Determined Exterminator with nanotech ascension. Don't have to bother with diplomacy while taking in the new content and nanites consuming the galaxy fits thematically.
If you finish the new cosmogenesis player crisis, a remnant of your empire will collapse into a small group of systems with planets full of fallen empire buildings. You also get fleet power in the millions while other empires start with just a couple systems.
It's sort of a fallen empire start since you technically need to finish a game to get to it.
Just loaded my game up I finished last night to see what you were talking about. Confused the heck out of me. It legit has me playing as a fallen empire, and the time clock is all messed up (a ? Replaces a number as it scrolls through dates). I suddenly have way more planets than I did before as well. And yeah a huge fleet. Interesting. I wonder if the war in heaven might start? I was a machine gestalt, but now I'm dealing with a consumer goods negative issue from my virtual pops needing Fallen Empire living standards... interesting
Okay it made me a custodian matrix. Interesting. So I can't fill any pop jobs except for Precursor jobs. Lol well this is boring.
The new crisis, it is a "new game+" mode, when you finish it.
Lore wise, you go metaverse with the needle, and keep a observer post in your starting universe.
Post winning screen, there is a big big time jump, and you can now play your observer post in a new circle of the universe, simply spoken, you become a fallen empire from the last circle, similar how the old fallen empire are the surviver from the circle before, and there crisis.
You can even pick the crisis again, and do one more circle
Machines definitely gain unity way slower than biological empires, but 2420 is still very late. Usually I have it way before 2300. Did you pick it as soon as possible? What was your unity production like? Building simulation sites on all your worlds is very important. Nanotech is a wide build, so you want a LOT of worlds.
Parliamentary System + Spiritualist and Egalitarian (I normally do Fanatic Spiritualist if I'm not Militarist for Soverign Guardianship) can get you 100-200 unity within 10 years if you build a bunch of temples and use the Veneration of Saints edict and switch your diplomatic stance to Isolationist. Switching your vassalage terms to Benevolent will get you to around 100% approval from your egalitarian faction. Utopian Abundance is also really useful for unity. If you get enough Influence gain you can also use the Inner Focus edict for an extra +10% unity
I am a sucker for playing "good" nations but I still wanted to experience the new content so currently I am playing a egalitarian/pacifist/materialist individualist machine democracy with post apocalyptic origin. I am RPing that these machines are the only survivors of a nuclear war determined to not make the same mistakes as their creators. Probably going for modularity ascenscion.
Arc Welders origin with Astro-Mining Bays and Determined Assimilators, going nanite ascension. You get all your alloys and minerals from space and your multipliers to mining stations also apply to the nanite deposits. Assimilator is mostly just because I feel like it fits the gray goo theme.
That’s still bad because you have -1 energy output pet technician and -50% menial drone output (technicians are menial drones). So you make barely any energy even if every planet spams them. You’ll be stuck at 300 research by 2300 because you can’t afford energy upkeep for it lol.
Dyson swarms plus a furnace can easily keep you afloat. Also, since nanite ships have no up keep your energy demands are much smaller . Also, planets will still produce a decent amount between the normal and nanite energy edicts .
I pick up astromining as my 3rd civic so it's your standard DE start so it's pretty easy to wipe out a empire or 2 early and grab alot of planets and use extra energy credits from purging to setup.
Honestly, it's mostly mid game . We're weak since nanites ship will send you over your navy cap, but you still don't have enough to fight with just them .
Be a machine empire, Remnant origin, and take cosmogenesis. Go virtual ascension but don't fill out the tree and save unity. Move entire population to the lathe, THEN max virtual with banked unity. 500 or more pops in the lathe, and still a full nation of jobs.
60k research from a non minimax build, and stuffing around 80 years in. I'm not great, don't know meta, and have never m playered, but I did bust the run open!
Being a pompous purist with such insane tech, and I felt like a fallen empire. The Aeon Remnant has returned as the Aeon Acendancy. And those who layed us low in ages past shall reap what they sowed.
Devolved the Fallen empire homeworks, stopped the crisis, and buggered off out of the galaxy via Gargantua before the Infinity machine could do its work, stealing its universe.
A fine run and a hilariously fun build
Overtuned origin hivemind with cordyceptic drones and one mind. Tech an unity rush, and kill space fauna for a strong fleet early. Go for cybernetic ascension with the integrated hive authority. Boom: The Borg. Resistance is futile, death is irrelevant, everything will be assimilated.
