Playing better as Lithoids...?

[cswiger]

Hi, all--

I just picked up the Lithoid species pack, and am losing my first try with them using 3.5.1. I don't have Necroids, so many recent build threads involving Lithoid+Necro meta don't apply. But that's OK, I'm good with role-playing a species instead of just trying for some ideal combination of traits. Here is my species:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2866232385

I was going to try for psionic rocks as the ascension path, but I got Baol precursors instead of Zroni, which is just not a good mix. So I tried going for robotics instead, but it turns out that Crystallization trait conflicts with using that slot to build robot pops. Am I missing something about Crystallization, since I was looking at ~1100 months for it to create a new pop?

I'm going to swap Crystallization for Intelligent. And I'm going to switch ethics to Xenophile + Fanatic Materialist and go for robotics + synth ascension from the start, rather than mucking about with psionics or biological ascension.

[cswiger]

Hmm. Well, my second playthrough using Xenophile + Materialist placed me in fairly tight quarters with a fallen empire and three normal empires close by, with no free paths to expand. 5 planets for me, 6 planets for the other guys, and they had room to keep growing.

I agreed to a migration treaty with the empire which was most friendly and let that run for ~15 years to see how that would do. Well, I found myself with 61 of my pops, the other empire had 10 of my pops, and I had gotten 0 migrants back.

Turns out that my friend was Voidborne, and instead of getting some pops from them to help my spawning rate, none of them wanted to live on my planets. But the AI was happy to recruit my pops and have them settle on their planets. Who says the AI isn't improved...?

[yuzhonglu]

Crystalliation is only good for cloning vats. Never mix it with robots.

[Kapika96]

Why would Baol make you go robotic ascension? Robots need the free gaia worlds less than anybody else and the pop growth speed would be useless for them. Baol seems a pretty good match for psionic to me, not as good as Zroni, but perhaps 2nd best after them?

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Kapika96:

Why would Baol make you go robotic ascension? Robots need the free gaia worlds less than anybody else and the pop growth speed would be useless for them. Baol seems a pretty good match for psionic to me, not as good as Zroni, but perhaps 2nd best after them?

You're right that Baol plus psionic is pretty decent for most species.

However, gaia worlds matter less for Lithoids which have the 50% habitability bonus than they matter for other species which have climate preferences. Basically, the problem I'm seeing with Lithoids is really slow pop growth unless I use robots or acquire some other pop types which grow more rapidly.

[BigTurnip]

Lithoids have two problems you identified one of them, pop growth the other problem is they eat minerals instead of food.

Lithoid necro's don't grow mitigating problem 1 they also have 50% mineral reduction bringing them down to 0.5 minerals which can be reduced all the way down to 0.225 thanks to traditions and prop traits this removes the problem 2.

Remember a lithoid with regard to pop growth is ALWAYS living on a 50% habitable world and you can NEVER change that.

[titanopteryx]

There's a trick with Lithoids if you own Synthetic Dawn, or the dlc that adds the ability to start as a machine empire. If you pick driven assimilators and the origin to start on a machine world, lithoid cyborgs are the only non-robot species that have 100% habitability on your homeworld, and 70% habitability on non-homeworld machine worlds. Other cyborg species have 50% on the homeworld and 20% on other machine worlds.

[ScreamCon]

If you would've colonised two three different planets with same species, lithoids will make you have +50% habitability on average.

This means while a food pop gets +80% habitability on same planet type, they get only +20% for worlds opposite in type. Lithoids +50% raises the +20% to +70%.

This means lithoids growth is slower if you have food eating aliens to fill all the planet types in your territory, but faster in comparison if that organic species colonises those worlds as those planets will receive growth slow for low habitability.

Their less efficient as minerals are made in smaller amount per district to food. They directly convert larger portions of equivalent worth into more habitability. Minerals made in batch of 8 while food in batch of 12 per district.

[cswiger]

Thanks for the additional replies.

I have Mining Guilds and Industrious to help deal with producing the minerals needed instead of food. I'm decent at taking advantage of an event which gives High Quality mineral bonus or similar to a planet and building out a specialized mining world.

I have Synthetic Dawn, as well many of the others, but not Necroids-- see screenshot above. I have enjoyed playing as Driven Assimilators or Rogue Servitors before, so thanks for the suggestion of trying that with a Lithoid species, @titanopteryx.

So far, I haven't gotten any food-eating pops before 2050 in the 3 games I've played using Lithoids. Even then, I'll end up with a few Nivlacs or Rackets or some refugees, something like that.

[lubed_assassin]

lothids make a great ruler class because of their habitability. basically there great slaving empires. with the new changes you should be able to use radioactive or whatever to make them consume 50% energy and 50% minerals. The mineral concern can be countered by having much more specialized buildings and structures. Two nebula refineries can feed 40 pops or so with this kinda build and later will produce gas :).

However, sticking close to what you already have you could instead use the servile start, serviles get mining and strong. This gives them +%10 all resources, +15minerals +2.5% all resources and + 10 happiness. Make sure your fanatic Xenophobe as its pretty OP, that will negate your negative growth and the culture monuments are crazy as a xenophobe. +5 happiness per culture worker means +10% at level 1, level 2 is +20% and level 3 is +30%.

so you should get +35% minerals from that, plus chattel slavery, and slave guilds which will add another 20%, if you go dominance and run extended shifts you should end up with around +65% or so and can respect your main lothids into venerable for amazing leaders or science nerds.

[cswiger]

^ I haven't played as Authoritarian as much, so I'm not really used to dealing with Slave pops. With Gestalts like DAs or Hive Minds, you assimilate pops into your union. And with Determined Exterminators, you Dalek them instead.

Still, I can see how having Lithoids as your leaders/artisans/researchers. and having normal biological/food eating pops as the underclass which expands more rapidly could work well instead of going with robots. Perhaps next time around I'll give that a try.

PS: I'm doing better this time around:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2867269829

18 planets for me versus 13 for my big neighbor to the southwest, and 11 for the other empires to the east and south-east. I've been paying tribute to those unprintable Marauders for now, but that will end once I can say no and make it stick.

[jackhickman999]

The main appeal of lithoids is stuff like necrophage and clone army. Without it, they're like one of the worst species for most things.

Edit: Base lithiods outside of meta builds could really do with a +1 to miners at least.

[Astax]

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

Crystalliation is only good for cloning vats. Never mix it with robots.

It's also good with Hiveminds. But without it is pretty weak effect. HOWEVER Lithoids do need a way to increase pop growth speed, and outside of necro this may be the only way (not sure if they can use incubators).

[BigTurnip]

I think in theory a lithoid can hit 0.05 mineral upkeep.