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The Flesh is Weak is the best for Megacorp, because you can increase Trade Value by 25% with "Trading Algorithms" to make your Space Cyberpunk fantasy real

I love how my favorite ascension path, Psionic, went from the weakest to one of the best. By embracing the blessings of dark gods.

Psionics when it was first released: help me I’ve fallen and I can’t get up Psionics post 3.6: bow mortals before my unlimited might for we are gods

Montu: Once you Breach the Shroud, you'll be able to Form a Covenant with... KZfaq: Little Ceasars Pizza and Breadsticks!

I'd like it if there was a benefit path for not taking a Shroud Covenant. Doesn't have to be as strong as the Covenants, but just something that supports you for not making a deal with a demon.

You didn't mention the Durable trait for cyborgs, which halves your amenities requirements, thus freeing many pops and building slots on all your worlds. Best non-growth trait in the game imho. Also, base cyborg assembly is higher than robot assembly, and it is affected by gene clinics, which makes them quite decent in the midgame.

New Psionic Ascension: "You cannot imagine the beautiful bounty of Chaos." Me, enjoying the bad Psionic without a Covenant: "Those things I'd never even wish to know!"

I'm so happy they're finally adding a Trade trait for Synthetics. Really awkward to go from a trade build and then ascend and have your entire economy crash.

It should also be noted that taking a specific path in knights of the toxic god can also give a guaranteed psionic theory research option. This is another path to no rng ascension.

Just woke up from a liver transplant this morning and Montu's video is like an absolutely awesome gift. Thank you very much, sir.

Genetic ascension is actually really, really good. Problem is that it's incredibly micromanagement heavy. Combine that with slavery builds and you can very easily make up for the resource output being low. But in return, you will have 50-70% more pops than ANY empire in the game if you do things right.

Genetic ascension would be good if they had a 'Sort by Job' function is the gene editor. You could make your Growth pops template and force every thing to produce those, make all your job templates, and then convert everything over to those in a few seconds. Then you can simply update each job with ideal pops every decade or so after that, taking advantage of the -50% project cost. It's still really fun on a hive mind.

Been doing Psionic since forever. I always try and get my starting leader (me) to immortality before dying of old age and I love how you get the strongest ships in the end. It's nice that it's become better and better.

I'm so happy that Psionic is now one of the most powerfull ascension path. It has always been my favorite.

Man psionic feels like its 5x more fleshed out than any other ascension path. I wish they would show even half this much love to the other 3.

gene ascension’s pretty cool

Some additional points worth mentioning: 1. Psionics still can use robot pop assembly, just outlaw the AI once you have researched synths and the best AI combat computers. 2. IMO, Nurgle is meh. Yes, you get a sweet pop growth bonus, but you loose trait picks for your pops, which means less efficient pops. 3. Knights of the Toxic God also get Psionics research as a reward from one of the quest events. 4. Synthetically ascending now converts all your pops to synths (since the cyborg trait is now for a different ascension), which means once you complete the project you will be left with 0 organics on your world, so synths will have to work a bit to get back their organic growth. 5. Wkth pisonics, Knights of the Toxic God knight policy, Charismatic leader trait (immortalize him as your god's chosen), some Galactic Community resolution, fanatic spiritualist bonus and Cutthroat Politics civic, you can lower your Edict Upkeep by -95%. On ALL edicts, including ambitions and strategic goods ones.

I think you forgot to mention the 'Damn the Consequences' edict that comes with Overtuned origin, which doubles the bonuses from the yellow traits. You can get +60% research output from Elevated Synapses + Augmented Intelligence. Pair that with Erudite for +80% research output even before you consider leader bonuses. Downside is immense unity upkeep for the edict along with food/goods upkeep penalties--making it an even later-game powerboost than Synthetics.

I have been playing a cybernetic Megacorp Empire on the Beta Branch since last week and the numbers really got out of hand when I saw that trait pop up.

After seeing what 5%(10%) output does, the Instrument of Desire is my goto. The downside is almost forgettable, especially compared to the other gods.

