Designing a mighty kingdom

[e11]

I want to play a strong, proud militaristic space kingdom.

I've had a few false starts (run into major empires I just can't compete with or realize I've made a poor long-term decision), but I'd like to be serious about this next one and get some advice.

Here's what I'm thinking so far in species creation:

*Fanatic Militarist Authoritarian.
*Authority: Imperial.
*Civics: Distinguished Admiralty and Warrior Culture
*Traits: Venerable and Slow Breeder.

This way I have a military with some oomph, and powerful, long-reigning leaders.
I WANT to have Aristocratic Elite and Very Strong, but those other two civics seem more useful, and doesn't the extra army damage from Strong only apply to ground armies?

What do you think? Am I overlooking some long-term consideration?

[Azunai]

slow breeder is a bad idea. the economy is built on the pops, so a penalty to pop growth is a very serious drawback. basically any of the other negative traits would be less damaging.

or you could just use enduring instead of venerable. the effect is weaker, but its much more affordabe. could be combined with strong.

[galadon3]

I think the biggest problem you'll face, especially if in your previous games you ran into empires you couldn't compete with: Your planned empire doesn't have any economical boni and as Azunai said, slow breeder is REALLY bad since 2.2 and honestly imo you get to little points for how damaging it is. In 2.2 population is THE bottleneck for developing your economy.

A lot of military boni are nice to have, but as many rulers throughout history had to learn: you need the ressources to build those fleets and armies in the first place.

[e11]

EDIT: What are boni?

Originally posted by Azunai:

slow breeder is a bad idea. the economy is built on the pops, so a penalty to pop growth is a very serious drawback. basically any of the other negative traits would be less damaging.

or you could just use enduring instead of venerable. the effect is weaker, but its much more affordabe. could be combined with strong.

Yeah, that combination wouldn't be quite as satisfying, but it's in the direction.

Maybe I'll just take Wasteful instead of Slow Breeder.

[Azunai]

decadent could also work.

i imagine if you live in a "proud warrior" society (thinking of star trek klingons or similar) you'd want to become a warrior naturally. becoming an engineer or doctor or similar could be seen as somewhat equivalent to the warrior caste (at least in civilization mature enough to become an interstellar empire) but simple worker jobs such as mining or farming might still be considered as "honorless" or whatever.

[Jewbacca]

I play with Venerable+slow breeders. Though it's more like a roleplay decision.

Thing is, that you can't be venerable+very strong. You can such later with gene modification (which gives the best available mass built army for non-machine empires)

Very strong only affects ground troops. While it looks nice on roleplay to be very strong with warrior culture it is not exactly strong, because the war decided in space.

I recommend taking nationalistic zeal instead of warrior culture so you can claim for even cheaper.

For efficiency i recommend ingenious for the extra energy.

For roleplay i would take strong+enduring, or decadent with very strong.

I never actually played authoritarian system, because i hate slavery. But i think it could work nearly same as my egalitarian with social welfare, but instead of that extra consumer goods you would build some extra predinct houses to keep crime down, and the planet stable.

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

Generally, it should work well for the RP of it. The actual mechanics could go a lot of ways, but it should be okay.

Spiritualist is usually a good idea in authoritarian empires but considering that you do have warrior culture you want to be using that for your amenities rather than temples anyways.

Generally I favor 'Decadent' over slow breeders but that's a personal preference to lean my people more heavily towards authoritarian (and anti egalitarian).

You also only really need the 1 level for longer lived, rather than 4 levels.

So trading that with charismatic or something could be helpful (also favoring xenophile which is generally the best faction in the game if you don't mind curbing your policies for them).
Very Strong or Strong would fit the RP very well, and be great towards your militarist faction ethics if you want it to be.

Considering you have duelists.. you will likely be amenities heavy which means you don't want to use slavery probably (as it boosts non-slaves rather than slaves).

Though you could make the argument that the slaves are more fine with the happier higher population. Though generally I find slavery only good if you're going down the xenophobe empire, or have a system where it's a set % of the population with a civic.

So just leaving everyone in stratified is a pretty good option as they are still low on consumer good usage. (it also lets you make the xenophile faction happy).