After putting some time into this game, servies should go up. They're fun and effective. Sicon should go down. Those gifts ain't worth 50% of diplomatic influence. And the ships were nice, but... I outpaced those throw aways quickly enough. Good if you want to rush some conquest or avoid being rushed.
I always really appreciate you going back and giving us updates on these tier lists. It really helps someone getting back into Stellaris or new incoming players!
Yeah I'm a new player and some of the older lists are harder to decipher in terms of relevance when entire mechanics have been removed merged and reworked since so some of the bonuses mentioned in older videos simply dont exist, I use them more for understanding what it is that makes a high tier choice even though even that can be made irrelevant with time thanks to meta and balance shifts making certain resources and bonuses more or less valuable
I think gateway origin would be interesting if the gateway is already active or could be active in 3-5 years. Imagine having another front to expand and possibly forming a very unique empire shape
I think it would be cool to have it just spit out random stuff more often. If you had enough things, it would be a fun RNG one... especially if it had rare, wacky things come out. Could use it even as a change-of-pace game.
@@Kasaaz I feel you, same with tomb world, it does so little and the tiny bit it does isn't good, what is kind of sad, because I bet with just a few tweaks you could make so many origins and also civics quite more competitive and interesting
You arledy have so much like take ove other empire just remember first make them open to you so your fleet can fly to they part og glaxsy. You can spread federationto entire galaxsy very fast ect ect and mega corp do magic on that origin... Just you have need not open another gate like 2 system out your system.
given the 3.11 changes in the beta. I had to go back to formula... again.. well again again again again. Now I wait for those changes to be finalised and THEN we can get a tier list...
Galactic Doorstep - I'd personally like bonuses that make use of your capital being accessible from anywhere. Random ideas in order of complexity: -66% Missing in Action - Whenever a ship is lost, all it has to do is find and traverse through the nearest Gateway to make it back home. +50% Migration Attraction - It's far easier and more appealing to migrate to a planet knowing you can both arrive and leave safely. +5 Amenities in Colonies with a Gateway - The joys of quick, safe, and efficient merchant routes. Ships in orbit of any colony or any megastructure (including gateways) in systems with an active Gateway are considered docked (-25% upkeep) - Far easier to supply your military when you have a near instant supply line.
How about the gateway being able to access gateways in enemy systems? All of a sudden you get a bonus that becomes more and more relevant as the game progresses as you get a huge strategic advantage being able to abuse enemy gateways or deny them using them effectively in mp
To go off of this, the idea of your homeworld becoming the galactic trade hub is an amazing idea. Like maybe give a fair amount of nerfs to more then 2-3 planets. Making you focus more on your own systems. But then give us something more to do in-game other then managing a couple of systems. Pretty much, we should be encouraged to hunker down and build a Trade Empire like no other. Putting the first league to shame. It's only natural that something that can be accessed by the entire galaxy, would become a big trade center.
"I wouldn't Take Void dweller as Lithoids" Tell me, have you ever heard of the Void Dweller + Terravore combination? It is an exceptionally powerful way to Become the Crisis.
Bruh...it's been a while since I've been coming up with builds. Holy crap, that's yet another awesome military build (throwing in Strength of Legions civic right now). Man, I never get sick of awesome military builds.
@HateBear-real A strong military is nothing without a strong economy to support it and strong science output to give both the latest and best capabilities. And without wise and strong leaders, it's all for naught.
I know subterranean is not great but i do very much enjoy desert world preference + sub origin, that means i never get useless worlds. Desert preference means planets tend to have lots of generator districts and if nothing else i can always strip mine a planet to the core thanks to unlimited mining districts, i often find myself with 2 useless guaranteed habitable worlds so this origin guarantees no world is ever useless.
@@MyHydralisk Subterranean with Noxious Lithoids is great for early rush - you invade other planets and they're always habitable for you. Noxious part is important, because it's a huge buff for your Ground Forces before proper researches pop up
regarding fear of the dark, while it has early negatives, there is a massive upsite it can give you that can be easily forgotten: The very first empire contact starts an event chain, that allows you to INSTANTLY GO TO TOTAL WAR with them. its a difficult, but incredible early rush option. taking over an entire ai empire that early (basically for free) can be incredibly powerful.
You can also just do a pre contact war. You technically have Total War on any empire or entity in space that you have yet to make contact with as long as you choose aggressive first contact policies.
@@MrVentches if you recolonize an uncontacted enemy planet using a colony ship after invading it, you get all the pops that were on the planet, plus planetary unification modifier, and without any detriments to pops complaining about being conquered. When fighting that early, it's pops you want, not territory or resource deposits.
The best part though is the ability to become fanatic purifiers mid-game, once you're prepared and strong enough to become the crisis extremely quickly
I don't think so. Getting 3 players into a federation is already very easy (only need 2 tradition unlocks) so the upside of your idea would only be that they (the 3 coop players) are spawned close to each other whereas the downside would be that none of them get the benefits of an actual origin. I don't know if a mod exists to influence empire spawn position - but if I needed to set up a game for my friends where we all spawned close to each other, I'd be able to move their systems close to mine manually without disrupting the galaxy.
@@prixtront7240 That would be good too if we could get players to start close together, though maybe just have the one player start as a common ground origin and just let the other one or two start with prosperous unification, though I suppose that makes the one taking common ground be at a disadvantage?
Subterranean is actually quite a bit better than F tier, because Lithoids ignore the pop growth reduction, and it does something extremely important that no other origin does: It widens the base potential of every world for your economy. Every normal empire needs minerals as the staple resource of expanding their economy, and so what this does is make every world significantly more valuable for resource extraction, giving whoever you play a much more robust economy. It has a number of good uses, especially when playing as lithoids and with Relentless Industrialist. For me, I run Radiotrophic with the origin regardless of whether they're lithoid or biological, but if if they use food, I make them plants or fungi and run the origin with Invasive Species to compensate. Invasive species completely negates any of the negative growth issues from the trait, and is staggeringly overpowered when used correctly.
i came into the comments to bring up how lithoids work quite well with the trait. however ive never considered going relentless industrialist or radiotrophic since it just ignores the modifiers anyways. thats a really good and fun idea i'll sometime try out :D
As I believe I mentioned before in earlier Origin tier lists, Stellaris is at its most fun when you go full role-play and thematic for your empire. So, analyzing pure meta-data like this is... useful, but only as something to compare if you have trouble deciding between two specific origins for the race you want to build. But still very much appreciate the work you do, so I don't have to. 🖖
Agreed! ❤😊 But bear in mind; these lists are narrated from the perspective of PVP tournament play (which is what a big chunk of of the channel viewer base is here for, due to montu's ones being so good; so that crowd will naturally be catered for). Not single player. These events, while tactically vicious ("Cough Cough Pax & Kizzie Cough Cough" ❤😊), seem really fun to play (& instructive to watch) once one gets around the learning curve. For what it's worth; they also are a really good natured community too 😊, with a truly refreshing degree of organisation than a great many other lobbies. Well worth getting into if you ask me; assuming interest that is, of course.
@@hardcorelace7565 Tell me you've never done a full playthrough as Knights, without telling me you've never done a full playthrough as Knights. I'm kidding.. but seriously.. KotTG is one of the most STUPIDLY overpowered mid/late game origins. By 2300-2325, I was producing 1k tech from my Demesne habitat alone. If you're dealing with trolly "corvette spam pvpers" who are dripping from week old sweat while covered in cheetoh dust, then yeah.. it might not be good. But for any other regular pve/rp/pvp-lite gameplay.. it's S tier.
Update: Machine Worlds have been buffed to have 2x as many jobs for each district as before and they have also added Unity districts to the world type. These two buffs have arguably made Machine Worlds an 'S Tier' pick.
