Your Go-to Origin (and why)

[OnyxAbussos]

So I usually think of myself as liking to try different things every game.

But the truth is that like 80% of my games I play Void Dweller. Since most of my instincts are all like "Small territory, Big Builder, Forget to go to War," the Void Dweller origin just feels natural and makes sense to me. That and the flavor feels right.

 

[GuildenSpur]

I like to try different empires and take different origins for roleplaying. I like Void Dwellers, Ocean Paradise and Life Seeded.

 

[Ridixo]

Lately i have gone with Renmants. Fixed but good planet size, blockers give allow you to shave months of research. Easier to get the full power of your planet than with Shattered Ring. I usually only control a small sector and leave the rest of the galaxy to my tributaries so with that origin and First League precursors i can have two good size Ecumenopolis which is more than enough and i can save ascension perk space not needing to take Arcology Project

 

[DrachenEngel]

I like the Clone Army.

 

[RabbaDooDabba]

Subterranean really grew on me.
The minimum-habitability is really comfortable to play and I do not have to dwindle into irrelevance with only my homeworld & guaranteed planets, being boxed in by other players and all the other planets in my reach are red with maybe a yellow one in between if I am lucky. That happened to me with a startling regularity...

The meme'y bombardment reduction and being able to turn every planet into a mining world regardless of planet-features are pretty nice boni.

While your pops suffer from basically slow breeders*2, you can kind of circumvent that by settling every planet you can grab and grow your pops in bulk... or just steal other nations pops.

So yeah... Subterranean.
But Remnants as a strong second because I love long lost civilisations rising from their ashes.

 

[Strangedane]

I'm fond of necrophages.
Being able to "peacefully" clean up the species list is nice.

I'm also having a lot of fun with cave people.

 

[sillyrobot]

I'm fond of On the Shoulders of Giants. The early prizes are decent being a mix of resources and random tech, but the permanent bonus is what attracts me.

mid-game
+5% Monthly unity
+5% Happiness
+5% Research Speed
+10% Governing Ethics Attraction


and later
+10% Monthly unity
+5% Happiness
+5% Research Speed
+20% Governing Ethics Attraction
+0.5 Monthly influence

Pretty good as an add-on

 

[Seskarl]

Lost Colony so I don't feel lonely.

 

[Mitchz95]

Doomsday, because I love the premise of a civilization having to abandon their homeworld and find a new one among the stars.

Also Necrophage when I'm playing a Hive Mind, because assimilating other civilizations into a collective consciousness feels weirdly satisfying to me.

 

[Casko]

My usual go to lately have been Clone army to build McXeno Burgers and build a couple 300+ pop ecumenopolises with a mix of raiding and forcefully resetting conquering planets while building few strong tributaries or vassals around my core world(s). - This all started due to me doing one planet challange, and it having been a rather enjoyable experience with Clones to give you that much needed start due to single planet rule.

Another one is to use Necrophages and clean the species list. And Raiding with Necropurge option is fun thing to do.

 

[A2ch0n]

Teachers of the Shroud!

Before it's release i always had a mod enabled that gave my species the latent psionic trait. And teachers is by far better!

So why? I play usually a diplomatic/espionage focused game. And nothing does more in case of espionage than Transcendence. In addition it's a strong early on bonus if you want to compete with GA AI and the one additional AP speak for itself. In addition it's huge for a vassal playstyle if you build the shroud tunnel early on and expand at least to a small peace of space on the other side, removing/lower the distance modifier to many empires. The only downside is the hard coded spiritualist requirement.

Beside that it's my perfect RP fit. Despite of testing i think i'll rarely play with other origins from now on. I would take a huuuuge new cool origin that maybe fit perfectly into my playstyle too, to convince me to use something else. Simply love it!

 

[ASGeek2012]

Lost Colony, because I'm a huge RP'er when it comes to this game, and that origin opens up a lot of possibilities.

