I'm playing a Gestalt Consciousness with Robots and I'm noticing that they are severely handicapped by not having a second method to produce populations. Other species can build robot manufacturers and clone vats but I'm not seeing a way to use the second assembly spot.
What do you do to make your Robot, Gestalt Consciousness population grow fast enough so they are on equal footing with other species?
In the early game, your advantage is that you can colonize everywhere while most empires have to be more selective.
In the mid-game, Machine World and Habitat spam, with upgraded assembly plants everywhere, gives you quite a lot of assembly.
In a long game, especially on a big galaxy, you do tend to hit a bit of a wall since the cost of each pop goes up, the more pops you have already. The solution depends on what kind of empire you're playing:
- Determined Exterminator: not applicable, you should already have won by eliminating everyone else before you run out of steam
- Driven Assimilator: just keep conquering/abducting organics (you can grow your own as well but it's pretty slow)
- Rogue Servitor: go tall on Ecumenopolises and Ringworlds; piling up lots of Bio-Trophies on a small number of colonies will lead to extremely high output per complex drone (especially noticeable with alloys)
- basic Machine Intelligence: not many especially good options to be honest, just try to get into a winning position before this point (whether by conquest, diplomacy or just overwhelming tech bonuses)
