Vicarious wrote:
Am I the only person here who thinks that the Sowers have already been saved? The difference between "old" and "new" Sowers is huge. Now it takes ~140-150 turns to achieve the supremacy/scientific/economic victory on impossible difficulty and ~160 turns for the expansion victory. The most effective strategy for playing as this faction remains the same: conquer your weakest neighbor, terraform all your planets to tundra asap, then... do what you want!

Then I'm probaly playing them wrong, but still (as far as I can tell) their the only faction that terraforms to tundra, the rest do better with terran or jungle which doesn't fit the lore

Based on the Lore, the Sowers should start on a Desert or a Jungle with Garden of Eden. This would probably solve the slow start leads to death issue.

I think the Sowers affinity should reflect the fact that they are the terraformers not just machines, the Automatons are machines and still need the same amount of food as the other factions. So it would make more sense to make a trait for machines that is similar to the current Sower affinity.

VeteranSpace wrote:
Here's a crazy idea... why not have part of their affinity or race tech have something to do with the Garden of Eden anomalies?

For example their Home World could be a Garden of Eden, which is why they are very much a cooperative based faction.

AND/OR

One of their Terraforming techs could be to create a Garden of Eden "anomaly" on tier 2 planets or better. So they can make Arid/Tundra/Jungle/Ocean/Terran planets into Garden's of Edens.



I think that would be REALLY cool. And of course this would be a costly improvement and could also backfire on the player if they start losing systems.

This would almost be a double-edged sword type gameplay and could really add some strategic depth to the game.

Also VeteranSpace made this suggestion for Digitalhawk96's Tohari faction but I thought this would better suit the Sowers.

Vicarious wrote:
Am I the only person here who thinks that the Sowers have already been saved? The difference between "old" and "new" Sowers is huge. Now it takes ~140-150 turns to achieve the supremacy/scientific/economic victory on impossible difficulty and ~160 turns for the expansion victory. The most effective strategy for playing as this faction remains the same: conquer your weakest neighbor, terraform all your planets to tundra asap, then... do what you want!

Will work for food. That is actually very clever, given the Sower affinity lol

Igncom1 wrote:
It's an interesting change, but I feel it makes then very similar to how everyone else plays, and so I guess I just don't like the flavouring.



But certainly they aren't at a disadvantage, but towards no real advantage to be worth speaking of.





But there are major concerns amongst the community about the influence changes, and the balance of them has taken the current spotlight at last chek.



(Personally favouring of space lines doubling the range of influence along them, so connected worlds have greater resistance from influence across the void or from other galactic arms, giving a reason to be more methodical about expansion then to simply scramble for the scattered T1 worlds.)

i agree to 100%



plus: i find the changes just to global, unspecific and not unique



further more.... with this changes i would also still be way way more powerfull playing the other races.



there is nothing what other races couldnt do what sowers could do but many things the sower cannot do and the other races can.

IMO an -focused gameplay would be pretty fun, but sowers are just too unplayable bc of huge - :/



save them pls

Taure wrote:
Sorry for the second post but I thought I should say why I think a change is necessary.



I tried the save the sowers mod playing two games together with no traits, one with the Sower affinity and one with the Sophon affinity.

They used the same galaxy settings and the same seed. I played the Sower turns first and copied them as Sophon and Sophon were doing everything faster so they spent over half there turns not doing anything waiting for the Sowers to catch up. The only thing Sower did better was on the lava, tundra and methane planets population grew slightly faster.



By the time I had researched everything on Sophon T1 planets (terran with food exploitation) the was about 30% higher with all system improvements (Compairing the same system Sowers 4765 and Sophons 6119 :industry but terraforming all the Sower planets to tundra with industry exploitation gave 5667 but getting much less dust (methane was 5686 but half the dust)



So for Sowers to be able to build fleets at the same speed as the other factions at end game they need to terraform the wrong way, which is just kind of wrong.

I haven’t tried this way of comparing them to the other faction but I expect the results would be the same.

Food ends up better than industry for production at end game so I don’t think any % changes to there current affinity would work to balance it.



Another way this could be solved is by changing the tech which does surplus to to give the Sowers a boost to industry.

But that still doesn't change the fact that they were worse for the whole game.



Again please let me know what you think and don't be afraid to tell me if I'm wrong and should just shut up.

You are asbsolutely right



and i think its a shame that in the endgame the *science* and everyother race got more industrie then the suppost to be *industrie race*.

your numbers are a nice proof (so think i) how the "adaptive industrial systems" improvment is a poor joke for the sowers and their affinity.

I agree with Soverign.



PI is nice but not overpowered and with MFG nerf no change is needed.

I pointed this out a long time ago but I thought I would state it again because it has a great impact on sowers.



Tolerant(2)

Cost: 30

Colonize all planets at -25% until specific colonization tech is reserched.



With the above the only advantage one gains is the ability to colonize more planets quicker than you would be able to however because the limiting factor on colonization is happiness and because these planets that you are gaining access too have higher negative happiness inherent to them this means this trait doesn't actually benefit the race much and when you take into account that these planets start off with a penalty to all resources few planets will actually be beneficial to colonize until after you would have researched the tech to colonize them.



Now compare what could be done with those 30 points that is somewhat equivalent to Tolerant.



