I let the default after they're put in slavery. Not sure which one it is.
How to Authoritarian in 2.2
- Thread starter evilcat
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Are the serviles in slavery (xenophobe)? If yes, is Extremely Adaptive really useful for them due to their very reduced weight? Why not take Charismatic instead and fix your amenities issue at the same time? Serviles can take any worker job and clerk are workers. If you do that you can remove two negative traits thus opening a +2 trait by the normal bio-engineering. I guess I'd take Industrious then. I think that's worth the try.
I've had some good runs with Authoritarian/Militarist/Spiritualist Barbaric Despoilers/Syncretic Evolution. The idea is to play tall territory-wise and rely on raiding to keep your slaves growing. Tech up as much as possible to get yourself to mega-structures, while using the Spiritualist bonus/buildings to tradition up to it. The serviles serve as your chattel slaves while your main species has Stratified Economy so they can fill the gaps in the working stratum because you're not going to have enough slaves to cover all of it to begin with and you need a small buffer of main species POPs.
There are some bugs with Stratified not affecting happiness/stability as it should, but the consumer goods reduction is good enough that I'm not too bothered by it right now. Fixing it will only make this play style stronger.
If I'm lucky I'll find either a primitive or another empire that has Tomb World habitability or Survivor and I'll set them to Residency with Stratified Society, both to act as overseers for planets that aren't my main species' habitability and to keep a balance between Authoritarian and Xenophobe.
This is also a really easy set of factions to please just through the usual course of play. Xenophobes love it when you attack other empires, as do Militarists, Authoritarians like having subjects (which is a natural result of playing tall) and Spiritualists are happy as long as there's a decent number of them and you go the Psionic route. Ironically, the one thing you can't colonise with your Tomb Worlders are actual Tomb Worlds. The bonuses from Authoritarian-oriented techs/policies means you are going to have naturally high government ethics attraction.
The only thing to be wary of is vassalising other empires gives an automatic migration treaty with them. I'm not sure if this is WAD or not because BDs are usually locked out of those, but it's easy enough to stick population controls on your vassal species or just use them as slaves.
There are some bugs with Stratified not affecting happiness/stability as it should, but the consumer goods reduction is good enough that I'm not too bothered by it right now. Fixing it will only make this play style stronger.
If I'm lucky I'll find either a primitive or another empire that has Tomb World habitability or Survivor and I'll set them to Residency with Stratified Society, both to act as overseers for planets that aren't my main species' habitability and to keep a balance between Authoritarian and Xenophobe.
This is also a really easy set of factions to please just through the usual course of play. Xenophobes love it when you attack other empires, as do Militarists, Authoritarians like having subjects (which is a natural result of playing tall) and Spiritualists are happy as long as there's a decent number of them and you go the Psionic route. Ironically, the one thing you can't colonise with your Tomb Worlders are actual Tomb Worlds. The bonuses from Authoritarian-oriented techs/policies means you are going to have naturally high government ethics attraction.
The only thing to be wary of is vassalising other empires gives an automatic migration treaty with them. I'm not sure if this is WAD or not because BDs are usually locked out of those, but it's easy enough to stick population controls on your vassal species or just use them as slaves.
So to put it simply, Barbaric Despoilers is the mean to keep most of the factions happy. That's a valid point. What about the pops obtained after the raid?
They find their place in my empire. Because I'm not Xenophobe I can quite easily slot them in wherever they fit best.
For example, in my current game I've just finished a war against some Space Elves. They're pretty terrible slaves, what with having Natural Physicists/Resilient traits (meaning they can't even be genemodded much without going full bio-ascension) but they're great researchers and I've got the tech that'll let me add Intelligent on there as well. They'll do very nicely as researchers, especially since they're the only Savannah species I have now, so I can stick them on a spare planet I haven't been using and set them away to force-focus my tech towards physics.
Next step will be to find another dry planet species that has a decent set of traits and go raid them (my biggest competition has Industrious/Natural Physicists/Troublesome so they're a good bet). That'll help fill that planet up while my main species sticks to its nice arctic worlds.
For example, in my current game I've just finished a war against some Space Elves. They're pretty terrible slaves, what with having Natural Physicists/Resilient traits (meaning they can't even be genemodded much without going full bio-ascension) but they're great researchers and I've got the tech that'll let me add Intelligent on there as well. They'll do very nicely as researchers, especially since they're the only Savannah species I have now, so I can stick them on a spare planet I haven't been using and set them away to force-focus my tech towards physics.
Next step will be to find another dry planet species that has a decent set of traits and go raid them (my biggest competition has Industrious/Natural Physicists/Troublesome so they're a good bet). That'll help fill that planet up while my main species sticks to its nice arctic worlds.
