The Ancient Race trait horribly unbalanced

I can see where you are coming from. On the mod I am working on I have been thinking of reducing the population growth of Ancient Races. So they grow slower. But that would only hurt the AI when you played against the computer.

The courage to endure.

I would agree that it's probably under-priced. At a cost of 1000 it's almost a no-brainer to pick Ancient Race plus Natural Merchants. However, increasing the price to 3000 or even 2000 seems like overkill. Setting it to 1500 ought to be sufficient; that would prevent Ancient Race players from also using the other expensive traits.

SE4 never ended up having everyone in multiplayer take the trait... Sure its nice and all, but its utility only lasts so long, compared to other traits that are useful for the entire game.

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I agree it is underpriced. It gives way too much value in the early game...so much so a player using it can easily dominate any other player who does not have the trait. I would suggest a price of 2000.

Loyalty above all else except honor.

i concer,

the ablity to know the whole map is a major advantage. The main question is how much is that worth? IMO it should be very high on the list maybe the top rated or at least equal too.

I'm in the same boat as Fyron. It's kind of useful for scoping out breathables early on, but in PBW action, almost every player will quickly swap races via the migration treaty clause and share maps/sensor data so it ends up more of a waste of 1000 points.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Granted, SE5 hiding system positions makes the trait marginally more useful than it was in SE4, but that's not enough to justify costs as exorbitant as 3000 racial points..

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I agree with the Captain Kwok and Fyron...it has only a limited use in multiplayer games and as the number of players in a game inceases, the usefulness of the ancient trait decreases.

I would say...
On a small map against one other player it is a must.
On a medium map of 4 players it will be very handy.
On a medium map of 6 players useful
On a medium/larger map of 8 players useful/slight starting advantage.
After that I'd say it was a waste of 1000 points.

Just my 2p

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Its also EXTREMELY useful for getting ruins, I didnt see anyone mention this, thats killer right there!! Unless you are just adding them in so anyone can get them....(lame)

and a question, if I were to change the atmosphere of a planet in a sector the ai or human didnt have sensors in would the ai and or the ai know it was changed (because of the trait)?

On the one hand, I find myself enjoying a PBW game where this trait has been banned the most. On the other hand, I favor diversity, as long as the price is right. Put it at 2000 and it becomes more balanced. 3000 is really overkill in my book, but if games allow more racial points than 2000 I can see it become more attractive, which in itself would unbalance things again.

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I rarely take Ancient Race, because it sucks a large chunk of the fun out of the game for me. "eXplore" is my favorite part of 4X games, and Ancient Race almost entirely eliminates that. Exploring the last unmapped system on the map is a bit of a letdown for me.

-----
"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

2000 is overkill for the cost of Ancient Race trait.

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I've never seen the need to use it, a few good scout ships and you have the exploring done easily, and about a sector or two from your front lines if you're smart...much further and you're spreading out too much IMHO

The point of the Ancient Race trait, at least in my mind, is to find easy choke points at the beginning of the game. As long as you don't over-reach (know your limits), you can rush to colonize and easily defend those points way before someone who doesn't have the trait. You can then develop inwards at your own pace. This makes it a massive strategical advantage in the early game. Although it's true that as the game goes on, the trait has lesser noticeable effect than some others, you have to remember that SE has a rather large steam roller effect. If you do well early, chances are, your later efforts are much easier than they should have been. So I have to agree than it should definitely cost more than 1000 points.

Having said that, I do enjoy playing without it more, just for the exploration feel.

Yeah, like Fyron I can't see it worth spending more than 1500.....

I explore so vigourously that I just don't need it.

I'm in Fyron's camp, I'm afraid. I've tried games with and without it, and while I agree it can help find chokepoints early and can help find out where the squishiest enemy systems are late in the game so you can open warp points to them, I still don't see it as worth more than 1000 points. For someone who really uses it to the utmost, I might see it worth 1500, but I think that's rare, honestly. Personally, I'm reasonably happy with it at 1000 points.

