Origin synergies

[Gilten]

Void Dweller & Worker Cooperative.

No need to find systems with mining and energy deposits when you can turn trade value directly into resources.

This is my confort game when I am too tired. It is relaxing.

 

[HFY]

This is my confort game when I am too tired. It is relaxing.

If you ever want to feel incoherent rage instead of relaxation, try it with machines instead of bio-pops.

 

[TSBasilisk]

Doomsday and jump engine Civics

The buffs to mineral/energy/alloy production help offset the initial rush to build your in-system stations and the smaller population. The smaller capital population will also reduce the impact of the increasing homeworld penalties/devastation and reduce the overall expense of relocating pops.

Also, good thematic linking. The world is exploding, we need to leave now.

 

[dulahan]

I like combining Subterranean with agrarian idyll. It makes city districts almost irrelevant too.

 

[HFY]

One more fun combo:

Mechanist + Invasive Species

Make your founder species as red as possible (Weak + Deviants + 2x more one-dot negs) for +20% habitability and +20% growth.

You're forced to be a plant or fungus for Invasive Species, so it would be natural to try to squeeze in Budding, but that cuts down on your negative traits and that's the first part of where Mechanist fits in -- you use robots from day 1 instead of Budding to get maximum value from both growth slots.

The second place Mechanist comes in is that you're targeting Synth Ascension, to turn all your very numerous four-bad-trait pops into excellent Synths with a completely different trait allocation.

Because you're targeting Synth Ascension, you can feel good about accepting refugees and signing Migration Treaties with everyone. They won't be cluttering up your species tab for long, and you might get something worth growing (not assimilating) like an Overtuned Cyborg or a double-ascended Erudite Psychic or whatever.

At one point, my red traits were so bad that I was actually getting paid by the slave market to take my pops home (and assimilate them into Synths).

 

[Beauty Nova]

One more fun combo:

Mechanist + Invasive Species

Make your founder species as red as possible (Weak + Deviants + 2x more one-dot negs) for +20% habitability and +20% growth.

You're forced to be a plant or fungus for Invasive Species, so it would be natural to try to squeeze in Budding, but that cuts down on your negative traits and that's the first part of where Mechanist fits in -- you use robots from day 1 instead of Budding to get maximum value from both growth slots.

The second place Mechanist comes in is that you're targeting Synth Ascension, to turn all your very numerous four-bad-trait pops into excellent Synths with a completely different trait allocation.

Because you're targeting Synth Ascension, you can feel good about accepting refugees and signing Migration Treaties with everyone. They won't be cluttering up your species tab for long, and you might get something worth growing (not assimilating) like an Overtuned Cyborg or a double-ascended Erudite Psychic or whatever.

At one point, my red traits were so bad that I was actually getting paid by the slave market to take my pops home (and assimilate them into Synths).

I was going to say I was curious how this would work with synthetic fertility, then I realized it would just make all your poison pops die out instead of spreading like kudzu.


I do wonder if you might be able to make it work with bio ascension, though. Stack on even more negative traits, cede a habitat to a migratory flock, then genemod everyone to be good while the rest of the galaxy is infected.

Probably can't get it going fast enough, and it's not tied to any specific origin though, so beyond the scope of this thread.

Though you could do overtuned and make a subspecies day one, but you'd need to wait until your second colony before applying it. Could maybe do an invasive species syncretic species that you sell on the slave market to shackle everyone with bad pops that can't even be specialists. Or necrophage so after you sell some of your invasive species prepatents (and get a replacement) you can necro purge them all.

Or simply broken shackles so the bad pops get drowned out in your sea of pops, and I think force spawns a pre-ftl somewhere the someone will end up assimilating to help the pop bomb along. Lost colony would have a similar effect on that last point if your origin empire is a migratory flock or gets conquered.

 

[HFY]

I do wonder if you might be able to make it work with bio ascension, though. Stack on even more negative traits, cede a habitat to a migratory flock, then genemod everyone to be good while the rest of the galaxy is infected.

Yeah that's the normal, obvious path. And you easily have enough points for Budding so that's +15% growth & habitability + Budding (or Polymelic) and that's pretty great.

You go Bio and genemod most of your trash pops into Erudite + whatever else, keeping just enough to settle and spread to other empires.

