Democracy Is Overpowered In Stellaris 

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"Become my Vassal so i can protect you." "Protect me from what?" "From what my FUCKING DRAGON will do to you if you dont."

I love democracy.

Step 1. Use bug to get unlimited unity Step 2. Talk to Here Be Dragon super early by having 6 ascension perks Step 3. Having overwhelming fleet power super early because dragon is on your side lets you do whatever you want politically, including federations

My allegiance is to the Republic, to Democracy!

"The developers turned the % modifier into a flat reduction..." I immediately said "oh no" when you said this. I think I know where this is going, particularly after you said don't colonize.

The Rakatan Infinite Empire was a nice touch, for those who don't know it is a faction in the old expanded Star Wars universe that conquered the galaxy a long time before the present setting.

Who knew democracy was so unethical in stellaris. Love it

For those who wonder 'why are Paradox using players as beta-testers???' I'd say part of it is that the playerbase seems to love to find ways to break their games.

I love the implications of a Admiral on a dragon, is he like riding throughout the galaxy destroying the enemies of democracies with his liberty loving beast

Start of the video: ok, thats strange ....how would he do that? Mid: U DUCKING WHAT??

Dragon diplomacy, when gunboats aren't enough.

Stellaris 3.8.4 Empire Size now has a floor of 50, and thus can no longer go negative. :D

Time to hunt some achievements then.

Imagine working at Paradox, showing up on a monday morning after having a rough weekend to be briefed by your manager that Montu broke the game again.

So that's Star Wars with the "Sith win" ending. Overtake the republic, check. Use the force to gain absolute power over ancient super weapon, check. Force all neighbors into submission, check. Kill the rest, check. Bring eternal balance to the force. 😅

So basically all you have to do is reduce your empire size to paradoxical antimatter, remember to vote, make friends with a dragon, and then scare your neighbors with the immortal wyvern rider you managed to create. Why didn't I think of that?!

I thought I was watching Spiff for a moment from how perfectly balanced this strategy is

I love that you made the Rakatan Empire, a militaristic slaver empire, as an overpowered democracy. It's so beautiful.

I love trying Montu's builds out, I get to see how much worse I can make them go for me. Love the videos though.

My man Montu with the Star Ocean Anime Villan Build; with the egalitarian sacred order of the Sky Dragon, the galactic utopia/dystopia, merging with the sky dragon to become a star devouring monster and triggering an JRPG-Style galactic get-together to bring down the BBEG at the end of the universe...

A unity exploit, what a time to be alive. Now who said unity was useless lol?!

Mechanically this is nuts. Lore wise it's insane. Personally I love it.

Does destroying the galaxy really count as conquering it?

just need to so this vid is so well directed, had me on the edge of my seat the whole time, and more than a few "oh no!"s. well don't montu, fantastic work!

-“Please set your diplomatic stance to isolationist’ *proceeds to conquer the whole galaxy*

Each patch some poor dev is gonna have to be like "Alright what strange way is Montu going to abduct the dragon early this time?"

This is absolutely hilarious, Montu

One thing I didn't hear in the video was that at year 10, after you immediately gain the infinite unity, you should enact ALL of your agendas, by completing them early.

Paradox is like me, in that we both try to fix things and end up making it much worse.

You can combine this with holy covenant, harmony, and +unity civic (which can be earned by statecraft) with docile pops to cause pops to also give negative empire size. 85% from Ascension 10, 20% from a level 10 governor, and 10% from docile. If combining cybernetic with this despite spiritualist, you can add another 10% discount.

This... this is beautiful

Hrozgar should get a fixed Admiral so they could be elected in a democracy

"Oh no. Looking at all of these fleets. Isn't it dangerous? Well AcKtuRelLY no This dragon should be able to tank these *HUNDREDS OF Ks WORTH OF SHIPS* relatively easy" Absolutely gold 😂

As always, Montu proves his genius. I have got to try this at my next opportunity. It looks like even more fun than when he broke Knights of the Toxic God by offering prisoners jobs on the Order's space station before the patch.

