Ok so first, let me go ahead and admit that, yes, i save scummed to get a few technologies.
It is very likely that you will not be able to get anti gravity engineering early on in the game, its not impossible, of course, but the odds of getting both weather control systems and anti gravity engineering done by year 2250 is not 100% even if you focus on it. This means, that in an ironman game you have a chance of this just flat not working, so, keep that in mind.
Assuming you do get the tech legitimately, which, isn´t that hard, what i should have done is placed a industry science leader in place, and resisted unlocking any of the early branches as much as possible so, dont pick up any of the techs that unlock a lot of other techs like geothermal fracking, or powered exoskeleton until you get weather control system for example. How viable is it? It is pretty easy and effective in my opinion.
(edit: also, get research alternatives asap, and if you dont see gene manipulation or weather control or antigravity, pick whatever has lowest cost that wont unlock branches. The month before research finishes change to a leader with perk of right type for what you want. see tech page here for help on how leader perks influence your chances of getting tech you want. You can also hold off on building last few city districts until you actually start researching anti gravity, figure out how many months it will take, base cost 8000, and build last city districts when you start.)
Well it might be easier to abuse the first league and get a free econopolis from that. After all, that only requires knowing where in the galaxy you need to spawn at... google it. This isn't a guide for that, this is more of a journal of what I did and how viable it is.
Also, i would certainly not recommend it in multiplayer, as you will most likely get killed. Against even grand admiral level Ai with no scaling and with Glavis AI mod, it is very doable, but it requires a bit of luck (dont try it if your neighbor is a fanatic purifier). The key is of course simply to play nice with your neighbors, make early game non aggression pacts, guarantee independence at first if you have to, sign commerce pacts, look at who they are rivaling, rival them too, that sort of thing. Making friends with your neighbors isn´t hard so long as you aren´t a xenophobe or have a xenophobe neighbor. It helps to keep your comparison rating above pathetic, because the AI will probably attack you anyways if you don't make some effort to convince them that you would put up a fight, and rivaling their rivals requires that their rivals not be overwelming. So at least build your homeworld fleet to 20 corvettes and park them there with logistics admiral if you have to, but a tiny navy is better diplomacy boost than none.
On that note, you should explore the galaxy early and trade contact info with everyone you meet. If you are lucky you will find a fanatic purifier (my was called Cynur Bloodborn, a species whom I immediately started pronouncing like the spanish word for "sir")/devoring swarm/driven assimulator on the other side of the galaxy from you. Rival them, and introduce them to everyone. The AI will always rival these empire if you do, and they have contact info, now you have something in common and that non agression pact is an easier sell. If you are playing a mega corp, which I highly recommend for this strategy, you will want to make friends with commerce pacts, avoid defense pacts like the plague, and branch office the capitals of anyone you can convince to sign commerce pacts with. I recommend you avoid research treaties too, as you will probably pull ahead of everyone, and there are better things to waste influence on than helping the AI research faster.
In my game i was playing as a mega corp fanatic spiritualist with authoritarian, gospel of the masses, and free trader, but you don´t need to do that, most any build that can reliably produce decent unity will work. You just need to be done with 3 tradition trees by year 2250, which isn´t hard. (arcology project ascention trait needs to be 3rd pick. I picked discovery then expansion then prosperity, interstellar domminion then engineered evolution, then arcology project)
The other thing you need, is to build up your capital world with full city districts ahead of time, and to stay reasonably close to your admin cap. You want 2-4 colonies to support your homeworld (i had 3, but think 2-4 work) which will not be producing any raw resources, so you will want to colonize early and try not expand much further than that. Pick your systems carefully, because you can't afford more than like 20 of them (i had 17 and spent a lot of time 10-20 overcap anyways), and if you do leave holes, watch your empire cohesion.
So, as most of you know, you need all districts, 21 in my case, to be city districts, before you make an an arcology project, this means that you will have a lot more housing on your homeworld than you can possibly use, and that you will be sinking a lot of resources into something that doesn´t give much benefits and adds 21 to your admin cap. Taking prosperity tree for the extra clerk job per city district is a must have, as it gives you something to do on your homeworld once you´ve been forced to demolish the starting resource districts to get those last 6 city districts, but you could take it 2nd or even 3rd. There is a sense of timing involved, it takes 1 full year per city district, so if you aim to start your project at 2250, like i did, you need to be building last 10 city districts starting in year 2240.
