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[Rolan7]

I've been practically filling my core worlds with commercial zones...

I sorta assumed it was good due to the difficulties caused by long trade routes, which is a hint but not a reason.  It looks pretty competitive, though?

Spoiler: Thinking out loud (click to show/hide)

Technician: 4 base energy, +25% (5) with Energy Nexus
Clerk: 2 trade value, 2 amenities (some multipliers, but generally less than technicians)
Entertainer: 10 amenities, -1 consumer goods (and a bit more for being specialists.  I'm running Academic Privilege which is the worst case, -1 goods instead of -.25).  Bonus of 2 unity

For maximizing profit technicians are twice as good as clerks, except that they rely on amenities and energy districts.  Looking just at amenities and energy/trade, I guess it's like this:

Technician: 5 income
Clerk: 2 income, supports 1 technician
Entertainer: -2 income (1 goods), supports 9 technicians

In an ideal world (heh) with infinite population and generator districts:
1 entertainer with 9 technicians = 45-2 = 43 profit (and 2 unity)
5 clerks with 5 technicians = 10+25 = 35 profit

So yeah, entertainers are clearly superior for meeting amenity requirements, *and* provide a little unity.
However, I don't think I'll change my strategy much.  Spamming commercial zones is much simpler, as it doesn't rely on the natural resources or noticing to add another theater properly.  There's "excess" amenities but they're mostly absorbed by the ruler and specialist pops, and provide a nice bonus without going overboard.

Trade goods are also better than straight energy income, since you can assign a portion to consumer goods or even unity.   I usually do the first, as it's... simple.  Just saves me from making hardly any civilian industries.  Which means even less specialists to cater to.

Trade does get much trickier as soon as it requires a route, though.  This is just easy for systems with 6 jumps of the capital.

I found a rather funny fast researching build. Just go egalitarian and get utopian and build lots of cities and keep most of your people unemployed. Huge research and unity. Dedicate the rest of the people to growing food and producing consumer goods lol. Just can't do migration treaties because all the unemployed people would rather migrate to the slave empire next door as slaves rather than live in abundance as freelance artists and scientists.

Hehe, I've been wanting to do this since I noticed the research boon.  Getting unity from unemployed pops with social welfare was sorta nice, but didn't seem worth doing on purpose.  Have you actually tried this yet?

I did have a lot of citizens wander into an empire I didn't realize was fanatic authoritarian slavers...  Seems a little odd but it takes all types I guess.

[Paul]

D'oh. I just realized you can set a priority pop on a planet. So I can make it grow the specific pop with good habitability. It just drops growth rate by 20%, which kinda sucks, but at least I can keep my homeworld colonized by my main race while my immigrants are headed for the frontier world where they have 70% and my people have 15%. 20% seems a bit excessive though, seeing as the bonus that costs 2 trait points only gives +10%.


As far as Entertainer vs Clerks, the +2 unity is a big difference. Assuming you use the trade/unity ratio as the value of unity, it would be worth 6.66. And if it isn't your capital area, you're looking at losses from piracy or investments in stronger anti-piracy stations and/or patrol ships.

I guess they have their place if you have a ton of extra pops to do something with quickly, and they're definitely useful within the range of the capital starbase due to zero piracy concerns; but otherwise they're kind of lousy. Now if you went with a race with the 25% boost to trade value it might be worth it, since that's one of the larger boosts you get to production from traits (others are only 15%). Especially if you stack it with + trade value civics and xenophile...

[MorleyDev]

So the penny has dropped for me that the new system makes Barbaric Despoilers hella good to play as.

As soon as you get strong enough to raid a neighbour and push to and hold a single populated planet with ships, you can just steal so many pops. Free large quantities of slave labour acquired very quickly, alongside huge planet pop growth, and the biggest risk is tanking your food production.

[Criptfeind]

Is that better then just taking the planet yourself? And, if it is better, how so? Genuinely interested in knowing, not having played Despoilers, but it seems like in most cases, unless perhaps you are out of influence, if you can steal pops, you can just take the planet yourself.

[MorleyDev]

Planets kick up your admin cap slowing tech growth and imposing extra costs. And it takes time to breed up the plant to how you want it, when you're still working on growing your current planets. I've found it very easy to overextend in 2.2 and take too many planets too quickly. Unless there are resources on the planets you need, I find it better to focus on growing the planets you have.

