Affinities arent even balanced resource wise

[Question]

Harmony (Xenomass)

Fully upgraded, xenomass wells produce +3 food, +4 production, +5 energy, +2 science, +1 culture

Purity (Floatstone)

Fully upgraded, floatstone quarries produce +3 production and +4 energy.

Supremacy (Firaxite)

Fully upgraded firaxite mines produce +3 production, +1 energy, +5 science and +1 culture

This is before taking terrain into account. For some reason purity gets the shaft and harmony gets the most powerful resource by far.

The resouce buildings arent very balanced either. (i cant remember which are quest rewards)

Harmony (Xenomass)

Microbial mine : +3 prod, +10% prod, 2 xenomass

Progenitor garden : +20% health, 4 xenomass. Totally pointless by the time you get it because you will have maxed out health anyway.

Xenosanctuary : +4 culture, 1 xenomass, quest option of either +2 science or +2 culture.

Purity (Floatstone)

LEV Plant : +4 prod, 2 floatstone (quest lets you go up to +6). Pretty lame when you consider that its 15% prod easily nets you around 10 production in the end game.

Skycrane : +15% prod, 4 floatstone. Seriously? 4 floatstone for a bonus less than what 2 firaxite/xenomass gives?

Mantle : +3 science, +10% science, 4 floatstone. Its like the hypercore but twice as expensive for no good reason...


Supremacy (Firaxite)

Bioglass furnace : +2 prod, +15% prod, cost 2 firaxite

Hypercore : +2 science, +15% science, 2 firaxite

Optical surgery : +2 science, +4 health, +1 health from Silica (i cant remember what the quest options were), 4 firaxite

So for some reason purity has the worst and more expensive resource buildings and xneomass has the cheapest.

Victory conditions

Harmony is the only one that lets you accelerate the countdown far in advance of building the win condition. With all the xeno sanctuaries (they give tons of culture) and some additional mindstems, you can easily get the countdown to 10 turns or less upon activation (i got it to 7 and i wasnt even stacking mind stems).

Supremacy allows you to send one unit through the gate at a time, but you can prepare the unts in advance. Min of about 10 turns (1000 commbat strength total). Even if you build the units after, its still far faster than purity.

Purity is an absolute min of 20 turns, realistically it will be more than that as you have to build the settles far away enough from your cities which willl include walking time (even with magrails). Plus you have to defend 4 seperate locations rather than one super building.

For some reason purity is consistently getting the short end of the stick everywhere...

Unique units wise, purity seems to be a mix of titanium/floatstone while the rest stick to their unique resoruces. Theres some imbalance here, xeno cavalry are the cheapest tier 7 unique unit while CARVRs are the most expensive at 3 firaxite, and angels are the cheapest tier 12 UU. Aegis is also a cheap tier 7 UU but arent very good (only ranged strength 40 although they can attack twice). For some reason the to tier supremacy artillery unit is the weakest...it only has 30 ranged strength and can only attack once, not sure if its a bug that they dont get a ranged strength upgrade in the last tier.

 

[TwistAU]

For some reason purity gets the shaft and harmony gets the most powerful resource by far.

Purity's farms more than make up for it.

 

[Question]

The problem is that they arent even exclusive to purity. You can easily get the same farms with either harmony or supremacy.

I didnt even bother to build farms in my last game because water refinery gives you 2/1/1 coastal tiles in the early game. Thats basically an early farm river tile on plains.

 

[Gamewizard]

The problem is that they arent even exclusive to purity. You can easily get the same farms with either harmony or supremacy.

I didnt even bother to build farms in my last game because water refinery gives you 2/1/1 coastal tiles in the early game. Thats basically an early farm river tile on plains.

Some of the farm upgrades are on the purity tech path though, the other affinities would have to slightly go out of their way to get them. Supremacy techs have the generator upgrades, and harmony gets a really good strategic resource tile improvement.

From the limited play I've had, I'd say the affinities are fairly balanced.

 

[Bandersnatching]

The super-farms might not be exclusive to Purity, but you'd have to go far down that path in order to maximize them.
That being said, the Purity buildings never looked worth investing research time into, but their units were pretty good (especially the powerful, inexpensive Battlesuits).
There's definitely imbalance in the game right now. What would you recommend to fix it?

 

[DanPMN]

Also, don't forget about the affinity bonuses. The one for Supremacy 3 is pretty much a must-have and the harmony ones aren't great at all.

 

[Question]

There really isnt a affinity specific tech path, you can go all directions and get all affinities.

 

[TLHeart]

getting all the affinities is a waste of time. Focusing on what you need to reach your goal for the game is the way to approach the affinities. With the tech web, you do not need or really want to research everything, which we were forced to do with the tech tree.

more choice, more options....

yes on paper just looking at the few parts you have looked at, it appears unbalanced... but when all the choices you make start to add up, they are very well balanced.

 

[Question]

I dont mean maxing out all affinities, but a lot of the techs have affinity points AND useful buildings/etc.

