hive mind 25% ethics choice
rapid breeders 10% trait pick
spawning frenzy 10% expansion tradition pick
nutritional plentitude 33% policy choice (requires and additional 50% food upkeep, but you get the growth)
drone campaign 10% edict choice (just costs 500 food every 11 years)
and then a spawning pool building 25% (for 6 food upkeep)
base growth is 3.00, I'm boosted to 6.39 a month, and I've still got tech choices to pick when they arrive.
just gotta make sure you got food and agrarian trait pick does that easy
On top of all that, Hive Minds don't have the -50% growth penalty for newly colonized planets, so that 6.39 growth is obtainable on every planet from day 1.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I didn't know newly colonized planets had a growth penalty. How long does that last?
I didn't know newly colonized planets had a growth penalty. How long does that last?
IIRC when you upgrade the colony ship to a proper planetary admin. Might also be simply once you get 10 pops.
New colonies also have a fairly large Immigration pull that offsets it a bit , though that does mean taking pop growth from someplace else, not adding a whole planet's worth of growth from the start.
I didn't know newly colonized planets had a growth penalty. How long does that last?
IIRC when you upgrade the colony ship to a proper planetary admin. Might also be simply once you get 10 pops.
New colonies also have a fairly large Immigration pull that offsets it a bit , though that does mean taking pop growth from someplace else, not adding a whole planet's worth of growth from the start.
It's when you upgrade the building. The upside of the immigration pull is that if you've got immigration treaties, the pop growth you're taking from somewhere else might be coming from someone else's planet.
You can also skip the 'newly founded colony' phase pretty easily if you want - resettlement is cheap now (100 energy base), so if you're inclined you can found a new colony, immediately resettle 8-9 pops from somewhere else, and build the first admin building upgrade which turns off the growth penalty and turns the shitty colonist jobs into real administrator jobs. I usually found a new colony, queue up my first 4 districts, and then, when they're done building, resettle whatever pops are still needed to work them and upgrade the admin building - still gives much-shortened turnaround time on upgrading from colony to real planet, without putting a bunch of pops on unemployment while you build jobs for them. (Alternately, found the colony, resettle to 5 pops, and build a robotics plant as your first build - robots basically give you another +2 monthly growth per planet [more once you can robomod and give them the rapid assembly trait])
I don't yet have megacorp, but i fired up a new game last night to get out the new patch. But also because I'm a rugged individualist i ignored their recommendation to do the new tutorials. How does this trade between starbases stuff work? I looked at the one trade route i have and saw that they were exchanging 3.6 "Trade Value" which is definitely a number.
Also does surplus food still give increases to pop growth? I didnt see any bonus to it on the pop screen.
I don't yet have megacorp, but i fired up a new game last night to get out the new patch. But also because I'm a rugged individualist i ignored their recommendation to do the new tutorials. How does this trade between starbases stuff work? I looked at the one trade route i have and saw that they were exchanging 3.6 "Trade Value" which is definitely a number.
Also does surplus food still give increases to pop growth? I didnt see any bonus to it on the pop screen.
I am also a rugged individualist (who needs instructions!), but I think the answers are:
1) Starbases are like trade vacuums that suck up the trade value (the rings) and they send them to your capital. Building trading hubs will let them suck up trade from systems further away (it stacks), but it always goes back to your capital.
2) No bonus that I can tell.
Also, a question for the panel: How do sectors work now? I just did an expansion phase to like 3 different planets, and now they show as three different sectors? Does the game just decide which areas are in which sectors? Is there anyway to merge them?
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
Why does it only allow me to demand that empires with superior or greater fleet power become my subsidiary? They're both going to say no, but I'd rather try and subjegate this inferior fleet power empire than the one that can kick my butt.
If they say no, you get causus belli on them and get to beat them up and make them your subsidiary anyways.
Oh I know, it's just that I can't do it to the one Empire I can actually take in a fight. It's a weird restriction, you can only bully Empires more powerful than you.
That sounds like a very simple bug that is currently being portrayed as "deliberate feature that makes the game more interesting."
Like how vassals and client states respect you less, and by extension are more like to be belligerent, the bigger the power gap between you and them. I'm not sure if that was ever fixed.
I don't yet have megacorp, but i fired up a new game last night to get out the new patch. But also because I'm a rugged individualist i ignored their recommendation to do the new tutorials. How does this trade between starbases stuff work? I looked at the one trade route i have and saw that they were exchanging 3.6 "Trade Value" which is definitely a number.
Also does surplus food still give increases to pop growth? I didnt see any bonus to it on the pop screen.
I am also a rugged individualist (who needs instructions!), but I think the answers are:
1) Starbases are like trade vacuums that suck up the trade value (the rings) and they send them to your capital. Building trading hubs will let them suck up trade from systems further away (it stacks), but it always goes back to your capital.
2) No bonus that I can tell.
Also, a question for the panel: How do sectors work now? I just did an expansion phase to like 3 different planets, and now they show as three different sectors? Does the game just decide which areas are in which sectors? Is there anyway to merge them?
So question 1a: That trade value then does...something?
Ooh 1b: can multiple starbases harvest trade value from a neighboring system?
Trade Value converts into resources automatically by being collected at the capital. What it converts into depends on your Trade Policy. Check out your options on the policies screen.
Ooooh that's neat and potentially very useful. When I went to bed I had just gone slightly negative on consumer goods, and unlocked allloy megaforges, but i can't build them because i lack (icon) and the game won't tell me what (icon) is even called much less how to get it.
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
(icon) is one of the former strategic resources. The three 'basic' ones have two researches each, one to exploit system/planet nodes, the other to synthethize it from minerals. Dunno if the resource needs to be physically present for the researches to pop
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I don't yet have megacorp, but i fired up a new game last night to get out the new patch. But also because I'm a rugged individualist i ignored their recommendation to do the new tutorials. How does this trade between starbases stuff work? I looked at the one trade route i have and saw that they were exchanging 3.6 "Trade Value" which is definitely a number.
Also does surplus food still give increases to pop growth? I didnt see any bonus to it on the pop screen.
Starbase collect trade value from planets and space deposits and send them to your capital, where they are converted in EC and (Depending on your policies) Consumer Goods or Unity. Before you ask, Consumer Goods are basically the upkeep resource for pops in normal empires, normally made from minerals; pops need a base amount depending in their strata and several jobs require extra consumer goods on top of that. As mentioned above, Trade Depots increase the number of jumps starbases collect trade from.
However, whenever you are collecting trade and sending it via trade routes to the capital, you get piracy. Piracy starts off as a reduction in the amount of total trade value that actually makes it through that system and can eventually spawn actual physical pirates that will completely block any trade through it until destroyed.
