Stellaris trait tier list 2021
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Docile is the best Trait. Environmentalist is the best Civic. Mechanist is the best Origin. Basic Subsistence is the best Living Standard. Galactic Stock Exchange is the (second) best building. Slaves are garbage never use them. Farmers are garbage never use them. Technological Ascendancy is garbage never use it. Improved Production/Efficiency of Scale/Maximized Productivity Techs are garbage never research them. This playthrough screenshot is not minmaxed, it's a larp. Do I have your attention now? Before you read beyond this line, lets see if any of you can figure out the why for any of these, leave a comment or take a note, then come back to it and see how close you were, add that to the comment if you left one. First off some shade; I am disappointed in all the tier list creating minmaxers fumbling this point. Even when you understand and say 'with pop growth being nerfed, pop efficiency is the key' (thank you devs, finally), you still miss how you get that efficiency. All the tier lists say Docile is the worst pick in the game of any kind; trait, civic, origin, etc, Docile is supposedly the worst of all of them and needs a huge buff, while Unruly needs a nerf, this could not be more wrong. If and when the info I'm laying out in this post catches on, Docile may need a nerf. Lets get some premises defined: there are 4/5 job taxes in the game: admin cap, amenities, consumer goods, food, and crime, but crime doesnt function and should be ignored in most circumstances. Each of these steal away valuable pops to manage these taxes in your empire. Over the next few paragraphs I will show how minimizing these tax jobs so as to productively employ more of your existing population, is more powerful than increasing your production, AND increasing your population via conquering, at the same time. I've watched streamers and 'top meta builds' at this year in game and none of them hit this score. Lets ask some math questions: what happens to the relative value of each successive additive bonus as you stack them up? Well when you additively stack multipliers, the absolute value of each stays the same, but the relative value decreases. Lets show this: I'm going to get a 10% bonus to minerals. 110%, divided by 100%, will show me just how much I've increased relative to my previous income: 1.1/1=1.1, as expected. Lets add another +10%: 1.2/1.1=1.090909... it's relative value went down... Lets turn on a subsidy edict at the beginning of the game (pretend you've got no bonuses) 1.5/1=1.5, now lets turn on that same subsidy at the end of the game (after a +100% production boost) 2.5/2=1.25, the value, relative to what I had before turning it on, is half that of the same edict at the beginning of the game. This is why I laugh at traits like Intelligent and Ingenious being stuck at the top of the tier lists. What's another 10% science when you've got +200% already? 3.1/3=1.0333... That was worth 2 trait points. I won't even say it's nice in the early game when it's at its highest relative value; it's an extra 1.2 research per researcher overall, but even there, you have no research to speak of, and it takes 15 minutes in game time to get your first +20% tech... or +.8 per researcher, and there are 9 of those techs... The bonus becomes obsolete to quickly. Side note, its not good design that your agrarian race is is near equaled in food production by every other race just a few decades after start... if agrarian gave +1 food per farmer, then that bonus would grow with the additive percentage tech modifiers, and your agrarian farmers would be solidly superior all game long, your choice of trait would matter. As it is, the traits that have the most value are the ones that boost stats you cant boost casually by normal gameplay. Now back on subject. Here's where the penny drops: additive bonuses decrease in relative value as they stack up, what happens in the other direction?... Do you get it now? Each successive additive discount increases the relative value of the next. A large chunk of the value is in that last 10%, until of course you reach a 100% discount, the relative value on that one is infinite; 1/.9=1.111..., .9/.8=1.125, .8/.7=1.143..., .7/.6=1.166..., .6/.5=1.2, .5/.4=1.25, .4/.3=1.333..., .3/.2=1.5, .2/.1=2 .1/0= But how high can you stack these discounts in game? That depends on which cost you're talking about. Here's where I take a break from throwing shade at the community, and start throwing shade at the developers because they cannot claim they intended this the whole time; For pop consumer goods upkeep, -70%-85% is possible in every game, and -100%-115% is