DA 1.5 Race Abilities

This is correct. You'll note that the custom race actually has 15 points to spend on abilities, rather than 10, and can pick whichever superability is desired to go with them.

That doesn't balance it at all. In the Yor example, they can start with a soldiering bonus higher than any custom race can choose (by adding the highest bonus available to their pre-existing bonus). I'd have no problem if everyone ended up with 15 points of bonuses all up, but that doesn't happen, and the existing races can get higher bonuses than anyone else. In GC2 everyone had 10-ish points of bonuses and full customisation, now the existing races have 'inherent abilities' but you can still choose a larger bonus on the existing ones.

For instance, Terrans get 10 points to spend on top of their +25 dip (4 points), 10% morale (1), 10% research (2), 25% trade (4), and a extra trade route (3). That's 24 points total. It only gets worse when the Terrans spend 5 points on trade and get a starting bonus of 55%. Custom races get 15 points and can't break the bonus limits in this way.

I'm sure it's balanced internally between existing races, but custom races are not equal to them.

It is intended to be that way. The core races can excel in their own particular areas, while custom races can pick a wider spread of abilities. And you can still manually edit the custom race file to have 'natural' abilities like the core races do if you so desire.

ah, modding, the answer to a great many customer complaints

The Terran trading bonus can be very effectively countered. Build the wonder that protects trade routes so they can't get it, then have a field day with fast small ships attacking their shipping. All of a sudden they have 9 points that are totally useless, bringing them down to 15 points and trashing a large chunk of their economy for little cost to you.

I think that this is really a nice way to encourage you to use a stock race. In DL I never used a stock race after my first game. Not once. Now they are a worthwhile, and yet I can still make a very powerful custom race.

And as far as modding goes, it pretty much IS the great answer. Not everyone is as upset about this as you may be. I happen to be one of them. Well, now you can make a mod that lets you, and anyone who CHOSES to, have the game anyway they want. The rest of us that are okay with the game as it is just keep on truckin.

Sorry if I seem a little harsh on you. I am really not meaning to be.

Question- does the AI use its 10 extra points?

If so, is it chosen randomly, or based on some sort of preference.

If it doesn't use the 10 extra points, I won't.

Even better: Choose the Korx as one of the starting races. Trade/buy their trade techs. Then invade them and take the Galactic Privateer. Pay another civ to attack the Terrans, while you build your own trading empire. The Terrans are neutered, and you are rich. There are ways to counter any civs' strengths, if you just give it a bit of thought and effort.

So, I need to use workarounds because the builtin races are 'just better'? I'm supposed to manually edit custom races to keep up with the 'way better' builtin races? I should try to counter the huge advantage they have instead of playing in an even field?

I don't see the logic behind 'builtin excel at one thing (when they have half a dozen unmatchable bonuses) but customs can spread out (when they have less total points and can never match the builtins in individual bonuses)'.

I'm curious to know how the AI allocates it's points myself. If it isn't random, the builtins have a huge advantage over customs. This isn't me complaining about difficulty: I wondered why customs always got owned by builtins in mixed games. Gee, I wonder if having twice as much racial bonuses had anything to do with that?

Of COURSE you can counter any particular build: but if the devs think 15pts = 25pts with higher limits is fair or balanced, they're just wrong. Did anyone complain about racial abilities in GC2? I'm interested to understand the logic behind the changes and how these decisions were reached. Yor starting with social +70%, loyalty +120% and soldiering +60% is hardly balanced against 'oh the customs can spread out a bit'. What if someone wanted to make custom races that were actually fairly matched? They'd have to do it manually.

Just pick an official race and tweak their abilities, name, portrait, etc. Viola, custom race with all the inherent abilities PLUS your bonus points. Theres no real difference in the end result as a "unique" race, other than you get more stuff.

The only reason to be an actual "custom race" is to get to (exactly) pick your starting techs, but its rarely worth passing up the native race packages.

I usually will pick custom race because I like the build that I use for a race, plus then you get to pick any super power.

Pnakotus

I don't know your problem. With the normal races you're restricted and this give you some point bonus.

With custom races you can choose the best combos, for this you don't have a bonus.

Thats fine for me.

I kinda like the cookie-cutter races being better than the custom races. In DL the custom races were clearly better, and I ended up playing with this half-baked race that used other races' logos, ship templates, etc.. Now I get to play races in the storyline. Although, I do think the custom races are a bit too much worse than the cookie-cutters right now.

Also, it would be nice if there was a Green Party. Choose that political party, get +10% PQ bonus. Doggone tree-huggers.

As a person who ALWAYS plays as a custom race I have to weigh in on this comment. You may be right that "it's rarely worth passing up the natives" to take on a custom race but therein lies the 'challenge' of being your own race. I don't put nearly the amount of thought that some of you guys do when it comes to this game and the numbers/stats/just about anything that can be categorized and observed issues, I just play for the fun of it and because it's a great game. Quibbling over the 'justification' as to why the devs do something... pointless. Just get over it and play the game. It's just that simple.

It seems to me that a truly custom race should by default have 25 points to distribute (Assuming 25 is the number that the other races have total.)

In DA the a lot of the stock races have wicked setups AND you get so many extra points that you can fine tune them to be very customized.

