Theodore wrote:

again allow me to voice my displeasure with some of the reductions made in the previous balences: why bother putting a catagory in the colonial exchange specialization for sterile planets when the bonus dust income is the same as it would be anyother kind of planet. Please give(return) the bouns dust points for colonial exchange specialization for sterile planets. and please give the imperials back the extra temperate planet influence point.

I believe this grants +1 Dust on any planet, but +2 on a Sterile planet. The Effects are not one-or-the-other. They add. 

jhell wrote:

@hera35 : what speed were you playing on where you achieved conquest by turn 149? I'd guess normal; if you were playing on fast, you'd have been just 1 turn away for the intended "score" victory - in terms of pace it's what we were aiming for :).

In normal however it's definitely too early, especially if you weren't specifically aiming for a conquest.

Do other people share the sentiment of thresholds being too low? At least for expert players?

I have to echo WeLoveYou here: if you want to make turn 149 too early for a victory on normal speed, the game needs a drastic overhaul. My last three victories were Economic/Wonder/Science, all in the turn 85-100 range in games with normal speed and Endless difficulty (although the Economic win was before the trade route nerf).  Supremacy can be even faster, especially on the smaller map types.

It would be nice if the game ended later, but you're going to run into a serious problem if you try to push the non-score victories back to anywhere near turn 300. Expert players are always going to win much faster than non-expert players. Thus  it will be the case that either (1) expert players will need almost 300 turns to reach a victory condition, making it so that non-experts will never be fast enough to win any victory other than a score victory without turning it off or (2) non-experts will be able to win before turn 300 and so experts, who play more efficiently, will be able to win much earlier (likely by turn 150).

Thanks everyone for the discussion.

Expert players are always going to win much faster than non-expert players.

Exactly. Unless we drastically modify the way victories work we won't achieve a similar end for all players, nor do I think we should. Our goal currently is to align the victories in terms of difficulty (one shouldn't be obviously easier than another). Individual conquest was extremely hard, but we're taking notes on the alliance conquest being too easy.

Restructured Math:

While theoretically possible this is a risky endeavour. Seeing how the change to approval a few months ago was received it seems wiser to not push for large economic changes, rather adjustments.

Tennis Scoring: 

Scheduled Interval Contests: 

While interesting, these suggestions are not the direction that we wished to take Endless Space 2 in (they bring their own problems and also change the pace and feeling of the game).

@ridesdragons: there's something to your suggestions for Wonder and Science victories but it's a bit out of scope of what we can do with the balance mod.  We'll consider it for a future update though.

Actually, we should be thanking you Kynrael. You guys really go above and beyond when addressing player concerns. Oh and Jhell as well. Thanks for taking the time to listen and make changes!

Don't mention it :). We're actually very lucky to have involved players like you and the others in this thread, and that we can maintain a healthy discussion about the game. (WeaponizedCaffeine is also doing a good chunk of the work on the mod btw)

@slashman its worse, ever walked by somebody pointing into the air not pointing at anything... Yeah thats air math. 

So did some tests with fighters.  Its far more effective to use bombers only.  Its a kill or be killed mentality, not sure why but fighters in a defensive position are having minimal to no effect less than 20 percent impact on the damage done during by the bombers. In theory werent bombers supposed to be countered directly by fighters? 

Also I too suggested that beams be point defense, its the battle engine that can not be changed. Beams would cause visual clipping and require a huge engine rework.  The engine despite a small oversight is beatiful. The problem lies in being able to stop a ray from a beam impact something as small as a fighter or a torpedo without causing major visual clipping.  Imagine a rock concert with rays of light flying around. 

plutar wrote:

@slashman its worse, ever walked by somebody pointing into the air not pointing at anything... Yeah thats air math. 

Disturbing...lol

So did some tests with fighters.  Its far more effective to use bombers only.  Its a kill or be killed mentality, not sure why but fighters in a defensive position are having minimal to no effect less than 20 percent impact on the damage done during by the bombers. In theory werent bombers supposed to be countered directly by fighters? 

Could fighters not be adjusted to also target the bombs from bombers? Freespace 2 comes to mind where you would fly interceptors who could either take down bombers or directly also target their ordinance when they launched them at the vulnerable cap ships.

Also I too suggested that beams be point defense, its the battle engine that can not be changed. Beams would cause visual clipping and require a huge engine rework.  The engine despite a small oversight is beatiful. The problem lies in being able to stop a ray from a beam impact something as small as a fighter or a torpedo without causing major visual clipping.  Imagine a rock concert with rays of light flying around. 

It's kind of a shame that beams cannot be used this way due to that limitation as it would be a great fix and addition to the battle system.

Idea for science victory. Is there a way to make it similar to wonder, except the science building wonder is constructed by the science output of the empire? That way it could be pinged on a map, just like wonder, but instead of using production the building locks the system into the contruction and the empires science total is what fuels the speed of the construction. Doing it this way would allow a enemy to try to blockade/ attack said system making the victory more challenging to achieve? That could stop accidental science victories and put it on a more level playing field with wonder and the other. Just a thought

Hi,

I get this bug only with G2G Mod : Impossible Colonize Ash World with Horatio

I get an other save if you need.