Still wish hive minds could become psychic. But I guess I'll take what I can while my machines can finally properly ascend.

I wish synthetic evolution could be done where instead of ascending into big clunky robot bodies, we make synth bodies like replicants in blade runner.

Psionics is still limited to a war-like or aggressive playstyle but the psionic admiral trait was also absolutely gutted - the reason psionic war rush was so powerful was that early evasion bonuses were absolutely brutal. 15% evasion is so, so much better than 10% shield hardening. Non-aggressive psionics did get buffed but non-aggressive psionics was never the meta way to play that ascension path. Rushing psionics by using 10(!) years of society research and no tradition picks also hurts your economy - missing out on hydroponic bays which allow you to minimize farmer jobs and early powerful tradition picks which immediately help your jump start your economy. Psionics may be a decent bit stronger coming out of a conquest but the tools given to them to perform that conquest in the first place got nerfed. Cybernetics also has the inverse problem of synthetic where they want to be building robots early for growth, but those robots will not be receiving any benefits from the ascension path.

Hello, I have 400h of Stellaris more or less and your video is exactly the type I'm looking for. Thank you for the very clear informations with a visual always in synergy with what you're saying. Very informative. Thanks you man.

So far I've been playing the genetic ascension. I actually like that it allows me to have for each planet a specific species go get the maximum out of it. Even if it needs quite some micro management.

The fact that nor cybernetic nor synthetic ascension give you ane unique armies is a huge bummer. I know that ground combat is the least important and developed part of stellaris, but it really sucks from role play standpoint (

Oh this game is awesome, the amount of choices! I think the reason you are the only stellaris KZfaqr that I watch is because of a few reasons, Well planned out videos filled with really useful information and genuine opinions while also clearly just enjoying a brilliant game. Keep up the good work Montu, everyone is watching!

Overtuned psionic empire was probably one of the most fun playthroughs I've had. I was blessed by RNGesus with a ruined matter decompressor, and got the contingency relic. Ended up with 3 of these, and just made all my worlds into Ecumenopolis, one ring world for food, the rest of science, with industrialist civic... dear god... my science, alloy, and consumer goods output was absurd lmao also really good pop growth speed from incubators and pre-planned growth, ontop of the Ecumenopolis bonuses to growth. Then adding Damn the Consequences Edict, once I had a sufficient amount of lifespan increasing techs, to further boost the growth increase and science output to 60% total each, JUST FROM THE TRAITS! created one of the most broken long-game playthroughs I've ever had.

With overtuned and teachers of the shroud being such powerful origins, mechanist needs a boost as well to maybe get a boost towards cybernetics and/or synthetics (or perhaps have one origin towards each?).

I like how complex the like button bits have gotten

You should do another series of military fleets test with the combat changes. Im curious how torpedo cruisers with screen destroyers will perform in general

27:00 I'm just visualizing a cyborg setting in a chair, eyes closed, doing algorithm trading of shares, currencies, or futures, using his Gordon 3.5 implant via wi-fi.

Congratulations on 90k subscribers, Montu!

I think my favorite part about Cybernetics is that because you can go into it so early, you can finish the project and tradition tree before you get Gene Tailoring making half of your entire tradition tree functionally useless. The 10% finisher effect is cute, but Psionics gets twice that with a building and their pop growth isn't nerfed randomly (seriously, 2.25?)

Yeah I played Lithoid Subterranean Terravore last night and went genetic. I like the way the new ascension perk works personally.

I've always liked going genetic ascension because pops of my species in other empires end up getting psionic and cybernetic traits (sometimes both!). I can then start cloning super pops.

I'd say that there's actually more benefit to disengagement chance now that you're not rolling it as often. With lots of rolls, even a low chance will happen reasonably often; when you only get a couple of chances, you have to make them count.

Purifier cyborgs can unlock organ harvesting which gives a good pop growth boost as long as you're purging somewhere in you empire. Which isn't something very hard to keep up as purifiers.

