(Since this topic is dead)
I love this skill, it's just hilarious. It reminds me of Lenin's quote. "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

0_o

I don't think the advent sucks, I think a lot of their skills in the research tree are misplaced, which causes them to be severely underpowered initially. Getting started with them seems to go very slow and if a Vasari or TEC player decides to rush you earlier on, then its GG.

Perhaps if Culture had a more substantial effect then Advent would have a starting advantage in a specific aspect of the game just like Vasari and TEC.

Yes, I agree 100% with this. The odd thing about the Advent is that it basically takes 3 of each research center to get to the 'next' big upgrades. (military/eco)

3 for tradeports, 3 for illuminators. Where as TEK only needs 2 of each research center to get to their 'next' upgrades - Javelis/tradeports. And Vasari only need 1 center to get to Assailants (big advantage in rush strategies) but need 4 for tradeports (hosing them in the current Cash-is-King 1.03v of game)

Perhaps as mentioned, if culture did more to help boost the early game (say 25% boost instead of 10%) or the drone host was not a worthless ship, then the Advent might be better off early game.

I think advent have the weakest early game and the strongest late game. The overlapping auras of their cap ships and supporting fleet make them near impossible to kill. Your right in that advent cant afford to lose their cap ships. They are the true power of their fleet. I found out the hard way that bombers arent much of an option against an advent fleet with high level caps. The bombers litteraly end up killing themselves.

TEC are truly the zerg race to me. They have the strongest early game and weakest late game. Sure they have a great eco but their ships cant stand up to a well rounded vasari or advent fleet. TEC needs numbers and the ability to quickly recoup loses. Both of which it has

Vasari to me have a moderate early game and strong late. They get the tough one on one ships combined with nanite attacks, subverters (evil evil), phase missles, and phase stablizers (very much like a nydus canal or arbiter recall). They have the hardest time recouping losses but they should lose less and be able to keep their ships combined into a smaller number of fleets.

No advent are fine all around.

I wouldn't have used Advent for the Capitol Ship only achievement. But, they are pretty good. And they have excellent broadcasting/allegiance powers, which means you lose less of your precious money to distance.

And to the post 2 above me, how can you call TEC weak late game? Novalith Cannons are just incredible once you have two or more, and if you manage to research "insurgents" your enemies can never leave a planet in the middle of nowhere and consider it to need no defending.

If you were to wake up and realize the Progenitor shoots out its sides mainly, then maybe you'd consider manually ordering it to park itself between pirate ships so that it can fire on multiple enemies at the same time... That would be the smart thing to do, but we all know how often people do the smart thing... A Progenitor has no trouble handling low level pirate raids, but needs a little help on the high level pirate raids.

Yes thats a big problem and I was trying to illustrated that in my post. When you start the game with advent you need to build 3 hostility and harmony temples to get any thing decent. So this limits your options with the way you can start the game. Its either you put cash into those 6 facilities or you can build capping fleet, which will be semi weak because the lack of upgrades. And from there you can cap other planets but since your economic powers will be weak then they will be extremely hard to build up defenses on choke point planets.

I think what I'm getting at is that the advent needs a mass amount of credit, metal and crystal flow near the initial part of the game to be effective. And of course they don't have that. This is why there have been suggestions that its best to go on defense with the advent. I don't think they are a defensive faction, its just the fact that the odd skill tree forces you to do so. Since without building three hostility,harmony temples then you will be good for nothing. Then when those three are constructed you are out of resources for a bit. Or if you decide not to build them initially then you have a weak fleet.

I was wondering for a bit was it possible for a strong rush in the initial part of the game by other players. I noticed the players doing that were always Vasari and TEC. So I decided to check out their skills and play them for a bit. And its just apparent how much better off they are in the beginning parts of the game. And how much low their requirements are to get things. Its apparent that the devs had culture dominance in mind for the Advent. But since culture is underpowered it makes advent underpowered. When you look at it, 7 out of 16 skills in the Harmony Psitech tree is related to culture.

I would say that those 7 skills are close(note I'm not saying completely) useless, due to the dominance that economy and military has over it. So close to half of the Psitech branch skills are ineffective due to them revolving around a ineffective aspect in the game. From what I gather....

Vasari= Miltary
Advent= Empire(from their initial skills, culture and fast research)
TEC= Economy obviously

Culture needs to be redefined or what its suppose to do magnified upon. Its obvious TEC has a economical advantage when you play against them. LRM spams and the ability to replace lost numbers at a fast rate. And Vasari has a Miltary initial military advantage due to its low requirements to get effective fighters. Advents empire advantage is not evident due to culture being not on par with economy and military. Sure you can setup some communication towers, but does anyone really expect for a planet to revolt before TEC and Vasari numbers put missiles up your butt? Most of the time culture has little influence due to other players having cap ships and setting up culture resistance.

