Stalker0

Join Date 04/2009

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[6.2] Balance Discussion - Ideology

Lets take a look at the ideology trees and see how their balance is looking.

I'm going to go with a simple rating for now

Strong

Medium

Weak

Bad - Meaning badly designed.

We will go in Tiers as that seems the best way to compare.

Tier 1

Outreach 1: Medium. Only useful in the early game but a nice solid expansion benefit.

Affinity 1: Medium. The building provides a solid morale bonus to any planet you need it.

Prominence 1: Weak. The missionary center went from OP to nearly useless now except to generate more ideology points.

Enlightenment 1: Weak. The other benefits give me things that will keep providing bonuses. This is a one and done.

Vigilant 1: Weak. Planetary Defense is one of the weakest stats in the game in my opinion, and it takes up a tile.

Builder 1: Strong. Right now there is a constructor exploit where you can upgrade them into colony ships, so this one can get you 3 colony ships early on if you do it right. Even without that, bagging 3 key artifacts or clusters of resources can be awesome.

Traders 1: Weak. This may be my bias against trade right now; trade just doesn't seem to be that great overall. Probably with good optimization this is a medium.

Negotiator 1: Bad. The problem is this a panic button, which doesn't really fit the rest of the trees. Its the prereq for a number of other ideologies which you are penalized for getting if you don't have any issues with war. Sure its great when you need it, but it should not be an ideology...or give it to me as a diplomatic asset that I can activate when I want to. So it gives me a panic button I can use whenever I want at some point in the game. That might be more worth it.

Aggression 1: N/A. I have never taken the aggression line myself. My thinking, the frigate would either need to be strong enough to take out at least 1 starbase, or fast enough to chase down any explorers and constructors. Otherwise this would be weak for the early game.

Motivation 1: Strong. The building is strong and generates more points.

Greed 1: Weak. Even with a money focused civ, its just not that big a bonus.

Awe 1: Weak. If the difference is literally +1 diplomacy it doesn't seem all that good.

Tier 2

Outreach 2: Strong. This one is great if you are properly prepared for it (have a colony ship on standby). Probably becomes medium on much larger maps but another planet is still another planet.

Affinity 2: Medium. Since its only 1 planet I wouldn't consider it strong, but the homeworld is always a place that needs more approval so a good bonus.

Prominence 2: Weak. I'm debating this one. Now that consulates don't provide static bonuses, the 50% is a lot weaker than it used to be. This one is heavily map dependent, on smaller maps it might be a solid basis for an influence push, on larger maps its worthless.

Enlightenment 2: Strong. Probably utilized you can get 50% bonuses to all your science planets. It makes early econ starbase play very good.

Vigilant 2: Weak. Has a lousy prereq, and any ideology that doesn't help me is not going to be that strong.

Builder 2: Medium. Requires special planning to put to use, but can be very strong in the right hands.

Traders 2: Weak. Again I consider trade ideologies on the weak side.

Negotiator 2: Weak. I feel like this should be Negotiator 1.

Aggression 2: N/A. Never taken it, though it sounds decent in the approval bonus is good.

Motivation 2: Medium. A solid bonus to your homeworld, obviously scales heavily with map size.

Greed 2: Medium. Has a bad prereq but its a good bonus, effectively giving your first 5 worlds a minimum 25% bonus to the thing they do...often a good bit more depending on your building tech level and adjacencies.

Awe 2: Bad. A weak prereq tech, and this one seems incredibly situational. It might be amazing, it might be garbage.

Tier 3

Prolific 3: Strong. If you can get this one early, you get a massive bonus in effective growth.

Affinity 3: Medium. Pretty map dependent, on larger maps more approval is always good.

Prominence 3: Strong. If done right, this is a game changing ideology that can bag a cultural victory for you.

Enlightenment 3: Strong. Very powerful science bonus building.

Vigilant 3: Weak. Its a hinderance but it doesn't make you stronger.

Builder 3: Weak. By this time building constructor with more modules if not a big deal. This one be great early in the tree, but not tier 3.

Traders 3: N/A. I've gotten this once, but I'm not really sure what the benefit is. The trade routes get stronger, how much stronger?

Negotiators 3: N/A. Never gotten it.

Aggression 3: N/A. Depends on how fully loaded these transports are. Seems to give me the means to take 5 planets in a short order, which does sound pretty good.

Motivation 3: Strong. My homeworld is often my main manufacturing base anyway. So this +10 production from the prereq makes my homeworld capable of building any ship outthere.

Greed 3: N/A.

Awe 3: Medium. This one sounds really good, if it didn't have 2 weak prereqs.

I haven't played around with the higher Tier techs enough to comment, but I did want to make 1 note.

