They most likely should wait for the next patch to come out in 2 weeks. Any update will be outdated after that patch since it's going to change ethos once again.
Beginner's Guide to Ethics, Traits and Governments
- Thread starter GAGA Extrem
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They most likely should wait for the next patch to come out in 2 weeks. Any update will be outdated after that patch since it's going to change ethos once again.
Clarke did not change the meta a whole lot. The main flaws of this guide is that it was written before a lot of mechanics, like xenophobe and ethics divergance, were well understood.
Maybe but the point is Asimov is coming out in 2 weeks so why write something for now when it will change in 2 weeks.
Beta Patch 1.2 out and I'm already confused what to go for. 
Militarist adds actual ship weapon damage now! Pacifism for extra 'trust' growth.
Annihilate the galaxy, or make everyone love me, hmmm choices, choices.
Militarist adds actual ship weapon damage now! Pacifism for extra 'trust' growth.
Annihilate the galaxy, or make everyone love me, hmmm choices, choices.
Traits got overhauled.
Very Strong and Very Adaptive both got reduced by 1 point
Nonadaptive is the first -2 trait in the game
There are new negative traits, Deviant (+15% Divergence) and Fleeting (-15 Leader Age), both worth -1
Venerable got nerfed heavily, lost 30 years and got its point cost increased by 1
Aside from the Venerable change, they are all very good... As for Venerable...
I can only wonder why they nerfed it so badly?
Very Strong and Very Adaptive both got reduced by 1 point
Nonadaptive is the first -2 trait in the game
There are new negative traits, Deviant (+15% Divergence) and Fleeting (-15 Leader Age), both worth -1
Venerable got nerfed heavily, lost 30 years and got its point cost increased by 1
Aside from the Venerable change, they are all very good... As for Venerable...
I can only wonder why they nerfed it so badly?
Some early thoughts about the Asimov patch:
1) Plutocratic Oligarchy is incredibly good. -25% mining station cost will save you more resources than anything else in the early game.
2) Due to the above, Fanatic Collectivist has been indirectly nerfed, since it can't access Plutocratic Oligarchy. And due to that, slavery builds as a whole have been nerfed (in addition to slave revolts). So slavery is notable worse.
3) Spiritualist is worthless. The only upside is the +5 happiness from Theocratic Republic, which Direct Democracy gets. Materialist >>> Spiritualist.
4) Pacifism is terrible. No more OP Moral Democracy, and the happiness doesn't make up for the restricted war policies.
5) Happiness build = xenophile build. Xenophile got massively buffed, and all other sources of happiness were nerfed.
1) Plutocratic Oligarchy is incredibly good. -25% mining station cost will save you more resources than anything else in the early game.
2) Due to the above, Fanatic Collectivist has been indirectly nerfed, since it can't access Plutocratic Oligarchy. And due to that, slavery builds as a whole have been nerfed (in addition to slave revolts). So slavery is notable worse.
3) Spiritualist is worthless. The only upside is the +5 happiness from Theocratic Republic, which Direct Democracy gets. Materialist >>> Spiritualist.
4) Pacifism is terrible. No more OP Moral Democracy, and the happiness doesn't make up for the restricted war policies.
5) Happiness build = xenophile build. Xenophile got massively buffed, and all other sources of happiness were nerfed.
Collectivists can still access Plutocratic Oligarchy. Collectivists got buffed because they can now access Share the Burden, which boosts slave/robot output even more. They also still have the strongest ethics divergence in the game. Losing access to democratic governments is still a downside, though.
Spiritualist was always kinda meh, now it is even more so. They did get their own unique building, but it is pretty terrible, only -10% ethics divergence planet-wide. I suppose Spiritualist is a good choice if you absolutly need ethics divergence but refuse to touch collectivist. Otherwise... Psionic techs for the win?
Kind of. Xenophile only works if you have multi-racial planets or Synths (assuming the patch did not change it). Pacifism also gets some pretty OP governments. For those reasons, Pacifism would probably still win out. Regular pacifists do not have restricted war policies, only fanatics do.