To prevent this, you have two options. The first is to build defensive modules on starbases, which add piracy protection to adjacent systems in a similar manner as trade depots, with hanger bays having the most protection. As long as the protection value is higher than the piracy value, no trade is loss and no pirates can spawn. Multiple starbases can overlap their protection to protect a system as well. The second is patrols. Every military ship (other than hired marauder vessels, for some reason) has a pirate suppression value, with corvettes having the best cost/effectiveness value. When the total piracy suppression in system is higher than the max possible piracy (which is a % of the total trade value going through it) piracy starts to drop to 0. Also, Admirals assigned to such fleets gain XP when suppressing pirates, worth keeping in mind.
Of course, the ultimate anti-piracy tool is gateways; trade routes can go through them (as well as wormholes and L-gates) and piracy can never develop in a system with a starbase, so once you can build gateways, plop one in your capital system, and then next to starbases where the accumulated trade value grows to the point that defenses and patrols are no longer enough, and enjoy the hassle-free profits.
As for food, there is no growth bonus from extra food per se, but there *is* a planetary decision that let's you spend 1k food to increase growth there, and a policy that increase the food upkeep of all pops forbextra growth and happiness.
Ooooh that's neat and potentially very useful. When I went to bed I had just gone slightly negative on consumer goods, and unlocked allloy megaforges, but i can't build them because i lack (icon) and the game won't tell me what (icon) is even called much less how to get it.
Volatile Motes. They’re a rare resource that can be found in planetary deposits and in space. There is a tech in Physics research I believe to synthetically produce them with a building and the associated Chemist job.
Ooooh that's neat and potentially very useful. When I went to bed I had just gone slightly negative on consumer goods, and unlocked allloy megaforges, but i can't build them because i lack (icon) and the game won't tell me what (icon) is even called much less how to get it.
Volatile Motes. They’re a rare resource that can be found in planetary deposits and in space. There is a tech in Physics research I believe to synthetically produce them with a building and the associated Chemist job.
I gotta say its pretty annoying that the very first building upgrade I was capable of researching (literally my 2nd engineering tech) is locked behind a rare resource and a tech i haven't seen.
I don't remember this kind of thing hitting so early in previous patches.
Yeah it's frustrating that a ton of the early game techs are "unlock this shiny tier 2 building, oh and by the way it requires a resource that you haven't discovered on the map, let alone researched a way to harvest it." Especially with how slow the snowball builds in early game research now, you could setting back your useful tech progress by 5 years.
The amount of rare resources I am buying on a monthly basis in the late game is absurd. I am buying like 50 of the gases a month, mostly to fund my research planet, which puts out around 1000 of each type of research a month by itself, now.
Luckily they fixed that in 2.2.2, you now only get the building upgrade techs when you actually have the resource to upgrade them.
I think the reason why they made it possible for them to appear before the extraction techs to begin with is because Trader Enclaves now deal in the main 3 rare resources, meaning it's possible to get your hands on the stuff before having any idea how to mine it or make it.
Ooooh that's neat and potentially very useful. When I went to bed I had just gone slightly negative on consumer goods, and unlocked allloy megaforges, but i can't build them because i lack (icon) and the game won't tell me what (icon) is even called much less how to get it.
Volatile Motes. They’re a rare resource that can be found in planetary deposits and in space. There is a tech in Physics research I believe to synthetically produce them with a building and the associated Chemist job.
I gotta say its pretty annoying that the very first building upgrade I was capable of researching (literally my 2nd engineering tech) is locked behind a rare resource and a tech i haven't seen.
I don't remember this kind of thing hitting so early in previous patches.
Are you on the beta branch? Because this has already been addressed. Those building upgrade techs don’t show up so early on the beta branch. Nor should they. Those building upgrades are no good to you in the early game anyway, their purpose is to help you get more jobs out of fewer building slots.
That fact that you're not supposed to mash on that upgrade button the moment you get the resources anymore still takes some getting used to.
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
I'm curious because I feel like I missed something. Do multiple species' pops grow at the same time, and if so how do you see the different pop growth speed without prioritizing one species over another?
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I'm curious because I feel like I missed something. Do multiple species' pops grow at the same time, and if so how do you see the different pop growth speed without prioritizing one species over another?
Only one thing grows, and with non-Beta branch weighting it will almost inevitably be whatever you have least of. Or you can designate what should grow and it'll grow slower.
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
do people have thoughts about best mods to get?
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I don't yet have megacorp, but i fired up a new game last night to get out the new patch. But also because I'm a rugged individualist i ignored their recommendation to do the new tutorials. How does this trade between starbases stuff work? I looked at the one trade route i have and saw that they were exchanging 3.6 "Trade Value" which is definitely a number.
Also does surplus food still give increases to pop growth? I didnt see any bonus to it on the pop screen.
I am also a rugged individualist (who needs instructions!), but I think the answers are:
1) Starbases are like trade vacuums that suck up the trade value (the rings) and they send them to your capital. Building trading hubs will let them suck up trade from systems further away (it stacks), but it always goes back to your capital.
2) No bonus that I can tell.
Also, a question for the panel: How do sectors work now? I just did an expansion phase to like 3 different planets, and now they show as three different sectors? Does the game just decide which areas are in which sectors? Is there anyway to merge them?
re: 2. Under the "Decisions" option on your planet, you can spend 1000 food for a 25% increase in pop growth for 10 years.
And you can go under policies and change your food policy to cost more food per pop for increase growth and happiness.
No other passive bonus from excess food production.
re: Trade, you can change what trade does for you under policies. I prefer the 50% energy/25% trade goods myself.
Having played a couple tall games now, it seems like the real bottleneck for tall play is just plain old minerals. All of the options for playing tall do something a little different, but none of them can mine minerals in any significant quantity, and most of what they do is give you more ways to consume minerals for alloys.
Ecumenopoli are extremely good in general; they give you a ton of housing, jobs, and growth, and they give you those jobs more efficiently than other things - their districts create a bunch of specialist jobs without the need for the appropriate buildings, meaning you don't need motes/crystals for upkeep on them (and thus also don't have to waste so many building slots on buildings that only produce 1 job). Their only real downside is that they can't make food or minerals.
Habitats are weird and a little niche - they only get a small number of districts, and their districts are bad at making jobs but good at making housing, so you mostly want to use them to build a bunch of housing districts and then get your jobs from buildings. BUT that means they can't generate food or minerals either, and it means that you want buildings that give a high number of jobs per slot, which means they're mostly good for filling with research labs, or with foundries/industry as an alternate way of converting minerals to alloys/goods if you didn't go Arcology Project. They'd be great for building Commerce Megaplexes on, since those give the most jobs per building slot, but those are prohibited for some reason. They'd also be good for other stuff if you could supplement their housing with housing buildings, but you can't do that either.
