deleted

[CuddilyWuddily]

deleted

[TemplarGR]

In the long run, no. Using influence to buy anything is inefficient, because for every resource you spend 80 influence to get 40 of that other resource, so it is 2:1. ratio. Since production buildings for each pop produce the same amount (6 of that thing + any bonuses) it makes no sense to replace farms with influence production buildings (especially since utopia will punish you for that). You need influence for other things as well. So you would be really crippling yourself if you relied on influence to convert to other resources. You can't just have too many influence producers due to utopia, and if you really need some food it is better to make a new farm to get 6, instead of making a building to have +6 influence to buy 3 food). I do it all the time when playing T'au, but i am not leaving intentionally a deficiency in my economy to rely on buying up that amount with influence.

There is also the issue that, units that need food to be produced, need food as an upkeep. Vehicles need ore and energy to be made and ore as upkeep, and air units need the same but need energy as upkeep. So you only need food for infantry and buying 40 food per turn won't allow you to make many when you account for their upkeep as well. Each new one you would buy, it would eat into future buys of 40 food, assuming you began at 0 food.

Of course, that assumes you want to use infantry after the mid game. I never do. Almost always i end up having too much ore production, and since monstrous battlesuits are treated like vehicles, meaning they need ore+energy for building and ore for upkeep, i tend to rush Crisis Center and only make ghostkeels and up. Therefore i don't need more food than my pops eat plus my heroes (who don't eat much). It is a shame that due to how T'au economy works, i almost never have enough food to focus on their infantry. If i spam farms, utopia punishes me, and until i have enough towns and cadre fireblades at lvl 6, i can't really boost the food production at a level that would allow for significant infantry. It is more efficient to focus on vehicles.

So i suppose, in a way, the guide is correct, assuming you don't really use infantry much.

[Deimos]

Yes, you can play without building any food and your eco will be better for it, as it essentially completely cancells your food upkeep. It will cripple your pop generation, but this can be remedied by 1. purchasing food and not spending it to reset the penalty (before your food upkeep hit -40) 2. straight up buying population.
In the end being able to field essentially endless amount of infantry without paying upkeep outweights 2:1 conversion rate.

[TemplarGR]

Originally posted by Deimos:

Yes, you can play without building any food and your eco will be better for it, as it essentially completely cancells your food upkeep. It will cripple your pop generation, but this can be remedied by 1. purchasing food and not spending it to reset the penalty (before your food upkeep hit -40) 2. straight up buying population.
In the end being able to field essentially endless amount of infantry without paying upkeep outweights 2:1 conversion rate.

This implies many ideal conditions and it is not a general "your eco will be better for it". It will not be.

For example, you need to have 80 influence per turn, or even 160 (for pop +1), dedicated to this. That is a lot of influence, influence doesn't grow on trees. It needs to be produced, and T'au can't produce it in other ways (like for example the Space Marines or the Orks). That is a huge amount of pops, dedicated just to buying food and/or buying pops.

And most importantly, T'au need a lot of influence for other things. Buying other resources like research and energy is far more important than buying food, they need to buy support systems and other abilities, they need to buy heroes and equip them, they need to build wide so they need to buy more cities. You cannot do all those things if you force yourself to need so much influence to mitigate not having farms.

There is something called an "opportunity cost" in strategy games. Buying this won't allow you to buy that. Dedicating so much influence to mitigate food production is inefficient, period. It can never lead to a better economy per definition. And for what? T'au infantry is bad to mediocre. It is of low mobility and most of it is very squishy without much firepower. So having lots of it with "virtualy zero upkeep" (basically you decide not to pay the upkeep which puts you in the red) will not make you better combat wise. The only T'au infantry units of any value long term are the Crisis and Broadside battlesuits, the other are trash that die way too easily. And since they are not that mobile, they do not have much offensive power especially towards vehicles (Broadside has but it is heavy so it is a glorified Devastator Marines), and they are squishy, having multiple of those will just mean more exp for your opponent to gather.

The ideal T'au economy is the one i described in my first post. You focus on monstrous battlesuits and vehicles, ground and air. You can support the limited amount of infantry you might need through having more farms, buying food occasionally to purchase units is fine, but upkeep should be paid by your regular production mostly, so you can spend your influence in most important things like rushing research and buying energy in order to make more monsters/vehicles and support building upkeep which is more important for T'au.

[TemplarGR]

The reason it is not considered overpowered cheese, is because it is not. I explained why in the previous posts. In fact, such a strategy can backfire badly, you cannot come back from it if it does, you lose the game no matter what.

Having unlimited amounts of Broadsides is not important, by the time you have them, others will have plenty of super heavies and will be level 10 each from all the experience from the broadsides they one-shot....

