Are you counting robots gestalt conciseness as well here?
Because if you are saying that in a game without tons of rules hiveminds are overpowered compared to normal I would really like to know against what you are fighting.
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Precursor Unbalance Issues
- Thread starter CrazyJ
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Because if you are saying that in a game without tons of rules hiveminds are overpowered compared to normal I would really like to know against what you are fighting.
What? Hive minds have been left in the dust by every other empire. They suffer from harder diplomacy, not able to assimilate conquered pops until late game and no robots. They also can’t benefit from pop happiness.
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Well, there is another difference. I don't really play multiplayer. In the few games of multiplayer I did play, it took a bit longer, but I still had my precursor by 2250.
No. I'm fine with them not being able to ascend psionically, but then they need to not get the Zroni. It is literally just a paperweight. Like a fanatic purifier getting the omnicodex. It's simply a waste, and relics should never be a waste.
"Quite achievable" to you means spamming restarts, playing the first 5-10 years until you find which precursor you got, or using the debug tooltips when not playing Ironman in order to see which ones you might get first as well?
That's not achievable to me. That's, first off, a waste of time, and second, a lot of not-fun just to re-roll over and over.
Much better is if the precursors were balanced enough that most people wouldn't care a ton which they got. And/or having it selectable or controllable in some way.
Say what, now? Gestalts so OP they should get any ascensions? Dude, have you PLAYED as lithoids? Have you played the difference between a normal gestalt and a machine intelligence? Not to mention this entire thread has been talking about precursors, not ascensions....
I mean, seriously, is this a serious opinion or are you trolling? I can't tell.
I personally find playing as lithoids easier than basic (organic) gestalts. You get all the advantages of playing normal races, with longer life spans, no need to bother with food/agriculture, and the "cost" is slightly reduced growth, which barely even matters if you colonize well (which is easy due to your 50% bonus habitability).
Remember a couple pages back when I talked about RPers and PGers getting along? This, THIS is the problem. You're acting like a brat/asshole to someone in order to say that they don't have a point, ignoring that they are trying to make a point to you.
Get a clue, and show at least a BIT of respect to people with conflicting ideas by putting actual effort into your posts. Not just mocking them and moving on.
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Tell me you have no grasp of actual balance of the game without telling me you have no grasp about actual balance of the game.
Hiveminds are, not good. They're excluded from a bunch of things, technologies, etc. They're not unplayable but they're at best lower middle of the pack.
They also don't get access to a bunch of technologies, up to and including longer edict duration for some weird reason. And trade values seem to have been buffed substantially. Their administrator equivalent is also hot flaming garbage.
On topic. Precursors are all over the place. There are some pretty good ones, like Cybrex and First League. Some okay ones like Vultaum and some absolutely atrocious ones like Yuht. Yuht is pretty much useless in every shape way or form. The +1 pop per colonized planet is negligible if you even get it before the colony rush is over, and the active effect is pretty much pointless. I'd take the Surveyor 10/10 times over the Yuht if given the choice.
Really hoping the Custodian folks have a look at precursors, I don't want the good ones to be nerfed, I want stuff like the Yuht and Irassians to be buffed.
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Disagree that it's negligible that early. Colonization tradition gets the same bonus, and it makes a world (ha ha!) of difference. Having both Colonist jobs occupied from the get go makes the new colony much more useful. Further pops are less advantageous, since you also have to have the minerals to invest in a district or building for them to be employed, but if you do, it adds up to free population fast, especially when paired with the new growth mechanic (where the lower your population is, the slower you see the growth).
However, that means it suffers from the same thing that the colony speed researches do - most of them you just can't get in time (or are too huge of a sacrifice to get during the rush). And once you already have 5-10 planets and most of "your" territory claimed, is VERY minimal usefulness.
Plus, even if you do get Yuht fully completed by 2210 or 2220, it's still not as good as if you'd gotten First League and the Relic World, not to mention the other effects of top-tier precursors. Getting +5 to +10 population "for free" across the early game rush simply isn't that powerful. It is a nice help, and it speeds you up for sure, but within 20-30 years, the advantage has faded into obscurity, and you only have the advantage of whatever year(s) of pacing you gained from it.
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You're extremely unlikely to finish it within a time frame where it even matters. Even if you are extremely lucky and get it early on, the number of pops you get from it throughout the game is minimal. So it comes to late for the only time it would even give you a bit of a benefit, and then just wiffs out entirely. Even worse. Their "Secrets" are hot flaming garbage as well.
The Yuht simply need an entire overhaul IMHO.
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Some are too niche, some are too good, some are too bad. Either make them all balanced, which I understand is nigh impossible, or let us choose, and buff/nerf according to what’s not being picked (similarly to how you balance origins and civics). There is enough randomness elsewhere, and I dislike RNG that locks you into a path that can make you or ruin you.
To be absolutely honest, I don't think Cybrex/First League are too good. They are exactly what Precursors should be like. Exciting, interesting, fun, and a nice boon for the game.
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Its only minimal if you never invest in Habitats.
If you do invest in Habitats, having 3 starting colonists is really the ruler and most of the first district of whatever district you start upon. As Habitats come into play in the mid-game- when most aggressively-expanding/growing players have already started slowing their growth- two immediately-employable workers is very useful, and can be very helpful in getting quicker returns-on-investment for, say, science districts built on minor science deposits to get your mid-game amp-up going.
