Minor race

Minor races are races that generally stay on their homeworld and build up influence. In addition to any minor races present from the start, new minor races can emerge during a game, either formed by revolting colonies (such as the I-League and the Fundamentalists) or by inhabiting previously uninhabitable systems. They work much like the "main" races in most ways, except that they cannot colonize or conquer planets. However, under rare circumstances, they are able to colonize planets that does not belong to anybody. Beyond this, minor races are in no way limited to a single planet, and they may trade with other races to acquire additional worlds and planets may revolt to join a minor race. A player may form alliances with minor races, though there is rarely any real benefit in doing so as minor races are generally too weak to offer much assistance in the event of a war. In Galactic Civilizations, it was very frequent for a minor race to build tons and tons of culture projects.

Minor races make good trading partners for militant players who would rather leave one planet alone inside their empire than establish trade routes with neighbors that will be lost during an eventual invasion. In general, leaving a minor race to trade with provides more income than the planet would have if conquered, assuming properly established trade routes. In the early stages of a game, trading technologies with minor races can be very helpful, as it allows the player to sell or trade the same technology to each minor race, then offer any thus acquired new technologies to each of the other minor races, and so on. This same strategy can of course be used with the main races as well, though doing so with the minor races is often preferable as they pose no threat and are much less likely to use any new weapon technologies against you.

From a real-world perspective, think of Minor Races as the galactic equivalent of Switzerland in that they:

1. Focus on influence
2. Avoid conflict
3. Try emphasising production in homelands as much as possible
4. Have a defensive army

Some minor races include:

• The Akilians
• The Andians
• The Arvanitians
• The Carinoids
• The Dark Yor
• The Debians
• The Fundamentalists
• The Furan
• The I-League
• The Jagged Knife
• The Jarkians
• The Jessuins
• The LentzLandians
• The Paridians
• The Paulos
• The Sanderons
• The Sanderians
• The Snathi
• The Scottlingas
• The Vegans
• The Venge
• The Windischians

All minor races have a +100 economics bonus.