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You know Virtual is broken when it makes *clerks* useful.

a star empire of robots who are all... priests that's amazing.

"What is my purpose?" -"To pass the bible."

This build lets you become a mid-game crisis. Before ascending into a late game crisis. Thanks for the video.

ah yes, sovereign guardianship again

i chuckled at the instant NO to the manifesti

I immediately took to this ascension path, and my RP is that my money worshipping megacorp decided to become sentient money and become the galactic currency

Absolute chad move to scour the universe for intelligent life, almost to the point of fanaticism, only so that you can flip them the bird.

Monty: says world is nigh impregnable. My 100k fallen empire army: I'd cap that.

Yo Boys i just loaded up machine age for the first time and can we talk abvout how hard the soundtrack slaps, its fucking fire

one neat thing i learned, the genesis arc civic for a synthetic ascending empire from organics, while it stops you from terraforming worlds with pre-sapients, gives your colony ships 3 more pops to use when you uplift them, and then assimilate them. your pre sapient policy does not stop you from assimilating them once they are uplifted for 3 extra pops.

I play it with Virtual Megacorp, Ring World origin. I just get rich through trade ring and use the marketplace of ideas policy to boost unity and rush virtual. At that point I get lots of vassals and keep pretending to be friendly and a good business partner until I get cosmogenesis and start absorbing my vassals one empire at a time and reaping their pops for research. It's absurdly funny, I'm pretty sure virtual and maybe cosmogenesis as well will get nerfed hard and soon.

3:30 Take note that Vocational Genomics and Adaptive Frames *DO* stack on Cyborg pops (as of the time of writing this comment), so if you slap both of those onto a cyborg species, you can get them to automod both the biological AND machine trait that's appropriate to their job.

I've done pretty much this same thing with a research/unity machine race and shattered ring start. If you're lucky, you get cybrex and can pick up mega engineering as a research option. Usually takes about 10-15 years to research, but you'll hit critical mass in about 50 years from start. Build up your 3 shattered rings while you repair all of cybrex, then colonize them all at the same time, dump into power, research and artificial gas. 9k research by the time mid game even gets rolling.

Focus on Unity, become the Virtual Endless. Got it!

This looks like a fun build to play! I was playing the new 'dying race' build and in about year 2370 I didn't realize the tiny pocket empire that causing me a headache trying to get around was actually a small part of the massive empire on the other side of the galaxy what was using the 2 wormholes to settle that pocket. When the 6 30K+ fleets popped in that was when I decided it was time for a new playthrough.

Day 20ish of asking for a renowned and legendary paragons tier list, even tho Montu has already done a traits tier list which only covers the paragons a little bit and not in depth. Also a crisis tier list with f being the most unfun and boring to a being relatively easy and or being the most fun

I'm loving this new expansion/patch, my favorite part of it by far are the Arc Welders. Not only are they super helpful early game but they super charge void dweller empires. I've always found it rare to find enough perfect Mineral systems but the arc welders guarantee it as well as giving you a boost to alloys to build more habitats.

Did two runs of this and it's incredible. Very refreshing to have a strong tall build that doesn't totally drown you in worlds to manage.

And then Montu achieved this run

Tbh, I love all the new things. I think the game is so much more fun, it's crazy. Now I just need to wait for the Hive Mind update

The overwhelming power a resort world now has. 1 clerk job per 2 pops.

Did a rush virtual ascension after the patch, took me 45 years but still OP.

This build was fun. I just stayed in my borders the whole time and researched and made my Diplomatic Weight and Fleet Power Ridiculous. Then kept declaring empires as the Crisis and just watched the Galaxy kill each other while waiting on the War in Heaven to Start.

I did a similar build without sovereign gardianship (dont have the dlc). Used pacifist, egalitarian to get pop size reduction and used domination, expansion, and harmony traditions to get more pop reduction.

yeah… virtual is really good with rings or arcs

I really like looking at the game settings. Never forget to show them. Eventually we can make a tier list of best settings for PvE and PvP.

