This is gonna be a long one, so putting the TL;DR at the top: Spiritualist is neither good, nor is it incentivized to play as itself.
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Spiritualists are not in a good place. 3.3 isn't fixing that, but it also isn't breaking it either. Pretty much every mechanic Spiritualists have is a relic of a game that does not exist any more, and most of them were not good when it did. And my goal with this post is to go over every single mechanic and why it does not work. In detail. Because there is a lot of them, and they don't work.
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The Ethic
Spiritualist as an Ethic gives +10/20% Monthly Unity and -5/10% Edict cost. On this surface, this is actually... pretty good! Once you actually look at how it works. It's not. It's really. Really. REALLY not. The first problem is that it lies to you. It does not increase all monthly unity generation by 20%, only unity yields by 20%. Derivative yields, such as Marketplace of Ideas Trade Policy is completely unaffected by Spiritualist. But it also means that any other sources of unity are also unaffected. Unity from Events is completely unmodified. For comparison, the Research Speed modifier on Materialist affects all event technology yields and all derivative yields gained such as tech overflow storage.
Edict Cost Reduction is actually good as a stat. In 3.3, Edict Costs are actually worth considering as the ones that can be bought with energy credits are really expensive, and... it doesn't work. You can literally start up a game on 3.3 beta and check for yourself. It only applies to upfront costs. But, that's just a bug. Lets say that it does work. Fanatical Spiritualist is equivalent in power to a single ruler trait, Charismatic. But Charismatic also gives 20 Edict fund, which is equivalent to a flat 20 unity, but for edicts.
In other words, for the price of two of our three Ethics points.... the sum total of our starting bonuses are weaker than one single ruler trait during the early game.
Lets compare this to the bonuses from other ethics. Authoritarian gives +0.5/1 Influence and +5/10% Worker Resource Output. Xenophile gives +10/20% Trade Value and +1/2 Envoys. Pacifist gives +5/10 Stability and -15/30% Empire Sprawl from Pops. Materialist gives +5/10% Research Speed and -10/20% Robot upkeep. Egalitarian gives +25/50% unity from Factions and +5/10% Specialist Pop Output. Xenophobe gives +10/20% Pop Growth Speed and -40% Starbase Influence Cost, and Militarist gives +10/20% Ship Fire Rate and -20% Claim Influence cost.
Not only are all of these stronger than a single ruler trait, but some of them are better at Spiritualist's thing than Spiritualist is. Egalitarian will give you more unity than Spiritualist will for the early game because +50% to factions is more than +20% to Monthly sources early, and factions are not affected by Spiritualist. Materialist's +10% research speed applies to every bit of research, is individually as good as an Agenda, and comes with robot upkeep reduction, which is hard to get in the first place.
Oh, and Egalitarian's +10% Specialist Pop Output applies to unity, so you're getting half the jobs bonus too. You know, just to twist the knife.
In summary, Fanatic Spiritualist is worse at its job than Fanatic Egalitarian for a large portion of the game, and worse than Charismatic for a small but significant portion.
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The Jobs
Priests have been murdered in 3.3 It's outright incredible just how bad this job has become. Prior to 3.3, Priests were the main reason you went Spiritualist, as they were superior to entertainers in every way. So, you know, something worked. Which is good.
3.3 priests give 4 unity and 2 amenities per job for 2 consumer goods. For context, Clerks give 2 Amenities and 4 Trade Value for zero consumer goods. Let me repeat that. You are getting 1 Amenity and 2 Unity for 1 consumer good. Entertainers give 1 unity and 10 Amenities for 1 consumer good. That is ONE-TENTH the Amenities for ONE more unity per consumer good. And it's basically equivalent to a CLERK, but as a specialist. It is that bad.
Prior to 3.3, Temples gave Society Research, More Amenities, and Unity, making them a cornerstone of Spiritualist play and arguably their best feature, as getting so much value from Amenities production gave you a leg up in managing Amenities. Now you're spending two consumer goods and a building on a clerk job.
But lets talk about the Psi Corps instead of just going on about how priests are so worthless now as to be below clerks in viability. The building itself gives +5 stability, which is good. Not amazing, but 2.5% or so job output is actually pretty solid.
