Beginner's Guide to Ethics, Traits and Governments

[Peter Ebbesen]

None of the traits give you an edge to win mid or end game - none of them. Let's say I went Enduring/Industrious. Which traits would you take in place of industrious which would give you a winning edge in the mid or late game?

First, I said a setup they thought would give a winning edge, not traits alone. So traits + ethics + whatever master plan the player has.

There are certainly some happiness setups where I would argue Adaptive/Communal makes for a stronger late early game and mid-game when all your native colonies are joyful without requiring any buildings or any research.

As another example, Thrifty is - in the long term - a more effective use of tiles than Industrious due to the disparency between on-planet and off-planet mining station and energy station production, so somebody taking the long view and focusing on production might very well prefer Thrifty.

And then there are the MP players who will focus on tech without a happiness build, they'll most likely be picking tech traits to support their build for quicker access to key techs. Tech isn't king, but it is certainly a valid approach.

I think the problem here is that you're arguing yourself into a false dichotomy. Several in fact. The first, that industrious is only useful in a worst-case scennario. This isn't true.

OBJECTION, your honour.

I have not made that argument. Reread what I wrote, if needed. It was quite clear:

So it comes down to whether one wants to guard against the worst case (in which case the industrious planet-based approach is clearly superior) or the typical case (in which case the situation is much more complex).

I have made the argument that the only case where I accept it as clearly the best is in a worst case scenario; I have not denied its usefulness in general. In general I consider its usefulness compared to other approaches to depend on your circumstances and your overall game plan.

Let's say you get a fabulous start with 10 production available from mining stations in your home system. It'll still take your science ship ~6 months months (depending on how many planetary bodies you need to scan) to actually survey those worlds, and you're construction ship will take even longer to get all of those stations online. And building those stations costs production. Building 2-3 mining networks on your planet has no opportunity cost. You can queue a science ship (for exploration) at your star port, and queue a mining network on the planet with production to spare on day 1. When you get your planets surveyed, you now have more minerals with which to build mining or research stations. There's no situation where the extra minerals from 3-4 properly bonussed mining networks isn't useful in the early game. Having 40 production instead of 32 is a good thing, any way you cut it.

And I have not argued that it isn't.

There is absolutely nothing to prevent you from building one or two mining networks on your home planet without Industrious; in fact, I expect just about everybody does so if their starting science ship doesn't immediately find a mineral deposit or two. Regardless of whether you have Industrious or not, regardless of whether you have extra mineral deposits on your home planet on your home planet or not, building extra mining networks on your homeworld provides at least as good a return on investment as building a mining station so long as you have unemployed POPs and aren't lacking for energy, in which case power plants would be better. So this is something that is independent of whether you choose Industrious or not.

Let's to your fabulous start of 10 minerals we add 3 mining networks for a total of 16 base, using 5 POPs, and the benefit that Industrious provides is 15%*16 = 2.4 minerals/month or an extra mining station per 90/2.4 = 37.5 months.

So let's look at your 40 vs 32 again, shall we? Yes, 40 is better than 32, but I can't help feeling that you are probably conflating the effects of happiness and Industrious here to bring up such a huge difference in monthly income, since to get a difference of 8 minerals in production due to your Industrious trait alone requires you to be mining 8/15% ~ 53.3 base minerals on planets.

This is not going to happen on your homeworld. Even if all 16 tiles of the homeworld were mining stations, it would not happen. It will not happen when you've colonized one or two worlds. It is not going to happen anytime soon, in fact. By the time you get a difference of 8 minerals extra produced per month due to the Industrious trait, you most likely have 5 fairly well developed worlds (should be doable by 7-8 POPs per world) or a larger number of less well developed worlds. In short, by the time you get 8 extra minerals/month due to Industrious, you should have a well developed early-game empire with a great many mining stations in space, and the difference is not going to be between your empire producing 32 or 40 (as that situation is impossible), nor is it going to be the difference between 45 and 53 (the minimal case with zero mining stations), it is more likely going to be the difference between producing 90+ and whatever number you end up with

But, one might argue, what about the extra mining stations made available through the extra Industrious income? It might only be one per 37.5 months, but surely that should be counted in the 8 mineral difference? I'd argue not; Given that the player is going to develop all mining stations in the territories he controls, and the territories he controls is not limited by minerals in the early game as much as by influence for outposts and exploration, the extra income from Industrious does not in fact grant the player extra mining stations; they were going to be built anyhow and, as such, their income cannot be assigned to Industrious' benefit.

