Is Torians and Super Breeder OverPowered?

Superbreeder is hands down the best superability in the game, if the AI would utilize it in the same way a player can the Torians would dominate all other AI's in every game.

Technically, the Yor get something better than government techs. The government techs at maximum level provide a +30 bonus to economy, and you have to have an election every so often (which can give you penalties if you fail). However, the Yor get those bonuses (and the bonuses from market techs) to their efficiency techs so not only are they not missing out, they don't need to worry about elections either... Now if only they could get stock markets...

The bonus for Star Federation is actually +40%, not +30% as stated by the description.

but still the Yors economy is universally described as being broken.

just build an additonal stockmarket on every planet will even the odds out not to say, specializing whole planets on economic income.

further, I wouldn't directly compare the government techtree with the Yors economic efficiency techtree because (a) other techtrees have economic trees with some racial innates as well and (b) government techs bring also racial diplomacy innates which the Yor also severely lack

election should never be lost just lower taxes the day before (game will even remind you of that)

 

The Yor economy isn't broken, it just works differently.

In fact, it is pretty much the opposite on how other races handle it. For most races you build one to two farms and then spam markets. The Yor, on the other hand, build one market (i.e. Efficiency Center) and then spam farms (i.e. Charging Stalks). It may not bring in as much money as the standard way, but it also doesn't require as many tiles. This means, that you can use lots of low maintenance improvements and still have the same, if not better, manu/research output as the other races, while also having less expenses.

well, what's the point on spaming stalks when your planet will most likely never veer cross the 20b mark even if you have ALL galactic resources under your control? around that mark approval becomes incredible difficult to sustain.

a usual techtree has now 2 or 3 options. you either built labs or facs or markets. the first two only when your economy can sustain it, and if this is not the case (or you're more about directly buying stuff) thrn markets and this method is not available to the Yor.

besides, as the incomeforumulae holds the planets population in a squareroot (if remember correctly) you don't see a linear increase in cash as your planets population rises. that's why initially population is *very* important but once you crossed a certain threshold building markets is *always* better.

and if we look closely and compare stalks vs vlc & farms you'll also find that the latter is more efficient. 2 farms and 1 vls will net you generally more than 3 stalks, and this doesn't consider the fact that stalks will only be able to utilize 50% of bonus-tiles.

tbh I like the Yor for the challenge they setup, as well as they have quite strong and efficient starting techs and buildings. however what they generally lack are the tools to specialize planets.

edit:

that the Yor could do is specializing bigger planets to industry or techplanets but with just one market on every world you simply will not be able to finance that. that market probably will not even sustain their own planets if we think in terms of building higher tier buildings.

Is it better to build a healing pool and a farm if your pop is at 12 billion or two markets? 

if you want an increased economical return then 2 markets by far. 12b is already enough. however, consider that money isn't everything to the game. population itself can be very usefull thats why I always aim for 15b and 18b. 

Yes, 20b is the max, so "spam" was the wrong word on my part. However, it is possible to go beyond 25b, you just need a planet with a high enough PQ (preferably 60+). Still, even if you find such a world, you need to be playing the Yor. They are the only ones capable to reach the food-maximum of 100b, while having a high enough morale-bonus to offset the morale-penalty from such a huge population, at the same time. Their maintenance will also be much lower.


But that is the point. The Yor don't need markets. Would it make the Yor more powerful or easier to handle for most people, if they had markets? Sure, but it isn't necessary. I've been primarily playing the Yor since shortly before the end of the beta for TotA, and missed markets only at the very beginning. Once I got used to the way the Yor economy worked, I had no problem with them at all.


Well, I already stated in my post that the standard economy is more profitable.


Two IFs and one VRC provide 12mt/wk, +40% morale, and have maintenance of 9bc. Three ACS provide 9mt/wk, +60% morale, and have a maintenance of 6bc. The food production may be lower for the Yor, but so is the maintenance cost. The morale bonus is also higher, meaning that the Yor can run a higher tax rate. However, I always try to get to a population of 20b on all my worlds, so four ACSs are necessary. This means, 12mt/wk, +80% morale, and a maintenance of 8bc. The food production is now on par with the one from the farms, the morale bonus is double as high, and the maintenance cost is still lower. The only "downside" is that an extra tile is required. However, that is not that big of a problem, because the Yor usually have enough free space for that.

