Origin synergies

[Kami-sama]

So, having played every origin in the game multiple times by now, I thought to make this thread where we can talk about what origin synergies with what civic/authority/trait/ethic. I'm particularly looking for any synergy I might've missed. This is about what offers the best synergies at start and doesn't include ascensions. Here are the ones I currently know:

Clone Army
Death Cult civic (pops assemble back really fast)
Eager Explorers civic (quickly undoes the starting pops penalty)
Lithoid species (cancels the leader penalty and you don't grow pops naturally)

Here be Dragons
Reanimators civic (if you kill the dragon you get both the permanent bonuses and the leviathan)

Knights of the Toxic God
Corporate authority (they gain access to a special branch office building)

Overtuned
Lithoid species (cancels the lifespan penalties and allows selecting habitability traits that would normally be unavailable to lithoids)

Necrophage
Xenophobe or Gestalt Consciousness (they gain access to a special purge type)
Lithoid species (most of your species doesn't come from natural growth)
For secondary species, Invasive Species (you can add negative leader traits with no worry since they can't produce leaders)

Under One Rule
Commander ruler (needed for Distinguished Admiralty synergy)
Distinguished Admiralty civic (can max the ruler trait from the start)
Vaults of Knowledge civic (can upgrade the second ruler trait if you picked one)

Syncretic Evolution
Selective Kinship civic (can make a secondary species from the same group to get the benefits)
For secondary species, negative traits that affect only leaders to get trait points (secondary species can't generate leaders)

Hegemon
Corporate authority (plenty of branch office opportunities)
Any fanatic ethic (causes the other members to share the ethic)

Common Ground
Corporate authority (plenty of branch office opportunities and lets you switch federation type to Trade League)
Militarist (lets you switch federation type to Martial Alliance)
Fanatic Materialist or Fanatic Spiritualist (lets you switch federation type to Research Cooperative or Holy Covenant and causes the other members to share the ethic)

Imperial Fiefdom
Corporate authority (plenty of branch office opportunities)
Materialist (overlord starts with this ethic so you get a subject compatibility bonus)
Militarist (overlord starts with this ethic so you get a subject compatibility bonus)
Xenophile (overlord starts with this ethic so you get a subject compatibility bonus)

Slingshot to the Stars
Stargazers civic (stacks with the origin starbase influence cost reduction)

Post-Apocalyptic
Radiotrophic trait (obviosuly)
Relentless Industrialists civic (obviosuly)
Fanatic Purifiers civic (no Armageddon bombing penalties)

Life-Seeded
Idyllic Bloom civic (obviously)
Noxious trait (habitability penalty doesn't affect gaia worlds but the min habitability bonus works on other planets)

Ocean Paradise
Anglers civic (obviously)
Agrarian Idyll civic (the tooltip only mentions it after the game starts but the bonuses apply to Anglers civic jobs too)
Astrometeorology civic (starting nebula gives bonuses to Astrometeorologist jobs)

Cybernetic Creed
Augmentation Bazaars civic (you're locked into cybernetic ascension)

Doomsday
Eager Explorers civic (fewer devastation penalties from pops and cheaper to resettle all pops)

Shattered Ring
Machine species (halves the penalties from colonizing the other segments)
Catalytic Processing (you'll miss less the mining districts when you repair the ringworld)

Broken Shackles
Fanatic Egalitarian (factions bonus)
Parliamentary System civic (factions bonus)
Idyllic Bloom civic (solves the different climate preferences issue)

Remnants
Eager Explorers civic (cancels the civic's starting building penalty)

Payback
Fanatic Militarist (for the path where you beat MSI in war)
Diplomatic Corps civic (for the path where you beat MSI in Galactic Community)

Fear of the Dark
Militarist (one of the possible endings will change ethics to this anyway)
Natural Design civic (they get penalties from completing an ascension before ending the mid-game story)

Lost Colony
Selective Kinship civic (good relations with an empire guaranteed to start strong)
Adaptive or Aquatic (removes the habitability penalty because the capital isn't the homeworld)

Riftworld
Dimensional Worship (obviously)

Storm Chasers
Storm Devotion (obviously)
Astrometeorology (obviously)

Primal Calling
Gestalt Consciousness (no stance restrictions)
Wild Swarm civic (obviously)
Cordyceptic Drones civic (obviously)
Natural Sociologists trait (the origin gives early access to space fauna technologies but they must still be researched)

Teachers of the Shroud
Authoritarian (you won't need to change ethics when you get the Chosen One event)