One fun perk of Overturned is that the traits can be used with Invasive species. You can easily get some massive pop growth that way while still getting some other benefitial traits
6:30 My real problem with Life-Seeded is the change from a max of 15 Building Slots to a max of 11. Before that change, it made sense to allocate slots to exploit the Gas and Crystal Mines, get ahead that way, but with only 11 Slots, it's really, really tight, and it basically never makes sense to allocate even one single Slot to Gas, as long as you're tied down on one single planet. And the SRs really only function as a "boon" or "sweetener" if they can reasonably be exploited early. Otherwise they're a noob trap. I think Life-Seeded would get a huge boost if instead of the 3 SR Mining Sites, it gets a Planet Modifier that grants 1 Miner job of each type, Gas, Crystals and Motes, so that it's no longer tied to Building Slots. That would definitely elevate Life-Seeded in tier, although probably not all the way up to B tier. But itd make it fun to play.
one of the builds ive ran with that was lithoid plus noxious trait basically letting me inhabit every single planet, plus you can take unadaptive as a free 2points and your habitability is always 80% on every world even nanite worlds, same goes for subterranian with noxious
The way I see it, the real issue is just the habitability limitation. Now, you could synthetically ascend after playing tall for a bit, but then what was the point of taking the gaia world? A slightly bigger planet? A few special resources? It's unbelievably weak, regardless of exact tier placement. The opportunity cost of not having something decent hurts even more as well for all the poor picks.
I want to see Montu play a normal game where he tries to win, but he can only use F tier points from his lists. Only F tier civics, origins, weapons / defensive slots, etc. (Only applicable F tiers, of course, not outdated ones)
Mechanist is my favorite origin, but I wish it were better. It would be nice if you started with machine template as well (which the specialized robots would tend to support), and instead start with droids as the guaranteed researchable technology.
Ringworld trader build is IMO one of the most OP builds I have ever played in my 3000+ hours of the game, I can produce obscene amounts of trade in the thousands before getting anywhere close to mid game and use a entire world for alloys with so many alloy buildings. Even on grand admiral no scaling I end up as the strongest empire each game with ease.
@@kirbcake Funny thing is, they nerfed trade for everyone except ringworld, they actually bufffed ringworld trade by giving you 2x high value traders rather than 1x merchant per a district, and with the leader that gives +0.4 per a leader level in the government, they give more than merchants did so now it is more powerful than ever.
Montu didn’t mention it, but there is special benefits from under one rule that come from the ascension trees. Depending on which one you go for, you will get different benefits, but your leader is immortal. However, there are downsides. There is a large upkeep cost for all of these and Psionic is one of the worst upkeeps, requiring 3 Zro per month. My favorite tradition is the synthetic (robot pops) tree as it gives bonus resources and has an alloy upkeep, and alloys are already pretty easy to get ahold of anyway.
I'd like it more if the post-apocalyptic origin started with two small/medium sized tomb worlds. That way it would be more unique than just giving a pop trait. It would also be an improvement if the Doomsday origin was related to the Void Dragon or the Stellarite Devourer. It would also be more interesting if the galactic doostep origin portal was an l-gate.
Returning to Stellaris after some time, I'm so glad you chose to update these tier lists. First, they're fun. Second, they can really help trying to pick some strong origins if I'm looking to metagame. I would love to see updated tierlists like Ethics, etc and see the view on things that changed, since Stellaris is always changing constantly. (I'm looking at you, food builds.)
I did not skip ahead and I did see your message in the middle of the vid. I'm still very new to Stellaris and feeling very overwhelmed. Last space 4X I played was Master of Orion 2.
You do not have to think of the slingshot in terms of long range assaults. You can easily use it defensively for the ambush bonus and at that range, the accuracy doesn't matter. Heck, I once used it in an early corvette war. Was a bit behind in ship numbers because I invested in the catapult. Once the opponent went in for the attack, I just slung my fleet and some transports into their home system (with 100% accuracy since it was close range) and just took the damn thing. By the time they had reorganized their fleets, I had catapulted in enough reinforcements to win the battle. Tho it would be nice if the origin gave a persistent bonus to megastructure building. The temporary bonus you do get from finishing the archaeology site usually comes at an inopportune time. Would be nice if it just gave a flat permanent modifier rather than what it does now.
Had to come re-watch this after I just saw Montu's latest upload to make sure that Galactic DoorstOp was indeed rated as the "Worst Origin". Pretty sure the Devs saw this video and took exception to that and snuck Skrand in.
i did in fact decide to watch that bit, so thanks for the secret callout. I don't play with origins often (since i'm still making my way through the pre-built empires to try all of them, and regularly change my mods), so it's nice to see some tier lists ranking the vanilla mechanics, so i can get an idea of potential interests, mechanics, and pitfalls for my games.
Tomb world I would personally rank way higher, almost to A tier even. You basically get to colonize worlds that nobody else can even touch, so you just basically gain an extra colonizable world type, especially with all of the narrative tomb worlds that spawn. Combine it with radiotrophic planetoids and relentless industrialists, and suddenly tomb worlds are super good. Personally I love doing super fast growing planetoids on tomb worlds, cause only half the food cost and ungodly stacking of growth speed (Rapid breeders, xenophobe, radiotrophic, and possibly adaptable) with some other civics thrown in and you absolutely explode in population and colonize ANY world period, since after a while you just turn it into a tomb world and get extra pops anyways
Hi Montu will you do remake of old tier lists? tbh your tier lists are amazing to watch and i catch my self repeating to watch prewious ones several times xD
for doomsday, use Machine intelligence DA, with lithoid second species. you have a total war goal, that you help with capturing another empires capital, and get the resources from this planet. your assimilated lithoids have 80 (planet class) + 30 (homeworld, hidden) + 50 (lithoid) + 10 (cyborg) percent habilitaty at game start iirc, which goes down to around 90 in the last moments, but before that, it has 100 %
I love how you rate the Riftworld Origin as F for not doing anything but gives you an early start with astro rifts while decreasing the chance of failure and exploration speed but gives the origin, on the Should of Giants, C-Tier above Riftworld despite making sure you do not get a precursor origin until later as you have to complete the multi planets dig sites for a reward and have to hope not all of the precursor origins are unlock by others far later in the game. In other words, shouldn't those two be switched since On the Shoulder of Giants introduces a lot of negatives compared to Riftworld Origin?
I'm starting to make my own Stellaris mods and these videos are a great help, especially the explaining what could be done to bring the less good origins up.
Surprised to see Under one Rule all the way down to B tier. When played to its strenghts with the right civics it lets you start with a massive leader, high stability, free edicts. Spiritualist, pacifist, xenophile. Focus unity. Play tall, vassalize early and ascend worlds to stay around 100 empire size. Won some GA 25x crisis with it. Super powerful, definitely A tier in my book.
There’s also the economical powerhouse potential if Authoritarian and Materialist. High king plus Titan of industry. Pair those traits with the civic Relentless industrialist and you’re producing like 35-50% more alloys than everyone else at the start
If you start with the Imperial Fiefdom Origin, you may get a Gateway close to you, including a planet that can be turned into a Fortress World to hold the System, which is kind of cool. So you somewhat get the Galactic Doorknob Origin included. It doesn't give you any of the technologies, but Galactic Doorknob doesn't do much of that either.
A small note on the Life Seeded origin: I used to play it quite a bunch for a more challenging game... At the time at least (it was around a year ago), despite your species being "Gaia-world preferenced", they still WILL definitely be able to inhabit properly habitats, ringworlds, relic worlds and ecumenopolis! So if by some miracle you get the First League or the Cybrex, you have another good guaranteed world :D It doesn't make it great, for sure, but it'a s mall bonus goodie. I agree with the video though, it would be much more balanced if it didn't lock the planet preference, or if it locked it to something more reasonable like "a Wet world only"
Galactic Doorstep: it should be set so that once you open the gate, it spawns a new fixed system similar to what happens with say the Rubricator event chain. Simple fix.