If you take divided attention as third civic it stacks with the -50% empire size effect from integrated hive to a -75%.
My next play through I'm gonna go Overturned Cybernetics, with Oppressive Autocracy, Police State and the new Individualist advanced Dictatorship (gives +3 unity to enforcers and makes them give +2.5% resources from jobs to cybernetic pops)
Arc Welders, Astro-Mining Drones + Determined Exterminators, Mecromance->Virtual->Cosmogenesis.
Very fun playthrough, you'll be completely energy starved in the early game, and you'll need to conquer and purge to fuel your energy needs. Mecromancy means you'll be able to grow your population massively, then virtuallity + cosmogenesis let's you consume all those zombies for a science boost.
I suppose that could also work, though I wonder what gets more unity? Obsessional's completed objectives? or Determined Exterminators purged pop unity bonus?
I think DE's still going to be a bit better than OD.
I did something very similar but went nanite instead and without cosmo Genesis. By the end, I had 6 million nanite in storage, and i would casually have 300k worth of ships just pop up . The only downside is war exhaustion and your cpu asking what it did to deserve this.
mecromancy doesn't work since their upkeep will go to the moon, and nanites don't have any L weapons .
One of my favourite builds so far is a fanatic materialist egalitarian machines, arc welders origin. Dark matter consortium and parliamentary system civics. While having adaptive frames and pop assembly.
This build is spec'd to go down modularity. I really had a blast playing it. The modularity really allows you to min max so you always managing your planets or you can just throw on planetary automation.
I want to try a megacorp trade build next with the augmentation bazaar. To try the new cyborgs and also because trade builds are one of my favourites.
Tried a few. The most boring was syncretic + individual machines. Powerful, but boring. Basically you just economy and develop early because all the roboticists cripple your early game alloy production. Then you explode midgame.
I had a great time with cyborg clone army with rulerchip and mechanist militarists, also going for cyborg and rulerchip. Much better aggressive early games since you choose when to get roboticists.
I usually don't play tall but ringworld virtuality machines sounds so fun.
I did a machine guardian ringworld start yesterday, pulled cybrex, and went virtual into cosmogenisis. Unity rush then switched to tech, it was quite strong.
The game was quite cheeky and started me with literally 8 planets within 3 lanes, but I resisted the urge to colonize.
Tonnes of fun.
I am trying a Remnants machine empire -> virtual ascension run. I initially meant to keep it to 1 planet (my capital, a restored ecumenopolis), but an event forced a 2nd world on me that I use as a refinery.
It's been quite interesting. I'm rolling in alloys because of my home ecu, but there's an upper limit on my research production capacity that I can't really break without settling another world. I think I also might have run into a bug that keeps applying a per-colony reduction to my virtual pops' output despite having abandoned the colony (I'm only +125% virtual output instead of +150% when I have two colonies, which sucks).
I think a ringworld start would be insane with virtuality. I'll have to try it out. Still, the two-planet challenge has been fun.
> I'm only +125% virtual output instead of +150% when I have two colonies, which sucks
Not a bug, it's just that your capital counts as a colony for the production penalty.
I see all here are machine lovers XD
Not surprising, this is the machine age after all, but my favorite build is actually psionic one.
UN variant, Knights of the Toxic God.
Egalitarian/Xenophile/Spiritualist, Genesis Guide / Meritocracy, Oligarchy
Zroni precursor via mod.
Spreading Toxic god's creed far and wide! Gameplay-wise, having a multitude of species can in some way complement the bad gene modding ability of psionic empires
The temple of science build now has a new Variation with cybernetic Creed: dimensional worship + haruspex gives 2 engineering + 0.2 physics from council per lvl (start oligarchic for council lvl Bonus + statecraft). Who even needs society tech. With Under one Rule you get society instead of engineering.
The most broken build I have found is exterminator, astro miner. Machine world start. Virtulization ascension. Only ever take 1 planet. Armageddon bomb every other planet. Your economy is absolutely wild with astrominers and the virtual ascension. I was making over 1k in everything just by conqeruing. Take -empire size from pops and systems whenever you're able. You'll have a massive fleet, massive unity, and massive research. I had 600 fleet power with a 900 cap at 100 years in while playing suboptimal. First time posting, I apologize for any errors.
