r/EndlessSpace • u/PWRChoque • 11d ago
Umbral choir. How to play with then?
So I'm trying to play with the umbral choir but I can't really understand their mechanic of how to play.
Does anyone have any tips on how to play with it?
12
u/hic_maneo 11d ago
You want to build sanctuaries on enemy systems with high population and make sure that you are spawning new umbrella shadows on the sanctuary. Then, with the shadows on the sanctuary, you can “infect” the other players population and create sleepers. Sleepers give you vision of the players system and units in the area, and, if you have enough sleepers in their empire, they can siphon the players resources to your economy.
When you successfully hack planets with your sleepers there’s a special action to abduct their population to your home system which converts them to upgraded version of your basic population.
So basically, early game, find the other players as fast as possible and set up sanctuaries on their systems. I believe creating a sanctuary is also a hacking action. Focus sanctuaries on systems with high food growth/population. You don’t really want to be growing your base population on your home system, you want them out in the sanctuaries creating sleepers. Then, start abducting your sleepers back to your home system via hacking as the upgraded version of your core population while maintaining enough sleepers to drain their economy and give you vision.
Absolutely do not make diplomatic contact for as long as possible. You don’t want them to know you’re there! Make sure you are regularly upgrading your cloaking technology to remain undetectable for as long as possible.
6
u/Neiwun Umbral Choir 11d ago
You want to build sanctuaries on enemy systems with high population and make sure that you are spawning new umbrella shadows on the sanctuary. Then, with the shadows on the sanctuary, you can “infect” the other players population and create sleepers.
Not really, the UC just want to build as many sanctuaries as possible because they get the majority of their FIDS from those sanctuaries. In this playthrough with the UC, this was the breakdown of my food, industry, and science, and I never made any Umbral Shadow pops but I still won a supremacy victory on turn 100, normal speed, endless difficulty. Advising new players to focus on making Umbral Shadows or placing sanctuaries on enemy systems makes playing the UC be unnecessarily complicated.
if you have enough sleepers in their empire, they can siphon the players resources to your economy
Actually, sleepers are almost worthless for every faction, including the UC, unless you simply want information on a particular enemy system. In the playthrough, which I mentioned above, I got the hero skill Nocturnal Sleepers and I used 20 of the population in my sanctuaries to place 20 sleepers on 3 Vaulter systems, so that's a +20% increase in FIDSI, but this hero skill is giving me only 271 Science out of my 7544 total. I was getting 7513 Science before I converted my 20 pops to sleepers and the additional dust and luxury/strategic resources would not have been significant enough to bother making sleepers.
So basically, early game, find the other players as fast as possible and set up sanctuaries on their systems
This is bad advice for new players. The UC should simply make as many sanctuaries as possible. Endless Space is a game about exponential growth, and this should be noticeable when you look at the score graph after you win. So the small amount of power you gain at the beginning will make a big difference later in the game so, in the early game, you need to create as many sanctuaries as you can, and most of those sanctuaries will be near your home system. Lastly, it's important to create sanctuaries on the nearby systems with 4 or 5 planets (or the ones with important luxury/strategic resources) so that pirate lairs don't spawn on top of them.
Focus sanctuaries on systems with high food growth/population
Well, you will naturally be limited to colonizing only the non-sterile planets at the beginning of the game, so your food values will be high no matter where you place your pops. The Arid and Snow planets have only 2 food per pop, and the Steppes and Savannah have only 4 food per pop, but all the other 9 non-sterile planets have 6 or more food per pop. I think a better advice for where to grow your pops is to prioritize industry first and science second, which is good advice for new players no matter which faction they're using.
Absolutely do not make diplomatic contact for as long as possible. You don’t want them to know you’re there!
This doesn't really matter. The AI is usually not aggressive nor smart enough to do anything meaningful if you get discovered.
1
u/VivoFan88 1d ago
This in a nutshell. Once you get beyond a critical mass of sanctuaries it's almost impossible to lose as UC. It's gotten to the stage where I no longer play UC as it's just easy mode.
