Stellaris Is Biological Ascension Any Good?
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- Biological, or Genetic, Ascension In Stellaris is sometimes viewed as the strongest ascension path, but is this fair? There are three ascension paths available in Stellaris; synthetic, biological and psionic ascension. How does the biological ascension path stack up when compared to the other paths?
Lets dive in and find out!
Stellaris Version 3.3
Stellaris Ascension Paths series: • Stellaris Ascension Paths
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I like Bio ascension for RP purposes, having mining habitats populated by a nerve stapled modified species of bio-slaves bred specifically for mining
I've been playing for psionic ascension lately, but bio has been my favorite for a long time for RP. If synth didn't completely overhaul species portraits or at least let your choose it'd be cooler for me.
@@perrytran9504 you can change the portrait literally the moment you do synthetic ascencion. You choose the name, and you can click the portrait to change the portrait.
@@joelfilho2625 I meant choose a regular species portrait, not the robot ones.
@@perrytran9504 ah I see. Yeah. Though it would probably suck to have to click on the species tab to figure out if whatever species you're looking at is synthetic or not.
Or having a modified species of strong army pops for fighting
Id like some special interactions with clone origin. Like being able to build more of the special clone vats.
Or have it unlock a stackable tech, Or perhaps make the vats even stronger and produce stronger clones.
Not that clone army needs any more buffs lol
Just let me choose between more vats at a unity cost. And let me boost my clone vats.
I think paradox realy droped the ball on clone army, They could have made exclusive AP like a diferent biological AP or maybe have an AP caled vat overdrive that causes your pop to come out sickly or deformed increasing pop upkeep and reducing stability and happiness.
@@lefterikapnisakis7038 Indeed, I would call it a more complete origin, since they can't really use 2 out of the 3 AP despite on of them directly dealing with cloning shenanigans
Biological ascension does feel kinda underpowered,but i do like the fact it was reworked to be very powerful for hive minds
With current game optimisation it is not good. More different pops mean more lags in late game.
Biological ascension in theory should be monumentally more powerful then what is represented in game. The game only focuses on species modification, Biological ascension would and should include Bioorganic technology.
Science fiction almost never does any justice to what is most likely are future. Nerds like to think up what's cool and familiar, Not necessarily what would make the most since.
Biological science has proven to be vastly superior to the extremely inefficient and inferior crafting of raw material. It takes an ungoldy amount of non renewable resources and alot of time and energy to make anything out of raw materials. Compare that to the human brain! are adaptive immune system! the abilty to create more of are selves with small amounts of time and energy.
Would it not be way more efficient to grow space ships, building etc. To create ships that did not need to expel lots of energy to escape are atmosphere, To grow power plants that simply absorbed the suns energy 10x more effectively then a solar panel, all with such little time and effort, while also not using up a finite amount of resources. Organic tech, in theory has the potential to far surpass the limits of what we currently consider to be "tech".
@@ViolenVaymire It's a bias similar to why, in Warhammer 40k, most Adepts of the Mechanicus replace their organic parts with metal and electronics, and the minority of the Magos Biologis modify their bodies with engineered organic parts. Perhaps it's an influence of engineers and chemists compared to biologists, and that the techniques for modifying DNA and protein synthesis are quite new
I think part of the balancing is the fact that bio ascension doesn't slow down your engineering research at all. Engineering is the most important set of research cards in the game, and rushing your next ship class, or your next station class, or rushing to habitats and megastructures is really important.
@@ViolenVaymire I have yet to see a biological thing anywhere close to the weapons that we have created with technology.
Bio's biggest weakness IMO is the sheer amount of micro you need to really get the most out of it, further hampered by how difficult it can be to get specific pops into specific jobs. I'd pick Bio more often if you could at least modify pops by job category per planet, or even in your whole empire. (Turn all workers into template A, Specialists into template B, Rulers into template C)
Yeah would really make it more logical
Clone Vats are actually quite competitive than it seems, since it requires no jobs to maintain the pop assembly. Robot Assembly is nice and all, but you need to put up roboticists that even use alloys as their job upkeep, whereas clone vats require none. Yes, 30 monthly food upkeep seems expensive, but think of the opportunity cost of pops working on roboticists jobs.
u need 2 or 3 farmer to pay for it upkeep
@@ououuou thats why you dont use farmers, you buy it, use livestock (which gets better with bio ascension!) And use station modules
well, the people who don't the roboticist job will work on your farm worlds/habitats instead because someone has to produce the enormous cost of 30 food per planet :P
@@ououuou Yes, but it's quite easy to specialize agri - world with insane efficiency and production thanks to Hydroponics Farms(You can use both districts and building slots in case of agri world). Also roboticists eat up 2 alloys so the comparison becomes something like -2 alloys -1 specialist job working pop + 2 assembly vs -30 food +3 assembly.
