How to play pacifist-xenophobe properly?

[Vjeldan]

With the new update (and utopia) i started a new game with Space-Faeries on a spiritual quest to search for the old gods they believe to have descended from and to regain the lost magic through technology and psionics.
Ethics are spiritualist-pacifist-xenophobe. With this aristocracy civic and inner perfection. So i've got the mandate of heaven government with a hereditary queen. Later i picked this "farms produce unity"-civic. I use wormhole-travel. Traits are intelligent, slow breeder, weak, +15 years lifetime and charismatic.

Now, how do i play this set of ethics properly? The "leave us alone"-attittude seems nice so far, but i cannot conquer, yet i've got only 3 planets (including my homeworld) that are colonizable to me. Neighbours are pretty peaceful with one exeption, but i cannot expand that much.

As a xenophobe i would be able to use slaves (who wouldn't want to serve us?! Lookatus!), but i guess other nations would be pissed if i signed a migration treaty to enslave their pops. Also my factions would probably dislike such a treaty. I could try to liberate a neighbour and try to vassalize... but, will this work as a xenophobe? Charismatic might help...

Any suggestions how to make space-faeries great old gods again?

 

[The Founder]

There is 8 Ethics, but 9 Factions. The 9th is a pacifist Xenophobe one - isolationist. It's goals are long peace (up to 50 years) and no Diplomacy aside from Non-Agression Pacts.
Add Harmony and you are actually in danger of hitting 100% Happinees or the Habitabiltiy cap.

My goal as pacifsit always was to rush colonisation. As you can not conquer, what you grab is all you got. Increased border range helps with that.
However Megastructures - Habitats and Ringworlds in particular - are there for the tall pacifist builds.

 

[Tacticus101]

You probably have to play tall, take a few planets, focus on unity and get space habitats ASAP. Alternatively, at the start drop frontier outposts in as many systems as possible to grab planets that you will later terraform and settle. Either way, not much expansion, but you should have really good tech.

If you want to fight, liberating states works really well. I generally find that if you have a strong fleet they will be willing to become your vassals immediately.

 

[Blue Giraffe]

If I wanted my species to have this North Korean attitude I would have made them extremely habitable and use other mode of transportation than wormhole for a rapid expansion early-game. After that You would have all the space for growing tall and your spiritual pursuits.

 

[Comradebot]

Haven't played Utopia yet, but I have a long running group of Pacifist-Fanatic Xenophobic hydra men. Made them highly adaptive and just colonized every world around without worry. Makes for an empire that's incredibly dense and, unless you're totally boxed in by other empires, you should be able to expand wherever you want.

They also seem to always do well under AI control, and twice now I've seen them and their isolationist empire being an incredibly powerful, if peaceful, force in the galaxy.

But a lot of that has to do with the highly adaptive trait. Without it, not sure how I'd go full isolation mode.

 

[Notho]

My pacifist xenophobe space fungi are doing pretty well. I'm fairly big as I started far away from most other civs except the xenophile FE. I'll be fine as long as they don't wake up.

 

[Hyomoto]

I have an odd society, we started out as aristocratic, militaristic xenophobes but over time have become aristocratic, pacifist egalitarians. And mind you, we still have slavery. The new faction system and ethics governance is interesting to say the least, in that it only matters that the faction a pop belongs to is happy, not whether or not they agree with how the government postures itself. For example, another supremacist faction cropped up just recently (the old one died out I guess, they were happy but their followers went to other factions) and as long as the main faction stays in power and we don't cater to other aliens they stay happy. None of the other factions care about those so there's literally no conflict of interest.

It's weird, even though our government values haven't changed, popular opinion just isn't there. It's like we put up a front of xenophobia but when it comes down to it, all that really means is we cater to our specie first. Now, if we were to go to war or start purging species we have those values to fall back on, but I'm guessing it would cause a tinge of unrest as the population returned to it's "old ways". The new system isn't perfect, but having a more dynamic population has been an interesting thing. Basically, you HAVE to play the way you want to be and if you don't, you'll BECOME whatever it is you are playing as. I think the system may be a little too dynamic, and for me has been a little too easy, but I'll be honest I am completely happy that it was added.

 

[General Retreat]

I'm running an oligarchic pacifist, xenophobe, materialist empire at the moment with a non adaptive main race. The main race gets alpine worlds and habitats, slave synths are everywhere else toiling on farms and mines.

The Unbidden appeared on the opposite side of the galaxy to me earlier and so far have expanded their territory while devouring around 1/5 of the map. I'm currently a signatory to the xenophile AFE which suits me fine because it means no one can get to me, and I wasn't declaring wars anyway.

My long term plan is to keep my fleet at the cap and continue to wait out the Unbidden. Hopefully they'll eat everyone else and I can then slowly push them back until I can colonise the newly vacated real estate.

In the mean time I'm building my first ring worlds and waiting to build up influence from the isolationist faction's peace bonus. I lost the 50 year bonus after being dragged into a short war in the heavens...