Hey Montu this is an awesome video. I'm a new player and have been binging these, now I'm super excited whenever I see a new upload. Do you have any plans to re-de the Psionic Democratic Crusaders meta build? If not, can you tell if it can still be done on 3.6, and if we should take Teachers of the Shroud or still take Aquatic? And how would the two versions fare against each other? Keep up the great work m8 :D

There is something I am curious about. Would Radiotrophic remove the energy upkeep from cybernetic traits? That's something that could be managable if you turn everything into a tomb world but then you lose tons of energy when you create ecumenopoli.

May I interest anyone in the Overtuned Psionic option? Montu kinda mentioned it, in that Overtuned doesn't force you into Bio, and having rolled an Overtuned start into Zroni precursors was hilariously powerful. Anyway, I always considered Psi the best because their leaders were so clearly superior to the alternatives, IMHO. The governor and leader traits especially. While Psi looks even stronger now I'm not particularly happy that so much of the power has been tied into the covenents, that's not really how I envision Psi ascension going most of the time. Mah immersion and so on... :P I also can't help but wonder why Telepaths were a separate thing to begin with instead of upgrading Enforcers into something not terrible. Feels like a missed opportunity, and Enforcers already scales with planet development.

I feel that ascensions need to be expanded upon. They're such an integral part of every campaign but they all feel so... railroady? There should be more ways to ascend in the same general way. For example, on a small scale, genetic ascension needs to have significantly less need for micro and should have some basic automation options or large-scale template options. On a large scale, every ascension should get alternate paths, like genetic ascension but instead of adding relatively tame traits a species can start modifying themselves to dark extremes with both benefits and weaknesses(like overtuned but on lots of steroids). Psionic should have a path that focuses on inward perfectionism as individuals and empathy instead of telepathy, focusing on the rejection of the shroud while improving through their own prowess. Refusing to accept the shroud as gods and instead striving for divinity yourself, leads to a slower start but heavy gains towards the end. Ascension of the mind while keeping individuality and replacing psi corp style buildings with "improvement centers" of some kind where people from all over the planet come to undertake journeys of self discovery and find greater meaning and skill in their lives. There's a lot of flavour oppurtunities and interesting scenarios that can be made with this i feel. Maybe even some kind of direct conflict with the shroud. Though it can be argued spiritualism in general needs a major rework with multiple religions and maybe even multiple ideologies per religion with spiritualist empires having some advantages in their type of religion. Hell, I'd love an imperium of man-style situation where our leader(s) is an extremely powerful psionic(maybe something even beyond chosen one) who hates the shroud gods and there are plans where you can damage or destroy the shroud entirely while the shroud itself manifests and corrupts other empires to destroy our empire. This could be a corresponding origin to the second psi ascension, as opposed to teachers of the shroud, paralleling it as now the teacher is a leader who has come from the species itself instead of far away teachers communicating through dreams, and offers a path to become like him instead of slaves to them(and ofc there's all kinds of ways to rp this as both evil or good depending on other aspects of your empire). Synthetic where instead of turning into machines, we instead get to stay as entirely organic beings but are either run by an ai deity of sorts that grants efficiency bonuses but bans further research into ai and robots, or one where people stay organic but use machines extensively as tools or sorts(think a floating mass of nanobots for everything in day to day life which is controlled directly by their owners). These are just vague ideas that may or may not make any sense but my general gist is that this is one of those mechanics that's very underutilized despite the tools being already there to give it a massive boost and add a lot of choice value to the game.

My favorite game I ever played was when my fanatic materialist empire rolled the psionic precursors, and got a free roll of the tech once finished. I didn’t know materialist/psionic was possible until then

Did you know it’s technically possible for a synthetic empire to become a machine intelligence. If your vassal synthetically ascends, and you integrate them and place them under AI servitude, then they will be placed into absolute servitude to their new organic masters. If you get unlucky (or in this case lucky) you can have a machine uprising: meaning that an empire that was once an organic empire is now a machine intelligence and possibly even determined exterminators if you have your cruelty points at the max and you have them with domestic protocols (for some reason machines with domestic protocols are more likely to become determined exterminators or driven assimilators)

I think it's worth keeping in mind that ascensions can intermingle to some degree and have a few other perks. Being able to integrate hivemind pops into your empire has value. Certain ascensions play really well with other ascensions. Bio can make the best use of Psionic traited pops and Borg can make the best use of Bio trained pops, you just have to actually get your hands on them. Also, Borg Overtuned is playable and quite good. I'm a bit of a Borg fan boy its very fun

Thank you for this video, It helps a lot. From my perspective is still a pity, that you can't fuse ascension paths like, lv 2 biologic and lv 1 psionic.

