｢Stellaris｣ Ascension Perk Tier List 3.0 - All Perks Explained!

greetings everyone i'm stefan and today we'll be covering all the essential perks in stars 3.0 and ranking them based on their power levels as you can see on screen we have a nice essentia perk tier list on our hands and i have very good reasons for all the rankings so stay tuned and we'll be getting to why planet ascension is actually not as bad as you might think so let's begin with f tier the first perk that we're going to be talking about actually really really surprised me i always thought you said learning was good because you got a lot more leader levels and later experience but in reality it doesn't translate into many levels at all i did a couple tests where i ran the game from year 1 to year 50 and transcended learning only actually gave us half of a level of advantage over an empire that did not use a transheaded learning the reason for that is because every time you level up a leader they require far more experience level up again for example going from level 1 to level 2 requires 200 experience but going from level 2 to level 3 requires 475 more than double this trend continues and makes it very difficult to level up leaders to a very high level that reason the extra leader level cap it gives is really not that useful if you're playing as an organic empire your pops will simply die before they reach a point where they can take advantage of extra leader levels the only situation where transcended learning might be decent is with a machine empire because you might eventually get more benefit out of this perk than any other empire normally though all it gives is one percent to some of your output and one percent is simply not enough to rank it any higher than f tier next we have enigmatic engineering and this is where i have to point out that this tier list is primarily meant for single player in multiplayer enigmatic engineering can be situationally good because it will prevent your opponents from stealing technology doing spying operations or reverse engineering your debris but in single player ai doesn't really do this and even if i did do it and actually conducted any operations on you those operations are quite weak and so as of 3.0.3 this does not really do much moving up to seat here we get into some decent essential perks such as for example consecrated worlds this perk allows you to consecrate uninhabited planets or a decent bonus across your empire the bonus depends on what sort of planet you consecrate for example consecrating a regular planet will give you only a moderate bonus to unity amenities and spiritual ethics attraction but cause creating a gaia world especially if it's a holy world is going to give you a whole lot more overall you can only consecrate three planets across your empire for a relatively decent unity amenities and ethics attraction bonus funnily enough while the planets do have to be uninhabited when you consecrate them you can later go on and colonize them this might be unintended but even with this this perk is not really all that good next up we have interstellar dominion this one gives you a 20 discount on starbase influence cost as well as 20 on claim influence cost the only problem with it is that influence cost is really not all that big of a problem most of the time if you are expanding early on you'll be doing most of your expansion before you're able to even get this ascension perk and when you're expanding into other empires in the mid game you're probably gonna have plenty of influence to do it there's not really many things to spend influence on except you know war and habitats and if you're not building habitats and just doing war you're going to have plenty to expand at a pretty reasonable pace next up on the tier list we have eternal vigilance this gives you plus 25 to starbase damage and whole points as well as giving you more defensive platforms and higher damage from your defensive platforms these bonuses are quite solid and if you're relying on your stations to defend you in the early game this perk might be quite useful the only downside to it is that late game it becomes a borderline irrelevant the thing is once stuff like neutron launchers and hangar bays are in play stations can't really put up a fight against the fleet and so can be destroyed relatively quickly in the late game however mid game is quite decent and it is actually possible to reduce your defensive platform cost down by about 80 something percent that's because any discounts or defensive platforms also stack with any discounts on ship cost and so spamming out a bunch of very cheap and very effective defensive platforms can be a good way to go next up we have imperial prerogative this gives you plus 20 to admin capacity which is a solid bonus but it really isn't all that much of a bonus giving you plus 40 to admin cap can free up uh maybe a couple of your bureaucrats and they can go work some other jobs but that's about the extent of the impact of this perk it really is quite boring and quite bad next up we have shared destiny this one gives you plus two available envoys and reduces your subject integration cost by fifty percent this does not actually reduce the monthly cost of integration but instead just makes it twice as fast so it is quite a decent perk to take and as long as you have subjects uh this can really help you integrate them faster and uh really make use of their empires otherwise getting plus two available envoys is quite decent for doing any diplomacy with other aliens or increasing your diplo weight in the galactic community next up we have a galactic contender this gives you plus 20 diplomatic weight which is uh relatively all right gives you more influence in the community and if you're playing multiplayer this can be relevant uh single player though it's more or less meh because the ai will just do whatever the eye wants to do uh the extra damage to fallen empires awaken empires and gate builders is quite decent and can be useful if you're in a situation where you are fighting them however generally you will be able to uh fight them on your own