u/MiningToSaveTheWorld

I dunno why it happened but I got NRA on like 4 lobbies right now/recently and in all of them I have no clue when to use the Hero. I used it to quadruple tech on one lobby to win off the 2 of 4 colour 2 pointer. In other 3 lobby I'm sitting on the hero wondering when to pop it and in 2 of them game is going to end soon. I assume main usage is to not get LS stalled or spam SO rerolls? Just feels weird because I'm holding off on the relic too. I assume I missed some good openings for it previously. In one lobby I got 2 SO in the bag and I'm maxed on tokens so dunno when I'd even use it at this point

I saw a Yin with IE Hero Styx and spawn 8 inf there which was pretty sick, nobody even tried to go there after that. Other than that, I'm looking at most games and my fleet is already maxed out most of the time so I couldn't spawn much with it even if I wanted to. Like I guess you top up on Fighters and fill in Infantry on planets as you go with it?

8P game with Yssaril, Sol, Titans, NRA, Hacan, and Muaat: what do I aim for other than just taking what the situation demands/offers? I know it will depend on situation but would like to have an idea on how to pick the general best faction techs when they all S tier if I can choose. Just imagining having SE2 and AC2 already and winning a battle against Yssaril or NRA would I ever swap for Mageon or Prefab?

Afaik the Hyperlane connect tiles so they become adjacent to eachother curious if this has any consequences on any of the effects on the game? Would be good to know for my draft as we're playing with Hyperlanes and not sure if it has any impacts on factions that care about adjacency for effects

~20 games deep and being new at the game, for the first 10 lobbies I drafted my faction first most of the time as I thought that was more important. After getting more game experience, I started prioritizing my slice almost always, though sometimes if I'm like 5th or 6th draft order and 4 of the good slices already taken and last 3 are comparable, not much risk in grabbing a faction first. I am almost always 5th/6th speaker order though with all that and I'm starting to realize that maybe I should almost last pick Faction for a few reasons:

1. Speaker order provides biggest boost to scoring R1, which I find to be one of the most important things. Most people can score every round after R2 so being one of the few that score R1 can snowball into a lot of easyish wins. For this reason, I should prioritize Slice/Speaker generally

2. Most factions can be counter picked. A lot of S tier factions can be hard countered by a B or C or D tier faction. A lot of S tier factions are still gimped by having bad slices, so if you first pick them you still suffer against lower ranked factions. LIZIX is a great example where I generally see them snowball as they are often a late/last pick with good slice and speaker order.

All of the above is just general, like obviously if you're 6th pick in the draft order and the other 5 players first picked a slice, you can last pick your slice from the 2 remaining options and grab Speaker/ Faction in your first two picks.

Would post a screenshot but worried about getting doxed, but basically I'm at end of R2 and Ghosts has just 1 of his adjacent tiles. The other 2 games I had with Ghosts same thing happened. I understand about the Mallice rush thing but don't understand why they are so slow to occupy their slice? Should I just treat their slice as open territory or what? In the other lobby they still hadn't occupied the slice by R4 but had ships all over the map

Curious how I should view the Ghost slice as maybe I can get an extra tile as their neighbor or via Wormhole access?

I'd like to get better at the game as I still struggle with a lot of game sense and understanding tempo and knowing what to do in various scenarios. I spend a lot of time playing with very experienced players so would like to catch up and have a lot of commute time to listen to something

Kinda at the point I've listened to 3/4 the faction guide podcasts so have good coverage on most of the factions in the game. Other than that I saw value in the relic and tech tier lists as it helps me value different relics on the board as well as value of going for relics later on versus selling frags, as well as prioritize technology. I've tried listening to a few tournaments but the formats I saw was very boring and not very informative from a educational perspective to be better at the game.

I think I'd like something like War of the Ring Champ or Doruks reviews of their own games in War of the Ring as they go through and explain their thought process in a condensed fashion (going through a 6 hour game in like 40 mins to an hour) but not sure if something like that exists in TI4. I really learn a lot from those videos for War of the Ring as they are speculating about action cards and why they made each decision and would be nice to hear a good player voice their thoughts about each move retrospectively so I can try to get some nuggets of wisdom.

I always translate all that extra resources into big fleet and try to ask nicely for a Support. If nothing works out and I ask less nicely it always ends poorly with player basically saying 'go ahead I don't care.' Even if they were in a solid position to win if they just took the deal. From the other side if someone tries to do that with me I'm actually the one offering my Support as it just makes sense to keep my neighbour feeling like they have a chance rather than space risking me. But when I'm the one with nothing scorable people smell blood in the water and don't want to do any deals. They just say 'I'll torpedo your game.' And I'm like 'What game, I already have 0 chance to win at this point.' Is there a better way to negotiate this to try to get back into the game?

Normally I see the NRA Mechs are sitting on a planet when it's attacked. Pretty sure we've been playing it wrong IRL as the Mechs were fighting in space when the system is invaded. On a closer read, I realized now that they already have to be in the space area to be used as ships. This means it's generally an offensive ability only right? Just feels hard to reconcile with their other usage with giving you 2 rolls for Explores.

