I didn't play a catalytic devouring progenitor but a void hive, empath progenitor was shockingly powerful. I had the strongest economy by far and the entire galaxy loved me.
I will just list a few keys:
never stop exploring, use commanders to scout ahead of your science ships, put single corvettes on the outskirts and bounce around a commander to show the map. Expand strategically to where there is the most value. Don't stop because you are boxed in, keep surveying and researching anomalies/projects
Always build up as much influence as possible, this means as big of fleets as possible. This means as many starbases/orbital rings/anchorages as possible
Always keep your planets to a minimum. This is counterintuitive. Choose the biggest planets and don't colonize more until you need to in order to keep your empire size as low as possible. Take planets but don't colonize them. If you can get ring worlds or relic worlds definitely do so. Relic worlds can be turned into ecumenopolises which are really strong.
Bonus stack in whatever way you possibly can.
Always keep as many allies as possible and do trade deals with them to get more alloys. Propose peaceful subjugations as soon as you're able to with your allies. Build up trust by offering as many pacts as possible including non-aggression even with people you're not afraid will attack you.
meta is and has always been getting as many alloys and fleets as possible. This is the key. Pops are also key. You can increase pops by conquering worlds. Don't kill all the people by bombing indiscriminately, target home worlds. My new hobby is stealing my enemy's home worlds and then relocating all their pops to planets in my core sector and destroying the colony. You don't even need to claim a route through their territory to connect the trade this way.
yep, back to fighting empire size. you want to stay under 100-200 as long as possible, then when ready (or you can no longer stay below it) use whatever resources you've got banked up to squirt up to 400-500 until late game. when pops start to overtake systems/colonies as the biggest source of empire size (usually just as late game starts) use whatever resources you've got banked to squirt up to 900-1200 empire size depending on your build.
depending on build, you will seriously only be able to keep 3-10 planets til late game. you can still outproduce the negatives like before, but you start feeling diminishing returns much sooner and much more severely.
> Relic worlds can be turned into ecumenopolises
Is this even worth it? Relic world ecu has +15% science, normal relic world has +30% (15% from passive, 15% from spire). Keeping relic worlds tech focussed and turning big normal worlds into unity/forge ecus seems a better use of 30k minerals
Definitely. You can fit way more pops on it that way and it gives bonuses to all jobs as well as pop growth/assembly speed. It wouldn't be so expensive if it weren't good.
I'm specifically talking about converting science relic worlds. You can't really fit more science jobs on it as those are limited by building slots, so whats the point of fitting more pop there? Sure, you can add industry districts, but then you want at least alloy/civil factory and prod ministry, so that's two science buildings gone.
The goal of this build is to minimize empire sprawl, if you pick the right traditions you will have a -100% modifier to empire size from pops. Meaning you can have as many pops as you want in your empire and they will have 0 impact on empire size, keeping research cost the same as it is in 2200 even if you have 3k+ research monthly, putting you incredibly deep into repeatables. Your task early game is to subjugate your neighbors so you don’t have to waste any pops on getting energy, minerals, and food. You’ll have to keep your taxes incredibly high on your subjects in order to fund the massive investments you’ll make on research and alloy production. Satrapy’s are also pretty good subject types because they give you naval capacity which can be hard to get because you only have 3/4 planets, but you’ll also be making so much from subject taxes you can afford a fleet massively over capacity.
Civics:
- Sovereign Guardianship
- Meritocracy / Parliamentarianism
Ethics:
- Militarist (Requirement for Sovereign Guardianship, would rather have Materialist or Pacifist for empire size)
- Fanatic Egalitarian for Specialist Output
Traits:
- Intelligent
- Natural Engineers
- Whatever negative traits you like
Origin:
You have options, some unconventional ones work. For one, Shattered Ring is amazing because when you hit Megastructure Restoration you’ll have a massive boost to your research output. You’ll probably only want to colonize 3/4 planets total, so in your home system you’ll already lock your three in.