Another way to get Psionic Theory is to roll the Zroni Precursor, though that's far from guaranteed. I got it in my first 3.6 playthrough, and I am absolutely digging the new changes to the Ascension path. Even rolled papa Nurgle off the bat. And I do like that the different patrons offer different playstyles. Khorne on top of Become the Crisis and Fanatic Purifiers sounds extremely dangerous.

Cybernetic used to be my least favorite ascension, but now I think it's really cool. You kind of get the best of both worlds, and I love the idea of picking custom biological and machine traits to pursue specializations.

@Montu Thank you for your videos! May I request if you could make chapters for your videos? They are quite lengthy and the segmentation will definitely make it easier to digest.

I have to agree with Psionic being the strongest at this stage. Part of this is also in overall build, with the Psionic origin requiring you to be Spiritualist, which in turn will drive your unity production and further hasten your ascension. However, I've also hit Psionic pretty well on a trade build. Basically, I use my trade to drive unity production, then Masterful Crafters to fund my researchers. In mid/late game, I switch my trade to producing Consumer Goods, drop Masterful Crafters for something more 'pew-pew' and swap my Consumer Goods factories to producing Alloys, thereby skyrocketing my Alloy production. Bit difficult to micro and certainly doesn't work all the time (like when I get stuck between Machine Empires, yay), but when it does work it can be quite powerful. Trade is very versatile because you can use it for pure credit generation, consumer goods or unity with minimal work to shift it back and forth. The idea of the trade build is to use Trade for Unity until you have the Ascensions that you want, then swap to Consumer Goods so that your factory worlds can turn into forge worlds, thereby funding the construction of a fleet. Once you have a massive fleet, you can switch your trade to pure credits if you feel the need to pay upkeeps.

My clone ascendant psionic playthrough is so much fun atm. Went tech heavy materialist, militarist with technocracy and meritocracy oligarchy. Swapped temporarily to spiritualist to pick up psionics and then back to materialist. My psionic clone admirals are devastating even at level one and I got cybrex as precursor and a neighbour empire had a shattered ring. Now my ringworlds are science printing machines and my ecumenopolis forgeworlds are effectively printing fleets. Conquering fallen empires and relocating their pops to my ring worlds and forgeworlds. Life is good.

As a hive mind TRYING to be peaceful, and also win by vassalizing and integrating all empires, genetic ascension was a must have. One I didn’t realize would fix my unable to switch off livestock option

That bonus anomaly research speed is certainly gonna be useful by the time you unlocked synthetics...

If you haven't already you should look at Overtuned + Cyber ascension

Will say one thing that was missed with genetic ascension, is the damn the consequences edict which while it is unity heavy it also doubles the positive benefits of the overtuned traits giving you +90% research output.

I really enjoy overtuned with cybernetics for some reason. It's just very fun to have all those different trait options.

Cyborgs robot perks give pops more energy cost. MegaCorps Empires: Oh no Anyway

Fun thing to note, psionic theory option can be guaranteed through toxic god origin too.

Just played a Psionic Cyborgs game. Absolutely mad powerhouse species. Cleansed the galaxy of every other species by the end lol

Genetic one is by far my favourite as I like to make warrior versions of species n special types for certain environments n cirucmstances

I think whisperers are good too if you are more peaceful empire and telepaths cover up the stability debuff.