I’ve tried this build (both as posted and in a few variations) in several GA runs now and can confirm it is absolutely broken. Combined with the new crisis you can absolutely stream roll.

Thank you for the guide. Trying to prep to make the most insane mega corp possible soon for a game with friends. It might not be the most optimal but virtual with life seeded seems like a very fun way to go!

Hey montu. Have you noticed that altho zero-g optimized trait says it gives -15% resources on non artificial worlds but it still gives the negatives in machine worlds and ringworlds

You should find out the numbers of just going max speed on situation progress. Sure you lose more unity per month, but you also progress the situation faster which also ends the penalty and also gets you to the reward steps faster and therefore generate more special resources. Even if you cant buy everything at once in the tradition tree when the situation ends the previous bonuses in the tree should quickly boost you back up to parity if not surpass what you would be given an equivalent amount of time passing. I imagine just a few extra months of being at around 150% production on everything will quickly make up for the lost unity you were not spending anyways.

Thx for the video!

Can't wait to try this out in about 1.5 to 2 years from now

I'm gonna be so sad when they nerf Virtuality into the ground :( I know it's coming, but I'm still gonna cry about it when it happens.

What did you pick for your 3 Civics one you were done ascending? For obvious reasons Guardianship is the 1st one. But for the other two: Switch Back to Democratic and get Beacon of Liberty and Distinguished Admiralty? Go Distinguished Admiralty and Crusader Spirit? Go hard, keep Exalted Priesthood and add Efficient Bureaucracy and further buff that sweet Priest Output and Edict Fund?

there should be a reverse phototrophic trait for machines. like "personal Bioreactors" which replaces some energy upkeep with food upkeep. i know its probably not the best trait gameplay wise but it would be interesting in regards to adding flavor

I tried out the SG civic with virtuality when machine age launched. It's crazy OP... I played with the ocean paradise civic. I already ruled the galaxy by 2300. Cosmogenesis as well has amazing synergy with virtuality, as you can just conquer worlds, transfer pops then shutdown the server (saving you 200 influence), as well as the fact you can just funnel your production into the synaptic. Don't even get me started on the FE ships... 2-3 million fleet power fleets (230 fleet limit) is insane. Literally fighting the 25x crisis fleet by fleet

Genesis Ark machine gestalts can also hit full Virtual by year 30 with a little luck on habitable planets. Colonize everything, start on Epigenetic Triggers as soon as it unlocks, then chain uplift. Imperial Prerogative is a good AP pick to keep your Empire Size (and tradition costs) down, although I wouldn't bother with Expansion

Love all your work Montu think there could be a trick to play wide adjacent with virtual. What you would do is create a second sectors with your core built up planets then you release them in to there own vassal at that point you have a planet for your new home system with uninhabited planets to build up and populate immediately by product is a built up vassal with max loyalties that is virtual. If you think it’s viable I would love to see how you would build it I would have ocean paradise for max size planet option

Hey! Thx for the video ! i have a question: if i found the cybrex with this build, i can colonize the ring world ? Or is a bad idea because -25% per colonize with virtualization ?

Shattered ring, with merchant guilds, also very good at virtually rush. All unity comes from trade plus u can fix your economy.

OK, played with this a bit. There's a bunch of builds that get you to be virtual in about 30 years, it's not that hard. Common ground / holy covenant gets you there, for example. What makes doing it with void dwellers utterly broken is the research districts. You get 4.5 jobs each (rounded down), so your guaranteed research world gives you 40 researchers after just 4050 minerals, 450 alloys, and under 10 years of build time starting from when the habitat is built. Once ascended, that's 480 base research plus bonuses. Another broken thing: Find a system with a molten moon and lots of planets (lots of moons and asteroids is a bonus). Forge on the molten moon, major orbital on every planet. You can easily get 60 miners busy, plus bonus alloys.