Also, before 3.2, edicts were much more easier to maintain so designating agri world was a terrible idea, but since 3.3, edicts became much more valuable and hard to use in long run, so there isn't much of efficiency diff between food/energy production.
On second thought, I shouldn't compare robot assembly vs clone assembly as +2 vs +3, because most of the robot users will be using mass production traits. Anyways, my point is that clone vats are not as ludicrously expensive as it seems on surface.
@@letsplaysvonaja1714 You don't need a clone vat on every planet. Just need to set up a few breeder habitats then with the variety of automatic resettlement options the new pops will move to your other colonies.
The best thing about bio ascension es the capability to modify and perfect every one in your empire.
Although, I think Stellaris needs a way to be able to assign genetic modifications to specific jobs, rather than planets, to be able to maximize more. It would also benefit greatly from an assimilation feature. The problem of being the good guy and having migration treaties is that you'll be constantly getting new unmodified pops. A way to make the assimilate into the superior version would be nice.
On the topic of assimilation, there should be a third ascension perk, mutually exclusive to xeno-compatability, where you can assimilate all species into one, so you could make those pesky xenos pure and human. This would open up cool roleplay potential with pompous purists as well.
@@cosmosyn2514 sounds like something no xenophobe would actually want. In fact, having "alien minds" masquerading as their own species sounds like a nightmare scenario even I would be scared about
that's basically necrophage
Definitely needs an option for dedicating certain pops to certain jobs, like if I have a mining world and I'm building robots with mining upgrades, I only want them to mine. I don't want them do farm or do any clerk jobs. The meatbags can take care of that.
THIS is what we need, we cannot micro every pop in the entire system with such inefficient tools we have now.
That said, if we could have better tools, not only for breeding the correct pops automatically (it's a pain when you have 100 habitats for example) but even better auto resettlement options (imagine like a unemployment queue with all the jobs available and all your free new pops being selected for their best traits to the correct job even if it's at the other side of the galaxy) and job distribution systems (because right now the pop is selected by it's perks but once it is working it won't be ever replaced despite having better new pops waiting for that job) this ascension perk would be definately better and the most important thing, really fun to play with.
I see what you did there. Showing Orcs with the budding trait. Nice little Warhammer reference there.
the assimilation feature of biological ascension works both ways btw
normal empires can "save" drones and hives can integrate individuals
wish synths could "save" machines and turn them into robots at least.
I can't find the Hive Mind trait when I open the species editor (template modification)...planet preference, traits galore - but no Hive Mind. I unlocked all the genetic ascendancy options before I tried this...so now i want to integrate into My Mind, all the primitives i've been protecting for over a century.
@@keenirr5332 assimilation is different from gene-engineering
I think it's under the species rights? Should be one of the citizenship types like full citizenship, limited, slavery and undesirables?
@@letsplaysvonaja1714 thank you!
For me, specializing pops falls apart during the mid game. Pops that I specifically made for a particular job, end up being randomly employed in jobs they aren't optimized for, even if the optimal jobs are available. Then pops that are terrible at a particular thing get the job they're worst at. This is especially noticeable with machine intelligences, due to how easy it easy to make different min maxed bots. So unless I'm missing something, or until it gets fixed, I'm going for a generalist population.
Also having to manage which pops grows on this planet (for a penalty) is annoying af
agreed. its why i only do it with hive minds. its easier too keep pops in line there. even with robots i often go for a generalist aproach instead of super specialised unless i have lotsa machine/hive worlds. its just too tedious.
You can often fix some of these issues by temporarily blocking all jobs on a planet and then clicking the Restore Jobs button. This will have the game re-evaluate the pops available and best match them to the open jobs. Naturally, this works best with a Gestalt empire (for BA a Hive Mind) that does not get restricted in terms of job tiers (i.e. pops from a higher tier job will instantly move to a lower one). But at least within the same tier of jobs (usually specialists and workers, respectively) any empire can do it.
Exactly, and you know, why would you sully your civilisation with filthy Zeno's?!!?
I usually fix this by literally having no other job in the planet than the one I want them for
Just for the fantasy realization value I'm disappointed that the bio ascension path doesn't offer immortality.
Yeah, although you can get venerable and robust for 210 year life spans.
Add in the fuel powered one, and you're looking at pre bonus lifespans of 260 years, which is practically immortal.
If you were able to enforce specific templates by job instead of by species then BA would be s tier. Maybe add a technology/edict that automatically 'fixes' pops according to their job for a small society research penalty.
That'd be so nice.
I think we just lack enough biological traits for it to be useful. We always end up with the same set of traits: erudite, natural engineers and robust for exemples.
If you're not using the 30% pop growth speed, then you're doing BA wrong.
I wish I could simply assimilate all my pops into one good species just like synth ascension. I hate it when there are five million different species and variants in my empire.
Yeah that would be nice, perfect for xenophobes.
All shall be Horatio should be a bio ascension thing you can do.