As for a 5% and economic output per planet buff on non-garden worlds at a mere 500 energy per planet being 'garbarge,' and potentially free techs worth another 10% habitaiblity for the same empire-wide, nah.
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Habitats are a questionable investment outside of a handful of situations. You're much better off taking space from your neighbors at that point. Growth doesn't stop, it changes from land grab to grabbing someone else's land. Which usually costs you influence as well.
As for the habitability. Sorry, hard disagree. The 10% hardly makes a difference. The basic 20% already bring up same preference to 100%. If they're not, you'd be terraforming anyway or settling with Synths/via migration treaties. If you go all in on habitats you'd pick up Void Dwellers.
If you go heavy into habitats sure the +1 Pop has an impact but as Marauder pointed out it's miniscule at best and there are better options.
Also this doesn't even matter because the alternatives are
a size 20+ relic world,
free pops (most likely way more than though Yuht), gaia worlds and another planet
or a print alloy machines, ruined ringworld plus the tech choice to restore them.
That's the things you want to have. Anything else is a just a plain downgrade and from my experience any Empire that has one of these is hard to catch up to.
The precursors should have somewhat equal value and at the moment they don't.
Also this doesn't even matter because the alternatives are
a size 20+ relic world,
free pops (most likely way more than though Yuht), gaia worlds and another planet
or a print alloy machines, ruined ringworld plus the tech choice to restore them.
That's the things you want to have. Anything else is a just a plain downgrade and from my experience any Empire that has one of these is hard to catch up to.
The precursors should have somewhat equal value and at the moment they don't.
Which goes to the point of a specific playstyle, not value for other play styles. 'Balanced around map-painting conquest' is not the sort of balance a game like Stellaris needs to worry about, because Stellaris isn't designed to be a balanced map-painting conquest game in the first place. Complaining that it's not optimal for min-maxing conquest is silly- that's not the metric that should be used.
If you're having tens of thousands of extra credits for terraforming and have all four habitability techs by year 2030, you're already not caring about map-painting efficacy. By the time you can afford that and have all 4 techs and have paid the energy/influence to move all the pops to ideal worlds... you've both already won the game for most intents and purposes, and you don't need precusor civilization.
10% habitability is most significant in the early-ish game, where most pop growth is natural and not from pop assembly, by pops on non-ideal worlds. This is most of your first century unless/until you Synth ascend, and in this period of the game increased growth and economic outputs are the most important to support the industrial output to support more (and better) scientists.
The core issue still remains.
The yuht are 100 times worse than the best precursor and they shouldn't be. Why would you every prefer having them over first league, cybrex and so on.
The first part of your post is more of a personal opinion than a valid argument that really contributes nothing here.
The second part is largely missing the point, while also leaving out huge chunks of what has been said so you can reach a fallacious conclusion. You don't need "tens of thousands" to terraform everything. You're on purpose leaving out both droids and migration pacts, as well as different difficulties being an option for the game, up to and including 25x crisis.
That you talk about "most pop growth being natural" within the first century and describe it as early-ish is honestly quite telling. And no, the small number of pops won't make that big a difference. A single robot assembly plant will have a bigger impact. You're also simply assuming that you're somehow finishing the Yuht precursor in a time frame where you could still utilize it for the early game rush. That's not the case most of the time.
The nerfed Cybrex isn’t too good. It’s good enough to be useful to every empire (compared to the niche or absolutely worthless relics), but not absurd. It’s just good in relation to the rest.
Zroni is bonkers good for any normal empire type.
Not everything needs to be 'balanced'. I like that some are better than others. They are all somewhat useful. My only beef is that sometimes a dig site will spawn way outside your borders still.
The select precursor mod has an option to disable them
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"nerfed cybrex" still outputs 166-ish alloys per month on average, which is tons more than you'll have economy to make from industry by the time you can get the forge.
This is without paying gc to specialists for conversion, so you can simply tool your economy for minerals for a long time and be massively ahead.
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Complaining that it's not optimal for min-maxing is silly? Did you read what I said earlier? There are 2 groups that play. One of them IS the min-maxers (the powergamers). And they deserve JUST as much attention as the roleplayers. Just because you are in group A does not give you cause to say group B is inferior.
That right there basically invalidates everything you say, because it demonstrates that you don't even care about players other than yourself.
And 10% habitability is trash for machine empires, lithoids, and void dwellers. For the rest, it is only marginally good. Remember, for a long time, -10% habitability was the BEST negative trait to take (for min-maxers) because of how little habitability mattered. It's not that extreme anymore, but you can still play just fine with lower habitability. The changes you have to make are generally minimal.
Finally, you went STRAIGHT into hyperbole. Like, seriously, are you demonstrating how to make a useless post? Because you have invalidated half of players, demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of several major game mechanics as well as an ignorance for non-standard races, AND used an argument that holds no water because it is done in a ridiculous extreme. That's your entire post.
Then you wouldn't care if everything was balanced either.
Just because it doesn't bother you doesn't mean it doesn't bother other people. Let the game get balanced - you'll still have your fun.
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