The advent voices are pleasant to the ears I don't know if anyone else felt this way but when I was starting the game, I refused to play as Vasari because their voices were extremely annoying. Like scratching on a chalkboard I swear!

I'll agree with you on this much: culture has gotten a little underpowered. That said, if you manage to find someone who forgets its power... well, putting up 3 fully upgraded culture temples all at once will get their attention pretty fast.

You should give the advent another try, they're pretty neat. On larger maps, their culture superiority really shines, and it makes a big difference. Having a 10%(researchable) bonus over your opponents on all planets, including resource ones, and therefore planet income, turns out to be a big economic advantage. And, as frequently remarked on these forums, the advent have the best mid to end-game fleet synergies

Culture is only good against noobs currently.

Against players that know wtf they're doing, they see enemy culture lines and it just takes one broadcast on a planet to stop it.

One broadcasts stops freaking 20 it seems unless i'm missing something.

You can have a desert next to an enemy roid with 8 broadcasts on it, then other planets behind your desert stacking more culture. The roid just needs 1 broadcast up there to stop it all. It's idiotic.

It should be like a 2.5:1 or 3.5:1 ratio so you can force people to scuttle logistics structures and make broadcasts or else lose the planet by making cultures. 2.5-3.5:1 is perfectly fair.

I'm not going to disagree that all things considered, Advent is pretty underpowered. However, when you get their unit combos and if you know how to play them well, they become very strong.

The thing with Advent which is slightly different from the other races is that you really need multiple cap ships to do very well. Start with the radiance and get it to level 6 as quickly as possible. Get the mothership soon after that. If an enemy fleet attacks you, use your radiance to draw enemy fire onto itself. Use Mothership's malice ability, then use the Radiance's Cleansing brilliance on their cap. This usually ends up destroying most ships other than flak and heavy cruisers.

Also, Repair bays are your friend. You have to keep your radiance alive. The whole combo rests on its insane level 6 ability. The next cap ship I like to get is the rapture. Being able to shutdown their caps is very important. Furthermore, using Vengeance and Animosity work very well together. To give you an idea of how powerful this 3 cap combo is, I've killed a pirate base before only using these three caps.

Iconus guardians are also great. They go well especially with this combo and help your radiance not die so quickly. If things start getting out of hand, hit repel, then drive the iconus forward into their fleet and hit repel again. You can use this to have your caps make an easy getaway. Another use for repel is to prevent enemies from jumping out. Sit your guardian near the edge of the grav well. If the enemy fleet tries to run, simply turn on repel and micro your guardian so it's always in their way. They won't be able to escape until they kill the guardian.

One thing to keep in mind - if they have 50 heavy cruisers or some obscene amount of units, make sure you have guardians or your caps will instantly die. Use the cap combo and as soon as it's finished, get the caps out of there with the help of the guardian's repair. All their heavy cruisers should be at about 50% health. Clean up with heavy cruisers/illuminators of your own.

Lastly, When fully upgraded, Crusaders have a crazy high dps (mid 30's). I think it's higher than even enforcers if I remember correctly.

The Deliverance Engine is an extremely powerful tool for Culture. You can flip worlds like pancakes with that thing! Unlike the Vasari superweapon (which is only situationally moderately powerful), the Advent and TEC Super Weapons are really quite powerful.

Also, use cap ships to repel culture and advance your own. Culture is like a match of "Tug of War", you need to put some fat kids on your end.

Oh, anyway, the reason I am posting is: Someone earlier in the thread, DreamMaster - reply #24, mentioned that the Advent need a big crunch of Credits and Resources at the beginning of the game, and didn't have it.

There, you are slightly wrong, my friend! The Progenitor Mothership's colonize ability, is simply fantastic!!! It gives you a 20%, 40%, or 60% DISCOUNT on Planetary Upgrades when used. The trick is, when you colonize a planet, you need to wait 15-20 seconds or so, until you see the discount amount pop up on it's infocard - BEFORE - you start upgrading. Once you see the discount on the info card (as I said, it's delayed a little), you will see the prices drop. When fully upgraded, the starting upgrades are only 170 credits, the maximum ones are about 330. The resources amounts go down in proportion too... Basically, once that discount kicks in, if you have enough resources stocked, you can queue all of the upgrades at low prices (you have something like 300 seconds to do it in, I think?). It takes so much of the pain away...

I have the feeling that this is probably overlooked by most, as the colonization abilities of the other races Cap Ships have nothing on this... especially the Vasari Cap Ship Colonize ability... gah, most useless thing ever... a measley 20% speed increase (non upgradeable) on structure building . Oooh, one second in five is shaved, Im sooooo impressed [/SARCASM].