Do you use edicts?

[Jorlem]

I'm wondering if I'm alone in this, as I almost never use edicts. The only times I use them are at the beginning of the game to research the colony ship tech faster, and if I get one of those anomalies that gives one of the Master's Writings edicts (or whatever the name of those are.) Beyond that, I usually completely forget that edicts even exist, and spend my influence on alliances and frontier outposts.

I think I've used the planetary edicts all of twice in all the time I've played the game. They're about as low as army attachments.

Is anyone else the same way, almost completely ignoring the edict mechanic?

 

[SuiciSpai]

yep, free research + grand fleet + welfare care and IIRC one special for a ethic that has 5% happiness too.

I activate and deactivate if I need influence or resources, but late game they are always on.

 

[Oscot]

I'm wondering if I'm alone in this, as I almost never use edicts. The only times I use them are at the beginning of the game to research the colony ship tech faster, and if I get one of those anomalies that gives one of the Master's Writings edicts (or whatever the name of those are.) Beyond that, I usually completely forget that edicts even exist, and spend my influence on alliances and frontier outposts.

You are correct to play in this manner, influence is always better spent on diplomacy.
And also the edicts and policies are crap, so you don't want to use them even if blurple were an abundant resource.

 

[kalauer]

I myself use outposts close to never (way too expensive for what they do imo) and thus spend the influence on edicts; mostly research acceleration and planetary when needed as sink. Grand fleet only in late game when taking down awakened empires and the normal limit is reached.

Also if the circumstances are right, cheaper infrastructure and faster growth can be helpful in the early decades.

 

[ArmChairAttila]

I use them often. Early game I try not to go over 1+ influence growth. If I'm not supressing factions then I'm boosting science and especially Sociology early. Seems like you don't need Engineering or Physics as much at least to mid-game. Late game I will switch around the tech schools where needed. Like if I found living metal or aquire a lot of physics tech through war debris research.

 

[Elothan]

Depending on ethos I use them a lot, especially welfare if I need that last push for happiness.

 

[Seryss]

I use them considerably because i enslave/purge/terror bomb a lot, and it basically locks you out of diplomacy - there are no Mussolini's to my space Hitler in stellaris it seems. If i'm playing science directorate I won't spend any influence, and will cut empire wide edicts if im sub 300 influence for director elections, and 2 leader picks if i need them.

Anyway, i like farming subsidies or the spiritualist equivalent on newly colonized planets with 5 pops/farms it's a nice little boost to growth.
Re-education campaigns helps for all of us non-fanatic individualists when we don't have all of our ethics divergence techs/buildings.

Mineral/energy edicts are in a weird spot, where they're not useful at all in the early game because 15% of 20-25 is meh, and you need the influence for colonizing. In the mid to late game i'm mostly just sitting around at cap anyway, and 25 more minerals on top of the 1k+ i'm already making is underwhelming. Somewhere around 75-100ish fleet cap when corvettes are about 100 minerals, and you have a dedicated mineral planet you can justify using it, but it's a really narrow strand of time. I might pop Capacity overload to slow the bleed on a mid-late game fleet, but even then i can just trade those thousands of minerals that i make to a trader and make them back in 1-2 months.

Free thought is good if you can ignore divergence or keep it in check, i've kept it on almost entire games before. I also find myself using physics grants a lot in the late game, energy production, and weapon tech repeatables mostly.

 

[-Marauder-]

Spirit of science, mostly. The others, not so much. They are for the most part surprisingly mediocre and worst of all, micro management at it's worst. I wish I had an option to toggle "auto refresh when runs out". Instead I have to manually keep track of them.