Purity handicapped?

Piruparka

Prince
Joined
May 1, 2010
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What do you think about the fact that the Terraforming tech which is needed for the floatstone improvement requires more than twice as much science than the related techs for Firaxit and Xenomass? Does this cause a balancing problem in your opinion?
 
I don't think it's unbalanced. The floatstone tech is one every player dabbing in satellite territory better makes a priority of, and Purity units/buildings requiring the resource are pretty high-end themselves ln the techweb.
 
Purity actually has quite an advantage because of the titanium, especially if you can guarantee to have some by playing with strategical balance. Probably not THAT much of a bonus anymore, now that affinity units are more in line with the rest of the army - but still. The first time you really need a decent amount of floatstone is once LEV-tanks come into play. At that point the tech-cost isn't that relevant anymore and is (at least the way I play) a stepping stone for more affinity anyway.
 
Floatstone is one the worst strategic resources out of all of the affinity types. It gets no improvements from Purity buildings. Xenomass gets huge additional yields added to it from Harmony buildings and their building quests (something like 5F, 4P, 4E). Firaxite is also pretty good giving a nice amount of science and culture from Supremecy buildings.

Where purity excels is in the very limited uses floatstone has in their UU's and are able to use the majority of it in the later game building quests. Also purity gets access to some very early game buildings / wonders and improvement yield changes that give them an advantage in that category.
 
Seriously, Bionics Labs. Purity get some awesome no-resource-required buildings in the early-mid game.
 
Also, with the change to trade routes it can be difficult to get a decent sized city without any food improvements. This is a boon to purity as most of the food improvement buffs are purity techs.
 
Seriously, Bionics Labs. Purity get some awesome no-resource-required buildings in the early-mid game.

Gene Gardens. The're the reason I'll try get two Purity points regardless of my primary affinity.
Floatstone has pretty weak yields, but Purity has pretty good buildings that don't need it, and it has the best passive bonuses from leaf techs.
 
Personally I always though that purity is imbalanced, even without taking battlesuits into consideration.

1) Best R1 affinity tech, which gives Gene Vault, which is a fairly cheap and relatively good wonder to have if city lacks grassland terrain. Harmony also has nice benefits on R1 tech, and Supremacy R1 tech got zero value besides affinity exp.
2) Fairly easy and reasonable to grab EctoPod from there. Other affinities don't gain that much from rushing Genetic Design.
3) Purity "superfarms" term hadn't came out of nowhere. Fully powered, +3/1/1 (with Ectopod) for a generic tile is absurdly good. Yes, you can praise xenomass, it's really good, but that's a relatively rare tile. Planning your city infrastructure around rare tiles provides unstable results. Basically, a purity farm even without ectopod will almost always support an additional academy, so you're not bound to grasslands and riverdeserts for your academy cities like other affinities. Coincidentally, Cognition is pretty easy to grab to, since it branches out of Genetics.
4) How good everything fits on tech web for purity. Probably the only things that fall out and typically never grabbed of general route is Surrogacy tech and Hyperconductors.
5) Purity has the most R2 affinity techs, which is why purity will probably be slightly ahead in affinity point.
6) I still didn't compare all of the units well (yes, after 120 hrs into the game, I'm a slowpoke), but purity is at the very least not behind every other affinity in that regard.

Seriously, the only real downside for purity is it's 'peaceful' victory condition. It always takes at least 20 turns, while other could be significally shortened (Yes, I'm looking at you, Harmony. Oh, don't hide behind the bushes, Supremacy, I can see your ANGELs from there anyway), and you actually need magrails pre-built if you don't want it take much more than 20 turns.
 
I am in agreement with faceundermask. Purity has plenty of advantages from the relative abundance of titanium to the conveniently located tech/wonder path. Much of the good stuff is in line with purity including Gene Vault, Ecto Genesis Pod, Biowells, Institutes, Etc... Purity is still the best affinity choice most of the time.

Let's face it, when was the last time you had a bunch of xenomass or firaxite laying around? Almost never. Titanium is always obtainable in abundance.
 
Purity is by no means handicapped. They still specialize in raw strength and city attack bonuses. Their peaceful victory does take them at least 20 turns but phasal transporters help a lot here. Floatstone resource is a bit ordinary but picking purity will always encourage players to grab all the titanium, which gives crazy amount of production (up to 10 with alloy foundry).
 
I don't know. Some maps I have Xenomass near 60-70% of my nearby city spots. Other times I have heavy concentrations of Firaxite. Other times I have few sources of titanium, other times it is abundant. It all depends on the RNG and the map gen you are using. Water maps tend to have a greater scarcity of resources which makes each tile that much more precious.
 
Others have explained the details thoroughly enough that I do not need to. Just adding my opinion that Purity is certainly not handicapped.
 
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