I've been enjoying making custom galaxies made up of force-spawned empires lately, usually with a balance of ordinary fodder nations and a few planned major powers. Sometimes, I want to make sure the fodder nations don't grow too much and ruin the kind of story I'm going for. Any recommendations for the best origin/civic/trait combos to limit an AI empires growth (while still letting them expand out of their home system at all)?
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Pacifist necrophages.
Prevents them from invading the pre-ftls that spawn on their guaranteed habitables, greatly slowing down their ability to expand. Don't make them xenophobic and they can't even necropurge either.
Shattered Ring, Ocean Paradise and Doomsday all probably have a similar effect since they remove said guaranteed habitables entirely, but in Doomsday's case it's pretty common for the empire to fail to expand at all before the deadline. I used to force spawn a migratory flock with it and they'd spread to every other empire instead of spreading their own.
Void Dwellers and that Arc Furnace one might also work. Slingshot to the Stars removes one habitable for a lessened effect. Common Ground and Hegemony also get rid of habitables but they do it by spawning a cluster of empires right by each other so they probably won't work.
Prevents them from invading the pre-ftls that spawn on their guaranteed habitables, greatly slowing down their ability to expand. Don't make them xenophobic and they can't even necropurge either.
Shattered Ring, Ocean Paradise and Doomsday all probably have a similar effect since they remove said guaranteed habitables entirely, but in Doomsday's case it's pretty common for the empire to fail to expand at all before the deadline. I used to force spawn a migratory flock with it and they'd spread to every other empire instead of spreading their own.
Void Dwellers and that Arc Furnace one might also work. Slingshot to the Stars removes one habitable for a lessened effect. Common Ground and Hegemony also get rid of habitables but they do it by spawning a cluster of empires right by each other so they probably won't work.
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As suggested above, Doomsday is an obvious one for limiting how well an empire will do. But assuming the goal isn't to hamstring the empire entirely, I'd suggest fanatic pacifists of either the authoritarian or xenophobic flavor.
Fanatic pacifist are unable to grow rapidly, because they can't conquer their neighbors, but at the same time they are very stable, so they don't do terribly either. They are your best bet to create a middle power, with a high floor and low ceiling. And the reason you couple it with authoritarian or xenophobic is to avoid the federation builder personality.
Fanatic pacifist are unable to grow rapidly, because they can't conquer their neighbors, but at the same time they are very stable, so they don't do terribly either. They are your best bet to create a middle power, with a high floor and low ceiling. And the reason you couple it with authoritarian or xenophobic is to avoid the federation builder personality.
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Haha, that's what YOU think! My Fan-Spiritualist Pacifists always invade their pre-ftls without any consideration for ethics, when controlled by AI.
... okay it might just be them spawning as Advanced. But still!
The Eager Explorers / Privatized Exploration / Stargazers / Exploration Protocols civics from First Contact seem like easy choices to start them off on the back foot. idk if the AI actually uses the mini-jump-drives well though.
The AI is pretty lousy at playing Void Dwellers; I feel like they usually just start colonizing 0% habitability planets rather than building habitats from the start.
I feel like the AI usually fails at Doomsday and gets annihilated by it.
Habitability-restricted origins like Life Seeded, Ocean Paradise, or Shattered Ring are especially crippling for hive minds, due to lack of migration pacts, inability to use robots, and inability to integrate individualist pops until ascension. Occasionally they'll get lucky with a pre-FTL hive mind that they can integrate pre-ascension though.
The AI is pretty lousy at playing Void Dwellers; I feel like they usually just start colonizing 0% habitability planets rather than building habitats from the start.
I feel like the AI usually fails at Doomsday and gets annihilated by it.
Habitability-restricted origins like Life Seeded, Ocean Paradise, or Shattered Ring are especially crippling for hive minds, due to lack of migration pacts, inability to use robots, and inability to integrate individualist pops until ascension. Occasionally they'll get lucky with a pre-FTL hive mind that they can integrate pre-ascension though.
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Not only does the AI fail at using the special drives well, it's completely unable to use them at all. AI empires with those civics are unable to move out of their home system until they manage to research regular hyper drives. Arguably it holds an empire back even more than the Doomsday origin.
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I've actually used Eager Explorers for that before, themed like a doomsday cult. They absolutely did just sit in their one system and die.
The absolute worst was the Obsessional Directive AI empires, though; For some reason they seemed to start purging all of their own pops after failing a quota. Though I only saw it happen a while ago, so maybe it's been fixed by now.
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Is that related to the fact that Survey/Exploration automatization does not work for Eager Explorer ships at all?
Synthetic Fertility Origin. AI can not colonize, and their pops die off one by one.
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This is false, Slingshot to the stars does NOT remove a guaranteed habitable.
I never lost a guaranteed habitable, unless I turned them off for everyone.
This is the empire I force spawn when going for RNG achievements in an empty galaxy. They never expand thanks to Eager Explorers as others have mentioned, the other stuff doesn't really matter. If you need an AI to exist for some reason but don't want them expanding at all, anything similar will do.
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I have a fanatic xenophile/materialist galactic curators remnants empire that rarely expands outside its starting sector of space. So that’s a decent empire if you want some space friends who don’t take up a major chunk of space.
Overall I think the archivist civics are a good bet for making a weaker empire, since a lot of their benefit comes from surveying anomalies and finding specimens, two things AI empire don’t really get. It slows them down compared to rolling a more practical civic like parliamentary system, or fanatic purifiers
Overall I think the archivist civics are a good bet for making a weaker empire, since a lot of their benefit comes from surveying anomalies and finding specimens, two things AI empire don’t really get. It slows them down compared to rolling a more practical civic like parliamentary system, or fanatic purifiers
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Individualist machines in general are in a bad place right now for early starts. Crippled alloy and consumer good production.