Competition vs Cooperation Policy

[MasterOfGrey]

This is a possible approach to playing the game without purging or robots, but with an otherwise optimised approach to high-stability empire management. Skip to the dot-points if you don't care about the RP justification.

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So, in my first game I'm planning to attempt a Fanatic Materialist/Pacifist Empire (with Enlightened Monarchy).

This presents an interesting challenge on how to rise to dominance amongst my peers. I will need to compete against the xenos that desire my planet type both within and without, and later the best species within my empire for other types of worlds will need to do the same.

As a result of this I feel like there would be a need, upon meeting your closest neighbours, to begin categorising the xenos as either 'competitive' or 'cooperative'. (With a 'potentially cooperative' in there for if they fit into a world niche but have rubbish traits and you're not sure yet.)

As a fanatic materialist I absolutely must have as many resources as possible to advance my species and their cooperative partners, but as a pacifist I naturally don't want to be unnecessarily aggressive, and can't really justify doing such horrific things as 'purging'.

Therefore all species identified as 'competitive' must be contained. If they are small and in a relatively convenient geographic area that can mean simply surrounding them, and vassalising them peacefully later when you are their obvious superior, or in response to them declaring on you. Their influence must then be limited as much as possible.

It is always a priority to deal with Competitive species before Cooperative species.

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Thus we have this approach to Competitive Species:
Competitive species are any that share your preferred world type, or the preferred world type of your other chosen species - even if that other species has not yet been incorporated into your empire.
- Identify, surround if applicable.
- Annex peacefully if conveniently surrounded as per the above/annex through war to preserve your access to your preferred worlds.
- (Optional) Utilise influence and clearing of tile-blockers to resettle as many of their people as possible to the smallest possible number of worlds, ideally in the most contained geographic area. If they have a small enough population to do so but you lack the technology to clear the tile-blockers for it, instead resettle your own people to stunt their growth options until such time as you have the technology to facilitate the original resettlement option.
- - - Importantly the worlds you contain them to should, if at all possible, have other worlds that you can colonise with a different species (or expect to be able to colonise with a different species). This is important for the last stage.
- Colonise at least 1 other world of the other types per system with appropriate species already within your diaspora before moving to the next step. If this option is not immediately available then simply maintain them within a dedicated sector until such time as you do have that option.
- Once all of the systems are 'shared' with the competitive species' worlds and they are locked down, briefly check their planets to make sure none of them run obvious resource deficits. Release these people as a vassal. (Note you check for resource deficits first because there's no good having a vassal who immediately goes bankrupt.)

Result: You get a vassal sub-state who owns only their planets in your shared (contested) space, much like the vassal the Blorg acquired when they finished enlightening their primitives. They will always be very weak compared to you, and yet they will provide improved depth defence to that area of your empire without you needing to pay quite as close attention to it. You essentially create a peacefully coexistent 'second class' of citizens who won't awkwardly show up in your leader pool.

Our approach to Cooperative Species:
Cooperative species are any that *do not* share your preferred world type, they are your chosen species to build strength and diversity into your empire.
- Identify, these will be the best species of either traits, or convenient ethos, found on a given type of world nearby. In the event of two same-world species bordering you you will have to identify which should be cooperative and which should be competitive asap. It is ok to select the species with worse traits if the other one is a lot easier to contain (for whatever reason).
- Acquire at least 1 world of this species. For more peaceful species it may be possible to trade a colony of yours for a colony of theirs. This would be the optimal approach early game, especially if you are having to contain competitive species.
- Research the appropriate colonisation tech and use them to fully utilise your systems & facilitate the end stages of competitive species management as above. Do not be afraid to adopt a juicy planet as a core world just because it's not your primary race.

Result: You end up with an empire that is diverse, and with an enormously powerful economy.

End

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Note that though diversity can make faction management a hassle, with occasional in-built sub-states made from competitive species, not only do they improve defence, but they contribute to maintaining order in the event of rebellion because their fleets etc. are already on the scene when they occupy overlapping territories.