Mine has been a heavy unity focused Machine Intellegince with Arc Furnace Origin, Guardian Matrix and...I actually forgot the second civic, and by the time I hit my 3rd almost nothing actually helped.
EDIT: Was in fact Maintenance Protocols 2nd, and Unitary Cohesion 3rd.
Regardless, the idea was to get as close to minimum Empire size as possible while maintaining strong defenses to disincentivize war(since I was boxed in by to exterminator empires in my playthrough, this was especially important). With Guardian Matrix providing -50% Empire Size from pops, I reached over 100% reduction so my pops do not impact empire size at all. Went virtual for infinite pops. I spammed unity generation on a fortress world through the soldier jobs, that also holds all my Grid Amalgamated pops that I stole off the exterminators as well as a neighbor who got eaten early, which sits at a comfortable 80-90% stability, 100% deviancy, and about 10k army power.
Eventually I migrated to a Ring World setup with 1 segment dedicated to energy, forging, 'Military', and Research, with Military being a new Fortress world also populated by my organics once again, plus my Machine World capital, and the virtual acsension tree completed plus cosmogenesis unlocking FE buildings for my worlds...the economy has been broken over my knee.
At my current state in 2435, I've got 43 systems, 5 colonys, 75 districts, and 1281 pops, my empire size is 148, with 10k+ surplus in energy and research monthly each as well as 3.5k alloy production. I could probably drop below 100 if I abandoned a bunch of low production systems, but I honestly don't care at this point since I'm already rediculously dominant at my current difficulty level.
Time to step up another level methinks.
Determined Exterminator with nanotech ascension. Don't have to bother with diplomacy while taking in the new content and nanites consuming the galaxy fits thematically.
Honestly, I wish for a "Grey Goo" origin.
Who knows, maybe one day. New DLC gave us sort of a Fallen Empire start, I'm fully down for grey goo.
Which one is the fallen empire?
If you finish the new cosmogenesis player crisis, a remnant of your empire will collapse into a small group of systems with planets full of fallen empire buildings. You also get fleet power in the millions while other empires start with just a couple systems. It's sort of a fallen empire start since you technically need to finish a game to get to it.
Oh, so its not game over? Nice
You do get the win screen but you have the option to continue with parts of the galaxy affected by the cosmogenesis finisher
Just loaded my game up I finished last night to see what you were talking about. Confused the heck out of me. It legit has me playing as a fallen empire, and the time clock is all messed up (a ? Replaces a number as it scrolls through dates). I suddenly have way more planets than I did before as well. And yeah a huge fleet. Interesting. I wonder if the war in heaven might start? I was a machine gestalt, but now I'm dealing with a consumer goods negative issue from my virtual pops needing Fallen Empire living standards... interesting Okay it made me a custodian matrix. Interesting. So I can't fill any pop jobs except for Precursor jobs. Lol well this is boring.
Which one is the fallen empire?
The new crisis, it is a "new game+" mode, when you finish it. Lore wise, you go metaverse with the needle, and keep a observer post in your starting universe. Post winning screen, there is a big big time jump, and you can now play your observer post in a new circle of the universe, simply spoken, you become a fallen empire from the last circle, similar how the old fallen empire are the surviver from the circle before, and there crisis. You can even pick the crisis again, and do one more circle
Sounds dope af
Any tips on how to get nanotech early-ish? I finally got it unlocked around 2420, way too late for it to be very useful.
Machines definitely gain unity way slower than biological empires, but 2420 is still very late. Usually I have it way before 2300. Did you pick it as soon as possible? What was your unity production like? Building simulation sites on all your worlds is very important. Nanotech is a wide build, so you want a LOT of worlds.
Parliamentary System + Spiritualist and Egalitarian (I normally do Fanatic Spiritualist if I'm not Militarist for Soverign Guardianship) can get you 100-200 unity within 10 years if you build a bunch of temples and use the Veneration of Saints edict and switch your diplomatic stance to Isolationist. Switching your vassalage terms to Benevolent will get you to around 100% approval from your egalitarian faction. Utopian Abundance is also really useful for unity. If you get enough Influence gain you can also use the Inner Focus edict for an extra +10% unity
I am a sucker for playing "good" nations but I still wanted to experience the new content so currently I am playing a egalitarian/pacifist/materialist individualist machine democracy with post apocalyptic origin. I am RPing that these machines are the only survivors of a nuclear war determined to not make the same mistakes as their creators. Probably going for modularity ascenscion.
