Altarian First Impressions

Speed Kills

Alright, having finished now my third game with the TA Altarians I thought I would give a little feedback and report some of the oddities I found:

- Stellar Cartography NOT in starting tech? Thought it was only the primitive humans that grew up in the dark. Bug or by design?

- Enhanced Defenses - says TODO under the description, and for the life of me I didn't see that this tech did anything if researched. I assume this is just under construction with more to come.

- A history of benevolence - wow, this is one of the best tech descriptions in the whole game and sure is hard to find. This tech starts out researched and you have to kind of hunt around in the tech tree to find it anyway, but unlike, say the short Korath "A history of ruthlessness", the Altarians "benevolence" starting tech says plenty. Supposed to be a bit of an easter egg?

- And, why adhere to the history of benevolance for however many years when you can research Dark Energy Research? Fun for the Drath, it feels more vital for the Altarians with their starting stats. Probably my favorite tech/building to finally get on a planet with this race.

- Go Mysticism! Who knew mystics were always so mean?

- Shrine of Mithrilar still rules but...

- Are the Altarians really so unhappy? Stoic? I only found a total +20% morale in their whole tech tree, and the best morale building I found (outside of the one-shot Mithrilar puppy) was healing pools at a paltry +18%. They used to have a BASE +20% morale as a race and were one of the easiest populations to keep happy. Suddenly they are sad...

- Are all starbase mobilization/projection benefits supposed to be AFTER starbase fort III in the tech trees?

- Ability Tab when buying +2 speed ability for 8 points incorrectly shows speed as +12 (should be +3 if consistent with other races) while the overview tab correctly shows this as +30% speed.

- several techs that work still have TODO in the description. By design.

- Social Matrix, this one confused me. The +25% social bonus APPEARED to apply to both the civilization level AND to the planet level, while the econ bonus applied only to the planet level. Is this working as intended?

- This (above) was hard to test as well because total social production bonus value does not display on the planetary summary screen. If you click on the Summary tab, at the bottom where you get "Planetary Improvement Totals", Social bonus appears as "Social Production Bon..." with no value displayed and no value on mouse over either. All the other bonuses have shorter names and correctly display. This may be a long time issue that I never noticed before. In any case, would be nice if I could see the total social production bonus total that applies to a planet.

- I have never wanted gravity accelerators more with a race! Vroom Vroom.

- Really? No additional buildings for going evil? Doesn't that hurt the Super Organizer ability more than a tad? I assume this is by design... still (humph).

- While I really miss losing the +20% morale and +30% econ bonuses, that speed boost instead is so nice. Apparently going really fast makes you more stern as a race. Coupled with the fact that they forgot how to entertain themselves and the Altarians are a bit of a different animal than before.

But lets face it, speed kills. I LOVE love love the new Altarians. The extra speed boost allows me to save space on my ships giving me more space for weapons. Added to the mysticism benefits and suddenly I have good attack craft with all of the tactical flexibility I love. Colony rushes rule! Early survey ships rule! Tiny planetary defenders with no engines and just guns can still have 9! movement (requires trade goods). Freighters can be built cheaper and just loaded up with range modules. It goes on and on and on.

While strangely the Altarian race has gotten kind of depressed in the future, I have never been happier playing them. Speed + research = death and doom for the rest of the galaxy. I mean, I had my 25 move troop transports back. That is just so sexy.

Yeah, I said it, sexy!
~ Wyndstar

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I get the sense with the Altarians that they are due a good tech tree tweak. For example they use Drath Templates. Other bits like those you mention makes it look like the Devs got 90% there then decided to release them so we could play them but still intend to finish up later. Would be very interesting if a Dev could comment.

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I like the Altarians in TA. They were my favorite in DA and I was prepared to be dissapointed, but I like the direction that Stardock picked for them. I think that the developers seemed to want to push us into playing them as good so the good portion of their tech tree is now worth missing all those evil planet bonuses. The military and social boosting techs seem to balance the high maintenance costs for factories and research is still an Altarian strong point, so you can take Technologists and go all lab with very little trouble. As for the happiness issues and the economic crunch, the Shrine of Mithrilar is huge for Altaria. You need an economic capitol and one building early and can crank your tax rate up to obscene levels. Add in the Shrine of Tandis and your Political Capitol and you can support two very large populations with ease while keeping the other planets happy with the odd healing pool for 1 maintenance. And the -20 to weapons is barely noticeable when you can race up the beam weapon line to disruptors before the Drengin are out of the Harpoon line of missiles.

And I agree with Wyndstar 100%, Speed + Research is just too awesome.

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Maybe I missed it, but I went Good with the Altarians and I didn't see any way to build the Hall of Empathy. That was one of my favourite builds -- bribe everyone into war and then maybe get a few dozen free planets from surrenders.

In my current game everyone was surrendering to the Korath regardless of alignment, which made little sense.

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Yes, I had exactly this problem with the Hall of Empathy. I'm pretty sure the Torians built one later on, and all but one surrender was to them (the Iconians surrendered to the Yor).

It looks like the Altarians don't get the Good and Evil -> etc techs, and while their additional techs for choosing good (not evil or neutral) are nice, they don't completely make up for not having stuff like the Hall of Empathy.

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- Are the Altarians really so unhappy? Stoic? I only found a total +20% morale in their whole tech tree, and the best morale building I found (outside of the one-shot Mithrilar puppy) was healing pools at a paltry +18%. They used to have a BASE +20% morale as a race and were one of the easiest populations to keep happy. Suddenly they are sad...

Actually, their strongest morale building would be the Counter Espionage Center (it gives +20%). You can only have one per planet, and it takes a while, but the maintenance is low (1 bc).

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

I am not the player that some of you are and I have only won a couple of games above the challenging level. I probably wouldn't last a half hour on obscene.

I do enjoy the game reviews and I tried playing with the Wyndstar settings except pacifist politics it was a head to head with the Arceans on a tiny map. With the speed bonus I had no problem grabbing most of the planets and I was surprised that I have had no economy problems. I have been accustomed to playing with economy ability bonus and this game has made me wonder if the econ ability is even working.

A little over a year into the game it seems that I can choose my path to victory. Military or influence are nearly certain. I realize that the Arceans are probably the luckiest random opponent I could have gotten and head to head on bright is not that hard but still the economy thing surprised me. I am going to do some testing to see if the economy ability is working as it should

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