Just to let y'all know in advance - the Romulans are my favorite Star Trek race so this thread might have a hint of bias.
The Romulan mission tree seems to be very poor compared to the big two races - Federation and Klingon- or even the Cardassians.
The first three missions on the left side of the tree deal with the Romulan Sun which *spoiler alert* ends up exploding and destroying Romulus as in canon. I don't have much of an issue with that because I have been able to resettle all but one pop every game and it has had no markable impact on my economy along with the fact you can get an Empire wide +25% pop output as a result. All three of these missions are very easy to complete and thus I do not put much of a requirement on the rewards. Still though, having the Federation choose to help you ends in a signficiantly better mission reward as you get a *permanent* 25% worker output bonus and +300 mutual relations with the Federation (which is good as Romulans are not designed to be a major conquest empire.) This is very good and the resettlement cost malus isn't really that important. The alternative provides 25% Ruler and Specialist pop output but only 25 years along with no relation increase in the Federation which...is OK but not as good as Exodus as it is not a permanent bonus. Both of these missions provide at least decent rewards and thus aren't a major problem but they only represent a tiny portion of the tree.
The real, big, problem with the Romulan focus tree is that...*checks notes* everything other than the Technological Apogee mission provides either medicore to downright terrible rewards. Woo. We will begin our journey through this rather underwhelming tree by going straight down the middle of the tree.
With the shared middle portion of the tree completed we now come to a major decision in the Romulan tree where you pick between doubling down on your shadowy schemes or attemping to integrate yourself better with galactic society. Both branches are pretty bad compared to the trees of the other major races.
The left side of the split is the "More Xenophobic" branch.
The Romulan mission tree seems to be very poor compared to the big two races - Federation and Klingon- or even the Cardassians.
The first three missions on the left side of the tree deal with the Romulan Sun which *spoiler alert* ends up exploding and destroying Romulus as in canon. I don't have much of an issue with that because I have been able to resettle all but one pop every game and it has had no markable impact on my economy along with the fact you can get an Empire wide +25% pop output as a result. All three of these missions are very easy to complete and thus I do not put much of a requirement on the rewards. Still though, having the Federation choose to help you ends in a signficiantly better mission reward as you get a *permanent* 25% worker output bonus and +300 mutual relations with the Federation (which is good as Romulans are not designed to be a major conquest empire.) This is very good and the resettlement cost malus isn't really that important. The alternative provides 25% Ruler and Specialist pop output but only 25 years along with no relation increase in the Federation which...is OK but not as good as Exodus as it is not a permanent bonus. Both of these missions provide at least decent rewards and thus aren't a major problem but they only represent a tiny portion of the tree.
The real, big, problem with the Romulan focus tree is that...*checks notes* everything other than the Technological Apogee mission provides either medicore to downright terrible rewards. Woo. We will begin our journey through this rather underwhelming tree by going straight down the middle of the tree.
Shadow Politics is a rather poor start to a tree compared to the Federation, Klingon, and Cardassian trees. The mission requires that you have closed borders with 5 empires. You start out with 3, can get a 4th when your peace treaty runs out with the Federation, and need to find a minor power for the 5th which can be easily accomplished by zooming to find Betazed in the south. Regardless, the "Pathfinder" modifier you get as a reward is wholly mediocre at just +5% Society research speed when society is arguably the least important of the three tech categories.
Omniscient is a relatively easy mission to accomplish which provides a decent edict and a mediocre modifier. The Black Ops modifier only gives +5 unity production for bases of operation built in the capital. That automatically limits you to a max of 55 unity from this modifer as you can *at max* build 11 Bases Of Operation on a capital planet. The bonus to home territory fire rate is great for a defensive playthrough and the -5% unity generation is, IMO, not a problem. Starbase cost reduction is not very useful.
The "Tal Shiar" mission is decent. +1 to Spies Starting Level is decent if you lose your spies a lot and plan on doing a lot of spy operations but not great either. Thematically it makes sense that the Tal Shiar are the last mission before a major split in the mision treet.
With the shared middle portion of the tree completed we now come to a major decision in the Romulan tree where you pick between doubling down on your shadowy schemes or attemping to integrate yourself better with galactic society. Both branches are pretty bad compared to the trees of the other major races.
The left side of the split is the "More Xenophobic" branch.
"Web of Spies" is the first mission in this branch and...is a mixed bag. It replaces the "Closet Politics" civic with the "Born to Spy" civic. The main problem here is that "Closest Politics" is an altogether decent civic that I would rather not lose as it provides +1 Additional Edicts and +0.25 monthly influence. It isn't the greatest civic in the world but some edicts are very powerful and the ability to have more is an excellent bonus. The monthly influence bonus is rather small and not really something the Romulans need given that they have a district that generates influence. "Born to Spy" is an alright civic that provides +1 Spy Cap, Spy Mission Speed, and Spy Mission success chance. The Spy Cap is arguably the best as it allows you to conduct more missions simultaneously or, perhaps most important, juggle your Puppet States without having to shuffle Spy Vessels around.
