WeLoveYou wrote:

Ptirodaktill wrote:

 They were broken as hell before the nerf and now they are still fearsome. A competent Unfallen player can deploy 48-60 Cp worth of ships with T3 components by turn 55-60 on normal speed. 

Eh? I'm pretty sure this is impossible. Unfallen are good, but not that good, not even close (no one is), and I think I'm a fairly competent player. Just to have the science, dust, industrial, and colonial infrastructure to have half that amount of mid-tech ships takes more than 55-60 turns. Turns 50-60 postpatch is basically the early game on normal speed.

If you can summon a save, on Endless difficulty, with this, I'd be convinced, and downgrade my own self evaluation.

Anyway, I think they're in the right place right now. Still one of the stronger factions, but their not strong for free. You need to protect your viners now, build several of them in order to expand decently, plus the AI gets annoyed at you now if you have them in their space. It's mostly just an influence sink with the force peace, but it's still a cost. I don't agree that peace is useless. Approval is now a hard to come by and important commodity if you want to expand quickly, and forcing peace is an easy way to get it.

I think this might be one of those cases where they were so good before that the nerf is going to feel overwhelmingly harsh to anyone who played them as a main, but they are definitely still extremely strong. They still have monstrous food output, good approval, a good starting planet, good starting political system, and decent heroes. 

This is good feedback.

I can definetly agree on the points of monstrous food output, High Approval, Good starting planet.

Where I take issue is that some races NEED to be stronger early to balance the likes of Cravers. Cravers are Military/Expansionist, there needs to be early equivalence in other races and in the case of unfallen it was Pacifist/Expansionist.

To nerf their early game was to go against the whole point of the race and the playstyle. 

i will reiterate, I am all for nerfing the unfallen, just not in the early game.  Nerf their mid/lategame instead, Allow the early expansionist playstyle and punish players who dont react accordingly just as if you were against Cravers. 

Ptirodaktill wrote:

I just leave it here. Spiral 8 map, normal speed, 4 players. I spawned near Unfallen. GG on turn 36 https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/849347022571426415/40C73CCA25882C0AFBC36A13C935DEE2A41F15C2/ 

In an earlier post you said 50-60 CP with T3 components by turn 50. This is 8 ships at turn 36, which is not difficult if you build shells and then use dust to upgrade them. You got rushed. UE could pull this off faster with their scout ships. No one is complaining about UE. In fact, you're down as saying they are the weakest race. You can't see from the screenshot (which is why I asked for a save), but if their system isn't next to yours, then there isn't a whole lot of payoff for them rushing you, other than eliminating a rival.

Plutar: I didn't say Unfallen were bad. I think they are only second to Cravers. I was just pointing out a weakness that not many people talk about. You can talk about how exploiting that weakness is difficult, but it's still a weakness. The home system is hard to take because it's the only system you need to take. 

yea that pretty much proves my point, starting next to them is like starting next toa  fortress that shoots cannon balls over there vine walls.  There in a good place. 

Really depends on how well it's defended, and how good your troops are compared to theirs, and how good your fleets shape up comparatively. If these things are mildly in your favour, you can take out a whole empire in a couple of turns, no matter how well they are doing in other departments. This is another point about not being expansionists. If you're playing Unfallen, you have to defend your capital to prevent being sniped. Doing so, while also trying to defend a large empire is extremely difficult, even with the added speed on vines. The other factor here is fleet direction. For any other empire, if I send all my fleets to one system just to conquer it, I will get the system sure, but it also makes conquest extremely slow, giving the opportunity for retaliation. No problem here though, just dump everything on Koyasil. 

Honestly, I'm surprised they are considered so viable in multiplayer because of this. Late game (even mid game) fleets can easily take systems. The usual barrier to steamrolling is system caps, attrition, and whether you can realistically hold that system for very long. All you need to do against Unfallen is take one system, and hold it for a few turns, and they've lost the game completely. They have a couple of buildings to mitigate the weakness, but even these don't stand up to well upgraded troops.

It's possible that all you really want is to take some of their strategically important systems, but the thing is, if you wipe them out from the capital, when you recolonise the lost system, if you get there soon enough, it comes back immediately as a fully fledged system, as if it had been conquered. So why bother with the smaller systems, when you can get them as well?

I still think Unfallen are strong, but even pre-patch, this major weakness for them was often overlooked. 

MetalCommander wrote:

On a other note, Unfallen dying if they lose their home system might be more of a gameplay thing considering how their vine network have to conect to it to be able to stay in place. Not sure anyone has tested what would happen if you took it out though considering how much of an investment it must be.

They die. If you hold their home system for around 3-4 turns, they lose all their other systems. It's a pretty significant weakness.

