What impact do the racial characteristics have when I'm playing the race?

[Wipqozn]

I'm a little confused about the impact the racial characteristics have on the race I choose to play as. Some of them are fairly straight forward, such as intelligence increasing my research speed and aggression increasing my troop strength, but I'm not sure how other characteristics impact my game.

Take friendliness for example. What impact will that have on me if I choose a friendly race? The attributes of friendliness all describe AI behaviour, and would only seem to apply to how the AI behaves when playing as that race.

[feelotraveller]

Friendliness increases the chances of colonising independent worlds.  If I remember correctly it also influences how other races view yours.
 
Aggression was decoupled from troop strength in Legends (although it is still 'largely' reflected in troop strengths).  From memory low aggression also helps with colonisation chances of independents.
 
Other than the mention of intelligence increasing research speed in the galactopedia there has never been any evidence that this is actually the case.  Given the other vagaries of the galactopedia I believe this is a (recurrent) furphy.
 
I'm pretty sure caution influences how many resources each colony/spaceport trys to hang on to.

[Wipqozn]

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller

Other than the mention of intelligence increasing research speed in the galactopedia there has never been any evidence that this is actually the case.  Given the other vagaries of the galactopedia I believe this is a (recurrent) furphy.

Oh, wow. That's really good to know. I've been turned off of races with low intelligence because of the negative impact I thought it had on research speed. If that's not the case I'd be more willing to try some of them out.

[feelotraveller]

The biggest influence on research speed is the form of government.
 
There aren't any slow research races!  There are a few quick researching races though.   (Quameno, Kiadian, Human and Ugnari... Zenox are quick at start because of their special government.)
 
Generally I don't pay much attention to the racial characteristics when choosing a race.  I'll generally invade all independents so that bit is irrelevant.  Diplomatic bonuses from racial characteristics are generally pretty weak compared to other influences.  The biggest influence I find is the caution factor but that can go either way, the Atuuks are good for rexing but not so much for Bakuras on your homeworld, while any of the many high caution races are the other way around.
 
I think the racial characteristics were more important in earlier versions and now largely add flavour to the cpu players behaviours.  Since Legends I find the victory conditions, racial resource bonuses, character prevalences, etc. much more significant for my race choice.

[Wipqozn]

I think the racial characteristics were more important in earlier versions and now largely add flavour to the cpu players behaviours.  Since Legends I find the victory conditions, racial resource bonuses, character prevalences, etc. much more significant for my race choice.

That's good to know, although one thing I have noticed in a game where I'm playing as the Quameno is that every so often a receive an event message saying they've reaffirmed their desire to be alone, and as such it's damaged my relations with other empires. Thus far though, it doesn't seem to have had any notable impact on my relations with other races.

[feelotraveller]

Each race has one or two specific types of events which can occur.
 
That's a race event for the Quameno, 'isolationists'.  It resets the counter for 'we find your strange ways disturbing' (or whatever the exact wording is) to the starting maximum penalty.  It is to some extent offset by the fact that all their Ambassadors get the 'linguistic' trait.
 
The modding guide is an excellent source for information like this. 
 
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2972691
 
 
 
 

[Wipqozn]

Thanks for the helpful link.