As for the bonus-tiles, I usually don't use the food ones when playing the Yor. Morale is far too important. As the Stalks are the only "morale" improvements the Yor can build without limit, it would be detrimental to place them on food bonus-tiles, because it makes it unnecessarily harder to keep the morale high. The only exception would be a planet with one morale tile and one +100% food tile. Building an ACS on both tiles would provide as much benefit as three ACS, with no drawback.


Challenge? Maybe I'm just weird (very likely), but the Yor are for me the easiest race in the game. I win about 8 or 9/10 games with them, whereas I win about 4/10 with the others. The only ones I'm anywhere near as good as them are the Iconians and Thalan. I win maybe 6 or 7/10 games with them. When I want a challenge, I play the Drengin or Korath. I have huge troubles with them, winning maybe 2/10 games. This is all on Tough difficulty. Both in the vanilla game and my mod.


How so? The Yor work better when using generalized planets, but it is still possible to specialize worlds. I usually use two planets for this. One to become a pure manufacturing world, the other to become a pure research world. More are unnecessary. Most of the time, the game is already as good as won when those worlds are fully build up.


Like I said, I do this and have no trouble financing those worlds.


Yes, the high-end improvements (Superior Collective, Ultimate Collective, Invention Matrix, Discovery Sphere) are very inefficient. This is the reason why I only use them on bonus-tile and on specialized worlds now. However, when I was still learning to handle the new Yor tech tree, I was using one or two UCs on all my worlds. Despite this, though, I was still making a net profit. Changing from UCs to one or two ECs only increased the profit by severely reducing the maintenance cost. Keeping an eye on the maintenance is very important when playing the Yor. Efficiency is everything.

there is no such things as "free space". you always want to use all available tiles, if you don't do this you only weaken yourself. hence you're comparison is off, 3 tiles vs 4 isnt even.

try to compair 4 ASC vs 1 VLC, 2 farms 1 stockmarket on a 20b planet and you'll pretty much see how weak this constellation is. you care about maint? well, that single stockmarket took care about all maint of *all* buildings on this planet....

well, speaking economically, you didn't even want to go that far, 15b pop will do, and from then on it is way better to build only markets. which the Yor cant but everybody else can. that's what I'm harping about, the best choice has been taken away.

You've found a way to circumvent that, but your solutions aren't something that I would consider strong. You've weakened yourself by alots of things.

but you haven't reasoned up why the Yor don't need a strong economy. everything that is important will cost them the exact same amount of bcs. sure maintencance might be important early but in endgame with 100 planets its only a small part of the cake anymore. with techtrees that can specialize on econ planets you would never worry about maint when you have like 20k-50k bcs per turn at your disposal.

with other trees you can easily go all-lab build initially ships from focus but as the game progresses you simply buy your ships. not only drive all your buildings at 100% all the time but you have your ships exactly there whenever you need them regardless of planetary mp. try to pull that of with Yor, it doesn't work.

where's the flexibility, it's not there. you are FORCED by a semi crippled techtree to play out in very distinctive way, and I believe this is the reason why the Yor usually odn't pose much a threat in endgame. they have been constructed to be an early danger, no more.

btw it is not my personal opinion that the Yors econ is broken, but its evident from countless threads here in the forum.