One thing you also can't forget about, is that you will need 20k mats ready to go on year 2250, which means you either need 3 starbase resource silos, or more likely, 3 resource silos on ground. I think putting them on capital is a good way to find anther 6 jobs for your homeworld workers, so I did that.
As to your colonies, you should make them tech worlds or alloy worlds. So far as i can tell, to get a tech world or alloy world what you need is 3 research buildings or 3 alloy factories and no more than 5 of any given resource district. Given how much more valuable those 2 bonuses are you should definitely focus on one or the other on every colony world. Get whatever resource districts you need, but no more than 5 of each type, and you will be fine. In my game i made 2 tech worlds and an alloy world which, once my enocopolis was done, i ended up converting into a 3rd tech world. You will not need alloy worlds after you have an enocopolis, so every world can be a tech world with resource districts.
I have previously tried to convince people of this, but don't upgrade your buildings, unless you have the resource production. Never build more upgraded buildings than you can sustain through mined special resource income. If you need to make synthetic resources plants to upgrade something. Don't, it isn't worth it, just 3 basic alloy or 3 basic research labs on every colony is fine, fill the rest of your jobs with resource districts (no more than 5 of each type).
On my game i actually moved my pops a lot, but, it's not really necessary. What i did try to sequentially build up worlds to size 40, for the tier 3 capital, with 3 city districts, 3 research labs, a temple, a cloning vat, and either a mineral purification plant or food processor and 5 of either food or mats (i had 2 worlds with 5 food districts and 1 world with 5 mining districts, energy districts aren't worth it). If you can get a research institute tech, that's super helpful, must have a physics science leader with computer trait if you hope to pull it off.
I highly recommend taking authoritarian and stratified economy, lets you move people around. When you first land a colony, shuffle in people to get it to size 10 asap and upgrade the colony into a planet admin building, as most of you know, colony worlds suffer -50% growth until then, and thats a divide by 2, not a -% like i had previously thought. (Edit: to be clear, for colony worlds, it is better to build 4 resource districts on your colony and move people in when have jobs and homes, then upgrade colony.)
What you might not know is that once upgraded, planetary admins or planetary capitals don't downgrade if you move people away. So moving people to get 40 pop for the upgrade, then moving them back out to upgrade the next planet, is doable. Just watch that you dont blow up your buildings by building on slots that go away. That last 9th slot should probably just be left empty, imo. You will want to move people back to your capital when ecopolis is done, and leave basically a skeleton crew of clerks on your homeworld while its upgrading.
Ok so what will you be doing on your homeworld while it is upgrading? It takes 10 years. Again, you need 20k mats and 200 influence saved, which is not that hard, since you will only be colonizing max of 20 systems anyways, which means you will spend less influence and mats. Well on year 2250 you will have 21 city districts and hopefully a planetary capital, and maybe a temple (or robot facitity and corporate culture site). Also 3 resource silos. So that will be a total of 48 clerks and some specialists/rulers, right?
Well, you could go less clerks. i picked thrifty as a racial trait because I knew that I would have an army of clerks on my homeworld with 21 city districts (2 clerks each), but, turns out, once you start building the 10 year arcology project, you can demolish the city districts you dont need. I dont know if that is something that will be fixed in later versions, but in my game, when I realized that I could do this, and that i could leave my planetary capital upgrade intact with less than 40 people, i basically moved my people out demolishing city districts to get me down to about 32 total housing (3 districts with the prosperity tree +1, and +2 from tech give 24 housing, then planetary capital gives 8) which you can find jobs for mostly as clerks, i kept 30 people at my homeworld mostly because i needed the slots for 3 resource silos, but when i spent that 20k, I demolished the silos which freed me up to really deport my homeworld pops to the colonies. During that 10 year gap, i had it as low as 20 in some points, still enjoying benefits of planetary capital of course, but finding more urgent jobs for them elsewhere, mostly as researchers. (edit: so far as i could tell, you always get 7 city districts on new econopolis after it is done, or maybe its 1/3 max districts? Have not tested.)
