Drath Balanced?

Yeah..... The Drath have some nice advantages. 50% defense boost. Start with Ion drive, Industrial Theory, Stellar Cartography..... I slashed and burned my way through a game yesterday playing Drath. That defense bonus is nice, once you get halfway up the defense tech tree, where defenses actually count for something.

That's balanced by......

The evil races get soldiering bonuses, miniaturization and logistics bonuses. Play the Yor sometime and you'll see.

The good races seem to have a powerful research ability, all out of proportion to the number of labs they build (or don't build). Plus they band together, which makes life hard for evil races.

Every time I stick the Drath in the galaxy under computer control, they always seem to be the first ones knocked out of the game. Not sure why.

Conquering the galaxy is not about defense, it's about offense

The Drath are very, very powerful. And defense helps keep your ships alive while they're out conquering the galaxy. The Yor are also very powerful. In terms of bonuses to start from, nobody else comes close.

Keep in mind that you don't have to play them as Good. Starting out as Good is an inherent advantage, since you can either go Good, Neutral or Evil without having to pick Good choices every single time. If you want to go Neutral, starting with a Good race means you get to kill kittens and stuff before making your ethical choice, where if you start as evil you need to sacrifice all kinds of ethical advantages in the beginning to get your alignment up.

As for the Drath consistently losing under AI control, I blame the AI. There's no reason for them to be behind with the advantages they get.

Along with the stats, one has to look at the techs given too. Also, you have to add the the starting planet quality. And the AI strength. In the end, they are fairly balanced.

The Drath ARE powerful if you research right. But remember in the end offense beats defense, but good logistics beats both. Early on when you're still in the 1-2 point phase of offense/defense technology and ships are cheap to build, good logistics is the best force multiplier in the game.

And in the end, it's *still* the best force multiplier in the game. You have to go pretty deep into Offense/Defense tech to overwhelm your opponent, and then you have the lag time of building the ships themselves. Logistics is instant as long as you have the numbers and allows your weaker ships to become a stronger unit as a whole *and* you don't have to go deep to get a superior advantage.

Decent offense/defense and great logistics beats killer offense or defense and so-so logistics every time. Why? Better logistics and decent, cheaper ships are a lot easier and faster to produce. You get your fleets out quicker. Your fleets have more ships, more hps. You can replace your losses more easily.

S'why the Drath lose so much in my games. Yor and Drengin inevitably overwhelm them.

weeble, as much as you said force multiplier- I'm guessing you're USAF...

Personally, my preference is big ships+ industrial might- only problem is surviving to that point.

Still, initial planets are a good sign of balance- there's a reason the Korx get a secondary class 8, and the Iconians a class 15 to start.

The Drath are always powerful in the games I play against them in. Well, I shouldn't say that. One game I played against them, they took on the Yor early on and they never got too big... That's probably because the only race that I find harder to play against than the Drath is the Yor.

Thats weird. The Drath are always getting whacked pretty early in my games. Go figure.

I personally don't think the races are at all balanced... Just try playing the Altarim, then as the Yor on a tiny map with 9 opponents and try telling me the Altarim are ok.

The Drath and the Yor are strongest in several ways. Both get Ion drive which is a huge bonus during planet grab. Both get bonuses that you just can't get any other way (miniturization for the Yor and defence for the Drath).

The AI plays the Drath dreadfully. It plays them as if their defence is the focus of their strategy. As has been said countless times before a good defence with no offence gets you killed every time. As a player if you put the offence to the fore then the defence bonus can become huge later in the game, I aim for larger hulls and decent weapons early on with the Drath. If you play as good you can quite nearly double your defence points. All the ridiculously large hp ships I've had have been as the Drath. A huge drath ship with the "right" defences can be almost unkillable if you prioritise its research, assuming it has at least mediocre weapons.


However, for me the Yor is the best. Ion drive, good logistics, miniturization and playing as evil means you can get a killer fleet of heavy fighters into the field a 20-30 turns before anyone else - you've got to exploit that window though. The miniturization is capped below that achievable by the Yor... boo hiss..

The miniturization is capped below that achievable by the Yor

Sorry.... the coffee hasn't smashed the fog from my head yet. Not sure what you mean by that?

There is a fixed game maximum level of miniaturization you can achieve regardless of race bonuses and tech. The Yor bonus + max miniaturization tech is in excess of that number and gets capped.

Well, I've played a couple games as Drath. A few things come to mind:
1) Yes, the AI sucks with Drath (and Thalan, for that matter), but I'm not the AI.
2) On the Yor: Don't Thalans get Miniaturization also?
3) I play long games with high research, so I get nothing out of Miniaturization, what with the cap.
4) The Drath have great bonuses *besides* Defense, too. Yay for diplomatic advantage.
5) Wait, different races get different starting planets?!? What are they?