terms and so getting plus 33 damage to an encounter you will only face once is not particularly good moving up to btr we have a megacorp exclusive universal transactions this one gives you a 15 discount on branch offices and makes it so that commercial packs are free to maintain because as a mega corp you will probably have a lot of branch offices and a lot of commercial packs getting a discount on those is very solid and allows you to expand and build even more branch offices which in turn help your empire significantly next up we have mastery of nature this has two benefits first it reduces clear blocker cost by 33 which is uh relatively minor but it does help in the mid game where you have a lot of blockers to clear the other benefit is the primary one and it's the mastery of nature decision this decision can be enacted on all of your planets and while it is quite expensive at 2 000 energy and 100 influence it will give you plus two districts on your planets in 3.0 getting extra districts is quite nice this will significantly help you out with pop growth because of course uh extra districts contribute to planet capacity and extra planet capacity allows you to grow more population faster as of 3.0.3 getting extra jobs is also not that easy and so being able to plop down to extra districts for either two extra building slots or two uh production districts is quite solid it can really help you out i would not recommend using this essentia perk early on but in the mid game to late game expanding your planets can really benefit you next up we have one vision this perk will give you three bonuses plus 10 to monthly unity which can help you with finishing traditions slightly faster minus 10 to pop amenities usage which can help you with employing less amenities jobs on your planets and having more normal jobs instead and plus 50 to governing ethics attraction i was actually surprised how good the governing ethics attraction was after doing some tests i had an empire with justice capital two colonies and another enemy capital captured really early on and after doing a test with one vision and a test without one vision i came to the conclusion that the empire with one vision actually had about five more stability across all planets because the pops were simply more attracted to the happier factions and overall the happiness from being in those factions translated into stability and overall increased production next up we have avoid porn this gives you plus 20 habitat habitability uh remember habitats have a base of 80 habitability and so this would bring it to 100 however this bonus is not that significant because there are already techs in the tech tree that increase habitability by a grand total of 20 percent so overall the extra habitability and habitats can safely be ignored the big thing about this is that you get two additional billing slots across all your habitats those additional building slots can be used for basically anything you want and as long as you spam a bunch of habitats uh getting those building slots will really help you out with getting more production across your empire and if you don't want to put up any production on those and at the very least put up some residences so that they have more planet capacity and so pubs grow faster on those habitats how good voidborn is really does depend on how many habitats you have and how much benefit you can get from those extra building slots so for example if you're playing void dwellers this will probably actually be an s tier and if you're playing with an empire with absolutely no habitats well congratulations taking this will give you absolutely nothing next up we have a grasp of the void this gives you plus five to starbase capacity which uh seems really boring and relatively weak until you consider how powerful star bases really can be in 3.0 getting five more star bases with anchorages on them can give you up to 180 naval cap which is quite solid as a machine empire or hive mind you also get access to solar panels so you can actually use those extra stations to just have solar panels and hydroponics on them or a very solid chunk of resources getting produced from them next up we have world shaper with this perk you can terraform planets to gaia worlds using five and a half thousand energy and ten years of terraforming although this can be increased via the terraforming gases edict on a guy you get plus 10 to resources from jobs as well as plus 10 to happiness on your organic pops as a side bonus any open districts anagaya are worth 50 more than open districts on a normal planet when it comes to planetary capacity and of course we can't forget about the 100 habitability for all species next up we have synthetic age this is an exclusive formation empires and it gives you plus two machine modification points as well as a reduction to modify species special projects honestly this essential perk is not all that good two machine modification points is good and all but considering how you have a limited amount of trade picks you will usually have to take off some negative trade point for either one or two points which is the entire thing that you're going to get from synthetic age and in the end you're going to be able to i don't know take off solitary and put on minus 10 to robot upkeep it's really not all that great although the reduced speed modification cost and come in handy next we have galactic force projection this perk will give you plus 80 naval capacity and 20 to flee command limit these numbers really aren't all that big although you do have to keep in mind that they are going to be modified by any modifiers that you have so that 80 naval capacity can easily be 120 or something else depending on your bonuses compared to grasp the void galactic force projection does not give you a whole lot of naval capacity but it is very nice that it is instant and so for example if you're building up a massive fleet and are going over naval cap you can very easily and very quickly mix that by just going with that essentia perk moving up to the eight here we have nihilistic acquisition now this is one of