I can only respond to this in regard to DL. Still have yet to play DA. Anyway, my standard has been to focus on economics and so my choices have been economics, morale and pop growth.

Pop growth is a not so obvious choice but has a big effect on economics because it helps your colonies grow faster and therefore become profitable sooner. The best race choices in this regard are the Torian or the Drengin which come with an intrinsic or "free" 25% morale bonus. With these races I chose the 30% economic bonus for 4 points and spend the remaining 6 points on the 70% pop growth bonus.

For any other race I chose 30% economic, 20% morale and 30% pop growth bonuses. In all cases I chose Federalist for the 20% economic bonus.

One variation I've started to use in the small galaxy games played in the Metaverse League is to trade the 30% pop growth bonus for the 10% Planet Quality bonus. I find that when the number of planets that you get are limited, the extra one or two tiles you get per planet can be a big advantage.

Since I mentioned the Torian and Drengin in regard to their intrinisic morale bonus I may as well mention a couple of other race characteristics as well. Between the Torian and the Drengin, the Torian are the better choice. The Torians have an extra intrinsic 20% courage and 10% luck bonus compared to the Drengin having an extra point of logistics. Also the Torian starting techs are better.

The 25% intrinsic Diplomacy bonus that both the Terrans and Drath have is a very useful ability on which to base a diplomatic focused strategy. However between the Terrans and the Drath, the Drath have a big advantage with an intrinsic 50% Defense bonus, 25% military production bonus and better starting techs versus the Terrans 25% trade bonus.

The final race that can be very powerful is the Yor. Their 20% intrinsic miniaturization bonus, starting logistics of 8 and the best starting techs of any race allow you to build a speed 6 colony ship as well as your manufacturing capital right from turn 1. The initial colony ship speed can be very big in smaller galaxy sizes and the miniaturization bonus is a big advantage in ship building throughout the whole game.

Other than the above listed races I don't see anything particularly interesting in any of the other races except for variety or to get your racial medal.

Again, I haven't played DA so I can't comment on races or abilites in that context.

What about the Planet Quality bonus? Is it worth the 3-8 points?
I usually take the 3-point version, and find it works decently. At the very least, it makes all those size-4 planets that the Torians keep 'giving' me suck a little bit less.

Regarding Courage: I believe the description is dead wrong; the debug file refers to a courage bonus in ship combat, and I believe that I read somewhere that it will give a ship with lower attack/power a boost.

As for my preferences, they seem rather standard, though of course, there are many factors. I think most that can be said for DL has been said, but I'll add that Drath with maxed Economics and PopGrowth, Universalist party, are awesome. Morale seems to have less impact in DL than DA to me.

In DA, of course, innate bonuses are added to chosen bonuses, which makes further improving those bonuses a fairly obvious strategy. Economics and morale, however, should just about always be picked. It's such a shame the PopGrowth bonus choices were nerfed (max is 40% for 5 points instead of 70% for 6), or I'd use that a whole lot more. Anyway, depending on my race, strategy and fancy, I might pick research or production bonuses, or weapons, luck, speed, planet quality, or very rarely defense or diplomacy bonuses.

And, that last paragraph was probably really unhelpful, but I'll post it anyway.

What does "creativity" do in terms of game mechanics? I've bought it a few times and never noticed much of an effect, so I quit.

I usually max research and econ.

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No. Creativity basically gives you random "bursts" of extra tp's that are entirely in the background, not generated by labs, resources, etc, and not paid for. Can range from a mere handful to 2-300 on a turn...but not every turn. Scales at least a bit with how deep you are into the tech tree. The only way you can see them is to check out your debug.err file periodically. Occasionaly this may result in you getting a tech a turn or so sooner, but the underlying mechanism is that it is adding some free tp's to your research efforts.

The "extra tech" effect is simply because tp's created during a turn are always fully applied to the current branch of the tech tree that you are researching on. If you happen to generate enough tp's to complete the next tech in line, you get that tech, too. You can demo this by researching very unevenly in the early game, just persuing the tech branches you absolutely need while your research base builds up to 1000 or so per turn. Now, go back and do catch up research from the very beginning of Beams, or Shields, or whatever field you've neglected. For the first 2-3 turns on that branch, when you are researching cheap techs, you will get your selected research topic plus 1-2 more follow-on techs in the same field, until the research cost of the next tech in the branch is higher than the tp's you are producing per turn. Note the little scale in the middle of the research screen when it pops up after you complete a tech - it shows you how much "spill-over" progress you have already made to the next tech. Those applied points are never lost, but there is no cross-over of those research points between branches either.