I am running a shattered ring trade build and finished Virtuality on 2244 with 1 not 0.75 science and tradition costs. Virtuality is way stronger on the lower levels because it comes on line for the player when everyone has fewer pops and it allows you to have infinite pop growth whilst everyone else is stuck at a low pop count. The only downside to these builds are that you are as weak as a kitten until you finish virtuality and then it goes insane. Enjoy it while you can because it will be nerfed in the coming months. As always I have learned some good tips so ty Montu , did not know that communications trick before this.

I'm doing an Overtuned Cyborg Xenophile empire since I figured you could put all 3 automodding traits (standard, overturned and cyborg) onto every species if you have the extra point and pick from xenocompatability.

This is really interesting for sure! But it also leaves you VERY vulnerable to anything going even slightly wrong.... If you accidentally contact a criminal syndicate in your rival rush your screwed.... I really love the economy you walk out of all that with though!

I am definitely going with cosmogenesis as my 4th ascension perk

I wish they made psionic machines possible. Maybe you could invite shrouds spirits into the machine bodies and give them a "soul" this way

Could you use megacorp to the same effect with this build? Or do you need the 60% from democratic and egalitarian?

I'm wondering if you can accomplish something similar with shattered ring or if that'd take a bit of luck since you don't get research districts to swap to until you get mega engineering. The trade method instead of priests would mean they're getting more bonus research from clerks until it can be refurbished.

Good video,Now we need a good guide for the new crisis.

Been trying to do it multiple times now, maybe cause I'm trying to do it on Large map, but if you're unlucky with neighbour/meeting aliens it's pretty damn hard to do as fast as you've shown. Best run I had so far I got declared war on way too early :x

I was playing around with a build very similar to this, but a lot more focused on trade earlier this week. It makes clerks super buffed while not degrading the relations like the antagonistic build does here. If anything it could actually accelerate making empires subsidiaries of yours. Species: Machine w/ Trading Algorithms and adaptive frames like in the video in order to maximize the clerk value that you earn because we are going to be doing the Federation origin. - Government: Xenophile, egalitarian, and religious Megacorp with Corporate Protectorate and Gospel of the Masses. That way your clerks are just even more buffed and you get more trade value to print out unity like its nothing. - Origin: Federation and choose the trade federation to get that juicy trade policy which gets you consumer goods, energy, and unity. That way you will be able to support utopian abundance for increased happiness and stability at the beginning of the game. - Opening Moves: Clear out your slums first to get that extra pop in your home system. Do not accept the migration treaties and only open commercial pacts in order to generate additional energy at the beginning of the game. You want to immediately rush down the diplomacy tree to get the embassies unity buff to your empire. Also make sure to pick veneration of saints. During this time, make sure to expand out to multiple systems and have at least one system that will support an Arc Furnace and one system for a Dyson Swarm. If you are boxed in by your allies in the federation, this build will still be effective, but you can just restart at this point in the game. Replace all basic resource buildings in your capital with temples and monuments. Just keep buffind unity production bby. Keep sending out your science vessels and military fleets to find additional contacts and keep bargaining for communications from every empire you meet. Keep establishing those embassies and get some nice unity on the side. For your second tradition tree, your going to choose mercantile to just keep buffing those clerks to generate those consumer goods which the excess will now be sold as liquidity to purchase alloys and anything else that you will need. Use those alloys to spam out trade stations which will allow you to maximize even more trade value and adds to the unity production. Your third tradition tree is going to be harmony or prosperity. Prosperity lets you squeeze out resources and sets you up better once you virtualize whereas harmony speeds up the process slightly by reducing population size effects on empire sprawl. Third ascension is rushing down synthetic age and choosing virtualization. Make sure to have medium priority on modularity and nanites that way you have access to those late game resources which can sell well and allow for rushed megastructure construction. As you're doing all of this, open up branch offices and construct unity production buildings there since you're not using your influence at that point as you've maxed out your starbase capacity from protectorate civic. As for your research, physics can go into anything. For society research, rush down anything colonial admin and or planetary unification to keep pumping out that unity. For engineering, rush down starholds so that you can upgrade your starbases to maximize even more trade value from the stars. - I got virtualization in around the same time frame as in this video. Have fun with this build.