True. Just genetically modify every race into one race. Be like that time kyles dad became a dolphin on southpark lol
Just eat the other pops
You can, sort of, do this with Necrophage, but I agree. If you could have templates for jobs and and convert pops into whichever template you need would be nice. :)
Personally I love bio ascension, it's the one I take when I'm playing some authoritarian empire since I keep a lot of "free labor" around... nerve stapled op lol
Happiness aint that bad to go for cause bonuses, even slave worlds people can be pretty happy
@@loafofbread9400 My thoughts exactly, I take nerve stapled because they don't care and I can use rights and policies to make my upper classes very happy
@@Brotrooper360 good for hivemind tho, nerve stapled delicious pop :)
@@loafofbread9400 yum lmao
@@StarboyXL9 cyberpunk megacorp is a brilliant idea and will be my next playthrough while listening to timecop1983, ty!!
Honestly, the current way pop migration, pop growth and the species modification template works. Results in a design that holds this path back because it introduces a ton of micro, some of which shouldn't even exist. For example of one bit of micro that exists, I shouldn't have to go back and apply the template because the first round was for X pops, but by the time it finished, I have X+3 pops and those three new pops are the old template.
The micro bit isn't really fun either. Probably one of psionics best traits on the straight up passive fun aspect, is that outside of setting species rights to assimilation, you don't have have to do anything. Synthetic has enough other things going for it, that it can mostly ignore the whole trait microing thing, but someone that does that will get more oomph out of the path. Bio seems like it's straight up designed to be too reliant on creating multiple species templates and well as I said, it's not a fun experience really.
Normally I agree, I don't like micromanaging but for some reason I enjoy creating my templates and having to reset them whenever a filthy xeno decides not to ascend to biological perfect selves.
That's why I don't play Iron man, I can't be bothered to wait to long only for more obsolete s to show up. I just finish my pop modification instantly and then continue to play normally.
Eh, sure, after you upgrade your pops their might be some that were produced while you were upgrading, but after you upgraded them too its no problem any longer. Oh you mean Xenos? Thats what Purging is for. Saves a lot of Micro.
I think what bio ascension is missing power-wise is that it doesn't have any bonus to trait *picks*. In practice it works fine if you're loading up on 4-pointer traits using your extra trait points, but your ability to do more exotic combos with lots of cheaper traits (including negative traits) is still quite limited. It would also be great if you could include in your genetic library (i.e. the traits addable to all organic species) versions of the special traits of species present in your empire, although it would have to be implemented carefully for balance reasons, probably with some extra cost so they aren't 0pick/0point traits, and you'd want to fix the gene heist exploit before allowing this.
It have in the third perk (xeno compatibility)
An important mechanic that I think is overlooked, is that after you complete your biological ascension, you also get the ability to steal hive pops as a normal bio empire. Hives get the option to assimilate normal bio pops into hive-minded pops, as you said, but normal bio empires also get the option to disassimilate hive-minded pops into normal bio pops instead of just purging them. So you get the opportunity to eat up hive minds!
I love biological ascension from a RP standpoint, but I hate the amount of micro it requires to truly take advantage of it.
@@StarboyXL9 oh man that’s a really good idea 😈 I love it.
It'll be able to compete from a gameplay perspective once again when they give it a Biological Assimilation features like with Necrophage so we can just merge everyone into one species and diversify from there. One of Synth's advantages aside from sheer numerical bonuses is their ability to have just one species with a few templates for specialization.
I'd like to note one important thing, which is that Biological Ascension can blend nicely with certain civics and ethics; not only this, but it doesn't have a soft encouragement towards going Spiritualist or Materialist like Psionic and Synthetic give. This allows you to focus on another Fanatic ethic and retain one dominant faction aside from those two.
P.S. It's a bit wild with Necrophage as you can specialize even further and slap some amazing traits onto your servants working in basic resource production while your Ruler species is tailored specifically for the best jobs.
P.P.S. Catalytic Processing makes for a very nice use of Nerve-Stapled, Delicious, Agrarian Livestock.
I like the idea of this ascension quite a bit. Absolutely essential when I get going with that Mahact Gene Sorcerer playthrough when I get around to it.
Whenever I play as my xenophobe empire this is pretty much what I do, as nerve stapled is extremely OP, especially when fighting empires with just one species, as all I have to do is invade, win the war and nerve staple all the new pops and bam, huge worker force that I'll usually just throw onto a thrall world and forget about
Ironically I believe that while Vanilla B.A. is quite weak in comparison to the other ones, in modded (For prime example, Stellaris Evolved does it best in my opinion) the potential is massive.
SOrry, I couldn't hear you over my psionic robot army! Can you repeat that?
@@attacheli9591 hold on what? What is this mod and why have I JUST now heard of it
@@falxblade1352 you can already get species with mechanical, cybernetic, psionic and latent psionic in vanilla.
