master crafters is way way OP

[DeanTheDull]

I think the second point is saying that you can use Master Crafters to offset the downside of war economy - just switch it on in 2200 and your CG production is still good enough, but you get +25% to alloys.
This only works if you assume that other empires don't run war economy though, which isn't a good assumption.

You can do this, but it's a significant loss in pop-efficiency, and doesn't really jive with any build. If you're a war build, you shouldn't be producing enough CG for the difference to matter- the CG margin is less than 1 CG per pop employed, and you shouldn't even have 6 artisans if you're prioritizing alloys. If you're in a tech build, you shouldn't be militarizing the economy in the first place.

Militarized Economy is exceptionally strong in trade builds because TV converts to CG without being affected by the CG penalty. But if you're running a trade build, you don't actually need or particularly want Masterful Crafters, since trade jobs are still more pop-efficient on the low-habitability worlds you prioritize them on, and the point of a trade build is to free up the high-habitability worlds you would be using for upkeep purposes (minerals/CG/Masterful Crafters) for other things (the scientists funded by trade CG).

I like to put my researchers in spare building slots across my empire - the research world designation isn't powerful enough to justify only allowing researchers there.
If you put a researcher in a free building slot on a non-tech world, you spend an additional 0.8 CG in upkeep (assuming no other modifiers), but don't have to spend 500 minerals on a city district for your research world and 2 EC on its upkeep.

The issue with researchers everywhere is downstream of habitability, not upkeep, though habitability does effect the pop (as opposed to job) upkeep.

Habitability is decreasing the pop output efficiency of all non-trade jobs, science/unity and CG/alloy and miner/technicians, and the reason science jobs should be concentrated is because they should be concentrated on the high-habitability zones. However, this brings back the issue of what do you put in your limited high-habitability planets, and where you're getting your minerals from.

If you're getting minerals from 60 or below worlds, you're facing 20+ job output penalties on what's already one of the weakest jobs, and you'd be better off just letting your homeworld be miners. If you're getting minerals from your 80-habitability guaranteed world, you're not getting the bonus building slots on that world and have to build the urban district anways. If you're building the industrial districts on those 60-habitability worlds, you're again facing the same inefficiency not just to the CG-artificer, but the science labs... when you're not using those building slots for amenity workers. And that's not cover the issue of 'building 1500 minerals worth of industrial districts and 36 minerals a month of upkeep for 2 science jobs,' or that as a (usually) upkeep-only resource you want as few planets dedicated to CG as possible, meaning that instead of inefficient scientists you want to use all the pops on the planet to build more CG for the empire as a whole.

It's never about maximizing the science per planet, but the empire as a whole.

Fundamentally, the civics that give free building slots from districts don't change that you want to hyper-specialize planets for pop-efficiency. If you have a CG world, only employ non-CG jobs once the CG capacity is filled. Don't spread industrial districts around the empire needlessly.

Luxury housing and strict hyper-specialisation will net you the most output from your pops, but burns a lot of that advantage in resettlement time and building costs. A pop that waits several months to start working and has a 500 mineral debt to cover is going to take a long time to catch up to a fractionally less efficient pop that got going immediately and for free.

The cost of a science lab, luxury housing, and amenity jobs (holotheater or gene clinic) and another industrial district or CG factory are all base 500 minerals for tier 1. There is no mineral debt.

If your planet is in an amenity deficit, then unless you're specifically going for certain sorts of negative-amenity rush strategies (which wouldn't be doing Masterful Crafters in the first place in favor of better war synergies), you will prioritize the amenity building over the science lab regardless. There is no mineral saving, and only a pop-efficiency-vs-energy tradeoff. Since Artificers produce their own energy, 6 artificers can easily cover their own industrial district upkeep and the luxury housing with energy to spare.

If amenities are not the deficit, and only employment is worth considering, then the substitution isn't between a science lab and luxury housing, but a science lab and another industrial district. Empire-considerations still want as few CG worlds as possible, so that one planet can support all the others dedicated to their own thing. There is still no mineral savings overall, and really a mineral bias towards skipping the science since the most efficient mineral usage will come from both a dedicated CG world and using minerals saved via efficiency for a dedicated science world elsewhere.