Awe 5: Bad. No ideology should stop one of the fundamental mechanics in the game, even at the top of the tree. Weaken it sure, but not immunity.

So agree or disagree? Lets debate!

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I play almost exclusively Malevolent, so I'll comment on those.

All of Aggression's free units scale up based on what techs you currently have. So, for example, if you wait until you have tier 4 Kinetics to take Aggression I, you get a Frigate that's fully loaded with Tier 4 Kinetics. However, even if you take it early on, even before you have Medium tech, the frigate is quite good.

Aggression I: Medium - it's honestly just a stepping stone to the amazing Aggression II.

Aggression II: STRONG - For every planet you conquer, you get a permanent, stacking +1 morale to every planet you will ever own. If you're a warmonger, you'll never have to build approval structures ever again. If you want to have a huge empire without being forced to get Patriotic, get Aggression II. Ironically, this means every world you conquer will be way past ecstatic.

Aggression III: Strong. Fully loaded means exactly what it says on the tin. You get at least 6 billion soldiers, and if your miniaturization is good enough, each one will have 12 billion soldiers. Their speed and range is loaded with the best of what you currently know.

Aggression IV: Strong. I under-estimated this before. Escort Fighters are amazing - each fighter is an individual Small craft armed with the best armaments of you can currently build, across all three types. They have 1 module of each defense as well, so they'll be well defended. Each troop module comes with 2 fighters (any more and it'd be disgustingly overpowered). Unfortunately, the module is expensive, and nearly twice the size of a regular troop module, but considering how small troop modules are in the first place, this isn't a big deal. Also, the game doesn't build transports with those modules by default, so you'll have to make your own design, though this also isn't a big deal. You still shouldn't leave your troop transports undefended, though they now contribute heavily to their own defense, so if they're in a fleet themselves, taking them out before they get somewhere is going to take an entire fleet of well-armed ships.

Aggression V: Strong. Have you been mongering wars? Well, now you get free Large ships with all the bells and whistles on every planet you own! Now you can defend all that new territory without having to spend time building anything.

Motivation I: Strong. It gives a large % increase to approval, which goes good with morale improvements. Scales well with Aggression II.

Motivation II: Strong. This makes your capital a beast of production.

Motivation III: Strong. You'll ram out Huge ships in 1 turn without even trying. Scales well.

Motivation IV: STRONG. The Death Furnace is ridiculously strong, as it receives double bonuses from adjacency and makes getting new Malevolent tenets very easy. Build it on your Manufacturing capital and this thing will rocket your production to the moon. It does give Research bonuses, but this is a waste of its potential. Surround it with enough bonuses and it's like having a second manufacturing capital, so even early game, you'll have over 1000 production without even setting the planet to specialize. Currently, my manufacturing capital has 500 production with its manufacturing slider set to only 30%. The other 70% is set to research. Even with the changes to how Projects award bonuses, I effectively have two research capitals.

Motivation V: Medium: A solid capstone. Sadly, I haven't figured out how to unlock the Culling planetary project, so I don't know what that does.

Greed I: Weak. Good stepping stone, but nothing special.

Greed II: Medium. Every planet gets +1 tile. You can't pick which tile, though.

Greed III: Strong. Citadel of Revenue gives +100% income to the world that builds it and high adjacency. Works well on your financial capital.

Greed IV: Strong. All trade routes you own give a one-sided bonus to production on top of credits. Essentially, the game treats you as if you had a slave brokering agreement with the other empire, which the other empire does not get to benefit from. The hidden side effect of this is that you can pick something other than Slave Brokering on your trade tech tree, because everything acts like you have Slave Brokering anyway.

Greed V: Strong. Every planet you own gets one free tile, and the tile you get is always a tile you wouldn't have been able to otherwise get through standard terraforming. Scales well late game.

Awe I: Weak. The entire Awe tree sucks unless you decide to play peacefully or feel like roleplaying through mechanics.

Awe II: Weak. This might be useful if minors built constructors, so you could snatch up all their starbases on the cheap, but they don't.

Awe III: Strong. Makes defending your territory absurdly easy.

Awe IV: Strong. A free Class 16 planet. What's not to love?

Awe V: Strong. I disagree that it's badly designed, but only slightly. The entire culture system is badly designed, because it's only fun for the guy that's winning, and is absurdly frustrating for the guy that's losing, so in the context of that culture system, this is a necessary evil. Sometimes you come up against a cultural force that just can't be stopped, despite your best efforts, especially if one guy keeps getting elected to the UP Chair. In that case, this might be your last line of defense. It means war, of course, but that was inevitable. At least with this, you won't immediately lose all those planets to culture flip.

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