Arceans Need Some Help

I would give you a really good reply but stopped reading your post cos my eyes are bleeding due to lack of paragraphs.

Try posting it again with paragraphs please.

I had played a couple of Arcean games in TA beta and they didn't seem that bad. Other than the fact that the speed penalty kinda negates their special ability, they seemed fine to me.

I concur with Mac, the Arceans are my favorite race and they are really struggling under Beta 4C.. They could hold their ground on small maps with rare everything, when you basically only get two worlds but once you get up to a size where you actually have a colony rush they're in trouble.

They don't need anything anywhere near as badly as the Thalans do (although the Thalans impromptu Embassy Warfare Tactic works well on small maps - by chance), but they definitely need something a little bit more competitive so when the AI is playing them they are actually effective, like their meant to be.

I semi-enjoy playing them as they are now, because they are incredibly hard to win with at the higher levels, but still just manageable if you are able to bide your time long enough. It's a real challenge though and you might win one in two or three times. It really depends on which way the early wars between the powerful civ's go at the moment.

Really? That's not my experience at all... they seem ridiculously overpowered to me.

I played on immense... I just 'pwned'.

Perhaps it just fits my play style. I am not a fighter... I am a turtler. I had a ridiculously overpowered turtled empire.

Cant forget the fact that the Arceans have better worlds than everybody else. Weather centers combined with Neutral alignment = some pretty nice worlds which can then be piled with economic buildings. My first priority as the Arceans when i play them is get them a market building, and then those are my first priority when improving my new planets. True, i may have some economic troubles, but i do get out of the crash fairly well.

Although there was this one game where I tanked bad as the Arceans, but that was more because I was trying to keep morale at 100% and had the tax rate ridiculously low (my first time trying to raise the population like this and I am rather noobish) to the point where I was an economic goner whatever i did.

I think more than most other races the Arceans benefit from cntrl-N until you get a precursor mine, due to their dependence on the stellar forge for early military parity. The -10 speed hurts badly, for sure. I'm currently playing as the Arceans in a medium abundant all Suicidal with the latest beta, and I'm doing all right (16 planets, third out of 9 major races), having conquered 10 Thalan planets, but realistically to achieve this I've relied heavily on the Thalans' early lack of military or industrial technology to blitz them quickly using ships built on my cntrl-n buffed homeworld. Their tech has caught up and my initial attack fleet has been destroyed, so I've got to regroup and it's far from a rout. Overall I think the Arceans are ok. If you wanted to boost them, I would suggest perhaps removing the -10 speed or adding a weapons bonus (either to starting statistics or early in the tech tree). Both of these changes emphasize the Super Warrior ability, and maintain the military-tactical nature of play that seems to work best for the Arceans.

My experience has been that the "turtling" strategy on upper difficulty levels will end in defeat unless you have more than a handfull of planets, which you can rarely get with the Arceans and avoid a fatal economic crash. I've also often seen a series of surrenders by the AI that eventually results in a single or just a few "super empires" that will just declare war on you and overrun you through sheer weight of numbers and higher technology-power house researchers the ARceans are not. Moreover, I have also frequently seen coalitions form that result in a last stand against virtually every empire on the map. Now, that being said, you may get lucky once in awhile and have one of those surrenders go your way, but strategies typically are not built on luck.

As for the contention that the weather control zenith offsets their disadvantages, I respectfully disagree. For one thing, you have to make it to the Zenith without going into the economic death spiral, which I can usually do if I can get to Trade in time and have a good starting planet and maybe find a research bonus tile or two on an early planet. Again, that all depends on luck. The same thing goes for reaching the initial market buildings, which in my experience do not provide enough of a bonus to get one out of the red once there. In any event, I've found Trade a more effective way out of the debt spiral.

Further, the three squares the bonus provides only really help offset the Arcean's disadvantages; they don't provide a real advantage in and of themselves. That is, the weather control center provides three extra tiles. The Zenith itself takes one tile, the navigation center takes another and that leaves you with just one extra tile from the Zenith. One extra tile is unlikely to change the tide of the game when the AI (on upper difficulty levels) almost always has a tech lead over the Arceans, a larger military, and a far better economy.

The Arceans simply are not competitive in my opinion. Other races easily outproduce, out research and eventually just crush them. Their advantages are insufficient to stop that and their penalties just make that situation worse. I've seen it in every game I've played with them and I've seen nothing posted here that changes my mind about that. What I believe they need is just a slight tweak so they would be competitive and one or two of my suggestions above would provide that tweak. I'm trying a game right now with an enhanced stellar forge (modded in the tables) and it has really helped without unbalancing the game in favor of the player.

