(Updated: 24/06/16 - 03:14)
One of the things 1.2 was intended to address was the overpowered nature of slave rushers. As competitive players already know, slaver empires have the tendency to snowball like crazy. With proper management 3-4K fleet power by 2220 is possible. Safe to say, even the tallest early game alliances can't really stand up to that.
In all the (1.1) matches I've played I've only been beaten three times by non-slaver players. Once involved my fleet attacking a bunch of nearby mining stations instead of engaging the enemy fleet, another involved me biting off more than I could chew and my enemy gifting away his planets, and the last involved an early game alliance of 4 players that spend all their minerals ganging up on me and still nearly lost in the end.
How 1.2 buffed slavers
Sadly, things are even worse in 1.2. In short, all the "nerfs" to this playstyle occur either mid-game and/or can be easily worked around. While early game has received a significant buff.
I was initially reluctant to post the most versatile slave build (Don't want to reveal trade secrets), but I figured if this isn't addressed it will just be another disaster with slavers overrunning everyone.
The lists is divided in two parts, the first explaining how slavers have been buffed and the second showing how "tall"/traditional players have been nerfed. I'd like to add that all of this is not some on-top-of-my-head theorising, but based on real observations in competitive settings. And that these observations are shared by the best competitive players we have at the moment. (See our MinMax Stellaris group)
Slaver Buffs:
"Tall" Nerfs:
Why Slave Rushing was overpowered to begin with:
1.1 exacerbated the problem even further. Even from the beginning slave rushing was the most competitive way to play.
While Asimov does contain some mechanics that make slavery require a bit more micromanagement, it's hardly a road block to the strategy it self.
1.2 Slave Build (UPDATED):
You get a powerful fleet, good early game admirals, enough influence to get both unyielding & logistic and still have enough to unlock your leaders agenda, lot's of minerals, powerful assault troops (For those who try to stall their defeat) and an almost guaranteed chance to get coilguns within the first 10 years.
Whenever you conquer a planet just resettle a primary pop and queue up very strong defense armies, in particular if the planet is full of malcontent slaves. (If the slave revolt is imminent you might want to wait a bit until you have enough troops) See "Slave revolts can be worked around" for info on how to deal with malcontent slaves later in the game. Just emancipate and re-enslave until that time. You also want to have 1 slave revolt vassal around for their fleet strength.
Make sure you use 1 corvette to explore early, and keep your other ships at port. Hire an admiral early and put him in your main fleet to further decrease maintenance. Keep cycling the leader pool until you have both an unyielding and logistic leader (you want the first before going to war, though aggressive works too if it doesn't pop up early)
Build only mineral infrastructure (mines & stations), followed by energy (including the +2 stations) until you've got positive income. Don't spend minerals on labs or stations unless you find +3 physics or engineering early. Also be prepared to focus on engineering and enable free thought if the coilgun tech pops up.
Contact everyone early and immediately rival after you've contacted them. Make sure you do the Space Amoeba project for +5% evasion early. (Especially while contacting other players so you don't waste research time later)
Start building corvettes early (~2203 at the latest) and attack early (By 2207, earlier if you have a bad start). If people stall (self purge, burn infrastructure or stack assault troops on their homeworld), just move on to the next target.
Once you have a big enough fleet hunt all the elite crystallines (appear near pulsars) to get crystalline forged armor early. If you do everything right you'll be pretty much unstoppable.
Obviously a bit more comes into play if you want to get even better at this, including fleet tactics, picking the right targets and making sure your fleet is ready to jump on the enemy homeworld the moment war is declared. But these are the basics.
Possible solutions:
Having talked with many competitive players, there are many things that could be changed to buff traditional/tall players, including:
tl;dr: Slavery was hardly nerfed in 1.2, and dare-say is even better now than it used to be compared to traditional builds. Slave rush builds leave you with more fleet power, a better economy and more influence than "tall"/traditional builds.
One of the things 1.2 was intended to address was the overpowered nature of slave rushers. As competitive players already know, slaver empires have the tendency to snowball like crazy. With proper management 3-4K fleet power by 2220 is possible. Safe to say, even the tallest early game alliances can't really stand up to that.
