"(6) If you want a good start (for sowers) you should pick the "Mineral Rich" anomaly for your home planet. This boosts early game production and growth significantly, allowing you to pump out colony ships like not tomorrow."



If you want a good start for the sower trait try pairing it with the N-way fusion tech and the Core mining tech, this increases your exploitation to +3 on your homeworld (tundra) and allows you to have your exploitation and Heavy isotope refineries built before others have even researched N-way fusion tech. It also has the added benefit of giving you 2 additional start game draws at a resource for your homeworld. Having these techs early can also help militarily as you will be able to spot sources of Titanium-70 (for ion torpedoes) and Hypernium (for "laser") right away.



"(5) Sowers benefit MORE from ecstatic happiness: The production bonus will usually outweigh the raw food income (before the sower trait), so the increase from happiness is substantial. In addition, the Elegant Shopping Networks have a an additional Sower-Specific boost for production."



This is very true and is one reason you want to seek out Gas Giants and lava (and to a lesser extent desserts) especially early that system contains happiness boosts in the form of planetary traits or approval resources. This is in fact a key to the sower playstyle balancing your approval ratings on the one side, and struggling to pay for your improvements with your abysmally low tax rate on the other.



The "other" key to a custom sower build...drop tolerant. Although that may seem what this race is all about, you can really squeeze more out of them if you "play it straight". I find that the Hissho with their Bushido bonus actual make for a much more manageable use of the "tolerant" trait.



Here's the Sower build i've been puddling around with against the AI;



Anarchists (1) -6

Builders (3) +24

Core Mining +15

Crowded planets (1) +10

Dust Archeology (1) +1

Dust Impaired (2) -4

Legendary Heroes (2) +16

Mineral Rich +8

N-Way Fusion +10

Sloppy Sawbones (2) -6

The Price of Beauty (2) -8



With this set-up and the pull of an administrator hero at the start you have your exploitation and Heavy isotopes on turn 3 and have your second colony ship out on turn 5 or 6.



As an aside, why is Baryonic Shielding an "orange" special research item for the sowers? It doesn't seem to contain any changes from anyone else's research...

For those 25 points you spent on the two techs you could have had 2 levels of scientist to research those techs faster and another 5 points to spend.

Could someone explain to me why custom factions from sowers and amoeba only get 60 points? For me that's a huge disadvantage and a pity, since I really like the ship design and the affinities.

Thanks in advance!

Snerch wrote:
Could someone explain to me why custom factions from sowers and amoeba only get 60 points? For me that's a huge disadvantage and a pity, since I really like the ship design and the affinities.

Thanks in advance!

The affinities are so strong, its for balancing. The Amoeba one certainly is, the sowers one people might disagree on, but I do think its incredibly strong.

chromodynamics wrote:
The affinities are so strong, its for balancing. The Amoeba one certainly is, the sowers one people might disagree on, but I do think its incredibly strong.

Both hissho and cravers are much stronger especially in multiplayer.

Unfortunately I probably won't be able to update this in depth until at least next week since I'm away from my main computer.

Economy



Almost Must-Haves

• Builders 3 (24 points): Even if you're playing aggressive, every system is going to require at least some buildup. Think of it as being able to start pumping out ships 30% faster.
• Militarists 3 (24 points): If you're playing aggressive, this is a no-brainer. Even if you're not playing aggressive, you're going to want cheap colony ships to grab more and better systems quickly.
• Growth Plan 3 (30 points): Early game, you're probably taking planets and exploitations with high Food per population, and later in the game, you'll have built up more +Food per population improvements. Therefore, this tends to be more powerful than Cloning. And Food is critical, since it affects the growth of the other three resources on a system. Note that this is important even for trade, since trade income is proportional to your population.
  
  

Corporate Economy



I'm talking about Dust and Science. There's two ways to go about this.



The Trade Economy

This works best with Amoeba--with Blockade Breakers, you get trade routes to all of an empire's systems as soon as you make first contact with them. All of these traits reinforce each other, so it's largely an all-or-nothing play.



In 1.0.14, this strategy has become much more expensive, due to the increase in trade trait costs and a decrease in the points gained from taking negative dust and science traits.

• Blockade Breakers (15 points). The most essential trait for a trade economy. Even if you plan to be at peace with most empires, you want every trade route you can get.
• Merchants 2 (16 points). During the all-important early game, you're going to need the extra trade routes. Later on this becomes mostly superfluous, but it'll have paid for itself by then.
• Diplomats 2 (15 points). This lets you get the most out of your trade routes.
• Space Cadets 3 (-15 points). Since you'll be relying on trade, you won't need domestic production--note that this doesn't affect trade income.
• Spendthrifts 3 (-15 points). Same as above.
  