possible with a bit of luck with anomalies and events. Population sprawl is the largest chunk of your admin cap, and pop sprawl can reach -90%. Amenities are actually worth while, the math is convoluted but -40% in any game, and -50% with some luck, are the total amenities usage discounts you can get. Remember maximum benefit from amenities does not come from getting a 2:1 amenities to pops ratio, but 1:1 excess amenities to consumed amenities ratio, and the maximum production output you get at that point is 7.2%, this is the real limiting factor for amenities because no amount of math will change that. Lets get a bit more specific to show just how powerful this math is. Lets say you start Unruly because it's the 'best negative trait', normal pops have .5 sprawl, your pops have .5*1.1=.55 sprawl. Bureaucrat jobs produce 10 Admin Cap, meaning you will need one admin for every 10/(.5*1.1)=18.18 pops in your empire. By the midgame, lets assume you've got a designated admin world (+2 admin cap from bureaucrats), you've either gene edited Unruly out or you've Ascended, you've got the Harmony tradition -10% pop sprawl, and you've got the 2 +5% admin cap techs. You will now need one bureaucrat per every (12*1.1)/(.5*.9)=29.333... populations in your empire. Now lets look at a my Docile Pacifists: 10/(.5*.75)=26.666... at the start of the game. I then min-max bureaucrats till the midgame, my bureaucrat needs are now one in (12*1.2)/(.5*.35)=82.285. I need ~1/3 of the bureaucrats you need. Each bureaucrat job saved is a researcher job added, each of those new researchers get the full +100% research bonus I've acquired by this point in the game, without your +10% Intelligent Trait. You have +10% research, I have +10 researchers. How's your Intelligent/Natural Engineer pops sitting in bureaucrat jobs look now? Remember, the most valuable discount is the last one, so lets take a look at that same math, minus the Docile Trait to see just how much Docile is adding to this build: (12*1.2)/(.5*.45)=64, that last -10% Docile Trait is worth an additional 18 pops per bureaucrat, that's equal to your unmodified unruly bureaucrats entire output. I've just chunked down the largest source of sprawl in all empires, and in so doing I've avoided one of the population taxes. Build your ecumenopoli and relocate to ring worlds and you've greatly reduce the second big chunk of sprawl: districts. Thus proven: Docile (and it's synth counterpart Streamlined Protocols) is the best trait. Next I'll show how Basic Subsistence, Environmentalist, and Galactic Stock Exchange are all top tier, and why it's a crying shame you can't use Basic Subsistence on your main species; sell them away as slaves and buy foreign pops, they're better for this reason alone. Side note; slaves are awful, never use slaves. Pull up the wiki for a moment and take a look at the various living standards. Notice something stupendously overpowered? If not let me direct your attention to trade value. If the above paragraphs haven't clued you in that you should be looking for relative value, not absolute value; absolute value is less meaningful than relative value. Now do you notice it? Slaves don't make any trade value at all, and the lesser living standards have greater trade value to consumer goods upkeep ratios then the more expensive living standards. Relative Trade is better than absolute trade, especially when that absolute trade is low, because trade requires protecting and low trade can often skate by under your passive trade protection no patrolling necessary. Basic Subsistence has the best ratio across it's stratums, this is where the first true exploit comes in. -100% consumer goods upkeep is possible but this math will use the -70% which can be achieved on any run. Lets look at the Basic Subsistence Ruler (.5 upkeep, .33 trade), and Worker (.05 upkeep, .05 trade). Trade value can be converted into .5 energy and .25 consumer goods. Lets take our trade value multiplied by our trade policy, and subtract upkeep minus our discount, to find out how much our pops are actually costing us. Ruler: (.33*.25)-(.5*.3)=-.0675 Worker: (.05*.25)-(.05*.3)=-.0025 That's disgustingly cheap, but wait, there's more. Lets divide consumption by production, I'll do just the worker here, let you factor the ruler on your own, its good practice. (.05*.3)/(.05*.25)=1.2 This means the worker is consuming 120% of what it is producing in consumer goods. ...You know what's next. This means that if we can get a +20% trade value boost (child's play), workers reach net zero consumer goods. Any trade value boost above +20% and... That's right, I don't pay my pops, they pay me. A normal empire must have dedicated artisan worlds to