The job on the other hand is a meme. While its upkeep is only 1 energy, and thus irrelevant, it gives us.... three unity and -35 Crime. That's it. We get two jobs that.... give three unity and 10 more crime reduction than enforcers. Which we get for free from our capital building anyway. And about that stability. Enforcers give stability. And if you took the Domination traditions, Enforcers also give one unity. Oh, and I guess they also give one more energy too, because the job doesn't have upkeep either. Nor are you paying the 5 upkeep for the building. Also, Enforcers give Defense Armies and Telepaths don't so.... I guess that's another point for Enforcers? Not that they need it.
What about Death Priests though? Surely, requiring an ethic and a civic makes them at least somewhat useful, right? Right? No. They're just priests that moved one unity to one society research. That's it. Technically an improvement. We also get Mortal Initiates though, which are actually stronger than Death Priests, in that they produce one less unity for two less consumer goods. Priests are so bad that the worker job version is objectively stronger just because the consumer goods are individually worth more than the job. Oh, but you also kill them all with the edict. But hey, that edict is at least affected by your edict cost reduction, so yay, Discounted Worthlessness!
Technically, both of these are better than Administrative Offices, in that you at least get +2 Amenities from them, but as they're also specialist pops, they consume one of their own amenities. Which would be nice and all, but you don't really want Administrative Offices in 3.3 anyway. There's just better ways to get unity, so a marginally better version of a bad job isn't helpful.
In summary, the buildings from Spiritualists are just... not good in 3.3, and Psi Corps wasn't even good before 3.3. Temples are so bad in 3.3 that it's objectively more effective to bulldoze them and build gene clinics on your capital instead. Or just make them into clerks. Clerks are better.
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The Civics
I wanted to save this for after the jobs just to point out how hilariously worthless Death Priests are compared to Mortal Initiates.
Death Cult isn't good. Your only bonus involves killing the only useful-ish job you get from it. It's RNG based. You should generally be sacrificing the pops you capture for this, but would be better served with something that helps with that. But, you know, that's all kinda... forgivable really. It's merely trash tier. What really puts this over the top, is that it puts two sacrificial temples on your homeworld. Tell me, do you want to kill pops on your capital? Have you ever wanted to kill pops of your main species on your capital? Has this EVER been desirable? At least with standard temples, you can leave them around and ignore them. With Death Cult, you have to actively demolish them or you'll be killing your main species pops on your capital. Don't do that.
Imperial Cult. +100 Edict Funds. You know, this is actually pretty good. And it doesn't scale at all while sprawl racks up ad infinitum. Is a civic slot worth a bonus that will become worth less than nothing by the time you get the techs to use this with? No? Didn't think so. There is hope for this though. Just give us some method to scale Edicts Funds as the game goes on and this is suddenly actually good. Probably the best normal empire civic they get.
Exalted Priesthood. Priests are bad. +1 unity from priests from a civic does not make them not bad. High Priests give +2 amenities over Politicians, and are affected by Exalted Priesthood, and you get them for free. So that's a free 2 amenities and 1 unity from a job you're stuck with anyway, so hey, that's not bad. It's just a shame Nobles give +2 stability instead of +1 Unity, don't require Spiritualist, and also gives +1 Governor Level Cap. And that you only get 1 high priest until System Capital Complex. Oh, and Byzantine Bureaucracy exists, and gives +1 Stability atop the +1 unity to all our Bureaucrats.
Fanatic Purifiers. You can take it with militarist. It synergizes more with militarist.
And that's it. That's all your civics. What ones you do get are either worse than other civics that don't require spiritualist, don't scale, or are outright sidegrades to spiritualist's default kit.
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Priests
Priests are supposed to make up the backbone of Spiritualist's niche as an ethic. They do not work. They do not work on so many levels.
Lets get the elephant in the room out of the way first. Memorialists. For the price of one civic, that is available to every single empire except Fanatic Purifiers, we get access to Death Chroniclers, which give +2 unity +2 Society Research +2 stability. Compared to priests, that's 2 less unity and 2 less amenities for 2 more stability and 2 more society research. Compared to Death Priests, that's 1 less unity and 2 less amenities for 1 more society research and 2 more stability. So already, we're getting better bonuses, but it the building also gives Unity from Jobs, More Governing Ethics Attraction than we were getting Spiritualist Ethics attraction (20% vs 5%), and free unity per ascension. We can take Memorialists on any and every ethic, so if we want to play a unity build, we simply have a better option.
