Arcean Slowpokes

I haven't finished a game yet with the Arceans, but what I've seen of them I do understand what their advantage is suppose to be. They get the space cannons which give a 50% planetary defense bonus plus a small morale bonus. Then they get the Cathedrals of Valor which I think still needs to be fixed, but in theory should give you another 33% planetary defense bonus but right now only gives a 2% soldiering bonus which isn't worth it. Then you have the Stellar Forge and the special ability which is useful in space combat.

So I believe the idea is that the Arceans are suppose to be the ultimate turtles. A strong military that is hard to use to invade with because of speed issues, but are also able to withstand all but the most determined attacks against them with their abilities.

The problem than becomes how do you win by turtling? Well I'm hoping that they'll have some luck when the new victory condition is put in and they can win by successfully defending a resource. In the meantime they're best bet is probably to go for some diplomatic victory and just realize that any game you play with the Arceans is going to go pretty slowly unless you get lucky and get a hold of an engine tech somehow. If they can keep pace with their opponents technologically they could also try for a tech victory.

There is also the trick I used with my Korath to win a cultural victory on an immense map without having to go to war with any major race. Simply wait for someone else to be conquered and buy out their empire with spaceships. This should work just as well with the Arceans and you need neither special diplomatic powers nor tech trading on to expand your empire this way.

Still, the Arceans aren't the most exciting race to play, but I can see it fitting someones playstyle. I'm glad they got the Stellar Forge fixed, though they still need to fix the cathedral of valor.
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They need +40% HP unique ability. Slow speed can work if they're shown as careful, deliberate and unstoppable.
Imagine two spiders. One is a big-ass tarantula, the other a much smaller taranta. Both can kill you. The tarantula is slow as hell, the taranta is not. Which one scares you more?
BTW, i'm arachnophobic. Writing that up gave me goosebumps and cold sweat.

Terror Stars?

If they're good turtlers with slow-moving fleets, then a final victory involving unstoppable fleets with Terror Stars might be an option, if you didn't want to wait for an Alliance, Influence, or Tech victory.

I find that the Arceans can get some pretty substantial speed going if they can get their hands on impulse drive or warp drive. They get a lot of +1 speed bonuses which can add up pretty quickly. Granted, with their negative speed ability, that becomes a lot less helpful. However, the Arceans excell at making engine-less ships move at a respectable pace, meaning that there's more room for guns. They seem like a fairly solid race in that regard... a slow but extremely deadly military machine.

As for the cathedral of valour... what do you mean that a 2% soldiering bonus isn't worth it!?! Most of the invasion techs only give you 10% or 20%, so if you have five worlds with these structures, your invasion abilities get a notable increase. In a large empire, you could become practically unbeatable on the ground. I mean, what does the Tir-Quan structure give you... 20-25%? 10 planets with the structure will equate to it.

I just finished a game as the Arceans...medium galaxy, common planets/stars/etc, masochistic.

At one point I got caught unprepared for war with small low-tech ships. Within a month the Thalans had uncontested space superiority, and they started invading my empire with transports. My space cannons and soldering techs kept them from capturing a single world long enough for me to turn out some ships with my latest techs.

My medium ships (stellar forge, extra racial HP picks, extra armor, materials tech) each had something like 115-120 HP coming out of the dock on my homeworld. Never lost a single one. And once I captured Warp II from an enemy planet (no tech trading), the Thalans might as well have surrendered right there.

In my last Arcaean game I had a bunch of small, poorly located planets with nothing but Cathedrals on them. They could just sit there, generating a bit of tax income and research . . . and making my soldiers cut through the opposition with contemptuous ease.

I haven't played Arceans yet, but they do sound like the ultimate turtlers. Which sounds like a great survivalist trait, at least until terror stars and spore ships come knocking on your door... I think I'll make my next game Arceans and try them out.

8 of these 'Cathedrals of Valor' could beat a Tir-Quan Training center. 8x2 = 16. TQ = 15.

