Thalans play-style question

I agree they are weird. I've beaten GC2 DA on the hardest setting as Terrans (who are quite strong IMO).

I must say I have enjoyed playing the Thalians, due to them being so different, also their back story is kida cool. Having all the high tech stuff...if ONLY they could get enough resources to research it in time.

I took a cursory look at their Research Buildings and factories, I must admit, I can't see what Stardock are thinking. Insane high costs for average research, in fact the Research Per Credit, is in fact one of the worst in game! The only advantage I can see is that they save planet space, IF you have an insane economy.

I basically traded like mad at start to get the Factory and other techs, so I could

A Make use of my super factory ability.
B Build up some reasonable base and have something other than diplomatic centres.

For this reason I researched most of the diplomatic techs, and chose bonus dimplomacy, and also rapid breeding to make up for their weakness.

On tough, I was the last man standing but still got steamrolled by the Drengi.

In my second game I have an alliance with the Terrans, and we are both against an overpowered Drath.

Economy is a HUGE problem. I used trade to boost it, but this falls appart if there are too many wars, an you end up not being able to do a thing, due to not having enough money. I've basically had to detroy colonies to keep in the game.

It may be a weakness on my part that I'm so used to playing Terrans that I've become over reliant on Trade and Diplomacy.

Other weird things, they have the most INSANE starbase defence, but NO attack, so they still get "one shotted". From what I can see you would need to trade for Starbase Mobilization from another faction.

My guess that Stardock gave them bad diplomacy, since they KNOW that you need to trade to be successfull. IF you could combine their insane Stabase Defense with mobilization, your stabases would be basically "immune".

I may be barking up totally the wrong tree, I've read some other threads where people are "powering" up somehow on a few strong planets. People are also building almost exclusive Trade buildings at start to get a good economy.

Another tip I can give is to get the "creative innovation" ability or whatever its called; the one that gives you a random proc chance to instant develop a research. Due to the long techs of the Thalians, this procs a lot so I hear.

Another thing is that morale can be a total nightmare. You will need to trade for techs, or research the two (expensive) moral boosters.

Overall they remind me of the Protos in Starcraft, high tech, but need tons of resources to pull it off.

I'm going to start a new game trying the power up strat this time. I think I'll also create a game with a Thalian enemy (me as Terran), to see what the AI does.

I hope the Thalians make it out of Beta more or less as they are, but with some tweaks, I'd hate to see their unique play style get binned for a more conventional, drop 3 factories, and a Xeno lab etc at start of game.

Good Luck.

I am relieved that others experience the same.

The Thalans feel great, yet it feels strange that a super-power from the future is the slow-techie of today.

Concerning the powering up of a few planets: That is not possible, since you have no buildings to power up ... except for tech-trading. The downside is, that most of the others don't want your tech.
I feel kind-of-stuck, here.

In my game, I only managed to get along by bee-lining to planetary invasion and using my precursor-mine-plus-galactic-achievement super-planet to erase the Arceans, which gave me two needed economic techs. Now, I have a good economy, but still, I am far behind tech-wise. And that is on tough, which I normally do quite well on.

The AI as the Thalans have shown me an interesting idea on how to play them in TA...and oddly, I've made it work.

I've placed all 3 galactic wonders on Thala, some people will say to save the main one for a normal planet due to the population spike.

The AI does something I can only describe as the "pink blob" technique. The first building they can get their paws on is the Embassy. So the AI fills all their planets up with these damned things....making one sick influence blob. This works out well when I play it to buffer me until I can get a proper planetary setup.

I wouldn't recommend playing with very-slow tech rate with them.

Creativity is really seemingly a must for them over any other race. So the following is my typical game as the Thalans.

-----
Racial points: max economics, creativity, max morale, luck and if there were points left...social manufacturing.

I'm a medium map person...all abundant, no minors, normal tech rate, only conquest victory, NO TECH TRADING, tech stealing is allowed.

Place all 3 wonders on Thala, colony rush only about 5 planets...more if you get lucky with anomalies. In this time, get Universal Translator and then start plopping down embassies on your planets...fill those suckers.

After getting the UT, then work your way up to the factory trio. Once at the first factory tech, kill your research almost (get to the min that'll give you a time remaining). Let Creativity proc your way through the three techs....DON'T place the tier I or II factories. Once you have tier III, then get at least 2 on each planet.

After this, work on the econ techs, the tech for Zero-G entertainment building (I forget what it's called...it's an orange tech). All depending on your neighbors or the mil rating of people, you may need to make a fluff military some point soon to keep people off your back.

