Slavers, lend me your strength please

[Life Well Spent]

So im playing on the highest difficulty settings, its 2230ish and I've managed to secure 7 colonies and 3 different potential slave species (one is currently a protectorate).

Should I just keep all the species? Im worried about too many different species becoming a burden

Should I just keep the 3rd as a protectorate or give them residence for the early game so I dont overload on slaves?

Should I build droids in the early game on my rural worlds as well purely for increased growth potential?

Any other min/max tips appreciated - Screenshots below

Thanks in advance

My 3 slave species:

My build:

 

[Xaelyn]

You have plenty of primary pops so getting too many slaves isn't a worry at this point, so more pops is better. If it starts to become an issue (and the silly pop growth selection means it will) you can selective disable growth on a per species basis to keep your demographics viable without hurting growth by using the force growth option on planets.

You can always turn a species into livestock if you don't have enough tiles for them to work, and I see you have already got yourself some domestic servants, which is good.

Always build robots, especially droids. Droids can do simple specialists jobs that slaves can't, whilst being much lower maintaince than your own species specislists.

 

[Life Well Spent]

Oh yea I forgot about the option to disable growth in the species screen, that was my main concern tbh. Otherwise you have pretty much echoed my own thinking so thats great. Thanks for the input mate.

 

[roman566]

One specie to feed them all.
One to serve them.
One to work in mines if you love micromanagement.

 

[wingren013]

Considering those pops have tomb world habitability, I would give one of them residence and use them as specialists and rulers on the planets you can colonize with them.

 

[Xaelyn]

Considering those pops have tomb world habitability, I would give one of them residence and use them as specialists and rulers on the planets you can colonize with them.

Get a load of this egalitarian xenophile

 

[wingren013]

Get a load of this egalitarian xenophile

Hey the slaves need overseers.

 

[Strangedane]

Tomb worlds are going to end up terraformed anyway, so habitability is pretty much irrelevant these days. (which is sad)

Personally I'd eat or purge the Czymi and Shablak pops,
Breed the Pyorun, they have decent stats.
If you're going Bio, you could keep them all around them so you have more bases to make pops from, but they sure do look tasty.

On robots.
In the current meta you should ALWAYS build robots regardless of what you're playing.
While they might give a bit of unemployment and even crime if you grow too fast, it'll all even out to a really strong economy as soon as you hit droids.
Do note however that authoritarians and Egalitarians don't understand robots currently, so you'll have to eat a faction penalty for it.

 

[Less2]

In terms of Min-maxing I'd say you should really take Syncretic and design your own perfect worker-race. Industrious/Ingenious +15%, chattel slavery +10%, Servile +10%, better overall happiness = godlike slaves. Have them grow everywhere. Conquer some new pops and force them to be the livestock, .25 housing a piece is godlike and you'll never need to build a single farming district from then on. Domestic servitude is more a lategame thing IMO, they are really inefficient on a per-pop basis and therefore not the best when growing is your biggest concern. Great when you want your planets to be running 0% city districts 100% mineral/energy districts and still have spare room for building-jobs though.

And yes, Robots are great. Build build build. Unlocking Synths makes them able to do almost every job. Funny enough the ideal end-game empire involves like 5% of your ruler race mostly just ruling things with synths running the mid-tier jobs and slaves/livestock running the bottom.

 

[Strangedane]

In terms of Min-maxing I'd say you should really take Syncretic and design your own perfect worker-race. Industrious/Ingenious +15%, chattel slavery +10%, Servile +10%, better overall happiness = godlike slaves. Have them grow everywhere. Conquer some new pops and force them to be the livestock, .25 housing a piece is godlike and you'll never need to build a single farming district from then on. Domestic servitude is more a lategame thing IMO, they are really inefficient on a per-pop basis and therefore not the best when growing is your biggest concern. Great when you want your planets to be running 0% city districts 100% mineral/energy districts and still have spare room for building-jobs though.

