master crafters is way way OP

[Rothe123]

I have been using Master Crafters and I make around 1k research around 2250 and over 2 or 3 k by 2300. Playing on Grand Admiral "sclaing on" and I have outteched every civ in the game.. The mid crisis is nothing not just to me but to other civs too.. seems like it needs to be beefed up. or give a meter like end crisis has. and the resource deficits need to be worsened cause they aren't really bad at all.

 

[fusei]

Scaling difficulty means you're playing on ensign up to the midgame start year and only then the AI slowly starts to get any bonuses at all, so if you want a challenge play without scaling difficulty and if you want more of a challenge from the midgame crisis reduce the midgame start year so they can show up earlier.

 

[DamnedLackOfTropicalFruit]

Scaling difficulty means you're playing on ensign up to the midgame start year and only then the AI slowly starts to get any bonuses at all, so if you want a challenge play without scaling difficulty and if you want more of a challenge from the midgame crisis reduce the midgame start year so they can show up earlier.

This isn't quite true - scaling difficulty starts from the beginning of the game. You're playing on ensign at 2200, but the AI gets bonuses every year afterwards.
That said, Grand Admiral scaling is still a lot less threatening than it sounds, as the AI is playing with almost no bonus during the most important years of the game. If you're playing with default mid/endgame years, it hasn't even reached Captain until 2250.

Master Crafters is definitely one of the best civics, since it's a strict upgrade to an important job and slots into any build, but it's not that OP. It sounds like it encouraged you to build a lean research economy, and outteching the Ensign/Captain AI early on made the rest of the game pretty easy.

If you want a challenge without making the AI start at Grand Admiral, you probably need mods like Dynamic Difficulty, Starnet AI, or the friendlier Startech AI, but you can start by making the midgame and endgame years earlier (I like 2275 and 2300). Not only does it make the midgame crisis more threatening and speed up the difficulty scaling, it also ends the game before the player can get wildly far ahead. Grand Admiral bonuses simply aren't enough for the AI to compete after making 200 years of mistakes.

 

[Incompetent]

Maserful Crafters means you need slightly fewer Artisans/Artificers, so if you would have employed 100 Artisans (which probably means you have several thousand pops overall), you save 10-15 jobs. You also save some city districts for building slots depending on how you have arranged your industrial districts (although this doesn't apply once you've transitioned to Ecumenopolises), and a very slight boost to Engineering income.

It's definitely a strong civic at game start, when you're making CGs, alloys and research all on your homeworld (=>Researchers cost full price upkeep) and can't make CGs very efficiently, meaning you need a relatively large proportion of Artisans/Artificers relative to the number of Researchers, and you are poor enough that the cost of a few city districts is significant. But as your economy gets more specialized and efficient, the actual impact of the civic from a whole empire perspective falls off pretty fast. So I don't think it's OP overall. It makes sense to take it with a tech rush start, but you can tech rush just fine without it too, CGs aren't that hard to come by.

 

[Dragatus]

Yes, it's a strong early game civic when you're still underdeveloped and short on everything, but doesn't do nearly as much for a mature developed empire. In particular having artisans that produce more CG means you need fewer artisans, so in a sense it ends up countering itself. Though that is a late game issue. In the early game every little bit helps and the neat thing about Masterful Crafters is that it gives you a bit of everything - some extra CGs, some extra Energy, a little bit of the ever important Engineering Research and a few building slots.

It's a nice civic for making the early game go more smoothly, which in turn helps to set you up for success, but it isn't game breaking.

 

[HFY]

Post-early game it means extra building slots on your smaller Forge Worlds, which is nice, but not nice enough to skip Arcology Project and not meaningful once you have Ecumeopoli instead of Forge Worlds.

 

[UltimateSpinDash]

The AI does seem to get a massive boost from this civic, though. I have a megacorp AI that blobs and vassalizes everything around it in every game they appear in. This civic is the only thing that empire has that the others have no equivalent to.

 

[Dr. B]

I have tried several various starts, as well as made some spreadsheet calculations to determine the effectiveness of some of my favourite starting civics.

