i decided to try a worker cooperative megacorp build. my entire galaxy is nothing but hive minds, so i can make no branch offices.
How to increase Mutual Aid gains?
- Thread starter Ohirra
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legitimately one of the worst gaming nights ever since i started playing stellaris
12 game attemps in a row as a megacorp, can't get a commercial pact at all
7 games in a row i'm surrounded by hive minds and megacorps, no candidates for branch offices
one game with three criminal syndicates and no ability to make branch offices.
2 games in a row sandwitched between determined exterminators and fanatical purifiers
1 game blocked into an edge corner of the galaxy with three systems to my name and i can't get out due to militant isolationist FE, haven't made first contact with anyone by 2250, have no wormholes. evne the caravaners haven't come by
last game of the night, i'm a materialist megacorp in a galaxy of spiritualists, most of them "evangelizing zealots" and every single one of them has rivaled me and seems to be dedicating multiple envoys to worsening relations becuase i can't even BUY better relations with them and i'm fighting a multi-front war and can't make any branch offices becuase NOBODY has good enough relations with me to form a commercial pact
i love this game, but sometimes it just makes me want to puke
12 game attemps in a row as a megacorp, can't get a commercial pact at all
7 games in a row i'm surrounded by hive minds and megacorps, no candidates for branch offices
one game with three criminal syndicates and no ability to make branch offices.
2 games in a row sandwitched between determined exterminators and fanatical purifiers
1 game blocked into an edge corner of the galaxy with three systems to my name and i can't get out due to militant isolationist FE, haven't made first contact with anyone by 2250, have no wormholes. evne the caravaners haven't come by
last game of the night, i'm a materialist megacorp in a galaxy of spiritualists, most of them "evangelizing zealots" and every single one of them has rivaled me and seems to be dedicating multiple envoys to worsening relations becuase i can't even BUY better relations with them and i'm fighting a multi-front war and can't make any branch offices becuase NOBODY has good enough relations with me to form a commercial pact
i love this game, but sometimes it just makes me want to puke
A lot of this could be solved by force spawning empires that have amenable ethics. Is this an option for you?
i have tried that. one thing i've noticed in 3.9 is that ALL empires are ultra-aggressive no matter what. i get war declared on me by the AI even when they have exactly the same ethics and civics as me. i don't know how to check the AI traditions, but i'm pretty sure they're all taking enmity as their first one and rivalling everybody they can for influence. i've force spawned a galaxy full of xenophile pacifists and they STILL rival everybody they can which leads to terrible relations and nobody can make beneficial agreements.
it basically reduces the game to nothing but gunboat diplomacy and vassalization, which means no commercial pacts or research agreements until you either vassalize somebody or beat them in an ideological war which for some reason makes them like you for a few years.
That's just your anecdote, my recent game is actually quite peaceful.
In fact, my first war in this save was around 2250 and it was I who wardec other.
And it's not because I was surround by peaceful empire either, the first one I encountered was honorbound warrior who almost gauranteed to rivalling anyone that they encountered first due to their need of rival.
The second one hate my gut because they were democratic crusader while I'm autocratic empire and the third was a hegemonic imperialist advanced empire (forgot to turn the advanced neighbor off, also pretty terrifying to got an advanced empire with this personality this close lol).
So now my anecdote cancelling yours out.
It might due to different priority that we got widely different result.
Like when I saw the honorbound warrior, my priority was shifted to investing even more into military and diplomacy (as a deterrence from military might and defensive pact), bumping science down to a third place from the top.
Because I know from experience that these guy are trouble and war is almost inevitable if you aren't reacting fast enough in early game against them but they are pretty reliable if you manage to ally them.
