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

[Darza]

Slightly different: if you did fired all your weapons prior moving, then move somewhere - then it will be done-d at arrival. If you move ship first, then fire all the weapons as in your example - it wouldnt be doned.

 

[El_Machinae]

Ah, I see. Yeah, I instinctively worked around that by having lots of weapon groups. Make sense...

 

[Darza]

Ah, I see. Yeah, I instinctively worked around that by having lots of weapon groups. Make sense...

Number of weapon slots used doesnt matter there. If you fired them all - it would be doned.

 

[Giftless]

Your example is pretty weird, if you get the natives, you free your farmers with them, not use them as "bad gold deposites" (you have to use them this way only if you are lithovore, as the only drawback there). You earn money by growing your colonists, not by selling excess food. Straight +0.5 BC (if you mean money bonus racepick) is absolutely incomparable in power with FT, as its a good useful pick actually, especially if used with Democracy (as its the way it usually do). In general you grow a food on a specialized worlds, where food is good (ideally some small poor gaias or so), and use a freighters to ship it elsewhere. The rich on production production planets build a ships, poor worlds do research, small bad planets do housing to ship the produced population to a constantly colonizing new planets (aswell as exceeds from regular growth from "normal" planets). To spend a whooping 4 picks (1\5 of total!) in hope of getting few extra BC from natives is simply nonsense.
Usual research path for non-blitz races is Lab\Autofactory and only after that is coming Soils. Actually the food balance in a game is really bad, as you need to have at least 3 food per colonist at start (if you want a playable race (by playable i mean actually playable, not just "able to win some impossible AI's", as its not a problem at all), and there is only few special races as exclude here). There is simply too few food in game, you cannot rely on selling it, you need it to enable more colonists instead. And by the time of 8-10 food per colonist output is reached - game is over for long-long time ago already. And extra 4-5 BC per colony is simply 2 cents by that time. Fantastic Traders could be used to channel a prod into money using trade goods, but its slightly different thing, and again, worthy about 0.5 picks.

There is some educational video to see how non-blitz moo2 game is playing (proper economic development): http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=534483

I agree on the matter of having specialized planets; though usually with how I use FT in my games there's some extra context to consider. Usually on my Homeworld start I can only get 6-8 production early on before pollution sets in. And with how the game is designed there are almost always odd numbers of food units being produced (9 food when I have 8 aquatic population on a water planet). It may not seem like much, but all that loose change adds up, especially when it's BC that can kick in before a planet is fully grown.

Anyhow, the way I use it is with a massive builder / terraformer style game. I pact and trade treaty every A.I. I meet, get colony governors set up in multiplanet systems ASAP, and Rush Buy. Granted, it might not work so well for an early game warlord; but if you're the type who planet-constructs and rush-terraforms everything then food scarcity is not going to be a problem

P.S. I tried a game recently without the Fantastic Traders on and found that the game rounds down (a rip-off) on the food BC calculation. Therefore the difference for a three food surplus is 3 BC versus 1 BC, so it's not a simple 2x increase but a 3x increase in some cases.

 

[Darza]

I agree on the matter of having specialized planets; though usually with how I use FT in my games there's some extra context to consider. Usually on my Homeworld start I can only get 6-8 production early on before pollution sets in. And with how the game is designed there are almost always odd numbers of food units being produced (9 food when I have 8 aquatic population on a water planet). It may not seem like much, but all that loose change adds up, especially when it's BC that can kick in before a planet is fully grown.

Anyhow, the way I use it is with a massive builder / terraformer style game. I pact and trade treaty every A.I. I meet, get colony governors set up in multiplanet systems ASAP, and Rush Buy. Granted, it might not work so well for an early game warlord; but if you're the type who planet-constructs and rush-terraforms everything then food scarcity is not going to be a problem

P.S. I tried a game recently without the Fantastic Traders on and found that the game rounds down (a rip-off) on the food BC calculation. Therefore the difference for a three food surplus is 3 BC versus 1 BC, so it's not a simple 2x increase but a 3x increase in some cases.

