Ayron wrote:
In 0.45.2 they added UE : Dust bonus. The % bonus was too long to start and to give a Dust advantage to the UE. As Dust is their main trait, we want them to earn more Dust than the others, even at the beginning (+30% => +1 per pop on each planet)

I'm not really sure if I understand this correctly.

Helpfull, you think?

I think this might actually be a nerf...



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Reconsidered. Because of the linear stacking of multiplicative effects, this change is far more powerful than it initially appears. That said, it isn't a strict improvement, and further nerfs strategies that actually want to generate large amounts of dust.



It is a pretty mixed bag that further discourages the already bad ideas which were Dust exploitations. Doing the math out, it doesn't really change much either way.

It's a definite nerf for late game or so it seems but for early game it's a rather nice boost. Given the starting position of the UE, I think they sort of need it.

xiebelvoule wrote:
A large part of the problem with UE is that when you raise tax rates, it diminishes other FIDS. So really your shooting your self in the foot, you raise taxes to get more dust, but in the process lower your food, meaning less people to tax, meaning less taxes, Oh and the hit to industry and science is basically unacceptable.

completely agree. had a game of UE yesterday, they suck so much its not even funny. i won (against AI) but....UE suck.

There is hope at the end of the tunnel for UE; if you look on the Progress page on the amplitude site the next 'Tuning' objective is in part economic balancing. In all my games I find the Ind->dust overly powerful. Shouldn't the game be about trying to balance the system economy so not to rely on it [conversion] to balance the books, or allow the tax system to set taxes per system rather than a blunt overarching tax rate across all system types. Also why is the dust from industry not taxed? Because it's a sort of hedge fund... those fat cats!!!!



I find my experience with UE to be 'bleh' as others have found it, but I would love the UE to be one of my main races to play. So I'm giving them another shot [aftermypilgrimscientificvictorygameimcurrentlyinvolvedin]. Any tips?

Well as for tips, Play the long game but keep your potions open, with good dust and decent ships you can do anything you want!



No way you will have any single thing as good any once else, but when it comes to adaptability the UE are LIKE A BOSS.

In my opinion UE has several problems:



1) Mineral poor starting planet is harsh. UE is very reliant on an administrator hero early on and if they can't get one it's better to reroll. Also: Administrators can get Civil Engineer too early / Civil Engineer is too strong.

2) UE affinity is useless until late game and seems counterproductive.

3) Current balance paradigm doesn't favor Strong Alloys (extra hitpoints are not that useful).

4) Current balance paradigm doesn't favor additional Dust income via Businessmen (because it's so easy to create Dust on demand through industry). Industry -> Dust / Science conversion rates should be lowered.

Zentay wrote:
2) UE affinity is useless until late game and seems counterproductive.

I think the point of it is for the late game, razing tax's increases your dust production but decreases everything else, this affinity offsets that by giving the UE their production back (Technically) allowing your already built, and researched empire the ability to pump out a larger fleet that you can afford, effectively giving them the ability to steamroll late game warlike races who may have had the numerical advantage, and to 'bum rush' other more advanced empires better then they could.



But that's just a guess

I am playing with UE on Serious level, without pirates, huge map, 8 factions.

Turn is 250 and I am going well at the moment, controling 12 systems. I have a big fleet, maybe around 200 cruisers, dreadnoughts and battleships.

Everybody is at war with everybody except me. Only with war with Pilgrims and Amoeba. Pilgrims are strongest faction.

I am in good relationship only with Hisso, giving them technology for free, so they can fight all other races.

I believe that secret in playing with UE is slow moving, and careful picking of right systems. Also try to raise big fleet to control borders.

I had a luck that 2 near systems had 2 terran planets which gave me initial push.

Darius wrote:
I am playing with UE on Serious level, without pirates, huge map, 8 factions.

Turn is 250 and I am going well at the moment, controling 12 systems. I have a big fleet, maybe around 200 cruisers, dreadnoughts and battleships.

What economy did you have for your empire to support your fleet? I seriously can't get out of using the Ind->dust and be competitive in UE games.

I don't think they're a weak faction s as whole, but the production bonus maybe is.

It's very late in the game, when you can start using it at all, and then i seldom see a good reason to go for it either, because raising your tax lowers your FIDS, and in late game production is not a problem for me, but especially science i don't want to miss out.

Not sure what can be done about it, but i'd welcome a cautous re-exmaination of that trait.

el_phantasma wrote:
I don't think they're a weak faction s as whole, but the production bonus maybe is.

It's very late in the game, when you can start using it at all, and then i seldom see a good reason to go for it either, because raising your tax lowers your FIDS, and in late game production is not a problem for me, but especially science i don't want to miss out.

