I've tried a variety of builds as the Harmony and I just can't get anything to really make them consistently playable. I like the idea of the race but as implemented I can't play them in multiplayer as it is waste of my time and the other players playing the game.



The biggest problem I have with the Harmony is that they are entirely circumstantial. What I mean by this is that they are entirely dependent on a very specific type of map generation. Particularly Tundra / Jungle and Oceans. Terran, Arid, Desert are all bad so no point colonizing those till you get the purify tech. Artic are ok IF you have a Tundra/Jungle or Ocean planet in the system for Production. Point being that a hopeless map generation for Harmony could actually be great for every other faction in the game and very playable, but because you're Harmony it sucks and you'll most likely get beaten out of the game rather quickly. Or you will put up a futile fight while everyone else is progressing normally.



Then there are the planet anomalies that generate dust, so even if you do find a planet that is Harmony friendly, you still might not colonize it. Then you have the luxury goods which again you might have a planet or two with Hydromiel and man wouldn't it be great to get that extra food, especially for the Harmony. But you have a planet or three where researching the tech to unlock Hydromiel may be a net negative with Redsang or something. Then you have the exploration events, most of which will not favor or benefit you at all. Or the other faction events in the game.



I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds the map generation... problematic... in terms of competitive and balanced games that are mostly fair and enjoyable for everyone. But I feel it's a 100 times worse if I try to play the harmony. I could go on and cover what RobM said before, and most of which is still very applicable today I feel. It may not be AS bad, but still bad enough.



Which brings me to the topic at hand. Do you think they are still broken? What's your strategy to play them effectively?

Well, I play the harmony like this: /#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/10548-school-me-harmony-post-arugia

And for harmony, anything but arid, desert and hydrogen should be a viable planet type.

Do you think they are still broken? What's your strategy to play them effectively?



My Strategy:



Singleplayer: Set ressources to High in the Map settings



Multiplayer: DO NOT PLAY HARMONY





playable against Endless AI okay but still weakest faction atm wich depends high on the number of strategic ressources and with tons of annoying micromanagement.

Let's put it this way, if you are playing a multiplayer game with more than 3 players... Then you should not be worried about early game disadvantage if you are playing with very good players.



It is because, whoever is leading / closest to victory will be ganked up by everyone else. Once he plummeted, someone else will take the top spot and be ganked again. This should keep happening till all players are at roughly the same power and everyone is close to victory. Of course, this depends on how good players playing with you are.



If you are asking for strategies as disharmony, I guess you have to accept the slow build up as them in the early game (if you are unlucky). Then try to play the weak guy card and play the diplomacy game. I do not see any way to put you at the same spot with the other factions.

ergo: Harmony are the best for Multiplayer?

Nosferatiel's Harmony plan reads like it works pretty well. I haven't tested his plan in detail, but the principles seem solid. I recently played an Endless Difficulty Harmony game where I based it roughly on his plan (at least what I could remember of it). I'm adding my save game files and a description here of what I did so that others may profit from an example.



Notes

I'm not a good player. I'm lazy. I really should micromanage things more. I can still play on Endless without too much trouble. This isn't me bragging, but an explanation about how to approach the game. If you aren't succeeding, then perhaps you are having a basic misunderstanding or are overlooking something. Once you figure that out, you shouldn't have much of a problem.



Principles

• The AI is not smart. He uses poorly designed ships and randomizes what he shoots at. He also can't use troops and isn't nearly aggressive enough. He bumbles around like a giant until he accidentally wins.
• The AI has massive economic and resource bonuses. It it isn't sufficient to win battles, you have to win wars were your expenses are 20% (or less of his). That's right. It is a safe assumption to go in knowing the AI has a 500% resource advantage over you.
• Keys to Combat Victory: EvasionDisorientation, Cost Effective Glass Cannon Destroyers, Long Range Kinetics, Medium Range Lasers, Weapon Overclock and Short Circuit, and Spread-fire.
  
