thats because you lose if you arent able to fast expand in endless space



no matter how you try get around it... if someone has double your systems by turn 20 on normal, and you arent able to punish him immediately ( which you arent with new invasion mechanics ) you are pretty much not going to be able to compete directly



yes harmony might have a strong late-game, but they will never EVER get there, unless they roll 6's every roll on the RNG, and everyone else has gas giants and barrens as their only starting systems ( sowers aside... you get the point )

I wasn't trying to get around it, I am trying to ask questions about how harmony are played and how they perform when you play them. you are getting a little aggressive with you position.



And for your point I agree, you need to be able to reasonably expand in the early game even as the harmony, but as it stands I don't see why that is hard to do?

Igncom1 wrote:
I wasn't trying to get around it, I am trying to ask questions about how harmony are played and how they perform when you play them. you are getting a little aggressive with you position.



And for your point I agree, you need to be able to reasonably expand in the early game even as the harmony, but as it stands I don't see why that is hard to do?

As others have said the current problem with the Harmony is that while there late game is incredible there early game is extremely weak with several factors working against each other to stunt your growth and development.

Now depending on the setting of your game this can just make you slower or downright kill you. On higher difficulties the other factions will grow so fast and be able to play aggressive at the same time that a Harmony player (who doesn't get all the silly AI bonuses) struggles to survive. By the time he develops and his late game bonuses start kicking in the game is already mostly lost.



Now the concepts for the Harmony are really cool but a less punishing start, for example by not stopping growth during all ship production, maybe limit it to 50% or remove it all together. Ofc this would have to be combined with some tuning down of the late game to balance but that's all a numbers thing that just needs testing.



Another fix could be the "tax" slider being on individual worlds. So you can set new colony's to grow while your older ones arnt wasting tons of food and no science but i doubt the inner workings of the game allow for that to be done.

I have never liked the idea of a per planet tax slider, as it seems far to easy to game the system to 0 tax unhappy systems and to 60% really happy ones.



But as to the ship penalty to growth, I do like that idea, we could even make a way for players to lessen the effect through research down the tree?

If the tech for reducing the penalty is good enough it becomes necessary and if it must be had as early as is possible then the Harmony have all the other stuff to catch up with. If you boost science to rush through those things you aren't getting enough food to grow anyway.



Maybe having a growth penalty of only 50% would be sufficient.

Possibly, as I would prefer some evidence to back up the claim

while a grouth reduction by mere 50% sounds reasonable it's not all that usefull in early game, simply as this would not apply to the Transport, or rather the Seed module, which has a 100% reduction itself. Thus colonlyships of all factions halt grouth. In early game the main thing is churning out colony ships. I think the key here is to constantly swap between grouth and science phases. It becomes important to synchronise your systems, so they all stagnate at the same time. Another thing I found usefull are high industry worlds, as you'll want to get a lot of science bonus time, the Tier 1 worlds don't yield that much food afterall, Tundra and Lava on food conversion make better breadbaskets and once full contribute greatly to building ships fast and producing science.



If you choose your systems wisely (no Hydrogen and Desert, few Arid and the odd Terran) maybe even get favorable anomalies, you can keep up quite long without the dust converter. I really think they should have added some sort of "disharmometer" so you actually know how high it is, all I see are the effects on food.

Ca_Putt wrote:
while a grouth reduction by mere 50% sounds reasonable it's not all that usefull in early game, simply as this would not apply to the Transport, or rather the Seed module, which has a 100% reduction itself.

XML-File says otherwise:




SupportCategory="Civilian">

StarSystemConstructionFreezeGrowth





%ModuleColonizationDescription












SupportCategory="Civilian">





%ModuleColonizationDescription

Interesting, every time I build a Colo-ship it shows the con-effect twice, thus I assumed as much, well in that case it's no issue.



So, I just jumped ingame and it does indeed show the con-penalty for the seed-module. HOWEVER I assume that the aforemenioned Seed module is not used ingame, probably one of all those Module issues Disharmony currently suffers from(industry and tonnage bonuses not appying, Cruisers have odd bonuses).

@Autocthon



I've tried more games on slow speed to turn ~60 with my map settings (average balance now - this shouldn't bother you anyway when app casi is researched, only system count per constellation is modified).



I just cannot come up with my performance as Harmony like I do with other races.

I've tried your custom Harmony setup too, and there the results differ, all depending on planets.



However, in my most recent game I had 4613 FIDS on turn 58, custom UE race. Did you achieve any Harmony game with 3000+ FIS @turn ~60? I did not.



Also in every game Harmony AI is waaaay worse than the other ones. I had a game with with Horatio at ~500 score, 110 for Harmony, at turn 50. Sophon was at ~400. All normal difficulty.



@Igncom



Saying Harmony could be well balanced is pointless if you never felt how bad they are.

Christ I can't even get that as the normal races.



I really don't play to the max at all.

Igncom1 wrote:
Possibly, as I would prefer some evidence to back up the claim

How about you first go play harmony and then come back to make judgements about anything related to them? How about that? I don't know why we are discussing this with someone who has not played them.









Here is my current harmony setup:



Ascetism -7 <- free points, luxury does jack .

Builders 3 24 <- you need every discount on build time you can get.

Cloning 1 5 <- +1 food/pop on arctic desert barren and lava, its a steal.

Eternal War -10 <- For singleplayer, in MP, remove knowledg gathering and eterna lwar.