--
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Meh, if one is unhappy with it, just allows "all players have see all the galaxy" option in the game setup.

Otherwise, its good early on to find choke points.. but thats it... once i encounter some ennemies it stop being much usefull.

Ruins location? Cool, but reaching it is another matter; you dont know where are the other players. And its only worthwhile if you have the right colony tech.

____________________________________________________

Without ammo, nice guns are just sophisticated clubs.

You can figure out where the HWs of other empires are simply by looking for the telltale signs, by size and value.

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That isn't guaranteed, but it works quite nicely in games with multiple homeworlds.

It's guaranteed to mark out all the likely candidates. You'll get a few false positives, but the chances of having too many worlds with near-perfectly matched values (of the correct size) aren't high.

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What are the highest and lowest values a homeworld have?

I think 100-125 and Large.

Like Fyron said, they do sometimes spawn, but in a large universe you might only end up with 5 that aren't homeworlds.

In a stock game we all had full view on. When I use Ancient I search out all the "homeworlds" nearby. I still missed that one of my colony targets was an AI homeworld.

-----
"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

OMG Ender,
This again? IT'S NOT THAT USEFULL! You can clearly see in the game we are playing I have found the choke points relatively fast.

~Slimbo

Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design...

i think its disadvantageous. It makes you not build scouts and frigates early on and makes planet menu useless for finding breathable NEAR you. Even in very late game i use ton sof firgates with o;ne or twowapons that t\can be produce very quickly and cheaply and retrofitted from begining ships, i would lose wihtou tmy exploration ships.

It's obvious that someone will think that each of the traits is unbalanced if they are able to utilise it well. Therefore, people who like to use the trait should discuss whether they think it is unbalancing and why, and those, like myself, who see no need for it and therefore don't use it should maybe leave the issue alone. If there is someone that uses it a lot but doesn't consider it unbalanced this would be helpful to the debate.

We'll see how long that lasts.

~Slimbo

Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design...

I might consider 1500 points for the Balance Mod, but I don't think I'd make it 2000.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

i say 1500 even thoughi hate the trait and think its an annoyance, themost overpowered trait is Natural Merchants...

Natural Merchants is one of the most underpowered traits. Spaceports are such a tiny percentage of system space, and take so little time to build, that the advantages of NM are negligible over the long term. The short term advantages are dubious at best. 500 would be a more appropriate cost for NM.

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I agree - Natural Merchants should cost only 500. There's no way it's worth more than that (not when you consider +10% resources costs 500)

And I think that 1000 is a good price for Ancient Race at the moment - I do use it, but it's not worth more than 1000 imho.

heck no!!!! NM is incredibly useful it allows u to get resources faster and not haveto colonize more than oneplanet. it alosa llows u not to have to; wooryy that the enemy will; bomb the ;one planet with th port makinga ll the resources useless.

Hmmm - I've never really been drawn to the Natural Merchants trait myself. Long term it only boosts your productivity by a small amount (once you have the three colony types and all the breathers, a single saved kiloton of facility space isn't very much).

It helps you get a return on a newly claimed system quicker than without, but in the earliest turns your empire is usually running at a surplus until your construction capacity increases. And personally I'd say that since warp point defences are more effective than defending in open space, that once the enemy has his ships running amok within your system that it's maybe only a couple of turns until you lose the whole system if your opponent is aggressive. Of course it depends on how you manage your defence.

But back to Ancient Race - I was one of the people suggesting it was underpriced a while ago, although reading this thread I am tempted to concede to those who have played a lot of PBW. There's definitely some luck involved in the starting state of the quadrant and its players which defines whether you get a large benefit from Ancient Race or not, or whether it was a waste of points that could have been spent elsewhere... that would suggest to me that it is close to being balanced.