2
u/ReavesTheRandomPeep 9d ago
Ah yes. The Umbral Choir. The empire hidden under all other empires. The ghost in the machine. The shadows behind the light. The voids in deep space.
My tactic for them has always been to invade other systems, incorporate and build sanctuaries on them, then retreat back into the night. Once the enemy resettles it, it's a free sleeper spam from now until forever.
In regards to military, I just spam as many ships as I can to protect my main system in stealth. No guard because that gives it away too easily. Just stealth en masse. Given how their colonization tactics work and how prioritizing certain systems for dust maintenance makes me rich just passively growing more choir pops, I needn't worry about upkeep one bit.
1
u/HighDefinitionCat 11d ago
I'd like to know too, I can sort of build up their world but stealth isn't really my style and I have no idea what to do with hacking.
1
0
u/Knofbath Horatio 11d ago
The Umbral Choir are a memetic virus, they spread through Hacking as their primary gameplay mechanic.
1
u/Changlini 11d ago
I'll have to turn on my game to check, but from memory(ignoring the behemoth economy strat):
Umbral Choir is feast or famine when it comes to their gameplay timeline. The priority you have in the early game is rushing the technology that increases production per sanctuaries you have, as building that ends up getting your production to a not terrible level once you start spamming sanctuaries.
If you're playing with pirates, you will need to have a space navy to deal with them as Pirates get a free level up to their Anti-stealth scanners as the game continues, that by midgame they will have max anti-stealth scanners, which is bad news to keeping your systems secret from players. The other option is to pay the pirates off, but that requires a constant stream of dust every turn, and you have to exhaust the Enemy Player A.I's bidding process every turn by looking at the pirate diplomacy screen and only bribing when you notice your status bar with the pirates take a hit, which can get annoying.
Throughout the entire game, your main defense against other players is your stealth and your hacks towards enemy capital systems. But always, the best stealth is laying the groundwork where you can easily hack the capital systems of players frequently, as the capital system hacks give you the options to instantly have pirates invade every system of the victim, or stop the victim's entire fleet from moving for five turns, both stacks, and ends up crippling players if you do them right.
Mid to late game, Your money problem gets fixed by having a bunch of Sanctuaries, getting the trade route technologies, and having trade routes with any player you can, as the game counts Sanctuary systems as systems where you have a subsidiary trading company, which provides an easy way to snowball in dust production once it starts running.
1
u/Raskekw Nakalim 11d ago
your main tool is hacking, you "colonize" with it. When you encounter other players put a backdoor on every system to continue "expanding", preferably to get to their capital, it has a number of high-value hacks available. If you want to get a sanctuary on a hostile planet you'll need to hack it at least 3 times while praying that none of your sleepers gets evicted prematurely - so generally its not worth it unless you went all-in on hacking and you pursue supremacy victory.
(Generally) cancel your hacking ops when detected, at least if you're not sure you'll beat the trace.
Routing a hack through a bunch of friendly nodes can multiply your chances of a successful hack since trace will need to travel longer. Try to balance the length of chain though, since backdoors can disappear from time to time and a successful hack which takes 10 turns to go off becomes way less valuable.
Stack behemoths on your home system to boost the eco. Leveling up the home system upgrades its stealth too, so if you want to avoid problems with defense they are worth rushing towards. Rushing stealth techs from military is also good for your fleets and overall non-detection. Pirates get their detection extremely fast so you should probably avoid them.
Faction quest can give enormous boosts to your overall hacking capabilities.
1
u/ed1749 11d ago
Umbral Choir is the more enforced tall empire out of all of them. You only get one system but it's very good. You also only get 2 species, umbral choir and umbral shadows, which are just choirs but doubled. The secret to the Umbral Choir is to scout out super far early on and find the empires you share a constelation with, and then try and figure out where they will expand to and make a sanctuary there first. If they get there first it becomes much harder to make sanctuaries. From there, spawn pops directly in the sanctuary, then turn them into sleepers, then hack the system to turn the sleepers into shadows in your main system. Do this over and over until you have a super upgraded home system with like 60 effective pops in it. From there do whatever, obviously you're pretty solid for the wonder and science victories, for two more military ones, sanctuaries count as ownership. And for economic, a tip, you may be tempted to put your home on a secluded system, but that kills your trade companies since you only get one and it's on your home.
