Do I have a problem?
It is normal to feel bad when one is doing something they know they should not. So, no, you do not.
No. I never play any other tech either. Thalan tech is far and away the best with the only possible exception being synthetic and using the synthetic tech. But even then, all the free raw production from the Hives and vortex makes up for that. Not even including the empire wide tech bonus from the hyperion matrix...The extra miniaturization techs....The extra accuracy and jamming techs...I mean it's pretty ridiculous.
The only tech trees I have really played extensively is the Thalan and Yor tech trees. I have checked out other tech trees and dabbled with them a little bit. I came to the conclusion that Altarian tech tree sucks horribly; I prefer to play insane maps for long games, so crap terraforming = crap tech tree imo. Krynn is ok, Iridium is ok, Iconian seems ok, the others look about the same. Yor is pretty good for something you are basically forced to be stuck with if you want to play as synthetic. And yes by far I prefer the Thalan tech tree also, for reasons already mentioned.
While I would not say all the other tech trees are completely useless compared to the Thalan's, I do think they are certainly behind and could use some better fleshing out to boost them up some. Wait, except for the Altarians. That tech tree is garbage in my opinion. I will never play that tech tree again. Even if they fix it. It has left me emotionally scarred for life, that is how horrifically bad it is. I have no idea how the Altarians were the top power rank for a while in my current game. I am in the middle of slowly crushing the life out of them, ignoring their pleas for peace. Just because it annoys me they would dare to declare war on me with my Thalan tech tree, when they are using a clearly inferior tech tree. Yes this post really has no point anymore, I'm just rambling.
Have a nice day!
You too!!!
To make simple changes that would help balance things out the adjacency bonusses for special buildings should be tweaked.
For Thalan, nothing should give % bonus to raw mfg. Period. If the hive adjacency was changed to regular mfg like any old factory it would be fine. Plus 4 flat raw mfg is like 4 population so that is more manageable. The abuse comes from stacking plus 50% raw mfg bonusses onto it.
For other trees, in general, make the special buildings (which are almost always split purpose) benefit from and give adjacency bonusses to both types. The Drengin slave pit is a good example. Surround it with research and it still gets adjacency bonus to mfg and vice versa. This makes it a nice all around boost. But when you look at I think the iconian one it doesn't work. It's only classified as one type so even though it inherently helps 2 types, it derives adjacency bonusses from only one. This greatly gimps it.
In all the time I have spent in Alpha and Beta and Release I have never played a single game without using the Terran Tech tree. Its the one I am familiar with and my 'go to' tech tree.
After 1.1 lands and its patch i am going to redo the Vulcans again and try Thalan tech tree this time. You all are saying its awesome must mean that it really is.
The Thalan tech tree can definitely be OP. I wonder why they're always such pushovers in my games?
Outside of them, I actually really like the Krynn tech tree. It's not as dominating as the Thalan tech tree, but it's really fun to conquer the galaxy without forcibly taking a planet.
I think they all have some cool value to them it's just the balance isn't quite there. The only tech I find completely lacking is the iridium because money isn't worth anything.
I read the title of your post
When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad Playing With Myself
Oh dear....
No, no, no, that's not what I wrote!!! Please read carefully. LOL.
So, I understand that, instead of putting a higher level of difficulty… I could choose a tech tree that is « less good ».
It would be a different challenge.
P.S. : I’m not a native English speaker, so I’m sorry for eventual mistakes.
Meh!Call me a noob, but I like the "Basic" tech tree. I suppose I'll try the others at some point...
I really like the altarians... but with a few minor exceptions their tech tree is just awful.
They need to get a much better terraforming tree - it screws them late.
Also their special building (social matrix) is just plain awful. Needs huuuge buffs.
And yeah, thalan tree needs nerfing into the ground.
I thought my custom Veluszhi Tech Tree was overpowered just because it's got a tech that gives a free +3 Raw Production, easy Extreme worlds, and an early (weak) mass terraform.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
After looking at the Thalan tech tree, I'm wondering if I only thought my tree was OP because I was comparing it to the Base Tech Tree that Minors use. I might just give my custom faction back the basic terraforming techs that I took away from them.
Iconian tech tree is unexpectedly awesome, too, though. Regenerating ships are insanely useful, and then late game, their ships cost no maintenance at all, and then can use all extreme worlds with a +25% raw production bonus and all their focus benefits. If the Iconians were warmongers instead of peaceful, we'd all be screwed.
