[MoO] Whats the most unbalanced custom race you've ever made (MOO2)?

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Sounds like it's time for Impossible!

Yes, maybe.

My strategy have been to rush computer techs as you need the research when playing as feudal. Ship tech can lag behind a bit as you can still win with low tech ships and feudal make them cheap. As soon as you get to the mid-late game you have basically won as feudal creative have far better ships that are far cheaper than everyone else and feudal overall economy is perhaps only second to imperium only because of the barrak morale imperium get. Feudal get cheaper ships and imperium get more command limit so they can build more smaller ships instead of a few large ships that feudal is excellent at.

Democracy and especially unification tend to get poor in the late game as they get worse morale and cost alot of points to pick and their upgrades are nowhere as impressive as dictatorship or feudal.

Another build is the boarding race, 20 ground combat, high g and maybe telephatic (I have heard it either allow you to always board ships or allow you to use captured ships in combat). Simply build ships without anything but boarding equipment, small ships are best because you will destroy the enemy crew in combat with these race picks and thus these ships tend to be really cheap.

There is also the +50 ship defence, transdimensional and warlord combination which makes your ships really hard to hit in combat. Research everything that increase ship defence such as augmented engine and jammers also use the smallest ship classes as they have more speed and thus harder to hit.

Because the enemy have very hard time to hit your ships, each of your ships should be able to defeat multiple enemy ships and thus you should win.

 

[Alex2018]

Another build is the boarding race, 20 ground combat, high g and maybe telephatic (I have heard it either allow you to always board ships or allow you to use captured ships in combat). Simply build ships without anything but boarding equipment, small ships are best because you will destroy the enemy crew in combat with these race picks and thus these ships tend to be really cheap.

Today I've won as modified Bulratti (High G + 20 combat, uni, large HW) vs ICE-X modified (by me) Klackon. Through editor I've gave it "ruthless expansionist personality", + 2 production, farming & research, +100 growth, unification, and normal research (I've removed uncreative). Drawbacks were: low g, repulsive, -10 ground combat, and -10 spying drawbacks. Too bad the AI was dumb... Rather than going for better ship combat tech to knock my ships out, it went for better ground weapons which didn't help it much. I've managed to over run it - even while it had a huge advantage in planets technology and industrial capacity.... Maybe I should try to give AI player even more racial advantages and play more as normal race (uni +1 production)

 

[Volcanon]

The AI makes enormous doom fleets in mid/late game on Impossible and sometimes makes a decent ship design (other times it makes doom stars with thousands of nuclear missiles). Fleets so big you hit the ship limit and you'd have to battle for three turns straight to blow it all up.

To increase the challenge you'll have to make the AI smarter, not keep heaping on bonuses. All the bonuses will do is make their citizens even better (already I'd populate my entire empire with Klackon citizens with those bonuses), which means they would pwn you harder in the early game if they can or otherwise zerg rush you when they sense weakness.

 

[Alex2018]

The AI makes enormous doom fleets in mid/late game on Impossible and sometimes makes a decent ship design (other times it makes doom stars with thousands of nuclear missiles). Fleets so big you hit the ship limit and you'd have to battle for three turns straight to blow it all up.

To increase the challenge you'll have to make the AI smarter, not keep heaping on bonuses. All the bonuses will do is make their citizens even better (already I'd populate my entire empire with Klackon citizens with those bonuses), which means they would pwn you harder in the early game if they can or otherwise zerg rush you when they sense weakness.

The strange thing is that AI seems to behave very differently. I almost never had large enemy fleet when playing 1 on 1. Only sometimes when playing vs 7 ai's. Sometimes one race (usually Sakkra or Silicoid) on the other side of the huge map would do this. But then, not always.

Today I've won on ICE-X vs 1 impossible ai which I've edited to be (unification, subterran, +1 production, large rich HW) and "ruthless expansionist" as personality.... I tried to play as democracy-creative-aqutic- large & rich HW (usually I always play unification production race and exceed research), average galaxy, huge, prewarp. Even with this race by the time I attacked the AI (somewhere after 200s turn), they had mostly laser/fusion beams and proton torpedoes, while I had battleships which had lots of mass driver, structural analyzer, hyper-x, high energy focus with which I was beating all their ships in single turn. And in like 20 turns I had almost all of the techs. Then I've left one planet and defeated guardian with a super tech cruiser...

How do I actually make AI smarter (rather than just giving them super bonuses)? It is sad when they are hopelessly outmatched late in the game.

 

[Alex2018]

To increase the challenge you'll have to make the AI smarter, not keep heaping on bonuses.