I think that the initial Galaxy Roll for other empires really does affect how games play out and there really isn't enough time in the universe to consistently roll for the experience you're seeking. My first legit full playthrough with Caelum now is super divergent from priors in terms of Galactic diplomacy where there are legit 4 Power Blocs with NO federations - just one hegemon with lots of vassals 4 times over including self. It has created a lot of weird overalpping war scenarios where I'm fighting a primary War for territory and cool systems against the hegemony, and then our vassals are having their own spats (One was freaking ideological in the middle of a massive war to cleave the most powerful hegemon in half, like that just feels a little extra...), which we are also embroiled in so there are 3 simultaneous wars between all of the same participants on the opposing side and ludicrous occupation implications if you settled one of them up.
The rolls for opposing empires basically created a good mix of everything but purifiers/assimilators and federation builders and the cards have fallen in a just so way that nobody wants to federate or can't but we're still acting like they're there.
The rolls for opposing empires basically created a good mix of everything but purifiers/assimilators and federation builders and the cards have fallen in a just so way that nobody wants to federate or can't but we're still acting like they're there.
Maybe Paradox fiddled with the aggression values to encourage more warfare. As loathsome as the idea is, you might want to turn down the aggression setting for the time being, see if it improves things.
i have only ever played with aggression set to "low", and that's as low as it goes. i personally believe it's utter bullshit and has no effect, i still get attacked by not just stronger enemies, but equivalent enemies or groups of inferior ones, often with ethics that match mine. it's infuriating.
yeah, they are absolutely incredible allies later on, but when i'm playing as a megacorp my economy literally does not work properly without branch offices. megacorps are hit harder by empire size, which slows down your research and traditions, which slows down your overall empire growth. if i have to wait until 2300 to build any branch offices because all the empires are rivalling me and i have to play diplomacy to break through the maxed out negative opinion they ahve of me, then i'm not playing megacorp, i'm playing a regular empire in a megacorp trenchcoat.
Not really. Megacorps have the same fundamental economy as any other, and actually have an edge in the solo-economy due to the superior resource generation of their Ruler and Unity pops.
Which is to say, they're not hit hard at all. The amount of additional sprawl Megacorps experience is more than offset by their superior innate resource production to fund more science and unity.
The biggest early-game megacorp disadvantage is that they can't take Imperial Prerogative for it's +2 leaders than the impacts of sprawl. That's an opportunity cost, but while Leader Builds are good, they aren't must-have.
If all empires are rivaling you, are are mis-playing and not leveraging spin-off vassals, which are a core part of Megacorp build strategy to enable their key federations and leverage their branch offices off of a subject who gets Merchant Guilds.
The solution to this is to not play in such a way that you are universally reviled.
and how do you suggest i do that? that's up to RNG entirely. like i said earlier, since 3.9 the AI empires have been way way more aggressive with rivaling, i assume due to enmity tradition being so good. breaking off some vassals sound great, and actually IS great, in the mid-game, but any vassals i spin off too early will have a terrible economy with no pops to produce resources or trade. i always like to spin off a vassal or three by the midgame, but that doens't help me in the early game when resources are the most scarce, and all the AI empires being difficult to get along with slows me down even more.
By not building up an armed navy at game start, obviously.
The AI literally cannot rival you if you don't build up a military fleet power in the early game.
The AI will prioritizing rivaling those it can.
Between these two points, it's very trivial to just downgrade your starting 3 ships weapons/defenses, and coast through the early game with no-problem neighbors because they will prioritize peaceful expansion over attacking you, rival everyone but you, and leave you the ability to up-arm afterwards when they've used up their rivalry capacity and you can select their rivals as your own rivals for not only mutual-war co-beligerancy, but an extra opinion buff. Build up a skeleton navy with no weapons/defenses, so that you can 'upgrade' them in a pinch and get power projection influence while paying fewer alloys.
Do not build an armed navy -> your neighbors can't rival you -> your neighbors rival other people -> your neighbors are easy to ally with.
Again- the AI literally cannot rival you if you do not have a military power to rival.
Note here that the gameplay midgame is well before 2300, but also that the value of a vassal spin-off as a megacorp isn't the branch office, it's the federation. The trade federation policy is what carries trade builds, which MegaCorps have a well-above average one due to their innate TV potential.
It is 100% worth it to spin off a tiny, miserable,forever-poor colony just to get a trade federation and your innate trade production.