Honestly I'm fairly happy for all the changes. I do wish genetic wasn't so painful and micro heavy.. a block on research etc etc

I guess the Leviathan gene mod traits are worthless then, but I think the Brain Slugs should at least get some kind of mention, they're pretty rare but more accessible thanks to the Teachers, at least in single player games

An underlooked differentiating aspect of the different paths is their relative ability to make good use of each other's pops/leaders. Psychic pops and leaders are great, but can occur "in the wild" and if a genetic ascension empire gets their hands on them they can incorporate them into their empire without issue. Cybernetics can't (usually) coexist with psionics, and synths can neither be psychic nor have presapient traits. In theory a psychic empire can nab the pops of a genetic empire and assimilate them just fine, but the fact that the genetic empire can theoretically have access to psychic pops within the first decade via contact with caravans and some other sources makes the balance of power solidly with the genetics in this way.

I've been watching deep space nine. Good show. Surreal to see them in a stellaris video

The "like button" prompt getting more and more absurd continues to be a fantastic recurring gag

The psionics have three paths, the knights put the psionic ascension in your deck prematurely, but ready already to investigate it.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what the best path for driven assimilators might be? They already have the cybernetic trait so is the path for that less valuable?

I like Genetic Ascension because of the pop growth and because I like rolelaying cancer and aging being gone through biotechnology. Also because it allows me to make the perfect livestock species.

How does the new clone vats work? Is there no more building, and can a species both grow and assembly with the perk? And most importantly is it anyway compatible with the clone soldiers origins?

Determined Exterminator robots can now take Synthetic ascension path ,which is awesome

I do believe that Cybernetic ascension might be a bit better even than that, as there are a large number of Origins that prevent you from really benefitting from Bio Ascension or Synthetic Ascension. For example, Overtuned really won't want to be Synthetics but could easily take Cybernetic for the best of all worlds.

Cybernetics is really great if you have multiple species to specialize. For example give the researcher species intelligent and logic engines for a real good research pop

did you include the 15% resource bonus for psionic pops from the holy covenenat federation's lvl 5 edict 'zro catalysis' into the resource output from psionic ascension?

I see your Peter Hamilton reference on your Hive mind world :D

If you want to preserve powerful rulers the synth accession is best since machines don’t age. I imagine it would work great with the “under one rule” origin

I don't find the energy upkeep on borg traits as an inhibitor. Energy is pretty easy to boost, and once you have a Dyson up you can stack many of them on all your pops and still have heaps of surplus energy.

You didn’t mention the massive empire size reductions that hive minds get from Cybernetic

RIP synths and cyborgs I guess. Psionics glow up has been INSANSE. From hardest to get to and kinda weak, to easiest to get and bonkers powerful.

Hi Montu. Big fan of your work. Just wondering what you think about vassalisation atm? I've started a thread in Steam where a bunch of players are frustrated with the current state of vassalisation. Single player games seem to degenerate quickly to one big massive blob against you (one Overlord and every other nation their vassal). What are your thoughts? Would you be open to doing a video on the current state of vassalisation in single player mode? Be great if you could use your influence to draw the developers attention to this aspect that some feel needs balance/adjustment.

Sorry for bad english. Total organic pop asembly build (aka Lagbringer Corp.) now loks like knight of toxic god (+3 on planets, +0.25 per squre on keep) plus Permanent Employment civic (+2) plus Clone vats (+4.5) plus budding or Polymelic if lucky(+0.02 or 0.05 per pop)... with Vat-Grown +25% and +20% from medics... easy 14-15 pop asembly on small colonies.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe if you go psionic and want pop assembly from robots you can just use the parliamentary system to recoup unity loss of having robots.

Coming back to this. I have to wonder if the Cyborg additional trait slots (+2 total) is a mistake. I'd think it's difficult to have enough points (+2) for that extra choice to be useful. While Genetic is swimming in points (+7) and has only one additional slot. (Incl Tailoring +1 in both). It might have been purposeful, but they really feel like they didn't give any additional fuel to actually power an additional trait. Speaking of actually needing power for those traits.

Does your ranking take into effect the Damn the consequences edict for overtuned genetic ascension? 2x ing the bonuses sounds very appealing.