  

Explanation of Combat Victory Techniques

• EvasionDisorientation - More weapons per ship, regardless of accuracy of the weapons, yields better damage. Firing more often per phase (i.e., kinetics) yields better damage.
• Cost Effective Glass Cannon Destroyers - Glass Cannon Destroyers are dirt cheap and have a higher DP$ than any other ship. If we are going to win the economic race we need these.
• Long Range Kinetics - The most DP$ efficient weapon.
• Medium Range Lasers - The second most DP$ efficient weapon.
• Weapon Overclock - We do more damage and block them running.
• Short Circuit - Prevent their damage reduction card from working.
• Spread-fire - We want to kill everything they have quickly, Spread-fire does that.
  
  

The Game Plan

• Secure our quadrant by blocking the wormholes.
• Don't allow anyone in with colony ships. We don't really care about warships, unless they come with siege and you'll lose the system. Keep your ships on planet.
• Once the enemy starts to siege, plan to break it around turn 9, you don't care until then. If you won't be able to break it, cut your losses.
• Abuse the +5 food per colonized planet.
• Abuse Harmonize Planets by unequally filling your planets to get the +50% FIS Bonus.
• Don't worry about expansion until the Harmonize Economy comes online.
• Abuse Metal Memory.
• Abuse no upkeep ships.
• Abuse Personal Shields to purify every system you claim. Even if they take it back, it is nearly worthless to them.
• Don't seriously consider expansion until the Personal Shields come online.
• After this, just mass produce glass cannon destroyers until everyone dies.
  
  

Research Plan

Get the basic +Industry, +Science, and +Food buildings. Next go for Harmonize Planets, kinetics level 2, or Wormholes. After that, pick things that are shiny and help your economy.



Ship Design

Design 1. Long Range Kinetics + Destroyers,+1 of each defense, when you get around to it.

Design 2. Medium Range Lasers on the same design as above. Build them when the enemy starts to survive.

Design 3. 1 Bombers + both of the the designs above on the -75% bomber/fighter weight ships. (optional)

Design 4. Destroyer with Elite Troops and max siege weapons.

Design 5. Whatever makes you happy (optional)



Race Design

I picked a race design that was okay. I'd make changes if I play again. Nosferatiel talks about it in much better detail in his post linked above.

• Tolerant 2 30: Colonize all planets, -25% FIDS until planet tech, -4% growth
• Efficient Stock 1 25: +1% FIS per strategic resource
• Cloning 3 25: +1 Food per citizen
• Deadly Weapons 3 15: +36% damage
• Deep Roots 2 -2: Something about ownership of planets
• Eternal War 1 -10: No peace
• Feeble Warriors 2 -5: -25% Defense per system, -8 defense per per citizen
• Offense First 3 -7: -15% Passive effects of defenses
• Spray 'n Pray 3 -15: -15% Accuracy
• Strategically Resourceful 1 7: -1 Strategic resource required for monopoly
  
  

Tolerant allows you to do amazing things.

Methane Planets are wonderful (+20 Industry per citizen).

The -25% loss isn't that big of a deal, and since it can reduce dust production,

it is even less annoying. Amusingly I never got around to researching all of the

planet technologies and just suffered the -25% penalty. You are going to end up

with a bunch of useless Desert, Arid, and Hydrogen planets. Colonize them last.



Efficient Stock allows you to do amazing things late game.

Strategical Rock gives you a +1 Efficient Stock Bonus for EVERY strategic resource.

If you've got 20 planets with strategic resources, that's +20% to all FIS. If you

then build Strategical Rock on each, that's another +20% FIS. I'm not sure when

it would be best to transition from specific planetary exploitations to

Strategical Rock.



Cloning allows you to do amazing things early game.

It starts by halvingthe food consumption of your people. That's nice. Then, since

it actually does this by increasing food production by +1 per citizen, it stacks

with any bonuses you have. Furthermore since Food = Science (and eventually

production), it never gets old.



Deadly Weapons, Spray n' Pray, and Offense First are all hilarious.

The net result is a massive increase in damage, with virtually no downside.

Your accuracy will already be maximizing via evasiondisorientation. The defense

loss isn't a big deal, and even if it were, we don't care about the ships surviving.



Deep Roots, Eternal War, Feeble Warriors are all free points.

Minor (if any) penalties and free points to spend on good bonuses.



Strategically Resourceful allows you to do amazing things mid and late game.

