PanH wrote:
@Reikoku

@Igncom1

I think that's what I'm gonna do, on all the games I play, I'll write down, scores (every, FIDS, science, military, etc) at different turns (also depending on game speed), difficulty, AI or player, well, lots of things. And I'll try to see how it goes.

I'll probably make a post about it, don't hesistate to send me any data you have.

I finally got around to another game today with the sowers in it, and other then the usual AI clumsiness they were the only possible challenge i faced (I ironically used diplomacy as the amoeba to trade with all their systems and make myself into a superpower, never seeing a single ship from their cluster! and becoming good friends).

You can change your entire focus is one turn with the cloning.

example:

you have all industire/dust hero's (administrators and something else, i forgot sorry)

except for one pilot/commander

now: you go at war with someone, get rid of all the industrie/dust hero's and clone your pilot till you can't anymore

in one turn you now have very deadly fleets equipped with all the some hero.



If you wanted to do that on a other race, you would need way more turns, and you only have level 1 hero's that cost insanely high amounts of dust.

Never underestimate the power of cloning :P

Cloning does not make me play differently. I develop an admin hero, or a fleet hero the same way I would normally. Then instead of hiring another new hero, I can clone and get a second copy. That is a nice benefit, but it doesn't change the way I play. Do you find that you do something differently due to cloning? Maybe there is a strategy I missed.



Perhaps an example of what I mean by "playing differently" will help. Until ES, my favorite 4x type game is Total War Shogun 2. I never play the tactical level. It has about ten different factions, each with a special ability. For example, one faction has better ninjas. So I play with a full set of high level ninjas and spend a lot of time assassinating other faction leaders. One faction has better trade ships. So I monopolize trade and earn a huge income, and I don't bother with ninjas. One faction has strong two handed sword fighters that are awesome in combat, but they are stuck way in a corner of the fixed map. Playing them feels very different because I don't bother with trade or ninjas, but it takes them a while to get going and if somebody on the other side of the map gets too powerful, I may lose.



When I consider starting another game of TWS2, it is an interesting decision about which faction I feel like playing, they are each different, and I have spent many (many!) hours trying each one. When I consider starting another game of ES, I only bother with Sophon. Fortunately the real excitement of starting another game of ES is when a new version has been released, to see what is fixed/improved/broken. I *hope* that the ES dev team will make the races more different from each other, in addition to making them balanced so that all eight are interesting to play.

davea wrote:
So far, IMHO, I don't feel ES has enough diversity. Sowers (ignore food) and Amoeba (see the whole map) feel different from the others. For all the rest, I'll just play Sophons because the tech tree "toys" come faster. Nothing else seems to play differently enough.

Horatio's cloning abilities offer a quite different play-style, that is if you manage to pull it of correctly

amazingPhil wrote:
Try the new UE or Cravers then

I disagree with this. A lot of the racial "differences" just fill up a gauge faster. For example, Sophons have +20% science and some science buff buildings. Yes, my science gauge fills up faster. But I don't play *differently*. Currently the UE fills up the dust gauge faster. I think I did one extra buyout compared to what I had done with other races. To me, UE does not feel very different.



For cravers, you get +FIDS at the beginning and -FIDS in midgame. But I don't play *differently*. (EDIT: lack of diplomacy options *could* play differently if the AI didn't use diplomacy so poorly/inconsistently. But if diplomacy is improved, what it would do is prevent me from playing them; that would be too big a disadvantage and make the game a boring expansion-fest.)



I still feel that sowers food and amoeba map-view are the only things I play differently. Of course YMMV.

@Gort

That's currently what I'm doing, but as you may known, a game in ES can last quite long (like 2-3 hours) even not ending by a clear "victory".

As said by amazing, you can't involve AI in that things, and even between players, there's huge difference (some players that just beginned the game are really bad, but that's normal). That can also depends on the galaxy generation, some players getting good start, while others bad (I know that'll be fixed, but not yet). Well, there's huge differences that can be made.

Here, I said my feeling about it in a few games after the patch.

So these stats need to be on a quite big data to be representative. If you have some, I'll be happy if you can share them with me, but I'm far from getting a big enough database to say that some races got a x% bonus to the others. I'm more talking about a gameplay lack in the patch, removing some for Sowers, Amoeba, Cravers ....

Gort wrote:
I would say that if you really want people to take your balance complaints seriously, make a thread where you have some actual numbers to back it up. I think the guy who ran 8 hands-off games and graphed the results was fantastic at illustrating which sides were broken and which weren't.

I don't think these stats are representative as the AI behaves somehow different to humans.

I would say that if you really want people to take your balance complaints seriously, make a thread where you have some actual numbers to back it up. I think the guy who ran 8 hands-off games and graphed the results was fantastic at illustrating which sides were broken and which weren't.

Try the new UE or Cravers then

amazingPhil wrote:
Every race has a "similar" playstyle. You expand as fast as you can and try to stay in the chase. By focusing on what the race does best every race gets it unique feeling. The tools are still the same, since every race goes to war, requires science and expansion.

