Stellaris Precursor Tier List 

Zroni deserve F tier because they seem to have a 0.1% chance of spawning on a spiritualist playthrough and a 70% chance on a materialist playthrough.

The Cybrex are my favorite. And the fact they're the only Precursors that survive since they can show up during the Contingency crisis.

Zron with Gestalt: the artifact resources are nice, I guess Zron with spiritualists: UNLIMITED POWER!!!

"Don't ask what Zro is made of people" just remove a few words at the start and you have your answer 😆

The main positive of getting the Baol is the story. I always hope to roll the Baol because the lore is so beautifully sad

Montu: gives a very detailed explanation for why something is either good or bad Also Montu, almost every time: "...However"

It’s pretty impressive how the Cybrex still stay as the top tier precursor despite a great many nerfs/redesigns over the years. That ring world is doing some SERIOUS lifting.

No other precursor but the Cybrex elicits a physical "Yesss!" reaction when you find that first situation.

The Cybrex mining station bonus isn't just minerals, it's any mining station. I had a good time with it and a few planets that started with mining stations and archeological sites, the bonus applied to minor artifacts once the deposit was added.

Don't forget that the Boal gives you up to 8 pops every time you use it. one for turning a planet into a Gia world and an extra desician (exclusive to gaia worlds) that turns four pops to a special gaia world preference that makes them produce +5% more resources AND four MORE boal pops. It's honestly one of the best relics in the game and is perhaps THE best precursor for genetic ascention since those cloning vats are so food hungry. and IMO turning food into more pops is the best use for that food.

Surprised you don't like the irassian shipyard. In my experience, the mega shipyard isn't always capable of replacing super late game losses quickly enough. The problem with supplementing it with regular shipyards is that the game doesn't seem to weight the mega shipyard throughput properly and the regular starbases become a chokepoint. This makes the irassian shipyards a good way to reclaim some of that lost bandwidth.

I honestly take the Archeotech ascension perk basically everytime solely for the ancient refinery buff. Everything else is just a bonus.

The Cybrex also make their grand return to the galaxy if you struggle against the contingency with a working ring world this time.

First time I ever played Stellaris I got Cybrex. I went into mega engineering and made a second ringworld. Then I found the system with another ringworld and was able to conquer it. Three ringworlds. The game was so easy.

Angler + Catalytic Processing + Baol. I think for that specific empire it could be awesome. You dont need any industrial districts.

I love it when I roll the First League and the Rubricator.

A correction regarding the cybrex mining hub building: it affects all mining stations, not just minerals. That means it also affects gas, crystals, energy, mote, living metal, and nanites mining stations. (Can confirm from my own playthroughs). A mining hub will net you about 3x nanites from a single nanite deposit, ditto for living metal, making it much easier to build nanite components or run the living metal edict. A deposit of 4 rare crystals will give you more like 10 once you have a mining hub in the system. So, yeah, it's a lot better than it appears.

Zro not only sell for lots of credits, but also gives massive acceptance on trade deals. I made myself galactic emperor by exchanging Zro for favors.

We need a tier ranking for the secrets of the Montu. This rare precursor benefit is found by completing the "special project" of watching this video without skipping

My faviourite part of the Cybrex is when you get "Meja Engineering"

Its funny when you form a Covenant with the Instument of Desire and get that random event where your pops need Zro as amenities each month. Ahhh my peeps are doing lines of Zro!

Yuht Cleansing also removes biological planetary modifiers such as Hostile Fauna and Titanic Life.

I watched until the callout. I have another great example for the Zroni Storm Caster. I was playing a Terravore and I got the Zroni. I used them in a combo with a fleet using only armors (so I lose nothing) against my enemies when in the total war. I was able to hold up to 4 times my size in enemy fleets, 6 times if I was able to have all my no shields defense platforms built and ready. It is even worse after you start using a Star Eater and you combo that building over a black hole. I mean, Black hole, pulsar and neutron star all at once... OUCH. It was not that bad to take it back after losing it if you make sure to have fleets with a few after burners, which menace fleets often have to be responsive... I could not go psionic, yet the starbase building was awesome in assuring my galaxy domination.

