What's with the xenophobic trait?

from GalCiv3 Forums

The Iconians start with this, and you can choose it for custom races - it increases your social production and research by a ridiculous 200% while halving your ship production. Except it doesn't halve it - these modifiers are, as far as I can tell, additive, so the more shipbuilding modifiers you have (if creating a custom race, militant+2 alone covers a good share of the -50% you start with), the less pronounced the starting penalty will be. Adding up, the trait effectively gives a net +350% in your production modifiers.

Slow ship production is pretty bad early on when you want to send out as many colony ships as possible, but you are building improvements and researching colony techs so fast that it doesn't actually take long to catch up - thanks to you building farms, cities, terraforming, starports and whatever twice (or more) as fast as anyone else your raw production will be miles ahead of everyone else, not to mention that you can basically build every single galactic wonder you want (I think the only one I missed in my current game was strategic command). 

Perhaps it was mostly made with the Iconians in mind whose expansion is probably hamstrung in the AI hands with the penalty to building colony ships, but I paired it with Time Travelers and a militant, productive race and very quickly snowballed out of control in practically every category available. Point being, perhaps it should be toned down a bit... or a lot? Something like decrease the SP and research bonus to 100% or make the bonuses +50% and the shipbuilding malus -33%. Currently it feels really out of proportion.

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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I think xenophobic works really well for most "fascist overlord" civs. The problem though is for them to really be a threat, they do need the militaristic boosts you mentioned. In practice, they're rarely a worry as the AI tend not to develop the infrastructure to ever create a significant military threat with them.

Even in the hands of a human, it's great to make research leaps, but it's a bit a touch and go in terms of defence until you get to carriers. So yes, it's great if you get through the early-game without losing too much ground (since even colonization is going to be delayed). It's just another reason why multiplayer and AI players should probably kill your civ before it matures.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

You would think it is a bit overpowering; until you look at ancient or wealthy, these are definately good counterparts to this. Maybe others are weak compared to these three. I think the Iconians were made to be the species to be played with tall in mind. The research, and social would be fine with a large empire penalty on large maps. The game was originally made with some civilizations playing tall; while others play wide, but why is everyone playing tall now. The only bonus I would change is instead of change from the penalty to ship building to the penalty to ships with colony modules, or ships with colony modules and constructor modules. I might change the shipbuilding penalty to base construction so the penalty applies regardless of whatever improvements are applied.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Xenophobic, synthetic Slavers (basicly space-robo-hitler) used to be a killer combination.
I didn't check on the balance in a while though, so take the following with a pint of salt.

Why slavers? Research Extractors used to giv +1 Research flat (not sure if they still do, but if they do: Screw the ancient trait), which went really well with the +200% research. Also the slave master citizen providing +25% military being available early in the game worked well. With militant +2 and slavers you were able to be at 95% military by turn 11.

Synthetic as combination has been reigned in by the 10 prometheon cost (at 1 durantium alone it still was very strong). Before that it snowballed really hard and negated the -50% military by raw production power due to population.

I think the -50% is too easy to play around to balance out for the 2x+200%. Militant +2 is a free grab in trade for scientific -1 and social productive -1 which doesn't hurt you at all with xenophobic.

Another way to play around this weakness is selling tech, which you should be attaining in excess, and by your ships with credits.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Xenophobic synthetic scavengers.

You get that early flat +1-per-resource mining boost, so all you really need is one or two sources of durantium and promethium each and you end up more-or-less unstoppable.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It should be hard 50% reduction no matter what. The way it work right now, you can counter it quite easily.