/civ4xg/ - Strategy/4X General

please do not fuck the snake

What is best authority?

democratic

Xenos are for PURGING

Democratic.
FREE influence.

nth for KILL YOURSELF IF YOU SAVESCUM THE SHROUD

Unironically aroused

Democracy hand down
Imperial if you're authoritarian

Materialists are flat earth atheists. They can bury their heads into their euphoria all they like, it won't save them when psionic armies are tearing their androids apart and the enemy God-Emperor has become an immortal demigod and summoned a horror from beyond the veil to swallow their planets.

Inter-dimensional horrors can't stand up against simple maths and vanilla corvette spam

>have the ability to go full Synth
>waiting until I control of almost the entire galaxy to do so
Robits stronk

Except more firepower they will have seeing as they are scientists and not a fags with myths instead of science.

>Psionics are a real, quantifiable thing
>Myths

>approach to psionics is some form of religious retardation
>not approaching it as a natural, explainable phenomen

Retards, i told you.

You don't understand user

Materialists can accept that the shroud exists

They just want to destroy it

I get the feeling that I over-prepared and this is going to be overkill

>vanilla corvette spam

As with most things, the faithful do it better. Enjoy trying to fight 90% Evasion almost-vanilla corvettes with your maths.

Good luck with that

F

Materialists don't approach it at all. They reject it as nonsense. Even as that nonsense is used to rape their brains and enslave their planets.

Materialists can't approach it at all due to their euphoria u cuck

>Spiritualists can just read your mind and steal all your scientific secrets
>And see all the dirty shit you're into

Checkmate, Materialists.

In real-life materialists would unlock the powers of PSI far quicker and billions of times more efficiently.
Just like every time religious and "magicians" actually did something true and useful but through a skewed perspective.

guess I should head to the the Dreadnaught the next system over to see how well that handles
Fug

...

Of course if we take technology out of the question, zeal will win through. But the post I'm responding to states that the spiritualists employ things other than vanilla corvette spam

Well its a know Paradox retardation at work.
Still doesn't protect you from the onslaught of firepower that materialists can field.

>being this mad religious cuck

Dreadnought is easier than the drake.
Specter is probably the easiest, but a bitch to chase sometimes.
Dreadnought is also the worst reward.

It's really easy to make up for that single science buff materialists have, user.

>Spiritualist reads a materialist's mind
>CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG

>In real-life materialists would unlock the powers of PSI far quicker and billions of times more efficiently.

But it's specifically shown that materialists can't comprehend it, they can't grasp things that aren't quantifiable.

As pointed out on the paradox forums, they clearly do considering the materialist FEs can defend against psychic thievery using their technology.

If it exists, it's quantifiable.

...

Just like the private market invented the internet- oh wait

Quantifying is just for ease of use, it ain't like scientists truly understand much in real life either.

Is there a way to remove the Unbidden but keep the other endgame crises?

All I ever get is the Unbidden and they're broken as fuck, as is the AI's response to them.

>if we take technology out of the question

But Spiritualists have better stuff than any technology Materialists have. Even if we don't take technology out of the question, Spiritualists are still superior.

I miss the old ship building mechanic, tbqh; Neither torps nor PD needed their own slot.

>torps only goes in medium slots
>PD only goes in small slots, as it did before
>small is equal to 1 weapon mass; medium to 2, large to 4, xlarge to 8, as it was
>bring back all the varying combinations of weapon mass, and then some, pic related
Obviously, the number of possible sections and combinations of those sections quickly gets out of hand.
Corvettes have 2 cores, and thus 2 combinations. (reasonable)
Destroyers have 5 bows and 2 sterns, and thus 10 combinations. (reasonable)
Cruisers have 5 bows, 8 cores, and 2 sterns, and thus 80 combinations. (reasonable)
Battleships have 15 bows, 35 cores, and 5 sterns, and thus 2,625 combinations (totally fucking insane)

Thoughts?
>inb4 autism

God exists but no one has ever managed to quantify it. Checkmate materialist.