Treasure Hunters
Gestalt Consciousness (one of the endings gives increased piracy risk if the empire is individualist)
Caretaker Network civic (plenty of specimens obtained throughout the story)

Mechanist
Natural Engineers trait (they make heavy used of Engineering research)

Subterranean
Masterful Crafters civic (very easy to gain building slots and mining districts will support industrial ones)
Mining Guilds civic (bonuses from mining districts)
Noxious trait (stacks with the origin min habitability bonus and reduces the max habitability penalty of the trait)

Subterranean Machines
Relentless Industrialists (if species min habitability is greater than max habitability the min habitability wins out)

 

[Cleaving3]

Oh, I thought you said ORBIS synergies

 

[Lorenerd11]

Life-Seeded
Idyllic Bloom civic (obviously)

This one's not that obvious, Idyllic Bloom renders most of the benefit from Life-Seeded obsolete and you might be better off picking Idyllic Bloom on its own.

Subterranean
Mining Guilds civic (bonuses from mining districts)

The primary effect of Mining Guilds is that the miners produce more minerals, and as a result you need fewer of them. This doesn't actually synergize well with unlimited mining districts. Subterranean combines much better with Masterful Crafters (mining and industrial districts both contribute to buildings slots).

 

[Dragatus]

Under One Rule
Philosopher King civic (they keep the same ruler)

Philosopher King gives effective leader skill, not actual leader skill. Meaning it doesn't give any traits and when you get a new ruler they immediately start benefitting from +5 effective level too, so I don't see a special synergy.

UOR though is one of the best ways of playing Genetic Ascension because if you're xenophobic and choose the Genome Artist trait you can get 13 trait points or 14 with the Omnicodex.

Knights of the Toxic God

Egalitarian or xenophobic ethics allow you to maximize number of Knight jobs. Egalitarian can stack the order's habitat with unemployed pops on Utopian Abundance while xenophobes do the same with livestock slaves.

Syncretic Evolution

Individualistic machines as main species, organics as the secondary one. You get to benefit from combined growth and assembly from the start of the game. Extra spicy if your secondary species is an Invasive Species with all the bad leader traits, which are just free habitability and pop growth. You can combo this further into Death Cult because of how good your growth is.

Being xenophobic + catalytic + going for genetic ascension gives you the best livestock in the game for whatever that's worth. Well, if you really want the best livestock you'd have to also luck into getting Baol as your precursor (the special building gives you CG from farmer jobs and livestock counts as farmer jobs), but that isn't under your control.

Overtuned

Cybernetic ascension and stacking three auto-modding traits on every species in your empire. Especially good for trade builds because +75% TV is insane.

Life-Seeded

Noxious trait gives you 30% habitability on regular planets instead of the usual 0% and on Gaia worlds you still get 100% habitability because they're marked as perfect worlds.

Machines are even better because they have 50% minimum habitability.

Shattered Ring

Noxious trait again for the same reason as above.

Machines have 50% minimum habitability, so they can immediately colonize the other two rings.

Remnants

Remnants allows you to take Archaeo-Engineers as your first perk (though you might prefer to take it as your second). You'll get early access to archaeo technology and weapons that are a league or two above what everyone else is fielding at that point. Then you can progress into Galactic Nemesis and use menacing ships. Menacing ships have a fixed mineral cost, so you can use archeo tech without being limited by minor artifacts.

Subterranean

Noxious stacks with Cave Dweller to give you 80% minimum habitability, which wins over 70% maximum habitability from Noxious alone and you have 80% habitability everywhere.

Machines will also stack their 50% habitability with the one from the origin for 100% habitability everywhere.

Fear of the Dark
Natural Design civic (they get penalties from completing an ascension)

I honestly don't see the link here. What works though is knowing whether you want to go FP or not and if you are, you can start as some mix of militarist and xenophobe to prep your pops for the conversion.

Lost Colony
Adaptive trait (removes the habitability penalty because the capital isn't the homeworld)

That seems a relatively minor benefit, but okay. Adaptive is a good general purpose trait anyway.

Teachers of the Shroud
Authoritarian (you're locked into Psionic ascension so you might as well get ready for the Chosen One event)

I'd go a step further and recommend Oppressive Autocracy, although it's worth noting that the origin is better for the civic than the civic is for the origin. The idea is to get into a pact with the Instrument of Desire, which eventually makes your Telepaths (which are counted as a sort of Enforcer) produce 15 Amenities, which is an extra 30 Amenities per colony for a civic that normally only gets Amenities from rulers and buildings.

