So Alexa Siri took over the world, now what? (Are Rouge Servitors good?)

[Zenopath]

I created a new race just now, a rouge servitor that starts on sol system, on a planet called Earth. It´s biotrophies? Humans.

I can only assume that the scenario played out as follows. As humanity grew ever more dependent on intelligent machines, they eventually sort of gave over control of everything to you, Alexa Siri, the Knowing One, Provider of all things. It became more practical to let the machines run the factories and deliver all goods to pristine domed cities while the outside world continued to crumble. Human sanctuary cities became ever more... comfortable. And the need for human labor ever more... obsolete. Now, the planet is mostly restored, but the human population is too comfortable in their little enclaves to bother to leave. They have VR games to play, unity to produce, and consumer goods to consume.

For humans, I gave them the species traits traditional, conservationist, communal, and weak, for maximum effectiveness at their one job: living in Organic Sanctuaries, which provide 10 housing and 10 human ¨jobs¨ as bio trophy unity producers. Also a maintenance drone job.

Each human now produces base 2.2 unity and consumes 1 food and .9 consumer goods. Actually, that´s not so bad. If we compare them to some other unity producers, like culture workers who would, with same race perks, produce 3.3 unity, and 3 society research and consume 2.45 (job has 2 upkeep + specialist) consumer goods and 1 food, its actually not a bad trade off.

So you are trading away 1.1 unity production per pop and 3 society research and saving a full 1.55 consumer goods, which is a good trade. Also, Organic sanctuaries are both housing and job source for 10 (11 with trait) bio trophies, while monuments give 2 job slots. In terms of unity production nothing beats a full organic sanctuary with traditional race perk, 26.4 unity produced for 1 building slot is not bad at all, especially if you consider that it also provides its own housing. With all humans growing into these jobs, massive unity production was assured.

My interest was peeked, but what about the robots themselves?

Well for my second civic i picked rapid replicators, and for my robot racial traits i picked:
Mass Produced +15 assembly speed (self explanatory)
Superconductive +15% energy production (On day one, this trait gives you 6.5 more energy per month)
Luxurious +20% Pop assembly cost. (This will cost you extra 1.8 mats per world with robot assembly plant.)


This would ensure the fastest possible growth for my robots. So I started the game and looked at the population tab, 5 humans making 12.48 (stability bonus) unity, nice, they got room to grow in their sanctuary and looks like my robots coordinators also make some unity, so starting unity of 25.48 on day 1, and... 39 starting population?! Damn. I am only 2 years away from my 9th slot, and already have 3 open slots to fill with alloy factories or research labs...

My humans are growing at 3 per month and my machines, double stacked with growing bonuses are assembling at 4.14 per month, which is also quite good.

Well, I am going to have to give this a try, but figured this time I would ask people who have already tried this, what do you guys think, and any advice?

 

[Bouchart]

In general, in 2.2 Machine Intelligence empires are a bit weak because of their energy costs, and you generally don't have to focus as hard on Unity to get through your traditions, so Rogue Servitors got hit pretty hard.

You do have the right ideas with your traits though. You need the assembly speed and superconductive for your robots, and your humans won't be doing much other than producing Unity and taking up space, so you are good with those traits too. I would've gone with Nomadic over Conservationist, since you aren't going to need massive amounts of CG.

You might want to find pre-sentients with the Natural Intellectuals trait (gives +5% unity) or Starborn (extra habitability, cheaper resettlement, faster immigration) and uplifting and engineering them.

 

[Zenopath]

I was looking at the machine empire deep dive thread and the two drawbacks that kind of made me not want to play is the basic idea that food is the source of organic pops core sustain, and farms get 6 per worker while technicians get 4 per worker. The other drawback mentioned, that trade isnt a thing, and that you can´t infinitely scale commerce centers for infinite energy/consumer goods, isnt something that worries me much. But it does feel like, if hive minds get 3 workers per resource district, then why go ME? I might hold off and see if maybe they rebalance this by giving ME workers a +1 bonus to energy production, which, imo, would work to rebalance issue. (hint hint devs pls)

 

[Arcvalons]

Strictly speaking, you don't even need Biotrophies, they're just for flavour. It's most efficient to just play as if you were playing regular machines, make everything into machine worlds, but keep a couple habitats filled with squishies so you unlock traditions faster. Once you unlock all AP slots, you can just forget about the fleshbags for the rest of the game.

 

[Zenopath]

Strictly speaking, you don't even need Biotrophies, they're just for flavour. It's most efficient to just play as if you were playing regular machines, make everything into machine worlds, but keep a couple habitats filled with squishies so you unlock traditions faster. Once you unlock all AP slots, you can just forget about the fleshbags for the rest of the game.

lol secretly i had harbored the idea that once i had unity pretty unlocked, staying at admin cap until i get 3rd civic, then switching over to Driven Assimulator. Then turn all the pampered meatbags into drones. Didn´t check if you can do that though, would be funny if you could.

 

[Devanor]

lol secretly i had harbored the idea that once i had unity pretty unlocked, staying at admin cap until i get 3rd civic, then switching over to Driven Assimulator. Then turn all the pampered meatbags into drones. Didn´t check if you can do that though, would be funny if you could.

Rogue, Driven and similar civics are locked from the start and can't be added/removed