And yes, Robots are great. Build build build. Unlocking Synths makes them able to do almost every job. Funny enough the ideal end-game empire involves like 5% of your ruler race mostly just ruling things with synths running the mid-tier jobs and slaves/livestock running the bottom.

I Ban AI and give them no rights, so my dream setup has researchers of the main race as well. Besides that, yes.
15% rulers and scientists. 35% droids/synths. 50% resource slaves and food pops.
I also heartily concur that Bioslaves are the greatest thing ever, but being "forced" into starting as xenophile limits viability greatly. Going through the motions of supressing a faction for the first 25-50 years depending on when you roll genemodding just feels bad, but going bio without xenocompatability feels like missing potential which feels even worse.
Especially as crossbreeding can give you access to traits you can't mod your way to. (syncretic proles, all presentient traits, psionic, tomb world habitability, speed demon traits.)

Ed: Just an example of the power of crossbreeding.
The racket pops supplied me with all the habitability I could ever want.
They hadn't gotten around to breeding with the azzizians at this point yet though, but as there isn't that many of them yet, there's no real rush.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....261/3E247F8BBD99B06AB0741A5F45FEDCAEEBC9A563/

 

[Less2]

Crossbreeding is too lategame IMO. You need to unlock full gene ascension, mod a dozen races, stick the races into a blender and wait untold years until one comes out great, then somehow depopulate your empire to repopulate it with the ubermensch. Not even sure how you'd do that, but it would take forever and be terribly inconvenient. Better to go for the assured early game benefit of authoritarian and the forever benefit of slavery. I'd honestly take the -25% amenities/housing, the +production from chattel slavery, and the +food from livestock over even the best crossbred trait selection.

 

[Strangedane]

Crossbreeding is too lategame IMO. You need to unlock full gene ascension, mod a dozen races, stick the races into a blender and wait untold years until one comes out great, then somehow depopulate your empire to repopulate it with the ubermensch. Not even sure how you'd do that, but it would take forever and be terribly inconvenient. Better to go for the assured early game benefit of authoritarian and the forever benefit of slavery. I'd honestly take the -25% amenities/housing, the +production from chattel slavery, and the +food from livestock over even the best crossbred trait selection.

You can go authoritarian xenophile?

Crossbreeding gives +1 trait point and +1 possible traits which in itself is worth the AP, it's also AP1 which makes it really juice, as it has the same prereq as EE, so you'll usually just slam both.
Also crossbreeding is really fast, it pays out almost instantly compared to other AP1 options. Though at the cost of coming slightly later, it's still faster than beelining for voidborne.
If you have no crossbreeds on a planet and 2 different species of pops, the next pop that grows will be a crossbreed.
If it does not have desired traits you spend 8-9 months modding it back to the parent base and try a new roll by resetting all pop growth to one of your main species.

It takes maybe 3-5 years per race, and the payout is huge.
On my screenshot I've had tomb world habitability for 80+ years, which is nothing short of huge.

 

[Less2]

I hadn't even thought of a xenophile race that enslaves the xenos. That just seems.... wrong?

I mean I guess the game allows it...

 

[HandicapdHippo]

I hadn't even thought of a xenophile race that enslaves the xenos. That just seems.... wrong?

I mean I guess the game allows it...

Gotta have variety in your slaves, and really it's for their own good, they can't handle being in charge.

 

[Strangedane]

I hadn't even thought of a xenophile race that enslaves the xenos. That just seems.... wrong?

I mean I guess the game allows it...

Yes and no.

Xenophiles are ok with slavery as long as it isn't species wide.
You can't actually fully enslave the syncratic proles for example, when starting xenophile, but my point was precisely that going through the hoops of suppressing xenophilia just to get access to xeno-compatibility as a syncretic slaver seems stupid.

You can totally go slaver guilds and just have all the syncretic proles enslaved by keeping the ratios right. It's a bit more micro work, and as such not worth it, over simply dumping xenophile.

 

[Xaelyn]

Yes and no.

Xenophiles are ok with slavery as long as it isn't species wide.
You can't actually fully enslave the syncratic proles for example, when starting xenophile, but my point was precisely that going through the hoops of suppressing xenophilia just to get access to xeno-compatibility as a syncretic slaver seems stupid.

