TA is some big challenge regarding techs and I'am still trying to figure out which is the tech path with unique elements for each race and were some techs stop and can not be researched further.

F.ex. the Iconians are simply not able to get advanced troops and their soldiering ability stops quite early in the game. Sure, you will need to get these techs somehow by trading them later on (very expenssive... ). It makes the game interesting indeed.

What I would love to is a overview with all those specific techs. Is there something like a wiki document out there? Couldn't find yet...

Cheers

I was going to point out number 6 and 7 above as well.

Logicsequence, they're really not. I can absolutely cast iron guarantee that 2) is a mistake, because without Battle Stations Mark I the Thalan can't attain any other offensive starbase modules of any kind at all, which immediately renders many of their other upgrades (some of them UNIQUE to their tech tree) utterly useless. They still have Battle staions Mark II, II and IV in their tree! It can't possibly be intentional for them to lack Mark I.

As for 1), I suppose it is possible that the developes wished to intentionally cripple certain races' ability to exploit galactic resources, but I can't imagine why, nor see how they are compensated for it.

All the other I could be believe as being intentional with an explained rationale.



Try the Galactopedia: here

I've been using it to spot the gaps with.

I'd be interesting in seeing official word on this...because it seems possible, especially considering the length of beta and how something this obvious would have to have been found during beta.

Well, I have played custom races with most every tech tree, at least through the initial colony rush, and I find that tech trees significantly impact it. Note that I play on immense maps where there are generally quite a few planets up for grabs, and with a very slow tech rate. So the starting and early techs and planet improvements are very important.

The Torians always kick butt. They are the best expansion AI race in every game I've played, and the easiest tech tree to expand with. Super breeder is the best ability IMHO, and with the Torians you can get planets up to max very quickly by maintaining a tax rate of 32% (one of their initial techs gives +5% morale, using other races on super breeder means a slightly lower tax rate for the same growth) and building the cheap temple of memories and a healing pool. Thanks to the harvester being initially available, you can get starting colonies up to 10-12 billion in pop (or more, depending on morale and farming enhancing resources on planets) in about 20 turns. That's a good tax base fast, especially considering that the Torians are one of the two races who can build market centres initially. I've never had to reduce spending below 100% using this tech tree. One game I never had to raise taxes beyond 32% to stay at 100% production.

Not only that, but their mine, while one per planet, gives 12mp for a 3bc upkeep, is insanely cheap to build and can be bought for a measly 204bc. You can afford one on every planet. IRC, you'd need three traditional factories to get 12mp, with a 9bc total upkeep, and they each take longer to build than one mine. You can't afford that on every planet. Plus the mine takes the fullest advantage of manafacturing bonus tiles. There's no hurry to research xeno factories, or to build them on any worlds save your industrial powerhouses. Schools are also a good deal, giving 4rp for a 1bc upkeep. In addition, since I play with the +20% PQ ability, their +5% PQ tech early on makes a big difference as it gives a number of planets one extra tile, but especially in taking those class 9 planets to class 11 and giving them the high PQ morale boost.

The Terran AI always seem to do second-best. Since their tech-tree is pretty standard, my guess is that the lowly marketplace makes a big difference compared to those with no econ improvement in terms of keeping the money coming in.

The other races tend not to distinguish themselves much in the rush, save the Altarians, who seem to consistently be the absolute worst race by far at expanding, for reasons I can't quite grasp. The Krynn are interesting, and have some interesting unique buildings like the consulate, however their upkeep tends to be high at 5bc.

The Thalans are also somewhat unique, given the amount of research they have to do to build improvements at all, except for a morale one which comes early. However, if they can build one of their initial mega-structures on bonus tiles, especially manufacturing, things are looking up. It's also interesting to play as it provides a really different game-play experience. Using super breeder, you have a lot of planets with only a starport and the morale improvement quickly getting to an 8 billion pop, good income and low maintenance. They are also slowly but surely producing colony ships for you.

The Yor are another interesting race, who seem to come consistently second-last in the colony rush despite an interesting tech tree that I would think would help. Their collective is more productive than a factory and very efficient, 5mp for 1bc, and the enhanced (advanced?) collective at 7mp and 2bc a worthwhile upgrade. They are also very low maintenance in other improvements, with their research matrix giving 12rp for 3bc maintenance, and their maintenance grid giving +20% morale for no upkeep, although both of these are one per planet only. I also like that their pop increase improvement, stalks, increases morale as well.

