Racial attributes in PBW games

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by trooper:
political savvy : totally useless, has to be set to the minimum.

Unless you are talking about a two player game I would have to strenously disagree with you here. T&R treaties with five other empires that are roughly the same size as yours effectivly doubles the economic output of yoru race. Dropping your savvy will put you in a serious hole against the other empires. However, in a small game where you aren't likely to make treaties, minimizing this is just fine.

Farming and refining aptitude : not critical ressources, must be low.

"Must be low", not at all. "Can be low", most definetly. It depends on your style. For myself I prefer dedicating all my early game colonies to research almost exclusivly. I have tried dropping my organic and radioactive numbers down and I consistantly end up running short in those resources at inoportune times. However, it is entirely possible to drop them and make up the difference by building some resource facs on your early colonies instead. So it's a matter of what you like I guess.

Repair aptitude : not many effects on the game, must be low.

You can usually offset lowering the repair apptitude by building repair bases. However this requires adjusting your research priorities to get repair. In a low tech start with one starting planet, this could be a problem. Again, it depends on the game and your style.

Intelligence, cunning, combat skills, maintenance : have bo be set to the maximum.

COmbat skills are and maintenance are a big plus as is intelligence. However setting all these to there maximums is going to cost more than you are going to get back from decreasing your other characteristics. If by maximum you mean as high as you can afford, then yes. Many people don't raise their intelligence, prefering instead to just build more research faciliites. Of course if you've already decreased your resource production that may not be an option for you.

Cunning is not one I would recomend increasing, unless your plan is to be a race that depends heavily on aggresive intel projects. And if you are, prepare to be disaponted. It's a lot easier to defend then attack with intel. You can make up the difference between you and the other guys by just building more intel faciliites. Some people suggest that cunning can be safely minimized. That's probably true, but you'd have to build even more facilities then. A more reasonable tactic I think is to just leave that one to it's default setting.

Geoschmo

[trooper]

hummm, it seems I've talked too fast. Nothing is so simple in SE IV, I should have known !

[Grandpa Kim]

Originally posted by trooper:
hummm, it seems I've talked too fast. Nothing is so simple in SE IV, I should have known !

Welcome to the club, trooper. I put my foot in it about every other post. LOL

One more point though. High happiness can be a godsend. Helps a lot to get your people out of the riot zone quickly during a lull in hostilities, allowing you to attack again before your opponent is ready.

[Pax]

Originally posted by trooper:
Farming and refining aptitude : not critical ressources, must be low.

Farming becomes more critical for races with Organic Manipulation.

Refining becomes more key in some mods (particularly, I've found, in P&N 3.1b).

Intelligence, cunning, combat skills, maintenance : have bo be set to the maximum.

50% Cunning is usually sufficient for a race that doesn't plan to go on the offense in terms of covert operations. Unless a 150%-Cunning race decides to go pure offense, neglecting their own defense, focusses solely on you, AND has more Intel facilities than you ... you'll be fine.

[ February 04, 2003, 15:55: Message edited by: Pax ]

[Fyron]

Mods do not alter the problems in the unmodded game.

[Nodachi]

Originally posted by some guy who claims he's Imperator Fyron

Mods do not alter the problems in the unmodded game.

That depends on what you consider a problem.

If someone thinks that colonies develope too fast then they can play Proportions, or if someone doesn't like the easy resupply in the stock game they can play P&N.

Back to the topic , in a multiplayer PBW game you'll encounter a plethora of strategies and just as many counter-strategies. IMO as long as you have fun and walk away having learned something new you'll improve as a player everytime.

[Fyron]

Yes, but playing that mod does not alter the unmodded game any. The unmodded game is still the same. Most PBW games use the unmodded game.