No I went for Trader. Trading partners will be a hassle so I doubt many warlords and researchers will spend the time to setup enough trade routes and my ship building rate is higher than everyone so I will just spam capital ships. I am not concerned about fighting warlords as a trader, its a researcher that knows what he is doing that will be annoying to fight. At the same time I am less likely to be a target because people will want to trade with me which will finally allow me to fight one opponent at a time instead of six like the last 10 games...

Though honestly I doubt being a trader will cause you to be that much less of a target, at least not for the majority of players unless you have a small empire. Small trading empires probably won't get targeted, but big ones will and most trading empires will be big.


That all being said I started game adjacent to a system with 4-5 planets including a gas giant....*win*