Personally think Irassian Naval yards should put them at least at C tier for base game if a player builds a lot of shipyards. Possibly B or A tier if you are using NSC which adds a lot more slots to star bases. Definitely S tier if you are also running Gigastructures along with NSC. Using those two mods and having Irassian Naval Yards it is possible to get almost 200 shipyards in 1 system if you go all shipyards on a system you build a Hyperstructural Assembly Yard in. Which means you can centralize your entire ship building into one or two systems and use the rest of your star bases for other uses like anchorages or factories. The last couple of times where I rolled the Irassians I definitely wasn't disappointed.

My first game I got the Irassians. Calls it F-tier. ... Subscribed because I 100% agree.

Man there really needs to be a way to select precursors at empire creation, such extremely powerful and unique options left to complete RNG

All those archaeological sites with Baol/Zroni etc would have been useful if I didn't run out of minor artifact storage so quick, with no way to expand that or spend them usefully.

Wow i was just wondering how good the Zroni is and up pops this video. I was going for psionic ascencion so I got lucky with this precursor. Good timing Montu.

still watching all the way through. Love your videos. There's no way I'd ever figure out all the secrets without you. Thank you for all your hard work

Still watching. Your videos are really making my day. Thanks Montu

The Baol didn't get weaker, everything else just got stronger. Selling relics got a nerf on the board, not just for the baol.

15:00 I'd like to point out that once you've applied the "Nu-Baol life-seeding" decision, you can add "Nu-Baol life-enhancing" pops to any Gaia world you have, so you can keep enhancing the same Gaia world over and over, even after you've seeded all your planets. The selected pops gain an extra 5% job output on Gaia worlds, so with 5 seeded planets and 8 modded pops per enhancement, that's 40 pops possibly all on the same planet, and the ability to grow them elsewhere. Edit: it's 20 enhanced pops, not 40, but still useful

I have 492 hours in Stellaris and yet I only ever seem to get the Cybrex. I think it could be interesting to increase the spawn rate for certain precursors as long as they complement the player empire’s ethics/origins, e.g. playing as Teachers of the Shroud increases Zroni chance.

The First League offices are so effective on a megacorp ecumenopolis world!

Hard disagree on the Zroni. Just the eco boost from the 5(15+ base iirc) zro deposits you get from the digsites(and chance of infinite artifacts) amounts to 360 Energy credits, which is a huge boost early game. Not to mention: -psy ascension is the strongest bio ascension. -and the boosts the relic gives are awesome.

Cool story here, in my current playthrough which I started before the update I got the Baol. Being the guy that I am I decided to genetically mod them and I basically turned them into cows. Long story short I forgot about them and it got really out of hand so now I produce almost 5000 food per month from them. Also a side note, when using the Last Baol active effect, if your first use it to terraform a world, you can then go to a different planet (one that is already a gaia world), open up the decisions tab and there you will find the Nu-Baol Life Enhancing decision. what it does is gene mod some of the pops to have the gaia preference but they also receive a 5% resource output bonus. To check that just go to the species tab and hover over the gaia habitability preference and it will tell you.

Amazing video like always montu and yes i saw all the 37 minutes

To parody a quote.. The Zro, they are made of them

just a small note, mining station output also applies to energy, alloy, rare crystal, exotic gases and volatile motes deposits afaik not just minerals, unless the screenshots montu used were displaying info wrong

34:20 not just minerals... every recource in that system worked with minor artifacts as well as nanites and zro(well not that you need it with the cybrex XD)

My instinct tells me the +100 Edict Fund from the First League unique building (w/ Archeo-Engineers) is actually based bc it completely replaces some people's standard need to take Executive Vigor - you basically get every other (admittedly small) bonus you get from Archeo-Engineers for free this way, as you're getting the +100 Edict Fund without taking the feels-bad Ascension perk that offers nothing but a flat 100 Unity equivalent. EDIT: Or, I mean, you could take both?! lol

As a hive mind the Baol building gives +1 energy instead of consumer goods which I found really nice.