  

Total cost: 16 points.



The Domestic Economy



This strategy is less strict--you might take more or fewer traits depending on how aggressive you want to play. Possible traits:

• Scientists/Space Cadets 3. Technology is nice, but if you're pursing an aggressive strategy, you will want to take battle traits first over science. Due to exponentially increasing technology costs, a 30% difference in Science doesn't mean a 30% difference in number of technologies--given that technologies costs roughly double each level, you're looking at something closer to a third of a tech level.
• Entrepreneurs. If I want more native Dust, I would take Businessmen first over not taking Spendthrifts or taking Businessmen. +1 Dust per population helps more in the beginning than percentage bonuses, and this is the time when Dust is most critical.
• Crowded Planets. TBD.
• Cloning. TBD.
  
  

Approval and Taxes

You are going to need some source of positive Approval . The bonuses for Fervent/Ecstatic (+30% FIS in all) are simply too large to pass up. However, if you can't keep a decent tax rate, you're going to have to use a lot of Ind->Dust conversion, which will stall your industry--not good!



Tax rates can be divided into the following brackets:

• 0-30% tax. In this range, each "tick" of 5% tax rate changes your Dust multiplier by 0.10, and Approval by 5.
• 30%-50% tax. In this range, each "tick" of 5% tax rate still changes your Dust multiplier by 0.10, but the Approval effect doubles to 10 per tick. This basically means that each additional Dust from taxes is twice as expensive in terms of Approval.
• 50%-70% tax. In this range, Approval remains at 10 per tick, but you get diminishing returns on Dust.
• 70%-100% tax. In this range, Approval goes to 15 per tick, and Dust multipliers per tick continue to fall.
  
  

In most situations, a 30% tax rate is best for most of the game, being at the top of its bracket. However, that gives you a base of only 70 Approval, and then you have planet penalties and expansion disapproval to worry about. Therefore, you're going to need a little help from traits to get above the magic 80 Approval. There are two options:

• Optimistic 2 (18 points). Immediate and effective.
• Naive 2 (10 points). This one won't come into play until you can make peace. At 8 Approval per peace, though, it will outperform Optimistic 2 with at least 3 peace treaties.
  
  

For most of the game, x0.1 Dust is more powerful than +10% Dust, so even in the 30%-50% bracket, taking more Approval traits is more effective than taking Businessmen (or fewer levels of Spendthrift). If you're relying on domestic Dust production, or using the United Empire affinity, you might consider taking both traits.

Ships



Battle



The combat-affecting traits can be roughly ranked in order from best to worst--at the top, take the positive version, and at the bottom, take the negative.



[list=1]

Accuracy. Accuracy bonuses are additive, which means that with no other modifiers, Snipers 3 is as powerful as a 30% bonus to damage for beams at long range. Add in the fact that Snipers is the only source of increased accuracy, whereas damage bonuses and accuracy penalties are plentiful (heroes, power modules), and that it helps even kinetics and missiles get past defenses, and you have the top battle trait.

Ship tonnage. It's a pretty close call between this, fleet size, and weapon damage. Of the three, this is probably the most versatile--you can put more of anything you want on a ship, whether its weapons or defenses for a warship, or extra engines for a colony ship (only the first level is relevant in this case). Granted, you'll have to pay for those extra modules, but unless you're in a glass cannon situation, quality trumps quantity.

Fleet size. A little more expensive than ship tonnage, with similar effect. I give ship tonnage the edge because upkeep is computed per CP, and the main advantage of larger fleet size over larger ship tonnage, namely more fleet modules, doesn't come into full swing until late-game.

Weapon damage. Not as versatile as the above two, but it makes up for it with sheer power: +12% damage for just 5 points per level! This is great for glass cannon situations.

Defense. Now we're heading into the neutral range. This has the same cost as weapon damage, but only gives +5% per level.

Hit points. If you're using glass cannons, you don't need hit points. If you're relying on defense modules, if you get hit you lose regardless of what hit point traits you have. And even hit point-based ships don't come into their own until late-game, at which point any trait modifiers will be swamped by HP module stacking. The possible exception is United Empire with their early percentage-based armor modules.

[/list]



Colony Ships



There are two questions when building a colony ship: how much will it cost, and how long will it take it to get where it's going?