If you are still alive after getting the morale building and stock exchanges...it's time to party. Load up planets now with factories OR econ buildings. You'll need some money-maker planets to keep afloat. The non-econ planets get all geared up with factories though. Either they'll be pumping out ships or focused to research...

If you've made it this far you've made it past the hard part of the Thalans. They truly do have a horrid start, but once they get rolling they are a tough competitor.

I haven't seen the AI however transform from the 'pink blob of doom' stage. They hold a threat in the game, but nothing like what the AI COULD make it be if played right. Mainly it's a threat of influence flipping...and a minor military threat.

All this said, the TA Thalans are my favorite race to play. They are unique in every way due to their techs/buildings so it really makes me feel like I'm playing an entirely different game than any other TA race.

Thank you very much!
I will try that as soon as I can.

It's not 100% effective. That is why I had the line "If you are still alive after getting the morale building and stock exchanges..." as that seems to be the turning point. If you were able to make it that far w/o getting steamrolled by faster-starting races or warmongers, you are golden.

Now get out there and steal yourself a farm tech!!!!

If there's an aggressive race anywhere close, the Thalans are dead. Early in the game the Drengin or Korath will be using the awesome power of their Basic Slave Pits and Slaveling Imagination Labs to roll right over you while you have absolutely nothing in the way of economy, research or industry

Interestingly, if the AI Thalans survive the early game they often have the highest ranked military (or 2nd if the Korath are present, but then again if the Korath are present the Thalans don't survive the early game), despite having built nothing but embassies. But with no industrial base that military is a one shot deal. Take it out and they can't replace it.

I usually play on gigantic or immense with tight clusters, so the Pink Blob of Doom doesn't really work. Yayyy, I have lots of influence around my planets. Nobody cares. They're all in their own tight clusters, building fleets.

Loupdinur: Sir, yes sir!

I'll second the doubts about whether slow tech is a good idea if you want to play the Thalans, and also agree that your map settings make a big difference re influence.

But I also wonder if y'all can help a geezer out. What is this "proc" term I've been seeing occasionally around here? It used to be short for "procedure," but I've seen folks using it as a verb and I can't really get a confident grip on the context.

As pndrev said in another post


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=proc

Or in 'old geezer' terms, it's like when you rolled that natural 20 with your vorpal sword and it lopped off the head of the minotaur. Kids now-a-days would say 'w00t my sword procced'

Thanks, Loupindour. If I hadn't just encountered "smishing," this would be near the top of my list of new usages to gripe about. From what I read on that "dictionary" page, it really should stay a noun. But even there, the examples following a definition of a noun use the word as a verb...

Did I say geezer? I should have made that grumbly-muttering curmudgeon who reads real dictionaries for fun...

As for the issue of the 'pink blob of doom' not being effective on larger maps, you can then just cut that phase out of the plan and save yourself some money and 2 weeks of research. The AI however won't think of such a thing and just flounder and fail on larger maps.

DisneyDestroyer however brought up a small bug with the Thalan tech tree with a custom race:
https://forums.galciv2.com/post.aspx?postid=303466

I will need some time to ponder if I'd like to see normal factories being allowed to the Thalan at the start of the game. It would help out their start, it would kill the era of the 'pink blob of doom' but it would pull some of the odd flavor from them.

mmmmm smishing. Ever since I read one of the comics at GUComics with Toast (from DAoC) in it I can't stop using 'smish'.

~walks away giggling~ "Toast smish"

Loupdinour: With creativity and some Ctrl+L-pressing, it now works fine.
But I think, there is something not working as intended, because being "forced" to take a certain ability to be able to play that race just does not feel right.

LOL I had to look up CTRL+L just to find out what you were talking about. Hopefully you just meant CTRL+N though.

Someone is bound to have a better route than the one I'm taking, but that is how it seems to work for me right now. I will be watching the next couple bug patches though to see if they squash the ability for a custom race to pick up the normal factory tech while using the Thalan tech tree or if they give that same option to normal Thalan players.

No, actually I meant Ctrl+L. (Ctrl+N is not necessary after you found a good starting planet. )
Sometimes I got a streak of over 100 turns of creativity not kicking in. Well, not only sometimes.
So from time to time, I loaded my game from a certain save-point to have a new go, when I realized that I fell behind too much. Call me lazy, but I play this game to see a story unfold, not to cope with large obstacles. (For the latter, I prefer Team Fortress 2.)

I've given the Beta 5a Thalan a shot in a game today, and I think given a very narrow range of game set-up options, they can be comptetitive.

