3368

Hmmm lol.

:(

3369

I feel like trying one of the campaigns. is there a consensus
about which ones are best?

3370

I would go with one of the DLC ones. The whole vanilla campaign isn’t very good IMO (and really, Star Empire is the way but you asked).

3371

I’ve been playing a lot of the Empire, trying out factions and techs I hadn’t used before. I was thinking a campaign might make a nice change, but I guess your recommendation is to stick with Empire mode?

3372

So have you folks tried out these new buildings that you become eligible to build when you have residential sectors? They are unique for each faction, providing worker slots to produce a fairly high amount of resources. For example, the Amazon building tier 1 has 2 slots that produce 6 food and 6 research, compared to a generic worker in a food or research slot only producing 5 of that single resource - so the tier 1 is 12 resources per worker rather than 5 - at tier 3 that building has 6 slots and produces 10 of each resource per slot, which is fairly ridiculous - you end up with vast stacks of food and research.

Even better, at tier 3 they all have some kind of thematic bonus. The Amazons produce a random animal or weirdo unit (I don’t know what you call those psychic rocks) each time you research a civilian tech. With 3 or 4 cities with those things, every time you research a civic tech you get 3 or 4 free units. The units can range from tier 1 to tier 3 with a distribution something like 50-60% tier 1, 30-35% tier 2 and 10-15% tier 3. You end up with the most ridiculous zoo of crazy units.

The Vanguard get a less crazy but still very good bonus of generating approximately 50 research every time you build a unit in that city.

The Assembly get a truly fun bonus - whenever you research a military tech, you get a free hero item or weapon, with a distribution of tier 2 to tier 4 similar to the Amazon distribution, but plus one tier. I went crazy with 4 Assembly cities with those suckers in my last game and ended up swimming in redonkulous tier 3 and tier 4 weapons and items. Stuff I’ve never seen before - the One Eyed Hawk insta-kill tier 1 or 2 sniper rifle, the Crystal of Opening Cans of Whoopass (not actual name) and other stuff. I believe that @inactive_user would appreciate these buildings.

I have not tried them all as yet. The Syndicate special buildings seem disappointing by comparison: they produce influence, which is nice, but at the cost of energy, which is blood and life. And their bonus triggers when you spend influence on diplomacy which I rarely mess with. Sigh.

The more I play the recent patch the more I’m into residential sectors and a food-focused build. It’s slower in the early and mid-game but becomes kinda gargantuan by turn 50 to 70. If you like the somewhat longer games like I do, this is a fun strategy.

3373

Thanks for the tip! I have built some tier 2 Racial buildings but I’m not sure I’ve made it to tier 3 and if I did I wasn’t paying attention to the bonuses. Sounds like good stuff

3374

Oh good heavens the residential-enabled buildings are absurd. The production from those citizen slots is enormous.

I think on balance it’s generally not that big a deal to get to level 3, though. Level 2 gets you double the slots and better production per slot, and is enabled by the first residential sector, which lets you annex one more sector by going from 16 to 20 pop. That second residential sector is harder to plan around sector-wise (no mountains is a significant restriction) and 20 to 24 pop is a huge amount of food that you could be exporting to other colonies.

The level 3 bonus has been pretty insignificant by the time it’s really online, too. I’ve gotten a couple free stacks of Emergents on my current Kir’ko world, but they’re an afterthought at best compared to the doomsquads of double- and triple-mod Purifiers and Aegis Tanks I’ve been rolling out.

I just don’t know how much benefit there really is to having that super-perfected 24-size megalopolis compared to the cost of getting there. Good colony planning and specialization seem much more important, even if you’re playing a boom/tall strategy.

Also, wow at the results of my current Promethean-or-bust strategy with the bugs. I literally have the first Psi mods and then unlocked the aquatic dudes, and other than that have gone all-in on Promethean tech and units. Hell yeah does it kick ass. The hordes you can knock out on the cheap with the Promethean doctrine that reduces cost and upkeep of Promethean units… Delicious.

3375

So for example, I just completed my Kir’ko/Promethean game. I followed what I consider to be my usual pattern: Expand aggressively, spending just enough on military to keep my main hero (and shortly, second hero) out clearing neutrals and dig sites while pushing Colonizers almost literally as quickly as I can afford them.

