But i dont see how +1 or +2 production is that good really, unless you possibly combine it with unification (but then you dont really have many picks left). Once you start building all the +production buildings, the only thing that really gives a noticeable boost in prod is leader bonus or morale bonus, because they work off %.
Production bonus is important in several ways:
1) you build the buildings faster, hence you decrease time spent on building and increase time your pop could be used as scientists;
2) gives boost to housing and population growth;
3) produces more war ships in the same period of time than non-prod races.
For instance try the following race - dict, sub, aqua +2 prod +100 pop rich hw, or dict sub +2 prod +2 food +100 pop rich hw, you will see the power of +2 prod over +1 prod or no prod...
Artifacts world - Dont get the high cost of this, except in pre-warp games...
Arti is already 4 points, do you want it to be even cheaper? Generally arti gives early boost, which has cumulative impact. Also it could be used by blitz/rush races to get an edge over opponents, what shouldn't missed.
I tried playing a dictatorship and going armor instead of hydrophonic farms once. It really, really hurt. My homeworld had to have lots more farmers to support the barren/radiated worlds i had to colonize, which reduced my prod and science output dramatically. Definately not worth it.
If you pick +2 food race (or aqua & +1 food) you don't need hydroponic farms.
Spying : The game moves too fast for this to only pay off once in every 10-20 turns, especially considering the sheer amount of resources you need to invest into this. 63 attacking spies + a large number of defending spies easily equal a massive battleship fleet. Sabotage is kind of a mixed bag...blowing up a starbase can be useful if thats the main thing stopping you from taking a planet....blowing up some random, low level building....worthless.
What can I say, you haven't played competetive games, where spying means a lot, so you really cannot judge. Again, I will repeat, before the said change spying didn't work well enough, now it is considerably better. Just for the record, spying starts to be perceptibly effective, when your attack bonus prevails over opponent's defense bonus by about 20 points.
Fighters still die too fast to things like pulsars, spatial compressors, warp core explosions and lightning fields IMHO. They also suffer from the problem of "too many targetting a single ship". Missles are the same IMHO. Beams seem so much better from mid-late game (or even early game if you took +75 ship attack). I think it would be good if players had viable choices to specialise in each category for the entire game.
There are two flaws in your approach. First, if you over-increase hp of fighters, early beams will be totally useless agaist fighters/missiles. In fact they are already useless against high-tier missiles. Additionally compressors/pulsars will become much less effective, so other tech choices will dominate in those tech fields.
Second point is that in late game beams dominate over fighters and missiles in
all cases, whatever hp increase you give to fighters. The problem lies within time lag for damage. Fighters and missiles do damage with considerable time lag, while beams do instant damage. Practically this thing makes missiles/fighters/torpedoes obsolete.
As for +75 offense race, it is good, but a little slow, compared to pure prod races or tech races. So the balance is kept.
Biggest problem with missles is when you have so many missle waves but a single warp core explosions blow up half of the incoming missles. Then you run out of ammo and have to retreat. Or a single ship equipped with pulsars/spatial compressors takes them all out.
Yep, if you don't like missiles, take torpedoes. However, missiles allow emg modification, while torpedoes don't...
Never seen planetary missle bases pay off. Even the AI can get past it pretty easily, just zerg the planet with multiple ships and destroy the missle base with bombs or whatever.
Join IRC and start multiplayer practice....
Bombers : Isnt the fact that they only fire once before returning to the carrier a huge disadvantage? That seriously reduces the amount of ships you can kill. I am pretty sure that 3x interceptors vastly outdamage 1x bomber except possibly against planets.
Its an advantage and disadvantage simultaneously. In some cases it's certainly an advantage, cause heavy fighters could be destroyed after first shot, while bombers after returning to the base are safe.
Heavy fighters : I cant use them without genociding every planet with a defence installation. Possible to fix?
Send less bombers. thats all... You might be observing fusion bomb bug...check and report if that's true.
Navigators : Whats so useful about them? I have never seen black holes block ship movement in more than 6 games...
+1 strategic speed, and more importantly, allows to jump at higher distance in one turn. For instance, with antimatter drive it allows to perform 6 parsecs jumps.
Charismatic : Is it possible to make it increase the chances of the AI wanting to trade techs with you? Right now it only seems useful for attracting famous leaders, but i have no idea how much higher the chance is.
Try playing difficulty level - hard or less. In 1.31 they decreased chances of AI being freindly on impossible level. Unfortunately I cannot modify AI in any way for the moment.
, and also previously available - cyber tol +2 prod +50 pop rhw was overpowered (had to increase +50 pop to +60 and increase cost by 1 in order to cut that race). Hope this answers you well.
: 1) replicators vs biosphere - replicator is broken atm, if it worked well it could be a good choice. In late game, when you have all moral techs/food enhancements food rep is of no use anyway.