Only if the empire as a whole has a CG surplus would it make sense to stop expanding CG production on your CG world in favor for science... but this, itself, should only come after the Capital is de-industrialized. The capital's 10% production output isn't as effective as the 20% job upkeep reduction of 80% worlds, and so rebalancing it from an industrial world to an urban world should take priority.


However, scenarios two and three are functionally pre-empted by scenario 1, and amenities are always going to be fighting against a deficit that doesn't justify scientists being employed unless you already have the extra 1000 minerals for an urban district and entertainer. At which point the argument on mineral savings is worse than dead, but redundant.


At 80 habitability, non-slave/resident pops are going to be needing 1.2 amenities each, such that 3 industrial districts that unlock a building slot require 6 pops who will need 7.2 amenities. Luxury housing will be 5, so net 2.2 amenities required per unlocked building slot even on the best of early-game worlds.

The Tier 2 capital provides 11 (6 from ruler jobs, 5 from capital building), 2.4 of which will be consumed by the politicians, and another 1.2 from a roboticist assuming normal non-rush builds (which wouldn't use masterful crafters instead of other civics). Which leaves 7.4 excess amenities. But another 2.4 are committed for the 2 Artificers from the CG-factory building, which will eventually be needed, especially when that upgrade comes along. This leaves us at 5 excess amenities after we use our CG factory slot.

Well, 5 amenities covers the luxury-housing gapped amentity deficit of 2.2 per 3 industrial districts for 2 more building slot unlocks after the first, ie 9 districts. So, if we use our building slots for luxury housing, we can get away without a amenity pop until about-

9 districts for the 3 unlock (18 pops) + 1 CG factory (2 pops) + 2 ruler pops + 1 roboticist= 23 pops.

At which point we need about 2 more amenities to get us to the 25 pop upgrade point, which... requires investing an urban district for something, unless we eat the amenity cost and rush the last 2 pops over for an upgrade.



By contrast, if we substitute one of those early luxury housings with a science lab, we have a 7.4 amenity swing, as +5 amenities becomes -2.4 amenities. This will require we build an amenity building, which in turn requires either giving up the roboticist- a no-no for econ blooms- OR spending the minerals to build an urban district and another building, and much earlier than the 23rd pop.

But if you're going to spend 1000 minerals to unlock a building slot and employ an entertainers, you could just do that on another world dedicated to scientists.

If you're doing the necessary conquest for 6k research by 2250, that speed is valuable.

It's a slowdown, frankly.

 

[Franton]

Your AIs have alloys to trade?

Not much in the beginning, but the more I trade with them, the more they will produce: apparently they adjust their production to make up for whatever they trade away. In my current game, I was able to trade ~200 alloys by 2250. Here you can see my production from a savegame from 2253.02.20:

The 104 energy I consumed were used to boost my production a bit via the market:

Not accounting for these market trades, my trade balance with AI empires was:
+356 energy
+226 minerals
-533 food
-266 CGs
+199 alloys

That's a total market value of -1065 in food and CGs traded for a total market value of +1378 in energy, minerals and alloys. Note how my own alloy production is virtually non-existant.

 

[Dragatus]

1. You don't need conquest to hit 6k by 2250. I've hit 6k by 2255 on default settings, GA, huge, max empires, no war. And there was room to improve.

How do you do that and how many colonies does it take? I used to think I was a decent player, but I don't think I've ever had more than 500 research by 2250.

 

[Incompetent]

Not much in the beginning, but the more I trade with them, the more they will produce: apparently they adjust their production to make up for whatever they trade away. In my current game, I was able to trade ~200 alloys by 2250.

Selling food to the AI is effectively an exploit, because the AI will pay completely irrational amounts for it, e.g. paying 2+ energy for 1 food. I suspect the AI also overproduces food and dumps the excess on the market, so it's just straight-up bleeding out resources for no reason.

The AI selling alloys on higher difficulties makes sense I suppose, because it's doubling up on the AI bonuses (each metallurgist makes more due to production bonus, but also needs fewer miners to feed it because of the miner's production bonus). Even so, the price at which the AI will sell needs to be set quite carefully, because if it keeps raising alloy production to meet demand and doesn't get enough basic resources in return, that could easily lead to economic disaster.

