Weapons are far more efficient than armor on a per-module basis, so generally speaking the military power of your fleet is in your offense. Small ships are generally more efficient than medium ships, up until you get the good damage modules (25% damage + crit or better), at which point a medium hunter with a maximum damage loadout will contribute more than equivalent CP in small ships.
In general, carriers offer immense power for their CP cost but have a high industry cost AND take extremely expensive research to get. If you can actually get them, they're basically rape machines. Some unenhanced carriers, like the Sophons', are arguably better than Enhanced Hunters even when unenhanced.
Otherwise your early-mid ship composition really depends on what your faction has to offer. Riftborn get glass cannons (4 guns starting) for their first attack ships for example, meaning they need something to protect them. Sophons on the other hand (like many of the factions) get a well-rounded attack ship that doesn't really need protection, and protectors that have extremely little armor anyway (but an incredible number of support slots, making them fantastic troop ferries/siege ships/accelerators).
Lucas Clark
Is there a fleet composition that works for Horatio or do his ships just suck ass?
Elijah Rivera
from what I read, they suck ass and you're supposed to flood them with the ships when you come online mid to late game
Andrew Foster
>horatio ships need to flood enemies to be effective >when they're more expensive to build Horatio is in a bad spot isn't he?
I love the Unfallen one but I think Riftborn is my favorite youtu.be/h8H8DedCW_I
Cooper Hughes
You don't want to go to war as Horatio at all if you can help it. You get fucktons of free food and good pops so you expand absurdly quickly on your own anyway, and ecologist obviously means there's no restrictions on what you can colonize. If you really want those riftborn/vodyani genes so badly then either jump on them when they're already being fucked by someone else or use the new diplomacy. Horatio pays 25% more per ship and gets like 16% less ship, so your military is simply crippled compared to any other faction by default.
For your actual military, you probably want to get enhanced hunters ASAP if you're expecting early/midgame warfare. Small ships suffer the most as Horatio specifically because they have the least overall slots, and every single Horatio hull is average slots -1. Therefore the bigger your ship, the less crippling the loss of 1 slot is. Horatio's carrier is pretty competitive if you can achieve it.
Eli Ramirez
>build all my stations >cant fulfill mandates simply epic
Isaac Young
has anyone made a playable bronze age prims mod for stellaris yet
Samuel Edwards
>Politicians making promises they can keep at elections Sounds realistic enough to me
Jace Brooks
I wonder if it counts if you disband/destroy stations and then rebuild them.
Christian Flores
ROLE PLAY
Christian Watson
This is all good advice. Additionally I'd just like to add that Horatio ships have something like 10% more HP than the other factions. Cravers and Riftborn ships have 10% less health.
Eli Rogers
Why do Sophons wear the mask?
Christian Campbell
they're big guys
Nathan Brown
U^4
Blake Gutierrez
of course it counts
Alexander Bennett
>stacking all his shit top so he can avoid one of my flotilla Good job AI, good job. That won't get you very far tho.
Logan Davis
But splicing other pops gives you FREE FIDSI.
Joseph Sullivan
I don't play dota so I don't know the icons, but I assume that instead of stacking attack speed and damage the dotards at large are stacking mana to take advantage of le ebin MP to HP conversion.
Eli Campbell
Close, they're +allstats items which are efficient on paper but give a watered-down combination of some damage, some HP, some mana. Basically building the hero as a fat sack of HP that does mediocre damage when a carry really needs to be killing the enemy team before their own team dies and they get stunlocked.
Wyatt Cook
I have two personalities: Nicest person you will ever meet, AND Twisted fucking psychopath.
Hunter Fisher
I just noticed that the pinned laws for scientists and pacifists got buffed. The former gives a 10% tech cost reduction and the latter gives 1 Influence per pop.
Gavin Barnes
Wait, no, they got buffed for republics.
Asher Scott
I notice AI spamming small hulls a lot more with the patch.
Brody Miller
There's supposedly a bug that somehow keeps the AI from building bigger ships. A dev on the G2G forum said it should be fixed in next week's patch.
Sebastian Williams
Republics have buffed laws user.
Carter Young
How do assimilation bonuses even work? Do you just get them by converting a minor faction? Can you check which bonuses you've gained anywhere?