There is no link between science technologies now (between steppe and artic and between meditarean and savannah) ?

Regards,

Elphy

vodyani2.sav

Here's a save, I'm going for supremacy. Can someone tell me why can't I break up with my allies?

jhell wrote:

Unless we drastically modify the way victories work we won't achieve a similar end for all players, nor do I think we should. Our goal currently is to align the victories in terms of difficulty (one shouldn't be obviously easier than another). Individual conquest was extremely hard, but we're taking notes on the alliance conquest being too easy.

Your earlier comment had me worried that you had the goal of aligning the non-score victories with the score victory; it's good to know that you're focusing specifically on conquest and the other victories that the balance mod changes directly. Toward that end, here's some thoughts on the current state of the peaceful victory conditions before and after the latest set of balance mod changes. Everything that follows is from my own experience against the AI. No doubt the balance is different in multiplayer.

The Science victory has long been the territory of the Sophons, with the United Empire (as the Mezari) coming in second. The ability to run the Scientist party mandatory law is crucial when pursuing this victory: it lets the player skip around a dozen tier 4 technologies, saving a huge amount of science both directly and indirectly (in the form of decreased research costs for the four victory technologies). The AI isn't aware of this strategy of minimzing technology costs while beelinging the victory techs, nor is it particularly good at maximizing science output. Thus, I've never seen it come remotely close to winning by Science. The current iteration of the balance mod is unlikely to change much. The AI will remain unable to achieve this victory. The player will take a few more turns, but 'few' is the operative word here. The small magnitude of the change and the way that the best strategy already tries to minimize the cost of the victory techs should leave this as the fastest peaceful victory, at least when pursued by a faction well-suited to it.

Outside the balance mod, the Wonder victory rewards well-rounded factions. It needs strong research to unlock the last tier of resources early, an empire large enough to have a source of all six resources and enough systems with high industry to build the actual obelisks. Inside the balance mod, it becomes the Resource Victory. The rate at which one can stockpile the various resources is the main concern. The one Wonder game that I've played with the mod suggests that a faction good at acquiring resources can win only moderately more slowly than it does without the mod, but some factions that were once strong for Wonder victories could find themselves in trouble. The Unfallen might end up relying on luck to manage a fast win, and the Riftborn may have trouble coming up with enough Titanium and Hyperium, as bizarre as that sounds, due to the increased Compression Singularity costs as of a few patches ago. The AI will have trouble planning ahead in a way that lets it save all the resources that it needs to build the obelisks, although this isn't much of a change from the current bad-at-Wonder-victories AI.

A tweak that left resource costs for obelisks between the pre- and post-mod values would preserve the old feel of the Wonder victory and maybe even bring it within reach of the AI. It might be necessary to increase Industry cost as well, in order to stop the victory from becoming too fast and easy, but the current 5x multiplier is an overcorrection to the changes to the resource system. It encourages a miserly, stockpiling style of play that gives luck an excessive role while punishing factions that are slower to expand or have high resource needs. On an unrelated note, the Obelisks of All Space-Time tooltip could also use a tweak before the mod becomes a patch. It still says that it exists only for the sake of the Wonder victory and "gives no bonuses" even though this is no longer the case.

I have yet to try an Economic victory in the world of weak trade routes, but my intution tells me that it might be easier to bring it in line with the other peaceful victories by adjusting it rather than adjusting them. A simple decrease to the dust required to win could make it an attractive option for players once more while also giving the AI some much-needed help. I'll try to play a few games over the weekend and come back with impressions of how hard it is for players and AI to win this way.

Slashman wrote:

Brdu wrote:

I've been lurking on this discussion, and my feeling is that a significant issue is that defense doesn't scale well - and so early-mid-game, weapons vastly outclass defense. I.e. if both sides have two wildcard slots, the one who fills them with weapons is going to beat the one who picks defences every time - even if it's the "right" defense for the damage type.
When I look at the battle postmortem screen, the percentage of damage prevented by defences always seems minimal, even when I've put a solid investment into them. And it seems like I could have prevented far more damage by killing the enemy quicker.

Just to be sure, are you using the current balance mod? Shields have had their values tweaked as well so defenses should not be quite so pointless early on. Granted that if defenses were that much better early on, things may lead to a slog where battles had no winners more often than not.

Sorry for not responding sooner...While shields do seem better from my limited testing with the new version, my issue is really that the current mechanic can't really scale well at the various stages of the game. Shields are somewhat easier to tweak than armour, as shield hitpoints do somewhat scale with weapons, independently of absorption percentage. It's not perfect, but it sort of scales. But armour doesn't have a similar mechanic, except the additional hull hitpoints - which a) add a vanishingly small amount of health early-game, and b) don't discriminate between beams and kinetics. So one unit of early-game tissue-paper armour absorbs 6% of a starting peashooter and 6% of an endgame purple mega-railgun.