Well, Individualist is still nice if you don't want to enslave, but it cuts you out from Collectivist's ethics divergence bonuses. And Individualist's colony ship (if you get the tech, that is) now costs energy rather than minerals, allowing you - in principle - to no longer be mineral constrained in all your early-mid game construction.
So how about something based around rapid internal growth with a strong energy mid- and end-game...
- Fanatic Spiritualist/Individualist. Thrifty/Communal/Negatrait of choice. So your pops get -30% ethics divergence, -15% growth cost, +15% energy, +5% happiness (i.e. +2% food, minerals, energy, science, and -2% ethics divergence)
- Starting government Plutocratic Oligarchy for +5% minerals and energy, and -25% mining station cost.
- Void Clouds only provide a temporary happiness bonus now, but it is now a +10% bonus for 20 years you get when you need it most - the early game. That's 4% extra food, science, minerals, energy (and -4% ethics divergence).
- Once you've settled or conquered your first few worlds and get access to advanced government forms, switch to Transcendent Republic. You've got several nearly empty worlds and the most important thing is for their population to grow rapidly, and between Fanatic Spiritualist and Transcendent Republic, you get that. You now get -20% food need and +10% happiness to all pops instead of the mineral, energy, and mining station bonus - as well as the extra influence from once per decade mandates.
- Hyper-Entertainment forums are always worth it on planets of medium size or upwards as their +15% happiness translates directly into 6% food, science, minerals, and energy, as well as -6% ethics divergence, regardless of what the happiness is (so long as it is below the cap.)
- Spirit of Unity buildings if you really feel you need them for foreigners you've conquered or for planets so far from your home that your own race's ethics and happiness can't cover.... mostly you won't need them.
- Focus on getting colonization techs and colonize everything in tier 1-3 with your own race unless you are lucky to conquer/absorb aliens that are near your ethics; With the 3rd tier now having 40% as base the early techs will bring it to 50% habitability, which is good enough to live with (for now).
- If you get genome tailoring early, modify your own race's habitat to create a new suitable race as usual, if not, don't worry, settle everything of tier 3 or better anyway when you get the techs and await whatever adaptions you'll get once you finally get the tech.
On paper, at least, this is something that has a strong phase one dealing with the major limitations of that phase (mineral and energy shortages), and a fairly strong phase two focusing on the limitations of that phase (the slow growth of planetary populations vs. the resource and research cost of colonizing new planets), leading to an endgame with very decent happiness (+25% on all medium+ sized planets from government + building, regardless of ethics and race, throw in the edict and we are talking +40%) and very decent energy production (+5% ethics, +15% racial traits on primary race, +x% happiness, +10% Individualist galaxy-unique), while having enough ethics divergence that the empire is likely to remain solid with only minor internal problems.
How strong it would be compared to other approaches is a good question, but it looks like a rock solid build for playing insane SP to me.
Xenophile is getting hit with the nerf bat in the next beta patch; See this thread. I think it only refers to the doubledipping of genetically altered races, but we'll see.
Looks like a fun build Peter! =D
Struggling a little now at hard difficulty with a Fanatic Materialist/Xenophobe build. Wanted to make a Synth-focused, purge everyone kind of build but nobody likes me.
Struggling a little now at hard difficulty with a Fanatic Materialist/Xenophobe build. Wanted to make a Synth-focused, purge everyone kind of build but nobody likes me.
One of the major problems pointed out with Spiritualist is that the ethics divergence bonus only applies to pops that have the spiritualist ethos and conformist trait. You will have a hard time converting anyone else, and overall, this build has the following problems:
- Collectivist can get -35% empire wide ethics divergence, easy, and unlike Conformist/Spiritualist it applies to all pops.
- Individualists cannot resettle (This is what ultimately killed a individualist playthrough for me)
- Hyper Entertainment Forums are not worth it. They were already a bad investment before when every 1.5% Happiness translated to a +1% increase in production. Note that Hyper Entertainment Forums cost 6 energy in maintenance.
- Materialists also get a + Happiness democratic government, given, you lose that if you go Collectivist... but collectivist is kinda needed anyway. Maybe you can get away with going with Materialist/Pacifist/Xenophile for maximum happiness to try to offset the lack of divergence?