Zachary Collins
I think you can also get them by conquering a minor faction, but I've usually found it easier to just do the quest and assimilate. You can check all of your bonuses in the empire screen, scrolling under where it says what your faction is.
Parker Allen
>The Play-to-win Community Challenge is over! Our target was 250,000 unique players to unlock all six rewards, and you were over 240,000 to have played on Monday evening. With a few minutes to spare and seeing all that you had accomplished so far, we decided that the nicest way to thank you for your involvement was to give the progress bar the little nudge it needed to reach 100%, because you totally deserved it. Congratulations to all, and thanks for playing! rigged
Ian Bennett
WHY IN THE FUCKING FUCK ARE PIRATE SHIPS SO GOD DAMN STRONG IN ES2?? AM I JUST SUPPOSED TO RUSH MILITARY REGARDLESS OF WHAT I WANT?
Benjamin Cox
WOOOOWWW DUDE YOU HAVE TO BUILD A MILITARY TO PROTECT AN EMPIRE?!?!?!
Xavier Flores
wtf I hate Amplitude now
Michael Bell
I DIDNT SAY I WANT BUILDING SHIPS YOU DUMB TRIPPLE NIGGER. I SAID WHY ARE THEIR SHIPS SO FUCKING STRONG? THE FUCKING LAIRS PUMP THEM OUT SO FAST I CANT KEEP UP AND THE ONE TIME I DID OUT NUMBER THEM 2:1 MY THEY STILL WON
Aaron Morris
Why are you fighting pirates with your colony ships you quadruple nigger?
Landon Nguyen
I wasnt
Xavier Jones
If Emperor Zelevas didn't want us to fight pirates with our colony ships, then why did he put a gun on them? Checkmate pacifists. Sheredyn: 1, Mezari: 0
Cameron Thomas
So is Influence actually useful now with the diplomacy changes?
Colton Green
Why does the top one look like Micheal Fassbender?
Jonathan Nguyen
Was it not always useful for border growth?
Chase Hall
he's talking about ES2 if you aren't constantly at war, the demand rework means that high influence essentially means that you can constantly take shit from rivals or ruin their economy
Adrian Bailey
When is border growth even useful?
Charles Peterson
stealing opponents' systems, enhancing pressure, and exploiting cold war to have immunity to enemy attacks
Isaiah Watson
It was always usefull for high tier laws
Justin Roberts
And getting special nodes if you have those on.
Charles Campbell
Man. You and everyone else complaining about it are fucking retarded chimps. Have you not noticed that all pirates of the same type use nearly identical weapons? That you can equip your ships with armor against it and invalidate them completely? Hell do you even know you can and should be equipping your ships?
Fucking subhuman. You are a bag of waste making the conversation dumber just by existing. You should be dragged through the streets and shot.
Parker Davis
Any guesses as to how the promised new ship modules will affect the game? (energy squadrons, swarm missiles, and railguns)
Ethan Fisher
>energy squadrons Like normal squadrons in function, but do energy instead of projectile damage.
>swarm missiles Possibly attacking the entire flotilla instead of single targets or faster rate of fire with lower missile hp
>railguns Kinetics with different range modifiers?
I'm more curious if they're going to be researchable techs or if they have to be found via curiosity, gotten from deeds, or gotten from quest rewards.
Blake Garcia
First of all, they're going to look fucking amazing. I think energy squadrons will just provide some contrast to the regular kinetic squadrons. I'm really hoping that swarm missiles can target multiple ships, maybe at the cost of damage or projectile health, for the sake of countering small ship spam. Railguns might be a medium-length kinetic option, with percentages between the long range missiles and short range guns.
Henry Morris
If you disband them, it counts as -1, and rebuilding it puts you back to where you started.
Unless you disband them before the election promise is made of course. Mid/late game you can keep 4 mining/4 research station spots free to farm influence by building then disbanding them immediately after fulfilling the promise.
Jackson Anderson
swarm could make missiles more viable as a sort of screening thing but I doubt it, railgun sounds interesting though. Probably long-range kinetic
Nicholas Reed
Id say railgun will be the kinetic counterpart of beams, so good at all range but not great damage
Wyatt Brown
I love this meme.
Justin Williams
I love this meme.
Gabriel Lewis
I love you.
