How to Deal with Minors as a Pacifist?

[Black_Shade]

So I recently started a new game, with FI/pacifist. In the surrounding area, I have 16 colonizable systems. ~10 of them have pre-FTL or stone age civs. I've never seen this many minor civs in a game before, let alone all over every planetary system that I could want. If I was playing anything but pacifist this would be an -amazing- start. However, because I'm pacifist, this is not ideal. I swear the game tries its hardest to troll the crap out of you based on your ethics choices. The worst is the 3 damn stone-age civs though, who I apparently have literally zero options to deal with. Seriously how is locking pacifists and xenophiles out of ever doing anything with huge blocks of systems even an option?!

What's the best strategy here? Colonize every 50% or higher world in the area and then uplift the ones with similar ethics, annex them after they colonize the surrounding areas? Is there a way to bump the stone-age civs alongso they aren't permanently blocking a bunch of class 20+ tile worlds?


I wanted an interesting game and to try something different, but having so few options to do anything about this massive swarm of minors has got me thinking pacifist (and to a lesser extent xenophile) is one of the least fun game mechanics I've seen in quite a while

 

[AvalancheZ250]

So I recently started a new game, with FI/pacifist. In the surrounding area, I have 16 colonizable systems. ~10 of them have pre-FTL or stone age civs. I've never seen this many minor civs in a game before, let alone all over every planetary system that I could want. If I was playing anything but pacifist this would be an -amazing- start. However, because I'm pacifist, this is not ideal. I swear the game tries its hardest to troll the crap out of you based on your ethics choices. The worst is the 3 damn stone-age civs though, who I apparently have literally zero options to deal with. Seriously how is locking pacifists and xenophiles out of ever doing anything with huge blocks of systems even an option?!

What's the best strategy here? Colonize every 50% or higher world in the area and then uplift the ones with similar ethics, annex them after they colonize the surrounding areas? Is there a way to bump the stone-age civs alongso they aren't permanently blocking a bunch of class 20+ tile worlds?


I wanted an interesting game and to try something different, but having so few options to do anything about this massive swarm of minors has got me thinking pacifist (and to a lesser extent xenophile) is one of the least fun game mechanics I've seen in quite a while

Spam a whole bunch of frontier outposts to grab the systems you want in the future before someone else gets them. Then enlighten the ones that have similar ethos to you, and once thats done you can integrate them later. Its the long way round and takes loads of influence, but its the only way. Well, other than settling a planet far away and moving your capital there to start anew.

If your lucky you can get one of those anomalies that'll change your loyalist ethos, allowing you to drop pacifism if you so wish.

 

[terrycloth]

Spam a whole bunch of frontier outposts to grab the systems you want in the future before someone else gets them. Then enlighten the ones that have similar ethos to you, and once thats done you can integrate them later. Its the long way round and takes loads of influence, but its the only way. Well, other than settling a planet far away and moving your capital there to start anew.

If your lucky you can get one of those anomalies that'll change your loyalist ethos, allowing you to drop pacifism if you so wish.

Enlighten them all. Protectorates mean influence which means more colonies for you far far away.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

Enlighten some of them, the ones that match your ethos well, and the ones who are in the industrial or atomic age. Place observation posts on the rest until you've got your empire really humming. You'll want that society research to cover the costs of enlightening the more promising ones and possibly for awhile after to give you a nice bump in research.

 

[BrokenGale]

You can colonize neolithic planets now. You just get the permanent tile blockers and occasional event.

And enlightening all of them is the way, even the fanatical purifier ones. Just absorb them all when they hit vassaldom. Build the ministry of culture and you've got xenophobia licked pretty easy. I did a game focused on nothing but rapid expansion and completely tanked my research so that my enlightened followers would become vassals sooner to integrate faster. In the end I just overwhelmed my enemies with a fleet capacity over 2000 even if my tech was awful.

 

[The Founder]

So I recently started a new game, with FI/pacifist. In the surrounding area, I have 16 colonizable systems. ~10 of them have pre-FTL or stone age civs. I've never seen this many minor civs in a game before, let alone all over every planetary system that I could want. If I was playing anything but pacifist this would be an -amazing- start. However, because I'm pacifist, this is not ideal. I swear the game tries its hardest to troll the crap out of you based on your ethics choices. The worst is the 3 damn stone-age civs though, who I apparently have literally zero options to deal with. Seriously how is locking pacifists and xenophiles out of ever doing anything with huge blocks of systems even an option?!