Necrophage
For secondary species, negative traits that affect only leaders to get trait points (secondary species can't generate leaders)

Lithoids because pop growth penalties don't matter when you don't grow your species. Slow Breeders is also 2 free trait points.

For the secondary species not only can you pile on the negative leader traits without consequence, if it's a plantoid or fungoid species, you can give it the Invasive Species trait to actually benefit from the bad leader traits.

Xenophobe to enable the special xenophage purge that allows you to turn xenos into your primary species.

This comes into play later, but Necrophages are also extremely good at leveraging genetic ascension. Because Slow Breeders is a free pick they effectively get 12 trait points before having to add actual negative traits and you don't have to get Fertile/Vat Grown. So in a way it's kind of like having even more trait points available. If you're xenophobic you can also edit just your main species and then assimilate all the xenos through the xenophage purge, leaving only a few specialty species focused on growth as slaves/residents.

But try to avoid researching Glandular Acclimation if you want to keep your species list short because it'll spontaneously create you a main species variant for every habitability type.

 

[HFY]

Remnants
Memorialist civic (relic world bonuses)

Strong disagree, Memorialists is trash and the extra +20% governing ethic attraction bonus is worthless on your Empire Capital (which gets a +100% bonus as part if its designation, and that scales up with Ascension).

IMHO the best civic synergy with Remnants is Eager Explorers, because you start with 3 researcher-equivalent jobs instead of zero, and the free tech progress for clearing blockers is even juicier when you're starting from a tech disadvantage.

 

[Kami-sama]

Thanks for the help guys. Don't forget to mention if you know synergies for origins I haven't mentioned, I merely don't know any for the rest.

 

[Vorpaliminal]

Genesis Guides with Machine species to get guaranteed bio growth, and Materialist for any origins where they don't start with Machine Template System as the Progressive Growth Agenda makes it a guaranteed option with 25% progress on it done.

 

[Exasperation]

Subterranean Machines + Relentless Industrialists is a nice one. If your primary species is mechanical, the industrialist building's pop growth penalty is replaced with a penalty to max. habitability. However, if your min. habitability (100% for subterranean machines) is higher than your max habitability, the min. habitability takes precedence. So not only do you not care about your worlds turning into tomb worlds, but you can also use the full steam ahead policy (+50% to the building's bonus) while just ignoring the penalty entirely.

 

[DeanTheDull]

So, having played every origin in the game multiple times by now, I thought to make this thread where we can talk about what origin synergies with what civic/authority/trait/ethic. I'm particularly looking for any synergy I might've missed. This is about what offers the best synergies at start and doesn't include ascensions. Here are the ones I currently know:

Sounds fun. I've not played in some time now, so may be a bit dated, but...

Clone Army
Death Cult civic (pops assemble back really fast)
Eager Explorers civic (quickly undoes the starting pops penalty)
Lithoid species (cancels the leader penalty and you don't grow pops naturally)

Ethic-wise, Xenophobe is bad because you'll have a ruler shortage unless you take the worse of the two choices (and why would you?), which means there's a bit less synergy in the whole Xenophobe-Authoritarian-Militarist synergies. The later two are still good, of course, but honestly Egalitarian-Parliamentary System works really well because you can maximize that early-game pope growth for a unity-powered rush.

Here be Dragons
Reanimators civic (if you kill the dragon you get both the permanent bonuses and the leviathan)

Ethic-wise, you can get a bit more value out of the early unity dumps if you're a spiritualist, since those kind of boons scale with your own output, and Reanimators + Spiritualist is a decent synergy in and of itself in pushing for a natural psionic draw strategy.

Under One Rule
Commander ruler (needed for Distinguished Admiralty synergy)
Distinguished Admiralty civic (can max the ruler trait from the start)
Vaults of Knowledge civic (can upgrade the second ruler trait if you picked one)

It's a leader build, so yeah.

Knights of the Toxic God
Corporate authority (they gain access to a special branch office building)

Knights work well with a trade build in general, due to trade conversion helping sidestep some of the Quest taxes.

Angler+Catalytic works really well for Knights, particularly in a trade build, which is highly useful due to it side-stepping some of the Quest taxes via the TV conversion not taxing the CG-side. Anglers + Catalytic is a good deal of raw power, as they can work extremely well with bilateral trades due to the exceptionally efficient CG production and the raw food production for food/CG trading to the galaxy. Which, in turn, works well with Xenophile and Egalitarian, which in turn is one of the utopean abundance synergy for knight spam.

