I currently have a game where I did similar. Driven assimilators, immediately get vassalized by another empire for protection. Bled them dry of all their resources while forcing them to join our offensive assimilation wars. Being a Vassal is great.

So, to reference how strong this is You got crusiers by year 42, with 1× tech and tradition costs, and not even going full tech rush from the start of the game. The absolute maximum tech rush I've seen, on 0.75× tech and tradition cost's (because most multiplayer games have that to keep the game clipping along at a nice pace) gets cruisers by about year 40, with a bit of RNG. You are beating the early game tech of some of the strongest builds in the game with a bad start and not even properly tech rushing Sure, you don't scale properly, after a while there won't be any AI empire who can actually feed you properly and your economy will kinda tank even with you taking your previous hosts as vassals to feed you, but the start is just absurd.

Now that ‘coming up’ is a nice new feature. It should really help retention.

This is a rather strange but fun form of the devouring swarm. Good job !

"The Messengers were happy after vassalizing the Hierarchy. But they didn't know the Hierarchy had been hiding a terible secret from their previous dealing. Will the Messengers realise their mistake and make a stronger empire, or will they suffer the same fate as the Hierarchy. Find out next time on Stellar Stealers!"

There's something extra hilarious about that empire vassalizing the overlord and vassalizing that empire's vassal without changing any of the numbers. I thought it would change the vassal's (player's) numbers to whatever deal they made with the AI empire they took over. Nope, they just ate the host and ended up with the parasite themselves.

In short: Lathrix lies on his subject tax returns to get overlord subsidies/benefits, then pretends he messed up on them and gives them the actual numbers. After a period of processing and realizing they can't do anything about it, his overlord is forced to pay him millions that they don't have. While they might've hoped to cancel the deal when his term was up, due to the corruption caused by economic instability, new officials were elected that have no clue about the deal, and no idea how to stop it. Many years pass before the empire finally falls to anarchy, with citizens and companies tiring of the corrupt government's ceaseless levies. The empire falls apart within weeks, however Lathrix had already planned for this, and had pledged secret fealty to a new... host. And the cycle continues, until Lathrix has complete dominance over the galaxy.

This would be really fun to watch a full series of

absolutely amazing, unfortunately they're partially patching this exploit in the coming patch. Going into negative research will no longer be allowed, so empires won't be able to give you more than they have, as far as tech goes.

Hey Lax, I’ve been in rehab for the last month for some...issues (i’m sure you know what I mean, family and whatnot) and i just wanted to say I’m so happy to be back and able to watch your videos again! Even through the past 4 or so years struggling with my various addictions you have continued to be a creator who is genuine and who has always put a genuine smile on my face. I’m so happy to be back and I can’t wait to catch up on the new content!

A negative research gain is a mechanic I knew about because my vassals were able to parasite me

So basically you've gone from deadbeat dad to gold-digging grifter? When people say you can do messed-up things in Stellaris, I'm not sure this is what they had in mind.

More stellaris! Always a good day ;)

You know, this "feeding" reminds me one of the "love death and robots" episode. Those one with crab "We need to feeeeed" (scary voice)

This is an epic way of playing. You get to sit back watch the other of the galaxy fight and when you have grown strong you can zerg rush them all!

I started doing this as a megacorp, intentionally staying small and compact, habitats everywhere, and O M G.... Those advanced starts love a pet Megacorp. lol

Stellaris is a perfectly balanced game with no exploits :p

Fun stream! I enjoy the vids, you present these long play-throughs well. Please keep up the good work!

Love this relatively short-form content! But I also love the longer full playthroughs; what a dilemma!

Yay more Stellaris! I wish to see this series in the future!

"lovely human-shaped parasites" Lathrix just knows his audience

This playthrough looks fun, hoping to see a full playthrough

More of this please! I want to learn the shenanigans

That amazing things you can do with the overlord DLC right I freaking love it 😊

love this

Interesting new form of content Also i get if its not your type of game but might you consider trying the terra invicta demo?

Blood for the blood god Skulls for the skull throne Milk for the khorne flakes Text for the algorithmic overlord

It would be interesting to see a full playthrough in the style but as like a crime syndicate to stack even more negatives on the host 🤣

Thanks again

Love Lathrix's Stellaris games

this was a good video showing the difference between "good and bad" infections. good keeps the host alive for a long time so it can reproduce a lot and easily spread to others but bad obviously kills it quickly regardless of its spread / reproduction speed.

00:08 A.M. Perfect timing for Stellaris :)

Really love this empire

what a cute surprise, cheers!

Yay Lathrix :D

An interesting thought was using something like this with several of your own mercenary fleets

Consider also trying bulwark with this, although you won't be able to produce as much, you will be able to ask for more anyways.

