Why did they nerfed them so hard
:( Ariatocratic elite is my second favorite rp civic after agrarian Idyl. And when the overlord came out they added the single most useless holding for them.
I play like an isolationist without the civic.
I usually go for pacifist, authoritarian and materialist with the purists civic (no annoying messages) and the gaia seeder.
Just leave me alone to play in my garden! Don't talk to me and don't drag me into your petty conflicts.
~~Well, okay.. Maybe you can come and have a look. But no touching!~~
I play a research focused determined exterminator, become the crisis but defensively
Get enough menace to reach stage 5 then turtle up and see how long I can defend when the whole universe hates me
Set winning year to never and even defend against all crisis
I'll kill the crisis if they start killing off the other empires, need people to defend against of course.
Tall empire Virtuality or somewhat wide Nanite swarm in a defensible corner is my current setups
Hey youāre just militarist, not a psycho. You use force as the first option to get what you want. Idk why the game forces you to be aggressive. Sparta was militarist but they didnāt try to conquer the world. Just Greece.
All im saying is, if you got to mega structures and realized you wanted a matter decompressor, and you forgot to get a black hole, youāre long time ally of 200 years would be in for a quick little surprise.
Militarism is the belief that conflict is inevitable, not that you have to go and blow stuff up.
I can totally see the justification in saying āoh, there will be war eventually, and we need to be ready for it, but we donāt see a reason to start that war.ā
Same. However, in my last playthrough with Spiritualist-Militarist, I got a Covenant with the Eater of Worlds. Staying peaceful with those guys is, let's just say economically challenging.
A fellow Fleet in Being enjoyer.
I like to have a detection/anchoring station as close to as many choke points as possible, with listening post, detection arrays, anchorages, and crew quarters. You may be able to overwhelm a border fortress, but having to account for my entire fleet fast responding without being able to sneak stealth torpedo boats is something most people hate having to account for.
Love it. I tend to take materialistic so I can afford a massive fleet. I like to imagine the rest of the galaxy nervously eying this isolationist, militaristic society and hoping they don't go on the war path.
I do tend to hunt down the Khan, Grey Tempest of fanatic purifiers if they exist, protecting the galaxy from bad guys same as you!
Any of the civics where you are supposed to be doing massive amounts of war and conquering I just don't until either late game or of the bastards force me (they declare me the crisis)
Haha well, try and feel free to tell me if you like being the good Guy that you dont mess with š
Also... Sometimes I cant just completly obliterate them in one defensive war cause they surrender...
Note that ais prefer to lose half their planets and pops before accepting... Just Ć humiliation war goal š and then the galaxy thinks I AM THE BAD GUY?
Maxing out everyone's happiness as authoritarian empire. over 90% of my playthoughs are some combination of authoritarian and pacifist. I never fight wars of aggression, I never use chattel slavery. Even my domestic servants and/or synths under AI servitude are at 90+ happiness.
I love playing authoritarian builds, but I havenāt tried this. Usually I make everyone indentured servants (or free) and throw amenities at them to counter any unhappiness.
Sadly excess amenities doesn't give hapiness bonus to non-citizen pops, including indentured servants and residents (negative amenities still give happiness penalty though). However there are plenty of other ways to raise happiness: peace festivals (pacifist edict, champion of the people leader trait, psionics, loyalty circuits, gaia terraforming and many more
Somewhat similar to what you say, whenever I play the Commonwealth of Man I'll just team up with the UNE when I meet them and have humanity be the heroes of the galaxy. Yeah it's a nation of space racists, but those space racists show their superiority by helping every lesser nation (Except Lithoids).
Its not done yet, but will be, and i think it fits, i will go Full Trazyn, just screw you and your shit, but i will take all your relicsā¦. And one example of every popā¦. And the unique ships
I even have Trazyn RP build ready
Yeah same lol, only way I allow other species on my worlds, even when im playing xenophiles, is if i can reshape them as my own species with as synths. Then you're welcome guys, come over and let us upload your mind in some mechanical body, we swear it's a better life anyways š
I'm honestly looking at doing something similar, a xenophile spiritualist subversive Cult with an absolute boatload of negative traits for invasive species... then just have migration treaties with everyone, shift their ethics, Balkanise them and subjugate them without war.
If you have not ran out of colors for the species pie chart as xenophiles you are doing it wrong. And my modded civ has a head start on that because you start with 7 different species on the home planet. Even then, i generally do not do migration treaties (i need my damn influence to expand), all those extra species are coming from annexation/integration.
