Stellaris - The Origin Fun Tier List (Not a Powerlist) 

Last time i was so early we built ships with minerals

video: Stellaris Origins tier list What I got out of it: *ASPEC IS GERMAN?!?!*

They should add more origins in future updates

Me: Aspec, I want to replace the fence in my garden with a thick wall of plants but I don't know how to pay for it Aspec: Hedgemoney

Your daughter is 1 yrs old? Good, she's old enough to start min-maxing, get her into multiplayer.

If you have a remnant origin, one of the fallen empires still in existence should recognise you as their ancient rivals.

Your demands have been heard;. I'll make a proper power ranking. I've also changed the video name to reflect the contents a bit better.

Scion Origin lets me be a Inward Perfectionist that I always wanted to be - I got a daddy who keeps all the bad people away. *turns up crisis to x25*

a lot of things with Origins is, that I feel like most all would want few more events just to make em work or be more interesting. ..that said I still think that Stellaris needs like a ton more events in general anyways.

ASpec straight outta put being pampered by Fallen Empire to the E tier? Absolute Madlad !

I think they should've merged Common Ground and Hegemony and just let you pick the federation type when you choose it, out of all the options. That's what I would've done anyway.

Scion gets really interesting if you force start every one of the empires to have it including yourself and set the number of Fallen Empires to 1. Gets everyone including differing ethics under the one empire so you can do a galaxy based around the Warring States period of Japan.

Ah yes, I love me some good old "Orgins" in the thumbnail

I can't believe you put Syncratic below Mechanist. The RP potential for 2 biological species is so much greater then 'ya got bots'.

"scion is to powerful, it gets and F" "Hegemon is so powerful, it gets an S"

How could you put prosperous unification in the E category Aspec? It has been with you since the beginning and never abandoned you. And now you just...throw it away like your relationships meant nothing. How can you sleep at night?!

Origin idea: Called once more. Description: This species has been born with psionic powers. Since ancient times, they have been following a being known as The Guide. During every step in their history, their leaders were contacted by the Guide through visions. Now the species has united their entire planet and have looked past their atmosphere. The Guide is with them and shall always be. Effects: Start with psionic theory. The Guide will, from time to time, either give missions, declare war or give boons to your empire.

The Electronic Arts Origin: essentially, the game slows to a crashing halt, and then your computer catches on fire. On the bright side, though, you can spend real world money to boost your empire. So, that's a plus.

They need an origin for the devouring swarms! It's really sad that they don't have one for them.

There's 2 things I'm waiting for Paradox to get in Stellaris so I can go on my fantasies. Flotilla based races and Bioships. PLEASE PARADOX, I want to play a Tyranid like race on Stellaris

The feeling I get from this is that most of these Origins could really use their own specific sets of Quest/Event chains. Multiple ones, perhaps even mutually exclusive ones that'll only be available on a specific playthrough to increase replay value.

I recently had a game where, I only really had one ally who I was in a federation with, and everyone else hated us. Our power together was enough to dissuade them from mailing me, well it turned out my ally was doomsday origin, and only had that planet. So when it blew up their whole empire disappeared, and I was immediately attacked by 4 different empires.

Me in any game: RIP AND TEAR!!!! Me as the Space Fascists: Hello friends! Anyone want to join my federation?

I really like the scion one actually, it gives me a free casus belli which is "equivalent" to an ascension perk right from the start (not actually equal to total war casus belli but good enough, plus nobody hates you for this)

Sooo.... what's her name? After all, B-Day card needs to addressed to someone specific.

"C being the middle, its like getting a C". *mindblown*

I wish "In the Shoulder of Giants" had more than one possible story. I know that would be a ton of work, but there's no reason to replay it once you've gone through it once.

