xBr0wnBear's Analysis of Racial Picks

[XiongBenXiong]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=433481478

Hey after realizing how it easy it was to make a guide I reformatted it into a guide. I also made some grammatical edits so it's a bit cleaner than the forum post.

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My opinion for Brutal and Brutal / Aggresive Enemies. The order I place each trait within a category is inconsequential FYI. This is also just my opinion based on the games I've played on and off camera. I was inspired to make this post based on another topic. I realized how long my reply would have been so I decided to make my own post.

Class A Picks - Strong Bonus / Cost

Rich HW - Your HW will always be a core planet in your empire. Making it rich gives you a strong start. Mid game unless you found some Huge Rich/UR planets, it'll be one of your main factories. You bought a sandwich and for $1 you get twice the meats. Yes Please
(As a side note I wouldn't take poor HW. It makes your start very volatile if you don't find a nearby awesome planet for only a measely 1 point gain.)

Subterranean - 6 points is very cheap for this and one of the main benefits is that asteroids are usually ultra-rich and have some good resource which combined with asteroid superstructure if you can grab that from someone makes awesome production platforms across the galaxy. Once you get cloning bay, your HW is going to take off especially if you've combined it with Rich HW / + Growth. You'll have to deal with approval though but just stuff the dissenters into an underground mine. Also consider this versus +Citizen Attribute picks. Once you max out and even with approval penalty, you'll be way more effective than a measely +1 or +2 benefit and more flexible since you can shuffle your average but plentiful citizens around to w/e category you need.

Class B Picks - Good Bonus/Cost

Sacrificers - Cheap pick, is situationally extremely strong if you find weak neutrals nearby. Once you get cloning bays, you can dump people for RP/money) Only 2 RP

+ Ship Offense - In the latest patch Cruise Missiles and Long Range is still the name of the game. Blow them up before you need to worry about tanking. 2 RP for 20 % is pretty cheap. 6 RP for 50% is probably closer to excessive but hey I won't judge if you want to one volley enemy cruisers.

+ Production / Pollution Reduction - Production drives this game from the early to the end. I haven't done the math to see which one is better but you can't go wrong grabbing a bonus here. You can also take both but then subterranean is better.

+ Growth - More people -> more resources -> more techs / ships / planets. It's like you start with cloning bays everywhere especially if you get +100%. Good for the midgame where having more people and buildings > base +1 attribute.

+ Money - There's a time where you'll start taxing which takes away your production / science. Consider money another approval bonus but money you can use to spam production on key worlds later on or plan an emergency defense. Throwing 50% taxes to rush out ships where you want them is very strong end game. Having money to jump start new colonies is very strong. 4 RP for 50% boost is a bit pricy but I would never take the -3 RP for 25% penalty.

Class C Picks - Mediocre Bonus/Cost | Gimmicky or Luck-Based Pick

+ Ship Defense - For the same reason in Space Fighters, kill them before you get killed so Defense isn't as important. It's more useful on like corvettes so you can tank a few extra shots so I won't say it's a bad choice. 3 points for 25% and 7 points for 50%. A bit on the expensive side but a smart leader can make a few tanky ship designs to front line... You can even take Shoddy Engineering if you make it up with Ship Offense. I don't think that's a bad trade in almost every fight minus the final boss....

+ Farming / Photosynthesis - I'm actually not as sure about this. More food -> more people doing other stuff or more money which is always good. In the start of the game those early farmers can be producers to rush a faster colony ship. I don't have enough experience with this pick but I would place this as potentially underrated.

+ Science - If production is the heart then Science is the brains of the game. The problem with + Science is that it doesn't exactly scale well until the mid game where you have a lot of scientists. If you do those missions and tech trade you already should have a decent tech on the highest difficulty. In addition there's a few key techs you'll want to grab pretty early on and there's no science victory. It shames me to say that + Science just isn't worth it as much as in say MOO.

Aquatic - Highly situational, if you find a bunch of organic planets then it's good. If not, you wasted points. Your HW is the equivalant of Gaia so it's not like you spent 6 points and got nothing. Even with the luck, in MOOII aquatic was a top pick and water distribution is relatively consistent between the two games. Consider it a loaded die that rolls 1/2 the time a 5 or 6 and 1/2 a time the remaining options. I'd personally rate it B but it fits more in the label of how I defined Class C.

