I wouldn't be surprised if mods come out about this; or if you're somewhat comfortable modifying some core files you could pretty easily make a few flavor changes. Changing out the events regarding owing a loan and all that would be more involved though.
By the origin definition it simply says that an empire with the "Your Ticket to the Stars" origin is spawned which is the origin MSI uses. It's very likely that at one point they were planning to have partially randomised empires spawn instead of just MSI but they may have changed it to help with event triggers and coding. Given that the framework for this is possibly already in place its possible that with enough public support PDX may find a way to make this an option.
This. Honestly, I wish it was possible to create empires with the unplayable origins and force spawn them in. Like the Fallen Empires, the MSI, the imperial lord and all that.
But the only water in the forest is the river... for my tropical mates/minions. What could they be deemed as I wonder - perhaps 'Hydro-Arborialic' or maybe 'Arborial-Hydratic'?
fun fact: killing the amoeba from galactic doorstep before doing the amoeba contact counts as a first contact war for the achievement, letting you easily cheese it.
The Clone army gets even more broken if you force-spawn another empire with your species as a clone army. The AI will always choose the fertile route as a Clone Army meaning you can get both the ascended clones and fertile clones.
@@synctrox9679 when you are looking through your created empires list there is a little box with wings if you click it one it turns orange (will occasionally spawn that empire) if you click it again it stays orange with a lock over the icon. That force spawns any empire of your liking.
@@synctrox9679 Simply create another Clone empire with your species and use the empire spawning option (The eagled button by all of your custom empires) and set it to Spawning forced.
The other things that make it broken are having essential no downside from taking the death cult civic, and having insanely broken admirals if you go psionic ascension.
With the Doomsday origin, i've had games where a random AI empire starts with it, and proceeds to spread out taking a few dozen systems by the time the end of the event chain rolls around.... but did not get a second planet. No idea how they managed that. Capital died, and the empire with a pretty significant territory spread for that time of the game just up and vanishes like a fart in the wind. EDIT: With the cloaking ships we have now, can it now be possible to have offspring ships in separate fleets, permanently cloaked, to hang around other fleets, boosting them by being in the same system but being far less likely to die by not being in battle?
i have a custom determined exterminators doomsday origin i played when the origin came out force spawned in my current game, they control 1/3 of the galaxy and have wiped out a fallen empire
I think that's what happened in my last game! Had a neighborl who expanded like crazy and then the next time I opened my star map they were gone and I didn't even get a notification they were gone. It might also have been a spiritualist fe cleansing them for taking a holy world. No idea how they died
Yeah AI Doomsday rarely survives. The AI don't realise they would have to settle for the low habitability planets they would rather spread out significantly first only settling the high habitation worlds before moving onto to the mid habitability worlds and finally the low habitability worlds only if they can't expand anymore
I had that happen too. My northern neighbor and I were allies, we had established embassies on eachothers' worlds, had some trade deals going, then... poof. Their homeworld explodes, and just like that their entire empire just vanished, leaving me and two other empires with the task of divvying up the territory that used to be theirs. I think I ended up getting their home system actually. Very sad.
For the Post-Apocalyptic Origin you can choose a Planet Type in the creation. Although you start in a tomb world, the world Type you chose ist still 80% habitable for your Pops. You get two habitable worlds. They are Just Not tomb worlds. I just played that Origin and it worked.
"Not particularly aggressive gameplay" My brother in Zarqlan, you're playing it wrong. Suffer not the slaver, tolerate not the tyrant. The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of free men.
Secret call out! The explanations are a big part of why I like any tier list for any subject matter. Opinions are great but HOW you arrived to that conclusion is even more valuable.
My favourite is still doomsday with habitable worlds set on lowest setting maybe not the most optimal origin but its the funniest to play. Going from a crisis to the strongest empire. Even better if you can trigger the worm and resurrect your homeworld.
@@joheng01 yes i really dislike the fact that the devs made the worm so difficult to trigger. You used to be able to get a science ship go back and forth to a black hole to trigger it now i think its a 20% chance on a random blackhole i haven't been able to trigger it since that update. I get it for balance for multiplayer but its a fun single player event.
@@RedGearZ96 On the other hand, if you're going to cheese it anyway rather than let it occur naturally anyway, why not just use the console to force it to happen? You're effectively cheating either way, may as well save yourself some time :)
@@JaceMorley i still like to have it spawn randomly the problem is the odds are so incredibly small to trigger it, i think the devs should increase the chances of it spawning in single player if possible.
Always wanted to play a doomdays game but instead of finding a new homeworld I either terraform Mars or build a habitat in orbit. Sadly I always die before I manage it.
Knights of the Toxic God may not be very good from a meta perspective, but it's easily the best origin still. I want them to do every origin like that with an awesome storyline.
I hope not. Those big story chains should be stuff you can find on galaxy as any empire like worm in waiting. Putting them as origins just waste an origin slot for a story that is only interesting first time you play it. And it goes against main strength of Stellaris. An empire is your own creation but those very railroaded origins basically lock you into developers OC.
@@Botar48 more story stuff out in the galaxy is a good thing, but some stories are specifically tied to the pre spaceflight development of empires. that stuff is interesting and by definition NEEDS to be part of the origin.
The only use I've found for calamitous birth is with terravore since you don't care about the habitability of worlds you're eating and the early pops compound for a great start, but it falls off later and there are probably more useful starts that achieve the same early boosts (like even doomsday).
I'd argue common ground is slightly better now given you can choose fed type. The biggest roadblock for trade based empires in the early game is getting federations unlocked then finding another empire or just creating your own. You can essentially start out maximising consumer goods, energy and unity. I think this'd be very interesting if it were available back when trade empires were meta. Also you forgot to mention that Ocean Paradise has ocean world frequency over life seeded. You stand a better chance of finding ocean worlds than you do gaia worlds, which goes without saying, but it's a massive advantage.
Ocean Paradise, with your species having Aquatic, Angler, Catalic Processing = fantastic alloy and consumer goods income. Gets even better when you choose the Hydrocentric ascension perk. I've been playing a roleplay, with these traits and it is fantastic fun
Next non-expansion patch, I really hope they do a sort of Origin Rebalance for a bunch of them. Remnants and Galactic Doorstep especially, maybe look at the way that Common Ground and Hegemon work. Syncretic Evolution just doesn't work with the way current population mechanics work, imo.
I love the Galactic Doorstep origin for having gateways super early on, but I really hope Paradox gives it some love. For example, maybe it could cost less time and resources to build gateways? Maybe getting the techs would have a cost reduction, or you could get gateway activation for free?
This used to be my favorite origin before I got DLCs. It would be pretty cool if it gave an empire-wide modifier like a small 10% discount on all future Gateway constructions or something
I think they did it this way because the gateways make this empire instantaneously powerful by midgame if you can construct them at critical defensive points. If you're graced with an inner empire that only has one hyperlane exit and a handful of planets near your homeworld, orbital rings guarantee massive shipbuilding capacity hidden behind a bristling wall of defenses. I've played games this way where I have been able to replace a major fleet in 200 days or less and deploy to my defensive lines in another 30 days. Gateway on my Homeworld basically means I can station all of my fleets over my capital and wait for the enemy to come to me, without getting trapped in the wrong battle.
Another good point with shattered ring is when you get mega engineering you can repair a segment and this counts a fully completed megastructure for you to get galactic wonders, can easily shave a decade or two off unlocking it (unless like the other guys I play with that always get a ruined mega structure next to their home system...... and cybrex...)
I love the concept of the mechanist origin, but it needs to start with machine templates researched and have droids as the permanent research option in order to be roughly equivalent to and competitive with the overtuned origin and teachers of the shroud origin. Right now it makes the two synthetic ascensions the hardest to get a head start in using the appropriate boosting origin.
I think it's worth noting that void dwellers also have horrible stability at game start, which is actually a pretty massive impact on your earlygame capabilities
Yeah I tried void dwellers once because I heard it was good...and it seemed absolutely horrible. I guess it's good if you know what you're doing, but I sure didn't
@@orirune3079 Habitats get extremely powerful later because you can build them in orbit around any planet, and if you find one with motes, gas, or crystals then you get a nice boost to your production with the buildings. What makes Void Dwellers difficult is the fact that habitats are extremely small at the beginning, and you can't unlock new building slots just by building a habitation district like you could with city districts. It's hard enough to play that I haven't seen my two AI empires ever build more habitats, but the last time I tried it I was able to stabilize my economy and amenities issues within the first few years. The key is getting build slots unlocked quick with key tradition picks and picking up Voidborne as soon as you can.
For Teachers of the Shroud, you talk a lot about it bonuses it gives, but then you off handedly mention you get some rare crystals which "can be used nicely for some scouting right at the start of the game", but it felt odd to not talk about what those rare crystals are actually for: Which is to build the Shroud Beacon to get yourself a sorta wormhole/L-Gate-esque thing to one of the Shroud Enclaves which hopefully is some distance away. This lets you have a second area to expand to if you can get to it first, which helps lessen the risk of getting cut off early on a hyperlane choke point by other empires.
It's less of a risk but it's also a 50/50 shot of having the second area claimed by the time you get cut off. Which makes it only good for a invasion route.
