Nook wrote:
What special grow penalty??? They have none, there's even a bonus by having a +10 happiness bonus it's like if for each new system they colonize a planet with a +10 bonus. The big penalty is science, the big plus for expansion is the factory bonus and the food coming from factory. It's excellent for a very fast expansion but as all factions if you go over the good rythm you'll get troubles. And the second important plus is a significant strategical advantage, but again not made to abuse of it.



If it was possible to abuse of it Sowers would just did major but kick.



EDIT: Perhaps you mean the food is a grow penalty but the problem of abusing of their special ability to colonize anything is the happiness management. The food penalty is just moving expansion from food and population grow to building and expanding.

Sowers Industry is worse than that of every other empire (except for a fully depleted Craven.... maybe)

and that goes for early and mid game too.



more food early = more population sooner

more population = more FIDS

more FIDS = more research

more research = happiness and FIDS

more FIDS happiness = more expanding and even more population

more expanding and population = more FIDS



and even if you manage to get into the late game, the +100% food surplus and food surplus = industry tech (+ ~7000-9000 industry for most star systems) beats sowerspecific techs that boost industry on tundra planets

its actually funny that most sower techs are there to *compensate* for their rather weak affinity, instead of capitalizing on it

the very first being Sociologics.

Nook wrote:
What special grow penalty??? They have none, there's even a bonus by having a +10 happiness bonus it's like if for each new system they colonize a planet with a +10 bonus. The big penalty is science, the big plus for expansion is the factory bonus and the food coming from factory. It's excellent for a very fast expansion but as all factions if you go over the good rythm you'll get troubles. And the second important plus is a significant strategical advantage, but again not made to abuse of it.



If it was possible to abuse of it Sowers would just did major but kick.



EDIT: Perhaps you mean the food is a grow penalty but the problem of abusing of their special ability to colonize anything is the happiness management. The food penalty is just moving expansion from food and population grow to building and expanding.

See KrayZee's post.



What you don't understand is that losing 25% of your growth is a massive penalty to your early game. Some of that can be made up in the midgame by industry to food conversion but that will be at a cost of other FIDS. I've show the math, Sowers lose ~1 :Food: off just about every planet type. That's because of their affinity and is a massive penalty. It doesnt matter what the sowers build they will NEVER get that food back.

MTB-Fritz wrote:
I think that would make em Harmony without the Harmony penalties. It would be overpowered as hell. Just set up a sowers game under the EndlessGenetics mod and give yourself 10/10 morale in addition to the regular race traits see how that ll play out.

I don't think using a mod really would be saving the sowers in the normal game. Second, even if they had no penalties they still would have to deal with expansion disapproval that is something harmony does not have.

Autocthon wrote:
See KrayZee's post.



What you don't understand is that losing 25% of your growth is a massive penalty to your early game. Some of that can be made up in the midgame by industry to food conversion but that will be at a cost of other FIDS. I've show the math, Sowers lose ~1 :Food: off just about every planet type. That's because of their affinity and is a massive penalty. It doesnt matter what the sowers build they will NEVER get that food back.

Where is the math? I would love to see it. Would you mind posting a link, I must have missed it while browsing over the other posts or something.

Autocthon wrote:
See KrayZee's post.



What you don't understand is that losing 25% of your growth is a massive penalty to your early game. Some of that can be made up in the midgame by industry to food conversion but that will be at a cost of other FIDS. I've show the math, Sowers lose ~1 :Food: off just about every planet type. That's because of their affinity and is a massive penalty. It doesnt matter what the sowers build they will NEVER get that food back.

I suggest you to try play Sowers without use much the "colonize all" ability. And remind to low down your population grow estimated importance for expansion phase, and remind increase your factory production estimated importance, and remind the buildings bringing more food will only bring 50% food so the question is when it really worth build some. And that Building increasing factory get 30% free food from the added factory power.



And when you colonize a planet you don't have the tech for it yet, don't forget it's a huge decision during first phase because this is a huge penalty on science where you are already weak and on happiness, specific happiness bonus in the first planet you colonize and in other planets you plan colonize can make it worth it, or a strategic decision. That's the key point, the optimization point can't be on using a lot their special ability, and it seems many player in this thread seems have tried only that. Now it's possible that once the optimization point is reached they still have an overall penalty. But at least players should search this point which can't include abuse of their 'colonize all" ability.



In your math (where is the link) have you included the possibility to not build blindly any building? And the increased building speed plus save or delay the building of some building is a very important element in expansion phase.