The second dichotomy is that getting early production somehow doesn't translate into a mid or late game advantage. In every 4x ever made, an early game advantage is a mid and late game advantage. If you have more production, and you get that production sooner, you will build labs sooner. You will build colony stations sooner. You will build research stations sooner. You will snowball sooner. Thats why in other 4x games (e.g. Civ) early game unique units and unique buildings are valued far higher than late game uu's and ub's. An early game advantage is a late game advantage.

Many 4X games have aspects that give early game advantages, which appear strong on the face of it but are later disparaged as noob-traps, because the very real early game advantage they provided was just too expensive in the long run - either directly because of drawbacks that didn't matter early on or because of the opportunity cost of not choosing something that just worked better in the long run.

So I'll have to reject your general notion that an early-game advantage is a late-game advantage, and advance my own view on that issue, namely that an early game advantage can be a late game advantage due to snowballing, but is is not guaranteed to be one when compared to other options - it all depends on the opportunity costs involved and that can be really hard to measure.

As for the snowballing aspect...

Take happiness builds as an example; A Fanatic Spiritualist Moral Democracy (void cloud) Enduring/Industrious build will only hit 80% happiness on your early colonies because of a lack of habitability boosters; you require 10% habitability and another 5% happiness to hit 90%, which is two separate techs researched (and a building built) to hit 90% due to lack of habitability. This is not going to happen in the early game unless you are extremely lucky with the techs you are offered. So in the very early game once you step outside your homeworld, your colonies will produce +10% food, energy, science, and +25% minerals... Whereas somebody who used the same ethics and government, and observed void clouds, together with Adaptive/Communal would hit 90% on colonies immediately, for +20% food, energy, science, and minerals. Their POPs grow faster, they need to use less tiles for power plants to support buildings, and all for the cost of -5% minerals. Considerably later on, this advantage disappears once you have researched habitability techs and gotten more sources of happiness, but one advantage of the Adaptiveness/Communal approach is that getting those techs isn't a priority; you are already good at 90% without them. On the other hand, the the Industrialist/Enduring has the benefit of long-lifed leaders, which is a mid- and late-game benefit for saving influence... On the third hand, influcence is seldom scarce in the late game... And so on and so forth.

So how does one measure the value of a slightly stronger very early game before anything is colonized vs a stronger game as soon as as colonization starts? Both of them snowball, as you say. The Industrious approach helps earlier, the Adaptive/Communal approach helps more when it kicks in, which it does as soon as you start colonizing.

The answer is, as far as I see it, that which of the two is best depends entirely on the random map generated and the possibilities it grants.

I consider the Adaptive/Communal to be the stronger in general; barring bad luck you will find minerals off-planet to exploit, and some native habitat planets to colonize, and getting those native planets up and running swifter and utilizing resources better is to my mind a better way of snowballing. You apparently disagree; so be it.

What would you even take to get an advantage in the mid game? Rapid breeder? As soon as your planets fill up, this is useless. Rapid Learner? Your scientists will hit level 3 three weeks before mine do and hit level 5 six months before I do. Congrats, enjoy that 2% edge in science for those 6 months, I guess. Thrifty? Sure, great trait for the mid-late game when I have planets full of power plants. Trouble is, the moment I actually want to leverage this, I can just gene mod it onto my energy world. Same goes for all of the science traits.

To be clear: I'm not saying other traits are bad. They aren't. There's more than one way to have a good build. I'm just pointing out that industrious gives you a production boost when you need it most, in the most critical phase of the game. That's rock solid.

I also consider it rock solid and I consider it a safe approach.

But this is perhaps where we differ the greatest: What I consider the critical phase of the game is when I am growing the first 5-10 colonies and a high percentage of those shelter-POPs are growing food establishing my presence in space, not the very early years. At this point I am rarely mineral limited but frequently energy limited in my expansion, and further limited by the time it takes POPs to grow. So anything that provides more energy or makes POPs grow faster is a godsend, making the realm snowball faster, while more minerals is merely a nice to have.

