Does everyone play the races, as is?

For me personally I like to see if I can build a race that is tailored to my specific style of play. Therefore since pretty much day one I've been playing as a custom race. The abilities have changed as I've learned more about what works and what doesn't for me but for the most part I think it does pretty well against the default races.

Hopefully sometime in the future you can mod the game in such a way to build a custom race for the computer too. That would be a blast to play against I think. You know set the abilities and then tell it *Use the Thalans AI*. Really give it a workout.

My Iconians need quite a bit of tuning, I drastically change the attributes and even the shipset......but I think their race logo is the coolest.

The default races are better than what you can make, but customization makes them better suited to your style of play. I've played it both ways, but usually prefer the customization.

Okay, I'm going to add a question here. Why ever play as humans? They get the least techs? Or...why play with any race other than the Torians who have logistics 8?

Or, is the answer simply that it's a single player game, so balance isn't really a huge deal. In other words, you can always make a custom race that's "better than the others" but part of the fun is winning the game as your preferred race. I don't care either way, but it's been a long time since I've seen a strategy game that doesn't pull its hair out trying to balance all the sides, lol.

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Or...why play with any race other than the Torians who have logistics 8?

Because the Yor have +25 miniturization, and can therefore colony rush like nobody's buisness?

Well again it's all about playing to your desired strengths. Playing as the Terrans means that you've got a really great start on diplomacy. This means that you can basically wine and dine all the other races from the start of the game. You know get them to give you good tech deals or even go to war with the others. Sometimes I like to see if I can get all of the empires at war with everyone else but me. It's tricky to say the least but if your diplomacy is high enough you can pull it off.

So yeah the great thing about this game is that there are probably hundreds of thousands of viable choices in terms of what race you prefer to play. And on top of all that because of the customization allowed you don't have to be pigeon holed into the devs vision of how a particular race should play.

In terms of balance again its about play style. As Alfonse said with the +25 miniaturization of the Yor you can really build some nice ships in the early go. However this is only a bonus for you if you play that way. So for some that might be war mongers that +25 is huge in terms of being able to pack ships with weapons in the early go. Hence it can seem *overpowered* or unbalanced. But I think in general all of the races have strengths and weaknesses. Your play style can emphasize one or the other

I played one or two games with stock races, then as I do with any game that allows custom races, I have tried numerous variants. I don't "play my strengths" (or style), as I don't have particular one(s), I jsut experiment with the various possibilities. They are there, after all, for just that prupose.

[Edit: I see now that I screwed everyone up with a typo....sorry!]

Okay, I meant to say, why play as anyone but the YOR. And, by that, I wasn't referring to racial bonuses. What I meant was, why not choose the Yor every time and make up your own bonuses? If you like the humans, then pick the Yor and give them all the human bonuses. You'll be playing as a human who has logistics 8 and more than 2x the techs.

Except for that one comment you made about the humans getting some kind of relational bonus with the other races. That isn't a racial ability. Is it some kind of special thing they get?

Thanks for being patient, sorry about the confusion.

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The Terrans have +25 on diplomacy, u might want to update

The only race ive changed are the drath and iconians kuz i felt they were pretty under balanced

Well, I'm on dialup, so I'm waiting to get to a wifi location to update. And I'm waiting until 1.1 to do that. Unless the updates are less than 10MB. Anyone know off hand how large they are?

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afaik the cool bonus abilities like 25 miniaturization will disappear if you costomize a race
i like the unchanged yor for their minis in the beginning but i also like lots of other abilities, so most time i get a custom race
mine has diplo translators researched from the beginning so i can tech trade in turn 1 (mostly playing small maps)

I play the uncustomized Drath sometimes.

I modify races.

iirc the miniiarization and logistics are the two that do not change and you can not when changing abilities within a game.

However, using a text editor such as "notepad" the raceconfig.xml can be modified as desired to make any of the races be whatever you like. This has been described elsewhwere in the forums and the modding section. Just be sure and save the original so you can go back to it when you want.

if you edit a race, how do you restore the default bonuses? currently whenever I start a new game it never resets the defaults and I can't find a means to do so.

Call me boring, but I only play stock races.

What works best for me is to choose a race that has bonuses that make up for my downfalls.

For instance, I tend to have issues keeping people happy, there are plenty of other techs that I want, and I like the high pop for the money. So I like to chose a race that has high moral bonus, or make my own with one.

Im a big stickler on balance, being a hard core warcraft 3 player. Honestly, most of my games feel the same regardless of who I am playing. What makes the games feel different is how I play it.

The two traits that I have noticed make a game feel really different are the speed upgrades, and planet quality 30%. Both of which cost plenty of ability points. Nothing really feels unbalanced for me.

But see this is what I've been saying... all these people get to play the same game GC2 but definitely not in the same way. Fantastic if you ask me. There is no one *right* answer here. It's all personal preference and in my book that is what separates an average game from one that is probably going to be on my HD until it blows up and I have to buy a new one. And you know what the second program I'll install is?

In the same subdirectory that holds the save games, delete the *.raceconfig files that were created when you edited the races abilities. The game will create new ones when you edit abilities in the game. iirc there are some downloadable editors that will do his for you. I just use the delete key

In the 1.1 beta the population ability starts to have real meaning. It was about worthless in the 1.0 release.
Economy. moral, diplomacy, and population in 1.1 beta are my favorites.

I generally play as the Drath, without changing them. They are close enough to what I would like them to be, and I can't get as much by customizing the race.

I noticed that the different races have a different number of points left over to spend. Are these points supposed to be spent, or are they just there because the race has some abilities that cant be bought normally (+8 logistics, +100 loyalty, +25 miniturazation, ect.). Typically, the races with lots of unbuyable abilities have the most points leftover, so I was thinking this was the case.

I have to say that I haven't actually played the standard races too much. I started out with my custom made squirels and haven't done much else since

I keep thinking 'You know I should try one of those standard races this game' and then one of the other voices in my head says 'yeah but the squirels are so CUTE!.. and fuzzy! *nod nod*' and then another voice says 'not to mention E-V-I-L! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!' and then another voice says 'and with the sharp.... pointy teeth... I mean LOOK AT THE BONES!!!!!'

And so I usually end up staying with my custom race.

Felk the Insane

While I've played as the Terrans once, for the most part I've created custom races, either of my own devising or based on other science-fiction TV or books. I create them according to what I think fits best, and try to play that way, rather than fitting the race to the way I'm most comfortable playing.

I play as stock Yor and stock Drath, which I consider to be the two best races. I add in +30% hp with the Drath, forget what I do with the Yor, I think I add in more weapons. I go evil and use the evil wapons with the Yor and use the good defenses with the Drath, works out very well on Crippling and Maso so far.

I don't like using custom races because they get less starting technology. I like to start out with Ion Drive and Xeno Industrial theory (for the manufacturing cap) and I can't do that with a custom race so I never use custom races unless maybe I want to try out a weird influence/trade based race.