That looks like an interesting combo indeed. What does Authoritarian gives you? It's probably not Barbaric Despoilers since it's already unlocked by your Military ethics. I guess it's for your serviles? tbh I don't have Apocalypse DLC thus I haven't included options that are not available to me. I may have to say this upfront in my previous build description.
Yes, I always place my Serviles in chattel-slavery (enabled via Xenophobe in this case).
The usefulness of the Extremely Adaptive on the Serviles might be debatable. They still consume same amount of food, 0.75 as much amenities, and 0 (or 0.05) consumer goods. The food and amenities savings are still decent in my opinion. Extremely Adaptive also makes it a bit more practical to raise their living standard to Decent Conditions if I'm feeling generous. If I were to ditch Extremely Adaptive, then I would probably replace it with Industrious and Agrarian.
Charismatic for the sake of Clerks seems like a stretch. On your homeworld at game start, 6 out of the total 31 amenities come from Clerks. Having Charismatic Clerks would increase your total amenities from 31 to 32.2. I think Extremely Adaptive on the Serviles will end up saving much more amenities when you colonize less-than-ideal planets.
I don't consider the amenities to necessarily be a problem when playing with a Repugnant main species, they just become something to actually think about. Clerks still feel like the worst jobs in the world, but I find myself occasionally allowing a few Clerk slots to be filled instead of de-prioritized down to 0. I might build 1 or 2 Luxury Residences on a really big planet instead of 0. A planet might get 1 Holo-Theatre instead of a Monument. I consider those fairly minor adjustments.
If you were to run into issues, then the easiest accommodation would be to find a primitive planet (or enemy) to turn into servant slaves (which can also fill specialist Entertainer jobs, unlike the Serviles). Even better if you find a Charismatic species to turn into servant slaves. You can make a hunt out of it (or depend on genetic modification, which would be the go-to ascension path anyway).
EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention is that ditching Extremely Adaptive on the Serviles may have unintended consequences with their ability to migrate and grow wherever they are needed alongside the Extremely Adaptive main species. Habitability plays a factor there, so I am wary that having different habitability values between the main species and the Serviles may upset the balance. Playtesting may be needed.
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I think the best thing for serviles is to spec them into livestock. The production bonus they receive also applies to livestock jobs.
Initially I think keeping them chattel slaves is best, until you enslave sufficient numbers of other species. However if you make them livestock early that saves a lot of minerals on building farm districts.
Initially I think keeping them chattel slaves is best, until you enslave sufficient numbers of other species. However if you make them livestock early that saves a lot of minerals on building farm districts.
You can always split your serviles into half livestock/half energy+mineral workers. Or make yet another split for domestic servants, though that's harder since you sort of want domestic servants everywhere which means a lot of resettlement micro, whereas transforming a bunch of workers on a few planets into livestock is simple.
As far as I'm concerned my main race is for leading and my starting servile race is the race I want to perpetuate as much as possible for all underling tasks. All of the other conquered races are merely kept in-place without growing (unless growth controls cause happiness issues, in which case I'll still keep migration controls on).
Good.
Mild Xenophobe can still forge some alliances (pay for it) against common rivals.
General pop growth is good. Starbase discount is great early game.
Authoritarian allows you to go Stratified society on your main specie.
But... you may have too much influence with all discount on outposts, factions and Authoritarian. Also there are a lot of techs giving bonus to workers production. So fanatic authoritarian is safe pick, but it could also be an overkill.
But overall it is safe pick.
There is no exacly answear of better combo. Since Spiritualist is good if you want psionics. Militaristic allows you to pick Barbaric Despoilers. Materialist allows you to use academic privilege on main specie. There are pros and cons.
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Nothing wrong with it, but I'd go for Fan Xenophobe + Authoritarian myself. Stacking -starbase influence cost gets kind of huge. In non-crowded galaxies you can just engulf everyone. In crowded galaxies all you have to do is claim all enemy planets for the war, snipe them, then the entire empire dies and you claim the non-planet systems at the incredibly cheap rate of ~25 influence.
Fanatic Authoritarian on the other hand doesn't really offer that much more. The influence doesn't let you pull off the same strategic moves that -70% starbase influence cost does, while the worker production gets somewhat diminished by the fact that you're already stacking the highest production bonuses in the game.
What do you think about ditching authoritarian for spiritualist and taking some edicts cost/length perks to use the campaigns and unity edicts some more? Worth it?
If you care only about Slaving Xenos you dont need Authoritarian just mild Xenophobe.
We aim for edicts: Capacity Overload 300i, Production Targets 300i, Farming Subsidies 200i, Declare saint 200i. Total 1000i every 10 years.
There is also Map the Starts but is more early game thing.
There are event edicts, some of them are good.