 

[Franton]

Selling food to the AI is effectively an exploit, because the AI will pay completely irrational amounts for it

This isn't really an exploit: you need to be on somewhat friendly terms to get a good deal, and you only get very good deals at ratios of 2:1 when you keep tradong over vast periods of time (e. g. 50-100 years). I haven't ever seen any empire offering such deals right from the start, even if they like you.

Making other empires like you requires effort, and it's only fair when that effort eventually pays off in the form of good trade deals.

 

[Franton]

How do you do that and how many colonies does it take? I used to think I was a decent player, but I don't think I've ever had more than 500 research by 2250.

I don't know about @7ED , but a combination of aggressive expansion and tech rush strategies typically get you there, and beyond. Personally I got the best results with Inward perfection (pacifist, fanatic xenophobe) and about a dozen science ships with half of them just exploring and the rest surveying the most promising areas as fast as possible, while using the one lone envoy to pacify your closest, most aggressive neighbour for as long as you can.

20 empty corvettes (50 alloys per ship) and tier 2 tech starbases are usually sufficient to discourage most would-be attackers, and if you manage to hold them off until you can build an actual tier 2-3 tech fleet, nobody will be able to stop you.

This is harder to pull off at non-scaling Grand Admiral, but doable with experience and a little bit of luck.

 

[DamnedLackOfTropicalFruit]

1. You don't need conquest to hit 6k by 2250. I've hit 6k by 2255 on default settings, GA, huge, max empires, no war. And there was room to improve.

Also chiming in on the 6k skepticism.
3k to 4k is reasonable assuming your build is science friendly and you can safely produce 0 alloys in your neighbourhood, but 6k is a lot more than that.

Endgame researchers with pretty much every bonus net slightly over 40 research each, but that would require starting a ringworld in 2242, which needs you to start a mega shipyard in 2232, by which time you need to already have the first megastructure ascension perk and the ascension theory tech to get the needed +100% construction speed.
Assuming you're not deep into T5 techs in 2230, a more reasonable assumption would be about 36 as erudite void dwellers on a research hab with every relevant tech (going up to T4s), plus assistance, meritocracy, and an intellectual governor. We'll need to be supporting 167 of these researchers to generate 6k research - though research stations reduce that slightly. My last non-war game had above-average space for a max-empires game and was getting 100 from stations in 2280, but we'll double that to be generous. 30 research is free, and we'll round down to 160 researchers.

Since we're using void dweller pops on research habitats (and giving this up would lose us +25% researcher output), we can't get the research planet upkeep reduction, so we need 2.4 CG per researcher with the discovery tradition and accounting for specialist upkeep.
This totals 384 CG for just the researcher upkeep, which is only 20ish artisans, plus maybe 10 miners to mantain them alongside space resources, again assuming you're very far into the tech/unity trees and have every reasonable bonus and civilian economy. EC, alloy and strategic upkeep is certainly not negligable, but we'll ignore it for now because that gets very specific.

To cover our researchers plus other upkeep, in addition to having building material, we want substantially more than 190 pops by 2250. In my last void dweller game, I had slightly less than 190 pops by that year, though this certainly wasn't played perfect and is without robots - averaging 35 to 40 monthly growth/assembly is yet another tall order, but manageable.
The problem is doing all of this at once - early robots delay key timings (especially as void dweller, which needs those alloys for habitats), later robots don't have the advantage of having already paid for themselves, and need more pops devoted to them in order to produce enough robots for 2250.

Some of these issues are specific to void dwellers, but other empires need to find space for over 80 labs on ideal planets, and pay vastly more EC upkeep on all the cities and labs compared to research districts, and need more researchers to begin with.

With the exception of perhaps reshuffling your entire economy into a stagnant state in 2249 just for the screenshot - I figure to get 6k at 2250 you'd need to be taking advantage of the AI in some way or another.

This isn't really an exploit: you need to be on somewhat friendly terms to get a good deal, and you only get very good deals at ratios of 2:1 when you keep tradong over vast periods of time (e. g. 50-100 years). I haven't ever seen any empire offering such deals right from the start, even if they like you.

Making other empires like you requires effort, and it's only fair when that effort eventually pays off in the form of good trade deals.