If I'm not mistaken, psionic ascension can get pop-assembly through the permanent service civic

I play shroud with permenant employment megacorp - lots of pop assembly for me (and you can go death cult shroud for +1 pop assembly....)

Man, overtuned cyborgs are the most OP ascension ever, waaaaay superior than the other three. Not only you can make true monstrosity pops with +80% resource output by stacking traits, but you can also "assimilate" organic pops from other species, so they become cyborgs too and you can specialize and micro them to become unstoppable on their role. But the top tier-pinnacle civ will be a megacorp of overtuned cyborgs: they can stack 50% trade value from pop jobs, plus all the hiperspecialized planet resource galore from your overtuned worker-cyborg plus a ton of research speed-unity from your specialized leaders plus the overtuned edict and you'll be steamrolling all the other civs in your galaxy in no time... hell, I had to turn up crisis diff from 5x to 10x because by the time it happened it was a joke for my civ build. Cheesy AF. Just try it.

Hey I went overtuned and I got the zroni so I was wondering is it better to go down psionic? the traits I have is preplanned growth, intelligent and augmented intelligence also mind over matter would be my second ascension perk.

Cant wait to cordyceptic drone hive mind the space dragon, then geneticly ascend and gene mod myself with dragon dna.

25:34 I knew it! Overtuned Genetic is the best! (I don't gonna mention combining these with ,,Damn the Consequences'' edict)

funny, i always play materialist and beeline for synth ascension. because the diplomatic points you get from that rapid ascension just immediately makes you become the senate if you play it right. The trick is to isolate completely, no exploring outside of hyperspace "borders"/chokepoints. In that time you immediately must do synthetic ascension and at least have gate repairing before another empire contacts you, and if they do, NEVER enter a research cooperative. From there, make the galactic community, use your points to vote in all the science stuff, which gives you more points in turn, and soon you end up with 180k+ diplomatic weight, combined with points from having a large, max-tier tech fleet or 3. basically fanatic materialist-militarist Imperial government is just instant speedrun to Galactic Emperor/custodian. The only downside to this play is that economy is really terrible prior to you researching all of that stuff, but you end up with all of the OP stuff like dyson spheres, ringworlds, titans etc. really early, which then just turns into exponential growth with each ringworld you make thanks to the capacity they have for industrial districts. At one point i had 4k net gain alloy per month. I could complete a new ringworld with more industrial districts every 2 or so years. which further solidifies your fleets and your economy points. after that it gets boring because none of the AI empires ever bother you, and if they do, they are steamrolled in a year or less.

I have been playing an overtuned genetic ascension since the patch start. Transgenesis plantoid tech with the budding trait/radiotrophic + the clone vat is kinda ridiculous fo pop growth. Tangenesis lithoid was bad : I found most of the trait uninteresting ? Trangenesis for leviathan : I only got the ether drake sadly. stacking all the reasearch trait is crazy too Really happy with those change.

If that 5th covenant tosses in some front row seats for what comes after the 50 year preshow, I'm in!

I have one major issue with this video. The other ones I have seen you put them in a tier list and as a visual learner it helps me keep track of what is good/bad. I realised halfway through this video that i didnt know remember where everything ranked./

My first psionic game I actually went with slow breeders so making that deal with the composer of strands completely counteracted it plus xeno comparability and I had no shortage of pops I also managed to make my king into the chosen one that was awesome Also I honestly don't think the composer of strands is really nurgle his theme is about change and mutation which while nurgle does mutate alot he's more about cycles and stagnation then change and new beginnings seems more like a more benevolent tzeentch or just kinda his own thing

Your four covenants explaination is so good I wish I had figured that out myself.

The youtuber Vain has a build for max pop growth using immigration attraction, xeno-compatibility, and synthetic ascension to "consolidate" the hybrids that occur. However, I don't know if that specific build can compete with genetic ascension given that you have to wait for pops to assimilate.

Bruh, Natural Machinist Pops on Foundry Habitats and any other Foundry designated Planets would be pretty cool.

I'm having the usual crashing issues I have when a new update comes out. Hopefully, I'll be able to enjoy the game next week.