Any indication of when the balance patch is going to be rolling out?
It's been available since yesterday here: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/427529
changelog was out yesturday........
Some nice fixes there.
Hmm.. I'd feel bad to just tell you guys to improve the AI so you can be more easily swayed to buff culture as I'm sure that's no easy task.. That said, AI improvements are never something I'm against.
If buffing it in a conventional way isn't feasible, is there some potential to buff it in some way that works better against humans than against AI's? I know that sounds impossible, but maybe it isn't...
Vasari Rebel after patch:
Anyone have opinions on the nerf to snipe and buff to scattershot for the Ragnarov? I always used TEC Rebel when i knew there would be a VR opposition, now idk if it matters as much. Snipe nerf was really strong.
Snipe starts out pretty weak, but now that overcharge double its damage it is still useful when combined with that. You just have to wait until level 6 before using it effectively.
Played a game against a hard AI to test out the AR buffs. The AI surprised me, it wasn't supposed to be a challenge. Maybe it's just the way the map was setup or hard AIs have been made harder but anyways, on our first engagement, he was Vasari, not sure if rebel or loyalist ( never checked ), had a Kortul Devastator vs my Discord Battleship, which alone is suicide, but he also had several more frigates than I did.
Knowing I could not win that first engagement, I still held the line until I captured the planet which we were both fighting for and immediately had both a repair bay and temple of communion built.
The map was very spread out with little actual planets and many uncoloniseables, so I wanted to spread my culture early to prevent him from capturing too many of the valuable planets.
Keeping with the early culture, I also upgraded the now 150% shield regen and phase missile block, seeing as I was facing Vasari.
Once those upgrades kicked in, the tide turned. While still not packing enough firepower to take down the Kortul which kept regenerating his own shields, my Discord was now durable enough to face off to the Kortul and his frigates while I built factories at my new planet and started pumping frigates into the battle, and eventually won.
The now 15% ressurection and reanimation rates also came in handy when some small force slipped to my undefended worlds and I found I had a small force of frigates and corvettes waiting at my homeworld to save the day. Considerably more ships than I would have expected to find with the old 10%.
TL:DR I like the Advent Rebel buffs.
Just played a game as VL against a bunch of AIs, changes are all just about right, I'd say. It's still perfectly viable to go completely mobile late-game, but it takes a fair bit more planning now and makes you more a good bit more vulnerable when you first start transitioning into a completely mobile fleet - once you pick up momentum you're still freaking powerful, but it's a lot more risk/reward where before it was all reward with little risk.
My one problem with having only 1 lab per capital ship is that you need 8 cap ships to fully lose dependance on holding planets, which means leveling up your titan is a royal pain in the ass if you keep your fleet together.
Maybe add culture strength bonuses to the higher AI difficulty levels and dial back the income and research bonuses to compensate?
As for AI improvements, would it be possible to add some logic so that if culture dips below a certain threshold, it builds a culture structure, scuttling something else or upgrading the planet if it needs to (if this is possible, and since you wouldn't want to waste cpu cycles constantly checking for this, there would need to be a way to just run the test periodically). Of course, I haven't really looked to see how much it does this.
Even if they do make culture a lot better across the board, the next affect would still be to make the AI easier.
Err how do you figure? I mean if culture is good and AI keeps building those culture buildings, wouldn't that mean that you have to build even more culture buildings because his have bonuses?
I would also prefer having culture better and then finding a working set of bonuses and behaviors to the AI so that it could fight it somewhat effectively.
I would also prefer some small but noticeable bonus for the advent for having culture buildings. For example letting allegiance go like 30% higher with sufficient extra friendly culture and some tech. 2-3 culture buildings and some tech for example. That way the economic sting of having lots of culture buildings would be lessened. Or even have the culture buildings simply generate a bit of cash or something if that one is hard to implement..
One thing that could also work is having culture be gradual. As in it would be harder to get allegiance to drop from 20% to 10% then it would to drop it from 50% to 40%. That way facing advent who focused on culture would be more like having most of your empire at lower then max allegiance then losing your borderworlds.