I agree with the situation with Tree of life. There needs to be *THE* downside when it gets bombed. I was honestly curious as to what the effects could mean when it gets nuked when I first played hivemind with this origin. In my opinion, Tree of life needs to be a building structure instead of a planet modifier. The planet that holds the true Tree of life will have it as a replacement for the Capital building (or at the very least, built next to it for free with a lot of job slots to make it worth while being there). That way when you are colonizing another planet, you *HAVE TO BUILD* (or rather plant) the Tree of Life Sapling to get the benefits of the thing and make it so important yet EXTREMELY long time to grow (remember it is a tree). This origin needs to have a challenge that really pushes the High Stakes that is literally the cause of their sentience. It is the Uni-Mind for the Hive; the Psionic Network of the Hive; Hell, it is the Soul of the Hive so make it worth it!

I would love a power rating list hope there is enough demand to make It happen love your content Aspec keep it up!

As an avid Hive Mind player, I want Tree of Life to be better so much. I'd love to see it maybe become an automatic Building rather than a planetary feature, or make it not destroyed until you hit 99% Devastation (since your people would logically defend the Tree most heavily out of anything else on the planet), and also have it auto-convert to giving more max mining districts instead of farming if you are lithoids; I'd also like to see it changed so that only your species can make use of the Tree and Saplings. Give it some kind of attunement back story and make it exclusive to that empire, or just exclusive to Tree origin empires. regardless of the above, I'd love to see the Sapling part changed. I'd love it if instead of getting a new one for free on any world you colonize, if instead you had a planetary decision to plant a sapling on any world at a resource cost. This would make colonization a little more costly, but allow you to actually make use of worlds you conquer from other empires without having to fully de-populate (either through bombardment or resettlement) and re-settle them. And I agree that losing the main Tree should apply some kind of pretty major empire-wide negative modifier, and maybe a Relic to the destroyers. (Chunk of Unobtainium relic, anyone?) I'd also love it if the Tree gave some kinds of unique bonuses that were more than just background number increases.

ASpec: Scion is overpowered so it gets F teir Me: I don't think you understand how a tier list works...

The tomb world origin is really fun with fanatic purifiers, since you can use apocalyptic bombardment to turn any planet your at war with into a tomb world, allowing you to colonize all of your enemy’s planets.

Your insights into how to evolve the game by furthering the development of storyline is awesome...

Just imagine Doomsday origin with gaia homeworld... I should mod this.

This tier list is trolling.

Personally, I'd rank former civics higher rather than lower, simply because of the convenience of freeing up one of your starting civic slots, but I also see where you're coming from since they're not new.

I am surprised to see remnants ranked so low. The amount of depth and storylines I saw in my remnants playthrough was astounding and I think unmatched by any other origin or dlc to date with 1000+ hours in. Sure it is no relic world, but man the storyline I had in mine just went on and on for nearly a century. One of my all time favorite playthroughs.

Remnants, is definitely the one on the list I keep going back to. It's the one I wish was like how Shoulder of Giants made you feel (going to play that one soon after this). Needs more love and additions to it but it's really close for me.

Origin idea: To the death once more Description: This civilisation was once the protector of their galaxy. They were responsible to keep the peace and prosperity yet when the time came and the enemy was at their gates, they failed. Their creators (if mechanical) and former masters were entirely wiped out and only a small handful of ships remain of their once grand fleet. Their fortress planets have been reduced to ashes but yet a single one survived. Yet there is no time to rest, subspace echoes can be heard once again from beyond the galaxy. They are coming back. The end is near but this civilisation is not yet ready to accept that, they are ready to fight to the death...once more Effects: -civilisation starts with the Defender of the Galaxy ascension perk -No fallen empires -all other empires have a 'shellshocked primitive survivor' debuff that reduces their fleet strength -all planets start with 75 devastation -Prethoryn Scourge ships can randomly spawn similiar to other organic aliens in vanilla -start on a fortress tombworld with destroyed fallen empire buildings that you can repair -fortress tombworlds spawn randomly with destroyed fallen empire buildings and deactivated pops (if mechanical) that can be colonised, repaired and reactivated. -civilisation gets perks depending on how many fortress worlds they have reactivated -the Prethoryn Scourge crisis always starts after 100 years. What do you guys think? It's a pretty hardcore start and might need a lot of perks to work properly but I think it would be a great challenge gameplay wise while being amazing for RP.

