Good Race Picks

[Cabman]

Your races couldn't compete in MP games. Even on huge galaxy You must be prepaired for war ( read :you must have a reasonable wartech Battleship) at about t 110. Those races are to slow. And about morale thingie :game usually ends up long before you get those morale techs. Siron's DC mod changes that so not only uni prod races are playable there. Regards.

[Zieman]

That DC mod starts to look more and more appealing, balancing the game so that no single race or two are utterly superior to all others sounds grreat!

[Morthos]

I can see that short games in small galaxies would change my preferences, but in single-player in huge galaxies my fav is:

subterannean
creative
cybernetic
charismatic
Large home world (?don't recall)
-money
-spying
-ship defense

I practically insist on the first two. the third is great for food in rich galaxies, and the fourth helps me keep out of trouble while I develop. My general design is to get the research running at top speed.

[Matthew]

I can see that short games in small galaxies would change my preferences, but in single-player in huge galaxies my fav is:

subterannean
creative
cybernetic
charismatic
Large home world (?don't recall)
-money
-spying
-ship defense

I practically insist on the first two. the third is great for food in rich galaxies, and the fourth helps me keep out of trouble while I develop. My general design is to get the research running at top speed.

Sounds interesting. You might want to check out the mp strategy guide on Siron's website. It covers the best race pick choices in detail.

http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2005 ... guide.html

[Tifi]

Pick and Mix

Farming +/-
Disabled by picking Lithovore

Farming bonuses generally won't do any harm unless you give up other production in order to get them.
Better farming = less pop needed to feed the ungrateful masses = more pop doing 'useful' things like building and research.
Penalties can *really* hurt though, unless you pick Cybernetic but then that hurts anyway.

Industry +/-

Vitally* important to success by any measure.
Never ever EVER take an industry penalty. EVER. Clear?

* If you picked Cybernetic replace 'vitally' with 'absolutely the most critical of all things anywhere'.

Science +/-

Pretty much the same as industry, + is okay* - is like kicking yourself in the head.

* If you picked Feudal government *lol* replace 'okay' with 'required to make you not suck (so much)'.

Growth +/-

More people = more production = win.
That being said, you can probably get much the same effect by using housing so its more of a 'hmmm... what shall i spend these last picks on?' kind of thing.

Ship Attack/Defence +/-

These two pretty much depend on the sort of game you're playing.
In a huge galaxy its probably a good idea to take -s here for more picks as you'll have plenty of time to get techs to compensate.
In a small crowded galaxy you're going to want to take +s to make the early skirmishes that much easier.

Basically, these will give you an early advantage/penalty that diminishes over time.
Bear in mind that maxxed out attack pick gives all your ships the advantages of a battle scanner, and a maxxed defence pick gives you the same effect as the inertial stabiliser.

Ground Combat +/-

This comes down to one question: Are you going to kill everything you see, or loot and pillage like a good pirate?
Aside from this minor roleplay thing, this is the same deal as the ship attack/defence picks - advantage/penalty that diminishes over time.

One of my personal favourite ways to play is to let the AI come at me with some high-tech goodie laden ships, then use good old fashioned piracy to learn its secrets.
Note: Playing like this WILL get you laughed off kali

Spying +/-

Same deal yet again.
Early advantage yadda yadda.... *yawn*

Feudal Government

Lets take a peek at this fabby thing right here.
-20% morale without a barracks of some kind.
You get to build all your ships for 66% of the usual cost, which is pretty cool.
But the cost...
You pay with HALF your science output *owie*
And if anyone takes one of your colonies all the population assimilates instantly, so no rebels fighting from the inside

The advanced form Confederation cuts shipbuilding to 33% cost which is awesome, and your population doesn't instantly assimilate anymore - but you still lose 50% of your science.

*backs away slowly*

Dictatorial Government

The default goverment, its neither especially good nor bad.
Again, -20% morale without a barracks.
Defensive spies get +10%
Thats it.
Well what do you expect for 0 picks?

The advanced form Imperium gives you a 50% boost to your available command points which is very handy, and your defensive spies get boosted to +20%.
Not too shabby.

Democratic Government

This is your science & economy boosting gov.
You get +50% to your science production and collected taxes.
On the downside, your defensive spies get -10% penalty and you're not allowed to extermine captured population.

The advanced form Federation increases the boosts to +75%
Nothing else changes.

Unified Government

This is the 'big daddy' of the governments, and is the perfect complement to a nice early rush.
You get +50% to farming and industry which is utterly awesome in the early game, the downside is that you can never benefit from morale, which means that the longer the game goes on the lesser your advantage.
Unified races are immune to losing thier capital - all others take a -35% hit to morale, while these guys just keep on going.
Also, your defensive spies get a +15% bonus.

The advanced form Galactic Unification increases the bonuses to +75%.

