Hi Richard,

I see no reason why the Yor should be considered evil and have tried instead playing them as "Benevolent".

The basic problem with them in the opening is getting enough  population and while they can't build Tyron's destiny after researching planetology (which gives a colony ship with 5 pop) if you choose Benevolent then the first three ideologies on the top line are extremely helpful.

The first gives you a colony ship of which you can unload all but 1 billion onto your home planet before it leaves. And then once you get the third, new planets will start with pop 3 so you can colonise directly from them if you like.

I imagine that some people will cavil at at nice Daleks but it does make it a lot easier.

Cheers,

Jon

Blasphemy! 

But yeah, the cost of Manufacturing Population is too high early game, so you need the boosts the Benevolent tree provides to compensate. 

The AI seems to struggle with the cost as well, in every game I play with the Yor as an opponent, they're always way down toward the bottom of the power rankings.  As are the the 'evil' races overall, in general. Is that because the Malevolent ideology tree is the worst (it is) and/or because the way the AI plays evil races, and plays against them? Lots of wars, few trading partners etc?

Hi Richard,

V glad it worked. It's a bit icky having them benevolent but presumably robots have no reason to consider themselves "evil".

As to the different ideology trees that colinm1305 mentioned yes I personally prefer the benevolent one - though with the pragmatic one you can make awesome starbase nests round your home planet in the middlegame rather than when you get the range extension .

As to the malevolent ideology of course it gives you lots of production early on if you want it. As I'm sure you know, it works fantastically with the Drengin cause as long as you can get to the third level on the top line you can spawn transports and with a nice target reasonably nearby  can then start generating more ideology and gold. Indeed the AI is much too bellicose with the bad alien sprogs - you need trading partners as well as least to start with.

Cheers,

Jon