"Arid Epigenetics" & "Xenobotony" & "Sustainability" & "Compact Fusion Reactors"

Cost: 24

Gives ability to colonize Tundra, Arid, Desert, Arctic at no penalty along with the bonus of +2 ship movement



The above is cheaper than tolerant and means most systems will have at least one planet able to be colonized at the start of the game by this species. While not the same as tolerant it is very similar in that it allows for the race to expand to more environments than would be normal. So for less points you gain much of the functionality of Tolerant but without the -25% to .



But hold on there's more, Tolerant still requires you to research colonization tech. The above four traits mean you start with four types of planets already researched. With Tolerant your 30 point investment effectively does nothing once you have researched those techs, because you must research the colonization tech.

Nycidian wrote:
I pointed this out a long time ago but I thought I would state it again because it has a great impact on sowers.



Tolerant(2)

Cost: 30

Colonize all planets at -25% until specific colonization tech is reserched.



With the above the only advantage one gains is the ability to colonize more planets quicker than you would be able to however because the limiting factor on colonization is happiness and because these planets that you are gaining access too have higher negative happiness inherent to them this means this trait doesn't actually benefit the race much and when you take into account that these planets start off with a penalty to all resources few planets will actually be beneficial to colonize until after you would have researched the tech to colonize them.



Now compare what could be done with those 30 points that is somewhat equivalent to Tolerant.



"Arid Epigenetics" & "Xenobotony" & "Sustainability" & "Compact Fusion Reactors"

Cost: 24

Gives ability to colonize Tundra, Arid, Desert, Arctic at no penalty along with the bonus of +2 ship movement



The above is cheaper than tolerant and means most systems will have at least one planet able to be colonized at the start of the game by this species. While not the same as tolerant it is very similar in that it allows for the race to expand to more environments than would be normal. So for less points you gain much of the functionality of Tolerant but without the -25% to .



But hold on there's more, Tolerant still requires you to research colonization tech. The above four traits mean you start with four types of planets already researched. With Tolerant your 30 point investment effectively does nothing once you have researched those techs, because you must research the colonization tech.

absolutely right

every single word is correct.



and iam fearing that with the new "Anti Fast Expansion mechanic" which comes with the Expansion pack most likely the indirect buff to tolerant is completely negated (now tolerant is okay but you cant anymore expand fast)



who played the *Save the Sowers* officialy mod knows what iam talking about.

+1 Also with Space Cadets the starting Tech advantage is VERY pleasant.

I haven't got as much play time as others... but are the sowers really that rough?

Maybe I'm just playing them wrong because on normal difficulty, I only seem to stand a chance while playing as Sowers or even better, Automatons.

As any other race, I get scrambled... and it is usually by the Sowers that have spread across the whole galaxy.

Not saying I've one (once as Automatons)... but I know which AI usually wins (Sowers).

Just me? Okay.

Esperologist wrote:
I haven't got as much play time as others... but are the sowers really that rough?

Maybe I'm just playing them wrong because on normal difficulty, I only seem to stand a chance while playing as Sowers or even better, Automatons.

As any other race, I get scrambled... and it is usually by the Sowers that have spread across the whole galaxy.

Not saying I've one (once as Automatons)... but I know which AI usually wins (Sowers).

Just me? Okay.

Yeah *sadly* just you ; (



we have also video proof^^

a "lets play" series i can only strongly recommend btw he plays very often on the *Endless* difficulty and the Sowers always sucks they are soo often the weakest faction by far.



look at the number of already played turns 68 (on fast)



and then on the number of sowers score its just a little bit higher as the pilgrims score (which are DEAD since a couple of turns)...he even makes a comment about it.



Look at about 17:40 and then watch about 20 seconds:

Save the Sowers. And make their ships more sexy

tonic wrote:


Save the Sowers. And make their ships more sexy

Ehhh, kinda. Sometimes there ships look a little toonish in certain lights, but other than that they have a nice line of ships methinks.

Late to the party, but what if Sowers received no negative Approval from planets? As in, if they colonize a gas giant, they don't get the -20 Approval. Disapproval from negative anomalies, taxes and overpopulation still apply.

Fenrakk101 wrote:
Late to the party, but what if Sowers received no negative Approval from planets? As in, if they colonize a gas giant, they don't get the -20 Approval. Disapproval from negative anomalies, taxes and overpopulation still apply.

Good idea, that's pretty much what Nos was suggesting earlier. I for one would love to see this implemented.

I agree, because why would robots whose number one objective is to terraform planets into better ones, care where they're at as long as they terraform, maybe if a planet doesn't get terraformed into a higher tier planet after X amount of turns, it starts coming back.

But this would give them even more reason to terraform the wrong way with the new planet FIDS in Disharmony.

Maybe if they swap industry and food for planets, so lava would be better for growing population with easier access to the materials the Sowers need and T1 planets could be better for production as the Sowers finish terraforming they begin to focus on building improvements and ships.

Taure wrote:
But this would give them even more reason to terraform the wrong way with the new planet FIDS in Disharmony.

Maybe if they swap industry and food for planets, so lava would be better for growing population with easier access to the materials the Sowers need and T1 planets could be better for production as the Sowers finish terraforming they begin to focus on building improvements and ships.

Sadly this would weaken the Sowers even more with the new planetary FIDS , also Terraforming is still a very expensive late game thing without a already huge well developed empire it is not researchable and affortable.