Ive been playing for like 20 hours and never been attacked once. Even after switching to max difficulty/aggresiveness

"Rakata" "Infinite Empire" I understood this reference.

Imagine what the PDX programmer in charge of bounding the derived variables must have been feeling when they realized they didn't bind the empire size variable to greater than or equal to one?

I'm gonna be trying this ngl, I've been playing democratic even though it ain't really that good of a government type on stellaris but I like technocracy, I'm happy it finally became a meta.

It is pretty incredible that those empire size effects apply to idle leaders rather than only assigned ones

As soon as you said Infinite Empire, I was on board. And you did not disappoint.

“There seems to be some kind of bug…” was the dragon thing your first clue? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Excellent, as always :)

...what an absolute wild ride of a video.

If you want a version of this build that lets you take an ascension perk but doesn't let you do a full galactic conquest (if you only want to do half-cheese), you could take Teachers of the Shroud or Overtuned instead of Here Be Dragons. If you go Teachers, start researching Psionic Theory ASAP so you can have it by Year 10. If you go Overtuned, you'll start with Gene Splicing already. This will let you pick up Psionic Ascension and Genetic Ascension when you get your infinite unity, though it does mean no dragon. If you go Psionic and are lucky with your first Shroud event though, you may spawn a Psionic Avatar, which should also get you that huge fleet power needed to start vassalizing the AI.

... and separately, watching that dragon immortality battle reminded me of days in eve as a logi pilot; watching that armor rep kick in with every strike.

I am eyeing the Crusader civic, it fits perfectly with a Fanatic Egalitarian+Militarist build I have wanted to make work for a while.

I adore the KotOR reference. That's a deep cut

Nice touch on the “Infinite empire” with the “Rakata”. Not many know about them

WOW! Great job, PDX Games, I wonder what exploits based on clicking one button exist in Surviving Mars

I noticed the flag change between 1:00 and 2:00. Did it just take a couple tries to get your strat down?

You had me at "immortal dragon". Played off and on for years, and can safely say this will be the first time I will try out egalitarian 😂.

Lovely throwback to KOTOR with the Rakatan Infinite Empire

I like how your vassals rebel against you but still pay their taxes.

Really loved the Star Wars Legends reference!!

That infinite Unity gain is one of the most broken things I've seen. How you or anyone discovered it is beyond me XD

guess I go ahead a do this playthrough before the inevitable patch.

that admiral that rides the dragon? name them Miraak lol

Wish I knew this was patched out. Spent so long in the first 5 years (Was just going for the unity). When I finally got a precursor I wanted I went forward, then noticed that the minimum empire size is a fixed 50 now I keep forgetting people play this multiplayer so they *need* to fix the exploits fast x_x

Ah, back when aptitude didn't suck.

There is a great disturbance in the Force.

😂😂😂 quality quality assurance Paradox 👍

lol this felt more like a spiffingbrit video with the balance demonstration

This is spiffingbrit levels of shenanigans and I couldnt be happier

At negative sprawl some edicts generate rare resources or unity. Ise that info as you will.

Yeah, Paradox are going to crush this in a near instant. Because you went ahead and made a video Montu. Still they would notice sooner or later anyhow, all you've done is made it obvious sooner.

20:00 those vassel contracts should be put on halt...

I love the nods to TheSpiffingBrit XD

the admiral in my headcannon is the Protagonist from Ride on King 🤣🤣

I think I have an addiction to playing on Grand Admiral, I keep starting and dropping easy games where I play on Ensign at like year 1, or 2. But on Grand Admiral I keep playing until year 80-90 when I finally lose to the neighboring crisis aspirant, determined exterminators. Also, scaling mid game is pretty nice, gives me a chance to not lose straight away.

i dont normally interact with videos but this has made me kackle XD yeah ill like this

Admiral Kaleesie over here conquering everything on the back of the dragon 😂

love when im playing modded adn get -10k empire size, cool to see its in vanilla

That unkillable Dragon build reminds ke of how I play Necromancer in DiabloIV. Lifesteal is fun.

