Ha - this reminds of a game of GalCiv I I played. The Carinoids came on early in the game but had 11 (!) star systems. Towards the end of the game - when it came down to me, the Dreign (or whatever) and the Torians, the Carinoids were the second most powerful government (after me) in the game! They had nearly 400 billion people too and a massive fleet. Kind of crazy. I worked a deal with the Dreign (or whatever) so we'd both attack. They dealt with their fleet and I took most of their worlds. Pretty fun, but a little annoying that a MINOR race came to that much power.

I have started three seprate games with the new 4D version and in all three games one or more minor races showed up (and by showed up I mean with 3+ colony ships) and then proceeded to swarm. I am not sure what their production profiles look like but mine at the start of a game is 52 weeks for a colony ship yet my exploring survey ship constantly is bumping into minor race colony ships. In the first game I started by the time I had seven to eight colonies the two minor races I had bumped into had not only boxed me in but each had over twenty colonies. I don't know if that was a bug in the reporting screen in the game or not though but to have that many colonies so quickly, for me, was a game killer.

I agree the minor races are very challenging and maybe a bit overpowered, but they definitely add fun to the game. Some of those are just too funny (evil chipmunks?!). But I like the way they are right now.

They sure don't leave much as a margin of error now.,..

I concur with the initial statements. I think there should be additional user controls on the minor races. It seems that there are less relation based options with the minor races. Most notably, I do not see any espionage or destabization options. This seems exceedingly unfair since they have become powerful forces in the galaxy.
I enjoy having minor races, but I do not enjoy feeling like I am in the midst of a competition with as many as 18 or so civs due to the presence of minor races.

Perhaps I just misunderstand them and their role. To me, I imagine them as trade people that have very little interest in expansion. Fleets are almost entirely defensive. Expansion is rare. That is my idea and opinion.

I like the challenge of stronger minor races, but there has to be better balance, too. In the 4D game I am playing now, one minor race is mining a morale resouce -- they couldn't do this in GC1, If they are allowed to do this in GC2, then we should be able to trade and/or buy their ships and starbases -- this seems still to be prevented since their ships and starbases do not show up on the diplomacy screen as a trade option.

Just to learn the game, I set the major races to "beginner" level. However, the minors seem to be at "normal" level. Is there a way to toggle the minor race starting conditions?

When a new minor race comes in mid-game, then start with all the tech that you have. T

Actually it looks like they come in with the tech that all races have researched.

Then what you are saying is that minor races should appear in star systems already oocupied by major races ? Just later in the game ehe nthey throw off the slavery/oppressinnn thing ?

Just what makes a minor race a minor race? Either an inability to expand as fast as a major race, or an inability to keep up with military, social, or research production. Or maybe because either they didn't get the blueprints to the hyperdrive. Or even possibly that they're not viewed as a major race by anyone else, so they have no influence, just the ability to resist other's influence. With that, I see several possible ways to handle this:

1) Have a racial limit that for the major races is effectively infinite that states that the government for race X isn't developed enough to manage more than X planets. Maybe have a line of techs that can't be traded that increases X, so that a minor can work on becoming a major. This would hopefully cause minors to be more careful where they place their colonies, since they're limited to how many that they can have.
2) Same idea, but where planets can't be farther than Y away from the home planet. This would mean that a minor could pack all the planets within a 1.0 or 2.0 range from the homeworld at the start, and they could research to expand that from there.
3) Rather than trying to restrict where the colonies can be, or how many, limit the range of ships to distance from homeworld only. Or maybe distance from homeworld or colony with population of at least X. Again, allow minor-only techs to reduce X.
4) Reduce the racial abilities points available to the race. I dislike this idea, I don't want them to be pushovers, just want them to feel minor.
5) Don't grant them influence. Not sure if this would make them feel minor. It sure wouldn't when they're pouring a stream of colony ships through my space.

Of these, i think I like option two the best.

In GC1, originally, minor races were restricted to their starting sector. This was too limiting, so it was lifted. I'm not sure how the balance was maintained there, but while you'd occasionally get a fairly large minor, most of the times, they'd span 2-4 sectors.

I had one game last night where right away, I had 3 colony ships streaking through my territory, and another one every 4 turns or so. I finally explored that direction and jumped on the PQ 18 planet in the minor's system that it had been overlooking, apparently because it was too busy trying to find planets in my space.

Errrr yeah. The system you propose appears to require a radical change to the gameplay engine. Or something like that.

What really gets my goat is how the Alexians can be soo ultimately powerful in midgame when I'm the tech leader and ownage of 20+ star systems or ~30 colonies and they have 2 or 3... Is the GNN report whacked or what ?
Not just me, the 'minors' were more powerful than all us major races... I find this disturbing.


Regards to Dark Yor = ROFLMAO, love the name makes me giggle everytime.

Also the Venge gets started as some galactic terrorist group which is a new angle, pretty cool i guess. Last game they were in it. I did view I guess what was a random event ?? They turned a PQ 15, Drengin planet into PQ5 with some bio weapon? Drengin responded by declaring war (if not already) and wiping them out shortly.

wait a minute so all those times i thought i was number one i was really in last place?

maybe i should tone down the difficulty a little bit...