Greettings folks. I'm DivineWrath. Some of you know me as the guy who wrote the TA 101 guide. If you haven't read it yet, do yourself a favour and read the guide now. See the link below:
TA 101
To the point of my post. I'm looking for unique problems that some civs might run into. Examples of such problems is the Arceans speed problem (because of their alternate engine progression) or the Yor's inability to research mass producable economic planet improvements (they get a 1 per planet sort of deal).
So I'm looking to the community to post any and all problems you have noticed about the various civs (you can skip the obvious problems). Simply put, I want problems so that I might be able to offer a possible solution in my guide.
Thanks in advance!
I'll give a few examples to get things started.
Before I get into this I'm going to go ahead and "solve" (part of) your second problem for you.
Use the initial miner to build asteroid mines. If time/the map permits, build a second one (and possibly third, but let's not get ahead of ourselves). An extra 12-15 production on your homeworld is a godsend. In some instances it can be worthwhile to convert the starting colony ship to a miner as well, but most of the time you're better off getting a 125% boost to empire-wide research (24+14+16 from hyperion matrix=54 as opposed to 24) by colonizing the first planet you see. Taking the +50% military production bonus is invaluable, and it only costs 4 points (whereas social +50% costs 5-that's always bothered me).
Stock Thalans can be a colony rushing beast with this, due to their innate +33 social/military production. Even so, it's probably better to go custom and tack on +1/2 speed-which brings us to the other issue of the Thalan tree not meshing very well with their SA.
Granted, without access to research structures, it's still difficult, in the circumstances you've outlined, but it's not as difficult.
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I've got two issues to present-both of which can be "solved" via tech trading, but as I understand it that's not a valid solution in your book-nor is it in mine.
Invasion:
-Iconians are missing Tidal Disruption (TA preferred tactic when you don't have the techs anyway). -Thalans are missing Core Detonation, Tidal Disruption, and Mass Drivers. Combined with their low(er) soldiering from techs and their lower population due to no farms in their tree, this can be fairly devastating. -Yor are missing Core Detonation and Tidal Disruption.
Morale:
Everyone but Arceans, Terrans, minor races.
You wind up missing the following:
+15 morale (Xeno Entertainment)+15 morale (Extreme Entertainment, Zero G Sports Arenas, Virtual Reality Centers)+15 morale (Ultra Spices - Extreme Entertainment)+12 morale (Virtual Reality Modules - Virtual Reality Centers)
For a total loss of 57 morale (about a starbase and a half, fully upgraded).
-Altarians/Drath get 20 from techs (loss of 37), while their maximal morale improvement is 18%.-Drengin/Korath get 15 from techs (loss of 42), while their maximal morale improvement is 25%.-Iconians get no bonuses from techs (loss of 57), and are stuck with a 25% morale improvement all game long.-Korx get no bonuses from techs (loss of 57), and are in an even worse position as they can only build one of their 25% morale improvements per planet.-Krynn get no bonuses from techs (loss of 57), and are limited to two one-per-planet morale improvements for a total of 50% (20+30). For the stock Krynn, this is hardly an issue, but it becomes noticeable when playing a custom with their tree.-Thalans get 25 from techs (loss of 32), and have a maximal morale improvement of 25%. However, theirs is dirt cheap, and they don't have farms in their tree, so they don't need it as badly.-Torians get 5 from techs (loss of 52), but have a maximal morale improvement of 50%.-Yor get no bonuses from techs (loss of 57), their maximal morale improvement is 20% and is linked to a 3mt/wk farm, and they have a separate 20% one-per-planet improvement.
You can consider the above to be a loss of 30 if you treat trade goods as buyable, which works so long as you have at least one AI in your game who will 1) have it in their tree 2) get that far and 3) build it. Don't rely on the minor races for that.
If you have tech trading on and can manage to get the techs, you have nothing to worry about, but it's something to keep in mind.
The best solution to this issue is to adopt a one-farm-per-planet rule (whereas DA with its standard morale bonuses and structures could support two).
[Edited. Thanks.]
-About Thalans and space mining
I looked at your suggestion, looked at the Thalan tech tree, and played with a few numbers. It costs 1100 research points (might vary depending on research speed setting) to get the "Space Mining" tech so you may upgrade your asteriod mines to the second level. This second level will increase the production output, but would require extra space miners and/or more micromangement to ensure you get this advantage early.
However, going strait to the extreme colonization techs requires no less than 2950 research points to colonize a world of your choice. It'll cost 3950 if you want to include research planet improvements before then.
I'll play a game to test things out.
-Soldiering:
The Thalans do get 2 different soldiering techs depending on the alignment techs you pick after researching "Xeno Ethics". That helps, but without farming, they still are at a disadvantage.
-Morale:
There are some bonuses you missed. The Thalans get a +15 bonus to morale from "Planetary Adaptation". The Torians do get a +5 bonus to morale from "Cultural Enlightenment". Both techs can be researched fairly early in the apropiate tech trees. I however, am not an expert in the bonuses from techs from these various so there might be others.
No, no, no.
