PBW Racial Point Set Up Styles

[Atrocities]

I was wondering how many of you set up your races at PBW to use 2000 racial points. I know how I do it, and it has proven effective in the past, but it took me a long while to figure it out. With a lot of new players around, I thought it would be nice to post some pointers and suggestions for them. That is if any of you are willing to give up any of your secrets.

[Fyron]

Make sure to take plenty of penalties in areas that do not matter.

[Pax]

Physical strength can usually eb bottomed out to 50%.

In games with fewer players, Political Savvy can likewise be bottomed to 50% (however, in games with LOTS of players, political savvy becomes more useful).

Farming, and even Refining, can often be lowered to 50%-75%.

Repair can almost always be lowered to 50% (in fleet battles, either everythign dies, or, you lose a bunch of shisp and have ONE or TWO damaged ships).

If you don't plan on OFFENSIVE Covert activity, bringing cunning down to 50% is a fairly safe bet (with Counter Intel 3, someone would have to devote three times as many intel points as you produce, to break your "nothing but defense" output ... which means they probably have at LEAST 50% more FACILITIES making intel points -- if THEIR cunning is sset to 100%! And that's if they're not defending at all. To match your defense, they'd probably have 2x as many Covert facilities, empire-wide.

That should be a decent start on mining for "free" and/or "cheap" points. 8)

[Zarix]

Reducing cunning could be risky. Someone with aggressive intelligence plan could prevent someone with 50% cunning from reseaching intel 3 with technological sabotage.

[spoon]

Here is a good base to start with. I think this leaves you with 200 points to add to what you will. Construction can be lowered back to 120 for another 500 points (I just like the even numbers you get for your build queues with 125% + Hardy Industrialist). I've been playing around with adding more to happiness, as well...

Physical Strength: 50
Intelligence: 120
Cunning: 80
Environmental Resist: 50
Reproduction: 100
Happiness: 100
Aggressiveness: 120
Defensiveness: 120
Political Savvy: 80
Mining: 120
Farming: 50
Refining: 80
Construction: 125*
Repair: 50
Maintenacance: 110

Advanced Traits:
Advanced Storage
Hardy Industrialist

And don't forget your Culture Types. I prefer:
Long Games: Merchant
Short Games: Engineers
Cutthroat Games: Bezerker

For Happiness Type, leave the default (Peacefull). The others can cause unexpected happiness problems...

[gravey101]

You will probably want to raise Reproduction to cover the loss taken from lowering ER. As I recall each 3rd point of ER drops 1 point of reproduction, so lowering ER by 20 points to 80, and raising reproduction by 6 points gives no net effect and a return of 350 racial points.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Zarix:
Reducing cunning could be risky. Someone with aggressive intelligence plan could prevent someone with 50% cunning from reseaching intel 3 with technological sabotage.

Then their aggressive intel attacks are pretty much wasted.

You will probably want to raise Reproduction to cover the loss taken from lowering ER. As I recall each 3rd point of ER drops 1 point of reproduction, so lowering ER by 20 points to 80, and raising reproduction by 6 points gives no net effect and a return of 350 racial points.

No. Every 5 points of ER = 1 point of Reproduction and 1 point of Happiness.

[ March 03, 2003, 20:19: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[gravey101]

ah, ok - thanks.
I certainly wasn't aware that lowering ER lowered happiness.

[Fyron]

It is hard to tell, as the effects on overall anger levels are not very great. But, it is there.

Lowering ER to 50 (or 80) is actually a bad idea. Lowering it to 51 (or 81) only gives 10 less points, but you get 1 less penalty in reproduction and happiness. Those 10 points are not worth the cost of increasing Reproduction and Happiness to compensate.

[ March 03, 2003, 20:30: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[spoon]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

Lowering ER to 50 (or 80) is actually a bad idea. Lowering it to 51 (or 81) only gives 10 less points, but you get 1 less penalty in reproduction and happiness. Those 10 points are not worth the cost of increasing Reproduction and Happiness to compensate.

There you go. Learn something new everyday... I'd revise my earlier suggestion to only lower ER to 51... And add a few points to reproduction.