You absolutely want to use these foodbonustiles as Yor. This will save you one ASC hence, you can leave the maintenance grid on the planet (which would be overbuilt by an ASC in all other cases)

Even if its a 300% or 700% foodtile. You don't have to fill the pop up to max, it'll come to a natural halt at 44% approval. Optimally all your planets should sit at 20% approval with taxes @ 79%. You'll find that many planets will have a different number of people which will be supported at this setting, bonus tiles, PQ, colonization events all come into play here.

just one afterthought. the higher a planets population is the lesser effective becomes moral. that's why it is completely ineffective to go for something bigger as 20b planets, although I think in ToA it could be done with techtrading on.

all in all your moralplus will allo for a better growth of your planets, but you won't see that many more people on these planets, nor will these extra inhabitants mean alot of greater income.

the only planets where maxing out the population is noteworthy are de facto specialized econ planets. because the more stockmarket ash in on an extra population the greater the chance gets that a VCR (or a farm, or both) will beat the return of an added stockmarket instead.

isnt that ironic? you're basically developing your planets like somebody who plays an all-econ strategy, which is something that the Yor can't do, however you have to do because there are no alternatives... lol

well, we all play our own games, and the game allows so many different approaches. what might work in your games won't work in mine and vice versa.

but from all what I've seen in your posts, and in my own experience, is, that as Yor, you have to hold yourself back in alot areas where others can simply max out their games without second thought. that's what is bothering me.

you realize that on suidical this approach of mixedsliders won't work? your buildings only drive on 50% of their theoretical output. if you'd go all-lab, and then specialize, you'll have quite an amount of production more to pay for. 

 

i find that quiet misleading. the government tech provides monetary bonus to the overall income, but at individual level there is no way for Yor colony to have an economic income that rises above 25% from the efficiency center. so the only other way that one can increase income in Yor colony is by having more population, which doesn't provide much, unless you can get to 32 billion on one planet, which you know is pretty much impossible due to the sheer amount of unhappiness it would generate. thus, Yor econ tree is probably one of the most broken tree. additionally, i think the economic bonus from efficiency center is stacked on by the econ tech that is provided, thus it doesn't achieve the compound effect the government would provide, and that's what's REALLY broken.

Tiles I don't need to use for Stock Markets, simply because I don't have them as the Yor, are for me "free space". Also, once the planets I'm not going to use for ship-production are fully developed, I build over the Collectives, because they are of no use to me anymore (either with ACSs or Research Centers, depends on the planet). This too counts to me as "free space".


You seem to forget the Efficiency Center. Yes, it will require another tile, but you will always build it on all your worlds anyway, and it increases your planetary income just as much as the Stock Market.


Just because it's the "best" choice doesn't mean it's the only one.


I never said it is "strong", just that it is possible. However, planets with the necessary PQ are so rare (simply because it requires the PQ-doubling event to happen on a high-PQ planet) that it might as well be just a theory. In the five years since the release of TotA, I found such worlds only twice. Come to think of it, the Torians could actually do it better than the Yor. They would only need 31 tiles (16 Hot Springs, Harvester, 14 Intensive Farming) to offset the morale penalty from the population and get to the 100b pop-limit, while the Yor need 40 tiles to do so. To actually run a decent tax rate, however, you would still need more tiles (or a higher Morale-ability), but unlike the Yor, the Torians could then build Stock Markets, increasing their tax income even more.

As for me "weakening myself", I don't care. Simply for two reasons: 1. score doesn't matter to me, and 2. I don't play to win. If I win, good. If I don't win, it's fine too. I pretty much roleplay the game.


Define "strong economy". With 100 planets, I could make 1.1k per turn. That is just the taxes at a tax rate of 59% and without any additional Economics-bonuses. If I get the +30% Econ-bonus at the start of the game, have two econ-resouces, and run a 69% tax rate, I would make 2.1k in taxes. Depending on how big the other races' empires are, my tourism income could increase this by 50-100%, if not more. That would mean an income of at least 3-4k per turn. Is it a pittance compared to what other races could make? Absolutely. However, it is enough for me to out-produce/research the other races, field a strong enough army to crush all opposition, and to still make a net profit. That, in my opinion, is all that counts. Being able to finance your goals.


Strange, I never felt forced to play a certain way. It all came naturally.

As for the Yor not posing a threat in the endgame, that has more to do with the AI. I just isn't capable to properly use the Yor tech tree. The same can also be said for several other tech trees.


Why would you want to build over the Maintenance Grid?


I know that. However, I very much doubt that techtrading would provide a +800% morale-bonus. That is the absolute minimum needed to offset the morale-penalty of the population on a 25b high-PQ world.