I'm not suggesting that you research space mining. You're looking at 10 week build times for 4/5 more production for the second level. That's clearly not worth it, in anything less than a medium all-abundant, or a large common, and maybe even not then.
Just that you get the first level asteroids up ASAP-before colony rushing begins.
You're right on the morale; I didn't check every tech, just looked in the standard places. As stated, it's not a real issue for the Thalans unless they trade for farms. Torians are different due to their improvement being 50%, so it's less of an effect there as well.
I have a question for the Arceans, if it has a speed peanlty, does it make it hard for the race to take the fight to the enemey.
Even if some Balancing gameplay issues were already pretty close to 'unmanageable' in DA, the introduction of multiple Trees multiplied this effect by at least twelve... but read on.
To me, the big differences or lack thereof depends a lot more on how most human players react at specific conditions presented to them. I'd say that 98% of this SD_Stock_Default balance design might certainly be dead on sharp when & if anyone can (or should) adapt accordingly... creating a challenge is one thing, enforcing artificially complex variations another.
For the 2% that remains above, here's a vague idea of what i believe could be 'altered' to make the situations a bit tighter from (again) the human perspective;
- Krynn's super espionage calculations. Nuf' said.
- Terraforming delays: if most AIs can't reach potentially high(est) **or feasible** techs soon enough, their and_or anyone else's colony rush is out-of-synch with HUGE implications to normal growth. This is where, a human can gain indirect (but, still unbalancing) emphasis to its resources at a much higher efficiency level than any AI could be (including what if any "natural" research path--S their algorithms allows them to follow!).
- Trading supplementals found in such stuff as the Korx early techs & how this alone can generate a steady flow of economic powers. Boost this all with the usual SB networking and eventually, somebody can enjoy an almost endless supply of rapid BCs considering Peace time can last long enough.
There may be some more slightly less important technicalities creeping around the default_regular trees of the 12 races, but i doubt corrections would enhance gameplay further or fix unbalancing factors to the point where any human players would possibly notice (specially in smaller maps, btw).
Based on experience (and instinct), there are bazillions of "problematic" ways anybody could find... to me, SD developpers went beyond some of these concerns already by coding an extremely solid gameplay design.
But, as they say -- you (or many, or them, or just me) can't stop evolution even if it means revolution.
I recently completed a game as the Thalans (with military production build) on a large map with 3 other civs. I feel like I almost forgot how useful a production build is. Inaddition to the production build, there were a number of techs between what you start out with, and "Space Mining I" that gave a number of useful bonuses (some being military production, and social production).
Anyways, I tried to play with the settings, and it does not allow you to set number of extreme planets beyond "Frequent" so extreme colonization problems with the Thalans has not proven as troublesome as I initially thought. Inaddition, with a strong production start, I was able to nab all the normal planets in my quarter of the map. Also, I managed to nab 2 quarters worth of galactic resources. I might be able to reproduce some of this success with a non-production build the next game I play.
@Sole Soul
I considered using the second level of asteriod mining, but I instead decided to build several extra miners early on, and let them do their own thing.
It depends on how you use them. If you blindly try to find your enemy, any civ will run into problems. I suggest the following
Good choice.
I usually spam miners (tiny hull, nothing but mining module) from one high production planet, then research the next mining tech when I get the warning that one doesn't have anything to do.
The Iconians have economic trouble due to not having access to advanced goverment, xeno economics or stock exchanges in addition to some powerful but expensive unique structures. I don't think there is any one perfect solution to their post colony-rush economic crunch, but keeping morale at 100% empire wide as long as possible, getting recruiting centers up in decent time, getting at least one morale building on each planet fairly early and two on the homeworld, getting to their unique one-per-planet +50% econ building as a priority, researching Xeno Ethics for the 50 bc/turn savings on upkeep from going good and the Harmony Crystals trade goods taken together can get things back on track.
The Korx have a bit of trouble that comes simply from having no exceptional combat advantages, research advantages or production advantages. This dictates (IMHO) either a more patient, careful play style (marked by a diplomatic focus in race setup and tech path, getting the diplomatic translators early, getting every other empire in at least one war to maximise profiteering income and reduce the likelyhood of being attacked yourself and playing tech broker) or a straight rush to Planetary Invasion to take out the nearest neighbor asap. If they try to just develop normally, they usually end up behind where most other races do. Going Neutral is a good idea with the Korx - they get a cumulative 50% rush buy discount, and the morale bonus is useful also.
One note on the Arceans - because of their cheap constructors, they are ideally suited to building an early military starbase array, and might find it worthwhile to go evil alignment for the free starbase upgrades. This can shoot their military rating so high it's not difficult to bully the other empires diplomatically.
A rather subtle issue with the Altarians: They have so many cool unique technologies that it's quite easy to get unhealthily passive - to keep wanting to just research one more tech before committing to action. On suicidal, that can delay actual action until the stronger AIs are terribly powerful. I think it may make sense as the Altarians to simply research the minimum level necessary to keep a balanced economy while successfully fighting a one-front war of expansion with your weakest neighbor, and be rather ruthless about not going beyond that point in the tech tree until you've conquered all the target empire's planets worth getting. Otherwise, you can end up with too small an empire.
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