Well having played sins, i was really looking forward to the "Balances" coming with entrenchment...
Come try the game in online multiplayer against human opponents, Stupidolphin. It might change your perspective on things like balance. The races are fairly-well balanced as evidenced by experienced and skilled players playing all three races.
But i find that the culture is still not anywhere near effective enough to be even slightly viable.
What exactly do you want culture to do for you? It raises allegiance on your planets, makes it difficult for attackers to colonize your planets after they've bombed them, and it slowly reduces allegiance on other planets. It's hard to kick an enemy military occupier off of a planet with pamphlets and radio broadcasts, but over time, in this game, it can happen. Culture really adds to the game, IMHO.
Returning armarda has not been changed to have a limit and remains completely broken and abusable.
RA is actually very expensive and not often seen in online multiplayer against human opponents. You have to build 8 civic labs and do 5 pieces of research, one level 5, two level 7, and two level 8. That's expensive! The phase stabilizers are also very expensive and you can only use the RA ability once every 10 minutes and you have to pay for it. Perhaps it would pay for itself after 6 hours of game play.
It's nothing like what it used to be before verson v1.1 where people would build 15 phase gates, publicly announce "I have attained Returning Armada, the game is over," and then proceed to skyrocket up to 2300 fleet supply. It's almost useless now. I really don't see it too often in the pro game unless it's a really long game and the Vasari player is doing well. Before v1.1 RA used to be the main reason for playing Vasari, but it's barely a factor at all now.
Being honest, the starbases are not even slightly blanced and are completely game BREAKING.
The vasari deflector shield damage reduction is just a joke and its ability to be built from a colony ship is insane.
The Vasari starbase is one of the primary reasons for wanting to play Vasari now. If it were weakened then the other two races would become a little more powerful than Vasari IMHO; it would mess up the game balance.
Having thourghly play tested all of the starbases myself now, i can say that when you have a fleet of 20 heavy crusiers wiped out by one star base its not playable.
You have to find other ways to knock them down. As a general rule, you should try to keep your fleet away from starbases. Try a swarm of 50 bombers and watch what happens.
Even more of a bad joke is when 20 cruisers specialised at killing structures cannot kill a starbase lol.
A fully loaded Vasari starbase can do that. However, I've also seen them knock down the starbases quickly.
Not to mention the asteroid ability completely stoping all fleets in their tracks.
The TEC starbase can blow up! Stay away from the starbases and fear them!
A star base backed up by hanger bays full of fighters and asteroid swarm is completely invulnrable!! ooh but they even gave those very same hanagr bays shield restore as well!! A starbase supported by repair platfroms is sick, and the TEC starbase is complety lame compared to the other 2..... its self destruct ability does not even do any damage to anything.. its completely bugged.
It's a tough nut to crack but starbases can't move across phase lanes. If you can't knock it down with a huge amount of bombers, just go around it and jump to the next gravity well or culture the planet to death.
pleeeeeeeeeaase BALANCE THE GAME i did not pay for a game that hasn't been play tested.
I don't mean to be too big of an ass, but until you come play the game in online multiplayer against real human opponents and have some experience, it's hard to take anything you say about balance very seriously unless you want to complain about the AI's bad decision making, lack of micromanagement ability, and overall lack of competitiveness.
