Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Shooer]

Kind of let down that each of the story pack race choices only get one origin each.  Machines starting with a machine world just looks really good.  Hiveminds get one that gives housing, pop growth, and society research buff on all their worlds and costs more food to make colony ships. 

The Lithoid one though, home world gets +6 districts +6 mine and -6 agri and -50% hab for everyone else.  Also can make colony ships that don't take any Alloys, supposed to take more minerals and put two buried lithoids (1000 minerals and get a pop) and add the same -50% hab.

A Lithoid hivemind with the lithoid origin get special colony ships that cost only 500 minerals that give bonuses for you.  Kind of glad the meteorite colony ship doesn't add the +6 district to colonized worlds, would just get out of hand.  Now to see if anything special happens when I use them to colonize relic worlds and orbital habitats.

[Greiger]

Voidborne is pretty strong if you play your cards right.

You get 2.7x as much population growth (3 planet start, -10% population growth trait for Voidborne).

Your pops produce bonus resources.

You can produce research districts right off the bat (massive tech lead at the start). You can also invest in cultural districts for a unity lead.

...but you have to spend 3000 alloys + a colony ship every time you want to expand. So you start off stronger but have a slower expansion rate early on.

Mid game though when you have 100+ alloys surplus your expansion rate becomes pretty insane.

My first game with the new expansion was voidborne.  If you have a nearby friendly ally you can set up migration treaties really easily and then you can just use the migrated race to populate planets.  I'm surrounded by super friendly races and even though I started voidborne I could colonize every planet type I know of.  Lowest habitability I saw was 70% and that was a tomb world.  That was before I even had fusion.

[Il Palazzo]

Gah. Started as voidborne autocratic criminals, with long-term intentions to enslave and cyborgise. Found a size 25 relic world nearby (still 70% hab regardless of pop traitss, which is broken imo) and the cybrex event chain. Great systems all around, was swimming in minerals 20 years in.
And then fanatical purifiers next door. On highest difficulty. D:

[Great Order]

Gah. Started as voidborne autocratic criminals, with long-term intentions to enslave and cyborgise. Found a size 25 relic world nearby (still 70% hab regardless of pop traitss, which is broken imo) and the cybrex event chain. Great systems all around, was swimming in minerals 20 years in.
And then fanatical purifiers next door. On highest difficulty. D:

Now that federations aren't guaranteed to take fleet power, I find them much more useful for mutual defence. Especially if I can dominate the power rankings later on, change the votes to weight, then push through every reform that makes me perpetual ruler of a federation filled with pseudo-vassals. And then when I'm fed up with that, I can leave and splatter it.

[EuchreJack]

One interesting thing I've noticed: from an early-game perspective, most of the origins are inferior to Prosperous Unification or Syncretic Evolution. Having additional pops makes your economy much stronger in the beginning, and alloys you to have more alloys and tech earlier than someone with a feature that can't be used until mid or late game.

I kept starting new games and wondering why I was behind the AI in the first 50 years; oh right, most of them have an extra 10+ years of pop growth than I do.

Having your home planet fill up with stupid people does however have some disadvantages...

[ZeroGravitas]

One interesting thing I've noticed: from an early-game perspective, most of the origins are inferior to Prosperous Unification or Syncretic Evolution. Having additional pops makes your economy much stronger in the beginning, and alloys you to have more alloys and tech earlier than someone with a feature that can't be used until mid or late game.

I kept starting new games and wondering why I was behind the AI in the first 50 years; oh right, most of them have an extra 10+ years of pop growth than I do.

Having your home planet fill up with stupid people does however have some disadvantages...

this is a thing that you control. why would you fill it up with stupid people?

[MrRoboto75]

One interesting thing I've noticed: from an early-game perspective, most of the origins are inferior to Prosperous Unification or Syncretic Evolution. Having additional pops makes your economy much stronger in the beginning, and alloys you to have more alloys and tech earlier than someone with a feature that can't be used until mid or late game.

I kept starting new games and wondering why I was behind the AI in the first 50 years; oh right, most of them have an extra 10+ years of pop growth than I do.

Having your home planet fill up with stupid people does however have some disadvantages...

Pull a Hitchhiker's Guide and dump them all on another planet.

