Calamitous Birth Origin - easy new 4 pop colonies

[aroddo]

Do the following:

• Adopt Domination for -33% Clear Blocker Cost
• Pass edict Volatile Land Clearance for -25% Clear Blocker Cost and Time
• Hire governour with Environmental Engineer for -25% Clear Blocker Cost and Time
• Adopt Colonization Fever for +1 pop on new colonies
• Colonize planets with a Lithoid Meteorie ship.

This can easily be done early in the game if your race has the Volatile Excretions trait. Increased mining is also very helpful. You can pay the blocker costs easily.

All this together reduces the Unbury Lithoid cost down to 167 minerals.
And the best part: You can clear the blockers while the colony is still setting up. Which means, that the moment your new colony is established, it already has 4 pops right from the get go.

You can get some impressive pop growth with that, especially when considering that you are a lithoid.

 

[Zagreb 887]

This exploit is known from a while, and as usual, it never had been addressed.

 

[HFY]

It's a great tacctic, but is it really an exploit?

You can get the number up by another +1 with something like that precursor Relic, but IIRC even with all that your growth is slower than what a regular race would be able to do through resettling.

 

[Ussnorway]

Agree it is not a big, just a option for people to try

 

[Dustman]

...and you resettle all pops back onto one of your worlds, and colonize again. Depending on shipbuilding and colonization speed, could actually be quite a bonus early on.

But all of this requires several traditions, an edict and a governor, plus possible resettlement costs. All in all, not that cheap and definitely not OP.

 

[aroddo]

It's a great tacctic, but is it really an exploit?

You can get the number up by another +1 with something like that precursor Relic, but IIRC even with all that your growth is slower than what a regular race would be able to do through resettling.

Well, we are talking about the very very early game here. like the first 10 years. So no relics.

- At about 22 months : Adapt Domination
- Immediately hire an Environmental Engineer (200 energy) and make him governor
- Sell alloys and consumer goods and buy 30 Volatile Motes (~400 energy)
- Enact Volatile Land Clearance edict for 34 Volatile Motes
- Now you can first clear out the sprawling slums for 51 energy in 60 days

You can do all this and still be able to afford at least 1 meteorite colony ship, as well as 2 science ships and 1-2 outposts.

- Clear out the other 4 buried lithoids for 167 minerals and 180 days each. build mining districts inbetween for jobs.
- At about 45 months, adapt Expansion
- At about 75 months, adapt Colonization Fever

At about 7 years, you should have unburied all your starting lithoid pop blockers, moved the pops from at least 1 breeding crater to your homeworld and settled at least one permanent colony.

From that point onward, you can use 2 planets as breeding craters to boost the regular colonies.
I'm pretty sure you can improve that if you use a hive mind, because no commodities.

I started a new game to test this out and I got this after 7 years:
That's 12 pop growth in the first 7 years.

Ok, late game, you don't want to bother with all the micromanagement.
And the pops you get from recratering are 50% specialists, so expect lots of unemployment.

It certainly is interesting but I haven't directly compared it with other builds yet.

 

[Dustman]

Prosperous Unification meatbags with few points in Colonization will have similar pop numbers no problem. Plus their colonized planets will be nicer. Machines and Hives can get even higher. Megacorps with Private Prospectors can pump colony ships for just credits, allowing for similar early planet (ab)use. Again, nothing new, nothing OP. On another hand, Ringworld or Void Dwellers is where real OP found, not even mentioning FE overlords.

I normally pick Lithoids for xenophobic conquests. Their +50% habitability is godsend to fill in all these high tier jobs. Growth wise they simply can't compete with others.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Sounds like an interesting idea that finally makes one of the worst origins interesting. I would hardly rate it as OP since you need to invest quite a lot into making this work.

 

[HFY]

Well, we are talking about the very very early game here. like the first 10 years. So no relics.

Alright, yeah, that does sound like more than I'd thought. I think you're right that the investment gives more return than intended, at least very early.

But does that early advantage snowball sufficiently to overcompensate for the Lithoid pop-growth malus?

And at least to me that sounds like a significant early investment, especially the luck-based portions like the leader traits, unless you're fixed on re-rolling until you get those (in which case it's even MORE of an investment, since my time as a player is worth way more than anything in-game).

Sounds like an interesting idea that finally makes one of the worst origins interesting. I would hardly rate it as OP since you need to invest quite a lot into making this work.

Yeah it does seem like a large investment and in the end you're not grossly exceeding biological growth, let alone Mechanist early growth.

 

[Zagreb 887]

Prosperous Unification meatbags with few points in Colonization will have similar pop numbers no problem. Plus their colonized planets will be nicer. Machines and Hives can get even higher. Megacorps with Private Prospectors can pump colony ships for just credits, allowing for similar early planet (ab)use. Again, nothing new, nothing OP. On another hand, Ringworld or Void Dwellers is where real OP found, not even mentioning FE overlords.

