POST your favorite CUSTOM Race ;)

[Modo44]

This one made me win every single game in MOO2 at Impossible level, after I came up with it. I tried a couple HotSeat games as well and my frieds got their arses handed.

Low-G, -(something) to Spying, -(something) to Ground Combat, Subterran, Unification, Creative. I can't remember the penalties and I don't have MOO2 installed, so you'll have to figure out on your own, sorry . IIRC tere was just one negative penalty for those fields. I remember that before the 1.31 patch there were 2 points left after the above choices, giving me a Rich Homeworld, or possibly lifting one of the penalties. But that's just a minor difference.

The race is a whatever-you-want powerhouse on its homeworld due to huge pop and Unification. It has excess food even in mineral rich galaxies. The increased population and better production allows for fast colonization combined with a possible early tech lead. Creative allows you to completely forget about tech trading or spying, if you don't feel like it. The thing the race likes, are good diplomatic relationships established early, so that you can live with a smaller amount of ships and keep building. You need good ships and lots of spy sentries. Often you will be able to field Titans with Zortium armor and Automatic Repair while even the biggest AI has only Battleships. With increased population, you can outproduce and outresearch all AIs, so they just start going down when you're ready. This is often combined with a "surprise" attack by one of them, ending in suicide after an epic battle.

[vmxa1]

I would suggest that if you played that race you consider dropping Uni and using the 6 points to boost production or +p and +R.

The reason is that as a uni you loose all those morale boost that a creative could otherwise have.

[siron]

Uni Sub Crea.....is a *****.....

normal negative Picks for this race are:
rep -shipdef -gc

Many new players underestimate this race.....

when it has CIII level with warp diss and zort-battlestations u need a nice fleet to kill such a crea-*****....

but experienced players kill such a crea early on. (early some mirv-nukes bbs....before crea has radiation shield+CIII)

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uni pick (with 50% on prod and food) is better for this race than prod or research picks. This race scraps normally its starbase and barracks in the first turns and can build bases before it has to research autofacts.

[Modo44]

vmxa, Unification helps in a number ways. First, you don't have to build the morale related structures. For example I don't need Marine Barracks, which is a nice thing early on - I only get them when I plan invasions, which is in the mid game. Second, you don't get morale penalties for mixing races. The conquered races have +5 race picks (because I play at highest difficulty), so they make great additions to a mixed population - without causing any trouble. The not so obvious benefit is more food. It only really shows when you play Subterran. I need it badly once planets get really big. While more research per scientist can help, I prefer to just have more well fed scientists, because they can be quickly turned into more well fed workers...

Basically it works like this: have huge pop, easily manageable. You can research or produce at extreme pace or do both at a good pace. The production bonus counts mostly as a measure against normal G worlds (I'm low-G, remember), until Gravity Generators come into play. Them and Terraforming mark a sudded leap for this race. All planets do both things at full production (yes, almost completely droping research for a couple turns) and all of a sudded you go from "a little stronger than others" to "that horrific monster". Pop is power, almost like the Agricultural trait in Civ3.

What I've seen in the HotSeat games was like this: at some point my friend noticed that he was worse at research than me, so he switched half of his people to do lab work and started grinning. Ok, so now we had about the same research. The thing was, I still could produce Titans, because only half of my pop was busy researching. At the same time his only planet still building ships (home) could just manage Battleships. He did have better designs than me (yes, that's a MOO2 skill I never learned ) , but was simply overrun by larger and more numerous foes.

[vmxa1]

Hey it is a good thing you expalined it to me as I never played this game before. Please, I am well aware of all its functions and the concept of scrappy your barracks for any uni. Who do you think proposed this race for the demo game?

This is an SP game as I can't imagine too many would take a creative race in a tough MP game. That means you can have some fun and take advantage of Holos and Pleasure Domes.

It means you do not need uni and can afford to not pay the price for capturing planets.

Anyway I merely suggested he give it a try.

[Modo44]

Okay, sorry for sharing with those less enlightened. Over and out.

[siron]

vmxa,

u overreact in ur response. (I even remembered ur posts here where u mentioned that uni can scrap base and barracks.)

But my point is that this is generally not a good choice for uni.
For uni crea it is surely optimal....because:
1. u have missile base early on
2. ONLY(!) with this money it gives u the option for early housing on col bases

If u propose a race here....and others should not seriously comment...it......hmmmm.....u should mention some words like:
"Fun Race", "u can enjoy the moral techs" or sth like that.....

i (and i guess modo too) have not understood ur post in that way, because i think ur following impression is wrong:

"This is an SP game as I can't imagine too many would take a creative race in a tough MP game."

1. Modo talked about MP.
2. Uni Crea Sub is quite popular, even in tuff games. (Just try to hide till turn 120....and u have FANTASTIC chances in 4ways.)

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modo,

gravity generators have one big drawback for crea (thats why lowg is unpolar for that race):
u have to take neutron blaster and graviton........so u dont have this pretty nice hv ion-cannon for ur battlestations. Quite important
to survive in "tuff" MP-Games.

[Modo44]

Actually i was posting about SP games mostly. I don't play much MOO2 anymore and have had only a couple MP games with my friends, just as inexperienced in MP as I was. The first post in the thread does not mention a requirement to have played 100 MP games before posting the race, y'know. The forum itself does not have a "MP -only" sticker on it either. It's about the game in general and that's what I was talking about. I have a race which plays good with the style I like and gives very good results. So I posted it, end of story.

vmxa, you know, there "could" be people reading this thread that know less about the game than you do. You could at least try to consider this.

