Xenophobe and Slavery a poor choice for Clone Army Origin?

[Marshall Thomas]

For clone army origin, is going xenophobe and using slavery a bad idea? I'm thinking that slavery is bad for the clone army origin because they wouldn't be able to fill the ruler and specialist jobs of newly conquered planets because of being tied to their clone vats.

Thank in advance

 

[John MacWhat]

I think the move, if you go Clone potential, is you want other citizen species, but just make sure they are marked "soldier only" for military service. You want your super clones to hold the specialist jobs and serve as your admirals and generals

 

[Incompetent]

For clone army origin, is going xenophobe and using slavery a bad idea? I'm thinking that slavery is bad for the clone army origin because they wouldn't be able to fill the ruler and specialist jobs of newly conquered planets because of being tied to their clone vats.

Thank in advance

Slavery is fine but I'd use the Authoritarian version, for the reason you say. If you use ascended clones, most of your planets will have 0 primary species pops, so either you have xeno citizens, synth citizens, or you have planets with all the ruler jobs left permanently empty. (Specialist jobs are not an issue, even slaves can do those.)

Alternatively, you could use the origin purely as a means of rushing your neighbours early on, go for the descended clones, and transition into a more standard empire where you can use your primary species as the elite everywhere.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

Slavery is fine but I'd use the Authoritarian version, for the reason you say. If you use ascended clones, most of your planets will have 0 primary species pops, so either you have xeno citizens, synth citizens, or you have planets with all the ruler jobs left permanently empty. (Specialist jobs are not an issue, even slaves can do those.)

Alternatively, you could use the origin purely as a means of rushing your neighbours early on, go for the descended clones, and transition into a more standard empire where you can use your primary species as the elite everywhere.

What's the difference between the Authoritarian version and the Xenophobe version of slavery? Thanks in advance.

 

[Incompetent]

What's the difference between the Authoritarian version and the Xenophobe version of slavery? Thanks in advance.

Both can enslave xenos, but Authoritarians are allowed xeno citizens. Authoritarian ethics also unlocks Slaver Guilds, which will make every species partially enslaved (you can still fully enslave some xeno species, as long as you have enough citizen pops left for ruler jobs), and stratified living standards, which make it easy to maintain high stability even when most of the population is unhappy (as long as you have some ruler pops and keep them happy).

Xenophobic ethics have the advantages that you can spam outposts at a low influence cost and you get a bonus to natural population growth, but neither of those is all that useful as a Clone Army origin. Your clone empire should be conquering other empires, not trying to beat them in a colony race.

Edit: I think Resident pops can do ruler jobs, but as non-citizens they suffer a happiness penalty and don't benefit from amenities happiness, so you lose quite a bit of stability. So a xenophobic Clone Army could be workable, but I still think Authoritarian ethics are much more useful overall.

 

[Vorpaliminal]

What's the difference between the Authoritarian version and the Xenophobe version of slavery? Thanks in advance.

When it comes to slavery, none at all. What is different is how they can handle free xenos as the prior comment said. Authoritarians can have full citizen xenos, while Xenophobes can only give Residency. This is problematic for Xenophobes because free xenos will join the Isolationist faction, which sucks if you're Militarist and plan to keep conquering new space. The Authoritarian faction doesn't conflict with the Militarist faction at all, and even shares a desire for subjects, thus adopting xenos as your main species is totally fine. As a Xenophobe however, if an Isolationist Resident xeno becomes a ruler they will tank your stability as they inevitably suffer -40% happiness from low faction approval, and then an extra -10% for being a Resident.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Both can enslave xenos, but Authoritarians are allowed xeno citizens. Authoritarian ethics also unlocks Slaver Guilds, which will make every species partially enslaved (you can still fully enslave some xeno species, as long as you have enough citizen pops left for ruler jobs), and stratified living standards, which make it easy to maintain high stability even when most of the population is unhappy (as long as you have some ruler pops and keep them happy).

Xenophobic ethics have the advantages that you can spam outposts at a low influence cost and you get a bonus to natural population growth, but neither of those is all that useful as a Clone Army origin. Your clone empire should be conquering other empires, not trying to beat them in a colony race.

Edit: I think Resident pops can do ruler jobs, but as non-citizens they suffer a happiness penalty and don't benefit from amenities happiness, so you lose quite a bit of stability. So a xenophobic Clone Army could be workable, but I still think Authoritarian ethics are much more useful overall.

I'd add that Xenophobe is often an ethic you want to get rid of anyway, so it'd be totally viable to start with it for the early-game influence savings for system claims (getting more pop-free resources/expanding towards your targets faster), and then use your captured pops as an ethics-base to swap to something else via an early-game ethics shift.