I also have to say that with the Sowers I run my empire industry heavy, build improvements once they are researched at a really amazingly fast pace and then put my whole empire to science conversion, safe for a few dust conversion planets.

Later, I'll switch science for ind->food conversion, as this shortens the growing phase and allows me to be stronger, later on.

The +5 happiness...thats a joke with the new Expansion Dissaproval System.



well the sowers would be realy awesome to colonize everything and the tolerant trait...but well try it...your empire will collapse (especially on higher difficulties) due rebellion before you can say "What the Hell" (dont play on normal guys)



also the Tolerant trait is again 30...(lol it was reduced to 25 before now its 30 again -.-) and they still have 5 points less then any other race i mean are u serious WWWHHHHYYYY!



sry but i cant make use out of the new lavas and methans and the tolerant trait sry.



make the The +5 happiness to +25 happiness (so you can actually colonize systems with lavas and methans) and it would be fine but so....they are still just *meh*



tundra terraform bonus...*meh* kinda late game...already lost.





MAN just look at the awesome stuff the other races got...i mean they got real power!



(except maybe hissho wihout their talon kinetics they got a sort of nerf)

first thing I did in Disharmony was to play as the Harmony(sorry guys :P ) and guess what happend: I got cut of by sowers, no they did not build them huge fleets but they outexpanded me with their left arm-thingy and literally colonized more than half the planets in those systems. I'm pretty sure they had maddening disapproval and set taxes to the lowest possible level but as I was unable to buy out my stuffs they totally punched me in the ego. probably what I got for playing the harmony but I'm pretty sure they even were fast on an absolute scale.

Meh AI has to much boni from the difficulty and does fine with everyone or they got to less boni and screws the sowers.



my AI is still crappy with the sowers.



tonns yeah hundreds of AI games would be necessary to make AI Scores valuable as it was done a year ago (with statistics and stuff)



to figure out which races were Overpowered or the AI better with.

I've only played one normal game but I actually found the Sowers to be really overpowered.

I was in an old galaxy and over 50% of the planets were tier 4 giving me a huge advantage.



For most of the game I had my taxes at 5% and one system converting to dust and I went almost straight for terraforming to lava then happiness improvements so I had ecstatic systems with 3-4 lavas in most with huge production using science conversion.

I also got the food conversion early so I could boost the population to max and for the rest of the game I could produce more than enough ships in one system to be at war with all my neighbours and in the end I won a science victory.



But one game is not enough to tell so I might try another tomorrow with a different galaxy age and a harder difficulty.

IMO the Sophons are again the OP one...those Science bonuses are insane



btw...wouldnt be there the need of Adamantium for tundra terraforming everything would be fine.

fortunately with weapon tech upgrading repetitively slowly from T1 to T2, they at least are in place when fighting say the hissho or cravers.

I really like the +5 approval on planets (Sociologics), it can really add up and make the difference at the start of the game. If you manage to get a T1 planet you can get a -10 arctic/desert for free. I just wish desert was still ind based and arctic offered more to the sowers.



However, at 300 sci it is not bad but nothing compared to:

Automation's Dense Orbitals (130 sci) that gives +1 pop per planet (I think Siderite is a bug on it),

Craver's Radiation hardness (130 sci) -25% upkeep on ships,

Horatio's Galatic Nutrition (130sci) +100% food bonus on system -2% per population on empire.

Sheredyn: Dust Retrieval: (130sci) +20 dust per each enemy cp on empire

Amoeba: Xenosociology: (130sci) +2 approval per % of Diplomatic Victory on system



I think the Amoeba's is the strongest of all these newly added low cost faction techs. In my sower game, I didn't pursue Diplomatic but by turn 30ish I had 1% toward the victory condition. Their faction tech could easily become very strong in a short amount of time.



@Nosferatiel "I also have to say that with the Sowers I run my empire industry heavy, build improvements once they are researched at a really amazingly fast pace and then put my whole empire to science conversion, safe for a few dust conversion planets."