You might get a few extra points using a completely custom race but you're not likely to match the oomph of a stock race.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I'm not sure that I'd go with a pure custom race when customizing a stock race is way more bang for the point-buck.

If you usually play pure custom races and haven't checked out how the points are different in DA for the stock races, you might want to do so.

I have to say, I'm a little disappointed in the rebalancing of the AP costs (or the lack of it). The only change that seems to be made was needlessly nerfing Pop Growth, and needlessly nerfing the Torians. The Torians were not the best race even in the beta. And then, like, Trade Routes: 3 points for a trade route?? That's a holdover all the way from Galciv1.

I've checked the numbers out and do agree that they aren't comparable in their values but I will still continue to customize my own... it's just more fun that way IMO.
Seriously though, they are out of whack and do make it quite unfair to use a custom race. But hey, we all have to give a little to get a little now don't we?

Just remember one thing guys... you all can remember the 'nerfing' of certain things based on user 'complaining' can't you? Be wary of what you wish (or bitch) for!

Yep, Torians were too powerful at one point in DL. But not now.

So requiring a longwinded, non-native workaround to get a fair game is fine? This attitude is appalling.



It's great that you don't think it's a problem, but I don't understand what you're saying. The normal races are NOT restricted: they can buy any bonus they like. They simply have slightly less points available and a large group of pre-existing bonuses. You can still put points into espionage and such for Yor, and you've only lost 5 points to gain 14 points of free bonuses. Honestly, do the math: Terrans get 24 points all told, and customs get 15. That is not fair, regardless how you slice it.

Frankly I've found many things that works fine native in GC2 now require fiddly rubbish to work - race portraits for instance. Seriously saying things like 'custom races are weaker and that's okay' and 'oh custom races are more flexible even though they have smaller bonuses' and 'just customise a normal race or manually edit files' really strikes me as a broken attitude. It worked fine before, they changed it, now anyone who liked to sit down and bang out a quick custom race is being penalised. You can now play with custom race-AIs... but they're now weaker and get stomped due to being both 10 bonus picks down and not being able to reach the same bonuses. People complained when Yor got unpickable bonuses (like miniturisation) in GC2 - now EVERYONE gets such an advantage... EXCEPT custom races. It's only made worse because these are 'transparent' bonuses instead of pre-chosen picks: the way normal races can get DOUBLE the maximum available bonus in this way is deeply unfair to custom races.

And this is 'working as intended' so it's okay? Even beefing up custom picks to 20 or 25 would make a significant difference - they normal races would still have higher maximums, but at least there'd be ROUGH parity.

I like the fact Pop growth has been nerfed it was to powerful imo. I'd also like to see aphrodisiac nerfed as well a 20-25% bonus would be much better than 50% which is way to powerful.

The Torians are a very poor race now. They have the worst super ability (You can only use it if you cripple your economy) and they have few abilities.

I'd like to see Super breeder working at 76% morale and perhaps be able to colonise aquatic planets (Torians are aquatic aren't they?). This would make it much more attractive.

I say its a great bonus of a custom race to put all points in best combinations. You could even combo with a super ability of your choice which is a huge advantage.

If you take a fix race you just can't do that because you're limited to a lot fewer ability points which can be allocate for free and you have to live with fix points wether you need much or not.

So whats so complicate to understand?

So it's an advantage that you can do with custom races what you can do with normal races... but the normal races get more? Sure, if you pick Yor and decide to take dip bonuses you might have less points to 'spend', but you've still got more picks worth of bonuses than if you chose custom. If you *appropriately* choose your normal race, you can start with both MORE PICKS and BIGGER BONUSES than is possible for customs. This is unfair.

Frankly, that you think 10 vs 15 is 'a lot fewer' but don't care that the normal races get 15 points of FREE PICKS confuses me. Five fewer picks is a big deal, but fifteen picks of fixed bonuses isn't? This makes no sense.

I'm quite amused that game-irrelevant things like 'what the techs are called' is considered a big deal, but making the game unfair and crippling custom races (both selling points of the game: non-cheating and custom races now usable as oppnonents) isn't. It might be unfair, but the flexibility of having 40% less picks overall and lower maximum bonuses makes up for it... and I can always *edit it manually*, the catchcry of a *broken feature*.

I honestly wish I'd waited for the DA demo instead of preordering: I wouldn't have wasted my money.

Well said.

With the custom opponents you can buld an AI custom and see how they fair with their 15 points versus the preset races. So far I have one custom that doesn't have a problem being the dominate AI against the built in ones. I've set them to use the same cpu settings and all ,so the only difference is their ability picks. So even AI against AI, I don't see it being a big advantage for the built in races.

It isn't a 'big advantage' that they start with higher bonuses that will take several techs to catch, like +50 dip?? I want fairness - this is why the low-cheating AI is such a selling point - so why not have an even playing field *like GalCiv2*? And why is it now impossible to play Killer Humans instead of Diplo Humans, whereas before I could make the Drengin nice researchers or the Altarians pacifists? The game's flexibility has decreased. What benefit did the game get out of losing fairness and flexibility? I bet most players don't even notice, so it's a loss for *nothing*.

Every time a patch comes out I'm checking it, and I kinda hope I can work out how to mod the game back to 'fairness'. It's awesome to explain this 'feature' to people thinking about GC2 and seeing their reaction: I haven't had anyone say 'oh well that's okay' yet.