There is plenty of discussion of the effect of Creativity in the forums already, most of it misinformed. Do a search on Creativity. Then scan the recent posts (last 2 months about) for comments / explanation by kryo. Further bene - some of the recent posts on the subject have example debug.err files where you can see the Creativity bonuses noted.

drrider

Do you think that enhanced speed has a significant effect in battle?

What is luck good for exactly?

There were a couple of questions. One I think on courage. I don't spend points on it but if it comes free (Torians 20%, Korx 10%) on a race I'm going to take anyway then I'll gladly take it. AFAIK courage gives an advantage to your ground troops.

Drrider definitely has creativity down pat. Again it's not something I would spend points on.

AFAIK speed is just a speed bonus and does nothing for a "tactical" advantage in battle.

Luck on DL *I think* gives you an enhanced change of delivering a "critical hit" in ship battle and isn't anything I'd waste points on. In DA I'm pretty sure that luck defines the bottom limit on how much damage your attacks do. If you have 30% luck then if you have an weapon with attack 10 then the minimum "roll" you'll get is a 3. In DA I would think that this would be something that's worth spending a point or two on although since I haven't yet played DA I can't vouch for it.

I pick Max. Tech, Max. Morale and Almost Max. Economy and play as Technologist.

Personally, I have played with every bonus at one point or another. I choose my bonuses very carefully, as they typically end up defining my play style. However some bonuses are clearly worse than others - so in a sense when you pick your bonuses you are also choosing your difficulty level. Remember, a lot will depend on the type of game you want to play, and even in DA with a custom race it is not really possible to get all of the best bonuses. Here is how I would (roughly speaking) rank the bonuses:

Best Bonuses
Economics (!) - playing without 4 pts in this will always make the game harder.
Morale
Population Growth
Speed
Luck (in DA, when combined with univ. gov so all guns do at least 50% damage on all rolls)

Above Average
Research Bonus
Military Prod. Bonus
PQ+10% (10% only, not the +20%, for DA)
Diplomacy Bonus (tech trading on or off, effects generic relations as well)
Ship Damage (due to tie rule)

Average Bonuses
Social Prod. Bonus
Influence Bonus
Sensors
PQ+20% (in DA)
Ship Defense (unless Krynn, then this is worth more)
Soldiering Bonus

Barely Worthwhile
Trade Revenue
Trade Routes
Repair Rate
Ship Range
Ship HP Bonus
Creativity
Courage

Actually a negative for your empire!
Espionage Bonus - increase the money you spend without increasing the effectiveness! In DA only.

So depending how you pick your bonuses across that spread will pretty much define your difficulty level within the difficulty setting you already chose. Sticking to all economy will make your life easier. Governments are similar, although there I think I would give the edge to the universalists over the federalists for best, with technologists right up in there. The trade government is the worst.

For instance, playing a warlike race with all the ship damage/defense/hp bonuses and soldiering will make you a military marvel, but is actually much more difficult than the exact same warlike race that just focuses on money and happiness so that they can easily keep kicking out more ships. As I said, I take them all for variety - all econ all the time (or all research, or all anything) gets boring for me. But play how you like.

Hope that helps,
- Wyndstar

Actually, only the Arceans get a first strike ability where the enemy doesn't get to return fire. That would be a good setup to take with the Arceans though, who really do excel the more speed you give them.


That is a fine setup. You should do well in the anomaly/colony rush with the added speed, your weapons will perform well when you get into combat, and you still have a small economic and pop growth bonus.

If you are looking for an even easier set of bonuses to play with, I would put four pts. in economics, 1 pt. in morale, 1 pt. in luck, take the universalist party - and then do whatever you want with the remaining pts. There is no beating happy high tax paying quick breeding people.

Good luck on your first game! The AI can be a devilish foe at first.
- Wyndstar

Altarians with Eco, Morale and some Research, Fed. Gov. Kinda cheesy, once you got your economy running you can just buy what you want. And thanks to their super ability, should someone declare war against you, half the galaxy will assist you.