The Yor are seriously gimped from the mid-game on, however. Their strength, cost effective-industry, disappears as the further collectives have much higher maintenance for 2 additional mp. I personally don't see them as worthwhile upgrades at all and don't research them; as a matter of fact overall I think they actually hurt you. The only economy improvement they can research is the efficiency centre, a one per planet deal that is not in the early tech tree. The bonuses from efficiency studies just don't cut it. Their inability to research other government types, which provide econ bonuses, also hurts. IIRC, there are also no additional morale improving techs or improvements in their tech tree. So you better hope you can trade for advanced market centres and entertainment centres real soon, although from a role-playing perspective these (especially the latter) seem kind of silly for a cybernetic species. You also have to trade for mining module techs, as noted above. The lack of diplomatic research options, however, makes tech trading a more expensive undertaking than need be.

Issue #1 is by far the worse as the inability to upgrade your resource mining starbases above 9% is game altering. This probably matters more too human players then the AI as the AI does not seem aggressive in acquiring and upgrading resource starbases.

Playing as the Yor I've also noticed I don't have access to the Manufacturing or Tech Capital. The Manufacturing Capital is linked to Xeno Industrial Theory which this thread's OP stated is not available to the Iconians, Korath, Thalan, and Yor. The Tech Capital is linked to Advanced Computing.

In addition to the Efficiency Centre, the Yor, may research and place on each planet a Recruitment Centre which provides a 10% economic bonus and a 20% population bonus. If issue #1 were fixed and the Yor's advanced manufacturing and research planetary improvements made cheaper then they were be competitive mid-game.

I'm also wondering to what extent some of the races lacking certain trade goods and Galactic Achievements is intentional and how much is just an oversight.... real hard to be sure on that one.

In any case it's clear that balancing work remains to be done, but I'd like to see the really obvious errors as above corrected first .

It seems there aren't a lot of official comments being posted lately.... I hope we hear from the devs.

My games are getting more frustrating than fun. The tech trees/game initially seemed like an amazing improvement and game - but if they are so seriously broken it takes away the level-playing field you need to enjoy an immense game.

Haven't seen any responses in the debugthread either. Hopefully they'll give some much needed answeres to the techtree questions that are unanswered!

I thought to only upgrading to 19% wasn't a flaw however as the races would be less "starbase minded"

Another point is the when you choose neutral or evil with the altarians they don't get any intresting stuff only when they pick good.

About the Yor midgame, MCC is the answer

another disturbing/disappointing thing is that certain race specific tech trees gain no extra bonuses from certain ethic choices...like the Altarians as neutral only get neutral shipping and learning centers, but if you choose good they get a half dozen extra defensive techs as well as some fleet defense and attack modules.

also, what's with the 10 point techs that don't unlock anything? Like the race history techs and such.

I know. The game is quite good otherwise. It's small gripes overall. I know the Altarians are a "good" race, I should have expected as much.

The Altarians have Drathian temples because they use to be Drathians. They changed to a different race from being visited by Draginol. This is explained when you research their tech tree in the text boxes. So it actually makes sense. I would like if healing pools were removed and if temples had 0 maintenence. Then rather than better structures you would just put down 2-3 temples.

I play with Yor and do pretty well (usually play painful with them). They are good at colony rush due to cheap production, growth from tech, econ from tech. After colony rush, grab barren worlds, then invade. You need to dominate from number of colonies before the other races start to build up and tech. Their basic structures are great, so large amount of colonies is key.

The main Yor issue I found was that terror drones I seems to take way too much tech points. Terror drones II and III takes less. It seems backwards. I don't really think the lack of starbase industry bonuses is that big of a deal. Other evil races will usualy trade them, and you can steal from invading. I would actually like if Yor had a tech that allowed them to use any type of captured factory. You couldn't build them, but you make use of them. It sucks to invade when you don't have the techs and lose the factories, I don't care about the other structures, early on the Yor version is better anyhow.

From my med-large games, I do best with Torians (where they actually seem broken good), I do very good with Yor (they work well for how I play them), and I do pretty good with Altarians (I think they are pretty average). Tried Thalans and Iconians, but didn't completely get how to play them well.