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[Broseph Stalin]

You can both restrict people from working some jobs, forcing them to work other jobs that would normally be lower priority, and you can mark jobs as high priority, forcing pops to fill those jobs ahead of all others.

Yes, and it's a terrible way to almost do the thing I want to do. If I could say X pop works Y job I could then ignore it until something cataclysmic happened. Under the current system I have to add back jobs when my population grows and stare at my prioritized enforcer job wondering if the gold marker is just a present to assuage my hurt feelings while the job remains vacant. It also provides no way for me to control which species work which jobs and while I'm sure there's a lot of good stuff under the hood around pop assignment I'd really appreciate veto power for when it fucks up or just when I find a certain mix more thematically appropriate.

[Blastbeard]

That's one thing I miss about the old system of pops and tiles. You could micromanage who did what just by dragging and dropping. Put the pops with the industrious trait on the mineral tiles, and so on. I also seem to recall being able to enslave and purge individual pops as opposed to entire species, and even if it may not have had much practical use, I count the removal of a 'fuck this guy in particular' button as a net loss.

That reminds of something odd I witnessed back then.

Spoiler:  That time I 'tamed' a devouring swarm (click to show/hide)

 Two hive minds my empire was bordering, a standard one I forget the name of and a devouring swarm by the name of Diri Ravagers, had gotten into a slap fight. The Diri Ravagers got their/its teeth kicked in and lost a good number of planets in the process.
The weirdness begins when, rather than purging the Diri population from the conquered worlds, the other hive mind was /somehow/ able to displace them. I know this because I began receiving Diri refugees on my own worlds.
So now I had hive-minded pops mixed in with my regular ones. Surprisingly, nothing went wrong. The hive-minders got along just fine with the normals, and were actually very productive due to the lack of happiness modifiers and indifference to political parties. I even recruited one of them as an admiral, aptly ned Diri, who had a very ironic career ahead of her.
Time passed, and the Diri population in my empire grew rapidly, making up about an tenth of my population. The devouring swarm proper wasn't faring near as well, losing ground on all fronts to neighboring empires. I finally built my fleet up enough to take a swing at this piñata, and I was determined to deal the deathblow and take all the candy for myself. I shouldn't have done that.
There's not much to say about my conquest of the Diri Ravagers. By the time I got to them, the devouring swarm was a shadow of its former self, and fell in short order. I remember admiral Diri leading a fleet against her own hive mind and bombarding her own homeworld. I remember that same homeworld being a tough nut to crack, but that's normal. What's not normal is what happened after I conquered the last world and eliminated the Diri Ravagers.
When a regular empire conquers a world formerly owned by a gestalt consciousness, it purges the gestalt pops regardless of ethics. This was no exception, and after I took control of the Diri worlds, the Diri pops started purging automatically. All of them, including the ones I received as refugees. I could only look on in horror, helpless as my empire's population was decimated. In the end, only admiral Diri was left, last of her kind. She went on to win three elections and ruled my empire for thirty years before passing of old age. And so ended the Diri.

[Loud Whispers]

Maybe the gestalt pops could survive for as long as the independent hive mind stellar swarm existed? Autonomous, but not separated from the hive mind?

[Blastbeard]

That could be it, but I think it's more that the hive-minded pops skipped a check when they were displaced from onto my worlds, which normally isn't possible. If the game finds a gestalt pop in a non-gestalt empire, then purge. Displacing must have skipped the 'find' part, but after I conquered the Ravager's worlds, the game 'found' some gestalt pops to purge.

It's a real shame, if gestalt consciousnesses could mingle better with normal pops I'd consider playing them more often. Less like rogue servitors or assimilators and more like a normal empire that went for synthetic ascension. But nope, all we get are borg and zerg because we absolutely must stick to the tropes.

[amjh]

My hive mind is lonely and wants to invite a few billion friends over.

[Egan_BW]

People might get a bit creeped out when a sector-sized organism invites them to live in it.

[E. Albright]

I'm suddenly reminded of the archeology dig where you discover that the tunnels you're digging in were originally a planet-spanning worm which had a civilization develop in its guts, only to be killed by indigestion when they discovered this and tried to kill it.

[Telgin]

That's pretty cool.  Somehow I don't think I've seen that dig site yet.  That is something I'll say for Ancient Relics: I've seen every anomaly a dozen times, but I'm still coming across dig sites I haven't seen.

Also, now that I've mostly completed a game, I can say with some confidence that the AI is smarter in this version.  It's still nowhere near a human who understands the game, but the empires I've looked at closely seem to be doing a much better job with their economy.  The war AI also seems a lot smarter and organizes real death stacks now instead of just suiciding fleets one at a time at the enemy.  I'm seeing the Contingency routinely group together 2M fleet power for its offensives, which I've never seen before.

[IronyOwl]

That's one thing I miss about the old system of pops and tiles. You could micromanage who did what just by dragging and dropping. Put the pops with the industrious trait on the mineral tiles, and so on.

Yes... but it was obnoxious and pop growth/balance meant you couldn't reliably get the pops with the industrious trait to exist on the right world in the first place.

I count the removal of a 'fuck this guy in particular' button as a net loss.

