Might affinity tree - underwhelming?

[Lanth]

In my games so far I've stuck pretty heavily to Prosperity, Knowledge and Industry. The Might tree just seems too situational, and of the first 5 virtues only the +15% production to military units looks 'generically' useful.

Here's the list of Might virtues for reference:

Tier I (Synergy bonus: +5% combat strength and +5% ranged strength for all units)
Adaptive Tactics: +50% XP from combat.
Survivalism: +25% Strength and Ranged Strength against alien life forms.
Liberation Army: After conquering an enemy Outpost, automatically found an Outpost of your own in its place.
Military-Industrial Complex: +15% Production towards military units
Public Security: +0.25 Health for every Military Unit under your command

Tier II (Synergy bonus: +5% combat strength and +5% ranged strength for all units)
Scavenging: Earn 100% of an alien lifeform's strength as Science after killing it Earn 30 Science from destroying alien nests
Adaptive Sciences: +20% Affinity earned from researching technologies
Special Service: +40% Intrigue from Covert Operations
Army Engineering Corps: +1 Production, +1 Energy from every Strategic Resource
Martial Meditations: Choose 1 Free Affinity Level

Tier III (Synergy bonus: 1 free Affinity level)
Brutal Efficiency: +50% quantity from sources of strategic resources
Integrated Arms: +10% Production towards a Unit for each upgrade it has
Joint Operations: +3 Orbital coverage by stations you trade with
Democratized Quartering: -50% maintenance for Units
Channeled Wrath: +10% Strength and ranged strength for all units

Now, if you're going for domination or something like that then I'm sure the Might tree is probably quite useful, but even then for early-game growth (which is most critical to having a good late-game position), the other trees seem better.

I think what happens is I always look at the first few virtues, then look at what is available in the other trees and think "those things are more useful to me right now", so as a result I never actually start on the might tree, so some of those later virtues which do look quite tasty never get a look once you only get virtues every 10-15 turns it seems like a big investment to have to pick up 3-4 'useless' starting ones before you get to the good middle and late ones.

One idea I had that could improve these virtues is if the first one gave a free soldier unit, like the prosperity tree gives a free worker/colonist. Or maybe even a free soldier + a free explorer! If you land in an area thats chock-full of aliens, then an extra soldier for free at the start is probably going to be more appealing than +50% XP, and it leads on to the increased alien damage virtue. The Liberation Army virtue seems the weakest of the opening set, since it's very situational and even if you are in a military position to take over an outpost, you may not actually be in an economic position to support it, or it may be in enemy territory and far from your capital so as to be indefensible, so that one could be dropped and the others moved around to make way for the free soldier one I'm suggesting.

This would overlap quite a bit with the starting cargo, where one of the options is a free soldier. That cargo could be made more interesting by giving a free Marine (1st soldier upgrade), or a free Ranger, both units that would take quite a while to get otherwise and are quite a bit more tactically useful than a soldier, who can often have trouble taking on a single wolf-beetle and can be killed by a 2nd or 3rd one easily.

Good idea? Bad idea? Other ideas? Is Might really useful and I'm just a noob?

 

[Eji1700]

In my games so far I've stuck pretty heavily to Prosperity, Knowledge and Industry. The Might tree just seems too situational, and of the first 5 virtues only the +15% production to military units looks 'generically' useful.

Here's the list of Might virtues for reference:


Now, if you're going for domination or something like that then I'm sure the Might tree is probably quite useful, but even then for early-game growth (which is most critical to having a good late-game position), the other trees seem better.

I think what happens is I always look at the first few virtues, then look at what is available in the other trees and think "those things are more useful to me right now", so as a result I never actually start on the might tree, so some of those later virtues which do look quite tasty never get a look once you only get virtues every 10-15 turns it seems like a big investment to have to pick up 3-4 'useless' starting ones before you get to the good middle and late ones.

One idea I had that could improve these virtues is if the first one gave a free soldier unit, like the prosperity tree gives a free worker/colonist. Or maybe even a free soldier + a free explorer! If you land in an area thats chock-full of aliens, then an extra soldier for free at the start is probably going to be more appealing than +50% XP, and it leads on to the increased alien damage virtue. The Liberation Army virtue seems the weakest of the opening set, since it's very situational and even if you are in a military position to take over an outpost, you may not actually be in an economic position to support it, or it may be in enemy territory and far from your capital so as to be indefensible, so that one could be dropped and the others moved around to make way for the free soldier one I'm suggesting.

