Your favorite Traits, Ethos, and Government?

[Doc_McStabbins]

Title says it all.

Mine is:
(+2) Intelligent
(+2) Thrifty
(-1) Repugnant
(-1) Sedentary
Fanatic Materialists
Militaristic
Government: Science Directorate

This combo gives an incredible boost to all 3 sciences, and an extra choice for what to research, which gives you a better chance of acquiring rare techs, or even a better tech than the first three choices. Assuming you have even the slightest idea what you're doing, energy will never be a problem, thanks to Thrifty. The Militaristic Bonuses to damage and war happiness is just a lovely little cherry on top.

[Valmirius]

I'm going to try this out :)

I was using this for my reptillian overlords.

(+2) Intelligent
(+1) Strong
(-1) Sedentary

Materialist
Militarist
Collectivist

Despotic Empire

Or my insect hivemind zerg rush

Spiritualist
Militarist
Collectivist

(+1) Rapid Breeders
(+1) Strong
(-1) Sedentary
(+1 Enduring

Divine Mandate

[Wraith]

Science Directorate for the extra Research option and higher leader cap. And also I like having a bit of diversity in Rulers, just not every 5 years..

Weak, Enduring and Rapid Breaders.. (weak/strong only affect ground troop army strength, not fleets so it's a good one to get a point out of).. Enduring so my Culture humans live longer and rapid breeding so the Pop grows quicker..

Fanatic Materialist (10% to all research output), and that one (collectivist?) that does 50% slavery tolerance and more less food consumed? I think.

[ManDudely]

That's almost identical to the one I'm running.

Science Directorate/Neural-Net Administration
Fanatic Materialists
Militaristic
FTL: Wormhole
Intelligent (+2)
Natural Sociologists (+1)
Slow Breeders (-1)

Wormhole is great. It means you don't get trapped in by other Hyperlane species in the early game, so you can expand out past them to get good planets early on. Later levels you can usually jump your whole deathfleet from your home planet to the enemies home planet in one or two jumps.

I made sure to keep my fleet maxed as I grew, and upgraded after every empire I defeated. I rushed for Genetic Engineering and Synthetics. Switched out Slow Breeders for Rapid Breeders when I could. The fact that my starter race has intelligent and a research specialisation makes them still better than Synthetics for research in that one field, guaranteeing a strong Soc-Research score for G-Modding every race I subjugated. Synthetics do pretty much everything else they can though. I avoided the AI rebellion by granting Sythetics and AI full citizen rights.

If I was to try again and tweak it, Militaristic doesn't really seem to do much. I took it largely for Full Bombardment, though I actually spent the majority of the early and mid game avoiding fights to focus on research and maintaining a ready defense fleet. Late game, I have a 70k battleship fleet and several full fleets of Genetically Engineered Synthetics (however that works) with Clone Commandos, and they take care of all planetary ground defenses. I'd probably take a point of Collectivist instead; that way I could purge the xeno scum off these amazing ring worlds I'm taking and replace the dissident organics with loyal, superior Synthetics.

[Wraith]

yep in one of my earlier games I played pretty much your setup above there.. Then I saw that Militaristic isn't that great, and out of alternatives Collectivist seems more useful..

I love Wormhole tech!

[Knut Are Mykland]

I guess you are a roleplayer and not a min makser, because your species is not even close to max science. Ps try out this build for exsample.
Trifty,industrious,weak,sedentary FS,P, MD/ID. +20% to everything in your cap, +35% to minerals and energy. Since this game is all about growing fast early game this is a winning build. Ps you can still wage war since the pacifist penalty is not that great. 150-300 each type of science in 60-80 years time should be easy to get.
+within 1 year of meeting mining drones you will have droning edict for another 15% minerals and 5% less energy.(+30% energy+50% minerals in the capitol.
each pop only adds 2% science penalty, it is far from enough to not make growing bigger and faster a lot better.