Cost

Let's start without traits. The hull is going to cost 25 Industry, and the Seed Module is going to cost 125 Industry, for a base cost of at least 150. Induction Drive Tuners costs 12 Industry, and Lossless Fusion Pods 25 Industry. Given that they'll get you to the target much faster, that's usually worth it. We'll say we have Lossless Fusion Pods for this analysis. That's a base cost of 175 Industry.



Now, traits. If you took Militarists 3 (you did take Militarists 3, didn't you?), that cuts 30% off the price, to 122.5 Industry. From here:

• If you take Masters of Illusion, that's another 40% off (multiplicative), for a net cost of 73.5 Industry.
• If you're playing Sophons, the modules are 50% off, for a net cost of 70 Industry.
• If both are true, you're looking at a 42 Industry (!) colony ship.
  
  

Clearly, Sophons are the best conventional expanders.



A system has base production 2, and Heavy Isotope Refineries gives another 10. So with either Masters of Illusion or Sophons, it will take at most 6 turns to build a colony ship with Heavy Isotope Refineries in place at Fervent/Ecstatic. With a Civil Engineer it will take 2 turns at most. With some more hero levels and a good Food planet, it may even be possible for a single system to produce a colony ship every turn.



Speed

During the colonization stage of the game, these are the relevant ship speed modifiers.

• Base (4 speed). The base speed for all ships is 4.
• Corvette (+1 speed). Corvettes have a hidden +1 speed bonus, and the cost is the same as transports. Therefore, you should build colony ships on corvette hulls--but note that you can't choose your starting colony ship.
• Fleet module bonuses (variable bonus). Lossless Fusion Pods are easily achievable during this stage of the game, which gives the possibility of using an escort to help ferry colony ships, or have colony ships travel together if they have a nearly common departure and destination. Note that Sophons have a small advantage in this regard, since their starting scout has Lossless Fusion Pods--in a pinch, you can use this to speed up your starting colony ship by 1.
• Engines (+2 or +4 speed). Induction Drive Tuners and Lossless Fusion Pods are the choices in this stage of the game. The former gives +2 speed, the latter +4 solo. Note that you'll need at least Optimal Structure 1 to fit either of these on a corvette hull without other technologies (which are significantly further down the tech tree). With a transport hull you can fit the former but not the latter without tonnage boosts.
• Compact Fusion Reactors (+2 speed). This technology gives a passive +2 speed.
  
  

Now let's consider the speed traits. They are going to have the greatest effect on your first colony ship; Slow Travelers 2 will slow your first colony ship to a completely unacceptable speed of 2--you'll probably want to resettle the ship immediately, which suggests taking a positive anomaly. By the time you build another colony ship, though, you'll be able to boost the speed to an acceptable level; just Corvette hull and Induction Drive Tuners will take you up to 5 speed. However, getting the second colony quickly is a huge advantage. The jury's still out for me.



Open question: which is best?

• Slow Travelers 2, possibly with positive anomaly?
• No speed trait?
• Fast Travelers 2?
  
  

The Pilgrim Export Trick



This involves using a high-Food planet and a Civil Engineer to quickly export Errant Fleet colonies-in-a-box, generally including multiple population and at least Heavy Isotope Refineries. The advantages are that you are not limited by how fast you can move around your Civil Engineer, and your outposts will start at a higher state of readiness.



As far as traits go:

• Fast Travelers 2 (10 points). Since you can't customize Errant Fleets, you must have this speed boost.
• Industry traits not strictly necessary. The cost of Errant Fleet is not affected by Builders, Militarists, or Masters of Illusion.
• Rich Soil (5 points). This will make your home planet a reliable top choice for performing this Errant Fleet spam--with the first Food tech and exploitation, this will give you 9 Food per population. In comparison, a vanilla Terran with no Food penalty will give you 7 Food per population with exploitation.
  
  

I would actually go with the conventional expansion strategy, however:

• Errant Fleet takes up your affinity--you could have taken the Sophon affinity instead for expansion.
• Due to the cost of Errant Fleets, your Civil Engineer is still going to spend at most 1/3 of their Industry building Heavy Isotope Refineries, which is comparable to the conventional traveling-Civil-Engineer strategy (move every 6 turns, and figure 2 turns to build one on a brand-new colony).
• Errant Fleets take up more Industry, and are worse ships than custom-designed colony ships. Even a Fast Travelers 2 Errant Fleet moves at only 6 speed, which a Corvette Colony Ship with Induction Drive Tuners can outrun with no traits.
  