Theres more reason to believe that since the beta that introduced the speed changes. They now are no doubt extremely weak in the the colonisation phase so any map with a high planet setting they will no doubt struggle with.

Before the speed changes I felt they were one of the strongest races in general the AI has big problems tackling 1st strike ability. They were very strong colonisers you could get speed 4 colony ships relatively fast when most the AI's were using speed 2 ships.

Arcea tech is more expensive than the other races as well which is a drawback (I looked through the xml file).

The -10 start speed is kinda nice for race flavour reasons. I certainly wouldn't be against them being strengthened a little bit to make up for the -10speed penalty. Though other races are probably weaker than them presently.

I would have to argue that what most gamers consider the 'Economic death spiral' is not actually death.

My strategy is very non-military. I played the Iconians recently. For 3 and a half years game time I was below -10,000 bc. And then, I won. I had grabbed lots of worlds and my economy tanked, but my population slowly grew, and then in a matter of a year I had gone from negative twenty-seven thousand billion credits... to over a hundred thousand billion credits.

In the first place, this thread is about the Arceans, not the Iconians. That race has attributes and penalties the Arceans don't and I'm not sure that experiences with them are really applicable to the Arceans. My experience with the Arceans tells me that once one goes into debt sufficiently far, happiness starts to precipitously fall. That in turns shuts down population growth. I've even observed my population falling because of unhappiness. Without population growth, there is no way to grow out of the economic downturn short of happenstance events or a tech breakthrough. Unfortunately, because of the economy running in the red, tech is shut down too. Eventually, colonies will start rebelling and the empire implodes. That being said, as I've stated above, I've pretty well figured out how to get through the initial stages of the economy crash, but it does take some luck. Nonetheless, the Arceans then remain behind the other eaces with a small empire that will eventually be attacked-the diplomatic strategy is not that successful with the Arceans. I'm playing a game now where I had a nice starting position in an isolated corner and am beginning to make progress. Still, I've had more than one lucky break in this game so I don't think it really says a lot on the competitiveness of the race. Lenius, the comment on the cost of Arcean tech is interesting. It has always seemed to me that the ARceans research was slow, but I had never thought to just look and confirm that.

Many of the races can really struggle early, especially when you have to worry about a colony rush. The Stellar Forge is priceless mid to late game because of its boost to ship stats. Are the Arceans really any worse off than say the Korx or Iconians or Thalans early game?

The Arceans are turtle masters with the "few but powerful" concept down to a tee.

If anything the problem is a lack of early game money - but if you want that changed it should be changed for everyone.

The problem with focusing just on the Arceans because "that is what this thread is about" is that several races suffer from the exact same problem. To "fix" just the Arceans still leaves a problem and inbalance for other races.

~ Wyndstar

I agree that slow money is a problem early game for several races but that doesn't make other race's situations comparable. For example, the Iconians have access to very powerful (for early game) research modules that can get them to trade fairly quickly. That in turn can get them out of the red. The Arceans, on the other hand, do not have access to such technology The only way they can research their way out is with a little luck, like (a) an enhanced research tile on one of their few worlds; and/or (b) having their survey ship find a treasure horde or two that keeps them out of debt while they research.

Further, the Arceans problems extend beyond the financial crunch in early game-that problem compounds their disadvantages later on. Their research is very slow and having only a handful of worlds only compounds that. My experience with them tells me that the Stellar Forge is insufficient to turn the tide when their enemies tech is at least one or two generations ahead and they are outproducing them. For example, in a game I played recently the Drath only had a few worlds but still were fielding fleets of five frigates with photonic torpedos compared to my small ship fleets with mass drivers. The Drath swept the field-my ships couldn't even survive long enough to penetrate their armor and do some actual hull damage.

Another thing I've noticed in all of my games with the Arceans is that coalitions tend to form against them. This may or may not be unique but I almost never experienced it playing Terrans. In my experience, it is inevitable that all or nearly all of the other races will declare war against the Arceans. This shuts down trade, a primary source of income and often cripples their economy (again) at that point.

I am currently in a game where it actually looks like the Arceans might win, but it doesn't really change my mind because (a) they have a manufacturing bonus (precursor mine) on their homeworld and a research bonus tile (precursor library) on their secondary world. Further, there were several minor races in immediately neighboring systems that were easy targets for conquest. The Drath also surrendered to me (I believe the surrender mechanic needs tweaked as races seem to surrender to easly. The Drath surrendered merely because of our relative power despite the fact that I was in no position to actually invade their worlds. Not only was my military power still insufficient, they were out of range. The AI needs to take that into account before surrendering in my opinion.)