With FI you can jsut about pick any Polcies and the pops will not rebel. Especially if you got a Paradise Dome on the planets.
With 1.4 everyone is able to colonise a Planet with Stone-Agers, unless they are on passive interference. You will just be locked into making them to tileblockers as you can not enslave them.

Build the ministry of culture and you've got xenophobia licked pretty easy.

FI also affects "Alien Overlord" Penalty now. That makes it quite the powerfull choice for a conquer approach.
You can not do stuff with Stacking Penalties (Purge, Slavery), but otherwise you can do whatever you want. Even more so with 5 Star Governors.

A lot of this will change with 1.5 We will get indoctrination options for Primitives and Neolitics will become a proper Pre-FTL Civ.

 

[AvalancheZ250]

Enlighten them all. Protectorates mean influence which means more colonies for you far far away.

Problem is, if you enlighten a fanatic militarist or fanatic xenophobe empire as a pacifist empire you are in deep trouble. You can't stamp them out until they've grown too strong, and they'll constantly join factions and make your life hell and you can't do anything to them. Which is why you only enlighten primitives that do not have conflicting ethos's. Post-Banks however, it will be fine to do so as you can just indoctrinate them, then uplift them.

 

[DanaDark]

Eat them. nom nom.

 

[terrycloth]

Problem is, if you enlighten a fanatic militarist or fanatic xenophobe empire as a pacifist empire you are in deep trouble. You can't stamp them out until they've grown too strong, and they'll constantly join factions and make your life hell and you can't do anything to them. Which is why you only enlighten primitives that do not have conflicting ethos's. Post-Banks however, it will be fine to do so as you can just indoctrinate them, then uplift them.

You don't need to integrate them ever, so just don't sign a migration treaty with them. Unless they're literal fanatic purifiers you should be able to keep them loyal just by not doing anything and relying on trust.

 

[AvalancheZ250]

You don't need to integrate them ever, so just don't sign a migration treaty with them. Unless they're literal fanatic purifiers you should be able to keep them loyal just by not doing anything and relying on trust.

Xenophobes don't like trust, if I remember correctly. It may help, but it means that they are much more prone to causing you problems. Best way to do it is the uplift them last, so you have the most time to get ahead of them so that they never will believe they can fight a war of independence and win.

 

[YagabodooN]

really? really? not being at least mildly militaristic?
why would you play an empire that is actively resistant to conquest?

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

really? really? not being at least mildly militaristic?
why would you play an empire that is actively resistant to conquest?

stellaris is a much better empire builder than it is a wargame...

 

[BrokenGale]

Problem is, if you enlighten a fanatic militarist or fanatic xenophobe empire as a pacifist empire you are in deep trouble. You can't stamp them out until they've grown too strong, and they'll constantly join factions and make your life hell and you can't do anything to them. Which is why you only enlighten primitives that do not have conflicting ethos's. Post-Banks however, it will be fine to do so as you can just indoctrinate them, then uplift them.

Xenophobes don't like trust, if I remember correctly. It may help, but it means that they are much more prone to causing you problems. Best way to do it is the uplift them last, so you have the most time to get ahead of them so that they never will believe they can fight a war of independence and win.

You don't remember correctly. My best friend in my long game was a xenophobic isolationist just because they hated and feared me less than the other neighbors. They even guaranteed my independence!

And I've absorbed more than one fanatical purifier without conflict thanks to the Visitor's Center and Ministry of Culture. Both of which slash the xenophobia penalties. In the end, even the hardcore Phobic/Militants just rolled over under the pressure of my galactic happiness.

 

[Slynx]

why would you play an empire that is actively resistant to conquest?

i always wonder why would anyone play as non-collectivist
i guess answer is: "they like different playstyle" or "they like challengle" or simply "cuz they can"

 

[terrycloth]

i always wonder why would anyone play as non-collectivist
i guess answer is: "they like different playstyle" or "they like challengle" or simply "cuz they can"

I play collectivists for variety but they're a pain in the butt to play. The only thing worse is xenophobes.

 

[Surimi]

Build observation stations.

Get all the science.

LITERALLY ALL THE SCIENCE.

