Arceans are damned good at fleet management, and that doesn't even take their first strike ability into account. Their military is the most effective of the AIs, pound for pound.

I feel Drengin are more bravado than a threat. If they can declare early wars and gobble up a few planets, they can survive, if not, I think their economy rips them apart.

The Korath have better empires overall compared to the Drengin, they seem to have a stronger economy and can actually support their wars. They are usually the military leader (after me) in my games.

Thalans almost always tend to expand a lot and somehow support that with some economy and military. They will almost always have the most numerous (albeit technologically out of date) fleets. They almost always come out ahead in the colony rush, but they will die if they meet an enemy that is leaps and bounds ahead of them in tech. Still, I find Thalans are pretty solid.

Krynn consulate is another solid militaristic empire, almost as good as the Korath. Usually, if I get these guys in my game, and they don't have a lousy start, they will become a prime power. Oh, they REALLY like using spies. I mean, they REALLY like them, they place them in waves of 3-4 spies.

Altarians will get to be one of the solid guys if they get a good start. If they don't, they almost always die a horrible death.

Dominion of Korx is always mediocre in my games, they don't ever shine as the 1st man, but they don't get wiped out either. They are just there, starting (and fighting) wars if they get pissed off too much, or paying to end wars if they are getting a beating.

My Torians always die, horribly. They look like they will do something in the early game, by the end of mid game someone has wiped the floor with them (usually it's one of the evil militaristic races).

Iconians are below average in my games. They are usually passive, rarely starting wars, but they seem to do OK with their research, so they can stand up for themselves when somebody makes war on them.

Arceans are REALY passive. They will have these awesome fleets but they will not start wars on their own. They'll just wait until somebody declares it on them.

I haven't had much experience playing against the Yor, but they will usually do well in the colony rush and follow it up by a solid mid game. They also seem to start wars on their own and I've seen them destroy other AIs single handedly. Definitely above average. Unfortunately I think they lack any diplomacy whatsoever.

I've had a good experience fighting the Yor, though it was only a single game. It was a well executed surprise attack with dozens of fleets. It wasn't much of a SURPRISE, considering that I saw how much they hated me and the ships were congregating in plain view, but I just had nothing I could do to counter them at the time, so I got to see them waltz all their ships right into the middle of my military starbases immediately before declaring war.

Oh, what a great idea for a thread. First off, my analysis is assuming they get in a starting position that lets them establish an infrastructure. Any AI will suffer while languishing with only its starting worlds. For what it is worth, here is my general experience:

Strong (and why):

The Krynn. They establish a good economy, use espionage well, build powerful fleets at all stages of the game, and seem to be generally interested in taking planets (all that really matters). If they get any sort of tech/industry advantage they will be around for a while. Thier diplomacy advantage makes it hard to take advantage of them in tech trading, and they always seem to manage a good balance between research and industry. They have very happy populations, which gives them lots of soldiers and money, a tough combination.

The Korath. Two things here really set them apart, their high racial weapon bonus and spore ships. Unlike most AIs that will fight your ships but never quite get around to taking planets, the Korath consistently take planets. I've seen them get into fights with stronger civs and come out on top because they are taking territory. They like offensive ships, and with a weapons bonus they pack quite a punch. They seem to be at their weakest after taking out an enemy (probably they are trying to deal with low pop and so economy numbers with the increased upkeep). I make destroying them a priority.

Arceans. Super warrior is a great ability, and the arcean empire seems to understand the advantage. In my last game they seemed to go exclusively for weapon and engine tech, they were the first empire to field speed 9 ships, and it was killer. They always kill more bc than they take in damage, so you really need to have a significant advantage if you are going to take them down. If they have any problem, it is in population management. They rarely have the highest population, so they don't send out many transport ships that are fully loaded (and being attacked by 300million soldiers isn't as scary as it sounds).

