I'd have to say their titan needs a little work on the L6 ability but overall i find AL a reliable race to play.. honestly i play them the most now. Considering early game they have very few things that are different from AR, i really like Ancient Retributions, it's very useful to have. I consider them the best spot to eco in and culture push the middle of a 5s or 4s. They are a utility race imo and their titans abilities only work well with proper research and fleet synergy.
Offensive culture isn't really viable against competent enemies even with the advent loyalist bonuses. And frankly a vasari or TEC player are undoubtedly a better ECO spot then any advent faction.
Ancient retribution is definitely great- the problem is that it's pretty much all the advent loyalists really have going for them.
I don't remember the techs, but there are two that i'm rather fond of. L6 titan, take a planet you're fighting at.
This gives you increased damage in the grav well, it also means that when the enemy retreats you have a 5% chance to take their ships, that is if your titan hasn't take them already.
Sadly this doesn't work. The 15% damage boost(assimilated populace) only occurs when you colonize a planet the old fashioned way. planets stolen with Repossession(the level 6 titan ability) do not activate the 15% damage bonus.
Also The 5% ship steal steals ships after they go into phase space- which means the 5% you steal is very quickly surrounded by the 95% you didn't on the other side of the jump. Unless you utterly decimated the retreating fleet you're probably not going to get to keep the 5% you steal.
I got my titan into a fight with 100 frigates, it stole 40 of them.. nuff said? No? When you take the planet, you also generate culture which would give you another 5% damage increase and then mitigation providing you have the culture researches.
Which is great if the opponent is polite enough to send their frigates into spitting distance. A carrier fleet can easily kite the coronata so that it never gets close enough to steal ships. In fact carrier fleets allow the opponent to circumvent 2 of the coronata's abilities as Suppression Aura does nothing to mitigate bomber damage. Honestly if the opponent sees a high level coronata and tries to fight you with lots non-carrier frigates they are doing it wrong in general. And frankly it's not like using that sort of somposition is much of a drawback as carriers are in general the quintessential late game frigate.
The Coronata has a very high potentials strength- the problem is that it's usefulness can be largely circumvented by using the above strategy, which smart players will do.
And for the 5% damage increase: you do realize other factions gain +15-30% damage boosts several tiers lower with comparable activation conditions to "in friendly culture". other T8 techs allows their factions to eat worlds, building multiple starbases, build mobile starbases, or gives tremendous combat boosts(such as the VR T8 hull & armor tech). +5% damage sort of pales in comparison.
My only request with AL to change would make the planet stealing permanent on the titan, and for the planet to come upgraded. To my knowledge it's the only ability on any titan that ends up costing you money.
--------------Edit-------------
I also stand by the argument if you're good, it's not a problem. Because at this point you would've already understood the way you play this race effectively.
By this logic nothing is ever underpowered. Underpowered isn't about being unable to ever win- heck every race has all the basic tools they really need. Underpowered is about a faction not bringing as much to the table as other factions resulting in a disadvantage against equally skilled players.
At present the advent loyalists simply don't have gooies comparable to other factions. A lot of their techs are cool in concept and have a ton of potential, but were poorly implemented.
A good example is how the 15% damage boost of assimilated populace is not applied by worlds instantly stolen with repossession.
----------Edit#2-----------
AL have an eco boost due to not requiring temple slots.
Not much of one. Most game you chould only be building a few culture buildings over the course of a game. And frankly 1-2 of those few are generally built before you reach T5 and can research global unity. Yes it does help economy a bit, but the advent loyalists still have a far inferior economy to any TEC/vasari faction- this is not really a problem though, the advent by DESIGN have the weakest economy- the vasari and especially the TEC are SUPPOSED to have a stronger economy then the advent- and they do.
All that said, while I may be sounding a bit exasperated the advent Loyals could be brought up quite a bit just by fixing the poor implementations(Things like actually making Repossession apply the assimilated populace +15% damage boost or making Coward's submission steal ships before they jump rather then after). Honestly with the possible exception of Fury of the Unity, very few of the advent loyal's techs actually suffer from numbers that are too low- most of them just suffer from poor or incomplete implementations.