We tried Imperial Fiefdom in a test game and I played my Pharma/Permanent Megacorp trade build. It was interesting and being science specialist did eventually catapault me in the tech race, however I'm not sure that as a Tall Megacorp it was the best origin for me, especially as your early game influence costs for systems is increased - meaning I had to choose between systems and early branch offices.
In case it helps, I always watch these vids straight through without skipping, since you ask :) I like your explanations, they're succinct but thorough.
I was just checking the playlist about the traditions, imagine my surprise when I see a new and updated video about Origins? Never not an enjoyable experience.
My favorite build is starting with the remnant origin and the barbaric despoiler and feudal empire civics. If all goes well you can have an ecumonopolis with over 100 pops, 2 or more vassals, and a disgustingly overpowered fleet 50 years into the game.
I don't think doorstep should unlock mega-engineering gateways are just not big enough for that, they and habitats may be technically mega-structures, but the whole point of them is that they are (comparatively) small and have no capacity in regards to life-seeded I think the habitability preference is a good handicap that gives you a decent challenge otherwise you just get an op homeworld with zero drawbacks it's pretty fun to be stunted until habitats, xenos or other means of expansion are secured or the old trick with robots that do most of the work while your guys only fill ruler jobs
Galactic Doorstep should spawn the system with the twinned gateway when you complete the project to open it, and it should be spawned a minimum number of jumps away from your borders and at least have a guaranteed habitable world, or to make more sense vis-a-vis the backstory it would contain a relic world having belonged to the gatebuilders. That's how I would rebalance it to become a GOOD origin.
Progenitor is still S tier, but should be mentioned that only *Assigned Leaders* get the passive experience. If you just hire a leader and don't do anything they don't get experience anymore.
one downside in playing necrophages is you get negative relations penalties for necrophaging species of other empires, so you'll either have to conquer them or they'll start hating you and might declare war if you have migration treaties
17:38 imagine if you finally meet your former empire and you have 3 option. Combined with the empire(big territory expansion), become a vassal, or be like "F you, we are our own empire" and went to war with bigger more advance empire"
Main bonus of Fruitful Partnership is actually seed bombing. It gives planets bunch of blockers that you can clear for +1 pop. So good rush option is going hivemind, find some primitive nearby and bomb it into infinity (you can bomb undefended planets with this stance). Capture, get some livestock and a bunch of energycosted pops ( like 150 or something). And later on, when fighting actual enemies it still helps to get some free pops. As individualists it's a bit harder to 'exploit' as origin requires pacifism or xenophilia - which makes early primitive invasions costlier
You forgot to mention that cave dwellers works different for lithoids, who get a pop growth bonus instead of a malice. Maybe not quite as good as yeeting rocks for your origin, but you'll never have to worry about food or housing. Also, Knights of the Toxic God are only missing 3 pops, but you have a habitat to grow them right off the bat too, so if anything you're probably ahead of most other origins other than the one that let's you build robots off the bat. The frozen worlds are not that big of a penalty for Ocean Paradise, considering that you'll want hydrocentric as an ascension perk for your aquatic pops anyway, which will let you terraform them once you have the tech. So you don't really "lose" guaranteed habitables, they're just locked for the first 50 years or so. A size 33-39 planet (hydrocentric, orbital ring, mastery of nature) should be plenty for you over until then, or just colonize other worlds anyway, as your hone planet is going to TIDE you over for resources and room for your pops.
I remember rolling lost colony and I spawned next to the advanced AI empire it comes with like 8ish jumps away..... they were fanatic purifiers and took their 3k fleet into my space at like year 10 and I was like wtf man lol
Overtuned Hive Mind has become my absolute favorite build. Piles and piles of amazingly efficient pops, immortal councilors, and you can get around the leader lifespan penalties later if you turn your Fortress world pops into specialized leader species. When you pick new leaders, go for anything with the Erudite trait. If it was a Leader pop, they'll live long and prosper. If it was a scientist pop, they'll die of old age in 3 months and you can roll again for the right type :D
something that is really good about teachers of the shroud is that you get 25 rare crystals at the start of the game. This can make early game scouting incredibly fast and can be the difference between you beating a neighbor in a forward settle due to having more information. I usually get 1/4 of a large map scouted by year 3 due to this its insane and incredibly useful in multiplayer games as well because information is king in multiplayer.
Wow, I'm so glad Calamitous Birth got buffed so much One of my favorite thematic origins with how careless a bunch of rocks could be in spreading across planets
I came back to the game recently and started with the Payback origin and it's probably my favorite starting scenario by far and I wish there were more like it. Especially with the right galaxy setup and random conditions around you it's one of the most immersive starting scenarios in the game and makes the early game / mid game a blast. I wound up spawning pretty close to the huge slaver AI from the origin and it was a real fight to survive for such a long time, to the extent that I eventually lost the initial war and had to build up again to liberate myself. It feels way more fun to me to have to dig yourself out of a hole and work within constraints than have a super advantageous start.
Overtuned works really well with cybernetics ascension too, because you can triple-dip on specific resource production traits, and that's on top of the global resource production improvements Cyber has natively built into it. And cybernetics has 0 issues removing or adding the overtuned traits. Bio ascension becomes rather optional. And cybernetic scientist governors easily make up for not having access to erudite. Cyber loses out on removing some garbage traits from assimilated pops, but you can't really have everything in life
I would love to see the caretaker team get in contact with you like Firaxis did with Potato McWhiskey about Civ VI. I got lucky with a Fruitful origin and was only about 5 years in when I got a potential colony notice for one almost on the other side of the galaxy (spiral). I spawned near the bottom, this was about at "2 o'clock' and near the edge. Then another notice about one at 9 that was 1/2 between me and edge. It was expensive, but I was able to colonize them both and spread from there.
For the "tree of life" I found Intresting strategy. I start with "Organic Reprocessing" and make sure mine civ have good farmers. Then on mine world's I build bioreactor so that makes sure mine civs not only makes food but also energy. Then I make "Food Procesing" building to make mine food production skyrocket and use because I use food to make alloys but also mine refinery building. This is so good is I find ancient refinery tech so with food and this type refinery there is a chance that I can make almost every planet in mine empire selfsufficient. Its very specific playstyle but I found it can be very profitable.
You did a great disservice to the astral rift start. The main benefit is NOT the rng based goodies you MIGHT get from the rift, it's the things you can spend astral threads on. I've had so many games when I did not use this origin where I never got a rift that would start me on the path to unlocking all the goodies until very late in the game. Yes, it's a weak origin beyond the guaranteed rift right at the start of the game, but being able to crank out rift after rift after rift means you're a lot more likely to get one of the really good rifts from the available pool before an enemy empire does. The +100% chance is garbage since one of the first things you can spend threads on will open a new rift in your territory on a relatively short cooldown, but that -50% fail probability means you are a heck of a lot more likely to get a good result.
I like the Gateway because its a easy method of making sure you get Skrand Sharpbeak, which honestly makes the fact that its otherwise lackluster worth it.
As an important note that I think moves Riftworld to another tier, you have a guaranteed Rift on your capital system, this rift can give you a certain number of Bonuses empire wide.EDIT: Also, some things you mentioned as good about hegemony can be done with common ground too, for example a martial alliance lets you have a navy at the start too.
Recently played a game where i went an oppresive autocracy, under one ruler origin game and went synthetic. You get a leader trait that gives you +25% pop output and honestly i think that that one trait alone raises it from c to b
Keep in mind that Knoghts of Toxic God are going to be nerfed next patch lol. Instead of +1,5% bonus to alloys per knight, you'll get shitty 25% army damage.