You will grow faster if you spend less on your navy and more on expansion with neighbors who can't rival you.
not building a navy is tantamount to suicide in 99% of my games. if i don't build my fleet, i WILL get invaded and vassalized unless i get lucky and my neighbors are inward perfection or some other flavor of fanatic pacifist.
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If you are being invaded and vassalized, then you are not engaging in the diplomacy system and managing your expansion to build up diplomatic trust and guarantors while getting the AI to rival eachother.
If the AI has a valid path to expand, it will nearly always prioritize doing so over invading or attacking a player. The key point is to not expand so aggressively that you block of the AI's path so that war is the only form of expansion. This can be exploited (allow every-other-system claims so that the AI spends alloys and influence 'leapfrogging' you), conceeded (let the AI expand down a significant path), or leveraged (let the AI expand, while using your influence/alloy savings to leverage early subjugation before their expansion pays off).
The point of not having a navy is not to never have a navy, it's to not have a navy during the period of the game where the AI is hunting for rivals. Once the AI has its rival quota, it is far more likely to try and ally with you if you're strong than to try and kill you...
...and if the AI has other rivals, you are in the best position to kill them instead, because you can invite rivals to be co-belligerants in a war and use it to cut down a mutual rival as a 2 (or more) vs 1 of AI-vs-AI fratricide.
This isn't even getting into the advantages of strategies to solicit AI allies. Getting and parking envoys on the AI who would otherwise rival you is a very easy way to get the AI to guarantee your security, which is functionally a oneway defense pact, AND protects you from the empire offering it by forcing them into a 10 year truce if they break the offer (such as you refusing vassalization), which will cover the opinion recovery back to the point of them protecting yuo again.
i'm just gonna be honest, what you are describing does not sound like anything close to my own experiences in the game. that sounds like an amazing game, but that does not sound like the stellaris that i experience.
since 3.9, i have had AI empires with my exact same ethics and civics rival me, dedicate all of their envoys to worsening relations while repeatedly using insult actions to keep mutual opinons low, despite me putting ALL of my envoys to improving relations while also giving them 10 favors immediately for the opinion and trust boost, and then use an ideological war CB to invade and force an ethics change from my ethics and civics, to their ethics and civics, which are already the exact same.
what i am experiencing in the game is NOTHING like what you describe.
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Obviously, as you've indicated that you don't play to the relevant mechanics.
The AI cannot rival you if you do not have an armed navy and are not a valid rivalry target. Therefore, if they are rivaling you, you are maintaining an armed navy, which goes against the point already identified.
Moreover, this is not a 3.9 issue. The AI has always rivaled the first people it can, regardless of ethics, until it reaches it's rivalry capacity of 3. This is why most rivals are immediate neighbors, and why it is so key- and so profitable- to deliberately make yourself un-rivalable in the early game, so that the AI reaches it's rivalry cap.
All 3.9 did to Rivalry was add the Enmity tradition tree which revolves around Rivalries, but doesn't change the minimum requirement vis-a-vis already-existing Supremacy.
The AI will re-allocate initial negative envoys to first contacts and then valid rivalries as the exploration phase continues. The AI will not be able to continue worsening relations at the same time, which allows the player the ability to wait out initial attempts at rivalry by maintaining the positive relations while their negative harm-relation attempts decay. This requires an Envoy-advantage to outlast if you want to maintain your own Envoy-camping, but that's part of why Envoys are so powerful- the side that can afford to do first contact and manage relation isn't going to just remove an envoy after a year in the early game.
In short- it's a phase, and one the player can manage in multiple ways.
Letting the AI pass through your territory to make first contact with your adjacent neighbors risks losing survey anomalies, but can tie down both of their envoys for an extended first contact phase, letting harm relation attempts decay. Using diplomacy to share contacts can risk losing some first contact influence for yourself when you start hearing of other empires without discovery, but also puts them immediately in contact with eachother, which lets them re-allocate envoys to rival eachother, which once at the cap prevents them from rivaling you. You can also just offer sensor data, so that they see your first contact opportunities.
