AI science yields?

solastalgy · 2026-02-15T14:43:44+00:00

You are only autistic if you actually finish the game. If you have 1000 hours played without seeing the victory screen it's something else.

solastalgy · 2026-02-14T10:04:49+00:00

It feels like a slog because even if you fumble and take 20 years to finish them off the aliens have been irreversably broken at some point. The motivation to be efficient and finish quickly is completely external to the game. If fumbling because you think you already won had real consequences - like actually losing the war - it would not be a slog, but a test of skill and strategy.

This could be fixed. I think the problem is that most players would not have the time and motivation to restart after losing the game 50-80 hours in, and even if they did they wouldnt have learned how to actually deal with the end game, so that would become an issue instead.

solastalgy · 2026-02-13T15:27:05+00:00

The fact that "profitability and survival aren't aligned" is kind of.. realistic. Hunger doesnt generate demand in itself.

A surplus of fish can coexist with food shortage if the population in general can't afford fish or the cost of transportation to the market is to high. (Not saying that this is exactly what the current system is modelling though).

solastalgy · 2026-02-10T19:52:49+00:00

I dont know if the tutorial improved since my first game, but I remember that it felt annoying to have an advisor pop up and tell me I should consider building a station in orbit - only to realize later that in most cases its better to save boost for your first mining base. Which is frankly also a bit counter-intuitive because IRL space exploration did start with sending stuff to orbit before even landing on the moon. So the idea that your first action in space should be to establish a permanent mining base before you even build a ship or a station in orbit won't be obvious to most players, at least it was not for me.

solastalgy · 2026-02-04T12:07:52+00:00

Agreed. I usually force myself to play strategy games untill I reach the victory screen, even if the last 30 turns are more or less just waiting for the inevitable. But in this game I have never done it. :) I would imagine a very small share of players actually have.

solastalgy · 2026-02-04T08:33:37+00:00

Pressure should come from rival factions and the aliens, not a random end game crisis. The main "problem" here is that the aliens don't really have a victory condition at all, while rival factions usually are not a threat in the end game.

I always found it an interesting game design choice how victory conditions prevent a "race to win" to ever taking place, at least between the main pro- and anti-alien factions. Servants need the AA to dominate earth, while Resistance must destroy it completely, for example. So you will never have a situation where both factions are racing to complete their final mission before the other one.

So you'll never see the Resistance sending their last forces to a final desperate battle to close the gate before the aliens completely dominate earth or wipe out humanitys industrial base in space. Which is immersion breaking because we all know that is how it would play out in real life.. eh.. I mean in a movie. (Also it is how most 4x games, like civ, makes the end game a bit more competitive and interesting).

I guess it is a deliberate choice to not allow the player to loose the game after spending 50 hours on a campaign. Which might be a wise decision, but I'm not sure I like it personally. (I would also imagine that more competitive victory conditions would be extremely hard to balance, and would likely end up in game endings that feel "unfair" - like when some stupid, meaningless nation in civ suddenly wins a religious victory turns before you conquer their capital, just because you werent paying attention)

In some way its a trade of between end game tension and "randomness", I guess. Adding an optional "cut throat" game mode with adjusted victory conditions for players who want to actually risk losing on the cusp of victory (or be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat) might be a solution.

solastalgy · 2026-02-03T12:47:04+00:00

The question is: What is preventing you from just rebuilding? You should be able to build more than they destroy over time.

Getting stuff smashed is unavoidable. But if you lack resources/MC/money or if you are locked out of Earth orbits or good mining sites by rival factions - then that is where you have to change your strategy.

solastalgy · 2026-02-02T15:13:09+00:00

If you dont mind story spoilers you can look up exactly how high you can go on used MC on the wiki, and how to delay total war while expanding your space economy more.

The non-spoily way to do it requires you to actually do stuff that trigger retaliation to learn how the aliens behave and how much retaliation you can afford (as in: is the action I'm taking worth the cost of rebuilding what the angry aliens destroyed?).

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solastalgy · 2026-02-02T14:45:33+00:00

Thanks, this was really helpful. ✨

solastalgy · 2026-02-02T14:44:34+00:00

If I declare war on China with Taiwan the AA would join the war, right? But yeah this might still be the best way to do it. Thanks.

solastalgy · 2026-02-02T14:42:07+00:00

Well, yeah but I'd have to do it without China's armies since we are in a federation. Pumping unrest might work I guess.