Something that would be cool for the gateway origin would be if you could get wormhole technology that only you can research and or build. Think about it. Ships orbiting planets could count as docked, colonizing planets could be as easy as puting down a gate on that planet, you could even have it so that you could get a new type of bombardment that is just as careful as discriminate while still being as powerful as indiscriminate or apocalyptic. You don't need to worry about civilian casualties when portalling bombs into bunkers. (listen as much as i want to play stellaris i also don't want to go into debt so forgive me)
Subterranean is B tier, because it means you need less minning worlds so those worlds that would be minning worlds can instead be other worlds like forge worlds. This is also better for lithoids for obvious reasons. Edit: basically just swap calamitous birth with subterranean. Calamitous birth's big modifiers only apply to the home world, not colonies. The colonies only get the -50% to non lithoids, and that pop blockers cost 1k minerals each to clear and early game that's a huge ask when you are setting up your innitial economy. So in short Calamitous Birth should be F tier and Subterranean should be B tier.
One of my last games was cave dweller lithoid mining authoritarian dictatorship on grand admiral. My fleet was often decimated, but they was not able to conquer a single world, and then their fleets splitted to all my worlds, and my remnants was able to destroy powerfull enemy fleets one by one - i always destroyed their armies with my backup fleet. Even when I was 4 times weaker.
i dont have as much experience as some players out there, but in all my games played i dont think i've ever needed a dedicated mining world even once. Maybe with very specific playstyles you would need one, like if you play a tall empire, but i've personally never needed one. I can either mine from systems, build one or two mining districts on the occasional planet, or trade my way out of needing minerals from planets, because energy is easy enough to get too. I do get that playing on lithoid with subterranean and then focusing on pure alloys could benefit a militaristic empire, but even then thats only one playstyle it benefits, not something deserving of even B tier.
@@declancampbell1277 Ancient refineries/ strategic resource buildings on all worlds can easily consume tones of minerals. Ecumonopolis forge/factory worlds can easily consume 700+ minerals each too. lithoid clone vats consume minerals instead of food too but that a very specific case most won't have a problem with. normal forge worlds can consume a lot of minerals too if fully populated. even with catylitic converters you still want at least one mining world since manufacturers/artificers still consume minerals. If you are able to sustain an entire empire on mining stations you are playing on civilian difficulty/powerful mods. nothing wrong with that, play how you want to play, but these tier lists are meant for harder difficulties on vanilla stellaris.
On subterranean the case dweller trait appears to not reduce pop growth on lithoid species. I found it super strong when you can ignore food completely
Some gripes. Doorstep and riftworld should probably be at C tier if we're judging by power level, or maybe shift broken shackles into F tier. Lost colony should be A tier at least. It is only C tier in terms of roleplay power level. if you build your empire while considering the habitability reduction then you can pick aquatic or invasive species.
You forgot to mention, that "Broken Ring" is one of the more powerful Machine-Empire-Starts, since it doesn't matter if your preference for planets is Ring World
I will say you missed one perk of the teachers of the shroud, the shroud beacon if you’re lucky and build it quick enough gives you a random singular gateway somewhere in the galaxy
The reason why I like playing Noxious Subterraneans is because as a biological empire, I can still play around with Happiness and the full capabilities of the council (and trade value), as it just feels that gestalt empire councils are a bit lackluster. An issue I often have with gestalt empires throughout a playthrough is reaching and maintaining higher levels of stability (and the nice bonuses that provides) because their happiness is locked at 50%. With a Noxious Subterranean, I can pretty effectively colonize every planet I see right from the start (the sheer number of planets making pops potentially counteracting the slower growth per planet) and keep them all pretty easily at 90-100 Stability (though maybe I'm just doing something wrong with getting high stability hive/machine empires). Give them the that one blooming civic to turn all those 80% generic worlds into 100% Gaia worlds and it's really fun (having 14+ Gaia worlds was an amusing run). However, I'm not sure I'd play a Subterranean empire that wasn't Noxious, and I believe the tier list was largely meant for each origin in a vacuum.
The servile trait is the closest we've ever gotten to an "insect hive" origin that I'd want, where your workers, specialists and leaders are all different species. Bonus points if you could do it as a hive mind.
Head over to steam to GRAB The Tribe Must Survive & support this channel now: wehy.pe/y/11/MontuPlays
I'd actually like to see some "The Tribe Must Survive" Gameplay, it looks really interesting.
@@fierylightning3422 I'll see if I can make a video or stream it?
@@MontuPlays I think maybe a Video might work?
the lol c bit lol i c what you did there ceee lol
After putting some time into this game, servies should go up. They're fun and effective. Sicon should go down. Those gifts ain't worth 50% of diplomatic influence. And the ships were nice, but... I outpaced those throw aways quickly enough. Good if you want to rush some conquest or avoid being rushed.
I always really appreciate you going back and giving us updates on these tier lists. It really helps someone getting back into Stellaris or new incoming players!
agreed! :)
Incoming player here, just waiting until it goes on sale.
Yeah I'm a new player and some of the older lists are harder to decipher in terms of relevance when entire mechanics have been removed merged and reworked since so some of the bonuses mentioned in older videos simply dont exist, I use them more for understanding what it is that makes a high tier choice even though even that can be made irrelevant with time thanks to meta and balance shifts making certain resources and bonuses more or less valuable
I think gateway origin would be interesting if the gateway is already active or could be active in 3-5 years.
Imagine having another front to expand and possibly forming a very unique empire shape
I think it would be cool to have it just spit out random stuff more often. If you had enough things, it would be a fun RNG one... especially if it had rare, wacky things come out. Could use it even as a change-of-pace game.
@@Kasaaz true, in general, there are a lot of things paradox could do to balance stellaris, currently it's honestly kind of a nightmare
@@toxiq5295 I don't even mind Galactic Doorstep being 'bad' from a balance standpoint, as long as it's INTERESTING. You know?
@@Kasaaz I feel you, same with tomb world, it does so little and the tiny bit it does isn't good, what is kind of sad, because I bet with just a few tweaks you could make so many origins and also civics quite more competitive and interesting
You arledy have so much like take ove other empire just remember first make them open to you so your fleet can fly to they part og glaxsy. You can spread federationto entire galaxsy very fast ect ect and mega corp do magic on that origin... Just you have need not open another gate like 2 system out your system.
wait, wait, this isn't the Leader's Trait Tier list !!!!!! and don't think we didn't hear "Galactic DoorSTOP" 🤣
given the 3.11 changes in the beta. I had to go back to formula... again.. well again again again again.
Now I wait for those changes to be finalised and THEN we can get a tier list...
Well done Sir and david, nearly thought I was the only one noticing xD
@@MontuPlays are they not finalized yet? I thought the last major update was the final one for them
@@MontuPlaysI cannot wait for your origins 3.11 tier list. We have been waiting forever for that one.
@@MontuPlays isn't it better for your sanity to just.. abandon it? Like, they're clearly changing it way too often for you to manage to keep up
Galactic Doorstep - I'd personally like bonuses that make use of your capital being accessible from anywhere. Random ideas in order of complexity:
-66% Missing in Action - Whenever a ship is lost, all it has to do is find and traverse through the nearest Gateway to make it back home.
+50% Migration Attraction - It's far easier and more appealing to migrate to a planet knowing you can both arrive and leave safely.
+5 Amenities in Colonies with a Gateway - The joys of quick, safe, and efficient merchant routes.
Ships in orbit of any colony or any megastructure (including gateways) in systems with an active Gateway are considered docked (-25% upkeep) - Far easier to supply your military when you have a near instant supply line.
How about the gateway being able to access gateways in enemy systems? All of a sudden you get a bonus that becomes more and more relevant as the game progresses as you get a huge strategic advantage being able to abuse enemy gateways or deny them using them effectively in mp
I think they should allow an espionage mechanic to be able to hack open other gateways in the galaxy if you have this origin.
@@IAreSmeegoo Whoa whoa, let's calm down... Espionage is already the most overpowered thing in the game 😂
To go off of this, the idea of your homeworld becoming the galactic trade hub is an amazing idea. Like maybe give a fair amount of nerfs to more then 2-3 planets. Making you focus more on your own systems. But then give us something more to do in-game other then managing a couple of systems. Pretty much, we should be encouraged to hunker down and build a Trade Empire like no other. Putting the first league to shame.