It does work, and it's a reasonable way to play if you don't mind the occasional genemod project to fix your trash pops that trickle back in forever.

Lost colony would have a similar effect

Invasive Species + Lost Colony, hmm. Now that's an interesting synergy. Not sure how to apply it best.

I like Mechanist because it speeds up the slow parts (teching up to the Synth Ascension tradition unlock) and I feel like you'd get the same effect from just force-spawning an NPC with Invasive Species and a similar build (but perhaps with Budding so they use both growth slots).

Is there any case where having the exact same species matters outside being a Purifier?

 

[Dragatus]

Another combo I've tried out and liked was Necrophage + Oppressive Autocracy + Dictatorship.

The trick here is that you want to maximize the amount of residents in your empire because under OA they have even lower political power than slaves. And so you only necrophage pops on your capital and those get moved to other planets to be the rulers and enforcers (once you run out of open ruler positions). All other jobs you want to be performed by residents whose political power will be crushed by your necrophage rulers & Enforcers.

Meshes well with cybernetic ascension and Dictatorial Cybervision advanced authority that turns Enforcers into a Unity job.

Bonus points for being a rare Necrophage build where you don't want to be xenophobic, because there's no special benefit in necro purging. You're not running an empire of necrophages, you're running an empire that's ruled by a necrophage elite.

Is there any case where having the exact same species matters outside being a Purifier?

No, nothing comes to mind.

 

[HFY]

The trick here is that you want to maximize the amount of residents in your empire because under OA they have even lower political power than slaves.

Sounds great for Stability, but what about Faction Unity?

Oh and throw on Noxious for your Noxophages to really drive home how unhappy the Residents should be.

 

[Dragatus]

Faction Unity is near non-existent, that's the downside of the build. But between Police State as your 2nd or 3rd civic, Judgment Corps (Domination tradition) and Dictatorial Cybervision, you're getting a baseline 6 Unity per Enforcer and you have Enforcers everywhere. Dictatorial Cybervision also gives you +2.5% Resource Output per Enforcer, so the Enforcers boost their own Unity production.

 

[HFY]

Faction Unity is near non-existent, that's the downside of the build. But between Police State as your 2nd or 3rd civic, Judgment Corps (Domination tradition) and Dictatorial Cybervision, you're getting a baseline 6 Unity per Enforcer and you have Enforcers everywhere. Dictatorial Cybervision also gives you +2.5% Resource Output per Enforcer, so the Enforcers boost their own Unity production.

Here's a thought: Xenophile -- Noxious, Oppressive Xenophiles. You'd be like a Double-Blorg.

... oh wait, Necrophage can't even do one-dot Xenophile. Phooey.

You can do a one-dot Xenophile Oppressive Autocracy ("Welcome, new workers!") but it's not quite the same without the layer of undead upper management.

 

[LeoBack]

Prerogative hive + Innate design. You get 2 Offspring Drones at game start that gives you 20% Menial Drone Output on top of 6 pop assembly with budding. And ofc you can go invasive species for even more crazy pop growth

 

[Dragatus]

@HFY Yes, I wanted to go Xenophile only to have the game tell me I couldn't and reacted in much the same way. I ended up picking Militarist to go along with the bonus Commander you get from Oppressive Autocracy. But in retrospect it might have been more fun to be Pacifist instead and run around liberating the galaxy from the dangers of democracy and the chaos of unbridled individualism.

 

[Beauty Nova]

Is there any case where having the exact same species matters outside being a Purifier?

Only ones I can think of involve different trait setups so you can mod between them but that requires force spawning at best and doesn't even work at worst, and all the interesting ones got "fixed" ages ago.

So... probably only if you want to guarantee more of your kudzu poison pops without force spawning them. Still, could be a way to do invasive species with purifiers and have nuggets of pops everywhere you can keep.

 

[Vlad123]

One more fun combo:

Mechanist + Invasive Species

Make your founder species as red as possible (Weak + Deviants + 2x more one-dot negs) for +20% habitability and +20% growth.

You're forced to be a plant or fungus for Invasive Species, so it would be natural to try to squeeze in Budding, but that cuts down on your negative traits and that's the first part of where Mechanist fits in -- you use robots from day 1 instead of Budding to get maximum value from both growth slots.

The second place Mechanist comes in is that you're targeting Synth Ascension, to turn all your very numerous four-bad-trait pops into excellent Synths with a completely different trait allocation.

