Well no, it just make's it a late game affinity for steamrolling the map.

Zentay wrote:
Sorry but if you don't expand rapidly you can't win on higher difficulties. I'm pretty sure that is true when facing human opponents as well. The benefit of expanding FAR outweigh the small potential benefit of the UE affinity at very high tax rates.



And that you can't get 60-65% tax rate until the endgame is proof that UE essentially does not have an affinity at all for the majority of the game. And what do you get? 5-10% industry bonus...

This is my entire point, UE is a faction with no Affinity and no functional traits.

Well no, it just make's it a late game affinity for steamrolling the map.

That is only relevant in games versus the AI, the entirety of how a multiplayer game is going to go is dictated by the first 30-50 turns. Meaning UE have no bonuses in the most crucial phase of the game and barley any bonuses later (+%5 Ind is utter crap). Besides if you haven't been paying attention no one has gotten the taxes higher than %65, at least without a rebellion on their hands, meaning they can't use the affinity at all hardly. The UE's traits and affinities need to be scrapped and it needs to be completely redone from the ground up.

The special power of the UE is that you must micromanage more and work harder at staying competitive with other factions.

How can you micro things you cant really control, like overpopulation and over expansion unhappiness?



60-65% for a 5-10% boost to industry that really doesnt give you anything since your industry decreased raising your taxes to that point......



There is no working harder because you cant fix how unhappy people are without rushing happiness improvements before they, once again, tank because the day you stop expanding is when you lose.



This is why I think permenant expansion unhappiness is stupid, even with techs that reduce it, slightly. Your species is finding ways to reduce the chances of becoming extinct by spreading the seeds of your society accross the galaxy, and that pisses your people off? Hell I figured any sentient being would be happy at the thought of that...I guess I was wrong.



Post-modern thinking at its finest in that design decision.



You can use Civ5 as an example, they had so many people complaining about the way they changed happiness from individual cities to global, they altered many of their policies and added many more buildings (FOR FREE) to help compensate for people that wished to build larger empires. Added micro, but still put a restriction on expansion. I still am sickened by the philosophy behind such a system, but at least they tweaked the gameplay.



They can do the same thing here, I personally feel that the techs are too spread out for a faction like UE. So either they need a couple "special techs" that come early on to boost happiness, or they need to give a bonus to over expansion or redo their entire affinity. If you try and play them WITH their affinity and somehow win a multiplayer match, then you're playing against incompitents or friends.....same thing.

I agree with everyone!



They're lacking. They have 2 negative attributes, and no +++ anymore. They're just not as good anymore, and they used to be my favourite in alpha. Right now I feel like all the races except the UE have gotten all the love.

xiebelvoule wrote:


That is only relevant in games versus the AI, the entirety of how a multiplayer game is going to go is dictated by the first 30-50 turns. Meaning UE have no bonuses in the most crucial phase of the game and barley any bonuses later (+%5 Ind is utter crap). Besides if you haven't been paying attention no one has gotten the taxes higher than %65, at least without a rebellion on their hands, meaning they can't use the affinity at all hardly. The UE's traits and affinities need to be scrapped and it needs to be completely redone from the ground up.

I agree, but do you see any worth in the idea of a late-game affinity that would allow them to steamroll, in-order to offset the fact that they might not be as militarily effective as some of the other races?



And if a MP 4X game is decided in the first 30-50 turns, then something is really, really wrong.

Igncom1 wrote:
I agree, but do you see any worth in the idea of a late-game affinity that would allow them to steamroll, in-order to offset the fact that they might not be as militarily effective as some of the other races?



And if a MP 4X game is decided in the first 30-50 turns, then something is really, really wrong.

Its not even usable late game, but then again you wouldn't know that. That would involve actually looking at the game stats and reading tool tips and your not going to do that, so i'll do it for you. The following images brought to you by Draco18s,





What the affinity reads:





What it actually does:



So no. The UE does not, in fact, get a benefit from high taxes. You actually get better Dust and Production values setting your taxes to as high as you can and still get Fervent.



So if you set your taxes low for example you get +%15 to industry from the approval rate of feverent, and a %0 reduction to industry due to the low tax rate, netting you a total of +%15 industry. If you set your taxes high for example you get a %50 reduction to industry due to high taxes, and receive a +%30 to industry due to faction affinity, netting you a total of negative %20 industry. Thats because, Remember: any tax rate above 50% imposes a direct negative 50% production modifier. So in fact, using your affinity as the UE is bad, and hurts you, not helps you.

Then lets change it so it does work!

Im glade to see you come around to our side.

xiebelvoule wrote:
The following images brought to you by Draco18s

Zing.



I will admit that the -50% production may be due to approval rating (and that you can raise approval through buildings), but the approval rating drops VERY quickly from high taxes, and as soon as that -50% modifier hits, it hits with full force.



However, if the bonus to industry was the +0-100% as the affinity lists, then it would actually come into play and end up being a net-gain to oppress the populous rather than keeping them superhappy.



Sure, you'd want happiness boost buildings, but only so that the malus from disapproval (both empire and system) is dulled and you get that extra 10% FIDS back from not being on strike.

xiebelvoule wrote:
Im glade to see you come around to our side.

