I've been playing them a lot recently. And they are just so lack luster, especially when compared to how awesome the Advent Rebels(Even if they are awesome because of their titan their tech is still meh bit I'll discuss this in another thread.) are. I personally do not think they can be redeemed just but moving around techs. They have a lot of layered problems that need to be addressed. They are probably the worst faction right now because they cannot utilize their tech most of the time. This has to do with how difficult it is to actually be offensive with Culture due to the nature of how late the D-engine comes.
Lets first discuss what should the Advent Loyalist specialize in. For example, TEC-R is Offense(With a focus on economy), TEC-L is Defense(With a focus on Production), VR are Defensive Mobility, the VL have Offensive Mobility, and the AR have have this really strange niche I cannot describe as to me I feel the Advent were really poorly designed but this is about the AL. The Loyalist to me come off as a defensive race(That should be focused on Culture) due to the nature of culture being really hard to spread but this leaves culture with how it was. Underpowered.
1. Tech wise lets start early in the tech tree, they just have WAY to much culture spread, there is such a thing as to much. You get it naturally by upgrading culture, you get culture spread from all of your planets when you get global unity. A good start would be to get rid of Confluence of the Unity and replace it with something else. I personally think they should get an early game upgrade that gives a +5%/+10% increase to the allegiance of their planets(Maybe to balance this out it wont effect allied planets, its essentially an early AotU) this would help them in the economy department which the Advent have always been worse in. This will fix the overlapping of a useless tech and give assistance and maybe a good niche for the Advent Loyalist.
2. Planet for a Planet needs a better description it does not tell you how much it debuffs the enemy in the tooltip and it really needs to as I don't want to research an ability that could be useless. The same goes for Assimilated Populace.
3. Now lets talk about Global unity. My problem with this ability is that a lot of the time you will have culture spread from your tower that you initially placed. Placing Global unity is so cost ineffective its ridiculous. Personally I think that this should come really early like maybe if you don't like my Confluence of the Unity change, place Global Unity there. Global Unity needs to be powerful, needs to come early or it won't be any good.
4. The D-Engine: Personally I think it should come early just like how the TEC-L can get their Novalith early. Make this thing useful for once who cares if it is really strong early on. At least it will finally not suck maybe make it tier 6 and not require Total Assimilation. This way early d-engine pushes can be used before culture can spread to the outer colonies of an enemy system.
5. Cowards Submission: 5% chance to take over an enemy ship. Sorry but these kind of abilities are really bad. I would rather see something like a passive ability added to the ToC that for every second a frigate is around the ToC there is a 5% chance to take over an enemy unit would be SO much better.
6. And lastly Fury of the Unity. This upgrade is so bad its not even funny. So the Advent Loyalist have a +5% damage increase when in their culture from the beginning this can be upgraded to 10%. This is a tier 8 upgrade, that requires you to be in culture, AND you have to tech down the Harmony Tree to get an OFFENSIVE upgrade. And you only give them a +5% damage increase. The Vasari Loyalist get +70% with their wave upgrades, even with Ancient Retribution is freaking awesome but even with all its upgrade like the range increase it even when combined with Fury get NOWHERE near 70% damage. Buff this ability that is so limited in use. Even 20% would be acceptable maybe make it +10%/+20%(Which would add up to 25% due to the innate 5%).
I really hope the Devs read this because the Advent Loyalist are really bad :/, make culture broken for them. Why not? Twin Fortress is stupid broken the only actual way to get past it is to culture spam the enemy. Starbase Mobilization is broken so why can culture not be? Its like you guys are afraid to break the Advent. I LOVE YOU GUYS BUT PLEASE MAKE THE ADVENT LOYALIST DEFINED AND GOOD.