  

Other



Affinities



I personally don't like their style, but if I had to pick a strongest affinity, it would be the Craver affinity. It gives a massive boost when it matters most, and the drawback won't occur until it's too late.



Past this, the next top three affinities I would say are:

• Amoeba make the best traders--as soon as they make first contact with a faction, all of that faction's systems become available to trade with.
• Sophons make the best expanders, due to their support module discount. Their Science bonus from low taxes is also great. Since trade is a good way to make up for low tax rates, they are probably second-place for a trader faction as well.
• Hissho are the best aggressive affinity, due to Bushido stacking.
  
  

The rest:

• Horatio have one trick: Cloning of Civil Engineers. It's a pretty good trick, but I'm not sure I'd put them at the top; the first Civil Engineer is the most important. Plus the Arid homeworld is not too appealing.
• United Empire suffers from the infeasibility of high tax rates in the early game, but at least it and the XP bonuses are indisputable positives. It also has a hidden tax rate bonus which gives more Dust than usual at low tax rates. The key number is x0.8 Dust at 30% tax rate rather than just x0.6.
• Pilgrims, like the Horatio, have one trick. However, it's not that good.
• Sowers I think are the most overrated affinity--I'm not even sure their affinity is a net positive, given the paramount importance of growth in the early game.
  
  

Anomalies



The best positive anomaly is probably Mineral Rich. The planets in the home system are worse than average, and the home system starts as a colony and thus suffers from expansion disapproval. Thus, you shouldn't look for it to be a top system even early in the game. Rather, you want it to pump out colony ships. Since Class I planets have good Food production and exploitations, and Civil Engineers are going to be best used on outposts, you'll need extra Industry to produce colony ships at a reasonable rate. Once you have a Food exploitation and Heavy Isotope Refineries up, you should be able to produce a colony ship on most turns on your home system with this (with appropriate colony ship cost reductions). Finally, it's tied for the cheapest positive anomaly.



Dust Lode might be interesting, though--it could save a turn on Civil Engineer, and help early Dust problems. Maybe with a N-Way Fusion Reactors start?



Meanwhile, the best negative anomaly is Unlucky Colonists. It gives more points back than Poor Soil or Mineral Poor. Furthermore, the possible anomalies from this are Hostile Fauna, Swamp World, Seismic Activity, Long Season, Meteor Strikes, and High Gravity. Of these, none are as bad as either of the fixed anomalies; indeed, only Long Season and High Gravity require Soil Revivification, as opposed to the easier Adaptive Colonies, to remove. In fact, Swamp World, Seismic Activity, and Meteor Strikes are not even wholly negative! If you didn't take Optimistic beforehand, you could take Optimistic 1, which makes it probably about a wash on the home planet and a boost elsewhere, at no net cost.



Technologies



These are expensive, and generally not worth it. N-Way Fusion Plants is the only one worth considering, but you may be spending your first few turns gathering Dust for that all-important Civil Engineer anyhow.

Feeble Warriors is -10 defense on planets. I don't know the exact mechanics, but you should look them up to determine the efficiency.

It's literally just -10 to the "Defense from Invasion" that you see when you hover over a system. Not -10 per population, or -10%, but a flat -10.



Here's the entry for the trait in the XML:



[code][/code]



Compare Impervious Bunkers, which is known to have a flat modifier of 250:



[code][/code]



The signature is exactly the same. So it's a flat modifier.



Check out the wiki page for more: http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Invasion

I'd recommend Rich Soil instead of Mineral Rich on the Jungle homworlds provided by the Pilgrim and Hissho affinities, since it provides a nice balance of growh and production to sustainably crank out colony ships (especially with Civil Engineer!).

With Pilgrims I'll have to test the Heavy Isotope Refineries export trick--in that case it would be better to park your Civil Engineer on your home planet, at which point Food becomes the more critical factor (especially given that Errant Fleet takes all your population except 1) and Rich Soil is definitely more powerful.



Edit: Hmm, I'll have to do a more careful analysis....



Otherwise, Jungle doesn't get extra Industry from exploitation until 3D Replication Plants, which won't happen during the colonization stage, whereas you get extra Food from exploitation at the first Food tech. So you're looking at +3 Food versus +1 or +2 Industry from exploitation, which would favor the Food exploitation early. So the anomaly choice is between 6 Food / 7 Industry per population with Mineral Rich, or 9 Food / 4 Industry with Rich Soil. (Taking the Industry exploitation with Rich Soil is strictly worse at this stage.) I think I would still go with Mineral Rich here, especially if I don't take Masters of Illusion.