I literally did not know there was 7. I only thought Cybrex Irassia and Yuhthan were the precursors… I have 500 hours… How rare are these things man…

Finally! More Montu videos!

awesome video! have you ever considered maybe breaking the rankings into sub categories and then an overall category? categories for this could be system, building, relic, other effects, and then as I mentioned an overall rating. it might be interesting to see how some are better in certain categories than they are overall. just a thought. also I'll say this, the later in the game you get the better and better the Yuht, solely because of the relic, become. the relic's active can easily be worth multiple dyson spheres in the hyper late game when naval cap and energy production are all that really matter.

Ironically, the Zroni Storm Caster is both most and least useful against Psionic empires - most, because they have the best shields in the game and removing them destroys their defences, and least because they are most likely to have Jump Drives to bypass the system entirely.

The Zroni storm caster seems like a perfect weapon in a war of attrition where you have to do scorched earth strategies to slow down your enemy as much as possible. If only I had ancient relics DLC

I've been really loving that to get better. Jumped into Stellaris randomly and hit it really really hard and love it so far

Great intro. Gave me chills.

The reality computer on a fanatic materialist with the archeo-engineers perk is a little nutty. Especially with a Remnants start. I think by the time I hit endgame, my physics research was a few thousand ahead of any other research I was producing. The only asterisk to the Zroni Storm Cloud is that the effectiveness of it is also dependent on enemy ship design. If enemy ships have their own hull regeneration, which seems plausible on at least the medium to large ships, that -10% hull regeneration will either be reduced or completely negated (though maybe I'm misremembering or overestimating how much hull regeneration things like battleships can actually get). And since that full 10% is only while not in combat, you're either avoiding putting too many weapons on the starbase to avoid initiating combat and thus dropping that regen from -10% to -1% and risk the station getting demolished in an alpha strike in under 10 days, or you set up your starbase either in a usual defensive format using that -1% as just some free damage or configuring your defense platforms for maximum armor and armor hardening (since you don't need to worry about shields) to try and stall out an attacking fleet. It sort of depends on the interaction with hull regen and how much enemies ships have in combat as well. But even then, I can't imagine how you could possibly stall an attacking fleet for 100 days or keep them out of engagement range for 10 days. Both just seem unlikely and then your starbase is defending itself as normal. As for the alluded to relic weapons and modules, my experience so far is that you need something of a minimum minor artifact generation to make it viable. If you're not making somewhere around 30 or more minor artifacts a month, it's very difficult to actually double down on archeotech military gear, as you just don't have the resource production to make fleets or defense platforms at a reasonable rate; you'd have to build "normal" ships and retrofit as the artifacts come in. If you're building your ships almost as fast as those minor artifacts are coming in, however, an archeotech kitted fleet can be very effective with the archeo-engineers ascension perk. However, if you get cocky or outmaneuvered and loose to much of your fancy fleet at once, it's essentially impossible to rapidly restore that fleet, especially since the cap on how many minor artifacts you can store seems arbitrarily small. It also doesn't help that while you theoretically can make trade deals with other empires for minor artifacts, the trade acceptance is so astronomical (pretty much like asking for them to give you a system) that's it's functionally meaningless if it's not a real person you're negotiating with.

i found irassian ship yards OP, citadels going from 6 useable shipyards to 12 + the extra ship build speed, incredible buff to how quick you can field a decent navy in a pinch - for me it was a hive mind neighbour becoming the crisis, i was able to pop up a strong frontline fleet alot quicker than my fleets travelling the galaxy. first time i encountered it i thought it was bugged!

