Are there any negatives to the brain slug event?

[Braidborn the Broken]

It doesn't seem like there is, but whenever i think of the word brain slug I imagine something very similar to the Yeerk the slug parasite thing from the old book series Animorphs, (anyone else remember them?) they can't be purely beneficial it doesn't make sense

[Malaficus Shaikan]

From what i can tell the brain slug are:
https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Tok%27ra

[Red Dox]

Have not seen them in a while, but if I remember right you get a kickass boost for science & unity, at the price of a huge decrease of pop growth. Which kinda was a nobrainer in 2.1 but with 2.2 and the new planetmanagement I would take a moment and reconsider if it is worth it. If your pop growth is no problem, be it due to edict pushes, huge food boosts, great immigration waves or a heavy reliance on robots to do the ehavy lifting, you probably have no issue with the brainslugs. If all those things do not really apply to your species playthrough, maybe the brainslugs would end up be more of an obstacle then a blessing.

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

From what i can tell the brain slug are:
https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Tok%27ra

https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Brain_Slug
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Trill_symbiont

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by Red Dox:

Have not seen them in a while, but if I remember right you get a kickass boost for science & unity, at the price of a huge decrease of pop growth. Which kinda was a nobrainer in 2.1 but with 2.2 and the new planetmanagement I would take a moment and reconsider if it is worth it. If your pop growth is no problem, be it due to edict pushes, huge food boosts, great immigration waves or a heavy reliance on robots to do the ehavy lifting, you probably have no issue with the brainslugs. If all those things do not really apply to your species playthrough, maybe the brainslugs would end up be more of an obstacle then a blessing.

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

From what i can tell the brain slug are:
https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Tok%27ra

https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Brain_Slug
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Trill_symbiont

I dont think:
https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Brain_Slug
Counts.
Unless i misremembered the brain slug's refuse a unwilling host.
Which is why i thought of:
https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Tok%27ra

Do https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Trill_symbiont reject unwilling hosts?

[Count Von Count]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

Originally posted by Red Dox:

Have not seen them in a while, but if I remember right you get a kickass boost for science & unity, at the price of a huge decrease of pop growth. Which kinda was a nobrainer in 2.1 but with 2.2 and the new planetmanagement I would take a moment and reconsider if it is worth it. If your pop growth is no problem, be it due to edict pushes, huge food boosts, great immigration waves or a heavy reliance on robots to do the ehavy lifting, you probably have no issue with the brainslugs. If all those things do not really apply to your species playthrough, maybe the brainslugs would end up be more of an obstacle then a blessing.


https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Brain_Slug
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Trill_symbiont

I dont think:
https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Brain_Slug
Counts.
Unless i misremembered the brain slug's refuse a unwilling host.
Which is why i thought of:
https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Tok%27ra

Do https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Trill_symbiont reject unwilling hosts?

It takes years for a Trill to be chosen as a host for a symbiont, and basically everyone in their society wants that honour. Although with the lasrge number of willing candidates, I don’t see why they’d force themselves upon anyone (except possibly in a similar situation to Ezra Dax in DS9, although that particular situation was consentual)

[Cervidal]

I like adding the brain slugs early on for the higher quality leaders. They don't infect your whole population, so you don't get a huge boost in sciences/huge decrease in population growth for awhile.

Later on in the game, when you're struggling to control all your maxed out population planets, you can genetically engineer your entire population to have brain slugs by creating the template with the slugged portion of your population. Instant science growth, instant population slow down.

Wait until you see your science growth if your people go brain slug/psionic/Erudite!

[RustyKn1ght]

Currently, it gives permanent pop growth penalty(Slug hosts get -25 percent growth penalty) and you also get -20 stability for 20 years as "Slug phobia", which I think Xenophiles are exempt(or at least I can't remember that I got any while playing UNE).

Slug phobia is kinda problem if you don't have great stability and so dropping from 60 percent to 40 in all of your colonies really bite you. And unfortunately low stability is a thing that feeds on itself, which is problem for Authoritarians and Xenophobes especially(one reason why AI players have so many uprisings in their hands).

But the bigger problem is -25% growth speed. In old system it was a minor inconvinience as uncontrollable population boom was inevitable, but ever since how pop growth was tied to planet carrying capacity....well, let's just say pop-growth penalties are really gonna hurt now. And pops are one of those things where more is always more(unless you supplement your workforce with robotic, but that brings other issues to deal with like AI rebellion).