For insults, if you are playing to avoid rivalries, it should be absolutely trivial to avoid insults, as the AI will generally only do insults at Tense or Terrible relations, i.e. when you are already terrible at -300 relations from the sum of both empire's totals.
Unilateral Rivalry- which they won't have if you don't have a military to rival- is only -100 to that (-200 if they have the new Enmity tradition's Antagonistic diplomatic stance), and maxed out harm relation is only -150. Since these can both be forced by the player to be 0- by being an invalid rival, and by committing an envoy to counter harm-relations with an equal-magnitude improve relations- this means that there needs to be -300 in neutral relations from other sources to be insulted.
If the AI in general is insulting you despite having disarmed and counter-envoyed, you are almost certainly doing something else- many something elses- to let relations get worse. (And most likely allocating envoys to first contact influence rather than relations.)
This could be by having default closed borders with them (-20 per empire doing it; AI usually reciprocates to -40), border friction (-10 mutual per hyperlane link), system claims (-10 mutual; the AI will generally not claim systems if they have valid expansion routes), rivaling their ally who they have a defensive pact with (-100), or ethic differences (generally below 60 mutual unless Fanaticism is involved). There are also various specific civic-related dynamics (especially Crusader Spirit) and AI-personality interactions (especially Democratic Crusader), but these are minority exceptions.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter. The best way to avoid insults keeping relations in the basement is to not let relations get that low in the first place.
The best way to not get that low is to avoid rivalries.
Neither envoys or bilateral deals/favor-trading provides diplomatic trust, and both are likely to expire well before they matter in typical play.
Envoys provide up to +150 relations total, the same total as Harm Relations -150. Increasing envoys only increases the rate, not magnitude. Both only accumulate as long as maintained, and begin to decay once the envoy is re-allocated, say to First Contact. In typical play- especially without an Envoy advantage- the opinion of an initial envoy is quickly lost when said envoys are re-allocated to new first contacts.
Trading favors is just leveraging the advantageous trade deal opinion bonus, and maximizes at an also decaying +100 relations. This can temporarily bump a player into an acceptance zone for diplomatic deals, whose trust-gains can provide more enduring gains that mitigate the opinion loss, but it's only a temporary measure against systemic macro-issues like rivalry.
In both cases, the decaying factor will typically not matter if you only do this immediately on first contact, as immediate first constact is when the AI still has space to expand, and so the AI doesn't need the opinion buff to not declare war. By the time natural expansion makes or breaks adjacent conflicts, temporary measures taken early will have decayed to irrelevance.
If they are already the exact same ethics and civics, you have literally 0 reason to not simply immediately 'surrender' and gain a 10 year truce, negating the threat at 0 cost. It's a free truce.
Moreover, if they are declaring war on you in the early-game, it is almost always because they do not have a valid path of peaceful expansion. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but often it can be self-imposed, as identified, which you have not indicated you didn't cause.
Obviously, as you've already indicated that you maintain an armed navy (that lets them rival you into negative relations and insult spirals), have engaged in temporary opinion seeking rather than diplomatic deals to build trust (ignoring parts of the diplomacy system), haven't waited to arm up until after the AI has rivaled other AI to its rivalry capacity (preventing them from rivaling you and denying you mutual-rivalry bonuses), and have likely engaged in a significant number of behaviors to make your situation worse.
In other words- you play in a different way than advised to avoid an issue, and thus encounter the issue. C'est la vie.
Dont do first contact. Let the ai establish first contact to u. This way they discover other empires than u first and can aggro on them. If they discover an genocidal or other very agressive empire first that also will make them more than happy to ally u because of threat.
If an ai rivals u try reducing ur fleet power fast, so the rivalry is invalidated. A negative opinion -50 or lower will cause them to want to war you, so stay above that.
Try bribing the ai with favors (or resoices if favors are too cheesy) so u get a relation headstart as improving relations with envoys tends to take a while. If they harm relations with u u need at least 2 envoys improving as counter.