[Spirit]

i´m not a warmonger like other players ... i play mostly my pacifistic/xenophile monarchy with traits like strong and charismatic ... they dont want you as enemy because they know you are harmless and embassys do the rest

[Valmirius]

Originally posted by Knut Are Mykland:

I guess you are a roleplayer and not a min makser, because your species is not even close to max science. Ps try out this build for exsample.
Trifty,industrious,weak,sedentary FS,P, MD/ID. +20% to everything in your cap, +35% to minerals and energy. Since this game is all about growing fast early game this is a winning build. Ps you can still wage war since the pacifist penalty is not that great. 150-300 each type of science in 60-80 years time should be easy to get.
+within 1 year of meeting mining drones you will have droning edict for another 15% minerals and 5% less energy.(+30% energy+50% minerals in the capitol.
each pop only adds 2% science penalty, it is far from enough to not make growing bigger and faster a lot better.

Fanatical Spiritualist?

[Knut Are Mykland]

yes fanatic spiritualist. spiritualist has some really good events as well. one gives you 5% happiness for meeting some alien type. Early game happiness boosts are easy to get and give 10% bonus to everything at 80% and +20% at 90%.
Irenic democracy is also nice for stopping rebellions with there +20% happiness.(+25% with the spiritualist event.)

[Valmirius]

Originally posted by Knut Are Mykland:

yes fantic spiritualist. spiritualist has some really good events as well. one gives you 5% happiness for meeting some alien type

Would you get away with choosing repugnant over weak?

[Knut Are Mykland]

Would you get away with choosing repugnant over weak? [/quote]

Why would you ever pick repugnant? weak is a tiny penalty and armies are dirt cheap anyway. + later on you can gentically engineer a single pop to be very strong

[Valmirius]

-20% against a +60% very strong maxed out race on equivalent/ superior tech might be an issue. I've never found repugnant to be much of a problem.

[DivineEvil]

My first pick was the scientific madmen, Tannari Combine:
Fanatic Materialist / Xenophile.
Intelligent Conformists, Weak and Non-Adaptive.
Science Directorate, Hyperspace FTL.

Goes into hi-tech very rapidly, and Hyperspace allows for very quick and unhindered exploration, although hard to protect.
Past 100 years I've already conquered 2 neighbour Empires of militarists, integrated a young space-faring race and genetically uplifted a near-intelligent race, all genetically modified to play different missing roles in the Combine (ground troops, industrialists, farmers and traders, respectively). Stood toe-to-toe against a Federation quite well, but my lack of efficient defenses spelled my doom.

My current playtrough features Corax Dominion - Fanatic Individualists / Militarists, Industrious Conformists, that are Sedentary and Solitary, Military Republic with Wormhole FTL.

Playing militant species is fun, love it! Though Tannari are my personal favorite still.

[PingvinSalat]

Cult of Cthulhu:
Government Type:
Theocratic Republic (for the -10% ethnic divergence and +2 core planets)

Ethics:
Xenophile (had to point the last point into something - dont even know what it does tbh :D)

Pacifist (I know, cthulhu is an evil monster - or is he? maybe he just wants to hug people... in the face.... with tentacles! :D - also, happiness buildings!)

Spiritualist (seems the general consensus is that this ethic is crap, and one should pick materialist instead. But why not just farm and stack multiple happiness bonuses for +20% everything (minerals, energy, research))

Traits:
+2 Intelligent (faster research)
+1 Communal (more happiness!)
-1 Sedentary (basically i see this as a free trait point - just like the Weak (-1) trait - so why would i ever NOT chose it? )

Probably not the best custom race by any means, and its not even cthulhu-lore friendly. But it works, and who doesnt love tentacles?! :P

[Doc_McStabbins]

Admittedly, I have never used slavery in the game, but I regularly hear how much others like to use it. Can someone please explain in brief the game mechanic advantages of it? It may be worth considering, though I still may not use it just because of RL feelings.

[Solitus]

Originally posted by Doc_McStabbins:

Admittedly, I have never used slavery in the game, but I regularly hear how much others like to use it. Can someone please explain in brief the game mechanic advantages of it? It may be worth considering, though I still may not use it just because of RL feelings.

Slavery synergizes really well with certain government types (they give a boost to slave mineral and/or food production.

But really it is because as of 1.0.3, the slave faction cannot rebel. (before the game released slaves could rebel but it was crazy insane rebellions that would destroy a player without option to mitigate so they made it so slaves couldn't rebel until they could patch it in correctly later)

That's the real reason. No unruly pops, no factions, a nice stable empire. With also a boost to minerals and food.