Second, unless we're taking both Spiritualist AND Exalted Priesthood, we aren't getting more base unity than we were getting from Administrative Offices. We're getting amenities. As already stated, we simply have better options if we want to build buildings that generate unity. We also just have more efficient jobs. Entertainers are 2 unity and 10 amenities. While the unity is halved, the amenities goes up by a factor of 5, and this is just baseline. And if we were taking both, Byzantine Bureaucracy gives us that +1 unity and a +1 stability atop of it. 1 stability is worth a lot more than two amenities.
Veneration of Saints exists, and +20% to Priest yields is pretty nice in theory, but it's also an edict, and thus suffers from sprawl penalties. And there's also just better edicts than +0.8 unity per priest. That's... not even a full unity per priest. For the same cost, we could run Information Quarantine, which is +2.5% to Priests... and everyone else, including our politicians, and also is available to everyone and gives double the governing ethics attraction. We just... aren't getting much from the edict. There are just better options.
And that's really the crux of it. We have better options for jobs. We have better options for edicts. We have better options for civics. We have better options that priests, and they don't even give bonuses to the very thing Spiritualists are supposed to be good at. We just get more from other things than from priests or any of the things that are meant to support them.
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Psionics
Psionics is already multiple layers of RNG. That's bad. But... what we get from Psionics isn't great either. We're rolling the dice more to get less.
Lets start at the beginning. Psionics gives the Psi Corps building. As stated, not good. It also gives a technology that unlocks an army. Also not good. The Flesh is Weak gives -10% Robot Upkeep, +10% Mechanical Pop Assembly, and Cyborgs. Cyborgs have +10% army damage (Useless) +20% Habitability (all worlds of your category are now 100% habitability worlds), and +40 Leader Lifespan. Latent Psionics gives +5% Research from Jobs, +5% Energy Credits from Jobs. But, Cyborgs also gives a 100% chance of getting the leader bonus, which is +5% minerals from governors, +5% research speed from scientists, +5% fire rate from Admirals, and +5% Army Damage from generals. Research Speed is more valuable than Research from Jobs, as there are many techs that improve Research from Jobs, while Research Speed is harder to get, and also applies to non-job sources. Beyond that, we're simply having to RNG new leaders to take advantage of the psionics bonus, so we won't even have psionic leaders usually, because we should be to trancendence before they start dying off if we're rushing it.
Also, we get Clone Vats from Engineered Evolution, and can't apply Psionic boosts to robots.
Second phase doesn't get any nicer. All your pops are robots now for synths. Bio has special super traits. And Psionics removes its RNG on its leaders, doubles its base bonuses to pops, and gets the shroud. Which can give you penalties, do nothing, costs money every time you use it, and is also on a long cooldown. At least there's no bad outcome atop losing your money if you gamble your money away to the caravaneers.
Zro, the unique Psionic resource... doesn't do anything. You sell it on the market for credits.
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Robots
You take a 5% happiness penalty for spamming robots on all your worlds as a Spiritualist. That's it. That's the sum total of the penalty you get for half your empire being robots. Also no "Full AI Rights", but do you even care?
5% happiness. That's it. You might as well spam them across all your planets because the penalty is a meme. Doubly so because of all the free amenities you get from priests and high priests that otherwise are pretty useless to you. Yes, your priests amenities bonus exists to offset the penalty you take from spamming robots. Peak spiritualist right there.
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Megacorps
So, I think it goes without saying that Megacorps are in a very bad place and have been for a long time. I've made a post about it elsewhere, so I won't elaborate here too much. But, in perhaps the greatest irony of all, Megacorps are the only way to even somewhat approach viability as a Spiritualist.
Temples for Spiritualists give one Priest and one Manager instead of two priests. Now you get +2 amenities and +2 trade value instead of +4 amenities. As said before, there's vastly, vastly more efficient ways to get amenities while getting unity, so this split actually works out ahead, especially with Marketplace of Ideas giving trade value into unity. It's still bad, and arguably a straight downgrade to just spamming managers, but it's still better than baseline temples, so hey, improvement!