As is said before, 20b is the max for me. You also seem to forget tourism income. Sure, most races can ignore this, but for the Yor it's a huge source of income, simply because of their population. It's a rare game where I don't have at least 8x the population of everyone else.


And? Not every race has to play the same. I'd be quite boring, in my opinion, if there was nothing to differentiate their playstyle.


I rarely set the sliders on 50%. It all on depends on the current situation. As for what does or doesn't work on Suicidal, I wouldn't know. As I mentioned in my last post, I play on Tough.

I still don't fully understand the relationship between the sliders and the buildings, and planetary emphasis.  

I do what appears to work, which is to set the sliders at 10/20/70 or 10/30/60 so most of my colonies are spamming out research and building buildings.  If I need production or military, I have that planet emphasize production or military.  

Otherwise I run into problems with unspendable resources.  For example, if your military percentage is above 10%, and you just colonized a new planet, you waste 1 or 2 resources there per turn because it doesn't have a starbase yet.  

Yeah I understand that overbuilding structure is actually a good way to accustomize your needs, and I do that too alot, but generally speaking, a game where a civ will use all available tiles vs one which leaves 30% of all tiles free it's easy to say who will come out as winner.

even if these 30% are "only" build over by a spamable filler-structure, but in the case of stock markets vs ACS I find the stockmarket better.

maybe for the AI on suicidal who usually has no economic problems this might be different. the AI will also have his planets invaded and high pop combined with Yors good soldiering will help here, too - although im not sure if the Yor do utilize your high pop strategy at all.

for a human player I donno, I've as good as never experinced that my planets are inaded at all, so high pop for me is just to get moe income but here are stockmarkets better. just played with thalan on crippling, after an excellent colonial rush once I set my tax to have 100% approval the game was already won. there simply was no need to go higher in pop. once max was reached I just shipped away 3,5b ppl in a troop transport, besides the thalan mine so well I had around 90% approval in general@ 79% tax, once I took a troop transport from a planet it thus was at 100% and grew up fastly again. it was so easy and I should do that with Yor too but then 50% of your planet will be empty.

If the ACS would actually give more moral boost I'd say ok, but in direct comparison with things other civs get I wouldnt call them superior so that a specializiation to this would justify. and Yor dont have any significant pop growth bonuses at all, going super pop is something for a Breeder SA

no, I didn't forget it. I drew a direct comparison of the ways different civs can achieve and sustain a population. you need food and moral buildings for that. now the Yor need more tiles for the same goal but to compare a 4 tile approach to a 3 tile approach isnt an even comparion. so I was simply adding a spamabler fillerstructure to the other civ to make 4 vs 4. and as this structure will get more economic income the the low maint or higher pop numbers the Yor have the other ivs have an advatange here (generic human techtree)

im not talking about MV or score games. but in order to beat a suicidal game without cheesy methods such as influence points trade or swindleing etc you have to be very efficient about what to do. I micro every last bit of the game, and in a big galaxy setup a single turn will take hours because I go through all planets every and ships every turn. if I wouldnt care, then I would loose but I play to win^^

well, thats pretty low. I took a close look on that in my last games and with Thalans I crossed 1k per turn directly after the colonial rush with 20 planets. with the Altarians I crossed that too with only 3 planets where one is halfway specialized on econ the other are on techs and I have only 34b inhabitants.

because the ACS last tier give the same moral increase but it'll add some food to it. now you might say that you've already capped your population around 22b inhabitants and to go any further is near futile, but then you're actually using 5 tiles to sustain your population and the maintencance grid is only there to maintain higher tax.

however, building moral structures at a high/superhigh pop is generally a bad or inefficient idea since lowerering tax + adding a stockmarket instead will yield better results.

well I understand that there needs to be some sort of "throttle" because with a techtree designed for such a superhigh industrial output they would outmilitarize everybody if they could finance their production easily.

howver, whats a theoretical industrial capacity worth if you cant suppurt it? an economic based civ that will still outproduce you even with lower facs, because they simply can build higher tiered structures. there's a causality in this game it reads like this

pop-->econ-->mp, sp, tp

wherein tp will reflect back or close the circle through new techs that bring racials, but sp will only turn back in the case of building economic structures and mp will never do this. it always needs a strong econ behind it. econ is one of the limitating factors of it.

so being super at something doesnt practially mean you'll be better in that in a game at all.