 

[CrabHelmet]

I hadn't actually considered Communal/Adaptive. I was so convinced Extremely Adaptive is useless (I still hold it is; by the time you'd be colonizing 60% planets you should have a POP that can hit 80% for them if you're warring enough), I didn't consider ordinary Adaptive. You're right that hitting 90% immediately on your first 5-10 colonies before you get Habitability techs is a huge boon, it's much better than Industrious. Are you sure on Communal, though? Say we start at 60% and we're aiming for 90%. Moral Democracy is +10%, Spiritualist is +5%, Void Cloud (which you will have for certain by your 3rd planet at the latest, they're very common) is +5%, that's +80%. To fill the gap, we can go Fanatic Spiritualist/Pacifist and drop the Individualist, but I think the additional energy credits are not worth that for the reasons you point out (early game I am more frequently constrained by energy than minerals). We can go Communal, but that gets us +5% so we're only hitting 85%. If you get Champion of the People, you're hitting 90% regardless of Communal, so it becomes redundant. You can breach the gap with Communal AND a level 3 governor, but we don't have room for Quick Learning, so you're certainly not going to have level 3 governors for all of your early planets given how slowly they level. I feel like if we're still talking Spiritualist / Individualist / Pacifist, then Adaptive / Enduring / Weak looks better to me because your Champion of the People will get more buck for your bang than going with Communal.

Unless you're considering Fanatic Spiritualist / Pacifist Moral Democracy with Communal / Adaptive / Weak? I've not tried that build at all, but I think it looks appealing.

Otherwise, I agree entirely with the rest of your post. Even if I was concerned with Minerals early-game, I'd rather take Thrifty because my mineral output is constrained by my energy output and I think everyone can agree that energy is the tightest early-game resource. That's another advantage for Individualist.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I am most definitely considering Fanatic Spiritualist, and thought I'd made that clear in the previous post; the whole 90% joyful immediately falls apart without it. It is the most obvious happiness build there is.

Heck, it is even GAGA_extrem's very first example of helpful newbie builds, though he forgot mentioning that Void Clouds would result in 90% joyfulness without the need for the Paradise domes.

It is certainly a significant opportunity cost to take Fanatic Spiritualist rather than merely Spiritualist and thus losing out on an extra ethic, but the rewards are also significant when running Adaptive/Communal. Reaching maximum productivity from happiness in colonies without having to spend resources on buildings or research and without relying on rulers with the right trait provides a huge early-game growth boost.

 

[CrabHelmet]

I'll have a toy with that build and see what I think of it. I worry that it will lack staying power; even Spiritualist / Individualist / Pacifist Moral Democracy builds can do better late-game through Individualist's rather powerful unique building and better energy credit budget. Adaptive stops being useful very quickly (as does Communal); you're blowing your load fast - that looks to be the most aggressive early-game build I've seen that I still think is viable. Still, I do like the look of it, it's good theory-craft.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

And do remember that once you do have Paradise Dome tech or other happiness boosters, you can change to another government form and maintain your 90% joyful native colonies. Whether it is worth changing government at that point or whether sticking to Moral/Irenic democracy is better considering POPs you have conquered is situational, but you have that option. (Obvious choices: Enlightened/Irenic Monarchy, Theocratic/Transcendent Republic, Plutocratic Oligarchy/Mega Corporation. Well, and Transcendent Empire, if you end up surrounded by Xenophobes who just don't get the point of happiness, I guess, allowing you to run with tranquilized xenophobic slaves while everybody else is happy. )

Another benefit is of course that it allows you to run your native race at 80% happiness on worlds one step removed from preferred habitat once you have researched 2 habitability techs, should you lack an appropriate happy alien species to use and also lack gene tailoring.

 

[CrabHelmet]

And do remember that once you do have Paradise Dome tech or other happiness boosters, you can change to another government form and maintain your 90% joyful native colonies. Whether it is worth changing government at that point or whether sticking to Moral/Irenic democracy is better considering POPs you have conquered is situational, but you have that option. (Obvious choices: Enlightened/Irenic Monarchy, Theocratic/Transcendent Republic, Plutocratic Oligarchy/Mega Corporation. Well, and Transcendent Empire, if you end up surrounded by Xenophobes who just don't get the point of happiness, I guess, allowing you to run with tranquilized xenophobic slaves while everybody else is happy. )

Of course, that's a given, but that applies to the Individualist Moral Democracy build too, which can also change government but will have a *significantly* stronger end-game thanks to the extra energy credits.

Another benefit is of course that it allows you to run your native race at 80% happiness on worlds one step removed from preferred habitat once you have researched 2 habitability techs, should you lack an appropriate happy alien species to use and also lack gene tailoring.