"Peerless" is an interesting mission that ties into the assimilation of minor powers but requires you to have assimilated 3 minor powers already. Military Excellence provides 100 influence whenever you assimilate a minor power along with slighly faster puppet conversion speed. The main issue here, is that puppet states are very good for repeat collecting some resources and integrating them loses access to these reccuring resources and, more importantly, ends up adding 40+ crime generating pops with an innate -30% resource output to your Empire.
Finally "Reclaiming Vulcan" is, sadly, a mediocre ending for a mission tree. It first requires you to own Vulcan (thus war with the Federation) and gives you very little in terms of actual rewards. +0.03 influence per Vulcan pop is the entirety of the reward for this mission. Firstly, it is very unlikely you will have more than 100 Vulcan pops - 100 vulcan pops would produce 3 influence. Effectively, this would amount to around 1.5 influence. This is not exactly terrible, as influence is a very rare and precious resource but...Romulans also have access to a special district (civil forums) which provide several useful jobs include researchers and supervisors. One of these jobs, praetorian guards, happen to provide 0.05 unity each. Just 10 Civil Forums will provide 10 Researchers and Supervisors along with 0.5 influence, 10 defense armies, and officers. This is arguably a better reward than the mirror bonus on the opposite branch however.
The right side of the split is the, supposedly, less Xenophobic branch.
"Paradigm Shift" requires you to have neutral relations with at least 5 Empires AND 20 Non-Romulan Pops in your Empire. In return, city districts cost an additional 1 energy upkeep whilst Praetorian Guards now give +1 Unity. This alone is not that great as Praetorian Guards will not be numerous enough to make the unity bonus noticeable whilst city districts costing a whole extra energy in upkeep will be noticeable in the early and mid game as city districts are often very plentiful in addition to the fact you are incentivized to build additional city districts with the next mission. The second bonus replaces the "State Vigilcance" civic which gives new pops a 15% chance for pops to appear aligned with the Empire principle with "In Rihannsu we trust" which gives a chance for pops to appear aligned with their principle instead of appearing unaligned for every successful counter espionage +5% to a max of +15%. Not really a bonus there.
"Technological Apogee" is the one mission in the Romulan Tree which I can fully stand behind being comparable to other races. The requirements are to sign 5 Research Agreements with other Empires and have 100 techs unlocked in order to recieve: Precision Industries Edict and the Technological Advantage modifier which gives a +5% flat research speed bonus, +2 research from researchers and +10% science ship speed. The Research Bonuses are very much useful to have combined with the Romulans ability to designate worlds as Tech Worlds, and the fact Civil Forums give researcher jobs. Sadly, this does mean more city districts to unlock building slots which, as mentioned previously, now have an extra +1 to their energy upkeep each. Precision Industries is not very useful. 10% production bonuses for things you dont really need bonuses for in exchange for slowing down ship construction by 15%. Would be quicker and easier to just build an additional building to generate what you need more of.
"Unification" is a worse version of reclaiming Vulcan. Requires you to have 30 Vulcan pops AND to have said Vulcan pops have Spartan Living Conditions (a very bad living condition that decreases output) AND to NOT own Vulcan all in exchange for +0.20% Vulcan Species unity output. This is absolutely horrid. Your not going to have many Vulcan pops as you rely on initial migration to get your first Vulcan pops combined with -5%, -10% -20% output for workers/specialists/rulers from the Spartan Living standard. Yes, you can eventually change off of Spartan Living conditions but as is, this mission is an absolutely terrible combination of difficulty and terrible rewards.
To top off all of this, going down the less xenophobic path does not allow you to change the living standards for non Romulan/Vulcan pops. They are stuck as slaves that are forced to work mostly worker jobs and a select few specialist jobs, along with a flat -30% less resource output.
The final branch of the tree consists of two missions that, again, do not offer a whole lot. "Event Horizons" is literally impossible to miss. If you build a planetary singularity core on every planet like you should then it's a free mission. The rewards match the difficulty in that they give -10% ship upkeep and 10% faster ship build speed. The "Sharpest Minds Edict" is not particularly great either - more expensive leaders in exchange for leader XP Gain and +1 to the leader pool size. XP gain is signifcantly less useful when you consider that Romulan Leaders have longer lifespans that permit them more time to level throughout the game.
Majestus is pretty poor. Requires you to build 10 Majestus class ships (Romulan Titan) and in return, you get +20% Ship officer boarding speed which increases the rate at which officers replenish, and +20 Fleet Command Limit. Neither of these boni are very good. Ship Replenishment speed already happens fairly rapidly, and Fleet Command limit can be increased through repeatables or ignored by constructing additional fleets. I assume this reward is poor because of the fact you are (eventually) going to construct 10 Majestus regardless.
In summary, the Romulan mission tree is very dissapointing. The rewards are lackluster no matter which path you go down compared to other races whilst the "Less Xenophobic" branch of the mission tree (literally called that as an achievement) is *very* dissapointing in that your civilization is just as xenophobic towards aliens as before. The Cardassian tree ALONE offers more interesting alternative options whilst the missions also provide more meaningful rewards. The Romulan tree just feels...weak and undercooked compared to the other three races. The *most impactful* bonus you can get as the Romulans is the exodus modifier if the Federation choses to assist you, and the +20% pop output bonus from choosing to honor Romulus after it explodes.
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