I agree that making other empires like you requires effort, but not that the resulting trade deals are fair.
Even the most degenerate overlord origin cheeses require some effort, but the payoff is not proportional to the investment.

The reward for placing an envoy in a friendly AI is that it won't attack you and is amenable to migration or other useful pacts - siphoning your neighbour's GA bonus by setting up monthly deals for a single month to trick the AI into over/undervaluing certain resources isn't really part of the arrangement.
If it was supposed to be free resources, they'd just give you free resources without the fuss.

 

[Incompetent]

This isn't really an exploit: you need to be on somewhat friendly terms to get a good deal, and you only get very good deals at ratios of 2:1 when you keep tradong over vast periods of time (e. g. 50-100 years). I haven't ever seen any empire offering such deals right from the start, even if they like you.

Making other empires like you requires effort, and it's only fair when that effort eventually pays off in the form of good trade deals.

With high relations they should give you fair trade deals, which could be profitable for you due to comparative advantage, e.g. if you are a Rogue Servitor buying basic resources and selling alloys and CGs. What they shouldn't be doing is effectively giving you tribute via the trade screen. (The AI is also too willing to pay taxes as a loyal subject, but that's another issue.) There's just no realistic scenario where it's justified for the AI to pay over 2 energy for 1 food; we're not talking about an empire with a completed Dyson Sphere, Catalytic Processing and Cloning Vats here, just ordinary consumption and an ordinary pop-based economy, with the AI presumably just building whatever energy/mineral/food districts it thinks it needs.

The AI won't offer 2:1 in general, I mean they specifically overvalue food, i.e. they are reluctant to sell it to you, but will pay huge amounts to buy it from you. Sometimes they overvalue other resources, but food is the most noticeable for how easy it is to produce and how close to useless it is in the quantities that the AI is willing to buy it.

 

[Franton]

they'd just give you free resources without the fuss

Actually that does happen, too! And the amounts of resources being offered for free, when it happens, are significant. Given that this does happen, re you still saying this isn't working as intended?

I'm inclined to agree that the exchange rates that AIs are sometimes willing to accept are too good, and should be rebalanced. But in principle everything's working as intended.

The AI won't offer 2:1 in general, I mean they specifically overvalue food, i.e. they are reluctant to sell it to you, but will pay huge amounts to buy it from you. Sometimes they overvalue other resources, but food is the most noticeable for how easy it is to produce and how close to useless it is in the quantities that the AI is willing to buy it.

This is true at the start of the game, but during mid game the focus shifts towards CGs. Also, FEs, - if they're willing to trade at all - will typically only trade strategic resources at a favorable exchange rate. For everything else, you better trade your excess production with standard empires.

All that said, you do have to consider that given a certain amount of pops, you can't produce unlimited amounts of food (or CGs): first you need to be able to actually overproduce some resources, and find empires willing to trade other resources for it at a reasonable rate. And when I say reasonable, you'll have to go with 1:1 or a bit worse for some time before you can hope for better rates, so it's not just the envoy, but also the continued trade, potentially at a net loss, that you need to invest before you can reap the benefits. Of course there are exceptions, and I always watch out for a good deal. But the very same could be said for aggressive playstyles where you're looking for tasty planets with few defenses that you can conquer. So, I don't see the problem with AI trade, really.

 

[OnyxAbussos]

TAKE FEUDAL EMPIRE FIRST.
You'll start with like +40 Unity.

Then you do Mercantile traditions first, and switch to Marketplace of Ideas for your Trade Policy so you have all the Unity you could *ever* want, then do Diplomacy and create a Trade Federation, you'll never have to have another Artisan or Bureaucrat in your empire for the rest if the game.

EVER.

By 2220 you'll have more CGs and Unity than God. All those Artisans are now employed as Researchers, using all those free CGs from Trade. Way more powerful in every way.

 

[DeanTheDull]

TAKE FEUDAL EMPIRE FIRST.
You'll start with like +40 Unity. -snip-

Over alternative empires without the trait? Not really.

You avoid unity upkeep, but this isn't the same as gaining it. You'd need about 20 leaders hired to have a net +40 in avoided upkeep, and to do that you'd need to spend unity for 20 leaders. Even without leader price scaling of +50 unity per, that would be 2000 unity even at 'just' 100 unity each, each which would take 50 months to 'break even'.