The Ancient Race trait does give you the ability to pick out distant planets of value and colonize them early. However, many competitive players already use the 'leapfrog' colonizing strategy, which is sending out colony ships to their maximum range before colonizing to establish more distant borders and then filling in the enclosed systems later. They can easily cover/claim the same amount (or more if they can build faster) of territory as a player with the Ancient Race trait. The ancient race player might have an initial boost in production, but the other player catches up once they start filling out their interior systems.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I think the ancient race trait cost should stay as it is.. Although 1500 would be okay, because of it's advantage. But 1000 is already on the top side of what I'm willing to spend on it.

As for Natural Merchants, that should not be made cheaper. it's an incredibly useful trait, IMHO. It should not be given away 'for free'. 1000 makes it an investment.
500 is waaaay to cheap for it.

In one of my current games I'm trying without natural merchants, and I'm deeply regretting it. It's an investment well spent if you got it.

~Myrath

I'd definitely agree that it's easy to find another thousand or two of racial points from picking low impact negative traits. And with racial traits aside, I think there are certain economic traits which are picked by almost all players. I wonder what scope there is for traits with interesting negative side effects that could make empires vary more from each other than they do now? I also wonder what magic Kwok has brewing in this area for the Nova mod...

Assume systems have an average of 8 planets. On average, 1.6 planets will be breathable (20% distribution of atm types). Lets ignore the effect of tiny moons and assume that planet sizes are perfectly distributed, leading to and average size of medium, with 3 or 15 facility slots. Thus, in our average system, we have:

1.6 breathables * 15 space / breathable = 24 space
6.4 non-breathables * 3 space / non-breathable = 19.2 space

total 43.2 facility spaces

(Note that if we had assumed a higher number of planets per system, which might be more accurate for the stock game, the picture will only get worse for the NM trait. I chose 8 to discount the 1-2 tiny moons in stock systems, to make the math easier.)

The Space Port represents only 2.3% of the total space. From an economic viewpoint, building one more miner improves one resource production rate by 2.3%.

The 3 turns of build time is irrelevant in the long run; with every passing turn, the value lost potential production of the first planet or two in the system gets closer and closer to 0. Unless you regularly colonize every planet in a system at the same time, the microscopic short term gain of having a miner or 3 producing before the spaceport is built matters very little.

The protection against having the space port planet bombed is a red herring; if your planets are being bombed you've already lost the system. If you manage to fend off the attack, the recovery time of building the space port on a planet that now has a SY is 1-2 turns, depending on population. Thus, assuming you don't lose the entire system, the production hit of not having that spaceport for a turn or two approaches 0 over the long term.

Thus, the only real gain of NM trait is the 2.3% increase in production for a single resource/research/intel type.

Now, lets say we purchased Mining Aptitude and Smart traits instead, giving +5% to mineral and research production. Compared to losing the slot to a spaceport, one of those bonuses drops to 2.7%. We are still way ahead on production here, however.

Thus, is the short term advantage of 2 turns of resource production in new systems and the short term protection against losing all production a few turns earlier in a dying system, worth the loss of 5% mineral production and 2.7% research production in the entire empire? I would say no, NM trait actually harms your empire. It might, however, be worth the loss of just 2.7% mineral production, if the NM trait cost 500 instead of 1000.

NOTE:
In Balance Mod, the NM trait actually becomes even more worthless (exponentially, in fact). The Mining Aptitude type traits increase production by 10%, meaning that NM is an even larger high-flow toilet down which to throw points. In that mod, you give up 10% mineral production and 7.7% research for the short term gains.

NOTE 2:
Once you start making planets breathable (usually trivial in PBW via trading pop with other races), the resource effect of the single slot gain for NM trait becomes very small (1 / (8*15) = 0.83% in the worst case), making the trait even less useful.

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Agreed. I don't use it for precisely those reasons. I'd rather pay for something like the +1 ship speed trait.

You don't even have a fleet to defend all that territory with. Thanks for bringing the giant target of your empire to my attention...

~Slimbo

Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design...

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LOL, he's bringing some PBW game banter into this thread We're 12 players and Ender's in the lead by a rather large margin. I have yet to meet Slimbo in game but I wonder already how his (mothballed?) forces could possibly pose a threat to the Chosen Ones' growth.