A brief AAR (mid-action report really):

The game I'm in is a abundant-all suicidal medium with 8 minors and Altarians, Iconians, Arceans, Korx and Yor as opponents. I intentionally avoided races with diplomatic bonuses (to minimize the Thalan diplomacy penalty) and races that are aggressive early, specifically the Korath and Drengin (to minimize the danger of the slow start). Tech trading is on and research is set to very fast. My race points were spent on +30 econ, +10 morale, +25 luck, +25 creativity and +10 weapons and I took the universalist party, which I believe suits the Thalan perfectly since they need all the pop growth they can get.

My starting planet had only a morale bonus. Not great. I did have a pq17 close, so I made that my first priority. It happened to have a +300% industry tile, so I built the Hyperion Matrix there along with the +50 planetary morale wonder. The +25 econ wonder went on my home world. In the colony rush I ended up with a total of 6 planets and a morale resource. The other empires had between 12 and 20 planets each.

As to my geographic position, Thala was a few tiles away from the southwest edge of the map (more south than west). I had the Arceans to my east, Yor to the northeast but further away, Altarians to the direct north, Korx to the west and Iconians to the northwest.

My first research priority was the universal translator, so that I could trade technologies. I had hoped to get to Diplomatic Translators in time to build it, but the Altarians got there quite quickly. The Thalans start with a decent mix of technologies, so I was able to trade for some important early techs such as the econ tech that gives trade centers and +10 econ, xeno labs, planetary improvements, laser 1 along with beam weapon theory and space weapons, space militarization (the most important of all of them probably, since the Thalans desperately need recruiting centers), space defenses (which offers +10 defense and isn't in the Thalan tech tree), trade and a few others. I made early contact with several of the minors, and that was vital for tech trading purposes early game.

My next research priority was Xeno Ethics. Since the Thalan do not have concepts of malice in their tech tree, I felt that to achieve a decent economy I needed morale high enough to have a decent tax rate while still maintaining 100% approval (which means going neutral for the +15% base morale bonus). This is an expensive tech, so I put research to the lowest level that would still give a time to completition and kept it there while I was expanding, counting on creativity to eventually come through for me. Eventually, it did.

I built the Harmony Crystals on my p17 with the hyperion matrix on a +300% industry square, my economic capital on my homeworld, and then the restraunt of eternity on the industry planet (mostly for extra tourism income, since money was a little tight). While all this was building, my other planets were building trade centers (with the exception of one world with a +100% research bonus, which got a xeno lab).

Once all this was done building, it was time for my usual strategy: Blitz my nearest neighbor (so long as that neighbor is not equipped to defend itself). I went to 100% research and researched up to medium hulls (which creativity got for me). I built Xianthium Plating on my industry planet, and then switched back to 100% research to planetary invasion. In the Thalan tech tree, advanced transport modules come directly after planetary invasion, so I grabbed that as well.

The Thalan have really weak ground combat techs (which is a significant problem with the race). I'd traded for war colleges, which gives +5 soldiering and +1 logistics, from a minor race, and researched basic logistics. The remaining problem was knocking out the defender, which was using beams. I caught a break then: The galactic senate voted my empire as the home for a galactic prison, which doubles the industrial output of your highest industry world. After I traded for xeno industrial theory and built my industrial capital, my industrial world now had close to 400 military production/turn. I'd traded for advanced deflectors and built a couple of medium fighters with one laser and several advanced deflectors.

I was able to conquer Altaria with a fleet of 2 transports with 2000 troops each using information warfare. If I had been unable to take Altaria, it would really have hurt. As it was, I was successful and got the Diplomatic Translators. The Iconians of course declared war on me when I declared war on the Altarians, but they were slow to develop a military. I had traded planetary invasion to most of the minors as well as to every major with the exception of the Altarians. I was able to get the Arceans to declare war on the Yor, got a few research treaties and plugged a few more holes in the Thalan tech tree.

From then, it was pretty clear sailing to the present time. I rolled over the Altarians, agreed to a peace treaty when they had 2 planets remaining in exchange for all their tech and some cash, and am currently taking Iconian worlds. I've got around 25 planets. Once the Thalan get rolling, picking up techs, industry and research capacity from conquest, they seem pretty strong. I got the combat tech that gives tir-quan training from an Iconian world I invaded, built that, got the tech that gives aphrodisiac from the peace settlement with the Altarians, and built that as well. At this point (october 1st of the second year) I'm completely certain I'm going to win (if I choose to play this game out).

So are the Thalan ok? Well, only given a good start, a carefully selected group of opponents, carefully chosen galaxy settings at start up, many minor races, tech trading on, creativity, neutral alignment, and a close neighbor that can be caught before they build a meaningful military. I still think they are the weakest race in Twilight. I don't think they are as weak as I had previously believed.