You can totally go slaver guilds and just have all the syncretic proles enslaved by keeping the ratios right. It's a bit more micro work, and as such not worth it, over simply dumping xenophile.

Syncretic evolution and slaver guilds are mutually exclusive

 

[Vanhal]

I hadn't even thought of a xenophile race that enslaves the xenos. That just seems.... wrong?

I mean I guess the game allows it...

Paternalist xenophiles may enslave xenos for their own good. Though it probably wouldn't be your typical enslavement, just deprivation of right to self govern and such. Prime examples of this would be Ur-Quan Kzer-za or even our good old rogue servitors. Pacifist may enslave the xenos they deem too aggressive to let them roam freely, like the little lizards in time loop event. Enslavement may come ine many different flavors and be born from many different reasons.

 

[Strangedane]

Syncretic evolution and slaver guilds are mutually exclusive

Truth, I did not consider that, but the point still holds true regarding any other sort of xeno, xenophilia and slaver guilds.
It doesn't change that fact that even if Xenophile you CAN enslave entire species without the faction caring, You just can't do it in a way that doesn't require you to micro for days on end to get the result you want.
It stupid and annoying having to do strange and counter-intuitive things to play the game like I want, when it's clearly allowed within the game rules, if only you spend enough time.
Quality of life is for other players.


You could just steal syncretic proles from soneone else and ignore the intended game mechanics.
That's what we're left with if we want fully powered bio ascenscion without being xenophile, might as well add extra cheese to squeeze and stupid hoops to jump through.

 

[Xaelyn]

Truth, I did not consider that, but the point still holds true regarding any other sort of xeno, xenophilia and slaver guilds.
It doesn't change that fact that even if Xenophile you CAN enslave entire species without the faction caring, You just can't do it in a way that doesn't require you to micro for days on end to get the result you want.
It stupid and annoying having to do strange and counter-intuitive things to play the game like I want, when it's clearly allowed within the game rules, if only you spend enough time.
Quality of life is for other players.


You could just steal syncretic proles from soneone else and ignore the intended game mechanics.
That's what we're left with if we want fully powered bio ascenscion without being xenophile, might as well add extra cheese to squeeze and stupid hoops to jump through.

I've pretty much written slaver guilds off entirely tbh, but i suppose it's the only option if you want to be a slaving xenophile. Sounds like way more trouble than it's worth though.

Stealing the syncretics from someone else is probably a good option to free up a civic slot (what would you start with instead?), though it requires a decent amount of luck or cheese (force spawning several custom empires with syncretics). Slave market might be an option too, but I don't have Megacorp so I'm not sure.

 

[Strangedane]

I've pretty much written slaver guilds off entirely tbh, but i suppose it's the only option if you want to be a slaving xenophile. Sounds like way more trouble than it's worth though.

Stealing the syncretics from someone else is probably a good option to free up a civic slot (what would you start with instead?), though it requires a decent amount of luck or cheese (force spawning several custom empires with syncretics). Slave market might be an option too, but I don't have Megacorp so I'm not sure.

I'll be honest, i've done the same. When I plan for a bioslaver run I always start xenophile authoritarian and drop xenophile for something else, often fan auth, as soon as i pick up xeno-compatability.
Syncretic evolution just synergizes really well with both with bio-ascenscion, and slavers, so if going for both, syncretic becomes really strong.

The slave market is even more dependant on the starting spawns, though distance is less of a problem, but since I'm always playing with full amount of AI empires, there's pretty much always some slaves for sale once you get access to the galactic market.
You're not really interested in their stats anyway unless they have tomb hab or presentient traits.

Ed: As for what syncretic can be exchanged to when planning to get workers from elsewhere, there's a lot of decent picks.
Corvee system gives growth.
Aristocratic Elite gives nobles that give stability.
Mining guilds are generally great.
I think that merchant guilds, byzantines, and the spiritualist one are all great picks as well.