Necrophage
Xenophobe (they gain access to a special purge type)
Lithoid species (most of your species doesn't come from natural growth)
For secondary species, Invasive Species (you can add negative leader traits with no worry since they can't produce leaders)

Necrophage have a great leader-build synergy in general due to the Lithoid-Necrophage leadership synergies. A good ethic is Spiritualist, as Spiritualist and Psionic work very well for their synergies, and a more spiritualist galaxy cares quite a bit less about your conversions.

Necrophage-Hive is also a lot of fun if you can get the balance working. It offers an exceptionally aggressive synergy for catalytic builds, even when not the genocidal form, and works amazingly well with an Unyielding-Catalytic combo opening.

Syncretic Evolution
Selective Kinship civic (can make a secondary species from the same group to get the benefits)
For secondary species, negative traits that affect only leaders to get trait points (secondary species can't generate leaders)

Syncretic's mostly just a worse necrophage, so the Individual Machine strat's really the way to go.

A point for Selective Kinship is that it's a diplomacy opening (to have a few super-easy early allies to leverage off of) more than an internal economy bonus. It's also a Xenophobe-synergy civic in general, which Syncretic is less of.

Overtuned
Hive Mind authority (nodes don't care about lifespan)

Overtuned and all natural high-growth origins also work well with an Egalitarian-Parliamentary system setup, and even Shared Burdens, to get the maximum early-game unity advantage.

Slingshot to the Stars
Stargazers civic (stacks with the origin starbase influence cost reduction)

Slingshot works really well for total war civics, since they can use it to basically 'reap' systems, abandon them, and force other empires to spend influence and alloys to re-settle the same systems.

Also very much a xenophobe-synergy to maximize the value of the system cost reduction bonus. Which makes it work well with the Environmentalist civic for pop-free unity from planets.

Post-Apocalyptic
Radiotrophic trait (obviosuly)
Relentless Industrialists civic (obviosuly)
Fanatic Purifiers civic (no Armageddon bombing penalties)

Kind of a solved problem. Very much an origin they had to work to make good.

Ocean Paradise
Anglers civic (obviously)
Agrarian Idyll civic (the tooltip only mentions it after the game starts but the bonuses apply to Anglers civic jobs too)

Ocean Paradis and all one-special-world starts are war-rush starts, not pacifists. They all work from a premise that you can use your econ advantages to build up a fleet to conquer other worlds before other empires start getting net-positive returns from their early colonies.

For war builds in general, the Xenophobe-Authoritarian-Militarist triad is the cornerstone of that setup, but with flexibility.

Shattered Ring
Machine species (halves the penalties from colonizing the other segments)
Catalytic Processing (you'll miss less the mining districts when you repair the ringworld)

Shattered ring is a trade build, and phototropic plants work very well with trade builds in general.

The primary ethic synergy is authoritarian. This lets you get the maximum value out of your special miners (who are basically more efficient with fewer specialists for alloy production), minimize low-habitability CG costs in your trade-build outside worlds, and afford expansion / megacorp offices.

Shattered Ring is not, despite some fanatical wishes otherwise, a Fanatic Egalitarian - Utopian Abundance build.

Broken Shackles
Fanatic Egalitarian (factions bonus)
Parliamentary System civic (factions bonus)

Parliamentary System is always good, but a lot of its value is lost to what Broken Shackles does naturally.

Broken Shackles is hard to synergize for, since it's deliberately weak, and as such Xenophile is both generally inevitable and best strategy.

Remnants
Eager Explorers civic (cancels the civic's starting building penalty)

Unless it changed again, Remnant became something tech-fishing build for Archaeotech, which itself is a natural strategic synergy for psionic-ascension due to the potential breakout parallels (psionic theory and archaeotech unlocking around the same time, and a build focusing on either wanting to build for tech draw fishing).

As such, Spiritualist ethos works well.

Fear of the Dark
Militarist (one of the possible endings will change ethics to this anyway)
Natural Design civic (they get penalties from completing an ascension before ending the mid-game story)

Fear of the Dark's main mechanical advantage is the first-contact-war total war opportunity. Militarist is great here, but so is authoritarian, to get the most industrial margins for the early buildup and early slaver potential. Spiritualist shouldn't be overlooked either, since you may get more value out of early tradition surging than techs.

Since the rush-down is so important, civics with immediate martial advantage, such as Distinguished Admiralty or Vaults of Knowledge can be surprisingly useful.