Gospel of the Masses is... actually an amazingly good civic. +trade value from Spiritualist pops across your empire, and in all branch offices. Now you actually have value from all those spiritualist ethics attraction modifiers you can stack up. Fancy that.
Permanent Employment gives pop assembly that isn't robots and benefits from psionics. Now we're not spamming robots while hating robots.
And we even get a Branch Office Building that spreads spiritualism.... which for some reason we can't even do as other empires.
Most all of the other problems still apply, but it actually... functions. Kinda. If they weren't both absolutely terrible.
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So, how do we fix it?
I think there's a few simple answers to this.
If Spiritualists are supposed to be about unity then give them more unity. I don't think it's really a hard thing to just give priests +1 or +2 unity baseline instead of the amenities. Bureaucrats can get stability, which is far better if you wanted to unity rush. Just... give priests some more unity.
Make Edicts Funds scale. As it stands, it quickly reaches a point where you just... generate less unity from your unique edict than it costs to run said edict. Which for an edict that boosts your unity generating job, runs aground quickly. It's fine if it's offset by Edicts Funds, but that doesn't take long to completely run away with unless you're really spamming them.
Rework Psi Corps to better stay in line with enforcers. Make them generate defense armies for starters, as that's just a silly oversight.
Give normal Psionic empires access to a Gospel of the Masses-like effect. If you're going to give Spiritualists a million ways to boost their Spiritualist attraction, give them some way to use it. Without a way to convert that to value... it just doesn't do anything.
Reduce randomess in Psionics and give Mind Over Matter a bonus. -10% Empire Size from Pops on Mind Over Matter and Trancendence. Now it's competitive with The Flesh is Weak. Let us control the shroud outcomes to some extent.
Give Zro an actual purpose. Use it to induce psionics. Use it to control shroud events. Can easily remove randomness and give Zro a reason to exist beyond being a good energy credit deposit.
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Paradox, please, fix Spiritualist to actually be in a decent state. At this point, it's been so bad for so long that it's actively a joke.
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Spiritualists are not in a good place. 3.3 isn't fixing that, but it also isn't breaking it either. Pretty much every mechanic Spiritualists have is a relic of a game that does not exist any more, and most of them were not good when it did. And my goal with this post is to go over every single mechanic and why it does not work. In detail. Because there is a lot of them, and they don't work.
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The Ethic
Spiritualist as an Ethic gives +10/20% Monthly Unity and -5/10% Edict cost. On this surface, this is actually... pretty good! Once you actually look at how it works. It's not. It's really. Really. REALLY not. The first problem is that it lies to you. It does not increase all monthly unity generation by 20%, only unity yields by 20%. Derivative yields, such as Marketplace of Ideas Trade Policy is completely unaffected by Spiritualist. But it also means that any other sources of unity are also unaffected. Unity from Events is completely unmodified. For comparison, the Research Speed modifier on Materialist affects all event technology yields and all derivative yields gained such as tech overflow storage.
Edict Cost Reduction is actually good as a stat. In 3.3, Edict Costs are actually worth considering as the ones that can be bought with energy credits are really expensive, and... it doesn't work. You can literally start up a game on 3.3 beta and check for yourself. It only applies to upfront costs. But, that's just a bug. Lets say that it does work. Fanatical Spiritualist is equivalent in power to a single ruler trait, Charismatic. But Charismatic also gives 20 Edict fund, which is equivalent to a flat 20 unity, but for edicts.
In other words, for the price of two of our three Ethics points.... the sum total of our starting bonuses are weaker than one single ruler trait during the early game.
Lets compare this to the bonuses from other ethics. Authoritarian gives +0.5/1 Influence and +5/10% Worker Resource Output. Xenophile gives +10/20% Trade Value and +1/2 Envoys. Pacifist gives +5/10 Stability and -15/30% Empire Sprawl from Pops. Materialist gives +5/10% Research Speed and -10/20% Robot upkeep. Egalitarian gives +25/50% unity from Factions and +5/10% Specialist Pop Output. Xenophobe gives +10/20% Pop Growth Speed and -40% Starbase Influence Cost, and Militarist gives +10/20% Ship Fire Rate and -20% Claim Influence cost.