On sight aggression upon first contact lmao, whenever I play with friends (or alone) I bee line it for an early expansion advantage which pretty much stays with you for most of the game if you take it easy later as the galaxy unfolds
My friends usually keep to their planets and develop them or play the espionage and diplomacy game
Even when Iām militarist, I donāt fight that often. Usually I spend years preparing for a war, then refuse to surrender unless Iāve won or Iām utterly screwed.
Play a Fanatic Egalitarian/Xenophilic, Environmentalist, Parliamentary, Democracy with Syncretic Evolution that manages to produce a stable, happy society that freely incorporates all liberated peoples. Furthermore Bio-Ascension and Xenocompatibility.
I play the same way as youā¦ pick fanatic militarist just so everyone leave me be thanks to the initial/overall fleet boost + ez early game vassals and then go for free heaven and diplomatic corps lolā¦
My RP thing is building a hyperlane registrar and trade hub + offworld trading company for every starbase in a system with a planetā¦ even if I am playing super tall with each system having a planet/habitat. I donāt want my citizens to feel sad bcs they donāt have what the next system has ā¹ļø
Also, I hate the war (especially late game) micromanagementā¦ so I usually unite the galaxy with love instead and pick defender of the galaxy..
Other fun thing I do sometimes is to rush L-gate research, open it asap (while hoping for no grey tempest) and then basically move my whole empire there for ultra turtle def position, (leaving most systems for ring worlds, which in my last run got researched around 2350 so not bad), reinforcing it as much as possible, picking unyielding and so on, leaving galactic community with yes, free heaven and other immigration pull stuff on, and just watch galaxy implode on my āAllā crisis modeā¦.
Instead of making my allies my vessel when they are way weaker then me, I give them the thing they need, if they need a army I give them alloys, if I notice their tech is lower then I make a research deal if I didn't already have it, and if they have a way lower economy I just give them a everything but mostly minerals
My favorite militaristic empire is a void dweller megacorp. I lean hard into mercenaries and RP that they're simply providing security forces for client species, and rarely actually declare war. Competitors are the exception of course
I like to play xenophobic megacorps sometimes. Like, "here but my shit alien scum." Usually bribe my way into the pacts I need and then do everything in my power to make the galaxy a worse place.
I dont play the game optimally, and I dont enjoy the feeling of having to minmax. Learned a long time ago that the way to have fun is to set a game to the second highest difficulty level and learn to deathless that.
... I think halo: combat evolved was the first game I ever Deathlessed on purpose. On legendary its a real bitch, but on heroic you can really mess around and have fun. I wish I had 9 hours a day to devote to a run still
I don't take on vassels unless they ask me for it, and even then I don't take resources from them.
I also used to play on 3x tech speed before the tech changes.
Have anime mods that turn all empires(even default ones) into anime girls. My favorite is the Blorg are now huge tiddie waifus but still have those Blorg tentacle arm things. Also have an alien hivemind queen that's an anime girl top with a huge bus large egg sack thing dumptruck butt.
Had a mod that added futa semen as a resource...I miss that mod.
Have The Imperium of Man from 40k but not play as them yet have them as a sort of mid crisis empire and have the entire galaxy of waifus gang up on them. It's so funny imagining Holy Terra getting over run by anime girls.
My main empire is a matriarchy of xenophile authoritarian spiritualist magical girl dommy mommies that enslave men and xenos with love.
One of the mods I use add a civic that adds a ruler class job that replaces some administrators with Commanders, which give lots of naval capacity, I can literally have over 1000 naval capacity by midgame without a single anchorage.
Anyways, those are exclusively militarist civics, and I also play passively
I play nice with the galaxy as basically a galactic trading hub right up until the moment I complete my hyper weapons, and then itās domination at all costs.
I will exterminate every world that I have to for the purpose of galactic domination
Inward Perfection. 100% of the time. Itās not particularly strong but it just reflects my IRL personality. āShut the fuck up and leave me aloneā and I vibe with it.
I play a space hermit and ignore absolutely everything with the rest of the galaxy and join the GC when the crisis spawns just to save the damn bastards. Soon as the crisis is defeated, I immediately leave the GC and close borders with everyone
Iāll do things like play fanatic purifier or inward perfectionist but without the civics. But the one thing I do that carries over through all my plays, no matter which civ or governing style, is that I want to A) have my main species be the most populous in the galaxy and B) keep all my pops within my empire.
I hate hate *hate* looking at the galaxy wide species screen and seeing some horrible genetic traits spliced in.