Well, at a high enough level, all 4x games are the same since you go to war, require science and expansion. My goal for replayability is that each race should have some "cool toys to play with", so after I feel I have mastered the game as one race, I still want to try again as each one of the other seven races. This has worked for me in some games like TW:Shogun 2.



So far, IMHO, I don't feel ES has enough diversity. Sowers (ignore food) and Amoeba (see the whole map) feel different from the others. For all the rest, I'll just play Sophons because the tech tree "toys" come faster. Nothing else seems to play differently enough.

amazingPhil wrote:
So what I can say from my MP games since patch ( ~10):

7 games with sowers (once myself). No game even close to Top5. I consider myself a good player.







Every race has a "similar" playstyle. You expand as fast as you can and try to stay in the chase. By focusing on what the race does best every race gets it unique feeling. The tools are still the same, since every race goes to war, requires science and expansion.

I would say the main difference between the Cravers and Sowers is the speed at which they play, with the cravers being very good early on and failing later due to their aggressiveness, and the Sowers being good later one they have had time to muster their strength and grow their systems.

So what I can say from my MP games since patch ( ~10):

7 games with sowers (once myself). No game even close to Top5. I consider myself a good player.

Skurkanas wrote:


The problem with Sowers and cravers, as I see it, is that both had a very narrowly focussed playstyle, and aren't really good at anything besides that.

Every race has a "similar" playstyle. You expand as fast as you can and try to stay in the chase. By focusing on what the race does best every race gets it unique feeling. The tools are still the same, since every race goes to war, requires science and expansion.

Skurkanas wrote:
Bottom line, I'd prefer races to be raised to the same level of strength, rather than being nerfed in turn. It's much more interesting to have truely diverse specialist empires, rather than a bunch of empires that only differ in their way to keep afloat.

As I stated before I strongly support that.

Yurixy wrote:
Looking at your avatar...







And looking at this comment ...



















- If you know what I mean







Sowers totally deserved it, it was extremely OP it was not even fun. In MP people won't let you play sowers, or they just quit if you take it lol. Now things can be different.

Actually, I put that avatar after posting that thread, and mostly because they were the most nerfed. I didn't played much sowers before that patch, I'll say it's a faction I play averagely.

And even if it was, that wouldn't be the point.

Interesting posts, good job guys: I'm on the boat of the "specialist-empire supporters" at the moment

Looking at your avatar...

PanH wrote:
I feel quite disappointed by that update.

And looking at this comment ...



















- If you know what I mean







Sowers totally deserved it, it was extremely OP it was not even fun. In MP people won't let you play sowers, or they just quit if you take it lol. Now things can be different.

I'm not sure why a mostly subjective flash poll is a good measure of balancing, while "rants" like these are not. :P The OP's worries seem legit to me.



The problem with Sowers and cravers, as I see it, is that both had a very narrowly focussed playstyle, and aren't really good at anything besides that. Therein lie several problems:

1. If a race has it's most efficient playstyle written all over it, people will perfect it pretty fast, and appear overpowered. Still, some of my most crushing victories where in fact with "allrounder" races like the Amoeba or Pilgrims, that take longer to get used to.

Sure, in theory Sowers can colonise everything, but in the end it's the Amoebas that get there (They can see and target the best systems right on, and reach them fast), and the Pilgrims that keep them (Early ways of coping with the expansion malus).

2. If you're only good at one thing, you better be really good at it. Sowers shine in building Improvements, and in not depending on Food. By giving them space cadets, that bonus becomes rather meaningless. The speed gain on one side, is negated on the other, because the improvements that you could theoretically build fast, are researched a hefty 20% slower rate, thereby lagging behind again.

This can - to some degree - be compensated by Ind>Science, but in the end all you can do is nullify both boni and mali. The unique playstyle becomes a walk on eggshells, just to be "average" again, rather than shine in the one regard your race was designed for.



Bottom line, I'd prefer races to be raised to the same level of strength, rather than being nerfed in turn. It's much more interesting to have truely diverse specialist empires, rather than a bunch of empires that only differ in their way to keep afloat.

The 0.51.2 is just fresh, and I've already played some multiplayers game with it.



And I feel quite disappointed by that update. Well, there's some nice features, like alert notification on invasion and all that stuff. But I feel that the balancing thing is really horrible. To me, what has been done is just, weakest factions are now strong, and strongest are now weak.



Looking at release notes, what I see is major bonus added to UE, and some bonues to Hissho and Horatio. Also, there's the nerf of Sowers, and some malus to Cravers, Amoeba and Pilgrims. And I perfectly understand the need of balance in a 4x games. Sowers were obviously too strong, and UE too weak (at least at start).

But there have just been some changes in the number : Sowers get 40% instead of 50% in their affinity, UE added tax bonus by x%, etc. And the game still looks as unbalanced as before.

So, for Sowers, now they can't focus on industry as they were before, because > 25% and > 25%. What does that mean ? That means that sowers, who had a unique gameplay based on industry, rushing it, can't play it anymore, or will be a lot late on Dust and Science.