Not only are all of these stronger than a single ruler trait, but some of them are better at Spiritualist's thing than Spiritualist is. Egalitarian will give you more unity than Spiritualist will for the early game because +50% to factions is more than +20% to Monthly sources early, and factions are not affected by Spiritualist. Materialist's +10% research speed applies to every bit of research, is individually as good as an Agenda, and comes with robot upkeep reduction, which is hard to get in the first place.
Oh, and Egalitarian's +10% Specialist Pop Output applies to unity, so you're getting half the jobs bonus too. You know, just to twist the knife.
In summary, Fanatic Spiritualist is worse at its job than Fanatic Egalitarian for a large portion of the game, and worse than Charismatic for a small but significant portion.
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The Jobs
Priests have been murdered in 3.3 It's outright incredible just how bad this job has become. Prior to 3.3, Priests were the main reason you went Spiritualist, as they were superior to entertainers in every way. So, you know, something worked. Which is good.
3.3 priests give 4 unity and 2 amenities per job for 2 consumer goods. For context, Clerks give 2 Amenities and 4 Trade Value for zero consumer goods. Let me repeat that. You are getting 1 Amenity and 2 Unity for 1 consumer good. Entertainers give 1 unity and 10 Amenities for 1 consumer good. That is ONE-TENTH the Amenities for ONE more unity per consumer good. And it's basically equivalent to a CLERK, but as a specialist. It is that bad.
Prior to 3.3, Temples gave Society Research, More Amenities, and Unity, making them a cornerstone of Spiritualist play and arguably their best feature, as getting so much value from Amenities production gave you a leg up in managing Amenities. Now you're spending two consumer goods and a building on a clerk job.
But lets talk about the Psi Corps instead of just going on about how priests are so worthless now as to be below clerks in viability. The building itself gives +5 stability, which is good. Not amazing, but 2.5% or so job output is actually pretty solid.
The job on the other hand is a meme. While its upkeep is only 1 energy, and thus irrelevant, it gives us.... three unity and -35 Crime. That's it. We get two jobs that.... give three unity and 10 more crime reduction than enforcers. Which we get for free from our capital building anyway. And about that stability. Enforcers give stability. And if you took the Domination traditions, Enforcers also give one unity. Oh, and I guess they also give one more energy too, because the job doesn't have upkeep either. Nor are you paying the 5 upkeep for the building. Also, Enforcers give Defense Armies and Telepaths don't so.... I guess that's another point for Enforcers? Not that they need it.
What about Death Priests though? Surely, requiring an ethic and a civic makes them at least somewhat useful, right? Right? No. They're just priests that moved one unity to one society research. That's it. Technically an improvement. We also get Mortal Initiates though, which are actually stronger than Death Priests, in that they produce one less unity for two less consumer goods. Priests are so bad that the worker job version is objectively stronger just because the consumer goods are individually worth more than the job. Oh, but you also kill them all with the edict. But hey, that edict is at least affected by your edict cost reduction, so yay, Discounted Worthlessness!
Technically, both of these are better than Administrative Offices, in that you at least get +2 Amenities from them, but as they're also specialist pops, they consume one of their own amenities. Which would be nice and all, but you don't really want Administrative Offices in 3.3 anyway. There's just better ways to get unity, so a marginally better version of a bad job isn't helpful.
In summary, the buildings from Spiritualists are just... not good in 3.3, and Psi Corps wasn't even good before 3.3. Temples are so bad in 3.3 that it's objectively more effective to bulldoze them and build gene clinics on your capital instead. Or just make them into clerks. Clerks are better.
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The Civics
I wanted to save this for after the jobs just to point out how hilariously worthless Death Priests are compared to Mortal Initiates.
Death Cult isn't good. Your only bonus involves killing the only useful-ish job you get from it. It's RNG based. You should generally be sacrificing the pops you capture for this, but would be better served with something that helps with that. But, you know, that's all kinda... forgivable really. It's merely trash tier. What really puts this over the top, is that it puts two sacrificial temples on your homeworld. Tell me, do you want to kill pops on your capital? Have you ever wanted to kill pops of your main species on your capital? Has this EVER been desirable? At least with standard temples, you can leave them around and ignore them. With Death Cult, you have to actively demolish them or you'll be killing your main species pops on your capital. Don't do that.