I love the Post-Apocalyptic start. I don't know if there is some kind of hidden algorithm but every time I play it I find plenty of tomb worlds. Also, what was seemingly forgotten is that you get to settle on tomb worlds ON TOP of whatever your homeworld originally was. Usually I roleplay as post-apocalyptic humans...so my settling options are incredible broad early on and allow me to expand rapidly. This includes, as I wrote, usually a fair number of tomb worlds and often systems with multiple of them.
As someone who plays Remnants a lot, I thought about it, and I feel the best balance for it in the new game would be for them to make it *the* Archaeotech origin. Like perhaps giving you a buncha minor artifacts as a start, and maybe your corvettes at the beginning also start with some archaeotech stuff installed on them with the tech to make more and boost from that ascension perk built in to it all. Of course it could be balanced as necessary. After all, if you're starting as a 'remnant' in-universe, why don't you have access to some of your old tech? Shouldn't you have managed to scrounge *some* of it? Perhaps a balance could be that you *only* have access to archaeotech stuff to start, and you have to research/remember how to *make* regular stuff again, because otherwise once you run out of minor artifacts, you could be quite SOL and unable to build anymore ships until you do.
Hegemon and Common Ground are quite powerful if you like to play without Guaranteed Habitables, as your federation members always spawn anyway. Common Ground can also be pretty good for a meme trade build allowing you to rush headlong into the Trade League policy
Knights of the Toxic God is definitely better than C Tier. The extra Growth from the Habitat means that the pop disadvantage is actually a pop advantage. The only disadvantage is the early energy and alloy malus. But this can be offset by having access to 6 Merchant Jobs in your habitat in addition to getting tons of research from these Knights. Its a perfect Tech Rush. And after some time you actually get a alloy bonus (that theoretically stacks infinitely).
Subterranean is absolutely busted when combined with lithoid hive-mind and a budding(lithoid version) trait. It's probably one of the strongest strats there are.
Hegemony becomes S+-tier on non-scaling Grand Admiral difficulties, because it scales with AI bonuses. You don't want to kill your "friends", at least not early. Think of it as an easy guaranteed ability to rush 2-3 other empires early even with almost no investment in ships. Just set a small fleet to have the AIs follow you and they'll easily 2v1 pretty much anything. From there you release conquered planets as vassals and leech their vast difficulty-boosted income. Having fully-populated worlds is also vastly better for Megacorps, a Branch Office constructed in 2200 will produce far more resources than a colony would for decades and costs no alloys to get going, further playing into the rushing research or alloys mentality. It turns out getting +140 energy a month from almost the start of the game is pretty good. You're also going to find your targets FAST, because you have 3 empires exploring and deciphering enemy transmissions. Try it, it literally makes the hardest starts in the game almost trivial. 1k research by 2220 is possible.
As a newbie I'm starting out with the payback origin with some friends! I chose the orbital habitat and I'm curious to see how that goes! Your idea of making it an army ship and taking over a neighbor is a really interesting way to go. I might do that next!
Progenitor Hive origin single-handedly got me into playing and loving Hive Minds. The progenitor ship early game is a bit rough with the need to use up alloys to tug-boat your ships around. But by mid-game or if you take Subspace Ephapse, you have enough naval capacity to have have more than 1 offspring in every fleet, plus still have tug-boats. But the passive leader exp is so powerful especially for Admirals since hives don't have trade value and don't earn much from preventing piracy. Couple that with hive leaders starting younger and you get more time with powerful leveled leaders.
These videos are so fun! I never quite got into Stellaris, but your videos are drawing me in. Seeing all these lists make me want to try them out, particularly the lower-ranked or RP-focused ones.
I wish they'd make origins for some of the more basic scenerios like "global conquest" where a single nation conquered the home planet or even one where the home planet wasn't unified yet, and you can have multiple rival empires from the same home planet that can eventually unify through events.
I have learned the joys of pairing Slingshot to the Stars with Stargazers. I like to imagine the empire I made for that has a “jebediah Kerman mentality” when it comes to exploration: eagerness to the point where it’s funny.
Post apocalyptic retains your normal world type preference doesnt it? So you get your original planet type plus you effectively get tomb world preference on top of that
Honestly Gaia is way better than most realise, I Have a build where I can get gas extractors by year 11 with 350 science output. I almost always have 1k science by year 35 if there is no war and ofc my empire size is not even close to 100, but if I get lucky and roll adv labs early then I can get it by year 30, if there is war tho on the horizon then it usually hovers around 6-700ish. Plus in the late game when you turn it into an ecu you can end up with over 3k alloys a month from just your capital, since its so big, so all your other planets can be used for everything else, pretty neat to have against all crisis on 25x Also something else to point out is that you can just colonise worlds anyway and build robots on those worlds and only keep one of your origin species on that planet initially as a colonist until robot is built. and if you get lucky enough to form a migration treaties with other empires then the main downside is pretty much gone.
I like playing galactic doorstep as a mercantile empire. It unlocks gateways early and reliably, allowing me to ignore piracy very early on as i build gateways in my trade hub starbases
The Payback origin has given me several +5 energy and mineral space mining nodes in the home system every time I've started it. Makes the early game economy really easy.
One thing you didn't mention with the Gaia start, though its VERY situational. If you get the Baol as a precursor, it gets a little better not sure enough to make it go up a tier, but it's an easy precursors chain, and the relic is a lifesaver fot Gaia start.
Offtopic, in my last 3.6 game i got the Grand Herald. Felt super nice, even though it was very late in the game, all he did was fill up my titan limit.
What really bothered me about Broken Shackles is that the many different species have pretty bad resource output due to their habitability-preferences. But I guess you could play around that with relative ease by just colonizing the remaining two different types of planets and resettling the pops or something. And Fear of the Dark also has a very nice bonus imo. You can get gifted 90% of the cloaking tech basically in the first year, which is nice for combat (though difficult because of the high cost, not to mention the need of rare resources for military ships) but also for exploration if you want to find ruined megastructures, Relic- or Gaia-Worlds early on and work toward them, because you can go through other empires that have their borders closed and also through random enemy fleets, even marauder empires, since they won't have any detection tech.
Slingshot to the stars might be quite excellent in a defensive manner. You would near guarantee 100% accuracy on your own systems which are nearby, so the question is in how much fleet power that 50% fire rate translates in battle (and thus how much necessary economy). It might make an even more unappealing target for conquest early-game than Subterranean, as instead of long-term attrition, the catapult might have the potential to really punish concentrated fleets.
At 11:30, in addition to your Guaranteed Habitables gaining the Colonial Remnants modifier, they have a chance of generating a random anomaly/event feature on each planet. These features range from the tame Harvester Fields (+6 agriculture districts), Impact Crater (+3 mining districts), and Organic Landfills (+4 generator districts and +10% society from jobs), to the very nice Ancient Bombardment Craters/Ruined Particle Accelerator (+20% physics from jobs and 2 free researcher jobs), Ancient Battlefield (+20% engineering from jobs and 2 free researchers), and Mutant Landfill (+20% society from jobs and 2 free researcher jobs).
The "Common Ground" origin should have a higher rank since it is very friendly to new players. It can provide the safest early stage environment because we have two allies help us defend and attack.
My fav origin is definitely The Void dwellers, it drastically changes your gameplay in my opinion and if you overcome housing crisis early on, you're gonna be probably absolutely bonking on every other empire in every possible aspect, or thats at least how my multiplayer experience goes :D
With Fear of the Dark I lost my homeworld because my maximum fleetpower was 1.5k (you need 2k strength). I played the sol start, so my Haven was a size 13 Mars and pretty much full once I took them over. If I'd known what would happen I would have switched to Purifier, but right now I'm a fanatic xenophile empire with 30% xenophobe pops and the normal penalties from the origin are still active. Awesome for roleplay but absolutely crippling right now. Atleast I got some early cloaking tech out of it. Though I would have liked to become Purifier after my homeworld got destroyed (it makes no sense that my people choose the compassionate way and then billions of them die and they are just fine with that, especially weird because most of my pops are technically citizens of Mars/Haven)
Proud owner of the secret call out card! Can't believe I missed this video when it first came out. I'm shocked that I didn't even disagree with you even once. Lol. Great video!
I got the secret call out. I super like the relic world start, so I am super peeved that it got nerfed so badly when I was expecting a buff. I keep getting roffel stomped at the start, so I think i need to take a new start.
i'm playing Fear of the Dark right now i think it should be in A tier because the other planet deploy a big cloaked fleet in your home system and can give you ressources if you start lacking them
My main problem with shattered ring, and to a lesser extent remnant, are that it takes so long to get the tech and resources needed to convert your home world to the special version with the cool districts that it fucks the planet up when you do it
Love your tier list they always help break down changes for one of my favorite grand strategy games, thank you for all you do, that said; made it to th3 call ou7.
I got to say I made gateways work to the best of my ability. I constucted them on my main chokepoint/fleet gathering points so my entire armada of fleets could get to nearly anywhere in little time. And its been useful while having a medium sized empire in a medium sized map
@@o-mangaming5042 I suppose so, tho the Necrophage shows 'feed off other sapient life', while the goa'uld parasites tend to mind control their hosts. Tho I guess since you can also enslave, seems to be the case...goa'wraith lol.