Knowledge Gathering 10 <- Killing things for science, sooo needed.

Militarists 3 24 <- you need every discount on build time you can get.

Offense first 3 -7 <- irellevant malus, free points

Optimal structure 2 20 <- its a fckton more room on your ships, what do you mean its not awesome?

Scientists 2 20 <- when you do sci, you really need to focus it. this helps. a lot.

Slow travelers 2 -6 <-- early game tech doubles move rater, later there is enough move boost to make this free points

spray and pray 1 -5 <- irrelevant malus at 1, free points

strategically ressourceful 7 <-- Gives you abundance with 3 ressources instead of 4. VITAL AS F+CK to gain ship boni

unlucky colonists -10 <-- there are 2 anomalies that hurt you mildly: - 1 food or -1 industry. the rest is eithr dust, approval or a combination. Most cant hurt you and those that do only affect your homeworld which will never be that vital as harmony.







its my current build, still does not work.



suggestions, guys?

cyrusol wrote:
@Autocthon



I've tried more games on slow speed to turn ~60 with my map settings (average balance now - this shouldn't bother you anyway when app casi is researched, only system count per constellation is modified).



I just cannot come up with my performance as Harmony like I do with other races.

I've tried your custom Harmony setup too, and there the results differ, all depending on planets.



However, in my most recent game I had 4613 FIDS on turn 58, custom UE race. Did you achieve any Harmony game with 3000+ FIS @turn ~60? I did not.



Also in every game Harmony AI is waaaay worse than the other ones. I had a game with with Horatio at ~500 score, 110 for Harmony, at turn 50. Sophon was at ~400. All normal difficulty.



@Igncom



Saying Harmony could be well balanced is pointless if you never felt how bad they are.

I can see what I can do, the thing about balancing is that better balance means more "chances" at good systems before you get casimir effect. Last I went I got 1800ish FIDS. Currently trying for Diplo victory as amoeba... Every single enemy AI is in a 6 way war... I can't make alliances so it's taking forever :/



I'll try for a super optimized Harmony game in the next couple days.



@The guy saying luxury FIDS do jack: If you have decent planets Luxury FIDS are huge.

Ail wrote:
XML-File says otherwise:




SupportCategory="Civilian">

StarSystemConstructionFreezeGrowth





%ModuleColonizationDescription












SupportCategory="Civilian">





%ModuleColonizationDescription

Funny you should mention this. I did some testing with the xml files to overcome the cost reduction on the transport hull not working. So i wanted to just cut the Harmony Colony Module in half. However if you adjust the values you will see the Harmony actually uses the normal Colony Module and not the Harmony Colony Module.



Just another bug I guess.

@The guy saying luxury FIDS do jack: If you have decent planets Luxury FIDS are huge.

Most Luxury Res give bonuses to Dust or Approval tho, none of which the Harmony actually use

Infact if not cleansed yet it may be a good idea to avoid Luxury res as the Harmony, as the dust increaces disharmony. for 10 out of 16 it's actually a (ambivalent) buff, as it reduces the dust collected^^

Asceticism halves the luxury bonuses on empire, like Hydromiel's growth bonus. It doesn't do anything to the FIDS bonus on the planet with it. Probably doesn't affect the approval on the planet either but I didn't check that. So it hurts Harmony a bit more than you think, although it might still be worth it.

Radioactive_Piranha wrote:
Asceticism halves the luxury bonuses on empire, like Hydromiel's growth bonus. It doesn't do anything to the FIDS bonus on the planet with it. Probably doesn't affect the approval on the planet either but I didn't check that. So it hurts Harmony a bit more than you think, although it might still be worth it.

cuz i get hydromiel and the others ever game at the plants in my neighborhood...



putting those 7 points elsewhere is much more usefull, especialy with builders/militarists/scientists since those alre "always on and avaialble" buffs, luxury is not, as the name implies it is a luxury meaning that you can do without.

Asceticism might be a wise decision, since you have to go for strategic resources anyway. I would rather play with Efficient Stock than with Optimal Storage ... since you have to go for strategic resources anyway.

(I did use Efficient Stock in my UE game - if you get a few +2/3 strat resource planets, the bonus is huge and for Harmony it might even compensate the early lack of green approval...)



Actually I would want to wait for the patch for the cheaper ship modules. Things might look different then.



Oh and I think the core techs (+50% if full pop, dust barrier) should be available way earlier, but their effectiveness should be reduced.

Ca_Putt wrote:
Most Luxury Res give bonuses to Dust or Approval tho, none of which the Harmony actually use

Infact if not cleansed yet it may be a good idea to avoid Luxury res as the Harmony, as the dust increaces disharmony. for 10 out of 16 it's actually a (ambivalent) buff, as it reduces the dust collected^^

Dust does not appear to affect Disharmony directly in any way as far as I can tell. An easy way to tell is to find a Dust Nebula and colonize it, check your disharmony before and after. All Disharmony really is is a measure of your expansion disapproval at roughly 2.8% FIS reduction per colony.

Funny you should mention this. I did some testing with the xml files to overcome the cost reduction on the transport hull not working. So i wanted to just cut the Harmony Colony Module in half. However if you adjust the values you will see the Harmony actually uses the normal Colony Module and not the Harmony Colony Module.



Just another bug I guess.

It's not a bug: the Harmony use the common module because of the code simplification, which apparently checks the name of the module to allow colonisation... But