Stolen slaves building up your existing planets don't add nearly as much to Admin Cap, so it lets you go *very* tall on a few built up planets *very* quickly.

You can then focus your native pops on Research and Refinement, which can let you get the costs for most tech down to stupidly low levels. Like, most research projects before you get to the repeatable can take less than a year.

If you stack Xenophobic Rapid Breeders on it, then you can get rapid access to a lot of potential specialists on your planets by importing in all the slaves.

Make them Domestic Servitude slaves and you don't even need to worry about the Amenities or unemployment, since unemployed slave pops will create the former and not count as the latter.

[Sartain]

So the penny has dropped for me that the new system makes Barbaric Despoilers hella good to play as.

As soon as you get strong enough to raid a neighbour and push to and hold a single populated planet with ships, you can just steal so many pops. Free large quantities of slave labour acquired very quickly, alongside huge planet pop growth, and the biggest risk is tanking your food production.

Yeah, that definitely works. And unless the _test branch fixed it you can actually completely empty planets this way, despite the tooltip saying otherwise. My Post-apocalyptic despoilers have had great success raiding ALL pops off planets and then, both other empires and pre-FTL species, and then just settling the planet with my main race afterwards (assuming I want it at all) while the larger share of slaves are being put to work in the mines of my more developed planets.

[Cruxador]

Is that better then just taking the planet yourself? And, if it is better, how so? Genuinely interested in knowing, not having played Despoilers, but it seems like in most cases, unless perhaps you are out of influence, if you can steal pops, you can just take the planet yourself.

Influence should usually be the limiting factor on what you can take anyway, though.

[MorleyDev]

My Post-apocalyptic despoilers have had great success raiding ALL pops off planets

That's odd, I'm finding that the last two Ruler pops always are left hanging around on any empire planet I raid no matter how long I leave my raiders above the planet. Not tried it with Primitives though, since I usually just march an army in there and resettle them manually.

[Dunamisdeos]

Is that better then just taking the planet yourself? And, if it is better, how so? Genuinely interested in knowing, not having played Despoilers, but it seems like in most cases, unless perhaps you are out of influence, if you can steal pops, you can just take the planet yourself.

Influence should usually be the limiting factor on what you can take anyway, though.

I generally just take the planet and boop the pops off of it onto my core worlds.

However, this costs energy. Despoliatin' is basically free, though presumably you might need to move some newly imported pops around your own empire afterwards.

[MorleyDev]

Plus with Despoliation you can take pops from several planets, not just the one you have a claim on, so you can cripple your neighbours for awhile by seizing a lot of their population from several planets. Crippled neighbours are good neighbours for a Tall Xenophobic Empire

(P.S, I initially mistyped seizing their whole population as sexing. That's for the filthy xenophiles and their xenocompatibility nonsense).

Also holy hell the First League Precursor is buffed. A free Ecumonopolis? That you can settle immediately? Yes please, just immediately move all consumer goods and alloy production there. Like, even the Cybrex required you to get the restoration tech before you got that free ringworld...

[Egan_BW]

...Why is it the xenophobes who like enslaving aliens again? Still makes more sense the other way round.

[Dunamisdeos]

I note that the other precursors have NOT been buffed. Not sure why the others are now MORE useless by comparison than they were before. They didn't even balance it to the current system. 10 research is like..... one free research complex.

woohoo.

[MorleyDev]

From what I saw, the others do produce 5 of a rare resource now, like Exotic Gases, which can definitely be useful but not quite on the same level. I get the feeling the bigger buffs are waiting for a system that ties into their story to get an extra bonus when a feature is added that fits.

Speaking of which, taking all bets: What will be next? I know they're itching to rework diplomacy, but maybe they'll surprise us.

[Cruxador]

...Why is it the xenophobes who like enslaving aliens again? Still makes more sense the other way round.

One imagines it's because slavery is bad and xenophobia is bad so therefore they go together. I don't think there's any deeper reason than that.

[Rolan7]

If I understand correctly (not having used (organic) slaves), Authoritarian Xenophiles can have slaves.  Widespread slavery in 2200 just requires justification - either Authoritarianism justifies enslaving people, or Xenophobia denies them personhood.

Oh, and my lack of a slavery run was due to the previous UI tedium, same reason I avoided biological ascension.  I'd like to finally try Authoritarian sometime, my friend has a great Hutt run going.