Not sure who you are addressing this sentence, but I will say my opinion on it. Uni is the best choice in all game settings in regular moo. For blitz Uni tele transd is better than fuedal tele transd; Demo can't out-perform uni from prewarp and for advanced start you take unification based creative race; not saying about the average start development game, where uni was the best without question. So when you say game balance isn't to make totally different races, I don't quite understand what you mean by that, since in all benchmarks uni was better than non-uni.Well, even in "classic, where was no balance and only Uni-Uni-Uni" actually Uni was best choice only under some special game settings. Another best ones included Feu as fastest anti-AI races; Demo, that generally outperform Uni from Prewarp; Crea for Advanced, and even Dict could be used to construct some true Anti-races, so even it was best in something in comparison to others. Game balance is not about to make a totally different races to "have them something relatively close in one benchmark", at least in moo2.
No, its not faster and it is easy to verify.I think that Feud P+2 should be a faster Blitz than UNI from Avg tech start, as it can build the first CA and Outpost Ships faster.
First we should agree that any comparison is made with all other things being equal. This is axiom of any testing procedure.
So, the blitz race includes the picks: telepathic (6), transdimensional (5), large hw (1), rich hw (2), total 14 picks. These are common for the two races. For the last 6 picks we make comparison between feudal +2 prod (6) and unification (6).
In this case we are testing how fast the races can produce 1 freighter, refit two scouts to remove laser cannon, build 2 outposts and interceptor cruiser on a large rich planet. 2 outposts are always enough to make contact on large map, 8 players game. I don’t consider blitz on huge map since there is a high risk that not only interceptors but also deuterium cells will be required to research, in which case feudal blitz is doomed. In fact on a large map usually only 1 outpost is enough, which gives unification even more advantage.
Cost of cruiser and outposts is different for these two races due to 33% cost discount for feudal race: 230 BC +2*66 for feudal and 345 BC + 2*100 for unification race.
Total prod needed will be:
Feudal: 10+50+230+132 = 422
Unification: 10+50+345+200=605
However feudal race has penalty on research and it takes more time to research interceptors.
As mentioned above comparison should be made with all other things being equal, so lets consider 120 rp cost for interceptors. 80 RPs at 50% roll.
For both races it is optimal to keep 1 pop on production in order to save prod from pollution penalty.
Feudal race will be producing 5 rps/turn with 3 scientist and it will take 22 turns to research interceptors. Should be 24, but the engine gives a discount for 2 turns.
Production stored will be 5 prod for 12 turns and 11 prod for 10 turns after a new pop is born.
Total prod stored will be 60+110=170
After turn 22 feudal will be producing 21 prod/turn.
Unification researches interceptors in 10 turns with 12 (15) rps/turn. You get 15 when second colony starts farming.
Total production stored will be 8*10=80
General formula for production output is: total production - pollution
Pollution is calculated as: (total production/pollution cleaners - no pollution prod*nanodis coef.)/2 - updated formula.
Since there is no nano disassember and pollution cleaners available the formula for pollution will be:
(Total production – no pollution prod)/2
So we have:
For feudal +2 prod with 5 workers on prod output will be: (5+2)*5- [(5+2)*5-8)]/2= 35-13.5= 21 prod/turn
Production to produce will be 422-170= 252/21 ~ +12 turns after turn 22, which is t34.
For Unification with 6 workers on prod output will be: 5*6*1.5 - [5*6*1.5-8]/2= 45 - 18.5= 26 prod /turn
Production to produce will be 605-80 = 525/ 26 ~ +20 turns after turn 10 which is t32.
As one can see unification produces first cruiser faster.
This example doesn’t consider cash though. With buying part of production with cash one can hasten production. But with all other things being equal in the test neither side gets an advantage with cash.
Also one can say that subsequent cruisers will be produced faster by feudal race, but that’s not exactly so either. Feudal race will be producing each new cruiser every 10 turns while unification each 11 turns. 3rd cruiser they produce at the same time. However this doesn’t count a strategy where unification starts housing on a second colony instead of just farming and grows more pop early, which can be used for farming later to free farmers from the main world.
And the most important factor was neglected so far, which is after capturing enemy pop unification race enjoys all government bonuses, which are far superior to feudal race. In result overall production of the empire will be much higher. While 3 cruisers are enough to kill any AI opponent overall advantage of unification over feudal is obvious.