Ringworlds are almost the perfect complement to Ecumenopoli; each ringworld segment is a size fifty world that can build the standard city/generator/agriculture districts, so they're great at supplying food to your other tall colonies, with the caveat that they, again, can't build mining districts and so also can't make minerals.
The end result is that tall strategies have a ton of places to put people and a ton of ways to convert minerals into useful stuff, but a real limited supply of actual minerals to convert - they're basically capped by the mining districts available in whatever standard planets are in their limited space. You can ablate that a good deal by building the matter decompressor, but once you get tall enough that won't be enough either. Obviously you can also buy minerals on the market, but that gets expensive, which means you need a lot of money coming in. Ecumenopoli are a lot better at generating money than habitats are because habitats can't build Megaplexes, but going for ecumenopoli over habitats means delaying (or outright not getting) the decompressor since you can't use the voidborne->master builders->galactic wonders chain to forcibly trigger mega-engineering.
Basically one way or another if you want to build tall you're eventually going to be mineral-limited, so planets that offer a lot of mining districts are high-value, as are mineral-increasing traits like Industrious (and, eventually, robust/nerve stapled/etc).
I'd also like to see a repeatable building that makes mining jobs, like the hydroponic farm does for food.
Having played a couple tall games now, it seems like the real bottleneck for tall play is just plain old minerals. All of the options for playing tall do something a little different, but none of them can mine minerals in any significant quantity, and most of what they do is give you more ways to consume minerals for alloys.
Ecumenopoli are extremely good in general; they give you a ton of housing, jobs, and growth, and they give you those jobs more efficiently than other things - their districts create a bunch of specialist jobs without the need for the appropriate buildings, meaning you don't need motes/crystals for upkeep on them (and thus also don't have to waste so many building slots on buildings that only produce 1 job). Their only real downside is that they can't make food or minerals.
Habitats are weird and a little niche - they only get a small number of districts, and their districts are bad at making jobs but good at making housing, so you mostly want to use them to build a bunch of housing districts and then get your jobs from buildings. BUT that means they can't generate food or minerals either, and it means that you want buildings that give a high number of jobs per slot, which means they're mostly good for filling with research labs, or with foundries/industry as an alternate way of converting minerals to alloys/goods if you didn't go Arcology Project. They'd be great for building Commerce Megaplexes on, since those give the most jobs per building slot, but those are prohibited for some reason. They'd also be good for other stuff if you could supplement their housing with housing buildings, but you can't do that either.
Ringworlds are almost the perfect complement to Ecumenopoli; each ringworld segment is a size fifty world that can build the standard city/generator/agriculture districts, so they're great at supplying food to your other tall colonies, with the caveat that they, again, can't build mining districts and so also can't make minerals.
The end result is that tall strategies have a ton of places to put people and a ton of ways to convert minerals into useful stuff, but a real limited supply of actual minerals to convert - they're basically capped by the mining districts available in whatever standard planets are in their limited space. You can ablate that a good deal by building the matter decompressor, but once you get tall enough that won't be enough either. Obviously you can also buy minerals on the market, but that gets expensive, which means you need a lot of money coming in. Ecumenopoli are a lot better at generating money than habitats are because habitats can't build Megaplexes, but going for ecumenopoli over habitats means delaying (or outright not getting) the decompressor since you can't use the voidborne->master builders->galactic wonders chain to forcibly trigger mega-engineering.
Basically one way or another if you want to build tall you're eventually going to be mineral-limited, so planets that offer a lot of mining districts are high-value, as are mineral-increasing traits like Industrious (and, eventually, robust/nerve stapled/etc).
I'd also like to see a repeatable building that makes mining jobs, like the hydroponic farm does for food.
Habitats can't have any building that provides the same types of jobs that one of their districts provide, which is why you can't have commercial zones (or research labs, for that matter) so your best options are all housing to run foundries in space, or do about 50/50 habitat and commerce districts and turn it into a trading post.
Also somewhat confused about why the other habitat districts don't have housing. Even if it was just enough for the jobs they had, it would make them a lot better, or at least more flexible with what you can do with them.
Also, are you using the consumer good trade policy? With enough trade, you don't have to have pretty much any civilian industries, which is more of your mineral income you can devote to alloys.
Having played a couple tall games now, it seems like the real bottleneck for tall play is just plain old minerals. All of the options for playing tall do something a little different, but none of them can mine minerals in any significant quantity, and most of what they do is give you more ways to consume minerals for alloys.
Ecumenopoli are extremely good in general; they give you a ton of housing, jobs, and growth, and they give you those jobs more efficiently than other things - their districts create a bunch of specialist jobs without the need for the appropriate buildings, meaning you don't need motes/crystals for upkeep on them (and thus also don't have to waste so many building slots on buildings that only produce 1 job). Their only real downside is that they can't make food or minerals.
Habitats are weird and a little niche - they only get a small number of districts, and their districts are bad at making jobs but good at making housing, so you mostly want to use them to build a bunch of housing districts and then get your jobs from buildings. BUT that means they can't generate food or minerals either, and it means that you want buildings that give a high number of jobs per slot, which means they're mostly good for filling with research labs, or with foundries/industry as an alternate way of converting minerals to alloys/goods if you didn't go Arcology Project. They'd be great for building Commerce Megaplexes on, since those give the most jobs per building slot, but those are prohibited for some reason. They'd also be good for other stuff if you could supplement their housing with housing buildings, but you can't do that either.
Ringworlds are almost the perfect complement to Ecumenopoli; each ringworld segment is a size fifty world that can build the standard city/generator/agriculture districts, so they're great at supplying food to your other tall colonies, with the caveat that they, again, can't build mining districts and so also can't make minerals.
The end result is that tall strategies have a ton of places to put people and a ton of ways to convert minerals into useful stuff, but a real limited supply of actual minerals to convert - they're basically capped by the mining districts available in whatever standard planets are in their limited space. You can ablate that a good deal by building the matter decompressor, but once you get tall enough that won't be enough either. Obviously you can also buy minerals on the market, but that gets expensive, which means you need a lot of money coming in. Ecumenopoli are a lot better at generating money than habitats are because habitats can't build Megaplexes, but going for ecumenopoli over habitats means delaying (or outright not getting) the decompressor since you can't use the voidborne->master builders->galactic wonders chain to forcibly trigger mega-engineering.
Basically one way or another if you want to build tall you're eventually going to be mineral-limited, so planets that offer a lot of mining districts are high-value, as are mineral-increasing traits like Industrious (and, eventually, robust/nerve stapled/etc).
