You could use the torrent trait with a custom race.

Igncom1 wrote:
I never have enough money to regularly refit my fleets. I always spend it!



But I can't wait to have a go at them once the sowers are well and saved.

I made a simple set of changes to the sowers to give them some OOMPH in the meantime.



Turns out Headhunter - Administrator and N-Way Fusion Plants is ridiculous when you do nothing but pump Industry.



anyway: update on my Harmony, I'm currently rapidly taking systems thanks to the brokenness that is hyperinvasion power. I have two options... I can make literally a fighter/bomber fleet for every world... Or I could just leapfrog with instant invasion. VOTE NOW



Oh also... I can research top level tech in 3 turns now. Fun times.

Igncom1 wrote:
You could use the torrent trait with a custom race.

Yea, and I do. But even with Tolerant, the fact that they can't live off of the minerals mean you still have take mostly food planets early on (and by mid game you should have the colony tech). I should go look into a custom affinity so they can eat rocks instead of pasta.

Silic Soils and I->F Conversion make those industry planets mush more livable, an researching trade routes makes it even easier.



also: I'm now making non-hero fleets with 60k+ MP

Autocthon wrote:
snip

I think in my view Harmony is a late game race that can't get to late game compared to other races, your comments seem insightful I never got to the tech that gives you bonus on capped so ... or dust yet I continue my playthrough of my C.Harmony I do not play with S.races, I did a S.harmony and amoeba took the whole centre in 30 turns in normal speed and it was bad times.

ThatMG wrote:
I think in my view Harmony is a late game race that can't get to late game compared to other races, your comments seem insightful I never got to the tech that gives you bonus on capped so ... or dust yet I continue my playthrough of my C.Harmony I do not play with S.races, I did a S.harmony and amoeba took the whole centre in 30 turns in normal speed and it was bad times.

What traits are on your C. Harmony? I recommend playing the standard version of any race before you try to customize it, it takes time to learn a faction's strengths and weaknesses.

Autocthon wrote:
What traits are on your C. Harmony? I recommend playing the standard version of any race before you try to customize it, it takes time to learn a faction's strengths and weaknesses.

Anarchist 2, Cloning 3, Crowed Planets 2, Fast Travellers 2, Feeble Warriors 2, Masters of Destruction 2, Masters of illusion 2, Offence First 3, Strategically resourceful.



Think now might change that race, was going for HP/Glass cannon strategy

Igncom1 wrote:
I never have enough money to regularly refit my fleets. I always spend it!



But I can't wait to have a go at them once the sowers are well and saved.

Already happened. You can stop complaining about the Sowers now. It's one of the balance things Amplitude DID get right with the expansion. They still need to sort out ridiculous things like the reversal of the order in which they unlock tundra/ice terraformation that they insisted on keeping for whatever reason, but the Sowers are mostly good now.

ThatMG wrote:
Anarchist 2, Cloning 3, Crowed Planets 2, Fast Travellers 2, Feeble Warriors 2, Masters of Destruction 2, Masters of illusion 2, Offence First 3, Strategically resourceful.



Think now might change that race, was going for HP/Glass cannon strategy

Anarchist is bad. I mean sure it's near meaningless later but in the early game blah. Cloning is OK, useful enough, I'd rather have builders in that slot though. Masters of ____ are both good, though to be honest the Harmony are mediocre at best offensively (their real power comes form stacking fleetwide power modules on the Lithic for half cost).



You NEED Xenobotany. It might not seem like much but the ability to colonize Tundra early in the game is HUGE given that there are literally NO good T1 planets for the harmony early. Jungle is the best, but a tundra is equivalent or better in almost all cases (I'll give you a hint: I->F during research phases). And you've given up Efficient Stock. It's easy to underestimate the power of Efficient Stock + Metal Memory for choosing efficient expansion routes.



As a custom I'd take similar traits to Sowers. A trait spread something like this:



Xenobotany

N-Way Fusion Plants

Strategically Resourceful

Builders III

Crowded Planets II

Masters of Illusion II (alternatively militarists)

Tolerant II

Anarchists II

Feeble Warriors II

Offense First III

Asceticism



Reasonings: Xenobotany+Fusion Plants is an effective early multiplier of FIDS growth. The ability to colonize tundra is mostly superior to needing T1 planets (of which only one is actually useful) and it's the one planet that I'd hate to take a colonization penalty on. Builders reduces time spent building up improvements, allowing for more resource conversion. Masters of Illusion is essential to early expansion., and tolerant allows you to exploit early game gas giants. the suite of negative traits is basically to make it work. Personally I'd like to have Rish Soil on the home planet (or metallic waters) but another negative trait would be hard to work in.



Edit: Yes I took a colonization tech and tolerant. And yes I took anarchist. I hate not having strong early fleets for defense, but if you have pirates off there's no need for the larger fleets. With these focus your first tech toward Trade Routes (at least the first planetary improvement) and casimir effect. I still recommend playing standard and getting used to how they play that way before trying customs.

