how to have aggressive multirace empire?

[Reef]

Hey,

my playstyle is usually very aggressive, outbuilding the neighbors and conquering them as soon as possible, no alliances or pacts.
does this playstyle valid if i want to integrate the conquered races into my empire?
what strategys should i use? what ethics my main race should start with?
(i mean, how to avoid getting stuck with 20 factions?)

so far i had to result to purge anyone that thought about making a faction.
the diplomacy results-
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/96104530594003204/3C8884B9BDB12C8E9D9222A4E74DB9A93DB9EAC3/

[Azunai]

fanatic individualist is a good pick if you want to run a diverse empire and don't want to worry much about the ethics of your pops. add some bonus happiness into the mix and most of your subjects will be content and productive (once the happiness penalty from bein conquered wears off).

[Stelar Seven]

I run individualist xenophiles. Add the space mall and computer chip implant democracy when you can upgrade and the happiness ends factions quickly.

I do find that indirect democracy is a great starter ethos. That let's you get miner and research mandates which keep the influence flowing.

[NixBoxDone]

Militarist and Spiritualist. Militarist gives you access to war happiness, fire rate and a building that boosts happiness (plus no restrictions to making war) and spiritualist gives you ethics diversion and boosts to your own growth to make expanding on your own easier.

Then you just take aliens and brainwash them with massive ethics divergence until they like ya.

[LAG]

2 ways that are neccesary

1) ethnic divergence
2) happiness

low happiness causes factions, ethnic divergence causes low hapiness.

you can solve this in one of two ways, with tons of negative ethnic divergence which will cause people to believe what you want them to believe and thus agree with you.

or you could run with enough happiness that you can boost through the penalty of ethnic divergence.


typicly ethnic divergence penalties will have a -10% and -5% on policies based on how much they dissagree. In addition to this you have penalties such as "alien overlord" for xenophobes which can be a whooping -30% happiness and the classic "opposite government" penalties such as individualists being collectivist societies.

I have 2 forms of government that will solve this in two ways

Fanatic spiritualist is the ethnic divergence path, indoctrinating your faith on everyone you meet.

Fanatical individualist is the way of happiness, being tolerant and allowing everyone to have their own opinon.

They work the following:

Fanatical spiritualist usually works nice with xenophile/xenophobe/individualist/collectivist
basicly anything.

I would reccomend not to use xenophobe, purely because xenophobe in itself is a pretty bad ethic.

The best combo imo is Fspiritualist/collectivist since it maximises your acces to indoctrination tools. You can basicly conquer even fanatic xenophobes and have them converted. Ethical divergence ticks once per year, starting when the pop was introduced into your empire with a % chance it will happen. More than 100% means it has a chance to divert two steps instead of one. 150% ethical divergence means it has a 100% chance of diverging one step and a 50% of diverging two steps.

Ethical divergence diverge in steps, either from or towards your ethos. If there are several different ethics of the same species then the new born pop will be a mix of the current ethics.

Fspiritualist/collectivist + Materialist/Fmilitarist might give colectivist/Fmilitarist for example.

Steps work like this

FMaterialist>Materialist>nothing>Spiritualist>Fspiritualist

this goes both ways for divergence and convergence.


Pics to illustrate point. Deus ex is simply replacing the conformist trait. I'm using tons of mods in my games which is why you see FE buildings and stuff.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=882921430

You can reliably drown your population in 200%+ ethical divergence.

Ethos: Fspiritualist/Collectivist
Government: Spiritual Mandate
Racial traits: Conformist for maximum ethical divergence, but can do without.

You can also run the free thought edict for research bonus without any risk of divergence.

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Fanatical individualist is much more simple and will work reliably without to much specialization.

This is because Findividualists get a -60% policy happiness modifier.

This means that you only get 40% of the usual dose of negative happiness from your policies.

This DOES NOT mean you don't get the ethic penalties! pacifists will still hate you for going to war, xenophobes will still hate everyone else.

This is why i highly reccomend using Findividualist/xenophile to deal with the xenophobes, because they will HATE you case and point. When you conquer fallen empire xenophobe world you will FEEL THIS.

Alien visitor center will reduce the otherwise 5% xenophobe penalty to 5% xenophile bonus and cut the 15% Fxenophobe penalty to a 5% xenophobe penalty, this also affects the "alien overlords" penalty.

Since you're an individualist and not all on the purge side this is the best alternative.

or you could run xenophobe, but that means having racial segregation planets as your species absoloutly do not deal with aliens.

Xenophobe can combo hyper entertainment center and symbol of purity for a 25% happiness bonus, which is sweet. You're going to find diplomatic negotiations more difficult if you decide to purge the alien scum though.

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As a final note i'm going to mention sectors, which is not good.

Sectors have a problem with special buildings, they just don't build them.
this goes for any strategy.

Sectors don't build mind control laser or symbol of unity and they don't build hyper entertainment center or symbol of unity nearly enough.

i neve see spaceports getting any upgrades and the few instances they do the modules are some complete random nonsense.

Buildings are a bit better, but you're mostly looking at a 50/50 chance the sector will actually build the buildings you want.

have fun.

[Reef]

thanks for all the advices guys, i will check it!