I normally pick Lithoids for xenophobic conquests. Their +50% habitability is godsend to fill in all these high tier jobs. Growth wise they simply can't compete with others.

Lithoud are very good as slaves with Syncretic evolution. I play this a fan authoritarian/xénophobe, going the gene ascension path. You have good workers, soldiers and livestock for minerals.

If you manage to get the Nu baol precursor, you can skip agri district for the rest of the game!

 

[SaintD]

Summarizing a well-known exploit that could have just been a link to SpiffingBrit's video, and not even mentioning any of those facts.

Classy.

 

[aroddo]

Summarizing a well-known exploit that could have just been a link to SpiffingBrit's video, and not even mentioning any of those facts.

Classy.

your whole post just screams class ...
you disappointed the queen.

 

[Franton]

Hardly an exploit considering the investments, the disadvantges, and the long term effects:
1. Adopting a treadition without completing it raises the overall cost of traditions by a notable amount
2. You cannot get volatile motes anywhere that early without investing in a 2 point pop trait. And you won't ever by able to get rid of it unless you pick genetic ascension later, or go synthetic (which may not be the worst of ideas with lots of craterized planet).
3. It's far from certain you can get a governer with the right trait to reduce blocker cost early. In my current game I got my first one about 60 years into the game!
4. The Meteorite ship adds a -50% habitability penalty to all races on that planet - unless you intend to never fully colonize it, that's a steep price to pay. You can of course work around it by researching robots early and create jobs that are unaffected by habitability (e. g. admin buildings), but at the very least your growth will be reduced, and that's rather harsh on a race that already has a built-in penalty!
5. The resettling cost is not neglible, especially in the early game, and even more so for specialists

Personally I don't think you should invest so heavily, and instead use meteorite ships only for planets that you wouldn't otherwise colonize at all: hit those with a meteorite, unbury all buried, resettle them all when you're done, then hit it with another meteorite ship and repeat. Much later, you may colonize them normally with robots and let them handle all the jobs: with +200% habitability base they'll still be at +100% in spite of two craters. Alternately, just keep those planets at 5 pops (to unlock a slot for a robot assembly) and use them as breeding grounds; later pick up the World Shaper ascension perk and turn them into Gaias.

As for specialist resettling, you can avoid that and decrease resettling cost with the Slaver Guilds civic: with 2+ pops there will always be at least one enslaved, which you can resettle at half cost (even when working as a specialilst!). The remaining pops will reassign slave roles to ensure there are about 40% enslaved on that planet. Only the last pop needs to be moved at full cost.

 

[Pancakelord]

Well, we are talking about the very very early game here. like the first 10 years. So no relics.

- At about 22 months : Adapt Domination
- Immediately hire an Environmental Engineer (200 energy) and make him governor
- Sell alloys and consumer goods and buy 30 Volatile Motes (~400 energy)
- Enact Volatile Land Clearance edict for 34 Volatile Motes
- Now you can first clear out the sprawling slums for 51 energy in 60 days

You can do all this and still be able to afford at least 1 meteorite colony ship, as well as 2 science ships and 1-2 outposts.

- Clear out the other 4 buried lithoids for 167 minerals and 180 days each. build mining districts inbetween for jobs.
- At about 45 months, adapt Expansion
- At about 75 months, adapt Colonization Fever

At about 7 years, you should have unburied all your starting lithoid pop blockers, moved the pops from at least 1 breeding crater to your homeworld and settled at least one permanent colony.

From that point onward, you can use 2 planets as breeding craters to boost the regular colonies.
I'm pretty sure you can improve that if you use a hive mind, because no commodities.

I started a new game to test this out and I got this after 7 years:
That's 12 pop growth in the first 7 years.

View attachment 631846
View attachment 631849

View attachment 631847



Ok, late game, you don't want to bother with all the micromanagement.
And the pops you get from recratering are 50% specialists, so expect lots of unemployment.

It certainly is interesting but I haven't directly compared it with other builds yet.

I commend your effort, I wouldn't be bothered to go through all that lol.

I feel like with how closely pop-growth is correlated to economic output, and there being no pop-growth rework in sight (I long for pre-2.0 multiple pops growing) lithoids could do with a civic to offset their shitty growth as it's exponentially worse than the flat growth modifier would suggest, and means youre going to find it hard to run a lithoid-only empire. Either:

1. Give em a "crystal nursery" that lets them assemble lithoid pops, it'd cost a civic and it would cost pops to work it, but it would be less micro than head-slamming planets. So basically a retextured assembly building that can only pump out lithoids.
2. I'm going to be looking in to the new necroids origin when it comes out as it seems like it will use a form of assimilation. A civic giving an ability for empires with lithoids as their primary species to assimilate non-lithoid bio pops in to lithoids would be cool AF. Land on a world and immediately start crystalising everything that moves.