I was never suggesting doing nothing?!?!



I just wanted to some how work the current ability into something worth having.

The real issue I personally have with the UE now is that they are just so mediocre. If they're supposed to be an aggressive expansionist totalitarian monarchy, then why aren't they receiving the military bonus' that were granted to the Sowers and Pilgrims? The Pilgrims get a happiness bonus per system, trade bonus at cold war, and a whole whack of other bonus traits; while the only redeeming quality of the United Empire has been the dust production boost.



Fixing the UE in my opinion isn't just about making their Affinity work, or balancing the economy to make their ability better - rather It should be to grant then either more traits that boost their military power, and/or their expansionist bias. Either additions combined with their dust production boost would go a long way to making them a better race.



I still really like this faction but they need to be given more bonus' then just a gold bonus per citizen; which by the way was a really big let down when i saw that their only +++ skill was downgraded. Early game economy really wasn't a problem for me, but the mid-late game boost from the 30% was what got the wrecking ball moving for me when i was playing the UE in alpha.

Hm. Maybe the United Empire could get a purchase discount for their outposts, such -50% or -80%? That would encourage them to invest in expanding their empire by colonizing worlds, and to purchase as many system improvements they can before these outposts turn into colonies. Essentially, outposts don't have the population or bureaucratic red tape that colonies have, which is a prime time for controlling the development of those worlds.

Given that the main problem is that it's not possible to sustain a high tax rate to take advantage of their industry bonus without, my solution would for their trait to also reduce the impact high tax rate has on happiness (try halving the happiness loss for taxation, for instance, and then reduce the industry bonus a bit if it ends up being broken).

If it says 0-100% bonus, then at 100% I should be getting 100% bonus production.....so even with a -50% penalty due to unhappiness, I should be getting +50% overall for maxing my tax rate. The tooltip lied......just like Glados's cake.......



They really have two choices here.



1) New Affinity.



2) Keep the Affinity, but give the UE bonuses in either techs(Early Game) or traits that allow them to support the unhappiness they'll gain by raising the tax rate. I'll even direct them to where that tech/trait should be directed at, Over Expansion. Actually I think that mechanic should be tweaked/removed, but you should get my point.



It's really quite simple.

High approval is just too important to lose. It boosts science, industry and population growth. Since industry = dust via conversion, there isn't any reason to raise taxes past fervent approval.



Personally I would like to see a militaristic UE affinity. The game art portrays UE as militaristic people with a "romans in space" feel, so I think their affinity should reflect that they are conquerors first, businessmen second.

Zentay wrote:
High approval is just too important to lose. It boosts science, industry and population growth. Since industry = dust via conversion, there isn't any reason to raise taxes past fervent approval.



Personally I would like to see a militaristic UE affinity. The game art portrays UE as militaristic people with a "romans in space" feel, so I think their affinity should reflect that they are conquerors first, businessmen second.

I agree, they need to be more militaristic and expansionist. They need to give them a new combat trait or two, and a colony trait. Right now they play nothing like they "feel."

Do we have any factions who excel at making single systems with high pop extremely productive? It would be much more interesting for a faction to function like that so we have some diversity rather than everyone maximizing expansion. This way we have a faction that is capable of matching normal expansion prowess by only focusing on a few systems. Right now for example, if you lucked out, with UE you could rest on three systems with 30 pop and crank up the taxes to the maximum while still being fervent in loyalty. If we had an easier way to do that it may provide a different game play style than most and even if you don't have the starting heroes that you want and the systems you want you can at least adapt and have a good game still. Anyways just a thought.

In my first game as the UE, I've been able to ramp up UE's tax rate to 95%, with ecstatic populations on all but one system (which was only happy), generating over 10,000 Dust per turn. At the end of the game, my faction composed about half of the galaxy's total FIDS output, which is just incredible. I was playing with a friend in that game, and he was nowhere close to me in FIDS, despite me lagging terribly behind at the beginning of the game.



I think their traits work fine, though they are fairly weak in the early game and probably will need to work the diplomatic channels, especially in multiplayer, to avoid getting swarmed and annihilated.

Samuikion wrote:
In my first game as the UE, I've been able to ramp up UE's tax rate to 95%, with ecstatic populations on all but one system (which was only happy), generating over 10,000 Dust per turn. At the end of the game, my faction composed about half of the galaxy's total FIDS output, which is just incredible. I was playing with a friend in that game, and he was nowhere close to me in FIDS, despite me lagging terribly behind at the beginning of the game.



I think their traits work fine, though they are fairly weak in the early game and probably will need to work the diplomatic channels, especially in multiplayer, to avoid getting swarmed and annihilated.

Do you have any proof? If not then your just barging into a serious discussion and making outrageous claims. Under what conditions did this occur? Had you researched all approval techs, expansion approval techs, how many systems? Honestly its not hard to make 5 or 6 systems ecstatic, try doing it with 20 or 30. Had you terraformed every planet into a jungle world or terrain world, because that would be throwing your numbers way off. When was this, because if it happened in turn 150-250 then its rather irrelevant to the conversation, and just proves our point.