I'll agree with you on this much: culture has gotten a little underpowered. That said, if you manage to find someone who forgets its power... well, putting up 3 fully upgraded culture temples all at once will get their attention pretty fast.

You should give the advent another try, they're pretty neat. On larger maps, their culture superiority really shines, and it makes a big difference. Having a 10%(researchable) bonus over your opponents on all planets, including resource ones, and therefore planet income, turns out to be a big economic advantage. And, as frequently remarked on these forums, the advent have the best mid to end-game fleet synergies

Culture is only good against noobs currently.

Against players that know wtf they're doing, they see enemy culture lines and it just takes one broadcast on a planet to stop it.

One broadcasts stops freaking 20 it seems unless i'm missing something.

You can have a desert next to an enemy roid with 8 broadcasts on it, then other planets behind your desert stacking more culture. The roid just needs 1 broadcast up there to stop it all. It's idiotic.

It should be like a 2.5:1 or 3.5:1 ratio so you can force people to scuttle logistics structures and make broadcasts or else lose the planet by making cultures. 2.5-3.5:1 is perfectly fair.

I'm not going to disagree that all things considered, Advent is pretty underpowered. However, when you get their unit combos and if you know how to play them well, they become very strong.

The thing with Advent which is slightly different from the other races is that you really need multiple cap ships to do very well. Start with the radiance and get it to level 6 as quickly as possible. Get the mothership soon after that. If an enemy fleet attacks you, use your radiance to draw enemy fire onto itself. Use Mothership's malice ability, then use the Radiance's Cleansing brilliance on their cap. This usually ends up destroying most ships other than flak and heavy cruisers.

Also, Repair bays are your friend. You have to keep your radiance alive. The whole combo rests on its insane level 6 ability. The next cap ship I like to get is the rapture. Being able to shutdown their caps is very important. Furthermore, using Vengeance and Animosity work very well together. To give you an idea of how powerful this 3 cap combo is, I've killed a pirate base before only using these three caps.

Iconus guardians are also great. They go well especially with this combo and help your radiance not die so quickly. If things start getting out of hand, hit repel, then drive the iconus forward into their fleet and hit repel again. You can use this to have your caps make an easy getaway. Another use for repel is to prevent enemies from jumping out. Sit your guardian near the edge of the grav well. If the enemy fleet tries to run, simply turn on repel and micro your guardian so it's always in their way. They won't be able to escape until they kill the guardian.

One thing to keep in mind - if they have 50 heavy cruisers or some obscene amount of units, make sure you have guardians or your caps will instantly die. Use the cap combo and as soon as it's finished, get the caps out of there with the help of the guardian's repair. All their heavy cruisers should be at about 50% health. Clean up with heavy cruisers/illuminators of your own.

Lastly, When fully upgraded, Crusaders have a crazy high dps (mid 30's). I think it's higher than even enforcers if I remember correctly.

The Deliverance Engine is an extremely powerful tool for Culture. You can flip worlds like pancakes with that thing! Unlike the Vasari superweapon (which is only situationally moderately powerful), the Advent and TEC Super Weapons are really quite powerful.

Also, use cap ships to repel culture and advance your own. Culture is like a match of "Tug of War", you need to put some fat kids on your end.

Oh, anyway, the reason I am posting is: Someone earlier in the thread, DreamMaster - reply #24, mentioned that the Advent need a big crunch of Credits and Resources at the beginning of the game, and didn't have it.

There, you are slightly wrong, my friend! The Progenitor Mothership's colonize ability, is simply fantastic!!! It gives you a 20%, 40%, or 60% DISCOUNT on Planetary Upgrades when used. The trick is, when you colonize a planet, you need to wait 15-20 seconds or so, until you see the discount amount pop up on it's infocard - BEFORE - you start upgrading. Once you see the discount on the info card (as I said, it's delayed a little), you will see the prices drop. When fully upgraded, the starting upgrades are only 170 credits, the maximum ones are about 330. The resources amounts go down in proportion too... Basically, once that discount kicks in, if you have enough resources stocked, you can queue all of the upgrades at low prices (you have something like 300 seconds to do it in, I think?). It takes so much of the pain away...

I have the feeling that this is probably overlooked by most, as the colonization abilities of the other races Cap Ships have nothing on this... especially the Vasari Cap Ship Colonize ability... gah, most useless thing ever... a measley 20% speed increase (non upgradeable) on structure building . Oooh, one second in five is shaved, Im sooooo impressed [/SARCASM].

I do not bother with the disciples they die way to fast for me. give me 5 or 5 mother ships and there isn't a pirate fleet out there that can stop them.

I'm not claiming anything in stone yet, but I've recently found that Advent's Illuminator can be a devastating ship when spammed.

The Illuminator has 3 powerful beam weapons (1 in front, and 1 on each side). If you spam a bunch of these guys and send them into a swarm of enemy ships then you will very likely see the enemy fleet evaporate. It's very important to send your Illuminators into the middle of the enemy fleet to take advantage of all 3 beam weapons.

I've only tested Illuminator spamming against newbies so far, not against veterans, but so far it has worked very well.

P.S. I totally skip building disciples all together. Go straight to the illuminators. It requires some tricky micromanaging but Illuminator spamming can take place very early in the game if done correctly.

The problem with Illuminators is that they are geared towards combatting Support/Heavy Cruiser and even Capital ships. The Advent don't really have anything that is geared towards destroying basic Combat Frigates, and other Long Range Attack Frigates - not until Destra Crusaders.

Well, you have Fighter Strikecraft... but Flak Frigates in SoaSE are imo almost too effective against Fighter Strikecraft. Some abilities used in conjunction with Flak Frigates can 100% negate Strike Craft entirely until they are destroyed. Kortul Devastators jamming strikecraft with an escort of Sentinels, for instance.

For the first 20-30 minutes, they're pretty vulnerable, and are forced to defend alot, without any real weapon. But I still consider them ridiculously ovepowered after that period. Yes, even more overpowered than massed Subverters.

That is true, but how often does the enemy attack within 20-30 minutes. Not very often.

  

  

Hence their overimbaerdnes.