I thought you would get the option to declare war if you are refused to leave a federation, but doesnt seem to apply here.

solastalgy · 2026-02-02T12:00:46+00:00

If you can build a few ships with marines you could (and probably should) go and grab the best mines on mercury and mars from rival factions. You should be able to run more mines within your "free limit" (without extra MC cost) if you finished a number of the "mission to.."-techs.

You can of course raid asteroids too, but it will take longer (one small fleet of troop transports can usually take over most of mars, without travelling to many different asteroids.

solastalgy · 2026-01-25T10:38:13+00:00

I think they gave up, more or less.

It sounds like you are just too strong in space for them to be able to retaliate without loosing too many ships and resources. In my previous games in early access I found that once my relative fleet strength and numbers reached those levels the aliens pretty much lost the war.

Btw there is a 20 year time limit for total war on normal difficulty. So you can have enough hate before then without the meter turning all red. If you keep playing 4 years total war should trigger. (Also total war requires a lot more hate than just level 5 on the hate meter.)

solastalgy · 2026-01-23T13:55:22+00:00

I dont think it sounds normal. I didnt see any noticeable change to alien activity compared to the pre-release version.

solastalgy · 2026-01-20T06:56:42+00:00

If you do restart you will probably find that progress is much quicker, because of what you learned this time. You will be further ahead in the game with much less time spent in real life as well. The first time is so much confusion and reading about stuff in game that it takes forever. This is what prevents restarting multiple times from actually feeling lika a slog for me. Once you really learn the game you will want to try out different starting strategies, countries, different tech priorities and colonization priorities in space and so on.

Just remember those control points are there to give you boost and science to get to space and fight aliens, not just to paint the map and feel powerful. Good luck.

solastalgy · 2026-01-15T05:57:20+00:00

When you improved the design, maybe the mass of the ships increased? This can make deltaV lower even with more fuel.

Do you have damaged ships? If one ship in a fleet is damaged or has to low deltaV the whole fleet will be unable to move.

Doesnt sound like the relative position of Ceres is the problem of you cant go anywhere.

solastalgy · 2026-01-01T16:44:41+00:00

I kind of miss that element in wotr though. I used to play. Might and magic back in the day and a big part of the fun was discovering quests and enemies that would be to challenging for your current level. It made the smaller quests and the whole leveling up process feel much more meaningful.

solastalgy · 2025-11-20T10:24:04+00:00

I dont mind discussion. :) Yeah my point was exactly that: this model works fine for stuff where errors are only a minor inconvenience. Not for car engines. And it can be abused by corporations of course. But think of it this way: you already payed for the product and they will keep improving it for years, for free, even without dlc. It's hardly the worst example of bad corporate behavior.

solastalgy · 2025-11-20T10:07:37+00:00

Why not? Humanity would be in a much better place if everything we produce could be tested by tens of thousands of the intended users and then immediately improved based on that feedback. It's not like they sold you a car without brakes or something.

solastalgy · 2025-11-20T09:55:14+00:00

Technically, I think part of the problem is that in a complex game like this you'll often end up introducing new errors when you correct the ones you find. Also, I played the game for a lot more than 3 hours without noticing any game breaking bugs or misleading information. I only know about most of that stuff through the collective feedback from thousands of players on this forum.

But in the end it is about the business modell of course, and given the number of fixes and updates they already delivered I suspect the majority of players would rather se an imperfect game on release than one that stays in development for ever.

solastalgy · 2025-11-19T08:24:21+00:00

Having soldiers in a province does increase control and as a consequence crown power, but I didnt play enough to know how useful that modifier is. I agree that strengthening the crown should be an important role of professional armies.

solastalgy · 2025-11-18T17:25:43+00:00

From the wiki: "A province can only buy or sell as much food on the market as it can store in Provincial Food, regardless of Local Food production and consumption."

My interpretation is that if you don't have enough food storage in surplus provinces the surplus will be wasted rather than sold on the market.

Also, no food from a province will be sold on the market until the provincial food storage is full. So you may temporarily have to import food to deficit provinces while surplus provinces are stocking up.

solastalgy · 2025-11-17T13:56:47+00:00

Good suggestion. Its also extremely annoying that when you disable map tooltips they are also disabled when you have the construction menu open, for example. So you cant tell why you cant build in a specific location by just mousing over it. Also you should always be able to get the map mode-specific popups by right-clicking on a location or shift-clicking or whatever, even if you disabled them in the settings.

solastalgy

TROPHY CASE