Imperial Cult. +100 Edict Funds. You know, this is actually pretty good. And it doesn't scale at all while sprawl racks up ad infinitum. Is a civic slot worth a bonus that will become worth less than nothing by the time you get the techs to use this with? No? Didn't think so. There is hope for this though. Just give us some method to scale Edicts Funds as the game goes on and this is suddenly actually good. Probably the best normal empire civic they get.
Exalted Priesthood. Priests are bad. +1 unity from priests from a civic does not make them not bad. High Priests give +2 amenities over Politicians, and are affected by Exalted Priesthood, and you get them for free. So that's a free 2 amenities and 1 unity from a job you're stuck with anyway, so hey, that's not bad. It's just a shame Nobles give +2 stability instead of +1 Unity, don't require Spiritualist, and also gives +1 Governor Level Cap. And that you only get 1 high priest until System Capital Complex. Oh, and Byzantine Bureaucracy exists, and gives +1 Stability atop the +1 unity to all our Bureaucrats.
Fanatic Purifiers. You can take it with militarist. It synergizes more with militarist.
And that's it. That's all your civics. What ones you do get are either worse than other civics that don't require spiritualist, don't scale, or are outright sidegrades to spiritualist's default kit.
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Priests
Priests are supposed to make up the backbone of Spiritualist's niche as an ethic. They do not work. They do not work on so many levels.
Lets get the elephant in the room out of the way first. Memorialists. For the price of one civic, that is available to every single empire except Fanatic Purifiers, we get access to Death Chroniclers, which give +2 unity +2 Society Research +2 stability. Compared to priests, that's 2 less unity and 2 less amenities for 2 more stability and 2 more society research. Compared to Death Priests, that's 1 less unity and 2 less amenities for 1 more society research and 2 more stability. So already, we're getting better bonuses, but it the building also gives Unity from Jobs, More Governing Ethics Attraction than we were getting Spiritualist Ethics attraction (20% vs 5%), and free unity per ascension. We can take Memorialists on any and every ethic, so if we want to play a unity build, we simply have a better option.
Second, unless we're taking both Spiritualist AND Exalted Priesthood, we aren't getting more base unity than we were getting from Administrative Offices. We're getting amenities. As already stated, we simply have better options if we want to build buildings that generate unity. We also just have more efficient jobs. Entertainers are 2 unity and 10 amenities. While the unity is halved, the amenities goes up by a factor of 5, and this is just baseline. And if we were taking both, Byzantine Bureaucracy gives us that +1 unity and a +1 stability atop of it. 1 stability is worth a lot more than two amenities.
Veneration of Saints exists, and +20% to Priest yields is pretty nice in theory, but it's also an edict, and thus suffers from sprawl penalties. And there's also just better edicts than +0.8 unity per priest. That's... not even a full unity per priest. For the same cost, we could run Information Quarantine, which is +2.5% to Priests... and everyone else, including our politicians, and also is available to everyone and gives double the governing ethics attraction. We just... aren't getting much from the edict. There are just better options.
And that's really the crux of it. We have better options for jobs. We have better options for edicts. We have better options for civics. We have better options that priests, and they don't even give bonuses to the very thing Spiritualists are supposed to be good at. We just get more from other things than from priests or any of the things that are meant to support them.
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Psionics
Psionics is already multiple layers of RNG. That's bad. But... what we get from Psionics isn't great either. We're rolling the dice more to get less.
Lets start at the beginning. Psionics gives the Psi Corps building. As stated, not good. It also gives a technology that unlocks an army. Also not good. The Flesh is Weak gives -10% Robot Upkeep, +10% Mechanical Pop Assembly, and Cyborgs. Cyborgs have +10% army damage (Useless) +20% Habitability (all worlds of your category are now 100% habitability worlds), and +40 Leader Lifespan. Latent Psionics gives +5% Research from Jobs, +5% Energy Credits from Jobs. But, Cyborgs also gives a 100% chance of getting the leader bonus, which is +5% minerals from governors, +5% research speed from scientists, +5% fire rate from Admirals, and +5% Army Damage from generals. Research Speed is more valuable than Research from Jobs, as there are many techs that improve Research from Jobs, while Research Speed is harder to get, and also applies to non-job sources. Beyond that, we're simply having to RNG new leaders to take advantage of the psionics bonus, so we won't even have psionic leaders usually, because we should be to trancendence before they start dying off if we're rushing it.
