Which Ascension tradition tree?

[Bosh]

Synthetic, Cybernetic, Genetic or Psionic? I can never decide.
Right now I'm playing as xenophobic materialist militarists.

[HappySack]

They're all good in their own ways except Cybernetic which is the worst unless you know what you're doing with it.

[Kalemenos]

I've always enjoyed genetic, then cybernetic after that. Psionic is just a bit too "random" or something like that, I just do not like the Psionic play-through. If you don't go Psionic, usually the AI does, and when you acquire their pops, the trait that boosts research and unity becomes yours, so you can still get that bonus without going Psi. And just full on robots with synthetic? Can be fun, with immortal leaders, but there's just something inhuman about that.

[Mr.I]

A common misconception about Psionics is that people tend to put the randomness above the other aspects of Psionics. The true strength of Psionics is its unmatched pop efficiency. And Psionic empires are more likely to be spiritualists so they usually come with high unity production in early game and a highly unified and stable society in late game.

Most things locked behind the randomness are just bonuses to your society, they're not essential. The only exception is the chosen one, which gives you divine sovereign.

And of course the biggest weakness of Psionics is the weakest pop growth among all ascension paths.

[Chap]

Genetics is good for xenophobes given you can increase your main species pop growth and give them very high pop bonuses including 130 years extra lifespan from robust and venerable, as well as giving alien pops things like nerve stapled for slaves or delicious for livestock.

Psionics is good because you have a chance of getting an immortal leader and the best techs in the game when it comes to ship designs, extremely high planet stability and pop output if your planets have the psi police or whatever they're called, and they get higher happiness and research speed, they do benefit more from not xenophobes because of the assimilate feature and you will get a empire wide effect that increases your pops attraction to spiritualism which might be a problem if you end up with a spiritualist faction

Psionics gives you a lot more benefits to your fleet strength than genetics does because all genetics does is gives you the erudite trait as an option but psionics gives you 4 ship techs that are better in every way (aside from the combat computer) than their normal tech counterparts, it gives you longer lived leaders if you get the shroud event for it, fives you shield hardening and damage on all of your psionic admirals and you can also get the chosen one trait for one of your admirals which gives whatever fleet they command incredible strength

[nilfiry]

You can also savescum the shroud, so it is not a big deal if you are only looking to unlock the techs.

[titanopteryx]

Genetic's fun.

Get ruthless industrialists and with either a plant pop or a lithoid pop you get a tech option to research adding plant or lithoid traits to non plants or non lithoids. Then put radiotropic on everyone. Also robust. Then terraform all your worlds to tomb worlds.

if you get some psionic pops, for instance Rackets from the caravaneers or pops from an empire that went psionic ascension or Ketling Star pack pops, you can add erudite to them and they'll have both psionic and erudite. They don't always have both but sometimes leaders from those species will show up with both psionic and erudite.

[Cinnamoon_dragon]

Psionics are the best of all Ascensions in the early game if you want to boost Unity production, in the late game you will get psionic shields. Genetics is the way to go if you want to maximize population growth. Cybernetics and Synthetics - this will be reworked in the near future, but it is a worse choice right now because Synthetics require a lot of development before becoming useful in the game, when other paths provide buffs much earlier.

[Seswatha]

All of them can be useful.

Psionic has a degree of randomness but you can make the odds in your favour e.g. in terms of which covenant you'll most likely get. It has the highest pop efficiency of all of them, especially if you go for the chosen emperor (can still reform back to egalitarian if you want to but you keep the civic and the divine conduit position) and on the world where you build your sanctuary, +115% pop output from telepaths is nothing to sneeze at. You can run your alloy eco from 1 forge ecumenopolis making 5k+ alloys. Natural weaknesses are pop growth and leader lifespan, which are somewhat mitigated if you manage to get a covenant with the Composer, which I think is overall the strongest. Overall good for rushing since it doesn't take that long to get, especially with teachers of the shroud, and you start getting the benefits earlier than others, pop assembly takes more time to pay off. Also good for playing tall while taking lots of vassals, since you get one incredibly powerful planet with the Sanctuary.