Moreother, in some case its truly infinite increase, with 1 food surplus - you jump from the 0 BC profit to a whoopping 1 BC profit. But well, that doesnt change anything. Did you watched the video link? Also there is no problem at all to build with pollution, to skip it entirely - you could use the Tolerant (as it also one of the best classic races), or Money race (not really working well in classic moo2).

 

[El_Machinae]

Number of weapon slots used doesnt matter there. If you fired them all - it would be doned.

Yeah, I know. I would just save some weapons for last. I'd have to deselect a weapon if I had some complex maneuvers in mind

 

[humbe]

Most unbalanced race I've ever played:

- Creative
- Lithovore (*)
- Tolerant (*)
- Subterranean (*)
- Ship Offence +50
- Imperium (Dictatorship)
- Large Home World
- Rich Home World
- Artifacts Home World
- Lucky
- Omniscient
- Ground Combat -20 (*)

(*) - All my colonists are captured Silicoids, so I'm getting lithovore, tolerant and subterranean from them, which removes my -food and low gravity penalties except for the ground combat penalty, and I had ground combat -10 to begin with.

 

[rcasale42]

I don't know about most unbalanced, but I'm currently playing

Tolerant
+50% population growth
+1 Production
Charismatic
-ground combat
-spying
-ship attack
-ship defense

Tolerant is just so powerful, with the added population and ignoring pollution. I like to take Charismatic for fun, because you can get more interesting leaders. Combat penalties are fine in my mind, because they have no effect on your early expansion, and once you have to economic base they can be offset by sheer numbers.

BTW, I'm glad I found the MOO community.

 

[Tech_150]

The "imbalanciness" of any custom race can be greatly improved by using patch 1.40 and /picks=14, or patch 1.50 and removing the restriction of only 10 negative picks.

In 1.40, those 4 extra picks got me very accustomed to using subterranean most of the time. Two of my favorite 1.40 custom races:

* FeudLithSubtCrea with -50 pop growth and repulsive
* DictCybSubtCreaProd+2 with -50 pop growth and repulsive

In 1.50, without a limitation on negative picks, you can do stuff like

* UniTolLithSubt
* DemoLithSubtSci+2ArtiLg

With uncreative, pimped-up AI races and mapgen settings which also benetfit said AI races, even those can be a challenge.

 

[j.d.shinshu]

The thread that never dies looks like.
I'm sure my build was probably listed already. But TLDR all of thread.
Before I installed 1.50 patch I went with a teleblitz build. Or as I liked to call it a "slaver" build. As I would often only build 2 colonies of my own.
I like to finish games in less than 2 hours usually. Or alternatively shoot for 6000+ scores.
As a side note the tech level never really gets that high in a quick game. Usually max at neutron blasters or ion cannons. It might not work well in an advanced tech game. Works great in post-warp though. You're already at the tech level you want to be at, but then so is everyone else.

so the build:
-fuedal
+telepathic
-50% growth
+transdimensional
-10 Ground Combat
+ 50 DEF
+ 20 ATT

at start, make one freighter fleet. Then max science to get auto-factories, research lab, hydroponics while exploring everywhere in range. At same time occasionally max production to build&buy factory, and outpost ship. Find world suitable for incubator world during exploration. Pump up homeworld with housing from there.
Build a beam battleship with lasers and a bomb or 2. Tech to battle scanners and battle pods.
It's really a tricky start. You have to balance your finances perfectly and be super friendly in diplomacy until your first battleship is ready. Getting a rich leader is super helpful.
I trade tech as fast as I get it if I can. As a general rule I never research weapons or armor if playing the long game, since it'll just end up in my enemy hands. Plus any non military tech just makes their colonies better for me when I take it. Do treaties and other diplomacy I play as needed, but just until I get the first battleship.