But the Arceans would still not be the toughest, most resilient race against conventional(non-Spore) militaries. They can still be blown by fast spore ships, Terror Stars(if they get through), or influence starbases. The most resilient would be the Yor, with their Super Isolationist, big soldiering bonuses, and 100% loyalty(which holds off Influence SBs for a while longer than usual). But the Yor economy, I hear, is broken.

Tir-Quan is actually 25% soldiering bonus. Ok, I grant you that the cumulative bonus of Cathedrals could be worthwhile with lots of planets if you have the tiles to spare. However, the improvement is still broken. If you read the description it's suppose to give a 33% planetary defense bonus, which it currently doesn't at all give you. The Arceans would be alot tougher if the Cathedral did what it said it suppose to do.

I should also point out that the Yor are only ordinary soldiers once the races start researching soldiering techs. The lack of planetary defense techs means that they actually gain no bonuses in the long run for soldiering. Hopefully they'll implement the Yor invasion tactic that was hinted at in a preview. In the meantime, the best soldiering races are the Drath and Drengin.

Aside from the Cathedrals getting fixed, one thing I'd love to see the Arceans get is a late game galactic achievement or ship module, something like a navigational astrochart or network that gives a +1 speed boost, but have it only work in Arcean territory. What a better way to show the nature of the Arceans than have them slow down the second they leave their own territory?

Edit: I looked at the Arceans tech again and now I have a better idea of how the Cathedrals are suppose to work. The Cathedrals aren't a one-per-planet improvemnet as I initially thought. That means you can go dedicate a class 12 planet (after upgrades of course) somewhere in the back of your empire and get the same effect as a TQ training center. I can also see how the potential for abuse if the planetary defense was added to the Cathedral of Valor without also making it one-per-planet. You could essentially make a planet impregnable just by adding enough planetary defense bonuses and the computer would be stupid enough to continue to throw troops at a planet it could never conquer. No need to even fortify the planet with ships either, just use it as transport ship bait.

I can't speak for difficulties above Painful, but I'm not having any trouble with the Yor economy. The Efficiency techs are cheap enough to max out early, and with the charging stalks and the various population growth techs the Yor have you can easily build up a large population and tax base. Acquire any of the standard economic buildings and money becomes a total non-issue.

I'm doing much better in my current Arcean game. Oddly enough, my current war against the Yor is again illustrating the importance of speed. Normally fighting the Yor you are pretty much at their mercy, but the Yor AI (set to genius) for some reason deciding not to research any speed enhancing techs or put engines on its ships. So I'm poking around in Yor space at a speed of 3, but the Yor ships are absolutely crawling at speed 2. So I can get my first strikes in and decimate them. In the land of the blind...



I haven't had much trouble with the Yor economy either. You can get each planet up to 12 billion with good morale. With the efficiency studies and the efficiency building, that provides a good base. Add in MCC add you'll be rolling in cash.

The Yor economy is a little weak compared to everyone else but not totally unmanigable. As for the Arceans I just one a conquest victory with them. They are without a doubt potentially the best soldiers without tech trading because of C of V build as many as you like +2% bonus for each one of course fixing the +33% planet defense would make them even more powerful. My ships are also tough but slow.

So basicly they are ok at conquest very hard to invade if played well but fairly slow and easy to out flank. I think it all balances pretty well.

The Drath have better speed and power in space though as of course to the drengin.

+33% planet defense, +2 Soldiering would probably be a nice once-per-planet building...

As for the Arcean speed, I'm kinda on the fence about the issue. On hand... I would like to think of their Navigational instead of better Propulsion as being a different method of speed instead of overall worse. On the other hand... the space saved by not using engines is a good bit, and with tech trading enabled, it can be fairly easy to get engines anyway, so all those passive bonuses can make for some really fast ships.

Either way, I really think Arceans shouldn't have the -1 speed penalty. I get why it's there, but they are already at a heavy disadvantage in speed. Throwing New Propulsion Techniques (for HyperDrive Plus, not much better than HyperDrive, but *shrugs) and/or Ion Drive into their tech tree couldn't hurt much either.