Our ships are 99% weapons 1% chairs. This makes our ships cost up to 60% less.

EXCEPT that it doesn't change the price of siege or level 1 or 2 kinetics. Since

our ships are mostly composed of those parts, we get less of a savings. It might

even be enough to justify missile ships.



Further Thoughts:

• If Blockade Buster works with Eternal War, that would be another opportunity to
• abuse the system.
• Strategically Resourceful might be replaced with something better.
• Cloning may not need to go up to level 3.
  
  

Overview of the saves

• By 28 I've secured the quadrant
• I soon get attacked by the Sowers & Cravers.
• I fight them off using LK destroyers.
• Their second wave necessitates building the ML destroyers.
• After that I get pretty much ignored for many turns. They occasionally attack. If they bring siege ships. I kill them. Otherwise I let them wander around sight seeing until I get around to killing them. Losses are not generally acceptable. I wait until I have parity in CP, and then swamp them in waves of cheap ships.
• I'm constantly last in the universe in everything, except for ships.
• I get Harmonize Planet up and my FIS jumps.
• I get Contamination Barriers and my FIS doubles.
• After that I destroy everything by wiping out defenses with the glass cannon fleets and immediately sacking the planet with elite trooper siege troops. Harmony regen bonuses refill them quickly enough to repeat the process. Once I get going turn 125 or so, it is 1 planet conquered every 1-2 turns.
• Around turn 150 I find the largest players fleets. I throw my combat ships at them to see what happens and pull back the siege ships (they are expensive!). After that I stop building silly things like factories and pump out the $150-$250 glass cannons. A few turns of that and his forces are eradicated without him taking back a single undefended planet. Amusingly my troops wipe out everything on the planet, leaving a devoured world without buildings. I build contamination barriers as the first thing, and now the planets are essentially useless to anyone. They'll eventually become productive, but I imagine I'll conquer the universe before they do much of anything.
  
  

Harmony v1.zip

Thanks for your responses. I appreciate the feedback.



My current build that I find workable and promising.



(-15) Anarchists (2/2) : -2 ship cap per fleet is a big deal in the first 30-40 turns, after that it's reduced immensely.

(+24) Builders (3/3) : -30% building costs means less time spent building structures, more time spent converting industry to science or industry to food or building ships. ( Does anyone know if this improves industry to X conversion? Seems like it should if it doesn't )

(+15) Cloning (2/3) : Gives +1 food for all but Terran, Jungle, Ocean. Since these planets already have good food production I don't see the value of 10 points for +1 per pop on all planets.

(+15) Deadly Weapons (3/3) : Maximum fire power should be everyone's business.

(-1 ) Deep Roots (1/2) : Free Point.

(-10) Eternal War : Because the Harmony is built for it.

(-5 ) Feeble Warriors (2/2) : I always play to have fleet supremacy, so this shouldn't be much of a factor.

(-6 ) Fragile Hulls (2/2) : I normally don't take this trait. But I kind of need the points.

(+10) Knowledge Gather (2/2) : I think this trait is mandatory to offset your lost/reduced science production due to dust in the early game. Plus it's the trait that keeps on giving no matter what stage you are in the game.

(+24) Militarists (2/2) : I take this to shave a couple turns off colony ships, but also in the mid to late game it can substantially reduce your ship costs when combined with other techs. Plus the first cruiser class ship of the harmony has -50% to defense modules tonnage, though not sure it's worth it. (NOTE: Per thuvian's observation, it may be better to use Masters of Destruction for -50% cost to weapon modules, and only spend 20 points instead of 24 points)

(+20) Tolerant (1/2) : Harmony's biggest weakness is lack of planets to colonize as I emphasized in my original post. Tolerant I feel is mandatory for multiplayer because it allows you to claim systems, but also keep your population growth going, even if it's reduced, some is much better than none. (I had to drop Optimized Structures to take this trait. I like the +30% to tonnage on the ships as it's useful in any stage of the game)

(-10) Unlucky Colonists : Because the worst case scenario is you lose some FIS. It's not the end of the world and only affects 1 planet.

(+4 ) Xenobotany : Harmony start with Tundra, this one is Mandatory.