[siron]

"The forum itself does not have a "MP -only" sticker on it either."

Keep Cool. Noone thinks that.

[vmxa1]

Ok let me try to recover. I do not wish to bulldoze anyone.

I will say however that the number of MP players is so small as to be the ones that need to make a note that they are addressing that aspect. I siron is an MP player, but in the last three years I can count them on my fingers.

The most common way that I have seen others play a creative races (SP), is to do some form of turtle. Then go to take down the rest of the races. The uni will make grabbing and holding planets very painful.

The production is not a concern in this form of a game. Of course it does not really matter all that much, you can win either way.

Siron
"gravity generators have one big drawback for crea (thats why lowg is unpolar for that race):
u have to take neutron blaster and graviton........so u dont have this pretty nice hv ion-cannon for ur battlestations. Quite important
gravity generators have one big drawback for crea (thats why lowg is unpolar for that race):
u have to take neutron blaster and graviton........so u dont have this pretty nice hv ion-cannon for ur battlestations. Quite important"

Creative race will not have to chose any tech over any tech, they get all tech. I know you just over looke that.

The real reason to not use LowG is the number of lowg planets is likely to be small and you will have to suffer the penality until you get the gravegen and build it.

I used to use that neg pick all the time, but I never liked it. I do like Rep -GC -SD, but mostly only MP players go that route. It is a freebie for them. I do it because I do not want to be able to trade with the AI and extort them.

Anyway sorry for being so short, I did not intend to imply my idea for sancrosac or even anything, just an idea.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by vmxa1
The most common way that I have seen others play a creative races (SP), is to do some form of turtle.Then go to take down the rest of the races. The uni will make grabbing and holding planets very painful.

Could you explain what you mean by "turtle"? I'm not familiar with this term. And what exactly is so painful about conquering planets with a Unification race?

Originally posted by vmxa1
The real reason to not use LowG is the number of lowg planets is likely to be small and you will have to suffer the penality until you get the gravegen and build it.

The Uni production bonus helps to even things out and does a pretty good job. Especially together with the increased pop from Subterran, which helps even more. Gravity Generators count as a boost, not as penalty removement - at least that's how I always felt.

Originally posted by vmxa1
I used to use that neg pick all the time, but I never liked it. I do like Rep -GC -SD, but mostly only MP players go that route. It is a freebie for them. I do it because I do not want to be able to trade with the AI and extort them.

I see. Well, I guess anyone likes to play his game. I enjoy diplomacy too much (not only in MOO2, but in all similar games), to remove it from my game.

[vmxa1]

I guess what I was trying to address originally was the painful amount of time it took to get alien pops under control.

The funny part is the thing that everyone touts about the uni is no barracks or other moral structures.

This is not the real truth, except for planets founded by you. IOW what do you have to do when you conquer a planet? You have to build a barracks and it yields no bonus. You will be building armor baracks as a creative race as if you have them, you tend to stiffle revolts better.

So now you have built two barracks and get no benefit from them. You may as well drop the uni and use holos and domes.

Anyway after years of using uni creatives like everyone else, decided to drop the uni to make the assimulation easier on me, since I had to build the barracks anyway. Now I get the boost and can use holo/domes.

My fleets can leave sooner and have fewer baby sitting. I no longer have to drop extra marines on extra lare pop planets to placate them.

I have not measured to see which is actually better, one is much easier on me. I do note that with all the boost available to a creative race, it will prbably be more productive with the booster than the + for uni, given I have 6 point to use on top of it.

[siron]

vmxa,

sorry for my bad english....

"Creative race will not have to chose any tech over any tech, they get all tech. I know you just over looke that."

I havent overlook that.. im not that kind of noob ...I wanted to say:

1. Hv Ion Pulse Cannon is the best defense weapon a Creative can have....(in combination with mass driver to eliminate the shields)

2. Creative dont go for graviton gen at all, because:

a) They cant research it, without ALSO researching neutron blaster and graviton beam. (they have to take all techs in the techfield which is the drawback in this case, because:
b) The Battlestation would have Hv Neutron Blaster and later Hv Graviton Beam in this case (automatically update).....but Hv Ion Pulse Cannon is surely more effective if u also have Mass Driver BBs.
c) The loss of the HV Ion Pulse Cannon in ur battlestation is the drawback...too risky in MP.

[Croesus]

Hv ion? I thought they got rid of those? I thought the mods for ion were continous and autofire.

Also, siron was saying that you can't AVOID researching neutrons and gravies, so that you could retain ion. Personally, I'd take gravitons over ion, because they can pierce Class 3 shields better, and they are smaller. Plus, I would be trying to get subspace and phasors fast, so my power tech might be lacking, and I've found neutrons to be quite necessary to deal with class III shields + IS.

:edit:
and my favorite race is Unitol warlord repulsive -GC -SD. All hail the battlescanner! for with it, you will be smitten with af nr co ap lasers. Also good for shooting down the missiles of races that chose -SD. If I can't chose repulsive, then I pick -spy -research, and try for a quick game.

[siron]

"Hv ion? I thought they got rid of those? I thought the mods for ion were continous and autofire."

Starbase and Battlestations have them in HV. Thats the point.