Slitherine

You can have TS be strong as an AI, but weak when played by a human player I guess?

BlueTemplar wrote:You can have TS be strong as an AI, but weak when played by a human player I guess?

How could TS be weak? Their intense use of forest makes pollution non existent while their habitat bonus gives them a clear morale advantage.

The only true weakness of this faction is the -25% assault, giving them hard time during war, especially against imperium and religious faction, but economy wise it's one of the strongest faction (if not the strongest).

well any faction can plop down a forest and gain the antipollution benefit from a tile they wouldn't bother to work anyway. if you have plains that give 1 food you can plop down a farm and get more food from it than you would a forest, hills with mines match TS forests for minerals, so mountains with mines becomes your mineral production center.

as for pollution being a problem, the only time this happens is when i have to pull my formers in due to alien aggression (stop making forests), this happens later with TS which is why pollution is less of an issue, not the forest bonuses. it isn't too long of a period, and only occurs if i don't plan ahead. bigger maps make this period last longer and thus makes makes it more impactful/harder to plan for. SD tends to need more forests, and more minerals, so they need to spread out a bit more, which might be a problem due to scarcity of good land.

as for the habitat thing, i only have issues with NC, and mainly that is with finding the next habitat tech on the tree. if i boost the amount i see of the tree, then that problem goes away almost entirely. of course i tend to have built 4 or 5 cities by the end of the game (as opposed to conquering them), i guess if i never built any cities then the habitat thing would be an issue. of course SD is a bit different, in that i need to have more cities.

if you have trouble keeping up with TS try specializing your cities, plopping down forests early on hills in high food areas, plains in low food areas and try to get at least one mountain city before the aliens get aggressive. after you have beaten back the aliens, pick out a non-coastal city that doesn't have mountains and is in a low food area (no good for food or minerals, but plenty of land) and shove a bunch of forests around it, then have everyone in that city become a factory worker, and use that city as your industrial base, you shouldn't have any pollution issues from that city or any other city (due to those cities having a couple of forests and not going heavy on pollution causing workers).