This game: I founded my fourth core colony on turn 23. I believe one of those was my “natural neutral” which I bought as soon as I had the influence, which is generally how I roll.

Once I have my immediate area colonized – aka I bump up against natural or rival borders and don’t feel good about expanding any further without exposing myself to a sneaky early attack by a rival – I blow my cosmite on whatever the best dudes I can afford is to flesh out a second/third/fourth stack.

This game: As soon as I got the Promethean doctrine that makes Promethean dudes cheaper, I whipped out a bunch of Purifiers with the madly overpowered Purification Field mod (once per battle: free action, heal 15 and remove all status effects from this or adjacent unit). Kir’ko Purifiers are awesome! Plasma Smog just wrecks dudes.

Then there’s the second wave of colonization now that I have a military the AI is cautious of before it starts looking for someone to shove. These secondary colonies might never build a single unit, depending on terrain. But they’re crucial to keep my economy rolling as I get to dropping a modded T2 or two out of my primary production colony every turn and start in on T3s.

This game: Yeah, colonies 4-7 were almost exclusively for econ. So much econ, though! I was rich as hell this whole game, to the point that my primary production colony (the first one I founded after my capital, this time, which had a nice landmark and a nice dungeon) got all its buildings rush-bought so it could keep supplying Purifiers and Aegis Tanks to the front line every turn.

Side notes: Aegis Tanks are specialists! So they get the bonuses from the non-elite production sector specialization. So good. Also Transcendents are fabulous and don’t really need any mods to shine, so I had my capital pumping them out when it wasn’t busy with colonizers. Don’t forget to mix them in with your naval armies with the Kir’ko!

Anyway, from there everything depends on who declares on whom, where the breakpoints are in terms of getting fancy new tech online, and which victory I’m pursuing.

This game: The first foolish AI declared on me about when I expected it to, so I was good and prepared to pivot from clearing neutrals to murdering Syndicate. Yeah, she didn’t stand much chance. After that it was just a matter of rolling my tidal wave of bugs over everything in their path. Won a pretty uncontested Empire victory (for deleting two enemy Syndicate commanders) on turn 56. Kir’ko leveled from 4 to 10, lol.

I love Star Empire.

3376

I have conquered three planets for my Empire so far. They were all easy – 15 complexity or less. My most recent got me the relic for hoppers (the insect things). Very fun.

I’m thinking of tackling a 25 complexity next. Will that lock me into complexity of 25 or greater going forward? Do you all have any more general thoughts on how to “design” one’s Empire?

3377

Idk, I’m just approaching it like “fun mutators for random-map games and some light persistence to tie it all together and cheevos to chase.”

3378

lol, fair enough. I do see a few interesting Achievements – collecting 5 relics, attaining Empire level 200. I have 20/80 achievements for this game, so I have a long way to go.

3379

@inactive_user sounds like you are penetrating the onion layers. :)

3380

Yes, @inactive_user, I meant to say I enjoyed reading your account. Please keep them coming!

3381

Yes I’m finally building enough familiarity with the whole mod ecosystem to start feeling good about things. Just took a couple hundred hours ;)

3382

And that there, in a nutshell, is this games biggest weakness and greatest strength.

:O

3383

Oathbound Wardens with the Arc Stun and Arc Chain mods (and/or Arc Stagger) are uh extremely powerful. Between the banner and their base attack, they’re absolute freaks at locking down the enemy team from long/extreme range while doing good damage.

Squishy, but whatchagonnado?

3384

Does the Arc Chain trigger off the AOE arc attack of the banner? I had sort of assumed it would not and so never tried that mod combo. If it does… that may make the Baby Jesus cry.

3385

No, that’d be crazy. But the banner still procs the stagger/stun/electrify/static, which gives your melee dudes cover to charge in and get into their grills. It’s crazy friggin’ strong.

3386

Yeah, it’s tempting to muck about with the Oathbound part of the tree and ignore it, but you really need to push into Arc stuff, if only for the damage modifiers.

3387

I mean, you need to unlock Siphoners out of Heritor so the uber-Wardens can do it all twice on the second turn. That’s important too.