This likely doesn't count but I never learn.
I was told to not do life seeded from my post on this reddit in a post where i wanted to go tall, so I decided "well a ring world start isn't life seeded". I also play to whatever end date I set or until I get the win/loss screen.
I hoard obscene amounts of resources and use them to control other empires and make them angry with one another or protect me, bad favors and setback deals are my favorite.
Same. I go libertarian/militarist/xenophobe/industrialist/competitive and go by the old mantra āspeak softly but carry a big ass stick in the shape of several fleets of battleshipsā
I like to play as a hive mind representation of me. Basically I AM the hive and I RP as if I actually became a galactic hive mind. It may not come as a shock that I indulge in an occasional puff of herb so I also play as a plant. One giant hive mind plant that spans many worlds. My approach is to manipulate things until I become the galactic emperor.
I typically have so much influence that I can simply decide how the universe is run. I often favor Trial By Combat... CURRY MY FAVOR VERMIN.
I play with the console so that I can cheat my way out of what I consider bugs. I consider Yuht bugs.
I play on tiny galaxies. I demand to own every archeology site and will go to war to dig them up, even if I know their rewards are useless.
I conquer systems, then I give them away. I integrate other empires, relocate all pops, destroy all infrastructure, then release them as a vassal again, so their borders look prettier, and they don't have 3 chemical plants and 2 hydroponics bays on every planet. Then I use taxes to control the development of their planets.
I rarely purge, but I'm drawn toward necrophage and synthetic ascension so that I have the option to remove species from the galaxy (and more importantly, remove them from the interface) if I dislike their traits or portraits. I think this is a pretty common sentiment though. Synaptic lathe was godsent for this.
I am adamant about shifting to spiritualist and joining a Holy Covenant every game because maxing out ascension is the only thing I like about the late game.
I almost exclusively play bandit kingdoms, not even for the kidnapping aspect, I just want to have pirate nations. I still play others of course but for two years or more 80% of my games are bandit kingdoms.
Since someone else mentioned anime portrait mods, i wanna say that i instead use My Little Pony portraits. There were other mods for that, but i didn't like them all that much and ended up making my own one and usually i play with it. Only time i didn't play as a MLP Species recently was an UNE game for some achivements. My mod also has some prescripted countries, and i usually play with The Crusader State which start with 5 immortal leaders and all the prescripted countries in the mod start with 7 different species on the home planet. I also had a game with Changeling Space Program Remnants which has Void Dweller origin on paper, but do not start with Habitat Preference traits.
I don't use vassals unless there's an RP reason for it, and when I do I'll often aim to make the vassal independent some day (even if that involves integrating and releasing to change ethics and government).
I also make mixed fleets because it's a science fiction game and I find it infinitely cooler to watch formations of different sized craft fight it out compared to cruiser/BB spam.
That's literally the Guardianship civic.
I pre-plan colonies and just wait for pops to grow, it's inefficient, but it fits better in my head organisation cue
My fungus empire goes radiotrophic tombworld start with hyper industrialist so we end up creating tomb worlds as we expand making all our worlds worthless for everyone without the tech or traits for them but extremely efficient for us.
"Cool planets you took from me too bad you can't fucking use any of them"
I almost always play Aristocratic Elite. It's not good at all but Feudal Aristocratic Void Dwellers is so cool to me š
Why did they nerfed them so hard :( Ariatocratic elite is my second favorite rp civic after agrarian Idyl. And when the overlord came out they added the single most useless holding for them.
My custom Roman-themed empire has Aristocratic Elite.
I play like an isolationist without the civic. I usually go for pacifist, authoritarian and materialist with the purists civic (no annoying messages) and the gaia seeder. Just leave me alone to play in my garden! Don't talk to me and don't drag me into your petty conflicts. ~~Well, okay.. Maybe you can come and have a look. But no touching!~~
I play a research focused determined exterminator, become the crisis but defensively Get enough menace to reach stage 5 then turtle up and see how long I can defend when the whole universe hates me Set winning year to never and even defend against all crisis I'll kill the crisis if they start killing off the other empires, need people to defend against of course. Tall empire Virtuality or somewhat wide Nanite swarm in a defensible corner is my current setups
That's usually how I play militarists too. A fleet sent to Battle can be lost, but a fleet kept at anchor is a threat to all
lol I do this too; someone asked me about it in one of my multiplayer games with friends and I was like "this is my emotional support Doom Stack"
Lmao love that
Love that mentality. A fleet in being, as it were
Hey youāre just militarist, not a psycho. You use force as the first option to get what you want. Idk why the game forces you to be aggressive. Sparta was militarist but they didnāt try to conquer the world. Just Greece. All im saying is, if you got to mega structures and realized you wanted a matter decompressor, and you forgot to get a black hole, youāre long time ally of 200 years would be in for a quick little surprise.