Happy birthday to your little girl! Also I pretty much agree, the most interesting was the tree of life, makes me sad to see it not have more stuff attached to it.

I am really hoping for a new Origins with the Space Fauna update. Maybe some unique interactions with the Space Whales/Amoeba?

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR ANOTHE TEIR LIST

I like syncretic evolution and start with a xenophonic empire. First thing you do is turn the second species into "livestock" using the species rights, not because it is powerful, although that does give you muchos food from the get go. The main reason though is because it is just hilarious. You can then go down the bio-evolution utopia route to genetically engineer them to be delicious for the additional lols.

you can bomb worlds into tomb worlds with the armageddon stance right? i was thinking of making that a limitation on a run with post apocalyptic start and only colonize other tomb worlds

"I hear you but I'm not listening" -ASpec

I freely admit, Doomsday is my favourite Origin on the list so far.

i like how you can game the arcane generator a little bit: with the prosperity traditions + functional architecture (synthetic / hive mind equivalents) you can save a bit on constructing the sections and get a small income of gas / crystal / motes / energy credits that can jump start advanced building construction later down the line (the generator produces full upkeep, not modified upkeep, you get the remainder) or be used as an energy credit reserve for when an EC needing event pops up and you are short. very debatable if a civic slot is worth the income but meh it is a cool interaction.

The moment you realize your favourite Stellaris youtuber lives not in the states but right beside you in cologne

I ran a Criminal Heritage Megacorporation called the Opiek Cartel. Opiek are insectoids who co-evolved around a species of intelligent plants called Tah'rah. The Tah'rah, while intelligent, were rather on the low end of this spectrum. The Opiek had a mutually beneficial relationship with the Tah'rah, as they were the only species that could consume the secretions that the Tah'rah produced via pours, which was a result of their digestive system, acting as waste and as poisonous wards to other plant eating insects, to which only the Opiek were adapted to. The Tah'rah, if they produced too much, would grow sticky and eventually have trouble moving and traversing, and once this was the case, swarms of Opeik would lick the secretions clean. The Opiek developed intelligence far faster than the Tah'rah, however, and produced communities before the Tah'rah even began forming rudimentary tribes. During this enlightenment phase, the Opiek discovered that using their waste and distilling it in a particular way can remove the poisonous effect and create a potent hallucinogen, which the Opiek began to regularly put into recreational drugs. Attempts to ban the drug resulted in overwhelming support for the criminal bosses who distributed it, and eventually the criminal empire was born, enslaving the Tah'rah and using them as cattle for drug production and menial labor. Really happy Syncretic Evolution is its own origin, allows me to run this more reliably.

As far as the tree of life it would be cool if by planting one on a new planet you started to incorporate that life into your hive mind, giving an early way to assimilate them. On the other side if you lose the tree, it would be interesting to have an event chain start where you either make a desperate attempt to regain/recreate the tree, or learn to live in this new world, disconnected from the tree and having your empire shift towards becoming a normal species with all the problems you might expect to arise when a unified hive mind suddenly has to deal with each drone developing independent thought.

You're a good narrator, buddy. Thank you for these videos.

Happy 1 year birthday Aspecdottir.

Ok so I got the game on console recently bc of you and omg I’m having so much fun thanks for showing me this game.

"All of the rulers will be pissed. . ." Just leave them on the planet to blow up. Captains are supposed to go down with their ships.

One of the builds I've had the most fun with is Fanatic Spiritualist Megacorp with Void Dwellers; essentially, from an RP perspective, I had come up with the idea that the starting race, the Stocca, were televangelists convincing the other xeno races that they had appeased the gods and gained the right to live on the "temples" (habitats), and that with enough "charitable donations" they too could leave their balls of dirt behind and live in the glorious space cathedrals. As someone who likes micromanaging their planets the constant reshuffling of pops and slow transition from specialized districts to full on housing was a good time for me as well.

So, I've just started to follow you recently on RU-vid, and I see that the po is located in Köln. So i guess you moved to Germany? You sound way to american to be a German speaking English. So should I write the card also in German or just parts? There is definitely coming some dutch on it you can be sure of that. Also I think this is a great idea, your daugther she will probably not experience it consiously, but if you get enough cartds, its really great to make something out of it. Alter ihr Idee ist ja super Toll .