- Spiritualist ethics divergence bonus only applies to the pops that have it, you will not be able to convert foreign pops to your ethos very easily.
Overall, I feel that happiness builds in general are going to be quite garbage.
- You need 2.5% Happiness per 1% production vs 1.5% Happiness per 1% Production in Clarke
- Happiness sources were nerfed heavily, so getting to 100% happiness is not as easy.
My thoughts on ethics:
Collectivist - Absolutly necessary if you plan on keeping your ethics under control. The only downside is that it locks the democratic governments. You can probably try to get away with extreme happiness and mind control lasers... but mind control lasers are very late game. Also, gives you access to purge.
Individualist - Would be better if the policy restrictions were not so ugly. No resettling. Slavery is penalized in happiness (which hurts slave/robot builds). Policies are the only reason I do not recommend.
Pacifist - Decent governments, and one of the best ethos buildings in the game. (Note: The real benefit of Paradise Domes is not the +10% Happiness, but the +5% Habitability). The biggest downside is being unable to invade primitives. Also, do NOT pick fanatic pacifism, no matter how attractive that +15% Happiness at peace is.
Militarist - Meh governments. Empire bonus is alright. Building is garbage. Could still use a buffing, but is not terrible anymore.
Materialist - The unique building is one of the best in the game. The ethos bonus is not too shabby. Not worth going to fanatic for, though. Removes all happiness penalties associated with robot policies.
Xenophile/Xenophobe - N/A, more testing is needed and devs confirmed that Xenophobia mechanic is going to get changed again.
I would also add that materialist has the "Science Directorate" government as long as you don't choose fanatic individualist or fanatic collectivist. The +1 research alternatives bonus is really good early on for getting rare and otherwise good techs.
Also, Hyper Entertainment Forums are not great in the long run for most worlds, but they can help at least temporarily for worlds that you conquer or that have happiness/habitability penalties on their modifiers.
Filed a bug report over the obvious idiotic side effect of the Spiritualist's divergence being POP-centric (POPs more likely to ditch Spiritualist in non-Spiritualist realms), but this build was an attempt to build on what was there; i.e. a build based around rapid growth where most of your worlds will be populated with your own people, who will start out with your own ethics.
Absolutely, but since the question the build addressed was what to do a) with Spiritualistm, and b) with Individualism without Collectivism, that's irrelevant to a discussion of whether the build works as opposed to whether it is build is "the strongest possible". I mean, yes, one can say that "a problem with all Individualist builds is that they can't get Collectivism", but if that dissuades one from playing Individualist builds rather than trying to make Individualist builds that work, one has a very narrow focus.
An own-race world with a Hyper-Entertainment forum on it has at least +25% happiness and +40% energy production assuming you have the Galactic Stock Exchange (+5% race, +15% ethics, +10% happiness, +10% unique). To cover the 6 energy cost thus requires ~4.3 base energy, i.e. a bit more than a level 2 power plant (4) and about 72% of a level 4 power plant (6), the highest level of power plant that can be produced everywhere without restrictions. It provides a 6% boost to everything including negative energy divergence.
If one was only looking at the production bonuses, ignoring the ethics divergence and ignoring how happier POPs are less likely to join factions, then I would agree with you since the requirement for planet size to be worth more than the slots given up would be (1+72%)/6% ~ 29. (Special case exception - if the 6% increase tips the calculations enough to allow you to save one food producing building at planetary cap - something that since it depends on food deposits on planets, other sources of +food%, and the level of farms researched can't be trivially calculated but needs to be checked on an individual basis - it is worth it for production alone at size 72%/6% ~ 12 and above.)
But since this build was focused on colonizing everything in sight with your own race, I've got to disagree with you on this one.
That being said, I also find Hyper-Entertainment forums too expensive in general - it is just that for this build, they seem to fit nicely. I should probably file a bug report over this issue, suggesting that their upkeep cost be changed.
Absolutely - the most broken build demonstrated yesterday used an amusing side effect of the Xenophilia unique to give monstrous happiness buffs to aliens from both your primary race and a genetically modified variant thereof.
Guilty as charged; hence why the idea of the build is to use your primary race with your ethics for - if not quite everything - then just about everything.