Has Montu done a Vassal Types tier list video? I know he’s done tons of tier lists videos (and I’ve watched all of them) but I’d like to know what vassal to be! I mean, aherm…what Vassals to get, because I would never be a lowly vassal… (Edit) It may be worth noting that I am a console player that just got the Overlords DLC a few days ago…
become a bulwark. They're so good to be! And don't make bulwarks, unless you can handle the economic noose around your neck. You probably want one of each of the other two specialists for the nice bonuses, and then as many satrapies as you can get (or just regular vassals if you dont have the Kahns throne)
I think subterranean is B or even A tier. I don’t think he mentions this but it’s like masterful crafters in that it gives you .33 of a building slot per mining district. You can stack this with masterful crafters and have infinite building districts. Lastly if you play lithoids you don’t have to deal with the organic growth speed deficit. Tho it does mean the minimum habitability doesn’t do anything
Would be cool if Paradox gave more flavor to Gateway origin, like your species finding out they were actually a part of a massive galactic empire in a distant past that got separated and lost their history to a cataclysmic event that separated them and maybe some cool path that enables you to have some type of resurgance as you find out more about your past.
I just recently bought most of the dlc on sale and have put inmy first 30 hours. Everything's new to me but I'm excited to try the broken shackles origin as it seems really fun to play
In my first go at Broken shackles I had set an empire I had been playing with the Eager Explorer civic to force spawn and I noticed early on it wasn't moving so figured obviously the AI can't figure out how to move. But since they were stuck I guess the AI had no choice but to optimize the system and in a few decades later I was surprised because they were suddenly number 2 in diplo weight in the Galactic Community
I like to start as a mechanist and then soon as possible get into genetics. The population growth and spread you can achieve is crazy. Maybe a silly combo, but I find it work good.
Hey there, nice video. I wish paradox will add an option to select the origins allowed for the random empire generated. Personally i will always disable Common Ground and Hegemony, i feel like it takes some of the surprise when a federation might be formed.
17:40 It's mistake: Cave Dweller have +50% Species Minimum Habitability and Noxious +30% Species Minimum Habitability and if we're lucky Voidling will give us +20% Species Minimum Habitability, so we can have 100% Species Minimum Habitability BUT Lithoid Hive Mind with Ascetic civic have 75% habitability on game start. I tested this HM yesterday starting as Subterranean on Desert planet when I colonized Ocean world. I suppose that the technologies that give us 4x+5% habitability will allow us to permanently +95%.
I don't think you gave Subterreanian a Fair Shake. If you go lithoid, you can effectively colonize tombworlds at 50% and function just fine. All the minerals you could even need for your "Live Everywhere" Lithoid bastards is all around them, and they don't suffer from the biological pop debuff. Whenever I play this origin, the only thing I really notice that holds me back is amneities early and mid game, but a single art mega structure *pretty much* sorts this out. It's pretty great for alloy production too.
Don't know if this would be be an effective strategy or not, but I plan to try and mainline the following build / protocols in tournament play. To address the amenity issues you describe with Subterranean, & double down on the increased resource district size; I've paired it with the Agrarian Idyll civic at start. Using Technocracy (could've gone with Masterful Crafters for more building slots via the mining / industry district openers but Tech has more of an impact overall) as my second civic (picking Catalytic with gene Ascension once the third is available to free up more minerals for the consumer goods behind scientific / unity upkeep via switching alloy production on food, making the farmers I originally relied on for amenities more relevant as well). Also put Incubators on my species as a starting Trait to fix Cave Dweller (also thought of going Xenophobe too for the pop growth speed but currently Authoritarian due to being easier to please the faction), which itself will be resolved through the aforementioned gene Ascension. The increased building cost will also be fixed by opening with Prosperity, the real strengths of which are is its +5% bonus to all jobs; -5% specialist upkeep, & +5% bonus to specialists; so no opportunity lost there. I know Lithoid is the conventional thinking when this Origin is used, but not going that way either due to food having fewer uses than minerals (also mentioned upkeep switch previously). Plus it has more repeatable technology, buffing production in the long run (I know I could get around that with a matter decompressor, but megastructures are too much of a strategic target; & I'm still not confident in my ship designs / Tactical ability to present that much of an opening). Anyway apologies for the rambling, just my two cents on a great but sadly underrated part of this game we all enjoy lol😅. Penny for your thoughts? Regardless; have a great day!
I think you're over-selling the shortfalls on playing Common Ground and Hegemon as intended, particularly since CG now lets the player choose the federation type. Trade League on day one is quite strong, and hegemony and Martial Alliance both would have a very early fed fleet which your allies will build for. It's very sensitive to the placement not being terrible and getting completely boxed in, but it can make for very easy early wars and snowballing from there. It's very rare for an AI to stand up to a 3v1 or even 3v2 in the early game. Yay secret callout
A big drawback for Progenitor Hiveminds is that the Ship-Malus also counts for your Science and Construction ships. Making early exploration and expansion painfully slow.
Ive always been afraid something bad would come through that gateway in that origin eventually so while im still new ive never played it, I've only been playing Voidborne over and over again. But i only have two DLCs.
Migration treaties can potentially make life seeded and shattered ringworld better by giving you the chance to colonize planets with other species(and, at least in 3.6, you don't have to actually have a pop of them in your empire, you just need a treaty). It's still not ideal but it makes these origins IMO a bit more viable(albeit quite dependent on having the luck of someone nearby who will give you a treaty). You just have to not be xenophobic and play nice with some other empires at first.
@@ZeroDMs_ correct. still pretty effective and reliable imo since rushing a capital doubles your pops. *colonies are a burden for the first few years, so no big loss short term
37:58 👍 I always watch the full video and put it on while I work from home. Stellaris has become my favorite game now and I love creating new empires or role-plays.
Same. But that wold most likely need yet another type of national distinction during setup. One for the species itself, & another for the world that civilisation starts on. Don’t think the development team is ready to give players that much granularity yet, if only due to the balancing hell such an option would open up. Great idea though! 😊 Would totally go Subterranean & on the Shoulders of Giants if I could!
Im really loving the remnant start more and more lately. I take the trait for 15% more energy production to help offset the upkeep from the building, and between my homeworld and a precursor thing i typically have a guarenteed 5 minor artifacts a month generated early on I can sell every 10 months for more energy credits. I dont think its as good upfront as it used to be, but it lets me smoothly transition into archeotech weapon systems fast.
i combine it with eager explorers to have a building replaceing my research labs, and still get that tasty sublight speed bonus. Bonus RP points my speices already knows whats out there and getting back in the galaxy sooner is worth the trouble. starting with jump drives is fun, even if its not the strongest way to play.
Been tinkering with overtuned hivemind and you can do some pretty insane expansion. For 4 points and 40 years of lifespan you can get up to 40% habitability, 60% pop growth and -20% housing with damn the consequences. So pretty much if you can balance your food and minerals you can expand every planet in sight pretty early. Then if you want you can either counter the lifespan penalty with cybernetic ascension or go bio and get truly bonkers growth/assembly.
See I enjoyed the Ocean Paradise one, he didn't mention it in the video, but you get a nebula as part of your starting system so you can grab extra minerals, it also covers (usually) one or two other areas as well. The most broken park about it though is that depending on how many systems you have with ice in them, the larger you can inflate your world by building space stations with ice mining on them. Lets you turn your homeoworld into an OP economic powerhouse. Plus you get bonuses for teraforming artic worlds which it spawns all around you and you can shape them as you please. Your economy will explode very fast. I love it
I feel like with how much precursors can change a play through there should be some way to guarantee certain precursors, like civics or origins not sure how you would balance it though
Should be able to choose it the same way you can choose the Crisis when you start a new game. (Unless that was a mod I was using to do that? I can't remember.)
So here's an idea for a vid: Origins Tier List for AIs. Tiering them on how well the AI use the origins. Why is that useful? Well, for when you want to set up a game a certain way with AIs. When you want to make an AI buddy to play with or an AI villian of your story to fight against.