Nook wrote:
And when you colonize a planet you don't have the tech for it yet, don't forget it's a huge decision during first phase because this is a huge penalty on science where you are already weak and on happiness, specific happiness bonus in the first planet you colonize and in other planets you plan colonize can make it worth it, or a strategic decision. That's the key point, the optimization point can't be on using a lot their special ability, and it seems many player in this thread seems have tried only that. Now it's possible that once the optimization point is reached they still have an overall penalty. But at least players should search this point which can't include abuse of their 'colonize all" ability.

Its not some much a question of being able to abuse their tolerant trait, its fact that is the trait is generally worthless, especially for the point cost. Which is something that has been pointed out before, I think. As you said that you have colonize other planets -that most other race could also colonize T1s and T2s- first to be able get good use of it, doesn't that in its self kind of defeat the point of it? Early game is important, with the -20% sci, the tolerant trait is has a longer time before its effectiveness kicks in. That is because cannot be fully utilized until you have other technology -approval boosting stuff- which lowers its early game usefulness greatly. Mean while a faction such Sophons can just swiftly tech up with their +30-80% sci rates and pull a head in colonization.

Nook wrote:
I suggest you to try play Sowers without use much the "colonize all" ability. And remind to low down your population grow estimated importance for expansion phase, and remind increase your factory production estimated importance, and remind the buildings bringing more food will only bring 50% food so the question is when it really worth build some. And that Building increasing factory get 30% free food from the added factory power.

You are completely missing the point. Sowers do NOT have better industry than other races. Sowers grow slower than other races CRIPPLING THEIR SCIENCE. Add to that the fact that food bonuses are wasted (I'm not dumb enough to build them, I play literally nothing but Sowers). Are you getting the picture yet? Sowers default traits are crippling, their Affinity is a PENALTY on anything but Tundra/Lave/Barren/Gas Giant, they have slow growth at all stages in the game which means their expansion is considerably slower and that they will ALWAYS be lagging in research regardless of whether you take advantage of Tolerant (Hint, ALWAYS COLONIZE THE LAVA WHEN YOU SEE IT, the happiness "penalty" is nothing compared to the growth bonus)

And when you colonize a planet you don't have the tech for it yet, don't forget it's a huge decision during first phase because this is a huge penalty on science where you are already weak and on happiness, specific happiness bonus in the first planet you colonize and in other planets you plan colonize can make it worth it, or a strategic decision. That's the key point, the optimization point can't be on using a lot their special ability, and it seems many player in this thread seems have tried only that. Now it's possible that once the optimization point is reached they still have an overall penalty. But at least players should search this point which can't include abuse of their 'colonize all" ability.

"Colonize All" isn't a Sower special ability. It's a trait which is available to any custom faction. It is also pretty much the only way for the Sowers to get around the 10% FIDS penalty they take on nearly EVERY planet in the game. Did I say 10% FIDS? I meant 25%-50% GROWTH penalty.



I've shown the math in this thread before. Sowers Affinity is a HUGE penalty to Growth in and of itself and the only planets WORTH colonizing are Tundra/Lava/Barren/Gas, as they're the only planets you get a net bonus on.

In your math (where is the link) have you included the possibility to not build blindly any building? And the increased building speed plus save or delay the building of some building is a very important element in expansion phase.

It. Does. Not. Matter. What. You. Build.



You will ALWAYS have slower growth than other races. You will ALWAYS be taking a relative FIDS penalty and a MASSIVE Food Penalty compared to other Factions. You "save time" by NOT building growth bonuses because they are a complete WASTE of effort, but that only means you'll be ever FURTHER behind. NONE of this is a good thing. Sowers are competitive as acustom race because you can offset these issues, as a non-Custom race they are much weaker than they should be because in addition to natural penalties to Growth (and by extension FIDS) they have BOTH -Speed and -Research. Further compounding their weak early growth.

Autocthon wrote:
You are completely missing the point. Sowers do NOT have better industry than other races. Sowers grow slower than other races CRIPPLING THEIR SCIENCE. Add to that the fact that food bonuses are wasted (I'm not dumb enough to build them, I play literally nothing but Sowers). Are you getting the picture yet? Sowers default traits are crippling, their Affinity is a PENALTY on anything but Tundra/Lave/Barren/Gas Giant, they have slow growth at all stages in the game which means their expansion is considerably slower and that they will ALWAYS be lagging in research regardless of whether you take advantage of Tolerant (Hint, ALWAYS COLONIZE THE LAVA WHEN YOU SEE IT, the happiness "penalty" is nothing compared to the growth bonus)



"Colonize All" isn't a Sower special ability. It's a trait which is available to any custom faction. It is also pretty much the only way for the Sowers to get around the 10% FIDS penalty they take on nearly EVERY planet in the game. Did I say 10% FIDS? I meant 25%-50% GROWTH penalty.



