What racial abilities / political party do you use, and why?

Terran. Default 6 to Logistics. My picks are 50% Diplo 50% Reasearch.

Same basic way I played GC I. It suits my play style.

I usually play with 50% Diplomacy, and 30% Social Production, 10% Research, 10% Military Production. Diplomacy makes it easier to trade for techs with the computer. The social production is to help build all of the things on the planets to do the things I need to do. Seems to work alright so far.

Political Party: populists - gives me better morale, and even better diplomacy.

I play with mostly technology research enhancements and morale enhancements. Don't recall the exact number, but I play as the Technologists to increase my research.

I take the 20% military and social production.
Then:
30% econ
30% tech
10% moral

But my economy still suffers. Think i might have to go make tech and max econ and work my abilities and political standings aorund.

Any advice would be greatful.

Dont know why i always double post. I click one time to submit and 2 posts always come up :/

50% diplomacy and then 50% research usually. Take the Economy +20 for my political party. I can sit back and research tech to create massive armies that are funded by my boosted economy while keeping everyone sweet-talked into leaving me alone.

At least in theory.

Luck can be surprisingly good when you have it maxed out (combined with party that has luck). It's great when you have a tech oriented race as you will find lots and lots of precursor ships to protect you while you continue to focus on tech.

That said...tech victory is long and boooring (it's really only viable when your unlikely to win any other way). Conquest victory is long and challenging/or entertaining. Cultural victory can be easier. Alliance victory is the quickest and easiest (if your a diplomatic god and have an incredible economy since you can buy everyone off) and provides a good mix of play.

Since I will never bother with a tech victory again and conquest is just too time consuming on large maps. I tend to go for influence or Alliance victories. So having a high diplomatic skill combined with good economy skill is keystone to this type of win. If your bank is overflowing with cash(lots of trade and econ bases) you can simply buy your improvments as needed. It's easier to get good deals from other races and hold off war when your diplomacy is good.
This method also worked well in Galciv1.

If your a warmonger type then you are going to need money and fast production. So econ, production, and maybe some ship enhancing skills. Ransom peace for tech as needed.

If your an influence hippy then you are going to want tech and production and some diplomacy. Tech to quickly get the needed techs and trade tech for influence, production to quickly build those constructors for your influence base spam and some diplomacy to keep people off your back and get some deals as needed.

Social production I can really see being worth it if you are constantly expanding and want your worlds to build buildings quicker without having to buy them. Probably usefull for large maps and warmongering types.

Hmm the game i played last nite was very militaristic in nature. 50%milit production, 40%ship repair, 20%ship HP, war Party (+25 HP), +15% ship attack, +10% soldiering bonus. suffice to say i beat the livin stuffing out of the dregnin lol. (2 computer opponents set on intelligent level).

I also made a diplomatic/trading race for 9 player game. (50% dep, 20%trade, 30%econ something else i cant think of)

I wanna try a techno race next (havent finished the game as a tech victory yet....i always end up conquering everybody everytime i try for tech win, then they try to gang up on me cuz i have weak military to begin with but once i get chuggin out the high tech ships they just die like flies)

Speed is very powerful for the early land grab. And it's good for early warfare because you can skip putting engines on your ships and load up with weapons and troop modules instead.

I had no idea luck could be anything other than an afterthought!
Then I thought about a saying I had when playing FPS games and some called me "Lucky"... I always told them "Luck is a skill, silly!"

I'm noticing a "trend" towards 3 main things: Diplomacy, economics, and research, as far as the posts here go. Influence seems to be a close 4th so far.

This forum is so educational!

I always get luck. I try to usually get planet quality, too. After that, I tend to choose my extra abilities and party based on what kind of game I'm in the mood to play.

Speed is very powerful for the early land grab. And it's good for early warfare because you can skip putting engines on your ships and load up with weapons and troop modules instead.

What he said.

I also like luck - you get some great stuff from anomalies. And Populists, so I can keep the tax rate up and get the diplo boni. Still not sure what to do with the last point - anyone know if Bravery is better than Creative?

