Egalitarian + Xenophile + Psionic ~=> Bad combination??

[KingAlamar]

TLDR: Don't go unrestricted egalitarian + xenophile + psionic UNLESS you want to micro-manage assimilation, unemployment, job demotion, building new jobs "just in time", etc. Problem gets worse the more species you have and the larger their numbers.

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For my first game I figured I would try a "Walmart that REALLY cares" type of approach. Loves everyone, anti-authoritarian, etc.

While playing I ALMOST went Genetic Ascension but got offered Psionic research as the tech right before I hit the button. I decided -- why not make my mega corporation folks PSI?? That may make it easier to figure out what the customer wants.

UGG ... I'm either missing something or that was a terrible idea. After about 100 years into the game humans [main species] are only about 10% of the population. This makes finding psionic leaders a pain -- esp. those leaders with good traits / skills. Then I got the bright idea of Assimilation to spread psionics to more species ...

Of course the way things are implemented when a species is assimilated the entire species goes unemployed across the whole empire -- seems to be an all or nothing. You can't go a planet at a time / job class at a time / etc.

Add to the above that other pops stream in to take the now open jobs left vacant by assimilated pops ...

So when the species is done with assimilation their old jobs are no longer available so if they were rulers or specialists they won't work again until they demote themselves which even with perks / techs / etc. takes a LONG time.

IF you have a lot of species in your empire the problem gets worse. If you assimilate one species at a time then all other species will promote into Ruler or Specialist jobs vacated. When you finally get around to the species at the end of your list they will have all promoted themselves pretty highly insuring almost none are workers ready to hit the ground running.

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Any recommendations on how to efficiently manage this outside of the "don't do that" or "start early" , etc.??

 

[tobias.mb]

As long as the psionic template exists, you can gene-mod that template onto the rest of the species. i.e. wait 1 year to get the first psi pops by ascension, then just apply that template to the rest. This usually speeds up the process quite a bit.
If you get some more of the basic pops later, e.g. by migration, you can upgrade them without them ever becoming unemployed in the mean time.

 

[KingAlamar]

As long as the psionic template exists, you can gene-mod that template onto the rest of the species. i.e. wait 1 year to get the first psi pops by ascension, then just apply that template to the rest. This usually speeds up the process quite a bit.
If you get some more of the basic pops later, e.g. by migration, you can upgrade them without them ever becoming unemployed in the mean time.

That's pretty much what I've been doing. As soon as I see the first PSI modded of the species I gene-mod the rest of them. So instead of getting PSI on 3-12 per year I finish the whole species in a few months. Unfortunately that still doesn't fix the "time to demote" and the problems with auto-promotion of everyone else making it such that the problem gets worse the more different species that you assimilate.

It may sound silly but I'd rather see a planetary or empire wide decision / edict / etc. that allows you to stop auto-promotion if you so choose to make the process go more smoothly.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

It isn't much better for Authoritarian + Xenophile + Psionic.

While you can resettle pops freely, it becomes a hideous chore very quickly because of the horrible resettle UI.
Moreover migration controls do not work properly; you'll frequently see pops growing on a planet where none existed prior.

You can of course force population species growth & take the 20% growth penalty, but again that incurs a large micromanagement burden if you want any kind of diversity in your population.
For example, obtaining a mixture of just a few species requires frequent manual adjustment of the growth pop, made worse by the need for these changes to be synced with the point in time the population actually grows. (lest you lose large amounts of banked pop growth from the switch).

The entire system is unwieldy and tedious for anything more than single species xenophobe empires, or rainbow empires who don't care about ascension, and the hugely inflated pop maintenance costs caused by inappropriate habitability

 

[pryr]

Agree. It's much easier to go psionics when all xenos are residents (or worse).

 

[Avil]

As long as the psionic template exists, you can gene-mod that template onto the rest of the species. i.e. wait 1 year to get the first psi pops by ascension, then just apply that template to the rest. This usually speeds up the process quite a bit.
If you get some more of the basic pops later, e.g. by migration, you can upgrade them without them ever becoming unemployed in the mean time.

Micromanagement chore. All the holy, just imagine xeno-compitibilty + psionic ascension. The nightmare.

 

[KingAlamar]

Micromanagement chore. All the holy, just imagine xeno-compitibilty + psionic ascension. The nightmare.

At least you can set default species rights to assimilation so if a new species crops up they are auto-assimilated [before??] they become a big impact on your empire. Of course you'd want to manually control species rights so to make sure all xenos don't get assimilated at once.

Maybe changing how ascension works would be better though. Being able to ascend others without the assimilation impacts would certainly be nice.

 

[WhapXI]

As long as the psionic template exists, you can gene-mod that template onto the rest of the species

I feel like this is probably an oversight. I was a bio-asc empire with good relations and a migration treaty with a psi-asc empire. My pops would migrate over there, ascend, migrate back psychic, I'd make them Robust and Very Strong, and then apply that template to the whole species.

It's kind of ridiculously exploitable, and kind of a big nerf to Psionic ascension that the trait doesn't make the pop unmoddable.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

There should really be better species rights controls, like ability to create "citizen classes" where you could define which species get what rights, not by species-by-species but as groups. Or at least some rights templates like gene-modding.

 

[Avil]

I feel like this is probably an oversight. I was a bio-asc empire with good relations and a migration treaty with a psi-asc empire. My pops would migrate over there, ascend, migrate back psychic, I'd make them Robust and Very Strong, and then apply that template to the whole species.

It's kind of ridiculously exploitable, and kind of a big nerf to Psionic ascension that the trait doesn't make the pop unmoddable.

This way I've applied mind slugs on my whole species, and I wasn't even bio-ascended.