Yeah the AI should treat them as troopships as they have the same effect on the defender (loss of colony).

Yes Actually they are a lot more dangerous than Troop Transports.You control a planet and make it toxic, at the beginning it is really powerful.
I don't know if it depends from the fact that AI just think too much expanding, but now Spore Ships is just a huge military advantage.

The idea that the AI can rush-buy a cheap tiny ship when it sees an approaching invasion holds true regardless of map size or whether you have spore. That's what a human would do. Although, a human would recognize if such a move is pointless as well (i.e. you have several nearby undefended planets and you can't rush-buy ships for ALL of them, or the other guy has a strong ship nearby that would only take your ship out as soon as you bought it).

An empty hull is no deterrent to spore rushing, and many users complained about the AI doing it to begin with (thinking it was a bug that the AI deployed unarmed defenders), so the AI no longer does it.

I can have armed spore ships with 4 or 5 speed ready to go around the 12th week of the game anyway, so it doesn't make much difference--unless they have armed ships in time they can't stop it.

That's odd. I'm in a game with the Korath now and I'm not sure it has ever used one. The Altarians are their neighbors so they may have used one or two early on, but the few worlds that changed hands that I know of were the Altarians taking Korath planets. The Korath declared war on the Altarians early, and I got the popup asking if I wanted to declare war on the Korath since I was playing good. That was kind of the plan in the game setup--me and the Altarians working against the Korath and Korx. So, I've been pounding the hell out of them for about a hundred turns, but haven't seen a single spore ship.

I'm playing on a Large Map at Tough Difficulty.

Does Spore Weapons tech have any prerequisites? I would prefer to give it more prerequisites than to just radically increase it's cost. Maybe hang it somewhere off the planetary invasion line?

Spore Weapons are a powerful Super-Ability also in end game.The simple fact that you can make toxic worlds and erase the entire population of a planet without losing a single soldier is simply huge.
Since GC2 was released rush strategies have been always a winning strategy because AI doesn't build too much armed ships in initial stages, now with Korath it is simply easy to erase entire civilizations.In my first game with this civ i had destroyed 2 big civs in 100 turns, building just some armed ships and only Spore Weapons.
Based on my experience they aren't game breaking when other civs have some ships to defend themselves but at the beginning it is too cheesy as Korath to destroy other civs with Spores.Spore Weapons is a tech so powerful that its more fit for a mid game at the beginning it's just like having Terror Stars of GC1 which are not available to the other civs.

Super ability or no,like it or no, sporeships are nerf-bait. Its essentially an end-game ability availiable far too soon.( does anyone think that being able to crank out planet-killing/planet-converting spore ships, independant of population 12 turns into a sandbox game sounds quite right?). Personally, Id bury it under a lot more pre-req techs in the tech tree, to ensure by the time anyone gets it, theyre still going to have to fight their way to a planet.(beyond slapping a single beam on a sporeship to kill any "placeholder" ships). It seems to me, that thematically, it should be availiable at the end of the planetary invasion tree (after shock troops), or at some point earlier as a branch, if that is too severe.

And yes, sporeships should have a big red "Kill me NOW!" target painted on them by the AI, as should troop ships, as the two most dangerous ship types in the game....to the extent of ignoring enemy fleets to get to them. If this is already the case in the game, I have not yet seen it. Im still sniping far too many unescorted lone troop/spore ships in the game as well, although the AI has shown some improvement in this area.

Just a couple of specific gripes, overall DA is awesome!


Thanks!

Like it's actually something good.
This other game I played years ago had a Virus tech that would affect not only civilian pop, but also any teleports made to and from that planet, spreading the virus. There are no teleports in this game obviously, but maybe it could be a way to quarantine planets instead of outright "conquering" them. Also, that game had a level based techtree, and if you attacked a planet with level X Virus, the owner of the planet would have to research that same level to nullify the attack. It was a potent weapon against low pop growth races.
Maybe a quarantined planet could become an independent planet or something, and could only be conquered again by someone with an appropriate "spore" tech.

(Never played DA yet, getting it tommorow though )
From what I hear, it seems a little too powerful to completely wipe out a planet. My opinion is that it should be changed to something less powerful but still useful, maybe like poisoning the planet, and instead of killing off the entire population, kill off a percent each turn for a certain amount of turns (maybe 5 or so) and then the toxins are removed from the air. This could make it less powerful early game which is where I hear the most complaints, and make it more useful late game because not only does it make invasion easier without losing your own troops, but you could also try to target planets you aren't going to take yet so they could make less money.

I find spore ships interesting, but certainly not overpowering. You still need space-superiority to use them, and when was the last time you lost a war when you had space-superiority? All they allow you to do is eat an empire quickly, once its defenses have been stripped.

To me, the most overpowered ability is Super Diplomacy, at least when I use it. The game is not difficult at all. Before I had Super Diplomacy I could barely win on two levels below 'Intelligent'. Now I am slaughtering the AI on 'Intelligent'.
This is not a complaint, just an observation. Its damn fun playing the ultimate puppetmaster.

Dano

Each super ability can be used as "cheese" depending on your play style. Well maybe not super spy but anyway.



Like Entropy suggested, what about adding a lower cost prereq ability for the early game and make the current ability more time consuming to research. How about have the early tech reduce the soldiering ability of the planet and/or reduce the population by 50%. It that isn't useful enough in the early game it could reduce or stop population growth and/or production for a set amount of turns.