Syncretic Evolution trait combinations

[MarKr]

Hi,

I've just modified my slaver empire which has Syncretic Evolution trait. I think that some of the traits for the servient race should be mutually excusive with the "serviles" trait.

Serviles trait gives:
Happiness: +10%
Resources from Jobs: +10%
Cannot generate Leaders
Cannot be employed in Ruler or Specialist jobs

Especially the last two make the traits Slow Learners, Decadent, Deviants and Fleeting have no impact at all. Since the servient race cannot produce Leaders, it does not matter if the leaders live longer or shorter (fleeting/enduring/venerable), just as it does not matter how fast they could accumulate XP (Slow/quick learners). Slaves cannot join/start Factions so Ethics attraction is pointless on them too. Decadent makes no sense there either because it basically just negates the happiness bonus from Serviles. I guess they could have it if you can manage high levels of unhappy slaves but from logical/RP point of view it makes no sense to have this trait on slaves.

The servient race can pretty much always get the negative perks influencing leaders and thus get some more points to get positive traits that will impact their production even further. As slaves they are basically only employed as farmers, miners or technicians and they already have +10% job production from Serviles, you can give them combination of Ingenious/Industrious/Agrarian so you can easily get them to +25% bonus in production of minerals and/or energy and/or food, on top of that they get another +10% from chattel slavery + possible other bonuses from Slave optimization agenda, Slaver guilds, "Iron fist" trait from governors etc.

I am not against these huge production bonuses stacking but the production boost traits being "outweight" by traits that do nothing is quite off.

 

[Arnovitz]

I understand something like Slow Learners being removed, but some of the other traits can still apply. Fleeting affects neutering speed and Deviants is still applicable since Serviles do not necessarily have to be slaves, so ethics could affect their happiness / political power influence.

 

[MarKr]

Fleeting affects neutering? How exactly? I cannot find any modifier for it in the game files.

OK, serviles don't have to be slaves I did not think about that. Ethics attraction could stay then.

 

[Talanic]

When you select neutering style purge, the pops in question die as if they were leaders of that type.

 

[Bouchart]

Fleeting affects neutering? How exactly? I cannot find any modifier for it in the game files.

The speed of population loss for the neutering purge depends on the species's lifespan. At least that's how it used to work. Not sure if it's changed for 2.2.

 

[MarKr]

Oh, I did not know that.

But still - these servant races are usually "tailored" to fill in the "weakness" of your main species. So if you plan that your servant species will do all the mining/energy production, you give them traits that buff this main purpose of theirs and your main species can get something that will buff their production in their work type or some other traits that will buff some other aspect of the game.
My point is that you are not likely to find a species better suited for the job they do to replace your "starting" servant species, thus there is little reason for neutering them because some other species would need to take their jobs and would most likely be less productive. So you CAN do it, but the occasions you would actually do it are quite rare, or perhaps come later in the game where the resource output they provide already gave you a solid headstart so the "Fleeting" trait is something to always go for with Syncretic species because it gives you space for a positive trait and if you don't decide to neuter them, it is a negative trait that provides no downside and if you decide to neuter them, it is a negative trait that actually provides positive effect which goes against the rationale behind the positive/negative traits.

 

[Kryndude]

Isn't that the whole point of Syncretic Evolution? They're master slaves. They're supposed to be that good. Otherwise it becomes a worthless civic that enslave half your pop and does absolutely nothing.

 

[Althizor]

Isn't that the whole point of Syncretic Evolution? They're master slaves. They're supposed to be that good. Otherwise it becomes a worthless civic that enslave half your pop and does absolutely nothing.

The servile trait does plenty on its own without enabling you to take a bunch of free negative traits. Also, having two distinct species from the start of the game is huge since you can specialize the primary species in an entirely different way. Everyone else needs to wait for gene tailoring, conquering, or migration treaties to get two kinds of biological pops. It is way different than just enslaving some of your pops.

 

[Kryndude]

The servile trait does plenty on its own without enabling you to take a bunch of free negative traits. Also, having two distinct species from the start of the game is huge since you can specialize the primary species in an entirely different way. Everyone else needs to wait for gene tailoring, conquering, or migration treaties to get two kinds of biological pops. It is way different than just enslaving some of your pops.

Yes but it's not like you get different habitability and once everyone gets gene tailoring or any other means to specialize their production it becomes a civic slot filler that does nothing. If you consider how other civics grant early boosts in different ways I think SE isn't anything to nerf.

 

[MarKr]

Isn't that the whole point of Syncretic Evolution? They're master slaves. They're supposed to be that good. Otherwise it becomes a worthless civic that enslave half your pop and does absolutely nothing.

I would say that the point of Syncretic Evolution is to give you 2 species from the start and having an option to specilize each species for different role. So yes, they can become "Master slave" but are they really "useless" when they can give you +25% production bonus to minerals/energy/food even without any other buffs? This is a potent bonus from the start, definately worth having some downsides.
As I said:

I am not against these huge production bonuses stacking but the production boost traits being "outweight" by traits that do nothing is quite off.

The thing is that when you create any species there are positive and negative traits. The idea behind it is (I presume) that your species can either have only one or two positive traits and no negative, or they can have more positive but outweight the bigger number of bonuses by some negative traits too. If you give to a Syncretic species one of these negative traits, it is basically bypassing the "either few positives only OR more positives but also downsides" system mentioned above.

 

[Askorti]

I've been exploiting the crap out of this tbh. My subservient species have all of those negative traits, which allowed me to make them uber miners, farmers, technicians and clerks all at the same time, while my main species only focuses on research and breeding and learning faster. Which makes this civic pretty nifty indeed. And on top of that you don't have to worry about your worker pops advancing to higher stratum when you don't want them to.