YOR Balancing observation

I would like to start that I have not yet tried them. I have had them in many games and it appears that they are not able to properly compete with the other nations. They have been on the bottom of all the games I have been playing.without the graphs and stuff I can't really speculate why but perhaps some attention to their ai would help. Thanks for listening

 

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Reply #1 Top

The Yor aren't that good early game, also there is this bug with some of their buildings not upgrading.

Reply #2 Top

They have also stated that the Yor will need to have the AI specially adapted for them, so at the moment the computer plays them very poorly.

Reply #3 Top

Same for me. Try a 3 player godlike game with the Yor on a huge galaxy to test it, I haven't, but I suspect mid/late game they will be stronger if they have enough room. They have to halt production to make population, and as others have said I don't think they do this intelligently yet, in fact deciding when and when not to do it will be the biggest challenge for the devs in their AI code.

After a colony ship? Check, easy one, but when else?

Maybe listing a few times they should switch, or unswitch from population building here will help. It might help the AI programming (for the AI not the player) if population building was a 5 turn thing, then the AI re-evaluated what they wanted, or ran another 5 turn project. 

Reply #4 Top

I seem to fall behind early game when using them.   Not being able to grow and build kills me.  It would be okay if they grew really fast when you chose assembly, but they seem to grow VERY slowly, and all the while nothing is being built.

Reply #5 Top

Having just played the yor for a bit, I can see and understand the complexities involved in what will need to be AI changes for the YOR. It also explains why they tend to fall behind when run as AI. Thanks for the info

Reply #6 Top

Tried them a few times and mostly got my ass kicked, they are slow to get started.  That they don't have a small planet in the same system actually sets them back but that will likely be resolved when extreme worlds come in.  The real issue is the inability to build and grow population.  While I understand Stardock wants to make them play differently, I can't think of a reason why a synthetic race would not automate building more of itself as much as possible.  I have 3 suggestions regarding this, first everyone else has population growth buildings to increase their population growth give the Yor a population growth building that builds Yor, even if its just to get to the level of natural growth by the biologics it would bring the Yor to competitive levels.  The second was suggested in another thread, to separate projects and building and put a slider on how much production goes to each.  Lastly give the Yor an option to build X population as part of their build queue, for example initial build queue could be something like Manufacturing Yor, Manufacturing Yor, 2 billion Yor, Research Yor, Research Yor, 2 billion Yor.  This would ease a lot of the miromanagement for the Yor as well as they are mrico heavy.

Reply #7 Top

I would blame the eco bug more then anything. You combine the slow start they get, with not being able to upgrade past a 20% production bonus per manufacturing collective and things get rough to keep up economically.

Reply #8 Top

I've only played yor about 80ish rounds, the lack of second planet -eally- hurts yor badly.

With other races, even ignoring that first planet & looking for a better alternative isn't much of a hit since the planet gets to grow pop & build stuff. The really painful part is having to do that while everyone else is running economic stimulus.

I think if the yor had significantly longer range than other races it could even out on larger maps since they could make up for it by focusing on iconia until everyone else hits the life support range wall and just skipping along past crappy planets and setting down on  choice planets with that range.

Another part of the early trouble is the fact that there really isn't much in the way of useful alternatives to colony ships. 
- freighters are in the tech tree (which I crippled early on by simply needing to build stuff differently
- extra scouts are of limited use  given the limited range.
-constructors... There is nothing to build initially

Reply #9 Top


I would like to start that I have not yet tried them. I have had them in many games and it appears that they are not able to properly compete with the other nations. They have been on the bottom of all the games I have been playing.without the graphs and stuff I can't really speculate why but perhaps some attention to their ai would help. Thanks for listening

 
End of quote

do you know which ones?  That would be a trivial fix

edit: nevermind, I already found &  fixed here

Reply #10 Top

Quoting dragoaskani, reply 7

I would blame the eco bug more then anything. You combine the slow start they get, with not being able to upgrade past a 20% production bonus per manufacturing collective and things get rough to keep up economically.
End of dragoaskani's quote

"Eco bug"?