I'd also like to see a repeatable building that makes mining jobs, like the hydroponic farm does for food.
Habitats can't have any building that provides the same types of jobs that one of their districts provide, which is why you can't have commercial zones (or research labs, for that matter) so your best options are all housing to run foundries in space, or do about 50/50 habitat and commerce districts and turn it into a trading post.
Also somewhat confused about why the other habitat districts don't have housing. Even if it was just enough for the jobs they had, it would make them a lot better, or at least more flexible with what you can do with them.
Also, are you using the consumer good trade policy? With enough trade, you don't have to have pretty much any civilian industries, which is more of your mineral income you can devote to alloys.
Yes. I'm not having any trouble funding my stuff, I'm just pointing out that the way all the tall tools are set up, your access to every resource is going to grow the taller you get except for minerals, which is going to cap out and then stay level (or even fall off, if you start converting too many worlds to ecumenopoli). It will eventually be your chokepoint, no matter how efficiently you spend it, so you should make a point of prioritizing it.
I don't yet have megacorp, but i fired up a new game last night to get out the new patch. But also because I'm a rugged individualist i ignored their recommendation to do the new tutorials. How does this trade between starbases stuff work? I looked at the one trade route i have and saw that they were exchanging 3.6 "Trade Value" which is definitely a number.
Also does surplus food still give increases to pop growth? I didnt see any bonus to it on the pop screen.
Starbase collect trade value from planets and space deposits and send them to your capital, where they are converted in EC and (Depending on your policies) Consumer Goods or Unity. Before you ask, Consumer Goods are basically the upkeep resource for pops in normal empires, normally made from minerals; pops need a base amount depending in their strata and several jobs require extra consumer goods on top of that. As mentioned above, Trade Depots increase the number of jumps starbases collect trade from.
However, whenever you are collecting trade and sending it via trade routes to the capital, you get piracy. Piracy starts off as a reduction in the amount of total trade value that actually makes it through that system and can eventually spawn actual physical pirates that will completely block any trade through it until destroyed.
To prevent this, you have two options. The first is to build defensive modules on starbases, which add piracy protection to adjacent systems in a similar manner as trade depots, with hanger bays having the most protection. As long as the protection value is higher than the piracy value, no trade is loss and no pirates can spawn. Multiple starbases can overlap their protection to protect a system as well. The second is patrols. Every military ship (other than hired marauder vessels, for some reason) has a pirate suppression value, with corvettes having the best cost/effectiveness value. When the total piracy suppression in system is higher than the max possible piracy (which is a % of the total trade value going through it) piracy starts to drop to 0. Also, Admirals assigned to such fleets gain XP when suppressing pirates, worth keeping in mind.
Of course, the ultimate anti-piracy tool is gateways; trade routes can go through them (as well as wormholes and L-gates) and piracy can never develop in a system with a starbase, so once you can build gateways, plop one in your capital system, and then next to starbases where the accumulated trade value grows to the point that defenses and patrols are no longer enough, and enjoy the hassle-free profits.
As for food, there is no growth bonus from extra food per se, but there *is* a planetary decision that let's you spend 1k food to increase growth there, and a policy that increase the food upkeep of all pops forbextra growth and happiness.
There's also an edict that increases empire-wide growth for 1k energy (or food for hives).
Having played a couple tall games now, it seems like the real bottleneck for tall play is just plain old minerals. All of the options for playing tall do something a little different, but none of them can mine minerals in any significant quantity, and most of what they do is give you more ways to consume minerals for alloys.
What's your definition of Tall? It seems like that just means living close to your admin cap in 2.2; I haven't had any mineral issues yet; it's pretty consistently my #1 surplus. Though I may under-produce alloys as I tend to be forced into buying those when I need a war surge.
I think 2.2.2 is supposed to increase Alloy yield from 2 -> 3, which may mitigate that.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
My definition of "Tall" is playing in a small amount of systems. So I just grab enough systems to create choke points, and maybe some with interesting resources. I usually end up with about ~20.
It does mean limited access to good planets and random resources.
I'm also running up against the mineral bottleneck. Food at least has hydroponic farms that can be built anywhere.
Also, a question for the panel: How do sectors work now? I just did an expansion phase to like 3 different planets, and now they show as three different sectors? Does the game just decide which areas are in which sectors? Is there anyway to merge them?
I'm noticing that stars are clumping together into localized districts a lot more in 2.2
before, you'd have arms or blobs and there would be a handy choke point that happened to be the only star crossroad in and out of a section of the galaxy.
I'm seeing stars in groups of 5 to 15 now with definite discrete highways to other groups. almost feels like counties within a state or province, with sectors delineating between the planets within one of these star groups.
so within a group of stars, if you have 3 habitable planets, those planets would form a sector, but as soon as you move over to a 4th planet in another star group, even if its only 1 or 2 jumps away, that's a completely separate sector and in need of another governor...
doesn't help there is absolutely no way to tell where a sector starts or stops either, but that's the confirmation bias I'm seeing.
Also, a question for the panel: How do sectors work now? I just did an expansion phase to like 3 different planets, and now they show as three different sectors? Does the game just decide which areas are in which sectors? Is there anyway to merge them?
I'm noticing that stars are clumping together into localized districts a lot more in 2.2
before, you'd have arms or blobs and there would be a handy choke point that happened to be the only star crossroad in and out of a section of the galaxy.
I'm seeing stars in groups of 5 to 15 now with definite discrete highways to other groups. almost feels like counties within a state or province, with sectors delineating between the planets within one of these star groups.
so within a group of stars, if you have 3 habitable planets, those planets would form a sector, but as soon as you move over to a 4th planet in another star group, even if its only 1 or 2 jumps away, that's a completely separate sector and in need of another governor...
doesn't help there is absolutely no way to tell where a sector starts or stops either, but that's the confirmation bias I'm seeing.
That's how it was "planned" to work, which each clear-cut cluster being it's own sector, but they had to drop that for some reason.
Instead, your first sector is every system that is 2 jumps away from your capital. If you colonize a planet beyond that, it creates a new sector, that is every system 2 jumps away from it, that is not already claimed by another sector.
Since first planet colonized gets dibs, to cut down on the number of sectors (and therefore the number of governors you need) you want your first planet outside of any sector to be 1 or 2 jumps away from as many other colonizable planets also not in sectors as possible, even if that means taking a less-than-ideal planet as your first in the area.
Having played a couple tall games now, it seems like the real bottleneck for tall play is just plain old minerals. All of the options for playing tall do something a little different, but none of them can mine minerals in any significant quantity, and most of what they do is give you more ways to consume minerals for alloys.
