Overtuned and machine intelligence pops - Are these the best pops for pure science research?

[cbdeakin]

Overtuned can get pretty large bonuses to research and pop growth, from the beginning. A 60% bonus to both research jobs, and pop growth, with the overtuned edict enabled. The growth is pretty useful to ensure you have enough researcher pops... Playing as a Hive mind makes it easier to manage your economy also, particularly due to not requiring consumer goods.

Machine intelligence pops benefit from a 10% or 20% bonus (if upgraded) to all jobs from their planet capitol buildings, depending on the # of pops on each planet. Generally, these pops were rivalling my overtuned pops. There's also the Rogue Servitors civic, that lets you get further boosts to all pop jobs (haven't tried this yet).

Have I missed anything, or are these the 2 best options for pure research, from the start of the game?

You can get Psionics pops quite early now with one of the origins options also.

[yuzhonglu]

What you do is to create other Hive Minds with Overtuned traits. Then you conquer them, and grow their pops in your Hive Empire. That way you get the benefits of TWO origins.

[Big mean bunny]

While over tuned is strong and better for hives turning it on needs some consideration as it uses a massive amount of unity upkeep too. You also have to consider how many pops are using jobs to maintain tne extra upkeep rather than just build the economy. I tent to start with drones that have high pop growth , habitability and basic resource production then immediately force clone a new subspecies with leader,longevity and science traits before I press start.

[Sea Base]

Originally posted by cbdeakin:

Machine intelligence pops benefit from a 10% or 20% bonus (if upgraded) to all jobs from their planet capitol buildings, depending on the # of pops on each planet.

I cannot for the life of me work out what you mean by this. Is this a species trait or...?
Closest I can find is the +25% Calculators get on their capital world if you pick Resource Consolidation Origin.

I haven't updated my spread sheet in a year, but skimming though patch notes nothing major has changed. Machine Intelligence has the highest efficiency for converting resources into science, effectively meaning you can support higher science production relative to your population count, so it's unsurprising you are finding they produce a lot of science early game.

[cbdeakin]

Originally posted by Big mean bunny:

While over tuned is strong and better for hives turning it on needs some consideration as it uses a massive amount of unity upkeep too.

It's alright.

You just need to manage your Edict quota with new technologies, leader traits and ascension perks.

[cbdeakin]

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

What you do is to create other Hive Minds with Overtuned traits. Then you conquer them, and grow their pops in your Hive Empire. That way you get the benefits of TWO origins.

True, but not really intended gameplay (in a typical SP or MP game). Overtuned is powerful when combined with other special pop traits like psionic, but you could potentially combine it with necroid pops.

[cbdeakin]

Originally posted by Sea Base:

I cannot for the life of me work out what you mean by this

You get a 20% bonus to all jobs for the planetary processor building (at 25 pops)

A 10% bonus to all jobs for the administrative array (10 pops).

No bonus with the 1st level planetary building though.

EDIT - My mistake, the bonuses I was referring too are only available after unlocking the improved production (10%), efficiencies of scale (20%) and Maximised Productivity (30%, I think for planets with at least 50 pops).

These technologies are available to all races, according to the wiki site.

So, that pretty much just leaves overtuned pops that can have a large research boost from the start.

Void Dwellers get a 15% bonus when working on habitats, which isn't bad.

And habitats get more research jobs also from their districts and are faster to develop.

[BigTurnip]

Psionic

Get 50% resource output from a 5 scientist councilor.

they get 20% from telepaths

They get 20% or 10% from zro edicts, can't remember which one.

They get 10% research/unity from there trait.

They get 25% resource output from there psionic governors

[cbdeakin]

Interesting.

I was thinking the origin for psionics looks decent.

Even more so, if it's possible to get all these pop/ resource bonuses.

Regarding this "Get 50% resource output from a 5 scientist councilor" - can't you already get large bonuses via the council positions with all non-gestalt races?

I've gone done the psionic route before, the latent psionic / psionic trait is good and so is the bonus from telepaths.

I think the best combination overall is probably start with Overtuned, then go down the psionic route later. If you choose the spiritual government trait, I think it can speed this process up a bit.

Because of the recent changes to ascension paths, it's now a bit easier to get the psionics tech, particularly if you have the Materialist government trait (researching this used to be restricted with this trait - it was still possible to get but difficult). The devs removed the probability/RNG involved in developing it.

