Psilons overrated?

[rgp151]

On Hard and below, a player can easily run away with the game very fast using Pslions. But it seems to me that on Impossible the Psilons aren't nearly as good as they are often touted to be. Yes, once you get them going they can become a monster, but getting them going is the trick and they don't really have any tools that help them get going quickly.

Until you start doing research the Psilons basically have no benefits at all. Compare that to Klackons, Sakkra, and Silicoids, each of which have direct economic strengths that provide benefits on turn 1. Even the Meklars have a benefit that becomes effective sooner than the Psilon's.

I generally find that with the Psilons on Impossible I really have to dig myself out of a hole and I sometimes end up in the position where I wasn't able to grab enough planets fast enough to be able to research my way back to dominance, thus requiring conquest to stay relevant, which may not be possible if I'm already behind.

OTOH, I find that with Klackons I generally am able to easily keep a strong position, grab the needed planets and establish production dominance from the outset. While not quite as good, the Sakkra can do the same. With Silicoids I can grab tons of planets, but find I will often end up losing a few as I'm unable to hold them. The Meklars do fall behind a little, but generally can come back even if you didn't get as many planets as desired to start. I'm always surprised when I start pumping out huge battleships in a few turns early in the game with them.

But it seems to me that with Psilons I often fall quite a bit behind and then have to catch up. With Klackons, Sakkra, Silicoids and Meklars I typically don't really fall behind to begin with.

[SpaceOWL]

Until you start doing research the Psilons basically have no benefits at all. 

That's why when I play the Psilons I start researching as soon as I settle the first colony

[shallow_thought]

Until you start doing research the Psilons basically have no benefits at all. Compare that to Klackons, Sakkra, and Silicoids, each of which have direct economic strengths that provide benefits on turn 1. Even the Meklars have a benefit that becomes effective sooner than the Psilon's.

I'm not a regular player on Impossible outside of SGs, so take what I have to say with a pinch of salt, but I don't think you're wrong. I'm not so sure about the Meklar or Sakkra, but top players (Thrawn) have shown that aggressive play with the Klackons is stronger on average than the "classic" build-then-push techiniques the Psilons lend themselves to. You have to pick up techs somehow (they are expensive), and Psilons are the best at doing this from their own production, but pointy-stick research may actually be more reliable (and, as you've noted, the Darloks can also take alternative approaches).

However, I do think that Psilons remain strong if your natural play-style leans towards them. The key point is that, yes, you have to research early to start stacking their benefit. I feel you should be putting beakers into research ASAP, pretty much as soon as you've stopped sending pop to the second world. Psilons gain from switching between research burst and trickle while building factories, picking up IT10 and cleanup before the first colony ship and snowballing from there based on the reduced costs. If you're in a game where that delays you critically and you're boxed in then you're dead; if you can expand to even a small number of half-decent worlds while still picking off techs then you have a decent chance to win. The Psilons are less likely to end up in the mid-game with a half-decent empire but still watch the game slip away as some other race just puts the econ pedal down.

[rgp151]

At this point, for my play style anyway, I think I'd rank the top races as follows:

1) Klackons
2) Darloks
3) Sakkra
4) Psilons
5) Meklar
6) Silicoids

Now of course many would put Humans in here somewhere, but I just really don't like playing as the Humans. I like to be aggressive and am often constantly at war with just about everyone, which pretty much renders the Human bonuses useless.

I do think many people underestimate the Darloks though. They have a unique bonus that cannot be matched or countered by any race. No one will ever out spy the Darloks, and spying is pretty effective in this game. All of the other bonuses sort of fade to technology. Even the Klackons, if they fall behind, can be overtaken in production. Meklars will often out-produce you. If something happens like you miss the first two IRCs you can certainly fall behind. But with the Darloks its like you can always claw your way back through spying, no matter how far ahead everyone else gets. The key to Darloks is being really aggressive diplomatically to stay on everyone's good side long enough.

I do really like the Meklars, given that they have really good Computer tech, but they just don't have that early out of the gate power. The early game is too critical and they just don't really have bonuses that help them get a fast enough jump. They are super powerful in the mid-game. But too many games I've been delayed and missed planets that I know the Klackons and even the Sakkra or Silicoids would have been able to get. And while the Meklars can get by with fewer planets, not really. I mean you can maybe handle being 1 planet behind where you should be, but that's really about it. Also, missing waste reduction techs early really really hurts them.

[haphazard1]

The Darlok racial spying bonus is very useful. If they fall too far behind in computer tech, they can get blocked from spying effectively. But it is very rare for all rival races to have that good of tech. I aometimes have problems with them if I start at one edge of the galaxy and have little contact early with other races. They are one of the few races that actually wants to start in the middle of the galaxy with lots of neighbors all around.

[SpaceOWL]

The Darlok racial spying bonus is very useful. If they fall too far behind in computer tech, they can get blocked from spying effectively. But it is very rare for all rival races to have that good of tech. I aometimes have problems with them if I start at one edge of the galaxy and have little contact early with other races. They are one of the few races that actually wants to start in the middle of the galaxy with lots of neighbors all around.