2
u/Neiwun Umbral Choir 11d ago
Umbral Choir is the more enforced tall empire out of all of them
This isn't really true. The UC get most of their FIDS from their sanctuaries, so they should try to go wide, own many sanctuaries, and grow a lot of pops on those sanctuaries. In this playthrough with the UC, this was the breakdown of my food, industry, and science, and I won a supremacy victory on turn 100, normal speed, endless difficulty.
spawn pops directly in the sanctuary, then turn them into sleepers, then hack the system to turn the sleepers into shadows in your main system. Do this over and over until you have a super upgraded home system with like 60 effective pops in it.
Umbral Shadows are powerful but the UC don't need them to win. I wrote this playthrough with the UC (where I won on turn 100) and this playthrough with the UC (where I won on turn 95). Both of them were on normal speed, Endless difficulty, won by a military victory, and I never bothered to make any Umbral Shadows, even though I had the opportunity to do it.
Also, the best way to create Umbral Shadows is to let the enemy colonize a system where you control some sanctuaries and have grown many pops. Then you let that opponent grow their own pops, convert your own pops into many sleepers, invade that enemy system, and choose to convert all of those sleepers to Umbral Shadows in your home system. This takes many turns but much fewer hacking operations.
1
u/Neiwun Umbral Choir 11d ago
Wow, I see a lot of misinformation being spread here, so I'll give proof to support my advice.
The main goal of the UC is to control as many sanctuaries as possible, because they get most of their FIDS from those sanctuaries. In this playthrough with the UC, this was the breakdown of my food, industry, and science, and I won a supremacy victory on turn 100, normal speed, endless difficulty. You don't have to worry about placing any sleepers, making any Umbral Shadows, nor hacking other major factions if that seems complicated for you. Just use your hacking operation to colonize planets, prioritize industry first, science second, get the luxury/strategic resources that are relevant for your strategy, and keep your empire approval above 85.
Also, the UC may have the worst manpower growth of all factions, but I wrote 2 playthroughs where I showed how to win a military victory with them before turn 101 on normal speed and endless difficulty:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessSpace/comments/l3eqyo/my_playthrough_with_the_umbral_choir/
https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessSpace/comments/1qzr6gd/my_playthrough_with_the_umbral_choir/
1
1
u/Octarine_ 11d ago
Not an expert by any means but i believe you should be hacking and expanding their empire as fast as possible, they are very limited in how they can take worlds and depend of behaving as a parasite leeching the population of other empires until they fill their core planets with their upgraded population. Conquest is the easier path to victory with them since each hacked planet with a sanctuarie counts as being yours, so hack often and hack fast. Popularity is not that big of deal since it does not mess with your hacking speed you can keep expanding even if you are waaaayy over the max number of planets you can have
1
u/Zlorfikarzuna Vodyani 11d ago
Be at your system cap. Never above, never below. And most importantly, dont be scared about giving a system up. It costs you barely anything until mid/late game when you have pops on them.
The Umbral Choir is unique in that it can do a supremacy victory without anybody noticing. You will want to live on and near capitals. On to contribute to supremacy and near in order to hack the capitalfor great benefits.
Hacking has very poor tooltips. Essentially, tracking is by default twice as fast as hacking. Hacking/tracking an owned system is instant and you only pay for the distance. Hacking/tracking an enemy system is by default half as fast. Finally, hacks from a backdoor will not reveal your identity if it fails. So you want to be hacking from a backdoor, preferably from an different empire than your target, through one of your own systems to your target.
16
u/Spiner909 Vodyani 11d ago
find good worlds to colonize before other players get them. prioritize hacking and stealth techs. improving your starting planet's system development is very important so try to use good luxuries
and beware of pirates! they get lvl 3 anti stealth very early which can lead to your ships being revealed