trying to play xenophobes

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quarague
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Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:00 pm

trying to play xenophobes

#1 Post by quarague »

My first two games with 0.5 (December 2022 version) both relied on using the Diversity and Artisanal workshop policies and these two seemed obvious almost forced choices both for a technology and an industry domination strategy. Geoff the medio raised the interesting point that diversity only requires lots of different species to be around but doesn't say anything about treating them all equally or all nicely. Personally I would interpret diversity as also including equality between species but that is more a naming issue than a content issue.

First attempt was with Eaxaws. Figured out that Centralization and then Metropolization is quite powerful early on if you have a single species empire. Researched lasers and robotic hulls early and used a single robo laser ship to easily crush and conquer a Fulver colony. Unfortunately it was out of supply range and I had to unadopt Metropolization and use Protection focus to keep the happiness above 0. By the time I had setup an outpost halfway the Fulvers had managed to defeat my robo laser and thus continue to block connecting my Fulver colony to the rest of the empire.
Stopped playing around turn 80. I didn't even use Racial Purity because there were better options for the limit number of policy slots.
New experience from 0.5: it is possible that you can easily conquer a planet but your empire overall is worse off if you try to keep it compared to not having it. I don't think this could happen in 0.4.10 version, at worst a new colony was useless.

Second attempt with Trith. I reduced the total system count to 75 to force early conflict. Took Racial Purity from the start, the Trith were happy about it. After conquering the first enemy planet I build concentration camps on it because there was no way to keep them happy and that is the idea with Trith anyway. The industry boost felt very disappointing. Maybe 20 or 30 extra industry production, the equivalent of a small industry focus colony for 10 turns. At that stage my empire was slightly ahead of the AIs in tech and somewhere in the middle in production. Tech advantage was not big enough to see a clear path to victory, so I stopped playing around turn 100.

Third attemp with Trith, 300 system count and low natives, trying to make live easy for Trith. First enemy I encounted happened to be Trith as well so my Trith didn't mind their presence and I could easily integrate the two colonies I conquered from them. Lucky, I would have had to remove any other species and replace with Trith or exobots. Currently at turn 130, my empire is well ahead in tech and also has more colonies and more production than any AI. Will still take quite a few turns but will turn into a tech victory eventually.

In summary one can play and win as a single species empire but it seems a lot harder than just going with multiple species, diversity and artisanal workshops. Being xenophobic is just a major handicap and if you play any non xenophobic species going single species seems like a strictly inferior choice.

Final note on the policy Augmentation: it significantly increases population on hostile planets. If you have a multi species empire it is almost alway better to settle new planets with a species that at least somewhat fits to the planet. So only single species empire would have significant numbers of planets which are hostile to their inhabitants. But Augmentation can't be combined with Racial Purity. I can see the reasoning for that fluff wise but to me this means Augmentation is just never used.

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Oberlus
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Re: trying to play xenophobes

#2 Post by Oberlus »

The PP total boost from putting a planet to conc. camps is superlinear with the initial population of the colony:
Pop. at startTotal PPs from Conc. Camps
32.25
66.75
913.5
1222.5
1533.75
1847.25
2163
2481
27101.25
30123.75
33148.5
36175.5
39204.75
42236.25
45270
Roughly double the population yields four times the PPs.

So it might make sense for any empire with Racial Purity to delay the Conc. Camps until population grows to max. Usually, when you conquer a native's world it is not a max pop because it just gained some population boosts from your empire.

Getting +6.5 PP per turn for 5 turns (for a 15 pop colony) is quite dull. Getting 12.3 for 10 turns (30 pop) is nicer, can be the needed push to pump those extra warships for a blitzkrieg, but not really that important mid game. Mid to late game, conquering enemy worlds, with big populations, Conc. Camps can be quite powerful, both gaining you quite a boost for warships and troopships and denying the enemy the chance to recover lost planets.