Speaking of cheese, someone earlier talked about the creativity cheese.

Idea: get the creativity bonus.  Set research to 5%. Research Xeno Ethics or something expensive. Cross fingers and wait for creativity to kick in.  

They do, although not as well as a human could do it. AIP 7 (the AI of the Yor, Drengin, and Korath) is very fond of morale improvements, and the Charging Stalks are considered morale improvements. Three to four ACSs is quite normal for the Yor AI.


It may not be significant, but it is still apparent. Just take a look: Korath +65%, Yor +35%, Terrans +25%, Thalan +5%.


Comparing 4 tiles to 3 tiles may not be even, but adding an economic structure, when the comparison is supposed to be about farming and morale improvements, is quite disingenuous, in my opinion.


Maybe I should give Suicidal a try. Just to see how long I would last. It's pretty much out of my comfort-zone, but it would be interesting.


Yes, it's low, but, as I said, it's enough for me to finance all my needs and still make a profit. Still, I may be wrong about some of the numbers, because I'm going be memory here. It's been a few years since I last played a straight vanilla game.


Of course it would yield better results, but this isn't an option for the Yor.


This isn't what I meant, but it is also a good point. Still, what I wanted to say was, that if you could play every race, using the same playstyle, then it would become quite boring. Simply because they all would be essentially the same race, despite the superficial differences between them. Just like it was in DL and DA.


I know, and agree to, this.

Yeah that's a good reason why to always have some research ongoing

 

another one:

set tech on the most expensive one (planetary invasion/star federation might be good early ones) and direct your surveyorships by hand waiting for the 25% increase, afterwards return to your normal tech you wanted to research

profit! 

that's because, in a practical game, that Market Center or Stock Market would be there. Once a certain MP/TP and Pop/Moral has been achieved, I will overbuild every empty tile with an economic structure, and this will mean that IF I had to use only 3 tiles for Pop/Moral I could build one such econ more. so this is a pretty practical conclusion^^ 

although this whole arguement could be offset by this point:

to which I fully agree. this is actually the fun element I currently encounter. However, still the game for the Yor plays exactly to the same basic rules as for any race:

and I personally see quite some weakness here for the Yor. However, I leave that argument here now. It might come down to personal play. Maybe I try to "burn" to fast or too strong with the Yor, my usual gameplay is heavily focused on economics.

Ultimately, that's what I think too. So I guess it's time to agree to disagree.

Those numbers are definitely wrong. In my current game, I have 99 planets, a population of 1.640t (still growing), an Econ-ability of 131%, and my tax rate is 74%. This provides me a tax income of 12,550bc.

We forgot this is about the Torians not the Yor; I think U need to find a Yor post. Now about the Torians I don't think they have the best super ability. I this the super hive, super isolationists, super adapter, and super breeder R on par with each other. I have found that at an approval of %100 have an awsome quadruple population has an awesome early on effect, but don't forget that there will come a day when U don't have %100  approval nterlling your super breeder ability after awhile most of your planets population R maxed making this super ability kind of becomes useless. Now lets assume I'm someone else like the Krynn at this point we R now on par with each other. The Torians have very little ability scores compared to each other Now they have a powerful tech tree they have a well balanced at the start I like the central mine It have a really powerful factory but U CAN only build one per planet making it possible to beat with other races with more tiles untill U research another tech or trade for another tech U can only build one powerful factory per planet U could even make a better ToriN by custy omizing I even sometimes experiment by combining the tech tree with a super breeder the reason why is because the thalans don't get factory techs the only reason I usually don't use them is because they R the second best AI race on the game to keep the game chaLLENGING Now lets compare the Torians to the Ypr. First the Torians start out with economics with economic structures wuth a chance to make better stru ctures. The Yor gets a flat rate economic bonus after urereally hard techs. And only after researching a bunch of Techs do they get a economic structure which is limited to one per planet. The Yor loses. To my opinion the torians have great more structures. I think the Torians R better with the morale. Factories with the Yor R more than one ber planet making the YOR BETTER now with farming isnt the harvesters one per planet. with the Yor dont they get theirs right off the bat to and dont theirs have a food and morale bonus making theirs better I thinkeven  the Yor has better research but ehv en with all this without a effective economic plan it will take time to make money The Torians have a superior economic and population growthmaking them better at least in the beginning. But the Torians R easy when the Yor is for more advanced players