I knew that people would more or less everything I had to say but much more coherently if I let them. As someone that admitedly doesn't have that much experience with the game it really does look like the only really harsh thing they might have to deal with is getting choked and even then they might be able to hold on long enough to break through at some point or get out by using wormhole or warp travel to nearby unconected systems.

Again, as I think most other people have said, their passive loving turtle style of play does give them a unique identity that could be loss if we nerfed their mid game instead. It would allow them to play a much more agressive solitary game from the get go rather than have to relly on diplomacy with others. Also we haven't figured out how they could be nefred in the mid game. I can think of three ways but 2 of them change their style of play a lot. You could nerf their bonuses they get from friendly factions but that not only remove an incentive to play peacfully it might not be that much of a change for some in multiplayer considering they don't seem to care about diplomacy. You could reduce their deffensive capabilities but that could change their play from a defensive stance to premtive offences while something they don't seem particuliarly better at than any other races. And finally you could reduce the amount of ressources they recieve from nodes but that's something the nerf all stages of the game from early unlucky expantion choices to late game amount of ressources you can have.

On a other note, Unfallen dying if they lose their home system might be more of a gameplay thing considering how their vine network have to conect to it to be able to stay in place. Not sure anyone has tested what would happen if you took it out though considering how much of an investment it must be.

Free expansion, food penalties and manpower arguments on colonies are all very good points. Something I perhaps was not taking into full consideration when I made my rant. I do not have a counter argument to make here so I will agree.  

The view that they should be a slowly expanding impenetrable fortress, as opposed to a quickly expanding pacifist empire, works better with the concept of what a tree is I guess, so again I concede.

I guess overall I'm just a salty unfallen main, but I did disclaim that in the first post. It just feels so much harder to get anything done now but that is probably stemming from being used to pre-patch unfallen for so long. :P

Thank you for your post dude.

Axelo7 wrote:

This is good feedback.

I can definetly agree on the points of monstrous food output, High Approval, Good starting planet.

Where I take issue is that some races NEED to be stronger early to balance the likes of Cravers. Cravers are Military/Expansionist, there needs to be early equivalence in other races and in the case of unfallen it was Pacifist/Expansionist.

To nerf their early game was to go against the whole point of the race and the playstyle. 

i will reiterate, I am all for nerfing the unfallen, just not in the early game.  Nerf their mid/lategame instead, Allow the early expansionist playstyle and punish players who dont react accordingly just as if you were against Cravers. 

Thanks, I try :)

Not sure I entirely follow on the Cravers point. The 'pacifist' expansionists are 100% the Lumeris, who are pretty much unrivalled for expansion in the early game, partly for the same reasons as Unfallen. They have optimist which lets them go over their system cap  with little consequence, and the ability to buy colonies, especially unconnected colonies (so no loss of food before warp tech) gives them a serious edge.

If you mean in terms of defence. Unfallen are nearly unkillable in the early game due to the Guardian defense buff, and their defensive buildings. Taking systems via conquest in the early game is already pretty hard. Unfallen are one of the only factions that I don't radically adjust my playstyle for if I find myself next to the Cravers.

In terms of playstyle, I gathered it was supposed to be the opposite of expansion heavy. Due to the vining mechanics on resource nodes (like black holes etc), the Unfallen don't really need to expand fast to stay competitive. That's your main strength and weakness. Koyasil becomes a super system relatively fast, but if you lose it, you die. I gather that people expanded really fast with them before, but that was partly why they were broken. A race that is supposed to have fewer, but higher quality, systems, could actually have lots of high quality systems. I guess thats another reason it burns so much with the nerf. People liked them because of the rapid expansion possibility, but that wasn't really supposed to be their playstyle. Especially as we already have two expansionist empires, namely Lumies and UE. 

IMO very harsh nerf. Unwarrented given the early game dominance of some of the other races, felt like unfallen were in a good spot to balance them out abit.

Firstly Vineships were already vulnerable to enemy fleets and pirates more than colonies with 10 turns of vining, let alone 20. Pirates in particular because as to my knowledge pirates don't seem to blockade a colony and thus prevent its growth, only factions do. Pirates might stop for one turn but they will always roam on. (correct me if I am wrong though). 

Pirates will ALWAYS engage on vineships which means you either defend them for 20 turns or lose them as they cannot fight for themselves. 20 turns without interference from pirates is a big ask. this further hits the ability to expand early as you need to invest resource in early military which defeats the purpose of your pacifist govt/expansionist style.

Secondly in versatility, Vining is limited completely by the star lanes you have available to you. spot a nice system somewhere further out? too bad you are looking at loooong waits before you could have any chance of colonizing, much easier for another race to quickly send a colonizer out and secure it. 

Thirdly, this change puts ALOT of emphasis on your starting system as your main early game FIDSI machine Combined with the nerf to the unfallen starting pop (used to be 3 unfallen + 1 locked guardian, now is 2 unfallen + unlocked guardian) you can no longer secure that early 4th pop bonus to help you on your way. This in combination with the vineship nerf hits the unfallen with a double-whammy early game nerf.

