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

[Roller123]

Creative Democracy is by far the most overpowered thing i ever saw.
Best possible ship equipment. best possible bonus in the game to production, research, food and money. No pollution. All technologies.

Unification tolerant sacrifices much of the above power for early availability. Its nice, but its something for rush bunnies. I dont really like to play that way.

 

[Murky]

In online play, Unification, Tolerant, Large Home world, +1 Prod, Repulsive, -Ship Defense, -Ground Attack trumps everything else.

In single player mode, you get more time to mess around so just about anything other than the stock races are strong enough to win easily. In that case, Democracy/Creative will work just fine.

 

[vmxa]

Dem/Creative is only powerful as the game gets farther down the line. Uni/Tol takes over the galaxy sooner and is more powerful. It makes ships faster, earlier in the game when it matters.

Dem/Creative can get swamped if it draws a bad location and is worse as the maps is smaller and not prewarp. IOW the worse map for that race is a small advanced start.

Uni/Tol is not just a rush bunny as you do not even have to go on offense, you can just jam out lots of colony ships to grab many planets.

 

[Murky]

I think the main reason that production races like UniTol+1Prod rule is because of the basic concept of expansion/growth in the 4x genre. They can expand the quickest and grow population faster. Most of their research is accomplished with buildings instead of pop.

 

[Tristan_C]

Dem/Creative is only powerful as the game gets farther down the line. Uni/Tol takes over the galaxy sooner and is more powerful. It makes ships faster, earlier in the game when it matters.

Dem/Creative can get swamped if it draws a bad location and is worse as the maps is smaller and not prewarp. IOW the worse map for that race is a small advanced start.

Uni/Tol is not just a rush bunny as you do not even have to go on offense, you can just jam out lots of colony ships to grab many planets.

I agree, creative in general is rather reliant on getting a safe starting location. This will work alright in single player, where you can just restart over and again until you get a nice system in a corner. Don't get me wrong, I very much love creative and the amazing ships it allows you to construct in the mid and late game. But you need to survive long enough to research the techs and build the ships, and for 8 picks, creative does not deliver you the instantaneous economic advantages of some other choices.

Unitol is the acknowledged dominator and a free pass to victory on any single player galaxy. Funny that it still makes for a pretty exciting game.

The cheaper ship costs also mean colony ships are cheaper...

...cheaper expansion is quicker expansion, more systems = more research

I mean you'll never be a Psilon research monster, but the creativeness is an extra facet that a lot of warlike races lack

Feudal + creative is just bad, mate, I'm sorry. Think "opportunity costs." There are other combinations that buff your ability to produce colony ships almost as much as feudal, but they actually work with creative rather than hamper it. But I'm not THAT close-minded... perhaps I'll give one of these games a try at some point just to see.

 

[Arakhor]

I was playing my custom Psyron race the other day (Creative, Telepathic, +2 Research, Low-G, - Spying, - Ground Defence) and the Humans were busy wiping everyone else in the galaxy out. The Alkari declared war on me and I sent my battleships to mind-control his worlds and then I declared all out war with my Titans on the Humans. I lost a few minor colonies and had to retake a few Human worlds, but in the end I quickly seized his empire that had previously been easily 40-45% of the galaxy.

Creative and Telepathic do make the game extremely easy

 

[vmxa]

Not sure what value Tele is to a creative race. No real need for mind control at the point that you have titans, but fun is fun.

 

[Demidjinn]

My all-time favorite race is this:

Aquatic
Democrazy (It is spelled that way! Seriously!)
Artifact Home World
+1 research
Large Homeworld
(19 picks)

Low-G World
-20 shipdefense
-20 shipoffense
(-9 picks)

I always played singleplayer... so I never tried this in multi. It would likely get creamed if humans played aggressively against it. But there are a few tricks that might make it not so. Still.. I think beamships (warlord/+50 offence/Feudals), and aggressive unitols, would probably eat them for breakfast if they started close.

I did try it in a few hotseat games with a friend (He played the Unitol variant). Naturally I couldn't keep up in the beginning but I did start to regain ground in early middle game. We gave up on the game about then due to boredom.. so I don't know if it would continue to gain ground.

Also against other humans I guess they would just steal my tech.. I invent all the Spying techs though. And build plenty spies.. eventually.

Okay. Strategy.

Sell your starbase (turn one!). Sell your Marine Barrack (turn two).
Invent automated factory asap (and get reinforced hull on the way) (when the percentages start counting you assign some workers too). Buy factory. Build Colonybase Asap.

Okay. It gets the first colonybase a bit (aprox turn 13) later. But if you start prewarp (you must with this race) you save a lot of turns on the techpart. And you go for Robo-miners right after research labs. And then polution processors too (while maintaining lowpolution production and buying things).

As for military.. I go for Atmossphere Renewers, augmented engines, and ion drives. When I have that I can build high initiative cruisers (with augmented engines) with 11 fully upgraded 2-shot mirv nukes. They take care of most things.. of course I have to build at least one starbase somewhere first..

Problem is I need some time to get everything into action. Usually I grab soilenrichment, holosims and Gravgenerators too before I really get going. But this race should be up and running at about turn 70-80. Much too late for multiplay I suppose. But I have had great fun on Single (impossible, huge, organic rich galaxies with 8 players).

