by Petri
Konrad von Richtmark wrote:
I just today finished my first game with the expansion. I was Magellan, the other players were Lyra, Exiles and Mechanema. I won hands down, not due to good play or due to my species, but rather due to fairly isolationist exploration by everyone else that was broken up by the three of them getting connected by warp portals. Whereby they kept grinding at each other while I grew all-powerful on my own, sweeping in and crushing everything before me on the last turn with wormhole generators.
Typically, an isolated player would lose the game horribly due to no access to ambassadors and low reputation. It's important not to wage war in such a way that both players lose. If you wage war with a player who is not leading with poor odds, then you probably deserve to lose.
Take the Magellans. What do the Terrans have that they don't? An extra move and one more point of trade rate. Meanwhile, the resource-manufacturing colony ships of the magellans give them a steady stream of free production with the odd unused colony ship (even at start, you'd get to use all of them for colonization far from every turn), and even the ability to occasionally when you just *have* to have that one or two more points of something to get what you want. And the ability to get both VPs and discovery goodies, and the free discovery at 4 techs.
Magellans are strong, that's true, but their poor influence action significantly weakens them. Especially when researching adv. mining/economy/labs I would often like to use influence action several times just for the colony ships, but Magellan can't do that.
And the Lyrans. The Lyra player didn't play them as I suspect they were intended to, but oh my, wormhole generator for effectively only 6 resources and no need for a research action. You could have it by turn 3. An exploration strategy would naturally suggest itself: Place tiles so that your borders to other empires are via half-wormholes. They won't be able to touch you, but you can invade at your leisure. And if you go all-in against another player, you won't get stabbed in the back from a third player, since he can't cross the border.
If you get the wormholes at the end of turn 3, you will not be able to achieve something else, which would most likely benefit you more than the wormholes. Besides, if you isolate yourself in the beginning, you will have a huge disadvantage for having no ambassadors.
And the Rho Indi Syndicate. What's their disadvantage relative to humans? One colony ship, meaning just that they might have to pay a bit for Influence in order to expand fast. And what do they get in return? Super-awesome strategic mobility, neat ships, and money whenever they blow up stuff.
One thing I'm pretty sure about is that the Syndicate is not overpowered. Their ships are ridiculously expensive, they can't even build the best ship type and their home sector is worth 0 victory points. Besides, it's often difficult to plunder a lot of money without losing ships in the process. They're my favorite race, but I don't consider them (too) strong.