Since Nakalin's starting planet, Sobra, is a desert with slight bonuses, it's terrible for early development. No interaction with Xeno-industrial Infrastructure or Public-Private Partnerships, large per pop disapproval malus, no guaranteed resources (like with Vanguard, Riftborn's starting planet), and pitiful food, which hinders growth and colonization.

All those factors together make "Forgotten Lore" useless to them. They can't use any of the available technologies before other factions since the time they take to build them compares to other faction's research + build time. No faction spend turns doing nothing but waiting for a research to finish, so Forgotten Lore is only ever useful if your industry isn't a bottleneck. Being a desert doesn't help with that either.

Even "passive" technologies, like having better probes and engines available early are useless since they start with no resources, no guaranteed strategic deposits, and their ships are overly weak (in an attempt to avoid their early game being too strong).

It was supposed to be Nakalim's strength, but since it's useless, the Nakalim are useless.

The Nakalim need Beliefs Not Breakthroughs to be a larger point discount for their traits, so they can have another positive trait that helps them actually use their huge surplus of techs. I can think of a couple possibilities:

1. Start with Drone Networks and Cerebral Reality built on Home System
2. -10% Construction Cost on System Improvements
3. Faction-specific Tier 1 buildings
4. A mix

This way they either get a small FIDS bonus and save a few turns so they can get to their juicy extra unlocks on turn 1, or just get construction done faster cause they're just reiterating things they already know how to build. Giving them a faction-specific couple of Tier 1 buildings would also be nice just cause their home planet doesn't work well.

And also, ya know, get a Colonizer and an Explorer like literally every other faction with a traditional colonization mechanic. The only reason a faction gets a second explorer instead of a Colonizer is if they have an alternate colonization mechanic that doesn't involve a civilian ship, like Vaulters or Lumeris.

Not to mention, doesn't this wipe out the Sophon's main ability when the Nakalim are in play?

koxsos wrote:

It definitelly is not as impressive on fast speeds.

Yeah, the vast majority of my experiments were on fast speed, so I didn't get to evaluate any advantages they might have in different speeds.

Industry man, industry!

Two scouts, high industry output to push out colonizers, close to guaranteed second planet to populate (cause you have T2 tech access ;) ), instant market + potential strategics access + buyouts combined with +10 dust per pop from law + instant T2 system access and lxuruies in quest rewards...

That's the thing, factions with regular colonization mechanics start the game with an explorer and a colonizer. Since Nakalim's explorer's are nothing special, you aren't getting much from this trade.

More importantly, Sobra's lack of food make so that you have to invest part of your early dust compensating that in one way or another. No food means no colonies. Even worse, it also means your population grows slowly. The high per-pop industry of deserts mean little if you can't increase your pop as fast. Compare with Unfallen, for example, who have a less than stellar starting planet industry wise but grow so fast they occupy all its space in no time, making better use of it's innate per-pop industry value plus getting the value of upgrades like xenoindustrial complex, since their planet is fertile.

Maybe it's different on other speeds, I'd need to test that, but from my many many games over the weekend (more than it's healthy, I should admit) bonuses like buyout and market access from the get go are almost entirely spent making up for the bad start instead of being invested on a stronger early game.

Another fun fact, nakalim can almost always win first spear of isyander, which on slower games can pretty much mean one player eliminated from that fleet alone.

That's true. An interesting advantage considering they are supposed to be specially good with their DLC's mechanic. Though I find it's slow speed an unfortunate detriment.

Nakalim play a lot more all in, you are not meant to farm, you are meant to grab what you can and start using the advantage from the get go. It can work, and it can fail.

If it can fail it means their main design directive (early powerhouse that struggles to keep up) is way too RNG dependant. Of course, all factions have a degree of randomness and luck involved, but most of what's supposed to be capitalized here are equally important for other factions, like good colonization options, curiosities, resources, etc. If you can gather all the early strength you can, rush someone, and fail because of luck (and lose all your momentum) that's a sign things aren't very good.

MrRiceman wrote:...

Maybe it's different on other speeds, I'd need to test that, but from my many many games over the weekend (more than it's healthy, I should admit) bonuses like buyout and market access from the get go are almost entirely spent making up for the bad start instead of being invested on a stronger early game.

...

This is the core issue. Nakalim have all these advantages at start, but you mostly spend them coming up to par instead of actually getting ahead. Your head start in one area is spent compensating for your late start in every other area.

IceGremlin wrote:

MrRiceman wrote:...