Resourceful - Once again, a highly situational pick. It's actually a bit annoying to get to 4 resources so with 2 what do we get or care about? Remember I'm talking about the completion bonus and not for each resource possessed. Diamondite (+10BC), Spice (+1 Research/sci), Bakta (+10% approval), Nano (-25% rush cost), Lemba (+.5 growth), Proto (+10% approval) are the ones that are definitely helpful!
Triithium (+33% fuel efficiency) and Artifacts (+2 BC/trade) and Delicacies (+10% dip relations ) Full Bonuses are useless although you'll get the full set bonus anyways because the per resource bonuses are good.
Noxium (+20% missile) / H3 (+25% beam) are situational. Since missiles are FotM, noxium bonus is more useful.
Latinum (+10 tolerance) can be useful.

Honestly I'd place this in class B if it wasn't so luck dependent. There's way more good bonuses than useless ones so chances are you'll be able to take advantage of it.



Class D Picks - Inconsequential / War Win Picks (You would have won w/o picking it / you are worse off if you arn't in the lead and having not picked something else)

Holy Land - +20% approval which I believe is +20% sci/production to HW) Not bad for 1 RP but usually you don't have most of your hw as scientists until later on so for the early game you're looking at the 20% production mainly. That's not comparable to +2 production/citizen in rich/abundant HW so it's a bit inferior. It'll scale up later on of course but by then your homeworld is but one planet out of dozens and in the early game there's a clearly better pick. 1 RP

Spiritual - (+10% to empire production and science). You can look it as more of a Jack of all Trades pick. Most Race produce 2 base science and to get +1 (a 50% increase is 3 pts) and assuming an abundant planet 3 base production and to get +1 (a 33% increase is 3 pts). Spiritual gives you a little bit of both for 10% but not enough to make it worth it unfortunately in the early game. Now if you reach late game or find some Ultra Rich bonanzas, then the 10% scaling pick has some use but if you are in those situations, was that 10% going to be the difference between win or lose? Probably not...

+ Spies - Spies arn't that annoying and they definitely don't have enough options in this game for them to be worth it. You don't want to be in the position where you need to rob everyone to catch up in tech and unlike MOOII you can't pretend you're the Galactic Al Qaeda so if I was to find points to grab it'd be in spies. Also think about it this way, if you take bad spies and another con to grab + money or production you can just build more spies later on to make up for it. There's also a small chance you get the anti-spy leader for all the spy defense you need. A small chance but still worthy of mentioning.

+ Diplomacy - The bonuses are too poor to be worth it but is the malus worth it? In Brutal diffiulty the hardest part of the game is the start where you need to make sure you don't get backstabbed. If you don't have the fleet, you're going to restart. Diplomacy can buy you a few extra turns theoretically but why buy your self a turn when you can build a fleet. The pen is mightier than the sword but definitely not the laser.

+ Ground HP - Ground combat is ridiculously easy. Just Hold position and you get 9 AP and they run towards you and don't. So the question more is do you want to take the penalty. It's not a matter of having a harder invasion, all of those are pretty easy. The bigger question is do you want to forfeit some mission rewards because you can only bring in 25 hp weaklings. The 500 Biochem RP one you'll be able to do which is arguably the best one. Nontheless there are a few mid game ones that reward a decent amount of cash and RP so that's what you're trading for an extra 2 Points. I'd take the 2 points.

+ Creative - It's really the cost. Creative is still a fun trait but in SD2, there's not too many hard choices in each branch to make. You got many other empires to take the 2ndary techs you didn't take and if noone ever researched it then oh well, everyone's on the same field. +14 is too much.

+ Assimilators - I like xeno assimilation and you can get that without spending 4 picks. Sure you can now grab 2 techs but do they have that many techs to grab that are useful?

+ High - G - The +10 Ground HP is pretty moot. Some ultra rich planets are more likely to be High G but 3 points for a gamble at some UR planets....mmm I'll pass.


