DivineWrath

Like I said, if you have any comments or questions, post a reply. I, or another helpful player, will try to help you out if you need it.

I'll be watching this post for a while...

Just played a game as Yor and they aren't that bad. Like you said, you have to play differently, not use up all your tiles. But keepin tiles empty can cause you to have a bangin' economy (no maintenance cost for all your unused tiles). Combined w/good pop growth and the money comes in nicely to support a giant military. Some of the buildings have big effects for one building. Plus, smaller planets others don't care about are fine for you, you don't need many tiles, don't need to spam a bunch of low output buildings.

I disabled tech trading, so had no other econ techs, yet had the best econ in the game.

Harder in the later part of the early game I think as balancing morale/production/economy can get tricky till you get a good population, but once you have that population its all good.

I'd also add - don't upgrade structures till you are sure you can handle the increased costs, the newer ones are *much* more expensive. Lay off upgrading and go elsewhere in the tech tree.

And if you play w/random opponents like me, don't forget to change your color scheme and at least your symbol or like me you might run into the 'dark yor' and have trouble telling your planets/boundaries apart. Even the treaties screen works by symbol so you see yourself twice on it (iconians are selected. I'm the yor they are at war with, they are warm w/the other yor. Same symbol for both of us.)




All that said, I've only played 2 games so far. My experience might be unique to my settings. Immense maps both times and I haven't started ramping up the difficulty yet. But I had fun w/the yor just as they are.

I think that's a lesson I am learning the hard way for all races in TOA, thanks to the changes in economics. Its much easier to go broke than in DL or DA.

The Economic Capital was moved to the Trade tech so that it was available in all the Tech Trees. However, the Manufacturing Capital is still tried to Xeno Factory and Tech Capital to Advanced Computing, which is not present in all tech trees.

Also most of the modules for economic and mining starbases are tied to the factory techs from DL/DA only present in some of the ToA tech trees (e.g., Humans).

Nice guide DivineWrath.

A few more things to add:

- 8B people now fit on a standard planet. Capitals still on 16B though. I think this change was intended to give the players more income, but it has the side effect of making the morale ability even more important imo.

- AI-designed ships. In theory a nice idea. However I find the autogenerated to be of little use. If I'm Arcean, they usually have too much defense. With their super ability you want enough raw damage to kill anything with the first strike.
With other races the generated ships usually have too few defense. High enough defense and you'll never take damage.
Note that this is assuming you have more or less tech superiority, which a skillful player should be able to get up to Painful (my limit ^^)

- Beefed up AI players. Now slightly less drooling.
Joke aside, the AI has been improved a lot. Unfortunately still no match for a good player.

- Immense, all-abundant, slow-techrate, conquest victory only maps. Truly epic. Don't start one unless you have _alot_ of spare time. Will take the better part of a week to finish these.

OH also another thing. You can now manually destroy 'non-destructible' items. So when those blasted Torians place their farm on a farm tile, you'll be able to raise that bugger.

Not all are like this though...

Updated the guide again.

Thanks for the suggestions provided thus far. Its proved helpful thus far to updating my guide.

It is a tech that is only available in their tech tree. AKA snag it since you can't research it lol.

I disagree that the Yor are pitiful with a weak economy. They have several racial bonuses like miniaturization, fleet logistics and loyalty and coupled with their super isolationist makes them able to build powerful fleets to defend their empire. The best way to use them in my opinion is to spread your industrial and research buildings around because in order to get a good economy out of this, you need to pump more Yors on your 10+ quality playets to 16B to 20B with the stalks. You should fill up your worlds ASAP with the recruiting center, that pink level 3 economic building and a few research/industry and a starport. Gradually change your production slider that you don't spend more than 10% of your treasury and pretty soon, money will start to roll in while you're pumping out cheap but powerful defence warships equipped with scatter guns or seeker missiles.

Toss in 'no farms' into that pile as well. My only advice with Thalan and invading is to stockpile troop ships whenever you can afford to. As you said, they don't have the rebound factor, mass numbers nor strong soldiering ability that others have so they will have to make up for it in pre-emptive stockpiling and just go for mass numbers on invading.

As for defensive ground fighting, I forget if they can get their mandibles on the planetary defense improvement...if so, it may also be a need-be for them. With all the time I've spent with them, I never took notice to that since I rarely use that improvement so I tend to look right over it.

Well, the Thalans are meant to be very low in people. I guess the other way (besides stunting growth rate) to show this would be lacking soldiering bonuses...making each Thalan troop less skilled as another races...so in effect making their troop numbers 'lower'.

There is always the utterly slow/costly option to just blow up enemy systems...~cough~. No need for troops then.
--------

-Lieutenant: Sir, we shouldn't invade that planet without a 5:1 ratio of troops since our skill sux
-Captain: Fine fine, devise something to just blow up that star so we don't need troops to deal a blow to our enemies
-L: But Sir, we have an idea on what to use...but it only has freighter engines, takes forever to initially power up and a kid with a slingshot can blow it up
-C: If you don't like my answer, over there is a jumpsuit and a laser rifle
-L: ~picks up the phone~ Start construction of the terror star fleet
-C: pwned.

Heck, if you place the matrix on Thala, you'll be having morale issues soon after breaching 20bil anywho, so it's a prime candidate for troop ships

Good point. Thalans have bad soldiering.

Lets see here. Stock pile a reserve of troop transports (as mentioned above). Tech trade for soldiering techs (not always possible, either tech trading is off, or the AI fears you too much).

Ah ha! Pay 2 opponents to fight each. They will send troops to try to destroy each. They will lose troops in invasion attempts, in defense of their worlds, and untold numbers in ship battles. Once one looks weak, you strike.

While the 2 are fighting, tech up in weapons and defense. They might reduce research spendings to fend each other off. As you make ships obsolete, donate your old ones to the war (or sell them) so that one side become weaker.

Try to focus your aggression against the one with the smallest population. By striking against the one we fewer numbers, you reduce the need for good soldiering and numbers.