lycan371

Join Date 11/2013

Crusades 2.5 Balance and Starbases

Hi,

I've played three games now in 2.5 and wondered what people think and about some issues in particular.

The three were all Huge galaxies 10 opponents, Genius. In the first as the Slyne I got what i thought was a decent opening but then got attacked from two sides and gave up in disgust. I was impressed by the AI's aggression which was considerably more than previously.

The second Slyne game (I think I discarded a couple of v bad openings in-between) i got another v decent opening and eventually took over completely. I was doing the 2 levels of malevolent (Motivation 1 and 2) and then switching to the bottom line of Benevolent for research and with enough planets this worked fine. The main limiting factor was getting enough Durantium to build cities.

I then tried the Yor and I think they've been made much easier than previously - much too easy?

Going totally Malevolent I was able to take lots of planets and given that I had enough Durantium, growth was trivial and of course morale not an issue. I've just finished on turn 169 and the capital has population 60.5 nearly 3000 ship building and about 1500 apiece science and research.

It was fun it being so easy but I guess that for balance the Yor need reining in a bit. Maybe growth could be made progressively more expensive - probably in terms of Durantium (and other resources?) rather than production. And perhaps even robots can get tense again from overcrowding (as in previous iterations).

The other issue I've noticed is re starbases. I built 22 but lots of the AI are in single figures and it seems that the (now dead) Drengin built 0! This is surely very suboptimal AI behaviour.

Anyway, other people must have other concerns.

Cheers,

Jon

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My thoughts are more about your ideology strategy. Only two Malevolents, and then you move on without choosing the third? You can do a. lot more with that 100% shipbuilding besides wage war. Second, you value starbases a lot, but chose to forego the first pragmatic? And third, what do you think of Benevolent's free colony ship? That ship comes loaded down with 9 free population, and that is a much bigger deal in 2.5, as I understand it.

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Hi,

Many thanks for your thoughts - It'd be v nice to get a proper discussion going about optimal ideological strategies.

The reason I don't go for the third is to try to get the whole bottom row of Benevolent which is much harder if you take one more Malevolent. You can slowly edge towards the ship production bonus using Intimidation Centres or whatever they're called and cash in after you've got the +5 science per colony. I think with the +10 production ship production will be fast enough in the opening but of course you want the +100% when building bigger ships

The three free pragmatic constructors are nice and if you're an engineer then they lead to the -50% decay bonus which gives you total flexibility (but is a mixed blessing in terms of time spent on optimisation if you choose to play "properly").

I didn't know that the colony ship had been buffed. That's also v interesting if you want to stay totally Benevolent since you could dump the lot or almost all of the lot in your capital which would be almost equal to the second tier Malevolent.

Cheers,

Jon

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now i really want to check out my synthetic custom race again, i believe it was cybernetic and wealthy, for the little extra production and starting credits.

so far i have only started one map (med), but other than one elerium on a planet there is non in the galaxy, plenty of nebulae and other resources.

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It's not so much that the colony ship is buffed, as it is that the free population it has been carrying is much more valuable now.

I find the 150 research a good first pick, if I get a good benevolent ideology event. But its value decays rapidly. I'm putting those points toward administrators.

I find the 100% shipbuilding killer, because you are taking the straight +10 to your homeworld and doubling it. Also, at that time in the game, that's a land grab: 100% of my citizens go to administration, and all of the constructors and colony ships I can get. And try to throw on engines and life support, and still get it out in one turn. And it's not just about the planets: it's about the ideology points. More colonized planets means more ideology points. Research Xeno Economics, and you can build +100% more treasure hunters, at a time when you really need the money.

If you're Xenophobic (which Slynne is not--that's Iconians), the shipbuilding is mandatory. That takes -50% shipbuilding and turns it into +50%. And a flat 150 research is less valuable to them, because they get +200% research.

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Hi again Tetley,

Yes of course the best choice depends on race and the map - how many planets you expect to colonise. And in the opening the planets are more about ideology and denying them to your opponents than their immediate benefit.

I realise that with Xenophobic races you have to go three rings into Malevolent to get the ship building and with the tech bonus for the Iconians, the Benevolent line is much less important. I tend to leave Xeno Economics for a while but indeed maybe it should be prioritised earlier. One use is it or bits of the tech tree below it like Tourism is as a relatively harmless tech to sell to the AI. I assume that on the level they play they have much less use for money or happiness techs than I do so am happy to research and then sell them. I should add I play without tech brokering which obviously makes life a lot easier.

Cheers,

Jon

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Slynne were not my favorite race, but I found them to be asteroid hogs. They need the durantium. And the raw production from the asteroids. That meant lots of constructors, lots of money to build up the asteroids, and antimatter--to mount prototype hyperdrives on constructors, to grab the faraway durantium first--which means more constructors.

Then I believe the game turned around, I was starting to make more money than I needed, so I started invading AI's who were closer to those asteroids. I got my Steam achievement for winning with the Slynne, and I was done with them.

I tend to agree that the Yor are a bit off. Whenever I take Yor AI planets over or spy on them, they have gobs of population that need to be saved. I'm building fast colony ships, no life support, as ferry boats (ah, back to the good ole days of Galciv2). I can imagine that, as Slynne, the Yor would be a very juicy target.

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The synthetics need a much smaller population cap now. They probably need a base 20 cap with techs that increase the cap incrementally.

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