In all the (1.1) matches I've played I've only been beaten three times by non-slaver players. Once involved my fleet attacking a bunch of nearby mining stations instead of engaging the enemy fleet, another involved me biting off more than I could chew and my enemy gifting away his planets, and the last involved an early game alliance of 4 players that spend all their minerals ganging up on me and still nearly lost in the end.
How 1.2 buffed slavers
Sadly, things are even worse in 1.2. In short, all the "nerfs" to this playstyle occur either mid-game and/or can be easily worked around. While early game has received a significant buff.
I was initially reluctant to post the most versatile slave build (Don't want to reveal trade secrets), but I figured if this isn't addressed it will just be another disaster with slavers overrunning everyone.
The lists is divided in two parts, the first explaining how slavers have been buffed and the second showing how "tall"/traditional players have been nerfed. I'd like to add that all of this is not some on-top-of-my-head theorising, but based on real observations in competitive settings. And that these observations are shared by the best competitive players we have at the moment. (See our MinMax Stellaris group)
Slaver Buffs:
- Up to 10% weapon damage for militarists: I know that many here think that 1.1 Militarist was pretty lackluster, but I don't think many appreciated the war happiness in combination with a higher chance to the get weapon techs. The result is that not only do I end up with much more damage, but I'm also guaranteed to get coilguns within the first 10 years.
- Mass Driver buff: The slave powered corvette spam was powerful to begin with, and I think most competitive players would agree that Mass Drivers were already the best early game weapon. This buff really was unnecessary. Which brings me to the next part...
- Engagement range increase turns kinetic corvette swarms into blap fleets: It's nice that the engagement range was increased. But this just means that alpha damage is even more in favour of Mass Drivers. I'm now blapping enemy (laser) fleets before their ships even get into range. This is mostly due to ship speed not scaling with the range increase.
- Humiliation wargoal: Xenophobe slavers (the most versatile 1.1 slaver build) were already swimming in influence, but even then we did have to watch our influence now and then so we could get decent rulers during elections. Now with the extra rivalries, even higher influence gain and this wargoal a slaver ends up having enough influence for an early unyielding (lvl 2) admiral, a stack of logistic admirals for his production spaceports, a decent ruler with an early agenda and even a bunch of outposts.
"Tall" Nerfs:
- Happiness is a lot harder to acquire, and early on the bonuses are even less significant: It takes incredible effort to get 50% happiness, even if you're running a transcendent pacifist-xenophile republic full of communal pops with early Teldar. And even then the bonuses are capped early for most planets, leaving you with a measly ~18% (and lower bonus) even after dedicating your entire build to happiness. And that's under optimal conditions.
- Colonisation is even more expensive now: Early colonisation, already a poor investment compared to conquest is even worse as choice now. Depending on your starting leader and government 2 colonies and an outpost are comparable in cost to 12-16 corvettes. And that's excluding the influence cost. Which means that colonising players will not only be stuck with less corvettes, but probably also sub-par leaders.
- Influence is harder to come by for non-warmongers: See above. Alliances cost influence, colonies cost influence, agreements cost influence. Pacifist leaves you with less rivals. Where do non-warmongers get their early influence for decent rulers and admirals? Tall players are even more of a pushover because they don't have the influence for an unyielding leader before the slaver's monster fleet rushes in.
Missiles are even more useless now:With this much of an increase to range, even more damage is lost to overkill. Add to that the fact that any competitive player can usually get PD within the first 15-20 years (blueprint drops from pirate bases), and I don't see why anyone would want to go for missiles (except for RP purposes).*Opinion seems to be divided on this, and tests show different results.
- Laser are even less powerful in comparison: Lasers got buffed slightly in terms of DPS, but overall they don't compare to mass drivers. They have similar DPS, but that bonus goes out of the window the moment engagement range comes into play (See Mass Driver Buff). Alpha damage & range > Armor penetration that doesn't really matter early game anyway (And was nerfed on top of that).
- Individualist was nerfed: Individualism wasn't that powerful to begin with (No slavery makes conquest a pain), and the galactic exchange usually comes too late to really make a difference anyway.
- Pacifist was nerfed: Sure, moral democracy in combination with rapid population growth and fanatic spiritualist/Champion of the People might have seemed overpowered. But even the tallest pacifist empires collapsed before a slave rusher. It's really just become an RP ethos that won't hold up in a competitive setting.