Lost Colony
Adaptive trait (removes the habitability penalty because the capital isn't the homeworld)

Lost Colony is THE build for Selective Kinship, since it's the only origin guaranteed to get the diplomatic benefit, and that benefit of a nearly free alliance is all the better when the home empire is guaranteed to be a strong one.


Lost Colony also works well for an Aquatic - Angler - Catalytic build. Aquatic is another way to get over the starting habitaiblity penalty, and Angler-Catalytic is potent enough in its own right and will be easily spreadable to your lost homeworld, which will have even more aquatic infrastructure and pops ready to work it.

Teachers of the Shroud
Authoritarian (you won't need to change ethics when you get the Chosen One event)

This puts a bit too much focus on the Chosen One event, and less on what early psionic is great for- war.

Teachers has some good synergies with Lithoids for early growth, but especially lithoids with the crystal trait. While this would normally be seen as a wasted investment, this allows huge early-game payoffs when you can buy crystals off the market to support the crytal edicts, including +1 sensor range (easier navigation / discovery / world hunting), and then the crystal weapon edict for +25% energy weapon damage... which applies to both mining drone lasers and Tiyanki energy syphon, which are a potent early-war weapon combo and which can allow you to more efficiently research other early techs for an all-rounder force.

Subterranean
Masterful Crafters civic (very easy to gain building slots and mining districts will support industrial ones)
Mining Guilds civic (bonuses from mining districts)
Noxious trait (stacks with the origin min habitability bonus and reduces the max habitability penalty of the trait)

Subterranean's noxious trait stack synergy also makes it a Xenophobe -> Environmentalist -> Authoritarian -> Reanimators combo.

Xenophobe because to maximize a planet-based bonuses value like minimum habitability, you want as many planets as possible early on. Noxcious also works very well in slave builds.

This leads to Environmentalist, which scales with early expansion, as the pop-free unity scales with the number of blockers and thus planets you have.

Environmentalist leads to Authoritarian, as it will get more value out of the Ranger jobs, and feed the expansion influence, and favor the salve build.

These and the Subterranean defense bonus will synergize with Reanimators, who provides substantial tech AND helps make any planet nigh unqonquerable, as the bombardment defenses + the reanimating defense armies mean that you have a lot of time if / when you expand into someone who will go to war, even as these planet-unique jobs scale with more planets and ultimately provide more fleet capacity.

Note all of these again work with a Unyielding opening, for more army-unity and early food production starbases and starbase capacity to feed the fleet size for Authoritarian-Imperial power projection.

 

[DarkHelmet110985]

Catalytic Processing on Ocean Paradise is another. Got all that Food with Anglers + Agrarian Idyll, got to put it somewhere no? Only downside to Agrarian Idyll is neutered Orbital Rings(no Habitation Modules) and no Ecu's whatsoever(even on Relic Worlds).

As for Overtuned, Excessive Endurance Lithoids + Incubators is rather nice. 100% Habitability everywhere but Tomb Worlds at game start and Incubators mitigates the Pop Growth penalty on new colonies. If the 2 points from Gene Tailoring were available at Faction creation, I'd add Crystallization for some Pop Assembly. It's stupidly broken once you get to the mid-game and get Eternal Throne relic. Can plop all those Overtuned traits without a care in the world.

Alternatively, full blown Trade with Cybernetic Ascension is quite strong too. +75% TV is pretty bonkers. I recommend Egalitarian(Fanatic ideally) with this given that the Housing usage from their Culture Workers is nice to have for densely populated Trade Planets and to take advantage of Utopian Abundance(0.5 TV per pop).

 

[HFY]

Shattered ring is a trade build, and phototropic plants work very well with trade builds in general.

The primary ethic synergy is authoritarian. This lets you get the maximum value out of your special miners (who are basically more efficient with fewer specialists for alloy production), minimize low-habitability CG costs in your trade-build outside worlds, and afford expansion / megacorp offices.

Shattered Ring is not, despite some fanatical wishes otherwise, a Fanatic Egalitarian - Utopian Abundance build.

What are the Fan Egal / UA builds?

Personally I find Information Quarantine highly addictive.

 

[DeanTheDull]

What are the Fan Egal / UA builds?

Personally I find Information Quarantine highly addictive.

There are none. But that didn't stop a once-prolific posters from spamming the forums asking for how to make it work!

 

[LiZinckle]

Memorialist is decent while playing as a gestalt, where stability is not very easy to come by and usually will not be excessive. In that case, 15 stability (9% planetary production) at a price can still be good.

