Beta 2 - won. Considerations

from Stardock Forums
I won my first Beta 2 yesterday at tough,gigantic,all-smart.
Put all my points into speed and started with 10 moves for colonies :)
I harvested "science mistery hot-spot" beeing so speedy and then exchanged top techs for planets, colonies, ...
I was able to buy all players but the last one that even at war gave me 3 of 4 planets for a lot of techs.
Last planet was conquered by the only transport I had to build. I was lucky to start alone in my side of the galaxy.

Beeing able to put points at the beginning gives you different flavours each time. Variable tech tree would improve that too (fog of science tree...).

No bug at all except sound went away after some hours. No opportunity to try starbases.

My suggestions to balance the game:
- now colonies are longer to build. possibly a little too long (from 60 to 45? :notsure: );
- AI diplomacy should prevent them from trading top planets or tons of ships for useless techs even if this is worth a lot of tech turns. Yes it could also be the case, but not like now.

I noticed minor races is not implemented yet so the only way to relate with them is to wipe them out...

Also the game is much more consistent (no diplomacy without the translator...). BTW, if the other race has the translator... they should be able to speak in my language... ;)

Keep going, my wife is starting to complain with me so the product is improving LOL

I'd be interested in other players strategies...
240 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
The extra moves on ships is actually a bug. I'm checking in the fix now. The navigation bonus is supposed to be a PERCENTAGE.

Minor races are in but th e only way to talk to them is to click on their star and choose the speak to option in the planet list.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I just finished a B2 game. I sent out my survey ship to collect anomolies. Since I know what the research anomolies look like, I always switched to a difficult to research tech just before picking it up, then switched back to the original tech I was researching. I had half my points in research, so I was able to climb the tech tree very quickly. Eventually, I was able to buy all of the other civilizations and minors in the game, by giving them all of my techs. Since they were gone the next turn, it didn't matter that I gave them such a huge tech bonus, and I didn't actually lose anything through the trade so I could keep on doing it.

A few things I noticed while playing:
- Wormholes don't always work. Sometimes they remove the fog of war where I assume I'm supposed to be transported, and replace it in my starting spot, but fail to actually move my ship.
- There seems to be a fairly large jump in difficulty between average and smart. I was having trouble with a smart AI in a normal galaxy, but the average AI was a breeze.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I just played 2 games.. one took me several hours the other one took me about 25 minutes...

I fonnd out if I put the galaxy on tiny, make all the races good and put my research to 100% and only go for the techs that take 1-2 years I can give all the races my techs and they all become my ally with about 4-5 techs. King of strange, but maby the vakue of the effect for the techs should be dependent on how much time you put into them.

My first game I finished like this, but only after being attacked by my allies! I conquered the Drengins after they surreneder but the Alterians(my allies) were still targeting the planets and they attacked me :( A similar effect happened earlier when I traded for the minor-races planets(I found out if u click on the plent and goto speak-to you can trade with them... I gave em all my tech for their only planet). The other races who were attacking the minor races then attacked me.

I like everything else that is new... very fun and I see a good game coming :)
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
The reseach trading does need serious balancing. It's too easy to win if you can trade research technologies. An empire with only a few planets should treat them as far more valuable than a large empire would.

Ally victories are also too easy at the moment. Bribe each empire 100 credits a turn and within a few turns you win. It does not even matter if you bankrupt your empire to do so. Perhaps you must remain allied for a length of time and maintain peace for 100 turns before victory occurs.

Paul.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
100 turns seems like a bit much, but 25 or 50 sounds about right.

I think that the AI for major races should never trade away its homeworld. Also, how highly they value their items should be somewhat influenced by how much they have total. That should be for everything (ships, cash, etc.) not just planets.

And one bug I forgot to mention before: When a race has a negative credit balance, they're willing to give you tons of money that they don't have. I got 15000 credits off the Altarians, who were already 760 credits in the hole. I noticed that the races with positive balances wouldn't go into debt for me, though.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
'And one bug I forgot to mention before: When a race has a negative credit balance, they're willing to give you tons of money that they don't have. I got 15000 credits off the Altarians, who were already 760 credits in the hole. I noticed that the races with positive balances wouldn't go into debt for me, though.'

I noticed this once before, but I'm not sure it's entirely unintentional, because races in that condition don't pay tributes with terms greater than 1 turn.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
My strategy was to basically hunt anomalies as well........maybe there should be a couple of more options to a couple of the research anomalies to balance it out like getting getting money, revealing a new resource to be harvested, or pirates destroy your vesel.

Better yet you could have your crew run into an anomaly that drives them mad and has them start randomly attacking everyone they see.....wouldn't that be a predicament?
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
" .... because races in that condition don't pay tributes with terms greater than 1 turn."

This may no longer true. At least on the game I started on the Beta 2 build. I have three minor races and all major races paying me for tradable goods, some of them with negative balances. Those with negative balances are going deeper in debt to pay for my goods at a rate of $100 bc/turn for 61 turns. I presume that if they will pay for trade goods this way they will also pay tribute the same way.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
This negative balance is even funnier when you bribe the last homeworld off a race. Offer a race ALL your technologies, take ALL it's planets and ships and then as much money as possible. I've had 1000's of credits from races without money. Then next turn I own the race and that money was never paid off! Maybe taking control of a race should also take control of it's liabilities?

Paul.