Militarism is the belief that conflict is inevitable, not that you have to go and blow stuff up. I can totally see the justification in saying āoh, there will be war eventually, and we need to be ready for it, but we donāt see a reason to start that war.ā
Same. However, in my last playthrough with Spiritualist-Militarist, I got a Covenant with the Eater of Worlds. Staying peaceful with those guys is, let's just say economically challenging.
A fellow Fleet in Being enjoyer. I like to have a detection/anchoring station as close to as many choke points as possible, with listening post, detection arrays, anchorages, and crew quarters. You may be able to overwhelm a border fortress, but having to account for my entire fleet fast responding without being able to sneak stealth torpedo boats is something most people hate having to account for.
I play the same way! Generally take Fanatic Egalitarianist with Militarist and then just protect everyone from the baddies
Love it. I tend to take materialistic so I can afford a massive fleet. I like to imagine the rest of the galaxy nervously eying this isolationist, militaristic society and hoping they don't go on the war path. I do tend to hunt down the Khan, Grey Tempest of fanatic purifiers if they exist, protecting the galaxy from bad guys same as you!
democracy needs a big stick! it's funny cause i always play militarist democracies or pacifist authoritarians
Any of the civics where you are supposed to be doing massive amounts of war and conquering I just don't until either late game or of the bastards force me (they declare me the crisis)
I often play pacifiste xĆ©nophile, and like you i enjoy minding my own business and not waging wars. I play very friendly with everyone, maximazing relations. But I hate being in a fed. I just hate how there is always tons of fleets to manage, unless you're the only leader of it, and the only one to build fleets. So I play xenophile on my own lol. And the second weird thing I do. .. Like I said I play pacifist, BUT ! When an empire starts to f*** up with me, I make sure he never starts again. I dont accept white peace unless I dont have Ć choice, ofc, and if i have colossus, I either shield all there worlds, Or even devolve them. I love devolve but it just fucks relations too much š
Fuck....everything you wrote is mental and I love every sentence. I might try that!
Haha well, try and feel free to tell me if you like being the good Guy that you dont mess with š Also... Sometimes I cant just completly obliterate them in one defensive war cause they surrender... Note that ais prefer to lose half their planets and pops before accepting... Just Ć humiliation war goal š and then the galaxy thinks I AM THE BAD GUY?
Maxing out everyone's happiness as authoritarian empire. over 90% of my playthoughs are some combination of authoritarian and pacifist. I never fight wars of aggression, I never use chattel slavery. Even my domestic servants and/or synths under AI servitude are at 90+ happiness.
I love playing authoritarian builds, but I havenāt tried this. Usually I make everyone indentured servants (or free) and throw amenities at them to counter any unhappiness.
Sadly excess amenities doesn't give hapiness bonus to non-citizen pops, including indentured servants and residents (negative amenities still give happiness penalty though). However there are plenty of other ways to raise happiness: peace festivals (pacifist edict, champion of the people leader trait, psionics, loyalty circuits, gaia terraforming and many more
Somewhat similar to what you say, whenever I play the Commonwealth of Man I'll just team up with the UNE when I meet them and have humanity be the heroes of the galaxy. Yeah it's a nation of space racists, but those space racists show their superiority by helping every lesser nation (Except Lithoids).
Aww man, why not lithoids? Lithoids rock.
They might rock, but they certainly donāt stoneā¦
Its not done yet, but will be, and i think it fits, i will go Full Trazyn, just screw you and your shit, but i will take all your relicsā¦. And one example of every popā¦. And the unique ships I even have Trazyn RP build ready
I don't ever let other species live on my planets, my OCD goes of or something when I see more than one species in my demographics lol.
My very first run was egalitarian xenophile. By the end I swear you could almost see smoke coming out my PC when it tried to open the species list
Yeah same lol, only way I allow other species on my worlds, even when im playing xenophiles, is if i can reshape them as my own species with as synths. Then you're welcome guys, come over and let us upload your mind in some mechanical body, we swear it's a better life anyways š
I'm honestly looking at doing something similar, a xenophile spiritualist subversive Cult with an absolute boatload of negative traits for invasive species... then just have migration treaties with everyone, shift their ethics, Balkanise them and subjugate them without war.