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See my PBW game stories on http://users.pandora.be/banzaiboy/sevpbw/.

They do not make any impact in the long-term. There is no failure to see, I've done the math on the trait in the past. NM doesn't do much at all to improve the rate of colonization. 3 turns of not having 2 mineral miners producing resources is not a significant gain.

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If you are colonizing every planet in the same system at the same time in the early expansion phase, something is awry with your territory-claiming strategy. One should be extending reach as far as possible, not filling systems up one at a time.

Due to the early-game resource waste of the HW's production, you should be building more space yards than miners from those first colonies anyways. Build rates are the main limiting factor, not so much a few extra miners. Once your HW becomes an insignificant production center, the first couple of facility slots of production lost in a new system due to building a spaceport becomes an even less significant portion of production.

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It's usually insignificant because you don't need those extra minerals right away in order to build more colonizers.

The amount of space that can be claimed is what matters most. In that case, you're usually leapfrogging and building Space Yards before Spaceports, relying on your home system to cover off costs.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Here's a tip Ender: use organic or crystalline hulls to reduce ship cost. Ten percent is nothing to sneeze at and it remains useful the entire game.

In the end I think this kind of arguments can only be settled in the arena of PBW. That's one game I wouldn't want to miss
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Speaking as a person who has seen Ender's early game strategy in action, coupled with the Ancient Race trait, I still must agree that it is underpriced at 1000. It should be 1500 minimum. Ender was able to effectively utilize the Ancient trait, in combination with two allies he fed vital information to, to box off every other player in our game (so three players dominated six in the early game). We easily controlled 2/3rds of the map while others were still "exploring". Using the Ancient trait, while building dirt cheap colonizers, a person can mass grab and protect most key systems. You cannot do this when you have to scout out systems and scout out planets within those systems. That takes time, lost time equals lost production. Since the game provides an advantage to those with production the more colonies a person can get in the early game the better their advantage grows with each passing turn. You only get that benefit with the Ancient race trait. At a mere 1000 points I have learned it is a necessity to compete against others who may have the trait. A trait that provides that much strategic advantage should come with some drawbacks. Perhaps also give the ancient race trait a population growth disadvantage...e.g. keeping in line with the Sci-Fi theory/genre that Ancient races reproduce more slowly, thus killing the production advantage.

Loyalty above all else except honor.

The fact that you have to scout systems in SE5 is all that make the trait worth 1000 points, compared to SE4...

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You got bum rushed? That's not that big a deal. Early game sneak attacks are the main use of AR. Anything else can be gained from skilled exploration.

Well, to put things further into perspective: when the []D[] hive surrendered to me I still didn't obtain the detailed maps they had explored. I only saw the systems they had settled and some still contained unexplored sections. Having the AR trait would at least have allowed me to judge where I should have put my defenses before I got raped by the Atlantica, because I would have searched for large planets with the typical homeworld values in nearby systems.

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Like I mentioned earlier, I'd consider 1500 points for the Ancient Race trait, but 2000 is too much.

I know you had success, but it's a 1 game sample size. There are a number of expansion strategies that can produce similar growth. The real bonus of the trait is the advanced planning it provides, particularly for mapping out where the other empires are located.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Enders success was also largely reliant on the fact that his production was much faster than hours, due to a setting in the mod.

But I agree that 1500 is more than enough for the price.

Perhaps there should be a second 'Ancient Race' setting which only shows the starlanes and star locations on the starmap, but NOT the planets in the different systems.

~Myrath

I started a poll at the Balance Mod forums at SE.net:
http://home.spaceempires.net/ftopict-4740.html

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

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That really cements its advantage for me then. One player with the trait, who then makes contact with one or two players that are open to teambuilding, can EASILY remove all resistence in a game. Like I said, Ender partnered with two other players, shared key system knowledge early in the game, and between the three of us we effectively boxed EVERY other player into a small corner. We easily own 2/3rds of the Quadrant unoppossed and it is only turn 102...during that time we have eliminated 3 players and one appears to have dropped due to frustration from our overwhelming advantage. The small races that we met we easily defeated because we could choke off their life lines before they even recognized they were life lines. Our production was magnified each turn because we did not have to waste valuable time "scouting" planets...we just went straight to planets. We had entire systems colonized while the opposing players were still scouting three. Using emergency build ques, with throw away colonizers, you can pump out a colonizer almost every turn. Once you get four space yards above your homeworld you can emergency build almost 5 throw away colonizers about every two turns.

