Xenophile Feudal Empire - Stellaris Meta Builds 

Flying a fleet with an unwanted admiral into an unwinnable battle is simplified version of what the emporor did to Duke Leto in the Dune

Making a Federation with yourself is just the sort of thing I have come to expect from this perfectly balanced game lol

Xenophiles - Making friends...that are never allowed to leave

xenophile is for making friends? i thought it is only for making more trade or getting more diplo weight. Thank you Montu for another tip!

That is some Machevellian meta right there. Chef's kiss.

I did a xenophile feudal empire and declared the first galactic Imperium 97 years into the game simply by making half the galaxy my vassals with restricted voting. No conquering required, I just made them like me and gave good terms for a bit before switching to restricted voting and defensive overlord wars for collective defense. With half the galaxy forced to abstain I could easily trade favors to win the votes to make myself custodian. At that point it was easy to simply strip away my term limit and proclaim the imperium before making the armada. Great Khan rose and the Imperial Armada jumped across the galaxy using a stage 1 quantum catapult to go kick his ass. Feudal society is broken right now and I'm loving it.

Starts with a clip from Norsemen? That's a like even before getting prompted in the video! Love it.

If you spawn a galaxy with max empires this is a easy way to get the achievement for having 10 migration treaties as a xenophile. Also it would be cool at some point to see achievement guides.

Gish will be much better when it Joins the Terran Empire.

I’d like to see a short video of your settings when you construct a galaxy at the game start. Do you max out Fallen Empires, Marauders, and Primitive Planets? Which galaxy size and shape do you prefer? Do you play with Advanced Empires, Scaling Difficulty, and what crisis strength?

i did something very similar to this as my most recent campaign except with a void dwellers megacorp. the only problem was the absurd amounts of empire size from colonies. still it was very fun.

people laughed at fuedal society at one point well whos laughing now honestly one of my favorite civics right now

I remember one of my games where I basically pushed my economy to spam out ships, so then I could vassalize another empire that I was friendly with... then I integrated them and basically doubled in size and resources. With that I was able to slowly start snowballing vassalizing other empires, then integrate them, and destroying those that I couldn't.

I tried something like this once, the three other large empires in the galaxy all made a federation together against me. Its pretty fun, all out war 24/7

I can't imagine how deadly the wildlife would be in Space Australia

A variant of this is to enlighten primitives you automatically spawn as a Necrophage, though noticeably slower

Thanks! And please - more content like this! Your work of discovering specific advantageous combinations of civics, traits and government types, origins, etc., and presenting them as playable empires, really helps me improve my gameplay. I enjoyed trying out your approach - except my Delphinidae species is charismatic - you know because they're dolphins and keep humans as a subordinate species; a veritable Planet of the Dolphins!

I’m excited to give this build a go, thanks Montu!!!

Did you ever talk about your thoughts on the "best settings" for the game ? (Star systems number, AI empire number etc...) And if not, what are they in your opinion ?

Love to seeing your videos as always Montu good work

i found out you can do similar thi g with clone army just spam corvets and everyone just submits or is just destroyed even on advanced start ai

In my current game I have vassalized the whole Galaxy through sheer fleet power and asking nicely, except the one fanatic purifiers. And im in the current process of being voted custodian and its funny because they cant vote against me but they can abstain in the vote. So I imagine my empire envoy in the senate room asking everyone if they want to vote, and everyone just standing there rolling their eyes and scoffing.

Xenophile Authoritarians has been one of my favorite memestrats for entire patch cycles, great to see it at the top of the pecking order.

Epic. Was doing something similar but didn't know Hegemony was so op.

Montu’s “friend” remarks make me laugh every time.

This whole video could be described as: "read the fine print" XD

Wow, this was the build I've been fine tuning for the past few weeks, whilst similar in play style, you play it a lot better xD. I didn't notice that hegemony "exploit" though.

Can I say that I love the funny memes at the start of each episode? They're all just fantastic.

Literal been doing a play through because of your 5 hour stream today and took a break only to find this. XD. My necrophage empire been doing a unity rush with feudal empire and man it is so much fun XD

you could also pull this off with megacorp(franchising) it was quite fun to spam branch offices

Seems like a very fun meta build! Thanks for the idea. Looking forward to seeing how broken I can make it.

You can also do this using the corporate version of these traits and / or using the hegemony origin depending on how you want things to play out.

God, this strat really is 'Congratulations, you're being rescued, please do not resist.'

God damnit, I literally just made my aquatic Xenophile fuedal state today and then Montu goes and does the same thing.