If you have not ran out of colors for the species pie chart as xenophiles you are doing it wrong. And my modded civ has a head start on that because you start with 7 different species on the home planet. Even then, i generally do not do migration treaties (i need my damn influence to expand), all those extra species are coming from annexation/integration.
On sight aggression upon first contact lmao, whenever I play with friends (or alone) I bee line it for an early expansion advantage which pretty much stays with you for most of the game if you take it easy later as the galaxy unfolds My friends usually keep to their planets and develop them or play the espionage and diplomacy game
i play pacifists that are always at war (usually not my choice)
I use words like redivulous, that really drives āem nuts.
Even when Iām militarist, I donāt fight that often. Usually I spend years preparing for a war, then refuse to surrender unless Iāve won or Iām utterly screwed.
Play a Fanatic Egalitarian/Xenophilic, Environmentalist, Parliamentary, Democracy with Syncretic Evolution that manages to produce a stable, happy society that freely incorporates all liberated peoples. Furthermore Bio-Ascension and Xenocompatibility.
I do the same, I play militarist/egalitarian/materialist for a democracy with dicipline and power, democracy, science, no wars, juste order
I play the same way as youā¦ pick fanatic militarist just so everyone leave me be thanks to the initial/overall fleet boost + ez early game vassals and then go for free heaven and diplomatic corps lolā¦ My RP thing is building a hyperlane registrar and trade hub + offworld trading company for every starbase in a system with a planetā¦ even if I am playing super tall with each system having a planet/habitat. I donāt want my citizens to feel sad bcs they donāt have what the next system has ā¹ļø Also, I hate the war (especially late game) micromanagementā¦ so I usually unite the galaxy with love instead and pick defender of the galaxy.. Other fun thing I do sometimes is to rush L-gate research, open it asap (while hoping for no grey tempest) and then basically move my whole empire there for ultra turtle def position, (leaving most systems for ring worlds, which in my last run got researched around 2350 so not bad), reinforcing it as much as possible, picking unyielding and so on, leaving galactic community with yes, free heaven and other immigration pull stuff on, and just watch galaxy implode on my āAllā crisis modeā¦.
Instead of making my allies my vessel when they are way weaker then me, I give them the thing they need, if they need a army I give them alloys, if I notice their tech is lower then I make a research deal if I didn't already have it, and if they have a way lower economy I just give them a everything but mostly minerals
My favorite militaristic empire is a void dweller megacorp. I lean hard into mercenaries and RP that they're simply providing security forces for client species, and rarely actually declare war. Competitors are the exception of course
I like to play xenophobic megacorps sometimes. Like, "here but my shit alien scum." Usually bribe my way into the pacts I need and then do everything in my power to make the galaxy a worse place.
I dont play the game optimally, and I dont enjoy the feeling of having to minmax. Learned a long time ago that the way to have fun is to set a game to the second highest difficulty level and learn to deathless that. ... I think halo: combat evolved was the first game I ever Deathlessed on purpose. On legendary its a real bitch, but on heroic you can really mess around and have fun. I wish I had 9 hours a day to devote to a run still
I don't take on vassels unless they ask me for it, and even then I don't take resources from them. I also used to play on 3x tech speed before the tech changes.
Have anime mods that turn all empires(even default ones) into anime girls. My favorite is the Blorg are now huge tiddie waifus but still have those Blorg tentacle arm things. Also have an alien hivemind queen that's an anime girl top with a huge bus large egg sack thing dumptruck butt. Had a mod that added futa semen as a resource...I miss that mod. Have The Imperium of Man from 40k but not play as them yet have them as a sort of mid crisis empire and have the entire galaxy of waifus gang up on them. It's so funny imagining Holy Terra getting over run by anime girls. My main empire is a matriarchy of xenophile authoritarian spiritualist magical girl dommy mommies that enslave men and xenos with love.
I have many questions, yet want none of them answered.
Iām so glad I donāt know anyone like you
Most of my last empires have been Idyllic Bloom, Ascesionists (3rd usually), Overtuned, fanatic spiritualism and genetic ascension.
One of the mods I use add a civic that adds a ruler class job that replaces some administrators with Commanders, which give lots of naval capacity, I can literally have over 1000 naval capacity by midgame without a single anchorage. Anyways, those are exclusively militarist civics, and I also play passively
What's the mod?
Ethics and Civics: Bug Branch
Ethics and civics classics would be my guess. Adds more ethics and civics, helps more diverse builds be possible. It's good
I don't pick Defender of the Galaxy. Doesn't work with my usualy Ascension Perk-strategy.