Regarding the bad empire rng. Either always use a few forcespawned ai to guarantee some friends or go for huge galaxy in order to have lots of different potetial trade partners spawn.
Regarding the FE box in dilemma - dont spawn in that many FE. Dont do certain galaxy shapes if u use smaller galaxy sizes because FE get spawned in after all other empires and if theres no space for them...
Also - the bigger the galaxy the more ways to go around a FE. Sadly also the worse the games performance.
If an ai rivals u try reducing ur fleet power fast, so the rivalry is invalidated. A negative opinion -50 or lower will cause them to want to war you, so stay above that.
Try bribing the ai with favors (or resoices if favors are too cheesy) so u get a relation headstart as improving relations with envoys tends to take a while. If they harm relations with u u need at least 2 envoys improving as counter.
Regarding the bad empire rng. Either always use a few forcespawned ai to guarantee some friends or go for huge galaxy in order to have lots of different potetial trade partners spawn.
Regarding the FE box in dilemma - dont spawn in that many FE. Dont do certain galaxy shapes if u use smaller galaxy sizes because FE get spawned in after all other empires and if theres no space for them...
Also - the bigger the galaxy the more ways to go around a FE. Sadly also the worse the games performance.
and i am telling you, i have tried to run a game by not building out my fleet at all, and the end result has not varied one iota. i'm invaded immediately upon first contact and vassalized or destroyed. no exceptions. you can say this is anecdotal, but this is still what has happened 100% of the time if i don't build a fleet and a bastion at every border. literally the ONLY exception to me getting invaded is when i'm boxed in between the edge of the galaxy and the militant isolationist empire.
what you suggest simply does not work in my experience. it literally cannot work in any game session i have played of stellaris. it's literally "build a fleet or freakin die, immediately".
it's far better for me to take supremacy as a first tradition and build every starbase as an anchorage so i can build "F U" fleet power and vassalize my neighbors immeidately after first contact.
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Amib, I fired up another game with my standard Empire I've been talking about and ran into some of the issues you speak of getting off the ground and not flopping.
Lithoid, Voidborne, CrimSyn/Worker Collective, Mil/Egal/Xenophile as Empire spec for context.
So game starts out and I do my turtle thing and get 3 habs total by 2217. I also take a Size 23 planet and get to work. I do a lot more micro for worker assignment and building districts and my tech is decent, unity is plugging along and, I've made contact with exactly one empire despite setting up 30 empires. It's also a Criminal Syndicate...NUTS! I keep exploring without building and the topography of the galaxy reveals that my other closest neighbors are an Advanced AI empire (Overwhelms me in every regard) that kinda hates me but there's a single lane chokepoint kind and if I can nab it, then we're just going to be testy neighbors for as long as we are.
About 2225 I noticed my Advanced AI Neighbor amassing ships on the border, 3x5k Fleets versus my 1x4.5k fleet...uh oh... -400 opinion...UH OH! Luckily I tossed an envoy for espionage on them at first contact so I can now see what their relations are and...by stroke of luck they have a rival, which means that I now have a rival. Assign another envoy to harm relations then make a rivalry, wait a month and flip back to Advanced AI Neighbor and lo and behold, their opinion of me has gone to Neutral. Still slightly negative but better. Then I assigned my espionage envoy to Improve Relations and after a year abouts, we are in slightly positive territory. The ships remain on the border but I am not so worried. Eventually the ships take off for a bonafide early war on the other side of their empire.
The game is still kind of a crap show compared to priors though, basically having 2 neighbors with borders, a huge empty patch of galaxy I could claim and colonize that my Crim Syndicate neighbor could also colonize but isn't, All inhabitable planets to colonize to create a vassal being hella jumps away (and one even had a Superflare that destroyed my first homespun vassal in 2240), all opposing empires to plop Branch Offices on being hella jumps away (it is so cost prohibitive and even Intelligence prohibited because I literally can not see the planets to put a branch office on for some of them).