So here's my rough draft for AI empire origins: F Tier: Don't give AIs these origins unless you really hate them. They do NOT know how to use these origins properly (if there even is a 'proper way to do this origin' in the first place with some things,) and will end up failing a lot of the time. Shattered Ring: Even as a robot empire, the AI fails to take advantage of the new system, so they play it the way it was in 3.5: very poorly. Giving them this origin is almost assuredly a death sentence. Life Seeded: They do SLIGHTLY better with this than they do with shattered ring. SLIGHTLY. But not really. Unless they get lucky with prims (which might not be the case anymore with the rework), they are going to be very weak. Doomsday: As you might have guessed, the AIs can't seem to figure out "oh, yeah, I should move my pops before my world go boom." So they end up flatlining because of it. Overtuned: You'll have to do the tuning for them, because the AIs have no clue whatsoever on how to genetically modify themselves decently. In fact you'll want to avoid giving them this just because you really don't want the AI doing any sort of genetic modification because they'll create 10-20 different types of their main species and cause lag. So avoid this one like the plague if you're making an AI empire. Toxic God: Yeah, they ... suck with this. THey suck economicwise, they suck fleetwise, they just... suck. They keep the quest for the toxic god in regular funding mode, and never take it off. ... Look, this origin was meant to be a story origin. Experienced... by players. The AI gets almost nothing out of this. There is no reason at all to give an AI this origin. Void Dwellers: You'd THINK they'd be very good with this, since the AI just LOVES to spam habitats. But noooo, they don't do jack with this. Clone Army: "Durrrrr how do me made clon vate? Me no dunno lol me die now 'cus me iz dum clon!" Yeah that's the AI using Clone Army in a nutshell. They have no idea how this works, so they'll keep colonizing the same planet over and over and over and over again, until they invade a prim world, get some sort of migration pact some other way, or become decendant (they always do); and then they'll just operate like a (rather weak) normal empire. C tier: They do okay with these. Not good, but not terrible either. Galactic Doorstep: They don't seem to run into the problems that players do, so there really isn't any good reason not to give them these, not that there's a good reason TO give them this. Syncredtic Evolution: Nice if you want to start an empire out with some slaves, but that's about it, really. Post-Apoc: Nothing to say about it. Nice if you give them the civic that turns planets into tomb worlds, but that's about it. Cave Dwellers: I've never seem them do too hot with this, but not too bad either. Then again they do take full advantage of the 50% habitability floor. Tree of life: Because the Tree of Life is automatic, they do decently with this one. Nothing to write home about though. Calamitous Birth: They do use the lith asteroids, but they don't really take advantage of it by clearing the blockers made by it. If they did, this might get kicked up to c tier. Payback: Yeah, they're just... bad with this, as to be expected. Don't expect a payback AI to become a powerhouse. They get a high fleet count due to the enlightenment ship (which they almost always turn into a ship. And thanks to Minamar's AI stupidity, will always end up being the last of its kind.) But are complete crap in all other matters. Especially compared to their broken shackles co-origin. Slingshot: They don't take much advantage of the Slingshot, at least that I've seen, nor of the ability. B Tier: They do fairly decently with these. Better than the C tier. Lost Colony: Oddly enough, the one that usually spawns with this is the COM. Which means it's hard coded to spawn the UNE, which usually stomps. And even if they aren't, they still get the 'same species' dip bonus. Syncretic Evolution: I am not entirely sure how, but they somehow make this one work for them. Not the best you can give them, but they work out. At least until the rebels start popping up. A tier: The AIs know how to do well with this, or it's too straightforward for them to muck it up. Broken Shackles: Despite the early game disadvantage, they seem to blaze through it, and the extra pop types means they can colonize just about everything, which they WILL do. As long as one of them doesn't end up with the noxious trait, they will end up doing rather well, especially if they find some quick allies (which they most likely will.) Pro Uni: There is a REASON this is the one AIs pick the most: Because it's powerful enough for them to take advantage of, and too straightforward for them to muck it up. Necrophage: Yeah, they're rather nasty with this. Not ZOMG WTF BROKEN nasty, but still nasty. As an aside, this is one of the few times where I've actually seen fan purs actually last into the midgame. Progenitor Hive: Unlike with Clone Army, they actually have enough ai brain to build progenators. Not immediately though, otherwise they'd be S tier, but they WILL get around to it at some point. Mechanist: They definitely understand this origin, and they will run away with it. Ocean Paradise: You think they would be bad with this, but no. They're actually quite great with it. Not overwhelmingly so, but still.... Here Be Dragons: They never did the dragon exploit (not that it would even work anymore), but even when it was still possible, they were a pain to play against. And lord help you if they're still around when they tame it, because they will rampage with it. Though it doesn't stop them from getting vassalized, and if they get the case of _revolutionitus_, the dragon won't really do jack for the new regime. S Tier: Give AIs this if you want your game to be grindingly nasty. Or your allies to be godlike. Common Ground/Hegemony: Okay, now this is a complete reversal. This is in the top tier?! HOW?! Allow me to explain. When this spawns, it spawns 3 empires. Now, most players will complain that it eats up your habitable worlds, and boxes you in. Which is fair enough criticism. However, what they fail to realize is that even if one of the fed members will get boxed in, at least ONE won't. And that one or two can carry the whole thing. They also get the avantage of having 2-3x the navy of most empires (thanks to their federation) which means they (hegemonies especially) are VERY aggressive when it comes to subjugation/liberation wars, which only serves to increase the federation further. And, especially if they don't start boxed in, they are VERY good at coordinating expansion. This also means they're bound to have migration treaties, research agreements, the works, which starts them off very strong. Imperial Feifdom: God help you if anything spawns with this right next to you, because you are 6 methods of FUCKED. Not only do they have all the strengths of Common Ground/Hegemony AIs, but they have it in spades. Luckily, they are on a timer, and when that timer is up, they fracture into quarrelling, bickering nationstates, all ripe for the taking. Scion: Yes, they are every bit as nasty as Scions as players are.
@@purpleisthesneakiest The Helios system or something, it's a race that have no space travel and live outside the hyperlane systems. They have collected 6 gaia worlds from all over and they will pay you one size 25 (planet X) that they have stolen from sol to be left alone.
The only time I picked Life-Seeded was when I wanted to do a one-planet playthrough.. Then I found Baol, back when they could change other worlds into Gaia worlds with a simple click. Suffice it to say, that game was pretty easy after that. When pre-cursors align with what you play, the game is absolutely bonkers.
Don't forget that habitability issues can also be countered with migration treaties and colonizing with those immigrants, so some ethics starts can simply ignore the problems with habitability from Gaia Preference and Void Dweller. Situational yes. But it seems pretty good as a situational thing. Sounds good for coop if you find your friend with opposite habitability type and migration treaty him.
Vassel origin as prospectorum is actually best machine start. Prospect traits stay when it dissolves which means you can gather a bunch of +20% energy,mineral,and ALLOY production traits on immortals allowing a backlog of extra governors with it along with all that conquest you'll be doing with a permanent 20% alloy. With an easy 75% research subsidy early game and often +20 of every strategic resource from orbitals the job efficiency goes through the roof through midgame. I don't see how one good world matters to machines compared to so many empire wide buffs when you're going to be able to have a ton of colonies anyway.
I love calametous birth with terravore. You can just smash into a planet, eat it for resources and free pops and then send em back to ur core planets. By far the strongest empire run I have ever had I steamrolled everyone
Great list. I made it to the secret call out and enjoyed the video a lot :-) Only comment is that I built a lot more science ships than usual when playing Fear of The Dark and I actually felt that I got some nice stuff from the Fear of The Dark bonuses regarding anomalies. I guess that if you explore a lot it's good, and if not, it's as you say not.
What do I want? I want a Payback origin that allows me to have a custom enemy empire instead of MSI :(
there should honestly be multiple options based off of existing different types of megacorps
I wouldn't be surprised if mods come out about this; or if you're somewhat comfortable modifying some core files you could pretty easily make a few flavor changes. Changing out the events regarding owing a loan and all that would be more involved though.
By the origin definition it simply says that an empire with the "Your Ticket to the Stars" origin is spawned which is the origin MSI uses. It's very likely that at one point they were planning to have partially randomised empires spawn instead of just MSI but they may have changed it to help with event triggers and coding.
Given that the framework for this is possibly already in place its possible that with enough public support PDX may find a way to make this an option.
This. Honestly, I wish it was possible to create empires with the unplayable origins and force spawn them in. Like the Fallen Empires, the MSI, the imperial lord and all that.
Mods
I'm a big fan of Hydrocentric being in the Sea Tier
Lol
Boooo
But the only water in the forest is the river... for my tropical mates/minions.
What could they be deemed as I wonder - perhaps 'Hydro-Arborialic' or maybe 'Arborial-Hydratic'?
Bottom Of The Sea Tier
@@justincronkright5025hear me out hear me out amphibians
fun fact: killing the amoeba from galactic doorstep before doing the amoeba contact counts as a first contact war for the achievement, letting you easily cheese it.
The Clone army gets even more broken if you force-spawn another empire with your species as a clone army. The AI will always choose the fertile route as a Clone Army meaning you can get both the ascended clones and fertile clones.
How do u force spawn
@@synctrox9679 when you are looking through your created empires list there is a little box with wings if you click it one it turns orange (will occasionally spawn that empire) if you click it again it stays orange with a lock over the icon. That force spawns any empire of your liking.
@@synctrox9679 Simply create another Clone empire with your species and use the empire spawning option (The eagled button by all of your custom empires) and set it to Spawning forced.
The other things that make it broken are having essential no downside from taking the death cult civic, and having insanely broken admirals if you go psionic ascension.
@@Spartan878455 How does the system determine if a species is the same? Does it need to have the same name? Same portrait? Same exact traits?
With the Doomsday origin, i've had games where a random AI empire starts with it, and proceeds to spread out taking a few dozen systems by the time the end of the event chain rolls around.... but did not get a second planet. No idea how they managed that. Capital died, and the empire with a pretty significant territory spread for that time of the game just up and vanishes like a fart in the wind.
EDIT: With the cloaking ships we have now, can it now be possible to have offspring ships in separate fleets, permanently cloaked, to hang around other fleets, boosting them by being in the same system but being far less likely to die by not being in battle?
i have a custom determined exterminators doomsday origin i played when the origin came out force spawned in my current game, they control 1/3 of the galaxy and have wiped out a fallen empire
I think that's what happened in my last game! Had a neighborl who expanded like crazy and then the next time I opened my star map they were gone and I didn't even get a notification they were gone. It might also have been a spiritualist fe cleansing them for taking a holy world. No idea how they died
If you fart is smelly enough you can still small it in the wind
Yeah AI Doomsday rarely survives. The AI don't realise they would have to settle for the low habitability planets they would rather spread out significantly first only settling the high habitation worlds before moving onto to the mid habitability worlds and finally the low habitability worlds only if they can't expand anymore
I had that happen too. My northern neighbor and I were allies, we had established embassies on eachothers' worlds, had some trade deals going, then... poof. Their homeworld explodes, and just like that their entire empire just vanished, leaving me and two other empires with the task of divvying up the territory that used to be theirs. I think I ended up getting their home system actually. Very sad.
