The Eco-Victory is pretty illogical anyways. I mean how does the mere accumulation of dust win the game? It's not like I saved it. I spent all of it on buyouts.

Ail wrote:
The AI-Harmony beat me... not by 1 turn but in the exact same turn where I would also have had victory. But for some reason the game had computed their vicotry-condition first .

No ties? The AI must have watched Highlander

Nice. I am gearing up to fire up my first game in the next few days. I do wish that they would balance out the weapons already.

Haha.Good for the A.I.

The AI-Harmony beat me... not by 1 turn but in the exact same turn where I would also have had victory. But for some reason the game had computed their vicotry-condition first.









(the turn before I was at 98% Eco-Victory)



I had a war with them and was winning but accepted cease-fire when they got Tier-3 Weapons/Defenses before me.

Tredecim wrote:
Impressive - or should we say: imbalanced?

I was last in the game on start, I was behind in the midgame, I was first in the endgame, far ahead. The harmony is slow and it can be stopped, but if you don't stop them... You see what they did there?

Impressive - or should we say: imbalanced?

Well, just played a session against impossible AIs. I won wars against a sower, two pilgrim and UE. In the end, noone could stop my 143% efficient stock FIS bonus, 50% harmony FIS bonus, everything a waterworld crystal tyranny.



So I got a "tiny" industrial advantage, in the end:

Nosferatiel wrote:
Np, but if I'm not infamous for walls of text in this forum, yet, I've severely underperformed, recently. XD

I'm not scared of wall-of-text's - continue



People appreciate every bit of information!

Sovereign wrote:
Yeah teach me too! Yes I AM BACK after moving to another town , anyone remembers me? Sovereign...the Reaper Guy? No!?



Nice Guide Nos i am looking forward to read even more!

Tredecim wrote:
The internet is full, go away Sov



Nah, welcome back lol





Thanks for this very usefull wall-of-text Nos !

Np, but if I'm not infamous for walls of text in this forum, yet, I've severely underperformed, recently. XD

The internet is full, go away Sov



Nah, welcome back lol





Thanks for this very usefull wall-of-text Nos !

Yeah teach me too! Yes I AM BACK after moving to another town , anyone remembers me? Sovereign...the Reaper Guy? No!?



Nice Guide Nos i am looking forward to read even more!

Well, I play my "supercritical liquid crystal"-harmony, now:



Efficient Stock (+25) - Too good not to take, now. The ability to increase the strat resources on a planet by 1 allows for +1% FIS on empire per upgrade of this type

Eternal War (-10) - No sense in making the harmony trade or do diplomacy. We are here to sow disharmony, aren't we?

Cloning 1/3 (+5) - Some extra food can come in quite handy, especially on the higher tier planets, because otherwise a high food -> sci conversion becomes impossible without starving some colonies

Powerless Warriors 2/2 (-5) - A simple point source.

Militarists 3/3 (+24) - Building ships hurts the harmony only in the sense that it looses growth. So we should, especially in the beginning, ascertain 1 turn colony ships on fast. Later on, ships don't hurt the harmony at all. We can have limitless ships. So we should FLOOD the galaxy with crystal dreadnaughts and laugh in the face of everyone with one of our nice shiny ships in orbit. We are just trying to make the universe look friendlier.

Fast Travelers 2/2 (+10) - Having many ships is nice, having many ships moving around fast is nicer.

Deep roots 2/2 (-2) - A simple point source.

Tolerant 2/2 (+30) - The harmony doesn't suffer from colonizing planets, but has some problems to channel science vs food, at first. So having this trait allows you to spread, regardless of surroundings, making your crystals the irremovable pest they should be.

Unhappy Colonists (-10) - Unhappy harmony? Who heard of such a thing, ever? You also have a chance of getting negative anomalies actually HELPING you, removing dust or just plain approval for giving you interesting stuff. A very good way to get points.

Xenobotanics (+4) - We start on tundrae, tundrae are powerful for the harmony and goddamn, those 4 points couldn't be allocated better, since you'd otherwise loose 25% FIS on the first few rounds...

Fragile Hulls 2/2 (-6) - We produce endless ships. What do we care if those endless ships burst? Also, with metal memory, we can have the most effective defenses in space. And crystals are supposed to be brittle.



Typical strategy:

First go about building an industry exploitation. Grab the nearest useful planet to you, which is basically anything with much ind, food or sci and the least dust possible. Then adjust the tax lever each turn to have one world grow in the least turns possible, ideally 1. Getting tech is based on exploration events and the phases, when you build a colony ship (don't forget to add an engine to the default design), where your planets stop growing. So instead of wasting that food, convert as much as you can without letting your people starve to science. Also, speed up growth by converting ind->food, when you do not build anything else, unless it helps no more. Then convert ind->science.

For the harmony, getting n-fold fusion, then xenobiology, isolation shields and building these three is a good start. Then you can choose depending on the distance to the next systems, whether you want to go for core mining or compact fusion reactors, next. Afterwards go for high energy magnetics, botanic scans and harmonised planets, if everything is peaceful. Otherwise get at least to L2 kinetics and then metal memory, as fast as possible!



In any case, once you got harmonised planets, the micromanagement begins. Always try to have at least two planets per system and one of these full to the last pop (preferrably the more useful one, but if the other one is far smaller and not totally useless, try filling that up). This will give you a 50% bonus with the improvement on that planet's production. That is one of the most important things to do as Harmony.

Now, at the latest, go out with Casimir and try settling everything everywhere, until you hit the other players. If you already had everything settled, at any point before, insert Casimir there, when there's only one system or so left. Converting most food->sci for getting such a key tech is also a sound strategy.



If you plan on really getting on everyone's nerves and conquering someone, now, fill up as many planets as possible in your systems, to get the bonus, fix the tax lever at ~50%, for now, then start building cheap ships en masse. You do not have to necessarily bother with things like defenses, but it is a good idea, since they also get huge bonuses. The grand strategy is to outproduce other players by having as many strategical resources as crystally possible. You can then go for military or science victory, that is up to you. In the first case, swamp them with cheap ships that manage to still kill something (1 cp ships + rally point settings are paramount for being able to pull that off) and blockade ALL their systems. That is the key, general blockade of everything. You do not pay maintenance, so make USE of it and take cheap fleets of invasion ships without troops (too costly to replace for harmony, as pop is scarce and this kills your bonuses) to besiege all their systems at once.

In the latter case of sci victory, get more living space on the bottom, more science and strat resource types on the right, more food on the left, in turn. Terraforming everything to ocean, in the end, gives you another awesome boost, but remember to drag your new oversized planets full of population, so you get the harmony special building bonus!



Well, this has been tested on the VIP build and has proven to be competitive enough against even DMT, so give it a try, if you want.