@@wulli_ oh. Still wanna know about the mod Zero talked about
@@falxblade1352 stellaris evolved is the name. It is a huge overhaul of vanilla, ascension path are all redone and you can have a mix of two. It got new civics, origins and traits. It got other things too but those are main selling points.
It is not complete yet but you can play the alpha (just be aware that the author update the mod every 3 days if you use irony manager for compatibility)
I made my civ into a pharma/medical Megacorp specifically to go with the Bio ascension.
Was a lot of fun.
The Bio ascension main drawback is the intense micro needed to reach optimal efficiency. However, it has one niche advantage over Synth ascension, its main competitor, that is when your pops become machine, they loose the void dweller trait, so that's 15% less resources on Habitats if you become machine. Unless you creatively exploit some flaws in the game like creating colony ships to keep your bio pop or steal a template from another empire.
If you don't want to bothered with so many templates, the best universal traits combo is
- Erudite
- Robust
- Very strong
Those 3 traits with no negatives produces a species that is well rounded in all aspects of pop properties, both civilian and military.
Why not fertile instead of very strong? worker pop output is pointless
@@mortache when you have multiple alloy producing ecumenopoli to feed, you will want to squeeze every bit of mineral production from the limited amount of planets you have.
@@Beef1188 but is it worth giving up fertile? For less than 1% of your total mineral output?
@@mortache due to late game pop caps, fertile isn't what it used to be. Also the army damage bonus helps the gene warriors clean up the vermi#AHEM# hostile combatants from planets that much faser.
@@Beef1188 well its true that pop growth isn't what it used to be, still growing more pops is definitely more useful than a tiny increase in minerals. Especially since fertile also reduces the housing usage which helps in giant planets and habitats, or if you're skipping city districts with masterful crafters which I considered to be the best civic in the game the moment it came out and it just kept getting better. Skipping city districts not only reduces resource usage but also reduces empire size.
Better than Synth until the option to keep the same portrait is added to vanilla. No amount of mechanical advantages can change that.
The way to use it is very complex and nuanced rather then being JUST ONLY a tade-off for playstyles. The way to go for grand strategy. This video shows and explains it perfectly
Fairly new stellaris player here. Probably only 200 hours in. Would love to see a video explaining fleet compositions and different ways to build/counter other types of fleets. Generally play with a few friends and they tend to just go titan and a bunch of battleships. Love your min/ max content keep it up. Also an episode on how you should develop the planets in your empire and how to decide what you should be doing/prioritizing to achieve specific end game goals. Thanks for all the effort in your
I feel like it would be really cool if they increased the odds of species self modification with bio ascension. I’ve gotten that event like once in all my time playing, but I feel like if they made it so pops automatically modded themselves to be more effective on whatever planet they’re on and in what position they’re in that would help deal with a lot of the micro.
I think it was best in 3.0 because you could use events to really create an Ubermenche. The best ever got was :tomb world preference, limited regeneration, Venerable, robust, very strong, strong, intelligent, brain slug host, rapid breeders, natural physicists, repugnant and cybernetic and I just liked the idea that I had these long lived, super strong, intelligent beings that could survive anything and live anywhere and I just roleplayed the repugnant trait as my race falling into the uncanny valley or otherwise breaking reality to other species.
Since then they fixed the 'bugs' that allowed for it.
Really playing with my emotions with that thumbnail after your last video, Montu
I use Bio Ascension when I start of in Habitats.
With a bit luck you can get a - 25% housing usage.
That will help you a lot and you won't need to pick the habitat +8 housing district.
So you can always build 8 of whatever you want like research or minerals.
Bio ascension was better back when we had the old tile system. It required some micro but it allowed you to produce a genetic caste system.
With how pops currently work, bio ascension is such a waste and pop modding in general sucks.
I was playing with Civil Wars mod and I was a wide spiritualist in empire. I had 2 ascension perks unspent when a sector to rebelled and the separatists took Psionic Ascencion due to the spiritualist bias. I was quite nicely surprised when I rolled over them with my fleet and I got psionic pops at the end. I had not planned it, but I double dipped at the end with Bio Ascension.
I did this for my Crisis playthrough for flavor. Removed all weaknesses and improved skills for my psychic necrophage race. didn't make a big change tbh, but it made a "Perfect Evil Race"
I'm currently playing an aquatic devouring swarm that has become the crisis and is working towards bio ascension. So far it has been one giant buffet for my piranhas. There is something oddly satisfactory about watching an entire blob of color on the galactic map just, disappear :)
Gotta feed the fishies :D
Something you didn't mention is that it also allows normal empires to assimilate hive mind pops into normal pops. Also I tend to only run 2 different templates; one with Erudite, fertile, and robust, and a second on my lithodids for very-strong and basic worker jobs. I do this so I don't have to micromanage, its not maximally efficient but it is mostly efficient. I don't like the cost of the clone vats, so I usually supplement with robots that are specialized to mining and technician jobs, and they later become synths. Overall I really like the Biological path, I know its not as good as the synthetic path but that one is bland to me, and there is just too much randomness in the psychic path for my liking (Although with the new buffs I might give it another go).
