Why bother with telepathy? With creativity, you won't need to do much spying.

The telepathy I can appreciate--never hurts being able to take planets over instantly, and the security bonus will protect your technologies--but I'm utterly baffled by the population penalty and subterranean. That's one of the worst penalties in the game, and it makes subterranean kind of pointless--what's the use of a higher population cap if you never actually reach it?

Ahm The point of malus in Pop groth is easily countered with Cloning.
With terraforming you get planets with 24 to 42 ( with Underground ) and with cloning its easily and fast to max the Pop and you dont need to Colonize as much as the AI does so that you can live in more Peace the whole game.

So mye favored Race is

Creative ( i hate Spying and Tech brokering )
Underground ( for more pop )
Unification ( is the best for prod and food )
max malus to Pop growth / Ground and Space fight / Spying ( all of them can be set back through Tech )

Some of the other configs are good in the beginning ( a few are very good ) but in the end I think this is the best because it never gets useless ( ok its a Builder and Peace lover Race ).

BTW:
I find Unification is the best form of Governement because of its great produktion and harvesting. in the beginning you can produce with Feudalism Ships faster but not buildings. With Democratic you can research faster but you cant build fast anithing so in the end the Produktion bonus of Unification can counter all of the boni Feudalism and Democracy have. I think Democracy is to costly and Unification to cheap.

Kinda surprised my custom race isn't already up here...

+ Creative
+ Cybernetic
+ Telepathic
++20 Ship Offense
Imperium
- -.5 Food
- -10 Ground
- Low Grav

Playing this on Impossible is fairly easy. In the early game, the ship bonuses from Cybernetic are tangible, and the food penalty means that at the start I'm growing food like a normal race- until all those food techs come in from Creative and suddenly my food and low grav penalty vanish like a Darlock ship in warp. Telepathic makes the ground penalty a moot point, plus gives me a diplomatic edge that still works on Impossible difficulty. The ship offense bonus is according to play style- my ships favor initiative and beam weapons. Han shot first, and you should too- that's my battle mantra. My extra +4 at Evolutionary Mutation is generally Warlord- ultra-elite ships with +20 and Molecular Computers & Battle Scanners will out-move almost anything, except Mrrshan and some of the AI's custom Impossible races.

Needless to say, this breaks down in multiplayer where everyone ends up hiding behind their frelling Phasing Cloaks... the dishonorable cowards.....

This is the same as my "power" race (when I just want to stomp everything) except that I go for the more typical -20 ship defense instead of -10 spying.

For a challenge, I like to play these guys:

THE WARRIORS

+20 Ground Combat
High-G World
Telepathic
Warlord

Feudal
Repulsive

Telepathic might seem like a waste (since half the point is not having to invade planets) but remember that it allows you to immediately use captured ships in battle. This means that if you can survive long enough to research techs like Assault Shuttles, Teleporters, and Ion Pulse Cannon then your swarms of small cheap ships (Thanks to Warlord and Feudal) can take over your opponents big expensive ships. Once you've got Powered Armor and some other good ground combat techs your marines will become basically invincible.

It's always fun to imagine what's going on when a single assault shuttle captures an entire Psilon doomstar.

-1/2Food
-10Spy

counterd by Unification

-10 Ground Combat

counterd by Subterran

Creative

balanced with -10 Ship Defense or Attack

You need to be careful at the start, Unifiaction morale nullification helps, soon as the tech starts comming in and you have some techs for growth to make good use of subterran, this build is mean. Usually use my start planet for food, colony base for Colony Ships and the next best abundant or rich for the frist war ships.

I love your spirit!
Even, Telepathic seem counterproductive, as these strong warriors don't need it to take planets. Lol sure.

I always play like this:

Creative
Omniscient
Unification

-Spy
-Bc
-Ground Combat

I'm finding it quite trivial and easy to complete, i play on advanced tech start, impossible, huge galaxy. you can fly straight to the best star systems (monster guarded ones) and colonize pretty much immediately as your ships will usually be strong enough to defeat them.

I establish trade/research agreements with other races at the beginning of the game and keep tax at 0% for the entire game. You may well find tech getting stolen at some point but this is not too hard to counter by mass producing spies midway through the game and leaving them to defend.

