Advanced Civics (Paid Feature)
In addition to the normal Civics available to everyone, there are also a few special Civics that are only available to those with the Utopia expansion. These Civics are meant to simulate very specific kinds of societies and generally have more of an impact on your game than the normal Civics do. They are as follows:
- Syncretic Evolution: Your species evolved along with another, subservient species. A second species is randomly generated on your homeworld replacing some of your primary species' Pops. They always have the Proles (rebalanced in Banks) and Strong traits, making them excellent soldiers and workers but less ideal for intellectual pursuits. This Civic provides no additional benefits and cannot be removed once picked.
- Mechanist: Your species is obsessed with the pursuit of robotics. This Civic requires you to be Materialist and has you start with the Robotic Workers and Powered Exoskeletons technologies and a population of worker robots to do the farming and mining for you, replacing some of your primary species' Pops. This Civic provides no additional benefits and cannot be removed once picked.
- Fanatic Purifiers: Your empire will not tolerate the existance of any other sentient life. This Civic requires you to be Fanatic Xenophobe/Militarist and gives very large boosts to the effectiveness of your military and gives you Unity from purging Xeno Pops, but disables all diplomacy with other species and forces all Xeno Pops in your empire to be purged (though you get to choose the method of extermination). All other regular empires will also have a massive relations malus with you, the one and only exception being Fanatic Purifiers from the same species.
I'm still a new player and as such I'll admit that my understanding of the game's balance is no doubt incomplete, however I would still like to provide what feedback I can regarding these Civics. I'll also admit that I haven't read the entire thread from beginning to end, so if this is a repeat of what has already been said, then I apologise.
I really love these as concepts and have the following constructive criticism:
With the Syncretic Evolution Civic, you mentioned that the second species is randomly generated, but I think that it would be good if players could customise the species to at least some degree, even if only their name and appearance.
Whilst I understand the point that you made elsewhere in the thread about how an early boost is very powerful and balances-out the lack of long-term bonuses, I can't help but think that it would be both more enjoyable and thematically appropriate if they provided some kind of long-term bonus, even if only a very limited one. For example, given that Mechanists are "obsessed with the pursuit of robotics", perhaps they could receive a small bonus to research speed specifically for technologies that are part of the Robotics Path and/or have those technologies weighted to appear more often. Even a 1% bonus to robotics research would be very much appreciated, as it would mean that I and other players wouldn't become as frustrated during the mid-to-late game at being stuck with a Civic that no longer does anything.
If I may be so bold as to make another suggestion: personally, I think that it would be very cool to be able to make a species psychic from the very beginning of the game and a Civic that makes them start with the first item(s) in the psionics research tree would be one way to do that. Some form of psionic Trait would be another alternative, but I'll admit that I'm pretty much just wishlisting at this point.
I hope that this feedback is helpful and, if not, that it isn't too annoying.
