Did my first run of a Machine Intelligence in 4.0 and man, they seem slower than molasses. Even with Mass Produced+Recycled, planets take an ungodly amount of time to populate, and the lack of unity jobs inherent in planet capitols plus the loss of innate growth is just crippling. Any tips on how to get them up and running faster?
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The play I usually do is rush virtual ascension. Once that tree is filled, planets (all 7 of them, do not have more than 7...) go BRRRRR.
Once you get modularity you will produce more than enough pops.
I never play machine intelligence without rogue servitor, and that certainly help for early unity generation.
You could take versatility + logistics early on to get super maintenance drones for unity (with simulation site), but it's not the same power level as civilians, especially because you can't convert your trade to unity.
I never play machine intelligence without rogue servitor, and that certainly help for early unity generation.
You could take versatility + logistics early on to get super maintenance drones for unity (with simulation site), but it's not the same power level as civilians, especially because you can't convert your trade to unity.
If you're talking about basic MI empires, yes. It requires a bit of setting up, but they do snowball.
Just tried a unity rush with maintenance drone build, it works pretty well. And you don't have to take logistics (but it would let you ignore more jobs / have more maintenance drones).
Take the civic maintenance protocols, put emotion emulators on your robots, build a simulation site ASAP, and rush the operational procies tradition. Your maintenance drones will be stronger than coordinators, with a far cheaper upkeep and without requiring infrastructure (except the simulation site).
That building really need to be locked behing a tech, disabling jobs at the start of the game is as stupid as empting your starting corvettes for alloys was back in the day.
Take the civic maintenance protocols, put emotion emulators on your robots, build a simulation site ASAP, and rush the operational procies tradition. Your maintenance drones will be stronger than coordinators, with a far cheaper upkeep and without requiring infrastructure (except the simulation site).
That building really need to be locked behing a tech, disabling jobs at the start of the game is as stupid as empting your starting corvettes for alloys was back in the day.
So basically Versatility is mandatory for not having crippling unity deficits? I'm running Genesis Architects + Tactical Algorithms on Starlit Citadel right now and my unity 30 years in has come entirely from colonization, as almost everything else is going to upkeep and defense platforms.
Genesis is probably better most of the time, but it depends if you find enough planets.
It's the same issue with the civilian + trade builds in a standard empire, except they have factions and elites jobs so they can do ok without it.
It's the same issue with the civilian + trade builds in a standard empire, except they have factions and elites jobs so they can do ok without it.
I'm a "two scientists, one governor, and when my starting admiral gets killed scouting don't replace him until I'm about to declare war" kind of guy. I've been taking Repurposed Hardware (reduced leader XP gain) because I don't actually want my leaders leveling fast and costing extra unity upkeep. It is pretty funny observering AI economies and seeing them in unity deficits from leader upkeep though.
As far as pop assembly, I'm basically still playing like 3.x. Take Imperial Prerogative, colonize lots of planets, just work the assembly jobs, and then have the resulting maintenance drones migrate to a handful of worlds that I'm developing heavily. Yes, 80% of my planets never fill up, but that was true before. Very little has changed for me.
I haven't been doing anything fancy with stacking maintenance drone unity output (I do my best to have as few maintenance drones as possible, no Simulation Sites, and get almost all of my amenities from Drone Storage, leader traits, and specimens) and I think I'm still hitting roughly the same timings on ascensions as I was in 3.x. Granted, I was never much of a unity rusher (mostly I alloy rush and go take other peoples' robot pops), but I don't think MI unity output is much more crippled than it was before.
edit: OK, I see what you mean now, I think I was relying on the 3x number of coordinators from the pre-nerf version of Resource Consolidation. Interesting.
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My approach was similar - Factory, drone storage (because new Machine colonies have negative amenities, for some reason), and 2 resource districts (gen+mine or 2x gen) so they support their own upkeep (to reduce the drain on Trade). Because this is 600 jobs, it still takes forever to populate. And the homeworld's Archives only produces barely enough unity to pay for leaders, even if you keep the build queue filled with urban districts.
Nah, I did just fine with no unity boosters of any sort outside of enhanced memory species trait and exterminating some fleshbags.
Just build the early unity you need. It'll all work out.
(Not talking about MP or whatever, just fairly normal settings SP with scaling GA).
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I don't think this is worth it. Trade costs are only 25% of value of the planetary deficit, and a big chunk of that deficit by value is going to be alloy for the replicators, which it sounds like you aren't producing locally.
My thinking has been to demolish one of the two starting Nexus district to reduce energy upkeep by 2/month (and a tiny bit of empire size from districts to boot). One city district, a Drone Storage, and an Assembly Plant is like 6 energy/mo upkeep (1.5 trade/mo), 300 replicators is between 3 and 4.5 energy/mo upkeep depending on habitability (call it 1 trade/mo) and 3 alloys/mo (3 trade/mo). Producing energy locally can only save you about 2.5 trade/mo, and incurs additional energy upkeep for the districts, buildings, pops, etc. So I've just been turning on 100 Logistics Drone jobs from the capital building and Machine Nexus designation for the +% trade and reduced building and district upkeep and calling it close enough; it doesn't quite cover the trade costs of feeding each of these worlds but it's close.
(And then throw in a Simulation Site per planet for no additional upkeep but a little bit of flat unity income, ignoring the stuff they give the maintenance drones who hang around temporarily after being assembled before auto-migrating somewhere with jobs)
On the other hand, Logistics Drones do have a pretty lousy base output per pop (4 trade iirc). Tech-drones with the machine species base output boost are so productive that maybe it does make sense to prefer them over Logistics Drones when possible (the "nice" thing about Logistics Drones is that as far as I can tell they have basically no support besides Machine Nexus and Logistics traditions, so you don't benefit a whole lot from centralizing them on a single specialized trade world vs distributing them on many tiny machine nexuses). I'd think you could cover each planet's energy upkeep with just one generator district and 100-200 tech-drones though. 600 pops per planet for local raw resource production seems like way overkill (unless you're also going to do the alloys for the replicators locally...?).
By and large I would say that my approach to shortfalls is simple - reallocate resources to stuff that produces the thing I don't have enough of. Not enough trade? Build Resource Reprocessor starbases (better than solar panels now) and work more trade jobs. Not enough unity? Work more unity jobs. Not enough pops? More replicators and automation buildings.
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