Spying is really not all that complicated or hard in GC2. It is important to do but doesn't take long to have it maxed out. Never tried it as a racial trait but I would think it would be almost the least effective racial bonus.

I've always played the custom race and I have been taking the 70% population growth bonus and the 50% military production bonus lately. More population will make the economy better as taxes are related to the square root of the population in millions. Population is also important for filling up transports with troops to conquer planets and is usually what will determine how fast I can conquer another civ.

As for Military production bonus, it helps in the colony rush phase and with constructors and military ships latter.

Other players have been picking morale and economy bonus's a lot with 1.31 quite a bit from what i've read in posts. If I were not able to get morale and economy resources in the game, those picks would probably be good but since I can usually grab at least 1 of each, I still go with the bonus MP.

I'm a big believer in getting some survey ships out to grab anomalies. So I pick the techs to give me Sensors at the start of the game.( Specifically Galactic Warfare, Xeno Engineering, Stellar Cartography, and Sensors )

At the start of the game I set spending to 100% and Research to 100%. Then I research to Impulse Drive first, then Space militarization and Planetary Improvements.
I'll buy 2 basic labs ( or just 1 if I have a research bonus tile ) first, and then the equivilant of 4 basic Factories while doing the research.

I'll also buy 3 basic survey ships on the first 3 turns using the long payment option ( just a cargo hull and survey module ). After I get Impulse Drive, I'll upgrae all 3 of them with 3 impulse engines and 3 basic life support.

There is an auto survey mode where the survey ships go to the nearest anomalie ( they have a device that knows where the nearest one is ). I don't use the auto survey, I like and enjoy micro managing them and also want to check out the planets so I know where to send my colony ships.

After I finish researching those techs above, I start pumping out a colony ship ( with impulse engines ) from my homeworld every 2 turns. Set MP% for that and the rest to RP%. Use focus on new colonies to build a starport. Buy a factory and starport on the first 2 or 3 colonies that have a production bonus tile.

This basic strategy or variations of it works well on gigantic and huge maps with normal abundance of anomalies and 12 to 50 habitable planets per civilization. Probably would work ok on a large map too. Medium and smaller maps probably don't have enough anomalies to make it work. Also if the game settings have less than about 8 colonies per civ, it's probably better to buy colony ships rather than survey ships.

Also, if you are planning on playing a gigantic map game first -- I suggest you give a huge map game a try first or even just a large map with 4 opponents.

Not really sure how much spying costs or how much a spying bonus will save on costs.
Spying just isn't that hard or long of a project in GC2. Typically I turn my spying on after I start running surplus's and I get the most advanced stage like 3-4 months later and I turn it off. It is definitely a must do but just doesn't take all that long or really cost all that much.

Spying is going to be greatly expanded and become a much larger part of the game with the DA expansion.

As for MP, SP, RP bonus's, I'll give an example.
Say a colony has an initial colony building and 4 basic factories.
Say the civ MP bonus is 80%.
Say spending is at 100% and MP% is at 100%.

The colony will have 36 basic production ( 12 from initial colony building and 6 from each basic factory ).
This will cost 36bc and show up in the colonies expenses.
The colony will have 28 bonus production ( 36 x .8 = 28 rounded down )
The 28 bonus production will cost 14bc ( 50% ) and show up in the civilization expenses on the Domestic Policy screen ( economy tab )
the planets total MP will be 64 ( 36 + 28 ):: total cost will be 50bc ( 36 + 14 )

So besides getting more production out of your factories the bonus production only costs half as much as base production.

So does an MP bonus save money? -- depends how you look at it. I see it as allowing me to spend even more money but spend it more efficiently.

A curiosity: the 50% MP bonus isn't really a 50% bonus. Why? -- because 3 early techs all give a 10% bonus to MP each. So pretty early on a civ has a 30% bonus from techs researched. So although it does add 50% to basic MP it only increases a civ's MP capability by about 38.5% ( 50 divided by 130 )

please give me more ideas and why. Thank you very much Kblore for your insightfull posts.

Actually, I had written a response of about 10 paragraphs yesterday but Internet Explorer had detected a problem and had to close (I truly hate Microsoft). I spent over an hour (twice) writing this up so I hope someone actually reads it. Also, listen to Kblore, he gives good advice.

My advice is more on the side of teaching someone how to fish as opposed to giving them a fish (which is a short way of saying that I’m going to give you a bunch of vague generalities about how you can figure this out for yourself instead of giving any specific advice that you could actually use). You also seem fairly new to the game so I’m going over some very basic stuff, forgive me if this is old news to you.

You seem concentrated on the custom race but in fact *all* races can, and should, be customized dependent on your strategy. When you select a race and go into the abilities tab, there’s a reset button. If you press this, you reset the default racial abilities and gain back your 10 racial abilities points that you can use for whatever you want. If at this point you go back through the abilities list you see that your race will still have some abilities, but they won’t be any of the selectable values. These are the races “inherent” or free abilities. Don’t try to change any of these or you’ll actually lose them (you can get them back by going back and re-selecting the race). If you do this for all the races, including the custom race, you can make a list of the free abilities of each race. Also note the starting techs for each of the races, some are definitely better than others. As you noted, the custom race can modify the starting techs to some extant (I usually take Ion Drive and whatever else I can get) the other races starting techs are fixed.

Another aspect of race is the default alignment or their natural bias towards good, neutral or evil. If you want to be evil it really doesn’t matter, but if you want to be neutral or good it helps to start with a race that leans towards good. That way you can take a number of the evil colonization event choices (i.e. the better ones) and still end up neutral or even good (not sure why anyone would want to be good, there’s no real benefit in it).

Once you have a list of each races inherent abilities you pick the race whose inherent abilities best match the strategy you’re trying to implement. If you’re new to the game you’re probably not real sure about that either. I’ll save you some of the trouble and give you some guidelines here, but you really won’t fully understand it unless you take the time and study it yourself.

The Drath are probably the best choice for general all around level of free bonus. They get a free 50% defense bonus, free 25% military production, free 50% espionage and free 25% diplomacy. They also start with Ion Drive and the best set of techs south of the Yor. The thing is that although they start with a lot of free bonus, none of them are the first ones that I’d chose if I had to spend points on them. The Drath start out leaning good (75 on a scale of 100).

The Yor have the best starting techs and a 20% miniaturization bonus and logistics of 8, neither of which you can otherwise get. They also get a 100% loyalty that gives some protection from influence but it’s no great deal. The Yor start as evil but not totally so (25 out of 100).

...and do the 'Mumble'

Nice write up buddy