HundredBears wrote:

This thread inspired me to see how fast it's possible to win as the Lumeris. The result: AutoSave 394.sav, a turn 71 Economic Victory with Normal Speed/Large Galaxy/Endless Difficulty. That's competitive with every single peaceful victory type: a Jadonyx-powered, pop-farming Riftborn science win is probably the only one that has a significant chance to beat it. It was admittedly the luckiest galaxy map I've ever generated with a good home system, amazing nearby systems, Jadonyx and easy-to-get Tinkers and Thinkers, but even an average map should see the Lumeris able to build a strong economy and win quickly by covering the 20-30 turn gap between starting their first trading company and getting substantial trade income with their powerful, bribery-fueled early-to-mid game. None of this necessarily applies to multiplayer, but even there it's not a matter of trade routes being weak in the late game. Without science freighters, they went from a significant boost to science by turn 50 to providing at least half my science by the end of the game, and the dust remains useful until the last few inflation-dominated turns of sprinting to victory.

Wow, thats pretty impressive, I even went and loaded that save, but yeah golden start with a forest and 2 jadonyx nodes on normal abundance is quite fortunate indeed. two jumps from academy even... that's kinda weird.
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.
Could be that trading companies scale evenly on both fast and normal, which would give the extra turns extra value, but I really like what I am seeing, except for the 55k buyout price on a ship.. but that's pretty decent for normal speed. But 78k a turn I haven't seen since the release...

I guess I need to play normal a bit more.

Yeah I think the claim idea got pretty much dissed by the dev response.

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. Point by point:

1. Inflation. As said, Dust is constantly depreciating, and the harder you try to earn it the worse it gets. It's a bit ridiculous but it's still unclear if it can be fixed, since it's working backwards and hurting Dust makers when it's meant to hurt non-Dust makers.

2. Buyouts. Buyouts can actually be extremely powerful, but that's a problem too- you won't afford buyouts by making Dust, only by selling resources and getting discounts. Super Spuds are necessary if you want to get a Buyout economy running, and then it quickly gets out of control.

3. Diplomacy. Diplomacy is very, very cheap. Influence was invented to prevent overly rapid wheeling and dealing diplomatically but Diplomacy is so cheap we rarely care, it's taken care of by a couple buildings and a Planetary Specialization. Further, Lumeris mostly want to entice you with trade, but more Dust in the galaxy hurts everyone. Inflation turns Dust into a curse.

4. Rewards. +3 Luxuries is pretty good, the laws are decent, the first quest nets some nice improvements like the +30% Industry on Governors. But +30% Dust on home worlds is Dust again, and Peaceful Life is a useless -10% Overpopulation Disapproval. Overpopulation Disapproval is incredibly small, why should I care? And why should I convert other resources to inflation when I have a non-inflating Manpower boost?

5. Bribery. It's alright, I'm fine with it, I just still dislike how quickly all the Minor Factions get scooped up.

6. Food. Trade Route income is derived from System population, so slower growth is also slower finance. Another unintended side nerf to Trade Routes.

6. Planet Brokers. It's alright for forward expanding but selling planets never happens. Problem is, the Outpost keeps draining your Food, and you have a very limited window to sell the thing, and need to ask for a massive amount of Dust that expanding factions don't have, or else you make no profit.

We need to be able to create a non-Outpost- a Claim- that is way cheaper and mines resources and can be sold, but isn't a real Outpost. No Food production, no shipments. Then make it as expensive as now to turn a Claim into an Outpost. Boom, now Lumeris can buy up tons of real estate for cheap to sell at a reasonable price (and great profit margins), without truly expanding faster.

This thread inspired me to see how fast it's possible to win as the Lumeris. The result: AutoSave 394.sav, a turn 71 Economic Victory with Normal Speed/Large Galaxy/Endless Difficulty. That's competitive with every single peaceful victory type: a Jadonyx-powered, pop-farming Riftborn science win is probably the only one that has a significant chance to beat it. It was admittedly the luckiest galaxy map I've ever generated with a good home system, amazing nearby systems, Jadonyx and easy-to-get Tinkers and Thinkers, but even an average map should see the Lumeris able to build a strong economy and win quickly by covering the 20-30 turn gap between starting their first trading company and getting substantial trade income with their powerful, bribery-fueled early-to-mid game. None of this necessarily applies to multiplayer, but even there it's not a matter of trade routes being weak in the late game. Without science freighters, they went from a significant boost to science by turn 50 to providing at least half my science by the end of the game, and the dust remains useful until the last few inflation-dominated turns of sprinting to victory.

+1

Lumeris are almost never played in MP....

There was the same issue with roving clan in endless legend (on different levels, but mainly because amplitude games emphasizes a lot on industry).

When i see how dictatorship got a buff...

:/

plutar wrote:

If trade routes were returned two 1/2 of their original value I think that would do a lot to make lumeris viable, there late game needs some help. 

Problem I see in that is that's a game wide buff and nobody has to trade with them.

But it would at least make trade companies appealing.

I would go as far as making blockade breakers autotrade agreement outside of war.

If trade routes were returned two 1/2 of their original value I think that would do a lot to make lumeris viable, there late game needs some help. 

Lightjolly wrote:

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.

That's one way. But it does limit dust strategies to only factions with that trait. But it's one way.

For me, it is less about the specific Lumeris balance, than them being heavily influenced by two things that seem kind of broken ATM: Inflation and (especially) trading companies.

The "selling ressources is the best way to make money" issue with inflation is a bit harder to fix; 

But for trading companies I would propose the following change:

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.