What's your definition of Tall? It seems like that just means living close to your admin cap in 2.2; I haven't had any mineral issues yet; it's pretty consistently my #1 surplus. Though I may under-produce alloys as I tend to be forced into buying those when I need a war surge.
I think 2.2.2 is supposed to increase Alloy yield from 2 -> 3, which may mitigate that.
Tall is basically holding a relatively small number of actual systems and getting room for pops via things that increase the population density of space (ecumenopolis, habitats, ringworlds, mastery of nature), as opposed to wide, where you'd be grabbing as much space as possible and getting room for pops by controlling more planets. It doesn't necessarily mean staying under or close to your admin cap, since you can pretty easily outstrip your admin cap if you build a bunch of habitats and/or 50-district ringworld sections.
There is definitely a phase of the game where minerals will run as a surplus in almost any strategy, but the more people you put in a given amount of space the more minerals you're going to need without your mineral income being able to grow, because minerals basically only come from occupying more space - once you've maxed out the mining districts on your existing planets, you either need mining stations in mineral-heavy systems, or new mining districts on new planets, and both of those things require you to take more space. If you don't want to do that, you're eventually going to be mineral-throttled, because you can get more energy and food by growing 'up' but not more minerals.
Also I would avoid buying alloys as much as possible unless you're energy-capped and looking for something useful to convert it to. Alloys tend to hover around 20 energy each on the market, and a corvette with anything more than starter gear is generally gonna run 150-200 alloys, which means that when you buy alloys to build your navy you're basically trying to buy a navy with energy at a cost of 3000-4000 energy per corvette. That's a pretty rough exchange rate (especially given that you can get a 5-year contract on an entire mercenary fleet for 9-15k).
This is a heady mix of good and bad advice. Mostly that's not how I'd build a tall race, trait-wise. Communal is a trap choice, for one - housing is easy to get, the penalties for housing shortages are minor, and a 10% reduction in housing usage (which won't even stay a 10% reduction, because you'll have immigrants who aren't Communal) is minor. I wouldn't build any race in this patch without Rapid Breeders, and certainly not a tall race which is going to need those growth bonuses to keep up with other empires that have more planets and thus more base growth. I also, as I mentioned, would strongly recommend that any race intended to be tall be Industrious. This boxes out Intelligent/Natural Engineers, but that's honestly not a big deal, because A)you'll have more people to do science with thanks to the better population growth and B)Intelligent is a smaller bonus than it appears to be, especially since it only applies to a very limited number of jobs. You're better off taking bigger bonuses to more-common outputs and then using that resource advantage to just put more scientists on tech instead of inefficiently trying to maximize your tech per scientist.
Likewise, Technological Ascendancy is kind of a shitty ascension perk. It's not nearly as big of a bonus as it appears to be, because it's not multiplicative with all the other science bonuses you're going to end up with, and while your first perk choices are somewhat limited, both Voidborne and Mastery of Nature are much better for tall empires - particularly Voidborne if you're planning around trying to get early megastructures, because Voidborne->Master Builders is the only way you're going to get Mega Engineering in a reasonable timeframe without getting very lucky, just because of its low chance to roll as a research option.
And Imperial Prerogative, while a fine (but not especially amazing) perk in general, is terrible as a second perk because it means you're passing up a huge population growth bonus from either Xenocompatibility or Bio Ascension, and again you need that growth bonus both because pop growth is king in the current patch and because you're already effectively eating a growth penalty by being tall as a result of the fact that the base growth of your empire is a factor of the number of colonies you have.
Also even with a tall strategy, you want to colonize every planet within your borders ASAP. Being at year 60 with 1 colony and like half a dozen uncolonized planets in your borders is a real bad plan no matter how tall you think it makes you.
Having played a couple tall games now, it seems like the real bottleneck for tall play is just plain old minerals. All of the options for playing tall do something a little different, but none of them can mine minerals in any significant quantity, and most of what they do is give you more ways to consume minerals for alloys.
What's your definition of Tall? It seems like that just means living close to your admin cap in 2.2; I haven't had any mineral issues yet; it's pretty consistently my #1 surplus. Though I may under-produce alloys as I tend to be forced into buying those when I need a war surge.
I think 2.2.2 is supposed to increase Alloy yield from 2 -> 3, which may mitigate that.
Tall is basically holding a relatively small number of actual systems and getting room for pops via things that increase the population density of space (ecumenopolis, habitats, ringworlds, mastery of nature), as opposed to wide, where you'd be grabbing as much space as possible and getting room for pops by controlling more planets. It doesn't necessarily mean staying under or close to your admin cap, since you can pretty easily outstrip your admin cap if you build a bunch of habitats and/or 50-district ringworld sections.
There is definitely a phase of the game where minerals will run as a surplus in almost any strategy, but the more people you put in a given amount of space the more minerals you're going to need without your mineral income being able to grow, because minerals basically only come from occupying more space - once you've maxed out the mining districts on your existing planets, you either need mining stations in mineral-heavy systems, or new mining districts on new planets, and both of those things require you to take more space. If you don't want to do that, you're eventually going to be mineral-throttled, because you can get more energy and food by growing 'up' but not more minerals.
Also I would avoid buying alloys as much as possible unless you're energy-capped and looking for something useful to convert it to. Alloys tend to hover around 20 energy each on the market, and a corvette with anything more than starter gear is generally gonna run 150-200 alloys, which means that when you buy alloys to build your navy you're basically trying to buy a navy with energy at a cost of 3000-4000 energy per corvette. That's a pretty rough exchange rate (especially given that you can get a 5-year contract on an entire mercenary fleet for 9-15k).
This is a heady mix of good and bad advice. Mostly that's not how I'd build a tall race, trait-wise. Communal is a trap choice, for one - housing is easy to get, the penalties for housing shortages are minor, and a 10% reduction in housing usage (which won't even stay a 10% reduction, because you'll have immigrants who aren't Communal) is minor. I wouldn't build any race in this patch without Rapid Breeders, and certainly not a tall race which is going to need those growth bonuses to keep up with other empires that have more planets and thus more base growth. I also, as I mentioned, would strongly recommend that any race intended to be tall be Industrious. This boxes out Intelligent/Natural Engineers, but that's honestly not a big deal, because A)you'll have more people to do science with thanks to the better population growth and B)Intelligent is a smaller bonus than it appears to be, especially since it only applies to a very limited number of jobs. You're better off taking bigger bonuses to more-common outputs and then using that resource advantage to just put more scientists on tech instead of inefficiently trying to maximize your tech per scientist.