Question is how to actually make it (to make the game difficult is easy. Just give them too much bonuses and slap 7 ai on the map. But how to make AI smart?). Today I've played another game on ICE-X 18a with AI being ruthless militarist (uni, +1 prod, subterran, large/rich/artifact homeworld).
I’ve won the above game at turn 261. The opponent was ruthless militarist… But even though AI had 2x the amount of colonies (but quarter the quality) as I did, I easily overmatched AI in all other respects. He had only like 5-10 battleships and the technology was very limited. Neutron blaster, graviton beams & class 3 shields. Star bases had like proton torpedo. The best defense was energy absorber… When I finally attacked, I was winning battles usually in the 1st combat turn.


Below is the graph from turn 230.

 

[plasmacannon]

I don't normally play Demo races, but just for fun, I thought I'd try your race Alex. Demo, Cre, Aqua, LRHW.
I didn't know your negative Picks, so I chose -10 G.C., Food-0.5 and Low-G.
Hard, Huge, Avg size, 8 players.
The first 5 races that I met (Gnolam, Alkari, Psilon, Trillarian and Human) ALL have Democracy! WTH?
Humans always had it. I forget if Psilons have it now.
I know that on hard and Impossible, the AI gets bonus race picks, but all the same one? That's annoying. I was actually getting spied on by the Psilons, the other Creative race.

EDIT: Yea. I see Psilons and another have it, so 3 of the 5 have it standard in this mod, but all appearing next to me? and 2 more close to me get it also? smh.

 

[Alex2018]

I don't normally play Demo races, but just for fun, I thought I'd try your race Alex. Demo, Cre, Aqua, LRHW.
I didn't know your negative Picks, so I chose -10 G.C., Food-0.5 and Low-G.

Negative picks are repulsive (always), and low-g, -ground combat, as needed. Never -10 on spying for democracies. Only if you play unification.

As for Demo races. I don't like them and usually do not play them. Only on ICE-X the pick cost is changed so I play different races.

My favorite custom races:
ICE-X (when vs 1 ai) is Bulrati like race (High G, +20 ground combat, large, rich HW). Use assault shuttles AMAP.
On 1.50 it is Uni/sub/1 production + large HW vs 7 impossible AI.

The biggest difficulty is that when there are lots of opponents, typically there will be 2 comps near you. With their cheating bonuses it is hard (maybe even impossible) in the beginning to defend against them. At least without sacrificing the long term. Meanwhile some distant silicoid or sakkra race could expand like rabbits and be too tough.

 

[plasmacannon]

I used to go Repulsive a lot as a negative pick, but since it doesn't take that long to get a Food tech, -0.5 isn't that bad so long as one takes at least 1 food bonus related tech, such as Aquatic, Unification or Cyber. When choosing all 3, it's a no-brainer. Being able to set up Research & Trade Treaties plus Non-Aggression Pacts and Trading techs come in handy. I have even given a low level worthless techs to an AI just to make them happy. They usually send their fleets off to attack someone else, giving me more time to build up my fleet. Better to fight fewer fleets than more.
The better Leaders are just a bonus.

 

[Alex2018]

MOO2 is so good because multiple ways are possible.

Personally, different people have different experiences, playing impossible without repulsive wasn't that good. I had a peace treaty, then suddenly psilons attacked me nonetheless. Exchanging technology is not that crucial (unless one is uncreative). If AI has a huge fleet/tech advantage & aggressive personality, I would be finished anyways.

I'd much rather lay low in few systems, have a minimal defensive anti-ship fleet to deter the AI from attacking, and then come out ASAP with super titan that could defeat almost everyone and with planets building titans very quickly.

 

[Alex2018]

Another race that I like.
Unification, subterranean, aquatic, large homeworld, repulsive, and - spying or gc. After I got android workers, I've built a LOT of them, so I was also tolerant in that respect.

I just played and won on huge, impossible, average mineral age, antarans on, 8 players.
Even though I got "aggressive expensionist" near me and two other races, I've won quite easily with dozens of doom stars at 341 turn. 2 Opponents finally had stellar converters on their bases... But not a single shot was fired from them.

 

[Alex2018]

How about this unbalanced race...
Feudal, -1 research (yes, minus 1 research on top of feudal), Charismatic, Fantastic trader, subterran, aquatic, large homeworld, -gc. After evolutionary mutation I've added +1 production. I've won either by getting Antares, or through conquest... But it took a LONG time and had >100s of doomstars vs 100s of opponents doomstars...