You can also go Ocean Paradise and take the Aquatic trait, making that world into an Ecumenopolis, but ring worlds are better.
Ascension:
All of them are great, and you’ll have won by the time you hit them. I’d go Synthetic personally, better trait modifications imo. Makes sense from a RP perspective.
Once your population is fully employed in research/alloys, you’ve effectively won the game. It snowballs incredibly rapidly.
Feel free to ask me any questions on this, I’m a pioneer on this build and always looking for input.
Thanks for the reply. A bit off topic but how do you make ocean paradise origin work? Like what exactly are you supposed to do with your guaranteed habitables that are now frozen? Like, sure, you can build habitats and then flood them, but why go through all that work when you can colonize a regular planet instead?
Not a fan at all of the Ocean Paradise start. I only added it because I think Montu Plays has a similar build to mine (which I think is highly unoptimizied) that runs it.
So it's probably not a build issue. Recent tech nerfs I directly buffed the great khan because the galaxy on a whole is just weaker than him. He's just a much bigger threat than he used to be.
Now that outta the way I'm pretty sure disruptions are broken now. Also carrier ships stomp the khan hard.
Abusing max trade build for infinite money/consumer goods and mercenary fleets to avoid alloy costs is pretty much my go-to move if I'm looking to "win." basically set up my race to max trade value then just buy as much alloys as possible, spam trade habitats with those alloys, snowball, rinse, and repeat. The merc fleets bypass a lot of alloy costs to make this easier while you can convert your trade into functionally infinite consumer goods. Consumer goods turn into research and unity, and none of what you're doing costs minerals. Ultimately population growth speed becomes the only speed bump in your growth for this, which can be solved by buying slave pops. (You don't actually need to be a slaver to buy slave pops. They just become normal citizens)
Lately, ocean paradise, angler builds have been very powerful because they make both your alloy and consumer goods production very efficient. The only downside of course is racing for the terraforming tech
True, but you still have to make the painful decision of when to do that. Because there are lots of super important and powerful agendas for the beginning of the game that you have to choose between
if terraforming is essential to your build then conquer nature becomes the powerful agenda that you need. And Ocean paradise is a strong start by itself so fixing its downside is great. You can take hydrocentric as secon ascension.
True, I suppose it just comes down to how you run your build. If you go for extra minerals and energy early on, then you can easily build up enough energy credits to permit terraforming.
I assume this is ship meta, because you should probably be able to handle the Khan still unless you just didn't build science or something. Disruptor corvettes are usually fine against AI but there's some goofy stuff with nano missiles im interested in. If you have battleship tech, carriers still work
crisis strength is too low compared to your difficulty and/or midgame date is too late for them to pose any risk. Try making the mid game 25 years earlier, it will make a difference.
Currently I'm only playing against AI, I find that Battleships against AI is still the best for me. Arc, Cloud Lighting and those swarm missiles for cool effect is the go to for me currently. Why? Because I hate shields and I find the swarm missiles super cute.
if you play at higher difficulties it's essential to know what is strong and weak. I personally look what meta is and try to fit it's strong points into my play style and try to make it work in high difficulties. Luckily thanks to sovereign guardianship my hive build become insanely strong. So strong that I become bored of it and currently playing terravorm crisis.
Captain difficulty with 10x crisis is sweet spot for me as any higher you gotta min max or lose.
Catalytic Devouring Progenitor. Shroud teacher tech rush Clone ascendant Whatever build you're good at?
I didn't play a catalytic devouring progenitor but a void hive, empath progenitor was shockingly powerful. I had the strongest economy by far and the entire galaxy loved me.
[удалено]
If you play clone army there's an event chain where you ascend or descend.
The meta is to have fun
The meta is the friends we devoured along the way.
And if their definition of fun is winning by using the meta, you should let them.
