Psionic Telepaths Spam build, Destroys the game by year 10....

[Psykhes]

With Divine Sovereign, Fallen Empire buildings and districts which aren't worth buffing, enabling him to get infinite Food, Minerals, Energy, Trade and Unity. Every resource except the ones which matter, too late for it to matter unless you do something else busted to get there before War-o'clock.

Too late? He got it by 2260, how on earth is that too late? AN I doubt her got even Divine Sovereign yet.
And he got boatloads of alloys and research as well, so, no, he also got "those resources which matter".

But, anyway, the point is it is actually rather easy to get to +560% job effect or more. AT the end of the video he was at over 1600%.

 

[ChromeViper]

I really dislike the youtuber "meta build" sillyness. This is not a "build", this is just broken and untested. Who honestly has fun being giga ultra 10,000 times more OP than normal?

 

[BrokenSky]

Too late? He got it by 2260, how on earth is that too late? AN I doubt her got even Divine Sovereign yet.
And he got boatloads of alloys and research as well, so, no, he also got "those resources which matter".

But, anyway, the point is it is actually rather easy to get to +560% job effect or more. AT the end of the video he was at over 1600%.

Are you even reading what I'm saying?

He got the build early because he used Clone Armies and Parlimentary System which are both individually strong and synergise well together.

If you only run a normal, non-busted slightly unity focused build, Telepaths on their own won't turn up until they're too late to be gamebreaking (they'll still be strong, but hardly the gamebreaking powerhouse everyone keeps talking about).

If you only run Clone Armies + Parlimentary System it will get you to your ascension way earlier than normal, which is extremely strong no matter the Ascension you choose.

Therefore trying to pin all this on Telepath spam is nonsense.

 

[ToneyT]

Not that this isn't a problem, and it certainly is a big one in multiplayer where nothing other than this can survive in a lobby, but I'm willing to bet my home that most people play single player games and, for them, this can simply be ignored.

Just because the game can be broken doesn't mean that you have to.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Are you even reading what I'm saying?

He got the build early because he used Clone Armies and Parlimentary System which are both individually strong and synergise well together.

If you only run a normal, non-busted slightly unity focused build, Telepaths on their own won't turn up until they're too late to be gamebreaking (they'll still be strong, but hardly the gamebreaking powerhouse everyone keeps talking about).

If you only run Clone Armies + Parlimentary System it will get you to your ascension way earlier than normal, which is extremely strong no matter the Ascension you choose.

Therefore trying to pin all this on Telepath spam is nonsense.

If both players run a normal, non-busted build, then Telepaths' clear 3-fold production advantage over other ascension paths' job output would cause the psionic player to rapidly pull ahead again.

Alternatively, if both players were playing a non-normal, busted build, then telepaths' clear advantage would do the same.

If you start from the assumption that they're on equal footing when they ascend, then the massive advantage from ascension on is still a massive advantage.

---

Again, this is almost certainly getting patched soon. But I'm objecting to the argument here.

In general, something like "a tryhard player could have conquered a neighbor and already locked in enough of an advantage to win the game by then, so it doesn't matter" is a terrible argument.

It doesn't reflect the way 90% of the playerbase actually plays the game.

It boils down to "everything after 2250 is just power fantasy and can be completely unbalanced without issue".

And from the second can be inferred: "this argument is useless noise, because the people who it applies to do not care about the topic being discussed (balance after 22XX), and everyone else does not care about the playstyle this argument applies to".

It is a self defeating argument: if it's accurate, you shouldn't bother saying it, because whatever thing is being discussed can go one way or the other and not impact your play in a meaningful way (or, so claims the argument).

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Not that this isn't a problem, and it certainly is a big one in multiplayer where nothing other than this can survive in a lobby, but I'm willing to bet my home that most people play single player games and, for them, this can simply be ignored.

Just because the game can be broken doesn't mean that you have to.

It can be ignored for now by not playing psionic.

But for someone who wants to play psionic.. Telepaths being brokenly powerful, to the extent that there's no challenge, is an issue. Which is a bummer.

 

[BrokenSky]

If both players run a normal, non-busted build, then Telepaths' clear 3-fold production advantage over other ascension paths' job output would cause the psionic player to rapidly pull ahead again.