Masterful Crafters was one of the, if not the best civic to take at start, for a specific playstyle with early game tech and unity focus.
It gives a substantional bonus from day 1, that helps with early game snowball, giving an important advantage for development and teching.

To contrast, there are plenty of civics that gives great bonuses, but not much at game start.
It makes sense to choose civics that help you in the early game, later on you can just change to someting else as the game unfolds.
Like starting with economically strong civics to build up then swapping them out for military civics later to kick ass.

 

[qer]

Early powerful civics are more important than civics that are powerful latter on. So if masterful crafters allow to reach Ecus earlier for example it would be a good pop. However I don't it is OP in the sense that it makes for a dominant gameplay. Driven assimilitors for example is an OP civic in that you get an insanely good advantage when it comes to invading other empires, which standard empires can't compete with. In that perspective, masterful crafters doesn't lead to an unfair advantage over other empires.

 

[Franton]

Given how so many players insist on producing all CGs via trade, there still appears to be a solid player base who'll never really benefit from this civic.

In the meantime I enjoy the very favorable exchange rate of CGs vs alloys when trading with AIs (typically about 6-8 alloys per 10 CGs), and I can live very well without producing any alloys at all!

 

[Astax]

OP is correct, and MP matches show it. Masterful Crafters is MEGA OP. I suppose in grand scheme of things I would put it behind geocidals and the Aquatic traits, but ahead of almost everything else.

 

[7ED]

As others have said, scaling difficulty is really not a challenge given the hardest part of the game is the beginning and the AI is like ensign-captain then. Also, 1000 science by 2250 is not that high and can be accomplished on pretty much every single civic/origin combination.

That said, masterful crafters is pretty good and definitely top tier. But its certainly not inherently better than the other top tier civics.

 

[qer]

Given how so many players insist on producing all CGs via trade, there still appears to be a solid player base who'll never really benefit from this civic.

In the meantime I enjoy the very favorable exchange rate of CGs vs alloys when trading with AIs (typically about 6-8 alloys per 10 CGs), and I can live very well without producing any alloys at all!

How much Ai trade can be exploited is really the single player meta : D

 

[Strangedane]

A couple of notes.

Scaling difficulty means no bonuses early game for the ai, when it matters.
Scaling GA is about as difficult as captain difficulty overall if left alone, or precisly as hard as ensign, if you go for military snowballing.

Trading with the AI is probably the biggest exploit left in the game, now that negative economy exploits are (almost) gone.
As long as the AI does not actually consider the value of the trades or it's actual needs while trading, it's exploiting at it's finest.
The AI would litterally be better off if you used the console to get the resources, that's how much of an exploit it is.

Last off, your science isn't even impressive.
You can have megastructures at 2240 without cybrex if you play it right, and that does NOT include trading with the AI.
It does however include having an overlord, which can then be exploited about as much as AI trading partners.

If you're going to exploit, at least do crazy stuff.

 

[demanvanwezel]

it's not the tech that's OP, at least not the tech bonus
every 3 districts you unlock a building slot which means more laboratories alongside usefull districts
also MC + war economy essentially turns it into a civ which gives every artisan -1 CG and +2 alloys which is hella powerfull

 

[UltimateSpinDash]

Given how so many players insist on producing all CGs via trade, there still appears to be a solid player base who'll never really benefit from this civic.

In the meantime I enjoy the very favorable exchange rate of CGs vs alloys when trading with AIs (typically about 6-8 alloys per 10 CGs), and I can live very well without producing any alloys at all!

Your AIs have alloys to trade?

 

[7ED]

it's not the tech that's OP, at least not the tech bonus
every 3 districts you unlock a building slot which means more laboratories alongside usefull districts
also MC + war economy essentially turns it into a civ which gives every artisan -1 CG and +2 alloys which is hella powerfull

Respectfully disagree on the use of the 3 districts. Those of us hitting 3-6k science output by 2250 using masterful crafters are doing it by hyper-specializing planets. If you're reusing the build slots on your consumer goods world for labs, something's gone wrong. The building slots are useful. But not for labs. Lets you forego an entertainment center.

I'm not sure what is meant by the second point. If above poster is saying that artisans produce alloys in a war economy, or that the civic affects foundry workers, pretty certain that is wrong.