High G Adapted

Allows your guys to operate on heavy and normal G worlds without penalty, which pretty much removes the need to obtain the gravity generator tech.
Gives all your ground troops +1 to thier hitpoints which effectively doubles thier effectivness.
Can't really justify taking this as you can never rely on finding certain types of planets (and it costs too much )

Low G Adapted

Your guys can only operate on low G worlds without penalty, which means getting hold of gravity generators is reasonably important.
Gives your ground troops a -10% penalty.
This is a frequent pick-mine as all its effects can be offset by technology.

Aquatic

You like wet places, your guys treat all watery worlds as if they're the next class higher.
This gives you a ton of extra room for population and the food to feed them, as well as meaning you never need to research gaiaforming as your terras and oceans ARE gaias.
A wholly recomended use of picks.

Cybernetic
Incompatible with Lithovore

This is one of those long-term picks that hurts like hell in the beginning, but gets better and better over time.
Your guys eat one food for every 2 pop. which is like having farming x2
But... Your guys also 'eat' 1 industry each which is a complete killer in the early game.
If you take CYber. you NEED to take either Uni. Gov. or +2 Industry.
That being said, cyber is pretty fun, and the ONLY way to get funky self-repairing starbases and ground batteries etc...
Note: If you capture a ship by damaging it, your new cyber crew will eventually repair it to full working order - very cool

Lithovore
Incompatible with Cybernetic

Your guys eat rocks.
Not a single farmer among them which makes things very simple indeed as frieghters are only needed for moving pop around.
Not needing to farm you can put more pop into industry and science right from the start and get a grand lead developed, and with the self-feeding pop you can turn that grand lead into and unstoppable juggernaught of production with only an average effort.
Also, food producing techs are removed from the tech tree.
Very cool, but not the be-all-and-end-all.

Tolerant

A very cool pick which kills two ugly birds with one super-efficient bird killing stone.
All planets regardless of type are treated as terran class for the purposes of max. pop.
More pop. = more win.
Yours guys completely ignore all pollution everywhere, this allows for some pretty decent early/mid game production centres when everyone else is struggling to get atmosphere renewers.
Very recomended.

Subterrainian

Gives a ton of extra pop. and a small (+10%) defensive ground combat bonus.
One of the most widely used picks there is, the only thing which could be considered a downside to this is the sheer quantity of food your guys will need, but if you're running things properly that won't be a problem.
Can't go wrong with this.

Telepathic

One of my favourite picks, but sadly not as useful as the others.
All your spies get +10%
You get +30% to your diplomacy - which is borderline useless.
Any ship of cruiser class or bigger can mind-control enemy planets unless there is a telepathic leader stationed there or the population is telepathic.
Regardless of how you conquer (mind-control or invasion) all the population is instantly assimilated.
Any ships you manage to board and capture are fully useable by you on thier next turn (including starbases)
Fun but not recomended.

Transdimensional

All your ships get a +2 boost to thier galactic speed, and a +5 boost to thier battle speed.
Pretty fun as it makes your fleets very flexible and much harder to hit.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone use this...

Stealthy Ships

All your ships are invisible on the galactic map.
A very fun pick with tons of potential for sneaky sneakingness if it weren't for the next pesky pick:

Omniescient

You can see EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE.
All monsters, all cloaked/stealthy ships, everything.
Spoilsports

Lucky

Hahahahahahahahahaha
No, srsly.

Fantasic Traders

Makes trade goods and trade treaties more profitable, other than that see 'Lucky'

Warlord

All your ships start off one level higher than normal, and you can train them to 'ultra elite' status
All your colonies add +2 to your command points. EACH.
All your colonies can hold x2 the amount of ground troops and trains them at x2 the normal rate.
This is definatley a 'small world' pick, as the smaller the galaxy the more advantage this gives.



Did I miss anything?
I'm at work doing all this from memory, so do point out anywhere I mucked up

[/b]

[marhawkman]

combining transdimensional with omniscient works nicely to swarm a huge galaxy.(by colonizing the best planets first)

[Matthew]

This is a race that I tested out in single player. It worked ok.

Unification
Aquatic
Heavy-Gravity
+1 Production
-20 Ship Defense
-10 Ground Combat
-Repulsive

The nice thing about it is being able to make earlier use of the large rich planets that often have Heavy-G associated with them. The major draw-back is that your homeworld has no bonuses so it's a bit slow at the start.

I do think the +1 Production is slightly better then Large-Rich-HW because it applies to all colonies. One of the first things you do is find other worlds to colonize and build colony bases. That is why +2 Prod is so good.

[Matthew]

This is a race that I tried in an MP game with StepNRazor. UniTol was banned so I tried to play something totally new for me.

Unification
Prod+1
Lithovore
Large Hw
-SD
-GC
-Repulsive

The obvious downside is that the farming bonus from Unification doesn't help much, but I think Unification is still better than Democracy.

I got off to a good start even though my corner was somewhat poor in the systems selection. The problem with it became apparent mid-way into the game; it needs a lot of systems or large planets to colonize to maintain a competitive population growth curve. You can go with Terraforming and androids, but that is taking a detour from war techs. The alternative is to get the jump on your opponent with a successful early strike. If that fails you have to focus on more expansion and growth.