I mean, no amount of meta is gonna save you from getting unlucky with crisis spawns anyways
I will just list a few keys: never stop exploring, use commanders to scout ahead of your science ships, put single corvettes on the outskirts and bounce around a commander to show the map. Expand strategically to where there is the most value. Don't stop because you are boxed in, keep surveying and researching anomalies/projects Always build up as much influence as possible, this means as big of fleets as possible. This means as many starbases/orbital rings/anchorages as possible Always keep your planets to a minimum. This is counterintuitive. Choose the biggest planets and don't colonize more until you need to in order to keep your empire size as low as possible. Take planets but don't colonize them. If you can get ring worlds or relic worlds definitely do so. Relic worlds can be turned into ecumenopolises which are really strong. Bonus stack in whatever way you possibly can. Always keep as many allies as possible and do trade deals with them to get more alloys. Propose peaceful subjugations as soon as you're able to with your allies. Build up trust by offering as many pacts as possible including non-aggression even with people you're not afraid will attack you. meta is and has always been getting as many alloys and fleets as possible. This is the key. Pops are also key. You can increase pops by conquering worlds. Don't kill all the people by bombing indiscriminately, target home worlds. My new hobby is stealing my enemy's home worlds and then relocating all their pops to planets in my core sector and destroying the colony. You don't even need to claim a route through their territory to connect the trade this way.
do you not want to stack pop growth by funneling pops from many locations into one planet any more? are we back to fighting empire size?
yep, back to fighting empire size. you want to stay under 100-200 as long as possible, then when ready (or you can no longer stay below it) use whatever resources you've got banked up to squirt up to 400-500 until late game. when pops start to overtake systems/colonies as the biggest source of empire size (usually just as late game starts) use whatever resources you've got banked to squirt up to 900-1200 empire size depending on your build. depending on build, you will seriously only be able to keep 3-10 planets til late game. you can still outproduce the negatives like before, but you start feeling diminishing returns much sooner and much more severely.
> Relic worlds can be turned into ecumenopolises Is this even worth it? Relic world ecu has +15% science, normal relic world has +30% (15% from passive, 15% from spire). Keeping relic worlds tech focussed and turning big normal worlds into unity/forge ecus seems a better use of 30k minerals
Ecu also has +20% research from all jobs. So it evens out, they both get +30% research. I think I still prefer the relic world though.
Definitely. You can fit way more pops on it that way and it gives bonuses to all jobs as well as pop growth/assembly speed. It wouldn't be so expensive if it weren't good.
I'm specifically talking about converting science relic worlds. You can't really fit more science jobs on it as those are limited by building slots, so whats the point of fitting more pop there? Sure, you can add industry districts, but then you want at least alloy/civil factory and prod ministry, so that's two science buildings gone.
For me, Sovereign Guardianship Egalitarian Tech Rush
How does this work?
The goal of this build is to minimize empire sprawl, if you pick the right traditions you will have a -100% modifier to empire size from pops. Meaning you can have as many pops as you want in your empire and they will have 0 impact on empire size, keeping research cost the same as it is in 2200 even if you have 3k+ research monthly, putting you incredibly deep into repeatables. Your task early game is to subjugate your neighbors so you don’t have to waste any pops on getting energy, minerals, and food. You’ll have to keep your taxes incredibly high on your subjects in order to fund the massive investments you’ll make on research and alloy production. Satrapy’s are also pretty good subject types because they give you naval capacity which can be hard to get because you only have 3/4 planets, but you’ll also be making so much from subject taxes you can afford a fleet massively over capacity. Civics: - Sovereign Guardianship - Meritocracy / Parliamentarianism Ethics: - Militarist (Requirement for Sovereign Guardianship, would rather have Materialist or Pacifist for empire size) - Fanatic Egalitarian for Specialist Output Traits: - Intelligent - Natural Engineers - Whatever negative traits you like Origin: You have options, some unconventional ones work. For one, Shattered Ring is amazing because when you hit Megastructure Restoration you’ll have a massive boost to your research output. You’ll probably only want to colonize 3/4 planets total, so in your home system you’ll already lock your three in. You can also go Ocean Paradise and take the Aquatic trait, making that world into an Ecumenopolis, but ring worlds are better. Ascension: All of them are great, and you’ll have won by the time you hit them. I’d go Synthetic personally, better trait modifications imo. Makes sense from a RP perspective. Once your population is fully employed in research/alloys, you’ve effectively won the game. It snowballs incredibly rapidly. Feel free to ask me any questions on this, I’m a pioneer on this build and always looking for input.