For the Post-Apocalyptic Origin you can choose a Planet Type in the creation. Although you start in a tomb world, the world Type you chose ist still 80% habitable for your Pops. You get two habitable worlds. They are Just Not tomb worlds.
I just played that Origin and it worked.
Broken shackles is my favourite of the new origins. It's really good for wide and not particularly aggressive gameplay
I wish the specific events it can sometimes trigger didn't feel so opaque.
I have been playing Broken Shackles with Shared Burdens. They synergise really well.
"Not particularly aggressive gameplay"
My brother in Zarqlan, you're playing it wrong.
Suffer not the slaver, tolerate not the tyrant. The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of free men.
@@t2force212 yes yes liberated slaves now hanging their former opressors,based
@@ilovespongebob7840 why settle for just liberating the slaves when you can liberate all the workers, after all they are all slaves to the system
Secret call out! The explanations are a big part of why I like any tier list for any subject matter. Opinions are great but HOW you arrived to that conclusion is even more valuable.
My favourite is still doomsday with habitable worlds set on lowest setting maybe not the most optimal origin but its the funniest to play. Going from a crisis to the strongest empire. Even better if you can trigger the worm and resurrect your homeworld.
That.sounds.aswesome. Getting the Worm is difficult tho...
@@joheng01 yes i really dislike the fact that the devs made the worm so difficult to trigger. You used to be able to get a science ship go back and forth to a black hole to trigger it now i think its a 20% chance on a random blackhole i haven't been able to trigger it since that update. I get it for balance for multiplayer but its a fun single player event.
@@RedGearZ96 On the other hand, if you're going to cheese it anyway rather than let it occur naturally anyway, why not just use the console to force it to happen? You're effectively cheating either way, may as well save yourself some time :)
@@JaceMorley i still like to have it spawn randomly the problem is the odds are so incredibly small to trigger it, i think the devs should increase the chances of it spawning in single player if possible.
Always wanted to play a doomdays game but instead of finding a new homeworld I either terraform Mars or build a habitat in orbit.
Sadly I always die before I manage it.
Knights of the Toxic God may not be very good from a meta perspective, but it's easily the best origin still. I want them to do every origin like that with an awesome storyline.
Which other origins have a good storyline?
@@Ajay_S4 Imperial Fiefdom has quite a nice emergent storyline of a great empire in it's zenith, and the inevitable downfall.
@@Ajay_S4 On the Shoulders of Giants has a good storyline too, though you don't get to make choices regarding it
I hope not. Those big story chains should be stuff you can find on galaxy as any empire like worm in waiting. Putting them as origins just waste an origin slot for a story that is only interesting first time you play it. And it goes against main strength of Stellaris. An empire is your own creation but those very railroaded origins basically lock you into developers OC.
@@Botar48 more story stuff out in the galaxy is a good thing, but some stories are specifically tied to the pre spaceflight development of empires. that stuff is interesting and by definition NEEDS to be part of the origin.
The only use I've found for calamitous birth is with terravore since you don't care about the habitability of worlds you're eating and the early pops compound for a great start, but it falls off later and there are probably more useful starts that achieve the same early boosts (like even doomsday).
If you go for decreases in blocker costs, you can stack them and get a bunch of free pops for like, 97 (iirc) minerals when you clear them off.
Now they have normal colony ship too. So you can colonize with it your "useless worlds" which has 5-16 size and gather your lithoids from blockers.
I'd argue common ground is slightly better now given you can choose fed type. The biggest roadblock for trade based empires in the early game is getting federations unlocked then finding another empire or just creating your own. You can essentially start out maximising consumer goods, energy and unity.
I think this'd be very interesting if it were available back when trade empires were meta.
Also you forgot to mention that Ocean Paradise has ocean world frequency over life seeded. You stand a better chance of finding ocean worlds than you do gaia worlds, which goes without saying, but it's a massive advantage.
Ocean Paradise, with your species having Aquatic, Angler, Catalic Processing = fantastic alloy and consumer goods income. Gets even better when you choose the Hydrocentric ascension perk. I've been playing a roleplay, with these traits and it is fantastic fun
Going even further and grabbing agrarian idyllic (after getting anti grav tech ofc) is also fun. If a bit boring because you're now pacifist.
@@grafeugenius then putting guaranteed habitable world's to zero causes no extra frozen world's lol
I'll keep asking for more love for the Galactic Doorstep Origin. First Contact was maybe the BEST opportunity to improve it and still... nothing.
Next non-expansion patch, I really hope they do a sort of Origin Rebalance for a bunch of them. Remnants and Galactic Doorstep especially, maybe look at the way that Common Ground and Hegemon work. Syncretic Evolution just doesn't work with the way current population mechanics work, imo.
I love the Galactic Doorstep origin for having gateways super early on, but I really hope Paradox gives it some love. For example, maybe it could cost less time and resources to build gateways? Maybe getting the techs would have a cost reduction, or you could get gateway activation for free?
This used to be my favorite origin before I got DLCs. It would be pretty cool if it gave an empire-wide modifier like a small 10% discount on all future Gateway constructions or something
If it made gateways dirt cheap and quick to make, but made your hyperlane speeds abysmal, I think it'd be a very interesting experience
I think they did it this way because the gateways make this empire instantaneously powerful by midgame if you can construct them at critical defensive points. If you're graced with an inner empire that only has one hyperlane exit and a handful of planets near your homeworld, orbital rings guarantee massive shipbuilding capacity hidden behind a bristling wall of defenses. I've played games this way where I have been able to replace a major fleet in 200 days or less and deploy to my defensive lines in another 30 days. Gateway on my Homeworld basically means I can station all of my fleets over my capital and wait for the enemy to come to me, without getting trapped in the wrong battle.
Even after over two years of content production Montu can't believe that a lot of people are watching his videos in their entirety. 🥰
Another good point with shattered ring is when you get mega engineering you can repair a segment and this counts a fully completed megastructure for you to get galactic wonders, can easily shave a decade or two off unlocking it (unless like the other guys I play with that always get a ruined mega structure next to their home system...... and cybrex...)
I love the concept of the mechanist origin, but it needs to start with machine templates researched and have droids as the permanent research option in order to be roughly equivalent to and competitive with the overtuned origin and teachers of the shroud origin. Right now it makes the two synthetic ascensions the hardest to get a head start in using the appropriate boosting origin.
I think it's worth noting that void dwellers also have horrible stability at game start, which is actually a pretty massive impact on your earlygame capabilities
Yeah I tried void dwellers once because I heard it was good...and it seemed absolutely horrible. I guess it's good if you know what you're doing, but I sure didn't
tf? i have literally never had any issue with stability lmao
@@ArousedRat1 would you mind beginning a new game as void dwellers and then posting your stability in all 3 habitats?
@@orirune3079 Habitats get extremely powerful later because you can build them in orbit around any planet, and if you find one with motes, gas, or crystals then you get a nice boost to your production with the buildings. What makes Void Dwellers difficult is the fact that habitats are extremely small at the beginning, and you can't unlock new building slots just by building a habitation district like you could with city districts. It's hard enough to play that I haven't seen my two AI empires ever build more habitats, but the last time I tried it I was able to stabilize my economy and amenities issues within the first few years. The key is getting build slots unlocked quick with key tradition picks and picking up Voidborne as soon as you can.
For Teachers of the Shroud, you talk a lot about it bonuses it gives, but then you off handedly mention you get some rare crystals which "can be used nicely for some scouting right at the start of the game", but it felt odd to not talk about what those rare crystals are actually for: Which is to build the Shroud Beacon to get yourself a sorta wormhole/L-Gate-esque thing to one of the Shroud Enclaves which hopefully is some distance away. This lets you have a second area to expand to if you can get to it first, which helps lessen the risk of getting cut off early on a hyperlane choke point by other empires.
It's less of a risk but it's also a 50/50 shot of having the second area claimed by the time you get cut off. Which makes it only good for a invasion route.
...yeah I tried to do this but around 2210 I got a psionic entity spawned in my home system which pretty much ruined the game
@@Supreme-no2yeyou gotta open your borders
I recently got back into Stellaris and found out the hard way that enemy fleets can use that gate
I love the Post-Apocalyptic start. I don't know if there is some kind of hidden algorithm but every time I play it I find plenty of tomb worlds. Also, what was seemingly forgotten is that you get to settle on tomb worlds ON TOP of whatever your homeworld originally was. Usually I roleplay as post-apocalyptic humans...so my settling options are incredible broad early on and allow me to expand rapidly. This includes, as I wrote, usually a fair number of tomb worlds and often systems with multiple of them.
As someone who plays Remnants a lot, I thought about it, and I feel the best balance for it in the new game would be for them to make it *the* Archaeotech origin. Like perhaps giving you a buncha minor artifacts as a start, and maybe your corvettes at the beginning also start with some archaeotech stuff installed on them with the tech to make more and boost from that ascension perk built in to it all. Of course it could be balanced as necessary.
