Balance and Logic Issues for TA.

1) Agree to a point; The Kourath are supposed to be similar to the Drengin, as they are all but the same race. They don't feel like they are too similar, except that the Drengin feel in part like a watered down version of the Kourath.

2) Very much agree, especially when you compare it to the Iconian's morale building.

3) Yeah... the Iconians feel overpowered early game to me. Sure, they have the highest maintenance costs of any race by far, but if you get a world with two +100 research tiles and drop both Precursor labs on it, there is no way anyone will ever be able to compete with your research until a while later in the game, by which time you will be so far ahead it won't matter, or you will have already effectively won.

6) Also agree to a point. The Drengin do have some advantages over the Kourath, but not many.

I don't think I agree about the Iconians. Their relative economic weakness is considerable. Heck, even with their MONSTROUS economic techs, they still struggle to maintain their expensive buildings and ships. Lets also not forget that if an Iconian player tries to get into an arms race with a Drengin or Korath player, they WILL lose, since they just can't create powerful enough ships. This is especially true in the mass driver line of technologies.

I agree with starstriker on that one. Ok the precursor labs are great but it's a sturlge to pay the upkeep at the begining of the game. For the temple of memory vs the iconian dream conclave they can't be compared: the dream conclave has 5 upkeep and the temple of memories 0. Of course the inconians have great buildings but they have no other moral building than the conclave (that costs 5 to upkeep) and near to no decent industry before the building that taps into the planet core (interstellar refiniery i think) and that also costs 5 or 6, their industry is also the less efficient of the game in terms of upkeep comparded to production and they are really bad at it. It's true on the other hand if you find the cash to run your precursor archives and libraries at 100% you basically end up making much more reseach but then again finding the cash can be a tough job with the upkeep.

Also to make ships that compete with Korath ships each advanced weaopn tech gives damage bonus to all weapos s it is worth rearching them all in late midgame and don't try to win the arms race win the HP race  

For point 6) (drengi look like washed down korath i basically agree on that one)

I disagree entirely. One thing the Iconians have is those hp boosting things for their small ships. Mass Drivers are the best choice since they're cheapest I think, and it's not like the Drengin and Drengin mk.B's have great research capabilities (The Iconians and Terrans seem to be the best researchers so far)

My times with the Iconians I get a monstrous tech lead early, which I try to leverage into wars. One weakness the Iconians seem to have is soldiering though. So you do kinda have to mass produce transports and use invasion tactics. I try not to give the Drengin time to catch up. The Iconians should rush. Since the Iconians lack governmental techs, a low morale doesn't even hurt them too much, so bumping up taxes isn't a bad idea.

Also the Iconians can effectively with an early mid-game tech, put a free economic capital on their planets. The biggest weakness the Iconians have to me is a lack of ability to specialize. Iconian strat seems to be determined by bonus tiles more then anything else.

Second source of suggestion: Super Abilities.

I think the super abilities need to be looked at and rebalanced as well.

Terrans: Super Diplomat. I think this should be changed slightly. Perhaps give it the ability to get extra benefit from treaties instead of just a +Dipl Bonus. The ability seems kinda dry to me.

Drengin: I think the ability is fine.

Torian: I think the morale requirement needs to be lowered to 90% from 100%. Otherwise it's fine. Might be fine as is- unsure. If the Temple of Memories became a +40% 4 bc maintenance building, that would also fix the problem (double the cost, slightly more then double the bonus)

Korath: Fine.

Iconian: Super Adapter. I'd change it to allow them to colonize any planet at 1% efficiency, though they have to learn the specific technology to get full benefits. Remove Extreme Colonization from their tech tree and allow them to research colonization techs off of Xeno Biology.

Yor: Perhaps change their ability from a linear change to a percent change. Ships move half speed in Yor influenced space, or ships lose racial speed modifiers, so ships would need engines to move.

Ug. I used to love the Dregin before DA. Now I don't even play them because this ability is so lame. Outside of a small map what good are the free ships? Unless you're immeadiately going to war they are just kindling.

Super abilities need looking at, but I don't agree with your suggestions.

The Super Diplomat and Super Breeder abilities do NOT need to be made more powerful in any fashion, as they are already ridiculously good at what they do. Super Diplomat gives a huge incentive to tech trade, keeps you out of wars, and generally keeps you from needing to fire a weapon until you're ready to. Super Breeder lets you build you
economy at a ridiculous pace, making it the most economically useful super ability. The Yor are also fine, though they get the biggest advantage when their enemies are fast. I've been saved from spore ships with 8 speed by that ability.

The Drengin super ability drastically needs an overhaul. At the time of the game that that kind of ship makes any kind of functional difference in a war, you don't get enough of them. At the time of game where you get enough of them, they're these piddly three attack ships with no additional health, defenses, or speed. The best purpose THEY serve is as meat shields. A better solution would be to have the game design a new super dominator ship each time based off your current tech level, with a correspondingly lower number of warships. This would make the new ships useful, and get rid of the huge swarms of fleets that are a pain to manage and render.