I know I’m late but I just wanna say I tried this recently and by year 60 I had a dyson sphere worth of energy income and didn’t even go to war once. Insanely powerful build

That Hegemony/Vassal trap is really powerful, almost too much, do you think it will be qualified as an exploit ? Anyway, great video as always !

I typically went with a void dweller trade megacorp - getting commercial pacts with huge numbers of allies is really really good. This also means that all of your vassals come with basic resource pulls from the getgo!

I’ve gotta say this was the most fun I’ve had with Stellaris in a while.

For people doing federations post overlord for trade, or research, you can actually use a split off sector vassal you make match your decisions to form a federation with someone else, and then boot that rando out. It lets you effectively have a 1 nation federation, all to yourself.

Lol i literally just made a really similar empire on my own and wanted to check if feudal society is any good, i guess this answers my question

New montu video hell yeah

Feudal society has always been my favorite, so glad it got reworked

Thanks for the video. I see you went with the Star League method of galactic dominance.

Really cool seeing Norsemen being used in the opening for the video, an amazing parody of the Vikings series. So, first watch some Montu, then check out Norsemen.

I've tried this and they've fixed this now. Distance from your territory brings a massive penality when trying to vassalize basically making it impossible...

Just pop on your videos at work, and listen to that soothing voice all day long.

Federation/vassal trap is like you sign contract without reading small text in it.

I have been preeching this build with the hedgemony origin since launch day of overlord, its so fun

I did something close but I was a megacorp for the massive branch office spam and I used the specialized vassal types because the resources and research become insane as you snowball and they level I up. Also I used many ministry of truths because I needed influence.

This whole meta build i actually figured out randomly while playing a random game lately It's absolutely bonkers, and it didn't take long before I kicked my "friends" from my fed as they were trying to expell my own subjects

It is because we love the xeno that we must rule them. How could they survive without our protection?

The Xenophilic MegaCorp after vassalizing the entire galaxy before I’ve researched cruisers:

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but this feels very much like a tall, or at least taller, build. Since influence is so key to get subjects, you don't necessarily want to be stretching your borders out too far - you wanna grab your habitable colonies, grab the cheese colony to make your federation, then you've got most of your science ships away looking for frens, and got maybe 1-2 science ships surveying

Would like to see a playthrough against an early crisis with this build. Unify the galaxy then defend it.

From testing this strategy, there's a couple of practical notes one should add when using this Feudal playstyle when playing Grand Admiral AI (no scaling). -In the beginning, I advise to focus on alloys and not to pay much attention to tech. The AI gets quite a boost to fleets early-on, so I sometimes had to have almost double the fleetof what Montu had in this video at a similar year to not be underpowered to get the subjugation approved. That might also be because I play on tech x1 instead of x0.5, though. It can thouroughly affect the gameplan. Once that is achieved though, you can switch to focusing on tech to keep up, as you'll likely to be able to maintain sufficient firepower after. -Be careful with technology and advanced resource-taxes. Once you out-tech them too much, a vassal becomes a protectorate and loses all of those taxes in their agreement. You can't get anything but basic resources from such vassals in agreements after, until their tech level catches on, something they in my experience didn't seem to be able to once you get the ball rolling even if you gave them a research agreement. -Don't combine this with Void Dweller origin. Feudal workings and building new habitats compete for influence otherwise, and your expansion will be hindered too much to pull this off effectively.

I've been experiencing this naturally, you just get to vassalize more or less any AI and they're OK with it

You are naming all these vassals a "friend of Rome" basically.

I love xenophile builds it's nice to see one

Lawers, the evil of the civilised world. The whole galaxy united just because of the loophole. Amazing.

Lol, I just finished a game as United Nations of Earth (single-player) where literally every other empire in the galaxy was someone I had diplomatically vassalized. I fought one war early on and that was it. I didn't bother messing up my economy by going Emperor, though, since I was fanatic egalitarian.

Just did this run to test out the new rework and vassal types lmao. Vassalized the galaxy within 100 years and it was one of the most fun games Ive had in a long time

Norseman is such an under rated show. So Amazing. Just like Lillehammer. (Most of the same actors.)

awesome video ... and i liked your ship builds (helped me alot) ... but how your fleet is build up .. or how many ships of one kind do you have in one fleet ... that the thing im still struggle with

It's absurd how easy this strat is.

7:47 Ahh yes space Australia. Particularly space Brisbon. Go space Bronco's!