When I play with Trith against AI, I go Racial Purity and planetary stealth route (which delays my armies). Usually by turn 100 my empire is stronger than any other two AIs together, by turn 200 I'm securing the area around Experimentors and control half the galaxy.
With Eaxaw it's full warmonguering from start, but I don't bother conquering tiny populations unless I need the supply from that planet: I go straight to the capitals (which I keep alive, also playing with Trith).

It is playing against human players that Trith sucks hard, not enough experience with Eaxaw to say.

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drkosy
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Re: trying to play xenophobes

#3 Post by drkosy »

With medium natives Diversity can quite push your stability. Combined with liberty that gives research quite a bonus. That's why I added in my "Kosymod" a policy called "patriotism" giving bonus on stability by the count of colonies of the capital species.
If you go for multiple species you always can choose what you need: good production, good research, good influence, artistic etc. You just need some luck to catch a species filling what your species lacking. That is not possible with xenophobes. Eaxaw are quite balanced but lack on influence because you can't push that with tech. Even the universal translator is really expensive with one single race and do not give a big advantage to IP production.

I think Xenophobes are forced to use the tall way (only few colonies with high pop) but with each game I play the wide way (many colonies) is always ahead. I thought a lot about that but it's not easy because if you push tall empires that bonus should not be accessible for the wide way.

P.S: I got the impression that the AI produces warships like crazy. Last game I run into scylior. Turn 70 they had 7 warships but only homeworld + 1 colony. It took around 20 more turns for them to get the 2nd colony. My production and science was well ahead and I conquered them at turn 100. That's why you never should got on any AI early on.
Want some fresh experience? Try Kosymod

wobbly
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Re: trying to play xenophobes

#4 Post by wobbly »

From my own experience in 22nd multi-player, Eaxaw can play multi-species just fine. This is however a sample size of 1, and may depend on luck with system layout. Anyway, with a little racial segregation you can keep the stability malus to a minimum, and Eaxaw have naturally high stability.

Daybreak
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Re: trying to play xenophobes

#5 Post by Daybreak »

wobbly wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 2:11 pm From my own experience in 22nd multi-player, Eaxaw can play multi-species just fine. This is however a sample size of 1, and may depend on luck with system layout. Anyway, with a little racial segregation you can keep the stability malus to a minimum, and Eaxaw have naturally high stability.
Only true initially - later in the game much more difficult

Ophiuchus
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Re: trying to play xenophobes

#6 Post by Ophiuchus »

Daybreak wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 8:19 am
wobbly wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 2:11 pm From my own experience in 22nd multi-player, Eaxaw can play multi-species just fine. This is however a sample size of 1, and may depend on luck with system layout. Anyway, with a little racial segregation you can keep the stability malus to a minimum, and Eaxaw have naturally high stability.
Only true initially - later in the game much more difficult
would that be a game with purity policy or not?

i would guess that segregation is much easier later on. just dont mix (besides exobot). if you want to expand the eaxaw, you maybe find some fitting universe pockets to wipe clean and recolonize. probably you mean that later on one can/could settle planets more densely with newly acquired species/techs. but the player has total agency about that (as compared to natives living close to the only habitable planet for your empire species in early game).

and you would have other species for each task, so you would not have to use eaxaw in new sectors.

xenophobic is considered a negative trait in balancing. on the other hand eaxaw have extra stability and trith have extra population.
so by itself that xenophobic is (mostly) negative really is not a problem.

but i am missing first hand experience here
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wobbly
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Re: trying to play xenophobes

#7 Post by wobbly »

Again it's a sample size of 1 but I actually found it easier the later in the game we got. Getting enough green techs is a big deal here as it allows you more choice about what race you settle where and allows for exobots on the asteroid belts.

I think with the xenophobes you need to be ultra aggressive about grabbing space early. It's going to be very unpleasant for Trith if you are trapped in a little box and the empires around you start to suffocate you.