Most importantly, I modded the stellar forge to provide bigger bonuses. Their economy still crashed but it was not as severe and because of the precursor library and a few lucky finds of treasure with my survey ship I was able to research to trade and already have a fleet of freighters deployed when the crash into red came. Of course, a coalition formed (every race but the Thalan) against me and I've been at war for the entire game with not a single period of peace with any member of the coalition. Fun game. So anyway, I still think the Arceans need a tweak or two, as I originally suggested. Whether other races need such tweaks I will leave to others.

If you are heavily relient on trade (and are not playing as the Korx), that may explain your problems. Trade takes a long time to break even, and the traders themselves are terribly fragile in wartime now that the galactic privateer appears to be gone (replaced with a Korx unique wonder). The Mind Control Center will dwarf trade as an economic solution worth researching towards. Additionally, I believe invading minor races imposes a rather large diplomatic penalty, which would explain why you are having everyone ally against you. I'm not sure that this is really means that the Arceans are underpowered. It may mean that your play-style is better suited to the Korx, who actually can (relatively) safely rely on trade (+3 trade routes, starts with master trade, +50 trade, and a unique tech that gives +20 trade and the new version of galactic privateer).

I would imagine part of the coalition problem you are seeing as the Arceans but not as the Terrans has to do with diplomacy issues. In general, the Arceans are going to get the negative "militaristic" tag, while the Terrans will be seen in a more favorable light (Super Diplomat...). Throw on top of that the fact your economy sucks and you have a small military, the AI will target you as the next meal.

While I appreciate your efforts, you missed the whole point. The only reliable way for the Arceans to overcome the debt spiral (in my experience) at the beginning of the game is to get to the Trade tech. The reliance is by necessity not by strategic choice. Moreover, given the heightened maintenance costs and the Arceans lack of any native economic bonus (something not unique to them but I'm here to talk about them), trade can remain an important component of income well into mid game. In any event, I think the idea that trade takes a long time to break even is in fact an incorrect one. Trade is very profitable almost from the start.



Yes. However, the point is that the Arceans, despite their "militaristic tag," are most often unable to maintain a protracted war from a technological and economic standpoint, especially when it is against the almost inevitable coalition. Their economy is weak, their tech prices higher than others, and the Stellar Forge, the Arcean's crowning achievment, is insufficient to offset their weaknesses to any degree. In short this aspect of the Arcean problem is really a symptom of their problems rather than a problem in and of itself. I suspect that tweaking as I suggested above would go a long way towards correcting it by equipping the Arceans with tools with which they could at least remain competitive when this situation arises, as it does almost every game.

LordZarth's comment is not completely off base. If you can manage to do something economically with the Iconians, it is much easier to accomplish it with the Arceans. My experience with them in this version suggests that they are best played aggressively with an all factory strat on anything below a large map. But it may be a question of difficulty levels or map size, I tend to play on medium/large maps at crippling with the ai's forced to use the CPU, so if you are into suicidal games, I can't help you beyond pointing you at Hydro's AAR.

Have you tried all factories on Arcea? You can spam colony ships early while you push for trade and economics and eventually build over most things with economic buildings. With the Arceans, I would go for propulsion, planetary improvements- 1st econ and 1st morale techs, then the diplo techs to trade so you can build an economic capitol. After that you really don't need very many ship/weapon techs before you invest in the planetary invasion tech and start picking off the non-neutral and non-altarians surrounding you. Don't build on your colonized worlds until you have to. They are a massive money drain until their pop can grow, so I would avoid anything other than a starport early. The Stellar Forge and Super Warrior are really very good early so being aggressive can easily make them a top 5 race on mid sized or smaller maps.

Checkout HydroAC's AAR Here if you haven't already, he sets out many of they key Arcean advantages.


Edit- I just read your game settings in the beta topic you posted earlier. With larger maps and rare planets, you are not going to be able to colonize very much with the slow Arcean ships. I'd definitely try to just focus on Arcea and take your neighbors planets with transport and small hull spam.