The Yor. Oh how annoying to fight them. They are very good colonizers. Their miniturization and logistics advantages give them some impressive fleets. They are consistently the first race to get a fleet attack value above 1k. They are slow to conquer because of their super ability. They seem to have only two weaknesses, both which you must exploit to beat them. First, they love to build ships loaded with offense - but these ships are usually slow, and low in the HP catagory. You don't want them attacking you, but if you are fast enough to do the attacking you will take them down fast. Second, they are poor invaders. Not because of a low soldiering bonus, because of their low population in general. My last game with the Yor presented a good illustration of their problem. The Yor went to war with the Iconians, and had destroyed every Iconian ship in a few months, with escorts parked outside of Iconian worlds. They took three of ten iconian worlds early, and then never succeeeded in an invasion again. I think invading crashed their economy because they ride their people too hard. Without happy and populous planets, they have problems recruiting enough soldiers to win large scale wars. But their fleets are scary.

Middle of the pack (and why):
Drengin - oh, they do allright going through the tech tree. And they will get a high military rating early and declare wars all over the place. But they overestimate their own strength consistently because super-dominator corvettes are worth nothing, and they think they are something. They can go to war against an "inferior" opponent and make no progress or lose. They are easy to pay to go to war with someone, but no good at winning wars.

Thalans - if they get a few worlds besides their homeworld, they can establish themselves. Super Hive would work better if they would build factories. The last two games in a row when I took Thala it was covered in invention matrixes. ?! Don't they know that isn't their strength? Sadly, the thalans are poor at managing a war, and are much better at looking scary than they are at taking someone down. Get them in a few wars, and they will almost always fail to deliver a knockout blow.

Terrans - nothing like rushing to space mining III to win a war! Ok, I'm being sarcastic. The terrans should be better. They are hard to manipulate because of their super diplomat, and not often worth trading with. But they are poor at making it through the tech tree, and poor at using the advantages they have. They don't conquer people - they seem to be committed to being on neutral relations with everyone. It is hard to manipulate them off that strategy, which is not necessarily a good thing for them.

Drath - diplomats like the terrans, the drath are frustrating tech trading partners, and they do a decent job of getting through the early tech tree. They are aggressive, and often take worlds early. They are annoying to fight, because they typically start wars all over the place. Starting wars hurts them though, because they don't conquer all the worlds of the foes they attack, instead they spread the spoils of war across several empires. They also seem to lag generally in weapons tech, which they can only compensate for with super manipulator for so long. Eventually, someone with a real military and pension for invading worlds will take them out.

Weak (and why):
Iconians - I know this race must have some advantages, somewhere. I do alright when I play with them. But wow, talk about consistent push overs. They don't build strong enough economies (in my last game they had Quantum power plants before banks, that's a recipie for econ crash - and a waste of industrial points trying to build those suckers), and the drath and altarians are always pulling them into wars they have no business fighting. I've almost never seen them in endgame to know if they get better. Early on they can field a decent military, but by middle game someone has always outpaced them.

Torians - This race also really suffers because they listen to the drath and altarians, setting themselves up for an early defeat. Perhaps the best race at the colonization phase (next to the yor), the torians just get less and less powerful as the years go on. They don't prioritize weapon techs, they go to war and don't take worlds, and they don't fight wars that are in their self interest. They fight wars that are in the drath or altarian self interest. They rarely start a war on their own, so they are just fat pickings waiting for the first empire that decides to take them out.

Korx - I haven't really paid attention to what they are researching, but it doesn't work for them. With master trade they should be rush building econ capitals, galactic privateer and galactic bazaar (if tech trading is on). Instead, they sit there fiddiling with the few worlds they have, setting up trade routes. They rarely attack. They are poor colonizers - they are too slow to be competitive at reasearching colonization tech, they shouldn't even waste the effort. And they often trade with too many empires, giving them fewer legitimate targets and upping their relations with everyone. This is a problem, because you need to start and win wars to get ahead. Not a lot of empires will declare war on them early (because of the trade mostly), but eventually someone will notice them and wipe them out. They need to trade with just a few empires, so that they hate more people and actually fight in the early part of the middle game.

Altarians - I don't even know where to start on this race. They create bad times for a lot of races, themselves included. They are the kings of starting huge wars that engulf almost every nation. They lead other empires to their doom. You will always think twice about attacking them yourself, but it is pretty easy to antagonize the AI into declaring war on you. But they are poor colonizers like the korx, wasting time on colonization tech when other races are taking those worlds with natural abilities. Also, their super ability hurts them. They never take all the planets of the people they are at war with, so they never end up with a dominating territory advantage. They will probably stick around till the late middle game, but that is just because if you are fighting them you are fighting 5 empires, so it takes a while to get around to actually conquering their worlds.