I feel like the ideal would be that if you've got a flexible module slot, choosing between an extra weapon or an extra armour/shield would be a meaningful choice at any stage of the game. I don't think it's there in the early parts of the game.

As far as battles being a slog, I'm not sure how I feel. If battles are very one-sided or neither side has invested in defense, then absolutely it should be a bloodbath. But if relatively-even battles between balanced fleets averaged two engagements before everything was annihilated, would that be a bad thing necessarily? It would make short-range weapons more worthwhile. It would allow a comeback with a better choice of strategy for round two. And it might make it sometimes worthwhile for an outmatched fleet to stand and fight rather than just retreat all the time. It might also make things tedious as hell, granted, but I feel like it's worth considering. Endless Legend tends to take a couple of rounds for major armies to wipe each other out, and that felt okay to me.

Regarding the speed of the game, I've been playing with the Community Mod and its changes to food consumption, and it makes a remarkable difference to the game's pace all round - for the better, I feel. Population growth is on-par early on, but doesn't then scale out of control to reach the magic 300 food/turn mark without even trying. Systems take longer to fill up, diverting production and tech towards food production is much more necessary, breadbasket systems become a thing, and food is useful past the early game and more on par with the other IDS. The knock-on effect is that it takes longer to reach maximum everything, the change in pace around the midgame isn't so jarring, and the late game feels more satisfying.

It's a simple change, but the ripple effects are really pretty substantial. I'd guess it would slow down victory by an average of maybe something like 30 turns? I think tweaks like this can organically make the victories more satisfying as they are, without the need for radically changing the victory conditions.

hera35 wrote:

Found a bug playing Horatio. With the balance mod active, Ash and Lava planet colonization abilities associated with the required techs (Atmospheric Filtration and Maximized Exploitation) disappear entirely...

Same here... Bug reported

HundredBears wrote:

Thanks for the detailed message.

The Science victory has long been the territory of the Sophons, with the United Empire (as the Mezari) coming in second. The ability to run the Scientist party mandatory law is crucial when pursuing this victory: it lets the player skip around a dozen tier 4 technologies, saving a huge amount of science both directly and indirectly (in the form of decreased research costs for the four victory technologies). The AI isn't aware of this strategy of minimzing technology costs while beelinging the victory techs, nor is it particularly good at maximizing science output. Thus, I've never seen it come remotely close to winning by Science. The current iteration of the balance mod is unlikely to change much. The AI will remain unable to achieve this victory. The player will take a few more turns, but 'few' is the operative word here. The small magnitude of the change and the way that the best strategy already tries to minimize the cost of the victory techs should leave this as the fastest peaceful victory, at least when pursued by a faction well-suited to it.

Indeed. Shell was in the process of revisiting the AI's pursuit of victory conditions so I'll be sure to mention it to him.

Outside the balance mod, the Wonder victory rewards well-rounded factions. It needs strong research to unlock the last tier of resources early, an empire large enough to have a source of all six resources and enough systems with high industry to build the actual obelisks. Inside the balance mod, it becomes the Resource Victory. The rate at which one can stockpile the various resources is the main concern. The one Wonder game that I've played with the mod suggests that a faction good at acquiring resources can win only moderately more slowly than it does without the mod, but some factions that were once strong for Wonder victories could find themselves in trouble. The Unfallen might end up relying on luck to manage a fast win, and the Riftborn may have trouble coming up with enough Titanium and Hyperium, as bizarre as that sounds, due to the increased Compression Singularity costs as of a few patches ago. The AI will have trouble planning ahead in a way that lets it save all the resources that it needs to build the obelisks, although this isn't much of a change from the current bad-at-Wonder-victories AI.

A tweak that left resource costs for obelisks between the pre- and post-mod values would preserve the old feel of the Wonder victory and maybe even bring it within reach of the AI. It might be necessary to increase Industry cost as well, in order to stop the victory from becoming too fast and easy, but the current 5x multiplier is an overcorrection to the changes to the resource system. It encourages a miserly, stockpiling style of play that gives luck an excessive role while punishing factions that are slower to expand or have high resource needs. On an unrelated note, the Obelisks of All Space-Time tooltip could also use a tweak before the mod becomes a patch. It still says that it exists only for the sake of the Wonder victory and "gives no bonuses" even though this is no longer the case.

Noted. The increase had two focuses: make the victory harder, and follow suit with the changes on strategic resources accessibility. We'll tweak the values and run some tests.

I have yet to try an Economic victory in the world of weak trade routes, but my intution tells me that it might be easier to bring it in line with the other peaceful victories by adjusting it rather than adjusting them. A simple decrease to the dust required to win could make it an attractive option for players once more while also giving the AI some much-needed help. I'll try to play a few games over the weekend and come back with impressions of how hard it is for players and AI to win this way.

This is true and is something we might do, but from our tests the victories were not on par, hence the current propositions in the balance mod. If you do play a game, don't hesitate to confirm/disprove your hypothesis and tell us here :).