This freed me up to grow out my 3 colonies to the previously mentioned size 40 much easier. The hardest part about building an enucopolis is just how long it takes, 10 years is a long time to wait without being able to build anything on your capital. That's why you will want to instead spend those 10 years making your 2-4 colonies into tech and resource gathering powerhouses. I had 3 colonies, but i could have gone with 2. What i would have done if I had 2, is to build them with 3 city districts, 5 food and 5 mat districts each, giving you housing for 52 people, 20 of which can be resource gatherers, 5 jobs from planetary capital, 6 clerk jobs, leaving you with room to find work for the remaining 21 pops with the 10 open building slots, again though, i would recommend leaving at least 1 empty slot as i planned to repopulate my capital back up once it was done.
Well that is pretty much everything you need to know to pull off your own Enucopolis rush, and this thread is already way to long anyways. What happens after 2260 when you do have an Enucoplis? Well that is up to you. But I am pretty sure you will stomp on the rest of the galaxy.
With the massive alloy and consumer goods production an enucopolis brings to your empire, you can focus rest of your worlds on the resource gather/techworld combo planets. I recommend that you basically make every world, a tech world with 5 food and 5 mat districts eventually. If you add a 4th research lab (doesnt matter if they are upgraded or not, number is what matters for bonus) you can have upto 7 resource districts of 1 type instead, which frees up having to have both a mineral purifier and food processor.
In my game, by year 2260, i was already done with 4th ascension perk, and was way ahead of every other alien technologically, except the fallen one obviously. I had upgraded my corvette fleet to 40 little guys with 2 mining lasers and an energy siphon, with near capped 90 evasion, but i was ready to start expanding them into a real fleet as soon as i started getting serious alloy production in. I had unlocked my 3rd civic and planned to go wild. All the races had been begging me to sign defense pacts, federation invites, and research treaties while i sat back and watched them struggle and fail against Sir Bloodborn and each other, but i was soon to restore peace to a blood soaked universe by making them all my subsidiaries! Except Sir Bloodborn, him I planned to enslave. So have fun with this if you try it yourself, let me know if it worked, or if you disagree with parts of my recommendations.
I am off to try this again with my lessons learned in ironman mode
It is very likely that you will not be able to get anti gravity engineering early on in the game, its not impossible, of course, but the odds of getting both weather control systems and anti gravity engineering done by year 2250 is not 100% even if you focus on it. This means, that in an ironman game you have a chance of this just flat not working, so, keep that in mind.
Assuming you do get the tech legitimately, which, isn´t that hard, what i should have done is placed a industry science leader in place, and resisted unlocking any of the early branches as much as possible so, dont pick up any of the techs that unlock a lot of other techs like geothermal fracking, or powered exoskeleton until you get weather control system for example. How viable is it? It is pretty easy and effective in my opinion.
(edit: also, get research alternatives asap, and if you dont see gene manipulation or weather control or antigravity, pick whatever has lowest cost that wont unlock branches. The month before research finishes change to a leader with perk of right type for what you want. see tech page here for help on how leader perks influence your chances of getting tech you want. You can also hold off on building last few city districts until you actually start researching anti gravity, figure out how many months it will take, base cost 8000, and build last city districts when you start.)
Well it might be easier to abuse the first league and get a free econopolis from that. After all, that only requires knowing where in the galaxy you need to spawn at... google it. This isn't a guide for that, this is more of a journal of what I did and how viable it is.
Also, i would certainly not recommend it in multiplayer, as you will most likely get killed. Against even grand admiral level Ai with no scaling and with Glavis AI mod, it is very doable, but it requires a bit of luck (dont try it if your neighbor is a fanatic purifier). The key is of course simply to play nice with your neighbors, make early game non aggression pacts, guarantee independence at first if you have to, sign commerce pacts, look at who they are rivaling, rival them too, that sort of thing. Making friends with your neighbors isn´t hard so long as you aren´t a xenophobe or have a xenophobe neighbor. It helps to keep your comparison rating above pathetic, because the AI will probably attack you anyways if you don't make some effort to convince them that you would put up a fight, and rivaling their rivals requires that their rivals not be overwelming. So at least build your homeworld fleet to 20 corvettes and park them there with logistics admiral if you have to, but a tiny navy is better diplomacy boost than none.