It's only natural that something that can be accessed by the entire galaxy, would become a big trade center.
"I wouldn't Take Void dweller as Lithoids"
Tell me, have you ever heard of the Void Dweller + Terravore combination? It is an exceptionally powerful way to Become the Crisis.
That sounds like such a cool combo. Habitat supremacy
That was my first thought when I saw void dweller, it MASSIVELY boosts your economy early on and makes building on your habitats ridiculously easy
Bruh...it's been a while since I've been coming up with builds. Holy crap, that's yet another awesome military build (throwing in Strength of Legions civic right now). Man, I never get sick of awesome military builds.
I thought you can’t be a hive mind with the void dweller origin?
@HateBear-real
A strong military is nothing without a strong economy to support it and strong science output to give both the latest and best capabilities.
And without wise and strong leaders, it's all for naught.
08:25 But without the Cave Dweller origin I can't roleplay my dreams of a Space Dwarf Empire.
I do the same with psionic space elves with immortal leaders haha
Rock and stone
for the Kyn!
@@karal_the_crazyFOR KARL!
I know subterranean is not great but i do very much enjoy desert world preference + sub origin, that means i never get useless worlds. Desert preference means planets tend to have lots of generator districts and if nothing else i can always strip mine a planet to the core thanks to unlimited mining districts, i often find myself with 2 useless guaranteed habitable worlds so this origin guarantees no world is ever useless.
the dwarf roleplay is always worth it as well
It's also has interesting synergy with noxious so your pops have 80% habitabily on every planet
It is also nice for lithoids - they do not get -20% to pop growth (that is only for BIO) and they actually eat minerals
@@MyHydraliskYeah, I think it should be a C or even B class origin for lithoids.
@@MyHydralisk Subterranean with Noxious Lithoids is great for early rush - you invade other planets and they're always habitable for you. Noxious part is important, because it's a huge buff for your Ground Forces before proper researches pop up
regarding fear of the dark, while it has early negatives, there is a massive upsite it can give you that can be easily forgotten:
The very first empire contact starts an event chain, that allows you to INSTANTLY GO TO TOTAL WAR with them.
its a difficult, but incredible early rush option.
taking over an entire ai empire that early (basically for free) can be incredibly powerful.
You also get a +5 alloy deposit in the form of divider. That alone makes up for nearly half of the lost pops.
You can also just do a pre contact war. You technically have Total War on any empire or entity in space that you have yet to make contact with as long as you choose aggressive first contact policies.
@@kirbcakeThats not how it works, i know, its stupid. you cant actually take anything if you fight before establishing contacts. its really useless.
@@MrVentches if you recolonize an uncontacted enemy planet using a colony ship after invading it, you get all the pops that were on the planet, plus planetary unification modifier, and without any detriments to pops complaining about being conquered. When fighting that early, it's pops you want, not territory or resource deposits.
The best part though is the ability to become fanatic purifiers mid-game, once you're prepared and strong enough to become the crisis extremely quickly
what common grounds need is some co-op functionality, lets 3 players take this origin to start together in a federation, that can be fun
I can taste the backstabing potential in this)
That would be great!
I don't think so. Getting 3 players into a federation is already very easy (only need 2 tradition unlocks) so the upside of your idea would only be that they (the 3 coop players) are spawned close to each other whereas the downside would be that none of them get the benefits of an actual origin. I don't know if a mod exists to influence empire spawn position - but if I needed to set up a game for my friends where we all spawned close to each other, I'd be able to move their systems close to mine manually without disrupting the galaxy.
@@prixtront7240 That would be good too if we could get players to start close together, though maybe just have the one player start as a common ground origin and just let the other one or two start with prosperous unification, though I suppose that makes the one taking common ground be at a disadvantage?
Subterranean is actually quite a bit better than F tier, because Lithoids ignore the pop growth reduction, and it does something extremely important that no other origin does: It widens the base potential of every world for your economy. Every normal empire needs minerals as the staple resource of expanding their economy, and so what this does is make every world significantly more valuable for resource extraction, giving whoever you play a much more robust economy.
It has a number of good uses, especially when playing as lithoids and with Relentless Industrialist. For me, I run Radiotrophic with the origin regardless of whether they're lithoid or biological, but if if they use food, I make them plants or fungi and run the origin with Invasive Species to compensate. Invasive species completely negates any of the negative growth issues from the trait, and is staggeringly overpowered when used correctly.
i came into the comments to bring up how lithoids work quite well with the trait. however ive never considered going relentless industrialist or radiotrophic since it just ignores the modifiers anyways. thats a really good and fun idea i'll sometime try out :D
F-Tier
2:27 - Galactic Doorstep
4:14 - Life-Seeded
6:45 - Doomsday - Warning Challenging Origin
8:27 - Subterranean
9:28 - Cave Dweller
11:12 - Knights of the Toxic God
12:36 - Payback - Warning Challenging Origin
13:41 - Fear of the dark
14:49 - Riftworld (not yellow marked on the screen, but correct text is shown)
C-Tier
16:20 - Lost Colony
17:39 - Fruitful Partnership
19:13 - Syncretic Evolution
20:42 - Post-Apocalyptic
21:54 - Common Ground
22:53 - On the Shoulders of Giants
23:49 - Shattered Ring
25:01 - Ocean Paradise
26:30 - Slingshot to the Stars
27:41 - Broken Shackles - Warning Challenging Origin
B-Tier
29:18 - Remnants
30:35 - Mechanist
32:15 - Tree of Life
33:25 - Clamitous Birth (Lithoid)
34:54 - Hegemon
35:49 - Void Dwellers
38:26 - Here Be Dragons
39:29 - Under One Rule
A-Tier
41:52 - Prosperous Unification
42:49 - Resource Consolidation
44:00 - Teachers of the Shroud
45:05 - Overtuned
S-Tier
46:09 - Clone Army
47:18 - Scion
47:56 - Necrophage
49:30 - Imperial Fiefdom
50:35 - Progenitor Hive
@derjadebaum9159 *Raises glass*
Doing God's work
As I believe I mentioned before in earlier Origin tier lists, Stellaris is at its most fun when you go full role-play and thematic for your empire. So, analyzing pure meta-data like this is... useful, but only as something to compare if you have trouble deciding between two specific origins for the race you want to build.
But still very much appreciate the work you do, so I don't have to. 🖖
Agreed! ❤😊 But bear in mind; these lists are narrated from the perspective of PVP tournament play (which is what a big chunk of of the channel viewer base is here for, due to montu's ones being so good; so that crowd will naturally be catered for). Not single player. These events, while tactically vicious ("Cough Cough Pax & Kizzie Cough Cough" ❤😊), seem really fun to play (& instructive to watch) once one gets around the learning curve. For what it's worth; they also are a really good natured community too 😊, with a truly refreshing degree of organisation than a great many other lobbies. Well worth getting into if you ask me; assuming interest that is, of course.
Tbf most of the bad ones here have very little actually interesting gameplay mechanics.
Most of the good ones tend to be both good at pvp and rp
@@hardcorelace7565 Tell me you've never done a full playthrough as Knights, without telling me you've never done a full playthrough as Knights. I'm kidding.. but seriously.. KotTG is one of the most STUPIDLY overpowered mid/late game origins. By 2300-2325, I was producing 1k tech from my Demesne habitat alone. If you're dealing with trolly "corvette spam pvpers" who are dripping from week old sweat while covered in cheetoh dust, then yeah.. it might not be good. But for any other regular pve/rp/pvp-lite gameplay.. it's S tier.
@@natedaniels3655 I believe that's been weakened or patched out entirely...
But yes I've never done toxic god cus I don't like the themes.
Update: Machine Worlds have been buffed to have 2x as many jobs for each district as before and they have also added Unity districts to the world type. These two buffs have arguably made Machine Worlds an 'S Tier' pick.