supply its population, let alone its researchers, instead, I have more forge worlds and do not skimp on the research. Lets do that same math with only a 40% discount (the highest Ive seen other players build) and lets do the math with Academic Privilege (since other players pursue higher living standards over lower) well assume Consumer Benefits is their trade policy as well, (even though it often isnt). Ruler: (.5*.25)-(1+.6)=-.475 (1*.6)/(.5*.25)=4.8 Worker: (.2*.25)-(.25*.6)=-.1 (.25*.6)/(.2*.25)=3 As you can see, the bulk of the value is in the later discounts, your workers cost more than my rulers, and it takes impossible amounts of trade value boosts to make up the difference. The authoritarians among you (now that Ive trained you to look for relative vs absolute) may have noticed that though the absolute political power is lesser, Basic Subsistence has a similar relative power ratio of rulers to workers as the Stratified Economy, just a little bit worse. Basic Subsistence is the Egalitarian's Stratified Economy. Huh, sounds like socialism. Happiness penalties are easily offset with festivals, faction approval, amenities, and brainwashing. The Galactic Stock Exchange building provides 24 trade, a +20% trade value boost (...you know...), 10 amenities (exploitable, see next paragraph), and 2 rulers (authoritarians know the value of an extra ruler to keep the workers in line, and no other building provides 2). Thus proven: Environmentalist is the best civic, Conservationist is the (second) best trait, and Basic Subsistence is the best living standard. Galactic Stock Exchange is the (second) best building. Another job tax avoided. The rest of your trade value is converted to energy, and synths consume energy instead of food, a -45% reduction in energy upkeep is easy to obtain. You do the math to find how many pops a single technician can support when their costs are reduced and they mostly pay the rest themselves. Before you synth ascend, if youre proactive about starbases early and letting food build up, you will never need to make a farm the whole game. Farmers are so incredibly inefficient so long ad hydroponics stations exist, no one should use them. Even after you ascend, keep the stations. The ai loves food deals most of the time, its a great trading resource. Beyond that you can always sell it, and it doesnt matter how saturated the food market becomes, the game does not let the price drop below a certain threshold, and that threshold is higher than your expenses. You get 10 food, and all it cost you was 1 energy and one building slot on a station you were going to upgrade anyways, and there arent enough good station buildings to compete with hydroponics. Another one job taxes avoided. Formula assumes net zero amenities at start, as it is more often worth while to avoid negative amenities than it is to pursue positive...and its simpler math. ...Theres probably a mistake in there somewhere...yep just fixed one. To many 5am nights working on this crap. 1+100(((E-D)((1+A)+.072(1,[CD/(EB])))/(E(1+A))-1)=F A=the average production boost across all other jobs on the planet B=the amenities consumption rate of a pop after usage discount C=the total amenities produced by an entertainer after boosts D=the number of entertainers E=the total population of the planet F=the production difference of entertainer pops relative to the average job If F is a positive number, youre golden. Alternatively you can compare like this, they seem to give the same result, but I found the one before the other, so...Im using it! ((E-D)(1+A+0.072(1,[CD/(EB)])))/(E(1+A))=F Amenities math is convoluted and I've already written a lot, so just know that if an entertainer can produce enough amenities he is worth the pop at certain planet population thresholds, which vary by the percentage boosts those other jobs get. But what's more important is Megacorps can stack unending +10% amenities modifiers, on top of a -50% amenities usage (the in-game keys lie...about everything...thanks devs). Even without Megacorps, it is possible to fuel the whole planets amenities needs off just the ruler pops. That's the fourth and last job tax avoided. Sorry this section is necessarily more vague than the last few, this math is to convoluted. Let me complain math again: now, I'm dumb, real dumb. The other night it took me 15 minutes of puzzling to work out X*__=1 for one of these formulas. ... Ya I can be that dumb sometimes. But I immediately felt better when a moment later I came across the amenities/happiness formula on the wiki, and I really hope this was reverse engineered poorly, because if that's the actual formula, then I feel better about being 1/X dumb cause I'm not alone