Horatio seem terrible

[Judge Cudge]

Back when Horatio had the food to industry buff when hitting the population cap, it gave them a much needed midgame lift that capitalized on their food heavy playstyle and made for some interesting decisions regarding splicing.

Now having removed that and replaced it with nothing, the horatio sit in the trash bin as the absolute worst civ in the game bar none. Their ships have less slots than any other, and the "flexibility" is wasted when any war ship simply wants raw numbers. Their early game is the worst possible, as they are left naked waiting for their ability to be useful. They need influence desperately to snag minor civs, but have no consistent way of acquiring it. They need to wait aeons to acquire and grow minor civs before they can combo purge them into their genome. And their lategame might as well not exist as any other actual civ can swipe a science victory around turn 70.

Their whole mechanic is a joke in comparison to any other civ's straightforward strength, and even in a perfect scenario is outpaced by literally anything else.

I love their theme and want their unique ability to be good, but even assuming you double your fids output(a rare occurance) any other civ simply building infrastructure outpaces you.

[vindicator]

Horation is scary as game throws alien pop units for your gene hunter integration from quests. You have to build bio-fuel factory for food to industry conversion. It can be researched fast enough.

[Epy]

Bio-fuel factory is SOOOOOOO good! It isn't that bad to research like vindicator mentioned. Also Horatio's early game isn't as bad as the Unfallens (just by their nature of play). Unfallen also have trouble acquiring minor civ's/squishy ships/dealing with pirates (on higher difficulties anyway). Both civ's have snowball potential though, with Horatio late game pops being potential monsters.

I recommend drawing the game length/turns out a bit, if you're able to spend a tad bit extra time on a game that is. That seems to mask early/mid game woes a little and give you time to enjoy having super horatios.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by Epy:

Both civ's have snowball potential though, with Horatio late game pops being potential monsters.

Their late game pop can be powerful but you'll need lots of assimilation assuming you start with more useful minor civs nearby to assimilate. Another thing is Horatio do not get the full trait bonus from spliced races but only a fraction of those. So you may not want to occupy all systems only with Horatio and no other races.

[I Am Atomic!]

3 things, 1st no, you dont wait for influence to buy your way into minor civs good graces, every minor civ you meet, 1st to last, you conquer asap, quick and easy, then you buyout all food buildings there so the pop grows to splice lvl asap.

2nd mid game your also splicing in main civ pop bonuses, and yes this works with unfallen, riftborn and vodyani pops to make your horatios into Super Sayains. also if you assymilate tikan your set for manpower for life, also theres a few civs with happyness boosts wich makes overexpansionism a non factor so grow forever my horatio friends!

3rd now that you have your supreme being horatios that its turn 40-50 thx to being a good conquering badass you should be getting irritated at all the non horatios in your empire, but fear not! you can convert all the non horatios into horatios! once you do this you have more science than sophons, more production than vod and riftborn combined and you never have to worry about food or dust or influence again - even if your running 2-3 +3 influence per pop laws.

final note. yes their ships are junk, but its better to go for massive numbers of spamable junk anyway DEATH BY 1000 CUTS! drop 4-5 fleets of junk ontop of enemies pristine fleet of kickassery amd dont let him leave system! if he does after the time limit for blockade is up, follow him! make sure to put extra engines on all your combat ships cuz the name of the game isnt win every battle, its ♥♥♥♥ with their minds while your other 50-100+ junk fleets swarm enemy planets and invade the ♥♥♥♥ out of everything. if enemy resists just keep throwing numbers at them, you will beat them down eventually.

(50-100 junk fleets is overexaguration, but not by much! by junk fleets i mean dont spend any strategic resorces on your combat ships - it is acceptable to make 2-3 good super teched up super kitted up fleets for punching through enemy defensive lines, but this should not be main goal, you are better off with 20 crap fleets than with 1-2 really good fleets.)

no go forth my fellow horatio, and show the universe why we are really just super sayains in disguise!

FINAL final note! yes good science civs can win by turn 70, this is why you start murdering them by turn 50 and laugh as their hopes and dreams of a sciency future become more fuel for the greatness that is Horatio!

[Judge Cudge]

Originally posted by vindicator:

Horation is scary as game throws alien pop units for your gene hunter integration from quests. You have to build bio-fuel factory for food to industry conversion. It can be researched fast enough.

If you consider bio fuel factory and an industry conversion to be "fast enough" considering you need massive gene splices to make it work, then you are playing an entirely different game than most players.

Also robo Ghandi, how are you supposed to fight a science boy if you don't turn on yet, have weak ships, need to spread wide as possible, and they have a SCIENCE advantage on you.

Conquering instead of talking to minor civs seems actually pretty wise, but the rest of your strat seems unrealistic. No human can be killed by a pre turn 80 horatio.