The reason it feels OP to you is because you play vs AI. All a human needs to do is focus on massive anti-infantry and will ruin your day, badly. Especially stuff like Marauder Bomber or Burna-Bommer, which you can do nothing to counter. And if you have built nothing else, once you lose your initial batch of Broadsides, it is game over for you.

[Deimos]

It is not overpowered in PvP because PvP is significantly faster and sometimes ends before you even reach t7, let alone able to spam Broadsides. Also just spamming Broadsides will not win you the game because they get outclassed pretty hard by t8+ units of other factions. Infantry that doesn't have upkeep is a strong backbone, but you will need more against lategame stuff.

As to why are sisters better, well every single unit they have up to t6 except Battle Sisters, Immolator and Mortifier is severely overstatted, which coupled with strong and easy early eco makes them utterly unstoppable.

[TemplarGR]

Broadsides are similar to the Space Marine Terminators, but worse. They have the same armor and HP, but lack the 33% min inv damage reduction from the terminator armor trait (and can only provide +17% with one support module by paying extra influence, still Terminators can use "the flesh is weak" doctrine for the same +17% on all infantry too so the gap remains). Also Terminators have the relentless trait which means they can use their heavy weapons at normal accuracy after moving, something Broadsides can't do, they lose 50% of damage when they move. That means Broadsides are more suited for setting up battlelines and defensive positions, than actually attacking. They lose a lot of power when they move and they lack the tankiness to retain their offensive power for the next turn, since they will definitely lose models before they can shoot at 100% damage next turn....

Still, even with 10 armor, their 18hp for their 3 models is nothing for late game units to clear. They can make short work of Broadsides. And unlike Terminators who have stuff like Apothecaries and heavy transports to aid them, Broadsides have a squishy transport and a hero healer that will be a nice target with his 0 armor and low hp if he tries to heal them.... If you can have more than 1 of those healers since you will be using all that influence to pay for food....

Even Hammerheads are not worse, just different. Much tankier with research upgrades, better firepower after moving than Broadsides, more mobility. If you want to attack, it is better to use Hammerheads than Broadsides. Even though both will become outclassed in the late game.

Honestly, what i wrote earlier still applies, it is not worth crippling your late game economy potential just to field more Broadsides. T'au bread and butter are their monstrous battlesuits from the Crisis Center, which are tankier, stronger, more mobile, and cost ore instead of food, which is far more plentiful for a typical T'au economy. And they scale far better into the late game with their final monstrous battlesuit being the Stormsurge, one of the best units in the game. Even better is to skip Broadsides altogether, use food only for pops and heroes, and spend the influence on buying ore, energy, research, instead of food and pops.

[Jey]

Originally posted by CuddilyWuddily:

I'm getting Broadsides at turn 66 [...] If PvP ends before that

You start fighting around turn 35 in team games.

But even if you somehow mass-produced broadsides while having a decent army for the early fight, as Deimos said, lots of factions can counter that.
Broadside are heavy, so they are bad at attacking. They are multi-model infantry, so they are vulnerable to blast and model loss and so on.

[Jey]

Originally posted by CuddilyWuddily:

You were 100% right about Loyalty. All 3 cities were at negative 5 to negative 10 loyalty all game and I was fine.

It's almost as if what I say is based in facts :O

[Stormfox]

The issue with Stealth suits is that they are total pushovers the second the opponent has any melee troops. Add to that the odd psi or damage reduction ignoring attack and there are just too many things that easily take them out. They also are only really good against heavy units themselves, which makes them into very meh early game units. By the lategame, even dakka will kill them because they lack HP.

[Jey]

Originally posted by CuddilyWuddily:

why isn't Crisis Suit + Stealth Suit super strong?

Because if there is anything that ignore ranged damage reduction (e.g melee attacks), Stealth die extremely quickly.

why aren't drones stopping the melee from happening?

They can stop one turn at best. if you have an important army of drones, the enemy also has an important army that can kill one or two drones to gain access to your troops.

Crisis should take real good care of melee troops no?

Your stealth are range 2. At some point they have to be exposed.
It doesn't mean stealth entirely suck. Just they are usually too gimmicky.

2. When do you build loyalty buildings? If -10 is not it, then when?

As a T'au? I don't know, I never need to.
Probably around the second pop building I guess?

3. Which support module is best on the broadside? Feel no pain or Invulnerability?

FnP.

If you make an Ethereal (you don't but IF), you can stack the FnP. If you make shield drones you can stack FnP and invu
However you can't stack Invulnerability support module and shield drones (since they are min invulnerable both).

Maybe the move one is good too to allow quick repositioning without allowing common infantry to follow you.
I don't know, I haven't been able to use them.

I legitimately think going all in on Tau infantry, you will double his army in number.

If you spam crisis and stealth? Nah never.
But even if you "double" in number, there are counters (like crisis and stealth are INFANTRY and THREE models. That screams for blast weapons to shoot them)