The Dreadnaught took out more of my ships than the Drake did,
and there is a dimensional Horror in my neighbouring allies territory so I guess after I do some ship replaceing I will go check out and destroy that thing as well

sounds like you need to rescue your father

I want all-torp ships back, neutron torps are my favourite weapon. I dunno why they restricted them rather than just balancing them with other weapons.

Oh you only have energy weapons.
Yeah the Drake is all armor, the dreadnought is more balanced.
The Horror and the Specter lean more towards shields, both.
Watch out for the horror in particular. It has system-wide range so try and jump immediately on top of it or you'll take a lot of damage before actual contact.

>God exists
>someone is actually retarded enough to type that shit unironically

>I dunno why they restricted them rather than just balancing them with other weapons.
Because paradox is a bunch of lazy cucks, that's why.

That brings up another qualm I have with combat; it's not involved in any way, shape, or form with any appreciable level of tactics or strategy, yet we have to manually build fleets ship by ship as if we were composing something for a wargame.

If Paradox doesn't want the combat to be involved and detract from the 4x, that's fine, that's totally reasonable, but they should at least make it so that actually building and maintaining and fighting is as simple as combat actually is.

Fleet managers, combat theater managers, larger amounts of ships overall (who ever heard of a galactic empire with just 500 ships; that's barely larger than the US navy!), etc and so forth. Fleets and combat as they are now are stuck in a weird limbo between "tedious and involved to set up" and "barely a feature at all beyond doomstacking"

jokes on you

I use command until I get what I want or run out of energy, this level of rng is bullshit

>Muh technology
>Psychics get better shields and jump drives

Salty materialist detected.

They really need to rebalance materialism - spiritualism

>Anything but regen armor and wormholes

>swedish cucks pandering to religious fanatics

Well thats something new..

Someone teach me how to be a slave owner.
Should I grab that trait with the +4 slaves in the beginning?

It's actually pretty even
Spiritualist get a few high tier research and mineral through slaves
Materialists get a flat bonus to all research and bots for mineral

I don't need god when living in a materialist society means my fleshlight costs less energy to operate and state can grant it full citizenship.

How am I doing

have you ever tried attacking FE spiritualist with those?

I did.

and I had to savescum

>avoiding perks
matte kuda stop

So, playing Xenophibic empire for the first time. Going well so far, the whole galaxy just turned against me after my first war against the bastard who colonized a planet right in the middle of my empire, before the borders could collapse around the space. I notice that the stagnant ascendancy next to me isn't as overwhelming as it should be, it's got merely double my fleet size. I'm thinking of taking him out; what's the best way to counter his destroyer/battleship fleet makeup?

Am I the only one in love with Paradise Domes? Happiness, unity and food all in one building? And I don't have to waste tiles on utterly fucking useless farms? Sign me up.

Synth evolution sucks even if you can go bio I guess.

Better leaders. Psychic > Cyborgs/Synths.

Better armies. Psionics > Androids.

Also government ethics attraction/less unrest > 10% research speed and fucking rowbot maintenance

Feels more comfy too. Materialist's end-goal is to kill you and install a copy of your brainwaves into a toaster, then claim they've made you immortal. Spiritualists want to empower you with incredible spehs-magics AND get you a reserved spot in the afterlife.

do one tree only so you can get perks you fucking retard

Underrated building. I'm still salty they've deleted my beloved combat arenas for militarists tho.

>religion with an afterlife
the ultimate coward society

1939 setting (Every planet already belonging to an empire) for Stellaris with Empire civics set to their real life counterparts when?

>Multi Earth start when
>multi solar system starts when
>non retarded doomstackfest combat when

Nigga there is so much to fix about this game i cant even begin to count those things.

>that trait with the +4 slaves
That trait is Syncretic evolution and it's garbage, you'll just get 4 xenoslaves instead of the regular slaves, it's a nightmare to micro each race on expansion and you cant replace the gov etics, ever. Just dont take it.

