What is your Strategy my fellow gestalt consciousness Machine friends?

[It's Shas]

Right now, Im not sure if my strategy is properly suited for le guin, I got good results with them so far dont get me wrong, but Im not sure if they are even close to optimum.

So my Race is basicaly a gestalt consciousness Machine race with rock breakers and rapid replicators (1+ minerals per mine worker, 20% + pop building speed) and my traits are
repurposed hardware and luxurious (+20% pop building cost and -25% leader XP gain), power drills, mass produced and durable (-10% robo upkeep, 15% minerals and 15% pop build speed),
didnt have so many energy problems so far oddly enough, expected more.
The thing is, getting a planet to actually grow fast is a long way until you have 5 Pops to build the assembly building.

Unity wise I almost always go for discovery first, then prosperity or expansion / Sinchronicity depending on what I need next.
What worked for you guys best, having more Systems and less planets or having less systems and more planets?
So far I allways ran with more systems over planets and boosting my empire cap with tech or ascendancy.

[[ALT] RoseAilton]

I only play ME, but this patch kinda killed it for me. To much micro, start with negative incomes...

What worked the most for me was to specialize planets ( mineras, energy ( the most important things for any machine empire hands down(so that you can suport robot building and alloy forging))), dont expand too fast or your empire size will increase your research and tradition costs to insane prices, look for planets that have natural special resources mines that you can build ( sou you dont strain your mineral production building special resources factories and can build alloy forges.

But still with all this, my energy prodution is aways near negative or negative. Population traits I go for reduce robot build time, increase housing needed and reduce robot upkeep. Civics I tend to do the same, to try to cut cost from upkeep anywhere I find ( the most upkeep intensive thing in ME is the robot population after some point, followed by distric upkeed if you tend to build tall)

[CraftyWülf]

Currently ME's are broken. PDI said that much on their own forums and a fix should be in the works. So hopefully they'll pull them in line a bit more in the weeks to come.

That said, current build... Pop growth is king. So rapid breeder organics or mass produced bots.. Pops = economic power so simply having more then your enemies will always have you win in the long run.

[It's Shas]

Energy is almost never a problem for me, except for when I establish new planets where I tend to allways go the assembly and unity building route. And even then, most of the time I have so much minerals that I can just sell a lot of the surplus on the market for energy. Having the 20% energy creds edict running almost all the time helps to, especialy if you get the +50% edict time.

What I dont know, in the long run is, having more planets early (since they take ages to develope) or have more systems. Need to figure that out realy.

[It's Shas]

Originally posted by Post-Moe:

Currently ME's are broken. PDI said that much on their own forums and a fix should be in the works. So hopefully they'll pull them in line a bit more in the weeks to come.

That said, current build... Pop growth is king. So rapid breeder organics or mass produced bots.. Pops = economic power so simply having more then your enemies will always have you win in the long run.

Do you have a quote or link for me good sir?

[CraftyWülf]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/2-2-robots-are-nearly-worthless-along-with-machine-empires-mechanist-and-synethic-ascension.1133936/

Edit: Wiz replied on page 2.

[The Grand Mugwump]

Machine empires are pretty slow right now. I used to go discovery first, but the population growth and avoiding early research penalties is so essential that I pretty much dump everything into expansion first. Now that I'm further into my game, I love machine empire just for not having to juggle as many resources around. There is no trade so no pirates, no consumer goods and especially no food requirements (most of the time)!

The big advantage of machine empires is being able to colonize any colonizable planet immediately. So I grab them as fast as I can. By the time the AI's had 5 planets, I had 12. The initial assembler costs are negligible and I figure I might as well get that 300-400 month wait out of the way sooner rather than later. That said, it was 50 years or so before any of my colonies had a positive income on energy or minerals, which is a huge shift from the rapid expanders machine empires used to be.

[キールス]

I love ME this patch.

I basically created a pop that was meant for the previous patch but I changed my species to specializing in getting more energy. I realized that that is a lot more energy upkeep for ME now that I had to specialize one planet on generating the energy that I need to sustain my starbases, ships and pops.

After that everything went smoothly once I got Mastery of Nature and Machine Worlds and started making forge and refinery worlds. The amount of resources that I could get from a specialized world is enormous.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1587615783

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1587615718

I really don't understand the people saying that the energy problems for ME make it unplayable to be honest. The only problem that I have is I cannot continue the game because the stuttering was unbearable so I created a new game on a medium sized galaxy.

The energy problems for ME is workable if you ask me.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1587625386

[CYBERfailzor]

I think it's worth noting that, in the long run mineral bonuses are also important in order to keep each planet in the positive, what I mean is that:

-energy isn't really a problem because, no matter your build there should always be some food production slots available that you can turn into bio-power plants easily.

-your pop growth is important but even 20% might not make that much of a difference when the base value is 3.0, it's a great perk, I think, not a must have, it's nice to have but there are many boosts from traditions eventually, also, it could become micro-hell if you wanted to expand fast.

-as your pops grow they'll require more amenities, bio-trophies will require consumer goods too, lotsa, while there are plenty of ways to build energy, pops will be effectively capped by your mineral planet production.

Minerals are probably the most important resource for machine empires because you either go to war (2 out of 3 archetypes) or build tall (so need to research and be a happy neighbour for a while) so you can see why you should always need'em.

[キールス]

@CYBERfailzor I agree with you on pop growth. Discovery is nerfed now that I don't think it is a good first pick unless if you want that science leader xp boost and survey speed. I feel like Tradition is the way to go for ME followed maybe by Prosperity/Versatility/Domination or Purity.

But I think minerals are a mid - late game problem for Machine Empires that you can remedy by adding the Rockbreaker Civic(I also think that Rapid Replicator civic is OP as it vastly improves pop growth and a good first pick civic).

I tried specializing pops for mineral production but it involves a lot of micro and I am lazy.