Again, completely irrelevant to the end-game. By the time you have: hit Paradise Domes and conquered enough POP types to cover a good three habitat types at 80%, then a pure Fanatic Spiritualist / Adaptable build essentially has no buffs; the Adaptability is pointless given your new POP variety, it has no effect, and you don't need Fanatic any more for reliable 90% Happiness. The Individualist build definitely does a little worse on the opening 5 or so planets, but it is definitely better over the majority of the game. If you're in MP and someone on the other side of the galaxy to you went with a Despotic Hegemony build, I'm not sure a Fanatic Spiritualist / Adaptable build is going to cut the mustard quite. That said, I do need to test it and you make some very good points; it's a much better opener than Industrious.

 

[Birdy123]

I'm reading up on the theorycrafting, but one thing I can't really get used to is those special buildings for a happiness build. How do guys get them to be useful when you have sectors with 100+ planets? The sectors don't build them, do they? Thanks!

 

[CrabHelmet]

I'm reading up on the theorycrafting, but one thing I can't really get used to is those special buildings for a happiness build. How do guys get them to be useful when you have sectors with 100+ planets? The sectors don't build them, do they? Thanks!

Set all sectors to "Prevent Redevelopment" (or whatever the precise name is) and just starting constructing the Happiness buildings immediately before you hand the planet over.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

First, I said a setup they thought would give a winning edge, not traits alone. So traits + ethics + whatever master plan the player has.

There are certainly some happiness setups where I would argue Adaptive/Communal makes for a stronger late early game and mid-game when all your native colonies are joyful without requiring any buildings or any research.

As another example, Thrifty is - in the long term - a more effective use of tiles than Industrious due to the disparency between on-planet and off-planet mining station and energy station production, so somebody taking the long view and focusing on production might very well prefer Thrifty.

And then there are the MP players who will focus on tech without a happiness build, they'll most likely be picking tech traits to support their build for quicker access to key techs. Tech isn't king, but it is certainly a valid approach.


OBJECTION, your honour.

I have not made that argument. Reread what I wrote, if needed. It was quite clear:

So it comes down to whether one wants to guard against the worst case (in which case the industrious planet-based approach is clearly superior) or the typical case (in which case the situation is much more complex).

I have made the argument that the only case where I accept it as clearly the best is in a worst case scenario; I have not denied its usefulness in general. In general I consider its usefulness compared to other approaches to depend on your circumstances and your overall game plan.


And I have not argued that it isn't.

There is absolutely nothing to prevent you from building one or two mining networks on your home planet without Industrious; in fact, I expect just about everybody does so if their starting science ship doesn't immediately find a mineral deposit or two. Regardless of whether you have Industrious or not, regardless of whether you have extra mineral deposits on your home planet on your home planet or not, building extra mining networks on your homeworld provides at least as good a return on investment as building a mining station so long as you have unemployed POPs and aren't lacking for energy, in which case power plants would be better. So this is something that is independent of whether you choose Industrious or not.

Let's to your fabulous start of 10 minerals we add 3 mining networks for a total of 16 base, using 5 POPs, and the benefit that Industrious provides is 15%*16 = 2.4 minerals/month or an extra mining station per 90/2.4 = 37.5 months.

So let's look at your 40 vs 32 again, shall we? Yes, 40 is better than 32, but I can't help feeling that you are probably conflating the effects of happiness and Industrious here to bring up such a huge difference in monthly income, since to get a difference of 8 minerals in production due to your Industrious trait alone requires you to be mining 8/15% ~ 53.3 base minerals on planets.

This is not going to happen on your homeworld. Even if all 16 tiles of the homeworld were mining stations, it would not happen. It will not happen when you've colonized one or two worlds. It is not going to happen anytime soon, in fact. By the time you get a difference of 8 minerals extra produced per month due to the Industrious trait, you most likely have 5 fairly well developed worlds (should be doable by 7-8 POPs per world) or a larger number of less well developed worlds. In short, by the time you get 8 extra minerals/month due to Industrious, you should have a well developed early-game empire with a great many mining stations in space, and the difference is not going to be between your empire producing 32 or 40 (as that situation is impossible), nor is it going to be the difference between 45 and 53 (the minimal case with zero mining stations), it is more likely going to be the difference between producing 90+ and whatever number you end up with

But, one might argue, what about the extra mining stations made available through the extra Industrious income? It might only be one per 37.5 months, but surely that should be counted in the 8 mineral difference? I'd argue not; Given that the player is going to develop all mining stations in the territories he controls, and the territories he controls is not limited by minerals in the early game as much as by influence for outposts and exploration, the extra income from Industrious does not in fact grant the player extra mining stations; they were going to be built anyhow and, as such, their income cannot be assigned to Industrious' benefit.