I like the idea of Efficient Stock, it's a great trait for the late game. But when you are playing with most if not all winning conditions, it's far too costly to take because by the time it can be of use (in terms of costing 25 points), the game will be nearing completion. The harmony have it rough in the beginning and they really need to do everything they can to stay competitive in the population and tech game. This trait doesn't really help with that. The first 75 turns or so (normal speed) you will be racing for 2 techs, the first one will be the one that gives you +50% to FIS production for max population planets, the second one will be to purify your systems. The rest is just balancing your situation with what techs you need between those 2 major tech points. I go heavy on the food tech in the beginning because it leads to a significant boost to the economy, especially science. After that I focus on industry tech to improve production and science output and after that it's pretty much the shortest path to purification. Oh and somewhere in all that I go for Kinetics level 2.



Here is my typical tech progression:

1. N-Way fusion Plants (Heavy Isotope Refineries are better to build first than industry focused exploitation for most planets)

2. Soil Xenobiology ( Easy +1 Food for faster population growth )

3. Isolation Shields (every little bit helps with science production in the early game)

4. HE Batteries (Beam Weapons / Defense)

5. Specialized Isotopes

6. Isotope Fabrication (Superior Fire Power to offset early game weakness / Generate Science from Knowledge Gathering.) (pick up the 2 fleet cap techs after this so you can start building your level 2 LR kinetic destroyers )

7. Botanical Scanning ( +1 food for faster population growth )

8. Harmonized Planets ( +50% FIS for planets with max population. By the time you research this you should have a couple systems that can take advantage of it )

9. At this point you need to decide if you want to focus a little on industry / science production or go straight for contamination barriers. If you have a few artic / barren planets it's probably best to focus on applied science till you get global tech park then focus on 3 or 4 industry techs then make a bee line towards contamination barriers.



The taxation slider I play around with from time to time. Sometimes in the rare case of exploration events actually benefiting the harmony, other times to try and keep the population growing as fast as reasonably possible without sacrificing science production. It's entirely situational though. Sometimes you can shave 2-3 turns off most of your system by moving the slider 2 or 3 to the left for more food, other times you move it 2 or 3 to the right for more science, as population growth is relatively unchanged.



Thuvian - I'll have to try Spray and Pray and offense first some time.

Nos - Your post gave me inspiration with Tolerant being useful. Thanks.



I'm still not convinced they are viable in a human multiplayer game with most winning conditions on. But I think the builds you guys have done are viable, so long as you don't get a terrible start / galaxy generation / exploration events that favor one particular side. It will be a few weeks before I can really weigh in on how these builds work in multiplayer.



Also does anyone know a good way to generate balanced maps? Perfect Balance seems less than perfect We have a rule that if you don't like your starting location / map generation by turn 15 you can mulligan and start over. Sometimes it's necessary because one person had a horrible start with the nearest system 5 turns away and no colonizable planets in the adjacent systems.

Might I suggest

• Tolerant to 3 (+10)
• Deep Roots to 2 (-1)
• Xenobotany to 0 (-4)
• Something else (-5)
  
  

Explanations and Further Thoughts



Going for Tolerant 2 means your FIS drop is only 25%. You can afford to colonize virtually everything and not worry about getting planet techs for a while (if ever). The 4%(?) growth penalty is also trivial.



Deep Roots 2 isn't a noticeable penalty.



Builders helps reduce building costs, but there aren't that many buildings you really need to build. Once you get to the expensive ones, you already have massive production (or are dead). Most of the time my core worlds are building ships, not buildings. Especially true for the Harmony compared to the other races, because they don't get to build any Dust buildings. Perhaps convert this over to either reduced ship costs or allocating the points elsewhere. The big expense is Contamination Barriers and that takes 5 turns regardless of Industry.



Anarchists troubles me, having an initial CP limit of 3(?) is a bit terrifying. I'd have to see how it plays. Combining it with extra, extra cheap ships seems like it might work.



Knowledge Gathers is it really worth it? Once you get going you can keep your science slider maxed. By minimizing your research direction, you can stall until you need to start making deep progress into the technology trees. At that point in time, you will be making tons of science. I'm not sure you need the boost from Knowledge Gathers, or perhaps better, you can spend the points better elsewhere.