Having learned from my previous game, I just ran through ~100 turns with the factory upgrade path fixed while playing yor with knowledge of what I learned previously , I learned a few things about what yor need on research planets (more factories than I expected)... but it looks like they will be phenomenal as traders & great on larger galaxies simply because they are burst expansionist from planets with massive industrial capability.    Within ~100 turns I had starbases spread out to cover the vast majority of the galaxy with an allied terran/altarian team from the ai that I had yet to meet (suspect they were in the part I didn't reach yet).  Another 30-50 turns & I would have had the entire galaxy as my reachable area.   

I had frequently seen yor survey ships exploring my area when I knew yor were clear across the galaxy & way out of reach, but now I know how.  In Yor's favor towards burst expansion & trade, they are unaffected by things like food & population growth so can pick whichever colonization event gives the best benefit more often... oddly enough I was about 60/40 benevolent/merciless with only one colonization going neutral.  

 

I think the biggest hinderance to playing yor is currently the lack of access to galaxies beyond huge.

Reply #11 Top

What do you mean with the Factory upgrade path fixed? There is no patch that I am aware of, and I couldn't spot the problem when I went digging in the xml files. (not my strong suit though I am a hardware guy not a programmer)

Reply #13 Top

Quoting dragoaskani, reply 11

I couldn't spot the problem when I went digging in the xml files.
End of dragoaskani's quote

<UpgradesFrom>IndustrialCollective</UpgradesFrom>

That's the problem, it's set to upgrade form itself.

Reply #14 Top

after going through two or three 100ish turn games  with yor &it fixed I'm really pleased with the yor


Some thoughts & observations while posting from my phone:
They need 3-4 factories on any planet for it to be able to build & grow at a useful rate... That's mitigated by the fact that they have a 16-20billion population cap on -any- planet & the farm +hospital gets replaced with a power thing +extra factory so you can grow the population & build things at useful rates

-It might be because I'm playing a bit differently by necessity, but I definitely struggle a little more with the tech tree than the "pfft whatever" relationship I have with it & terrans/iridium 

- their planets take -tons- more hands on micromanaging & its a cool twist to the build & forget for everyone else.

- morale isn't in yet again, but it's one of the things you need to be careful with & forces more early game attention to the political tree as a result (cool).  With other races I just plant an entertainment center where needed, but its more of an issue with yor & I think glad for it because it & the diplomacy penalty makes playing for diplomatic/influence/long gameoptions take more hands on attention.

- expansion should be done wildly differently from every other race & most planets should probably have a starbase. 

- Rather than having a small number of high pop/cap/growth worlds you can pull colonists from here and there, you can make -any- world a cap one.... Colonization goes like this as a result....
-- expand your range with some long range modified constructors while you build up any newly colonized worlds
--send out scouts to find lots of planets
-- build yourself a bunch of yor colonists
-- launch colony ships from -all- of them at once & colonize them all
-- repeat.

I was playing with star spread 2, common stars /planets/habitable on huge & having a blast.  Normally such a high habitable world %  isn't nearly as enjoyable

My next game I'mm going to be a bit more diplomatic/military atop the exploration I think that it will help considerably for various reasons  too.

 

Edit:  some of what I noticed has been confirmed by another gamewas wholly because of the different slant I took on my tech tree navigation, not picking up tourism & other economic techs previously made a huge difference.  All in all, I'm having a blast with the yor the better my understanding of them gets.  I still feel that yor will get even better as galaxy size scales up & can't wait for larger galaxies  Playing with more of an economic/diplomacy/trade focused yor has the diplomacy penalty making it actually take effort & things like prep (as opposed to cruise control like terrans & iconians by comparison).... "will I get that freighter to $iconian planet before they attack me ?.." > "uhhh-oh why did they make another rallypoint?" type stuff.  The seemingly weaker research has the unexpected effect of making me dip more into the military tree out of desire... all in all it's great fun.   It seems like around turn 100-150ish I have enough colonized worlds with a high enough population where I can more than make up for the early handicap :).

Reply #15 Top

Quoting peregrine23, reply 13


Quoting dragoaskani,

I couldn't spot the problem when I went digging in the xml files.



<UpgradesFrom>IndustrialCollective</UpgradesFrom>

That's the problem, it's set to upgrade form itself.

End of peregrine23's quote

Ah thank you. Don't know how I over looked that, I swore I looked at all of those and couldnt figure out why it was broken.