koxsos wrote:

Okay, I went ahead and reattempted an economy victory with the latest patch (trade buff hint hint)
It is clear I am doing something wrong, since I am no way reaching that 60K income like the other guy.

trading comp.sav

I had a look at the game, and there are lots of things going on there. First of all, you aren't in sprint mode, where you focus on maximizing your empire's dust production right now because the game's going to end before the improvements that you're building and pop that you're growing are going to pay for themselves. When I set every system to build political theater, reassigned your heroes and rejiggered your laws to dust mode, your income went up to 38k. That's actually more than my 60k when you convert it to normal speed dust, which is worth half as much as fast speed dust for everything except an economic victory. You got it much later (turn 78 on fast is equivalent to perhaps turn 110 on normal), but that delay has a lot to do with how trade routes apparently don't scale properly on fast speed and, as nicoG2G points out, my ridiculoulsy strong start. None of the systems near you were good to colonize early wheareas I had one of the best legendary planets in a system with another temperate/fertile and two other solid planets next door, along with a further pair of excellent early-game planets in a four-planet system next to that one. Another major factor was the cheap system improvement giving +50% system trade value that I got from a deed. That's not just a big direct boost to trade income, but also an indirect boost from the way it's available early and helps trading companies level up faster.

With all that said, there are holes in your play. You could have skipped some of the techs that you got, (especially but not exclusively in the left quadrant), ran Make Love not War instead of Toys for Boys to avoid the -10% industry and get extra approval to make up for the harder time that you might have had with it because of skipping those techs, beelined the tech unlocking political theater instead and gone into sprint mode on turn 50-something, which likely would have let you win around turn 70. There are a lot of little tricks that you might not know but that add up to help a lot as well. Things like putting outposts on a new wave of planets one turn before the current wave finishes so it doesn't cost as much dust to speed up their growth, shipping out population from a system that's full so its food production isn't wasted, micromanaging your use of system level upgrades so you don't waste industry overflow and building empty hulls to upgrade them are all valuable, and while you probably do some of them, I didn't see signs of all of them in your game.

yey details:

Balancing

• Adjusted trade buff; trade companies should start with a higher initial income while still being reasonable in late-game

I guess we *did* it. A bit. You technically still die to craver rush (who doesn't) if you invest into trade companies, but the tradeoff should be much better.

In turn inflation will get more ridiculous and we counter ourselves a bit harder, but hey:

And we thank you for that and will carry out experiments. Like testing whether the faction 50 pop trait is still not working, spoiler: it isn't.

As of 1.2.20, trading companies got a buff, hopefully that will make lumeris more valuable

Thanks Amplitude :)

Stacking spuds sounds like a sound strategy, but rarely works for me, of course it heavily relies on your ability to produce the spuds in sufficient amounts (or any), hence rng and trade routes again.
But that's what the game is about! And even at -60% buyout costs, it's still expensive :-(

Problem I see with buyout costs is following:

turn 20 (fast)
I buyout 10 ships at price of 800 dust each selling whatever to get there. (utilizing laws and stuff)

turn 21

same ship design now costs 1200 dust to buyout. (same effects apply)

That's a 50% increase on buyout cost in 1 turn only.

While having a stacked discount helps a ton, the prices go up at this rate. And I do apply this behaviour repeatedly, or else I can just die. =D

I have seen many things, I have even witnessed inflation decreasing randomly, I mean the number, not the actual effect, going from 3 to 1,4 and then to 2... (and I did not research the - inflation tech)

I'll finally get home tonight so I might even upload some vids to support said claims.

Yeah, maybe, if everything was properly scaled, that would probably help them for MP and fast settings.

There is another thread (here) in the "game design" section of this forum about game scaling issues...

The bad speed scaling of trade routes have been spoted 4 months ago (!!!)

My argument with buyouts is just that whenever you get spuds, there's a choice between either stacking them in multiple levels of system development and getting buyout-cost-reducing improvements, an apparently strong strategy but one that takes a while to get going, or skipping the relevant techs and enjoying the benefits of a more immediately useful level 2 system development. The point is just that there are significant variations in how the Lumeris play from game-to-game. They do have choices, and the fact that several of their quest rewards are junk and most of their quest branches have an obvious best branch doesn't change that. They can skip or delay the 3rd tier science improvements off the back of science from minors and trade routes, actually benefit enough from level 4 systems to bother getting them and have a variety of trade-related improvements to spend their middle-tier strategics on; these are all options that are unavailable or weaker for most factions and lead to a reasonably strong late game.

I'm wondering if our disagreement about how much of an impact inflation has on that late game has to do with game settings: even when I tested things out right after the trade route nerf, I didn't see inflation anywhere near 26x, but it might be more of an issue in larger galaxies. I tend to forget that the larger maps exist, but making the economic victory scale with map size (and non-linearly with game speed as I just looked up, WHAT?) was always one of Amplitude's worse decisions. The threshold really should be the same on all map sizes and one-half as much on fast as it is on normal (instead of three-fourths).

oxsos wrote: 
But otherwise well played, I have a lot to learn from that, but then on the other hand, you are not actively competing for staying alive.

