l'll answer my own question first.     I tend to play custom races more than the base races ... for example, i've yet to play a game as humans    not even started one... I think I'll do them next.


1.  Yor.  The Yor are tricky to play but they can have crazy growth and thus super crazy production.

2.  Thalan      Prolly the best tech tree.  All the quantum techs really make for some huge ships.

3.  Iridium.     MONEY to buy EVERYTHING.    

well if we reallly want to be technical it is Civilizations....   but whateves... you didn't answer the question

Quoting Taslios,

reply 3

well if we reallly want to be technical it is Civilizations....   but whateves... you didn't answer the question

The Yor. Because who wouldn't want to play as a Cylon.

Humans - Diplomacy has low cost but a high return.

Iridium - Same reason you gave.

The best faction in the game that doesn't judge you by the faction you are but, on the individual you've become.  Personally of the core factions I prefer the Thalan, Altarians, or the Torians.  However, I rarely play the core factions and tend to play a custom faction I developed.

Which one is the best? Why my own custom created race, the Avatarians, that's who! 

The OtherFolk are Ancient, Intuitive, Benevolent, use a Thalan tech tree, and obsess over population growth and production, especially prduction.  We take a Tech Victory quite regularly on Incredible.  We have maxed out economic traits and the weakest possible ships, but we create lots of big fleets with our production.

It doesn't seem like the stock races are getting a lot of love here.  Interesting.  I play against all the stock races at once a lot. Nowadays, the Arceans are the most regularly on top of the graphs.  They also have the most aggressive attitudes and may be the most dangerous militarily.  Still, there is a lot of variation from game to game, which shows a lot of balance within all the lopsided differences.

For my attacking style of play at L/8/I (Large/8 players/Incredible) I usually play a custom race. However, if forced to play standard races, I find Drengin to be the best. Malevolent along with Zealous rocks for attackers. Thalan if I can choose to play as a different Ideology than Pragmatic is also very good as their tech tree is awesome and Intuitive means that I am starting my Hive on T1.