The Amoeba is usually consider strong due to the ability of trade, giving you massive amounts of free dust and science just by being friends, letting you spend more and reserch more, while focusing yourself on food and industry, you often come out as a type of Juggernaut.

Am I the only one to found it really powerful compared to some others affinity ?



The amoeba one is only beneficial, and you can say that's one of the best, but lower the points for custom races, with still an ocean first planet.

The cravers need to rush for planets, before they're depleted, so they got malus after some times, with an arid planet (Tier II)

The hissho is good too, with a bonus for war, the more you do, the more you stack, with a jungle planet.

The Horatios got Cloning and heroes boost. I don't know much about them, but some people appears to use it very efficiently, but with an arid planet, which is the malus.

The pilgrims got one that is not used that much. You can, of course, use it early, but it becomes fastly useless. Jungle planet starting

The Sophons got a Science bonus for low taxes. Terran planet

The sowers got a Food malus, and linked industry > food. Tundra planet



About planets, there's obviously 2 (or 3 groups).

The jungle, which got great industry, that can make a boost for early game : Hissho and Pilgrims

The others Tier 1 planets : Amoeba, Sophons, UE

And the Tier 2 planets : Cravers, Horatios, Sowers



About the affinity, Amoeba's one that has been recognized as best.

Cravers, Hisshos, Horatios are requiring a change of gameplay, with rush/war/heroes.

But, if you compare, Sophons, Sowers and UE affinity, UE is obviously one of the best. Why so ?

If sophons wants to get the science bonus, they need a low tax, which means less dust.

Sowers get an important food malus, but their industry can help it.

But UE got benefit from getting higher tax, which means higher dust AND higher industry. It's all beneficial, no malus. So yes, it's a bit hard to set in early game, you have to micromanage tax each turn, but that's a very good affinity already, with a good starting planet.

Yeah, but late game you really need the affinity to build your mega fleet, but you can then switch it off when your ready for war.

No, you need approval to expand (well, technically you never need approval, but enjoy those -50% FIDS otherwise). If you get the approval elsewhere (lategame improvements, lucking out with anomolies/luxuries etc), you can expand more without lowering taxes.

Well you need to lower taxes to expand and grow, but late game you don't need to grow.

Igncom1 wrote:
I have to ask, how much does a 50%-100% tax reduce industry? Would not a solution be to provide an industry bonus to fully restore the loss from taxes for the purpose of Mass rush buying?

Taxes don't directly affect FIS, they reduce approval which removes FIDS bonuses or with little enough approval gives maluses. So, if you had a system with a crapton of approval, you could have all the bonuses at 100% tax.



I'm not really sure how to fix UE when their affinity is directly opposed to what the game forces you to do (expand and lower taxes to keep approval afloat).

I have to ask, how much does a 50%-100% tax reduce industry? Would not a solution be to provide an industry bonus to fully restore the loss from taxes for the purpose of Mass rush buying?



Otherwise i quite like your first suggestion.



The UE affinity is the only one in the late game, and no other faction has one specifically designed for that part of the game, and should really spruce up the part of the game when most people believe that the game is already decided.

How about 25% production is added to dust.

I would have hoped that the designers would have made adjustments for the affinities so that conflicting aspects of the game's rules would not apply. Sadly that is not the case. In regards to UE they should lose a lot less morale for tax loads that are appropriate to their affinity.

coldsteel wrote:
hi stars2heaven, I think your suggestion to change the tax rate 0-100 while keeping the production bonus 0-60 is an elegant solution that will give a balanced amount of early benefits. +1

Thanks, not only do I like the UE affinity, and not to say that they don't sometimes do otherwise, but I think that developers are more keen to listen to improvement suggestions when they remain close to the original designs. My first suggestion is a very simple change that gives only a modest boost in the early game and a respectable, but not over powered, boost mid game while staying the same late game. I actually don't know if it's good enough. I think everyone can see that the affinity is not very useful as it is now, though.

hi stars2heaven, I think your suggestion to change the tax rate 0-100 while keeping the production bonus 0-60 is an elegant solution that will give a balanced amount of early benefits. +1

Well, they are sort of linked already. Tax rate increases dust income and industry. Since dust is dependent mostly on tax rates, switching the affinity to be dependent on dust wouldn't change things much. The only difference you would really see is an industry bonus at 0% tax because of trade routes. Also, it's the sort of thing that would have a greater impact later in the game when you have more worlds available to produce more dust. Right now, the late game ins't the problem, it's the beginning.

I'd link their dust and industry in some way. Sorta like Sowers' industry and food is linked. They're all about the economics/production, so linking those two makes thematic sense.