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Atreides
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Re: trying to play xenophobes

#8 Post by Atreides »

I play random species now (still a newbie) and last 2 were Trith and Eax. So far I've lost all my games except for the beginner mode one. Trith didn't go well but it was a weird random start (rando everything except monsters low or very low) and didn't work. But my current game as the eax looks like it is going well. Purity is on and I've had to CC 2 natives as well as all the Fulvers Empire who I've now mostly conquered. The Ugmors and Hhhoonh? both can be kept as good little slave workers.

BlueAward
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Re: trying to play xenophobes

#9 Post by BlueAward »

Atreides wrote: Sun Jul 02, 2023 11:00 pm I play random species now (still a newbie) and last 2 were Trith and Eax. So far I've lost all my games except for the beginner mode one. Trith didn't go well but it was a weird random start (rando everything except monsters low or very low) and didn't work. But my current game as the eax looks like it is going well. Purity is on and I've had to CC 2 natives as well as all the Fulvers Empire who I've now mostly conquered. The Ugmors and Hhhoonh? both can be kept as good little slave workers.
Eaxaw are mostly average so being xenophobic is "only" downside but them being great pilots boost your game real nice, including early game, you can go do some early conquering, possibly getting some natives to "switch" to and keep your Eaxaw only for the piloting, in their original little pocket of universe. So even without racial purity Eaxaws work out okay, wobbly was alluding to it as well. Even showed it in last MP game too, where he absolutely steamrolled opponents very early (who admittedly did not put up anticipatory defenses, but, still...)

Meanwhile, Trith's thing is Self-Sustaining metabolism which is very nice trait indeed, however to balance it out it is really nerfed. For one, it works only on "Good" planets. Now, homeworld is "Good" by design... so it is downsized to "Medium" trying to balance it out with other species. But Self-Sustaining is also nerfed in case of Trith by lowering the bonus when other species exist nearby, which often happens early game (depending on settings). So in practice you end up much closer to having just a Medium planet start rather than Large planet start and imho it makes a huge, huge difference/nerf, impacting the green grow techs as well so other species can have more population quicker even with your supposed self-sustaining metabolism. It takes a while to clean up shop, all the while you start really low in the exponential race to power. Was particularly bad with Ancient Guardians around, but I think that part is fixed now

Trith can excel end game with them everywhere on terraformed "Good" planets and readily having better influence to make more planets productive without relying on other species, particularly with Racial Purity influence boost. But guess what, other species end game also can excel, can find some population-boosting specials without relying on self-sustaining, and even don't have to do so much terraforming cause of variety of species in the fold (and growth specials working not on "Good" environments as well, and having growth techs that counteract a bit of unpleasant environments without terraforming, too..). And you have to get to the end game first or what good does it make you to be very good later, if you never survive that far (and Eaxaw's bonus helps with survival for sure, from the get go)

I mean even camps are steamrolling engine closer to the end game, however any species can have them if you want them, don't need to be xenophobe

So yea Trith have short end of the stick now imho, and I think everyone agress, but it is hard to balance them and keep their flair. I'd like perhaps to see at least their homeworld immune to population drop that causes you to be pretty much on Medium planet start without anything else going for you in early game, compared to other species that start on Large planets. Maybe there could be some expensive-ish building that "mind-shields" trith somewhat and it is pre-built on homeworld? But that also maybe lowers the detection of other species as counter balance?

Long story short don't beat yourself up if you fail with Trith, they're a bumpy road indeed, particularly at start (if you survive long enough, they get good too, just play rather differently). I'm often tempted to stage a coup and relocate capital elsewhere to get different imperial species... But that puts you even more behind initially

And good that you confirm Eaxaw work out fine

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Atreides
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Re: trying to play xenophobes

#10 Post by Atreides »

Ironically the Trith game I played was in some weird galaxy with huge star deserts and massive distances to anyone else. Suffered no penalties at all. I lost because I'm still learning (fast) the game. : ) To think, a dream Trith start, wasted on a Newbie. Hehehe.

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