14:10 the new bankruptcy system took their fleet

Hey Lathland, i have got a game suggestion for ya. Its called Starsector and i think it might just be up your alley for interesting games.

I have never been so accurately described in the first 10 seconds

Awesome

My last modded play through crashed on me. One of my mods added the ability to put a space station above any planetary body. The ai empire near me some how managed to build more than one per body and had built about 50 around their sun. All had 113 combat power but their being so many in the early game was absurd. I was just feeding fleets into the system. Because I could have a space based economy on my stations I had the numbers to keep fighting but the game really couldn’t handle it

A fun way to address this exploit, if Paradox did want to, would be to allow the Overlord to "alter the deal" after a bit. You could react to that, if you were powerful enough, but otherwise you'd just have to sit there and take it, more accurately reflecting the idea of being the subject. The description even talks about an idea like that, unlike now when both parties scrupulously always uphold the terms of the agreement as written. The easier way to do it would just be to remove the subject getting paid from even being possible.

Plot twist: This is what cats did to humans.

Epic

🖤

Stellaris the game where starting a Co dependant relationship is the best game plan

me: Playing my first ever "normal" campaign for almost one and a half month now. Lathrix: I've been playing a quick iron man game just for achievements...

I agree

I comment to help you out. I don’t usually do it but for you and stellaris, I’ll make an expecting

Hey, check out Terra Invicta, that game might be right up your alley! Would love to see you play the demo for a bit.

You should also always give unified sensors, it's always a boost and has no downsides.

When are you going to continue to play From the Depths?

This DLC is so scuffed, it's beautiful!

Ha, there really isn't a way to patch that out, is there, considering how the calculations are done and how disabling jobs works. Nice find!

That Dyson sphere is economic warfare

Will you go back to Terratec or from the depths

19k research at 2292... I don't think I've had that much without Gigastructural Engineering ever

So...what are the chances we will see a whole full playthrough video of this? Cause this seems like you would have a lot of fun with it. The only thing better than blood taken for the blood god...is blood willingly given.

Im considering getting Stellaris, could we get a playthrough of a Necrophage megacorp?

It may not be the strongest way of playing, but it's still pretty entertaining, regardless!

Me: you have my attention.

Not a parasite, a galactic dieting aid... for empires.

Stellaris with lathland, hell yes Also I've been playing the azur lane mod and the mod is stupidly op, yet the leader system in it is actually pretty unique, li,e you can assign different characters to be different leaders and choose 2 different skills for them and upgrade those skills

*sips tea like a certain Brit*

Onions can make you cry in many ways if you help them

STELLARIS SHOULD ADD A ACHEVEMENT CALLED “I’m Pissing On The MOON!” AND YOU GET IT BY USING EITHER A NUTRON SWEEPER OR A PLANET CRACKER ON THE EARTHS MOON. CHAINGE MY MIND.

Should do a full playthrough without any production using this parasite method to see how far you can take it.

Will you return to Airships: conquer the skies

Praise the algorithm

nom nom

This is the personification of the "I'm just a little guy" meme

do this in a run of the Gigastructurs mod

Whad origin did you use ?

Ah yes, the negotiator..

This exploit kind of reminds me of the time I was married.

Lathland shall devour the Algorithm Overlord hahahahahahah

Not sure how they would even patch this out, they'd probably have to completely change the way vassal acceptance is calculated

Likes for the Lathrix

FOR THE ALGORITHM!!!!

Actions for the Algorithm

The real question is: will this hold given the patch next week?

Goodday

Parasite? Of course I know him. He's me!

Comment for the Composer of Algorithms

I would’ve invaded them instead of diplo-vassalizing… put their worlds to better use, but otherwise I could see the amazing strength of this build

Huh, now you can play as Italy.

if you weren't a hivemind you could do something like getting gaia world preference, make your worlds gaia worlds, and steal through immigration your overlord's pops haha

lathrix can you please play avorion again i miss it it was so good

once again just a short comment asking for a new Avorion series please and thanks.

Stellaris is perfectly balanced with no exploits whatsoever

Will this work in reverse? Remove all jobs and get a vassal to pay 45% resources?

i cant seem to get the ai to become protective of me despite tanking my economy to the core of the earth :( anything im doing wrong? i have tons of envoys improving relations and the diplomacy tradition too

So wait... in your video you pronounce your name like “lathrix,” but the channel is called “lathland.” Why? (Did you misspell it when typing it, was the name taken, etc.)

XD

biggest of keks

You guys should watch those master SC2 players dabbing into Stellaris. Literally breaking the game, without cheesy exploits, just focusing on an optimal build order with proper early game priority. This guy barely knows the game

Comment!

I wonder how this would work with the 1 planet challenge

So, this is what cats are doing to us all these years?