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Virtuality stops scaling after a while.
For terravore necrophage the snowball starts on year 12. This is 2256 and the scaling never stops. I have 1800 pops and growing rapidly. Genetic ascension with cloning vats and the right traits and I'm getting a total of 13 growth per planet. With budding I believe I can push it to 15, and pre-nerf it was pushing to 17. I believe I have 2x your pops. LOL.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198088036064/screenshot/2527164217054667573/
Genetic Ascension is finished and I have Cosmogenesis. GA/ Non-scaling AI, full menu bonuses for AI. Main issue is sprawl, but with Hive Mind, Divided Attention, and Subsumed Will it's not too bad. Sprawl will be fixed once the Lathe is finished and I get rid of the Unruly trait. Currently on 80 colonies and growing. Huge galaxy, 5x planets. I need the Lathe desperately so I don't die to micromanagement hell. The problem with Terravore/ Necrophage is you become so powerful with so many planets that you can't continue playing because it's too much to manage. Found a mod that auto-seeds the Lathe with pops. Thank god.
The irony is that I played a lot of Virtuality because Terravore/ Necrophage WAS TOO POWERFUL. Once you get up to 100 planets with like 3k pops, the game becomes unmanageable. With Virtuality you're weaker, but you only have to manage 7 colonies. The Synaptic Lathe with auto-seed is the perfect solution. I might finally play my Terravore / Necrophage past the year 2280 LOL.
Guess you're playing small galaxy?
Ouch. You will lose to DA and even Synthetic Fertlity by picking this worst ascension path.
Meta-builds in singleplayer game are ... :)
You should either go for early x10-25 all crisis or try some super epic mods like ACOT (but weak pops are relly bad for it as you're unable to use lathe).
That's why you should play Nanites in that case :)
Virtuality at 2250 is like 2k research with 0 sprawl. Necrophage/Terravore at 2250 is 4k research with 120% extra tech cost penalty thanks to Divided Mind and Hive Mind bonus for a -50% reduction to empire sprawl effect. So research-wise they're equivalent.
But Necrophage continues scaling upwards while Virtuality stagnates.
1. Your eventual fleetcap is larger since you control a lot more planets.
2. You get a lot more pops you can put into your Lathe.
3. I'm getting +16 growth on all my planets thanks to fertility bonuses and vat-grown.
With Synthetic Lathe, genetics is the strongest ascension path in the game if you're a wide empire because genetics gives you the most pop growth with minimal investment. Unlike the non-Virtual Machine Empires you don't need 5 robotcists to get 15 growth per planet. All you need is a cloning vat and a spawning pool. Once you're at 200 planets, each producing +16 growth per month, just get a mod that stuffs all the unemployed pops into your lathe and you're golden. The only thing you have to worry about is making sure you're making enough energy to not go bankrupt.
Late game Hive Mind is basically turning all your planets into breeding vats for your Lathe.
b) Virtuality is almost always ~2k research at 2250, while N/T is depending on your neighboors. Something like several machine empires as neighboors would cripple your snowballing.
Who need that scaling if most of the galaxy is already your vassals? So basically virtuality already won the game.
You're right about very late game - but there is no reason for doing it in vanilla Stellaris. And with lategame mods (like ACOT/Giga) weak pop efficiency of genetic is crippling you even more (plus you simply can't go for Cosmogenesis at all if want to try all ACOT fun stuff).
Growing pops for Lathe ... madness?!
You're stealing other empire pops in a few wars and then you'd won the game - if we're both about vanilla Stellaris.
P.S.
You're absolutely correct that N/T is still a strong build. That's true, there is no doubts.
Genetics have fine pop efficiency. With the Lathe it doesn't matter. Also you're Hive Minded and with Divided Mind sprawl cost penalty is reduced by 50%. You're forgetting that very important detail. Also all your basic resource generating districts provide three jobs, not two.
The 4k research is before the Lathe comes online.. Also even Virtuality empires will have 20% sprawl cost.
And in terms of conquest, no one conquers as quickly or as efficiently as a genocidal empire that can convert 75% of the pops that it conquers and can consume low pop low district worlds for free minerals/ alloys / pops. Hive Minds can also start with subspace Ephase for an extra 20% movement speed to their ships LOL.
I'm trying to say - in vanilla Stellaris you don't need to go that much into endgame (other then self-made goal "yes, I can reach 2500"). But if you're playing with major mods - suddenly pop efficiency is more important then raw science output of lathe.
And as I said - ACOT (amazing mod for very long games btw) do not allow you to have a lathe at all. Well you can go for it, but will be locked with tech below delta and will be unable to survive even Cetana, not dare to try Phanon/Stellarites. Hell, just killing a Fallen Empire with Cosmogenesis in ACOT would be crazily hard to accomplish.
You're joking, right? Basic resources job? On GA? We have vassals for raw resources :)
We already have a screenshot here from ~2300 (I don't believe you can pass 4+ resolutions in only 2250 as author states) with less then 60 spawl for virtuality.
I never claimed it was the best build. In my title I said very clearly that it is one of the TOP builds. As is Virtuality. I've played both. The fact that N/T is competitive with Virtuality (and perhaps even better) means that N/T is one of the TOP builds in the game.
If I want a power trip I play N/T. There's nothing quite like conquering an enemy empire, converting them all into anime girls, and then eating their planets. If I want to get to 2300 without getting bored, I play Virtuality.
UPD. Btw, empire spawl is near 600. Super tech in ACOT is just that crazily expensive (and powerful).
For example currently since mid-game I swapped Rapid Replicators (+20% pop growth) to Experience Cache (mostly for +1 effective councilor skill).
And my 3rd civic since lategame is Elevation Hypothesis.
Shocking, right? But combating empire spawl is the most important thing in super-late game with mods.
As a gestalt machine empire and using only vanilla modifiers I'm having -84% spawl from pops (without running agenda). Thanks to boosted lvl 10 ascension on my research rings (yes, ringS - I need them) - 4571 pops provide only 385.2 spawl.
It is true an individual empire is easier to espionage more vulnerable to from my findings. But terravore can eat planets quickly for extra resources. Likely more competitive in pvp.
wait, nvm I just realized you can't cyber the robots. Nice daydream though ! So you can use megacorp's main trade jobs to feed part of your robot pops.
There's nothing stopping you from conquering the galaxy, transfer all the pops onto rings, ascend the rings, and then blow up all the planet districts and use them as breeder planets for your Lathe. With Hive Minds you can have twice the sprawl as any other empire and still have the same penalties. The only reason I haven't done that is boredom. Imagine doing that for 200+ planets.
Make a mod so that Terravores can make Hive Worlds and it's even better. Hive Worlds are the most sprawl efficient world in the game for mineral and energy generation.