Class F Picks - Pick can be harmful / 0 Gain trades

Cybernetic - This is going to be my most controversial placement imo but here's why I rate cybernetic so lowly. Early game you're building a charger building for 4 maintenance if I recall correctly. You have to build your people. So you're trading the first 28 turns of your planet's production for much much later gains when you don't need farmers. You need to spend 200 production which you don't have to spare in the early game for more citizens. Other races will have an automated rover bay out + more by then so when you start gaining relatively to other races is muh much later. Cybernetic is an 8 pointer + ingame investment that you'll find returns after a hundred+ turns. If you meet someone early on you're a fried circuit board.

Low G - Ok yes it's a negative pick so it's meant to be harmful :p. But considering that 90% of the planets in the universe are going to give you -25% production and production is king. It gets special mention for why this is a bad trait to pick.

+ Fantastic Traders - 3 Points to gain nothing is a bad trait. In easier difficulties you can negotiate but on brutal your tolerance is a precious commodity and brutal negotiators malus with all interactions makes it so that you arn't going to be entering into many trade agreements if any.

+ Adept Slavers - Why slave when you can conquer?

[XiongBenXiong]

Feel free to agree / disagree with me or anyone else who posts as long as we keep the discussion all nice and civil. Once again I'm talking about Brutal | Brutal / Aggressive difficulty.

Let me know if I made any misinformation and I'll correct it. It took a while to post. I might make this into a guide later.

[Zanteogo]

If I was to do your chart....

High G and Holy Land: D to C

Ship Offense: B to A

Cybernetic: F to D

[XiongBenXiong]

Originally posted by Zanteogo:

If I was to do your chart....

High G and Holy Land: D to C

Ship Offense: B to A

Cybernetic: F to D

Fair enough and not very big changes :) I most agree on the ship offense. Alpha striking is on the borderline from very strong to OP on the current patch.

[Zanteogo]

Originally posted by xBr0wnBear:

Originally posted by Zanteogo:

If I was to do your chart....

High G and Holy Land: D to C

Ship Offense: B to A

Cybernetic: F to D

Fair enough and not very big changes :) I most agree on the ship offense. Alpha striking is on the borderline from very strong to OP on the current patch.

It's powerful because the AI sucks at doing and dealing with the long range phase of combat.
If they used more mass drivers and cruise missiles and less "RAAAA!!! CHARGE FORWARD IN A STRAIGHT LINE AND ATTACK POINT BLANK!!", then it might be better, until then.....

[PrawnWonton]

Growth rate I have never found to be an issue. Even with slow breeders, I have never felt a need to build a cloning facility.

Aquatic, should be bottom tier. Outside of playing as Rayleth, I have never once seen an ocean planet. Never seen a gaian planet either, but maybe the RNG gods just hate me. Nearly every game I play, my homeworld is the only planet that can produce food. Barren, barren, toxic, barren, gas giant, barren, asteroid, empty, sigh.

[XiongBenXiong]

Originally posted by PrawnWonton:

Growth rate I have never found to be an issue. Even with slow breeders, I have never felt a need to build a cloning facility.

Aquatic, should be bottom tier. Outside of playing as Rayleth, I have never once seen an ocean planet. Never seen a gaian planet either, but maybe the RNG gods just hate me. Nearly every game I play, my homeworld is the only planet that can produce food. Barren, barren, toxic, barren, gas giant, barren, asteroid, empty, sigh.

Thanks for the input.
Aquatic I placed as a gimmicky pick (Class C) because it is very luck dependent. Personally I've seen a few games water rich and a few games very water poor so that's why I've placed it where it is. At least your homeworld is aquatic xD which basically makes it Gaia. If you ever played Civ V then aquatic is like playing Spain. Sometimes you just dominate, sometimes you wish you picked something else.
Also Tundra and Swamp planets arn't too insanely rare especially in yellow/red systems in case you didn't know which essentially upgrades them to Terran class which is very nice.

[XiongBenXiong]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=433481478

Hey after realizing how it easy it was to make a guide I reformatted it into a guide. I also made some grammatical edits so it's a bit cleaner than the forum post.

