So, I recently got the shadows expansion and, of course, tried my hand at playing as the Forgotten.

One of their most interesting mechanics is that they dont generate science, instead using dust to buy tech. Sortof a play off of the broken lords mechanic that uses dust in the place of food.



Now, I'm not one to play as the broken lords myself, so when I started playing as the forgotten I instantly came face to face with a real problem that both factions must face.

Spawn location is really important for both of these factions. If the Forgotten spawn in a red rock or tundra region where the overwhelming majority of tiles have science benefits in the place of other benefits, they are really really screwed over in the early game.



Now, it could be that, because this is my first time really playing a faction that is more dust reliant, I just dont really understand how to overcome this problem.

Still, I'd like to put forth the idea that EL should have Spawn rules added for every playing faction that dictate what sort of territory each faction can and can't start in.

Forgotten should never start in a territory that is mostly filled with science boosting tiles

Broken lords should never start in a territory that is mostly filled with food boosting tiles



What do you guys think? Would it be worthwhile to place this mechanic into the world gen of endless legend to ensure these two factions don't get shafted early on in the game? Or, is there something I'm missing when I say starting location can place these two factions in an extreme disadvantage?

Your tradeoff here is between using "Ideal FIDSI" and "Spread" placement options in game settings. The former acts like you'd like, limiting potential terrain, but can leave empires disturbingly close.

natev wrote:
Your tradeoff here is between using "Ideal FIDSI" and "Spread" placement options in game settings. The former acts like you'd like, limiting potential terrain, but can leave empires disturbingly close.

Ah, my mistake then.



Still, it seems odd that there is no real way to get the best of both worlds.

I would think that if the world gen began with taking into account all the empires, generating ideal starts for each and spacing them out a bit, then generated the rest of the world from there... well, I suppose that would require an intensive overhaul of the world gen system wouldn't it...

Oh well.



Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

I guess now I'm just suggesting that the world gen be reworked to solve for this tradeoff players must choose between whenever starting up a game...

Agreed. There should be a minimum and a maximum yield within walking distance on the first turn, and that should be default. Imposing factions with a handicap to adapt to suboptimum yielding or move more than two turns, especially on fast MP games, leads to a negative feedback cycle that´s barely possible to be controlled against competent opponents.

Your tradeoff here is between using "Ideal FIDSI" and "Spread" placement options in game settings.

Yeah, nope, im gonna have to restate my original complaint.

I switched to the fids option and still wound up in a science oriented location while playing as the forgotten MULTIPLE times. A generous amount of science mind you, but all completely useless to the forgotten. Unless this is due to a bug, im going to have to again say that spawn rules should be implemented for each faction that has a fids rule to them.



Needing to rove around to find an alternate start, wasting valuable starting turns, is a crippling result of simple bad luck that really should be rectified by way of some spawn rules.

I do agree that the starting locations of the Forgotten feel off. However, I think this may be an issue specific to the Forgotten, as I never had that impression with other factions. It is possible that their "starting preference" is bugged.

Broken Lords for me always started in 1 turn from really awesome dust generating position. I think there is already mechanic to ensure that. Maybe it's bug with forgotten.

There is a system in place that balances spawn positions. It might be that the fine tuning isn't quite right, but it looks functional from my first inspection.



Here's the relevant section on weighting of each hex, with the base values on the left and the Forgotten on the right.





And here's a section titled "minimum FIDS". I don't know how far around it looks to check for these, or if this option is only enabled with the 'ideal fids' option on. Again, base values on the left and Forgotten on the right.

That´s great, thanks! I wonder why so much food and so little science for necros.