Playing as Iconians

That +100 espionage is really boggling to me. I'd prefer a PQ bonus for them since their super ability is about adapting and such...why not be able to squeeze out a few more tiles per planet?

The one thing the AI doesn't do to capitalize on the Iconian's strength is to load up on HPs. Their navy can be the strongest in the galaxy if given thought process. This I think was figured in during the Iconian's balancing of everything, but it never progressed into their AI it seems.

Somewhere I had a post giving the details of a Huge-class ship with 753 or so hp and a decent array of weapons/defenses/speed. Topped with their regen rate, those ships never fell in battle. They were meant to be the heir of the precursors...I made them such. The key in that insane hp total was tech trading was on and I had bought all the +hp passive techs from the 9 opponents in the game, stacked with the Iconian's great hp module (only 'great' on huge hulls since it doesn't change size like the other race's)

Iconians are great universalists, since most of their best research, economy and industry building are planetary projects, so you want one of them on every world you have.

On bad side, they are missing government techs and their economy buildings (exempt Emporium) aren't much great, so economy can get bad in late game, especially if not using Tech Trading to get missing techs.

Also they have above average morale and farm buildings right from start (although they are missing better choices later). Which is good help in early game. They don't get passive moral bonuses from any tech, but they race does have unique +20 moral bonus from start.

Industry is bad, but only in early game when you have nothing but Basic Replicators. Interstellar Refineries and Molecular Fabricators will make every world productive.


Their unique HP ships module, as said before, is great, even on small ships, when adding one doubles ship hit points (8+8=16). Also, they have tech that adds +100% to their ships repair rate.

also, the iconian AI seems to fare much better now. i've seen them do quite well. they put a lot more focus on research than some other civs seem to, so they can usually hold their own.

Hi Zuxsion,

I've played a couple of games with the iconians and really enjoyed them. The only problem I can recall off-hand is that the race specific economic buildings didn't auto-upgrade. Merchant Emporiums I believe? That was slightly infuriating when I had eighty odd planets and was swapping quite a few back and forth during a long and bitter border war with the Arceans.

Regards your question on espionage... I ended up losing the above mentioned game for one reason: Spies. Now I'm not totally sure what 100+ bonus to espionage does (I assume it makes them cheaper but you never know, ((mumble? iztok?))) but it certainly didn't help me. I had more spies than a feral has headlice and just couldn't cash in on my bonuses... Let alone the insane amount of funds I had to divert into espionage for pretty much the entire game.

Teach me for being the military superpower eh? The worst thing of course, was that I had chosen them to see what I could ring out of an espionage bonus. Lol. All things considered, it was still a lot of fun.

This is because the Merchant Emporium isn't an upgrade to the lower structures. It is a one per planet separate improvement to be used along with the other lower ones.


My guess with espionage bonuses are they reduce the time it takes to go up to each sequential intelligence level, and increase the chance to steal technology. That's about all they COULD do. I don't see any cost reduction on spies when having a bonus.

I never got to delve into the espionage bonus usage. I was working on figuring out the entire system...but due to the announcement to an overhaul in 2.0, I held off.

Popular belief is that it allows more spending to be done to train spies, thus gaining them faster. For example, if normally a race set at 25% would spend 500bc for a spy, the Iconians with the same economy would be spending 1,000bc for that 25%.

Thats not the one I meant then. Barter stations is it? Sorry mate its been a while, though I've had it confirmed in another thread.

Yes, it is the one you meant. Merchant Trade Complexes are one per planet, Barter Stations should (but dont) upgrade to the Merchant Emporiums.