Even better is that if you can change the portrait of the species all together, so you could make every thing the same, if at least one of that species sub type is in the game, usefull against fanatic purifiers AI to just become their species as your main so they don't hate you that mush.
I honestly like it a lot. The only downside is having to micro-manage especially if you are a xenophile and have a lot of migration treaties. If you had your main species and a few subordinates then I don't think it would be as annoying. The traits you get access to are damn good too. I think its stronger than psionics in my opinion but I would still prefer it to synthetic ascension just because I very every want to change the species I play. If I wanted to be a robot I start as one lol.
Bio Ascension is even better if you can open the species screen. In my case i use a portrait mod that removes all vanilla portraits and doesnt have a single animated portrait, this saves every frame in the screen and allows me to use the screen very easily. An easy way to make species modding more fun however would be to set planet species traits meaning that your empire will auto "mod" species on that planet to meet the species requirements you set meaning they can auto migrate and you dont need to go back every 5-10 years to mod them all again.
One of the things to remember about clone vats is that much like robotic assembly plants, these eat through an absolute fuckload of resources (food instead of consumer goods in this case). It's nothing you can't overcome with proper planning, but the first time I set my fresh suite of bioengineered frontier colonies to automatic and they all immediately built clone vats, my food production quickly went from +250 to about -100. You get what you pay for, though, they work fast.
Also lol at everyone complaining about variants. Try a xeno-compatibility run and get back to me.
I prefer bio because synth ascension creeps me out and psi is too random to bank on.
Psionic is the coolest though
@@bryane727 Just my preference. You like psi so rock it. Play how you want, that's the beauty of this game. So many ways to play youre limited really only by your imagination unless you only want to play the most op and efficient way which can be fun but it gets boring to me.
Synth pops get integrated into Machine Intelligences if they're conquered. Yeah, let that one and the fact that Synth leaders can implode spontaneously sink in for a moment.
I still like it, amazing for wide empires where you have the space for pops to work at but need the pops in the first place. Will definetely try after my vanilla human playthrough
A little late to the conversation, but i actually do prefer this path to the psionic path as it is more of a known quantity for what you are getting. Really nice to get into mid game and get huge buffs to your pops to push past your competitors.
Its also very nice if you are playing as a species that doesnt have really any migration treaties and/or low reproduction rates. Can attest it is pretty powefrul for necroids - especially if you are gaming to be the end game crisis...
I greatly prefer Psi ascension. It gives a wide array of good bonuses for any job or leader position in a single trait und doesn't require any micro apart from optionally interacting with the Shroud once in a while. Bio ascension is just a hassle and makes games unfun.
IMO, biological ascension is the best path for a xenophobic empire. Because creating the genetically perfect livestock species for food (and lithoid livestock for minerals and gas) just turns your empire into an economic powerhouse.
What's about the third perk? Xeno compatibility (lag machine) hybrid species get 1 extra trait
The only reason I pick up this ascension is so I can have more positive traits and the option to remove all negative traits. And as a Void Dweller Main, I prefer this over the others because I like to create Caste Systems with in my empire where I create special pops for each habitat based on primary resource. It doesn’t have to be the best choice to still have it’s uses, especially if you are going pure biological. The only other option would be Psionics for the Psi Corp building that can also provide a job boost without having to rebuild your pops.
Gotta have it for that caste RP goodness. Synth is the way to go (for most) but RP fun the other two are quite good :D
-What the intro actually portrays is Grid Amalgamation citizenship.-
I prefer bio ascension. It's fun to try and get my pops into other empires going cybernetics and psionics so they have those traits applied. If you have an open migration treaty with those empires it's easy to get them back in your empire with the cybernetic or psionic traits by settling a new planet or habitat with them. Or you can just try and sell some on the unpaid intern market when it opens and hope they circulate to a cybernetic/psionic empire eventually and hope again they end up back on the market with the desired traits later. It's possible to end up with pops with cybernetic, psionic, fertile, erudite, robust and and once you do you can apply it to your entire population. I've achieved this only once (also managed to get brain slug and red box buff), but I like to keep trying for it and with the recent updates I think it's easier now as empires seem to go psionic and cybernetic more often.
Eugenics, you made the true superior extreme race. ABOVE ALL USELESS XENOS
A good cook always modifies their new food source to be tastier. All it requires is the food internally producing its own salt and paprika.
Damn montu l have played this game for years but your videos are teaching me tons! 🙏 thank you!!! 🎉
An interesting thing with Biological Ascension is that if you can get Psionic pops in your empire by event, conquest, or migration, you can use that as a base species to get pops with both Psionic and the Biological Ascension traits. Niche, but useful if you can pull it off. Unfortunately, as I recall leaders don't get both Psychic and Erudite even if the species has both traits.