One thing that would help them is if they were given back the +25 starting econ they had in DA. I also believe that there is no longer any reason for them to have 8 race points instead of 10 at race design. I don't know as it is possible to make them viable with tech trading off. It would also be helpful to them if the diplomacy penalty was not so severe and they had better ground combat technologies. In particular, space marines or tidal disruption would really be nice. I have no idea why they do not have planetary defense, either.

I've played a few more games with them. The latest I won.

Medium Galaxy, rare planets, normal tech speed. Enemies were random tough.

I ended up with Altarians, Iconians, Korath, Arceans and Derengi.

If memory servs, I went for moral boost, population boost, Creativity, Luck, and small econ boost. I chose the Federalists for more econ.


It makes a Huge difference what planets you find. My first colonly (only 4 squares), had a precusor library 700% research. I put the matrix on this, and went pretty much straight to Planetary invasion.

With the matrix on the library, I could research insanly fast. I went for a Cargo Hull with a laser, and then I was set.

I easily conquered Acreans, and Iconians before they were able to put up any real fight. I traded a few imporant techs like econ matrix, and research labs etc. From here I teched first to medium hulls, made an alliance witht the ALtarians, and Steamrolled the Derengi.

Half way throug steamrolling the korath they surrendered to me, I won diplmotic victory with aroun 6800 pts I think.

As the poster above mentioned Thala attack stroops are RUBBISH! So anoying to see fleets of transports wiped out. All I managed to get were the Thalan attack robots or whatever they are called (30% boost).

The thing is, I **don't really feel anything that unique about playing them***!. The only way to win seems to be to trade for other races "Normal Tech". Xeno Labs, Xeno Markets, I also traded the techs for economic captical, research/manufacturing capital etc.

I just Cant see Any Reason as to why I'd waste turns to research the sub par expensive Thalan versions? The only way to win seems to be getting a good tile for the Matrix.

Appart from the Matrix, In fact overall they seem to play like other races...but weaker.

Other real killers are super weak starbase (no def at all, and you cant seem to trade it either).

I also found a bug on the good Xeno Ethics tech. You CANT add the influence bonus module of the last tech 50%, if you've already added the 50% one you get from the Thalan tech tree, which kinda makes going down Xeno Ethics good weaker than it should be. You may take it however, to get Fanatics and make your invasion army less rubbish!

Overall I still like the idea of the new Thalan's but they need some more tweaking.

On a more positive note, the super factory builder is not a bad ability, it helps you get new planets up and running fast (as long as you have the econ).

I had Thala as the econ center (most markets and nothing else), since it starts with a big population/decent planet.

4 sqaure planet as the research center (later improved with techs)

Random planet as manf base.

Random plant which built all the trade goods (since these waste squares).

Getting counter espionage is almsot a must, a few spies can mess Thalan up bad, but on the positive side, these give a needed moral boost as well.

I'm currenty playing as YoR...I seem to have so many more "options". I'm gonna play again as Thalan next, to see how much luck was in my original game. I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on the Thalan. Cheers.

I agree that any time the Thalan are forced to research and use their own production/research buildings, they are in trouble. They are nearly useless compared with standard buildings and take forever to research. The weak troops and star bases are real problems as well. I do think they play differently from the other races because of the importance of the hyperion matrix and the fact that they must trade for standard technologies to be competitive. Since they have such a unique tech tree with a lot of nice passive bonuses, trading for standard techs can give them ability levels other races can't match in production and weapons. They still have a very unfinished feel to me. I can not believe that they are done, since I don't think Stardock would leave them with so many glaring weaknesses and such a narrow range of options to compensate for them, both in strategy and game set-up.

I agree with the strange embassies situation - that is definitely happening. Do the Thalans not have the option to upgrade embassies at some point? I just played a game where they stacked embassies on all their worlds, and somehow managed to hold off the Drengin, Korath, Torian, and Korx when I paid them to all declare war on Thala at the same time. Playing as Terran I built up a huge military in the corner and took over all the Thalan planets. This plan took about three years, but all of the Thalan planets still had only embassies and no upgraded structures.

I tried the Pink Blob of Doom method on a small map last night. Worked great. But it works much better with a race that can build up a decent population. I also tried a custom race with the Super Hive ability and was amazed at how powerful it was when it wasn't tied down by a race that, for all intents and purposes, can't build any factories because they take forever to research (because you can't build labs either) and then they're too expensive to build anyway

How many players have had success with the Thalans on Suicidal? I have in one game, but that was dependent on a very good starting position and a very carefully selected galaxy set-up. I'm pretty sure the pink blob of doom is a doomed strategy on suicidal, but I'd love for someone to have proven me wrong.