Many 4X games have aspects that give early game advantages, which appear strong on the face of it but are later disparaged as noob-traps, because the very real early game advantage they provided was just too expensive in the long run - either directly because of drawbacks that didn't matter early on or because of the opportunity cost of not choosing something that just worked better in the long run.

So I'll have to reject your general notion that an early-game advantage is a late-game advantage, and advance my own view on that issue, namely that an early game advantage can be a late game advantage due to snowballing, but is is not guaranteed to be one when compared to other options - it all depends on the opportunity costs involved and that can be really hard to measure.

As for the snowballing aspect...

Take happiness builds as an example; A Fanatic Spiritualist Moral Democracy (void cloud) Enduring/Industrious build will only hit 80% happiness on your early colonies because of a lack of habitability boosters; you require 10% habitability and another 5% happiness to hit 90%, which is two separate techs researched (and a building built) to hit 90% due to lack of habitability. This is not going to happen in the early game unless you are extremely lucky with the techs you are offered. So in the very early game once you step outside your homeworld, your colonies will produce +10% food, energy, science, and +25% minerals... Whereas somebody who used the same ethics and government, and observed void clouds, together with Adaptive/Communal would hit 90% on colonies immediately, for +20% food, energy, science, and minerals. Their POPs grow faster, they need to use less tiles for power plants to support buildings, and all for the cost of -5% minerals. Considerably later on, this advantage disappears once you have researched habitability techs and gotten more sources of happiness, but one advantage of the Adaptiveness/Communal approach is that getting those techs isn't a priority; you are already good at 90% without them. On the other hand, the the Industrialist/Enduring has the benefit of long-lifed leaders, which is a mid- and late-game benefit for saving influence... On the third hand, influcence is seldom scarce in the late game... And so on and so forth.

So how does one measure the value of a slightly stronger very early game before anything is colonized vs a stronger game as soon as as colonization starts? Both of them snowball, as you say. The Industrious approach helps earlier, the Adaptive/Communal approach helps more when it kicks in, which it does as soon as you start colonizing.

The answer is, as far as I see it, that which of the two is best depends entirely on the random map generated and the possibilities it grants.

I consider the Adaptive/Communal to be the stronger in general; barring bad luck you will find minerals off-planet to exploit, and some native habitat planets to colonize, and getting those native planets up and running swifter and utilizing resources better is to my mind a better way of snowballing. You apparently disagree; so be it.



I also consider it rock solid and I consider it a safe approach.

But this is perhaps where we differ the greatest: What I consider the critical phase of the game is when I am growing the first 5-10 colonies and a high percentage of those shelter-POPs are growing food establishing my presence in space, not the very early years. At this point I am rarely mineral limited but frequently energy limited in my expansion, and further limited by the time it takes POPs to grow. So anything that provides more energy or makes POPs grow faster is a godsend, making the realm snowball faster, while more minerals is merely a nice to have.

Isn't adaptive kind of useless though?

Consider this:
1) You generally won't be colonizing non-native type worlds in the early game because It costs additional tech, which could otherwise be spent on techs that give +influence, +border range, advanced governments, +leader pool, +leader skills, etc. You do get a slight benefit to your native type of worlds, initially, but that brings us to point 2.

2) There are two techs that give +5% habitabillity empire wide. Atmospheric filtering and Hostile Environment Adaption. Atmospheric filtering is available really, really early. Hostile environment is a mid game tech. Then add frontier clinic, an improvement which can double as a farm early on. So, +10% habitability is super easy to get early on. Build a frontier clinic instead of a single farm and your golden. By mid game with hostile environment adaption, you don't even need to do that much.

3) Generally, by the time you're colonizing different types of worlds, gene mods are available. Mid game, you have atmospheric filtering and hostile environment adaption. So, want to colonize that size 25 desert? Drop a colony ship, take 1 month or less of society research to gene mod the single colonist to desert and boom, that desert (80% habitabillity from gene mod, 10% from tech) became a Gaia for all intents and purposes.