You can also make astartes with these by making a template of just army modifiers and making gene warriors from it.
It’s not super useful since armies aren’t that important, but it’s a fun little rp thing to have
Bio ascensionsucks for QOL reasons. You should be able to combine species to groups. Noone has the time to micromanage 20 different species. And its not worts it to modify if there are only like 4 pops. Thats the benefit of synt ascension. Its possible to combine all species into one easily managable species.
Second: Different jobs etc. It should be possible to restrict some pops from jobs. Like forbid main species from working as entertainers or clerks. Only allow that for another species. And then you can get benefit from different templates with different traits.
Definitely the best modern sci-fi show, and it is a game at the same time!
Bio ascension has potential, but it is soooooooooo much micro to properly abuse it, and even on peak abuse it is still overshadowed by synthetic which is like 100% simpler.
I would make bio modification into species policy. Banned, discouraged, allowed, encouraged, mandatory. And templates on a new tab where you can set the primary traits, job dependent traits, and final traits. Basically when a pop. gets modified then:
1. apply primary traits
2. apply job traits
3. apply final traits
Each as points allow it. You basically make a priority order for it.
I tend to overuse this ascension when playing an empire with enabled henicid (force to leave) to fight off "democratic" civilizations. Conquer some worlds, check which of the pops have the highest head count, modify them into the worst possible species and then force them to leave to other empires. Feels evil
While playing as an Authoritarian empire, you can basically make everyone in your empire a slave with the Nerve Stapled trait and wouldn’t have to worry about them revolting against your rule. It even gives you a 15% resource output if you give them the very Strong trait, Robust trait and Nerve Stapled trait.
This is actually very fun thing to do for roleplaying, you can be nice like the old ones or be evil like the qu
This moment of joy when you get the pop hybrid and omnicodek genres from migrations or events in the first 50 years and you already know that you will become the champion of evolution and establish hybrids as the dominant race of the galaxy!
This path is my second favorite, behind psionics. I feel all the paths need reworks, especially bio. The clone vats are great, upkeep could be lower, but it’s fine. If the devs went in and reworked the ascension paths and made bio and psionics better and balanced everything, then synthetic wouldn’t dominate so much. Hey Montu, maybe you could make a video talking about some needed reworks to ascension perks and some suggestions to rework them.
I tried to make this ascension work, but one day i come up with a build with no especific ascention. It's a lithoid species with the mechanist origin, they are fanatic materialists. i spammed robot assembly plants in every world, while the lithoids colonized every world possible to take the specialists jobs. Then i took gaia sculpting perk and terraformed every world to gaia and also made some eccumanopolis. Needless to say that this unascended game was better then my bio ascended playtrough.
Thanks to the nemisis update I was able to clone a latent psyonic species I didn’t have any access to through other means and through that I was able to get psionic theory despite the fact I was a fanatic matirialist technocracy because having a psionic pop significantly boosts the likelihood of psionic theory showing up even negating the matirialist penealty of getting it
Biological Ascension is my favorite path, I've done the other two and they feel less customizable honestly.
Also keep in mind yes, you can upgrade your pops, but you can do so much more with it if you think outside the box.
I've reengineered species with terrible traits and gave them fertile then exiled them from my kingdom. Within 30 years they populated the galaxy giving empires all kinds of negatives. 😎😎
I like it for a hive mind role play. I'm sure some stuff is a lot better but having no negative traits and just compiling great traits with very strong by year 2300 gave me a huge leg up in my mp campaign. I ate the galaxy by 2500.
Biological ascension with necrophage is really fun.
I can have one species made to be grown as fast as possible, and one to be as efficient as possible.
Biological feels like the nice middle of the road. It doesn't have the fun rp factor of the shroud and psionic federation battles for leadership as well as not being downright broken compared to the other ones like mechanics. But it can be very strong if microd properly while retaining the rp elements of changing and altering your entire species
Always give species that generate leaders the Erudite trait. It's the only Bio trait which gives Leaders a bonus, much like the Psionic & Synth ascension paths do.
The way I see it is that if Biological Ascension outclasses the Psionic Ascension starting from midgame but is in turn outclassed by Synthetic Ascension in the endgame, it isn't necessarily the weakest. Also, as far as the pop shuffling is concerned, with 10 points (2 default, 8 from tech and ascension) I prefer to just make two main templates; one for rulers, researchers and other related jobs with Erudite and Robust (Thrifty, Charismatic or Traditional may be applied as needed), and one for everyone else (mainly industrial and worker jobs) with something like Fertile, Robust, Industrious, Ingenious and probably Unruly. Making a separate worker-only template is a bonus in my opinion. Given the job specialization of worlds, I don't find the shuffling to be much of a problem especially with the two templates.
you mentioned that hive empires can convert regular pops into drones, but i think you forgot to mention that fully bio-ascended vanilla empires can also convert hive pops into individualist pops.