Also, we get Clone Vats from Engineered Evolution, and can't apply Psionic boosts to robots.
Second phase doesn't get any nicer. All your pops are robots now for synths. Bio has special super traits. And Psionics removes its RNG on its leaders, doubles its base bonuses to pops, and gets the shroud. Which can give you penalties, do nothing, costs money every time you use it, and is also on a long cooldown. At least there's no bad outcome atop losing your money if you gamble your money away to the caravaneers.
Zro, the unique Psionic resource... doesn't do anything. You sell it on the market for credits.
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Robots
You take a 5% happiness penalty for spamming robots on all your worlds as a Spiritualist. That's it. That's the sum total of the penalty you get for half your empire being robots. Also no "Full AI Rights", but do you even care?
5% happiness. That's it. You might as well spam them across all your planets because the penalty is a meme. Doubly so because of all the free amenities you get from priests and high priests that otherwise are pretty useless to you. Yes, your priests amenities bonus exists to offset the penalty you take from spamming robots. Peak spiritualist right there.
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Megacorps
So, I think it goes without saying that Megacorps are in a very bad place and have been for a long time. I've made a post about it elsewhere, so I won't elaborate here too much. But, in perhaps the greatest irony of all, Megacorps are the only way to even somewhat approach viability as a Spiritualist.
Temples for Spiritualists give one Priest and one Manager instead of two priests. Now you get +2 amenities and +2 trade value instead of +4 amenities. As said before, there's vastly, vastly more efficient ways to get amenities while getting unity, so this split actually works out ahead, especially with Marketplace of Ideas giving trade value into unity. It's still bad, and arguably a straight downgrade to just spamming managers, but it's still better than baseline temples, so hey, improvement!
Gospel of the Masses is... actually an amazingly good civic. +trade value from Spiritualist pops across your empire, and in all branch offices. Now you actually have value from all those spiritualist ethics attraction modifiers you can stack up. Fancy that.
Permanent Employment gives pop assembly that isn't robots and benefits from psionics. Now we're not spamming robots while hating robots.
And we even get a Branch Office Building that spreads spiritualism.... which for some reason we can't even do as other empires.
Most all of the other problems still apply, but it actually... functions. Kinda. If they weren't both absolutely terrible.
--------------------------------------
So, how do we fix it?
I think there's a few simple answers to this.
If Spiritualists are supposed to be about unity then give them more unity. I don't think it's really a hard thing to just give priests +1 or +2 unity baseline instead of the amenities. Bureaucrats can get stability, which is far better if you wanted to unity rush. Just... give priests some more unity.
Make Edicts Funds scale. As it stands, it quickly reaches a point where you just... generate less unity from your unique edict than it costs to run said edict. Which for an edict that boosts your unity generating job, runs aground quickly. It's fine if it's offset by Edicts Funds, but that doesn't take long to completely run away with unless you're really spamming them.
Rework Psi Corps to better stay in line with enforcers. Make them generate defense armies for starters, as that's just a silly oversight.
Give normal Psionic empires access to a Gospel of the Masses-like effect. If you're going to give Spiritualists a million ways to boost their Spiritualist attraction, give them some way to use it. Without a way to convert that to value... it just doesn't do anything.
Reduce randomess in Psionics and give Mind Over Matter a bonus. -10% Empire Size from Pops on Mind Over Matter and Trancendence. Now it's competitive with The Flesh is Weak. Let us control the shroud outcomes to some extent.
Give Zro an actual purpose. Use it to induce psionics. Use it to control shroud events. Can easily remove randomness and give Zro a reason to exist beyond being a good energy credit deposit.
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Paradox, please, fix Spiritualist to actually be in a decent state. At this point, it's been so bad for so long that it's actively a joke.
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