Not sure what can be done about it, but i'd welcome a cautous re-exmaination of that trait.

Raising your taxes will only lower your Food, Industry and science.



The affinity restores the industry when 50% taxed or over.

Darius wrote:
Turn is 250 and I am going well at the moment, controling 12 systems. I have a big fleet, maybe around 200 cruisers, dreadnoughts and battleships.

...I've won the game by turn 200 on a Large map as the UE.

...with a science victory...

Igncom1 wrote:
Raising your taxes will only lower your Food, Industry and science.



The affinity restores the industry when 50% taxed or over.

Yes sorry, i obviously misphrased that, used the term FIDS for convenience, maybe should have written FIS ;-).



But my point still stands, with a few dedicated production worlds the industry bonus is not an incentive for me and i'm swimming in dust (esp. as UE) anyway, so i only see my science going down when wanting to use the Empires unique trait.

In the build up phase the production boost would be kind of nice for general system development, but before late game morale isn't up to the task in order to raise the tax much over 50%.

Yeah, still a balance issue with it. But I think that's the point of it anyway.



And if your so rich, just rush by everything and win the game!

Ill be blunt here. You can win with UE against the AI, cause even on the highest setting its dumb as a box of rocks. You probably won't win as the UE in multiplayer because people aren't that stupid. UE sucks when playing human opponents, especially if you can't convince people to not kill you in the first 30 turns, which is easy to do by the way. Again my point was never that UE can't win a game, its that they can't win a game using their supposed play style of taxation. Against competitive human players, with an average seed, you will always be behind, period. They're very much a "meh" faction, who do nothing well. Oh and heaven help you if you spawn near a Craver or Sower, cause that person is simply going to gobble up your little empire. I think the major problem with the UE is a problem with dust in general, its infinitely better to Ind>dust convert in this game. Planets that are setup for dust production are a waste of time, as are the dust techs themselves. Also the change to the "businessmen" trait is pretty much a hard nerf, as +1 per pop is a joke. Also for those who think a faction's traits coming into play late game is ok, its not. If your faction has to struggle to survive just to use its own traits then its not balanced.

When did they change the +30% gold to +1 per person that makes them even weaker than before now they pretty much have nothing. I mean that advantage is only better in the early game but the mineral poor starting disadvantage counters it anyway. I think I'd rather play with a race that has no attributes at all.

And don't play UE on impossible in singleplayer. You're stuck on a one planet (prob mineral poor) homesystem as well!

Draco18s wrote:
...I've won the game by turn 200 on a Large map as the UE.

...with a science victory...

Same here...



UE is a rare faction to play...

Darius wrote:


I believe that secret in playing with UE is slow moving, and careful picking of right systems. Also try to raise big fleet to control borders.

I had a luck that 2 near systems had 2 terran planets which gave me initial push.

That strikes me as something completely contrary to what the UE is described as: aggressive, expansive, exploitative, militaristic/mercantile state. Hence, there's an issue here.

The simple problem is that Dust production suffers too much from low tax rates and that it overall does not yield anywhere near enough the benefit of being deployed early on.





For a faction that is supposed to thrive on doing that, this is basically a knockout blow.



The fix to this is not to nerf ind to dust conversion, that is stupid and ruins gameplay for all other factions.





The fix is to rework the taxation system so that the players choice of researching and building finanze realted buildings does not EFFING YIELD HIM A NET LOSS because as far as i am concerned this is the most ridiculous, counter intuitive thing i have seen in any 4x game in a long time.



You have to go up against tax disaproval, empire expansion disaproval, "this planet sucks oh so much you horrible, horrible leader person!"-disparoval and then on top of all this crap working against you the very buildings whos description says "this much money per dude" are lacking the very, VERY important addage of "but only if you slap on a slave collar on this due and throw him into the rancor pit to mine for dust. also, please shock regularly for added effect."



The unwitting player does not get an explanation about how the finance buildings do jack shiite unless you jack up the tax to 40+ and even then it requires a big enough population.



Its counter intuitive to everything the player has ever learned from 4x games and while ican understand the abstract reasoning behind it, i cannot understand why the player is not properly educated on this before he even STARTS to think about building these things.



WHY aren't there proper displays that flat out tell the player when building a finacial structure makes economic sense or at least warns him about the negative impact it will have under the wrong circumstances?









As for the ships:

in my opinion, the hp of all ships need to be raised by a factor of at least 5. (only the hp)





With firepower on standard battleships of around 3k, evenwith mitigation you still lose the ship becuase the base hp are just way to low compared to the firepower.