Irassian shipyards can make a standard shipyard station nearly on-par with a mega shipyard. Depending how you play, this can be OP.

@Montu Plays bit of an oversight on the cybrex building. It affects all mining stations, not just mineral ones. So you get increased energy credit output from mining stations as well. Possibly even stregic resources as well as those are also considered mining stations.

This is basegame, but with some very popular/simple mods (mainly the Planetary Diversity series) the Yuht become a little more useful, especially when starting with things like the Ammonia Rebreathers origin which relies heavily on habitability boosters to colonize worlds. That Baol Terraforming speed buff would help with making Shroud Worlds, aswell.

Irassian saving grace is shipyard building its crazy strong. Yuht is worse imo

bro you need to do more meme vids its my favorite part of your videos

I have found that if I get the Cybrex, if I don't acquire the 6 sites in the early game, I'll never find them, because 'signs of Cybrex Activity' are extremely rare. I also seem to find that when I have the Cybrex, the difficulty of the game seems to rise astronomically, with more dubious AI fleet power gains on my borders throughout the game. I don't experience any issues, with any of the others

Thanks for the detailed video Montu, until today my knowledge of precursors was "Baol, Cybrex, Zroni - and the other guys don't really care except this one that has the Relic world kinda cool"

Me who's played with a mod that allows me to get all the precurssors for the past year "You guys only get to pick 1?"

I like the baol Especially after I found out that I can apply the gaia world preference on an entire species as long as I can afford the blueprint

The Baol Organic Plant is incredible for hive minds, especially the phototrophic hive mind I play

the main issue I have with precursors, is that if your not a basic empire, a lot of them don't really do much for you. More of them need to give alternative rewards to empires that don't use the main thing they do.

Currently playing a fear of the dark run, using a spiritualist empire. One of my neighbors turne out to be a common ground origin and they're all materialist... early game they basically stacked their fleets and outnumbered me 3:1... thankfully once i got the zroni arc device I started baiting them into the systems and decimating them.

Farming is ok on energy world if you got some spare spots. You can boost energy output with bio-processing plants.

i think the yuth potential, is best paired with slaying the kleptomaniac shard. for a other +10 sensor/hyperlane range. you just have to make sure that is the first leviathan you slay, to guarantee it lands on your homeworld first. and considering how it chains it's fairly easy as you can setup a starbase just for it, a pure armor hull fight.

I really could use a Tech Tier List from Montu to improve my tech bee-lining. Maybe split it into 3 videos, one for each type of research?

Vultanum with an energy weapon + shield fleet is bonkers. It's a tech every year.

There was a Species in Ascendancy from 1994 that works as same as the baols are described. And they turn their worlds also in Gaja-Worlds

Baol is imo the best you gain bonus pops and can turn worlds into gaia worlds for resource bonuses. Fantastic for life seeded origin and ring world. Those extra pops also means extra resources meaning a stronger empire faster. You can use it faster then the other origins cyberx is incredible late game but early and mid not so much.

Hey Montu maybe do meta guide for megacorps in current Stellaris?

the funny thing about the zroni strom generator is the shield nullification. if you put your station full with proton/neutron launchers yous enemy's ships basically instant die because they have no shields and gets bombarded killing them away without problem...

The Yuth home system also has a special project a few years after you take it, that gives you the hyper relays technology and an L -gate insight.

Still waiting for Branch Office tier list, you got to play them more montu 😉

I've played thousands of hours of this game and my brain still reads "Irassian" as "Iranian."