Evil4Zerggin wrote:
With Pilgrims I'll have to test the Heavy Isotope Refineries export trick--in that case it would be better to park your Civil Engineer on your home planet, at which point Food becomes the more critical factor (especially given that Errant Fleet takes all your population except 1) and Rich Soil is definitely more powerful.



Edit: Hmm, I'll have to do a more careful analysis....



Otherwise, Jungle doesn't get extra Industry from exploitation until 3D Replication Plants, which won't happen during the colonization stage, whereas you get extra Food from exploitation at the first Food tech. So you're looking at +3 Food versus +1 or +2 Industry from exploitation, which would favor the Food exploitation early. So the anomaly choice is between 6 Food / 7 Industry per population with Mineral Rich, or 9 Food / 4 Industry with Rich Soil. (Taking the Industry exploitation with Rich Soil is strictly worse at this stage.) I think I would still go with Mineral Rich here, especially if I don't take Masters of Illusion.

For Fleet Errant rushes I prefer 9 Food /4 Industry > 6 Food / 7 Industry. Since you are adding +25 production from your admin hero, as well as the +10 industry from N-Way Fusion Planets, with a 30% reduction in building costs you should be building an early building per turn. - The +20 food admin ability is "later" since that's 4 levels in. Since your goal is 3-4 population to shift to the new system, you need the excess food to drive the population up. You also need to factor in pop growth curve/time on production. Earlier turns on pop 2-4 will provide more FIDS.



The danger with this strategy is that delivery time for fleet errant's really eats into your overall FIDS production. Those boats are slow... and if Pirates get one, you had a really really really bad day.

Food is definitely better for Fleet Errant. However, I'm not sure Fleet Errant is all that effective--the whole point is to let your Civil Engineer spend more of their time building Heavy Isotope Refineries, but the cost of Errant Fleets means that still at most 1/3 of your Industry is going to be spent that way. That's not much better than the conventional traveling-Civil-Engineer, and you're paying quite a bit in opportunity cost for the Fleet Errant strategy.

Evil4Zerggin wrote:
Food is definitely better for Fleet Errant. However, I'm not sure Fleet Errant is all that effective--the whole point is to let your Civil Engineer spend more of their time building Heavy Isotope Refineries, but the cost of Errant Fleets means that still at most 1/3 of your Industry is going to be spent that way. That's not much better than the conventional traveling-Civil-Engineer, and you're paying quite a bit in opportunity cost for the Fleet Errant strategy.

The key with Fleet Errant in my opinion is placements. A good plan get set up a couple of forge worlds and a few research worlds and give them a head start For instance, having 3-5 pop and a supermarket for colonizing Lava can make a huge difference. Going high food enables you to lever the fast population growth from the rich soil option. All of that said, I suspect it's only marginally better than the traveling Civil-Engineer and if you make bad settlement location choices, possibly much worse.

I've been experimenting with different faction creations and what have you, and I noticed something a little odd that maybe you all could shed some light onto.



Most other affinities you are able to have 65 points worth of "abilities" except for the Ameoba affinity, there you are only allowed 60. Is this because with the Ameoba you see the whole map and location of all luxury resources straight away?



Cheers

There are a number of factions that only get 60 points, actually.

Old thread: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9138-optimizing-custom-races



Must-Haves



The following traits I would take regardless of strategy.

• Feeble Warriors 2 (-5). Though the effect is much stronger in 1.0.14, fundamentally you defend with ships, not systems.
• Dust Impaired 2 (-4). It takes quite a while for Dust-costing abilities to appear, at which point such costs may be negligible.
• Sloppy Sawbones 2 (-6). Hero injuries are quite rare.
• Legendary Heroes 2 (16). OP Civil Engineer. That is all.
  
  

Net cost: 1 point.

Installed Endless Space on my current computer, but it's not fast enough to actually play (no video card). Still, I got a brief look at the changes:

• It looks like point returns from negative traits were reduced across the board. This disfavors lopsided faction design.
• Feeble Warriors and Sloppy Sawbones have a much greater impact than they did, but I would still take them.
• The new Dust Archaeology looks like a must. Even with the nerf, Civil Engineer still looks very strong, and the additional starting Dust will save you a few turns on that at very little cost.
• Trade economy is now much more expensive--some sort of Sophons now looks much stronger relative to trade-based Amoeba as a more peaceful build. On the other hand, the recent science speedrun challenge suggests that trade might not be dead.