Let's hear it, what could I have done better.

I tried eager purifiers, and it turns out being behind everyone in tech, down 10 pops, and also having your ships have 50% less fire rate is not a good combo with purifiers :D

Teleporting into the heart of an empire's power and cutting off their head is basic tactics. It worked for the Reapers (until it didn't).

I'm going to start a shoulder of giants game with eager explorers. People who are extremely eager to discover their creators at the cost of everything else on top of all the new archeaotech

Stargazer and the Quantum Catapult is great for border gore - make the map horrendous, little bits of your empire everywhere.

Hey Aspec, now we’ve have the new dlc out, would you consider updating a new video for beginners? I’ve not been able to play Stellaris for a long time (forgotten completely how to play admittedly!!! 😅) and thought it’d be helpful both for veterans and new people alike to playing it. All the best and complete respect for you mate, thanks for being the guy that initially got me and others into getting the great game. ^^

Only if we can name the starting exploration vessels ‘Harold’, and ‘Kumar’.

It's a pity that you can't take Calamitous Birth too for complete galactic cataclysm experience.

11:57 - "Our flesh harvesters are coming for your pebbles..." Uhh.. bro?

I can't help but see your empire's sigil as the goatse image. It isn't super obvious, but once I saw that, I was constantly distracted.

Now we just need exploration servitors.

You still have the hyperlane mindset. First thing I saw was you survey the catapult and there's no reason to even go to that system until you plan on doing the dig site or repairing the catapult.. With the -distance influence cost, why not jump over those empty systems and take the chokepoints or the systems with planets first? You can just ignore a lot of those empty systems until you have chokepoints and planets

Hungry. Hunt. Consume. Hungry.

Did you ever make use of the -distance influence cost? You keep mentioning it but I haven't seen you use it yet. Distance influence reduction is not normal influence cost reduction.

out of the 4 primitive Civics I have been enjoying the megacorp version the most, what I have been doing is play as a Void Dweller fanatic xenophile, Criminal Syndicate and I just utterly ignore building a fleet to intentionally become a subject of another empire. and I put all my Alloys into Building Habitats and building Starbases/defence platforms instead, using my 'weak' status to try to become a Bulwark of the first empire I find so I can just steal as much resources out of them as possible, pledging my fealty to another more powerful empire if they come along so I can jump ship when my overlord gets too weak from me sucking them dry of everything of value, usually taking some of my old overlords systems in the process Its not the 'best' empire to be as you won't be doing any conquering without assistance from AI when you swap to a new sugardaddy, but it has been incredibly fun

Instead of giving you hyperlane engines, those techs should give you jump range increases. Or jump cooldown reduction. There's no way they couldn't have flagged those techs to interact with the eager explorer civics in that manner.

wow that looks like fun *note to self: lower the difficulty*

I just found something amazing with the new DLC when I tried the Common Ground origin. Not saying anything more, if you are interested in seeing it.

Dear god. I instinctively hit M while watching this video to zoom out without thinking.

So.. What you tried to create.. is the true history of Galactus. Nice! And what would be better? Cloaking Galactus... Never see you coming.. till it's too late 😈

From the perspective of the "victims" it must be like when the Tyranids (40K) or the Zerg (Starcraft) invade and destroy / devour everything. - The horror they experience is unimaginable.

My first winned game was a terravore crisis. It was just too easy. All the galaxy quickly well under my havy rocks. I even had my production mainly in negative, but just keeped eating planets.

I know this is an older video, but an interesting idea I had while watching. Not sure how well it would work. If you stack clear blocker reductions, you could in theory have an endless cycle of eating a planet, clearing the blockers for free, and eating it again. It could be a big boost of resources in the early game and potentially scales because you can eat multiple planets simultaneously. With an environmental engineer governor, mastery of nature, domination tree, and volitile land clearance. You can clear blockers for free and 60% faster. You could even munch on your home world with no permanent side effects as you can just clear the blockers for free after.

So you become the Tyranids

I really wanna see a run with Terravore and that meteor origin, seems fun just bashing meteors into planets and consuming them right after whilst having 2 extra pops

So basically Galactus but a hive mind. Love the concept.

BTW is Deneb now spawning outside of the preset human empire?

Swapping slingshot to progenitor hive would make it even cheaper for influence even without stargazers it is around 37 influence

You tell everybody! Listen to me, Hatcher. You've gotta tell them! Green apples are PRIMITIVES!!

so Basically your the Tyrranids after assimilating the Zerg & the Aliens from Independence day... OK then this kinda makes me want to play again.

So now we need to see you work a highly cloak/cloak detection focused empire. Crime syndicate maybe? :p

So basically this is the kirby race is what im hearing.

I will ask a bit unrelated question but is there a good tall diplomatic build for Payback?

couldnt you add the new ranger job that give resourced based on blockers? to really spiral

While this is objectively stronger, kind of sad it's not Calamitous Birth for the RP. Still one of the more interesting videos I've seen of the new stuff. :D

Now I want to force spawn this empire as an AI in my game...

This build makes me thing you should be getting Calamitous Birth colony ships. Because you are already shooting them to destroy planets far away with the Quantum Catapult.

o.0 thats genius

Eager beaver yeeters.

What do you think of the machines variant? I think it has some strong narrative potential.

How ironic, the first victim has an avian avatar. Mmmmm... Space chicken!

I tried a run like this and the first AI to declare war on me ran roughshod over me and there was nothing I could do about it.

I was trying to recreate the species but I could not find that one trait he had radionic I think it was

eager purifiers aka THE BLACK TEMPLAR CRUSADE

Would cordyceps have given a bit more versatility with the scout range finding the systems should have been made alot easier and it would allow you to cheat by having fleets that travel via hyperlane without the drive research. Also would cybernetic ascension let you assimilate rather than purge or does terravore override that?

i wish i could enjoy anything that isnt fanatic purifier, but, the xenos just have to be purged.

23:28 VaZZals!!

Imagine if there was a Necrophage civic

Phaaze gang

You've missed the opportunity to name your colonies after McDonald's menu items.

nom nom nom

Stellaris has an anti machine bias..... devouring swarm + star gazers? Check, but can you use the new machine civic with determined assimilators? Nope...

I seriously think you should at least be able to terraform unihabital worlds into habital worlds so you can eat them

#AugmentedOwl

Total war empires definitely struggle with this origin, since everyone hates you and you are super weak at the start

Irregardless is a word, and it means "regardless AND beyond dispute".

Lol it's Steven Universe

Civic wise for me are (Mod) Avid explorers: 15% survey speed, 15% anomaly research speed, 10% anomaly discovery chance Eager explorers: 15% sublight speed, 20% survey speed, 5% anomaly discovery speed Map the stars: 25% survey speed, 10% anomaly discovery chance, 1+ hyperlane detection range Total: 60% survey speed, 20% anomaly discovery speed, 20% anomaly discovery chance, 15% sunlight speed, 1+ hyperlane detection range

First wooo