Owen Collins
What galaxy settings are ideal to ensure a fun game? I'm starting to think you should actually always play a somewhat oversized galaxy by default, possibly with high system density as well, simply to help counterbalance how fucking overpowered early aggression is in this game. It is the dumbest fucking shit that if you play spiral 4 for example you can just get stuck at the end of an arm with 5 shitty systems before hitting an AI's capital blockade.
Jose Ortiz
Is it worth getting ES2 on sale or should I just entertain myself with Civ 4?
Ryan Sanders
GET A ROOM YOU TWO (three? kinky)
Elijah Hall
This seems very much like a personal preference thing. I like to play on a Unique, low-connectivity, normal-density constellation. I have been playing on Many constellations since they added constellation-control, though.
Sebastian Davis
Spirals are good for turtling and Rings are even better, because you can only be attacked from two sides. I like twin elliptical for letting one or two enemies have the chance to expand and power up by the time you get to them. Every time I've tried ovoid I've started way in the corner, but I keep hoping for a game where I'm in the middle, beset on all sides. If you want a tense, knife fight of a game pick a cramped map size with lots of factions. If you want a more comfy game of exploration and powerful empires only coming into conflict in the mid to late game, go for colossal size but only 8 major factions.
Jason Wright
>smallest size >maximum number of factions >low ressources This is fun. Also it gives an excuse to bully riftborn for their guaranteed strategics.
Henry Reyes
>maximum number of factions >make them all Horatio
Thomas Morales
Yes.
Lincoln Butler
To clarify, I mean a game where you might actually get to build carriers before it's obvious who is going to win. On default settings everyone's so crammed together that you'll just end up conquering the galaxy with tier 1 ships.
William Mitchell
I have played games in large galaxies with many constellations, one of each of the 8 major factions, go to 200 turns before a victory where I've only been in two or three defensive wars. Colossal map size is fucking amazing. Sophons and Riftborn are super fun for getting carriers and high tech weapons, then massacring enemy fleets of hunters and coordinators with them.
Michael Green
In EL, when do you do a minor faction's quest and when do you just attack them to pacify?
Also, what are usually the timings you'd do for building new cities?
I'm just new to the game coming from Civ 5, so there are some things that aren't quite clear to me yet
Dominic Nguyen
>when do you do a minor faction's quest When you can afford to wait. >when do you just attack them to pacify? When cultists are close or when you need to move your armies and can't afford to leave neutrals around.
Grayson Diaz
Try to do the quest all the time since some are piss easy and others are not worth it when you can just buy out the village. Attacking villages is only for denying enemies or if you cannot use diplomacy.
Every 20 turns or after every empire plan.
Grayson Reyes
Would you say that necros benefit from attacking the villages early on or not? I've been toying with the idea of waiting until the first roaming units spawn and then attacking them along with the villages for double the food stockpiles but I haven't tested it per se.
Adam Sullivan
Necros benefits from fighting a lot. I don't even remember if they can take over villages peacefully.
Matthew Taylor
Thank you If you feel like answering more noob questions >Which early game techs do I prioritize? I've been doing Language Square and then things like Cultivation, Alchemist's Furnace, Search Party, Marketplace >Which buildings do I prioritize? I've been trying to keep up with building borough districts asap when I have the pop for it and it isn't a big hit to happiness. But I'm not sure if this is as important as I've been assuming it is >Do you deck out every unit with the very best equipment or do you minmax? >Can I have actual allies in this game, or is it Civ style deathmatch everytime? Just to know whether the AI is 100% backstabbing shits always or not >Should I be buying out buildings/units whenever possible, or should I be saving that for heroes or other things? >Should I be very on top of the Legendary quests for each era, or just a few? >Is wonder rushing viable or is it a noobtrap like in Civ to do that? >How hefty should my military be at all times?
Joseph Rivera
They don't. You actually shouldn't attack villages as necrophages unless if you immediately plan to colonize that village. The reason for this is easy proliferator doomstacks and respawning roaming armies for food stockpiles.
Search party can be skipped since it only adds 10% to successful chances. I go for the marketplace early since I won't have the production for another building by then and heroes are great to have.
Tyler Baker
Most of these questions depends from your opponent and the difficulty you're playing in.
In Casual, you can afford to have only one army. In Easy, you need 6 armies at full strength to fight the onslaugh. For the buildings and such, it depends. If you spawn near necrophages, you of course want to build a lot of military buildings.