Go fanatic spiritualist/Authoritarian (Or take a 3rd ethos, your pick)
Imperial cult for free ethics and cheap edicts
Caste system, play wide, focus on minerals, if you got slaves revolts, build defensives armies or drop an happiness edict
Discovery tradition first for research
Look around you for races that will allow you to colonize everything, happiness isnt an important factor so you just need 2 other races to reach the 60% habitability for the hot/cold/temperate planets.

As far as ascension go, mastery of nature is really nice for playing wide early.
Both psionics and genemod work well in mid-late, psionic is simpler, bio require a bit of micro to minmax your sector but is more fun.

So does mechanist desu senpai, it's a marginal early boost for an ethics that can never be replaced
Honestly, both mechanist and syncretic ev should never be picked

Plantoid ships is more appropriate for agrarian idyl/inwards perfection empires since those ships/stations have domed gardens on them.

>Mastery of nature

I can't wrap my head around why anyone would take this. The tile cards don't take that much time to research, you're using up an entire ascension perk for that? Seems utterly fuckin' useless to me.

it's a meme from people who desperately want to convince you that Stellaris should be played like an RTS

It takes courage to have faith. Materialists need certainity in everything, that is true cowardice.

>Conquering some alien's territory.
>He's a retarded AI so he colonized basically every single tiny planet his pops would accept.
>My ethics don't allow me to purge them.
What should I do? This faggot won't leave me alone so I have to rip him apart, and his territory is certainly nice enough that I want the resources, but all the unnecessary colonies will kill my research and traditions.

I don't want your perks lmao

I don't have plant DLC

Depends entirely on the faith.
If it's a good faith or a pussy faith.

>I can't wrap my head around why anyone would take this.
It's a crazy amount of research/ressources saved over time, and a crazy powerspike early
Probably the safest pick you can take if you aim to snowball

It's a great perk for people who like winning, if you want to RP your tall research empire that's fine by me

This is a good point, I hadn't thought of that before. The 'leaves' also suggest a sort of advanced solar power too.

Personally, I believe that it's not that Materialists ignore the Shroud. It's the Shroud that ignores Materialists.
All psychic abilities come from there, at least that's what I got. The Shroud is also filled/controlled by eldritch beings beyond our comprehension.
Who's to say that all those beings don't just keep the Shroud locked to those they can't manipulate? Materialists would want to study it, learn the limits and would probably ignore any of their contracts until they understood what would happen. While non-materialists and Spiritualists in general just accept it without trying to understand it.
So basically, Cthulhu doesn't want scientists or lawyers, he wants believers or commoners.

>know you can't purge
>conquer shit planets anyway
do you only get the cleanse planet CB if you're a purifier or something?

>liberate
>vassalise
>impose tribute

>free_policies
>purge them all timmy
>free_policies
>go back to being a space-hippy

Solved.

Only xenophobes get purge

Can you make an empire both a vassal and a tributary?

Well single tile blocker research takes on average 12 months.
There are what ? 8-10 different tile blockers ? So its a time/money saving perk. Especially early when you have five planets with 75% of tiles blocked by some faggt jungle or some shit like that.

Liberate and vassalize.

sadly not
i assume that you can edit so vassal actually pay you some tax

>It's a great perk for people who like winning
it's a waste of an ascension perk slot, if it made the tile blocker clear instantly as well as for free it'd maybe be worth considering, but resources are so easy to come by after the early game that it's just an absolute waste. Just terraform planets and it automatically clears all tile blockers as well as makes the planet your preference

so... If you go full Synth and an AI Empire Causes a Robot uprising you am pretty fucked right?

I don't think so

What are you gonna snowball off of? You're just clearing tiles, you're not pulling pops to fill them out of your ass. When you consider the fact that you can stagger your research alongside your tile removal, the value of the perk becomes null. You could make an argument for saving resources, but honestly, early game economy shouldn't be a problem if you expand correctly.

In my experience, tile removal cards tend to show up more if you have those tiles on one of your colonies. I've never waited long for the card to show up, and you still gotta wait for the pops to come in.