After all, if you're starting as a 'remnant' in-universe, why don't you have access to some of your old tech? Shouldn't you have managed to scrounge *some* of it? Perhaps a balance could be that you *only* have access to archaeotech stuff to start, and you have to research/remember how to *make* regular stuff again, because otherwise once you run out of minor artifacts, you could be quite SOL and unable to build anymore ships until you do.
Hegemon and Common Ground are quite powerful if you like to play without Guaranteed Habitables, as your federation members always spawn anyway. Common Ground can also be pretty good for a meme trade build allowing you to rush headlong into the Trade League policy
Mechanists, teachers of The shroud, and overtuned is perfect ascension trio of origins.
I just started a Fear of the Dark run today, and I LOVE the flavor it brings to the game. Looking forward to the midgame events!
Knights of the Toxic God is definitely better than C Tier.
The extra Growth from the Habitat means that the pop disadvantage is actually a pop advantage.
The only disadvantage is the early energy and alloy malus. But this can be offset by having access to 6 Merchant Jobs in your habitat in addition to getting tons of research from these Knights.
Its a perfect Tech Rush. And after some time you actually get a alloy bonus (that theoretically stacks infinitely).
Agreed
Subterranean is absolutely busted when combined with lithoid hive-mind and a budding(lithoid version) trait. It's probably one of the strongest strats there are.
Hegemony becomes S+-tier on non-scaling Grand Admiral difficulties, because it scales with AI bonuses. You don't want to kill your "friends", at least not early. Think of it as an easy guaranteed ability to rush 2-3 other empires early even with almost no investment in ships. Just set a small fleet to have the AIs follow you and they'll easily 2v1 pretty much anything. From there you release conquered planets as vassals and leech their vast difficulty-boosted income. Having fully-populated worlds is also vastly better for Megacorps, a Branch Office constructed in 2200 will produce far more resources than a colony would for decades and costs no alloys to get going, further playing into the rushing research or alloys mentality. It turns out getting +140 energy a month from almost the start of the game is pretty good. You're also going to find your targets FAST, because you have 3 empires exploring and deciphering enemy transmissions.
Try it, it literally makes the hardest starts in the game almost trivial. 1k research by 2220 is possible.
As a newbie I'm starting out with the payback origin with some friends! I chose the orbital habitat and I'm curious to see how that goes! Your idea of making it an army ship and taking over a neighbor is a really interesting way to go. I might do that next!
Thanks SO much for the breakdown of all the origins! Love the content and keep up the VERY helpful and amazing work!
Common ground is goated as a megacorp. Two customers right next door, not to mention crazy unity and consumer goods production from trade league.
Money money money
Inperial Fiefdom is much better.
Progenitor Hive origin single-handedly got me into playing and loving Hive Minds. The progenitor ship early game is a bit rough with the need to use up alloys to tug-boat your ships around. But by mid-game or if you take Subspace Ephapse, you have enough naval capacity to have have more than 1 offspring in every fleet, plus still have tug-boats. But the passive leader exp is so powerful especially for Admirals since hives don't have trade value and don't earn much from preventing piracy. Couple that with hive leaders starting younger and you get more time with powerful leveled leaders.
These videos are so fun! I never quite got into Stellaris, but your videos are drawing me in. Seeing all these lists make me want to try them out, particularly the lower-ranked or RP-focused ones.
I feel like common ground is pretty strong for megacorps. Start out with trade league and easy branch offices
I wish they'd make origins for some of the more basic scenerios like "global conquest" where a single nation conquered the home planet or even one where the home planet wasn't unified yet, and you can have multiple rival empires from the same home planet that can eventually unify through events.
I have learned the joys of pairing Slingshot to the Stars with Stargazers.
I like to imagine the empire I made for that has a “jebediah Kerman mentality” when it comes to exploration: eagerness to the point where it’s funny.
On accord of acheodigging, the building is amazing. Artefact fleets can overwhelm GA purifiers in the beginning
I would love to see an updated species trait tier list!
Post apocalyptic retains your normal world type preference doesnt it? So you get your original planet type plus you effectively get tomb world preference on top of that
Yes, it does. It's actually a pretty good origin to be honest.
Honestly Gaia is way better than most realise, I Have a build where I can get gas extractors by year 11 with 350 science output. I almost always have 1k science by year 35 if there is no war and ofc my empire size is not even close to 100, but if I get lucky and roll adv labs early then I can get it by year 30, if there is war tho on the horizon then it usually hovers around 6-700ish. Plus in the late game when you turn it into an ecu you can end up with over 3k alloys a month from just your capital, since its so big, so all your other planets can be used for everything else, pretty neat to have against all crisis on 25x
Also something else to point out is that you can just colonise worlds anyway and build robots on those worlds and only keep one of your origin species on that planet initially as a colonist until robot is built. and if you get lucky enough to form a migration treaties with other empires then the main downside is pretty much gone.
I like playing galactic doorstep as a mercantile empire. It unlocks gateways early and reliably, allowing me to ignore piracy very early on as i build gateways in my trade hub starbases
The Payback origin has given me several +5 energy and mineral space mining nodes in the home system every time I've started it. Makes the early game economy really easy.
One thing you didn't mention with the Gaia start, though its VERY situational. If you get the Baol as a precursor, it gets a little better not sure enough to make it go up a tier, but it's an easy precursors chain, and the relic is a lifesaver fot Gaia start.
I've psionically ascended to the secret callout
Offtopic, in my last 3.6 game i got the Grand Herald. Felt super nice, even though it was very late in the game, all he did was fill up my titan limit.
What really bothered me about Broken Shackles is that the many different species have pretty bad resource output due to their habitability-preferences. But I guess you could play around that with relative ease by just colonizing the remaining two different types of planets and resettling the pops or something.
And Fear of the Dark also has a very nice bonus imo. You can get gifted 90% of the cloaking tech basically in the first year, which is nice for combat (though difficult because of the high cost, not to mention the need of rare resources for military ships) but also for exploration if you want to find ruined megastructures, Relic- or Gaia-Worlds early on and work toward them, because you can go through other empires that have their borders closed and also through random enemy fleets, even marauder empires, since they won't have any detection tech.
And you can finally catch your 2 missing animals for a jear worth of research, yay.
Slingshot to the stars might be quite excellent in a defensive manner. You would near guarantee 100% accuracy on your own systems which are nearby, so the question is in how much fleet power that 50% fire rate translates in battle (and thus how much necessary economy). It might make an even more unappealing target for conquest early-game than Subterranean, as instead of long-term attrition, the catapult might have the potential to really punish concentrated fleets.
At 11:30, in addition to your Guaranteed Habitables gaining the Colonial Remnants modifier, they have a chance of generating a random anomaly/event feature on each planet. These features range from the tame Harvester Fields (+6 agriculture districts), Impact Crater (+3 mining districts), and Organic Landfills (+4 generator districts and +10% society from jobs), to the very nice Ancient Bombardment Craters/Ruined Particle Accelerator (+20% physics from jobs and 2 free researcher jobs), Ancient Battlefield (+20% engineering from jobs and 2 free researchers), and Mutant Landfill (+20% society from jobs and 2 free researcher jobs).
The "Common Ground" origin should have a higher rank since it is very friendly to new players. It can provide the safest early stage environment because we have two allies help us defend and attack.
My fav origin is definitely The Void dwellers, it drastically changes your gameplay in my opinion and if you overcome housing crisis early on, you're gonna be probably absolutely bonking on every other empire in every possible aspect, or thats at least how my multiplayer experience goes :D
With Fear of the Dark I lost my homeworld because my maximum fleetpower was 1.5k (you need 2k strength). I played the sol start, so my Haven was a size 13 Mars and pretty much full once I took them over. If I'd known what would happen I would have switched to Purifier, but right now I'm a fanatic xenophile empire with 30% xenophobe pops and the normal penalties from the origin are still active.
Awesome for roleplay but absolutely crippling right now. Atleast I got some early cloaking tech out of it. Though I would have liked to become Purifier after my homeworld got destroyed (it makes no sense that my people choose the compassionate way and then billions of them die and they are just fine with that, especially weird because most of my pops are technically citizens of Mars/Haven)
So for quick reference:
*S Tier:* Clone Army, Scion, Necrophage, Imp Feifdom, Progenitor Hive
*A Tier:* Pro Uni, Resource Consolidation, Void Dwellers, Teachers of the Shroud, Overtuned
*B Tier:* Lost Colony, Mechanist, Tree of Life, Giants, Dragon, Slingshot, Broken Shackles, Fear of the Dark
*C Tier:* Remnants, Syncretic Evolution, Post-Apoc, Shattered Ring, Ocean Paradise, Cave Dwellers, Toxic God, Payback
*F Tier:* Galactic Doorstep, Life-Seeded, Calamitous Birth, Common Ground/Hegemony, Doomsday.
this should be on top / or in the video summary..
Broken Ring is pretty good if you are, for example, doing a one system challenge or are otherwise expecting growth opportunities to be limited.
Proud owner of the secret call out card! Can't believe I missed this video when it first came out. I'm shocked that I didn't even disagree with you even once. Lol. Great video!
