Best empire settings

[Deathy]

Is there some specific setting like religious or military what is the best setting, sry if I wrote it a bit confusing

[Mistfox]

Best setting is if you spend 3 points in the trait "Out of this world OPness".

[Deathy]

Originally posted by Mistfox:

Best setting is if you spend 3 points in the trait "Out of this world OPness".

Oh ok thx will do that

[Exarch_Alpha]

If you are a newbie Egalitarian is a solid choice. Influence is the second most important resource (first one... is time) so it´s good to have more if it. Authoritharian is also good but more complicated.

Also put less AIs but not many less - you need to learn how and when to expand.

[Lantantan]

Different traits come with different playstyles. If you tell us how you typically play (expand fast? turtle and tech? rush neighbours? federate?) we can tell you which traits optimize that playstyle, deal?

[Dakota]

Each of the empire ethics and civics are just better at doing certain things. Militarists are better at war while a pacifist is better at stability, egalitarians better at complex goods while authoritarians are best at basic goods, xenophobes great at exploiting aliens while xenophiles work with them, materialists are faster at research while spiritualists are better at unity. That's the basics of it, there's some other bonuses here and there and some things really pair well together synergy-wise.

[Lantantan]

Originally posted by Dakota:

Each of the empire ethics and civics are just better at doing certain things. Militarists are better at war while a pacifist is better at stability, egalitarians better at complex goods while authoritarians are best at basic goods, xenophobes great at exploiting aliens while xenophiles work with them, materialists are faster at research while spiritualists are better at unity. That's the basics of it, there's some other bonuses here and there and some things really pair well together synergy-wise.

Thats the theory at least. In practise ethics are not created equally and some are vastly inferior to others, in every aspect besides roleplay.

[Lantantan]

Okay I'll start with some random thoughts on traps if all you care is powerplaying:
In general do NOT take:
Spiritual, Not being able to make droids slows your early game so much.
Pacifist. I mean, not being able to go to war is a huge pain.
Xenophile, Being able to invade some other planet type alien primitives can double your empire.
Xenophobe, Making all the land you take undeveloped is a huge penalty.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Lantantan:

Okay I'll start with some random thoughts on traps if all you care is powerplaying:
In general do NOT take:
Spiritual, Not being able to make droids slows your early game so much.
Pacifist. I mean, not being able to go to war is a huge pain.
Xenophile, Being able to invade some other planet type alien primitives can double your empire.
Xenophobe, Making all the land you take undeveloped is a huge penalty.

Spiritualists not having droids can be pretty painful, though the huge unity boosts (not only is it the ethics bonus but also consecrated worlds which also boost amenities and declare saint) along with reduced edicts costs lets you speed through traditions and late game you have loads of unity and cheaper edicts so you can use unity ambitions constantly. That and the higher chance for shroud stuff is nice if you're going for psychics.

Pacifists can be one of the biggest warmongers with liberation wars, though this is taken away if you go full fanatical pacifist. Still the play style's large stability boosts let you be very efficient with your pops and create a huge defense in the case that anyone does attack you, letting you just turtle the whole game away and hold off against the crisis.

Xenophile lets pretty much everyone form defensive pacts with you along with commercial ones providing you with some decent extra income along with a horde of fleets coming to your aid any time you want to declare war, which pairs nicely with ideology wars to make even more friends who would like to go to war with you, try out a fanatic xenophile militarist.

Xenophobes don't have to purge pops, that's only purifiers, xenophobes can allow aliens to stay as "residents" which can do all the normal jobs or just set them as slaves or even as livestock to provide massive food without any districts.


Basically all 4 of those have some really nice powerplay moves with different end goals in mind.

[Lantantan]

All civics have their own cool endgame toys and I do enjoy playing spiritualist. having 80% of all your pops attracted to spiritual and thus super happy is the biggest boost to stability I found so far, no need for pacifism to get that sweet 100 stab.

However, OP seem to me most interested in getting easy tips for getting most powerfull asap. For that, all that matters is a fast early game in which you get the most pop on most planets asap so you get that exponential snowball rolling. Everything you said are valid points on the strengths of those ethics, but they're kinda off-topic.

[Angry Obnoxious Goose]

It all wholy depends on the type of empire you wanna play. if you wanna go tech-speed, go with fanatic Materialist, if you isntead prefer going with Psychics, go Spiritualist. wanna be warlike, go with some Militarist as well.

[Theutus]

Play some of the starting empires to get a feel for them.

[Lantantan]

Yeah tell us what you want us to optimize, but IMHO most of the game's enjoyment is in playing the kind of aliens you want to play. Roleplay!

[Deathy]

Thank you for the help guys, I wanted to get as much resources and tech speed with some settings as possible and I think I will go with materialist and maybe something else

[Mistfox]

If you are into land grabbing, authoritarian gives you a small amount of "bonus" influence (0.5 or 1 per month) and xenophobe gives you a -20 or -40% discount on new starbases built, so it is more suited for solo early land grab expansion.

Things like life seeding is more suited for playing "tall" or small well developed empires since other planets kind of suck for you so your gaia home planet is going to be super well developed but you'll end up with very few planets that are worth colonizing.

Xenophile is very good for mid game development, especially after you get migration treaties. A lot of them means you can fill in every planet in your claimed sectors with a suitable pop, so you can rather easily fully develop your empire.

It all just depends on how you want to play. My advice though is if you commit, go all the way and not try to play the opposite of what you selected, like playing xenophile after selecting xenophobe or egalitarian after selecting authoritarian. It sort of wastes your advantages and makes your pop unhappy.