Any tips for Lithoids?

[Luky]

Progress from the beginning is really slow because low grow, and I lack on fleets too and getting beaten when someone declares war on me, I play higher difficulty and I can handle with other species but with this species its really hard.

[Cryten]

Lithoids are slow, they are naturally worse then other species in the early game. you can counteract some of this with the lithoid pillars on your homeworld but that only for 3-4 pops. You will want to settle every single planet you come across even the worst planets should at least be okay as a pop growing factory. But that penalty for growth will always hurt you compared to what you could of been with a normal race with fast breeding. You will need to use other planets to force move lithoids onto a few primary planets to start you forge and research worlds.

The main problem remains that first 10 pops. As lithoids are 30-50% slower then other races at getting to that 10 pop it means it will take even longer to get planets into the non penalised growth phase. I hope the new lithoid origin will help with this. You can only counteract the penalties by going very wide. But if you get boxed in by aggressive neighbours your gonna be hurting for a long time.

Lithoids are the only species where I can be losing to the ai in research in the first 40 years because it takes so long to get a research planet going.

[SpectralShade]

Spread out. You get a hab bonus compared to other races, so spread out on those planets.
building lots of colonies early also helps offset your racial pop growth penalty.

As I see it, they more or less require that you go wide. If you try and go tall with them, you are at a disadvantage because you emphasize the negatives then.

[Prometheus]

The key thing to remember is that a lithoid on an off biome planet grows better than a normal pop on an off biome planet. The hab penalties to growth are huge. You need to milk that.

You need to abuse resettling. Use it to get that key admin building upgrade, then move the pops to the next planet and do it again. I know everybody can do this but Lithoids need it more.

[Markus Reese]

I found lithoids to be quite powerful. While they have slower growth, the increased planet accessibility count offsets that right after you begin initial colonization.

Additionally, Not needing to have food resources means your manpower allocation is more efficient as your mineral and food manpower surplus production is now combined into one for districts.

So population is 25% less for growth.... But I got 50% more planets.

But it doesnt end there. Get machines. Build robots to suppliment since you now got the extra ability to focus manpower on energy. It was a nasty runaway.

In reality, I found late game was tough if you don't have much in the way of good mining planets. However in a relatively small empire size, I was supporting multiple full Ecumenopolis. My science one was just an insane powerhouse.