The correct calculation for early game benefit should be to test the average amount of turns it takes to scout and colonize a planet versus the advantage to simply being able to colonize them. For instance, if it takes a player 5 turns, on average, to locate a single planet, then another 5 turns to get a colonizer to it, on average, then the ancient race player truly has a sincere advantage. His production is DOUBLED and then magnified ?x times past the other player every ten turns. Since the game is based on production this does give the ancient race player a sincere advantage. The more planets the Ancient player collects the more the ?x will increase over time over the other players since the Ancient will now be able to produce twice as many throw away colonizers as soon as the ship yards are built.

None Ancient / Ancient
Turn 1: 0 / 0
Turn 2: 0 / 0
Turn 3: 0 / 0
Turn 4: 0 / 0
Turn 5: 0 / 1
Turn 6: 0 / 1
Turn 7: 0 / 1
Turn 8: 0 / 1
Turn 9: 0 / 1 + SY
Turn 10: 1 / 2
etc.

Loyalty above all else except honor.

If it's taking you 5 turns to locate a single planet, you really need to adjust your strategy!

Essentially without the Ancient Race trait, you need to make sure you're using at least level 3 basic sensors. Simply sending out colony ships in all directions to their maximum range before colonizing will uncover most of the planets your nearby systems. In most cases, the Ancient Race trait won't get you any more territory faster.

Players teeming up in any regard can still dominate a game just as easily without the trait.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Consider me old-fashioned, but I prefer using scout ships. Now that the colony module cost is higher, you can get 2-3 scout ships in the time you need to build a colony ship.

Not only you'll have contact with other players faster, you will be able to spy on their movements, and each (weaponised) scout ship could eventually take out 1-2 colonies if you act fast enough and if the opponent has skipped on defenses. You'll also be able to detect an eventual rush strategy.

I consider that lvl 2 sensors are enough to scout: they give you a diameter of view of 11 hexes, which is exactly a system's radius. Circling the star once at the right distance is then enough to reveal all hexes. Early research is better placed in frigate lvl2, ressuply lvl2, stellar harnessing...

Also, I like to slowly learn about the quadrant - exploring is fun!

They whole thing of traits is knowing when and how to use them.

The price of these traits is fixed though and does not change depending on the game settings...something which will make them more or less valuable.

I feel that on a small map versus one other player the cost of AR trait is underpriced...as it is vital (IMO) to expand as quickly as possible there as the pace of the game is quicker and so there is less room for error and any delay will give your enemy an advantage.

So taking traits such as the crystal trait in such a game could be seen as throwing away points as you may not be able to research/use it to its full worth...less systems with 2 or more stars to use, less research time and points, etc.

So does that mean the Crystal trait is over priced?

On larger maps and with more players the game will go on longer and get into the mid or late game stages...where other traits will give you much more of an advantage over the AR...In fact I would consider taking the AR is such a game to be throwing away points...and taking the crystal trait a great buy...

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Yes, but you could say that in a big multiplayer game, sending one fast scout ship to each of the other player's homeworld is also vital, because you'll get trade treaties, alliances, and tech trades faster. Especially, you'll know right from the start where the two closest players with colonisation tech you don't have are. It's also easier to define what your territory should be, and you can trade your quadrant map to other players.

And for instance in EotU, since there are no ruins, it's less interesting to take ancient race. And depending on your strategy, Mining Aptitude, Smart, Cunning, Builders or Power Conservation, Propulsion Experts, Hardy Industrialists might be more interesting to take.

my scouts are my colony ships.