 

[DamnedLackOfTropicalFruit]

Respectfully disagree on the use of the 3 districts. Those of us hitting 3-6k science output by 2250 using masterful crafters are doing it by hyper-specializing planets. If you're reusing the build slots on your consumer goods world for labs, something's gone wrong. The building slots are useful. But not for labs. Lets you forego an entertainment center.

I'm not sure what is meant by the second point. If above poster is saying that artisans produce alloys in a war economy, or that the civic affects foundry workers, pretty certain that is wrong.

I think the second point is saying that you can use Master Crafters to offset the downside of war economy - just switch it on in 2200 and your CG production is still good enough, but you get +25% to alloys.
This only works if you assume that other empires don't run war economy though, which isn't a good assumption.

I like to put my researchers in spare building slots across my empire - the research world designation isn't powerful enough to justify only allowing researchers there.
If you put a researcher in a free building slot on a non-tech world, you spend an additional 0.8 CG in upkeep (assuming no other modifiers), but don't have to spend 500 minerals on a city district for your research world and 2 EC on its upkeep.

Luxury housing and strict hyper-specialisation will net you the most output from your pops, but burns a lot of that advantage in resettlement time and building costs. A pop that waits several months to start working and has a 500 mineral debt to cover is going to take a long time to catch up to a fractionally less efficient pop that got going immediately and for free.
If you're doing the necessary conquest for 6k research by 2250, that speed is valuable.

 

[Tree of Life]

I like to put my researchers in spare building slots across my empire - the research world designation isn't powerful enough to justify only allowing researchers there.
If you put a researcher in a free building slot on a non-tech world, you spend an additional 0.8 CG in upkeep (assuming no other modifiers), but don't have to spend 500 minerals on a city district for your research world and 2 EC on its upkeep.

There's another hidden cost to research world which is the scientist spent on research assistance, and the unity cost adds up if you try to boost every planet. Also pretty sure that currently it is best for non-gestalts to build research solely on your capital.

Luxury housing and strict hyper-specialisation will net you the most output from your pops, but burns a lot of that advantage in resettlement time and building costs. A pop that waits several months to start working and has a 500 mineral deficit to cover is going to take a long time to catch up to a fractionally less efficient pop that got going immediately and for free.
If you're doing the necessary conquest for 6k research by 2250, that speed is valuable.

The calculation isn't about comparing an artificer on a specialized factory world to a normal artificer, it is about comparing an entertainer with an artificer + 1.1k basic resources+ 4 energy upkeep. And on the artificer is producing roughly 11 basic resources if you value 1 CG as 2 energy/mineral. With no additional job bonuses it will take 1100/7 months (13 years) for it to pay off. But you have to remember output modifiers and building cost reduction reduces the return time by quite a bit.

 

[7ED]

I think the second point is saying that you can use Master Crafters to offset the downside of war economy - just switch it on in 2200 and your CG production is still good enough, but you get +25% to alloys.
This only works if you assume that other empires don't run war economy though, which isn't a good assumption.

I like to put my researchers in spare building slots across my empire - the research world designation isn't powerful enough to justify only allowing researchers there.
If you put a researcher in a free building slot on a non-tech world, you spend an additional 0.8 CG in upkeep (assuming no other modifiers), but don't have to spend 500 minerals on a city district for your research world and 2 EC on its upkeep.

Luxury housing and strict hyper-specialisation will net you the most output from your pops, but burns a lot of that advantage in resettlement time and building costs. A pop that waits several months to start working and has a 500 mineral debt to cover is going to take a long time to catch up to a fractionally less efficient pop that got going immediately and for free.
If you're doing the necessary conquest for 6k research by 2250, that speed is valuable.

1. You don't need conquest to hit 6k by 2250. I've hit 6k by 2255 on default settings, GA, huge, max empires, no war. And there was room to improve.
2. Hyper-specialization comes out ahead by far. You can get to about 3-4k by 2250 without hyper-specialization.


If you're going to go conquest there really isn't much to talk about. If a human player has the skill to steamroll the GA AI, it doesn't matter how they micromanage their pops. They will snowball regardless.