 

[Slynx]

pain in the butt

huh? no faction problem(enslave everyone and fill mineral\food spots. purge the rest), no happiness problem (unique buildings for +happiness, or simply purge everyone below 50% happiness), no stupid Pops leaving crucial energy hub\hydroponic and leaving whole planet\empire starving(migration is off), no ethic divergence problems(unity\benevolence\mind control\commissars), good economy (share the burdens, and plenty of influence for capacity overload(or similar edicts) cuz you don't need to suppress factions) and so on.
how can it be painful?

ps: add militarist to have even more happiness during war (there is simply no reason not to go to war) and influence from rivalry(no one will attack you cuz the'll know that you're stronger)... and more unique buildings giving happiness.

Build observation stations.

oh..right. you can definitely build observation station and hope that it'll trigger comet event (or something as nasty)

 

[Foefaller]

huh? no faction problem(enslave everyone and fill mineral\food spots. purge the rest), no happiness problem (unique buildings for +happiness, or simply purge everyone below 50% happiness), no stupid Pops leaving crucial energy hub\hydroponic and leaving whole planet\empire starving(migration is off), no ethic divergence problems(unity\benevolence\mind control\commissars), good economy (share the burdens, and plenty of influence for capacity overload(or similar edicts) cuz you don't need to suppress factions) and so on.
how can it be painful?

ps: add militarist to have even more happiness during war (there is simply no reason not to go to war) and influence from rivalry(no one will attack you cuz the'll know that you're stronger)... and more unique buildings giving happiness.


oh..right. you can definitely build observation station and hope that it'll trigger comet event (or something as nasty)

Collectivist doesn't have a happiness building. Ministry of Benevolence is it's only unique (though it is a fine unique for keeping everyone collectivist)

Might be thinking Xenophobe's Monument of Purity, arguably the most cost-effective happiness buildings (150 minerals and no upkeep) which is one of the few upsides to it. I mean, if you're going to enslave and/or purge the galaxy, why not take xenophobe?

Militarist's Virtual Combat Arena, on the other hand, is one of the worst, a measly 5% bonus + -5% ethics divergence (nice if you aren't collectivist, not needed if you are) and a damage bonus to armies recruited there, which has niche benefits at best. IIRC 55% happiness is a measly 2% increase on production on that world; unless you are offsetting unhappiness (which, as collectivist, is only going to be a temporary thing until everyone is enslaved, purged, or have their ethics changed to the empire's) there is no planet big enough to make 5% happiness worth it.

As for why to go the other way... Biggest advantage of Individualist is Migration attraction and the reduction of policy-based unhappiness modifiers. First basically lets you siphon other empire's growth to build up your new colonies faster (especially if you take Highly Adaptive and colonize a planet from each triad) Reducing the time from establishment -> Planetary admin to as little as a year without having to spend influence on resettlement or economy on robots. the unhappiness modifier, especially if you go fanatic, is at least as good at keeping everything together as all those collectivist techs, as it keeps unhappiness within the range of a good sector governor or happiness building to offset no matter how far away it is from the capital, even if the pop in question is xenophobic. Some of my biggest, fastest-growing and most stable (based on how much influence was spent suppressing factions) empires were fanatic individualist ones, with each new colony filling all their tiles in only a couple of years by midgame from all the migration treaties I had with friendly neighbors and vassals, and I only had to suppress maybe on or two factions that were one pop that had gone fanatic xenophobe or was a pacifist during wartime.

 

[Slynx]

i've played xenophobe once. to get the achievement. decided that they are just gimped collectivist (they can even enslave, but the slaves are always unhappy even if they have same ethics as me). probably never will do it again til 1.5.
also they need to spend TONS of influence to deal with main species. and factions... and everything else. i was so glad when my Deneb were captured by enemy and i could declare war with the goal "cleanse it back"

Migration attraction

ugh probably i'm not ready to let people migrate freely. yet. maybe i'll give it a try...someday.
also i guess i almost always have a point in a game where i stop colonizing and just start ceding new planets. and they are almost always full.

 

[The Founder]

You don't need to integrate them ever, so just don't sign a migration treaty with them. Unless they're literal fanatic purifiers you should be able to keep them loyal just by not doing anything and relying on trust.

Or you rely on being "just that strong". The average Protectorate has no way to colonise a lot of space. Most likely they awaken literally in the middle of a established empire. Even if they want to rebel, they would never have the power to do so being bound to a single planet.

Another option:
Wait till they reach space age on thier own. Liberate. Vassalize/Protectorate. Have somebody of your Ethos, converting the pops for you. Integrate later.