Goddamn amoebas. I hate these pesky creatures. Had several games over the past two weeks, alternating normal/hard difficulty, versus all-random factions, spiral-8, huge map, me + 6 A.I . Every time when they are in the game - they get so overpowered. In the last game that I quit today - they had the tech lead since turn 50 and although I concentrated on tech, they never let go of the 1st place. I was Automatons and did pretty well in the early game - killed one of the Horatios on my left side then tech-ed up to start warring against the Sheredyn on the right side. But by that time the OP amoebas have killed off one faction that I didn't even get the chance to meet, think it was Sowers and were in the process of exterminating another Automatons + Horatios combined. Later in the game when I had like around 17k MP ships they had ships with 28k and this was without heroes...

What the hell makes them to snowball like this? Looking now at their traits they have no science boosts.. Does the -40 % reduction on ships without weapons combined with the revealed galaxy makes them spam colony ships for like 1 turn and colonize the best planets. And I thought they are a peaceful nation, but killing 3 out of the 6 A.Is does not seem peaceful to me.



How to deal with them? War early? I tried once to block them in their spiral arm but again they were faster than me and had both of their outer planes already taken ..

Trading combined with being able to see the entire galaxy means that as soon as they declare peace, they can trade with every system in an empire.



The Amoeba get traits that also boost their trade income (Of science and dust) meaning that peace with the Amoeba is much more beneficial for them then it is for you.



And giving the knowledge of the entire galaxy means that they can beeline straight for the best systems, and plan where to bottleneck you from.



The Amoeba are my nemesis, and always will be as my personal go to for a good game against the AI.

Well i have not played a whole lot of this game but it seems to me that the Ai in general is a joke up until turn 100 or so and once they get past that in one piece (read: unopposed when expanding) they will indeed snowball everything. The best way i found to deal with amoebas (and other peace loving factions that get stronger when they ally with others) is to plainly steamroll them in the first 50 turns (or atleast take away their best systems). That pretty much gimps them for the rest of the game (provided they wont ally with everyone and get some ridiculous +% bonus to MP).





Heard there are going to be some major AI changes in the future updates? Maybe a less cheating AI... would be nice.

That's funny, I normally have more trouble with the Hissho. They seem to build up a deadly fleet very early in the game, and ignore the science drawback entirely. Not to mention that beam weapons on their ships are possibly the deadliest thing in the galaxy until you research solar mining.



Cheap weapons + damage boost + accuracy + more damage boost = excessively destructive fighters.

I don't have any particularly big issues with Amoeba.



Yes, sometimes they get big - and for a supposedly peaceful race they tend to build massive fleets.

But it's more of an even spread really, sometimes it's Amoeba, sometimes it's Hissho, Sophons, United Empire or Horatio. Interestingly enough, there's rarely any Cravers that go large.



I've found that if I have an Amoeba besides me, I can block them off from the best systems near them (as the AI tend to be kind of stupid in this regard), and "starve" them. After some turns I can go and conquer them.

Indeed Cravers seem very disappointing when controlled by the AI. My guess is since theyre based around rushing (planets get depleted as time goes so you need to rush another system asap to keep your military/science machine going) and the AI is not really suited for this kind of gameplay - it fails miserably.



On another note - for a faction that should be revolving around peaceful coexistence and "tending to their planets like gardens", Automatons seem extremely aggressive. Whenever i have Automatons in my games and check the diplomacy screen - theyre at war with atleast 2 factions at a time... and winning (!). Im yet to find out how their stacking bonus works since i havent played them yet (due to the craver looking ships...) but it seems mighty overpowered or the bonuses AI gets makes it overpowered. Huh..

The AI gets bonuses almost all the time.

I just finished a game playing as Amoeba on Hard, and I gotta say their affinity really gives them a Huge advantage. Usually by turn 90-100 I start to prepare for war, but in this game by that time I was beating the sheredyn pretty hard. Somewhere at the end of the war allied with the Pilgrims and we both conquered later on all of the galaxy

Yep, the pilgrims and Amoeba are trade heavy factions.



With the Amoeba getting better trade, and the Pilgrims getting trade with everyone, irrespective of peace treaty's.

Igncom1 wrote:
Yep, the pilgrims and Amoeba are trade heavy factions.



With the Amoeba getting better trade, and the Pilgrims getting trade with everyone, irrespective of peace treaty's.

I don't think so...



LIGHTS OF POLARIS (1.0.45)



CHANGES AND ADDITIONS



* Blockade breaker doesn't work with empire at war

Ah ha!



Yes I seem to have amnesia of late regarding the patches, so I am mistaken on that part.