* Galaxy: Young, Immense, Pre-Warp, 8 Players, Easy, All Toggles Set To "On"; Salutar (Custom Race: See This Page.); Moderately Different. *

You look at the "New Game" screen and set up the galaxy how you want it.

You, remembering the other times you've played, set the game to a fairly standard configuration. You select a "Young" Galaxy Age, for more minerals; "Immense" size, for maximum systems; "Pre-Warp" tech level, because it gives the canny player an advantage; "Easy" Difficulty, for the same reason; and Number of Players to 8, for maximum potential of allies and trade deals.

You also turn all the toggle switches to 'on' and then move on to race selection.

You know better than to go with any of the standard races, so you click "custom race" then are frozen by indecision for a moment. You must base your custom race on an existing one, but which to pick?

You finally settle on the Elirians, because "hot chicks", but when you get to the race customization screen rename them the "Salutar", and almost entirely re-design them.

You ditch their combat advantages, Omniscience, and Telepathy, but keep the Feudalism. You give them -50% Population Growth, and -10 Ground Combat. Now armed with 20 points to distribute for advantages you pick up Creative, Fantastic Traders, Lucky, Charismatic, and Rich Home World.

This means the following: your race can research not just ONE technology from each set, but ALL of them; you get more money from trade compacts and more importantly earn 1 Basic Credit for each unit of excess food your empire produces; Negative Random Events are less likely to happen to your race and positive ones more likely; you get more offers for leaders to join your empire and a better quality of leaders as well; and finally your starting homeworld is "Rich" in minerals.

All that done you press "Accept" and you suddenly black out...!

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