Terran. Default 6 to Logistics. My picks are 50% Diplo 50% Reasearch.

Same basic way I played GC I. It suits my play style.

I play with mostly technology research enhancements and morale enhancements. Don't recall the exact number, but I play as the Technologists to increase my research.

Dont know why i always double post. I click one time to submit and 2 posts always come up :/

Luck can be surprisingly good when you have it maxed out (combined with party that has luck). It's great when you have a tech oriented race as you will find lots and lots of precursor ships to protect you while you continue to focus on tech.

That said...tech victory is long and boooring (it's really only viable when your unlikely to win any other way). Conquest victory is long and challenging/or entertaining. Cultural victory can be easier. Alliance victory is the quickest and easiest (if your a diplomatic god and have an incredible economy since you can buy everyone off) and provides a good mix of play.

Since I will never bother with a tech victory again and conquest is just too time consuming on large maps. I tend to go for influence or Alliance victories. So having a high diplomatic skill combined with good economy skill is keystone to this type of win. If your bank is overflowing with cash(lots of trade and econ bases) you can simply buy your improvments as needed. It's easier to get good deals from other races and hold off war when your diplomacy is good.
This method also worked well in Galciv1.

If your a warmonger type then you are going to need money and fast production. So econ, production, and maybe some ship enhancing skills. Ransom peace for tech as needed.

If your an influence hippy then you are going to want tech and production and some diplomacy. Tech to quickly get the needed techs and trade tech for influence, production to quickly build those constructors for your influence base spam and some diplomacy to keep people off your back and get some deals as needed.

Social production I can really see being worth it if you are constantly expanding and want your worlds to build buildings quicker without having to buy them. Probably usefull for large maps and warmongering types.

Speed is very powerful for the early land grab. And it's good for early warfare because you can skip putting engines on your ships and load up with weapons and troop modules instead.

I always get luck. I try to usually get planet quality, too. After that, I tend to choose my extra abilities and party based on what kind of game I'm in the mood to play.

+2 speed

still figuring out what I like for the others...

I think the +50% military production is a steal at 4 points. It helps with the early land grab, since it's easy to set your homeworld to crank out colony ships every two turns, or every turn even. You save a lot of money over purchasing the ships, and you can send out far more of them. You effectively get a discount on every military ship, frieghter or constructor you build the entire game, saving you significant money even in a peaceful game. Finally, in emergencies, you can set it to 100% military and crank out that killer fleet very quickly.

I think speed is overrated. You can start with Ion Engines, which will give you a speed 4 colony ship right out of the gate, and Impulse Drive is just round the corner, which will get you up to speed 7. What's 1 or 2 more on top of that?

Economy is a favorite of mine, simply because there aren't many other ways to boost it. And money makes the galaxy go round...

Diplomacy, morale, influence, bah! Those are for the weak

Soldiering isn't a popular pick, but quite useful IMO - There aren't too many boosts for soldiering either, and an early bonus can make a big difference in the early invasions.

Military production is a double-edged sword. The majority of my games, I end up with a world with a substantial +Starship bonus, and that becomes my fleet shipyard. I surround it with Econ starbases and it churns out almost all of my warships. A military production boost is kinda wasted then - all my other worlds are churning out transports and constructors, so I rarely have a shortage.

Planet Quality... meh. It was a must-have in GC1, but it just doesn't do enough anymore in GC2 to be worth the points, I find.

Another "low-profile" pick I like is Ship Hitpoints. Another thing that can't be improved on in-game readily, but at the end of the day, the fleet that has HP left wins. More HP = GUUUD.

In the end though, what you pick doesn't matter a whole lot. What matters is playing to the strengths of the picks you made.

I have found Mercantile to be one of the hidden gems of the political parties, +20% trade can be quite a bit more powerful than +20% economy in the mid to late game, and the +20% espionage is just an added bonus!

First of all I turn off Alliance victory, it's the cheesist easiest way to victory when going the diplomacy route. Hell the most warring factions in the game loved me, I was friends with everyone.

So, with that turned off I tend to go with +30 eco +30 military +10 morale with industrialist with +20 social and +20 military. I do agree though "morale" is very important to higher taxes and higher growth of your planets. So, when I find a morale resourse out there you can bet I will "rush" to cap it before anyone else does and before any other resource out there. Economic starbases are also my bread and butter, I think too many people overlook the value of economic starbases and build influence or military ones first instead. Not me, I get them economic starbases out there asap also. Especially near my focused economic planet and my focused research planet. I don't build 1 of each thing on each planet either. I focus an entire planet on economic or research. This works much better than piecemeal 1 of this and 1 of that.

I can hardly wait for a PBEM mulitiplayer game of this. So, I can crush huumahn players like I crush the AI.