I've been getting back into this game recently (playing it off a flash drive during my work breaks).

Right now I'm trying to create a bunch of "Themed" races that aren't just min/maxed for best possible play, but rather to make me play very differently to get to victory. Basically the rules for me are that I can use any means I want to achieve victory except use the "Creative" perk:

The first one I found success with is a race I call the "Liberals" :

+ 50% Growth
+ 1 Food
- 20 Ship Defense
Democracy
Low-G World
Poor Home World
Fantastic Traders

Basically the point here is to make so much money that you can buy your way out of all your problems. The population and food picks are a little convoluted, but basically the more people you have the more tax you collect, and the more food you have the more epic your Fantastic Traders bonus becomes. By the end of the game on 0% taxes I was making 2k+ every turn. If I were to do it again I might switch out Ship Defense -20 for Ship Offense -20; this is much less debilitating to overcome given that missiles aren't really affected by chance to hit modifiers AFAIK.

The second successful race I have made I call the "Spies" (I'm not creative with names, sue me):

- 50% Growth
+ 20 Spying
+ Unification
Low-G World
Large Home World
Telepathic

This one fits together a little more loosely, basically because I was doing whatever I could to get +20 Spying, Unification, and Telepathic all at once. As others have noted, the growth pick is debilitating - if you don't get cloning and don't know how to make judicious use of the "Housing" build option.

The most difficult play yet for me, though, has been a "Warrior" themed race. Haven't won yet, but I'm trying something along the lines of:

+ 2 Science
+ 50 Ship Defense
Feudal
Rich Homeworld
Repulsive
Warlord

I was able to use this to take over the Mrrshan before I even had researched level 3 shields, but the late game has become... troublesome.

Wow the +2 Sci and Feudal just does not go together. If you had to choose Feudal (which I try to never do) then perhaps a better build would have been something like;

Feudal - 4
+50 Ship Offense/Defense + 11
Cybernetic + 4
WarLord + 4
- Ground Combat - 2
- Spying - 3

You would just focus on stealing tech through conquest with the above build and hope for the Legendary officer that gives Confederation and/or the one that gives Auto Labs.

My builds never see a good reason to leave out Cybernetic as it's just SOOOOOOOooooooo good both in combat and out.

My favorite build is:

1. Low G,
2. – Spying,
3. – Ground Combat,
4. Unification,
5. Tolerant,
6. Artifact Home World,
7. Large Home Word.

With the unification the –Spying is not a problem and with the necessary technologies the ground combat also.

I believe that this is the best build for the most of the cases with huge production, and big push in beginning for the research. With this build it is easy to beat on huge galaxy on impossible with 7 opponents for about 200 - 250 turns.

The most efficient possible I've found (only build I've won impossible difficulty with) :

- Repulsive (above normal difficulty it's 6 free points considering that repulsive or not all AI will suddenly declare war on you no matter your diplomatic efforts ; also you don't need tech exchanges while creative)

- Spying -10 (you don't need spying while creative)

- Aquatic (huge advantage in early game)*

- Creative (better than any research bonus)

- Rich home wold*

- Large home world*

- +50% growth


* Subterannean instead of aquatic and large home world also work well, the +50% growth may also be replaced with any other bonus

Now I prefer by far playing normal (non repulsive, non creative) races with advantages like telepathic, excellent traders or warlord, the problem is the AIs usually destroy me in this case.

It's the big problem of Moo2 for me, the game is too easy playing a creative race and/or one with big economical or growth advantages, but is frustratingly hard if you take one with funnier powers (usually lose even on just hard difficulty if I take races without those advantages).

My current experiment-
+1 Prod
+2 Research
+20 Spying
Dictatorship
Low-G
Large HW
Poor HW (Optional pairing, I tend to use the original HW as a research center)
Cybernetic
Uncreative

Very poor early game if tech rolls don't go your way, but they can explode out once you get your hands on the right tech-through either using the research bonuses to smash your way to some high-tier (but useless) tech to trade, or by abusing your spying as hard as you can get away with. Haven't tried it on higher difficulties yet, getting back into the game after a long absence.