- Spiritualist was nerfed: While this was popular pick for slavers as well, the nerf mostly hurts tall/traditional players. With happiness both nerfed and harder to come by.
Why Slave Rushing was overpowered to begin with:
1.1 exacerbated the problem even further. Even from the beginning slave rushing was the most competitive way to play.
- Colonies were already a sub-par investment compared to conquest: Think about all the infrastructure and pops a homeworld has, and how long it would take to gather and build that up using colonies. Even if you lose half a dozen early corvettes in the process the net increase in wealth is still staggering. You get extra resources, fleet capacity and free buildings that would take considerable time and minerals to build and unlock on colonies.
- 10% Research cost increase per planet affects non-rushers the most: Think about it: For all the early investment you only get a bunch of pops working mostly food tiles, and much more expensive research. Sure, the slaver gets even more of a penalty per populated world captured, but that is insignificant to the huge benefits in terms of resources and fleet capacity.
- Salvaging negates the tall research bonus: I've won matches without building a single research station or lab, and still ending up being equivalent in tech. With all the research agreements going around the materialist bonus becomes pretty insignificant. Even when tall empires do have a significant technology advantage it easily overcome by sheer numbers. The worst case I encountered involved me completely overrunning a player that had a death stack of shield tanking autocannon cruisers. Even with all his technology he was unable to stop my crystalline armored corvette swarm. Even if someone enjoys a tech advantage I simply send in my science vessels to salvage it.
- Happiness bonusses were too low to begin with: A 20% income advantage is hardly competitive when your enemy has several times the number of worlds you have.
- Slaves prevent uprisings: And even now they still do. A work around has already been found. (More on that later)
While Asimov does contain some mechanics that make slavery require a bit more micromanagement, it's hardly a road block to the strategy it self.
- Slave revolts can be worked around:
Simply move over a primary pop to the newly enslaved world, and then queue up a dozen very strong defense armies. In total this might increase the upkeep per enslaved planet by less than 2 energy, and cost a bit of minerals. Works especially well in combination with a warlike leader. This is also assuming that all your enslaved worlds are filled with malcontent slaves, which more often than not isn't the case. In the worst case scenario you can just purge the planet and populate it with fanatic collectivists. Also switch your policy early to regulated slavery.An even simpler workaround: Make sure you start with regulated slavery and try to unlock the Monument to Purity ASAP. Once the slaves and other factions become too tedious to micro, switch all policies except War Philosophy to the least offensive choices (No native interference, no resettlement, no xenopurging, no native enlightenment, free migration, peaceful/aggressive first contact depending on who you enslaved). Begin building Monuments on every slave world (that requires it). Usually this will leave them with sufficient level of net happiness, even after being conquered. This is enough to make every slave permanently docile. This is effectively 1.1 all over again, but this time with even more bonuses to rushes and nerfs to colonisation builds.
- Slaves disappearing isn't the end of the world: Sure, I might lose dozens of slaves by mid-game, But when I control half the galaxy: Does it matter? I can simply repopulate those worlds with resettled docile slaves or even my own primary pops.
- Crystalline forged armor is still the most powerful early game module: With usually a minimum of 2k fleet power by 2220 and a focus on salvaging, you'll have 500-600+ HP corvettes by the time your enemies are still using improved deflectors. The nerf hardly changes this.
- Formerly enslaved vassals are ridiculously overpowered: Just keep one of them around for the massive fleet strength. I've seen some of them build upwards of ~1500 fleet power within a decade after revolting. That's one hell of a return on your investment. Ill trade a lousy razed world for 1500 early game fleet strength anytime.
1.2 Slave Build (UPDATED):
- Species Traits: Industrious, Very Strong, Non-Adapative, Sedentary
- Ethos: Fanatic Militarist & Xenophobia, or Militarist & Fanatic Xenophobia. (I prefer the first)
- Government: Military Junta or Plutocratic Oligarchy. The first is more versatile in low resource situations, while the second benefits more from having rich starting systems. Overall I prefer the first because in the second case you're going to win anyway.