Apheirox wrote:
Already happened. You can stop complaining about the Sowers now. It's one of the balance things Amplitude DID get right with the expansion. They still need to sort out ridiculous things like the reversal of the order in which they unlock tundra/ice terraformation that they insisted on keeping for whatever reason, but the Sowers are mostly good now.

Tolerant is still heavily overpriced. and they should be better at terraforming, should also probably have another level of optimistic.

Apheirox wrote:
Already happened. You can stop complaining about the Sowers now. It's one of the balance things Amplitude DID get right with the expansion. They still need to sort out ridiculous things like the reversal of the order in which they unlock tundra/ice terraformation that they insisted on keeping for whatever reason, but the Sowers are mostly good now.

I want complaining, I want to see the sowers being competitive.



And having tundra terraformation earlier then Arctic was to give them earlier access to it in the exploration tree, so they can then focus on getting the needed resources in the science tree.

Originally Posted by Apheirox

Already happened. You can stop complaining about the Sowers now. It's one of the balance things Amplitude DID get right with the expansion. They still need to sort out ridiculous things like the reversal of the order in which they unlock tundra/ice terraformation that they insisted on keeping for whatever reason, but the Sowers are mostly good now.

Everyone who says so has little idea about what you can do with the other races. Period.

Igncom1 wrote:
I don't get why they are bad, the AI with them seems to be very good at zerging across the stars.

They weren't bad when i played them, tried a score victory huge 8 player 450 turns, and totally wiped the floor with them. There is no need to make sci or dust systems, every system is a ship builder, and i was running round with 80k mp fleets laying waste to everything in my way. Don't understand what all the hate is about.. yes, thier different, but far from broken..

BROKEN?



Hell to the no. Balance is one thing but broken is taking it too far!

Sovereign wrote:
Everyone who says so has little idea about what you can do with the other races. Period.

haha, well said

Apheirox wrote:
Already happened. You can stop complaining about the Sowers now. It's one of the balance things Amplitude DID get right with the expansion. They still need to sort out ridiculous things like the reversal of the order in which they unlock tundra/ice terraformation that they insisted on keeping for whatever reason, but the Sowers are mostly good now.

Sowers of any vanilla faction have the leats trait points used, half of all factions are using not only more than the 60 points allotted to the sowers but also more than 70 points (beyond trait cap for custom factions).



The Automatons for instance have an astounding 77 trait points used... Out of 65.



And the factions generally considered weak? Harmony use 64. Sowers use 61 (and that's *over* their custom cap).



The complete list looks like this...



Pilgrims: 88

Horatio: 84 (Have all HH traits, effectively 65)

Automatons: 77

Sophons: 77

Hissho: 73

United Empire: 68

Amoeba: 64 (Custom Cap 60)

Cravers: 64

Harmony: 64

Sheredyn 64

Sowers: 61 (Custom Cap 60)



Notice how the strongest vanila factions have 10-20 more trait points than the ones generally considered weak? Now obviously you have to consider internal synergy, but numbers don't lie. Vanilla factions *have* to have better trait points than custom factions because players make laundry list factions (taking the negligible -traits to get free points, for instance eternal war is generally considered negligible), but as far as balance between vanilla factions? This is just absurd.



Edit: Misclicked the harmony faction, tehir actual points used appears to be 79... How I managed to mix them up wit hanother faction I will never know.

I've had huge problems adjusting to the harmony (they are just so different) and I agree that the other races have a much easier time, in the late mid-game to late-game they (harmony) just own. My favorite race hands down (ok ok, maybe automatons #1 because they are just clearly OP)



I will post a guide after I refine my play, but now I can hold my own provided I get a decent spawn. Will try and work with not so good spawns



Here are my observations, feel free to mock me and pretend they are under powered if that makes you feel better :P



1) If you are not first on FIDS during early to mid game, don't worry, you are not supposed to be first, you don't even have FIDS, you have FIS.



2) About planets: Avoid arid / desert / Terran (actually terran is not so bad compared to the other two), but anything else goes. What you want to hunt for are resources. You want that efficient stock! you want resource abundance (purple), also lava is your friend, tiny lava in particular.



3) As far as ships in early-game go, two words: Tectonic, Fighters. You don't need weapons, just defense and fighters. AI won't know what hit them (early on, it makes enough of a difference to give you that well needed advantage). This is more or less essential, no other ship will give you this advantage (you don't need to build many, they are also really cheap, you can concentrate on population).



4) Mid game (and late game) Metal memory will replace heroes. Sure it's not as much as a hero but it applies globally to all ships so you'll find that you're actually stronger if you have enough abundance.



5) Not being able to upgrade ships is not a problem but the workaround is complicated and I need to take notes before I can elaborate on that.



Conclusion: Needs more player involvement to balance production and growth, needs a bit of long term strategy. Weak early but very strong late game, great hulls somewhat mitigate early weakness. Early on diplomacy is key (dust from diplomacy does not affect you as far as I can tell) but if you spawn near aggressive species, you need tectonic + fighters if you are to survive. On highest of difficulties spawning really close to ... cravers ? I don't think you can win TBH.