On that note, you should explore the galaxy early and trade contact info with everyone you meet. If you are lucky you will find a fanatic purifier (my was called Cynur Bloodborn, a species whom I immediately started pronouncing like the spanish word for "sir")/devoring swarm/driven assimulator on the other side of the galaxy from you. Rival them, and introduce them to everyone. The AI will always rival these empire if you do, and they have contact info, now you have something in common and that non agression pact is an easier sell. If you are playing a mega corp, which I highly recommend for this strategy, you will want to make friends with commerce pacts, avoid defense pacts like the plague, and branch office the capitals of anyone you can convince to sign commerce pacts with. I recommend you avoid research treaties too, as you will probably pull ahead of everyone, and there are better things to waste influence on than helping the AI research faster.
In my game i was playing as a mega corp fanatic spiritualist with authoritarian, gospel of the masses, and free trader, but you don´t need to do that, most any build that can reliably produce decent unity will work. You just need to be done with 3 tradition trees by year 2250, which isn´t hard. (arcology project ascention trait needs to be 3rd pick. I picked discovery then expansion then prosperity, interstellar domminion then engineered evolution, then arcology project)
The other thing you need, is to build up your capital world with full city districts ahead of time, and to stay reasonably close to your admin cap. You want 2-4 colonies to support your homeworld (i had 3, but think 2-4 work) which will not be producing any raw resources, so you will want to colonize early and try not expand much further than that. Pick your systems carefully, because you can't afford more than like 20 of them (i had 17 and spent a lot of time 10-20 overcap anyways), and if you do leave holes, watch your empire cohesion.
So, as most of you know, you need all districts, 21 in my case, to be city districts, before you make an an arcology project, this means that you will have a lot more housing on your homeworld than you can possibly use, and that you will be sinking a lot of resources into something that doesn´t give much benefits and adds 21 to your admin cap. Taking prosperity tree for the extra clerk job per city district is a must have, as it gives you something to do on your homeworld once you´ve been forced to demolish the starting resource districts to get those last 6 city districts, but you could take it 2nd or even 3rd. There is a sense of timing involved, it takes 1 full year per city district, so if you aim to start your project at 2250, like i did, you need to be building last 10 city districts starting in year 2240.
One thing you also can't forget about, is that you will need 20k mats ready to go on year 2250, which means you either need 3 starbase resource silos, or more likely, 3 resource silos on ground. I think putting them on capital is a good way to find anther 6 jobs for your homeworld workers, so I did that.
As to your colonies, you should make them tech worlds or alloy worlds. So far as i can tell, to get a tech world or alloy world what you need is 3 research buildings or 3 alloy factories and no more than 5 of any given resource district. Given how much more valuable those 2 bonuses are you should definitely focus on one or the other on every colony world. Get whatever resource districts you need, but no more than 5 of each type, and you will be fine. In my game i made 2 tech worlds and an alloy world which, once my enocopolis was done, i ended up converting into a 3rd tech world. You will not need alloy worlds after you have an enocopolis, so every world can be a tech world with resource districts.
I have previously tried to convince people of this, but don't upgrade your buildings, unless you have the resource production. Never build more upgraded buildings than you can sustain through mined special resource income. If you need to make synthetic resources plants to upgrade something. Don't, it isn't worth it, just 3 basic alloy or 3 basic research labs on every colony is fine, fill the rest of your jobs with resource districts (no more than 5 of each type).
On my game i actually moved my pops a lot, but, it's not really necessary. What i did try to sequentially build up worlds to size 40, for the tier 3 capital, with 3 city districts, 3 research labs, a temple, a cloning vat, and either a mineral purification plant or food processor and 5 of either food or mats (i had 2 worlds with 5 food districts and 1 world with 5 mining districts, energy districts aren't worth it). If you can get a research institute tech, that's super helpful, must have a physics science leader with computer trait if you hope to pull it off.
I highly recommend taking authoritarian and stratified economy, lets you move people around. When you first land a colony, shuffle in people to get it to size 10 asap and upgrade the colony into a planet admin building, as most of you know, colony worlds suffer -50% growth until then, and thats a divide by 2, not a -% like i had previously thought. (Edit: to be clear, for colony worlds, it is better to build 4 resource districts on your colony and move people in when have jobs and homes, then upgrade colony.)