One fun perk of Overturned is that the traits can be used with Invasive species. You can easily get some massive pop growth that way while still getting some other benefitial traits
6:30 My real problem with Life-Seeded is the change from a max of 15 Building Slots to a max of 11. Before that change, it made sense to allocate slots to exploit the Gas and Crystal Mines, get ahead that way, but with only 11 Slots, it's really, really tight, and it basically never makes sense to allocate even one single Slot to Gas, as long as you're tied down on one single planet. And the SRs really only function as a "boon" or "sweetener" if they can reasonably be exploited early. Otherwise they're a noob trap.
I think Life-Seeded would get a huge boost if instead of the 3 SR Mining Sites, it gets a Planet Modifier that grants 1 Miner job of each type, Gas, Crystals and Motes, so that it's no longer tied to Building Slots. That would definitely elevate Life-Seeded in tier, although probably not all the way up to B tier. But itd make it fun to play.
one of the builds ive ran with that was lithoid plus noxious trait basically letting me inhabit every single planet, plus you can take unadaptive as a free 2points and your habitability is always 80% on every world even nanite worlds, same goes for subterranian with noxious
The way I see it, the real issue is just the habitability limitation. Now, you could synthetically ascend after playing tall for a bit, but then what was the point of taking the gaia world? A slightly bigger planet? A few special resources? It's unbelievably weak, regardless of exact tier placement. The opportunity cost of not having something decent hurts even more as well for all the poor picks.
I want to see Montu play a normal game where he tries to win, but he can only use F tier points from his lists.
Only F tier civics, origins, weapons / defensive slots, etc. (Only applicable F tiers, of course, not outdated ones)
I did indeed not skip ahead too slingshot to the stars
I‘m eating up your ranking videos every single time😂
Keep them coming
Glad you like them!
Mechanist is my favorite origin, but I wish it were better. It would be nice if you started with machine template as well (which the specialized robots would tend to support), and instead start with droids as the guaranteed researchable technology.
Ringworld trader build is IMO one of the most OP builds I have ever played in my 3000+ hours of the game, I can produce obscene amounts of trade in the thousands before getting anywhere close to mid game and use a entire world for alloys with so many alloy buildings. Even on grand admiral no scaling I end up as the strongest empire each game with ease.
Is this up to date for right now or was that more than a few months ago? I feel like such a thing is GUARANTEED to get a big nerf from Paradox.
@@kirbcake Funny thing is, they nerfed trade for everyone except ringworld, they actually bufffed ringworld trade by giving you 2x high value traders rather than 1x merchant per a district, and with the leader that gives +0.4 per a leader level in the government, they give more than merchants did so now it is more powerful than ever.
You know I did not expect montu to say that with the scion origin. Choked on my drink when I heard that.
Montu didn’t mention it, but there is special benefits from under one rule that come from the ascension trees. Depending on which one you go for, you will get different benefits, but your leader is immortal. However, there are downsides. There is a large upkeep cost for all of these and Psionic is one of the worst upkeeps, requiring 3 Zro per month. My favorite tradition is the synthetic (robot pops) tree as it gives bonus resources and has an alloy upkeep, and alloys are already pretty easy to get ahold of anyway.
3 Zro pre month is basically nothing though, once you actually get a supple of Zro.
I'd like it more if the post-apocalyptic origin started with two small/medium sized tomb worlds. That way it would be more unique than just giving a pop trait. It would also be an improvement if the Doomsday origin was related to the Void Dragon or the Stellarite Devourer. It would also be more interesting if the galactic doostep origin portal was an l-gate.
Returning to Stellaris after some time, I'm so glad you chose to update these tier lists. First, they're fun. Second, they can really help trying to pick some strong origins if I'm looking to metagame. I would love to see updated tierlists like Ethics, etc and see the view on things that changed, since Stellaris is always changing constantly. (I'm looking at you, food builds.)
I did not skip ahead and I did see your message in the middle of the vid.
I'm still very new to Stellaris and feeling very overwhelmed. Last space 4X I played was Master of Orion 2.
You do not have to think of the slingshot in terms of long range assaults. You can easily use it defensively for the ambush bonus and at that range, the accuracy doesn't matter.
Heck, I once used it in an early corvette war. Was a bit behind in ship numbers because I invested in the catapult. Once the opponent went in for the attack, I just slung my fleet and some transports into their home system (with 100% accuracy since it was close range) and just took the damn thing. By the time they had reorganized their fleets, I had catapulted in enough reinforcements to win the battle.
Tho it would be nice if the origin gave a persistent bonus to megastructure building. The temporary bonus you do get from finishing the archaeology site usually comes at an inopportune time. Would be nice if it just gave a flat permanent modifier rather than what it does now.
Had to come re-watch this after I just saw Montu's latest upload to make sure that Galactic DoorstOp was indeed rated as the "Worst Origin". Pretty sure the Devs saw this video and took exception to that and snuck Skrand in.
i did in fact decide to watch that bit, so thanks for the secret callout. I don't play with origins often (since i'm still making my way through the pre-built empires to try all of them, and regularly change my mods), so it's nice to see some tier lists ranking the vanilla mechanics, so i can get an idea of potential interests, mechanics, and pitfalls for my games.
When he said “little bitch” when talking about Scion it felt very personal for him
Tomb world I would personally rank way higher, almost to A tier even. You basically get to colonize worlds that nobody else can even touch, so you just basically gain an extra colonizable world type, especially with all of the narrative tomb worlds that spawn. Combine it with radiotrophic planetoids and relentless industrialists, and suddenly tomb worlds are super good. Personally I love doing super fast growing planetoids on tomb worlds, cause only half the food cost and ungodly stacking of growth speed (Rapid breeders, xenophobe, radiotrophic, and possibly adaptable) with some other civics thrown in and you absolutely explode in population and colonize ANY world period, since after a while you just turn it into a tomb world and get extra pops anyways
Hi Montu will you do remake of old tier lists?
tbh your tier lists are amazing to watch and i catch my self repeating to watch prewious ones several times xD
Yes, next up should be civics!
for doomsday, use Machine intelligence DA, with lithoid second species.
you have a total war goal, that you help with capturing another empires capital, and get the resources from this planet.
your assimilated lithoids have 80 (planet class) + 30 (homeworld, hidden) + 50 (lithoid) + 10 (cyborg) percent habilitaty at game start iirc, which goes down to around 90 in the last moments, but before that, it has 100 %
Yay new tier list!
I love how you rate the Riftworld Origin as F for not doing anything but gives you an early start with astro rifts while decreasing the chance of failure and exploration speed but gives the origin, on the Should of Giants, C-Tier above Riftworld despite making sure you do not get a precursor origin until later as you have to complete the multi planets dig sites for a reward and have to hope not all of the precursor origins are unlock by others far later in the game.
In other words, shouldn't those two be switched since On the Shoulder of Giants introduces a lot of negatives compared to Riftworld Origin?
The guaranteed rift you get also has some strong modifiers too
I'm starting to make my own Stellaris mods and these videos are a great help, especially the explaining what could be done to bring the less good origins up.
What mods are you making?
@@David-bf2cg just small personal mods like a new purge (plus bugfix), some espionage asset stuff and changing some civics.
@@SolymribnWaliBarad Cool, good luck.
Surprised to see Under one Rule all the way down to B tier. When played to its strenghts with the right civics it lets you start with a massive leader, high stability, free edicts. Spiritualist, pacifist, xenophile. Focus unity. Play tall, vassalize early and ascend worlds to stay around 100 empire size. Won some GA 25x crisis with it. Super powerful, definitely A tier in my book.
There’s also the economical powerhouse potential if Authoritarian and Materialist. High king plus Titan of industry. Pair those traits with the civic Relentless industrialist and you’re producing like 35-50% more alloys than everyone else at the start
Slingshot with that Astral-Upgrade is nasty though.