[Varivox]

Only played one game with them but I gotta disagree.

They have probably the weakest start since their whole mechanic requires a sacrifice of population and, otherwise, have no real benefit early on. However, as the game progresses, their population benefits become massive. By the end of the last game, each horatio was giving me ~10 happiness, ~10 industry, 5 dust, 5 science, 10 food, and influence. I was probably 3-4x over the colonization limit and didn't run into a single happiness issue, every system was maxed out on happiness. Add in their population limit bonus and every system can pump out insane amounts of economy.

Their only real drawback is their lackluster (terrible) ships that are both lacking in module slots as well as overpriced due to the price of perfection. However, splicing quickly overcomes this as your economy will become so powerful that that 25% industry you pay over what you'd normally see becomes negligible.


Overall, horatio is a steamroll faction. They have a rough start since their innate population bonuses are terrible early on, their starting planet is mediteranian which makes the best 2 starting tech/buildings for industry/science lackluster at best (and they start with neither tech too), and their ships cost an extra 25% industry, but once you hit mid game they begin steamrolling because of their splice mechanic. It makes losing a system or two to them that much more painful, since they will likely see an empire wide boost if they can splice your population.

Whereas the Vaulters are good at defending a system from invasion, Horatio can defend really well while also adding massive boons to your FIDSI, while also negating any real happiness penalties you run into.

IMO, Horatio is the reverse-Cravers of ES2. Where the Cravers are really strong early on but lose steam as the game goes on, the Horatio are really weak early on and gain momentum the longer the game goes on. They out science Sophons, out influence Empire, out food the Unfallen, and make the Riftborn's bonuses look like a sad joke (and you can steal Riftborn's genes somehow...).

[ElPrezCBF]

All factions have the potential to steamroll except arguably the cravers depending on the situation. The question is how fast Horatio can reach that stage before other factions if possible. I think the splicing trait power has been overstated powerful as it could be. A lot still depends on the availability of accessible and useful nearby factions for them to assimilate. That's why I would refrain from saying they would always "outscience" or "outproduce" other factions late game.

[Judge Cudge]

My argument isn't that their lategame isn't strong, it is objectively the best. But if that doesn't fully turn on until turn 80 then you've already lost. Their lategame comes too late.

Everyone who's coming here to tell me that Horatio's lategame exists is an ai fighting scrub whose profoundly missing the point, Horatio needs to be able to get greater than 10 fidsi and happiness per horatio BEFORE turn 50 in order to even be considered a contender with any other civ just playing normally. Thats next to impossible in some games, and actually impossible in most. Unless they make it so you can gain more than one population a turn, or make a profound change to the Horatio's ability, a food based civ simply can't work. They are mechanically hamstrung in an insurmountable way.

Even if you met every minor civ worth meeting in a perfect stairstep fashion from turn ten onward every 3 turns, even if you magically captured each one THE TURN YOU MET THEM, even if every single town for every single turn gained one pop of that specific civ per turn every turn. You'd still gain your ability slow enough to lose to any other civ playing normally, and the scenario I mentioned is impossible to produce. Further, as you have the absolute weakest ships, you can't even hamstring other civs to slow them down, you'd simply lose outright.

The pace of their ability, or its average efficacy per game needs to be nearly doubled for them to even be on the map of playable traits. Its power can only kick in post loss to any decent human player.

[Varivox]

Originally posted by Judge Cudge:

Everyone who's coming here to tell me that Horatio's lategame exists is an ai fighting scrub whose profoundly missing the point, .

ugh....

Listen, the vast majority of 4x "scrubs", the VAST majority of them never even touch MP. Your looking at a problem that probably won't even affect 10% of the playerbase; that said...

Horatio are a high risk/high reward faction, similar to the Harmony of ES1 (suffered a penalty for any planet that had dust on it, which they couldn't get rid of until late game). You are effectively risking the game on the bet that you can survive long enough pull ahead. They are slow, and rightly so, because if they weren't, Horatio would dominate every game.

As far as population growth goes, get a starport and spread the non-horatio around your empire, then use a booster to increase their growth. You only get 1 population per turn per system, so if you have 10 systems you can have 10 new populations.

Horatio's lategame potential (keyword: potential) is vastly superior to any other civ's already and there has to be a tradeoff for that. When fighting Cravers, you have to contain them early on so they don't eat the whole universe, Cravers trade the lategame for the early game. Horatio is the exact opposite of that, they trade the early game for the late game. Any "buff" to their early game would lead to an absolutely out of control Horatio that traded little/nothing for the best ability in the game.

If they didn't sacrifice what they do now, what would be their counter? Their genesplice is simply too good to give them much, if any, of a boost as is. The Riftborn trade resources and production for their population/manpower/rifts. The Cravers trade their literal planets for FIDS. Vaulters trade their colonization speed for portals. Etc. If you have your way, what would Horatio trade?

