[Ed Kolis]

The current scheme for determining the cost of racial characteristics is too conducive to min-maxing - look how many empires have +20 this and -20 that, because most of the thresholds are at plus or minus 20! Here's an idea to encourage more diversity in empire design:

Instead of specifying a base cost, a high and low threshold, a high and low cost, and an absolute minimum and maxmum, you would specify only four numbers in the data files: a base cost, an exponent, and the minimum and maximum. Then the cost to raise an attribute by 1 point would be calculated like this:

base cost * (current attribute level / 100) ^ exponent

Thus, if your base cost for an attribute was 100, and your exponent was 2 (a quadratic relationship), then to raise the attribute from 100 to 101 would cost 100 * (100 / 100) ^ 2 = 100 points, but to raise it from 80 to 81 would cost 100 * (80 / 100) ^ 2 = 64 points, and to raise it from 149 to a godlike 150 would cost 100 * (149 / 100) ^ 2 = 222 points, with a gradual progression in between instead of a sudden jump at 80 and 120.