Your Strategy for Clone Army Origin?

[Stug_Life]

As the thread name states, what is your strategy and why? Especially when it comes to stretching the DNA or making them fertile again.

 

[Surimi]

So, you're going to get a lot of replies to this effect but ascended clones are by far the better option. Sure, their numbers will ultimately be limited but unless you're playing fanatic purifiers it is relatively easy to compensate for that by just using other species. Even if you give all those species full citizenship, you can restrict their military service to "soldiers only." They can still work enforcer jobs and produce scientists, governors and rulers, but all your admirals will be drawn from the clone species and have the overpowered bonuses.

Going spiritualist for easy access (and ethic attraction benefits) from going psionic is a great option. Psionic ascended clone admirals are about the most stupidly overpowered admirals possible. For full cheese, you could also go death cult. Late game, stick all your clone pops on one planet and have it be the sacrifice planet. The combined effect of all the cloning vats will mean sacrifices are replenished extremely fast, and you can get massive empire-wide bonuses from sacrificing pops this way. Charismatic species are more likely to be selected as sacrifices for some reason, so charismatic clones are a great option for this.

You do need some way to get other pops relatively fast. Xenophile helps you form migration treaties, but if you're confident in your ability to rush down another empire militarist works as well (given how powerful clone admirals are and how fast the clone economy develops, it's a good choice for rushing). Nihilistic acquisition can be a fun choice if you're not looking to expand that much.

Becoming fertile again means you can play like a normal species. The event chain takes a little bit of research, but you can manage it fairly early. The bonuses are far less powerful but they are still there, so it's an okay option. It just doesn't have the raw overpoweredness of ascended clones.

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

ascension

either 5 planets with 20 clone rulers/specialists and the rest robot workers or 1 planet with just 100 clones (former if you want to stay tall, latter if you conquer lots of systems, either if you rush megastructures/get cybrex)

become crisis

blow up galaxy

 

[Ryika]

Clone Army is essentially "Build 100 Pops, conquer the galaxy, GG WP!".

The other option is strong, too, but it's not really playing into the strengths of the Origin.

 

[Stug_Life]

i appreciate all the replies, I tend to do 2x planets with clones. Capital with 3x vats and another planet with 2x.

 

[Quinzal]

Call me weird, but when I play an origin with well defined restrictions, I can't help but hardline play into those restrictions (e.g. as Void Dwellers I will only ever colonize habitats or ringworlds, even with other species) so when you show me something like Clone Army, my monkey brain says "okay, 1-2 planets and a bunch of robots, guess I'm playing tall"

Tall play, of course, usually means MegaCorp, and MegaCorp usually means Marketplace of Ideas rush.

With the +40% Ruler and +25% Specialist resource output, the game at this point is just begging me to Merchant spam, and while this may not be the best use of the limited CA Ascendant pops, is usually made up for with the robots.

Criminal Heritage/Subversive Cult, then, ends up being pretty wild, since as mentioned above you can get crazy insane admiral bonuses, and suddenly you're the Galactic Mafia.

 

[rubert]

Could Clone Soldier Empire could pick both Synthetic Ascension perks but never finish the 2nd special project to keep both Cyborg Clone Soldiers? Obviously planets without clone vats would lack the extra replicator jobs from the Synth ascension so growth would be quite bit slower but least the Synth pops would get 10% production bonus from the Ascension Perk.

 

[Surimi]

Could Clone Soldier Empire could pick both Synthetic Ascension perks but never finish the 2nd special project to keep both Cyborg Clone Soldiers? Obviously planets without clone vats would lack the extra replicator jobs from the Synth ascension so growth would be quite bit slower but least the Synth pops would get 10% production bonus from the Ascension Perk.

You absolutely could. I don't think it would be "optimal" but we're talking clone army so if you're playing optimally you're going to crush the whole galaxy with zero challenge, it could definitely be fun, and might be a good option for a fanatic purifier clone army.

I did experiment a bit to see if you could do the special project and still keep the ability to build clone vats, but sadly being a synthetic empire specifically locks you out of having clones.

 

[rubert]

Thanks for testing, soon as I saw Clone Army I thought about the partial Synthetic Ascension. Maybe once 3.2 is released I'll give it a try, some flavor of materialist and xenophobe who think that they are superior to anyone else but grudgingly accept the synths.

 

[evilcat]

Ascension is better.
But Fertility Fanatic Purifiers is one way to go.
You might end up in empty part of galaxy or nearby empires are of wrong type.
Or... You just want to get 100pops in 30y and then play normal.
This Origin is really strong so it doesnt matter what you do.

Planets 32 offers some fast pop growth. Just pick for second planet the biggest not always the nearest.

 

[Brael]

So, you're going to get a lot of replies to this effect but ascended clones are by far the better option. Sure, their numbers will ultimately be limited but unless you're playing fanatic purifiers it is relatively easy to compensate for that by just using other species. Even if you give all those species full citizenship, you can restrict their military service to "soldiers only." They can still work enforcer jobs and produce scientists, governors and rulers, but all your admirals will be drawn from the clone species and have the overpowered bonuses.

Going spiritualist for easy access (and ethic attraction benefits) from going psionic is a great option. Psionic ascended clone admirals are about the most stupidly overpowered admirals possible. For full cheese, you could also go death cult. Late game, stick all your clone pops on one planet and have it be the sacrifice planet. The combined effect of all the cloning vats will mean sacrifices are replenished extremely fast, and you can get massive empire-wide bonuses from sacrificing pops this way. Charismatic species are more likely to be selected as sacrifices for some reason, so charismatic clones are a great option for this.

You do need some way to get other pops relatively fast. Xenophile helps you form migration treaties, but if you're confident in your ability to rush down another empire militarist works as well (given how powerful clone admirals are and how fast the clone economy develops, it's a good choice for rushing). Nihilistic acquisition can be a fun choice if you're not looking to expand that much.

Becoming fertile again means you can play like a normal species. The event chain takes a little bit of research, but you can manage it fairly early. The bonuses are far less powerful but they are still there, so it's an okay option. It just doesn't have the raw overpoweredness of ascended clones.

I liked synthetic ascended. I think they were stronger as cybernetic, but I liked the lifespan, getting my leaders forever as clone origin.

 

[theBigTurnip385]

Fanatical Spiritualist + Egalitarian Sacrificial Mega-Church

The Church of Utopia.

You will accept Utopia or you will die.



If you not a death cult then why are you playing Clone Army

 

[Dragatus]

The biggest non-obvious thing I noticed when playing Clone Army was that I had issue providing the housing and jobs for my fast-growing clones, so from now on I'm pairing the origin with the Functional Architecture civic. I guess I could also delay building additional clone vats on my capital, but where is the fun in that?

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

The biggest non-obvious thing I noticed when playing Clone Army was that I had issue providing the housing and jobs for my fast-growing clones, so from now on I'm pairing the origin with the Functional Architecture civic. I guess I could also delay building additional clone vats on my capital, but where is the fun in that?

yeah, you definitely have to speed up your construction queue if you don't want to drain in unemployment (in my first run with clones i was lucky though because of shared burden keeping them all happy)

for clone army, early-game the value of minerals exceeds the one of alloys by a multiple

another thing to mind are criminal syndicates; you have to ideology DOW them on sight or they'll mess everything up

 

[mial42]

Clone Ascendant + Psionic Admirals is pretty nuts, especially since you can get them both by the third decade or so. I play with reduced building slots, so I have to spread my clones out a bit (no more than 2 vats/planet as a rule of thumb), but clone/ecus for +40% specialist output is also extremely strong.