Except for the fact that if you're Fanatic Spiritualist you can't have a third ethos.

I'm not saying spiritualist is bad either, I'm just saying they need to make some of the ethic choices better. As it is almost everyone takes either spiritualist or materialist, then get other stuff.

There needs to be some xenophile/phobe government types imo.

 

Didn't they add a bunch of bonuses to Xeno ethos in the last patch?

 

Not really, they took the 'gain influence from rivalries' from Militarist and gave it to xenophobe, and some stuff from pacifist and gave it to xenophile.

They're better then they were, sure. But they're still really weak.

 

Oops, meant second ethic, as I tend to think of the normal and fanatic ethics as separate.

Still, Spiritualist is strictly better than materialist because the 10/20% bonus from being Happy/Joyful affects everything compared to only getting a research boost from materialist. Food, research, energy, minerals. They're all boosted by the happy population.

It's probably OP, now that I think about it. It's probably even better than Collectivist, since you're not at risk of revolt, ethics divergence doesn't bother you (because moral democracy and communal affect everyone so the 10% from Fanatic Spiritualist isn't a huge loss) and you're only disliked by materialists, rather than everyone who doesn't go for slavery.

That said, I agree that the other ethics could do with a rebalancing.

 

Well, be fair to Materialist, Aekiel. They do get an awesome unique building. Also, when they can afford to get 90%+ Happiness, they would likely end up "strictly better" on larger planets where the loss of a building, or two, for the Happiness, is made up for by their relative bonuses. Of course, that only applies to research income and speed, so...

I still prefer Spiritualist myself, though. I like happiness, and Moral/Irenic Democracy + Grand Design's +25% Happiness neatly counters the Recently Conquered penalty, to generally avoid Factions being generated by conquered foes. Toss in a +Happiness and/or -Ethics Divergence Edict as needed, and even newly conquered enemies can see 60%+ Happiness values.

 

The fun part is that Moral / Irenic Democracy is Pacifist-based, so you can get guaranteed Happy even if you're Materialist... Add the Paradise Dome to that...

I'm predicting Moral/Irenic Democracy nerfs.

 

I think you're forgetting the advantage that having a unique building brings.

http://www.stellariswiki.com/Buildings#Ethos_.26_Government

The materialist building gives a flat 5% boost to all research, and +5 of each research type.

Happiness is good too though, for sure.

Edit to reply:

The problem with pacifist is it doesn't let you interact with stone age primitives at all.

Considering the absolutely massive boost they can give to research, I find I never play pacifist.

 

I am a fan of the Edict you can get from Pacifist(and Xenophile, I believe?), though, for +15% Minerals/-5% Energy. At least for Early~Mid game when Mineral income is quite important.

Aside from a couple of other factors, I do agree that Pacifist's policy limitations are definitely something to consider.

 

True, I just don't think it stands up to the happiness bonus. Like I said, Materialists get a decent research boost, Collectivists get bonus food/minerals, individualists get energy, but Spiritualists get to be good at all of those things at once. It's not a matter of trying to out-compete the specialists in their own field; it's that the generalist approach gets close enough that it devalues the speciality.

I mean, when you can turn all of your preferred worlds into 100% habitability, 100% happy worlds for your people and decently happy worlds for any immigrants... It adds up a lot.

 

I mean, you seem to be ignoring the advantages of robot pops.
They give:
Bonuses to minerals
Colonize ANY planet without regards to habitability
And if you're brave enough to risk Synths they give a flat 20% bonus to everything

Yeah, happiness games are good. But materialist is very strong as well, since you can colonize all those big 20~tile planets that are not suitable for your race at all.

 

That's true, but spiritualists can also get synths (they're just rare). It also means you've got to put a lot of research into getting what spiritualists have as standard.

 

With your happy spiritualist/pacifist build, you also really miss out on exploiting the stone age primitives.

Colonizing a SAP-world can give you like 40-100 society science REALLY early on. Like, I've had empire with 100+ society science within the first 10-15 years of a game starting.