I have a Question about the new Machine Ascensions. Can it be that nano,modular and virtual are only possible if you are machine from the start (individuell or gestalt) and organics changing only get synthetic? 🤔 Cause i find it seriously weird that i couldn't take virtual ascension with synthetic fertility ....

Does someone know, where the Ship Battle animation in the beginning is from ? Thanks

Montu, how do u start in Sol? I thought voidforged origin always start in Void Dwellers and Sol is only available for human void dwellers?

Which virtual focus do you use throughout?

Just a note, it's worth it to keep a single research lab (or district) instead of replacing all of them. The time difference to ascension is minimal but you *double* your research output until you ascend which can allow you just that extra bit of research to fight off any rivals that want a piece of you.

You mentioned a megacorp version of this. How would you build that without parliamentary system?

The modularity tree is also pretty nuts. You can for the cost of .01 dark matter per pop, get a 60% job output, among other wild traits. For one civic point every researcher can more than produce enough dark matter. The new crisis perk is also pretty nuts once you get the fallen empire buildings online. The assembly one has no planet max, so you can really crank out pops.

Is Void Dwellers really ideal for Virtual? What do you think about Ringworld origin or Ocean Paradise? You know, to get more out of the few colonies we can have.

I am curious tho. By year 20 what was ur fleet at? Because in MP neighbors tend to kill each other instantly. The whole "kill ur neighbor, befriend his neighbor" play could quickly make ur run end

By the way, Montu, what do you think about the cybernetics rebalancing? They removed organic pop assembly, but on the other hand they boosted natural growth and opened the assembly slot for robots.

Is there a way to pivot from spiritual to xenophobic for the raiding stance to fill up the lathe?

full play though coming? id love to see that

how do I get the square machine portrait? I dont have that one in my game

I've tried doing this for hive mind machines and it just does not work as well. mixing spiritualist and sovereign guardianship with that parliamentary system factions at the start to get their unity gains, really makes or breaks it. I tried taking Unitary Cohesion or maint protocols but thats spending an entire civic to just be slightly better than spiritualist.

I am thinking ... wouldn't Shattered Ring start with full on Traderbuild and marketplace of ideas pump out even more unity? + you wouldn't need more than one system (although ... yeah you want to be lucky and roll either cyberex or habitats early in order to get research districts down

Lol I figured this out on day 1of release. Getting +1 researchers jobs from districts is huge.

Hi, another question if you dont mind - googled it and couldnt find anything - every so often my economy tanks... production drops for uknown reason and I've traced it to drop in production in my species, virtual debuff - around 450% ?? UPDATE: Sorry! Nevermind, its to do with the planets! 😅

How do you get 'box' machine portrait?

Adaptive frames seems to stop working after the virtuality ascension / tradition tree, must be something to do with how the pop growth calculations get changed

where does the energy come from? without generator districts?

I love you times a Million Montu, but maybe include the starting solar system type in the build section of the video please and thank you. Just makes for easier following along of these click by click videos

2 things happened to me when trying this build. I ran out of consumer goods because I put all temples on my first world. And I also ascended into nanites. How do I ensure I get virtuality? What do I do about consumer goods?

You can get rid of sov gaurd by switching to mega corp in the reform tree and then switching your govt back without reform and you can remove the trait. seems like a bug

Created a machine empire based on the matrix movies, since they do go into virtual only soon later on as they further develop the tech. As why they arent on Earth? Well, sky kinda screwed up...