Foreign POPs without the race's ethics can get a Hyper-Entertainment Forum if they are too angry to work properly otherwise and otherwise stay on their dismal worlds unless they decide to migrate. They sure aren't going to be used as colonists unless their ethics mostly align.
What do you guys think of this post on reddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/4pbvv2/happiness_buildings_are_useless/
A little worrisome to see happiness being so much less effective. Maybe my robot build isn't that bad after all, seems better than happiness builds.
A little worrisome to see happiness being so much less effective. Maybe my robot build isn't that bad after all, seems better than happiness builds.
It's absolutely right. Paradox hit Happiness faaar too hard with the nerfbat.
I think, if Paradox seriously wants to make Stellaris a reasonably balanced game suitable for competitive multiplayer, they need to let the community do the balancing rather than try it themselves. Set up an official Paradox MP tournament or league, use it to establish the top players, and former a small panel to consult. Players have the time and specialisation that Paradox can't produce from their own team when they also have to work on all the coding and the like.
I think, if Paradox seriously wants to make Stellaris a reasonably balanced game suitable for competitive multiplayer, they need to let the community do the balancing rather than try it themselves. Set up an official Paradox MP tournament or league, use it to establish the top players, and former a small panel to consult. Players have the time and specialisation that Paradox can't produce from their own team when they also have to work on all the coding and the like.
Yup, I said it a few posts ago, happiness is still good as a stat, but the days of building strats around it are gone. Happiness buildings are also dead unless they provide something else that is valuable like habitability. Even then, the usefulness is situational, Paradise Domes are worthless on planets that already have less happiness than the habitability supports, and they are probably one of the best happiness buildings in the game. Purity Monuments? Hyper entertainment forums? Parks? All garbage now.
IMO, in order for happiness buildings to return to being viable, they will have to reduce the amount of happiness needed to increase production by 1% to 1, so it scales from 0-50 instead of 0-20. That way, most happiness buildings give +10% production and the Hyper enterinment forum gives 15%. Much, much better.
Birdy is actually not that far off, I feel like there is going to be three metas going into Asimov.
Genetic Engineering/Multiracial - Put Agrarians in food, Thrify on energy, Very Strong + Industrious on minerals. Overall, it is kind of a jack of all trades, but would synergize well with other races and xenophile (for free happiness boost). Probably start with 4 negative traits for maximum genetic potential. Another interesting facet is that it does not prevent the use of either slaves or robots, since genetic engineering does not require any particular ethos.
Slaves - Base slavery + Share the burden gives you +40% food and minerals. Governor trait adds an additional +15% and there are other boosts down the line. Home species focuses on energy/research. This is probably going to be the preferential strat of rushers since it is quick and easy to start up. Downside is potential for slave revolts. Maybe requires fanatic collectivism for slave tolerance?
Robots - Slow to start, but probably the most long term potental. Synths are the only pop that can achieve over +40% in research and energy. Downside is the 33% chance of starting an endgame crisis. Requires Materialism to remove robot policy happiness penalties and possibly collectivism because Synths need to be diverged into national ethos.
Slaves/Robots are a bit mutually exclusive, because synths will start with 0 ethics and thus they will suffer from slavery penalties until they diverge into fanatic collectivism.
I think it is narrowly correct if only focusing on production and completely ignoring the importance of happiness in general in keeping an far-flung empire together without factionalism. I also think that having such a narrow focus is a significant mistake if talking about whether something is useful or not.
These are things that can to a large degree be ignored or worked around if one is Collectivist due to the ease of getting significant negative ethics divergence and the opportunity to purge, but not everybody is a Collectivist.
The only thing I'll agree to is that the Hyper Entertainment Forum should be considerably cheaper; With its current cost it appears to be mostly a trap unless you use a very special build to take advantage of it, and apart from being a trap for players, with the AI now prioritizing building unique buildings (factor 1000 to decision) that's a very bad situation to be in.
Happiness is still a good stat, yes, but you can get perfectly adiquate amounts of happiness without needing to take hefty opportunity costs. Missing from your calculation is also the fact that using a building slot on a happiness building also means you are not using a building slot on anything else, and that becomes an opportunity cost, too.