Void Dwellers is also very strong, since you start with 3 times the total pop growth, but unlike scions or ring world it requires you to play well alongside some planification.

I'm confused is this a tier list of how powerful they are or how fun they are?

I had a run with a Void Dweller megacorp once the dlc came out. It was the most fun I had in this game since I got it. Managing each single habitat to produce and administrate every microaspect of your empire and, as a megacorp, give an all in on economy and money to buy everything you need. It was really, really difficult but also SO FUN. I love it. I'm giving it a 20 out of 10.

I choose synchretic evolution with my slaver empire, thought it would be fitting. The problem is the servile thread - it makes it impossible for them to become specialists. It really wrecked my starting economy, since i had no entertainers and enforcers to keep them in line. It was made worse by two of my neighbouring empires, one of wanted to expend into my territory and the other wanted my to take their ideology. They where both superior and overwhelming to me. First, i survived against the overwhelming empire by hit and run tactics and used mercanaries to take half of the other. The new pops reviewed my economy. I had two wars after that declared on me by the other empire, its fleet still being overwhelming, by doing hit and run tactics, basically flying in circles in their empire with my fleets until i got a status quo. As i became finally equivalent to them (the other empire was grinded to dust in the following wars) they stopped attacking me, but where destroyed by an robotic uprising. Destoyed that machine empire as well during the endgame crisis, because they blocked me access to one of the sterilisation hub and let the convergence through to me. I routed the main fleet of a awakened empire by myself by laying a trap for them with gates. (Provoking an attack on a gated system, jumping the fleet in to destroy them)

I love how much opportunity there is for mods, I have seen some great ones.

I had fun with tree of life but I can understand why people, aspec specifically, wouldn't like it. For reference, went lithoid empath/ascetic build, chose the portrait with the three rocks connected by roots for that built in tree of life goodness, and eventually united the galaxy under one galaxy-ending anti-crisis flag. I thought those federations normally fall apart afterwards but aside from three empires, my former neighbors and long time allies, and two other empires, all eight of us stuck together to the very end. Felt very betrayed by my former buddy who stayed neutral for the entire war in heaven arc. If they weren't my sugar daddy, trading me massive amounts of alloys for dark matter to keep my fleet afloat, I probably would have invaded them in retribution. Got lucky, sort of, and rolled Baol precursor event but the first or second dig sit, cant really remember which, spawned in the damn Sanctuary system. Years later when I finally took it and completed the sites, I never got the last one. Couldn't colonize the ringworld either because of rp reasons. Also got into one hell of a skirmish with both awakened empires at the same time, that was fun as hell. Just kept bouncing back and forth between gateways, stacking massive armies on worlds and doing my damnedest to chip away at their fleets until they had nothing left. Couldn't beat em in a straight up fight but I could far out produce them thanks to consuming two decently large total war empires earlier in game. Damn allies didn't show up until after I killed the 800k sometin' xenophobe empire doom stack. Had to slam my fleet into it a few times before he finally separated them for repairs and then from there, it was easy pickings. I really liked that war from an rp standard because I had to sue the xenophiles for peace eventually when they were about to bathe one of my worlds. Thankfully I wrecked most of their fleet before hand but they refused to fight their xenophobe rivals and kept bullying me. I also had nothing left, wasted all my alloys building those damn super weapons and battleships only for them to get destroyed in the first attack. When I finally turned it around, I swapped out the shield world gun on my colossus for neutron sweeper and got some payback. I had used to the shield gun preserve one of those two previous total war empires, the terravore (specifically an empire I made called the Crystal Clustar Gems) and I tried to save one of the fanatic purifier worlds, untainted, too but before I could, somehow they're last world was over thrown by a single alien, using the blorg portrait, who began purging them despite no other aliens of his race being present on the world. Hands down the funniest and stupidest thing I think I've ever seen in this game. It was 50 pop world too. Then by the by the end of the war, there is no power greater than I. I get a message about a breech in our galaxy, thinking I can be the savior of the galaxy again, I immediately push for the anti-unbidden bill assuming I'm going to get another fun fight. Then my fleet shows up and nothing, the unbidden never stood a chance and I wiped them out before they could capture a single system. Feeling disheartened and unneeded by the galaxy at large, we just sort of withdrew from the galactic scene and went into semi-hibernation. No enemies left to fight, no challenges left surmount and nobody needed my protection anymore. A sad end, to me at least, to what was otherwise a great run.