The one way Stardock do need to improve the AI I have noticed whilst using the Dev.exe is enabling it to sell structures to build different ones, depending on circumstance, Example: I was playing on a small map where most of the Planets required research to colonise, I being a human built 2 civ research and gained access to the technologies to colonise the planets which require research to colonise. The AI however built to many other structures to be able to research what I had and consequently couldn't expand as fast as I did, with the amount of resources flowing into my empire and more research labs I built I easily could of trounced the AI (I was testing something else at the tme and gave it a helping hand by self destructing a few of its structures so it could build a second civ research and unlock the new planets). I find that the AI doesn't really consider what structures would be best where, I have never seen it move its Capital for example or another scenario one AI had used all its logistic slots and was unable to build any culture centres o combat a nearby AI's culture .... again had to swoop in there to do it for it using the Dev.exe.
Improving how the AI builds on its worlds really would make the AI a much better Player, I think the Fleet building it does is adequate but I don't believe it would require so much help if it became smarter on how it built its worlds.
Played a game yesterday for VL against 2 AIs FFA and i think the changes to them are about right - not once did i have shitload of money like i used to have before, additionally i took me quite a while to evolve into the fully mobile state. And i was not even harrased, so i could concentrate on the researching early game, under different circumstances - if i was heavily contested - i can see the whole transition to take way way longer.
I like the changes to the Dark Fleet summoning stuff, with those lower cooldowns, its finally viable to replenish your forces using just 2 phase stabilisers, which you can spawn with the Vorastra basically within 10 minutes (on top level). Vorastra feels now more powerful as well, how much though, and if enough, i cant say...some direct comparison to other titans now would be nice...whoever did it first time, please...
One annoying thing, i could not beat the AI, it just would not surrender - it was Advent Rebel, his culture prevented me from stripping conquered planets, so i moved on, and he would keep recolonising the planets afterwards ad nausea... even when i stripped all the planets in the game, leaving just dead asteroids, he would hang on those and never quit... i know people were asking for getting rid of AI surrendering, it happened even to me, that as i prepared for final major push before, AI surrendered - and it obviously felt shit, took all the fun away - but this was the exact opposite and it was not much fun either - over and over to move around and bomb same planets/roids... hopefully there is a possibility of finding some happy medium here and it would be perfect then - or i will just stick to capital planet victory.
Overall, very good work, love the game to bits. VL got the be the best faction of any RTS game ever.
Vasari Loyals
While strip rush is path in right direction combined with returning armada it still gets you big fleets for cheap money.
I just got a question, if VL Titan is mobile homeworld, why it doesn't generate money and labs? Also vasari armament pact should affect titans.
Probably so its not OP - but frankly, it would make sense. If titan costs the same capital crew points as the capital ships do, the techs adding labs and money production to capships should affect it as well. IMHO it would not be OP, just make the VL even bigger pain in the ass, where they could technically survive just with the Titan only (which after a while could generate enough money to summon few ships, which could be in turn used to take some planet), but that is i think OK, as this is meant to be main strength of the faction.
A diplomatic option to demand surrender by the player would be great to initiate or signal that "I'm done and want this fight to be over so re-evaluate your circumstances and consider surrendering as soon as you're losing badly". Not to say that the AI should never surrender on it's own if it is sorely beaten, but this way, you avoid an abrupt game ending.
Maybe the AI types could also be prone to a surrender less or more frequently. For example, Defender AI fights to the bitter end while agressor will surrender quicker if its fleets are gone and planets are being lost left and right ( I don't know specifically what the conditions are for the AI to pack it up).
Ok, so, what would make sense to me for culture is if ALL factions culture upgrades made it tougher for opponents to defend against culture. If I spend alot on culture upgrades, you should have to either spend a fortune on unupgraded centers to combat it or match my capabilities. Advent should, in my opinion always have a small advantage in cultural capabilities due to their reliance on it, though I don't think that is absolutely necessary.
Anyhow, the way I would accomplish this is by use of the cultural resistance stat. You know, the one from advent's "Wall O' Faith" tech? So, every culture upgrade, for all factions would look like this: +x% culture spread rate, +y% in culture bonus, +z% culture strength. 'culture strength' being a new term meaning that it's harder to resist. it would be like having a negative cultural resistance.
At least, this is my latest idea. We'll see what I think next month
If he's dead and you're cleaning up, can't you just leave one cap behind to stop the capping behind you?
Good point. It would have to depend on how much AI culture were buffed if this route were taken. Leaving everything else alone and only buffing culture for harder AI players would be better for comparison since you'd only have one variable to worry about.
So isn't Part 2 of this patch supposed to be sometime this month? Any ETA or updates on it?
ya end of July is approaching. Maybe Thursday?
We're looking at some time in August right now for the next update.
Thx for the update. Looks like you are putting some serious work into it.
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