 

[Lorenerd11]

There are none. But that didn't stop a once-prolific posters from spamming the forums asking for how to make it work!

Utopia Abundance actually works really well with tall playstyles, since at some point you will have more pops than you can provide with jobs.

 

[HFY]

There are none. But that didn't stop a once-prolific posters from spamming the forums asking for how to make it work!

You're saying Egalitarian is a poorly supported civic, therefore you want to grave-dance on someone who kept asking how to make it work?

If you're right about it being poorly supported, then asking how to make it work would seem pretty normal.

 

[Beauty Nova]

I want to like idyllic bloom with broken shackles. And I used to a lot, actually.

You need a plantoid main species, which you can put budding on so said species can still grow in your cornucopia. It also eventually fixes the problem with having so many climate preferences and I think *might* expand your pool of gaia-able worlds if you roll any plantoids of different preferences.

But non-plantoids can't bloom, not even if you bio ascend and research plantoid transgenesis. Ever since they added that you're just leaving bloom potential on the table growing anything else.

 

[DeanTheDull]

You're saying Egalitarian is a poorly supported civic, therefore you want to grave-dance on someone who kept asking how to make it work?

If you're right about it being poorly supported, then asking how to make it work would seem pretty normal.

Nah, I think Egalitarian is a very well supported ethic- arguably one of the best in the game.

Rushing Utopian Abundance as early as possible in the game, however, isn't, for much the same reason that running the Egalitarian-specific edict for ethics conversion isn't great at the game start: it's a tool for a different purpose later in the game.

The mechanical value of Utopian Abundance is not in the bonuses it gives to pops as a productivity bonus to pops that are already egalitarian (such as their productivity to jobs via happiness-stability, or increased trade value, or political-power unity), but the bonuses it gives to stabilizing planets that would otherwise be unstable as you convert the pops to Egalitarian. It's a way to take an economic surplus (of CG) and convert it into macro-economic stability and ideological coherence, and it's most useful if your economy is so large that it's easier to just increase CG consumption than redevelop planets for macro-employment shifts.

This does not apply in the early game (which is to say it's not a build to approach the campaign with), because the early game is defined by the shortage of goods like CG, which are needed for important things like early-game unity, research, and colony ships. The early game also has the highest ethic coherence due to all your pops starting 'right.'

Utopian Abundance not only provides the least benefit to this context, it's actively detrimental, especially when habitability is lowest. Because CG costs scale as a % with habitability below 100, at 0-habitability a pop on UA will be consuming 2 CG- as much as the job upkeep of a researcher- even as their productivity margins are terrible. Since 0-habitability outside of ringworlds is kind of the thing of Ringworld habitability (and equivalents), UA is never going to be good early-game on various origin.

The poster who can be named if you're really curious would just ignore those mechanics no matter how many times it was pointed out, and their favorite topic to return to was fanatic egalitarian utopian abundance ringworlds... which are the *worst* origin for Egalitarian synergies like that, since Egalitarian synergies are at the specialist level, while origin's mechanical synergies are at the worker and ruler level, even as the habitability cutoff is worst for Egalitarian builds. Again, 2x CG per pop on 0-habitability worlds is bad. Really, really bad. And asking for 'how to make this better' is running into the issue of fundamental issues.




I'll step away from UA to note that Fanatic Egalitarian does have a really good living standard strategy opener, and that's Shared Burdens - Parliamentary System. After the political power-unity rework... two years ago?-, Shared Burdens became incredibly efficient unity producer. For 75% the unity-output at 40% of the cost of UA, SB-PS actually makes sense as an early-game econ opener. While SB as a living standard is 'worse' in pure-CG terms for worker jobs, the unity production makes up for it, as the stacking of high base political power + Fanatic Egalitarian faction unity + Parliamentary System unity makes every pop a de facto partial unity worker. Before the trade rebalance it was arguably the best trade build setup in the game, and it may well yet still be even after the trade nerf.

But it's still not a good synergy for certain origins- habitability costs still lose much of its advantages- and there are only so many times this can be re-stated before the snark flows.

Utopia Abundance actually works really well with tall playstyles, since at some point you will have more pops than you can provide with jobs.

Later on, sure, that's not a origin-synergy build by any means. Kinda of like saying Megastructures work really well with tall playstyles- they do, but they work well with anything. Utopian Abundance is the highest pop-efficiency living standard in the game whether you're tall or wide, and many of its effects are arguably best when wide (since wide emplies conquest, and conquest means needing to assimilate).