- FTL: Wormhole
You get a powerful fleet, good early game admirals, enough influence to get both unyielding & logistic and still have enough to unlock your leaders agenda, lot's of minerals, powerful assault troops (For those who try to stall their defeat) and an almost guaranteed chance to get coilguns within the first 10 years.
Make sure you use 1 corvette to explore early, and keep your other ships at port. Hire an admiral early and put him in your main fleet to further decrease maintenance. Keep cycling the leader pool until you have both an unyielding and logistic leader (you want the first before going to war, though aggressive works too if it doesn't pop up early)
Build only mineral infrastructure (mines & stations), followed by energy (including the +2 stations) until you've got positive income. Don't spend minerals on labs or stations unless you find +3 physics or engineering early. Also be prepared to focus on engineering and enable free thought if the coilgun tech pops up.
Contact everyone early and immediately rival after you've contacted them. Make sure you do the Space Amoeba project for +5% evasion early. (Especially while contacting other players so you don't waste research time later)
Start building corvettes early (~2203 at the latest) and attack early (By 2207, earlier if you have a bad start). If people stall (self purge, burn infrastructure or stack assault troops on their homeworld), just move on to the next target.
Once you have a big enough fleet hunt all the elite crystallines (appear near pulsars) to get crystalline forged armor early. If you do everything right you'll be pretty much unstoppable.
Obviously a bit more comes into play if you want to get even better at this, including fleet tactics, picking the right targets and making sure your fleet is ready to jump on the enemy homeworld the moment war is declared. But these are the basics.
Possible solutions:
Having talked with many competitive players, there are many things that could be changed to buff traditional/tall players, including:
- Buff happiness bonuses: 1% increase in income per level of happiness above 50% would be a decent buff for tall players.
- Buff starting spaceport HP: Or at least have a mechanic that gives some time for attacked players to react to their homeworld (and only spaceport early-game) being raided.
- Place a defense station on the homeplanet at start: This would both give players more time to react and allow tall/traditional players to build up a bit before being rushed. At the very least make the defense station tech almost guaranteed to appear at match start, similar to colonisation. Two hangar defense stations and the space port can stop most of the earliest rushes single-handedly.
- Buff tall build research: This includes buffing the materialist bonus (and edict), and research assistance.
- Make higher tier buildings cheaper and place them at higher tiers: Allow tall players to build much better and more efficient planets.
- Make colonisation cheaper in minerals and remove the influence cost: Colonisation right now is too expensive for the benefits it offers early game compared to its penalties. Remove the influence cost so tall players can also afford decent leaders and rulers.
- Unlock the special empire buildings such as the Galactic Exchange and Research Institute earlier, make them cheaper as well: This too would be a decent buff for tall players.
- Buff defense station health: They're a road bump atm. And a waste of resources unless you use them to augment your ship repair rate.
- Change FTL inhibitors so it affect neighbouring systems as well: This also gives tall players with static defenses more time to react.
- Make defense station research cheaper or unlock it at start: This gives another tool for a tall build to defend it self against aggressive rushers (when combined with the other)
- Remove the 10% research penalty per planet: This disproportionately affects early-game non-warmongers.
- Make higher tier ships and long-range weapon easier to unlock for tall players: Not sure how to accomplish this exactly, but a tall build can hardly overcome the numbers of a slave rusher with just tech advantage. The counter that are available arrive to late to be meaningful.
- Make higher tier ship infrastructure cheaper to build: Energy torpedo/tachyon lance destroyers are a decent counter to corvette swarms. But they come both too late and the infrastructure to build them is too expensive.
- Make malcontent slaves spawn ships before revolting: There is a thread in the index about this. This would make running a slave empire take a bit more work.
- Make planetary edicts cheaper and buff them: I don't think I ever use planetary edicts in my slave games, mostly because I don't have the research to unlock any edict except the Grand Fleet. Allow tall players to go truly tall.
- Buff special planetary buildings: They're quite expensive for what they do, and also block local tile yields.
- Decrease default amount of sectors: This primarily affects slave rushers. Who will quickly hit the cap. This would either mean having to colonise so systems can be connected or abandoning them.
tl;dr: Slavery was hardly nerfed in 1.2, and dare-say is even better now than it used to be compared to traditional builds. Slave rush builds leave you with more fleet power, a better economy and more influence than "tall"/traditional builds.
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