Actually, the Torians can be a colonizing powerhouse, as well as an economical giant if used properly. Just ask Mumblefratz for his strats and you'll see why REAL fast.

And the Iconians, for the most part, are perfectly balanced - they really don't have any true strengths or weaknesses. That, and they have an INSANE +50 espionage ability, so they're not totally helpless!

Can't say much about the Altarians, though.  

I like Korath for smaller maps, Thalans for larger maps. But the Drath are starting to sound interesting now.

Best is Yor due to its super ability, inherent abilities, 10 bonus points, & many starting techs.
Second is Thalan.

Hm. On the one hand I'm only on my third game of Galciv 2... on the other hand I'm winning it without much trouble on Tough (large map). I did read the forums for tips.

I've been playing Altarians and it's worked *really* well. From what I can tell, Galciv 2 is like other 4x games in what attributes are important to win. Generally it's biased toward productivity being more important than combat bonuses. And if you can keep a technological lead, you can make up for most racial attributes you might lack.

So the question is, what do you most need in this game?

My answer always seems to be MONEY. I could fill all my planets with factories and research stations but I'd never be able to pay for them. Morale is also an issue due to pushing for higher taxes to get more money.

Beyond that, racial bonuses to productivity and research are very useful. A 20% social production bonus really does take every single bit of production you'd get from everything else, and then increase it by 20% without you having to pay a cent more for it.


So I take the Altarians and stack them with technologist party and before you know it I have an 85% bonus to research. With pretty sweet bonuses to economics, morale, and social production to boot.

If I feel like it I can sit around with a pretty small number of planets, out-research every other civilization in the game, and have the manufacturing and money to pay to build the accelerated rate of improvements.

Next game I might disable tech trading, but I worry it would give me too big an advantage.

I don't see what the big deal is with the Yor? 10 bonus points is the same as what most other races get. Their Super is nothing particularly to write home about.

They get 10 points (as much as any race) on top of the best allotment of inherent abilities (which cant be duplicated anywhere else), bonuses, and startech in the game. Their superability is not the best in the game, buts its highly decent...especialy when factored with all the other stuff they get.

I wont even play with the Yor anymore, because everyones like "oh...but hes playing with the Yor...". Theres like a permanent asterisk next to any Yor game.

Approximating for all the values that don't actually exist and with the qualification that I looked at these a while ago, Yor and Krynn have 30+ points in abilities total (including discretionary), Humans and Korath 24 or 25, Altarians 22. Everyone else- way, way less.

Um, I still don't see what's supposed to make them so great *to play as a human*. A lot of their abilities are mostly useful in the hands of the AI.

Their super ability is basically useless, the AI doesn't build fast ships anyway so it doesn't actually limit their speed.

+100 loyalty is completely useless, the AI doesn't ever out-influence me.

Soldiering bonus is of limited usefulness, all of the planetary invasion techs are pretty cheap to research and I always make it to Tir-Quan Training first.

Starting techs... I don't see why people are so obsessed with these. Yeah, better engines put you slightly ahead in the colony rush. But it doesn't take very long to research those starting techs so on many galaxy settings they're unimportant.

Barren world colonization can be really great or pretty useless, it is totally dependent on the map randomness and the galaxy settings. I personally prefer a racial advantage I can rely on, rather than one which is more like rolling the dice at the beginning of the game.


In my most recent game I'm learning the incredible virtues of the Thalans. Super hiver... WOW. DAMN. WOW. New colonies/conquered worlds go from zero to hero in record time. Factories build in, typically, one turn. Grab yourself maximum econ and morale bonuses and the industrialist party, and WHAM, you are king of production.

In greater difficulties, the AIs do build faster ships and you'll appreciate the max 3 speed/turn in a war or colony rushes. If this applies before military bases -2 speed to enemy module, it is even better.

The abilities are decent and many but spreadout though the miniturization bonus is great in the early/mid game

Anyway, play Yor more often and play around with the points and you'll see they tend to have an easier time, at least in the beginning, on harder diffculties.

Thalan definitely a close second.

In DL, the Drath were my preferred race. Their combination of abilities suited my play style very well. DA has been very different. One, the Krynn now seem to have all the racial bonuses the Drath used to have. Two, they're neutral, which I preferred. Three, the Espionage system is very different.

I don't play metaverse at all, so I modded in a miniaturization ability pick, and bumped the custom races available ability points up to 25. That way, I could duplicate almost any variation of a standard race. It always bugged me that I could never make a custom race as good as the ones that shipped with the game, especially since I'm using more and more custom opponents.

I've played with each race at least once, and I've noted that they can all be powerful in the hands of a human player. Take the Torians, usually a wet noodle in most of my games. They do really well in the colony rush, but get conquered by the first race to declare war on them. When I played them, I used Super Breeders for everything it was worth. Keep taxes maxed out so approval sits at 51% until you have a decent number of colonies, then drop it till you get 100% approval. After a couple turns, you'll have double then tripled the number of tax payers you have. Put the tax slider back up and watch the money roll in.

That's just an example, you can do it with any race, just play to their strengths.

My vote goes for a split first place between the Yor and the Krynn.

The Yor get a highly decent package of bonuses including an excellent miniaturization bonus, plus the awesome super ability of super isolationist.

The Krynn, on the other hand, get an even better bonus combination but a sucking super ability. They have +50% morale, which is godly especially in the early game (allows the 100% morale population growth while still earning decent taxes). And they have a +50% defense ability, a great bonus in late game. Top that off with espionage and diplomacy boni, and you get easily the best bonus combination of all races.

The reason I voted for split first place is that super spy frankly sucks almost as much as super tomator (er, dominator )