Would agree with almost all of what you listed except for the Survey Module -- I use em right off and buy 3 survey ships on first 3 turns and upgrade engines and life support around turn 5 to 7 when i get impulse drive tech. I probably snatch up 60-70% of the anomalies on a gigantic map.

Personally i find freighters not worth the time and effort to build myself -- the pay off is too far off and they can be attacked and destroyed too easy and it is after all only extra income ( my economy generates enough of a surplus without them ) -- however they are great extra income when the others generate trade routes and they do have the comp AI wasting their time on em.

The same goes for economic starbases -- real lame payback especially if you think about really defending them with all the add ons. Unless they changed em in 1.2 -- haven't checked em out since 1.1 .

I've never done the military starbases -- almost always on the offensive and using constructors to build up mining starbases that have great payback. But they look like a real neat strategic option to have.

Econ starbases rock. And hopefully they won't nerf them any further. Starbase defenses on the other hand, suck. You need to add a kagillion constructors to give any real hope of surviving a fleeted attack, and later in the game forget it. It's much easier to park a fleet of obsolete ships that you can upgrade in a pinch on your starbases. To me this is one of the biggest weaknesses of the AI, it relys on the crappy starbase defenses. Which means :

1) It wastes resources sending 40 constructors to each starbase.
2) Its starbases are still not protected.

Trade does suck. It's just not worth the effort unless you need to kiss an AI's ass to stay alive. In GC1 trade could often make 30% of what your economy was pulling in. It made going evil and/or leaving the council tricky. In GC2 it's pathetic unless you're on a tiny map.

Survey module is fine, like Kblore said, you just need to get it early. Wormholes are good too, they add some risk to just goobling up anomolies.

The guid book is a complete joke, you still need to use the space to put the survey module in. (and like you said, by then it's worthless anyway)

Agree with tactics. Mini-soldiers and info war are the only real choices.

One other thing is the political capitol doesn't seem to do very much for influence.

Agree with most, espesially the invasion tactics, but whoah!
I can't believe what I'm hearing about trade! It makes tons and tons for me! Absoloutely tons! I have eco starbases over all the routes; when I go to war with someone I have huge trade relations with it can sometimes put me into the yellow. I never up the taxes on my worlds, and I'd rather fill of the space on my planets with industry and science buildings, so trading with anyone you're not at war with seems indispensable to me.
I mean, I've played alot, and with huge galaxies, and people are saying the trade in GC1 was better: it used to make up 30% of your profit...well, geez, trade makes up pretty much half or more of my profit, and I never want for cash once I get all my trade routes out.
With the right placement of eco bases...it's just insane how much you can make--not to mention the added bonouses those same eco bases can give to nearby planets.
Anyone agree?

Oh yeah, never had a trade route attacked in my life. Ever. In countless games.

I mostly use mini soldiers too, but sometimes, others are useful when i want to do scoth and burn.

300% food tiles

I find these useful, especially on large planets. Good cash-generators (lots and lots of stock markets - those +10% morale bonuses add up!) and a handy place to top up transports.

300% food production tiles are great... Stick loads of influence buildings on the same planet and a few stock exchanges and look at the revenue. You need to be looking at a happy 100M pop (not obsessing about how bad 25M is for morale).
I do tend to get the morale wonders and trade goods but honestly it is one of my favourite tiles. With 100M planet you can get a troup transport per turn and not diminish your population at all. Also it is great for trade routes (not that I use it myself).

I find Life Support fairly useless after the initial colony/resource rush. By the time I reach the top of that tree I can reach everywhere with no life support at all. Certainly I never make warships with sensors or life support on them at all.

I think you should consider the game settings you're using before saying a given tech/improvement is useless. While a small map in general may make life support useless, a gigantic one with only occasional stars/worlds makes LS essential. I've played a couple of games where I'd never have gotten beyond my starting system without LS because habitable planet density was low.

Trade is great for keeping up relations and with econ starbases, has always been a viable source of income for me, but I prefer low taxes and don't like to waste space on worlds building morale centers. A player that likes high taxes-morale centers may not rely on trade as I do.

Sensors are always a priority tech for me. Get survey module early and even on gigantic maps, you can snag 60+% of anomalies. On a small map, though, your flagship is typically adequate.

I do tend to use minisoldiers more than the others when invading, but the other techs aren't useless, I just tend to go right up the invasion route to its end without researching other techs in between once I go that way. Other players may not do that.

300% food bonus tiles are great for the militaristic player. Those worlds will be filling transports till the end of the game, but a more peaceful player would find that keeping high morale on these worlds is prohibitive to building a farm on those tiles.

I DO agree that galactic guidebook has never been useful for me, most anamolies, even on the largest map with high density, are gone before I can research this tech.

Anyway, I think, for the most part, a lot of the techs/improvements can be useful, but their uses depend on your particular play style and galaxy/game settings you prefer.

- Secret Police Center (too small morale boost - tested even on v.high population planets and it was still worse than normal morale booster buildings) - Galactic Guide Book (no anomalies left by the time when it's available) - Survey Module (no anomalies left after I can build it)

Agree, useless!

