Gameslayer989 wrote:
Do the Ameoba really need a buff in terms of adding to their affinity? I mean, the ability to see everything right off the bat is really strong as is. Surely they only need the 65 points...

Taken by itself that would be true, their tech tree is also lacking. All of their racials are in the left tree and fairly late game, this leads to a mid-game weakness that they have no compensation for hence the suggestion of +dust for making friends. It is likely that +10% is too much but the penalty for war is also there to balance it and allow other empires a recourse against a strong amoeba.



Its a number that needs to be tested, I can see arguments for cutting the values in half(+6/-3) but this seems like an interesting baseline.

The Amoeba are very very good if you leave the alone, and even without any direct allies they have one of the best economy's in the game.



And with the recent buff to trading, they are now more then decent.

Igncom1 wrote:
The Amoeba are very very good if you leave the alone, and even without any direct allies they have one of the best economy's in the game.



And with the recent buff to trading, they are now more then decent.

The only advantage they have economy wise is the Ocean homeworld(Terran is better for dust) and late-ish game techs where if their vision doesn't let them rush good planets they won't survive to.



On a different note I would argue that Sowers should have a 30% conversion, -30% food instead of 50/50. At 50/50 there is no reason to ever build a food exploit anywhere, at 30/30 they get a less significant growth advantage from being able to specialize in industry without actually hurting their overall FIDS.

Early game advantage: Vision



Mid game advantage: Trade



Late game advantage: Everyone hates each other more then you.



I have never considered the Amoeba to be disadvantaged, ever and the association that they are is silly.

Trade and peace is the amoebas ally, and with a strong trading economy they can easily keep up with technology and can also keep up with dust to rush buy in pace of other races industrial economy.



The Amoeba are better in my opinion then even the Sophons, with good tech and a great economy that allows them to put out fewer high-quality fleets when necessary.



The Amoeba are fine.

Igncom1 wrote:
Early game advantage: Vision



Mid game advantage: Trade



Late game advantage: Everyone hates each other more then you.



I have never considered the Amoeba to be disadvantaged, ever and the association that they are is silly.

Trade and peace is the amoebas ally, and with a strong trading economy they can easily keep up with technology and can also keep up with dust to rush buy in pace of other races industrial economy.



The Amoeba are better in my opinion then even the Sophons, with good tech and a great economy that allows them to put out fewer high-quality fleets when necessary.



The Amoeba are fine.

In Single Player they are just fine thats right and the AI can handel them (still horrible with the SOWERS btw o.O)



in MP their affinity became kind of useless in mid game after the several trade nerfs.



i cant btw say something about the little buff of trade by the mod yet...

now i know what i test this night^^



i will tell if trade feels now different.

Igncom1 wrote:
...

The Amoeba are better in my opinion then even the Sophons, with good tech and a great economy that allows them to put out fewer high-quality fleets when necessary.



The Amoeba are fine.

You are talking about the base races and not the affinity alone, correct?





@All

Right now, I'm thinking the test games will just be until turn 50 w/ results based on score/fids/etc. It'll probably be 4-5p to avoid things like Naive being too strong (+48 happiness trollol). That, and I doubt I can get more than 5 players together. Turns will be on 2 minute timers so this process should take ~2 hrs if we have to reload or something.



I'll probably finish the mod I have in mind tonight or tomorrow, then will start trying to do testing games maybe on Wed Thurs or Friday.



Does that work for everyone/sound reasonable?

Sovereign wrote:
In Single Player they are just fine thats right and the AI can handel them (still horrible with the SOWERS btw o.O)



in MP their affinity became kind of useless in mid game after the several trade nerfs.



i cant btw say something about the little buff of trade by the mod yet...

now i know what i test this night^^



i will tell if trade feels now different.

I just finished a 100 turn game on "Very Hard" difficulty.

(50 turns serious , then additionaly 50 turns just loitering)with a Amoeba affinity Race focused on Trade.

And the game was very smooth(still to slow but faster then with the Sowers hands down) the result was pretty much okay and competitve.



Through the fact that now you cant perform the *Sophon is on XTC* expansion strategy and the *build Bayoranic Meph Labs in every single Outpost for 40 Science* isent that effective anymore.

The increased Science gain through the Tradelines and in combination with the Distance Bonus makes now a noticable difference and the Dust is also quite nice.



For a final result i would have to play several sirous Multiplayer Games with decent human enemys but out of my first impression and my experience in MP matches i would say

that now Trade Races are again an valuable Tactic even for Multiplayer Games. By Far not so OP as they used to be many patches ago but not as so absolutely useless as they are in the current vanilla version.



Iam realy like this change i dont know if its enough

but i can realy imagine that this could bring some new tactics and Trade Builds into MP- Partys and increase the diversity of custom races.

Iam very positive surprised.

