Hi,
I find the Orbital Transformers useful. Because the AI is not as aggressive as it might be, I often have time to beeline to Terraforming, after building the Diplomatic Translators, the Restaurant of Eternity and Xinathium Plating. This path gives me Aphrodisiacs, which will turbocharge my growth, and then the Transformers. I refrain from upgrading any squares, pumping the unused social production into more colony ships and constructors.
Aphrodisiacs are awesome when gotten early. +50% pop fuels economic growth, colony spamming, influence and eventually planetary invasion. It's worth 4 or 5 racial points, and cannot be gotten any other way.
I like the Aphrodisiacs so much that I avoid neutral alignments. I find neutrality less useful because I can get one of the two major benefits this way. I'll miss out on the neutrality learning centers in favor of the immediate benefits of Evil. In a way, the whole Aphrodisiac/Evil thing makes sense: Girls *so* go that bad boy image.
Priorities:
1) Get easy techs that increase production, while spamming colony ships. (Gal Militarization, Planetary Improvements...)
2) Research speed techs until Impulse Drive, for faster colony ships.
3) Sensors, for fast cargo-based survey ship.
4) Yellow techs to get better economy, diplomacy, +10% morale, Diplo Translators and Restaurant. This path also lets me start trading for other technologies, once the translators are built.
5) Research toward Xinathium.
6) Terraform track.
Oddly enough, I can usually trade for good technology, even weapons tech. The Drengin are especially cooperative with me in this regard, glad to trade with their evil buddy.
Suggested game change: It should be impossible to receive any technology in trade, without first having all prerequisites.
Suggested game change: A race should boycott all trading (not Trade) with races toward whom they feel cool or worse, except as part of a peace agreement.
Note: In 1.1, the military production pick is awesome! I get +50% for 4 points. This boosts both my economy (free military production) and capacity to build ships, which I will be doing all game, but especially in the beginning. Because buildings become active the turn they are bought, whereas ships do not appear until the next turn, I gain turn advantage when I use starting cash to build industrial buildings whose production is devoted to building ships. I'm a little slower off the mark than the guys who buy a colony ship first, but this matters less in 1.11. I catch up within two or three turns and pull ahead. My economy never tanks.
Favored racial picks: 4 for military, 4 for economy, 3 for morale. Industrialist party.
Favored game: Tough (all Intelligent; I like a level playing field against a fully-enabled AI), Large (larger galaxies are just *too* big, and the UI quickly becomes cumbersome as I have too many planets to manage), 7 opponents (I want the AI to fill up the space so I don't), everything abundant (I enjoy anomalies, I want the AI to have lots of habitable planets, though I've also tried reducing #stars to common, because I still find myself with too many planets to manage :/).
Favorite Races: Anyone who starts with miniaturization. Custom is nice because I can start out with techs that give me production bonuses, but *not* with Xeno Industrial Theory: Basic Factories get me going much faster than Factories.
Anyway,
Ken