Thanks. I did fight two wars that game (one against the Cravers), but yeah it's nothing like the pressure that you get from a human player. Fast multiplayer is such a different environment from normal singleplayer and numbers from the latter are always going to be more impressive.

Following a tiny bit of success holding a balance discussion I would like to bring some attention to Lumeris.

While Lumeris have a strong early game (not as strong as some other races) but strong and expansive nevertheless, combined with the vaulter nerf they now are the fastest outpost making race in the galaxy - provided they have the dust to do so. (And food to supply them, riftborn still win in this!)

They do not seem to have much else. And they have been taking in some indirect nerfs through the past few patches:

• Most recent being the buff of all governments except for republic leaving them in the dust, but not the dust you want. Also the nerf of military event strength, furthermore making it difficult to achieve military government for military laws (which you kinda want to have to fight people that want to kill you)
• Most impactful and lasting is the trading company nerf, close to removing trading from the fast games and even normal games (I don't play any other so I won't say more). Being the faction most strongly trade-friendly.

What my point is the Lumeris kinda do not have an endgame goal. 

• Economy victory? Almost any other race can do it better. (To elaborate - vodyani can stuck dust bonuses on arks, riftborn have that silly tower, but also a decent output by themselves and can hug sterile planets such as toxic more willingly etc...) There is nothing besides the pop bonus that makes Lumeris shine anyhow extremely when it comes to dust production. They do have that extra -10% on buyout costs, which means instead of need 250K to buyout something endgame, they just need 225K, which is a 25K dust difference and nothing to scoff at, yet unaffordable either way.
  What's worse the economy victory is slower than scientific victory, the dust production is just falling behind. On top of that the dust production itself is contraproductive considering you increase the inflation and thus screw yourself over as a result being unable to use your dust effectively.
  This intensifies if AI with fidsi boost is involved, bye bye dust production and it's relevance. - virtually up to 90% of dust and endgame dust income is produced by selling luxuries and strategics on market. Dust production can be effetively ignored. What's worse, if you choose not to ignore it, it becomes irrelevant either way.
• Trading companies went from being the stuff to being a waste of research so did your extended consortium trait, blockade breakers trade and 50 pop bonus (seriously even the +200 dust was probably better)
  
  
• Alliance? Diplomacy? What exactly do you have to offer? You have no endgame, no particular strength to bring to the table. Your hero skills are a joke on the most part, the lumeris ultimate is seriously a JOKE. If you want to ally up with people pick Unfallen, mutual understanding and the DS bonus per friendly faction has your back. With lumeris you are kinda just as well off declaring war on everyone and hoping that even while you spend 90% fighting, you will have enough money to lobby down the 90% pacifistic result.)
  
  
• Quest objectives and rewards - Luxury production is fantastic, if there are nodes to benefit from, however luxury prices is something that does not tend to stay high, considering people don't use them as much as strategics. Yet it enables you to improve systems, I mean once you get it. So while you can improve systems vertically aswell as being horizontally well spread, you are heavily reliant on the luxury RNG (oh a whole +food package! Dafuq am I supposed to do with that?).
  • Ecologist law being tied ONLY to the systems with trading company HQ (which is 4 max) +15 approval with republic is super weak. What's even worse is the followup requiring you to own 3 faction home systems - this is either easy or impossible.
  • Industrialist law is very good, but again conditional, but cheap and neat. The HUGE planet quest is however again, heavily randomized and it actually does not have a working progress tracking.
  • Final quest reward was nerfed and consequently ending up with the single reasonable choice of dust to manpower. Which is great, if you ignored food production, which on this patch it seems you should not.
• Planet selling - close to 0 benefit or use. I tried it couple times, but without team option this has a very limited range of use. What I would like to propose and see in the future is the ability to instantly sell planets you invade. Although this could be little too OP.
• So you are stuck waiting to lose to anyone who has more science output (almost everyone else) or whoever is more military oriented than you (almost everyone else) or, you can rush people and kill them, provided you get lucky. I mean seriously I can take out a craver on turn 15 on fast, it's not impossible, if he declares war and you have bluecap or jadonyx even dust trees would probably work and of course if he is a noob and actually gets rushed by lumeris. But by going militaristic (with anti-militaristic pop) you will again eventually lose out on your momentum because most other factions get combat relevant bonuses from their quests.
• It should also be noted that the bribe action on minors is also a very good ability (provided there are minor factions to bribe) and is not to be underestimated. And optimistic is a also a very strong trait.

But all this considered we still have a faction with mostly useless two traits worth 30 trait points and 50 pop bonus and a of course the dust orientation that results in you screwing yourself over.

This is not my first attempt to bring this matter to attention as I have been continuously hinting at it on G2G balance mod feedback threads and elsewhere. Aaaaand I think it's time to make it a wall of text.