And that's exactly the same for Cravers, removing one of their war bonus, and they are THE war faction, they can't even make peace.

Amoeba gets also lowered about their free trade, their big influence area, meeting people at start (not 0.51.2).

And that's like that for every factions that get a malus : a part of their gameplay has been removed.



Of course, these factions were overpowered, of course the others were underpowered. And some balancing had to be done. And I'm happy that the team listened to what the players said, because that's quite rare from the part of a dev team. But this is just stupid balancing, just getting some numbers a bit better. We can't get to a perfect balance by just adjusting numbers, there will always be some bonus or malus that will be a bit too much important, and when you'll try to fix it, you'll unbalance all the others. I don't think we can balance a game just by trying to get the perfect numbers. And if all races were getting all equal bonuses, I would rather play to chess, because that would be more interesting.



The way I think we need to balance the game is by the gameplay. During the Alpha, when I heard that the team was going to lower down the Sophons' science bonus, I thought it was nonsense : Sophons are meant to be better in science. That means that if they're better in that part, each faction has to get his own better thing, his own gameplay. And that's what I think was interesting in Endless Space. Instead of getting each time the same game, with the same old strategy, each race need to get their unique gameplay. Sophons have science, Cravers have war, Sowers had industry, Hissho have war too, but in a different way, Amoeba have diplomaty, Horatio have clone, UE have Dust, Pilgrims have high mobility and expansion. And I would feel that a game were these particular gameplay would be more balanced, because that would mean that you are not better because you get +50% bonus instead of +45%, but because you manage well to play by you're faction's way.



I think it's better to balance by upping races than lowering the others, like this has just been done.



And that's also why I want to be able to disable custom factions in MP : because there would be always be a way to make a faction that would be unbalanced.



That's my ideas for the few hours of game that I get from that update, sorry, that balancing patch.

PanH, i start the game by rushing down Geo-Plants while i search the near systems for good looking planets. After i do that i train up for Xenology+Isolation Shields if i have over 2 planets with big populations or 3 planets with medium populations, otherwise i skip Xenology and rush down the wormhole tech while i start to colonize potentially good planets in my constellation. Every planet that i colonize i start by Geo-Plants->Isotopes and then depending on the majority of the planets, i turn them on for ind>dust. After that, i rush High Energy Magnetics for the Interplanetary Network and pretty much from that time on i start building up around 2-4 colonization ships, depending on the availability of planets. After i finish that, i start researching for the Tier1/2 weapon techs and then go straight for the Infinite Supermarkets upgrade. Note that i always play on around 10-20% tax, depending on how many planets i have colonized. If i have an excess of money, i spend them to either speed up the System Upgrades or pay the difference in Dust for the Colonization Ships.



As for the save, yeah sure i guess, i just have to find out how to give it to you (i will check the forums). Also, what are your general prerequisites for this if i do it?

@Reikoku

You really played Sowers without any food improvements now ? And how did you get Dust and Science to be competitive ? What about happiness (and difficulty, of course) ?

If you could get a save like that, I would appreciate. I feel like now, if you colonize planets like Desert, Lava, Arctic, you get huge draw back cause of happiness. That has always been, of course, but you can't avoid it with a low tax and some systems with >ust: anymore.





@Igncom1

I think that's what I'm gonna do, on all the games I play, I'll write down, scores (every, FIDS, science, military, etc) at different turns (also depending on game speed), difficulty, AI or player, well, lots of things. And I'll try to see how it goes.

I'll probably make a post about it, don't hesistate to send me any data you have.

I firmly believe that Sowers are still one of the top -if not the top- factions. No matter what nerfs they will receive, their ability to colonize virtually any planet without the use of food system upgrades, gives them a huge advantage over other players when they hunt down good systems with luxury and strategic resources, even if that puts their FIDS at odds with the colonized planets. This is true to when it comes down to early games on which Arid/Tundra/Barren/Arctic/Desert planets are still impossible to colonize from other species and i get the luxury of colonizing them before everyone else. Sower industry is also almost second to none and even if they don't get any military bonuses, their ability to pump out ships faster tahn everyone else makes up for the lack of doomstacked fleets. Cravers, on the other hand, feel a little bit on the normal side of things now. I keep playing with them and in my opinion, whether they are good or not, depends on their starting game. if they get lucky with good planets, then they are off to a great rushing start.



The peculiar thing about these two races is that they share a certain gameplay: the need to tech up as fast as possible the wormhole tech. If i tech it up with the Sowers, that gives me the ability to colonize first all the strategic planets outside of my home territory, when everyone else is researching stuff that they need to. Cravers also get to rush in the enemy with minimal war upgrades because they can "out-man" a single enemy. That might help as well if they want to set up a second home in a distant region of the galaxy map and give them time to colonize it without anyone else -initially- knowing that he is there. Hissho and Amoeba share this "expansion booming" to a lesser extent, but the first need to do so out of the need to attack, rather than expand and the later, while they have the ability to see the map, initially lack the means to colonize it.