Alternatively, if both players were playing a non-normal, busted build, then telepaths' clear advantage would do the same.

If you start from the assumption that they're on equal footing when they ascend, then the massive advantage from ascension on is still a massive advantage.

So both of those scenarios are irrelevant because the point of comparison is one player playing a normal build and getting telepaths at a normal time and the other is playing a rediculourly optimised start-of-game build, and then uses a normal +50% - +100% output ascension.

Because the arguement here isn't about whether Telepaths is strong - the arguement is that every build claiming to break the game with Telepaths has already broken the game before they hit Ascension in the first place. The tread title claims that Telepaths break the game 10 years in, but you need to have already broken the game to reach Telepaths 10 years in.

Again, this is almost certainly getting patched soon. But I'm objecting to the argument here.

In general, something like "a tryhard player could have conquered a neighbor and already locked in enough of an advantage to win the game by then, so it doesn't matter" is a terrible argument.

It doesn't reflect the way 90% of the playerbase actually plays the game.

It boils down to "everything after 2250 is just power fantasy and can be completely unbalanced without issue".

And from the second can be inferred: "this argument is useless noise, because the people who it applies to do not care about the topic being discussed (balance after 22XX), and everyone else does not care about the playstyle this argument applies to".

It is a self defeating argument: if it's accurate, you shouldn't bother saying it, because whatever thing is being discussed can go one way or the other and not impact your play in a meaningful way (or, so claims the argument).

Frankly my main objection is that everyone losing their mind over the Telepath thing are using an arguement which seems to go like:

"If I combine an origin which massively boosts early game growth, multiple Civics which turn large populations into a lot of Tech and Unity, Phenotype-limited traits which synergise with the Civics and/or origin, Psionic Telepath Spam and a Shroud Covenant which was specifically balanced around Telepaths being highly limited, I can get rediculous output by 2220 which completely eclipses all other builds, therefore Telepath Spam breaks the game by 2210."

Which I feel completely misses most of what makes this a problem (and frankly the Devs clearly didn't miss what made it a problem because most of the Civvy-spam got nerfed, and in probably the most sensible way - by making them cost non-zero Consumer Goods)

 

[Abdulijubjub]

So both of those scenarios are irrelevant because the point of comparison is one player playing a normal build and getting telepaths at a normal time and the other is playing a rediculourly optimised start-of-game build, and then uses a normal +50% - +100% output ascension.

Because the arguement here isn't about whether Telepaths is strong - the arguement is that every build claiming to break the game with Telepaths has already broken the game before they hit Ascension in the first place. The tread title claims that Telepaths break the game 10 years in, but you need to have already broken the game to reach Telepaths 10 years in.



Frankly my main objection is that everyone losing their mind over the Telepath thing are using an arguement which seems to go like:

"If I combine an origin which massively boosts early game growth, multiple Civics which turn large populations into a lot of Tech and Unity, Phenotype-limited traits which synergise with the Civics and/or origin, Psionic Telepath Spam and a Shroud Covenant which was specifically balanced around Telepaths being highly limited, I can get rediculous output by 2220 which completely eclipses all other builds, therefore Telepath Spam breaks the game by 2210."

Which I feel completely misses most of what makes this a problem (and frankly the Devs clearly didn't miss what made it a problem because most of the Civvy-spam got nerfed, and in probably the most sensible way - by making them cost non-zero Consumer Goods)

You're the only one in this thread that keeps insisting that the Telepaths don't matter, and everyone should be looking exclusively at the broken quickstart Clones build. Everyone else is talking about Telepaths.

Yes, the Clones build is very powerful. Obviously. No one is saying it isn't.

There are exactly 0 people in this thread saying that Telepaths go back in time to boost your job output and help you ascend faster before you unlock them. The fact that the early unlock comes from the things that happen before you ascend is obvious.

There are plenty of people (myself included) saying "you could do the same thing, but slower, with some other start", though... because when we say "the same thing", we're talking about Telepaths.

---

If it helps, imagine the thread title says "Psionic Telepaths spam build destroys the game by year 20" (because that's about the time limit for TotS to hit ascension), or year 30.