Cybernetic is fairly similar to generic, but has way less micromanagement and is better for trade builds since you can stack thrifty and trading algorithms, which is massive since it modifies base trade value and is multiplicative with other trade value bonuses. So you literally go from 1.25x to 1.5x trade. Overall better for wide playstyls, especially with the habitability bonus, and trade.

Generic is good for slavery and conquest, since you can just nerve staple everyone, and specialisation since you can create dedicated subspecies for research, mining, alloys etc. It's probably the better option for hive minds since hive minds don't care about trade. Overtuned makes it a lot better opening up some crazy combos, e.g. +50% research. Without overtuned it's more comparable to cybernetic, and pretty micro intensive if you want to get max value out of it since you want a multitude of subspecies with different habitability preferences and specialisations to really min-max it. You probably want to be some kind of authoritarian/xenophobe allowing slavery and blocking migration with this.

Synthetic is probably the most situational one, but it's the only option for most machine empires except DA. Even for non machine empires it can be good, it allows to make all around powerful pops and an easy way to turn everyone into them, eliminating any conquest complexities even better than bio. The downside is that it generally is the hardest to get due to tech requirements, howeve that also can be seen as an advantage in some circumstances as you get the most use out of the synthetic agenda and can level the crap out of your council if you combine it with statecraft. So good for machines, rapid leveling leaders with the agenda, lategame power and ease of use. Worth mentioning it offers probably the most OP lategame trait in Under one Rule.

tl;dr

psionic - normal empire, tall, rush, better with teachers of the shroud
cyborg - normal empire trade
bio - hivemind, authoritarian slaver, conquest, lots of micro, better with overtuned
synth - machine empires, ease of use, strong lategame but takes the longest to take off, agenda can be abused for leader xp the longest out of all ascencion agendas, stronger in under one rule

All the machine stuff is gonna change massively in the next dlc and probably gonna be OP on release though.

[Seraphiel]

I used to be a synthetic main but now it's Psionics 100% of the time because (a) the ship-techs are the best and (b) it makes your pops extra efficient.

[Seek and Find]

My answer: None of them.

[Kalemenos]

I forgot about the shields, that's a good point. But when I go genetic, I take on the FE as soon as I can and get their Dark Matter Deflectors. They don't need zro, and they're pretty powerful. Is that the only ship tech unique to the Psionics?

[nilfiry]

Originally posted by Kalemenos:

I forgot about the shields, that's a good point. But when I go genetic, I take on the FE as soon as I can and get their Dark Matter Deflectors. They don't need zro, and they're pretty powerful. Is that the only ship tech unique to the Psionics?

Psionics also has the best jump drives and the best combat computers for dealing with high evasion.

[Elhazzared]

Cybernetics isn't that good. You can make it work but it's honestely the worst of the options.

Synthetic is pretty good but because you'll essencially become a machine empire which is technically not a machine empire, you can assimilate everything and everyone while having a slightly simplified economy. That said, you'll have to shift your planets around what things you don't need anymore and what things you need more now so it's kind of a pain in the ass.

Psionic is just broken good. Great bonus all around, get to summon millions worth of fleet essencially for free. It's a bit too good but if you want the best, that's the choice.

Genetic is for me the better choice because of the way I play. It doesn't has broken mechanics while still being strong. You get to properly modify your species and more importantly, modify the species that you come across essencially being able to create a homogenous empire where everyone is good at the exact same thing. I know some people like to diversify but I like to stick to my strenghts instead of having to think what is good where and why are things costing more or less. When everything works the exact same way, harmony is archieved (if only I could convert them to my own pops so I have only 1 pop tabs that would have been even better but I'll have to be happy with just be making them the same traits even if they look different).