So the diplo trick of leap frogging over neighbors to rival their rivals is pretty standard play and can spare some Empires from getting after you but not the purifying kind, so if your next door neighbors are in that mold and are Advanced AI, you'll probably get wrecked without recourse if they set their sights on you.
Compared to prior playthroughs, the biggest things that have been trouble for me here are not having enough neighbors to engage with, not making first contacts to gain Influence, tons of empty space with all the potential in vassals at the furthest reaches of it (literally, all the planets to spin up vassals are on the edges here, it's so annoying it's looped back to funny because the Influence to even reach them stacks up to something ~500ish). Wide open spaces without many neighbors is pretty bad turns out.
The saving graces have been the topography itself making it so only two empires can really hurt me with the neighbor Criminal Syndicate absolutely becoming a Federation Partner on the next tradition pick and being a great E2E trade partner, tons of anomalies, slow and steady population growth filling in Industrial Districts and the tide of trade rising with population to keep every resource in profitable surplus to splurge on accelerating decisions.
So this particular playthrough feels like it won't be a loser by any mechanism, but it's definitely not going gangbusters, or even as middling like prior ones where I had more friendly neighbors, less space to expand into after my core sector to plop subsids on, closer branch offices, and at least one rival every local neighbor agreed was the worst.
In most of my prior playthroughs with this spec, the regular production economy is never that great and is always marginally one step ahead at most, but it keeps pace enough to get to a phase where neighbor relations and vassal relations kick in and can carry a huge portion of the economic load. As this relates to Mutual Aid, I think this playthrough clarified that if you don't have a means of accruing pops to plug into Stewards and Clerks, your entire game is going to suffer for it. This was also actually one of the first times I built a Bioreactor, which being Lithoid is kind of obviously there for a reason, but with Mutual Aid is there in an ass saving way. When I finally set up an immigration treaty with my CrimSyn neighbor, I could cover every resource including Food as more of those funny little xenos started moving to my arid size 23 planet and then a desert size 17 planet.
So to sum up, I think most playstyles that rely on having some friendly neighbors are going to be so much more contingent on who the actual neighbors are in any given instance than doing things properly and by the book with the constraints self imposed. Again, the biggest difference between this playthrough and the prior main one with 3.9 is that I had to go and find my neighbors rather than them coming to me or just being there and immediately hopping into Branch Office setup for naval cap and credits. And I have to spend ungodly amounts of influence to do the plays that set up the rest of the game which isn't always the case.
I'll maybe do an update around 2280 on how things went from this point, as I don't foresee a wipeout at all, but take solace that you're not just imagining a steeper barrier playing with a similar spec - it's tough in a way that might not have easy remedy to it and you might need to lay low for longer than you'd like to make it to some next phase where you start coming into your own.
Lithoid, Voidborne, CrimSyn/Worker Collective, Mil/Egal/Xenophile as Empire spec for context.
So game starts out and I do my turtle thing and get 3 habs total by 2217. I also take a Size 23 planet and get to work. I do a lot more micro for worker assignment and building districts and my tech is decent, unity is plugging along and, I've made contact with exactly one empire despite setting up 30 empires. It's also a Criminal Syndicate...NUTS! I keep exploring without building and the topography of the galaxy reveals that my other closest neighbors are an Advanced AI empire (Overwhelms me in every regard) that kinda hates me but there's a single lane chokepoint kind and if I can nab it, then we're just going to be testy neighbors for as long as we are.
About 2225 I noticed my Advanced AI Neighbor amassing ships on the border, 3x5k Fleets versus my 1x4.5k fleet...uh oh... -400 opinion...UH OH! Luckily I tossed an envoy for espionage on them at first contact so I can now see what their relations are and...by stroke of luck they have a rival, which means that I now have a rival. Assign another envoy to harm relations then make a rivalry, wait a month and flip back to Advanced AI Neighbor and lo and behold, their opinion of me has gone to Neutral. Still slightly negative but better. Then I assigned my espionage envoy to Improve Relations and after a year abouts, we are in slightly positive territory. The ships remain on the border but I am not so worried. Eventually the ships take off for a bonafide early war on the other side of their empire.