What is really problematic: Without resource abundance you have no chance at all versus heroes and I personally see that as a major issue. I can't emphasize this enough YOU WANT RESOURCE ABUNDANCE!

pheipl wrote:
Here are my observations, feel free to mock me and pretend they are under powered if that makes you feel better :P

I think your observations are largely correct, though not complete inclusive. Here's a few comment.



3) I was under the impression that fighter sucks, the few times I use them they don't really seem to do anything other than kill opponent fighters. With that said, Tectonic's -75% tonnage bonus may just make that little amount of damage worth the damage/tonnage ratio. Right now, I feel like the thing that makes Tectonic useful isn't that they can equip fighters but that they can equip fighters while still having space for lots of other weapons. So then it really isn't the fighter that's making them useful.



6) You forgot Dust Barrier, the single most important improvement for Harmony.



7) Gas giant terraforming, absolutely must for a race that can exploit it like no others





So what difficulty did you played on?



I think, with a few exceptions, the players who argue the Harmony is weak have experienced playing them on higher difficulties while those who argue they are strong have not. Harmony has a horrible early game and a fantastic late game and seems to switch from one to the other right when you slap on the Dust Barriers. I don't know if the devs intend Harmony to work this way, but its a very jarring experience for many.

I've made a little economy test.



My settings are:

Map: Disk-4, Huge, 4 Empires (me and 3 AIs), Normal Age.

Adv Map (left): Weak, Low, Low, Normal, Normal

Adv Map (right): Medium, Many, Remote, Normal

Difficulty: Normal

Speed: Slow(!)

other: no tech exchange, only supremacy and and expansion victory, no pirates



These may be other settings than you all guys play, but I like them. It reminds me of Civ marathon speed or Pax Imperia maps.



Now, I've made custom factions, this is my Harmony faction:

- Strategically Resourceful

- Crowded Planets 2

- Unlucky Colonists

- Xenobotany

- N-way

- Masters of Illusion 2

- Builders 3

- Diplomats 1



This is a rather average faction I just made for comparison:

Sheredyn:

- Dust Impaired 2

- Sloppy Sawbones 2

- Legendary Heroes 2

- Dust Arch 1

- Optimistic 2

- Masters of Illusion 2

- Eternal War

- Xenobotany

- Feeble Warriors 1

- Businessmen 2

- Metallic Waters



I couldn't make use of Diplomats 1 right now as I didn't discover enemy planets (round 59!) yet. Also the planets I got for Sheredyn were better. RNG defeat balance anyway...



These are the 2 saves I've come up with now:

Save.zip



The first one is Harmony, after turn 59. The second one is Sheredyn, after turn 45.



Now, you can clearly see my Sheredyn FIDS are double my Harmony FIS.

Even if there would be Dust (let's suppose +33% to FIS to be FIDS), Sheredyn produces WAY more then Harmony.

Also expect the Harmony FIS to drop in the next turns.

I am colonizing in waves and right now I would be ready to build a new rack of colony ships and set my tax slider to the right.

Then I would get less Sci than I get Food now.



You also can see that I've explored way more systems in my Sheredyn game. This is due to the fact I can't afford building simple scout ships without losing even more time with harmony.

Also I could build colony ships with 2 colony modules. That would be viable ... if they would cost -50% ind. (Devs, fix this.)



I think the overoll Harmony weakness also comes from the lack of approval.

Other races do not only have dust, they also have more FIS due to Fervent/Ecstatic.

Then the cost bug. Then the "oh noes we don't have enough food, all but one pop die" bug, instead of "one pop dies".



Hunting for resources is something you can't always do. Even on my Huge 4 players map there are only relatively few resources.



One question regarding Mineral Memory:

If you do not have the tech (let's say High Energy Magnetics for Anti-Matter), do you still get the resource in your overview?

Do you still get the +1% to FIS with Efficient Stock just by colonizing the planet?

Antera wrote:
I think your observations are largely correct, though not complete inclusive. Here's a few comment.



3) I was under the impression that fighter sucks, the few times I use them they don't really seem to do anything other than kill opponent fighters. With that said, Tectonic's -75% tonnage bonus may just make that little amount of damage worth the damage/tonnage ratio. Right now, I feel like the thing that makes Tectonic useful isn't that they can equip fighters but that they can equip fighters while still having space for lots of other weapons. So then it really isn't the fighter that's making them useful.



7) Gas giant terraforming, absolutely must for a race that can exploit it like no others

In regards to 1 cp hulls (best ships), the recent patch that reduced fighter damage to 28.57% of what it is now was a severe nerf to their 1cp specialized battle hull and is why you might find people who think fighters are still okay (they havent tried the latest ones)



In regards to harmony getting the most out of gas giants.

Industry wise Sowers do: large system of methane giants -> ~5k industry before any hero bonuses or resource wide bonuses (can reach above 9k with heroes and abundance). remember for sowers industry -> food and with tech food surplus -> industry.

Harmony are the best research wise before any hero bonuses.