Take Photosystems for example. Its a harmony tech. You could avoid it as purity/supremacy but that would be silly...not only does it buff all the plantations you have but it gives you the OP solar collector. Once you start spamming solar collectors your energy will go through the roof. Theres no reason to avoid it.

Tactical robots though, dont make sense at all unless you are going supremacy or need level 3 sup.

 

[BoydofZINJ]

Most of my maps are littered with the miasma - I seem to always be picked up 1 harmony to get the tech that makes your workers immune to miasma. Once you get that tech you can also use workers to remove miasma 1 hex at a time. A great way to clear paths for trade routes or troops. Likewise, always get the solar collector - I start having energy problems in the mid game (thanks to building allot of stuff) and those solar collectors are worth their weight in gold, energy, and what ever else you can think of.

 

[Soffacet]

The problem is that they arent even exclusive to purity. You can easily get the same farms with either harmony or supremacy.

By that logic you can easily get the maxed xeno wells with either purity or supremacy. In practice, that would be a very inconvenient and time-consuming tech diversion. Same with the idea of the harmony/supremacy farms.

In any case, there’s no reason why the individual components of each Affinity must be evenly matched. An affinity can be stronger in one area and weaker in others. Early teching convenience is definitely a big advantage for Purity right now.

 

[s0nny80y]

Don't forget xenomass can spawn alien nests, perhaps requiring the fence to be built or keeping aliens off your territory. Zero sum if you take everything into account.

 

[Question]

Its not a problem of getting the tech that makes xenomass wells good, its the problem of starting in a location with either xenomass or floatstone/firaxite. The player who gets xenomass is going to have a huge advantage over the player with floatstone.

Its not even hard to get non-dominant affinities, set a bunch of spies to steal tech and you will grab tons of them on the way. I actually ended up getting up to purity and supremacy 5 via tech stealing even though i was aiming for harmony. I dont even see whats the issue with getting the non-dominant affinities like farm tech when vertical farming works regardless of your affinity. Its not like the other improvements get special bonuses if you have other dominant affinities.

 

[Soffacet]

Its not a problem of getting the tech that makes xenomass wells good, its the problem of starting in a location with either xenomass or floatstone/firaxite. The player who gets xenomass is going to have a huge advantage over the player with floatstone.

Its not even hard to get non-dominant affinities, set a bunch of spies to steal tech and you will grab tons of them on the way. I actually ended up getting up to purity and supremacy 5 via tech stealing even though i was aiming for harmony. I dont even see whats the issue with getting the non-dominant affinities like farm tech when vertical farming works regardless of your affinity. Its not like the other improvements get special bonuses if you have other dominant affinities.

So you are denying that Vertical Farming and similar techs are more efficient for a Purity strategy than for other affinities?

 

[Strategist83]

I don't think Question's criticism can be so easily dismissed. He's wrong that you can 'easily' get off-path techs and have power-farms as Harmony. However, it's very true that Xenomass wells are much better terrain than - especially - Floatstone. I concur on the assessment that Purity gets the weaker end of the deal all round, with no clear advantages to make up for their many deficiencies.

 

[Stalker0]

Purity 1 is the best of the tier 1 affinities, gene gardens (need purity 2) are great health boosters, battlesuits are solid combat units.

I think it's too early to call balance on the affinities just yet. They are definately different in their strengths...but not sure if any Of them are on the whole weaker than any other

 

[GenEngineer1]

Purity is also the affinity that people are claiming is the strongest militarily, so that might be a balance difference (also, thematically, it makes sense the Affinity that works with the land gets more from it).

 

[Darvon]

Why do affinities need to be balanced?

It's not Starcraft, it's Civilization. If anything having a spread in power is preferable because it lets people design (and then overcome) challenges.

 

[Umbral Reaver]

In my last game I was going Supremacy and ended up somewhat short on firaxite (I even started selling hypercores and optical surgery to fuel my wars). I spent most of my firaxite on ANGELs and SABRs and used Prime Battlesuits as my front line units in the late game. It worked pretty well!

 

[Eji1700]

Purity 1 is the best of the tier 1 affinities, gene gardens (need purity 2) are great health boosters, battlesuits are solid combat units.

I think it's too early to call balance on the affinities just yet. They are definately different in their strengths...but not sure if any Of them are on the whole weaker than any other

Having the best tier 1 is hardly much of an advantage with how easy it is to get all the tier 1's. It's the higher rewards that really matter. I do agree it's hard to tell beyond that though.

Why do affinities need to be balanced?

It's not Starcraft, it's Civilization. If anything having a spread in power is preferable because it lets people design (and then overcome) challenges.

Starcraft is a balanced game with asymmetrical units. You should, ideally, have roughly the same chance to win regardless what race you play(there are matchup advantages, but it's not too severe...ideally).

Civ really has no reason to not strive to be the same, and often has. There's very few people who just desire a "weak" race for a challenge, when you can easily impose rules on yourself or extra ones through options to recreate that. Actual races should ideally be fleshed out and balanced as much as possible, without being identical. They seem to have always at least tried to do this, even though it's hard to achieve with so many different races, such as civ 5, or even BE when you start factoring in combo's.