Lastly, the change to pacifist govt default law gives you almost no incentive to pursue peace other than for Approval which is not what the unfallen need to be competitive. Is just another nerf to the early FIDSI potential.

..Yeh am salty unfallen main, but valid points I would argue.

Discuss!

Ptirodaktill wrote:

 They were broken as hell before the nerf and now they are still fearsome. A competent Unfallen player can deploy 48-60 Cp worth of ships with T3 components by turn 55-60 on normal speed. 

Eh? I'm pretty sure this is impossible. Unfallen are good, but not that good, not even close (no one is), and I think I'm a fairly competent player. Just to have the science, dust, industrial, and colonial infrastructure to have half that amount of mid-tech ships takes more than 55-60 turns. Turns 50-60 postpatch is basically the early game on normal speed.

If you can summon a save, on Endless difficulty, with this, I'd be convinced, and downgrade my own self evaluation.

Anyway, I think they're in the right place right now. Still one of the stronger factions, but their not strong for free. You need to protect your viners now, build several of them in order to expand decently, plus the AI gets annoyed at you now if you have them in their space. It's mostly just an influence sink with the force peace, but it's still a cost. I don't agree that peace is useless. Approval is now a hard to come by and important commodity if you want to expand quickly, and forcing peace is an easy way to get it.

I think this might be one of those cases where they were so good before that the nerf is going to feel overwhelmingly harsh to anyone who played them as a main, but they are definitely still extremely strong. They still have monstrous food output, good approval, a good starting planet, good starting political system, and decent heroes. 

Sorry chief

I want the discussion to focus on the Unfallen and what their aim as a race should be. Just seems like they are a little in limbo right now. 

Let's keep discussing everybody's favorite treekind without the tension, shall we? :)

Im not looking for you to shut up! I'm appreciating constructive discussion as that's what this thread is for, I just want it to be focused on the points being made and nothing personal like 'you're playing them wrong' or 'you are incompetent with unfallen'. I mentioned my hours played only to try to reassure folks that I am not a beginner or talking above my head, not to dissuade any actual discussion. 

To respond to your point, The way I see Unfallen (from previous patches) is they are an Early game reliant race. Pacifists and Expansionists, Peace and Growth, designed to prefer diplomacy over military and thus emphasize expansion, allowing them to pursue their victory condition of choice in the mid/late game. 

The counterplay to this is to hit them early and hit them hard, Dont give them the chance to pursue peace and dont give them the chance to expand. Cravers and Vodyani are big examples of direct counters to the Unfallen race objective. Other races need only apply some pressure to stop them going full pacifist.

By nerfing their early expansion capability, All they have going for them is Diplomacy.
And, by also nerfing their incentive for diplomacy by changing the pacifist laws,  They lose their identity as a race entirely. 

My suggestion then is to nerf their mid/late game options instead! make it so that only REALLY succesful early games result in a good chance of victory for them, much like cravers who also rely on early expansionist playstyles. 

EG. Make ships more expensive, make win conditions for them harder, dont destroy what the Lore of the race says they should be trying to do!

Every race needs counterplay, this is healthy for the state of the game. Countering unfallen was pretty clear cut, hit them before they can expand or negotiate and start gearing up their FIDSI machine. 

To flat nerf their starting turns and pacifist/expansionist style turns them into a race with no clear-cut identity or direction for victory. Outclassed mid game by Sophons and Riftborn. If I want to play for late-game who better than Horatio? 

Point is, In my opinion, the areas targetted by the nerfs have now quite possibly made the Unfallen the worst race at all stages of the game, outclassed at every point by other races and have no clear power spike and thus direction/identity like the other races do. 

A competent unfallen player wouldn't be playing for military dominance by turn 50, if so why not just play Cravers? But I'll bite..

Vodyani can easily wipe Unfallen early if they set their minds to it. An early Ark rush with support still has very little counterplay for anyone but the cravers really. Something that happens alot in multiplayer. 

at turn 50 UE are easily one of the better races at pumping out ships and should have no problem going toe-to-toe with Unfallen. 

Horatio are a Late game power-house so yes at turn 50 it would be safe to assume that the Unfallen SHOULD be ahead. 

Also vining special nodes only applies bonuses to your Home system, I don't see how this is in anyway overpowered or even how it would be possible to nerf this without implementing a default FIDSI reduction on all unfallen special nodes.

Finally, to try and reign it back some, I dont see how this is addressing any of the points I made other than 'Unfallen are broken as hell'. I'm advocating for the return of the unfallen EARLY game, by all means nerf their mid/late if they feel broken, but early growth was kinda their whole identity...

MetalCommander did summarize the deceisive points. Still very powerful faction. Nothing to admit no more.