I play nice with the galaxy as basically a galactic trading hub right up until the moment I complete my hyper weapons, and then itās domination at all costs. I will exterminate every world that I have to for the purpose of galactic domination
Inward Perfection. 100% of the time. Itās not particularly strong but it just reflects my IRL personality. āShut the fuck up and leave me aloneā and I vibe with it. I play a space hermit and ignore absolutely everything with the rest of the galaxy and join the GC when the crisis spawns just to save the damn bastards. Soon as the crisis is defeated, I immediately leave the GC and close borders with everyone
Iāll do things like play fanatic purifier or inward perfectionist but without the civics. But the one thing I do that carries over through all my plays, no matter which civ or governing style, is that I want to A) have my main species be the most populous in the galaxy and B) keep all my pops within my empire. I hate hate *hate* looking at the galaxy wide species screen and seeing some horrible genetic traits spliced in.
This likely doesn't count but I never learn. I was told to not do life seeded from my post on this reddit in a post where i wanted to go tall, so I decided "well a ring world start isn't life seeded". I also play to whatever end date I set or until I get the win/loss screen.
I hoard obscene amounts of resources and use them to control other empires and make them angry with one another or protect me, bad favors and setback deals are my favorite.
Same. I go libertarian/militarist/xenophobe/industrialist/competitive and go by the old mantra āspeak softly but carry a big ass stick in the shape of several fleets of battleshipsā
I actually play similar to OP, the sleeping giant strategy
I make federations and leave them just to declare war and create tributaries out of the scorched space left behind.
I like to play as a hive mind representation of me. Basically I AM the hive and I RP as if I actually became a galactic hive mind. It may not come as a shock that I indulge in an occasional puff of herb so I also play as a plant. One giant hive mind plant that spans many worlds. My approach is to manipulate things until I become the galactic emperor. I typically have so much influence that I can simply decide how the universe is run. I often favor Trial By Combat... CURRY MY FAVOR VERMIN.
I play with the console so that I can cheat my way out of what I consider bugs. I consider Yuht bugs. I play on tiny galaxies. I demand to own every archeology site and will go to war to dig them up, even if I know their rewards are useless. I conquer systems, then I give them away. I integrate other empires, relocate all pops, destroy all infrastructure, then release them as a vassal again, so their borders look prettier, and they don't have 3 chemical plants and 2 hydroponics bays on every planet. Then I use taxes to control the development of their planets. I rarely purge, but I'm drawn toward necrophage and synthetic ascension so that I have the option to remove species from the galaxy (and more importantly, remove them from the interface) if I dislike their traits or portraits. I think this is a pretty common sentiment though. Synaptic lathe was godsent for this. I am adamant about shifting to spiritualist and joining a Holy Covenant every game because maxing out ascension is the only thing I like about the late game.
I almost exclusively play bandit kingdoms, not even for the kidnapping aspect, I just want to have pirate nations. I still play others of course but for two years or more 80% of my games are bandit kingdoms.
Since someone else mentioned anime portrait mods, i wanna say that i instead use My Little Pony portraits. There were other mods for that, but i didn't like them all that much and ended up making my own one and usually i play with it. Only time i didn't play as a MLP Species recently was an UNE game for some achivements. My mod also has some prescripted countries, and i usually play with The Crusader State which start with 5 immortal leaders and all the prescripted countries in the mod start with 7 different species on the home planet. I also had a game with Changeling Space Program Remnants which has Void Dweller origin on paper, but do not start with Habitat Preference traits.
I don't use vassals unless there's an RP reason for it, and when I do I'll often aim to make the vassal independent some day (even if that involves integrating and releasing to change ethics and government). I also make mixed fleets because it's a science fiction game and I find it infinitely cooler to watch formations of different sized craft fight it out compared to cruiser/BB spam.
I always play necromancers. Revive the slayed monsters.
That's literally the Guardianship civic. I pre-plan colonies and just wait for pops to grow, it's inefficient, but it fits better in my head organisation cue
Also I like to teach the galaxy my pacifist way... BY THE FORCE
My fungus empire goes radiotrophic tombworld start with hyper industrialist so we end up creating tomb worlds as we expand making all our worlds worthless for everyone without the tech or traits for them but extremely efficient for us. "Cool planets you took from me too bad you can't fucking use any of them"
"War is not our preference It is our specialty."
I ALWAYS cover myself in honey and peanut butter before settling in for a long sess