Scara wrote:I recently played the xenophobic Eaxaw and was surprised of the difference in game play. I wondered why production and research kept so low, but when I found out about the malus on both the own side and the other species causing the "trouble", I was already battered. I think it is logical the malus goes in both directions. I had no closer look at the mali, but it might make sense if the mali for the eaxaw were less than the mali on occupied alien species. Is there anyway compensating them? I didn't get to exobot's but they probably don't cause mali?
Eaxaw have identical stats to Humans except the Xenophobic malus and the Great Pilots bonus (they're joint best pilots in the game with the native Mu Ursh species). And yes, Exobots are excluded from the Malus.
We have done some balancing work on Xenophobia to reduce the effect, I forget whether that was before or after the release of 0.4.4, but it is meant to be a disdvantage pushing a different playstyle:
So if that's the case I guess the straight forward solution would be to use the concentration camps to eliminate the other races and plant exobots on every planet not habitable by the Eaxaw?
Yes, the malus on the Eaxaw doesn't apply if all the nearby species in your empire have camps built. You can also research Cyborgs and Xenological Hybridisation and inhabit every world in the galaxy.
To be honest I never used cc yet... in the beginning I was a bit shocked to find this concept in the game, but being a dead end in the research tree and no necessity of building them at all, I already thought them as strategic element of some sort. Probably exactly what xenophobic species need...
I'll try the eaxaw again, cause I haven't been prepared of the impact on game play by the xenophobic game concept.
We've discussed changing various aspects several times, but no one has come up with a solid proposal.
Concentration camps are, in many respects, very overpowered. Mostly because a player that can be bothered to juggle them can get a massive production boost fairly quickly, the xenophobic "wipe out the infidels" strategy can be a fun challenge, it's certainly a very different game, but it's not as easy as the more general approach.