First Ascension Perk

[starrynite120]

I have to say, props to the devs for making the first ascension perk a hard choice. I'm wondering what other people pick. I'm currently playing an aggressive authoritarian/militarist game, and I was between expanded borders and core planets, ended up going with the borders but man it was a hard choice.

What do you pick for your first perk?

[Radene]

I usually go for the tech supremacy. Sometimes mastery of nature if I play rapid expansion.

[Apeironic_Entelechy]

I chose Master of Nature (or whatever it's called) the perk that reduces the cost of removing tile blockers by 100% and makes most tile blockers removeable, it's just so amazing. I've removed all the tile blockers on all three of my worlds, it's just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ useful.

[Andante]

the unity one, research one, 25% more borders, and the master of nature are all really really good early game perks, I generally pick one of them depending on the strategy im going for.

[RodHull]

Unity one is good if your pumping unity, border growth excellent early game to grab space and stop ai sprawl, core worlds good if you hate sectors, the research one is nice but a bit over rated imo

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

Always Mastery of Nature.
Always.

Free techs for all colonizing terrain (so don't research them), and they're free to remove.. it's ridiculously good if you're mass colonizing and can get to this early game.

[starrynite120]

Interesting none of you said the increased core worlds. I've taken the science one before, it was pretty useful. I'm having a bit of a hard time getting myself to pick master of nature. Its really good short term, but is worthless later in the game once your empire is developed. How do you justify taking it?

[Keyes]

I usually go for the science perk. It's just so strong and scales extremely good into late-game.

[cooltv27]

Originally posted by starrynite120:

Interesting none of you said the increased core worlds. I've taken the science one before, it was pretty useful. I'm having a bit of a hard time getting myself to pick master of nature. Its really good short term, but is worthless later in the game once your empire is developed. How do you justify taking it?

I take it with a hype expansive extremely adaptable build. because of how fast im building new colonies and getting new pops I always fall very far behind on science, with this I can get a bunch of techs that are helpful right away. and I always need resources for ships rather than tile blockers

[A Big Hairy Monster]

Originally posted by starrynite120:

Interesting none of you said the increased core worlds. I've taken the science one before, it was pretty useful. I'm having a bit of a hard time getting myself to pick master of nature. Its really good short term, but is worthless later in the game once your empire is developed. How do you justify taking it?

I take this one; I actually really like it, because the sector AI tends to build very slowly, whereas I can focus one particular aspect at a time to ramp up different aspects of the ecomony as I need it. I've played several games now where I didn't have any sectors at all until late in the game, where I just had like 10-12 systems I managed manually.

[Ficelle]

I tend to go for the more cores one as i like to colonize everything in sight, and no matter how good sectors are (or are not), 100% efficiency is better than 75 or less.

The more cores i have, the better for me.

[Jynn]

My strategy is usually:

Technology
Border Size
Unity Generation
Tile Blockers

And then the rest varies based on my strategy...be it Megastructures, Psychic, etc

[Sir Crashalot]

Justify Master of Nature?

Well, it is very useful if you get it early on in the game.
It allows you to clean up planets without any energy or mineral expediture.
It saves you having to research multiple blocker cleaners for each planet type.
It makes you more attractive to the females of whatever species suits your fancy.

Getting ahead in the early stages of the game can make a big difference, especially if you are intending to build wide.

[erneiz]

Master of Nature first, by going down Expansion. Hands down best first ascension perk. Not wasting precious early resources on things like this can get you very far. Almost any kind of percentage based bonus ascension is not worth picked first because you're not yet generating much in the first place. Extra core world is a double edged sword because it also increases tech cost by a lot so better picked when you actually have good science base already.

[Apeironic_Entelechy]

Originally posted by erneiz:

Tile Blockers first, by going down Expansion. Hands down best first ascension perk. Not wasting precious early resources on things like this can get you very far. Almost any kind of percentage based bonus ascension is not worth picked first because you're not yet generating much in the first place. Extra core world is a double edged sword because it also increases tech cost by a lot so better picked when you actually have good science base already.

Uh dude, you double posted.

[starrynite120]

Originally posted by Jynn:

My strategy is usually:

Technology
Border Size
Unity Generation
Tile Blockers

And then the rest varies based on my strategy...be it Megastructures, Psychic, etc

You delay the ascensions and things like voidborn that much? That surprises me. May I ask why?

Originally posted by Sir Crashalot:

Justify Master of Nature?

Well, it is very useful if you get it early on in the game.
It allows you to clean up planets without any energy or mineral expediture.
It saves you having to research multiple blocker cleaners for each planet type.
It makes you more attractive to the females of whatever species suits your fancy.

Getting ahead in the early stages of the game can make a big difference, especially if you are intending to build wide.

I am starting to see the perks of it, if you get it early enough and are growing your species fast enough.