And some Energy edicts. Healthcare, Consumer, Fear are good. But energy is easier to manage.
Over 10y Authority have bonus 60i. Spirituality has 50i. With base edicts Authority is better.
You need 200i event edicts to run 100% of time to break even.
Duration modifiers affect Authoritarian and Spirtualistic equal.
Charismatic Ruler and Cuthrorat politics fabour Authoritarian.
Overall Authoritarian are better at edicts.
You can also combine Mild Authoritarian, Mild Spiritualistic, Mild Xenophobe.
There are military edicts of rare resources which Spiritualistic are better.
But, Authoritarian have flexibility to do not take some edicts, but instead take some land.
However, workers production effect is slowing over time. But Unity is something. You can go for Unity build.
Stack: Spiritualistic, Communal Trait. Fear Campaign Edict (xenophobe), Declare Saint Edict. Build Temples. Exalted Priesthood civics.
You can pass on some of it.
But overall you can double your unity output that way. If you have ruler specie with +20y lifespan that could bring some good results and very fat leaders.
It could be fun for Unity purpose.
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How do you keep the various slave species/sub-species at the right relative population levels? It seems like a LOT of micro if you specialize into 3+ trait groups across species.
I find it easiest with population controls on a species by species basis. I aim for a livestock slave pop, a clerk/domestic servant pop (don't use serviles for this as their bonus doesn't work for trade and amenities), and a mining chattel slavery pop. You can also use migration controls to keep each type on their respective worlds. You can also add droids for doing miscellaneous tasks (like manufacturing alloys).
The real secret is to have livestock pops once you pass a particular size. They don't require district jobs and use minimal housing, so they're ideal for unlocking buildings on habitats or ecumenopolis.
Simply turn on and off population controls if, say, you're generating too much food from livestock.
Note also, that agricultural traits do provide bonus food for livestock, so serviles make decent livestock.
So probably focus mostly on mineral worlds (since you can get energy more efficiently from the market & food from livestock), with a single food-heavy thrall world (since you can build the 1/planet food boosting building but not the mineral or energy equivalents on thrall worlds). That's why I like Alpine (more minerals on average)
You're right about species-wide population controls. I was trying to micro it via locking down breeding on a planet by planet basis, but species wide makes a lot more sense now that I think about it. You don't get the 20% penalty to whatever you *are* growing, for one.
Authoritarian?
First thing you need to do is mod your game. Stratified Society is a ticking time bomb that goes off the instant your empire has a robot on it, and your empire will likely descend into chaos when it goes off, especially if you have slaves. Even if your empire doesn't build robots, if you acquire a single one through conquest or via events, then you're screwed unless you notice right away and sell them off ASAP.
Here's a link to the mod I use for the time being, though I think it requires you download the beta branch build: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1598606408
Second, if you're enslaving your homeworld species, you will need to always remember that 40% of all a planet's population will be enslaved, and that will affect how you build your planets. You do not want an overabundance of specialist workers on your planets because slaves can only work in the worker strata. If more than 60% of the jobs on a planet are specialist or higher, you will start having unemployed slaves. Non-sentient robots do not count for this percentage, but bear in mind they can compete with slaves for those jobs as well. You can also use the slave market to "purge" unwanted slaves and robots if you need to.
First thing you need to do is mod your game. Stratified Society is a ticking time bomb that goes off the instant your empire has a robot on it, and your empire will likely descend into chaos when it goes off, especially if you have slaves. Even if your empire doesn't build robots, if you acquire a single one through conquest or via events, then you're screwed unless you notice right away and sell them off ASAP.
Here's a link to the mod I use for the time being, though I think it requires you download the beta branch build: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1598606408
Second, if you're enslaving your homeworld species, you will need to always remember that 40% of all a planet's population will be enslaved, and that will affect how you build your planets. You do not want an overabundance of specialist workers on your planets because slaves can only work in the worker strata. If more than 60% of the jobs on a planet are specialist or higher, you will start having unemployed slaves. Non-sentient robots do not count for this percentage, but bear in mind they can compete with slaves for those jobs as well. You can also use the slave market to "purge" unwanted slaves and robots if you need to.
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So probably focus mostly on mineral worlds (since you can get energy more efficiently from the market & food from livestock), with a single food-heavy thrall world (since you can build the 1/planet food boosting building but not the mineral or energy equivalents on thrall worlds). That's why I like Alpine (more minerals on average)
You're right about species-wide population controls. I was trying to micro it via locking down breeding on a planet by planet basis, but species wide makes a lot more sense now that I think about it. You don't get the 20% penalty to whatever you *are* growing, for one.
Yes. Livestock also is pretty good for energy(by selling food) . They're not as efficient per pop as technicians but per district they're far better. I haven't used them in combination with thrall worlds though.