Likewise, Technological Ascendancy is kind of a shitty ascension perk. It's not nearly as big of a bonus as it appears to be, because it's not multiplicative with all the other science bonuses you're going to end up with, and while your first perk choices are somewhat limited, both Voidborne and Mastery of Nature are much better for tall empires - particularly Voidborne if you're planning around trying to get early megastructures, because Voidborne->Master Builders is the only way you're going to get Mega Engineering in a reasonable timeframe without getting very lucky, just because of its low chance to roll as a research option.
And Imperial Prerogative, while a fine (but not especially amazing) perk in general, is terrible as a second perk because it means you're passing up a huge population growth bonus from either Xenocompatibility or Bio Ascension, and again you need that growth bonus both because pop growth is king in the current patch and because you're already effectively eating a growth penalty by being tall as a result of the fact that the base growth of your empire is a factor of the number of colonies you have.
Also even with a tall strategy, you want to colonize every planet within your borders ASAP. Being at year 60 with 1 colony and like half a dozen uncolonized planets in your borders is a real bad plan no matter how tall you think it makes you.
Couple counterpoints to your counterpoints:
A lot of his choices build off each other. Communal by itself isn't very impressive, especially with Xenophile, but with Agrarian Idyll and Life Seeded it's more than enough to fill out all of his homeworld's building slots and keep nearly all of it as non-city district. He's also going for the classic Stellaris tall of "doesn't matter you have way more stuff than me, I'm building Battleships with Kinetic Artillery and you've only just figured out Cruisers" which gives the "bad" ideas of picking Intelligent, Technological Ascendancy and Imperial Prerogative a much more favoriable context: he's trying to get as much tech and unity as possible, and grow as big as possible while staying under his Admin capacity.
I actually feel Rapid Breeders is a trap trait, at least for non-Hive Minds that have to deal with the 50% pop growth penalty for new colonies, for the same reason you don't like Technological Ascendancy; too many additional modifiers I can pick up elsewhere. I can day 1 switch my food policy for +10% growth, and then whenever I can, pop the planetary decision for +25%, get Genome Mapping for another 10% as one of my first techs, and pick up the 10% pop growth Expansion tradition in the first 5-6 years. Adding Rapid Breeders to all that only gets me a net 6.5% increase to growth vs. not. Is that really worth two trait points? I personally don't think so.
Finally, for not picking up Voidborne if his professed goal is megastructures... Not a problem, where he's starting. Why? Well, that comes with a fun, and very important fact:
What Precursor you get is *not* random, and in fact is entirely dependent on what part of the galaxy you get the first precursor anomaly.
And South/SW is where you will get Cybrex. He just needs to complete the chain (which is also part of the reason why he dipped into Discovery first thing, to research the precursor anomalies faster), and he will get a broken Ring World spawning nearby that he can claim and use to fish for Mega-Engineering, which with his setup he'll be doing by the time he's getting alerts that marauder mercs are now available.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I bought the expansion. I loaded the game, started a new round. I took a brief look at the main UI and planetary window, and closed the game.
I feel overwhelmed and really don't have it in me to relearn the game at the moment.
If you’re playing a Paradox game and not ready to learn you’re probably in the wrong place. Learning by doing is pretty much The Experience.
I mean I'll learn when I'm not feeling unwell. It was a comment on how Stellaris has changed so much it's pretty much a new game.
I poked at it a bit to try and understand it and I'm already at a loss of how energy management is supposed to work, because I hit negative generation after a few months.
Yeah, not only did systems get a massive rework, but the logic you'd apply to the old systems can seriously mess with your game if you try them in the new version.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Yeah, not only did systems get a massive rework, but the logic you'd apply to the old systems can seriously mess with your game if you try them in the new version.
How much slower do I have to expand then?
And how much does "unemployment" hurt because that happened after the first pop showed up and I couldn't construct any buildings because now they're all super expensive.
Yeah, not only did systems get a massive rework, but the logic you'd apply to the old systems can seriously mess with your game if you try them in the new version.
How much slower do I have to expand then?
And how much does "unemployment" hurt because that happened after the first pop showed up and I couldn't construct any buildings because now they're all super expensive.
You can set a policy that makes unemployed people generate unity at the cost of extra consumer good
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On top of all that, Hive Minds don't have the -50% growth penalty for newly colonized planets, so that 6.39 growth is obtainable on every planet from day 1.
IIRC when you upgrade the colony ship to a proper planetary admin. Might also be simply once you get 10 pops.
New colonies also have a fairly large Immigration pull that offsets it a bit , though that does mean taking pop growth from someplace else, not adding a whole planet's worth of growth from the start.
It's when you upgrade the building. The upside of the immigration pull is that if you've got immigration treaties, the pop growth you're taking from somewhere else might be coming from someone else's planet.
You can also skip the 'newly founded colony' phase pretty easily if you want - resettlement is cheap now (100 energy base), so if you're inclined you can found a new colony, immediately resettle 8-9 pops from somewhere else, and build the first admin building upgrade which turns off the growth penalty and turns the shitty colonist jobs into real administrator jobs. I usually found a new colony, queue up my first 4 districts, and then, when they're done building, resettle whatever pops are still needed to work them and upgrade the admin building - still gives much-shortened turnaround time on upgrading from colony to real planet, without putting a bunch of pops on unemployment while you build jobs for them. (Alternately, found the colony, resettle to 5 pops, and build a robotics plant as your first build - robots basically give you another +2 monthly growth per planet [more once you can robomod and give them the rapid assembly trait])
Also does surplus food still give increases to pop growth? I didnt see any bonus to it on the pop screen.
I am also a rugged individualist (who needs instructions!), but I think the answers are:
1) Starbases are like trade vacuums that suck up the trade value (the rings) and they send them to your capital. Building trading hubs will let them suck up trade from systems further away (it stacks), but it always goes back to your capital.
2) No bonus that I can tell.
Also, a question for the panel: How do sectors work now? I just did an expansion phase to like 3 different planets, and now they show as three different sectors? Does the game just decide which areas are in which sectors? Is there anyway to merge them?
That sounds like a very simple bug that is currently being portrayed as "deliberate feature that makes the game more interesting."
Like how vassals and client states respect you less, and by extension are more like to be belligerent, the bigger the power gap between you and them. I'm not sure if that was ever fixed.
So question 1a: That trade value then does...something?
Ooh 1b: can multiple starbases harvest trade value from a neighboring system?
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
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Starbase collect trade value from planets and space deposits and send them to your capital, where they are converted in EC and (Depending on your policies) Consumer Goods or Unity. Before you ask, Consumer Goods are basically the upkeep resource for pops in normal empires, normally made from minerals; pops need a base amount depending in their strata and several jobs require extra consumer goods on top of that. As mentioned above, Trade Depots increase the number of jumps starbases collect trade from.
