I've heard from a couple people around here that the Drengin (Spelling?) and the Yor are considered very poor races. In an effort to decide this for myself and provide useful feedback to Stardock, I'd like to use this thread to document my games where I play as either race and give my thoughts and feedback on the matter. If anyone would like to offer their own feedback playing these races, I'd be glad to hear it.
My first game as the was played with the following settings:
Map settings: Large, all victory conditions, allow surrenders, disable mega events, disable minor races, disable tech trading, super abilities active, tech rate normal, occasional number of stars, random star density, common habitable planets, common number of planets, anomalies rare, asteroids abundant.
My race: Drengin
Political party: War Party
Race abilities: Weapons +20%, Morale +25%, Hit Points + 10%, Repair + 40%, Sensors +4%, Soldiering +50%, Courage and Creativity +25%
Computer races: Arcean, Terran, Torian, Yor, Iconian.
Difficulty: Tough
As you can see, from the ingame race window, I did not put any points into Morale; this was an attempt to play on "hard mode" because I've often heard that maxing the Morale, Economy and Population bonuses turn any game into a pathetically easy experience.
To summarize, I rushed the Arceans with just enough fighters to cripple their industry by killing all their asteroid mining bases, hence making them less capable of producing a credible military threat, while dedicating enough funds to tech up to Planetary Invasion. After the Transports started churning out, my ridiculously high soldiering bonus enabled me to take over planets very easily, even if I only had 1000 soldiers against a planet with a population of 6000+. Due to this, I was able to swipe three of his planets early. I talked him into a peace arrangement (Which he hastily agreed to, having half my military strength and only four planets left) so I could concentrate on building up my planet infrastructure some and balancing my economy back out, as it was quite stressed during the war. As soon as my economy was back on track and I felt capable of finishing him off, I redeclared war and finished him off. After the Arceans were finished, I felt as if the game was largely in my hand, and it was only a matter of time until I won. For the sake of not cramming an unnecessary amount of text into this post, I shall go ahead and say I eventually earned a very satisfying Conquest Victory.
My thoughts on Super Dominator: I believe this Superpower is very good because it is the major thing that enables the Drengin to be highly aggressive early game. Without a great economy, I found it imperative to rely on their extremely cheap slave labor and research as many soldiering techs as possible, so I could make the absolute most of every transport I built and not need to use special invasion plans which could quickly deplete my treasury. I personally feel that they are fairly well balanced, and that their racial buildings are good enough to ensure they can wage war as cheaply as possible to counteract the lack of bonuses to their economy. But I feel two things should be considered in a future patch for them.
One, I believe that Super Dominator needs to scale at least somewhat with your current techs. I do not mind that the ships that spawn from it are small class vessels, but the fact that they spawn in the dozens and only have a paltry few damage and virtually no movement speed makes them seldom used late game. Early game they are extremely powerful, possibly imbalanced, because they enable the Drengin to be highly aggressive towards whatever race they first encounter and almost assuredly slaughter over them militarily, with the unfortunate target having practically no chance at all unless the AI is smart enough to shut down military spending and tech like there's no tomorrow. Overall, Stardock should look into a way to make them scale more smoothly from early game to late game.
Two, I believe that the player should be able to choose where the Super Dominator ships spawn. I've thought about the balance implications of this, since in early game if you choose to spawn them on a planet near an enemy empire's space they could enable the Drengin to rush their opponents even faster than before, but I feel that if Stardock finds a way to more smoothly scale the strength of the Super Dominator ships that it won't be a problem.
Overall, my initial thoughts have been that the Drengin are a powerful race that are a joy to play because of their highly aggressive style of gameplay. I think that even with no morale, economy or population bonuses to start with (Outside of their natural race morale bonus, of course) they are more powerful than other people give them credit for. As long as you play them to their greatest strength (Their industry, soldiering, and ships) by being as aggressive as possible without getting in over your head, they are quite good.
If anyone wants to explain to me exactly why I'm an idiotic noobtard who doesn't have a clue what he's talking about and that the Drengin need to be buffed, I'm all ears :
But my initial thoughts are that they're fine.
Now, to get a game going as the Yor!
Bugs noticed during first game:Noticed a typo in the description of Artificial Slavelings upon completion of the tech; it says "coords" instead of cords.
Noticed a grammar error in the description of the Drengin homeworld, in the part where it talks about how the Torians were enslaved by them.
In the description of the Death Furnace tech upon completing it, there are question marks used instead of quotation marks around the word soul.