What you might not know is that once upgraded, planetary admins or planetary capitals don't downgrade if you move people away. So moving people to get 40 pop for the upgrade, then moving them back out to upgrade the next planet, is doable. Just watch that you dont blow up your buildings by building on slots that go away. That last 9th slot should probably just be left empty, imo. You will want to move people back to your capital when ecopolis is done, and leave basically a skeleton crew of clerks on your homeworld while its upgrading.
Ok so what will you be doing on your homeworld while it is upgrading? It takes 10 years. Again, you need 20k mats and 200 influence saved, which is not that hard, since you will only be colonizing max of 20 systems anyways, which means you will spend less influence and mats. Well on year 2250 you will have 21 city districts and hopefully a planetary capital, and maybe a temple (or robot facitity and corporate culture site). Also 3 resource silos. So that will be a total of 48 clerks and some specialists/rulers, right?
Well, you could go less clerks. i picked thrifty as a racial trait because I knew that I would have an army of clerks on my homeworld with 21 city districts (2 clerks each), but, turns out, once you start building the 10 year arcology project, you can demolish the city districts you dont need. I dont know if that is something that will be fixed in later versions, but in my game, when I realized that I could do this, and that i could leave my planetary capital upgrade intact with less than 40 people, i basically moved my people out demolishing city districts to get me down to about 32 total housing (3 districts with the prosperity tree +1, and +2 from tech give 24 housing, then planetary capital gives 8) which you can find jobs for mostly as clerks, i kept 30 people at my homeworld mostly because i needed the slots for 3 resource silos, but when i spent that 20k, I demolished the silos which freed me up to really deport my homeworld pops to the colonies. During that 10 year gap, i had it as low as 20 in some points, still enjoying benefits of planetary capital of course, but finding more urgent jobs for them elsewhere, mostly as researchers. (edit: so far as i could tell, you always get 7 city districts on new econopolis after it is done, or maybe its 1/3 max districts? Have not tested.)
This freed me up to grow out my 3 colonies to the previously mentioned size 40 much easier. The hardest part about building an enucopolis is just how long it takes, 10 years is a long time to wait without being able to build anything on your capital. That's why you will want to instead spend those 10 years making your 2-4 colonies into tech and resource gathering powerhouses. I had 3 colonies, but i could have gone with 2. What i would have done if I had 2, is to build them with 3 city districts, 5 food and 5 mat districts each, giving you housing for 52 people, 20 of which can be resource gatherers, 5 jobs from planetary capital, 6 clerk jobs, leaving you with room to find work for the remaining 21 pops with the 10 open building slots, again though, i would recommend leaving at least 1 empty slot as i planned to repopulate my capital back up once it was done.
Well that is pretty much everything you need to know to pull off your own Enucopolis rush, and this thread is already way to long anyways. What happens after 2260 when you do have an Enucoplis? Well that is up to you. But I am pretty sure you will stomp on the rest of the galaxy.
With the massive alloy and consumer goods production an enucopolis brings to your empire, you can focus rest of your worlds on the resource gather/techworld combo planets. I recommend that you basically make every world, a tech world with 5 food and 5 mat districts eventually. If you add a 4th research lab (doesnt matter if they are upgraded or not, number is what matters for bonus) you can have upto 7 resource districts of 1 type instead, which frees up having to have both a mineral purifier and food processor.
In my game, by year 2260, i was already done with 4th ascension perk, and was way ahead of every other alien technologically, except the fallen one obviously. I had upgraded my corvette fleet to 40 little guys with 2 mining lasers and an energy siphon, with near capped 90 evasion, but i was ready to start expanding them into a real fleet as soon as i started getting serious alloy production in. I had unlocked my 3rd civic and planned to go wild. All the races had been begging me to sign defense pacts, federation invites, and research treaties while i sat back and watched them struggle and fail against Sir Bloodborn and each other, but i was soon to restore peace to a blood soaked universe by making them all my subsidiaries! Except Sir Bloodborn, him I planned to enslave. So have fun with this if you try it yourself, let me know if it worked, or if you disagree with parts of my recommendations.
I am off to try this again with my lessons learned in ironman mode
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