I was playing a megacorp/church with void dwellers and I have to say, what a blast. The amount of resettling was hilariously much, especially when made a resort world and was like: I can put on it a 100 pops (turned into 102). Also I have never before led my housing go into negative, but this origin forces you to make this decision. Planning where your new habitats come was also satisfying for someone like me that just want to micromanage (not per se min/max). Also I made heavily use of the branche offices, for the nice extra alloys, food (really the saviour), vast amount of energy and of course temple of prosperity. I think I only scratched the surface of what wonderful ways you can play with void dwellers.

My first game with federations i took a xenophile free haven democracy (egalatarien with the friendly friendly federation start) , just to see how much i could control the community. After being the leading researchers in the galaxy for basically ever i developed full psionics for my species and took control over the federation with the challenge laws. The contest was for the best psionic so i always won by deafult. I had the strongest diplo power in the galaxy, but not by nearly enough to control everything alone. After a while my leader was touched by the shroud became and became immortal. How could i say no to the follow up event: want to become an imperial fanatic religous cult? Around that time a war in heaven started and i joined the hegemony of neutral nations, forcing through the psionic laws again and controling about 2/3 of the galaxy through the federation and outranging the closest contender in diplo power by about 50k. I can't actually continue sadly as it is a lagfest of the highest degree at this point in time. So i am the defacto ruler of the galaxy, even though i only control about 20 systems and 5 planets (inlcuding the L-Cluster which was the dead nanobots btw) rivaling both empiers at once, espacially once i denounce them both with my council powers of doom. For I Am The Senate!

Here's an idea, next time you do something like this instead of doing it in flat tiers give each a score in 3 metrics. Power, Role Play, and Fun Factor

I've still not played anything but Voiddwellers because I like them so much. But I cannot say I find them challenging at all. Yeah, in some of my runs I had some economic problems, but join a trade league, do trade and you're set. Solid unity production, all your consumer goods are from trade so military focus production for more alloys has no drawback for you. Housing is a problem, yes, but homeless people on your planets isn't that big of a problem. I only wish I could do food-focused habitats, but voiddwellers doesn't really need that boost.

I have to agree with Aspec on the Tree of Life origin. The thing has 'potential' written all over it yet the launch was so premature it was barely worth the spot as origin in the first place. I was imagening the tree being an actual building, perhaps even replacing the main structure on your planets. Maybe you must choose in what way you wish to encourage the tree to grow when you can eventually upgrade it, boosting one bonus or feature more than others? Maybe fruits fall from the tree with a few years/or a decade in between, giving various/random temporary bonuses on each respective planet? Maybe losing the original tree creates a void in the hive mind that unless you invest time and resources/research to fill or at least stave off, creates a hunger that eventually makes you a devouring swarm? Maybe you must spend an enormous amount of resources to grow one of your saplings into a new primary tree of life, lest you get steadily over time increasing empire wide debuffs? Maybe new planets have diseases or parasites that threaten the sapling, and when the threat is conquered the tree provides you with new permanent bonuses? Maybe a research project would enable the home planet tree to recieve the new bonuses as well? Maybe different planet types have different threats to your tree and thus different bonuses you may collect. That would make for an interesting expansionist style campaign! Maybe hive worlds enable the tree to grow even further, further boosting the bonuses the tree, or sapling, provides? And so many more! I really think Tree of life needs an overhaul.