If you start with the Imperial Fiefdom Origin, you may get a Gateway close to you, including a planet that can be turned into a Fortress World to hold the System, which is kind of cool. So you somewhat get the Galactic Doorknob Origin included. It doesn't give you any of the technologies, but Galactic Doorknob doesn't do much of that either.
me: picks whatever the fuck kind of origin i feel fits my empire the most from a roleplay point.
A small note on the Life Seeded origin: I used to play it quite a bunch for a more challenging game... At the time at least (it was around a year ago), despite your species being "Gaia-world preferenced", they still WILL definitely be able to inhabit properly habitats, ringworlds, relic worlds and ecumenopolis! So if by some miracle you get the First League or the Cybrex, you have another good guaranteed world :D
It doesn't make it great, for sure, but it'a s mall bonus goodie. I agree with the video though, it would be much more balanced if it didn't lock the planet preference, or if it locked it to something more reasonable like "a Wet world only"
There is a fun tech you can do with a quantom catapult. Catapult to a system with a gateway, then use that gateway to ambush an enemy.
Galactic Doorstep: it should be set so that once you open the gate, it spawns a new fixed system similar to what happens with say the Rubricator event chain. Simple fix.
We tried Imperial Fiefdom in a test game and I played my Pharma/Permanent Megacorp trade build. It was interesting and being science specialist did eventually catapault me in the tech race, however I'm not sure that as a Tall Megacorp it was the best origin for me, especially as your early game influence costs for systems is increased - meaning I had to choose between systems and early branch offices.
47:19 I wasn't ready for that😂😂
I was just thinking about which origin to choose and and this came out. Thanks!
P.S. found a sea-cret
26:17 Life seeded is my favorite with the gene modding ascension. I appreciate the long form videos
Love these tierlists, recently bought stellaris and these help alot!
In case it helps, I always watch these vids straight through without skipping, since you ask :) I like your explanations, they're succinct but thorough.
I would rank the @26:20 callout no higher than C tier. Needs a little bit of a re-tweak to be on par with better callouts.
Payback is F-tier power but A-tier satisfaction. Something special about dropping a re-purposed ship on MSI and saying "Hey! Remember me?"
I was just checking the playlist about the traditions, imagine my surprise when I see a new and updated video about Origins?
Never not an enjoyable experience.
My favorite build is starting with the remnant origin and the barbaric despoiler and feudal empire civics.
If all goes well you can have an ecumonopolis with over 100 pops, 2 or more vassals, and a disgustingly overpowered fleet 50 years into the game.
Doomsday is S tier as long as you constantly shout "THIS IS CETI ALPHA V"
KHAN!!
Montu is a pillar of Stellaris. Haven't played for years and your videos are always a huge help for getting back into the game. You are appreciated!
Who's 'monty'
@@Autisticnetwork Goddamn autocorrect!
@@Emanon... oh sry
@@Autisticnetwork No worries!
I don't think doorstep should unlock mega-engineering
gateways are just not big enough for that, they and habitats may be technically mega-structures, but the whole point of them is that they are (comparatively) small and have no capacity
in regards to life-seeded I think the habitability preference is a good handicap that gives you a decent challenge otherwise you just get an op homeworld with zero drawbacks
it's pretty fun to be stunted until habitats, xenos or other means of expansion are secured
or the old trick with robots that do most of the work while your guys only fill ruler jobs
Galactic Doorstep should spawn the system with the twinned gateway when you complete the project to open it, and it should be spawned a minimum number of jumps away from your borders and at least have a guaranteed habitable world, or to make more sense vis-a-vis the backstory it would contain a relic world having belonged to the gatebuilders. That's how I would rebalance it to become a GOOD origin.
So funny that Doorstep which has been F tier since it was introduced is finally a S tier origin :)
Single Machine world played tall with Individualist robots. Congratulations you just made Cybertron and Transformers.
Progenitor is still S tier, but should be mentioned that only *Assigned Leaders* get the passive experience. If you just hire a leader and don't do anything they don't get experience anymore.
Definitely loving the updated tierlist. Not sure what it says about me though, when half the origins i like are all F tier. :P
one downside in playing necrophages is you get negative relations penalties for necrophaging species of other empires, so you'll either have to conquer them or they'll start hating you and might declare war if you have migration treaties
17:38 imagine if you finally meet your former empire and you have 3 option. Combined with the empire(big territory expansion), become a vassal, or be like "F you, we are our own empire" and went to war with bigger more advance empire"
Main bonus of Fruitful Partnership is actually seed bombing. It gives planets bunch of blockers that you can clear for +1 pop. So good rush option is going hivemind, find some primitive nearby and bomb it into infinity (you can bomb undefended planets with this stance). Capture, get some livestock and a bunch of energycosted pops ( like 150 or something). And later on, when fighting actual enemies it still helps to get some free pops. As individualists it's a bit harder to 'exploit' as origin requires pacifism or xenophilia - which makes early primitive invasions costlier
You forgot to mention that cave dwellers works different for lithoids, who get a pop growth bonus instead of a malice. Maybe not quite as good as yeeting rocks for your origin, but you'll never have to worry about food or housing.
Also, Knights of the Toxic God are only missing 3 pops, but you have a habitat to grow them right off the bat too, so if anything you're probably ahead of most other origins other than the one that let's you build robots off the bat.
The frozen worlds are not that big of a penalty for Ocean Paradise, considering that you'll want hydrocentric as an ascension perk for your aquatic pops anyway, which will let you terraform them once you have the tech. So you don't really "lose" guaranteed habitables, they're just locked for the first 50 years or so. A size 33-39 planet (hydrocentric, orbital ring, mastery of nature) should be plenty for you over until then, or just colonize other worlds anyway, as your hone planet is going to TIDE you over for resources and room for your pops.
I remember rolling lost colony and I spawned next to the advanced AI empire it comes with like 8ish jumps away..... they were fanatic purifiers and took their 3k fleet into my space at like year 10 and I was like wtf man lol
Overtuned Hive Mind has become my absolute favorite build. Piles and piles of amazingly efficient pops, immortal councilors, and you can get around the leader lifespan penalties later if you turn your Fortress world pops into specialized leader species. When you pick new leaders, go for anything with the Erudite trait. If it was a Leader pop, they'll live long and prosper. If it was a scientist pop, they'll die of old age in 3 months and you can roll again for the right type :D
something that is really good about teachers of the shroud is that you get 25 rare crystals at the start of the game. This can make early game scouting incredibly fast and can be the difference between you beating a neighbor in a forward settle due to having more information. I usually get 1/4 of a large map scouted by year 3 due to this its insane and incredibly useful in multiplayer games as well because information is king in multiplayer.
The part where you started to go on about the "Scion" origin was great LOL
Wow, i thought Under One Rule would be higher. Its so powerful.
Now im curious how you would rank the leader traits.
Wow, I'm so glad Calamitous Birth got buffed so much
One of my favorite thematic origins with how careless a bunch of rocks could be in spreading across planets
I came back to the game recently and started with the Payback origin and it's probably my favorite starting scenario by far and I wish there were more like it. Especially with the right galaxy setup and random conditions around you it's one of the most immersive starting scenarios in the game and makes the early game / mid game a blast. I wound up spawning pretty close to the huge slaver AI from the origin and it was a real fight to survive for such a long time, to the extent that I eventually lost the initial war and had to build up again to liberate myself.
It feels way more fun to me to have to dig yourself out of a hole and work within constraints than have a super advantageous start.
i miss these videos. glad theyre back!!!
Overtuned works really well with cybernetics ascension too, because you can triple-dip on specific resource production traits, and that's on top of the global resource production improvements Cyber has natively built into it. And cybernetics has 0 issues removing or adding the overtuned traits. Bio ascension becomes rather optional. And cybernetic scientist governors easily make up for not having access to erudite. Cyber loses out on removing some garbage traits from assimilated pops, but you can't really have everything in life
Lost colony power lies in a powerful ally, or free citizen pops, or combining psionic and bio accession.