Arceans are my favorite race, (with their 2 noodely appendages lol)
and I agree they have problems, but right now a lot of the races do.
I hope they can fix that early game economy slump every1 is talking about

[quote]If you are heavily relient on trade (and are not playing as the Korx), that may explain your problems. While I appreciate your efforts, you missed the whole point. The only reliable way for the Arceans to overcome the debt spiral (in my experience) at the beginning of the game is to get to the Trade tech. The reliance is by necessity not by strategic choice. Moreover, given the heightened maintenance costs and the Arceans lack of any native economic bonus (something not unique to them but I'm here to talk about them), trade can remain an important component of income well into mid game. In any event, I think the idea that trade takes a long time to break even is in fact an incorrect one. Trade is very profitable almost from the start. [quote]

I think you may have trouble with your over-all economic management. You say that reliance on trade is an economic necessity rather than a strategic choice. If you are finding this to be true, then you are probably either spending too much (too many production/research buildings, too large a military so the upkeep costs are too high, leases) or you have insufficient income (not enough economic buildings, no advanced government, no MCC, failure to take adequate econ, pop growth and morale bonuses in race set-up). You completely ignored what I had said about the Mind Control Center being a far more reliable solution to the Arceans' economic woes. This makes me think you may not be aware of what it is or what it does.

The Mind Control Center is a galactic wonder that adds a global +100% economic bonus. It is unlocked by the technology Concepts of Malice. This technology will show on your tech-screen after Good and Evil when you've researched Xeno Ethics and selected Evil. Xeno Ethics also allows you to build the trade good Harmony Crystals, which adds a global 20% morale bonus. If you have a reasonable population base, have taken +30 econ, +10 morale and either the Federalist or Universalist party on race set-up and haven't gone crazy with your spending, getting those two projects built should completely solve your economic problems as the Arceans. This isn't theoretical. I've done it on Suicidal in Beta 4C. Without a single Freighter. Despite what you may think, your focus on trade is in fact a stylistic preference, not a strategic necessity.

As to Trade breaking even early game, I'm not sure you've considered all of the costs. First, you have to spend to research the technology and you have to spend to build the Freighters. At 120 production a piece, that is 120 out of your treasury for each one. Then figure 3 upkeep/turn * 10 turns to get to a suitable planet. You've got 150 sunk in to each freighter (not counting the money you've put into research to achieve this). Your trade route is not likely to start at better than +6/turn, so it will take you roughly 25 turns to break even once you've established the trade route.

There is also the opportunity cost. By choosing to research trade and build Freighters, you have delayed researching Concepts of Evil and building the MCC and the Harmony Crystals. Figure 5 turns delay there. Next, raise your tax rate 10 points past where your first planet hits 40% morale. Then take 100% of your base income and multiply it times 5. That is what not having the MCC and Harmony Crystals was costing you for those 5 turns you were going for trade.

You said that the Stellar Forge is not sufficient to give you a needed military edge middlegame. If you are using psionic weapons and have built the Artificial Slave Center (another galactic wonder found in concepts of malice), you're going to get a global 50% bonus to all military production spending and a 25% bonus to the attack and hit-points of psionic weapon equiped attack ships on top of First Strike from the super warrior ability. One good industry planet with the Stellar Forge and the above mentioned technology and you're a military juggernaut.

Basically, it's not that the Arceans are terribly under-powered. It's that you have a diplomatic/trading play style, have become accustomed to an early empire development pattern that requires trade for economic viablility and the Arceans are a terrible fit for you. If that is how you play them, they are going to look horrible compared to the Korx, Humans, Drath or Krynn, who will do much better with that play style.

JustInsane4,


It is not my intent to insult you, but I don't think you've read my previous posts very closely. If you had, I believe you would realize you are mistaken in several respects. The whole point of this thread is that I believe the Arceans need a minor tweak or two to make them competitive. I've not stated they are "terribly underpowered." I base this not only on my own experience with them but also on my observations of the AI's experience with them. I've yet to see them flourish in any game I've played and I've owned this game for more than a little while and played more than just a few games.

First, I have a good understanding of the new economic model and its heightened maintenance costs for ships and buildings. I also have a good understanding of various strategies to deal with that, including holding off on development of planets and avoidance of overbuilding of ships. Trust me when I say that I employ both with the Arceans.

The consistency among all of the strategies I have tried is to avoid overdeveloping planets-even the home planet-early in the game. In short, I'm already employing that strategy and have been for some time. I usually just build a factory or two and, if there's a research bonus tile I'll build a research building on that. Nothing else. Doing less than that is disastrous with the Arcean speed penalties-one will never build a colony ship in sufficient time to colonize much of anything. If that is counted as a plus for avoiding the early economic crash, i.e., over colonizing, it is ultimately fatal. As I've stated, the Arceans have slow research because of higher than normal research costs and tend to have coalitions form against them or simply have the rest of the galaxy declare war. Limiting oneself to a couple of planets (assuming there is more than two available), while helping with early economics, is disastrous once contact is made with other races . They are almost inevitably far more technologically advanced, with a superior economy and superior fleet and openly hostile. Those empires will easily crush the Arceans just as they do when it is an AI.