+2 speed

still figuring out what I like for the others...

Economy and Morale. The more money you have, the more you can do. That and they work unlike a few.

I think the +50% military production is a steal at 4 points. It helps with the early land grab, since it's easy to set your homeworld to crank out colony ships every two turns, or every turn even. You save a lot of money over purchasing the ships, and you can send out far more of them. You effectively get a discount on every military ship, frieghter or constructor you build the entire game, saving you significant money even in a peaceful game. Finally, in emergencies, you can set it to 100% military and crank out that killer fleet very quickly.

+1 speed, +20% influence +20% diplomacy, and pacificists party. Works every time.

I think speed is overrated. You can start with Ion Engines, which will give you a speed 4 colony ship right out of the gate, and Impulse Drive is just round the corner, which will get you up to speed 7. What's 1 or 2 more on top of that?

Economy is a favorite of mine, simply because there aren't many other ways to boost it. And money makes the galaxy go round...

Diplomacy, morale, influence, bah! Those are for the weak

Soldiering isn't a popular pick, but quite useful IMO - There aren't too many boosts for soldiering either, and an early bonus can make a big difference in the early invasions.

Military production is a double-edged sword. The majority of my games, I end up with a world with a substantial +Starship bonus, and that becomes my fleet shipyard. I surround it with Econ starbases and it churns out almost all of my warships. A military production boost is kinda wasted then - all my other worlds are churning out transports and constructors, so I rarely have a shortage.

Planet Quality... meh. It was a must-have in GC1, but it just doesn't do enough anymore in GC2 to be worth the points, I find.

Another "low-profile" pick I like is Ship Hitpoints. Another thing that can't be improved on in-game readily, but at the end of the day, the fleet that has HP left wins. More HP = GUUUD.

In the end though, what you pick doesn't matter a whole lot. What matters is playing to the strengths of the picks you made.

Winners in my book:
Morale (you can set your tax rates higher)
Diplomacy
Economics
Solidering

Even with a maxed out econ bonus, I still find myself going in the hole at 100% industrial capacity, so production bonuses are worthless to me. Overall, I think the most important is Morale.

Just a tip when you're picking your abilities: identify where points becoming diminishing. IE: 1 point may give you 10%, but 2 only gives 15% (+5). It's better to spend the second point elsewhere.

As far as my political party? I started out with technologists becaused I liked fast research, but then I realized I was short on cash due to my high research, so I switched to federalists. Then I realized I had decent amounts of cash and all, but all my colonies were unhappy and everyone hated me. Then I realized that Populists are the best choice overal.. +20 Morale (yay) and +20 Diplomacy in one. Diplomacy, in high enough amounts, can assure a win for you before the first turn has been played. It's rather lame, and needs fixing, but until then

I have found Mercantile to be one of the hidden gems of the political parties, +20% trade can be quite a bit more powerful than +20% economy in the mid to late game, and the +20% espionage is just an added bonus!

Right now I get all the diplomacy I can (to trade techs). After they implement the no trade toggle in 1.1 I might actually have to figure out other ones (since trading techs seems to make the game easy even on the hardest levels)

First of all I turn off Alliance victory, it's the cheesist easiest way to victory when going the diplomacy route. Hell the most warring factions in the game loved me, I was friends with everyone.

So, with that turned off I tend to go with +30 eco +30 military +10 morale with industrialist with +20 social and +20 military. I do agree though "morale" is very important to higher taxes and higher growth of your planets. So, when I find a morale resourse out there you can bet I will "rush" to cap it before anyone else does and before any other resource out there. Economic starbases are also my bread and butter, I think too many people overlook the value of economic starbases and build influence or military ones first instead. Not me, I get them economic starbases out there asap also. Especially near my focused economic planet and my focused research planet. I don't build 1 of each thing on each planet either. I focus an entire planet on economic or research. This works much better than piecemeal 1 of this and 1 of that.

I can hardly wait for a PBEM mulitiplayer game of this. So, I can crush huumahn players like I crush the AI.