Note:
About the repulsive +2 food, cybernetics, fantastic trader race. It's pretty clear he is purposely gimping himself. But he does have one 'ace'. He isn't going to produce stuff. He is going to produce food and buy stuff. Each food he produces in excess of what he needs will net him 2g .. only way he gets up and running. But it sounds fun

 

[scratchthepitch]

I find creative and telepathic together are unbeatable in single player. Using those, I've never even come close to losing a game on the impossible setting. The 6 points left over allows for a wide variety of other choices, including the unification government. These other picks vary depending on my mood when starting a game. I usually pick low gravity, negative spying and ground attack settings to get the -10. Low gravity is quickly made up with the gravity tech. With creative, there's not much of a reason to spy. And telepathic negates the need of troops (I rely upon my fleets to prevent others landing on my planets).

For strategy I usually spam colony ships as fast as possible till I meet up with one of the repulsives. Then I switch to warship building. That seems to work well, though sometimes I have to resort to bribes till I get a fleet up and running. I do trade and research treaties with the aliens I can, for as long as possible.

 

[plasmacannon]

never mix cyber with low-G, that's suicide.

I have tried feudal + creative in a SP game, usually with Uni, Aqua, Prod+1 also.
but, usually, the creative is not matched well with it, and Prod+2 RichHW is better matched with it instead.

I noticed the game generates a map somewhat based on what you pick for your race.
If you choose Aquatic, you tend to find a few more water based worlds around you, and if you choose Heavy-G you find more of those around you. So, I mixed them.
Uni, Aquatic, Heavy-G, Prod+1
I had 3 of the 5 Heavy-G planets in the game, near me, and 2 were rich, the other Ultra-Rich.

Uni, Aquatic, Prod +1, Cyber, Rich Hw, was one of the best Cybers I could come up with.

I modeled one race after the Vaadwaur race from Star Trek Voyager. Episode VOY225: Dragon's Teeth. http://www.startrek.com/database_article/dragons-teeth#user_info_box

They were found underground and technologically 900 years behind the races in their region, yet, still remembered how to get to their subspace corridors to travel vast distances quickly without being seen. They had lots of small out of date ships. I simulated them as follows:
(6) Subterrainean, (5) Transdimential, (4) Stealthy Ships, (4) Warlord, (1) LG Hw ; (-4) -50 pop growth, (-4) feudal, (-2) Ship Defense

Unbalanced, yes. Slow to build, because, of no Uni or Prod+2. Slow to tech, because, of the feudal representing their lack of technology. Slow to grow, because, they just do not have the population to reproduce fast enough to keep pace with everyone else.

Strategy: You have to build alot of cheap low tech destroyers and overwelhm the fleets you find. If you can't beat them, fly off to another planet and try there. If you can weaken a ships engines, you might be able to capture it. Scrap it and gain new technology to help you catch up.
Also, scout everywhere to meet the new racaes in the region, and steal their technology, as your research will be very slow. This is a challanging race, with some nice atributes. It's subterranean feature allows it to catch up and surpass some races on population, but, at -50 Growth.
Its best ships will be small and fast, such as fighters, bombers, frigates and destroyers, because, of the speed bonus of Transdimential (+4 spd in combat) increasing their ship defense (by +20).
Many races chose -20 Ship Defense, but, few have TransD to compensate for this.

 

[vmxa]

For strategy I usually spam colony ships as fast as possible till I meet up with one of the repulsives. Then I switch to warship building. That seems to work well, though sometimes I have to resort to bribes till I get a fleet up and running. I do trade and research treaties with the aliens I can, for as long as possible.

IIRC repulsive can only declare war or make peace, so they cannot be bribed.

 

[codyisland]

Researcher races where unbeatable in my opinion!

 

[scratchthepitch]

IIRC repulsive can only declare war or make peace, so they cannot be bribed.

Before they attack, repulsive races start demanding things. At least once, sometimes more often. If you give them what they want, then it buys you a little more time. This is what I was talking about when I said I bribed them.

 

[El_Machinae]

Aquatic creatives. I find the easy food and large colonies really help.
I take -10 spy and -10 ground troops, because creative compensates for those very easily.

Reserve 2 points for the endgame, when the evolutionary mutation allows me to take telepathic. Then I can steamroll.

 

[vmxa]

Hope you do not have any close races as they will steal you blind in the early game with -spy. What do you need tele for at that point as a creative race?

 

[El_Machinae]

Early tech thefts don't really matter. The odds of getting a crummy tech are too high, and they require active investment in spies instead of progress.

Telepathy in the endgame allows steamrolling. There's no need to manage troop transports or pacifying a population. You can take over a planet, and then it's yours.

 

[vmxa]

I don't have that need anyway, just glass the planet. In the mean time you could have used the 2 picks for the most important part of the game. By the time you get Mutation, you can do whatever makes you happy.

They seem to do a far amount of stealing and I would not like them to get things like Planetary Missles. Even if I do not take -spy, they get in some steals.

 

[scratchthepitch]

Having tech stolen is annoying, but not too much of a problem. The planetary missile bases are not a problem, either, except very early in the game when beams miss most of what they shoot at. I find the ground batteries to be much more deadly, since if you cant knock them out on the 1st attack round, you'll likely lose ships on the AI's turn.

 

[DirtyFinger]

I only need telepathy and unification to win on impossible, even with -10 penalty picks.

I take the elerian pic to improve chances that i'm the only telepath in the game.
once i can build cruisers with mirv rockets i start conquering neighbours.

i need unification production bonus to quickly create multiple research bases to offset my research weakness. telepathy saves you all the tedious ground troop conquest issue which is a gigantic timesaver.

the only one that could possibly stop me in my tracks is a bad start with an early shield III tec neighbour, because that would require me to invent missiles better than mirv nukes earlier than otherwise.

 

[vmxa]

Telepathic Warlord Trans Dimensional Omniscient Rich Feudal Repulsive

no researched needed.