My issues with the Astari

As it stands right now - do you have *ANY* idea how some of these pieces fit together?
Or are you still in the process of trying to create more pieces and then grab the whole box of blocks somewhere down the line and see how you can tetris it together?

The unifying end goal is clearly: "great game." However, largely arbitrary and abstract qualities such as that are highly amorphous and subject to observer-bias, which is fantastic because it means you can just make something that clicks with whomever and the goal is achieved. Everyone else hardly matters at that point because someone thinks it's great. I don't think they've ever said they were aiming to achieve objective greatness.

I've said it before this "no plan" development approach is crazy and you can see its fingerprints on all GODUS's mistakes. I completely understand the need to be flexible in the development but the throw mud against the wall approach just isnt cutting it. You are 18 months into the development of a game and you still don't have a view of what the finished game will look like. That is nuts.

I have been killing the little fuckers as fast as I can find them. I put swamps all over their home and burnt down all their trees. They now seem to be hiding from me, and I go to their island it says they are having a festival but they are nowhere to be seen near their temple. Maybe because I put a swamp on their temple and settlement.

Kill the infidel defectors!! METEOR STRIKE!!!!



Hehehehehe-hahahahahahah.

That was very satisfying and amused me to no end.

I had a blip when I had a set of 3 astari left and my 600 followers become unhappy for no good reason, that was not a very pleasant time. They seemed to get happy when I'd killed them off, my guys seemed to be saddened by it.

Yup, thats correct 13thGeneral - I've surmised as much before.
Apparently the Astari gain happiness at a much faster rate (or atleast lose less) when their population goes low.

I suspect it has to do with the statues. Statues supposedly give unhappiness to the followers within its radius.
The Astari have 4 statues, but as their population drops, so do the number of Astari affected by these statues.
Combine this with what I can only assume is a flat happiness increase on their part (countered with a constant happiness decrease for the player and only an active happiness increase) and there you have it.

The larger your civilization, the harder it will be to combat the Astari.
As you will be constantly dragged down by statues and other negative modifiers.
I don't even think that trees give a flat happiness increase constantly. But only when you place them down (just like the gifts do when activated every 10 minutes and beautify when used on any plot, be it abode, mine, farm or settlement)

There might be a flat happiness increase for the player aswell, but if there is that is insignificant when compared to the much larger size the player will become compared to the Astari. Flat values tend to scale poorly when confronted with large numbers going upwards.
Alternately it is possible that trees DO give a flat happiness increase in their radius, but that due to their costs (and most players destroying the majority of the native trees), the number of trees required is so high that it doesn't compare to the happiness lost by followers affected through the various other negative modifiers.

I don't know the exact values.
But it appears that killing someone, using the finger of god, sacrificing someone etc give a flat negative instantly.
Statues seem to give a flat negative overtime to their surroundings.
Trees *might* give a flat positive overtime to their surroundings.
Gifts and "good" godpowers give a flat positive when activated.

It surprises me that beautified land does not give a flat positive to the people living there, but that might be a balance issue (and/or an oversight).
With this all in mind I definitely thing that the Holy Forest power is most definitely far too expensive (,is misnamed...) and the cost scaling makes no sense - I suspect this has to do with the fact that Peter wants us to preserve existing trees rather than just removing them all to make space for houses.
But as previously remarked, he gives us no incentive to maintain existing terrain and makes it exceedingly rewarding to flatten (the game is build around flattening...)
Effectively what happens is that he gives us the tools to destroy and then says we'll get a cookie if we behave and not use them.


An interesting psychological experiment, but not exactly an entertaining video game to play.

Is it even possible (currently) to convert all the Astari, rather than kill them off?

I'm at about 130 converted / 130 remaining. I have not sacrificed anybody, and only used the FOG once to kill a small handful of Astari. Everything else has been by keeping my happiness up. My happiness is consistently at the very top (except when I don't play for a while, during which it plummets). But the Astari (who aren't as happy) get a huge boost when they hold their festival, so the last several times I haven't gained any more followers.

Right!?

And that was only one sect of traitors; there were three more just like that, flaoting face down aflame in an ocean crater, nuked into oblivion. I believe the count was 124 followers defecting (I missed screengrabbing the info alert) when I logged in - despite the previous day having logged out with 500+ happy people, to thier despicable (but still somehow happy) 23 irritating cowards.

About 10min after this photo I had my happiness topped out,  and theirs dropped to about 1/3 of the guage... but about 20min later they were back near the top again.

Hope it gets fixed soon, because that be some major bullshit.