I always thought Bio-ascension was the least interesting of the three paths. It would have been really interesting if you could go full Horatio or Qu and use it to have complete control over a species' biology. Like, turn a species into a member of your species or mutate them into some horrible amalgam of flesh.
Having access to just extra traits and vats seems a little underwhelming, especially when you compare it to Psionic or Synthetic Ascensions which completely change how your empire / species functions.
I just realized something about the tomb world preference of course the tomb world habitability is great but the best thing is that every other planet that isn’t a Gaia world is only 60% habitable that means you can colonize any planet you want without any serious problems and considering how hard it is to raise habitability in the early game you can colonize more planets then any other regular empire so in retrospect the tomb world origin is actually a surprising powerful origin for the early game which is likely the most important time in the game
I absolutely love it for the nerve stapled perk. Basically a completely docile slave population and almost complete stability on any planet as a result
It really needs a way to modify ALL species at once, or assimilate those species to have certain trait templates over time without a project. It becomes an absolute nightmare to manage any more than 3 species, each ending up having >3 variants each, with several straggler pops on older templates.
It would be able to compete with synthetic, but currently I'd rather deal with the RNG of psionics than the micro of bio
Just needs a Necrophage-esque assimilation mechanic to modify pops into your own superior species.
@@arandomoctopus2532 that would exclude xenophiles from it, which while we're all playing xenophobes anyways, this could be a really good opportunity to make them better.
A new UI that lets you make generic templates, THEN apply it to species would work great. Applying the templates by percentage instead of planet would remove alot of the micro aswell.
@@takeaswig4506 Well, you wouldn't *need* to assimilate. If anything that'd be blocked for Xenophiles, as for Xenophiles the Xeno-Compatibility Perk (which needs to be fixed still) actually synchronizes well with Biological Ascension as Hybrids give an extra trait point and trait pick.
@@takeaswig4506 Thats a great suggestion. I just cant modify 30+ species all with 3+ templates, takes forever and is no fun. Your idea would allow me to keep different species and the RP flavor of xenophile while removing most micro
I love biological ascension. I would be nice if it was a less 'all or nothing' when applying templates on planets though. Sometimes I just want to modify a couple to fit a specific job or want to modify one pop to a radically different biome to colonize a planet.
The most fun species I've done was cybernetic and psionic -- I had psionic pops from immigration and I went the cybernetic ascension route. I'd love to engineer that situation in someone else's empire, bring them in to mine, and then do the genetic ascension. Psionic, cybernetic, erudite and robust (can you even sneak in very strong?) would pretty much cover the bases of everything you'd want to do with your empire.
The gene warriors are also really nice for invading the fallen empire worlds in some vaguely reasonable amount of time.
There is some really wacky stuff you can do with Bio Ascension Megacorps. Posthumous Employment Center + Clone Vats = Pops for days. It's utterly hilarious with gospel of the masses, as more pops = more trade value for free from pops, and you have truly titanic pop growth rates. It isn't uncommon for a build doing this to have more pops of their species than the rest of the galaxy has pops *combined*.
Food in the current build of Stellaris may not be the most useful resource normally, but it is absurdly easy to generate in excessive proportions. One dedicated Agri-world can generate enough food for a hundred worlds. Normally, this would be horribly inefficient because food doesn't do anything but convert poorly to energy credits once you've crashed the market, but as a bio ascension popspam build, you can actually use this incredible food efficiency to build pops. and while there is an argument that you're using up jobs that could be doing something else, one farmer can generally support a Clone Vat/Posthumous Employment Center on their own with all of the upgrades in, which is more pop efficient that robotics, and you're also building pops FAR faster than robots. Importantly, Clone Vats are modified by Building Upkeep, which really helps push their price down.
I've seen planets break 20 pop growth/month in total doing this build. The end result is I end up essentially bulk building Ecumenopoli and habitats because I need places to put my pops. And given how absurdly strong Ecumenopoli and Labitats already are, the snowball is extremely real.
I usually chose this path since it fits my role-play heavy vanilla united nations playstyle best. For optimum effect this ascention path definetly requires too much micromanagement, but i usually just remove negative traits, slap erudite on everything, plus communal, docile or tradtional at random...
I personally think that the best set up for this is 100% void dwellers as u can get 40-50% resources output on many jobs when combining the advanced traits with the void dweller trait if u dont mind micro managing up pops.
My favorite part about biological ascension is after conquering a fallen empire with pops that have the worst possible combination of traits possible, you can actually fix it.
Or you can act like the Qu.