Very helpful, thx m8

Damn montu got passive aggressive when he reached that farmer building there's the farmer hate kicking in lmao

Honestly I love baols. Free gaia world planets and additional pops. I like to play with weaker habitability, so it fits

Something that happened to me in a playthrough that I took for granted, I got the Yuht as my precursor which was pretty disappointing but after using minor artifacts to unlock the secrets of the yuht, I was then given the opportunity to discover the secrets of the Cybrex? Which gave me access to the Cybrex mining hubs. Still not sure how that happened

Yuht cleansing is kinda useful for last steps of Industrial Development resolutions in GC, sweet industrial bonuses, but -25% habitability

Psionics normally: I SEE DEAD PEOPLE Psionics on Zro: *I SNORT DEAD PEOPLE*

Got pretty happy when got Baol for my aquatic anglers megacorp with catalythic. The building gives angler jobs, boosts them even more and more food means more alloys. Perfect match!

the irassians are fun as a crisis so many ship build speed modifiers and a way to just decimate a planet prior to getting a colossus it’s absolutely a F tier precursor but it can be made use of in some builds also the vualtum building gives you a science director which normally you need technocrat or the normal special researcher building for so it saves a slot or is just another way to get another director job

I do like the irassian shipyards actually. I was disappointed when I rolled them but was surprised with the new building

Irassian naval yards are unironically the only thing that saved my first Ironman playthrough when I became The Crisis and was getting gang banged by my former Federation and the Galactic Council

Yuht home system also has a bonius project that gives some minor research. Not huge at all but I think it is 100% which would break the stalemate with the Irassians.

Bureaucrats get replaced by Priests in spiritual empires, so I would think that the additional +1 amenities from the 1st League building would apply to them as well.

IMO since the Yuht Astronomical Interferometer was put into the game recently, I've felt like giving it a "Base Intel: +10" would be far more effective (and of course by extension making it a 1-per-empire as well) thing for it to be. I feel like the Baol Organic Plant would be good in a similar way. Make it an empire-wide bonus, and then plunk your one down on your main/only ag world (or ring world section), get your extra farmer jobs and the bonus for them, and call it good. Making it a per-planet building is just such a waste, when there's far more efficient use of precious building slots, which are extremely finite. Also, the Baol relic allows you to instantly make Nu-Baol on a Gaia world as well when used (albeit it ONLY counts on a world that *starts* as a Gaia world) as well as turning one other world into a Gaia world.

I like using the Irassians on my knights of the toxic god, both because virus bombing as toxoids is funny to me, I always use the exotic gasses gas giant for a refinery habitat, and I use the naval yards to have 5 shipyards per shipyard starbase.

No, we do not ALL agree with the Cybrex being the highest. Long live those First League Clerks!!!

Cyberex is basically the Billy Mays of Precursors: "But wait, there's more!" Ridiculously overpowered, and my favourite next to the Matrix busting power.

doing my first ever pc playthrough and i got the Cybrex lol i had no idea it was this good!

I am curious if you took the upcoming DLC into account with the Zroni as that ruler level up might make it rather interesting with the leader rework and how Veteran and Destiny traits work.

Zron is my favorite vanilla precursor system if I have the Gigastructural Engineering & More mod. After using GLUE the system can have five molten worlds that could support an Equatorial shipyard each for 40 shipyard capacity from the uplink building. Also, Zron Prime is size 35 if you can make it habitable such as through using the Psionic Beacon.

the thing about the Baol is with he right build it can break the game your entire empire running off of anglers only XD

Never got the Baol, Zroni, or Cybrex on any playthrough. It is underwhelming, but i think the Irassian are good for biological tall empires. The starbase building basically gives you cheap, mini mega shipyards too, which I think you are underestimating. Seems like you can get that and put a bunch down on starbases long before mega shipyard is available.

I got Irassians last game and got a really nice arc furnace on their home system.

That nod to Ron Popeil made me laugh.

Boal with catalytic processing and anglers are kinda bonkers, you dont need any factory worlds, just forge world and farmer worlds.

Just started my first game and got Vultaum. Hype.

recently in one of my games I got the baol precursors combined with the Junk ratlings tomb worlds and having just and endless supply of large tomb worlds to cheaply turn into gaia worlds felt completely broken but extremely fun. (I was playing as xenophobes too, so if I had been a xenophile democracy instead the free nu-baol pops would have been an insane boost to my eco)