A much better passive unity unity build is is Parliamentary System with Fanatic Egalitarian. This actually is bonus unity- that you don't need to spend- and is easily 2000+ unity in the first decade thanks to early factions. Further, Egalitarians synergize much better with trade builds over time thanks to considerably higher passive TV, even as their faction unity will be considerably higher than Authoritarians.

This is without considering the relative advantages of Egalitarian-boosted scientists, who get more happiness from Egalitarian living standards, for higher stability to boost science and lower crime to decrease/delay the number of enforcers for more early-game specialists.

 

[OnyxAbussos]

Over alternative empires without the trait? Not really.

You avoid unity upkeep, but this isn't the same as gaining it. You'd need about 20 leaders hired to have a net +40 in avoided upkeep, and to do that you'd need to spend unity for 20 leaders. Even without leader price scaling of +50 unity per, that would be 2000 unity even at 'just' 100 unity each, each which would take 50 months to 'break even'.


A much better passive unity unity build is is Parliamentary System with Fanatic Egalitarian. This actually is bonus unity- that you don't need to spend- and is easily 2000+ unity in the first decade thanks to early factions. Further, Egalitarians synergize much better with trade builds over time thanks to considerably higher passive TV, even as their faction unity will be considerably higher than Authoritarians.

This is without considering the relative advantages of Egalitarian-boosted scientists, who get more happiness from Egalitarian living standards, for higher stability to boost science and lower crime to decrease/delay the number of enforcers for more early-game specialists.

1. Solid. Point goes to Deanthedull.
2. For the sake of the nuance, I only meant that on day 1, your net Unity number is +40 per month (+50 if Void Dweller). I think without the civic, your starting net number is +24 or so. Like you said, because of cost reduction.
3. I'll have to try that with the parliament and Fanatic egal.

 

[HFY]

3. I'll have to try that with the parliament and Fanatic egal.

Parliament System is fantastic for your first 10 years, when you get your 3rd civic slot consider swapping it for Beacon of Liberty or something else.

 

[Dr. B]

Having super high numbers for a given resource without using extra spicy cheese will mean you sacrifice something else.

Like influence, if you want a good supply, you can have lots of bases with anchorages and a huge fleet for force projection, as well as several rivals. Need a ton of alloys for that.

I like to have it all, decent alloy, science and unity income at the same time.

 

[DamnedLackOfTropicalFruit]

Actually that does happen, too! And the amounts of resources being offered for free, when it happens, are significant. Given that this does happen, re you still saying this isn't working as intended?

I have literally never seen this, but I play primarily with Starnet AI which is far too cynical for that sort of thing, so I'm willing to believe the vanilla AI would do this.
How much does it offer? These occasional gifts would need to be incredibly substantial to compare to the monthly income from abusing the trade system.

All that said, you do have to consider that given a certain amount of pops, you can't produce unlimited amounts of food (or CGs): first you need to be able to actually overproduce some resources, and find empires willing to trade other resources for it at a reasonable rate. And when I say reasonable, you'll have to go with 1:1 or a bit worse for some time before you can hope for better rates, so it's not just the envoy, but also the continued trade, potentially at a net loss, that you need to invest before you can reap the benefits. Of course there are exceptions, [...]

There's definitely a disconnect in what you're saying and what I'm familiar with - so I booted up the game to double check.
Meet the Dabbax Compact. They are the first empire I met, a Hegemonic Imperialist (below average trade acceptance), and they are an Advanced Empire because "Advanced Neighbours Off" is apparently a placebo setting.

Our diplomatic history is as follows:
I am fanatic Xenophile.
We have an opposing minor ethic.
I insulted them in the High Language by accident.

This is, with below average opinion and trade willingness, the deal they are willing to give me the moment I met them:

This is a phenominal deal - I am selling food for 1.3 credits each. There is no reason to employ any technicians, because farmers can make far more energy credits by selling food to the Dabbax Compact.
There is also no reason to employ miners, because these credits can be used on the internal market to buy far more minerals than the same number of miners could produce. Alternatively, I can just buy the Dabbax Compact's minerals for an even better deal that doesn't get more expensive.