The loss of meaningless fuck you buttons is always tragic, yes.

Also, now that I've mostly completed a game, I can say with some confidence that the AI is smarter in this version.  It's still nowhere near a human who understands the game, but the empires I've looked at closely seem to be doing a much better job with their economy.  The war AI also seems a lot smarter and organizes real death stacks now instead of just suiciding fleets one at a time at the enemy.  I'm seeing the Contingency routinely group together 2M fleet power for its offensives, which I've never seen before.

My experience is "smart enough not to ram into my defensive station with the fleet nearby, dumb enough to go aaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way around letting me snap up territory while they're busy instead."

[E. Albright]

That is something I'll say for Ancient Relics: I've seen every anomaly a dozen times, but I'm still coming across dig sites I haven't seen.

The other thing about archeology, which may not be immediately obvious, is that some dig sites can have different outcomes from the same base site. That adds some longevity even once you've seen everything, just because you don't always know what the outcome will be this time around.

[Teneb]

Finally am having a successful game. I decided to re-make the very first empire I did when the game launched, since I had luck with that one, but also slap onto them the Hegemony start.

And boy the Hegemony start is good. Sure, you miss out on the two guaranteed colony worlds, but having two minions friends at your back more than make up for it. I've also used the hegemony CB to create new empires (with my ethics and who auto-join the hegemony) out of my non-complying neighbours and have just finished gobbling up a Determined Exterminator empire that was squatting in the SW corner of the galaxy. Just after taking out the Exterminators, the neighbouring megacorp that was being bullied by them spontaneously asked to become my vassals.

Spoiler: I am very much considering liberating some of the conquered Exterminator territories as vassals to ease off on the resource burden (click to show/hide)

[Blastbeard]

Is it bad that I can look at the blank spots on that map and tell where the fallen empires, marauders, and leviathans are at a glance?

[Teneb]

Is it bad that I can look at the blank spots on that map and tell where the fallen empires, marauders, and leviathans are at a glance?

The Marauders are the little black empire in the top-middle. The blank spot in the left side is indeed a fallen empire, xenophobes. The area near me in the bottom is just empty space that I am going to claim eventually.

Looks like one of my hegemony partners declared war on the Assimilators near them. I was planning on doing that, anyway, but wanted to upgrade my fleets first. Oh well.

[ZeroGravitas]

Finally am having a successful game. I decided to re-make the very first empire I did when the game launched, since I had luck with that one, but also slap onto them the Hegemony start.

And boy the Hegemony start is good. Sure, you miss out on the two guaranteed colony worlds, but having two minions friends at your back more than make up for it. I've also used the hegemony CB to create new empires (with my ethics and who auto-join the hegemony) out of my non-complying neighbours and have just finished gobbling up a Determined Exterminator empire that was squatting in the SW corner of the galaxy. Just after taking out the Exterminators, the neighbouring megacorp that was being bullied by them spontaneously asked to become my vassals.

Spoiler: I am very much considering liberating some of the conquered Exterminator territories as vassals to ease off on the resource burden (click to show/hide)

Yeah, Hegemony feels strong. And even if it's not strong, it's just much less hassle. Yes, I could conquer and manage all these planets myself, but I'll settle for just letting the AI run them and having it build 70% of its fleet power for me.

But I'm guessing it's legitimately strong, actually. Mostly because it leverages Admin very well, it's a very efficient method of conquest with the Hegemony CB. The federation fleets are also highly efficient, because they ignore fleet cap size and automatically use the best technology among all federation members.

[Teneb]

Finally am having a successful game. I decided to re-make the very first empire I did when the game launched, since I had luck with that one, but also slap onto them the Hegemony start.

And boy the Hegemony start is good. Sure, you miss out on the two guaranteed colony worlds, but having two minions friends at your back more than make up for it. I've also used the hegemony CB to create new empires (with my ethics and who auto-join the hegemony) out of my non-complying neighbours and have just finished gobbling up a Determined Exterminator empire that was squatting in the SW corner of the galaxy. Just after taking out the Exterminators, the neighbouring megacorp that was being bullied by them spontaneously asked to become my vassals.

Spoiler: I am very much considering liberating some of the conquered Exterminator territories as vassals to ease off on the resource burden (click to show/hide)

Yeah, Hegemony feels strong. And even if it's not strong, it's just much less hassle. Yes, I could conquer and manage all these planets myself, but I'll settle for just letting the AI run them and having it build 70% of its fleet power for me.

But I'm guessing it's legitimately strong, actually. Mostly because it leverages Admin very well, it's a very efficient method of conquest with the Hegemony CB. The federation fleets are also highly efficient, because they ignore fleet cap size and automatically use the best technology among all federation members.

Yup.

The latest development was the Khan arising... and promptly taking a wormhole into the former Exterminator's territory (now a bunch of my federation members that I released). And I can't do shit against them because they're rocking at least 40k in fleet power while I can maybe scrape 20k.

I feel like the Great Khan event fires way too early, since in every single game I played it has always popped before anyone can really stand a chance against him. Guess I'll just use some of my federation as a buffer until the Khan dies naturally.