This would overlap quite a bit with the starting cargo, where one of the options is a free soldier. That cargo could be made more interesting by giving a free Marine (1st soldier upgrade), or a free Ranger, both units that would take quite a while to get otherwise and are quite a bit more tactically useful than a soldier, who can often have trouble taking on a single wolf-beetle and can be killed by a 2nd or 3rd one easily.

Good idea? Bad idea? Other ideas? Is Might really useful and I'm just a noob?

Theres a couple issues with might, but I feel the biggest one is just how bad the starting units are, and by extension, just how bad an early military tech rush is.

Starting with a soldier is basically just awful. Any other starting item would likely get you far enough ahead that by the time that soldier would actually be able to do anything, you could've bought/built one with the extra production/money you'd have. He's basically just a bad scout(no expedition, awful move).

Further if you expand early, you fulfill a quest, which gives you a free soldier(at a time when you're much more likely to actually use it) and again makes the military tree less attractive, since you get more real military benefit from going for the quick colonist.

With that in mind, looking at the options:

Tactics- the standard XP buff. This is MUCH worse in this game. Vet bonuses aren't nearly as strong or important as they could be in Civ 5. I'm fine with that, but this doesn't do ANYTHING good. Your starting military often can't even grind some decent XP on the aliens without taking stupid losses, and making it worthless. Maybe you kill an early trade post, but that's it. This really shouldn't be the first tech I feel, and it hurts the tree.

Survivalism/Scavenging: these are what make the tree even remotely viable early and it's extremely map dependent. If you don't have the nests near you, it's not worth it. Even then you're still probably better off getting one/2/3 techs in another tree first because, again, you just cannot farm aliens realistically with starting units(at least 2 affinty points, maybe more)

Liberation army- This might be much better than I think it is, but right now I just feel it's waay too early in the tree, and worse, often a bad thing since it means you can't raze cities you might otherwise want gone(it needs an option).

Military industrial/Public security- these are fine mid game, but being the last of the tier 1 techs i'm covering, they aren't worth rushing at all(unless i'm missing some crazy powerful tier 1 ranger+soldier spam?) You just harm your economy so much by trying to do military this early, without nearly enough benefit.

The rest of the tier 2's - these are all awesome. The spying one is sorta conditional(especially since the spy game is kinda flawed), but assuming that gets fixed, it's great, and so are the rest. These make the tree shine in my eyes, the problem is, you feel punished as hell for rushing them with how bad the early military techs are.

Tier 3's- all fine. Some are a little niche or boring, but whatever. I can see uses.

Tall bonuses- I recall these being a very boring +5% damage, which is meh, but it works.

Anyways the short version of this is, even with extra military units early, I feel that they're too weak and too easy to lose, even with the alien fighting perks, to really justify. I don't think you can get much out of early military until you've got marine's/gunners, and if you're waiting until then you might as well get perks in other trees, and then just mass produce/buy a few just before the affinity up's while they're still cheap.

 

[kirbdog]

Because Affinity levels are basically victory points (for 4/5 victories), and because they become increasingly expensive (further out on the tech tree) or are dribbled out per turn randomly (quests/excavations), it's actually a bit surprising to me that so many people have decided that Might is an under powered tree.

Adaptive Sciences: +20% Affinity earned from researching technologies
Martial Meditations: Choose 1 Free Affinity Level
Tier III (Synergy bonus: 1 free Affinity level)

I will not be surprised if we see this build in some "fast-finish" affinity victories, also picking up this one:

Scavenging: Earn 100% of an alien lifeform's strength as Science after killing it Earn 30 Science from destroying alien nests

Giving a solid early game science boost if you play it well & with raging aliens.

Also, unlike Knowledge, Might lets you ignore Health, which is a powerful option.

Finally, while Prosperity gives you 1 settler, Might gives you a free settler (basically) for taking outposts, which adds up to a lot more settlers over time.

All I'm saying is give war a chance.

 

[Pnothy]

Also keep in mind that the military units get auto-upgraded in this game. Building a lot of early weak units and positioning them carefully near future targets means that once the upgrade comes in, you have favorable battles going on many fronts very soon.