I got the secret call out. I super like the relic world start, so I am super peeved that it got nerfed so badly when I was expecting a buff. I keep getting roffel stomped at the start, so I think i need to take a new start.
i'm playing Fear of the Dark right now
i think it should be in A tier because the other planet deploy a big cloaked fleet in your home system and can give you ressources if you start lacking them
My main problem with shattered ring, and to a lesser extent remnant, are that it takes so long to get the tech and resources needed to convert your home world to the special version with the cool districts that it fucks the planet up when you do it
Love your tier list they always help break down changes for one of my favorite grand strategy games, thank you for all you do, that said; made it to th3 call ou7.
Damn your videos are amazing. So helpful, clear, accurate, and humorous. Thank you Montu.
I've played a remnant orgin since the patch came out and still had the tech boost for clearing the blockers
I got to say I made gateways work to the best of my ability. I constucted them on my main chokepoint/fleet gathering points so my entire armada of fleets could get to nearly anywhere in little time. And its been useful while having a medium sized empire in a medium sized map
I think extra timestamps for each origin in each tier might help sort it better in edition to the tiers....
Maybe as a pinned comment post?
Necrophage reminds me of the Wraith from Stargate Atlantis...be curious to try that out.
I see them as Goa'uld, but both races fit.
@@o-mangaming5042 I suppose so, tho the Necrophage shows 'feed off other sapient life', while the goa'uld parasites tend to mind control their hosts. Tho I guess since you can also enslave, seems to be the case...goa'wraith lol.
Has Montu done a Vassal Types tier list video? I know he’s done tons of tier lists videos (and I’ve watched all of them) but I’d like to know what vassal to be! I mean, aherm…what Vassals to get, because I would never be a lowly vassal…
(Edit) It may be worth noting that I am a console player that just got the Overlords DLC a few days ago…
become a bulwark. They're so good to be!
And don't make bulwarks, unless you can handle the economic noose around your neck. You probably want one of each of the other two specialists for the nice bonuses, and then as many satrapies as you can get (or just regular vassals if you dont have the Kahns throne)
I think subterranean is B or even A tier. I don’t think he mentions this but it’s like masterful crafters in that it gives you .33 of a building slot per mining district. You can stack this with masterful crafters and have infinite building districts. Lastly if you play lithoids you don’t have to deal with the organic growth speed deficit. Tho it does mean the minimum habitability doesn’t do anything
Also no food
Would be cool if Paradox gave more flavor to Gateway origin, like your species finding out they were actually a part of a massive galactic empire in a distant past that got separated and lost their history to a cataclysmic event that separated them and maybe some cool path that enables you to have some type of resurgance as you find out more about your past.
I just recently bought most of the dlc on sale and have put inmy first 30 hours. Everything's new to me but I'm excited to try the broken shackles origin as it seems really fun to play
In my first go at Broken shackles I had set an empire I had been playing with the Eager Explorer civic to force spawn and I noticed early on it wasn't moving so figured obviously the AI can't figure out how to move. But since they were stuck I guess the AI had no choice but to optimize the system and in a few decades later I was surprised because they were suddenly number 2 in diplo weight in the Galactic Community
I like to start as a mechanist and then soon as possible get into genetics. The population growth and spread you can achieve is crazy. Maybe a silly combo, but I find it work good.
Hey there, nice video. I wish paradox will add an option to select the origins allowed for the random empire generated. Personally i will always disable Common Ground and Hegemony, i feel like it takes some of the surprise when a federation might be formed.
17:40 It's mistake: Cave Dweller have +50% Species Minimum Habitability and Noxious +30% Species Minimum Habitability and if we're lucky Voidling will give us +20% Species Minimum Habitability, so we can have 100% Species Minimum Habitability BUT Lithoid Hive Mind with Ascetic civic have 75% habitability on game start. I tested this HM yesterday starting as Subterranean on Desert planet when I colonized Ocean world. I suppose that the technologies that give us 4x+5% habitability will allow us to permanently +95%.
I don't think you gave Subterreanian a Fair Shake.
If you go lithoid, you can effectively colonize tombworlds at 50% and function just fine. All the minerals you could even need for your "Live Everywhere" Lithoid bastards is all around them, and they don't suffer from the biological pop debuff. Whenever I play this origin, the only thing I really notice that holds me back is amneities early and mid game, but a single art mega structure *pretty much* sorts this out.
It's pretty great for alloy production too.
Honestly, it deserves to be in B tier. It's not TOTALLY insane, but it's really good- and great for lithoids.
Don't know if this would be be an effective strategy or not, but I plan to try and mainline the following build / protocols in tournament play.
To address the amenity issues you describe with Subterranean, & double down on the increased resource district size; I've paired it with the Agrarian Idyll civic at start. Using Technocracy (could've gone with Masterful Crafters for more building slots via the mining / industry district openers but Tech has more of an impact overall) as my second civic (picking Catalytic with gene Ascension once the third is available to free up more minerals for the consumer goods behind scientific / unity upkeep via switching alloy production on food, making the farmers I originally relied on for amenities more relevant as well).
Also put Incubators on my species as a starting Trait to fix Cave Dweller (also thought of going Xenophobe too for the pop growth speed but currently Authoritarian due to being easier to please the faction), which itself will be resolved through the aforementioned gene Ascension. The increased building cost will also be fixed by opening with Prosperity, the real strengths of which are is its +5% bonus to all jobs; -5% specialist upkeep, & +5% bonus to specialists; so no opportunity lost there. I know Lithoid is the conventional thinking when this Origin is used, but not going that way either due to food having fewer uses than minerals (also mentioned upkeep switch previously). Plus it has more repeatable technology, buffing production in the long run (I know I could get around that with a matter decompressor, but megastructures are too much of a strategic target; & I'm still not confident in my ship designs / Tactical ability to present that much of an opening). Anyway apologies for the rambling, just my two cents on a great but sadly underrated part of this game we all enjoy lol😅. Penny for your thoughts? Regardless; have a great day!
I think you're over-selling the shortfalls on playing Common Ground and Hegemon as intended, particularly since CG now lets the player choose the federation type. Trade League on day one is quite strong, and hegemony and Martial Alliance both would have a very early fed fleet which your allies will build for. It's very sensitive to the placement not being terrible and getting completely boxed in, but it can make for very easy early wars and snowballing from there. It's very rare for an AI to stand up to a 3v1 or even 3v2 in the early game.
Yay secret callout
Neat, I came back after over 2 years of break from Stellaris and here, fresh for me a video help me out chose :P
I have to say I actually really like the Fear of the dark Origin, Incubators will make the start better
A big drawback for Progenitor Hiveminds is that the Ship-Malus also counts for your Science and Construction ships. Making early exploration and expansion painfully slow.
Ive always been afraid something bad would come through that gateway in that origin eventually so while im still new ive never played it, I've only been playing Voidborne over and over again. But i only have two DLCs.
Im a huge fan of ocean paradise. It’s great with anglers and just in general very fun to play
Love the call out. :) I agree with the list, particularly after hearing the explanations.
Migration treaties can potentially make life seeded and shattered ringworld better by giving you the chance to colonize planets with other species(and, at least in 3.6, you don't have to actually have a pop of them in your empire, you just need a treaty). It's still not ideal but it makes these origins IMO a bit more viable(albeit quite dependent on having the luck of someone nearby who will give you a treaty). You just have to not be xenophobic and play nice with some other empires at first.
Gaia is C tier. You can use the gaia world advantage to build a large fleet to rush another empire for normal pops.
Montu addresses this...
@@ZeroDMs_ correct. still pretty effective and reliable imo since rushing a capital doubles your pops.
*colonies are a burden for the first few years, so no big loss short term
37:58 👍 I always watch the full video and put it on while I work from home. Stellaris has become my favorite game now and I love creating new empires or role-plays.
I wish I could get two origins at the same time.
For example Relic Necrophages, because why not.
Pretty sure you can with mods
Same. But that wold most likely need yet another type of national distinction during setup. One for the species itself, & another for the world that civilisation starts on. Don’t think the development team is ready to give players that much granularity yet, if only due to the balancing hell such an option would open up. Great idea though! 😊 Would totally go Subterranean & on the Shoulders of Giants if I could!
Im really loving the remnant start more and more lately. I take the trait for 15% more energy production to help offset the upkeep from the building, and between my homeworld and a precursor thing i typically have a guarenteed 5 minor artifacts a month generated early on I can sell every 10 months for more energy credits.
I dont think its as good upfront as it used to be, but it lets me smoothly transition into archeotech weapon systems fast.
i combine it with eager explorers to have a building replaceing my research labs, and still get that tasty sublight speed bonus. Bonus RP points my speices already knows whats out there and getting back in the galaxy sooner is worth the trouble. starting with jump drives is fun, even if its not the strongest way to play.
Shattered ring with machine empires is genuinely amazing
Lost colony + human portrait + sol system
Lost colony + human portrait + fear of dark sol start( 4 planet)
That's Sol abuse right there.
Been tinkering with overtuned hivemind and you can do some pretty insane expansion. For 4 points and 40 years of lifespan you can get up to 40% habitability, 60% pop growth and -20% housing with damn the consequences. So pretty much if you can balance your food and minerals you can expand every planet in sight pretty early. Then if you want you can either counter the lifespan penalty with cybernetic ascension or go bio and get truly bonkers growth/assembly.