The Iconian ability... on one hand, it's nice to have toxic colonization, since it allows a counter to Korath spore tactics. On the other hand, 50% colonization of toxic and aquatic planets hardly stacks up with the other race abilities! The Yor get HALF of that as a bonus to their ability, and the Korath are allowed to FULLY colonize toxic planets! The Iconian ability would need to be something like 50% to all planet types in order to really stack up, or thereabouts.

So? Their Hot Springs give +50% morale with no maintaince.

That's kinda another point, actually - what's the point of Temples of Memories (which are one per planet) when the basic Torian morale-boosting building is far superior and not one per planet?

Definitely agree about the Drengin super ability being weak... And the Iconian, for that matter.

Maybe the Temple of Memories are just a stepping stone to the far superior Torian morale buildings?

In case no one has realized it yet, I see no problem with Temple of Memories. Once you get better morale buildings, why should you care about it any further? If its useless, don't build them, and if you have something better, replace them. Its that simple.

The Temples are not stepping stones.

I also dislike the concept of useless buildings. The first level Torian morale building- the healing pool, gives the same bonus without the maintenance, and is a very early game tech.

I thought the Super Dominator ability had to do with extorting other races of their money etc? Didn't know it had anything to do with extra ships (although the Super Dominator corvette type seems to support that assertion.)

SD corvettes are utterly useless, I decommission them immediately for money... meat shielding provides enemy sips with more XP.

The Race poll putting the Drengin in last should be a clear sign to Stardock that they need to improve the Drengin.

It's a shame that the iconic Gal Civ Race is curently so awful. Poor industry/research dreadful special ability and the Korath who have many better things going for them means that there's very litte point in playing the Drengin.

I think there are some GREAT suggestions/discussion on this board. I hope some of the developers are reading this.




I agree with much of what astral has said but I think Starstriker1 is very correct here. I generally like to play on high difficulty levels such as obscene or suicidal. So far, the only races I can survive with are the Torians and the Terrans. The Torians massive economy allows you to survive the early game colony rush (by essentially being able to fund it), allows for espionage to steal techs (which on occasion enemy races seem to have without researching prerequisites), and to buy huge class ships to instantly fix defense emergencies. As the for the Terrans, the super diplomat ability with all the races on the map (including 8 minors) promotes just enough tech swapping and convincing of other races to war with each other to survive and even prosper.

(Granted there are some obvious remarks to be made: if there few races you are playing with then super diplomat is a waste and if you're on a tiny map, the super breeder trait isn't so great on only one planet. In these situations, it would seem like the Iconians are quite effective.)

But yes, the Drengin are a poor choice (even though still powerful) in comparison to the Korath. Further, what I see in all these high level difficulties is that the Korath ALMOST ALWAYS dominate... It's actually quite entertaining to watch. (I recommend it. Put yourself on an immense map with the suicidal difficulty and watch them spread like wildfire). I think on these difficulties, their economy is doubled or tripled if I remember, so their upkeep problems for their production buildings are nonexistent. Anyways, they would be unstoppable if it weren't for their dumb tendency to being fooled into warring with every single race on the map at once (hehe).

As for the temple of memories, yes it is useless. I always go straight to healing pools without any hardship and just build these suckers on each planet as needed.

The super adapter doesn't make sense for the Iconians. Especially when the Yor can colonize Barren, Korath can colonize Toxic and essentially, the Torians can colonize Aquatic so early.

I noticed that no one commented on many of the more (nonsuper) traditional abilities
which seem useless or ineffective such as: range, espionage, sensors, trade/trade routes, courage. I could give many reasons for this but I've already written too much.

Espionage is its own problem.

Range can give you a short-term advantage

Sensors is useless I'll give you that

Trade can be very very useful

Courage can be useful for some races (Iconians especially)

How to fix the Korath

Simply put- I think they should have to rely on Replicators that are inferior to the Iconians, though they should get power plants as well to somewhat make up for it.

If you are incinerating your slaves, you shouldn't have slave pits, maybe have them upgrade to slave camps, which are a little higher production but higher maintenance.

Then you'd have to power up the Drengin slightly. Could be done via shipyards which could be upgrades to military production.

Just out curiosity.. how so? What does Courage do, exactly?

Ick, Courage... From what I understand, if an invasion goes on long enough that the two armies actually meet each other in the middle, Courage virtually guarantees you a victory. That's what I heard, anyway.

The problem is that most invasions aren't enough of a fair fight for that to happen; usually one side has a big enough advantage to end the battle before that. Also, I could be wrong because I don't remember exactly where I heard that.