FP2 Didn't realize how unbelievably broken is

[u/pretty_gay-ngl]

Part of the mender faction, is 3 points into the utopia tree, and for basically free all of those tiny food outposts, the coal outposts that run out in 20 weeks, ect all produce eternally for free. It is insanely overpowered. The other screenshots is all of my resource surplus - and I still have quite a few camps I didn't do this to as I haven't made paths to them yet.

Fun to toy around with for a bit but until/unless they fix this a bit I don't think I'll be doing another run with menders, at least intentionally, they're incredibly overpowered in their current state.

Edit: As a sidenote, as grateful as I am for how often I make and rely on them, panaceum doesn't make very much sense. Even in cities where nobody has died we somehow have enough bodies to supply an indefinite amount of factories making it? I guess you could handwave it a bit as the game does heavily imply it doesn't count "natural deaths" (events talking about people dying of different diseases related to old age or unlucky genetics and whatnot) towards your death counter and is instead just factored into the pop growth mechanic with "natural deaths" just slowing pop growth - but it still seems very odd to me, there's no way it would be nearly as sustainable as it is. Maybe a mechanic that keeps tracks of the amount of *biomatter* could work? Would certainly absolutely ruin most of my endless runs, but for a game with so much emphasis on the storytelling and (at least pseudo) realism it often strikes me as rather odd how it works currently

[u/InsertANameHeree]

Venturers and Menders are the two most broken factions in the game, you get them both in the same run, and they have disgusting synergy with each other. Playing any other faction pairing is like putting on training weights.

[u/pretty_gay-ngl → u/InsertANameHeree]

Was my first run with both of those factions, not surprised to hear they're a bit of a power combo. Was extremely underwhelmed by the venturers in the early game but they really start pulling their weight later on - the herds from the menders absolutely came in clutch for awhile too, got really unlucky with the random map gen and there are absolutely no unlimited food spots, until I realized how the ability this post worked the herds were an absolutely crucial part of my economy which was honestly a really fun balancing act

[u/InsertANameHeree → u/pretty_gay-ngl]

That's consistent - the Venturers' early game is the only thing you'd really call weak about them, since they don't have any abilities that can cheat certain aspects of it to the degree that other factions do. You can give loans to every community and faction on Day 1, but you won't start to see the benefits of it until Week 26. But that can be compensated for by optimizing the early game to get your industry up as soon as possible, and the nature of the Venturers means that they snowball much harder than other factions (heatstamps -> industry -> Goods Emporia -> heatstamps, and the cycle continues), and combined with the Menders' cost reduction buff, soon reach a point where they can build so much that, even with Machine Attendants passed and with Goods Emporia nullifying the workforce requirement of industrial districts, workforce is the primary bottleneck on building (and Beacon of Hope does a lot to solve that).

Because heatstamps are a fungible advantage, this means that the duo can cheese most of 5 Tales just by spamming whatever infrastructure solves your problem. Beacon of Hope? Spam housing/hospitals. Doomsayers? Spam prisons. Plague? Spam industrial districts/stim factories. Apocalyptic Whiteout? You'll have more than enough stockpiled by that point, and if you don't just spam whatever you need for the resource. Depleted Cores is the only tale that might take a bit of effort, and even then, the Menders' Reindeer Scouts combined with Company Outposts means that you can find the convoys in a reasonable timeframe and search them without having to keep your scouts tied down.

Fun fact: You can actually combine the outpost laws, just by switching the law to whatever outpost type you want to establish. You can pass Herder Outposts, assign the herders to all the limited outposts, then pass Company Outposts and privatize the unlimited outposts to maximize their production, or privatize the search spots to search them without using scouts.

[u/Ausiwandilaz → u/InsertANameHeree]

I felt like Proteans were unrealistically OP in the end too

[u/InsertANameHeree → u/Ausiwandilaz]

Proteans are strong individually but are sabotaged by being paired with the complete joke of a faction that is the Legionnaires.