It seems to me that if industrious is a trait that's only useful in the early game, then adaptive is a trait that's never useful at all. I'll agree that there are some builds for which communal is useful, but adaptive? Seems like it goes completely obsolete by mid game and doesn't give you much at all early on.

 

[SaintD]

Really liked this guide, I used it a lot while I was still trying to wrap my head around the game. Just helps to have something basic laid out for you so you have develop some familiarity and come up with your own quite possibly insane builds.

As for the early game debate, as someone suffering from crippling altitis who often barely ever even reaches mid-game because I suddenly start a new game after thinking, "Screw divergence! I'm starting again with MAXIMUM COLLECTIVE OPPRESSION!", or something, my thoughts on the early game are thus: If it ain't an energy bonus, it's bloody pointless for early game.

You don't get enough minerals from planets for it to make an appreciable difference to your early game. An extra 15% of f*** all is still f*** all. What you want is a realm stuffed with mining bases, and THOSE create the feedback snowball that lets you colonise early and fast enough to have enough planet tiles for your planet outputs to be worth a damn. Energy though, that usually comes in bigger numbers than minerals do on a per tile basis, so a bonus can actually start having a vaguely noticeable effect more quickly. An extra 15% of something is still something. And every single one energy you squeeze out is a minimum of two extra minerals that can be supported. Having all the minerals in the world doesn't mean squat if you don't have the energy to run it, so the bottleneck is almost always, putting aside hateful RNG shenanigans, the energy you have to support expansion, as opposed to the minerals you have to build it. If you have tons of energy and few minerals, you just need to go find some minerals to build on. Your snowball is ready to move, it just needs a place to go. If you have tons of minerals and no energy, you can't do anything. No more minerals, no colonies, no robots if that's your thing, no fleet, no frontier outposts, nothing. Nothing nothing nothing. Your snowball is a melting blob going nowhere.

When it comes to early game minerals advantage for the reroll-a-perfect-game minded, I've got four words for you: Warlike and Space Miner.

I don't know if it's working as intended, but the leader trait 'warlike' applies its 15% cost reduction to all buildable stations, not just ships. The mineral savings from that will make an utter, utter mockery of any amount of extra percentage you stack for your planetary mineral production. Space Miner is 25% off all mining stations. Seeing either of those two on your ruler at the start of the game means hundreds and hundreds of minerals, and years of time, saved. If you see both of them on your leader, it's gonna take some serious RNG bulls*** to make your game miserable.

In the absolute early game your meticulously stacked bonuses really don't amount to much, certainly not enough to get worked up about. It's actually all a luck game built on two things: Your leader and your starting position. If you're unlucky with your leader, you're immediately down by years of time and piles of minerals. Thanks, Resilient and Charismatic guy. You're utterly worthless garbage, and I get you exactly long enough that you'll die the moment I might actually want to use an edict. And we all know what a bad starting position will do to even the absolute best built species; welcome to your barren void surrounded by xenophobic fanatics, some of whom got the advanced start and one is a Fallen Empire. Try that on for size, O gloriously smart sentient being. Or GTFO and roll again, silicon 1 - meatsack 0.

By the mid game you don't even care about your meticulously stacked mineral bonuses because you'll have minerals coming out your ears regardless. Minerals are a concern only in the really early stages, and later on they're something that just sort of happen and you don't really care. Having territory just inherently means having tons of minerals. 15% extra minerals is 15% wasted when I keep headbutting the stockpile limit like an angry rhino. Energy, however, means you can have more of everything. 15% extra energy means 15% extra fleet, and if I hit the stockpile limit it's a reminder I can have MOAR OF EVERYTHING.

So I don't rate minerals as a bonus. You get lots as a sheer consequence of existing into the mid-game, which makes the bonus kinda pointless, and it's not enough to be worth it for the early game when a single leader trait suddenly makes the whole effort pointless. Hooray, I perfectly crafted the Get Lotsa Mineralians, and the entire character of my species has been rendered meaningless by the sheer might of happening to have Space Miner or Warlike at the start. The hilarious thing is that a good leader can really make your break your empire in the earliest stages......and after about the lifespan of that first leader (if you're not a democracy) they often become inconsequential and irrelevant.

EDIT: Also, that ship cost reduction from being a Military Junta also applies. 10% off all your stations and ships makes more minerals for you in the early game than any amount of planet mineral bonus stacking will. You can build your entire species into having the maximum mineral bonus possible, and it sucks because +25% to your 14 planet minerals is a joke compared to saving 10% off the 90 mineral cost of every station you build. That's not even getting started on saving 10% of your colony ships.