What do YOU think?

IceGremlin wrote:

Lumeris, like many unbalanced factions, mostly have problems with internal balance of their abilities and balance of what they can do. They win fine and can sometimes kick ass, but there's not much flexibility or choice to be had.

I disagree here. They're far from the most flexible faction, but they do have choices. They're well-positioned to go for a wonder win by virtue of being a republic and having the industrialist quest branch, and they can also leverage their early advantages into a military approach (I doubt it's nearly as strong as the Cravers, but that's a high bar to clear for most factions). There's also buyout vs. non-buyout: I've never tried the former myself, but you seem confident that it's a strong option and spuds will be around in a reasonable fraction of games. Diplomacy can also present some interesting choices. My experience there has been the opposite of yours: it's a while before you have good influence generation and there are a lot of influence-using laws that you might want to run after the first election. The influence that you spend making peace matters, and there are choices to be made in the intersection of how you spend your influence, how you use your law slots and how you manage approval. At the very least, it's a good bit more interesting than the Unfallen approach of force/sign peace with everyone, let faction trait handle approval. done.

We're in agreement about Planet Brokers, though. It isn't a balance issue that some traits and quest rewards are lackluster as long as the faction has other advantages to make up for it (which the Lumeris do), but it is a disappointment that the signature Lumeris ability gets literally no use in a typical game.

There's a common thread to most of your points and many of other people's posts that inflation hugely devalues dust and makes selling resources dominate all other forms on income. While inflation is a problem for the game, it isn't the crippiling burdern for the Lumeris that the thread makes it out to be. There's a brief window at the end of the game where inflation is up to 10x and it really is that bad, but it tends not to matter very much since you're just rushing straight for the economic victory finish line then anyway and don't have much to buy. There's a longer window where you don't have that many strategic resources to spare, the direct science and dust income of trade routes matters quite a bit, the dust from trade routes and selling trade route luxuries makes the bulk of your income by far and that dust income is very useful. Granted, it's more likely to be spent on upgrading ships than buying things out because the dust-to-industry conversion rate is better, but that's more an issue with the game as a whole than anything specific to the Lumeris. They handle inflation just fine.

Edit: And Dragar points out that trade routes might not be working properly in the current patch. If that's the case, maybe the Lumeris aren't just fine. The ridiculously fast scaling of trading companies once you've invested in them is the reason they're good in the late game. If that goes away then the brief window where inflation is extravagantly high becomes a long window, and that makes for trouble.

I think something got adjusted on trade-routes that wasn't supposed to be this patch. I doubt it will persist - so I wouldn't take anything regarding trade-routes as indicative right now.

Dragar wrote:

Yup. Their dust advantage is never an advantage, and trade routes were over-nerfed. They have a very strong early game with bribe on minors and buying outposts, and a strong early game is very strong in a 4X - but they still end up struggling later.

Mostly their theme not meshing with gameplay is the worst part, right now. (Balance is harder to achieve.) In principle they are clearly meant to make dust and buy things out. But dust production rapidly depreciates in value due to inflation. The end result is a dust focused faction that, like everyone else, just relies on industry to get everything done. That's dissapointing.

Perhaps a trait should be applied to them where they're not affected as much by inflation, that way they can be much more effective at buying stuff out mid game, so when everybody is at x5, the lumeris are at x2 

 I mean the United Empire make the Lumeris pretty obselete since Influence can buy stuff out even cheaper and is never affected by inflation

Trade routes need a serious buff again though, even in scarce resources where you'll want trade routes to get those luxuries rolling in, they're just too expensive for so little.

YertyL wrote:

Make them more powerful as a baseline, but make it take longer to unlock second and third companies (to slow the exponential growth factor).

In addition to having +1 max trading companies, Lumeris could start with two companies unlocked.

This would give the Lumeris a much larger relative headstart in trading, and indirectly buff the "+2 trading outposts" tech for everyone.

Hey, not such a bad idea, issue I struggle with though, the blockade brokers and trading theme is meant to utilize everyone else trading with you which requires not only you to invest i trading companies but also make sure everyone agrees to have a trading agreement with you (good luck signing that one) and even after that also having a subsidiary available (shocker, not even endless AI researches trading tech most times).
And I do not really feel there is an exponential growth right now, I mean sure, if you mean that increasing your dust production from 8 dust to 80 dust in 50 turns on fast is wayyyy too much by the time inflation hits ×5

I just really do not understand how this is ignored for so long and piled on upon, or if there is something I am missing.

Yup. Their dust advantage is never an advantage, and trade routes were over-nerfed. They have a very strong early game with bribe on minors and buying outposts, and a strong early game is very strong in a 4X - but they still end up struggling later.

Mostly their theme not meshing with gameplay is the worst part, right now. (Balance is harder to achieve.) In principle they are clearly meant to make dust and buy things out. But dust production rapidly depreciates in value due to inflation. The end result is a dust focused faction that, like everyone else, just relies on industry to get everything done. That's dissapointing.