Remember there's a diffrence between thinking a faction is weak then thinking a faction is boring. I definitely do no think shifters are a boring faction, there the most unique yet other then maybe cultists. But I can't help but think they have something missing when compared to everyone else, like all factions are running at about 100% efficiency but shifters are running at 90%.

Skyfin is great but as I said definetly does not make up for the massive expansion debuff making there economy drop drastically in the early game as they have to sit with one city while other players have 3 then have 2 cities while others have 6. They have a mass amount of pearls and dust though. But does that really make up for having 33% of the cities they should have along with far less workers?

gecko67 wrote:
I have not yet gotten in a war, but I can already see that it could be crippling. And since they are encouraged to war in winter, I think it makes sense to have something to compensate. Like maybe being able to raze on taking a city. Even if only during winter.

I have yet to war myself but I think the theme for the Allayi is something like: "No limits but penalties for straying too far from your core character alignment." So in that sense, rather than instant raze, there could possibly be a small turn cooldown until they can salt the earth. So that they still suffer effects from taking a city, but they can more quickly rid themselves of it. So they would essentially wage war at less of a breakneck pace, but still manage to keep their happiness in balance.

I had suggested a unique pearl blessing, accessible only to the Allayi, giving them the ability to cauterize a city using pearls. The Allayi would pay a solid amount of pearls to destroy a city in 5 turns; in essence, they would be turning pearls into WMDs.

I registered here just to say one thing to everyone : Monks, just monks.



EDIT: Do they have a cold climate bias?



Also because of their superior scouting they are can easily get the first era challanges and wonder, even megapole. They seem strong Imo.

Slashman wrote:
One error I have found is the description of the Seeker unit. It's description reads that in summer its charge has a greater attack and in winter it removes the enemy's defense. The actual description for Shifting Charge reads that in Light form it is -10% Attack per movement point on target enemy and in Dark Form it is -10% Defense per movement point. Nothing about increased attack for the charge in summer.

Oh dear :S We'll get on fixing that. It should reduce the target's attack in summer, not increase the Seeker's attack. This is what is implemented, but it may not be correct in the description.

Slashman wrote:
The Shifter Nature description actually then says that in Dark Form (Winter) it gets +20% attack and +20% defense in Light form (summer).

Shifter Nature and Shifting Charge are two different abilities - the Shifter Nature one looks correct to me.



Unfortunately battle capacity tooltips are hand-written (generally by Miles, poor guy) so unlike the tooltips for improvements and technologies they don't update automatically when we tweak values. There's always a risk things may not be update to date, but we are generally very disciplined about it.

Slashman wrote:
people complain that they want more challenge and innovation from 4x games then turn around and immediately complain when they get exactly that.

It's tricky, but there is a balance to be found between boring players by doing too much of the same, and losing players by doing too much that's weird and wacky. We hope we've found that balance with Shifters - certainly it was not our intention for the Allayi to play like any of the other factions

wilbefast wrote:
It's tricky, but there is a balance to be found between boring players by doing too much of the same, and losing players by doing too much that's weird and wacky. We hope we've found that balance with Shifters - certainly it was not our intention for the Allayi to play like any of the other factions

Love them. I love their dual personality and how they play in the winter.

Anyone have any idea what aspirate does?



And sorry but the pearl stockipiles is a terrible research. All it does is give you can option to convert 100 industry and 8 pearls into 100 industry. Unless your desperatley trying to rush a science victory this research/blessing is useless. Don't know who suggested this idea. just waisted lots of pearls and unskilled labour research.

someguy216 wrote:
Anyone have any idea what aspirate does?

It harvests strategic and luxury resources, if the skyfin is sitting on top of an unclaimed deposit.

someguy216 wrote:
Anyone have any idea what aspirate does?



And sorry but the pearl stockipiles is a terrible research. All it does is give you can option to convert 100 industry and 8 pearls into 100 industry. Unless your desperatley trying to rush a science victory this research/blessing is useless. Don't know who suggested this idea. just waisted lots of pearls and unskilled labour research.