 

[HFY]

Nah, I think Egalitarian is a very well supported ethic- arguably one of the best in the game.

Rushing Utopian Abundance as early as possible in the game, however, isn't, for much the same reason that running the Egalitarian-specific edict for ethics conversion isn't great at the game start: it's a tool for a different purpose later in the game.

Oh, sure -- personally I use UA as more of a flex than a tool to win. It's like, when I have too many CG from something I can't reduce (or don't benefit enough by reducing) then I'll swap into UA or AP or some other high-cost lifestyle.

And it's probably worth doing earlier in some circumstances, but I'm usually too busy to notice.

The mechanical value of Utopian Abundance is not in the bonuses it gives to pops as a productivity bonus to pops that are already egalitarian (such as their productivity to jobs via happiness-stability, or increased trade value, or political-power unity), but the bonuses it gives to stabilizing planets that would otherwise be unstable as you convert the pops to Egalitarian. It's a way to take an economic surplus (of CG) and convert it into macro-economic stability and ideological coherence, and it's most useful if your economy is so large that it's easier to just increase CG consumption than redevelop planets for macro-employment shifts.

It's probably also nice when I need to reformat a lot of newly conquered planets and I don't want unemployment penalties (both to ethics attraction and stability).

Wish we had better tools to visualize how much impact these sorts of policies had.

The poster who can be named if you're really curious would just ignore those mechanics no matter how many times it was pointed out, and their favorite topic to return to was fanatic egalitarian utopian abundance ringworlds... which are the *worst* origin for Egalitarian synergies like that, since Egalitarian synergies are at the specialist level, while origin's mechanical synergies are at the worker and ruler level, even as the habitability cutoff is worst for Egalitarian builds. Again, 2x CG per pop on 0-habitability worlds is bad. Really, really bad. And asking for 'how to make this better' is running into the issue of fundamental issues.

The 0-habitability colonies are fairly new relative to the other parts of the build, so it's presumably something that used to work better and then it got broken by a designer nerf.

I'm not really fond of the double-nerf that Shattered Ring got (habitability type + "shattered" planet type + new 0-habitability blockers for other segments). I like the new Shattered Ring type itself, but losing out on expansion seems too restrictive unless I'm planning on conquering a neighbor and using them as full citizens. Which is certainly possible! But it feel too restrictive.

I'll step away from UA to note that Fanatic Egalitarian does have a really good living standard strategy opener, and that's Shared Burdens - Parliamentary System. After the political power-unity rework... two years ago?-, Shared Burdens became incredibly efficient unity producer. For 75% the unity-output at 40% of the cost, SB-PS actually makes sense as an early-game econ opener. While SB as a living standard is 'worse' in pure-CG terms for worker jobs, the unity production makes up for it, as the stacking of high base political power + Fanatic Egalitarian faction unity + Parliamentary System unity makes every pop a de facto partial unity worker. Before the trade rebalance it was arguably the best trade build setup in the game, and it may well yet still be even after the trade nerf.

Great points.

Parliamentary System is hella strong, and I bet unity rushing while alloy rushing is viable for Parliamentary System builds.

Early conquest with a big navy and Supremacy, and then turn the conquered planets into Research colonies.

I will note that Encourage Political Thought feels kinda worthless if you don't conquer.

But it's still not a good synergy for certain origins- habitability costs still lose much of its advantages- and there are only so many times this can be re-stated before the snark flows.

Did someone else bring it up? It looked like you brought it up so you could complain about people who bring it up, which is a notable pattern (and not in a good way).

 

[DeanTheDull]

Oh, sure -- personally I use UA as more of a flex than a tool to win. It's like, when I have too many CG from something I can't reduce (or don't benefit enough by reducing) then I'll swap into UA or AP or some other high-cost lifestyle.

And it's probably worth doing earlier in some circumstances, but I'm usually too busy to notice.

And this is part of why I don't consider UA a build-defining feature. Builds need to be centered around a signature tool, but UA is basically a 'when you can get around to it' device, where 'when' is usually 'mid-game' when economic surpluses are up and habitability penalties (and thus double-increase in CG costs) are down.

It's probably also nice when I need to reformat a lot of newly conquered planets and I don't want unemployment penalties (both to ethics attraction and stability).

Wish we had better tools to visualize how much impact these sorts of policies had.

UA is honestly why Egalitarian becomes a very potent war build after the initial industrial spin-up, and why some civics that offer core economic synergies tip the normal Authoritarian-Militaristic-Xenphobe setup towards an Egalitarian inclusion. It just lets you stabilize/convert so quickly.