Me too, I really like to play the spy game with the Darloks, even though I get beaten very often. Maybe because I spy too much and care too little about gifts and other diplomatic compensations.

But differently from the usual strategy of computers I normally start by getting propulsion techs and not computer tech. The bonus is not so useful without targets for spying. :-)

[rgp151]

The Darlok racial spying bonus is very useful. If they fall too far behind in computer tech, they can get blocked from spying effectively. But it is very rare for all rival races to have that good of tech. I aometimes have problems with them if I start at one edge of the galaxy and have little contact early with other races. They are one of the few races that actually wants to start in the middle of the galaxy with lots of neighbors all around.

Me too, I really like to play the spy game with the Darloks, even though I get beaten very often. Maybe because I spy too much and care too little about gifts and other diplomatic compensations.

But differently from the usual strategy of computers I normally start by getting propulsion techs and not computer tech. The bonus is not so useful without targets for spying. :-)

Yeah, the way I typically do it with Darloks is, like all races, I generally open all the techs to see what I've got to work with, and then reduce all research to 0 except Propulsion, Construction and Planetology. I'll spend on those based on what's available. Once I get the first tech in those three, then I'll typically add Computers. Depending on what Propulsion techs I need and am able to research I'll either put most of my research into Propulsion or the least for a while.

With Darloks, I'll probably research the first tech in all fields, because it doesn't require much, but then I'll start shutting down research in everything except Computers and Propulsion. I'll generally do about 75% spending in Computers and 25% in Propulsion, relying on spying for everything else. I may selectively research some tech if I have an option available that none of the other races currently has available to steal, but generally, yeah, Computers and Propulsion is where its at.

And when it comes to spying, I'll generally take Computer techs first, even if there are other techs that I may rather have, because by getting your Computer tech as high as possible you improve your spying, which I always make the top priority.

[Cyneheard]

For us playing on Impossible, here's my rankings:

Klackons are S-Tier. They have both the fastest start and a very high ceiling. You do take a bit of a hit by having Poor Propulsion - Range 4/5 are critical for rapidly expanding peacefully, and so many games are won/lost in that early expansion phase.

A-Tier includes the Psilons, Silicoids, Meklar, and Humans although like most of you I hate playing the Humans. On Small maps, I'd argue that the Silicoids might be the strongest of these, just on the plan of "get Range 5 and grab all the hostile worlds before the AI can". They'd also be by far the best race if they didn't have the pop-growth penalty - other races' downsides have an impact, but theirs is the only one that's truly damaging.

B-Tier is Sakkra and Darloks. The Sakkra fast growth is nice but it stops being particularly useful fairly quickly.

C-Tier are the Bulrathi and Alkari; Alkari can do cute things with, say, Nuclear NPG fighters in those early Impossible wars no one really wants to fight.

D-Tier are the Mrrshans.

I think what you're getting at is the Psilons are treated as S-Tier - because they have a slow start, there's some games where they're just too far behind by 2340 to ever really catch up. Some of that is they're also the scariest AI race, because "no starting bonuses" doesn't matter that much when you get the AI Impossible bonuses - they definitely leverage the runaway games better than any other AI race, and they get them frequently enough.

[SpaceOWL]

B-Tier is Sakkra and Darloks. The Sakkra fast growth is nice but it stops being particularly useful fairly quickly.

IMO the real advantage of Sakkra is being excellent at Planetology.

[rgp151]

Well I guess I'd say that Sakkra are underrated too then. The Sakkra have a fairly fast early power curve. The difference between them and the Klackons is that the Klackon power advantages stays long term, whereas the Sakkra can get generate production faster than all other races except Klackons and Silicoids, but they top out at the same place as an average race. But that faster production curve shouldn't be under estimated. And that fast growth can also be used militarily early on as well, both defensively and offensively.

Also, they have no Poor tech fields. And with Excellent Planetology is can mean getting cheaper Colony Ships faster as well. So that's the thing. When you think about being able to get Colony Ships out quickly, of course the Klackons are best, but the Sakkra are close behind. It may be Klackons> Silicoids > Sakkra. With the faster than average production curve and fastest route to cost reduction of Colony Ships, its a good combo.

I think another reason the Psilons are so overrated is because the races play differently on different difficulty levels. Darloks are of course horrible on Easy and Normal and not even very good on Hard. They really only shine on Impossible. The Psilons are most powerful on Easy and Normal, moderate slightly on Hard, and fall farther behind on Impossible. So many people play them on Normal and Hard and just run all over the game, but their particular bonus doesn't shine as brightly on Impossible as it does on Hard. Because on Impossible its all about being able to get the jump on planet colonization quickly against AIs with resource advantages. In order to do that, you need races with the best raw production bonuses that don't require research to take advantage of.

The big there there are the Klackons, Silicoids and Sakkra, but again the Silicoids have a serious down side that holds them back IMO. And Meklars can be very powerful, but they don't have that early advantage on turn 1 that the other three have. And if you get bad waste control tech options in your first tier of techs, the Meklar advantage is almost entirely negated. Where Silicoids really suffer is when you need to do planetary invasions before Cloning. That's very painful with them.