So, I‘ve spent some time messing around with Xenophile empires that just attract all the other species and integrates them as happy citizens, and presumably, that sort of approach will be super-useful if you happen to have an origin that ties you to any specific type of planets (or non-planets) because once you get one or two migration treaties, you can basically have your Xeno pops colonize the worlds your own pops have a problem with. I‘m doing a Shattered Ring playthrough rn to test this (and also for a potential larger challenge), and so far I‘ve only run into reclusive or agressive civs.

Too late to this video, but, Happy Birthday on this 1 year of your birthday

@Aspec what do you think about the idea to mix n match origins with categories. Example you pick an origin for your planetary start (life seeded, void dwellers, remnants ect) and then another one for the "cultural" aspect of your empire(, I.e mechanist, syncretic, hegemon ect). I think that doing so would make this system absolutely bonkers, but imagine a void dwelling hive mind with a space tree of life? A broken ring world scion (now that's easy mode). Also I do think that those origins need negative modifiers. Make the choice impactful. (doomsday + calamitous birth = woops, didn't mean to hit the planet that hard, I guess we need a new one)

Shattered ring can be gamed with the functional architecture as well. So for anyone that's seen Stefon's civic tier list, for shattered ring, that civic might actually be a bit higher for the free strategic resources from the get go. Granted, you need to have a district that needs those resources, thankfully the farm district gets you volatile motes, which IMO are probably the most important strategic resource to get or at least tie with exotic gasses. Fully agree on all of these, at least the ones I've played. A good chunk of these would be so much better if they had more events attached to them. Maybe the devs really should consider having some stuff be solo play only because I suspect they keep a few things anemic out of concern that people will get overwhelmed in multiplayer, since they do not have the option to pause the game.

I used Syncretic Evolution when i did a playthrough of a ‚Reptiloid Dominion of Earth‘, that civic/Origin always is good fun!

Lost Colony should have a series of events that could either trigger a war with your original empire or enable the option to fuse with them. To be balanced, the option to fuse with them should be a late game event, but I think this could fix the problem. Maybe in the mid game you could have the option to make a alliance with them or something.

Nice! More tier lists!

Lost colony is great for purifier, you get essentially a second empire of your species you can keep. Post-apocalyptic is really fun if you find the tomb world systems, which I think most of the time are close-by.

I want D.T to show up so us Paradox paid sycophant shills can roast him again.

A way to use Void Dwellers. Take Lithoid, and give them Thifty. In Civics give the Miner's Guild, and the Merchant Guilds (Gets Unity for Merchants civic). And you can make extremely effective places up and running, as you can boost Trade Value, and colonise most planets.

I started my L-Gate rush race as a Shattered Ring origin and was able to activate the gate by year 12. Took till 35 to reach a point I could turtle well enough to risk actually opening it, which isn't much better than my previous attempts at rushing it and letting the tempest eat the rest of the galaxy, but the science rush and finding enough l-gate clues went a lot faster.

"galactic union is not intresting" Well... I disagree... if you are not authoratian its best one to have to play diplomatic game since you will leech diplomatic weight of all other members making you diplomatic juggernout at galactic community. I think hegamony is kind of better but still its definatly good and its more fun than hegamony for me note:this is not about galactic community but galactic union itself