I always feel like most of the AC are worth less than a TG but then every other game I have a game saving card. I wonder now if I'd have more game winning cards if I invested more in the AC deck... Just also feels like the power of a token used in any other way is generally higher. A strat used in Diplo is generally about $6-8 guaranteed. Very rare for 2 AC to be worth that much.

Has anyone put much thought into this? I see some players that really focus on following Politics but not sure how often it pays off

I never know how to make this faction work. I understand the expensive permanent Warfare aspect, the ability to copy all Commanders on the board, and the extra fleet cap for combat.

But because I don't have any abilities that make me intrinsically superior at combat or have more movement without double spending tokens, I find I can get bullied by much weaker factions like Arborec.

CR also doesn't have much combat buffs but I feel like movement wins games and the commander grants so much economy I can beat a lot of factions just off that. I win a lot with CR and often pick them over Mahact despite Mahact being considered stronger in the meta.

The main issue I have with Mahact is that I generally have a weaker slice with them as they are an early pick faction. But if I don't get high influence I can't leverage their main advantage that makes them S tier. I've had a 9 influence slice before but that came with being low resource (3) so I didn't have a big enough fleet to do anything meaningful with the permanent warfare.

In podcasts I always hear about last round Mahact spamming 3 moves with the same fleet but I never have a bank of tokens to do that when I play.

As for the hero, it never did anything to help me win. Like I've winslayed with it but as a distant third that just lets second runner up win.

Curious if someone has a better idea about this faction so I can have the right approach or at least a better idea to start. Thanks!

Playing through all 3 campaigns on minion Necro for this season and am almost done first campaign @ level 50. Have been playing minion Necro and Warlock in D2R and both feel amazing in D2R. I also really liked summon Druid with all the animals and the ravens feel really special too.

Something just isn't jiving with Necro in D4 like just the way the skeletons behave doesn't feel cool and the curse usage doesn't feel as strategic like in D2 where you are mixing and matching to fit the situation like a general, plus corpse explosion making you contribute a TON to the fight. I assume it will feel cooler when I get better aspects to augment each minion like in D3 where the skills become way cooler with endgame gear.

Curious on experienced minion players in D4, which classes do you like most, what are your thoughts on the questions?

Spending a token plus committing forces to take a 1/1 system, what are your thoughts on that? Sometimes due to them being lower value I don't even get around to it til round 3, at which point I'm practically breaking even on it? Is it worth it just for the explore and possibility of it factoring into an objective?

Just confirming there's no minion cosmetics in the game? I assumed there would be. Not a big fan of how they look was hoping to get a force that looks better. I did some light googling which said no but just wanted to confirm with a human just incase

Have been on a bit of a Naga bender and got some pretty crazy winstreaks like 15 in a row a few times this month. I know it's Turbo but kinda like seeing how far I can get it. I'm a 'Sniper main' so I know Sniper very well and most of my losses are against this hero. When I play Sniper vs enemy Naga I seem to not have enough damage to handle all the illusions.

For some reason as Naga I can't seem to burst Sniper down. I tried SEing him but he just Hurricane pike me and melt me+ Illusions easily somehow. I assume his team playing well is almost as important but yeah just interested in how I adjust itemization vs Sniper. Normally he's snowballing but I can handle any other hero in the game basically, even Sven. I pretty much always Manta, Bloodthorn, Heart, Butterfly (unless other evasion in which case Skadi), BKB. My flex items are either Pipe for mass magic damage or Silver Edge for closing distance.

Curious if someone can lay this out for me. Tech path, can you do it with suboptimal slice (lots of single planet systems), how do you go for a win?

I assume you want a few ships do you even bother with capacity or just go for a certain fleet composition to support this? I assume C2 is still on the menu if even just for the Hero play later on.

Assuming you're late/ last picking this when do you draft for this assuming 7/7 and you'll never be forced to Sardakk? I assume you have a good slice if playing Sardakk or at least Speaker/2nd pick.

Interested in learning more about this as it sounded interesting. Thanks

Curious for some opinions on DA. I'm thinking of taking it in one lobby in particular. Seems to have great potential on medium engagements where it isn't so small the status phase repair is enough to block most damage but isn't so large your whole fleet gets one shot anyways and it ends up coming up to a single hit blocked. The more I think it through it seems incredibly niche unless I got a decent amount of sustain behind a good fighter swarm to take turns tanking between combat rounds.

Half of this faction feels pretty bad, but the Commander seems pretty insane for getting techs? I also see the Hero pop off for snatching Frac. Everything else seems pretty garbage. Every time I see them play they attempt to murder hobo then get eliminated/ near eliminated pretty quick. Thoughts on this faction?

Curious on your thoughts about how to manage a tied VP lead situation? I'm in a few lobbies right now where me and another player are ahead 2-3 VP and I can easily winslay the other contender. But maybe better to let them live? For example we both 6 VP and rest of lobby 3 VP. Best to let him live a bit longer right so I don't get 5v1?

Which B, C, or D tier faction is secretly S tier in your opinion?

For me I think Winnu is insane every time I see it played