I've shown the math in this thread before. Sowers Affinity is a HUGE penalty to Growth in and of itself and the only planets WORTH colonizing are Tundra/Lava/Barren/Gas, as they're the only planets you get a net bonus on.



It. Does. Not. Matter. What. You. Build.



You will ALWAYS have slower growth than other races. You will ALWAYS be taking a relative FIDS penalty and a MASSIVE Food Penalty compared to other Factions. You "save time" by NOT building growth bonuses because they are a complete WASTE of effort, but that only means you'll be ever FURTHER behind. NONE of this is a good thing. Sowers are competitive as acustom race because you can offset these issues, as a non-Custom race they are much weaker than they should be because in addition to natural penalties to Growth (and by extension FIDS) they have BOTH -Speed and -Research. Further compounding their weak early growth.

He just says it...cant understand why people didnt realize the facts.



besides i made a pool particular for the Tolerant Trait...we need attention of the Devs again that the High Cost of this Trait are just ridiculous.



Thats also something important for the Harmony.



/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11504-reducing-tolerant-trait-costs

So sov, what are your thoughts on the new sowers?.......I really want a stab at the Harmony due to being vetoed from talking about them till I experience them first hand.

Oh. I just realized that this is concerning the faction itself and not the affinity, which is fine in my opinion. Can I take back my vote? xD

The sowers, including their affinity.

Suzuteo wrote:
Oh. I just realized that this is concerning the faction itself and not the affinity, which is fine in my opinion. Can I take back my vote? xD

The affinity is pretty bad compared to other affinities (excepting the Harmony for obvious reasons). It's the only affinity which is a net penalty at (literally) all stages of the game.

I know at one point the sowers had 40% ind to food, now they have a 33%. Why did they receive that 7% nerf, was that ever explained?

They are certainly weak, but isn't harmony in far worse shape?

Gaizokubanou wrote:
They are certainly weak, but isn't harmony in far worse shape?

One battle at a time....

super_aardvark wrote:
Sorry if this is only tangentially related to this thread, but I just started playing Sowers for the first time, and I'm confused. On the wiki and in this thread, I see a few technologies mentioned, e.g. Artificial Biologics, that don't appear anywhere on my tech tree. Given all this discussion about Sowers being under-powered, it seems crazy that they don't seem to have as many unique techs as other factions. Am I missing something? (I'm playing without Disharmony.)

The reference techs are Disharmony only. And yes in Classic they have fewer unique technologies than other races.

Those are unique to Disharmony. In vanilla(the basic game) I don't think they had fewer techs than most others, due to the way the techs were updated in the wiki this now is rather hard to track :/



While their Vanilla techs were pretty meh, for the most part, the added techs in disharmony are pretty neat if you ask me.



One reason I could imagine the Devs actually nerfed the sowers affinity is that the affinity basically has a lot of potential. Consider this: You're playing Aoe2 and get a great malus to ... food however a significant portion of your wood income is (losslessly) added to your Food income, you also get a little bonus to woodgathering. Thus you do not need to research any Food techs and can put all your villagers on Wood. I can tell you that would be VERY sweet. Now in ES there are some problems with that. For one you don't allocate villagers to certain tasks you only build exploitations of different efficiency and build a handfull of not all that costy Improvements and "Foodtechs" generally also unlock stuff you actually need(badly). now where was I?

Right, now while there are a lot of things that hamper the greatness of resource substitution(techs, the general tendency to balanced systems, ...) it is undeniable that the planetary rebalance HAS helped the Affinity greatly(and Tolerant btw) as now higher tier planets are not totally worthless hunks of rock that wait to be changed into Terran-type-planets, So I think that with this massive buff of affinity and maintrait the devs did not want to make the Sowers too OP.



But if you want my opinion check my sig^^

IIRC the Sowers in Classic have one fewer tech than other factions.



As far as the affinity goes, like I've said it's only actually helpful in a game with lots of low tier systems. And that's not much different than before the planetary rebalance (where it was still more useful on lower tier planets). If there are lots of T1 and non-Tundra T2 planets the Affinty is just going to cripple your economy.

