It might be just me, but after trying both Lumeris and Vodyani factions I found that I struggled way more at achieving victory with the Vodyanis (because of the slow expansion and the limited options when dealing with minor factions).

Let me know if you guys experience the same thing

Haven't tried it yet, but there's another thread of a Vodiyani player finishing the game at turn 92 with a score of 21,922 on the highest difficulty...

It was mentioned there that being able to use ARKs in battles and not having approval problems, along with the industry boost, made them too powerful.

I honestly think they're a bit overpowered. The only real interaction that the Vodyani can have with minor factions is to park a vampire fleet in orbit, but if you have 2 or 3 groups of leechers working at once, you can grow their population about as quickly as a regular faction would -- and the Vodyani can exploit every colonisable planet in a system per pop unit, so it's incredibly powerful.

atejas wrote:

I honestly think they're a bit overpowered. The only real interaction that the Vodyani can have with minor factions is to park a vampire fleet in orbit, but if you have 2 or 3 groups of leechers working at once, you can grow their population about as quickly as a regular faction would -- and the Vodyani can exploit every colonisable planet in a system per pop unit, so it's incredibly powerful.

Did you say overpowered?? xD I'm sorry but I disagree wholeheartedly. Finding minor factions can occur pretty late in the game, which can undermine greatly you population growth even on the lowest difficulty.

And besides, colonizing planet is also one of the most arduous tasks when it comes to the Vodyanis: you always need more and more essence, which can make the gameplay experience quite punishing compared to other factions.

Everytime I played this faction (which is still my favorite faction), I got beaten by score simply because of those reasons.

They to not prey to the Virtual Endless they prey to the RNG god.

They are too luck depedant and can be easly crushed if your vampire fleets find no prey or being attacked early on by a major faction.

The mechanic were u can transform Dust into essence is not worth mentioning either. Either you find an early parkingplace for your leechers or u have lost.

marka2 wrote:

atejas wrote:

I honestly think they're a bit overpowered. The only real interaction that the Vodyani can have with minor factions is to park a vampire fleet in orbit, but if you have 2 or 3 groups of leechers working at once, you can grow their population about as quickly as a regular faction would -- and the Vodyani can exploit every colonisable planet in a system per pop unit, so it's incredibly powerful.

Did you say overpowered?? xD I'm sorry but I disagree wholeheartedly. Finding minor factions can occur pretty late in the game, which can undermine greatly you population growth even on the lowest difficulty.

And besides, colonizing planet is also one of the most arduous tasks when it comes to the Vodyanis: you always need more and more essence, which can make the gameplay experience quite punishing compared to other factions.

Everytime I played this faction (which is still my favorite faction), I got beaten by score simply because of those reasons.

I suppose I had a lucky run then. I was running three arks with about 4-5 pop each by the end of my first game. Found 2 minor factions early on, (stupidly) defeated one to see what would happen, and then just leeched off other factions for the rest of the game.

I got around to playing the Vodyani, and I would agree that they're leaning towards overpowered IF you have a reliable minor faction/AI to leech from. You would think that being blocked from expansion 2 jumps from another AI's capital at a dead-end corner of the galaxy would be a horrible start, but a fleet of Leechers and 79 turns later, I had 9 Arks and at least 32 pop (who can each work multiple planets!), with more battleships than I could ever need. New colonies can be developed rapidly thanks to all those Ark production modules and filled up with pop as long as you have essence. There's no expansion penalty as far as I can tell, and no compromises that need to be made with research either (was 2 techs into era III). Not having to deal with conquered pops also makes handling politics much easier (as the Vodyani just eradicate colonies after invasion). The only weakness to all this was the lack of manpower to man the invasion fleets (empire reserves were perpetually at zero unless I spent food and influence on enrollment).

The Vodyani can snowball very hard under the right circumstances.

you can rapidly find a minor fction to leech, pop an ark and use it to bust another empire early on (i mean good luck fighting an ark before turn 50 or so).
So yes they ar strong, but too random based (imo they should nerf arks and maybe allow them to absorb minor faction and grow them like cattle (to make more essence)

The Vodyani would be fun if the early access wasn't just the score and military victories.  Though I'm frustrated sicne I seem to get really unlucky with starts.  Damn cravers.  Only ever really had one good start so far.

SirBagel wrote:

I got around to playing the Vodyani, and I would agree that they're leaning towards overpowered IF you have a reliable minor faction/AI to leech from. You would think that being blocked from expansion 2 jumps from another AI's capital at a dead-end corner of the galaxy would be a horrible start, but a fleet of Leechers and 79 turns later, I had 9 Arks and at least 32 pop (who can each work multiple planets!), with more battleships than I could ever need. New colonies can be developed rapidly thanks to all those Ark production modules and filled up with pop as long as you have essence. There's no expansion penalty as far as I can tell, and no compromises that need to be made with research either (was 2 techs into era III). Not having to deal with conquered pops also makes handling politics much easier (as the Vodyani just eradicate colonies after invasion). The only weakness to all this was the lack of manpower to man the invasion fleets (empire reserves were perpetually at zero unless I spent food and influence on enrollment).

The Vodyani can snowball very hard under the right circumstances.

Teach me senpai