 

[Ohtari]

Not sure if allready mentioned, in my book defenitely the most unblanced: DictLithSubArti
Secret power of this race: some call it a bug, I call it the Mega-Morph race that rebuilds itself end-game: When getting evolutionary mutation and taking Cybernetic, the lithovore pick gets re-imbursed, since it cannot go with cybernetic together. You can then also deselect cybernetic if you do not want it, but for flavor it fits you redesign your race as the perfect cybernetic warriors . Now you can spend alot of points to morph into a warrior race ready for war. you can also keep a few points unspend from the start so you can take more expensive picks like Telepathetic or maybe transdimensional. Your empire will require food from this point, so have freighters and food ready for them the turn you morph, even when the food requirement is not shown yet, else you loose population end turn. You get the benefit from early lithovore boost, and later with a large empire its easier to ready gaia's for food. You can morph into a Stealthy/Warlord/Telepathetic/+spy/+ship attack race with this trick after building a strong empire.

 

[plasmacannon]

Not sure if allready mentioned, in my book defenitely the most unblanced: DictLithSubArti
Secret power of this race: some call it a bug, I call it the Mega-Morph race that rebuilds itself end-game: When getting evolutionary mutation and taking Cybernetic, the lithovore pick gets re-imbursed, since it cannot go with cybernetic together. You can then also deselect cybernetic if you do not want it, but for flavor it fits you redesign your race as the perfect cybernetic warriors . Now you can spend alot of points to morph into a warrior race ready for war. you can also keep a few points unspend from the start so you can take more expensive picks like Telepathetic or maybe transdimensional. Your empire will require food from this point, so have freighters and food ready for them the turn you morph, even when the food requirement is not shown yet, else you loose population end turn. You get the benefit from early lithovore boost, and later with a large empire its easier to ready gaia's for food. You can morph into a Stealthy/Warlord/Telepathetic/+spy/+ship attack race with this trick after building a strong empire.

I figured that this was something in an earlier version, but I created this race and just got Evo Mutation. Yes. It still works in version 1.50
I guess it's meant to be in there, or it was overlooked or it's change is being worked on.
I went from Subt/ArtiHW/Lith to Subt/ArtiHW/Warlord/TransD/Stealthy/HeavyG/Ship Attack+25/Telepathic.
It appears that the limitations are:
1) that we only get the points for Lithovore plus Evo Mutation.
2) that we can not choose an individual Race Pick that costs more than Evo Mutation would allow.
3) other existing Race Picks can not be changed.
It does seem to be an exploit. Anything that already doesn't need to eat, suddenly needing to, seems more like a devolution more than an evolution.
If Rocco is interested in removing the ability of a Lithovore to choose Cybernetic upon researching Evo Mutation, I am all for it.

EDIT: By the way, there are enough picks left over to add another, so I played additional games as Subt/ArtiHW/Lith/Pop+50. It's a fast early growing race.

 

[Ohtari]

I think you are Incorrect on "2) that we can not choose an individual Race Pick that costs more than Evo Mutation would allow."
If you leave unspend points, you can pick more expensive picks above the points evo mutation would allow, max point pick = evo mutation + unspend points.
Also "3) other existing Race Picks can not be changed." You CAN remove the Repulsive trait this way or buy off other negative picks you made like negative ship attack.
Changing from repulsive to being able to talk might be a perfect example of good evolution.

Ofc this seems to be a bug, though I really like the idea of this race changing into some Cybernetic warrior race (Borg?) that now DOES need some bio-fuel to run components.
So far in multiplayer it seems to be almost on par with standard top UniTol and Demo race, but still not overpowerd enough to remove the option. I liked having more race options to choose from and my friends I play with do call it a bug, but did not forbid me to use this race yet so far. I Also start with +50 growth and large HW on this race with extra points, as long as you keep 1 point unspend you can pick most higher cost options later.

How broken or overpowered this "bug" is I will leave for the great modders to decide It definitely earns a spot in this thread of most unbalanced race.

 

[plasmacannon]

2) Right. I was assuming no unspent points. One can't choose Tolerant, for example, on just the base points of Evo Mutation.
3) I was referring to picks like Artifacts Home world. One couldn't evolve to suddenly lose their home world starting choice. One can't change a Government or add new negative picks as they are shaded out.
I do like the Borgification of other species also. It just doesn't make sense to me how a species that doesn't eat, such as a sentient robot or pure energy lifeform would require food after being converted. That's more of what I was getting at, rather than gameplay.

IMHO, Lithovore should have some kind of production penalty in the manner Cyber does. Even -0.25 prod per pop as part of their "eat rocks" biology would be satisfactory. Everything requires some kind of maintenance. Lowering the pick cost to 8 base (16 in some of the mods) would permit more Lithovore race varieties.