Basically the auto/ND/continuous laser gunboats are so good at ship/base killing I steam roll the AI. And with super high defense (transdem-speed, +50, leader) it really can hang in a fight. I usually wipe out 2 or 3 civs within a couple dozen turns of getting the battleship, just the one. Pumping out a few outpost ships to extend the range of my battleship as needed.
The 1.50 update doesn't change this build. You have to be more careful in tactical when attacking a colony but otherwise the same.
You can take 1/3 to half the galaxy with the one ship and from then you have the infrastructure to build a real fleet, and also possibly catch up on tech. Although you often get a lot of tech from conquest and extortion. If AI get decent armor and/or shields I tech to auto mass drivers and if that can't crack their planets I'll build bomber cruisers to accompany the battleships.

Basically I've played most of the other good combos, and they all have their good points. So I just take the other races in-game and use them as slaves. It scales with game difficulty too. The higher the level the more useful your slaves are. (Some more than others obviously).

I'm really liking the ICE mod, since you can't do this until mid game. So I don't bother with telepathy. Time to figure out a new way to do it. I suspect aquatic, cybernetic, fuedal with ship defense maxed and possibly transdimensional. Maximize possible worlds to settle, and have cheap(ish) killer ships. It'll probably be more of an extermination build than slavet as it'd be better to have multiple incubator worlds to repopulate worlds rather than deal with unrest.

 

[civvver]

I think I found the best race with the base game.

Standard negative picks for these, repulsive, -ground combat, -ship defense to get to +20 picks.

Tolerant (10), unified (6), +1 production (3), large home world (1). This is essentially the best production race their is. Being non creative is not a big deal here. For one you need no pollution picks so you can build missiles and fuel cells and armor easily. No real sacrifices in that tree. Then you just crank out battleships with ease. I beat AIs on impossible using phasor while they still have fusion beams sometimes. Tolerant also gives you a lot of extra population. I find subterranean underwhelming now.

The best creative build I could come up with now is also tolerant (10), creative (8), rich home world (2). Yes it's dictatorship which hurts colonies early but since you're creative you get all the morale buildings so late you have more production and gold and science than unified or democracies. I used to always skip tolerant because I thought hey creative gets all the pollution buildings anyway, and that's true, but creative suffers from having to build everything to keep up with other races production. Being able to have 100% of your production off the bat and skip building those buildings is really needed. Plus tolerant gives that extra population. The main issue is going to be finding a second food planet early so you can take advantage of your rich home world to just produce things instead of farm.

Creative also opens up what I find to be superior weapons tech in mass drivers/gauss cannons. If you look at the comparable beam options which are fusions/phasors, yes they do a bit more damage fully upgraded. Fusions due to enveloping and phasors from shield piercing. But the issue is range dissipation. As a creative race you'll have all the beam goodies and hit people with 3 auto fire shots every time and full range. You'll be doing full dmg from turn 1 with mass drivers instead of having to fly close first. Non creatives can't afford to do this as level 1 force fields is mass driver, ecm jammer, class 1 shield. Jammer is hugely important, although losing level 1 shield hurts a lot too because at level 3 you choose between level 3 shield and planetary radiation shield. Flux shield comes way too late to sub for planetary radiation shield. You really have a tough choice at level 1 and no way you can pick mass drivers.

Overall though this creative build comes online a lot slower than the production one and isn't as strong.

 

[Alex2018]

My favorite best custom races (for long term, not to rush) to play on huge, impossible difficulty, 8 players, antarans on, random events off (for now), always pre-warp, average age are:

unification + subterran + aquatic + large HW.
Or
Unification + subterran +1 production, large HW.
Negatives: repulsive, -spying or -ground combat.

I usually end up with 100s of titans with dozens of doomstars and getting 1000s of dollars and RP's per turn.
Of course in small galaxy I could rush and have a quick game vs 7 impossible AI's. But I prefer to play long games with high tech.

 

[Harv]

I think I found the best race with the base game.

Standard negative picks for these, repulsive, -ground combat, -ship defense to get to +20 picks.

