Synthetic Civilizations

Yor Yor Yor Yor

from GalCiv3 Forums

"Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down."

-Zapp Brannigan

 

I played a lot with Yor and custom synthetic races, so this is a thread to discuss them.

 

1) Race creation:

-You do not need population growth, which gives you 2 free design points. (Infertile)

-the base population cap, as well as techs that increase population are rather high, so you can take reduced population cap (Poor Farmers) for another 2 points (also the population cap is bugged at the moment)

-You should always take at least 1 speed so pirates can not catch you (they only have a base speed 2)

-I really like Handy +2 which will save you quite a bit of money

 

As for abilities we have to take synthetic. I would highly recommend prolific instead of the default Yor adaptable ability. You get access to tier 1 extreme worlds rather fast anyways, but the additional population from prolific will slingshot your economy to #1 early on.

 

2) Early strategies:

-the capital should only have factories with 100% focus on manufacturing

-manufacturing should be split up so you get 1.5 assembly projects for every colony ship

-buy out your first few factories

-buy out you a few scouts and the first few colony ships

-the first colony should focus on research (so you start getting research in the first place)

-early techs to get:

  *collective manufacturing

  *industrial mechanization

  *power matrix

  *xeno commerce

  *interstellar governance

-ideology wise i made very good experiences with malevolent, especially the ruthless path. every thing in ruthless is just incredible synergistic with synthetic races.

 

you do not really need early weapons or ships because planetary invasions can only happen from age of war onwards (unless the enemy goes for early aggression 3 in the malevolent ideology tree)

 

With this setup you can usually pump out a colony ship in 2 turns + the population you lost on the homeworld. This gives you an incredible advantage over the meatbag races, because they can only dream getting 3 population every 2 turns. The prolific ability will then double this population giving you a huge population and planet advantage.

 

3) Mid games strategies:

I can't really comment on this because in my games the ai has fallen so far behind at that point that i can basically do whatever i want

 

 

4) Feedback on playing synthetic races:

Balance wise synthetic races have incredible advantages because of free trait points (which is somehow balanced that they have to take synthetic ability) and that they do not need farms, i.e. you have more tiles for other buildings. When it comes to colonization and invasions, synthetic races are quite micro-intensive because you have manually assign assembly projects for every ship that drains population. The early expansion described earlier feels outright broken compared to non-synthetic races. I also do not like that you are pretty much confined to the Yor technology tree where many techs and buildings refer directly to the Yor, i.e. playing a custom synthetic race that has nothing to do with the Yor feels very awkward.

 

5) Suggestions:

-heavily reduce the initial population cap (i suggest to set it to 4 with giving the capital a bonus of 4 for a total of 8)

-techs that increase the global population bonus should have an reduced effect, but unlock buildings that locally increase the population cap

-assembly projects should give a population growth boost instead of flat population, e.g. assembly +0.2 population growth for 10 turns (and every further assembly project increasing the effect by 10 turns as long as it is active), so you cannot spam full colony ships in the early game every 2-3 turns indefinitely.

-buildings and techs of synthetic races should not be named after the Yor but after the civilizations short name (which would be Yor for the Yor but otherwise for custom civilizations)

 

42,858 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

hm i tried a new run, this time not focusing on malevolent. it is much harder this way. imho malevolent makes or brakes a synthetic civilization in the early phase of the game.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I'd add a lot of colonisation  events are nonsensical  for synthetics, which makes playing them seem some what like they've  been shoehorned into a games not designed to accommodate them. That event thing is one of my biggest bugbears  with the game.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The balance for the Yor at least is that there production and research buildings are not very good...so the key is to focus on assembly projects. Your economy comes through raw people, not good infrastructure.

Theoretically Yor would start to fall behind late game because their infrastructure starts to fall behind, but I agree they can do a powerful early slingshot.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Actually my favorite race is systhetics. They fit my playsyte so far.

 

I play only tiny and small maps, so i dont have any experience in long run large maps.

 

My strategy is:

-Patriotic+Synthetic abilities

 

-scout the nearly stars send out the colony ship

-take malevolent ruthless path

-rush about 3 factories each planet

-focus on research +1 movement speed

-after that you focus on manufacturing and start nbuilding up your 2nd and 3rd colony ship.

-at this time you should have at least 3 core planet, focus 2 heavily on manuftaring and the last go for research.

 

In about 50 turn, you should have strong manufacturing power which you can pump up your population ( i can easly achive 100b+ pop in early mid game, at this point ai has 10-20b max!) , starbases and your army fearly easy. At this point you basically wins againts AI in small size maps, regardless on AI difficulty.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting slavinkelevra, reply 4

Patriotic+Synthetic abilities

 

I would NOT take Patriotic as morale/approval only really impacts organic pop growth (and planet defense but a good offense fixes that). Something synthetics don't have.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Some very good points tesb. I agree 100%.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thats because the morale effect your pop cap, which is quite important. I will test some other abilities.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Morale does effect production but only at 100%, it also effects influence.  However I agree for Synthetic patriotic isn't worth it, your production comes from huge populations not from approval bonuses.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting slavinkelevra, reply 7

Thats because the morale effect your pop cap, which is quite important. I will test some other abilities.

I don't see this in any game that I run. Its always the same cap whether I am at 100 or 10.

Quoting kestlstw, reply 8

Morale does effect production but only at 100%, it also effects influence.

Influence yes but the tooltips never show anything for production when a planet is at 100.

I hate to say it but I don't think approval/morale has any effect upon Synthetics unless you are trying to go for a cultural win.

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting kestlstw, reply 8

Morale does effect production but only at 100%, it also effects influence.  However I agree for Synthetic patriotic isn't worth it, your production comes from huge populations not from approval bonuses.

Joe, the math expert around here, showed that it did adjust every 5% approval I believe by looking through the XML.

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I stand corrected on the production issue. Morale/Approval still has an effect on production and closer to what Stalker0 said then the 100% effect. Would be nice if this was tooltipped.

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

playing with the latest 6.2 opt in:

 

-max population is still bugged and does nothing

-i tried patriotic instead of prolific: together with the malevolent eager (approval for every conquered world) i am currently up to 40+ population with 100% approval.

 

 

all in all, the more i play with synthetic the more i wish it was implemented differently. synthetic is basically an early game problem, but a huge late game bonus (more tiles because you do not need farms/hospitals and rapid population growth compared to other races once you have the manufacturing). my main issue is the amount of micromanagement of constantly building more population.