Race characteristics - what's hot... what's not

[Jason2]

I am curious about what people choose when they make a race. I tend to play 5000 point games and load about 5 computer players and max them out plus select high for number of empires.

I tend to crank research, resource production, maintenance etc. Focusing on the mainstays of the game - I rarely select any of the special characteristics except two.

The first is 25% more supply It makes a big difference in terms of scouts and colony ships ... heck, even battle fleets.

Lately, I've started selecting emotionless... I kept having my populations shift to indifferent in many games (regardless of my 'type' ... bloodthirsty or peaceful...). Choosing emotionless has led to a pretty stable atmosphere... especially since I can declare war or make peace with impunity.

Anyways.... what do the rest of you select??

Jason2

[Nyx]

My favorite race to play has psychic or temporal tech (I switch back and forth pretty often), advanced storate, 50% physical strength, 50% cunning, 50% politics, some mix of any/or all of the following: 110% intelligence, 105% happiness, 105% attack, 105% defense, 105% mineral harvesting, and all the rest dumped into construction.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[Emperor Zodd]

In my opinion 5000 points is way too many.

I only play with 2000 racial points.
The most I would ever use would be 3000.

You can't make the races strong in every Category in my opinion. They need to be weak in some areas.

To me,playing with 5000 points is like playing poker with half the deck filled with wild cards.(Childish)

[This message has been edited by Emperor Zodd (edited 09 February 2001).]

[Jason2]

Childish!?!?! Why... you .... erk.... (Jason holds his breath until blue)... You're smellier than a Xiatian's behind! (hehe that'll show 'im)....

[Drake]

I use 50% happiness and usually go with temporal tech. Not only do you get the faster build rate, the vacation service facility has double the effect of the other +happiness facilities.

I pick 81% env resistance. 5% drops you 2% in pop growth, independant of anything else, contrary to common sense. Also, the cutoff is at the 0/1 and 5/6 points, so if you round things off, you hurt yourself more.

With the points from env. resistance, I set reproduction higher. I get enough to set reproduction to 110%, gaining a +6% total, and get 225 pts for free. If you don't need a higher growth rate, it's a great bargain.

Advanced storage. I can't imagine not playing with it anymore. It TOTALLY blows away increasing my individual resource productions, because those bonuses are summed with population and happiness bonuses before being multiplied with your production. Adding 20% more facilities? That's a boost to your base production - all other modifiers also affect the +20% fully without getting a reduced value. PLUS you can siphon off population from your homeworld early without dropping below 2000K, and losing your 10% population bonus. Another major plus.

I wouldn't dream of playing emotionless. 3000 points?!?!? Build some pacification facilities if you have problems, the tech is super cheap. Plus, you ensure you'll never get the +20% bonus from a jubilant pop. If you are getting your butt kicked and your pop is upset, would you be better off spending 3000 points on making sure they don't care, or 3000 points on making sure you'll be doing the butt-kicking?

Giving construction a boost is also nice. With temporal and a nice bonus, a huge planet can build more than 10K per turn worth of stuff. Even more important with emergency build going to be set at 150% in the future.

-Drake

[edit]
hmm, I can't add. 10% from repoduction rate minus 3% from 15-19 point drop in environmental resistance = 7%, not 6% growth rate increase. All those years of college put to good use!

[This message has been edited by Drake (edited 10 February 2001).]

[Tomgs]

Advanced storage and propulsion expert seem better to me than most of the other racial traits. If you like having an offensive punch Organic is the way to go. Temporal and Psycic have some benifits. Religious is marginally useful (I use it a lot actually but its not as flashy as the others). I almost never use Crystalurgy so I can't comment much on it the armor with shield option seems to work well with it but the weapons aren't that great except against organic races.

I usually also knock down strength and cunning a bit and up my intelligence, reproduction, and maintaince. I usually take a few points off of trade, organic, and radiation production. Unless you play an organic race its real easy to produce enough organics with few facilities anyway.

Even with strength and cunning around 80 to 85 you can still sucessfully invade and use intell you just have to use a bit more troops or intell points.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 10 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 10 February 2001).]