out here. Here's the formula, and here's my fix. (20%, [(X*20)/Y]/100) vs .2(1,[X/Y]) Gets the same output, but has half the steps. This was an equation that I assume was to be run every day on each planet, extra steps are what cause the game to shred processors and chug. Fix this. (unless this isn't the actual formula, as speculated above) Conclusion: Additive percentage boosts to production are cheap, plentiful, and scale poorly, while cost reductions are rare, obscure, and scale to ludicrous effect, but are ignored. (individually, -10% cg upkeep is stronger than +10% artisan output, and tier lists worship Meritocracy Civic, so Im not buying it). The greater surface area is in the square with equal length sides, not the long and narrow rectangle. A mix of production boosts and cost discounts gives the best results, but discounts are more valuable than boosts. While your normal empire has higher resource production, a large chunk of your production is devoted just to keeping the lights on. Meanwhile this alternative has upkeep and job taxes so low that nearly every population in the empire is providing net gain at nearly the same multipliers, meaning its producing less than you on paper but at the end of the day its got far more spare resources to play around with. I have not played these principles wide yet, I prefer tall, and making tall viable was half the reason I studied these numbers enough to find these exploits (and several others Im not mentioning here) but there is nothing in the game that prevents you from applying these principles to a wide empire. Now go, discuss, improve, minmax, and get the devs to nerf all of this into the ground, whatever else you can think of to do with this, Ive done my part its up to you now. Notice my math did not use the maximum possible values, only the values I could reasonably guarantee by year 100. A note of warning: some of these bonuses are mutually exclusive, for example the -90% pop sprawl is mutually exclusive with both the -70% cg upkeep, and the basic subsistence living standard, for this reason I generally get -55% to -65% pop sprawl instead. Keep that in mind, it aint all pie in the sky, but Id think half off is pie enough. Disclaimer (yes, at the end): I am a hater. I like the concept, but I hate the execution. I think vanilla was better because this patchwork of fire-and-forget dlcs are causing most of the problems, and there are great options that have been removed over the years such as drag-and-drop pops that didnt eat processors to run, and much freer ship customization. The devs need to buckle down and fix problems from dlcs the released years ago and havent thought of since, before they add their next expansion. Why is Criminal Heritage still broken? Why is Crime still broken? Why are you announcing yet another dlc when the last 5 are still broken? I have friends that like the game, and I like to play with them. I also like breaking things to learn from how they broke, and boy did I learn a lot from breaking this game. "Quit being so reasonable, I enjoy disliking [it]." - Harry Dresden, The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher You're Welcome. SneekMouse Yes Necroids are nice, but you lose that once you synth ascend, while Mechanist you keep and now it applies to everyone. Still, if you're not synth ascending, go Necroid every time and use these same principles. Robots are flipping amazing, because when you synth ascend, your robots are kept separate. When you assimilate bio pops they are converted to your main species, meaning they must have citizen rights and can't use Basic Subsistence. Robots, since they're kept separate, can still use all other rights. For this reason I will prioritize robot growth over pop growth early game, and once I've ascended I make sure all my assembly is towards robots and non towards my synth main species. Give your robots rights as soon as possible and this point is mooted there after. I've run many games without Technological Ascendancy, most of the techs you want aren't rare. Resort worlds is rare, but Synthetic Personality Matrix is normal, which one is more important? The Rare tech system is all out of wack, let alone the Dangerous tech system. Tech Beelining and rigging the techs in your pool is far more effective than adding weight to certain techs, especially when if you want to weight rare tech you can always just put a Genius in charge. I'm not fond of the tech weight system in any way, I'd prefer almost anything else, you have to rig it so hard to get anywhere with it, and every empire progresses the same, average way, it makes none of them feel special. But that's a rant for a different post. I stopped reading at