Talk:Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares/Race design options

Comment on Charismatic
Maybe it's worth mentioning that this is great for an espionage-based race, since you can steal techs and rarely earn ire from AI races. I'm still a bit new too MOO2, but I played a game with Charismatic, Telepathic and +10 spying (I think I used -10 ground combat for the points) and AI races only gave me the "I'm going to break up with you" speech about one in six times I stole a tech from them. 70.242.119.117 03:50, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Feel free to incorporate that tidbit into the write up, just keep a neutral point of view. — najzere T 05:19, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Money
The current discussion understates the impact of the -0.5 BC/+0.5 BC/+1 BC picks.

The Spaceport, morale, leader, and Democracy bonuses are merely additive with each other. For example, in the endgame, a fully built planet under Dictatorship with no leader would normally produce 4 BC per population (+50% Spaceport, +100% Galactic Stock Exchange, +50% Galactic Currency Exchange, +100% morale), while under Democracy it would produce 4.45 BC (+70% morale and +75% government bonus, instead of just +100% morale); this is only a 11.25% advantage.

However, the -0.5 BC/+0.5 BC/+1 BC picks affect *base* income per population unit. The -50%/+50%/+100% difference persists throughout the game; Dictatorship with +1 BC pulls way ahead of Democracy without it (8 vs. 4.45). The only reason it doesn't seem to make a big difference in most games is the credit cheat, which can easily yield more money per turn (even without conscious exploitation of the bug) than you'd naturally collect with +1 BC. When playing with a post-1.31 version that patches the credit cheat, -0.5 BC becomes a very bad idea, while +0.5 BC/+1 BC become viable (especially if you intend to make heavy use of slave races).