those perks that if you don't use the power of it is completely useless but if you do you can get some pretty serious benefits for example right here we are playing as a pacifist empire we can't claim territory but we can take other people's pops by just bombarding their planets with nihilistic acquisition overall it only takes about a couple years to be able to abduct a large world and resettle it across all your normal planets a side effect of stealing the pops rather than conquering them directly is that once you capture them they don't actually get any malices and so they can work just fine in your empire and the only issue you might have is they might be a little bit unhappy uh due to their faction being at low approval but if the pops that you capture have the same mindset as you you'll be able to just completely seamlessly integrate them on your planets and do it relatively quickly with nails tech acquisition without having to bother with uh invading an empire having all the claims and taking all that space next up we have zeno compatibility aka the heresy as that's your perk it gives you plus 33 to immigration pull which is quite decent when it comes to migration packs with other empires and uh once you can get some xeno pops in your empire uh on the pops where you have two or more different species you'll be getting a very solid 20 bonus to pop growth data compatibility actually also allows you to cross breed species and make special super species using different xenopops as you can see over time you will get half species these half species actually have the unique privilege of having plus one extra trade point pick and one extra trade point as long as you can manage to have species and give them the proper traits via bioengineering those pops should be actually better than your normal pops and you'll be able to get a decent chunk of benefit from that combining the incompatibility with the bio ascension will allow you to uh get a lot more benefit out of it and so you're going xeno compatibility you probably will want to go for bio ascension next up on the tier list we have master builders a pretty decent essential perk as long as you are building megastructures this will give you a nice 50 to mega structure build speed and plus one to mega structure build capacity you could potentially combine that with the ambition architectural renaissance or a grand total of three mega structure bullet capacity so you'll be able to build or upgrade three mega structures at the same time and do it quite quickly of course if you're not planning on building or upgrading any mega structures master builders is completely pointless but if you're it is quite solid moving on we have engineered evolution engineered evolution will give you extra gene modification points a discount on modifying your species and clone vats soldiers are also nice but are honestly the least significant impact of bioengineering anyways with those traits and any trait pose that you have from technologies you'll be able to modify your species the only problem is you probably won't be able to do much to your species because if you have min maxed it you'll probably be running salt lake unruly and solitary negative traits that don't really impact your species all that much and if you have three positive traits you'll only be able to really put on one two trade point one or two one trade point one which overall are not going to impact your empire all that much this is why i would usually hold off on modifying my species until i get to the evolutionary mastery which is generally going to be the next perk i pick after engineered evolution and then i can go all out i'm modifying my species for now though the biggest perk of having engineered evolution are the clone bats sadly the clone bats have been nerfed from 2.8 and i say nerfed in the sense that for an organic empire they're nerfed for a high of mind uh yeah they're better but for a normal empire they really are quite terrible the reason why i would consider colon bats bad for a normal empire is because as a normal empire you'll have access to robots colon bats are incompatible with robot assembly plants when it comes to pop assembly and overall robot assembly plants are a bit more efficient when it comes to pops sustaining them than clone vats the thing with combats to remember is that they require a whole lot of food to upkeep 30 food per month and so you'll require about two to three pops working farmer jobs to be able to upkeep a single clone bat to help keep a single robot assembly plant you'll need about one and a half pops one pop to work the actual roboticist job and about half a pop to upkeep the roboticist with alloys all in all if you're building clone vats instead of robot assembly plants you're trading about one pop uh in exchange for 0.7 growth which is not all that efficient but is relatively possible on new planets on older planets where you already have robot assembly plants replacing them with colon bats is really not worth it in my opinion not only are clone bets very expensive but you will also seriously disrupt your economy as your modest jobs are now unemployed and suddenly you have to get a lot of farmers to upkeep the colon bats on top of all that clone bats lose out to robot assembly because robots are just better than organic pops in most cases robots require half as much housing needs and half as much amenities usage as any normal pop and also can be easily modified really early on to be specialized towards a particular need on top of that they also have perfect habitability everywhere the only area where robots lose out to normal pops is uh that normal pops can auto migrate and robots cannot but reset on robot pops is also cheaper because it does not require influence although of course if you have slaves they don't require influence either all in all this big engineered evolution relatively average however it becomes quite good when you combine it with evolutionary mastery so let's take a look at that evolutionary mastery will give you just as many gene modification points and just as much of a discount on modifying