[Elethio]

Cybernetic

You knew this was coming right?

Cybernetics, you seem to of missed off their most powerful benefit - they don't suffer from moral penalties.
Also consider this, DON'T build the charger hub right away, just use food until you're happy to change over to the hub.
Also if you end up getting a food tech (aeroponics) to help until you change over, that building is still going to pay for itself when you stop using food, excess food = more money.

But back to moral, you could say this is a negative as well as a positive, but this factor really makes a difference if you combine Cybernetic with subterranean, massive worlds massive pop, no food shortages and no moral penalties more people to put into research and prod (because there are less farmers) - Freaking power house!!

Basically I'd rate Cyber as a C at worst, tricky start but always strong mid-late game

but when combined with other traits thats when it really shines

Cyber combined with + prod
Cyber combined with sacrifice, (build then sacrifice @ profit)
Cyber combined with Subterranean,

I expect there are more great combinations I haven't tried.

[XiongBenXiong]

Originally posted by Elethio:

Cybernetic

You knew this was coming right?

Cybernetics, you seem to of missed off their most powerful benefit - they don't suffer from moral penalties.
Also consider this, DON'T build the charger hub right away, just use food until you're happy to change over to the hub.
Also if you end up getting a food tech (aeroponics) to help until you change over, that building is still going to pay for itself when you stop using food, excess food = more money.

But back to moral, you could say this is a negative as well as a positive, but this factor really makes a difference if you combine Cybernetic with subterranean, massive worlds massive pop, no food shortages and no moral penalties more people to put into research and prod (because there are less farmers) - Freaking power house!!

Basically I'd rate Cyber as a C at worst, tricky start but always strong mid-late game

but when combined with other traits thats when it really shines

Cyber combined with + prod
Cyber combined with sacrifice, (build then sacrifice @ profit)
Cyber combined with Subterranean,

I expect there are more great combinations I haven't tried.


:sdprod::sdprod::sdprod::sdprod::sdprod::sdprod::sdprod:

Hey there Elethio, thanks for your input. I actually didn't think about not building the charger hub which is kind of funny. It actually does make more sense to grab your automated robo -> research lab -> charger or auto -> charger. Nontheless then you're still delaying the benefits from the charger bay for quite a long time.

I'm not sure if aeroponics -> more than 2 BC just selling food. This part the mechanic is unclear to me because you do get 3 food but does it sell 1:1 ratio? Sometimes I've got the money but sometimes not.

Cybernetic + sacrifice is potentially a good money / tech producer but in the early game there's probably a bunch better things to be producing than chopping away your citizens. You don't want to be 2 techs up but significantly down in people. The BC is nice but you're just going to be using it to rush projects. You didn't build enough for maintenance to be a big factor and if you're just rushing stuff then it's better to just build. Unless you're really spread out at the start with your starting colonies it might just be better to build rather than get the money.
In the late game, the RP bonus is moot so it becomes more of an improved Trade Goods. Let's say that you're a real life automaton and want to micro multiple systems of robotic sacrifice, 10 pts is still a lot. You could have also went any of the food / money picks and gained much earlier.

IMO the greatest potential you stated was with Cyber Subterranean which the main problem is 14 points. It'll definitely be really strong late game and I assume you're taking maluses in ground/spy/dip to get there but what's the opportunity cost? I could have grabbed Sub and 2 +1 or Sub/Photosynthesis/Space+1 or many other combinations.

Morale is a very fickle thing too. Unless we're talking subterranean huge worlds, morale really usually ends up positive (>50%) by the mid-late game through resources / tech / buildings. If you get the early start you probably can control the resources to do so as well.

I was actually thinking about moving it to Class D but the opportunity cost is still extremely high. Cybernetic is basically mini-lithovore in MOOII. Lithovore was one of the best picks but that's partially because you get the benefit right away by having no farmers at the start so either fast research or fast production.

If your capitol got a free charging bay with no maintenance I'd raise Cybernetic much higher, potentially up to even C or a low B but until then it'll just eek between the border of F and D. It's actually a really simple change but a really profound one for the early game. 8 points for a significant start that has bumps with new colonies as you need some food then is much more balanced for the cost.