Mind you, this is against the AI. Against human players I'm not sure the Harmony has a chance regardless. A point in your favor is that is someone does start attacking, they need to finish you off, otherwise you'll be a massive annoyance as long as you are alive.

thuvian wrote:
Might I suggest



Going for Tolerant 2 means your FIS drop is only 25%. You can afford to colonize virtually everything and not worry about getting planet techs for a while (if ever). The 4%(?) growth penalty is also trivial.

It's all about perspective. My perspective is to claim systems and keep population growing, because people are the FIS producers. Every system you colonize is a another system growing population independently from your colonize techs and producing some resources without having to focus on those techs. That is my goal with tolerant. It's not really about producing resources, as much as people. But point wise you might be right in that it's worth taking to the next level. My issue is that by turn 50-75 you can easily grab these colonize techs in a few turns and Harmony should be focused on Harmonized Planets and Contamination Barriers first in terms of tech. Once you've researched these techs going back and getting the colonize techs will cost you a couple of turns and then your 30 point faction trait is meaningless in the mid and late game. So my opinion is minimal investment.

thuvian wrote:
Builders helps reduce building costs, but there aren't that many buildings you really need to build. Once you get to the expensive ones, you already have massive production (or are dead). Most of the time my core worlds are building ships, not buildings. Especially true for the Harmony compared to the other races, because they don't get to build any Dust buildings. Perhaps convert this over to either reduced ship costs or allocating the points elsewhere. The big expense is Contamination Barriers and that takes 5 turns regardless of Industry.

Look at it a different way. Say you are building Refineries for 100 Prod points on a system that is generating 10 production, it will take you 10 turns to build it without builders, but only 7 with builders. Without factoring in the production gains from building refineries 3 turns early, it still gives you 3 turns to produce something else. Perhaps a ship, perhaps ind to food for another population. These things add up and because Harmony can't rush production, I find this one worth taking to help immensely with early game planets you just colonized. But the benefits are seen through out the game regardless. And is there a building not worth building besides military ones?



Take my build from the previous post, drop militarists and add Masters of Destruction, this will give you 4 points and use it to start with the tech of N-way fusion planets. Start up a game, and start building refinery on your home system, and colonize a new system with your first colony ship and do the same. Try it out and let me know what you think. I'm not convinced I'm right, so I'll be interested in your thoughts as you tend to use math to calculate the efficiency.

thuvian wrote:
Anarchists troubles me, having an initial CP limit of 3(?) is a bit terrifying. I'd have to see how it plays. Combining it with extra, extra cheap ships seems like it might work.

It can be tough if you get a bad start where the AI starts adjacent to you and has more than a +2 fleet cap on you. I usually offset this with optimized structures. In most cases though you can manage this disadvantage and while 3 vs 5/7 ships is tough, 7 vs 10 not so much and in the late game it's like 14 vs 16 or 14 vs 18 which is even less . Though I don't play on endless difficulty, so my opinion may be invalid at that difficulty level. But it's a 15 points disadvantage that becomes less and less meaningful the further you get in the game from my experience.

thuvian wrote:
Knowledge Gathers is it really worth it? Once you get going you can keep your science slider maxed. By minimizing your research direction, you can stall until you need to start making deep progress into the technology trees. At that point in time, you will be making tons of science. I'm not sure you need the boost from Knowledge Gathers, or perhaps better, you can spend the points better elsewhere.

I think so. Most techs will take on average 10-12 turns in the early game to research as the Harmony. Killing scouts will reduce those turns dramatically, which will help you get up and running faster. Once you research the 6th tech in my tech progression build (Isotope Fabrication) and the 2 fleet cap techs beneath in the military tree, you can start harassing their outposts. The AI will happily send fleet after fleet to break your blockade / invasion and every ship destroyed is advancing you down the tech tree that much faster. The quicker you get Contamination Barriers the better as that will open up Arid and Desert planets for colonization, as well as reduce the corruption of the lesser dust producing planets. Especially if you have planets that have dust producing anomalies.

while generally "free points" Anarchists also troubles me a bit. With reduced ship quality(due to traits + affinity) having a lower fleet capacity does hamper your potential power per fleet. Harmony are capable of spamming ships, quantity over quality so any limitation to their fleet size hurts them quite a bit. This makes researching the fleet capacity techs VERY EARLY mandatory.



