I have been playing a game as the Allayi, and have been reading about people with 100s of pearls after the first winter. How are you getting them? When I get pearls from a deposit I am lucky if I get three each deposit. Is there something I am missing?

What speed and world size are you playing on? I'd imagine you'd get more on a lower speed and on a larger map

Yeah, don´t worry, you´re not supposed to have 100 pearls by the end of first winter. If you got about 50 after spending on a couple of cheap things, you´re doing just fine.

On fast game speed a friend of mine had about 120 pearls after first winter. He forced pearl collection, I forced drawing strategics with my flying unit. So I had 32 pearls only, but was succesfull by starting and finishing Auriga Museum first.

I'm not assuming that you're doing this, but I'll state it any way. There is absolutely no way you could be doing this on Hard.



The amount of Pearls the Allayi get is sad. On easy you can probably get 200ish depending on the size of the map. On Hard you'd be lucky to get half that. 200 is almost nothing. That's about 7ish districts and 5 Skyfin. On Hard you'd probably get a Skyfin and around 4-5 Districts if you're lucky.. That means you have 1 to 2 Skyfin and 1 functioning city by the time you reach the end of Era II, assuming your Skyfin wasn't ambushed while picking up Pearls and assuming your Hero led army is even able to survive.



Paying 20 Pearls for a mobile extractor that doesn't cost a tech slot isn't the worst thing in the world. But, the fact that they can be killed so easily is a problem. The fact that it costs the same resource as Districts is a mathematical mistake.



The way Allayi are designed, they are almost impossible to play on Hard. Of course every faction is OP on Normal/Easy. They always have enough resources to get ahead of the AI. But if you play on Hard, you're SoL. Not enough resources to extract, not enough places to hide away from wandering enemies, not enough time to grab Pearls, not enough Districts, not enough population, not enough Happiness, not enough FIDS, not enough of anything.



The fact that they have slower population growth on top of everything else is just more icing on this cake. They aren't going to be competitive. There is virtually no way to afford mobile extractors for 20 Pearls and Districts that cost increasingly high amounts of Pearls. Losing one Skyfin is game. I don't care how good you are. If you lose a Skyfin, you lose. That's on top of the ease of which you can be rushed. That's on top of the ease of which you can be crushed by minor faction units. That's on top of your barely-an-eco-here system going for them.



I like the concept. But, this execution was foreshadowed.

cj.of.earth wrote:
Paying 20 Pearls for a mobile extractor that doesn't cost a tech slot isn't the worst thing in the world. But, the fact that they can be killed so easily is a problem. The fact that it costs the same resource as Districts is a mathematical mistake.

On Normal speed a district is 10, and the Skyfin is 20. Not sure how pearl cost scale with game speed. Haven't checked.

Again, I agree with CJ.of.earth.



Allayi are not competitive. They are worst than the Forgottens at the beginning of the Shadows Expansion...

I don't know. Trying them out on hard right now. I'm surely not the biggest player. But I'm doing fine with my little empire. Some AI are snowballing hard however. I'd have to see how it turns out. I do have some stacks of pearls. If my Skyfin is attacked I retreat and move into the sea. Until the naval expansion, the sea is safe :P

kin0025 wrote:
I have been playing a game as the Allayi, and have been reading about people with 100s of pearls after the first winter. How are you getting them? When I get pearls from a deposit I am lucky if I get three each deposit. Is there something I am missing?

I think it depends on map size and game difficulty.



When my friend and I played last night on a tiny four faction map on Harsh Winters, fast turns, I easily had 200+ pearls by the end of the second winter.



But, when I play on a larger map with my family and friend (8 position & normal winter, fast turn), by the end of the second winter, I had picked up 60.



First, trying changing the winter conditions to harsh, then, if that doesn't suit your fancy, then go to progressively smaller map sizes.



Regards,



Marc

I was at the point in the quest where I needed a lot of pearls and the map was scoured clean so I thought I'd be waiting a while. But then winter came and I redeployed my four skyfins and sent out my three pearl-gathering heroes (mobility, stealth, auriga affinity). By the end of winter I had over 200 pearls. This was an 8-map, serious, normal speed normal winter. Pearl gathering is the priority for this faction: scout the whole map, get open borders where you can and use stealth where you can't, and don't waste time on skyfins sucking up resources when they have pearls to gather.

Getting pearls was never a problem for me, while playing on a large map with 8 players on Serious, with harsh winter and hard world setting. Using Skyfins and dedicated heroes for pearl collection (and pearl cost reduction) have been more than enough in providing my pearl needs, including aggressive voting.

It´s a good idea to send a couple of fins to the sea after a couple of winters, especially if you´re the only Allayi. That+whatever i have in my regions/adjacent regions has been more than enough for me the last few games.