Just as one example, in one game I played in an immense galaxy and with similar conditions to those described, by the time I made contact with the Drath they were building five ship fleets of photonic torpedo equipped frigates while I was still building small mass driver equipped corvettes. Despite the Stellar Forge, my ships were swept aside with no problem-I don't think they even penetrated the Duranthium armor the Drath frigates were using. In any event, "over colonizing" has not been a problem with rare/rare settings for planets and inhabitable planets combined with the slow speed of the Arcean ships.

Second, the "reliance" on trade stems from the fact that it is an early tech that will consistently (in nearly every game I've employed it) get the Arceans out of the debt spiral. The early economic buildings simply will not do it, both because they do not provide a big enough bonus and because it takes time to build them during which the economy continues to crash. Trade ships on the other hand, are relatively quick to build and it only takes a few to bring the Arceans back into the black. Regardless of your beliefs, those rules are borne out by my experience actually playing the game. Wile it may take a few turns to recover the money spent building the freighters, the point is that they consistently stop the loss of money in the overall economic picture as soon as they start operating. Getting the debt spiral reversed is what is important early game.

As for the MCC, I just don't know where you're coming from. Have you actually played the Arceans? That tech is high on the tech tree for early game. I believe your estimates of the difference in time to research that tech versus trade are simply incorrect. It would not only take longer to get to those techs, but would likely cost money for the Arceans to actually choose evil in order to build the techs in the first place. Further, one still has to actually build the improvements once one reaches that point. By that time, the Arceans are broke and can't building anything-let aloen a galactic achievement and a trade good that usually take a long time to build. There is NO way the Arceans are ever going to reach that in time to avoid having their empire implode as I've already described (I'm playing on very slow research.) By the time I can research those techs, I don't need the economic bonus it would provide and would choose neutral alignment anyway. That's the whole point of why I go for trade, it is relatively early on the tech tree and provides the boost needed to get over the economic hump.

Third, my "playstyle" is varied according to the race I play. With Terrans, diplomacy is very successful. It doesn't work with the Arceans and I don't rely on it. In fact, every game with the Arceans turns into one long war because the rest of the races seem more than a bit hostile to them. Regardless, the Arceans need to have an economy to build that military in the first place. That requires a little trade because their internal economy is simply not going to do it unless one wants to be a sitting duck that is conquered by late early game. Their military bonuses, whether native or through available techs and projects, are insufficient to overcome that in time to prevent conquest. They have slow research, slower ships, and a weak economy. I could go on and on with this but it is obvious we are not seeing the same picture. I remain of the belief that a tweak or two is needed to make them competitive. In fact, I just finished a game where I gave them a tweak to the Stellar Forge and while it was a struggle, they did better.

Ah, I apologize. I think we've been in one of those situations where 3 blind men feel the same thing. One says "it's a tree", the other "it's a rope" and the last "it's a snake". It's actually an elephant. I should not have jumped to asssumptions that you were making mistakes or lacked experience. That was projecting on to you mistakes I made when I was inexperienced.

I think the fact that you are playing with very slow research and I with very fast explains absolutely everything. That would put the MCC out of reach for you as a solution to the early game economic crash, whereas for me it's very attainable. And trade would certainly seem like a good solution. I agree, with slow technology the Arceans may be slightly too weak. It depends on what tech speed they are being balanced for. Probably with very fast research they are in the top half, with very slow in the bottom, and somewhere in the middle at normal research speed. I'd imagine that me playing on medium galaxies and you on much larger ones also plays into this, since the smaller the galaxy, the greater the tactical impact of the stellar forge.

Again, I'm sorry for the erroneous assumptions I had made.

I wonder if it's possible at all for the races to be equally balanced for each type of galaxy set up. It may not be, though if tweaks can get a race closer to balanced at what they're bad at without making them too strong at set-ups where they excel, I don't see why they shouldn't be made.

Agreed. The Arceans need SOME engines, those navigation centers don't cut it.

Yes, even the Impulse techs would be a huge help. And get rid of the speed penalty, losing out on all the engine techs is bad enough.

Perhaps the speed penalty is left over from DA, when there was one ubiquitous tech tree for all the races. Now that each race has a custom tree, the Arceans don't need the speed penalty; the penalty is manifested by the lack of engines.

No, the speed penalty was implemented a few iterations ago, when they boosted the base speed to 2. At least, IIRC