Tolerant: letting the highest level slip probably isn't a bad idea. For the most part low priority worlds are reduced to Strat-res mines. With the new Disharmony mechanics, colonizing a desert planet yields so little FIS that 50% less does not actually hurt you a lot. The extra yield from the next level only really helps if you neglect researching, higher planet tiers, something that isn't profitable anyway, as these techs are mostly usefull(save desert) and when you get to colonize them you're well within the "I can set my Food-science to science" phase where you whizz through the techs, like a sophon.

Yeah Anarchists is a bit of a waste for the Harmony cause u didnt get the advantage of lower Fleet Upkeep costs as the other Races do. But the points are still needed and Big Fleets is in my opinion a bit to expensive, i mean to spend 20 Points for it?!



I didnt used that trait for a very very long time.

Quite!

I'd assume that the harmony would profit most(compared to other civs) from "big fleets", however it's a terribly overpriced trait if you ask me , if it'd be like 5 points, it would be a valid option, but not like this.

i would found 6 Points Cost valid for rank 1 and 12 for rank II.



then i would pick it for Harmony Races.

Last nights multiplayer game was a failure for my Harmony (Tweaked a bit from my build above, particularly I dropped fragile hulls, and added 1 rank of spray and pray and 1 of offense first and then dropped deep roots). I had a pretty decent start By turn 75 I was purifying my systems, I had researched colonize techs up to Gas (didn't do Asteroid, arid or desert till after purification) I had applied science and some industrial tech and harmonized planets. I was second in knowledge around turn 75 being tech heavy on planets (Gas, Barrens, Artic) + Harmonized Planets.



We stopped at turn 125 because it was clear that he was going to win as I had not even met him yet, and he was producing massive FIDS which was going to inevitably result in Economic / Wonder or Scientific Victory around turn 160 or 175 and we were both stomping the united empire in the ground fleet wise. I had 6 systems by turn 30, but my first colony ship had to explore 3 systems before finding a colonizable planet (Though I admit the first system I could've colonized, but accidentally moved the colony ship to the next system), I also got 2 colony ships for free from an exploration event.



What really sucked for me was that my systems and my particular part of the galaxy was severely lacking in strategic and luxury resources (though highly dependent on the luxury). I had no access to Hexferrum or Titanium and there was nothing really great about my systems, my highest population system was 16 or 19, I'd say 4 were above +10, with my home system being capped at 5 due to the two other planets in that system being deserts. The other system was 9 or 10 at best.



Game was on Serious Difficulty, Large Galaxy (Split by worm holes), 8 players (2 human, 6 AI), Perfect Balance, Full Exploration Events, Normal Pirates, Normal Speed. I will keep trying I suppose, but it seems to me the success of the harmony is very circumstantial on map generation and are not viable in multiplayer with non-combat winning conditions enabled. The other human player had 6 luxury resource monopolies. Not sure the point of "Perfect Balance" map generation when the 10 systems around me were nothing special in terms of planets, size, types, anomalies, luxury or strategic resources



Also in regards to Anarchists, my opinion is fleet size doesn't matter if you win the battles. In last nights game I actually had the fortune of finding 2 pirate exploration events in the first 5-6 turns of the game. One was a fleet 3 ships (cap 2 size per ship) and the other 2 ships (cap 2 per size). I was able to kill both fleets with 2 KD's for a nice bump in science (400 points) by turn 12 or so. After that I didn't really have problems keeping fleet dominance. In fact around turn 30 or 35 Cravers AI sent a fleet of 15 ships against my 5, I killed 9 of their ships, and lost the battle, but I had another fleet of 5 2 turns away to reinforce and wipe them out. The reinforcing fleet were more current in tech, so the next wave of 15 that came after that one was wiped out with a loss of 2 or 3 ships. But I was able to keep replenishing the losses from the system they were trying to break. Granted this is serious difficulty and not endless. But still, point being fleet cap doesn't matter if your fleets still win the battles at an acceptable level.