You kind of missed the whole point of using super-breeder, which is to colonize as many planets as possible, ASAP, and then turn production AND tax rate as low as possible to maximize approval rate, thereby booming your population in almost ALL your colonies for 4-5 turns.  

Then turn your tax rate and production rate back to normal, and your population base for taxes has doubled in size.  

No one else can do that like the Torians/Super-Breeder.

Well with Torians you actually have the best chances to colonize planets AND having production turned on to 100% because the economic return of a quadrupled pop growth can better support that than any other SA. (except maybe Humans with techbrokering in a small map)

The way I see it getting pop high is pretty much the very first thing you should be focusing in any game because building any sort of building on a fresh planet will only turn the economy even more into the reds, further building economic structures on low pop planets will also not net any good return.

So with any other race except Torians I usually fill every available tile with Fertility Clinics + 1 Recruiting Center and overbuild these later with Food + Moral + Econ + Prod. With Torians I don't really bother with Fertility Clinics because the pop rises so fast that I even have to rushbuy Farms so the pop won't cap.

In my current game half the planets are still growing pop at around 10b ppl although the building up process is actually finished. 2 or 3 factories, some special racespecific buildings, 2 farms supporting 20b ppl and the rest all Fertility Clinics - which I right now would want to overbuild with Stock Markets but then would loose the pop growth bonus - which I actually want because I consistently have to take away pop into Troop Transports..... with Torians you kinds son't have these "problems". Granted, the Krynn have a boatload of moralplus at their disposal and going at 100% all the time isn't that difficult, still it's not enough growth for my taste.

Another factor is the defensive character a SuperBreeder carries. Let's say you focus on a 20b planet AND besides build some additional moral structures on the planet (the Torians have some good cheap ones) or you have some moral resources then your planets will recover very easily form say, an opponent that is stronger than you militarily (ie you can't really keep him from sending Transports to your worlds) Because, even at maximum taxes, once a planet is invaded you suffer some pop loss--> morals then instantly back to 100% --> 3-4 turns and the full pop is restored.

You can basically leave a cheap Fertility Clinic or an additional moral structure instead of an expensive planetary defense, because the net effect with a Breeder will be the same.

If I compare that with the Thalans for example, well their SA isn't bad, yeah they can build amazing high productive factories very fast/cheap but the point is... can you even support it? 15bcs PER FACTORY MAINT early on this is pretty much killing you, besides, the production you also have to pay for 12MP (if my memory is correct) + Bonus prod while anybody else is building 5MP facs, so there's really no need to fill up your planets with that.... Moreso less popgrowth, no farms etc.... it's the same problem with the Yor.... high productive capability but crippled economically... what's all the theoretical production worth if you can't support it economically. And that's what Torians don't have to worry about.

And for the AI is Breeder also pretty welcome. I remember a game with the worst colony rush wasn't able to get a single planet - so I traded them from the Altarians via techs... they just had something around 0.05-0.2b ppl and were deep in the red that's why he gave them away but from the Torians you will never get any

Building the Planetary Defense improvement would be pointless anyhow, because it doesn't work in the vanilla game. It never has. Only the Arcean Space Cannon does what it is supposed to do.

the Orbital Command Center doesn't increase soldiering as well?

OT: actually I find Super Diplomat en par with Breeder or maybe even stronger, because if you can utilize it right you don't have to colonize at all just buy freshly colonized planets from the AI via techs (thought this would only work on very fast techspeed/MV game but seems to work on normal just fine .... except vs Torians cause they get their planets too fast out of the economic minus)