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The rule for Cultists' leeching is: every converted minor village in a region instantly, and automatically, leeches 0.2 of each strategic and luxury resource in that region, for which you have the extractor tech.
- 1 village x 1 Titanium = 0.2 Ti per turn
- 3 villages x 2 Adamantium 1 Palladium = 0.6 Ad, 0.3 Pal per turn
Then sum that up over all the regions in which you have converted villages. With 30 villages across 12 regions, and some regions having 6-8 different resources, you could be raking in a total of 45.0 resources, spread over all 21 types, per turn.
You do need to research the extractor techs, but you don't need to build any extractors. Ergo, for Cultist, once you (quickly) convert several villages in a few regions, from then on you want to research every extractor tech ASAP, as soon as you enter its age, because it turns on your leeching.
You don't even need to be in the Age of the extractor tech. If you win a war and an AI trades you the right extractor tech before you're in that Age, then you still leech those resources even if you can't see them on the map.
Also ... it's a leech :) If the region is actually owned by another player, then that player loses those resources, and loses the FIDS in the village's 1+6 hexes. AIs will get mad at you for this, but that's OK: just kill them and take all of their hexes. (OTOH, if you were first to convert villages, and then an AI later comes in and settles that region, it doesn't get mad at you for the FIDS and resources it's not gaining, because it never had them in the first place.)
Hie thee hence and convert villages not in your own region. (But that's your mainline strategy, so you're already doing it.)
Take off weapons of the enemy by making a custom race. You only get 10 points back but it will help you in the long run.
let me link you to the thread where we were talking about it.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/289130/discussions/0/1726450077681017021/
Long story short you are paying design points to automatically burn down a city instead of keeping it forever. Why do you want that?
The short version is to play cultists as a custom faction and remove weapons of the enemy for: cuts both ways, keys to the market, or big armies.
The first option is weak with few AI and strong with many. The second option helps you early game to buy a hero to govern your city (which gives you a big leg up). The third option lets you have +1 unit in your army. This is an incredible advantage as soon as you have enough units to fill the army.
Can you please stop advicing people to use custom factions. They are the single most broken aspect of all Amplitude's games (partly on purpose for goofing around). It's about the same thing as if you were playing a nation in Civ with the bonuses of three nations.
How about no? Most of the people I know would say you are goofing around if you play with the default nations. Aplitude uses lazy ai (read as in order to create more difficulty they just give the AI massive cheats) and that in my opinion is the entire reason you use a custom nation.
It's not like playing civ with 3 bonus nations. It's like playing with the custom unit from say Egypt with the American national bonus and the china unique tech (but only each of those parts and not the whole of those 3 nations).
The whole reason to play this game or Endless Space instead of say civ is because you can customize how you want to play. People like customization because it allows you to start your strategy before the game starts.
No offense but weapons of the enemy is a limiting mechanic. It is similar to pitiless in that it severely limits your faction but you get no points for it. This is poor balance.
If you held a pvp tournament of some kind for EL and forced people to use default nations the cultists would likely lose. Know why? One town loses to many towns. You can kill off their minor units to gain exp and cripple the cultist economy.
Overall the game is poorly balanced in that you can extremely subert the national planning. Make a national plan then steal one city from the enemy and make a new one. By the time the next national plan rolls around if you know the game well you can buy just as much stuff as you had last time even though now you have 3 cities and before you had 1 city.
I don't think you realize it yet but the only way to balance the cultists is when you take off weapons of the enemy.
Perhaps you should start to learn how to play vanilla Cultist faction? From my experience weapons of the enemy can be very powerful by the given boosts you get from razing your enemies cities (industry, science). I remember multiplayer games, where everyone called neighbouring players of Cultist faction to immediately kill their minor civs villages, for to prevent Cultits faction from steamrolling. Cultist faction is able to sell minor faction units to make dust this way - very useful. Keep in mind, you can research techs to raise the power of industry/science boosts... and not to forget about the fact their capitals districts can be raised to level 3, resulting in a powerhouse. The ranged attack units are brutal, in case you care for their equipment. To defend one city only (especially if it's that kind of powerhouse) is more easy.
Playing this game with custom factions tends to cheat - at least from my opinion. But hey, devs did decide to offer options to make this game enjoyable for different types of players. Glad you found your way in custom factions, to enjoy game. Even I tend to think you take away the option for to learn how to deal with given game mechanics (for every faction) and negate game balancing.
I would strongly recommend to start achievement hunting, for to be forced to rethink the common strategies carried over from other 4x games. A lot of fun.
The simple fact that you can use the Broken Lords (55/80) as a template and simply add three level of Businessmen (which result in +30% dust production on cities) without having to take any additionnal negative trait (which place you at 79/80 total) is a good exemple of how unbalanced custom factions are in my opinion.
Yeah, what have you done? I hope next time you know better...
;)
Being able to modify a race to make your own strategy is what makes the game worth playing. Which sounds more fun?