Hi montu Sry for my eng in advance btw I ve tried it once but had my mars as broken world what came such a pity Was it my mistake in pre-game settings or it is just my usual lack of fortune And one notice from my game, I tributed some neighbors to get additional strategic(rare) resources from them and it was win at 90s(actually at 30s you know) Your vassals will never have any progression with such agteement so thet will never attack you It is the stongest one ive ever seen as well, but unforunately will nerfed right soon

How did you get all the building slots on your capital?

Any plans to also make one for Modularity?

Prob think that Nanites might be able to compete with this (effective same build, just different endpath) (well maybe not, due to you go extra wide)

Is it me or is the sovereign guardianship civic removed? I cant find it

I think that merchant guilds with shattered ring origin is as powerful as this build, just filling all 3 rings with 5-6 trade districts and rushing marketplace of ideas and then focusing on research is busted, and any resources like alloys or strategic ones can be bought from market due to how big energy credit flow from trade value is

Can confirm this works and is nuts, I am mid at this game and finished ascending by year 35 at 1x cost

You can have it easier and even more powerfull. Just take the new Genesis Guides civic. It is completely broken(getting up to15k unitiy per planet) and you will get some huge vassalls if you don't want to keep the planets and go virtuell. I got full ascencion on my first try only 31 years in on 1x costs. Without really optimising that much.

So does this build give enough repeatables so that one can take 5 Cetana fleets of 5.7 Million each along with 10M( Cetana mothership) with roundabout 2000 Empire fleet capacity?

Hi, sorry noob question, I'm unable to build more districts on my capital habitat despite having them available via the minor orbitals?

Followed as best I could… then a crime spree popped up on capital year 14 and it’s been a nightmare trying to keep it under control.

Is getting a different leader just for the purpose of getting the 10 year reform? I like to keep my leader (me) as roleplay. Never thought i'd see consecrated worlds be good for something.

Hi thank fir the video . Question . I dont understand exactly how virtuel pop must be create, it s automatic ? Thx

This is perfectly balanced, I see no issues here.

im so excited to try this out, but im curious; has anyone figured out yet if that whole "is virtual better for wide or tall?" thing was figured out? does anyone know if its better to go wide or tall with virtual?

So what changes if I go the trade route good sir

Just wondering what happens if you ascend as Virtual with a Birch World origin. You get unlimited pop size on that world, while Virtual gives you unlimited pops.

So what does getting rid of my first ruler do? I tried but my ruler is just too popular even if I boost another's popularity.

I did a similar build with a relic world start. Spiritualist, Militarist, and xenophobe. Civics were memorialist and High priest. I don't have the Paragons or Astral Planes DLC, so no sovereign guardianship for me. I definitely played subpar and forgot to turn on my fear campaign edit for xenophobe, forgot to supply my priests with minor artifacts, forgot to buy my religious revelation when I could, built my Sanctuary of Repose too soon, and accidentally clicked mastery of nature instead of One Vision for my first ascension perk. My traditions were Discovery so I could turn on Map the Stars, Expansion to grab land and have my first 2 colonies started sooner, and Mercantile to finish. Finished my 3rd tradition around 2029 and the situation for transformation around year 2034. I put off filling out the virtual tree for a couple of years while I filled up some planets outside my core system with pops (because you can empty your capital and have all those pops reappear once you fill it out, then have a decent vassal). Does the situation go faster if you have more tech? Because I don't remember it taking 8 years on either my ring world rush or my relic world rush. I also got into 2 wars before taking my ascension path and I think that set me back quite a bit.

My virtual pops eat massive amounts of resources in upkeep. The more I produce the more they eat. All resources. When I gave up it was 100 energy, 80 minerals, 10 alloy, and 5 of each of the special resources - per pop!

Ok...this is insane. Also from a inuniverse perspective THEY are INSANE!

I'm actually finding virtual a bit too strong. I held off taking machine worlds just to give the AI empires a fighting chance. The resource output and efficiency is just so high when you have four or five big worlds and can near-instantly shut down any others.

Virtuality is all the rage in the mid game, until the nanotech empire maxes out its nanite deposits and makes thousands of disruptor or missile swarmers