- 300% food production boost tiles (morale on such planet always very low if farm built on this tile, more trouble than benefit)

No, these are great.

- some invasion tactics: Gas Warfare, Tidal Disruptors, Core Detonation, Mass Drivers used very rarely (maybe cost tweaking needed for invasion tactics - make Mini-Soldiers more expensive and the others slightly less expensive?)

Semi-agree. They need to tweak these a bit to make them less homogeneous so a reasonable player will have more choices.

- Pre-made ships. Nothing against them but they're always put on obsolete the minute they show up.

- Agreed on wormhole anomalies. I really wish we could have a "ignore wormholes" checkbox next to the auto-survey button; losing that ship to a distant sector while you're doing something else can be almost game-breaking sometimes.

- Sensor tech tree path. I don't know, maybe it's just me but I never bother.

Abilities: Espionage, Repair, Sensors -->Not that bad but I would never spend points on these instead of the others.

Parties: Populists, Technologists, Pacifists, Mercantile --> Again maybe other people have some use for these but I sure never do.

Galactic Privateer Wonder = I could not win suicidal without it as it protects a good chunk of easy income in the early/middle part of the game where you need it most. And I know how to build my economy.

Pre-made Ships = sucks (how about give me more ships shells to choose from to build my own ships)

Anything Influence related = sucks (winning by influence is the most boring way to win)

Sensors = I love because I can see things sooner to protect myself and they are great for trading for weapons from alliance members.

Food production tiles = I love these and 98% of my planets are always at 100% morale with a 40%+ tax. I need more population so I can take over more planets.

Starbase Defenses = Complete waste of time. It takes so much work for so little defense. I just don't build it and instead protect the starbase with ships. For the important ones on resource tiles I will heavily protect it with ships.

dinantes, seriously try playing with more stock exchanges... They give tons of money, influence, and morale. Your usefull pop limit is ~25B, so there's no reason to lower taxes below 75% because you can keep them happy at that level with 4-5 vr centers and all the rest stock exchanges. Once you try this, you'll see that trade is not viable.

Especailly because building and sending out the freighters takes so long. Also building all those starbases takes money, and uses a lot of your industrial capacity to build all the constructors.

With money you can be very flexible. Like upgrade all your ships at once, or quick buying factories/ships. I admit i probably over-do my economy, i can't spend the money fast enough, but i think the solution is creating more industrial and research centers to chew up the dough.

My personal list of useless elements: - Secret Police Center (too small morale boost - tested even on v.high population planets and it was still worse than normal morale booster buildings)

Meh. That's why I build it on planets that only need a small boost.

- Galactic Guide Book (no anomalies left by the time when it's available)

Pfft. On what, small maps? I don't play on small maps if I can help it. I'm playing on the gigantic suckers where sometimes I'll have graviton weapons by the time I find a minor species. They're very useful on those.

- Galactic Privateer wonder (freighters still sometimes gets attacked)

Odd... I don't experience the same results.

- Survey Module (no anomalies left after I can build it)

Then, obviously you've never had your survey ship blown up by someone who doesn't particularly like you early on.

My personal list of almost useless elements: - Hyperion Shipyard (only +1 to speed is nothing by the time when it's available)

+1 to speed can be the difference between it being done this turn or being done next turn. Also helps out when you're not willing to spend money on engines for a ship. Allows for some cheap probes.

- 300% food production boost tiles (morale on such planet always very low if farm built on this tile, more trouble than benefit)

That's odd... I always get 100% on the planets that have those... The secret? Make your priority be entertainment for building.

- Wormhole anomalies (only enter them sometimes on small maps - on gigantic usually means to be out of own sectors for ages)

Yes, it does. It also means that you gain plenty of early knowledge about the sectors that are out there and sometimes get a chance to meet people you might not meet for half the game. I've gotten some of my strongest alliances resulting from sending my survey ship through random wormholes.

- some invasion tactics: Gas Warfare, Tidal Disruptors, Core Detonation, Mass Drivers used very rarely (maybe cost tweaking needed for invasion tactics - make Mini-Soldiers more expensive and the others slightly less expensive?)

Okay, I agree.

In my case, I have only one: Technological Victory. Typically, I'm already looking at the victory screen by the time I get halfway there.

The Galactic Guide is the most useless Galactic Wonder/Super Project. Prior to v1.2, Eyes of the Universe was key to taking advantage of the huge first strike advantage which pretty much assured you a victory in the game; still very useful in v1.2.

There has neen many posts saying Galactic Privateer was broken because freighters would still be attacked. A saw a post that it only prevents the cancellation of trade routes which makes it 99% useless; whereas, the Galactic Guide Book is 100% useless!

The survey module very usefull! It is available after researching Sensors 1 which I get early in the game as it also provide +1 to sensor range. Creating a few cargo ships with a survey module, extra sensors, and two impluse drives, will help get those money anomalies before your neighbors which really helps in the early game!

I mostly use standard invasion until I'm rich then I will use mini-soldiers on the high population planets.