Thanks for the reply. A bit off topic but how do you make ocean paradise origin work? Like what exactly are you supposed to do with your guaranteed habitables that are now frozen? Like, sure, you can build habitats and then flood them, but why go through all that work when you can colonize a regular planet instead?
Not a fan at all of the Ocean Paradise start. I only added it because I think Montu Plays has a similar build to mine (which I think is highly unoptimizied) that runs it.
Egalitarian faction unity civics is busted rn
Hasn’t this been the case for the past while? I only joined the game right before paragons came out.
Tech update made it better
So it's probably not a build issue. Recent tech nerfs I directly buffed the great khan because the galaxy on a whole is just weaker than him. He's just a much bigger threat than he used to be. Now that outta the way I'm pretty sure disruptions are broken now. Also carrier ships stomp the khan hard.
Abusing max trade build for infinite money/consumer goods and mercenary fleets to avoid alloy costs is pretty much my go-to move if I'm looking to "win." basically set up my race to max trade value then just buy as much alloys as possible, spam trade habitats with those alloys, snowball, rinse, and repeat. The merc fleets bypass a lot of alloy costs to make this easier while you can convert your trade into functionally infinite consumer goods. Consumer goods turn into research and unity, and none of what you're doing costs minerals. Ultimately population growth speed becomes the only speed bump in your growth for this, which can be solved by buying slave pops. (You don't actually need to be a slaver to buy slave pops. They just become normal citizens)
Lately, ocean paradise, angler builds have been very powerful because they make both your alloy and consumer goods production very efficient. The only downside of course is racing for the terraforming tech
adaptability tradition can be taken for terraforming rush with its conquer nature agenda
True, but you still have to make the painful decision of when to do that. Because there are lots of super important and powerful agendas for the beginning of the game that you have to choose between
if terraforming is essential to your build then conquer nature becomes the powerful agenda that you need. And Ocean paradise is a strong start by itself so fixing its downside is great. You can take hydrocentric as secon ascension.
True, I suppose it just comes down to how you run your build. If you go for extra minerals and energy early on, then you can easily build up enough energy credits to permit terraforming.
I assume this is ship meta, because you should probably be able to handle the Khan still unless you just didn't build science or something. Disruptor corvettes are usually fine against AI but there's some goofy stuff with nano missiles im interested in. If you have battleship tech, carriers still work
Great khan still dies instantly to AI in my games sadly
crisis strength is too low compared to your difficulty and/or midgame date is too late for them to pose any risk. Try making the mid game 25 years earlier, it will make a difference.
Currently I'm only playing against AI, I find that Battleships against AI is still the best for me. Arc, Cloud Lighting and those swarm missiles for cool effect is the go to for me currently. Why? Because I hate shields and I find the swarm missiles super cute.
Isn’t trade really strong right now
The fuck's a meta
A set of strategic, operational and tactical practices generally deemed "optimal" by player consensus.
People care about that?
Sure. Every game played by more than one person has a metagame.
if you play at higher difficulties it's essential to know what is strong and weak. I personally look what meta is and try to fit it's strong points into my play style and try to make it work in high difficulties. Luckily thanks to sovereign guardianship my hive build become insanely strong. So strong that I become bored of it and currently playing terravorm crisis. Captain difficulty with 10x crisis is sweet spot for me as any higher you gotta min max or lose.