Stack the Military Junta with warlike and/or Space Miner and you'll not just be laughing, you'll be laughing with a species that can then use whatever traits and other ethics you damn well please instead of spending it all trying to maximise minerals.

 

[jju_57]

@SaintD you made some excellent point. In a game I quit last night I had a great home territory but whad a Xenophobe FE and another FE on my two borders. RNG ended up being unkind after all so I had to reroll. Starting position is many time more important as is you first leader or the first election choices.

But I do have one question. If the +20% boder tech pops up is that an automatic go for or are there other things more important?

 

[CrabHelmet]

Military Junta only gives a -10% reduction; you can (somewhat strangely, but there we go) get Warlike Rulers through Moral Democracy. I don't think a 10% reduction to station/ship costs is quite worth missing +20% on minerals/energy/science/convergence, even if they are restricted to POPs, so I don't think you need to go Military Junta to abuse Ship Costs.

Put it this way: a Mining Station costs 90 minerals with no modifications. Say we get x mineral income each month from planetary production alone. It takes 90/x months to reach a new station. There are two alternatives: we can use Military Junta for Military Junta, which reduces it to 81/x months, or we can use Moral Democracy for Joyful, which reduces it to 90/(1.2x) months. Moral Democracy works better; as an example, a planet that starts with 10 mineral output (the average) will get a new mining station every 8.1 months with Junta compared to every 7.5 months for Moral Democracy. Even if subsequent planets can only hit Happy, for 90/(x*1.1) months, then you're getting a new Mining Station every 8.2 months, which is only a very small increase and given your first planet dominates your output for some time, Happiness builds are still preferable to Junta.

Even if we split it, and say we have px income from planets, and (1-p)x income from Mining Stations, then a Military Junta has 81/x and a Moral Democracy has 90/(1.2px + (1-p)x). As long as p > 0.55 (that is, planetary mineral income is at least 55% of your total mineral income) then Moral Democracy outperforms Military Junta in terms of setting up Mining Stations fastest (or any other option).

The other advantage to Moral Democracy is because you change your leader much more quickly, you can get to one that has the Space Miner or Warlike traits more quickly, and there's a higher chance of getting it because there are ten candidates which is more than Oligarchies get.

 

[maxirage]

Stage I mining stations give 2 production for the cost of 1 energy. Stage I energy plants give 3 energy, which when traded to the AI is typically worth ~2.5 production. Therefore you are almost always better off building power plants and trading the energy away instead building mines. Therefore Thrifty is indeed superior to Industrious, even at the start of the game, even if you take the capital admin into account.

On that note, I find trading resources to be absolutely essential for early-game rushes. If your starting systems are poor in resources, your best strat is going to be building power stations on your homeworld and trading it away to the nearest AI.You should then ideally conquer them, which will give you a big enough of an advantage to start snowballing and win the game. Trade deals actually still keep going even if you're at war with your trading partner, so you basically steal their production and prevent them from reinforcing their fleets. This is fairly reliable even on hard difficulty, and is the best winning strategy out of all the ones I tried.

On Crabhelmet's rankings of ethics/government, I will have to disagree. The main reason is that in practice, choosing Pacifist = choosing Moral Democracy. Moral Democracy is stupidly OP and blows all other government forms out of the water. If you're making a Pacifist build, you should be going with Moral Democracy 100% of the time, as that its biggest advantage by far. Conversely, if you're not going for Moral Democracy, you may as well dump Pacifist to allow a more unrestricted playstyle. In my view, there are two Pacifist builds:

1) Pacifist / Spiritualist / Individualist (Moral Democracy)
2) Pacifist / Spiritualist / Xenophobe (Moral Democracy)

A general happiness build will always benefit most from build 1, so it's the default I go with. I use build 2 for exactly one reason: to purge xenophobe that I conquers, which build 1 cannot integrate in the early game. Also, I feel that it would be the strongest choice for an MP game. Being a xenophobe means others are less likely to conquer you, so it gives added protection on that front.

And as for non Pacifist builds, I feel the only viable one is Fanatic Collectivist / Materialist (Despotic Empire). Any other option is simply sub-optimal.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

And as for non Pacifist builds, I feel the only viable one is Fanatic Collectivist / Materialist (Despotic Empire). Any other option is simply sub-optimal.