Subterranean Origin details tomorrow? Maybe? space dwarves ftw
My disappointment is immeasurable
To cut down on complex micro I give different templates and roles to whole races like making one race my soldiers and giving them “strong”
Pretty much what everybody else has said:
A.) Too much micromanagement is necessary
B.) Game doesn't handle specialized pops well enough
When I do go Bio Ascension, it's mostly for roleplay - and I rarely use it to its fullest potential. Synth is far easier to make the most of. Psionic is, well, Psionic - good for RP and has its perks, but generally underwhelming.
TBH. I like to do the same thing I do when I go for Synthetic Ascension. Make a single Pop type. My Synths are equipped with Efficient Processors and Loyalty Circuts (or logic engines, given that in most of my games my pops have already 95%+ happiness). For my bio Pops I go for the trifecta Erudite/Fertile/Robust. Adding non-adaptive, for I have primarily Gaiaworlds and ecumenopolises.
TL;DR: When I play Fanatic Egalitarian I mean it.
2:00 Oh dang, I didn't know I need Glandular whatever to get the next tech needed for the ascension. That explains why my terravore hive mind wasn't getting it. Duh 😑😅
I usually either go Bio ascension, or more commonly Psionic. They might not be optimal, but I really just don't want to be a robot. I do wish there was some way to be a cyborg without going half in on Synthetic or messing with migration or console commands. On your main species specifically.
I really want them to add back in events/situations where your population starts gene modding itself outside of your direct control. There was that event chain at launch where a segment of your population gene modified itself and became terrorists/rebels. I don't think they ever flushed out the event chain though and I haven't seen it for a while in any of my recent games. New factions on genetic enhancement/naturalists forming and causing stability problems and/or a full-on Eugenics War/ revolt similar to machine uprisings would be cool. Also, they could increase the benefits and add additional special traits for genetic ascension but with the downsides of possibly damaging pop growth, creating diseases or having other potential downsides. Anyway, seems like missed opportunities.
I love the biological modifications and take the gene modification research even when that isn't my species specialty. The big thing with these abilities for me is just the storytelling aspect of play -- which is a huge part of how I play (and I rarely focus on min/max but like to see a more organic looking empire history). I like how this has a much more general impact except at the extreme (Hive). So it's a good specialized path to take that boosts Hive like crazy. Otherwise it's an interesting and fun thing to play with for most other types. Even my super diverse (xenophilic), diplomatic, egalitarian, spiritualist republic I had a lot of fun just removing negative traits from my populations and occasionally assigning them to different biomes.
Nice intro clip 😝
To be honest, I usually just go Bio Ascension since Synth Ascension is really boring to me and it's hard to do Psionic Ascension as Materialist. Usually I have a couple different species specialized for a certain thing; a researcher species, specialist species, army species, etc. It gets more interesting with mods, particularly Xenology: Traits Expansion Neo, as that adds a lot of things, such as the ability to make a specialized admiral species.
I love it for my necrophage. I like to customize one race for each of the resources (food energy minerals) and then boost my necroids specialist output as hard as I can. Everyone else is just fodder for the nercopurge, so growth speed and housing reductions of course.
A big QoL change would be to let you modify depending on jobs. Having to shuffle everything around and stuff causes bio to have a lot of micro to be efficient while the other ascension don't. Hell from a flavor perspective why can't a civ so advanced set up a system that automatically modifies pops according to their jobs? In such a civ, wouldn't the workplace,government, etc. just schedule a trip to the gene clinic for you so you can get the appropriate gene mods for the job?
That aside I just think the three ascension paths need some tweaks and reworks tbh.
I would agree that biological ascension is the weakest and the most micro intesive, but I would say the hardest one to get is psionic ascension because it is rng if the theory will pop up. I have only had one run where I went with the mechanical acension and tended to lean towards psionics more recently because I am tired of the micro.
> through a little bit of micromanagement
More than just a little... but yea it can make for some nice specializations. Would be great if the UI on this was better and it didn't take a silly long research project
biggest advantage is that you can capture psionic or cyborg (or if really lucky, both) pops and then genetically engineer them to get all the bonuses at once.
It works well with slaves, especially with specialised thrall worlds.
I like to have one nerve stapled worker species, one specialist species and the founder species.
Any others I might pick up I just turn into nerve stapled livestock, much more efficient and less variety to handle.
As pointed out by other commenters here. It is relatively underwhelming. However, it's very good with certain hive mind builds. Like stacking with budding and getting additional science from unemployed pops. You have to stack pretty heavily into pop growth and sprawl reducing traditions to make it worth while, but it can be fun printing pops every month. I had a game recently that could arguably be called out of the meta, where I was printing 6-12 hive mind pops every month by 2360. Is it good? Not necessarily. Fun when it works? Absolutely.
No the bast example of ascension use. But you are right, that’s very expensive, but the strongest in buffs.
I accidentally did a psionic heist with a friend, we had a migration treaty and after a bit got a few of my pops back now psionic, so using my mastery of genetic engineering now everyone was
I'm just wishing there was a special bio ascension thing when you can turn your spaceships into loving things