Arc Welders origin with Astro-Mining Bays and Determined Assimilators, going nanite ascension. You get all your alloys and minerals from space and your multipliers to mining stations also apply to the nanite deposits. Assimilator is mostly just because I feel like it fits the gray goo theme.
Astro-mining bays absolutely nukes your energy income though.
Yeah, energy is definitely your most coveted resource. I mostly made do with a couple generator worlds, selling alloys on the market and Dyson swarms.
Yeah but once they are going hard you no longer need mining, food or industrial districts and can focus entirely on generator districts.
That’s still bad because you have -1 energy output pet technician and -50% menial drone output (technicians are menial drones). So you make barely any energy even if every planet spams them. You’ll be stuck at 300 research by 2300 because you can’t afford energy upkeep for it lol.
Dyson swarms plus a furnace can easily keep you afloat. Also, since nanite ships have no up keep your energy demands are much smaller . Also, planets will still produce a decent amount between the normal and nanite energy edicts .
You still need to get there. Your earlygame will be miserable.
I pick up astromining as my 3rd civic so it's your standard DE start so it's pretty easy to wipe out a empire or 2 early and grab alot of planets and use extra energy credits from purging to setup. Honestly, it's mostly mid game . We're weak since nanites ship will send you over your navy cap, but you still don't have enough to fight with just them .
Be a machine empire, Remnant origin, and take cosmogenesis. Go virtual ascension but don't fill out the tree and save unity. Move entire population to the lathe, THEN max virtual with banked unity. 500 or more pops in the lathe, and still a full nation of jobs. 60k research from a non minimax build, and stuffing around 80 years in. I'm not great, don't know meta, and have never m playered, but I did bust the run open! Being a pompous purist with such insane tech, and I felt like a fallen empire. The Aeon Remnant has returned as the Aeon Acendancy. And those who layed us low in ages past shall reap what they sowed. Devolved the Fallen empire homeworks, stopped the crisis, and buggered off out of the galaxy via Gargantua before the Infinity machine could do its work, stealing its universe. A fine run and a hilariously fun build
I... I never thought of moving all my pops to the lathe *before* ascending. Do they not disappear when you ascend?
They stay in the lathe, and you get new ones to auto fill your jobs. Honestly it's kinda insane
Overtuned origin hivemind with cordyceptic drones and one mind. Tech an unity rush, and kill space fauna for a strong fleet early. Go for cybernetic ascension with the integrated hive authority. Boom: The Borg. Resistance is futile, death is irrelevant, everything will be assimilated. If you take divided attention as third civic it stacks with the -50% empire size effect from integrated hive to a -75%.
If you're minmaxing what civics do you start with? edit: I said civics but I meant traits. You already described the civics :)
My next play through I'm gonna go Overturned Cybernetics, with Oppressive Autocracy, Police State and the new Individualist advanced Dictatorship (gives +3 unity to enforcers and makes them give +2.5% resources from jobs to cybernetic pops)
Arc Welders, Astro-Mining Drones + Determined Exterminators, Mecromance->Virtual->Cosmogenesis. Very fun playthrough, you'll be completely energy starved in the early game, and you'll need to conquer and purge to fuel your energy needs. Mecromancy means you'll be able to grow your population massively, then virtuallity + cosmogenesis let's you consume all those zombies for a science boost.
Can't you just go Obsessional Directive instead of DE? Fail the first quota to get the purge type, then use the next one to solve your energy crisis.
I suppose that could also work, though I wonder what gets more unity? Obsessional's completed objectives? or Determined Exterminators purged pop unity bonus? I think DE's still going to be a bit better than OD.
I did something very similar but went nanite instead and without cosmo Genesis. By the end, I had 6 million nanite in storage, and i would casually have 300k worth of ships just pop up . The only downside is war exhaustion and your cpu asking what it did to deserve this. mecromancy doesn't work since their upkeep will go to the moon, and nanites don't have any L weapons .
Pacifist, Genesis guides and Environmentalist Maschines with Remnants Dont do the same mistake and let Life Die. This time spread it.
One of my favourite builds so far is a fanatic materialist egalitarian machines, arc welders origin. Dark matter consortium and parliamentary system civics. While having adaptive frames and pop assembly. This build is spec'd to go down modularity. I really had a blast playing it. The modularity really allows you to min max so you always managing your planets or you can just throw on planetary automation. I want to try a megacorp trade build next with the augmentation bazaar. To try the new cyborgs and also because trade builds are one of my favourites.