[ElPrezCBF]

I think generalizing Horatio as always too strong late game or breaking their FIDSI down to numbers before a certain turn doesn't take into account the diversity of settings and spawn situations. If anything, I could also rightly (or wrongly) argue that Riftborn is way stronger than Horatio or any faction late game because they don't depend on farms for growth and can rapidly escalate their power through time compression. Even late game, my strongest opponents are usually not Horatio but Sophons and UE.

The AI also performs poorly when playing factions requiring more extreme strategies like Cravers or Vodyani. This has been an issue even in Endless Legend. Beating such AI factions late game is no indicator that Horatio is a natural late game steamroller. That said, I haven't played Horatio in quite a whole and not sure if things have changed greatly in the latest patch. Perhaps more playthroughs would be a good idea before generalizing about Horatio's performance.

[Varivox]

Originally posted by twel70:

I think generalizing Horatio as always too strong late game or breaking their FIDSI down to numbers before a certain turn doesn't take into account the diversity of settings and spawn situations. If anything, I could also rightly (or wrongly) argue that Riftborn is way stronger than Horatio or any faction late game because they don't depend on farms for growth and can rapidly escalate their power through time compression. Even late game, my strongest opponents are usually not Horatio but Sophons and UE.

The AI also performs poorly when playing factions requiring more extreme strategies like Cravers or Vodyani. This has been an issue even in Endless Legend. Beating such AI factions late game is no indicator that Horatio is a natural late game steamroller. That said, I haven't played Horatio in quite a whole and not sure if things have changed greatly in the latest patch. Perhaps more playthroughs would be a good idea before generalizing about Horatio's performance.

Yea, Horatio is less reliable since you can get unlucky with minor civs nearby and get some useless genes. Riftborn are probably more consistant in that regard, but that plays into Horatio's "high risk/high reward" style.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by Varivox:

Originally posted by twel70:

I think generalizing Horatio as always too strong late game or breaking their FIDSI down to numbers before a certain turn doesn't take into account the diversity of settings and spawn situations. If anything, I could also rightly (or wrongly) argue that Riftborn is way stronger than Horatio or any faction late game because they don't depend on farms for growth and can rapidly escalate their power through time compression. Even late game, my strongest opponents are usually not Horatio but Sophons and UE.

The AI also performs poorly when playing factions requiring more extreme strategies like Cravers or Vodyani. This has been an issue even in Endless Legend. Beating such AI factions late game is no indicator that Horatio is a natural late game steamroller. That said, I haven't played Horatio in quite a whole and not sure if things have changed greatly in the latest patch. Perhaps more playthroughs would be a good idea before generalizing about Horatio's performance.

Yea, Horatio is less reliable since you can get unlucky with minor civs nearby and get some useless genes. Riftborn are probably more consistant in that regard, but that plays into Horatio's "high risk/high reward" style.

That's what I like about ES2 because playing the same faction could yield a very different experience when the settings and resource/minor race spawn distribution changes. Even Riftborn are very dependent on having enough strategic resources spawn nearby. They cannot even compress time and colonize efficiently without them, which could delay their late game steamrolling.

[Varivox]

Originally posted by twel70:

Originally posted by Varivox:

Yea, Horatio is less reliable since you can get unlucky with minor civs nearby and get some useless genes. Riftborn are probably more consistant in that regard, but that plays into Horatio's "high risk/high reward" style.

That's what I like about ES2 because playing the same faction could yield a very different experience when the settings and resource/minor race spawn distribution changes. Even Riftborn are very dependent on having enough strategic resources spawn nearby. They cannot even compress time and colonize efficiently without them, which could delay their late game steamrolling.

Yea, I normally play on Endless speed (super slow) and with low resources, so my playthrough of Riftborn was a bit challenging since I didn't even start with enough Hyperium to really utilize that rift...

[Kanjejou]

watch out if somebody is siphoning your horatios he will get pop with all the buff you gave your horatio.

this is what i did in a mp i took a single horatio world and replaced some of my pops with horatio and they recieved all the player splicing bonus...

[I Am Atomic!]

Originally posted by Judge Cudge:

Also robo Ghandi, how are you supposed to fight a science boy if you don't turn on yet, have weak ships, need to spread wide as possible, and they have a SCIENCE advantage on you.

you dont need massive science to win wars, thats the noob way, rather you get massive science from winning wars, to do this just get a teir2 lazer or missile, grey so your not using strat resorce, and rush cp techs till it gets to be w.e you can handle with your current sci, if you beeline the cp techs they are much cheaper so you can get them much sooner, and thats all you need to win wars, the rest is up to your strategy. but you dont have to win every fight or even most fights if you can massively out produce them with little swamrs of ships wich is easy to do. similar strat is usefull as cravers too.