Okay soo machines are lame now!

[Kahldris]

Soo prior to 2.2 machines became my favorite to play post synthetic dawn. I hadn't played them yet cuz I wanted to fully experience the new economy stuff.

Anyway my cousin and I played a game last week where we both went machines and omg..... terrible.

We were on fast or fastest speed most of the time and it took like 3 hours for our first colony to get to 5 pops. We each took like 8 or 9 colonies and then had nothing to do while we just waited for what felt like 1 pop an hour on fastest speed.

Wow I thought everyone was exaggerating when they said machines are bad. After 3 hours of it we just quit, so I dont know if they are bad but they are very very boring now.

What needs to be done to make machines fun again? I guess increasing growth speed of pops is an obvious answer but we do want to make sure they are balanced if course.

We were floored. Like wow!

 

[Methes]

You have to take all the speed growth modifiers you can (traits etc), go Expansion asap and resettle pops from other planets to reach 5 pops (assembly factory) and 10 pops (upgraded capital) as soon as you can without hindering your economy. While carefully micromanaging jobs on your growing colonies to only keep the bare minimum.
I usually go with 2 energy and 1 mineral districts, assembly factory and capital.
Of course other empires can do this too and be much more efficient at it but with this strategy you at least have something to do and you maybe stand a chance against AI.
TL DR: machine empires currently have zero benefits over other empires (except machine worlds) and many downsides.