In my sower game, I really saw the difference between the first and second wave of expansion. You have time to get all the nice buildings and such with the first colonies, but the expansion disapproval on the second wave really hurts. I would have liked to use the Ind -> Food converter a lot more, but on T1 (oceans & terran), T3 (arctic & desert) the amount of industry was was too low to facilitate ample growth over building improvements (isotope, supermarket, interplanetary network, and magnetic field generators).



I'm also not sure if the food gained by conversion is effected by the Affinity (-50% to food). I feel that the conversion is a cheap substitution to giving the sowers better ind improvements.



Compared with other factions unique conversions it is the highest cost. It could technically give the highest returns on the right system, but that can be true for all the conversions.

UE: Wealth Systems (130sci) 50% ind -> Dust

Sophon: Augmented Visualization (300sci) 50%ind -> Sci

Sowers: Artificial Biologics (680sci) 33% ind -> Food

Harmony: Initially starts with 33% ind -> Food (hard to compare because faction is so different)



The +2 FIDS on tundra is really nice, but tundra transformation (like Sovereign says) still requires Adamantium to take full advantage of it. Moving up the tundra terraform tech still doesn't do much when Adamantium is so far down the science tree. However, the bonus is well received and even better with some luck on planets/systems.



I'm still still disappointed by the lack luster Inorganic Cultivation ( +3 food per explored moon / +3 Ind per endless temple). The main meat of that tech is very luck based.



P.S. Thanks 3ntf4k3d for reminding me about Harmony conversion.

I think the main problem of the stock sowers is the combination of Space Cadets and Builders.

Space Cadets is a really, really painful disadvantage throughout the whole game, while builders is rather useless for a race that will go full-IND-everywhere anyway.

I think something like "Crowded Planets I" would be a lot more useful (and synergizes quite well with the Tolerant trait).



A thing I still wonder about is the actual efficiency of the affinity trait.

To me it seems that this trait is almost always an advantage. At least numbers displayed seem to indicate that the gains do always outweight the losses.

However, I find it almost impossible to do proper math because of so many uncertain factors involved...



Regarding Inorganic Cultivation:

I have to agree that the bonus is a bit "luck of the draw".

Maybe changing it to "+2 I on explored moon, +2 I on moon with temple" would make it a bit stronger?



As for the adamantium issue:

I think having the terraform tech down a few tiers is a quite decent advantage (saves more than 10k science) - and considering that the lower part of the Science tree has all the important production buildings, beelining for Quantum Substrates is not that terrible. At least its way better than the important techs of some other factions that are scattered in the corner of a rather usless part of the tech tree (e.g. 50% FIDS for Harmony in the left tree).



Speaking of Harmony: They can also convert IND -> FOOD, so it is not an unique trait.



You know, for me the odd thing is that I am really into the Tolerant / mass-IND approach of the Sowers.

I am so used to the freedom to colonize everywhere and have superb production AND food from one stat that I literally can't play another race properly anymore.



I am 3ntf4k3d, and I am a Sower addict.

Q_Q

I've only played a few hours with Sowers since the expansion came out so I'm very much still forming my opinions about them but generally I'd say they're a little better, but not much. The buff to production->dust/sci is interesting and this actually makes the builders trait (something I'd generally ignored in the past in my custom builds) quite tempting. I still can't say I consider Tolerant to be that useful given its cost and the fact that any early-game buff you might get from colonising lavas or gas giants is -very- situational: first you actually have to have access to these planet types (I didn't in my first game) and second, you really need to have happiness buffs to make them viable.



One thing that a fellow player I know mentioned was that the +5 FIDS per planet colonised in the system could actually work rather well with tolerant, allowing you to dump one pop on each planet, get a big pile of flat buffs, and then worry about growing your empire. So far I haven't managed to test that hypothesis due to the slow growth rate of sowers: if you spread your pop out between the planets rather than concentrating on the production-heavy ones, you grow even slower! Maybe the flat buffs are worth it though. Something to test, I imagine.