??? I thought I was watching Montu Plays and not the Spiffing Brit.

I noticed only a little bit of the Spiffing Brit creeping in to this video.

Authoritarian Empire -> Oligarchic Military Federation -> Ratiocratic Democracy. That is the ideal means to Galactic Conquest. You have to be completely dedicated to conquest and this may involve enslavement for any populations that resist you, in tun you provide citizenship like the Roman Empire. First they can pay for their own freedom and can continue to live freely given they don't resist the law, otherwise they are re-enslaved. Second, they can apply for citizenship but this requires service for the Empire similar to Rome. After you have conquered the Galaxy, you then turn towards being an Oligarchic Military Federation in order to maintain and develop the empire into becoming a coherent structure to itself as prior it was just a conquering military institution, you now need that military complex to serve the needs of those who have sought to become citizens and maintain this society in whole. Then you become a Ratiocratic Democracy, not just a Democracy, but a Democracy of Learned People who adhere to Reasonable Expectations and Interests to prevent Democracy from spirally into a madness upon itself. Ultimately, it is really more of a Ratiocracy in which Democracy comes about as a consequence of its achievements. A natural progression rather than one that forced upon a people. By the way, the same can apply to a planetary government and something we should do if we bother to dehumanize the sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists and borderline personality disorder dumbfucks within our population to make such a venture possible.

Glory to the infinite empire!

the virgin early dragon necromancy exploit VS the chad Dragon Anarchism President

can you look into shared burdens + clone army because of the pop growth and how many unemployed you get could that be a valid strategy?

My dragon communication was bugged once but after I finished the psionics tradition it suddenly contacted me to join me and give me the opportunity to hatch eggs myself. Well, I built dragon hatcheries but they as well were bugged and I wasn't able to make any more dragons

Stellaris was always broken, but paragons got it to the edge. Hilarious😂

0:47 "Hey! i understood that reference!"

This video brought to you by Spiffing Montu.

Love how your empire is the rakata

Montu how long until the leader trait tier list?? 😩 I cant wait any longer...

This is what they get for not making leader cap scale like starbase cap. Just make it a hard limit per pops in your empire; 5+(pop/50) or something. That way a thriving system with over 100 population could support one famous governor and scientist. You would still have sub 20 leaders for most of the game too.

I've made recently a negative starbase upgrade, but I don't recall if I was getting alloys when upgrading or if it was just a free upgrade

Grab your Yorkshire tea everyone! This is a worthy addition to the great tea drinking moment's like buying energy credits with energy credits .

Ah, yes, more star wars references! A surprise, but a welcome one

Spiff would be proud :D

I'm so glad that we have Montu to remind us of how fair and balanced Stellaris is.

You are very strong in the Dark Side of the Force, please, teach me Master!

"...and now Stellaris is perfectly balanced, as all things should be." Ladies and gentlemen, this exploit deserves to be watched with a nice warm cup of Yorkshire Tea because these are Spiff-level shenanigans!

I think this run has made the devs go home and rethink their life....

0:26 me haveing from start ruler with 20+ traits : yes.... balance.....of course......

They can fix this easily by just making the bonuses from the tradition only apply if a leader is assigned to a position, i.e. ship, planet, army, councilor. It's such an easy oversight that I'm really surprised it wasn't part of the design to begin with. Not to mention negative empire size keeps rearing its head over and over, how many times is it going to take for them to just hard cap the empire size reduction to zero?

Actually edict upkeep and costs also get negative when your anti-empire has an anti-size.

11:45 WTF 😂

You forgot to promote Yorkshire tea... 😛🤣🤣