paragraph 4 (I'll read the rest soon) to ask this. Will anybody make several meta AI empires and simulate screenshot the game score from observer mode in 30 year increments? For example 2230, 2260, etc. I've done this to learn how some AI Empires just fail, like Doomsday, Void Dwellers, Life-seeded, etc. I wonder how this would really fair vs some of the metas. I'd do a few runs, as there's multiple factors that influence a human player (humans get more anomalies/events/precrusor) than AI. Could even do this using StarNet, as all AI would have the same far superiorly optimized economy/research path. I would, but I don't have MegaCorp, Necroids, Nemesis, Lithoids, Plantoids, Leviatian, etc. When scrolling to the bottom, I saw the Dresden quote! My man! You'd probably like the Kate Daniels Series. EDIT: Fantastic dense post. Finished it all. Lost on a lot of maths, but I understood the basics of relative value and additive bonuses. Still would like to see it put to the test. And if it is the case that this is superior, I wouldn't be surprised in the least. Starcraft II they discovered over time new metas and strategies, same with DoTA. Always challenge the meta. Everyone learns something. Maybe Stefan Anon would do a video on this. I didn't go as far as a hundred years. To me the first 60 years are the most crucial. 100 is a nice number though. I was doing dozens of simulations and console command fast forwarding 30 years took about 10 or so minutes of computer processing time. This taught me how broken (bad) Voiddweller, Doomsday, and Life-seeded, and Shattered Ring Normal AI Empires currently are (I don't have MEs, Lithoids, or Necroids). It's good to do several simulations, because there could be random things, like Priki-ti-ki etc. I probably wouldn't do good in multiplayer, I've only played with casual friends. I never claimed skill in this post, I only claimed math. Nevertheless I say with certainty these principles would do better than the current meta in the hands of a skilled player. This isn't a strategy, a method to approach combat, this doesn't need much specialized practice, it is a new understanding of efficiency and how it is achieved. Take a look at that screenshot, see that I'm floating 4 forge worlds because I don't need a ton of consumer goods, and yet I've got 9 research worlds. Let me say that again; 9 research worlds, 4 forge worlds, 0 artisan worlds, balanced economy... Ask yourself 'would a highly skilled player like an economy that can pump out the same alloy production as their own meta economy at twice the empire size, all the while pumping out a research to population ratio of 10 to 1, while their meta build judging from recent streams of multiplayer brawls and meta build showcases, has a ratio anywhere between 4-6 to 1... Ya little unskilled me is lapping the 'meta builds', I'm pretty sure this'll catch on, and when it does, the skilled players will once again make my numbers look trash, until the devs nerf this into the ground of course. This is all rendered moot with one little question we all know the answer to; would you rather have 10% more pop output? or 10% more pops? ...I rest my case. I don´t really agree with your empire sprawl point, I have no problem with your first calculation that a single Bureaucrat can satisfy the admin use for 3 pops more, but afterwards you suddenly say: "(12*1.2)/(.5*.35)=82.285" if I see this right the 12*1,2 is the production of the Bureaucrat, no problem here. Afterwards you wrote 0,5 empire spread times 0.35 so you have a 65% discount, that is I assume 30% from fanatic pacifist + 10% from docile + 10% from governeurs + 10% from psyonic theory + 10 % from harmony traditions = 70% discount, from that i can get 30% without being an pacifist or docile. If we assume that if you don´t have any discounts in any way for your empire sprawl around 50% of your empire sprawl is generated from pops and you got 20 Bureaucrats, you need normally without discounts 10 for pops, with you build you need 3, with the standard dicount everyone has you need 7, and someone with unruly needs 8. Afterwards if you add the 10 other buraucrats you need to compensate for colonies, districts and systems the comparision is: Unruly: 18 => 105% Standard: 17 => 100% Your build: 13 => 76,5 % So in the end you only need 23,5% Bureaucrats less than everyone else, and if you build a standard empire Unruly only forces you to have a single Bureaucrat per 20 you have more, in the midgame that would be maybe two or three. Not quite 66% less as you claimed. And you have gigantic opportunity costs with not being able to wage war in any way, loosing the influence and ressource output or pop growth that autoritharian or