There's something I haven't seen mentioned here yet - apologies if it has and I've missed it. It applies strictly to PBW games, but it's a rather important additional reason why AR players will always be faster than any opponent without the trait. When you explore new systems, you loose the remaining movement points after you have warped into a new unexplored system. AR players do not suffer this handicap.

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It was an example. I have no idea what the average time is to locate a planet. That is why I said it needs to be looked at. If you find one planet in 1 turn but then takes 8 to find the next, etc.

Loyalty above all else except honor.

Ender, it would seem that you are very convinced by your gaming experience...but in games out side of one v ones I would not consider taking the AR trait simply because I do not think it is worth it...as I have said before and find from my own experience.

I therefore present why I do not think it is worth increaing the cost of the AR trait from my point of view...here is the current game I am playing...with all my info exposed...we are currently on turn 39. The game is Nebula storm and it's setting are below the screen shot. There are several races in the game that have the AR trait, mine not being one of them.

Starting resources: 100000
Starting planets: 3
Home planet value: Good
Score display: Own
Technology level: Low
Racial points: 2000
Quadrant type: Paradise
Quadrant size: Large
Event frequency: Low
Event severity: Catastrophic
Technology cost: High
Victory conditions: Last empire standing or allied victory.
Maximum units: XXX
Maximum ships: XXX
Computer players: None.
Neutral empires:No
Ruins: yes.

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The AR trait is useless in the hands of too slow and conservative players. There's no sense in taking the trait and then going through the expansion phase like a snail because you are afraid someone will invade your existing colonies. I'm not saying this is what has happened in your game Takahlah, since I'd need to be in it to be able to judge that properly. You might have spawned in a remote system while other players ended up in each other's backyard. Such random factors cloud the issue, but they're all part of the game. It still does not disprove Ender's point of view. I look forward to some 1.15 BM game that may sort this.

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For future reference, "hear" and "read" mean the exact same thing in the context of Internet forums, where "speech" is just written word.

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*rolls eyes*

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In other words, ancient race is SE5's version of the "One World Wonder" races in Stars!. Both exploit the small map size in order to be viable.

OWW races had insane production and research bonuses, but lacked the capacity to expand. Of course in a Tiny universe you don't really NEED to expand as you only need one or two turns to find your opponents. OWW races were close to invincible, but only in a tiny universe. Lack of expansion capacity doomed them in universes of medium or better. Small wasn't too good for them either.

Here in SE5, Ancient Race, coupled with Prod bonuses, allows you to find and attack your opponents almost immediately. It also lets you identify the map points where you are most likely to be attacked and concentrate any defenses there. But it largely fails to be useful in maps beyond small as all races are gonna have more than enough time to expand and build up before they start attacking each other.

so anybody disagree?

Yes. Read my comment again.

I think that the price of 1000 for Ancient Race is fine as it is - as someone has pointed out, it's actual value to a player comes down to many factors, such as :
Starting Position
Map Size
Style of Play
Choice of Racial traits by other players
Other Racial choices and trade-offs
Luck

There is no one price for this (or any) trait that takes all of these factors into play, as it will change depending on the scenario. The point i'm trying to make is, if you want to use it at 1000 - go ahead. If you don't, then spend the points elsewhere wisely to maximise their value.

Also - Don't forget that if you don't choose this Racial trait you can always try to 'inherit' it from a friendly partner reasonably early on in the game, and then you have it for 'free' AND have the 1000 points to spend elsewhere.

Oh - I think it is expensive at 1000 points, but maybe that's just me

Look at TakAhLah's example - he spent the 1000 points on Ancient Race and is in second place in a 10 player game that is well advanced. That proves that it's not worth it - surely ?? As he has the value from the points on other areas, which MUST have worked out better otherwise he wouldn't be in second place ? Also, in that game there is no longer any value to be had from Ancient Race (as his map shows he can see all his territory), so his spend in other areas will only increase while the 1000 others might have spent on Ancient Race will only decrease in value (actually it's worth 0 now).

Or is that too simplistic an viewpoint ?