Ok...

[Fyron]

douglas said:
Edit: 40% vs 60% certainly seems less important to me. It also takes longer to get the full benefit of training than CS and ECM (ignoring research time).

But it is 40% versus _0_... ECM and CS being equal, that 40% advantage in both defense and offense is a hugely massive advantage. I can not stress that enough... Even a 20% advantage in both CS and ECM, representing just one tech level of advantage in both areas, is a huge advantage, given the importance of combat bonuses. Find a planet with moons. Build training facilities on the planet and the moons. 9% training per turn. Only takes 3 turns to complete the training...

Also, make sure to always take at the very minimum 120% in both racial aggressiveness and defensiveness traits. The extra 5% to get to 125% is generally not worth the cost, except possibly in 5000 point games... Berzerker culture is most certainly the best culture, as the 10% bonus to combat offense and defense is a very, very important edge to have, or a difficult disadvantage to overcome if you do not have it... Merchant culture, combined with 115% maintenance aptitude, can sometimes compete, if you can get enough ships built to take advantage of your very low maintenance rates to overwhelm the combat-bonus oriented empire designs. Make sure to still take that 120% aggressiveness and defensiveness though... Temporal Technology helps with this empire design, as you can get ships built much more quickly, to help in the overwhelming numbers cause.

[douglas]

Imperator Fyron said:

But it is 40% versus _0_...

I was comparing CS and ECM vs. training, not training vs. no training.

[Fyron]

douglas said:
I was comparing CS and ECM vs. training, not training vs. no training.

Well of course you develop both of them as soon as you can... Training is a lot cheaper to research than CS III and ECM III... Training + CS I and ECM I is also cheaper to research than CS III and ECM III, and gives the same net bonuses. It also gives you a head start on the training bonuses...