I especially love it when the stars align properly as I play a Lost Colony origin as a fanatic egalitarian beacon of liberty empire, and the empire that spawned as my progenitor are authoritarian slaver guild bastards.

Impose Ideology CB for the win.

 

[Fulgrymm]

Since the Shattered Ring nerf, I've mostly been sticking to Remnants for the decent planet size and mostly free techs that come from removing blockers. Oh and also it's handy for stockpiling a bunch of relics so you can get to unlocking Precursor secrets earlier.

 

[Cry_Havok]

Here be dragons is nice, I like having dragons. Hegemon if I'm not going egalitarian/trade league because it's a strong start, can give fun allies (last hegemon campaign I was a Barbaric Despoiler and my allies were federation builders and peaceful traders that spent a lot of early game barely putting up with me). I tend to run most origins at least once other than Gestalt Consciousness ones.

 

[Ohirra]

Void Dwellers because I like the consistency of having every colony be the same size.

Unless I play as a Machine Intelligence, then it's a Ringworld.

Or if I have to play as a Hivemind, then it's Tree of Life for the shiny overlord holding building.

 

[The5lacker]

I should probably not play so much Remnants, because it's pretty blatantly kicking the actual origin point of your empire down the road, but A. it's such a fitting origin for Driven Assimilator/Rogue Servitor and B. I love the random techs and minor artifacts from the Ruined Arcologies.

Outside of that, it's really hard to justify not running Ocean Paradise. Aquatic's pretty strong, and you can wind up with a comically large Capital if you combine Mastery of Nature, Hydrocentric, and Habitation Modules. 39 Districts baybee!

 

[DeanTheDull]

If I had to say one, it'd be necrophages, both as a normal empire and as a hive mind. Very fun super-aggressive, with a unique balance of bloom or burn. There's just so much versatility in it, and it keeps me from a default run of xenophile-egalitarian. As a hive it taught me more about early-game military rushing than anything else, and as a non-hive it taught me about the pitfalls of bloom-building when taken to its extreme.

I've also come to really enjoy Angler-Catalytic trade builds, and when doing that there's really no better start than Lost Colony. Aside from the capital modifiers themselves, I'm convinced Lost Colony's real strength is that it ensures more of your empire population across the galaxy, letting you fall in on your pre-defined master race template rather than dealing with AI RNG.

When I'm machine, it's usually Rogue Servitor, which is either Remnant or Shattered Ring. Remnant is strictly better, probabably, but it's nice being able to get a Ringworld up before the game is over.

Teacher's of the Shroud is pretty swanky, and is becoming my go-to for spiritualist for obvious reasons. Really want to do it as a Barbaric Despoiler some time in the future, to get the effect of 2 more ascension perks than usual. Just wish I could combine it with Necrophage.

 

[MK1980]

My most played are prosperous unification and lost colony. Also played syncretic evolution a few times.

Not a big fan of "over the top" stuff. Recently played a game with clone army and found it ridiculously overpowered.

 

[Olterin]

Most-played? Probably Prosperous Unification followed by Remnants and Lost Colony. I've tried the other ones, and they're fine - if I'm doing some particular cheese, I'll pick something else. But whenever I'm exploring a new patch or set of mods, those are my fallbacks, without fail.

Ocean Paradise is fun too, 40 ecumenopolis districts (30 base, +3 with hydrocentric, +2 with Mastery of Nature, +1 for finishing Expansion, +4 from Orbital Ring habitation districts) for a 250-300ish total population on the planet is funny. Not practical in terms of power moves, but if there were to be one planet that gets the full 10 planetary ascensions, that's the one to do it with.

 

[Taritu]

Remnants. I just like the RP idea of returning to the stars.

When I want a really nice origin, it's often Ocean Paradise. That 30 size planet really suits my playstyle. Previous to the sell artifacts nerf I was quite fond of "On the shoulder of Giants". It's still decent, but not quite as attractive.