TLF Version 1.900-2.007

[Eternaly_Lost]

Thoughts will be welcome.  I find it very hard to replicate your strategy, chemical_art, but that was true when I tried it even prior to this patch.  So I'll be curious to see what you make of it.

I done the same thing that Chemical_art has done, Although I did it with a Thats so OP combat and a difficulty of Hard, So I really did not think that much of it. Given I basically did the exact same thing. Go in, kill all the attackers, send in my robot well I bomb the population down to nothing.

Granted that was a few version back, so I don't know how all the changes since then have effected what I did that game.

[x4000]

Haha.

The fear bonuses do stack.

And in terms of diplomacy, the races typically won't attack -- much -- if you are a lot stronger than them.  So consolidating your planet, then doing nice things for some of them to make them like you, can win you some points.  Then get them fighting between themselves, and then spread out.

You basically have three forces to work with: races vs races; your flagship vs anyone; your armadas vs anyone.

[Eternaly_Lost]

I just did a quick run though on the easiest setting on Betryal mode, it took me about 62 months or so to win.

I am sure that I could trim it down a bit, as I did a bit more research then I needed, and I needed less population then I thought to take over the Galaxy. My longest break was getting the seed population I needed to attack. Once that was done, it was orbital bombs, tactical support and every armada in orbit above the planet and a very quick victory.

Order you go in really matters, with the Thoralaxians going first and the Burlists second and starting with the Acutians, made the later part fairly quick.

Now, this was on Easy, so I can accept it. When i got more time, I am going to try again on normal or hard and see what I can pull out.

[chemical_art]

4 planets down in 14 months. Things are really heating up.



The gloves should be coming off. I'm excited.

Predicted order of conquest is dark blue, light blue, purple, orange.

[chemical_art]

Extra bit: The AI is trying!

[x4000]

Good lord, you two are wizards! 

I tried like 3 times today and could not remotely replicate that sort of thing.

Seems like it is sort of putting up more of a fight now, but not like it is taking a more appropriate amount of time (kind of the opposite, really). Any ideas on ways to thwart yourself? Since I can't do that strategy effectively for some reason, I'm guessing at a remove. I really expected I had you with those last changes, for instance. But now you're even faster!

[chemical_art]

Good lord, you two are wizards! 

I tried like 3 times today and could not remotely replicate that sort of thing.

Seems like it is sort of putting up more of a fight now, but not like it is taking a more appropriate amount of time (kind of the opposite, really). Any ideas on ways to thwart yourself? Since I can't do that strategy effectively for some reason, I'm guessing at a remove. I really expected I had you with those last changes, for instance. But now you're even faster!

I'm going to have to think a little while, because they are no easy solutions.

I mean there ARE solutions, like splitting technologies for ground troops between offense and defense. And offense techs come in mid game...but that doesn't really make sense in a space game (If you can travel between planets and secure orbit, you can conquer fixed defenses)
I suppose you COULD remove Orbital bombardment...but for the same reason, if you have engines that use controlled nuclear energy, you certainly learned how to use them with less control for weapons.

In the larger sense, as long as you have the concept of a super flagship being fun, the whole strategy phase is bonkers. It is impossible to balance both owning planets and a super flagship. One has to be more important.

The in-game description says attacking armadas on your own is suicidal...that has to be brought back somehow...I have an idea...let me flesh it out...

[chemical_art]

The solution I brainstormed was that what if...Betrayal mode didn't start right after the Hydra were wiped out...what if Betrayal mode happened after all the races were spacefaring...and had an uneasy truce.

The last Hydra was found in a coma years after the event, awakened, and then took over a planet. Did not wipe it out, just became a dictator. It has all the benefits and weakness of the race in terms of technology (everything else fairly irrelevant).

So...in short you become a Hive Queen...or a King of Birds.

The reasoning for all of this:

1. With the game starting in mid game, these early blitzkriegs are simply not effective. It is very easy to bomb 50M to dust, harder to bomb 500M, but almost impossible to bomb 5000M on your own.
2. With mid techs, there is a relativistic parity between player flagship and enemy, without the player necessarily being "hurt".
3. It allows a much more unique gameplay due to having access to unique technologies.


The biggest negative:

1. It would take a lot of work, worthy of yet another sequel


A "shortcut" would be to just have the game start at the mid game phase of the technology tree, with appropriate population levels.

[chemical_art]

23.8 solar months of genocide.

This will go two ways:

1) Many skirmishes to wear down the enemy fleets.
2)Play defense and intercept the enemy fleets before the troop transports follow. Sooner or later they will run out of ships...no more then 80 months from now.

