I had played GC3 before, including the Mercenaries and Crusade DLC's, but gave it up because I didn't enjoy the game pace and play with Crusades. Recently, I downloaded the free version of GC3 Retribution from Epic Games. I hadn't played GC3 for a while, so that's why titled this as "newbie" thoughts.
The biggest change is the slow initial population growth rate of 0.01. This makes population the most valuable resource early in the game. This has several implications:
If you play Retribution with the maximizing pop strategy above, you can find yourself with 20+ planets by Turn 50, while the computer players are scraping by with 4 or 5 planets. You can ignore anomalies, resources, technology, money, military. All that doesn't matter because with 20 planets to the computers 4, you can pretty much steamroll them.
Most overpowered now are the Drengin. Not only can they colonize more planets than anyone else with the pop metagame, but with the 2500 BC per conquered planet, they'll be rolling in the money so they can set taxes to 0 by midgame.
Next overpowered races are the ones with fast movement, like Humans, who can just spread out and grab planets.
Unlike previous iterations, a one-population planet can provide meaningful production. How is that? Build a space elevator and starport next to each other and start rolling in gears, anywhere from 5 to 15 depending on tile and adjacency bonuses. Your empire should be able to producing 300-350 ship production a turn in aggregate by turn 50 when your enemies are probably in the < 100 range.
Since there's no real penalty from going "wide", this steam roller just builds on itself.
Grab an alien capital or two (by turn 100 at the latest), and you'll not only see your production explode, but most of the early technologies (Technological Age, and Age of Expansion) you skipped will be researchable in 1 turn.
There's some other changes like the hyperlanes and supply ships, but they are much less impactful than the slow population growth.
Yea, the population change was intended to create additional trade offs.
There are some techs and other things you can do to increase population growth but, of course, that means you can't go right into warfare if you take that path.
When I wrote the AI, I always intended the Drengin to be the toughest enemy. Unfortunately, they always seem to struggle -- I think they just get over their heads. In theory, the Retribution changes should make them tougher but in actuality, it just makes the competitive.
In a human player's hands, the Drengin are just overpowered in Retribution. After the initial colonization push, Drengin just build kinetic ships in mass and crush their neighbors. Soon, they're rolling in planets, research, population, money, production.
Ironically, the handicapped races are the silicoid now even though everyone's population is gimped. While early game the silicoids can keep up because everyone's population growth is so slow, mid game they falter because they can't boom pop easily without getting lucky on the map with lots of easily mineable promethium. Not so bad if you got 5 planets, but try finding enough promethium to feed 25 planets.
Carbon based have no problem booming 25 planet empires. Food is boosted easily with farms and adjacencies to cities, hospitals, and wonders.
The only carbon based races I struggle with are the Terrans and Iconians. With Terrans, its' probably the slow speed and lack of any good specials. They feel like a grind to play. With Iconians, the slow shipbuilding is just too painful. While science and planet-based social construction zips by for the Iconians, in the early game, where big advantages are won or lost, ship building is more important.
But as a said in my first post, I'm finding Retribution more enjoyable than Mercenaries or Crusade. Feels more like a "classic" 4X game in many ways without too many side distractions. Very clear phases of explore/expand/exterminate, with the exploit hiding in the background. Games go by pretty fast and planets become useful much faster than I remembered.
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