Sorry for the Dominions meme, but >IT DEPENDS Usually, you should try to keep your dust for heroes and armies, but if you really need that defense building because Rapist McFuckAss is coming close, buy it. But move all your citizens from production to dust to save up a bit.
Andrew Scott
Why does playing ES2 just make me want to play EL?
David Long
While Horatio invaded Horatio, Horatio declared war on Horatio. Horatio asked Horatio for a trade of strategics for his fleet, but Horatio wasn't interested, opting instead to send Horatio some dark glitter to make his armies even more gorgeous. While Horatio battled Horatio battled Horatio, Horatio and Horatio removed a pirate base. Horatio is making the galaxy beautiful.
Easton James
I was playing on Hard for my first run but after 50 turns when I saw how many mechanics I was missing (even after playing the tutorial) I chickened out and decided to start a new one on Normal, but having a better understanding of the basics
And yeah I've been trying to micro my FIDSI as much as I can, although I still don't quite know what to prioritize sometimes. Is it the right move to be building boroughs ASAP when I have the pop for it? What I noticed as Vaulters at least was that my growth was always quite good and I didn't bother putting any citizens on it (except one or two during winter) because if I put more then my boroughs wouldn't be able to keep up. Or is that not so important?
How much do you prioritize new heroes? And do you send early heroes on armies or as governors? I'm just trying to figure out what common noob blunders I might be falling for
Jonathan Cook
>play space jews >cant buyout the whole building list when you colonize a new system Its just not the same
Ayden Robinson
Wouldn't Horatio auto-win because his goal is to make the whole galaxy Horatio?
And since one Horatio is the same as the other Horatio starting out, they'd make natural allies
Mason Bailey
They'd all be sneaky on every Horatio There can be only one true Horatio
Samuel Morgan
fucking dust inflation
Charles Myers
I thought about that however not fighting the minors in the first few turns before roaming units spawn I feel makes them fall behind a bit. The first one or two food stockpiles can be crucial for getting the necessary workers to start crapping out armies. Additionally, by just bumrushing all the villages you can try to complete the pacify x amount of villages/defeat x amount of armies legendary deed. Then again, maybe I am just used to being in too much of a rush due to playing against Endless AI.
Aaron Lewis
I wish a drawfriend would draw Horatio on the "Trust nobody, not even yourself, not even yourself's self" picture
Landon Cruz
Good governors are harder to come by than good generals. A governor for every city, though only larger armies get generals since the rest are full movespeed/vision scouts.
Liam Anderson
>I was playing on Hard for my first run Then you probably know better than me, I only played in casual.
Carter Scott
>UE small defender has less support slots than their colony ship Zelevas pls
Jacob Rodriguez
Last game what I was doing was keeping my initial two Marine+Vaulter hero group together going around scouting, ruin hunting and doing parleys/quests. I kept giving the hero movement and vision upgrades for the party
But I'm not sure if the Ruins (goody hut) XP is worth it that much
Was this the right move? Or should I have the first hero be a governor and have the other two marines split up?
Kayden Jenkins
Governor is only good if you grow the hero to be that way, or if you want to safely level him up.
Joshua Reed
Not an expert but I prefer separating my starting units, if I can afford the upkeep. This way I get more exploration done and more ruins for sweet dust
Jaxon Harris
If there are a few ruins right there, it is free exp when you can just remove the hero from the army and put them to work as a governor. Just like in an army, heroes get extra exp per turn depending on how many units are garrisoned in it. Governors also benefit from +xp per turn buildings.
Easton Edwards
Alright. I guess this game I'll try splitting my three initial units up and scouting around, and then pulling my hero back to govern after they've gotten a few easy ruins under their belt
William Perez
Btw, forgot to say: despite not having that much clue what I'm doing, I've got to say I'm loving this game. It's gorgeous. Love the music and the art too
Really makes me want to learn more about it
Lincoln Moore
The difficult part is that there's no real build orders like in RTS. It's all about figuring out what to do.
Yeah, right.
Brayden Richardson
Play Dungeon of the Endless.
Charles Moore
Oh and one last question: does industry/science spill-over when there is nothing queued next? I got conflicting information about this
Just to make sure, because sometimes I don't want to queue things up
I think I will
Jack Allen
>invading a vodyani ark in endless difficulty >ark has 0 pop >he still shit out a new vodyani each turn for conscription Fuck this shit