Granted, those games are really lucky, but still.

That said, there's clearly benefits to both playstyles. I just wish the other ethos' were as important as spiritualist/materialist. All of the others seem kind of lacking...

 

That said, what you miss out on in primitives you can gain back with immigrants. Even materialist (though probably not fanatic) can reach max happiness in this regime. I've yet to test this out in-game, though, so I'm not sure how effective it could be. I'll have to build a Fanatic Spiritualist/Xenophile civ to give it a go.

 

I don't think you actually can gain back the massive society boosts with migrants....

I mean, yeah it can get you some new pops, which can be very nice. (Though, those treaties also tend to end with you losing some pops as well, usually your own already very happy pops.)

Well, ultimately both version are pretty fun. I've started out a super-happy fox race game... which is hilariously funny because I started next to another race that was pacifist-xenophile, who pretty much instantly said 'Allies? Allies please? LOVE ME SEMPAI!'

 

So, what sort of ship-building strategies are folks using now that corvette spam seems to be a lot less powerful? I've been going with mostly destroyers equipped with a single heavy lance and a couple point defense guns, along with a bit of battleship support for auras. Granted, most of my experience is vs AI, but lance weapons seem like the best in the game.

 

I tend to go with Particle/Tachyon lances where possible, with PD. Corvette's usually end up with Torpedos. (They are generally the best weapon, although Torpedos are also stupid powerful, since they ignore shields and do good damage even a corvette's small slot.)

Edit: Also, I tend to use a lot of battleships in my fleets. I usually have two 'types'.
One is a pure lance battleship, carries 6 lances and no support module.
--Upside is it carries two more lances vs 4 destroyers -which can only carry one lance per destroyer.
--1 Battleship = 8 Fleet Power, 1 Destroyer =2 FP [4 Destroyer's = 8 FP]
The other 'type' supplies the support aura's, and also carries 3 lances+ lots of PD. I use the same loadout for all the support aura's usually.
---Note: the picture were from a hyperlane only game. Wormhole games it's a lot easier to use this setup for ships because you don't need to waste ship power on the hyperdrives. In a wormhole game you can toss some extra torpedos in to replace some of the PD on the support-class.

Also, Aekiel. I've officially found a materialist set up that can more or less match the spiritualist ones for happiness. Materialist/Pacifist/Xenophile, with the charismatic/intelligent/weak/sedentary traits. Moral Democracy Government.

It is absolutely hilarious to play, and when you get robot pops it gets even more awesome. It's apparently known as the 'Friendly Mad Scientist' sort of government according to this one thread I found earlier.

Thread for reference:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/clarke-empire-design-guide-huge.945352/

 

On a semi-related note... Some information about likely upcoming Ethics changes

Not sure what to think about the Spiritualist changes, without further information on the changes to their governments, but with Happiness being shifted to scaling from 50%+, rather than hitting breakpoints(80/90% as now), makes the current Happiness bonus... somewhat less important? They might still be the sole source of +5% empire-wide from Void Clouds, though, which is a minor benefit.

Pacifists getting a somewhat unneeded buff, along with a potentially significant nerf, depending on how the war score cost scales. Fanatic Pacifists can only Vassal/Liberate(->Vassal)->Integrate, if they want enemy planets.

Ah, found a post with many more details about the latest stream discussing Asimov. Including scaling Influence cost for colonies outside your borders, and Frontier Outposts(examples given are 30 and 52, the same as a colony in the same place would be).

 

Sounds like pacifist's will benefit from trying to rush a bunch of colonies early on, since it'll be harder to expand later in the game for them.

I kind of look forward to happiness not being as important. It kind of limited how effective an aggressive player could be, since you'd either need to enslave the planets you conquered or spend time getting them happy.

Edit: I really hope they make xenophobe viable, somehow. Right now it's just useless, but I so very much want to play a true Imperium of Man and purge the xenos.

 

Looks good, man. I can see this being a really powerful build once Asimov goes through and Pacifist gets the static Happiness bonus from Spiritualist.

 

An interactive tech tree.