I can't help feeling that you are confusing definitions if you consider sub-optimal to be the same as non-viable.

More generally, I'm not sure where the question of viability comes into it. Regardless of whether you play normal, hard, or insane, in singleplayer the game is not so difficult as to require min-maxing of ethics, traits, and government to win. Your starting position is much more important. So while some builds may be easier to play than others, all are viable, and saying things like one should take moral democracy 100% of the time if going pacifist is nonsense. One should of course choose the government that one will have fun playing, for whatever sense of fun one might have. Which might mean min-maxing or might not.

Now, multiplayer is another game entirely; victory comes down to either game mechanics abuse and min-maxing or diplomacy depending on which people are involved.

But frankly a discussion of multiplayer min-maxing with game mechanics abuse like taking advantage of the current materials trading centered around getting rid of 90%+ of possible combinations in order to determine the current FOTM build and declaring all others non-viable, as interesting as such a discussion is in its own right, really ought to be discussed in a separate optimization thread; It has nothing to do with a beginner's guide to traits, ethics, and governments.

 

[SaintD]

Military Junta only gives a -10% reduction; you can (somewhat strangely, but there we go) get Warlike Rulers through Moral Democracy. I don't think a 10% reduction to station/ship costs is quite worth missing +20% on minerals/energy/science/convergence, even if they are restricted to POPs, so I don't think you need to go Military Junta to abuse Ship Costs.

Put it this way: a Mining Station costs 90 minerals with no modifications. Say we get x mineral income each month from planetary production alone. It takes 90/x months to reach a new station. There are two alternatives: we can use Military Junta for Military Junta, which reduces it to 81/x months, or we can use Moral Democracy for Joyful, which reduces it to 90/(1.2x) months. Moral Democracy works better; as an example, a planet that starts with 10 mineral output (the average) will get a new mining station every 8.1 months with Junta compared to every 7.5 months for Moral Democracy. Even if subsequent planets can only hit Happy, for 90/(x*1.1) months, then you're getting a new Mining Station every 8.2 months, which is only a very small increase and given your first planet dominates your output for some time, Happiness builds are still preferable to Junta.

Moral Democracy doesn't really come into it; I'd also ascribe to the idea that getting +20% to everything from joyful is pretty much awesome at every point of the game. Even within that, however, getting thrifty for a further 15% energy poops all over getting industrious for even more minerals.

The point was more about attempting to maximise your early game mineral output.....it's a losers game because 25% of a tiny number is an even more tiny number. By comparison, reducing the cost of stations and ships by even only 10% essentially makes you a hell of a lot more minerals in the early game, way more than you'd ever actually produce planetside, because 10% of a big number is a big number.

Building your species explicitly towards mineral production is, as a result, a complete waste; you don't get the early game lift off you hope for compared to other options, and by the end of the very early game you don't need mineral production bonuses anyway. Instead you could, for example, just be a military junta with WAY more other options than stacking for minerals. Or be joyful. Or reroll until you get a warlike lunatic for a leader. Or whatever. The core conceit is that stacking for mineral production sucks at pretty much EVERY stage of the game compared to stacking practically anything else.

 

[Birdy123]

The next update will really change some builds up. Pacifism with +15% happy, and Spiritualism having -ethics divergence... so many options!

 

[SaintD]

The next update will really change some builds up. Pacifism with +15% happy, and Spiritualism having -ethics divergence... so many options!

Now I can be collectivist and fanatic spiritualist for MAXIMUM CONFORMITY!

 

[Birdy123]

Has anyone here been successful with a really aggressive 'combat' build? Fighting pretty much everyone you can come across with? Looking at Military Republic (Fanatic Militarist, Individualist) with a focus on credits (Thrifty for example). Perhaps even a little mid-game robot action, with all the credits we'll conquer.

Just not sure how underwhelming or good Fanatic Militarist and its Military governments are.

 

[maxirage]

Has anyone here been successful with a really aggressive 'combat' build? Fighting pretty much everyone you can come across with?

Yes, it's the best strategy to use in regular/hard difficulty games. Don't take Militarist, though. It's ironically very bad for aggressive strats (because it's bad at everything), and you're still better off with pacifist. Happiness builds are the best for conquest.

 

[DDRussian]

Is there an update for this guide after the changes to ethos? The initial post still has stuff for the initial versions of the ethos before the Clarke patch.