xenophobe would give you and not being able to play a technocracy. And even if it would save you 10 bureaucrats it´s more than arguable if fanatic Materialist (with a comparably hard to stack flat research boost) combined with technocracy (reduces your need of unity workers to zero as we all know) is not still a better choice for a research build. I will give a very short response (maybe will write a longer later). Docile saves you at most 607*0.05 = 30.35 admin capacity (less if you have some robots without streamlined protocols). You are 122 points below your admincapacity. Not only docile isn't being used, but even if we make your pops triple unruly your empire will still be below admincap (and will have exactly the same outputs). Note that it's possible that while playing you were using the trait, just wanted to mention that right now (and probably several decades) you aren't. Docile lets you have three less bureaucrats (and thus have 3 more scientists). Not sure what's your output per scientist, I think you have around 300 scientists (correct me if I am wrong and feel free to substitute your number), so each scientist makes around 20 research. If you were using your docile trait (you aren't doing that currently) it would indirectly give you 60 research. If instead all your scientists were intelligent they would have generated 300*12*0.1 = 360 research. You can make this estimate be more precise, but increased precision isn't going to help cover such a massive difference. Now personally I am more of a fan of rapid breeders (last time I did cost benefit analysis it turned out to be a better trait in a pacifist single species playthrough), but even inteligent that you have so low opinion of could be responsible for 5-7 times the science yield of docile. Without going into too much detail, the basic premise of the OP is that additive bonuses have less impact, the more you have already, whereas discounts have accelerating returns. Well, yes and no. The classic case of accelerating returns is something like reduced coring cost in EU4. The reason it's so powerful is that you need to core every province you conquer, and you would like to core tons of provinces, basically as many as you can afford, because it's a blobbing game. So 50% discount can mean you literally gain land twice as fast and 75% that you gain land four times as fast. (It's not actually that simple because overextension, coalitions and truce timers will also get in the way, but there are discounts that help with several of those too, so if everything comes together you really can multiply your rate of expansion; you get the idea.) Loan interest rate was a similar deal in earlier version: as it gets lower, then assuming you have something to spend it on, you borrow more, vastly more, until at near-zero interest rate, you have practically infinite money, even if your real income is tiny. A similar logic does apply to some things in Stellaris, e.g. outpost influence cost in the early game, especially as a Pacifist (because Pacifists can't just say, "it's ok, I will conquer it later", they really need to win the opening outpost race phase of the game). The devs have wisely chosen not to put this in the game, but a discount that reduced the *cost* of techs below baseline (as opposed to research speed) would have a similar impact in Stellaris, because you always want more tech and its cost is the only barrier. To summarize, the real accelerating power of a discount isn't that you "pay less and less for the same amount of product", it's that you "buy more and more product for the same cost". Now compare with something like empire sprawl from pops in Stellaris. As OP says, it's great to get a discount to it, because it means you need fewer bureaucrats for the same population. What it does not mean, though, is that you end up with far more pops than you had before, so that the effect of the discount is multiplied. The point is that the "tax" you were paying here was not at all one of the important bottlenecks on how often you could make the purchase; the bureaucrat tax is pretty trivial compared to the hard grind and opportunity costs of either growing/assembling pops or stealing them from others. The most you can ever do with sprawl reductions is reduce the number of bureaucrats needed to 0, which is not a big deal if your bureaucrats were only a few % of the population to start with. You can apply the same reasoning to positive bonuses, too. Doubled farmer production means 50% of your farmers are freed up to do other things. You're not going to just make twice as much food, because surplus food isn't very useful (I mean you can sell it to the market, but that suffers severe diminishing