However, whenever you are collecting trade and sending it via trade routes to the capital, you get piracy. Piracy starts off as a reduction in the amount of total trade value that actually makes it through that system and can eventually spawn actual physical pirates that will completely block any trade through it until destroyed.
To prevent this, you have two options. The first is to build defensive modules on starbases, which add piracy protection to adjacent systems in a similar manner as trade depots, with hanger bays having the most protection. As long as the protection value is higher than the piracy value, no trade is loss and no pirates can spawn. Multiple starbases can overlap their protection to protect a system as well. The second is patrols. Every military ship (other than hired marauder vessels, for some reason) has a pirate suppression value, with corvettes having the best cost/effectiveness value. When the total piracy suppression in system is higher than the max possible piracy (which is a % of the total trade value going through it) piracy starts to drop to 0. Also, Admirals assigned to such fleets gain XP when suppressing pirates, worth keeping in mind.
Of course, the ultimate anti-piracy tool is gateways; trade routes can go through them (as well as wormholes and L-gates) and piracy can never develop in a system with a starbase, so once you can build gateways, plop one in your capital system, and then next to starbases where the accumulated trade value grows to the point that defenses and patrols are no longer enough, and enjoy the hassle-free profits.
As for food, there is no growth bonus from extra food per se, but there *is* a planetary decision that let's you spend 1k food to increase growth there, and a policy that increase the food upkeep of all pops forbextra growth and happiness.
Volatile Motes. They’re a rare resource that can be found in planetary deposits and in space. There is a tech in Physics research I believe to synthetically produce them with a building and the associated Chemist job.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I gotta say its pretty annoying that the very first building upgrade I was capable of researching (literally my 2nd engineering tech) is locked behind a rare resource and a tech i haven't seen.
I don't remember this kind of thing hitting so early in previous patches.
I think the reason why they made it possible for them to appear before the extraction techs to begin with is because Trader Enclaves now deal in the main 3 rare resources, meaning it's possible to get your hands on the stuff before having any idea how to mine it or make it.
Are you on the beta branch? Because this has already been addressed. Those building upgrade techs don’t show up so early on the beta branch. Nor should they. Those building upgrades are no good to you in the early game anyway, their purpose is to help you get more jobs out of fewer building slots.
That’s a midgame issue.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Only one thing grows, and with non-Beta branch weighting it will almost inevitably be whatever you have least of. Or you can designate what should grow and it'll grow slower.
re: 2. Under the "Decisions" option on your planet, you can spend 1000 food for a 25% increase in pop growth for 10 years.
And you can go under policies and change your food policy to cost more food per pop for increase growth and happiness.
No other passive bonus from excess food production.
re: Trade, you can change what trade does for you under policies. I prefer the 50% energy/25% trade goods myself.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Do you get any value from vassals like you do with tributaries?
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Ecumenopoli are extremely good in general; they give you a ton of housing, jobs, and growth, and they give you those jobs more efficiently than other things - their districts create a bunch of specialist jobs without the need for the appropriate buildings, meaning you don't need motes/crystals for upkeep on them (and thus also don't have to waste so many building slots on buildings that only produce 1 job). Their only real downside is that they can't make food or minerals.
Habitats are weird and a little niche - they only get a small number of districts, and their districts are bad at making jobs but good at making housing, so you mostly want to use them to build a bunch of housing districts and then get your jobs from buildings. BUT that means they can't generate food or minerals either, and it means that you want buildings that give a high number of jobs per slot, which means they're mostly good for filling with research labs, or with foundries/industry as an alternate way of converting minerals to alloys/goods if you didn't go Arcology Project. They'd be great for building Commerce Megaplexes on, since those give the most jobs per building slot, but those are prohibited for some reason. They'd also be good for other stuff if you could supplement their housing with housing buildings, but you can't do that either.
Ringworlds are almost the perfect complement to Ecumenopoli; each ringworld segment is a size fifty world that can build the standard city/generator/agriculture districts, so they're great at supplying food to your other tall colonies, with the caveat that they, again, can't build mining districts and so also can't make minerals.
The end result is that tall strategies have a ton of places to put people and a ton of ways to convert minerals into useful stuff, but a real limited supply of actual minerals to convert - they're basically capped by the mining districts available in whatever standard planets are in their limited space. You can ablate that a good deal by building the matter decompressor, but once you get tall enough that won't be enough either. Obviously you can also buy minerals on the market, but that gets expensive, which means you need a lot of money coming in. Ecumenopoli are a lot better at generating money than habitats are because habitats can't build Megaplexes, but going for ecumenopoli over habitats means delaying (or outright not getting) the decompressor since you can't use the voidborne->master builders->galactic wonders chain to forcibly trigger mega-engineering.
Basically one way or another if you want to build tall you're eventually going to be mineral-limited, so planets that offer a lot of mining districts are high-value, as are mineral-increasing traits like Industrious (and, eventually, robust/nerve stapled/etc).
I'd also like to see a repeatable building that makes mining jobs, like the hydroponic farm does for food.
Habitats can't have any building that provides the same types of jobs that one of their districts provide, which is why you can't have commercial zones (or research labs, for that matter) so your best options are all housing to run foundries in space, or do about 50/50 habitat and commerce districts and turn it into a trading post.
Also somewhat confused about why the other habitat districts don't have housing. Even if it was just enough for the jobs they had, it would make them a lot better, or at least more flexible with what you can do with them.
Also, are you using the consumer good trade policy? With enough trade, you don't have to have pretty much any civilian industries, which is more of your mineral income you can devote to alloys.
Yes. I'm not having any trouble funding my stuff, I'm just pointing out that the way all the tall tools are set up, your access to every resource is going to grow the taller you get except for minerals, which is going to cap out and then stay level (or even fall off, if you start converting too many worlds to ecumenopoli). It will eventually be your chokepoint, no matter how efficiently you spend it, so you should make a point of prioritizing it.
There's also an edict that increases empire-wide growth for 1k energy (or food for hives).
What's your definition of Tall? It seems like that just means living close to your admin cap in 2.2; I haven't had any mineral issues yet; it's pretty consistently my #1 surplus. Though I may under-produce alloys as I tend to be forced into buying those when I need a war surge.
I think 2.2.2 is supposed to increase Alloy yield from 2 -> 3, which may mitigate that.
It does mean limited access to good planets and random resources.
I'm also running up against the mineral bottleneck. Food at least has hydroponic farms that can be built anywhere.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
I'm noticing that stars are clumping together into localized districts a lot more in 2.2
before, you'd have arms or blobs and there would be a handy choke point that happened to be the only star crossroad in and out of a section of the galaxy.
