Fun stone alien build?

[Witch ~]

In all these years of playing Stellaris one thing I always struggled with was making a rock alien race build that I didnt struggle with. The low population rate really screws you over

was wondering if you guys have some fun build ideas I could try

[Sgt. Sarge]

Become one with the mountain, don't do anything for a century

[Garatgh Deloi]

One of my favorite lithoid builds:
Hive mind empire, Void Dweller origin, Terravores and Void hive civics (Void Hive is optional, but it works well in this combo).

Live on habitats, eat all the planets. Being a hive mind adds a bit of growth (and assembly), eating planets has a % to spawn extra pops. That said, do keep in mind that this is a Genocidal empire type (thanks to Terravore), so no diplomacy.

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Other then that, If you do a Necrophage or Clone Army empire that kinda sidesteps the whole low pop growth issue neatly (Necrophage using another species for growth. Lithoids have slower assembly for the clone army, but that origin has such insane early growth anyway so i doubt it will be much of a issue).

[HappySack]

Terravores are a popular build that bypasses this issue by playing tall so having a lower pop count doesn't really impact you that much.

Otherwise the Subterranean origin is made with Lithoids in mind.

[titanopteryx]

Originally posted by Witch ~:

In all these years of playing Stellaris one thing I always struggled with was making a rock alien race build that I didnt struggle with. The low population rate really screws you over

was wondering if you guys have some fun build ideas I could try

One thing you might try is driven assimilators with lithoid cyborgs. The Lithoid trait combined with the cyborg trait gives them minimum 70% everywhere including machine worlds so they share the robot's ability to colonize anywhere.

An alternative is making a lithoid empire with the radiotropic trait on the lithoids. Then pick relentless industrialists and gain the ability to terraform planets into tomb worlds. Greatly decrease the upkeep of your pops.