Thanks dude, always fun to see all origins ranked in a comprehensive manner!
I would love to see the caretaker team get in contact with you like Firaxis did with Potato McWhiskey about Civ VI.
I got lucky with a Fruitful origin and was only about 5 years in when I got a potential colony notice for one almost on the other side of the galaxy (spiral). I spawned near the bottom, this was about at "2 o'clock' and near the edge. Then another notice about one at 9 that was 1/2 between me and edge. It was expensive, but I was able to colonize them both and spread from there.
For the "tree of life" I found Intresting strategy.
I start with "Organic Reprocessing" and make sure mine civ have good farmers. Then on mine world's I build bioreactor so that makes sure mine civs not only makes food but also energy. Then I make "Food Procesing" building to make mine food production skyrocket and use because I use food to make alloys but also mine refinery building. This is so good is I find ancient refinery tech so with food and this type refinery there is a chance that I can make almost every planet in mine empire selfsufficient. Its very specific playstyle but I found it can be very profitable.
You did a great disservice to the astral rift start. The main benefit is NOT the rng based goodies you MIGHT get from the rift, it's the things you can spend astral threads on. I've had so many games when I did not use this origin where I never got a rift that would start me on the path to unlocking all the goodies until very late in the game. Yes, it's a weak origin beyond the guaranteed rift right at the start of the game, but being able to crank out rift after rift after rift means you're a lot more likely to get one of the really good rifts from the available pool before an enemy empire does. The +100% chance is garbage since one of the first things you can spend threads on will open a new rift in your territory on a relatively short cooldown, but that -50% fail probability means you are a heck of a lot more likely to get a good result.
Hi Montu, small bit at 15:00, you made a mistake regarding which origin you highlight. Very small thing, but wanted to mention it.
Oh thanks! Sorry about that. Hope it didn't cause any confusion
@@MontuPlays it was no issue at All, solely mentioned it for awareness, didnt decreases my enjoyment of the video
I like the Gateway because its a easy method of making sure you get Skrand Sharpbeak, which honestly makes the fact that its otherwise lackluster worth it.
I still like playing Life-Seeded because it makes such a perfect base for roleplaying an Utopia Empire
As an important note that I think moves Riftworld to another tier, you have a guaranteed Rift on your capital system, this rift can give you a certain number of Bonuses empire wide.EDIT: Also, some things you mentioned as good about hegemony can be done with common ground too, for example a martial alliance lets you have a navy at the start too.
Recently played a game where i went an oppresive autocracy, under one ruler origin game and went synthetic. You get a leader trait that gives you +25% pop output and honestly i think that that one trait alone raises it from c to b
Keep in mind that Knoghts of Toxic God are going to be nerfed next patch lol. Instead of +1,5% bonus to alloys per knight, you'll get shitty 25% army damage.
Something that would be cool for the gateway origin would be if you could get wormhole technology that only you can research and or build. Think about it. Ships orbiting planets could count as docked, colonizing planets could be as easy as puting down a gate on that planet, you could even have it so that you could get a new type of bombardment that is just as careful as discriminate while still being as powerful as indiscriminate or apocalyptic. You don't need to worry about civilian casualties when portalling bombs into bunkers. (listen as much as i want to play stellaris i also don't want to go into debt so forgive me)
Little note for Calamitous Birth: it works AMAZING with Fanatic Purifier or Terravore because the -50% will never hurt you
"Why would you ever wanna play subterranean + Noxious, why not just go robots?"
BC I wanna play mole rat Skavens!! Or idk, Fart Dwarves or something.
35:34 "Day One Ish".
I see what you did there, uce.
this is the first time ive ever actually been intrigued by a sponsor ad
Subterranean is B tier, because it means you need less minning worlds so those worlds that would be minning worlds can instead be other worlds like forge worlds. This is also better for lithoids for obvious reasons.
Edit: basically just swap calamitous birth with subterranean. Calamitous birth's big modifiers only apply to the home world, not colonies. The colonies only get the -50% to non lithoids, and that pop blockers cost 1k minerals each to clear and early game that's a huge ask when you are setting up your innitial economy.
So in short Calamitous Birth should be F tier and Subterranean should be B tier.
One of my last games was cave dweller lithoid mining authoritarian dictatorship on grand admiral. My fleet was often decimated, but they was not able to conquer a single world, and then their fleets splitted to all my worlds, and my remnants was able to destroy powerfull enemy fleets one by one - i always destroyed their armies with my backup fleet. Even when I was 4 times weaker.
I agree! Additionally, of you play as lithoid hivemind you are basically unstoppable
i dont have as much experience as some players out there, but in all my games played i dont think i've ever needed a dedicated mining world even once. Maybe with very specific playstyles you would need one, like if you play a tall empire, but i've personally never needed one. I can either mine from systems, build one or two mining districts on the occasional planet, or trade my way out of needing minerals from planets, because energy is easy enough to get too.
I do get that playing on lithoid with subterranean and then focusing on pure alloys could benefit a militaristic empire, but even then thats only one playstyle it benefits, not something deserving of even B tier.
@@declancampbell1277 Ancient refineries/ strategic resource buildings on all worlds can easily consume tones of minerals. Ecumonopolis forge/factory worlds can easily consume 700+ minerals each too. lithoid clone vats consume minerals instead of food too but that a very specific case most won't have a problem with. normal forge worlds can consume a lot of minerals too if fully populated. even with catylitic converters you still want at least one mining world since manufacturers/artificers still consume minerals.
If you are able to sustain an entire empire on mining stations you are playing on civilian difficulty/powerful mods. nothing wrong with that, play how you want to play, but these tier lists are meant for harder difficulties on vanilla stellaris.
You still get less pops because you don't have lithoid blockers. And then your building cost gets more expensive, which slows your expansion.
On subterranean the case dweller trait appears to not reduce pop growth on lithoid species. I found it super strong when you can ignore food completely
Some gripes. Doorstep and riftworld should probably be at C tier if we're judging by power level, or maybe shift broken shackles into F tier. Lost colony should be A tier at least. It is only C tier in terms of roleplay power level. if you build your empire while considering the habitability reduction then you can pick aquatic or invasive species.
You forgot to mention, that "Broken Ring" is one of the more powerful Machine-Empire-Starts, since it doesn't matter if your preference for planets is Ring World
Great one thank you, please do an updated civic tier list next
Honestly for me Origins is one of those things where the roleplay and story is the most important, more than the stats it gives
I will say you missed one perk of the teachers of the shroud, the shroud beacon if you’re lucky and build it quick enough gives you a random singular gateway somewhere in the galaxy
The reason why I like playing Noxious Subterraneans is because as a biological empire, I can still play around with Happiness and the full capabilities of the council (and trade value), as it just feels that gestalt empire councils are a bit lackluster. An issue I often have with gestalt empires throughout a playthrough is reaching and maintaining higher levels of stability (and the nice bonuses that provides) because their happiness is locked at 50%. With a Noxious Subterranean, I can pretty effectively colonize every planet I see right from the start (the sheer number of planets making pops potentially counteracting the slower growth per planet) and keep them all pretty easily at 90-100 Stability (though maybe I'm just doing something wrong with getting high stability hive/machine empires). Give them the that one blooming civic to turn all those 80% generic worlds into 100% Gaia worlds and it's really fun (having 14+ Gaia worlds was an amusing run). However, I'm not sure I'd play a Subterranean empire that wasn't Noxious, and I believe the tier list was largely meant for each origin in a vacuum.
The servile trait is the closest we've ever gotten to an "insect hive" origin that I'd want, where your workers, specialists and leaders are all different species. Bonus points if you could do it as a hive mind.
Voidborn hive is such a great combo. The slow expansion early game is remedied dramatically by the removal of consumer goods from your economy.