Synthetics are very powerful mid to late game. Best to hit them early if you can.

Patch 1.02:

Added a check to gray out Yor assembly projects so that you cant run them when your population is already capped

Just tested it, overproduktion of yor Population is still possible. I have 17.9 Population, 15 is allowed and I still can produce more. Pls Stardock fix it. And pls fix the Yor Tec tree, it now has 2 tecs that unlocks the Market center.

Thx in advance.

Same experience here....the Yor consistently have 2x or more of the score of the next highest AIs.

Frogboy programmed the Yor better than the organic races.  Or maybe machines are just better.  

I personally think it's the production bonuses AI gets.  The Yor can convert them directly into pop.  

On suicidal, with Yor on the map one possible idea is to colonize quickly and get Malevolence level III and invade their worlds early and nerf them down.  The AI doesn't build anything to defend their worlds in the early game.  

I ended up disabling the Yor in my suicidal games for the time being, just because I had the same experience.  Very early on, they would just wipe out everyone.  9 AIs versus the Yor, and the Yor were unphased.  There are definitely some balancing problems with them.  I tend to play the same settings as you, so the early rush to Malevolence III isn't that feasible.  I don't like micromanaging a huge number of planets and get bogged down by the large maps, let alone anything bigger than that.

Paul and Frogboy have said the Yor are better late game and its best to kill them as soon as possible But, there have been race/AI balance issues and the devs have been trying to balance it out with the patches.

the problem here is what is the definition of late game?

for a player playing the yor or a similar synthetic race you can hit their stride at some point between turns 15-30 is this late game? whats a good strategy to take out the yor before turn 30? on an immense map?

If you aren't synthetic you can't, he builds pop faster than you can, by thousands of total percentage.  The only potential method would be the Prolific trait coupled with the newly nerfed Abundant ideology trait. And that still doesn't hold a candle to Yor production.

Except that Yor can overproduce. Even if the AI isn't doing it intentionally it still takes advantage of any excess pop it does make by accident.

From what I've seen, the "challenge overachievers" are not just the least numbered group but also the most vocal group.

And nothing raises hype about a game and builds up reputation like a vocal group of old-timers complaining on each and every forum that "this game just doesn't cut it either, and none of them do like that one did". Please those old timers, and that "one game to shame them all" will be yours.

Or at least that's what I think on the subject of whether or not SD "should" care about uncommon difficulties.

Well. that, and another thing revolving around levels of appreciation and "art" of designing games compared to the art of pleasing casual audience and making sales. But that'd be a long discussion that I've no wish to partake in.

That largely depends on the map composition. While the synthetic race is trying to accelerate you have a few turns worth of advantage at expanding. Once it DOES accelerate you quickly loose that advantage. The rest is a question of how important it is to settle ASAP. Which in turn is a question of how the map is set-up. If both of you are rubbing borders almost from the start (doesn't have to actually be the "rub" between you and them) then their initial delay will cost them dearly. If, on the other, hand you've both got an abundance of space you'll be the one left in the dust.

A player-controlled synthetic race will attempt to lengthen that initial delay in order to hasten "the coming of the catchup". And again it'll only work if the map is "free" enough for it to work, otherwise it's their own grave.

In reverse, seeing that there's no time for acceleration Yor would attempt to force his way into earlier "land staking". That, in turn, would diminish his snowballing potential significantly.

You'd still want to deal with them ASAP though.

That said...

I don't think Stardock put a lot of thought into balancing the game for competitive play. I don't think they ever will (or should).

Not really. In the question of AI balance it's was about a disproportion of Yor and all the rest of them. That, afaik, isn't as disproportional as it was meant to be. What IS as disproportional as it's meat to be is the AI in "suicidal" games.

Both the balance between Yor for AIs and Yor for players is equally "borked" (not equally in measure, but rather equally in founding principals that define the measure of it's belonging to borkedness...).

And the question of whether or not it is worthwhile to fix it is, quite prosaically the question of popularity and "vocality".

Judging by the forums, and by the dev's "focus history" SP is already a higher priority issue for them than MP.

Judging by common 4x practices "cooperative" multiplayer holds a much bigger "share" in the genre than competitive.

Judging by the hype spreading mechanics and even commercial moves of certain companies, the "suicidal" challenge-lovers are a big element in commercial ecosystem (despite the fact that they are NOT the majority of customers).

It is on the ground of theses assumptions that I estimated the priority and likeliness of "suicidal" AI rebalance to be well above the priority and likeliness of competitive rebalance.

And about the cap prevention. I'd have to slightly disagree.

IMHO there needs in fact to be some "buffer space" for them to overbuild their population into. I entirely agree that it shouldn't be a way to stack insane bonuses. But there needs to be a "one project worth" of buffer space.

Yor can populate their planets by building, which is a plus, but they also must populate their planets by building which is a minus.

The mechanic of building a colony ship for an organic race is simple - build and lose population, wait for it to regenerate, build and lose more.

The mechanic for synthetics is build and lose, replenish, build and lose.

Synthetic mechanic is different in that it is more effective the more people there already is on the planet. So for example doing it in the order of "assembly->colony->assembly->colony" would be faster than "colony->assembly->colony->assembly". There's no such difference for organics but there is such for synthetics.

Specifically let's say it's 15. jumping 15->13->15->13 would be slower than jumping 15->17->15->17 . Even if there was no benefit of having population beyond 15. Without a buffer however this build order would be impossible for the capped pop level but still possible for any lesser pop level.

I can't really give strong enough arguments why it should work the same at all pop levels, but it would simply not sit right with me if it didn't.

It's not a question of balance, just more or less a question of consistency.

If I was the one choosing I'd make them able to order an "overbuild" at any time, but never actually let them have more than pop cap + the size of their biggest unlocked assembly. And of cause reduce the numbers till they are back to the cap just as they are now. Or maybe even better - as long as the associated shipyard isn't making a colony/transport cut it all back down to pop cap in one turn.

remember that the population > production formula was reverted to prod = pop recently. the other formula we had for a few patches around release (prod = 2 * pop ^0.7) made high population  less efficient. the new formula doesn't. combine that with a race that can cheaply manufacture population. voila, there's your explanation.

not sure if "overbuilding" is such a big issue. they'll be over the cap thanks to the overbuilding, but they'd probably steamroll everyone almost as hard if the cap was actually a hard cap. that's just the icing on the cake, not the real issue.