I am curious, because I never play with a good alignment, do the Altarians drag the player into wars if you are also good?? If so, that has some potential upside...

hmm, It seems that the Korath and Krynn are consistantly rated the strongest.

The other races seem to vary a lot in everyone's opinion. Drengin, Yor, and Altarian also seem to be rated fairly high by a good number of players, but on the same side, there are a good number of players also rating them low.

I suppose in the name of "game balance" it ought to be random (no race ingerently better than the other). That could explain why everyone seems to have very different opinions concerning race performance.

Regarding the Drengin, they must be very dependent on map settings. In my last game they had an even stronger showing than usual, taking literally half the map before squashing my poor beleaguered Iconians like proverbial bugs.

The only way that this is going to work is if everyone starts using some type of map standard (i.e. large map, common everything, average research speed, all victory conditions on just to see if any race excels at some types of conditions, etc.) in order to make this survey work. Otherwise, the results are going to be skewred as hell.

Anyhoot, here's my analysis, from strongest to weakest:


Korath: Damn these guys are tough, if not THE toughest. If their military doesn't screw you over early on, then the spore ships will, especially once they start putting some engines on those babies. Their economy is surprisingly strong too, more often than not they'll end up with a pretty nice war chest for some odd reason for another until the whole spore-ship strategy screws them over. But what caught my attention the most was the fact that they kept influence-flipping any mining bases nearby their borders. Oh, and their research ability is pretty strong too.

Drengin: I pretty much agree with everyone on the board here on the Drengin. They start out strong, build a crapload of ships, start up wars, but all of a sudden slow down and crash for some reason or another. But whenever they get their game going properly past the first three years, it's tough to beat them, period.

Thalan: Though not terribly militaristic in my experience, they do tend to build up their colonies really fast, along with their hordes of starbases. Often, I'd see half of their planets loaded with improvements and whatnot. However, they don't seem to apply this mentality to their fleets, unfortuneatly, but they still play an impressive game against the others. I usually find myself allied to them due to their economic strength and rather friendly nature towards my race. And they love to spam influence starbases in everyone's turf (which often causes their downfall  )

Altarians: If they ever survive the first moments of the game and get some good planets, then they can become a nuinseance, especially if you're an evil race. Their research ability is pretty good as well. Also, they almost never run out of resources, so their economy never really sinks at any given time, even when they're losing badly. Otherwise, they're average.

Terrans: These guys are the epitome of a wild card: in some games they'll pwn like no tomorrow once several years pass, and in others they're a total weaksauce race. The Super Diplomat ability of theirs does make them difficult to trick in terms of trade, but it becomes useless near the endgame once everyone is obsessed with war. The Terrans usually tend to dominate the mid-game, but they start to lose their strength by the end for some reason or another, not sure why.

Yor: Hmmm... hard to say on this race. The miniturization bonus they employ is damn nasty, making their fleets tougher than normal, along with their new Super Isolationist ability which can totally screw over your invasions, but otherwise, they're kinda weak at times. I believe it's because they spend more than they can efficiently sustain in terms of fleets and populations, both of which they have in droves. However, due to their aggresive nature, they very rarely survive any of my games once some of the bigger alliances appear.

Arceans: My experience with them has very often shown that they have a horrid opening game strategy, a poor economy, poor diplomacy, average planets, and will only improve if someone saves their ass from elimination or mediocrity early on. But once they do get their footing, it's just like everybody else says: they're unstoppable... except in the research department, where they suck no matter how hard you try to help them.

Krynn: I really don't know about these guys. Not once have they ever become hositle to me or my allies, and they hardly seem aggressive or expansive. Heck, they don't even use their spies for what I can tell! I'll have to leave their judgement to you guys.

Korx: Since they're evil, they're obviously gonna be aggresive and wield a big military, which is always good for the AI in most cases, but the problem is that they don't know how to use it for crap! Furthermore, they'll trade away alomst anything they got for pittens, so if they have something valuable like one of the extreme colonization techs, you could probably get it on the cheap, especially if you're a Super Diplomat! But the worse part is that they don't even use the Super Trader ability effectively, so that just makes them even weaker overall. Definately not one of the better races.