your species as engineered evolution however we will also unlock a technology that allows us to have advanced traits and resequence our species to actually remove any positive traits with this technology you can really make your species quite good and with the special traits that you get from it uh you're also going to be getting unique bonuses for example robust is one of the special traits unlocked and it gives you 30 habitability 5 resources and 50 liter lifespan for the cost of 4 points i would highly recommend this if you are lazy uh but if you're not lazy and can actually gene mod all of your species to have specific planet preference the habitability aspect of this really falls off and it's not all that good otherwise air date however is good no matter how you spin it this will increase your researcher output and also give your species special traits if we take a look at our scientists they have plus opposite to research speed we take a look at a ruler we have five percent research speed taking a look at our governor we have five percent research speed well it's five percent output but it's it's also modifying researchers and if we take a look at an admiral we're gonna be getting plus five percent to ship fire rate and plus ten percent to combat disengagement we also get a similar thing on our generals although honestly generals don't really matter with all these bonuses we can get a very solid research boost of about 40 percent uh which is actually better than what synthetic assession could do however we can't really do much of anything else we can have specialized species for example we can have a species producing extra energy a species producing extra minerals but all in all you're going to be doing a lot of micro in exchange for a 15 bonus usually i don't have time to micromanage all my species and so i generally just have ingenious or some other good treat my main species and just have that template across everyone my ascension does become quite interesting if you have a livestock or any slave pops you can easily apply it nerf stapled so that they produce extra resources and are not affected by happiness and delicious for extra food from livestock having a livestock species can really make it a lot easier to run all those clone bats in case you want to go for them instead of robots but anyways this does it for the biosension and now let's take a look at another ascension path the psychic ascension when you choose mind over matter your species will get access to the latent sciatic trait which gives you extra science and energy output and you will have a chance to roll leaders with the psychic trait as well and as you can see here having psychic on your scientists can really really help you out otherwise with sciatic ascension you will have access to a building called the psi core the sitecore will give it two tailpath jobs which are basically better enforcers and will also increase stability on the planet by five you don't even need to have pops working the sciatic jobs the building itself will increase stability and therefore increase production and just like with biosensition you will have access to special armies which are a bit better than normal ones the real goodies of the sciatic section come with transcendence this will give you a lot of bonuses to espionage so if you're playing a spy empire run sentence is probably the way to go and otherwise we'll give you quite a bit of bonuses as well first and foremost all your leaders will now gain the psychic trait and your ruler that's going to amount to 0.5 extra influence and 100 governing ethics attraction on our scientists as you have already seen we get 10 extra research speed and on our governor we get an extra 5 stability and extra unity from jobs military leaders also become quite good as you can see our admirals are going to get plus 10 to ship weapons damage and 50 evasion and our generals are gonna get extra morale yay on top of that our species is also gonna get extra production with increased happiness energy and science output with all these bonuses uh we're not quite on par with bioascension although we are very close and by the way while the sciatic trait is only applied to your primary species you can apply it to other species after that by going with assimilation assimilating pops is relatively expensive and can take a while so you can always just click the apply template button and do a special project to just apply the trait manually anyways now we get to the fun part of psy ascension and that is the shroud first we're gonna have to do a special project to breach into the crowd which is gonna take 20 000 society research but once we do we can gamble and really the shroud is just a gambling device we reach out we uh pay up and then hopefully we can get some goodies out of it for example ethics attraction or not actually we're not gonna get ethics traction because we're going to fail if the shroud likes you you will get a lot of bonuses if it doesn't you won't you can get some pretty serious bonuses from the shroud especially when it comes to technologies for example we can get upside jump drive which has a lot more jump range than a normal jump drive you can get a precognition interface which is a combat computer that is basically like any normal combat computer but has far more tracking and we have access to the best shields in the game as you can see here hyper shields have 145 hit points dark matter deflectors have 185 but do require you to kill a fallen empire for them amp sonic shields have 240 hit points that is quite a lot and so going for these special technologies can really help you out and can make your ships quite a bit stronger than they normally would be on top of that you will also have access to covenants covenants are basically packed with shroud entities they could give you some pretty serious bonuses overall these covenants are quite strong and if you get really lucky you can even get the end of the cycle which is going to give you a hundred percent to resources from jobs in orbital stations 100 naval cap bi-monthly influence a lot of star wars capacity uh but