DA 1.50X Race & ability picks

Depends very much on your playing style - there is no universal top 3, or even top 1. Most races are well balanced and can excel if played correctly. For me, it has always been the Thalan - but I've played every race and won at suicidal.

As for abilities, then maximum economy is probably the only truly universal "must have" - IMO only of course.   

1.5x quick guide races at maso imo

1: Thalan - overpowered imo
2: Yor - quality abilities and strong special

3: Tougher decision perhaps Korath or Krynn

Most of the other races if not all need to be improved imo

Ability picks tend to be eco, morale, sensors and weapons.

Government Federal/techno/industrialist depending on race pick.

If we're talking Dark Avatar 1.50X, I'm going to say Korath for sure. I have confirmed, Maso is very much beatable using Korath. And Super Annihilator was actually nerfed slightly in the patch. I'm inclined to agree that Thalans are a good one, especially if you're playing large galaxy and don't view the Mind Control Center as an exploit (in my book, if that isn't "fixed" by now, it isn't an exploit). I think I would pick Krynn 3rd, for the manipulate-AI's-into-war strategy. But I have only tested the Korath so far; and having way too much fun doing it to even bother trying the others.

In these difficult levels and big maps, would a race with a balance picks (picks that improves racial weakness more) or more specialized picks (increase racial advantages more) survive better? Currently I'm trying out Korx so any examples and follow up strategies about Korx can really help me out with other races too.

Specialise in your races strong points to maximise their potential whenever possible. However, I wouldn't recommend using any additional points on trade abilities for the Korx - Economy & Pop growth would be top of the list.

The Korx can be an economic giant and virtually buy the galaxy for cash. They get a nice PQ8 as their second planet in home system - use it, and spend a few turns ferrying 2-3 billion people from homeworld to it. That way you have 2 planets generating revenue early on, and also 2 that have enough population to pump out colony ships. In truth you can do this for any race, but the close proximity of 2 useable planets early on makes this a perfect starting strategy for the Korx.

You start with the trading techs - which means you can get a jump start on building the Restaurant & Bazaar. Make sure you do build them. Buying the economy capital outright on turn 1 on your homeworld could also be a good option.

Korx probably need to pursue a trade-with-the-AI-while-they-kill-each-other strategy. I would actually consider the +50 social production with them. Colony rush, build the Bazaar, pay off the AI. Go evil, get the Artificial Slaves, pick off the weak AI's, steal their techs.

A more traditional approach could be to pick +50 military, put out some early freighters, and colony rush like mad. You use the trade to slow the burn rate of your starting 5000bc, so you can colony rush longer and more aggressively. But I like the first approach better, because of the long-term benefits.

For the Korx, pick speed. That way, you'll be able to set distant trade routes quicker. That's what I did in my last metaverse game.

Speed works. That'll let you spam lots of cheapo speed-1 colony ships, too.

Hmm, speed +1/+2 does help in the beginning especially for Core designed ships. But what about the production strategy? I have read in the forum, to produce colony ships & survey ships. When should Korx built freighters?

Should choose +1 or +2 speed? what about the the remaining ability points?

i would chose +1 speed and +30 econ, and Federalists.

cheap-o colony ships that are just colony modules and cargo hulls, will work, but i'd recommend putting ion drives on them as soon as you can. they're cheap enough to justify putting them on.

as far as when to switch some or all of your colonies to building frieghters, that's a tougher question. the best answer i can give is, "after you're satisfied with how well you've handled the colony/resource rush." the only extra thing i'd add is that you don't need to prioritize planets of PQ 4 or lower - the AI seems to put minimal value on them.

For an easy win, go for the tech advantage -
Take Altarians, add another +20% research and take technologists, set tech research to very slow and turn tech trading off.

Put your other 6 pts into +30% econ and +10% morale...and luck or creativity or something. Keeps you with money for that +65% research you start out with. Planetary improvements will take that up to a +75%... Nano research comes from sensors III and can be picked up in the first 6 months or so as well.

Start off by going down the research buildings path till you have R. Acadamies, and check the graphs near the end of year one. On suicidal I typically am out researching the next closest AI 2-1 on these settings one year in.... you should get reports along the lines of "we represent 11% of the galactic population while doing 42% of the total research occuring".

Maybe too easy of a win though. Depends on how much of a challenge you want.

The Korx do start off with Ion Drive, I didn't see that. 85bc speed-1 colony ships vs. 105bc speed-2 colony ships, are 20% cheaper. So the tradeoff, a 20% faster build time (which means 20% more ships) vs. a 50% faster speed (with +1 speed bonus, it'll be 2 speed vs. 3 speed). Yeah, that probably is worth it to slap on an Ion Drive. When you don't have the speed bonus it's a no-brainer--you put an engine on.