Additionally note that primitives should either be made into your cooperative species or exterminated while you still can. It will be important that you perform surveys enough to identify them before you brush up against your neighbouring empires and make your decisions on the matter. It is likely that primitives will only be viable if there are no neighbours of the appropriate planet type available.

I hope this strategy is useful to people, and I am keen to hear any suggested improvements. =D

 

[Panpiper]

I find your outlined tactic to be frankly, quite brilliant. I shall endeavor to steal your idea for my own. Thank you. ;-)

 

[Nielzert]

This is exceptional! One question though: Once you have a species in your empire for every planet type, will you strive to let only those species expand to appropriate planet types, or will you continually expand your roster of subservient species? I would assume the latter, seeing as how you are planning on being pacifist, however, I could also see a case being made for the former, as the increased diversity that would entail might cause rampant diversification and the accompanying disorder and flood of factions.

In any case, this is an amazingly detailed strategy for a game that's still less some 2 and a half weeks away, my compliments!

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

You have managed to explain my own vague ideas more precisely than I could have done so myself. Thank you for this.

 

[Azkaban]

This is exceptional! One question though: Once you have a species in your empire for every planet type, will you strive to let only those species expand to appropriate planet types, or will you continually expand your roster of subservient species? I would assume the latter, seeing as how you are planning on being pacifist, however, I could also see a case being made for the former, as the increased diversity that would entail might cause rampant diversification and the accompanying disorder and flood of factions.

In any case, this is an amazingly detailed strategy for a game that's still less some 2 and a half weeks away, my compliments!

Many smaller factions are less dangerous than less bigger factions, as in the former case you only have to deal with some of them until the rest isn't capable of harming your empire.

Diversity of species, however, has the advantage of diversity of traits as well. If you can get one xeno with agrarian (+1 food), another kind with industrious (+15% minerals), another one with thrifty (+15% credits) and none of them is xenophobic, you should do it, as it allows you to increase each tile's efficiency.

 

[Jerev]

Do you plan to annex future colonys with frontier outposts until you have the perfect species?
Because as it was shown in the stream manually changing the pops of a planet costs serious amounts of influence.

 

[MasterOfGrey]

This is exceptional! One question though: Once you have a species in your empire for every planet type, will you strive to let only those species expand to appropriate planet types, or will you continually expand your roster of subservient species? I would assume the latter, seeing as how you are planning on being pacifist, however, I could also see a case being made for the former, as the increased diversity that would entail might cause rampant diversification and the accompanying disorder and flood of factions.

In any case, this is an amazingly detailed strategy for a game that's still less some 2 and a half weeks away, my compliments!

Once I have one of each I would endeavour to expand only the selected ones and contain all the others in the method described. The only case where I suspect I would deviate from that is if I came up against a region that had already been heavily and extensively colonised by another species that was at least as good as the previously selected one, and then I would likely maintain both, but only spread the new one in the direction being expanded already. It would have to be a situation where they are too numerous to operate as an effectively contained vassal or where they have some truly stellar combination of traits to make them superior leaders or something though. I mean the whole point of this is that removing the smaller elements to vassals is designed to assist in maintaining order which doesn't work so well if you adopt too much diversity.

I do imagine though that by the time this sort of difficult decision making occurs you'll be big enough already to be worrying about border zones that don't fit the original bill because the places being conquered have already incorporated extra races into their own empire (complicating matters somewhat), as well as spawn difficult factions etc. so while it's certainly the strategy for probably up the first 100 or so systems I acquire influence over I don't expect it to run perfectly smoothly forever.

P.S. Thanks

Do you plan to annex future colonys with frontier outposts until you have the perfect species?
Because as it was shown in the stream manually changing the pops of a planet costs serious amounts of influence.

I do yes, I shall be patient and wait rather than suffer the frozen wastes with my Tundra species that still likes actual soil. Whether or not I explicitly control it with an outpost or not though will depend on whether or not the desired target might colonise it for me or not, or if it's at risk of being exploited in an undesirable way by a competitive race.