I am glad the Devs changed this cause i was criticising the huge Trade nerf already several times.



So maybe we realy made it.



WE SAVED THE AMOEBAS!



well yeah whynot...we Sowers love all races out there and we are glad to help them out.

As long they stand not in our way...





BTW: Horatios were again the strongest AI by far in the entire game.

The Second strongest were the Automatons...(this was not the first time...the automatons seems to benefit strong from the new Planet Fids System...or the Changes from Ail got these positive effect on them)



This made me curious my next run will be with the Automatons with the same settings.

Sovereign wrote:


WE SAVED THE AMOEBAS

Rofl



idk why that was so funny.

Sovereign, are you saying Amoeba is fine as-is?

I just say they maybe arent completely useless anymore in MP when focused on Trade.



(as long not more then one player decides to declare war on you to denie you the Trade then u have lost)



but i also dont think your changes would be OP. (OP was the time were Trade Science was the double amount of Dust Income)

that is something to test.





And they still have only 60 Race Trait Points -.- like the Sowers.

I'm setting all races to 65 points as one of my planned changes the more I thought about it. Would that fix them you think?



I am trying to minimize the changes I make.

ElMew wrote:
I'm setting all races to 65 points as one of my planned changes the more I thought about it. Would that fix them you think?



I am trying to minimize the changes I make.

I think the 5 extra points might be enough, there are some decent benefits to having an ocean homeworld.

Kareal wrote:
I think the 5 extra points might be enough, there are some decent benefits to having an ocean homeworld.

Alright. Then I'll leave it @ 5pts for now and see.

Sovereign wrote:


And they still have only 60 Race Trait Points -.- like the Sowers.

actually this critic was more aimed at the Devs and their mod.

Sovereign wrote:
actually this critic was more aimed at the Devs and their mod.

yar but 65 pts makes balancing things easier (since its trait vs. trait choices). We can just play affinity-only games to balance those.

Changes, Round 1



Racial:

• Stellar Guardian Nerf
• Sowers Fix (30%/30% conversion)
• Cravers is now 20 / 60 instead of 40 / 60 for improved / normal production. Rest is unchanged.
• United Empire - 0-60% / 0-100% as per original notes, it wasn't doing this before.
• Horatio is going to get a Sophon-style Food Buff via Tax Rate (20% for 0-50%, so 2% per tick for 10 ticks). This is done due to the Stellar Guardians nerf.
• Amoeba is being left alone for the moment to see if +5 pts & trade changes are enough to salvage it.
• Changed all racial point definitions to 65 pts.
  
  

General Changes:

• All star systems are now 'good' systems, many/perfect results in 6 planets in all systems.
• Outpost -> Colony Time is now 20 turns.
• Expansion Cost is being left alone, the 20 vs. 30 turn change is enough to make colonies flip fast enough to avoid crippling a MP game (rough guess, not 100% sure yet).
• Expansion Approval tweaked but not quite what I said, I want to test it and see.
  
  

Hero changes are not yet in.





I'd like to test these changes Wed night if I can get 4 ppl together (besides me). I think the greater quantities of Terrans/Oceans/Jungles combined with the 20 turn flip time is enough. If it feels decent, I'll fix the heroes and then we'll play Affinity only games for a bit to try to test Affinity balance.



There are a couple ways to fast expand with custom races:

Stellar Guardians on Sophons.

Mineral Rich + Stacking Food & Happiness bonuses to counteract the expansion method.





In all honesty, I hate the artificial limiters involved with this and they are very fragile (in the sense they are unbreakable and require optimization to function, or too easily broken). Sticking with a reduced timer is one option. The 3 dust thing just didn't work (too easy to break out of, I'd have to make something like 9 which might make it too hard for people who don't understand how to cycle ind/dust to manage their economies). I really, really would prefer to have an Outpost counter (which doesn't seem to be how this game is tracking stuff based on the XML) in place of this silly Influence/NotInInfluence accounting which is easily broken.

so far so good.



but why u hating the cravers so much? They are fine as they are.



and Seriously only 10 turns with Bonus on fast speed...sry but this is ridiculous with the increased cost of Colony modules u are maybe able to have 2 Outposts in 10 turns. And then u only get penalties...well i would never play cravers again.

I will be around tonight and would join your test if you would like ping me

Tbh, i'd say the whole "Outpost under influence is not an outpost" is more of a bug than anything else.

Let them fix it and then we can talk, as of now it's a critical mess.

Aureon wrote:
Tbh, i'd say the whole "Outpost under influence is not an outpost" is more of a bug than anything else.

Let them fix it and then we can talk, as of now it's a critical mess.

If you look at the XML its obviously very intentional, prior to the Expansion Effort it was reasonably balanced with trade offs in regards to Expansion Disapproval vs Dust generation. Now it hinders the new system.