Race Design

[solops]

First of all, thanks to those of you who responded to my fighter/PD question. Now...Race Design: This is a topic that I have seen little work on. Are there any do's and don'ts? I realize that there are a huge number of possibilites in designing a race and how one designs should be tied in with the pre-game strategy. However, surely there are some combinations that are particularly effective for certain situations. And surely there must be some combinations that are particularly dumb. Please Comment.

[Alpha Kodiak]

You touched on the most important consideration: have a plan for what the race will be like before you start. Once you do that, getting the politics and anger settings can be sped up by looking at a race or races that are similar in character to the race you want to create.

From a research perspective, decide whether your race will be aggressive militarily, thus researching mostly combat techs early, or whether you want them to spend more time on infrastructure research early. If you make them research combat techs early, they will be nastier to meet early on, but may slow down as the game progresses as they try to catch up on research/production technologies. On the other hand, a race that spends too much time researching infrastructure early will get killed if they run into an aggressive opponent early.

The one thing that I can say definitively is to make sure that your race builds plenty of colonizers in all AI states so that it can keep expanding as long as there are planets to colonize.

The thing I did to start was look at some of the custom races that I liked to see how they were doing things. Then I read the forum to see what everyone said made the AI weak. I came up with a plan to minimize the weaknesses that were listed. That plan evolved into the Rage Collective. Since then I have tried different ideas for AI's, but always try to start with a plan.

[Krsqk]

Are you referring to creating new shipsets, or to empire setup? I'm leaning toward the latter... (not leaning on the ladder)

[spoon]

Originally posted by solops:
Race Design: This is a topic that I have seen little work on. Are there any do's and don'ts?

I generally raise the following to 120% -
- Intelligence (research)
- Mining Aptitude
- Construction
- Maintenance (to 110% - costs a lot after that...)
- Aggressiveness and/or Defensiveness (I usually can't afford to raise both to 120%, though...)
I generally lower the following to 80%
- physical strength
- political savvy
- refining aptitude
I generally lower the following to 50%
- Farming Aptitude
- Environmental Resistance
- Repair (well, 67% is more like it)
The only thing I would say ALWAYS do, is raise your Maintenance to 110%. Everything else can be fudged a little here or there.

And don't forget your culture setting -- warrior, bezerker, engineer, and merchant are probably the best.

The best Advanced Traits are Propulsion, Ancient Race, Hardy Industrialist, and Advanced Storage Techniques.

I'll leave the Special Tech Traits for another discussion...

Combos that work really well together:
- Religious + 125% defense + Bezerkers (allows you to create ships that always hit, and are only hit ~50% of the time, or forces your enemies to take up sub-standard tactics)
- Organic + Godlike Construction + Hardy Industrialist + Engineer (allows you to build really, really big ships in 1-2 turns)

-Spoon

[ August 27, 2002, 06:05: Message edited by: spoon ]

[solops]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
Are you referring to creating new shipsets, or to empire setup? I'm leaning toward the latter... (not leaning on the ladder)

LOL...I did not even consider that my question could create two threades; one for AI races and one for races to be played by a human. Actually, I was asking for comments on designs intended to be played by people. However, I would be facsinated to read about some AI design strtaegies as well.