I started playing Stellaris after Federations came out and at first I only had the base game. I found Prosperous Unification to be a good introduction to the game, and I'd definitely recommend it to new players. Then as soon as I'd gotten the hang of things I started branching out into the other origins, and for the most part I haven't looked back. Lost Colony is a bit more interesting and has some roleplay potential, but I agree that it's lacking in special interactions between the advanced and lost colony empires beyond the initial greeting. I find that the advanced/original empire tends to have opposing ethics to the player empire, which I guess could explain why the colonists left, but it can be a bit frustrating. Especially if the empire goes from friendly on initial contact to weirdly hostile when you try to communicate with them via the Contacts screen, it can be kind of immersion-breaking. So, yeah, this origin could use some work. Of the vanilla origins I gotta agree, Galactic Doorstep is the most fun and challenging. I created 2 empires with opposite responses to having a Gateway in their home system: one thinks it's the gods calling them to the stars and they can't wait to meet everybody, while the other is terrified of what might come through that gate and preparing to defend themselves at all costs. Other origins... well, Paradox should be paying you, ASpec, because you have thoroughly convinced me to get Federations. All the origins introduced by Federations sound amazing and I can't wait to try them, especially Doomsday... As for Void Dwellers though... to be honest habitats sound too micromanage-y, I don't think I'd actually enjoy them. But hey, why not, I'll give it a try. IMO Calamitous Birth, particularly in conjunction with the Hive Mind: Terravore civic, is kinda broken. Calamitous Birth lets you build a cheap colony ship, smash into a planet, dig up your buried Lithoids while the colony is being established, and start with up to 4 pops... Then with Terravore you can eat the planet using a Decision that randomly gives you minerals, alloys, or additional pops at the cost of blockers, loss of habitability, and devastation. The loss of habitability creates some penalties - but there's no rule saying you have to actually develop the planet. You can just maintain 6 pops to give yourself a Spawning Pool and fill all the default jobs - maintaining decent stability even at 0% habitability - then Resettle additional pops to other colonies. The devastation heals itself over time. I wouldn't recommend eating all your planets, but IMO it provides a way to exploit the ones you would ignore otherwise. I'm having a lot of fun with it (easy settings, and I'm still in early game) even though I usually don't like to play aggressively, much less as a Devouring Swarm. I like the idea of Remnants for roleplaying as the last survivors of an empire that nearly met its demise. I have it as the origin for my Rogue Servitor empire, and it's fun. It's kinda cool to find "your lost colonies" as you explore nearby systems... But I gotta agree, it would be much better if your home planet were a proper Relic world (maybe with hydroponic farms?) at the very least. If I had to choose between Mechanist and Syncretic Evolution I would actually choose the latter. I wish you could start with 2 or more equal species, instead of having to have your main species and a subordinate one. But with Mechanist I find starting with robots on my home world slows everything down. It drastically reduces available alloys. The robots can only be farmers or miners, providing even more of the resources I tend to find myself with too much of. And managing the jobs becomes more complicated. I'm actually a lot happier developing robots later and putting them on colonies that could really use the extra pops, often only after I've gotten the upgrades that let them do all jobs. With Syncretic Evolution I'm pretty sure the 'lesser' species can do all the Worker jobs. It's also possible to roleplay interesting hypocrisies like calling oneself Egalitarian while profiting off a second species that only has Resident status. Do you redeem yourself by removing the Servile trait and making them true equals once you get Genetic Resequencing? Or do you continue to exploit them, even as species who have immigrated or whom you've Uplifted or Enlightened enjoy Full Citizenship? Finally, sadly, yeah, Tree of Life does deserve that F. I think it works better as the origin for a custom AI empire that you want to have show up in your game. Have fun making that, then pick a different origin for the empire you're planning to play. If you've read this whole thing, thank you. :-)

If i could wish for any origin (tbh more of a mechanic than anything) it would be life ships à la Quarians from mass effect. I always loved their story of being forced in to a nomadic life style maybe the ships only have a few build slots in them so you'd have to build a migratory fleet and literally pack up your empire with you. That would be a challenge to me at least.

in stellaris im currently at war with a hivemind who has the tree of life origin, If i conquer their planet do I get the Tree of life bonuses or does it just go away after all the hive pops are exterminated?

I totally was expecting some more interesting Interactions when running a Fanatic Purifiers empire with lost colony, except that they more or less hated me just like everybody else.

Is there a slow motion mode or just captured this with high fps? @ASpec?

i'm doing void dwellers with a megacorp for my first federation play through and its been crazy fun

For all those with English troubles in the comments: dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/hegemony