[Telgin]

Meanwhile, I'm trying to form a federation to test out the new mechanics, but nobody wants to form one with me.  Apparently, having a policy of no wars of aggression is a kiss of death when it comes to building a federation, with a -50 acceptance modifier for everyone I've checked...

I've read about releasing a vassal and just forming a federation with them, which is tempting, though I've never tried it.  How does that work?  Can you release a sector as a vassal or something?

[Shooer]

Yes you can release a sector as a vassal.  Never done it, but have seen the button.

[ZeroGravitas]

Meanwhile, I'm trying to form a federation to test out the new mechanics, but nobody wants to form one with me.  Apparently, having a policy of no wars of aggression is a kiss of death when it comes to building a federation, with a -50 acceptance modifier for everyone I've checked...

I've read about releasing a vassal and just forming a federation with them, which is tempting, though I've never tried it.  How does that work?  Can you release a sector as a vassal or something?

It's tough because the game weights your neighbors towards different ethos.

If you just want to test the new mechanics, can you use one of the Federation origins?

[E. Albright]

Envoys can overcome the ethos difference. I had a game where my fanatical egalitarian empire got a Federation offer from the fanatical authoritarian we shared a border with. They eventually left (and thus dissolved) the Federation b/c we didn't continuously butter them up, and that was probably just as well since they didn't like any of our other neighbors and thus vetoed them join up, but the ethos difference was far from an insurmountable hurdle.

[Rolan7]

Meanwhile, I'm trying to form a federation to test out the new mechanics, but nobody wants to form one with me.  Apparently, having a policy of no wars of aggression is a kiss of death when it comes to building a federation, with a -50 acceptance modifier for everyone I've checked...

I've read about releasing a vassal and just forming a federation with them, which is tempting, though I've never tried it.  How does that work?  Can you release a sector as a vassal or something?

Works the other direction too, though as a non-pacifist you can just set your policy to forbid wars of aggression then change it back ten years later.  The neighbors being weighted towards opposing you can suck, but envoys go a long way to fixing any relation hits... but that -50 Federation acceptance is virtually a dealbreaker, yeah.

I used to release sectors fairly often, particularly if I was otherwise painting the map.  They remain as a vassal but stop taking up administrative cap, and there's less headache with long trade routes pre-gateways.  That's less useful now since spamming administrative offices is fairly easy.  Vassals can be in your federation, but I kinda doubt you can start one with them, so you may have to release them from vassalage as well.  It sounds like a decent plan though, particularly since they'll love you and have your ethics.  Federations level up slowly so starting them ASAP is useful.  Vassals also keep your traditions, so you can make sure they have Entente Coordination before you spin them off.  Though it'll be a while before your federation can actually have a fleet at all.

[Telgin]

Yeah, I could have tried the federation origin and may try that next time to see how it goes.  I'm at like 2330 in this game so a new federation this late may not get very far anyway.

I do have envoys assigned to the empires I was interested in forming federations with, but it just didn't make enough of a difference.  My overall relations were at like +730 or so, so that can't go much higher.

[Shooer]

Construction ship: "We've built a grand habitat.  A perfectly sealed environment for almost all life to live and thrive."
Lithoids: "Hold my molten sulfur"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So we might have put a hole in the side, we can still live on it.

Having a lot of fun as a empathic Lithoid hive.  Slowly making everyone love we, convincing everyone they need greater sanctions that hurt everyone else.  Right now if your fleet is too small you research slower and produce less.

[EuchreJack]

Meanwhile, I'm trying to form a federation to test out the new mechanics, but nobody wants to form one with me.  Apparently, having a policy of no wars of aggression is a kiss of death when it comes to building a federation, with a -50 acceptance modifier for everyone I've checked...

I've read about releasing a vassal and just forming a federation with them, which is tempting, though I've never tried it.  How does that work?  Can you release a sector as a vassal or something?

It's tough because the game weights your neighbors towards different ethos.

If you just want to test the new mechanics, can you use one of the Federation origins?

Hm, so I could probably achieve Galactic Peace by playing as a Xenophobic Militaristic Authoritarian.  The peaceful loving hippies will all join against me, I push the opposition parties, and then flip and join the federation that was formed to thwart me.  There shall be peace in our time!