Drengin always toughest?

from Stardock Forums
This may be a somewhat weak post/question.

In my experiences over 5-10 games, by and large the Drengin are the winning civilization. Even when morality is not their typical evil. I continually see there military and economy as "strong" or "strongest" to a consistent degree enough to limit my focus on all other races.

Of course, I love their occasional messages on how my "skin looks .... delicious" (always chuckle), but am somewhat tiring from their consistently strong performance.

Is it me? Am I OK? Loaded questions, I suppose.

-Anx
350 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh, also using the latest version downloaded yesterday. Could be that perhaps a better balancing is in this version?

-Anx
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
What difficulty are you playing on. I noticed they seemed to do better on the lower diffs because their basic strat isn't exactly complex. Now that I'm playing all Intelligent, it's a total crap shoot as to who winds up dominant.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Since I am a relative newbie (i.e., not very good), so I have been playing at the "simple" level with most AIs at beginner.

-Anx
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Mostly it's a matter of positioning for the AI civs, in two ways. One, if they start in a strong (or weak) spot in the galaxy for colonizing then that will make a huge difference in their eventual strength. Two, their neighbors make a big difference. You get the Drengin stuck between the Torians and the Altarians and they don't tend to do so well. LOL

And I agree with the posts above about difficulty, in my first two games at 'Fool' level the Drengin indeed mopped every other AI civ up, but at between Normal and Intelligent it's a crapshoot as to who will be the dominant AI civ (heck, my last gigantic intelligent game it was the Arceans!). Probably the AI algorithms that get cut out at lower levels effect some civs more strongly than others.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
"At higher dificuly levels they seem to be one of the weaker civs in my games "

Exactly, since their core strat is basically "hit them with a rock", it all depends on their starting position and how many rocks they got. If things don't go just so, the more subtle AIs generally overtake them.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I too have noticed that the Drengins consistently win during many of my games. However, upon reflection I think this is b/c I tend to play on low planet quality settings. With so few choice planets to go around, most of the other civs simply can't live up to their potential. But, since the Drengins run around conquering everyone, they eventually get their full range of planets, and end up dominating pretty fast. :notsure:

BTW - This is the exact reason why the 10% and 15% PQ ability was an exploit. Play a Large or larger galaxy, set the planet quality to its lowest setting, and watch as the only person who settles more than 1 or 2 planets is the Humans, since you can settle planets in the 12-14 range easily, and the AI won't touch em with a ten foot pole... ;)
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I did that on one game, gigantic galaxy with rare planets, me with +15 PQ. It was like playing in sandbox mode, the Yor and Torians had 2 planets the entire game, the Drengin had 3, the Altarians and Arceans did best with 5. In a gigantic galaxy. *boggle* I saw right off that it was a cakewalk so tried some new things to make it interesting, but yeah, that's definitely the nightmare mode for the AI: rare, tight clusters, and human player with +15 PQ.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
The Drengin seem to do well on the loewr difficulty levels since they take the most brute force military strategy. The more sublte strategies come up at higher levels where the other AIs start to get a bigger advantage.

~SDC~
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I think that since the AI is dumber at diplomacy at low levels, this gives Drengin a big advantage.

Their tactic is simply to build tons of militrary and extort their way to victory. I hope that at higher levels the other AIs will be less aquiecent to the Drengin threats.

However, I'm not good enough to play at 'Intelligent', so I'm just going to downgrade the Drengin to normal and have everyone else at bright in my next game. Hopefully that will put an end to the 'me vs the drengin' games that I've been playing recently!

~SDC~
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Even on genius, I think the Drengin do very well. I play mostly smaller maps (tiny, medium, sometimes huge).
On tiny maps, I have played and lost a few masochistic games. Always the Drengin were the big power. Then the Altarians seem to do OK, the Yor are most pitiful, the Arceans being not very good either.
I think this depends more on map size/settings than difficulty: With few resources for everyone and near neighbours, the Drengin rock because they can extort, build up, conquer, whereas the other races need more time to develop. Probably Altarians resist Drengin best because they hate them and won't let themselves extorted?