1) play the cultists 50 times
2) play the cultists 10 times (every few games you switch out traits and try some different strategies).
Stealing a large city will have a greater effect. Especially if you steal a region that has resources your home region does not.
The cultists can be shut down more readily than any other faction. This is one of the reasons why I advocate they are broken in their vanilla state. Market ban the cultists as soon as you meet them and the game is lost for them.
No one is going to let you have converted minors in a mp game. Besides when doing quests for minors the smartest move is to kill them after you finish the quest so others cannot benefit from the settlement. Not only does this prevent other players from leveling their armies but it also makes the cultists pay more * points to convert.
Everything you research makes future research cost more. So wasting tech to make something better is of questionable value. You need to backtech for certain milestones but if you try to get everything your opponent might research tier end tier tech while you are busy grabbing everything from tiers 1-4 so you are way behind.
Ranged units overall are pretty weak. There is a tier 1 item that gives you massive defense vs ranged (funny enough this and the movement item are some of the best accessories for your army). If you aren't focusing on fliers then ranged don't get a damage bonus.
You have it backwards friendo. You understand the game less by playing the same thing every time. You can really only appreciate the effectiveness of certain traits when you try them on faction 1, then faction 2 (and so on) and cross reference that with trying it with trait A or trait B or trait C and see how it changes the game.
You have to ask yourself - compared to what. Now granted not all of the traits are priced appropriately. I mean hell some of the factions have more base points than others (and that doesn't seem fair but they did the same thing in ES if I recall). Even with all that dust you have to buy population instead of get it for free. You also have to use your dust to heal your troops. You could make armies with minor faction units but even custom modified minors are weak and no amount of tweaking will put most of them (few exceptions) on par with a default unit.
3) playing the cultist vanilla faction and trying different strategies
Thanks for precising what I wrote about. Let me add you can't "steal" regions or cities, just destroy and convert it's minor faction villages in that region.
Any faction gets hurt by market ban. Sure, the cultists even more. Level of threat depends on number of Roving Clan players, as long as you know Roving Clan can only target one other faction a time. Are you talking about 1 vs 1 games?
You did pretend Cultist faction is weak. Why do you think no one lets you have converted minors in mp game? Because vanilla Cultist faction is basically weak? Not sure so far, if OP talks about mp game experiences... OP asks for ways to optimize the strategic ressources output and if market place is the only way to do so.
It was not my point to get (research) everything, just to research at least two techs to raise the effectiveness of food/industry boosts when playing Cultist faction.
You describe how to counter ranged units by equipment. What prevents Cultist from countering the counter? Still Cultists ranged units are basically pretty good.
I don't see your point to check out same traits what vanilla factions offer using custom factions, so far. You imply to have more insight of effectiveness of certain traits this way. I don't see. I just see you can build an even more unbalanced faction this way.
Anyway, I'm far away from convincing you to play vanilla factions, in case you are happy to play custom ones (my opinion about you know). Taste differs and devs offer a wide set of options to make it the game for everyone. I found mine in point of vanilla factions. Especially connected to achievement hunting, what did help me to finally understand most (?) of the game mechanics - like you digging in custom factions.
There's really not much variation with the vanilla faction. Make one mega city and convert the world's minor factions.
"Thanks for precising what I wrote about. Let me add you can't "steal" regions or cities, just destroy and convert it's minor faction villages in that region."
You can if you remove weapons from the enemy with a custom version of the faction.
You describe how to counter ranged units by equipment. What prevents Cultist from countering the counter? Still Cultists ranged units are basically pretty good.
Range units are really strong most of the time. You can often get away with making just enough blockers so that your melee ties down the enemy so you pick them off systematically with range and take low damage (with no casualties).
But as I said before you can get a 40% defense bonus vs ranged trinket for just extra construction cost. The 40% attack trinket will cost you Palladin. You can put the range defense on really early and the range attack is much later in the game.
So if you happen to have a tier 2 flier (necros) you can put the defense trinket on and you can roughly counter the ranged unit's bonus damage. This is essentially rock beating paper. Infantry spam will also pretty reliably shred ranged with the trinket on as well.
You imply to have more insight of effectiveness of certain traits this way. I don't see. Play different factions and give them trait A then add trait B, and maybe C. Is this trait combo merely strong or is it broken?
Broken lords with 30% dust really aren't all that broken although I can see why you think they might be (they would only really be broken if you got 6 delver minors). It's really simple. Try different trait combinations and you really understand what makes a trait work or not. I describe a scientific approach to testing traits. If you don't see that then I don't know what to say.
If someone wants to play vanilla only you are welcome to do that. I just ask why. Especially in the case of OP if you are struggling try a custom build. I think the game is too simple with fixed traits. I always played ES with custom trait AI so they were better to play against. The same thing works for EL.
The AI sucks pretty hard as the trade guys not being able to declare war. If they can declare war they are much better and give a more fun experience to play against.