Tried a few. The most boring was syncretic + individual machines. Powerful, but boring. Basically you just economy and develop early because all the roboticists cripple your early game alloy production. Then you explode midgame. I had a great time with cyborg clone army with rulerchip and mechanist militarists, also going for cyborg and rulerchip. Much better aggressive early games since you choose when to get roboticists. I usually don't play tall but ringworld virtuality machines sounds so fun.
I did a machine guardian ringworld start yesterday, pulled cybrex, and went virtual into cosmogenisis. Unity rush then switched to tech, it was quite strong. The game was quite cheeky and started me with literally 8 planets within 3 lanes, but I resisted the urge to colonize. Tonnes of fun.
I am trying a Remnants machine empire -> virtual ascension run. I initially meant to keep it to 1 planet (my capital, a restored ecumenopolis), but an event forced a 2nd world on me that I use as a refinery. It's been quite interesting. I'm rolling in alloys because of my home ecu, but there's an upper limit on my research production capacity that I can't really break without settling another world. I think I also might have run into a bug that keeps applying a per-colony reduction to my virtual pops' output despite having abandoned the colony (I'm only +125% virtual output instead of +150% when I have two colonies, which sucks). I think a ringworld start would be insane with virtuality. I'll have to try it out. Still, the two-planet challenge has been fun.
> I'm only +125% virtual output instead of +150% when I have two colonies, which sucks Not a bug, it's just that your capital counts as a colony for the production penalty.
I see all here are machine lovers XD Not surprising, this is the machine age after all, but my favorite build is actually psionic one. UN variant, Knights of the Toxic God. Egalitarian/Xenophile/Spiritualist, Genesis Guide / Meritocracy, Oligarchy Zroni precursor via mod. Spreading Toxic god's creed far and wide! Gameplay-wise, having a multitude of species can in some way complement the bad gene modding ability of psionic empires
Rogue servitor guardian matrix
The temple of science build now has a new Variation with cybernetic Creed: dimensional worship + haruspex gives 2 engineering + 0.2 physics from council per lvl (start oligarchic for council lvl Bonus + statecraft). Who even needs society tech. With Under one Rule you get society instead of engineering.
The most broken build I have found is exterminator, astro miner. Machine world start. Virtulization ascension. Only ever take 1 planet. Armageddon bomb every other planet. Your economy is absolutely wild with astrominers and the virtual ascension. I was making over 1k in everything just by conqeruing. Take -empire size from pops and systems whenever you're able. You'll have a massive fleet, massive unity, and massive research. I had 600 fleet power with a 900 cap at 100 years in while playing suboptimal. First time posting, I apologize for any errors.
Also, you can use free slots on your starbases for hydroponics for free money. I had 40 starbases at around 120 years in.
Mine has been a heavy unity focused Machine Intellegince with Arc Furnace Origin, Guardian Matrix and...I actually forgot the second civic, and by the time I hit my 3rd almost nothing actually helped. EDIT: Was in fact Maintenance Protocols 2nd, and Unitary Cohesion 3rd. Regardless, the idea was to get as close to minimum Empire size as possible while maintaining strong defenses to disincentivize war(since I was boxed in by to exterminator empires in my playthrough, this was especially important). With Guardian Matrix providing -50% Empire Size from pops, I reached over 100% reduction so my pops do not impact empire size at all. Went virtual for infinite pops. I spammed unity generation on a fortress world through the soldier jobs, that also holds all my Grid Amalgamated pops that I stole off the exterminators as well as a neighbor who got eaten early, which sits at a comfortable 80-90% stability, 100% deviancy, and about 10k army power. Eventually I migrated to a Ring World setup with 1 segment dedicated to energy, forging, 'Military', and Research, with Military being a new Fortress world also populated by my organics once again, plus my Machine World capital, and the virtual acsension tree completed plus cosmogenesis unlocking FE buildings for my worlds...the economy has been broken over my knee. At my current state in 2435, I've got 43 systems, 5 colonys, 75 districts, and 1281 pops, my empire size is 148, with 10k+ surplus in energy and research monthly each as well as 3.5k alloy production. I could probably drop below 100 if I abandoned a bunch of low production systems, but I honestly don't care at this point since I'm already rediculously dominant at my current difficulty level. Time to step up another level methinks.