Hives alone with an average tech tree would make it awesome. Hives plus all the other goodies makes it amazing. Hives give 4 raw production and potentially 2 adjacency bonus to basically everything in a package that only costs the same amount of production to make as a basic factory. Add in the fact that the Hive is a manufacturing improvement and you can surround it with factories that make it gain its own bonus which is a percentage boost to raw production. The tech itself is available from the word go and only costs a little bit more than the first manufacturing tech. It's amazingly OP in my opinion.
Why don't we all sit down and help the devs a little by talking about our perceived flaws with the tech trees?
I'm pretty new and still getting a handle on things but i'll have a go at the Altarian's.
The first issue as noted is their unique building. It appears it's designed to let them build mixed research and manufacturing setups. But it just doesn't compete because at the end of the day it has to compete against solar power plants, (and upgrade's), and similar buildings for research. These can provide double the adjacency benefits, extra adjacency from not having mixed stuff encircling and around 5 times the percentage bonuses.
Their other major unique item is the approval buildings which i've adjacency benefits to influence. These have several issues: A) The adjacency bonuses are less than having another influence building, you only really need approval buildings when you have really high world populations, but high world pops don;t really help culture booming much if at all. C) even if you do need high approval from buildings the benefits are still equivalent to less than 1 proper culture building.
Well, I think the best comparison for the Altarians is the Iconians.
Compare the molecular fabricator with the social matrix. The fabricator is better in literally every way:
Then the follow up tech is also better - +25% vs a 2x +5%
And finally, the upgrade of the fabricator (industrial fabricator) is better than the dark energy lab - by even more! Why? Because it gives +3 adjacency, where dark energy lab is stuck on +1.
The iconians precursor line in the eng tree is amazing. The altarians have no equivalent.
The iconians have good terraforming. The altarians are crippled by lack of ultra-terraformer
They have the dream conclave which is a truly awesome building
They get more morale starbase upgrades
So for all those reasons - and more - the Iconian tree is just a LOT better than the Altarian one
And dont even get me started on the Thalan tech tree, which everyone knows is rediculous...
Honestly i don't get the problems with the Thalan tech tree above and beyond the part where anything that lets you fit more modules is broken in general right now.. Which isn't really an issue with the Thalan tech tree so much as a general meta problem. Sure the extra terraforming step is wonderful for flexibility and the hives are nice. But they don't come close to totally breaking things 4 production even early game is out done by a basic factory come 16 pop, and by later games even the most modest totals are outdone and till you get mother hives the adjacency isn't anything to write home about either. Even then there are better options. They're still worth having for the combined capabilities but hardly game breaking IMO.
You need to read the posts carefully. It's not 4 production it's 4 raw production. So it gets multiplied by all the 400% factory bonusses you stacked. And it's own adjecency bonus is a percentage increase to raw production.
Consider it this way. When surrounded by factories the hive is equal to 4 population with another 30% population added on top. Do the math...it's not just a factory.
The issue is that hives comes SO early. And its realllly powerful that early. Earlygame is the most important time in any game, since any boost you get heavily reduces how quickly you reach lategame.
But its not just Hives... They have so many amazing techs etc that others don't have.
Yes it's raw, but a soon as one factory's % times your pop exceeds the amount it gives it becomes much less impressive, and that point comes quickly.
@Adamb: thats a completely fair point such as it is, but i don't generally see it as completely broken in that respect on it's own. It's nice, even powerful, but i don;t feel, (given the lower adjacency bonuses and no food bonus), it's any worse than the Iconians. And i don't think anyone thinks they're broken.
Just ran a s[readsheet, with a top level factory and max adjacency benefits difference it runs to even till 54 pop. With basic factory you need 160 for a basic factory. However even with a basic factory the bonus drops below 20% by 20 pop, and below 10% at just after 30 pop, And that's assuming a base multipler to raw of 1000% with hive, so for basic factory';s it gets better even faster in reality.
Like i said mainly a very early game thing, (first 50 turns or so on the first couple of colony's).
Two other structures of interest that you can get easily:
Gaia Vortex (+4 RAW PRODUCTION TO ALL COLONIES).
Hyperion Matrix (+50% RESEARCH TO ALL COLONIES).
Yeah the matrix is insanely good. They also get a whole tech tree path dedicated to combat improvements, and every tech in it is amazing.
Generally, Thalan tech tree > iconian tech tree / yor tree > other tech trees >>>> altarian tech tree.
Going back to the Altarian tech tree, I'd like to mention that for a supposedly research focused tech tree... where are the unique research improvements or bonus techs?
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