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

[Taqwus]

Agreed with the happiness levels not changing under Emotionless. The third non-neutral empire assimilated in a game actually had a fairly large number of colonies that must have been rioting... Bugger.

At least it didn't seem to spread, but yup -- it's a nasty little feature/bug.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[bmills]

I am currently experimenting with the "highly religious" thingy, and am surprised that no one has mentioned it. You get some really powerful facilities, most of which exert their effects system-wide. You get facilities which boost population growth, happiness, production, combat, and the nature shrine improves *all* resource values on *all* planets in its system! I have planets with resource Ratings ranging from 150% to 201%.

[Drake]

Whether or not religious is a good pick depends on the other special tech areas you might take. Religious overlaps in a number of areas.

While the nature shrine is a cheap way to get a nice early boost, since planetary engineering facilities stack, you can compensate by building more per planet.

I used religious tech for the TG contest, but think that ended up being a mistake. I'll have to try some games against other players and reevaluate it then.

-Drake

[Tomgs]

I like the religious tech area because it is not all powerful but does have some good infrastructure effects. The war shrine and death shrine aren't that useful yet but if the AI gets more powerful they might be very useful. The Religious Talisman is very powerful for Beam weapons making them at least considered over missles in the mid to late game especially on the larger ships that can use larger mounts. Its not an offensive powerhouse like Organic (which also has some good infrastructure and armor making it IMO the most powerful of the racial picks). But I don't always want to have the most powerful race in the game sometimes its better to play the race that has to capture aliens to sacrifice to its death shrines (they should make a negative population growth modifier for the death shrine facility).

[Marty Ward]

I have a question about the racial traits and the bonus traits.
If you pick the advanced trait that boosts your shipyard rate by 25% and then boost the shipyard rate on the characteristic screen by 10% what is your net effect, 137% or 135%?
Is it worth doing this?

[Drake]

It'd be +35% for planetary SYs and +10% for ship SYs. I like to boost the construction rate, because the faster I can build, the faster I expand.

You're better off deciding what you will usually build, and tailoring your construction rate to best take advantage of that IMO.

-Drake

[Marty Ward]

Thanks