The game is still kind of a crap show compared to priors though, basically having 2 neighbors with borders, a huge empty patch of galaxy I could claim and colonize that my Crim Syndicate neighbor could also colonize but isn't, All inhabitable planets to colonize to create a vassal being hella jumps away (and one even had a Superflare that destroyed my first homespun vassal in 2240), all opposing empires to plop Branch Offices on being hella jumps away (it is so cost prohibitive and even Intelligence prohibited because I literally can not see the planets to put a branch office on for some of them).
So the diplo trick of leap frogging over neighbors to rival their rivals is pretty standard play and can spare some Empires from getting after you but not the purifying kind, so if your next door neighbors are in that mold and are Advanced AI, you'll probably get wrecked without recourse if they set their sights on you.
Compared to prior playthroughs, the biggest things that have been trouble for me here are not having enough neighbors to engage with, not making first contacts to gain Influence, tons of empty space with all the potential in vassals at the furthest reaches of it (literally, all the planets to spin up vassals are on the edges here, it's so annoying it's looped back to funny because the Influence to even reach them stacks up to something ~500ish). Wide open spaces without many neighbors is pretty bad turns out.
The saving graces have been the topography itself making it so only two empires can really hurt me with the neighbor Criminal Syndicate absolutely becoming a Federation Partner on the next tradition pick and being a great E2E trade partner, tons of anomalies, slow and steady population growth filling in Industrial Districts and the tide of trade rising with population to keep every resource in profitable surplus to splurge on accelerating decisions.
So this particular playthrough feels like it won't be a loser by any mechanism, but it's definitely not going gangbusters, or even as middling like prior ones where I had more friendly neighbors, less space to expand into after my core sector to plop subsids on, closer branch offices, and at least one rival every local neighbor agreed was the worst.
In most of my prior playthroughs with this spec, the regular production economy is never that great and is always marginally one step ahead at most, but it keeps pace enough to get to a phase where neighbor relations and vassal relations kick in and can carry a huge portion of the economic load. As this relates to Mutual Aid, I think this playthrough clarified that if you don't have a means of accruing pops to plug into Stewards and Clerks, your entire game is going to suffer for it. This was also actually one of the first times I built a Bioreactor, which being Lithoid is kind of obviously there for a reason, but with Mutual Aid is there in an ass saving way. When I finally set up an immigration treaty with my CrimSyn neighbor, I could cover every resource including Food as more of those funny little xenos started moving to my arid size 23 planet and then a desert size 17 planet.
So to sum up, I think most playstyles that rely on having some friendly neighbors are going to be so much more contingent on who the actual neighbors are in any given instance than doing things properly and by the book with the constraints self imposed. Again, the biggest difference between this playthrough and the prior main one with 3.9 is that I had to go and find my neighbors rather than them coming to me or just being there and immediately hopping into Branch Office setup for naval cap and credits. And I have to spend ungodly amounts of influence to do the plays that set up the rest of the game which isn't always the case.
I'll maybe do an update around 2280 on how things went from this point, as I don't foresee a wipeout at all, but take solace that you're not just imagining a steeper barrier playing with a similar spec - it's tough in a way that might not have easy remedy to it and you might need to lay low for longer than you'd like to make it to some next phase where you start coming into your own.
this is basically my whole playstyle. my games, regardless of empire build, all start out the same. explore my immediate surroundings and then rush to claim my way to the chokepoints into my neighborhood. i prefer to have 3 or less avenues in or out of my territory. 2 is ideal and a single chokepoint can be difficult to manage if you get surrounded by a hostile advanced empire.
then, my starbases at my borders/chokepoints become bastions, every other starbase becomes an anchorage and i beef up my fleet and defenses so i can build up my infrastructure and economy without getting the crap stomped out of me. i've given up on federations unless i'm playing an origin that starts with one, and when i'm strong enough i try to vassalize my nieghbors to make them into prospectorums or scholarium.