 

[aroddo]

Tried various builds.
To be honest, it's bloody hard making that strat work.
I managed 50 pops after 10 years with a lithoid hive mind, colonizing left and right. But that race has a whopping 4.5 growth rate on the starting planet, so that contributed noticeably. Didn't even get to the recratering "exploit" by that time.

 

[Franton]

offset their shitty growth as it's exponentially worse than the flat growth modifier would suggest,

I think the idea behind lithoids is that their ability to settle pretty much any world (other than a tomb world maybe) adds so much to their total empire-wide growth, that it more than makes up for the lower base growth: A run-off-the-mill rocking empire will cover the galaxy like The Rolling Stones (tm), with 50% hab on tomb worlds and at least 70% hab everywhere else baseline - add to that +20% from hab techs and the +20% tomb world hab tech, and you get to 90%+ everywhere just from techs, without pop traits, terraforming, genetic adaption, synth ascension or other tricks.

As for Calamitous Birth, if you choose that origin, I think you need to have a plan B for (a) picking up large amounts of minerals without affecting anything else too much, (b) making your cratered worlds habitable in the long run, and (c) have a good idea how to bridge the (probably) long time until you have the resources and techs to implement point (b).

Suggestions for point (a):
1. Pick (fan.) Xenophobe ethic for reduced influence cost and spread your empire like crazy to get lots of mining stations
2. Mining Guilds civic
3. Industrious (is that the name?) pop trait (+15% mining)
IMHO either 1. or both 2. and 3. could work very well, but I prefer 1. because ethics can be changed later, and spreading fast comes with lots of other benefits.

Suggestions for point (b):
1, Synthetic Ascension: at 200% hab, a crater or two won't matter
2. World Shaper: Gaia worlds with a crater will still be 100% for lithoids, and for other (enslaved) species the +20% from hab techs should be sufficient to get them to 100% too
3. Arcology: turn every low hab world (due to craters) into an Ecumenopolis. Similar to World Shaper, but in my experience it's not useful to convert more than 8-10 planets as you simply don't need more than 3k alloys/month and a low 5 digit number of CGs to support your researchers.
4. Terraforming: turn planets into your native type, so your hab level will be at 80%+50%(lithoid)-50%(crater)+20%(techs)=100%
5. Selective cratering: only use Meteor ships on Gaia (or relic) worlds, or planets of your native type; use standard colony ships everywhere else.

As for (c), that is the hardest part, depending on lots of factors. Probably it will be different on every game, depending on the other empires and events.

 

[Pancakelord]

I think the idea behind lithoids is that their ability to settle pretty much any world (other than a tomb world maybe) adds so much to their total empire-wide growth, that it more than makes up for the lower base growth: A run-off-the-mill rocking empire will cover the galaxy like The Rolling Stones (tm), with 50% hab on tomb worlds and at least 70% hab everywhere else baseline - add to that +20% from hab techs and the +20% tomb world hab tech, and you get to 90%+ everywhere just from techs, without pop traits, terraforming, genetic adaption, synth ascension or other tricks.

I agree with that being their original intention, however in practice if you play lithoids "as intended" you usually end up weaker. Why?

• You need industry to build fleets to protect your stuff as you expand, you need pops for industry
  • If you dont have the pops to support industry as you expand you'll run in to border friction fast and be considered weak enough economically/militarily to be invaded
• To get pops for industry as lithoids you need to expand quickly head-bashing any world you can find, to get that wide growth - as you pointed out.
  • then you need to somehow turtle whilst waiting for your pops to all germinate.
  • This gives you more pops - later in the game (with them doing better on higher planet settings - an advanced-start lithoid DE on 5x planets would be terrifying).
• Whereas a non-lithoid society gets fewer pops, initially, but gets them way sooner, and these can be immediately put to work,
  • Much like money compounding interest in an account, access to fewer pops sooner has far larger growth potential than more later

It's basically a tall/turtle playstyle that requires you to go wide ... so a playstyle without any real benefits of tall or wide until midgame+

I think if lithoids had come out on the old border system pre-2.0 it'd have been a really solid way to play, as you could colonise any world in your sphere of influence and grow slowly that way. But with how things work now, with chaining outposts, you very quickly run in to other empires & fall fowl of the current pop scaling dynamics - if you dont min-max your empire, it often falls flat like a house of cards. They make a good syncretic or slave species though, if you find some during a game, but are a bit crap as a primary species IMO.

 

[Franton]

however in practice if you play lithoids "as intended" you usually end up weaker.

Looking at my first lithoids game, I'm inclined to agree: but only because I overextended in the expansion phase and now my fleets need like 6-8 years to fly from one end of my empire to the other.

That said, it's not dissimilar to other games I've played: I always hang back and get targeted by wars I can't defend against because I focus on expansion way into midgame. But somehow it works: the AI rarely manages to hurt me badly, and, once I meet the marauders, I typically get through the early wars pretty well with the help of hired fleets.