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—Alorael, who is hoping that the Fosterites are right. Their Heaven sounds like good, wholesome, tacky fun.

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If I understood you correctly, the 3 scenarios can be summarised as follows:

1. All Shapers are just hypocrites, talking about control, but taking every opportunity to grab any bit of power that comes their way.

2. Events of Geneforge are completely unique and represent an unexpected crisis.

3. Megalomania is human nature, and Shapers are struggling with it as well as they can.

I think it's a combination of cases 2 and 3. On one hand, it looks like experiments gone wrong are common enough to have standard procedures for dealing with them. On the other hand, Shapers have built a stable empire spanning two continents, and the Geneforge War seems to be an unprecedented challenge. (At least that's the feeling I am getting from Geneforge 3.)

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By leaders I meant bosses in the sense of extra-tough opponents.

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The assumption about Spawned creations is that they are somehow temporary.

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But once we start quibbling about which units to count, this discussion becomes arbitrary.

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To me the bottom line is that in G3 the two sides are balanced until the player comes along, and for one PC to make such a difference it must be that both sides are stretched awfully thin for what they are trying to do.

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On the specific point about the Isle of Spears: I may well be forgetting how many big monsters were there; I only remember a few Drakons and one Eyebeast that were truly on the Rebel's side. By that stage of the game, as Loyalist or Rebel, the Isle of Spears and Rahul's keep both seemed pretty easy, so the body count didn't really register for me.

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About Shaper control versus Rebel chaos, I don't think you're taking the proper long-range perspective.
The Shaper Council may have as many disasters per year as the Takers have per week, but on the slower time scale, the effect is the same.

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They are trying to do something which they manifestly cannot really expect to control.

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Sucia Island was no isolated incident.

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Sending ambitious and talented Shapers out to research labs in isolated regions seems to be a basic function of Shaper society.

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Danette was just waiting to happen.

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Thirst for knowledge and power is as deep a streak in Shaper character as discipline -- or we would not be continually learning about things which Shapers have had to forbid.

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And Shaper discipline even functions as a kind of enabler, because the Shapers do not just believe in control in the sense that they think that control is a good thing. They also believe in control in the sense that they believe their controls are effective.

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I don't see that I have to propose a better way of being a Shaper. The Rebels may simply be right, that the only good Shaper is a dead one.

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On the other hand perhaps there is a level of caution that could be reached, or a cultural surgery that could eliminate Shaper arrogance, that would make Shaping sane and safe.

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But by the same token it is conceivable that the Rebellion might turn out well in the end after all, as well.

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The Shapers and Rebels still seem to me very similar, if you take a certain long-term perspective.

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Do not ever call BoA an abomination again, please.

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Have you ever actually played any scenarios by anyone but Jeff?

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Avernum 4 was definitely heavier on the hack and slash side than the previous games. This along with the clunky interface (too much reliance on both the mouse and keyboard), removal of skills/stats/spells,inability to rest outdoors, and the insipid storyline clearly makes this the worst in the series.

The graphical improvements do not outweigh all the above negatives... Although it would have been nice not to have relied on Geneforge-esque graphics.

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About understaffing: the Ashen Isles aren't exactly crawling with fully qualified Shapers, but then there aren't a heck of a lot of rebel leaders either.

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Nothing but spawners

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and cameos from fugitives Hoge and Litalia until pretty far along on Dhonal, and if I remember rightly the ranking rebel presence even there is just a few Drayks who seem rather to have struck out on their own.

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On Spears you finally find a few Drakons.

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Their history, and for that matter their contemporary geography, are full of example after example of good Shapers gone bad and things gotten wildly out of hand.

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And their response to all this, on the long view, is just to keep at it: next time more control, next time tighter discipline; ban this creation type, bar that island; on with the show.

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On the level of correcting mistakes by individuals, the Shapers react and adapt, step back and restrain. But as a society they seem to learn nothing,

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and on this level their measures of control and containment seem no wiser than the Taker policy of locking the worst failures into Inner Gazak-Uss, and carrying on with the great project.

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Keep in mind all we've seen is isolated shaper areas, not centers of shaper rule. As for the islands, recall that the rest of the world was at war. I doubt the shapers would spend time trying to reclaim some islands when the central core of the shapers was in jeopardy.

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P.S. David Gemmell is my favorite author (Drenai Saga is the best with the Waylander series being my favorite).

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Well, maybe instead of a minority of purists opposing a majority of reckless Shapers, the proportions might be the other way around.

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I still expect some pretty dangerous things will get tried by nominally responsible Shapers. Heck, the games so far are full of leftovers from the dangerous experiments conducted by nominally responsible Shapers even in peacetime.

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The fierce Shaper discipline and the continual outbreaks of Shaper megalomania seem to be two sides of the same coin.

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I might even argue that disciplined Shaper society, with its Council that forbids mad experiments, is itself a giant mad experiment.

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About Barzahl my point was that he began as a Shaper, and became a right-wing rebel by applying the abilities he held as a trained and unusually talented Guardian. If the Shaper ranks hold others as talented as he was, but under better discipline, then it isn't so hard to understand why they're winning.

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In general I'm not so sure what the distinction is between raw and cooked power; skill is also power.

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On the other hand, it doesn't seem so easy to make lots of canisters quickly. Barzahl was making Shapers out of sailors, but he was still desperately short of Shapers.

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The Shapers may have to train their people for years, but they have had centuries to do it on a large scale, and they don't seem to be all that shorthanded

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The Shapers we have seen in the games so far have been much more reluctant to release uncontrolled monsters than the Rebels. I don't think that means they couldn't do it if they wanted to.

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It may be that under wartime pressure the Shapers liberalize. I think it is at least as likely that they also get more reckless, and start doing some of the dangerous things they have forbidden so strictly for so long. Jeff has a lot of scope for secret Shaper war labs doing necromancy, summoning demons, making uncontrolled monsters, or whatever, all of it formally forbidden by the most basic Shaper laws, but all of it secretly sanctioned by the Shaper Council as an emergency measure. And so I could imagine an opposition faction of purists within the Shapers, who would rather lose the war than win it by those means.

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You might need sertain level of Luck skill to "find" them.

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But still, teaching shaping, magic and/or fighting to a previously traitorous servile, or an outside human... That would be just insane.

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I don't really view this as a cheat but more of a balance fix. One that should have been made before the game's release. It wasn't exactly game breaking, but it was extremely one sided how useful Greta was compared to Alwan. Loyalists couldn't keep Greta... She took off right as she was becoming quite powerful.

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Alwan's fanaticism gets on my nerves (and yeah, I've always had trouble with melee fighters in general), and while I sometimes sympathize with Greta, she also ends up annoying me.

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Agreed. If anything random were added to the game, it would have to be set up so that the player can't immediately reload and get something different. After all, anyone who had the patience to get the complete Geneforge 1 easter egg will sit and reload until they finally get the battle gamma they are after.

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