While there are some grievances I have with it (no robots, no ring worlds and a lot of tech/traditions regarding districts and housing being useless), void dwellers really do a lot for Stellaris as it really manages to do what a lot of 'em is trying - a completely different play style that still gives you a ton of ways to use it. So definitely S tier/S+ I am currently finishing my run with mercantile space dwarfs void dwellers and I'm having a blast, one thing is that I've forgot turn off refugees welcome so I had to start colonizing them disgusting mudballs for them tall folks to have a place to live (two species, one of them space elves no less), then I've lead my trade league to war against ravenous swarm them made those refugees run to my space, dismantled them and quarantined their home world with global pacifier - and these little stories is what I play Stellaris for. Thou I still think Origins and Federations should have been two separate expansions- as both parts seem a bit... under-cooked sure galactic council and federations are fine, but for most of a time, those are just passive bonuses and the diplomacy itself is still non-existent as some oversights are just head scratching (so I can use favors to make some slaving fanatical xenophobe to vote for abolitionist legislature, but I can't convince my federation ally to go to was against some dude we are both rivaling)which for something that should have been part grand strategy part 4x is a wee bit unfortunate and similar goes for origins. Still cool expansion, I just hope we won't wait another 4 years for something that feels like it should have been included in federations and the base game.

I did lost Colony but no other empire of my Species spawned

You really did this you know what that’s it. I declare this Hersey

I think my favorite is Syncretic Evolution. I love the idea of ​​placing in the galaxy all the species whose aspect (portrait) I like but without having to fill it too much with empires. So, the way I like to use Stellaris is to create myself all the empires that will appear, placing the origin of Syncretic Evolution in all of them (I know that the matter of discovery or surprise about what the alien species and their governments will be like is lost... but if I do the alien empires myself I can do it all by selecting the way I like it or seems correct to me, the PC could place a portrait of a favorite species of mine as a hive-minded empire (or worse, an empire of fanatic purifiers ) and I would have to eliminate them for the good of the galaxy). On the other hand, since I am a human being and the Earth is all I know, I prefer to make a representation of our planet Earth and then embody/interpret it and often with what is now the origin called Mechanist (since that is what it seems that it is closer to what our near future will be) or simply with the Prosperous Unification.

Devouring swarm hive mind starting on a ringworld or post apocalyptic is pretty great!!

That meteor play can let you salt planets that you capture but can't use. I'm thinking border planets that swap hands every 10 years. Few empires can compensate for the loss in habitability the same way lithoids do. You lose the plow and they lose a limb.

Well I have a tech rush build any juggle between three origins. Scion, Ring and Void Dweller. Void Dweller isn't my favorite for this build, maby in the long run, Scion makes it way to easy but you don't have to worry about an army. My favorite is the shattered ring. It works really well. I Shall put scion one tier higher. But I can understand your view. Congratulations with your daughter!!!!

I had a great time with Remnants start and psionics/religious based playthrough. Never changed over to ecumenopoli because it’s bad for that religion. The tech boosts were odd for me to RP around, because our people wanted to be closer to our god without playing it. It was also the first origin I used and was able to procure my own hegemony. The weird thing about Stellaris to me is that is about the passives. You push through tech and accumulate alloys while keeping your population stable and safe. I want more finality to your choices. Like tech picking. You basically get any and all techs you want, that seems kind of unrealistic without stealing someone else’s tech. The hivers shouldn’t race through biological tech trees, they should have specific techs for hivers. Mechanists should be able to VR robots and link into their species eventually like rogue servitors before they fully give in to the metal body. But, a mechanist shouldn’t be able to live longer or have more species traits or more habitability because they went a different technological path. But, Stellaris’s tech tree doesn’t play like that, it plays more like civilization. I would give anything for choice decision in the tech area as I think it would open up interesting options and give more agency to the player.

I love mechanist. It can be so fun because of how much of a tech rush you can do.

A tierlist for the plentiful tradition mod would be awesome.

Was legit in the process of buying Utopia when Aspec was talking about how you should get whenever it is on sale.

One of the first things I did when Federations came out was edit one of my custom empires to use the Void Dweller origin. I haven't done much with them, yet, because I've been focused on my Hegemony start Empire.

Mmmm, yes. We’ll reach 365 days watched sooner than I thought.

As a player that basically only plays robots (and has since they released) resource consolidation is the definitely better than E tier. I admit it is shallow but it’s usefulness for the early game is unparalleled for robot empires. Especially as something like a determined exterminator, where if you don’t grow quickly and get unlucky in the early game it’s easy to lose before getting a solid fleet together