But then you research Impulse. Now it's only a 33% speed improvement (speed 3 vs. speed 4) to slap on an Ion Drive. Unless you've got a long way to travel I wouldn't bother. Especially if that's the difference between putting out a colony ship every turn vs. every other turn.

Hmmm...if Korx start with Ion Drive, is +1 speed really helping them that much?

I just try it out. +1/+2 speed even for races that have Ion Drives in the beginning helps a lot. It helped me to survey/explore faster and colonize faster against the AIs during the colony rush phase. I think if coupled with Military production, the colony rush phase would be very easy.

I've always found the +70% population growth bonus for 6 points to be the best, and it's the first bonus I always take. It directly translates into a huge economic boost early on because your colonies will be populating that much faster and you will have that much more taxpayers and can therefore afford to colonise much, much more worlds early. Also it's exponential growth so the more people you have next turn, the more growth you'll have the turn after so it actually translates into your colonies populating way, way more than just 70% faster (think compound interest). Then there's the added bonus of being able to invade relentlessly without worrying about getting soldiers and also to be able to fight off invasions. If you plan on either a rapid early colonisation strategy or a rapid invasion strategy it's by far the best pick. Some people criticise it because once your planets hit max pop it's esentially useless, but for me I seem to be always either colonising or invading so I'm never at a stage where it isn't useful in some way.

Secondly you can't go past putting 4 points in 30% economics, it's a fairly easy way to cover all your bases so to speak and, unlike the production, research or military bonuses it's always useful whether you're concentrating on producing, researching or whatever that extra money will always help and it can often be very hard to run at 100% production without it. I can't see why you'd want to pick, say, a research bonus over an economics bonus because if you need more research you can just buy more labs or if you want more production just get more factories, everything can be bought and economy is the only universal bonus that's useful ALL the time. You do spend an extra point for this purpose (i.e. 30% social would only cost you 3 points) but for me it's well worth that extra point for the versatility economy offers.

If I had points left over after the above (like if I was playing custom or something) I'd go with 1 point in morale because 10% morale boost for 1 point is pretty good although after that you only get 5% per point so it's debatable whether it's worth it. And points after that would probably go into social production or diplomacy depending on my strategy, maybe a point in luck although I haven't seen any solid evidence that luck does anything but help your ships out in combat slightly.

For political party, you can't go past the federalists for the reasons stated above. Giving you a total of 50% economy boost total. Combine that with the pop growth and you've got a huge bonus to your early economy and let's face it, the main challenge of the early game is how to start making money before your reserves run out.

Thats why they finally nerfed pop growth ability in DA. They need to nerf aphrodisiac as well though.

Aphrodisiac occurs late enough in the game that I don't think it needs nerfing. By that time you're bumping into the farm limit.

Not true in my maso games it gets built in the second year on my capital while the rest of my planets are building factories and have relatively low populations. It's a very powerful way to get your economy flying early on and its affects are powerful throughout the game.

Probably most powerful special imo.

Are you playing on fast or very fast tech rate?

Second year Aphrodisiac sounds about right. I'm in my second year and my planets are bumping into the 6 billion limit without Aphrodisiac.

normal tech about 125 planets large map



Are you playing few planets? For all your planets to have high pop early second would be strange. I colonise about 20-25 on the maps I play by that point and only my capital would be 6 bill by the time I build aphrodisiac if that. I play 41% morale rate on my planets to get my economy going (no tech tade and rare anomolies so now easy money). You must be having low taxes or using torians I guess.

Anyway a 20% growth bonus for aphrodisiac would be about right I hope Stardock changes it.

No, I'm playing abundant planets, abundant anomalies and keep my morale at 100% for quite awhile. The trick is in wise loading of your colony ships--your homeworld needs to be raided for population, all the way down to 2.5B. If all your other planets get a 500m start (plus get more ferried in on occasion), that's an exponential speedup in your population increase. The reason you're seeing a powerful Aphrodisiac is because that +50% is going toward your <2.5B exponential population growth, not the >2.5B linear growth like I'm getting.

I go for an early Xeno Medicine and an early Aphrodisiac, and by the time I get Aphrodisiac, my homeworld's somewhere between 6-12B and I've got a few other planets in the ~5.15B range (knocking on the 6B door).

I do think Aphrodisiac should move to be under Fertility Acceleration, not Habitat Improvement. When Stardock first dreamed up Aphrodisiac back in Galciv1, the pop growth techs did not exist. Also, I think the Torians should start with Xeno Medicine and Fertility Techs (and, consequently, the ability to build Aphrodisiac). Torians are wimps now as it is.