I stumbled into this playstyle during a single player game when (as a hive mind) I was invited to a hegemony federation and immediately took it over because my fleet size and political power was ridiculous at the time. In almost no time at all the entire galaxy was in my federation and I was essentially only competing with the crises at that point. (it was still early/mid game). Never thought about making this happen from the start but it looks like a lot of fun.

Solid guide into "how to use and abuse vaselization"

Yeah playing as a xenophile, almost all the galaxy are my vassals. One economically more powerful empire is friendly towards me, and one xenophobe is hostile towards me. The rest are all my vassals 😄

Nation resisting subjugation: Close the Borders! That will Hold them! Player Nation: Bribes with deals and tempting offers. Nation resisting subjugation: They are still coming through! This is Impossible!

Montu Dolphin: I am diplomacy.

"I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further".

I loved playing as a plantoid with tree of life because the tree of life holding gives a full chonky +1 loyalty per month and it's awesome

With Pacifism you can make the space fauna friendly to you which may help you in finding other empires

I lucked into this playstyle as a militarist spiritual teacher of shroud because my neighbors had the Hegemony Origin. I fought their neighbor, they invited me to the federation and I promptly took control of it.

Amazing !

Finally, the Blorg can have all the friends they want, by force!

Recently I have this idea of playing a scenario where Earth, other that create its own sphere of colonies and basically a core empire, have spawn also few rogue colonies that in time evolved into various new empires inspired by old ones. Kinda a new byzantine empire, a new republic of venice, new ottomans etc... In a sort of late medieval scenario. I have to play something like that. 🤔

That opening was a masterpiece. Where is that "protection money" clip from?

I remember i essentially accomplished this when I was playing as fanatic xenophile federation builders and i opened the l cluster and got gray at about year 40. Within 6 years I went from a proud, pacifist equal partner in the tiny Friendship Butterfly Federation of Peace and Love to the fanatic militarist xenophile leader of the Eternal Hegemon of Love and Stability controlling the whole galaxy

I made a build very similar, but instead of Xenophile I went with mild Xenophobe ethic and Pompous Purists civic. Extra envoys and trust growth seemed like a net positive to me. What do you think?

I kind of did this accidentally on my first run with the new DLC it was bonkers how overpowered I became

I used a mixed psionic rush and this build and ended up as galactic emperor by year 2290 and currently have more score than both fallen empires combined

Lol this feel like a political science classes simulation, too good.

This sounds like a lot of fun and I'd like to try this. Coming to it late though. Has this approach been nerfed at all in 3.9? Thanks for the great content!

Hey Montu, going forward with this build, would you say becoming thw Galactic Emperor to be the best choice? You lose the Hegemony, and you could youst stay the permanent Custodian anyway.

Not nearly as fast, but I managed to subjugate the entire galaxy l by 2300 as a rogue servitor. Once integrated we will all live happily ever after…

All hail the SPACE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE!

I think with void dweller you could do some crazy stuff with making a billion one system scholariums

Im going for rogue machine and buliding vassels with primatives where possible then shared destiny but ill let you know how it goes but i will make sure only i make my oen basic resources

I've encounterd a problem with this strategy: the A.I. tends to federate rather regularly and quickly, making it impossible to subjugate them.

i did this a bit later in the game w/o xenophile by using merc enclave fleets to boost my power quickly. feudal society is kinda overpowered now

Hi Montu, quick question on this vid -- you mention going domination second if you were authoritarian but it seems like you would need still diplomacy to make a Federation right? I just tried this tactic (v 3.7.4) and it wouldn't let me make a federation, even a hegemony, without also having diplo. So it seems like it would take 3 filled-out traditions before you can make this work, whether you have authoritarian or not. Am I wrong?

so basically 'read the damn fineprint' the space sim

Gosh I love this idea LOL!

There was definitely a sopranos or Goodfellas scene for the into

Recently came back playing stellaris, played xenophile militaristic and conquer the galaxy as usual. I am not familiar with the new vassal stuff so i end up conquering half the galaxy with 3k pops, had to micro 100 planets and it lagged so bad. Played synth ascension for that. I Didn't know there's this type of build that reduces a lot of lag. Gonna try this one next lol. I wanna play a build that I don't have to micro much

I stumbled onto this build entirely by accident a couple days ago.

Two questions: 1. How does this affect your diplomatic wieght? 2. Is it crucial that you start this process early on or can you wait a bit?

Love the build. Gotta ask though. Where is that scene from at the start?

I don't think you mentioned the origin, I see is prosperous unification but will any origin work with this strategy ? I typically do the techno organic start which idk if it's part of the vanilla game or a mod