Because you're targeting Synth Ascension, you can feel good about accepting refugees and signing Migration Treaties with everyone. They won't be cluttering up your species tab for long, and you might get something worth growing (not assimilating) like an Overtuned Cyborg or a double-ascended Erudite Psychic or whatever.

At one point, my red traits were so bad that I was actually getting paid by the slave market to take my pops home (and assimilate them into Synths).

Can explain better how work the last part of growing and not assimilating and double ascension?

 

[HFY]

Can explain better how work the last part of growing and not assimilating and double ascension?

Sure, as a Synth Ascended empire you can set default rights to Assimilate and then manually set some species to Full Citizen instead of Assimilate.

You'll probably have to go through your species list to change a bunch of the ones you already have to Assimilate, so finding the few you want to keep shouldn't be much extra work.

Double Ascension happens when two empires are friendly, and both choose different Ascensions, and their pops migrate around to each other. So one of them first genemods one group of pops to Erudite, then that pop grows over in the Psionic Empire where it gets Assimilated into Psionic (and keeps Erudite). Or vice-versa, could gain Psi first then migrate and get genemodded into Psi + Erudite. Or when one such empire conquers another.

If you're very lucky, you could get a pop which started out Overtuned then got Erudite'd and finally became hooked on Psionics, or an Erudite Overtuned Cyborg, or some other trait-rich biological monstrosity.

 

[Beauty Nova]

Just to cover an obvious one: Stormchasers with Storm devotion. The unity buff to storm buildings should apply to Storm Dancers from the civic (have not had a chance to confirm, yet)

For a less obvious one: Stormchasers with Eager Explorers, Hyperspace Specialty, Hyperspace Trade, Hyperspace Synchronicity or Subspace Ephase to stack yet more sublight speed. Ephase gets the highest bonus, but Eager Explorers gets a side benefit of increased jump range from council for even more mobility, along with survey speed and anomaly chance for a faster explore phase.

Oh, also gaseous byproducts or exotic breath for day 1 access to gas on the market for the +15% sublight edict. And Supremacy for Rapid Deployment, and Militarist/Unyielding for Martial Alliance or Megacorp/Corporate Dominion/Merchant Guilds/Mercantile for Trade League since both get sublight speed (in federation space) as a level 1 perk.

Edit: Scratch the gestalt stuff, you need your leaders to be councilors to get sublight speed out of stormchasers.

 

[Sacaros]

Necrophage with Imperial government with following civics:
- Natural design (ascension paths become impossible but gives very nice buffs to production and starting trait points)
- Planetscapers (clear out all your blockers to get extra production and pop growth)

Last step is to make your prepatent species an Invasive species with 6 (yes, 6!) negative traits. This gives them flat 30% habitability and pop growth speed. Combined with fanatic xenophobe, you are looking at insane 40% pop growth from day 1 and 60% in first few years (after clearing your blockers). Production is likewise bonkers: you'll reach 80% from specialist pops within first few years, meaning over 5 alloys from each metallurgist.

This combination bakes the cake and eats it too: massive economic boost (improved even further by Necrophage getting to invade and not needing to colonize their first 2 worlds), massive pop growth filling your jobs, 70%-100% habitability almost everywhere (main species being lithoid), extremely happy citizens for good stability. Because of your headstart, you'll likely surpass every Grand admiral AI empire within 5 years and are able to snowball like crazy. When your limitations with not being able to ascend become apparent, you'll simply not care as you'll be sitting on top of horde of vassals producing all your secondary resources, with core worlds being transformed into Ecumenopolises.

Pretty fun. Can recommend

 

[jaketoms16]

Another combo I've tried out and liked was Necrophage + Oppressive Autocracy + Dictatorship.

I like this one as well. I like to make my first custom species my Battle Thrall Enforcers and only use the Necros themselves for Leadership. Other species I collect later work other jobs.

 

[Gilten]

If you ever want to feel incoherent rage instead of relaxation, try it with machines instead of bio-pops.

Politician: What do you mean you bought "bio-mass"?
Trader: Huh, well, those strawberries were at a really low price and...
Politician: But we do not eat food, you moron!
Trader: Maybe we could use it in our new Bio-Reactor then...
Politician: IT DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT!!