Tolerant (10), unified (6), +1 production (3), large home world (1). This is essentially the best production race their is. Being non creative is not a big deal here. For one you need no pollution picks so you can build missiles and fuel cells and armor easily. No real sacrifices in that tree. Then you just crank out battleships with ease. I beat AIs on impossible using phasor while they still have fusion beams sometimes. Tolerant also gives you a lot of extra population. I find subterranean underwhelming now.

Recently, I have been playing with:

10 Base Picksx
+5 Low-G (This is basically a temporary penalty in Normal-G worlds.)
+2 20 Ship Defense Penalty (We are getting hit.)
+2 10 Ground Combat Penalty (We get crushed like Ants!)
-1 Large Home World (because why not)
-6 Unification (of course!)
-6 +2 Production
-6 Subterranean (nearly max population)

I have been having lots of fun with this build, but working out newbie mistakes.

I like sub-terranean, because of the population bonus. Also, we are ants!

 

[civvver]

That's good too but tolerant gets like 60% of what subterranean does and you don't have to waste tech or production on anti pollution buildings. Although not being repulsive you could probably trade for what you need. I may have to try low g vs repulsive and see how it is.

 

[Alex2018]

That's good too but tolerant gets like 60% of what subterranean does and you don't have to waste tech or production on anti pollution buildings. Although not being repulsive you could probably trade for what you need. I may have to try low g vs repulsive and see how it is.

I prefer to take subterranean and then just get android workers ASAP. Since they are tolerant, I end up being subterranean and tolerant. Especially if you take Low-G penalty, it helps to have android workers.

I did play one game where I took low-g instead of repulsive. Not as good as I wanted.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Perhaps not the strongest but the combination of creative-feudal is quite interesting.

Creative provides uber ship and feudal makes these uber ships who otherwise would cost +10k to only cost like 3k.

Don't think there is any stronger combination in the late game as this combination can massproduce high quality ships in numbers which nobody else can do.

This combo also mean you still have 12 positive Points left to spend with other negative picks.

The only problem is that you need to survive to the Point that creative starts to shine and my strategy have been to rush the computer line for the research and morale (morale works adjective with the feudal science penalty which is very nice and the base research from the buildings are not affected by the feudal penalty).

Another combo would be Demo-1 bc which produce 3 bc per colonist instead of only one and it get even better as the game progress with better Tech. Because you produce so much Money you can afford to build hordes of cheap ships who cost far less to produce and give more firepower per production while also having the nice science advantage of democracy.

Unification-fantastic trade is basically the same as above but far cheaper in terms of Points with the advantages of unification but you need to produce goods instead of just getting all Money for free.

 

[civvver]

Feudal creative seems counter intuitive. Creative shines as you research more and feudal researches slower, so they don't really seem to compliment each other at all.

 

[plasmacannon]

Feudal creative seems counter intuitive. Creative shines as you research more and feudal researches slower, so they don't really seem to compliment each other at all.

It works better on lower difficulties. When one is getting attacked a lot by higher tech empires, it would get rough. The AIs usually make well rounded ships, not specialized ships powerful in one area.
I've done it on hard for a challenge.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Feudal creative seems counter intuitive. Creative shines as you research more and feudal researches slower, so they don't really seem to compliment each other at all.

I find production to be the bigger problem for creative as you get so many buildings that to use them all you need very good production or alot of money. Creative need research but because stuff that affect population are summed togther, the morale buildings will greatly reduce the feudal research problem and the science from buildings are unaffected.

On the other hand a problem with creative are it cost alot of points so feudal mean you can pick other strong advantages while avoiding other penalties.

It works better on lower difficulties. When one is getting attacked a lot by higher tech empires, it would get rough. The AIs usually make well rounded ships, not specialized ships powerful in one area.
I've done it on hard for a challenge.

I did not find this combo to be all that challeging on hard.

 

[plasmacannon]

I did not find this combo to be all that challeging on hard.

Sounds like it's time for Impossible!