See I enjoyed the Ocean Paradise one, he didn't mention it in the video, but you get a nebula as part of your starting system so you can grab extra minerals, it also covers (usually) one or two other areas as well. The most broken park about it though is that depending on how many systems you have with ice in them, the larger you can inflate your world by building space stations with ice mining on them. Lets you turn your homeoworld into an OP economic powerhouse. Plus you get bonuses for teraforming artic worlds which it spawns all around you and you can shape them as you please. Your economy will explode very fast. I love it
I feel like with how much precursors can change a play through there should be some way to guarantee certain precursors, like civics or origins not sure how you would balance it though
Should be able to choose it the same way you can choose the Crisis when you start a new game. (Unless that was a mod I was using to do that? I can't remember.)
@@Kasaaz You can choose the crisis, that's not a mod.
From what I understand, all the precursors are in every game. Which one you get is supposed to depend on your starting location.
Thanks very much. I'm currently having fun with my underground hive. But it was nice to hear the whole overview.
So here's an idea for a vid:
Origins Tier List for AIs. Tiering them on how well the AI use the origins.
Why is that useful? Well, for when you want to set up a game a certain way with AIs. When you want to make an AI buddy to play with or an AI villian of your story to fight against.
So here's my rough draft for AI empire origins:
F Tier: Don't give AIs these origins unless you really hate them. They do NOT know how to use these origins properly (if there even is a 'proper way to do this origin' in the first place with some things,) and will end up failing a lot of the time.
Shattered Ring: Even as a robot empire, the AI fails to take advantage of the new system, so they play it the way it was in 3.5: very poorly. Giving them this origin is almost assuredly a death sentence.
Life Seeded: They do SLIGHTLY better with this than they do with shattered ring. SLIGHTLY. But not really. Unless they get lucky with prims (which might not be the case anymore with the rework), they are going to be very weak.
Doomsday: As you might have guessed, the AIs can't seem to figure out "oh, yeah, I should move my pops before my world go boom." So they end up flatlining because of it.
Overtuned: You'll have to do the tuning for them, because the AIs have no clue whatsoever on how to genetically modify themselves decently. In fact you'll want to avoid giving them this just because you really don't want the AI doing any sort of genetic modification because they'll create 10-20 different types of their main species and cause lag. So avoid this one like the plague if you're making an AI empire.
Toxic God: Yeah, they ... suck with this. THey suck economicwise, they suck fleetwise, they just... suck. They keep the quest for the toxic god in regular funding mode, and never take it off. ... Look, this origin was meant to be a story origin. Experienced... by players. The AI gets almost nothing out of this. There is no reason at all to give an AI this origin.
Void Dwellers: You'd THINK they'd be very good with this, since the AI just LOVES to spam habitats. But noooo, they don't do jack with this.
Clone Army: "Durrrrr how do me made clon vate? Me no dunno lol me die now 'cus me iz dum clon!" Yeah that's the AI using Clone Army in a nutshell. They have no idea how this works, so they'll keep colonizing the same planet over and over and over and over again, until they invade a prim world, get some sort of migration pact some other way, or become decendant (they always do); and then they'll just operate like a (rather weak) normal empire.
C tier: They do okay with these. Not good, but not terrible either.
Galactic Doorstep: They don't seem to run into the problems that players do, so there really isn't any good reason not to give them these, not that there's a good reason TO give them this.
Syncredtic Evolution: Nice if you want to start an empire out with some slaves, but that's about it, really.
Post-Apoc: Nothing to say about it. Nice if you give them the civic that turns planets into tomb worlds, but that's about it.
Cave Dwellers: I've never seem them do too hot with this, but not too bad either. Then again they do take full advantage of the 50% habitability floor.
Tree of life: Because the Tree of Life is automatic, they do decently with this one. Nothing to write home about though.
Calamitous Birth: They do use the lith asteroids, but they don't really take advantage of it by clearing the blockers made by it. If they did, this might get kicked up to c tier.
Payback: Yeah, they're just... bad with this, as to be expected. Don't expect a payback AI to become a powerhouse. They get a high fleet count due to the enlightenment ship (which they almost always turn into a ship. And thanks to Minamar's AI stupidity, will always end up being the last of its kind.) But are complete crap in all other matters.
Especially compared to their broken shackles co-origin.
Slingshot: They don't take much advantage of the Slingshot, at least that I've seen, nor of the ability.
B Tier: They do fairly decently with these. Better than the C tier.
Lost Colony: Oddly enough, the one that usually spawns with this is the COM. Which means it's hard coded to spawn the UNE, which usually stomps. And even if they aren't, they still get the 'same species' dip bonus.
Syncretic Evolution: I am not entirely sure how, but they somehow make this one work for them. Not the best you can give them, but they work out. At least until the rebels start popping up.
A tier: The AIs know how to do well with this, or it's too straightforward for them to muck it up.
Broken Shackles: Despite the early game disadvantage, they seem to blaze through it, and the extra pop types means they can colonize just about everything, which they WILL do. As long as one of them doesn't end up with the noxious trait, they will end up doing rather well, especially if they find some quick allies (which they most likely will.)
Pro Uni: There is a REASON this is the one AIs pick the most: Because it's powerful enough for them to take advantage of, and too straightforward for them to muck it up.
Necrophage: Yeah, they're rather nasty with this. Not ZOMG WTF BROKEN nasty, but still nasty. As an aside, this is one of the few times where I've actually seen fan purs actually last into the midgame.
Progenitor Hive: Unlike with Clone Army, they actually have enough ai brain to build progenators. Not immediately though, otherwise they'd be S tier, but they WILL get around to it at some point.
Mechanist: They definitely understand this origin, and they will run away with it.
Ocean Paradise: You think they would be bad with this, but no. They're actually quite great with it. Not overwhelmingly so, but still....
Here Be Dragons: They never did the dragon exploit (not that it would even work anymore), but even when it was still possible, they were a pain to play against. And lord help you if they're still around when they tame it, because they will rampage with it.
Though it doesn't stop them from getting vassalized, and if they get the case of _revolutionitus_, the dragon won't really do jack for the new regime.
S Tier: Give AIs this if you want your game to be grindingly nasty. Or your allies to be godlike.
Common Ground/Hegemony: Okay, now this is a complete reversal. This is in the top tier?! HOW?! Allow me to explain.
When this spawns, it spawns 3 empires. Now, most players will complain that it eats up your habitable worlds, and boxes you in. Which is fair enough criticism. However, what they fail to realize is that even if one of the fed members will get boxed in, at least ONE won't. And that one or two can carry the whole thing. They also get the avantage of having 2-3x the navy of most empires (thanks to their federation) which means they (hegemonies especially) are VERY aggressive when it comes to subjugation/liberation wars, which only serves to increase the federation further. And, especially if they don't start boxed in, they are VERY good at coordinating expansion. This also means they're bound to have migration treaties, research agreements, the works, which starts them off very strong.
Imperial Feifdom: God help you if anything spawns with this right next to you, because you are 6 methods of FUCKED. Not only do they have all the strengths of Common Ground/Hegemony AIs, but they have it in spades. Luckily, they are on a timer, and when that timer is up, they fracture into quarrelling, bickering nationstates, all ripe for the taking.
Scion: Yes, they are every bit as nasty as Scions as players are.
Listened to the whole video. Great job as always
Shattered ring will always be S tier for me because of the book Ringworld by Larry Niven.
This guy gets it.
Life Seeded could be useful if you get that new system that has 6 gaias in it close by.
h-huh?!?
@@purpleisthesneakiest The Helios system or something, it's a race that have no space travel and live outside the hyperlane systems. They have collected 6 gaia worlds from all over and they will pay you one size 25 (planet X) that they have stolen from sol to be left alone.
@@purpleisthesneakiest new primitive, they're basically solarpunk
The only time I picked Life-Seeded was when I wanted to do a one-planet playthrough.. Then I found Baol, back when they could change other worlds into Gaia worlds with a simple click. Suffice it to say, that game was pretty easy after that. When pre-cursors align with what you play, the game is absolutely bonkers.
Don't forget that habitability issues can also be countered with migration treaties and colonizing with those immigrants, so some ethics starts can simply ignore the problems with habitability from Gaia Preference and Void Dweller.
Situational yes.
But it seems pretty good as a situational thing. Sounds good for coop if you find your friend with opposite habitability type and migration treaty him.
Vassel origin as prospectorum is actually best machine start. Prospect traits stay when it dissolves which means you can gather a bunch of +20% energy,mineral,and ALLOY production traits on immortals allowing a backlog of extra governors with it along with all that conquest you'll be doing with a permanent 20% alloy. With an easy 75% research subsidy early game and often +20 of every strategic resource from orbitals the job efficiency goes through the roof through midgame. I don't see how one good world matters to machines compared to so many empire wide buffs when you're going to be able to have a ton of colonies anyway.
Frozen worlds can be used to buff the size of your ocean world for ocean paradise.
I love calametous birth with terravore. You can just smash into a planet, eat it for resources and free pops and then send em back to ur core planets. By far the strongest empire run I have ever had I steamrolled everyone
Great list. I made it to the secret call out and enjoyed the video a lot :-) Only comment is that I built a lot more science ships than usual when playing Fear of The Dark and I actually felt that I got some nice stuff from the Fear of The Dark bonuses regarding anomalies. I guess that if you explore a lot it's good, and if not, it's as you say not.