I'm seeing stars in groups of 5 to 15 now with definite discrete highways to other groups. almost feels like counties within a state or province, with sectors delineating between the planets within one of these star groups.
so within a group of stars, if you have 3 habitable planets, those planets would form a sector, but as soon as you move over to a 4th planet in another star group, even if its only 1 or 2 jumps away, that's a completely separate sector and in need of another governor...
doesn't help there is absolutely no way to tell where a sector starts or stops either, but that's the confirmation bias I'm seeing.
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That's how it was "planned" to work, which each clear-cut cluster being it's own sector, but they had to drop that for some reason.
Instead, your first sector is every system that is 2 jumps away from your capital. If you colonize a planet beyond that, it creates a new sector, that is every system 2 jumps away from it, that is not already claimed by another sector.
Since first planet colonized gets dibs, to cut down on the number of sectors (and therefore the number of governors you need) you want your first planet outside of any sector to be 1 or 2 jumps away from as many other colonizable planets also not in sectors as possible, even if that means taking a less-than-ideal planet as your first in the area.
Tall is basically holding a relatively small number of actual systems and getting room for pops via things that increase the population density of space (ecumenopolis, habitats, ringworlds, mastery of nature), as opposed to wide, where you'd be grabbing as much space as possible and getting room for pops by controlling more planets. It doesn't necessarily mean staying under or close to your admin cap, since you can pretty easily outstrip your admin cap if you build a bunch of habitats and/or 50-district ringworld sections.
There is definitely a phase of the game where minerals will run as a surplus in almost any strategy, but the more people you put in a given amount of space the more minerals you're going to need without your mineral income being able to grow, because minerals basically only come from occupying more space - once you've maxed out the mining districts on your existing planets, you either need mining stations in mineral-heavy systems, or new mining districts on new planets, and both of those things require you to take more space. If you don't want to do that, you're eventually going to be mineral-throttled, because you can get more energy and food by growing 'up' but not more minerals.
Also I would avoid buying alloys as much as possible unless you're energy-capped and looking for something useful to convert it to. Alloys tend to hover around 20 energy each on the market, and a corvette with anything more than starter gear is generally gonna run 150-200 alloys, which means that when you buy alloys to build your navy you're basically trying to buy a navy with energy at a cost of 3000-4000 energy per corvette. That's a pretty rough exchange rate (especially given that you can get a 5-year contract on an entire mercenary fleet for 9-15k).
Edit:
This is a heady mix of good and bad advice. Mostly that's not how I'd build a tall race, trait-wise. Communal is a trap choice, for one - housing is easy to get, the penalties for housing shortages are minor, and a 10% reduction in housing usage (which won't even stay a 10% reduction, because you'll have immigrants who aren't Communal) is minor. I wouldn't build any race in this patch without Rapid Breeders, and certainly not a tall race which is going to need those growth bonuses to keep up with other empires that have more planets and thus more base growth. I also, as I mentioned, would strongly recommend that any race intended to be tall be Industrious. This boxes out Intelligent/Natural Engineers, but that's honestly not a big deal, because A)you'll have more people to do science with thanks to the better population growth and B)Intelligent is a smaller bonus than it appears to be, especially since it only applies to a very limited number of jobs. You're better off taking bigger bonuses to more-common outputs and then using that resource advantage to just put more scientists on tech instead of inefficiently trying to maximize your tech per scientist.
Likewise, Technological Ascendancy is kind of a shitty ascension perk. It's not nearly as big of a bonus as it appears to be, because it's not multiplicative with all the other science bonuses you're going to end up with, and while your first perk choices are somewhat limited, both Voidborne and Mastery of Nature are much better for tall empires - particularly Voidborne if you're planning around trying to get early megastructures, because Voidborne->Master Builders is the only way you're going to get Mega Engineering in a reasonable timeframe without getting very lucky, just because of its low chance to roll as a research option.
And Imperial Prerogative, while a fine (but not especially amazing) perk in general, is terrible as a second perk because it means you're passing up a huge population growth bonus from either Xenocompatibility or Bio Ascension, and again you need that growth bonus both because pop growth is king in the current patch and because you're already effectively eating a growth penalty by being tall as a result of the fact that the base growth of your empire is a factor of the number of colonies you have.
Also even with a tall strategy, you want to colonize every planet within your borders ASAP. Being at year 60 with 1 colony and like half a dozen uncolonized planets in your borders is a real bad plan no matter how tall you think it makes you.
Couple counterpoints to your counterpoints:
A lot of his choices build off each other. Communal by itself isn't very impressive, especially with Xenophile, but with Agrarian Idyll and Life Seeded it's more than enough to fill out all of his homeworld's building slots and keep nearly all of it as non-city district. He's also going for the classic Stellaris tall of "doesn't matter you have way more stuff than me, I'm building Battleships with Kinetic Artillery and you've only just figured out Cruisers" which gives the "bad" ideas of picking Intelligent, Technological Ascendancy and Imperial Prerogative a much more favoriable context: he's trying to get as much tech and unity as possible, and grow as big as possible while staying under his Admin capacity.
I actually feel Rapid Breeders is a trap trait, at least for non-Hive Minds that have to deal with the 50% pop growth penalty for new colonies, for the same reason you don't like Technological Ascendancy; too many additional modifiers I can pick up elsewhere. I can day 1 switch my food policy for +10% growth, and then whenever I can, pop the planetary decision for +25%, get Genome Mapping for another 10% as one of my first techs, and pick up the 10% pop growth Expansion tradition in the first 5-6 years. Adding Rapid Breeders to all that only gets me a net 6.5% increase to growth vs. not. Is that really worth two trait points? I personally don't think so.
Finally, for not picking up Voidborne if his professed goal is megastructures... Not a problem, where he's starting. Why? Well, that comes with a fun, and very important fact:
What Precursor you get is *not* random, and in fact is entirely dependent on what part of the galaxy you get the first precursor anomaly.
And South/SW is where you will get Cybrex. He just needs to complete the chain (which is also part of the reason why he dipped into Discovery first thing, to research the precursor anomalies faster), and he will get a broken Ring World spawning nearby that he can claim and use to fish for Mega-Engineering, which with his setup he'll be doing by the time he's getting alerts that marauder mercs are now available.
I feel overwhelmed and really don't have it in me to relearn the game at the moment.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I poked at it a bit to try and understand it and I'm already at a loss of how energy management is supposed to work, because I hit negative generation after a few months.
And how much does "unemployment" hurt because that happened after the first pop showed up and I couldn't construct any buildings because now they're all super expensive.
You can set a policy that makes unemployed people generate unity at the cost of extra consumer good