[cbdeakin]

I forgot about the 'Academic Privilege' living standards option as well. You'd need to manage consumer goods carefully with this enabled though, as the cost is 2x that of 'Decent Conditions' for specialists.

[BigTurnip]

Originally posted by cbdeakin:

Interesting.

I was thinking the origin for psionics looks decent.

Even more so, if it's possible to get all these pop/ resource bonuses.

Regarding this "Get 50% resource output from a 5 scientist councilor" - can't you already get large bonuses via the council positions with all non-gestalt races?

I've gone done the psionic route before, the latent psionic / psionic trait is good and so is the bonus from telepaths.

I think the best combination overall is probably start with Overtuned, then go down the psionic route later. If you choose the spiritual government trait, I think it can speed this process up a bit.

Because of the recent changes to ascension paths, it's now a bit easier to get the psionics tech, particularly if you have the Materialist government trait (researching this used to be restricted with this trait - it was still possible to get but difficult). The devs removed the probability/RNG involved in developing it.

You can go materialist psionic but you lose out on 50% bonus from your spiritualist scientists and the 25% bonus from spiritualist planet governors.

Also no only psionic can get a 50% resource bonus from 5 scientist's on the council.

There is no RNG for ascension paths, ascension paths are determined by your ability to generate unity, in order to get 3 traditions finished, followed by researching an 8k tech and then unity to finish the psionic tradition tree

[Sea Base]

Originally posted by cbdeakin:

I forgot about the 'Academic Privilege' living standards option as well. You'd need to manage consumer goods carefully with this enabled though, as the cost is 2x that of 'Decent Conditions' for specialists.

Thats kinda the issue with a lot of the per pop science production set ups, their costs go up so high you end up producing less net science due to needing higher % of your total population just producing all the things you need to maintain your science jobs.

[cbdeakin]

Originally posted by Sea Base:

Thats kinda the issue with a lot of the per pop science production set ups

Yep. You need a large surplus / high rate of CG before being able to sustain Academic Privilege, so it doesn't work that well with the overtuned edict.

The significant resource cost reduces the usefulness of the materialist ethic at the start of the game, but maybe worth it later on.

I think the usefulness of civics like technocracy is greater after a few decades in game as well, after the player has fully colonised a decent number of worlds. It's really only useful once you've got 10 pops on each planet if I recall correctly, but it's possible to cheese this...

[cbdeakin]

Originally posted by BigTurnip:

You can go materialist psionic but you lose out on 50% bonus from your spiritualist scientists and the 25% bonus from spiritualist planet governors.

Also no only psionic can get a 50% resource bonus from 5 scientist's on the council.

I'm trying a lithoid + overtuned run, with Fanatic Egalitarian + Spiritualist ethics (With Meritocracy and Masterful Crafters civics).

At what point do you get a bonus to scientist jobs from the spiritualist ethic? Or, is it a bonus to unity that is unlocked?

I think for the last non-gestalt playthrough, I must've had the psionic tradition tree, to be able to get the extra bonuses from councillors (or it might be that the mechanics have changed a bit since I last tried spamming science councillors).

[BigTurnip]

Originally posted by cbdeakin:

Originally posted by BigTurnip:

You can go materialist psionic but you lose out on 50% bonus from your spiritualist scientists and the 25% bonus from spiritualist planet governors.

Also no only psionic can get a 50% resource bonus from 5 scientist's on the council.

I'm trying a lithoid + overtuned run, with Fanatic Egalitarian + Spiritualist ethics (With Meritocracy and Masterful Crafters civics).

At what point do you get a bonus to scientist jobs from the spiritualist ethic? Or, is it a bonus to unity that is unlocked?

I think for the last non-gestalt playthrough, I must've had the psionic tradition tree, to be able to get the extra bonuses from councillors (or it might be that the mechanics have changed a bit since I last tried spamming science councillors).

Spiritualist Scientist destiny trait(lvl 8) give them a 10% resource output to psionic pops and 25% society research speed

[cbdeakin]

It would be quite interesting to see something equivalent for Machine empires to 'Overtuned'.

Synthetic Evolution doesn't really do this, and generally takes a while to get. Generally, quite a bad idea (in my view) to go down this route with the overtuned Origin - If you convert all your bio pops to machines, they lose the benefits from overtuned.

And for machine empires, synthetic ascension is just some stat buffs basically - but the ability to assimilate robot pops is nice.

Maybe they could call the machine origin equivalent 'Overclocked' or 'Overcharged', it could offer very similar benefits to overtuned, but would also add a finite lifespan to machine leaders.