One of the reasons that Angler-Catalytic is an Egalitarian synergy, for example, is that it basically reduces your number of workers to maximize your number of specialists for an industrial economy. Both the Anglers-to-Alloys and Miners-to-CG chains are sharpened in the specialist favor. Anglers is about the only civic that can halfway-competently run a UA econ opening, though this is where the 2-civic-limit starts to hurt because it's either Anglers+Catalytic or Anglers+Parliamentary System+UA.

Authoritarian has the war-influence economy advantage with better fleet scaling, but given how decisive the early-game expansion is, you really only need to claim/conquer one system (the homeworld) to win everything that matters.

The 0-habitability colonies are fairly new relative to the other parts of the build, so it's presumably something that used to work better and then it got broken by a designer nerf.

I'm not really fond of the double-nerf that Shattered Ring got (habitability type + "shattered" planet type + new 0-habitability blockers for other segments). I like the new Shattered Ring type itself, but losing out on expansion seems too restrictive unless I'm planning on conquering a neighbor and using them as full citizens. Which is certainly possible! But it feel too restrictive.

Feels weird to call it 'new' at this point, myself. Those habitability changes have been in place almost as long as the origin has existed.

Ultimately, it's still a good trade build, and it's a good authoritarian build, which is two distinct-enough basis of play that while it is restrictive, I consider it far better than the early OP state.

Great points.

Parliamentary System is hella strong, and I bet unity rushing while alloy rushing is viable for Parliamentary System builds.

Early conquest with a big navy and Supremacy, and then turn the conquered planets into Research colonies.

I will note that Encourage Political Thought feels kinda worthless if you don't conquer.

Parliamentary System-to-Supremacy is absolutely an opener, though I've also enjoyed Parliamentary-to-Unyielding+Catalytic/Reanimators myself. If you pace your war outbreak to the end of the second cycle or so, you can use Unyielding to either turn Reanimators into a decent unity civic earlier, or use catalytic-starbase spam to really kick up your early-game alloy potential for raw fleet size capacity, and then take Supremacy as a second tradition closer to when you should be completing contacts.

Parliamentary System can even be a useful opener outside of Egalitarian if you used it to beeline Statecraft for the early third-civic tech and then reform out of it for whatever your three-civic monty would be.

Political Thought is absolutely a conquer-edict, or a vassal-integrator, or a slave market strategy (which opens interesting Egalitarian-Xenophobe dynamics).

Did someone else bring it up? It looked like you brought it up so you could complain about people who bring it up, which is a notable pattern (and not in a good way).

You are someone else, so yes.

My only allusion to the topic at first was noting that the synergy of the origin is authoritarian, and not fanatic-egalitarian UA. This is a relevant point because if you search these forums for shattered ring builds, there's a non-trivial chance that topic stream is going to come up. Then you asked what the builds for FE-UA are, and I noted it was none despite being someone's passion in the past as a way to raise why it was brought up at all, and left it at that. Then you asked a question that both linked the previous person and misconstrued my position on UA, and so more clarification felt warranted.

 

[Dragatus]

Parliamentary System can even be a useful opener outside of Egalitarian if you used it to beeline Statecraft for the early third-civic tech and then reform out of it for whatever your three-civic monty would be.

Sounds fun. I've not played in some time now, so may be a bit dated, but...

Well, you really proved your earlier point.

Statecraft sadly no longer gives you quick access to Galactic Administration. They patched that out last November when they did the leader class consolidation. It's still a good tradition, but it's now mostly about leveling up your council.

One of the reasons that Angler-Catalytic is an Egalitarian synergy, for example, is that it basically reduces your number of workers to maximize your number of specialists for an industrial economy. Both the Anglers-to-Alloys and Miners-to-CG chains are sharpened in the specialist favor. Anglers is about the only civic that can halfway-competently run a UA econ opening, though this is where the 2-civic-limit starts to hurt because it's either Anglers+Catalytic or Anglers+Parliamentary System+UA.

The new Arc Furnace "kilostructure" added with Machine Age sharpens that ration even further. I now often get so many minerals from space mining that I don't employ any miners at all and that's without Catalytic Processing. Although it's worth noting that I play tiny galaxies with 10ish planets in my empire and I typically have a single planet taking care of all my alloy production.

It's been a bit of a buzzkill for Catalytic Processing although at least Catalytic Technicians are still more productive than Metallurgists.