Drath: If they ever manage to find a cozy spot in some distant corner of the galaxy to cause mayhem via manipulation while not being bothered, then it's all good for the Drath. But if they don't, they're screwed... always.

Torians: While they may breed like rabbits, they sure as hell don't know how to fight, even if their lives depended on it (which it often does!) Even worse is the fact that they don't know how to build a planet for crap, and their severe overpopulation very often leads them to their ruin very early onward. It's rare to see them survive to the end of a game, and when they do, it's most likely because of a strong ally who protects them (who often happens to be me  ). Hands down a crappy race.

Iconians: There's nothing redeeming about these guys. Period. Despite them having a +50 espionage bonus, they never spy, and the their colony rush tactics are often flawed. The only thing that keeps them from going extinct in most cases is the fact that they can do a mediocore enough job in the research field, but that's honestly it.

Not so much skewed as totally random, which is kind of a result in itself. The implication is that, with a couple of exceptions, most AI's play well on at least some sort of map and poorly on some others.

Personally I always play large or huge maps with occasional everything (except anomalies rare, stars scattered and common) for what that's worth. It might be interesting to make a new thread with standardized map conditions, but I'm guessing only a very limited portion of the population would be interested in changing their map setup for the sake of a forum experiment.

Yeah, I use those same exact settings as well, except for the anomalies, which I like to set at occasional.

BTW, I think you hit the jackpot when you said that the game is totally random and that the races will never truly react in the same way due to the random nature of the map.  

Looking back, most of my experiences of Drengin domination were in DL. In DA, they can do well, but it does seem that they have too high an opinion of their strength and are increasingly burdened by a bunch of useless corvettes.

Wait for it... wait for it...any minute now will be the

"The [insert race here] are overpowered. We need balancing...waaaaah!"

hehe. Very true, Skyjack. I'm glad no one has said that here. IMO, It seems to me that while there seem to be races that excell better than others, there isn't really a race that totally runs away with the game everytime. I just had a game, where the Krynn were creamed by the Altairan (influence flipped)

For what its worth, due to time constraints, I play on Medium, with uncommon to rare stars, resources, planets, etc. I play between tough and challanging.

I think you would need to mention difficulty too and number of AI's too. The race's effectiveness would probably be heavily dependant on difficulty (ie, an economic penalty/bonus might affect one AI personality more than it would affect another). Also other races effeciency would be based on the existance of other AI's. (The altairan super ability wouldn't be worth squat if it were you vs them for example)

Side note: I've noticed the Altarians becoming more and more deadly. I think its linked to the Super abilities. In short, They can effectively diplomacy spam (but only to cause races to go to war with eachother), and do it often. They are using a vary popular tactic amoung players on the forum, and they seem to do it well (not all the time mind you, but sometimes)

To be honest the only consistant feature of my games is that the Drath Legion always fall first

Torian (weak): For me, the Torian always fail miserably. They die quite fast, usually being the first civ conquered. I was surprised they atacked me the last game, and thought things could change, but they didnt put on a fight, and surrendered quite quickly. Yes, these guys surrender a lot, and fast. They just dont hold it together.

Altarian (Strong): But the Altarian Resistant, yes, these guys fight. Even with just 3 or 4 planets, they really hold it, and manage to grow and become stronger. They usually last to the end game, even if they dont atack or conquer much.

Arcean(Average): These guys have been my alies for a few times. What I noticed is that they always seem to hold their ground and not do much. I consider them the most neutral civilization, since they hardly atack anyone, and hardly anyone atack them. Which means they last to the end of the game, maybe because I consider them my trading partners and dont atack them.

Drengin (Average): Ok, they have a lot of ships. They can be a bother, and may scare you. But besides the tons of ships they have at the start, they have a crappy economy, and usually end up failing because of too much upkeep on their ships. They are easy to deal with if you know what you are doing.

Thalans (Weak): They may scare you, because they spread quite quickly. But they arent that good military, and you can easily conquer them.