All empires capable of diplomacy can and should do this. Even if you're a build that's specialised in making something else (say, industrious slaver mining guilds), these rates are so good that you're still better off employing your min-maxed miners on industrial worlds, and exchanging the CG with the AI.

But this isn't even the main problem - because after a single month, I can make the trade deal this:

Note how the trade acceptance isn't all used up - this is because the advanced GA empire doesn't have enough spare EC per month to trade away.
Food is going for almost 1:2, this rate is so good that I can buy food off the market and sell it straight back to the AI at a profit. It's not just doubling my pop efficiency, it's straight up printing money.

To really stress this point, the Dabbax Compact doesn't like me, has known me for 1 month, and has a below average trade acceptance from its personality.
The primary factor of an AI's value of resources is not how much it likes you, how loyal a trade partner you've been, and certainly isn't how much it needs the resources (the AI is floating 7.4k food and making +170 a month in both screenshots). The AI looks at your monthly net production, and bases its values almost entirely on that. Overproducing food? You "only" get 1.3 credits per food. Did you, like I did, fabricate a food deficit by setting up a temporary monthly market order? You get triple the profit.

Obviously you don't have to abuse this, and can "only" abuse the first trade kind of deal. But the price is always going to be determined by how much you're accidentally doing the second deal by initiating trades before building up a large monthly profit.

 

[Dragatus]

The primary factor of an AI's value of resources is not how much it likes you, how loyal a trade partner you've been, and certainly isn't how much it needs the resources (the AI is floating 7.4k food and making +170 a month in both screenshots). The AI looks at your monthly net production, and bases its values almost entirely on that. Overproducing food? You "only" get 1.3 credits per food. Did you, like I did, fabricate a food deficit by setting up a temporary monthly market order? You get triple the profit.

That makes no sense and I would've never guessed it works that way.

 

[7ED]

Also chiming in on the 6k skepticism.
3k to 4k is reasonable assuming your build is science friendly and you can safely produce 0 alloys in your neighbourhood, but 6k is a lot more than that.

Please see links below. I don't understand why folks are so skeptical of 6k science by mid 2200s without conquest. I'm not the only one hitting these numbers. I just did a one planet challenge and hit 3k science by 2250, and thats not even that impressive compared to the guy who hit 3k alloy output + all megastructures built on a one planet challenge by 2300. Its really not that hard once you've mastered the min-max (though the 6k by 2257 is an insane feat and that took a lot of tries to match).

Also, if you're trying to hit these numbers with void dweller, ring world, shit like that--you're going to miss those targets; but if you somehow manage to work let me know, because even pre-nerf shattered ring couldn't match a well-honed tech rush using normal planets.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/ny9ah6
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/n912vz
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/osfyia
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/vuorcn
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/vckh36
Edit: Franton--hitting these numbers with inward perfection is impressive. I've tried it and the 1 envoy shortage is crippling. So much of min-maxing is dependent on AI relationships (for trades, for guarantees of independence to protect you from hostiles, etc.). I was completely at the mercy of who I spawned next to. But note, I play on huge, max crowd galaxies. I suspect inward perfection becomes a lot less viable if you are shut in with lots of neighbors.

And for the above poster shitting on single players.... I mean I'm not sure a comment like that is worth a response, but I would note that the min maxers in single player who are hitting insane numbers are also perfectly capable of shitting out 100 corvettes by 2220 (or numbers as needed) for an early game rush. As I mentioned before, conquest builds are way easier than playing peacefully. War builds are the obvious choice in multiplayer for good reason, given most human opponents early game aren't as challenging as a Grand Admiral AI, and those who are way better than the AI.... well, then you definitely should kill them ASAP before they become a threat.

 

[7ED]

To really stress this point, the Dabbax Compact doesn't like me, has known me for 1 month, and has a below average trade acceptance from its personality.
The primary factor of an AI's value of resources is not how much it likes you, how loyal a trade partner you've been, and certainly isn't how much it needs the resources (the AI is floating 7.4k food and making +170 a month in both screenshots). The AI looks at your monthly net production, and bases its values almost entirely on that. Overproducing food? You "only" get 1.3 credits per food. Did you, like I did, fabricate a food deficit by setting up a temporary monthly market order? You get triple the profit.

