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[mainiac]

Not really.  Did you notice how no matter how much Il and I trashed on each other, we never were able to make each other stop being dangerous.  Growing powerful upsets the balance and the other players naturally react to that. 

The offices among other things act as that counteracting agent.  Despite the fact that I was a relentless diplomat at the start and Il Palazzo burnt bridges like matches, the offices helped him keep breathing down my neck the entire game.  But if the offices didn't matter because everyone had twenty Cadiz class ships, that counteracting balance wouldn't matter as much.  You don't need to bother with diplomacy and intruige when competing for resources is more important then cooperating to control the offices.

[Kebooo]

If engineers had cost 2000 food and 2000 metal you wouldn't have kept being dangerous.  You wouldn't even be able to make a single engineer every two turns right now, this being 60+ turns into the game and having had the opportunity to have 100 food/metal engineers to expand your food/metal production to your current level.  I think you can see how it would go otherwise.  And if you had no transports?  You would not be expanding to other planets or launching any invasions.  So there you are, sitting at home, twiddling your thumb for possibly months of real time.  You'd probably be making one engineer every 2 turns 100 turns into the game.  I've played in dozens of games and only one ever kept people's interest that long.  Just look at this game, it flamed out despite being quite riveting.  I think if EFS was going to have resource scarcity, there would have to be ways to mass cheaper units easily (like frigates and freighters) or for each player to start with way more than they do.  Otherwise it would just make the games take even longer for someone to win.

The offices, no matter what you do, will become irrelevant because none of them can harvest gems and players aren't going to spend their resources on replacing ships they may lose in an election.  I do wish they were more relevant for the entire game, but I wouldn't want them to be an overpowering force.  It's not really fair for someone to get the fleet and dominate with it.  Keep in mind, not every game ends up with a powerful player others have to gang up on like yours did.  At the end of the day, EFS is a strategy game first and foremost, and balance takes precedence. 

[mainiac]

You are assuming that we would have been stupid enough to lose our transports in that scenario.

[Il Palazzo]

If you think of what is the biggest cause of EFS games dying before being finished, you have to arrive at the conclusion that it's the intrinsic difficulty of holding people's interest in playing for many months at best, most likely years. A year is an awful long time, even a die-hard fan of the game, like Kebooo, could change completely - e.g. get married, or find a demanding job, or just find a more involving, yet time consuming hobby. Having this in mind, every modification to game mechanics, that also happens to slow it down, is undesirable, no matter how attractive the change might seem at first.
And so it is with the engineer's cost. It's a great idea, making the game more appealing in some ways, but also one that would significantly hamper players' economical development, make them more reluctant to engage in even medium-risk actions, thus taking away a lot of "fun factor" that such enterprises usually cause.

Yes, I haven't said anything you didn't know already. I just needed to write something vaguely resembling inteligent and coherent thought. I feel better now, thank you.

[Mlittle]

I enjoyed this one. The crazy, the chaotic, the backstabbing.

I believe the problem for Aqizzar was, him being in his own corner, distanced from the main events.

[JoshuaFH]

I am disappointed by this turn of events.

[Servant Corps]

Do you really have to  declare yourself Emperor to win? Can't you have other victory conditions, like taking over the Church, spreading your religious sect, or earning prestige points? It is strange that the noble families agreed to form a Regency that they intended to overthrow at the earliest opportunity.

[mainiac]

Sects don't really... exist.  Taking over the church isn't too hard as the AI is kinda stupid and the church doesn't move off planet.

Certainly if the game was redone could benefit from such changes.

[Servant Corps]

I heard sects exist, they just don't do anything because they were bugged, and that any unit you produce belong to that sect. I was just throwing out random ideas.

On a unrelated note, in a single player LP of EoFS, the player discovered that the Church actually have a couple xenos parasite units (the ones that you need to contain by using that Stigmanta garrison ), for use as military troops. Is that true, or is that something the player made up for fun?

[mainiac]

Seems perfectly possible to me.  If you attack enemy units the same turn they retreat while defending, they will be captured (unless they retreated to a spot with their allies).  This applies to everyone, symbiots, nobles and inquisators included.

[Kebooo]

Sects do something...it's just absurdly buggy.  Every time you change the sect of a church, units on planet will gain or lose 5% loyalty, depending on what you change it to.  So if you have an Avestite unit and change the church to Avestite, they'll gain 5%, and every other sect unit will lose 5%.  So basically you could conquer a players' church, change the sect several times in one turn, and all of their units would be at 0% loyalty, thus all rebelling the next turn.  Or vice versa, you could keep ferrying troops from world to world to get some to 100% loyalty.  It was a cool idea in theory but it's really broken and they never fixed it.  The game would have been a lot greater if Segasoft hadn't rushed them and forced them to release an incomplete product.