Either doesn't sound fun, I do consider this a win.

Also attached save at end:

[x4000]

Okay, what you say makes a ton of sense.  I've thought about it a lot, and I think a tamer version of your suggestions might work.  We'll see: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=The_Last_Federation_Post-2.0_Release_Notes#Version_2.002

It certainly should be about impossible for you to pull off exactly what you were doing before, at least.  Also, this is now a situation where you'll immediately need to play defense, I'd expect, and focus on making a friend or two to go do some attacks for you.

By having some friends like that, you can avoid situations where you need to beat your head against a wall just to fully claim your win (as in the save you just posted).  The alternative, hopefully, is that you have no friends and everyone kills you, leading to a clear loss.  OR you patiently become militarily supreme, then slaughter everyone else.  Either way works for me, frankly.

Hopefully this leads to more diversity of strategies here.  And really, still doing quite a bit of diplomacy is something that is supposed to be important in this game.  If you leave it at 7v1 indefinitely, it's supposed to crush you.

Anyway, fingers crossed that this feels better!

[chemical_art]

To your changes I just say:

"Hmmm"

Actually the first thing I say really is:

"I wish I tested this LAST week"

I'm sorry!


But anyway, the pirate plus the +10 year start changes are legitimate changes to curb my violence. I can't argue with these, or bypass them. Population is still a serious concern, and tech might be, but one problem at a time....I will legitamately have to play nice from the start...give me time and we will see what happens.


Anyway, we have certainly changed things from this morning about discussing spacefaring tech!  But I'll try playing nice...for once.

[Eternaly_Lost]

I don't know what tech you have, but a bit of planet improvement (Get them all to about 5 or so) helps a LOT. Your population growth rate basically doubles. (Mine went from +0.5 to +1.0. +1.5 after I researched the pop techs.)

It does not take that much to take the Andors down, that 4.3 B power seems to act more like .43 B when it comes to them. A bit of prep work rather then right out attack, and you could take that world a lot quicker then just a flat out attack.

As for how to fix it, I think there is a fairly easy way, less then Chemical put out.

First of all, start all races space faring. The Alliances with each other sounds like a good idea too.

Give each race (save your own) a lot of starting population and Armadas, and a I mean a lot. They should start in the 30s range for Armadas and the low billions on population.

Make each race see your Armadas well they are at your 'home' world, appear to be worth the same as 20(or maybe more) of theirs until you take your first planet. This is to make certain that the entire galaxy does not attack you right away until you take over another world.

Perfect ingame justification. They know how powerful Hydra ships are. They think your fleets really are that strong until they see them in action against a world. The Spy probes reports the results to everyone when you take the first world, so they know that they were greatly overestimating you.

What this means is, you have a lot of work to do, either blowing up massive fleets (add some sort of counter attack option maybe?) Or getting sides to hate each other and fight each other. Then you can walk in and clean up.

Add in a 'Boss' at each world that appears in each fight (and something that disables them, be it mission, building or tech) and it will take time to get anywhere in a Betrayal mode.

It certainly changes the pacing of Betrayal mode, but in the end, I think it would feel like a real Betrayal mode. Your not knocking down people that just started to get to space. Rather you walking in after they are already built up, and removing them.

The end result of this, means when you take your first planet. You better be ready, because the rest of the races will realize what you are up to, and exactly how strong you are when you do.

EDIT:

Well the new version sneaked out well I was typing this. Even more mild then I suggested, but it is starting to move that way. I give the changes  a play later and see how they do.

[chemical_art]

First response:

HOLY...COW

Yes, these new time settings are simply...wow.

Nothing like dying because you decided to engage in combat yourself.

I wont say I didn't deserve this, but still it hurt.

[chemical_art]

As a follow up:

The increased time for space combat is no fun.

There is little fun in defending your planet, and suffering 25% losses while defending yourself, then losing another 75% of the fleet from the lag time because the same race attacks again.

[Eternaly_Lost]

As a follow up:

The increased time for space combat is no fun.

There is little fun in defending your planet, and suffering 25% losses while defending yourself, then losing another 75% of the fleet from the lag time because the same race attacks again.

That is one thing that should be tweaked.

Mainly because it makes no logical sense that well you were there fighting. The ships attacking, somehow destroyed the same ships you protected in the battle, durring the battle, without being in the battle at all.

I think the only reasonable way it can be taken is, when in a combat, if other ships show up to attack your planet over the time you are fighting they just join the combat when they get there.

Or they can't attack you until the combat time is over.