returns on a large scale). As the farmer bonus gets bigger, you have fewer and fewer pops actually using the bonus. But if you got doubled researcher production, that doesn't mean you employ half as many researchers, it means you make twice as much science and therefore double your tech progress speed. So in practice the latter bonus is at least twice as good as the former. You are missing several additions. The maximum 90% reduction is indeed only possible with level 10 governors, so stack on those exp boosts, it also requires The Greater Good Resolution 4, which is crippling to most empires, as is Fanatic Pacifist, while Pacifist is more manageable. This which is why I said though the maximum is 90%, I generally get only 55%-65%, but you are correct I used the 65% for the math (the maximum I am willing to get in an average game) when I should have used the 55% (the average I am able to get by year 100, which is when I took my screenshot). The math now reads 1 bureaucrat per 52.363636... pops in my empire. I should have short changed my math to avoid this potential criticism, I will give you that much, but you yourself missed a point; this build is Fanatic Materialist Pacifist. Pacifist is the only place I can get a 5%, something your note didn't account for, I am not Fanatic Pacifist. If you would like, do your math without Pacifist at all and decide if you like it, it is one of many, and you may do without. Notice I did not put 'Fanatic Pacifist is the best Ethic.' in my opening paragraph, I was tempted to put Pacifist there, as the best single ethic point you can spend, once I found that Basic Subsistence is the poor man's Stratified Economy, and Slaves don't trade, Authoritarian has some competition. -10% harmony tradition -10% psionic theory -10% docile -15% pacifist -2% governor per level (assumed between 5 and 10) =55% to 65% -15% fanatic -10% greater good 4 =80% to 90% Technocracy is not locked off, you can play it still, I am not arguing against the power of Technocracy but I chose not to us it as I was picking options from the bottom half of tier lists to make my point sharper. Standard Pacifists can still wage ideological war, vassalize and integrate, you can use federation members to 'drag you into war', and you can bait out defensive war. I say again; the screenshot is a larp, and yet look at it's numbers, you can do better by playing serious. In that screenshot I have 32 bureaucrats on a single small world and could do with a lot fewer, they can be researchers until more admin cap is needed, I have 120 excess for my current empire size. That is not the only place I haven't minmaxed in that screenshot, I don't yet have the full -70% cg upkeep discount, and I've only begun to break amenities. This is not a minmaxed, best possible result playthrough, I spawned surrounded by opposite ethics, even 3 envoys per empire couldn't stall early war, I'm also enveloping the spiritualist fallen empire, they hate my guts too, and am neighbors to another fallen empire. My capital spawned at the furthest point possible in the galaxy, bad for megacorps since branch costs increase with distance for some reason. I also had to indoctrinate and uplift primitives to have anyone with the right ethics to federate with, so that got started way late too. This is not a pie in the sky playthrough and I am not a very skilled player, that's why I picked it for my screenshot. As I said in the first paragraph: this is not minmaxed...you can do MUCH better than I have...look at that screenshot... Here is a breakdown of my Unity, without Technocracy, which Megacorps can't get. Megacorps have the most limited civic options, and half of them are duplicates so I don't see why they've got separate lists at all, give Megacorps the same lists with some exclusives and some locked off, then I don't have to become the emperor just for access to Environmentalist... But I like Megacorp, broken as that dlc is, so megacorp I play.
Farmers are just an example; same goes for amenity producers and admin cap producers (actually even more so for the last one, because excess admin cap is totally useless). Nobody has 3 bureaucrats and 0 researchers; you don't even think about admin cap until you're ready to tech up in a serious way. Maybe it's 3 bureaucrats and 10 researchers versus 1 bureaucrat and 12 researchers, but then that's not a huge return on investment for all the discounts you'd have to stack up to actually get to -66% empire sprawl. Efficiency is the Key. As I said before; the greatest surface area is in the even sided square, not the long narrow rectangle. I've followed this principle and have a research to population ratio of 10 to 1, and I'm not neglecting