Igncom1 wrote:
So sov, what are your thoughts on the new sowers?.......I really want a stab at the Harmony due to being vetoed from talking about them till I experience them first hand.

IMO



-almost saved but almost is by far not enough.



a reboost to 40% conversion or what is in my opionion more lore ture thing :a stronger synergy with the tolerant trait.



i would realy would love to see finally after so much time and support from the community see them saved.

it is clear that still the majority see them as a weak faction compared to the other.



also i would like to see them saved so i can put my efforrt in saving the Harmony.

Sovereign wrote:
He just says it...cant understand why people didnt realize the facts...

I can return you this poor arguing in this deaf exchange.



First point to make it clear, I won't argue with custom faction, clearly the custom system allow many exploits and it's pointless for now to try balance anything in that context. Rename your thread Sowers trait.... but I quote it's about Sowers faction not the traits. So ok I'm not interested in arguing about the traits, the whole custom faction have much more important points to improve than look in deep at Sowers traits.



Second point as I'm not interested about traits I'm not interested in arguing about this, only about factions.



Third point clearly many many thread whining here are over using the special ability to colonize all. And if you aren't yet aware how important is happiness when managing asap expansion then you are really missing a major element of the game, for any faction. Grow isn't purely grow on each planet and each system but also how well you can expend and that's where Sowers are quite excellent and without exploiting their special ability to colonize or this will break their expansion rapidity ability which is deeply linked to happiness.



Not much more to add, I won't even care look at partial math because they are only a small part of the whole, I'm sure your math don't even look at the system expansion and happiness effects and ability to build colony ships on new systems and many more important elements, if simple math was that important AI would be a lot better. :-)

Nook wrote:




Third point clearly many many thread whining here are over using the special ability to colonize all. And if you aren't yet aware how important is happiness when managing asap expansion then you are really missing a major element of the game, for any faction. Grow isn't purely grow on each planet and each system but also how well you can expend and that's where Sowers are quite excellent and without exploiting their special ability to colonize or this will break their expansion rapidity ability which is deeply linked to happiness.

I play almost exclusively Sowers. I know exactly how to use their vanilla default stats. The Sowers are BAD at expanding. In fact tolerant is the only reason they have any ability to expand in the early games because they LOSE ALL THEIR GROWTH ON MOST PLANET TYPES. This is not a"colonizing low happiness planets issue" this is a "if I don't have tundra/lava/methane to colonize I expand at half the rate of other factions, if I'm lucky"

Not much more to add, I won't even care look at partial math because they are only a small part of the whole, I'm sure your math don't even look at the system expansion and happiness effects and ability to build colony ships on new systems and many more important elements, if simple math was that important AI would be a lot better. :-)

I repeat. Sowers have terrible growth rates. They expand SLOWER THAN ALL OTHER FACTIONS. they take SIGNIFICANT PENALTIES TO GROWTH ON ALMOST ALL PLANET TYPES. Read what I'm saying.



Now back on topic: Radical Idea. The Sowers are Endless Technology themselves, and they have a clearly implied lack of interest in agriculture (see affinity and "too busy to eat"). Why not considering just running with the theme.



Remove all Food tech from the diplomacy tree. It's wasted industry anyway, there are much more efficient ways to spend your industry to increase growth (hello I->F conversion, which will be T2 in diplo tree soon enough, we're gonna leave that one). This basically removes null choices from the sower tech tree. Now that leaves Dust Virtualization in a weird spot, but like I said Endless Technology. For the Sowers this will; be replaced wit ha faction unique technology.



Dust Networking

By studying the networking capacity of dust and finding similarities with current network protocols your Empire is now capable of adapting network runtimes to include ambient dust as external processing power.



Leading to the following Improvements



Dust Network Integration

-10% Industry Costs on Empire

By expanding network influence to ambient dust it can be suborned for complicated tasks, greatly increasing populace productivity and reducing construction costs



Dust Network Relays

-35% Dust on System

200% of Dust on system added as Industry

-20 on Improvement

Constructing massive network relays and stocking them with equally massive amounts of Dust all Dust within a system can be integrated fully into Sower Network Protocols, providing massively increase productivity.



These two improvements heavily highlight the Sower "Endless Ancestry" and also completely remove reliance on food for industry endgame in extended matches. The net result is giving the sowers a competitive industrial edge in the late endgame (which they currently lack due to Dust Virtualization) while also higjlighthing the "Slow and Steady" play pattern that currently exists for the faction.