Maybe it's different on other speeds, I'd need to test that, but from my many many games over the weekend (more than it's healthy, I should admit) bonuses like buyout and market access from the get go are almost entirely spent making up for the bad start instead of being invested on a stronger early game.

...

This is the core issue. Nakalim have all these advantages at start, but you mostly spend them coming up to par instead of actually getting ahead. Your head start in one area is spent compensating for your late start in every other area.

I could be wrong but I believe this is by design. The Nakalim are supposed to be a faction trying to recapture its glory days, they've lost more than most empires have ever even had. You're supposed to feel like you're making up for lost time, lost research, lost people, lost resources...in this way, the advantages you do still have can be used to either take an aggressive push in that direction or to compensate for what you've lost. 

I've played several games up to turn 100 with the Nakalim and they really don't struggle as hard as it appears at first glance, you just have to change your approach to things. Exploration is still important so get the vision range increases on the hero and use them for a scout. Grab as many early curiosities as you can to stack up on luxury resources and other bonuses. Use the market to sell luxuries to get the things you need - especially Jadonyx of you're going for production. 

If you really feel yourself struggling in the science department then it should be noted that bonuses from hero skills and system development are not halved, just bonuses from system improvements. Peaceful relations with minor factions can help with early game science as well if you still feel yourself struggling. However, if you compare the science output from one or two relics with a few minor bonuses to science from improvements, events and heroes...you'll find that your science output isn't nearly as bad as it seems, it just feels really slow because you're working on tier 3 science research from the beginning of the game instead of gradually getting there. 

The technological bonuses at the beginning allow you to quickly colonize other planets and systems without having to research them, give you access to better engines, weapons and defense modules that don't require special resourches and allow you to quicklky begin working the market to your advantage based on your starting situation. 

Lastly, the latest pre-patch makes some good changes to the Nakalim temples and offers an increase in relics obtained from faction quests, which both ease this burden a little bit. 

@dustwhit 

I'm playing with the latest patch information from Steam, 1.5.5. Are you playing the same patch?

Nothing escapes the negative modifier within a system. The reason that some things do (like I mentioned above) is because they bypass system science and go directly to empire science.

No food means no colonies. Even worse, it also means your population grows slowly. The high per-pop industry of deserts mean little if you can't increase your pop as fast. Compare with Unfallen, for example, who have a less than stellar starting planet industry wise but grow so fast they occupy all its space in no time, making better use of it's innate per-pop industry value plus getting the value of upgrades like xenoindustrial complex, since their planet is fertile.

Maybe it's different on other speeds, I'd need to test that, but from my many many games over the weekend (more than it's healthy, I should admit) bonuses like buyout and market access from the get go are almost entirely spent making up for the bad start instead of being invested on a stronger early game.

Food has very little value on fast games, no food does not mean no colonies. Since the food taken from colonies scales with the system production, you will always end up losing pop on two colonies or more. Sure they might grow faster, they will also grow faster if you just sprinkle 150 dust on them, twice as fast in fact.

Or you can just open game with food wonder. Easiest wonder in the game. I would probably recommend those 300ish dust colonizers myself. Almost cheaper than Lumeris second planet...

Or you can just colonize that T0 - T2 planet that spawned in your home system, it's probably not terran, but then it might be.

Compare with unfallen on what, starting system with 2 toxics and one barren gated behind one node till system that becomes a pirate lair before you can entwine it?
Well at least it's in the same tree! ;)

How long does it take to reserach a single T1 tech at fast unfallen? 3 - 5 turns? You basically spend first 5-8 turns on vineship anyway, right?

Nakalim play a lot more all in, you are not meant to farm, you are meant to grab what you can and start using the advantage from the get go. It can work, and it can fail.

If it can fail it means their main design directive (early powerhouse that struggles to keep up) is way too RNG dependant. Of course, all factions have a degree of randomness and luck involved, but most of what's supposed to be capitalized here are equally important for other factions, like good colonization options, curiosities, resources, etc. If you can gather all the early strength you can, rush someone, and fail because of luck (and lose all your momentum) that's a sign things aren't very good.

Well, if you lose a fight with such an overhwelming advantage, I would probably not blame game design. Tuning down difficulty for yourself is an option, tuning up a DLC race, so it's broken as heck is a lot less favourable option.
If you can not make use of the techs you are given, you are better not playing the race, but the forgotten lore is simply not useless at all as the thread claims.

But then preview patch reveals you can also sit back, and just turn entire galaxy into your influence bubble with no possible resistance. 

In the preview devs also made sure, that you will be sitting at about 4 relics guaranteed once you can prove that you are mentally capable of scanning about 4 curiosities, which then is 200 science at turn 5ish?