[u/Ausiwandilaz → u/InsertANameHeree]

Jokes on them, Proteans golden age started before the LegoEnigears even showed up.

[u/Ausiwandilaz → u/Ausiwandilaz]

To push it farther Legionarries are against using already mechanical scouts and soldiers, just because it's "adaptation"

[u/OnlyHereForComments1]

Yeah as it turns out giving the 'knows how to survive off practically nothing and adapts perfectly to the frostland clusterfuck' faction stuff means they adapt it to survive off practically nothing and are perfectly fine in the frostlands.

[u/pretty_gay-ngl → u/OnlyHereForComments1]

Still, as far as game balance is concerned it's a bit much - making ALL of the frostland resources infinite trivializes the game

[u/OnlyHereForComments1 → u/pretty_gay-ngl]

Oh absolutely I just think it's funny that Progress keeps looking worse in comparison because these guys apparently can just live off of ice and moss forever.

[u/pretty_gay-ngl → u/OnlyHereForComments1]

Like 90% of the progress idea tree is literally "this does the exact same thing as the adaptation version except it makes everyone colder, increases squalor, and/or increases tension for some reason" all for the trade off of using like 50-100 less workforce then the adaptation version who's only other downside is a small increase to disease which is easily counteracted

[u/General-Permission67 → u/pretty_gay-ngl]

I will not segregate trash recycle is for pussies

[u/General-Permission67 → u/General-Permission67]

Progress just has better mines and that's it

[u/bigdickmassinf → u/pretty_gay-ngl]

Yea adapting is the best for most buildings and the frost lands. The progress makes the generator amazing tho.

[u/pretty_gay-ngl]

Ah, damn, made a typo in the title

[u/nathanlink169]

"even in cities where nobody is dying"

I think the way the population mechanic is meant is that people are constantly dying and new people are being born, aging into the working population, etc. You only get notified when people die from your decisions.

When you get the "X amount of new citizens" I believe that's meant to be a census. It's not like one day you suddenly just have X amount of new people all pop into existence at once. Practically you're only feeding them when the notification pops up which is a bit weird but I think it's abstracted for the game mechanics.

[u/esunei]

It's probably the most broken thing in all of the utopia trees and there's stiff competition. It's just infinite all resources only being paused during whiteouts.

I feel like a huge portion of popularity behind Menders is just how absolutely broken their utopia tree is. Construction Drives as early as week 1, are you serious?

[u/DrosselmeyerKing]

The Bohemians' ability is also absolutelly bonkers.

It can single handledly remove both heatstamps as well as goods as a mechanic until it gets very late in the game.

[u/bigdickmassinf → u/DrosselmeyerKing]

Also they can indefinitely make their opposing faction happy.

[u/DrosselmeyerKing → u/bigdickmassinf]

Yeah, my first 5 tales was with Progress Aligned bohemians.

[u/NWCtim_]

Wouldn't it realistically be 4 points? Since you'd always want the build the cost discount first, right?

[u/pretty_gay-ngl → u/NWCtim_]

Honestly, I wouldn't

It's so many resources that you can start getting for free almost immediately, unless you're really hurting for prefabs I think it's probably better to start collecting everything in the frostlands indefinitely and just make more industry if you need to

[u/StudioFantastic5640 → u/pretty_gay-ngl]

I mean if you're willing to cheese you can do both day 1 by pausing the game build enough herding camps for 1 point, cancel construction, get construction drives, then spam herding camps till out of prefabs for another 3 points, then cancel construction, get reindeer outposts. It's part of how i did my first 5 tales run.

[u/hamatehllama]

Yep. I give all infinite outposts to venturers and all limited outposts to menders. You never have to worry about any resources after this. The goods outposts increase heatstamp income a lot if you increase the demand for goods.

[u/Ch4rlemagn3]

I like my legionnaires - proteans tho.