Yes, I agree with this unfortunately. The cost in Pearls for this is staggeringly high. There is no way I would do this unless I was wishing for a very slow game. If it costed 1 or 2 Pearls per stock I would consider it.



I'd like to point out that you cannot pillage Pearls, and it would be great if you could do so (although a small amount as a bonus in addition to the dust+resource given would be smart here). Also, it would be nice if you received Pearls from bribing minor factions.



All in all I feel that this DLC is good. But, like much of the game and DLCs already, too many new options that are too expensive and serve as a useless alternative to a more optimal approach that had already been previously implemented.



I sincerely hope that the Pearl costs are reduced almost universally. They are at least twice as high as they realistically should be.

someguy216 wrote:


And sorry but the pearl stockipiles is a terrible research. All it does is give you can option to convert 100 industry and 8 pearls into 100 industry. Unless your desperatley trying to rush a science victory this research/blessing is useless. Don't know who suggested this idea. just waisted lots of pearls and unskilled labour research.

I specified that I focus on food and research stockpiles, which I have found very useful to counter act the pop growth needs and slow tech from fewer cities. I do not use industry stockpiles except to shift production from a mature city to a new one.

someguy216 wrote:
And sorry but the pearl stockipiles is a terrible research. All it does is give you can option to convert 100 industry and 8 pearls into 100 industry. Unless your desperatley trying to rush a science victory this research/blessing is useless. Don't know who suggested this idea. just waisted lots of pearls and unskilled labour research.

The to stockpile allows you to move Production between cities. The others allow you to convert to something else at a 1 to 1 rate (plus pearls), which is pretty decent.



If you don't have a glut of or don't have access to pearls these aren't going to help you much.



Calling them "essential" or "useless" are probably both exaggerations.

You must be doing something very wrong. Playing on fast, I get a three digit amount of pearls during the end of first winter.

I love the Shifters!!! My favorite faction right now.

Right now Allayi are seeming quite OP. I do play on normal settings, but the AI are way behind me. Going massive on boosters (the racial tech is just too good ), right now having six fervent cities. B)



About the food stockpiles, with the low growth of the Allayi these are pretty neat. I used them to kickstart new cities, but I can also imagine using them on bigger cities, especcially if you have the industrial megapole and can churn one out in one turn.



One thing that was 'less convenient' was certain quest armies bothering my Skyfins. My bad for scouting every ruin and accepting quests. Some quest armies would follow my Skyfins around and attack while they were aspirating nice resources. Just let them suck in peace!

Slashman wrote:
I find it hilarious that people complain that they want more challenge and innovation from 4x games then turn around and immediately complain when they get exactly that.



They don't play like other factions and I think that's great. No you can't randomly and endlessly expand. You need to use the tools specific to them to gain an advantage. Also, you can build a unit that sucks up resources from ANYWHERE on the map. That is freaking awesome!

There's nothing wrong with a bit of constructive criticism. There are definitely some good points being made in this thread.

Just got it and I loved it. So much mobility. I´ll try to play mp game to be sure, but I suspect they´re really strong. Loved the shifting charge, loved their hero and class tree, loved retaliation from defensive towers. Good tweaks on forgotten and cult. Awesome work, amplitude.

Turn 44 against 3 on normal anomalies. They´re quite something.

EdwardFalcon wrote:
There's nothing wrong with a bit of constructive criticism. There are definitely some good points being made in this thread.

You're right that there is nothing wrong with constructive criticism. But pretty much every point brought up so far has been addressed. The only exception to this would be the fast conquering of enemy cities which may or may not need some sort of tweaking to avoid taking big hits in happiness for extended periods.

BPrado wrote:
Just got it and I loved it. So much mobility. I´ll try to play mp game to be sure, but I suspect they´re really strong. Loved the shifting charge, loved their hero and class tree, loved retaliation from defensive towers. Good tweaks on forgotten and cult. Awesome work, amplitude.

Looking forward to your "complete" review of the Allayi and the kind of strategies you use for them!



EDIT: at this point, I'm starting to think the monks in winter are a bit too powerful.