Anyway, the jury's still out on the Sower changes as far as I'm concerned. I'll give it a few more hours and see.

Thank you all for you agreed posts ; )



i realy agree with everything you said.



I personally will still need some more time to test all the other races (so far i have done, Horatio,sheredyn,craver,hissho,sophons) besides the Sowers.



To can give a full scale comparison. But so far....i was able to to do realy awesome stuff with the other races...and the sowers were just like...*my approval omg my approval ! no tundra oh crap system!*

I'm also not sure if the food gained by conversion is effected by the Affinity (-50% to food). I feel that the conversion is a cheap substitution to giving the sowers better ind improvements.

I dont think so...i mean that would be a just a joke (or bug) for me it was clear that it didnt got the penalty.

Just opened new disharmony addon, and now I'm wondering: is it really only 30% of ind converted to food by affinity? So, sowers affinity is even weaker than before?

Droom wrote:
Just opened new disharmony addon, and now I'm wondering: is it really only 30% of ind converted to food by affinity? So, sowers affinity is even weaker than before?

Yes, it is, but you can now research a tech to directly convert another 33% of industry to food, if you select it.

Also they got more ind due to the planet rebalancing and tundras don't have negative approval anymore, once you research sociology.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Yes, it is, but you can now research a tech to directly convert another 33% of industry to food, if you select it.

Also they got more ind due to the planet rebalancing and tundras don't have negative approval anymore, once you research sociology.

Which when it is the selected (the extra 33% Industrie to Food) you cant build anything else.

Sovereign wrote:
Which when it is the selected (the extra 33% Industrie to Food) you cant build anything else.

That's true, but I rarely build anything else with my sowers than ind->food, ind->scienc, ind->dust, actually.

I'm in. I really do like the concept of the sowers, but I've mainly resorted to using a custom faction if I want to play them.

Just got back today and played my first Disharmony game.



Where to begin...



You'll notice I began by taking down the blue text of boycotting the Harmony. Not because im going to start playing them anytime soon, but...



Well I'll say what I think about Disharmony. New battle System: Rules. New invasion system: Crushes Hissho Affinity Harmony: Havent played them. Fighters and Bombers: Rock on Amplitude! New music, colored anomalies, etc. = Awsome



But then you have the factions. Originally, we said that the Sowers needed a Buff. That did not change. However, we do not believe the Sowers recieved a buff, but, in fact, every other faction was nerfed close, if not to, the Sowers level. (With the exception of the Sophons, but i'll let Sov talk about that) In addition, the entire planetary FIDS system was reworked around the Sowers. However, the Sowers still have some pitfalls that take affect depending on the circumstances (Again, Sovereign probobaly has more to say about that than I do.)



Overall, Disharmony made some aspects of the game much better. But it also made some of the other aspects (such as the faction) feel very watered down to me.



However, it must be noted that amplitude + their VIPs had no way to foresee everything that would be wrong with Disharmony. So agree with me or disagree, I just hope that Amplitude will listen to the Community (as they have done SOOO many times in the past) and be open minded and tune the exp pack.



Also, Disharmony is by no means a failure. All the things I dislike about it show a ton of potential, that can make this game even more epic. And I like the new Faction specific techs. But a few of them do need to be moved in my opinion so they can help the faction when it actually matters.



EDIT: ^^ Nice to meet other ES players from Colorado, panther

In regards to the Hissho, do instant invasion only trigger Bushido now?

Igncom1 wrote:
In regards to the Hissho, do instant invasion only trigger Bushido now?

Erm, I'm not sure. All I know is that I meant to say that the new Hissho tech tree hurts the Bushido as some of their important techs are either gone or out of reach when they need them (Thus resulting in them not being as big of a military presence and hurting Bushido)

as due the high forum activity in the last days ( for me its still about 1 minutes loading time to post something)



this thread was posted at 03-18-2013.



and we all are doing still tests and games etc with the new DLC Expansion Pack.