other aspects of my economy. I've mentioned this a few times now but I've looked at streams and meta build showcases and found at this point in the game they've got research to population ratios around 4-6 to 1, with similar economic outputs, while owning empires twice my size. Maybe you're right about Docile, and the other tricks I outlined are more responsible for this windfall, I've made my pitch, you decide what you do with it. You're not the first to harp on my not using that admin cap, I'll point you at the 'this is a larp, you can do better', 8 of those bureaucrats could be scientists until more admin cap is needed, I could support 40+ more scientists before I'd need to make another artisan, I don't need half the technicians I employ. But even if I had half my population as scientists, and yet still had that economic output...with 0 artisan worlds...and you're still complaining..why? 177 Researchers 2 Dimensional Portal Researchers 7 Science Directors 18 Artisans 0 Industrial Worlds 0 Civilian Industries Do the math on your own example: 10 researchers *12 base output *1.1 multiplier = 132 12 researchers *12 base output *1.0 multiplier = 144 10 researchers *12 base output *3.1 multiplier = 372 Science 12 researchers *12 base output *3.0 multiplier = 432 Science Not a huge return aye? Both early and late game I win that math. 2 more researchers are worth more than 10% research unless there are a lot more than...Heck! lets do that math instead: 12/10=1.2 so which is bigger 1.1 intelligent or 1.2 docile. You have to have a lot more researchers per bureaucrat before the +10% output catches up with the +2 researchers, and you can't have more, that's the point, you're the one arguing more isn't good enough. Without modifiers you need a bureaucrat per every 20 pops, and not all 20 can be researchers because they have food, energy, goods (minerals), amenities (goods), housing (energy), etc etc needs from which the labor of other pops is required, eating into that bureaucrat's total. It's already super optimistic to get 10 researchers per bureaucrat. In that screenshot I've got 5.5 researchers per bureaucrat, (177/32=) if I better managed and didn't have excess bureaucrats that number jumps up to 7.3 per (177/24=). Yes yes that's unfair, let's compare just pop sprawl and not total sprawl: Sorry buddy but the math gets worse; I need 11.2 bureaucrats to take care of my 607 pops, and 29% of them are researchers. 177/607=.291598 the empire is ~29% researchers 160.9/14.4=11.17361 bureaucrats to care for all my populations 177/11.17361=15.84089 Just shy of 16 researchers per bureaucrat using all my efficiency tricks. Your number without those tricks will be lower than that. If we assume it's still 10 to 1, then your output becomes 10*12*3.1=372 vs 16*12*3.0=576 We have to assume it's at least 15.5*12*3.1=576.6 to compete, can you support 15.5 researchers off of 3.5 other pops? Can you support 15.5 researchers out of 12.5 other pops? Just braining it I can see you doing it with 7 pops and late game huge stacks of buffs. How much economy are you giving up to do that though? This leaves no room for forges, etc. Maybe if you can show me compelling math in your own game, without these tricks, then you might convince me, but as it stands I am thoroughly unconvinced. Wow that example is better than I thought. Same output as the early game example; 120*1.1=132 120*1.2=144 One last thing: not a huge return on investment for all the discounts you have to stack up? What stack? harmony is gotten anyways, governors should be an automatic reflex, you're already half way there. I'm saying think about getting a psionic pop in your empire somehow so psionic theory can appear and then weight for it, and then think about being pacifist (normal, not fanatic), that's almost no work at all, but since as I've shown; the relative value of discounts increase as they stack, even just ensuring psionic theory and keeping high level governors around makes a huge difference, forget about pacifist. You're arguing over one buff you can have anyways at no opportunity cost, and one buff you may skip if you don't feel it's worth it. This isn't deep. That's one of my complaints about the game. Be a skeptic. Test it. By all means. Or just wait, someone will eventually. If I'm a hack fraud they'll find artifacts in my screenshot or something, I don't know how you could prove that. I assume using cheats would disable achievements wouldn't it? Is there a way I can show achievements are still enabled in game? I can show it's ironman with the menu. Mechanist unironicly is an underrated origin tbh. Starts you out with extra pop growth. Could just be my 2.8.0 brain sneeking into 3.0 tho. |