Obviously you don't have to abuse this, and can "only" abuse the first trade kind of deal. But the price is always going to be determined by how much you're accidentally doing the second deal by initiating trades before building up a large monthly profit.

On the last sentence, its hardly abuse. Entire real life industries are built off arbitrage.

 

[DamnedLackOfTropicalFruit]

I don't understand why folks are so skeptical of 6k science by mid 2200s without conquest [...] (though the 6k by 2257 is an insane feat and that took a lot of tries to match).

I should clarify I agree that 6k in the mid 2200s without conquest is reasonable - 6k in 2260 is extremely impressive but definitely possible, 6k by 2270 is pretty consistent once you know what you're doing.
I was specifically wondering about 6k by 2250, which you casually mentioned was within reach but by my understanding definitely wasn't - napkin math ruled it out on the basis that you just don't quite have enough time to get the neccessary pops, even with the most pop-efficient empires possible. There isn't a decade of optimisation to be made from a 2260 run.

The links are interesting - I didn't think about having genocidals produce refugees for you (though I'm not sure how it sits with my AI interaction hyper-purity), and particularly good luck with primitive worlds could definitely cover the difference, albeit it's questionably skirting the no-conquest thing.
On closer inspection, it also looks like synth ascension nets more research points from researchers, even though erudite probably has the edge in actual research speed, assuming all other things are equal. Another L for bio ascension

On the last sentence, its hardly abuse. Entire real life industries are built off arbitrage.

Arbitrage is taking advantage of small differences in price in different markets to make a profit. It's skimming profits, but pairing up buyers with sellers is a real job with real value. Buying resources off the galactic market, then reselling them at 400% markup to the same empires that sold them on the market in the first place can hardly be described as arbitrage - it's just stealing.

While everyone can draw their own lines when it comes to exploits, I personally draw mine at trading with the AI. The AI is incapable of acting in its own interests, and it will always value resources based on the player's net production - a metric the player has complete control over and is always manipulating, even if not on purpose.

That second part is the kicker - if setting up a monthly -400 trade to trick the AI isn't ok, is it ok to trade when your monthly net is -20 because you know you've got a key production boost coming up? Should you wait? How long?
Making multiple trades in a month will have different acceptances to making the same trades in consecutive months - sometimes in your favor, sometimes not. When is it not ok to make multiple trades at once?
If the old system of being able to trade favors away infinitely wasn't ok, why is the first 10 ok? It's the exact same deal, you're just making it fewer times.

There's no consistent rule that seperates cheating from smart play - you can get unreasonable trades entirely by accident.
Playing without AI trades is the more interesting challenge anyway. Just like how early conquest is single-dimensional and overwhelmingly the dominant strategy, only producing things the AI overvalues and alchemising it into a perfectly balanced economy is similarly simplified and unbeatable. I'll see how much tech I can get while I employ my own technicians.

 

[7ED]

There's no consistent rule that seperates cheating from smart play - you can get unreasonable trades entirely by accident.
Playing without AI trades is the more interesting challenge anyway. Just like how early conquest is single-dimensional and overwhelmingly the dominant strategy, only producing things the AI overvalues and alchemising it into a perfectly balanced economy is similarly simplified and unbeatable. I'll see how much tech I can get while I employ my own technicians.

Ya whatever floats folks' boat. You ARE arbitraging.... its really the same mechanic.... Its just that the AI is a non-sophisticated counterparty. But that's true for almost every aspect of this game. There are people who feel strongly that favor trading is an exploit, but that's an explicit feature of the game the devs implemented. Favors are horrifically mispriced in the early game, but exploit for something added in as a feature is a bit of a hot-take.

On the 6k, my record is 2253. But I lucked out with some primitive spawns, which would count as a conquest even if no war. There was still room to improve--it was definitely not a fully optimized run. You could be right that 2250 is impossible without a clutch primitive to take. I play but I don't crunch the numbers. That said, just from the figures I am hitting on non-lucky starts compared to where I know there is room to improve more, I think its possible. Mind you, are you accounting for the possibility of getting almost all of your base resources/CG from sources other than pops? Before the deficit spending nerf the last major patch, you could just have every pop be a researcher by taking advantage of deficit spending mechanics (obviously not possible anymore and that was most definitely an exploit that was rightly patched out).