in exchange your empire just kind of dies after 50 years that's the end of the cycle and honestly it's the most fun thing in the game overall gambling in the shroud and getting all those bonuses across your population uh make for a pretty good ascension path especially compared to the now nerfed engineered evolution however it is still quite weak compared to synthetic evolution and we'll actually jump up a tier to cover that very quickly synthetic evolution just like the other ascensions comes in two parts the first part is going to give you reducer about upkeep and increased assembly speed and will allow you to modify your species to be cyborgs cyborg pops will get plus 20 habitability plus 40 years of leader lifespan and the leaders will also get special traits specifically five percent minerals from jobs for the governor five percent research speed for scientists five percent ship fire rate for admirals and five percent army damage or generals euro doesn't get any special bonuses but he does live quite a bit longer when it comes to the next step of synthetic evolution there's another project to do and this project will actually transform all of your cyborg pops into synthetics and now this is where the tricky and fun part of synthetic evolution comes in if you modify your species to all become robots you actually won't have any normal organic pops growing and that does reduce your popular speed overall however if you leave some of your pops as plain organics such as for example by applying your default templates to some of your population those two pops will be spared from the set ascension and you will actually be able to grow your organic pops alongside your synthetic ones but that trick is only for extra pipe growth overall you do want your species to become synthetic because you get some very very serious bonuses specifically 10 to robot output and plus 1 to robot modification points you also have to consider that robots by default will get an extra 10 to output and so compared to normal organic pops you're already at 20 production extra in every single field once we do synthetically ascend we'll be able to increase that even further you can put on efficient processors on our props for an extra five percent to resources from jobs we can put on loyalty circuits for extra happiness which translates into stability and that translates into resources and we can also put on high bandwidth for extra extras profit pops in exchange for super conductive this is how i generally like to run my robots and this is a very very effective way to do it once we get our species modified we're gonna be facing some pretty serious bonuses first and foremost our leaders they are all going to be immortal and are going to get some pretty serious bonuses uh to what they're doing for example governor gets plus five percent to energy and minerals scientists gets plus five percent to research and extra anomaly research speed admirals get five percent to ship fire rate and extra ship weapons range which is very crucial in the late game by the way and generals will get extra army damage our normal pops are also gonna get perfect habitability everywhere and to put the cherry on top we're also gonna get some pretty serious pop growth across our empire as long as we keep an organic species around they will be growing and they'll be growing at a pretty good rate of course it does matter what tier capital you have but generally you're going to be getting some pretty serious growth from set ascension on top of having the most efficient pops possible another thing to note is that you are going to be getting a lot more uh base output out of your technicians eight per job rather than six and any specialization buildings are also going to give you more districts in their specialization overall i hope you guys can see just how powerful synthesization is when compared to the other two but now let's go back to a tier and cover the other perks there for example let's take a look at the archaeology project this perk will allow you to turn some of your planets into yuca monopoly all you have to do is make sure all their districts are either city districts or industrial districts and as long as there are no tile blockers on the planet you'll be able to do the arcology project for 20 000 minerals and 200 influence once the project is complete you're going to get all your housing districts and industrial districts converted into our colleges and you will have access to some very very efficient districts when it comes to alloy output uh consumer goods output and uh unity slash amenities output the uk monopolist itself will also have all its building slots automatically unlocked and you will get plus fifty percent to popular speed on the planet additionally twenty percent of resources from jobs never hurt anyone the thing to keep in mind with an arcology project though is that uh you will not be able to just convert all of your planets into you cannot apply and have a direct upgrade you cannot produce raw resources on these arcologies and instead you're going to have to rely on either buying resources or having other planets produce it for you also keep in mind that if you have a relic world you'll be able to restore it into commonopolis anyways and so if you do have a relic world in your space you probably will not want to go for the arcology project ascension moving on we have the colossus project the colossus itself is a planet cracker weapon that can easily destroy a planet no matter its fortification it is very expensive it takes a while to build and is quite vulnerable however once you are done building the colossus you will have access to a very special causes ballet and all the other empires for total war total war will allow you to capture enemy space without any claims and make war very very simple and very easy by just you know allowing you to walk into enemy space and taking all their stuff however if your colossus is destroyed this causes belly will go away so just try to keep it safe next up we have defender of the galaxy this will increase damage to any crisis be it normal end game crisis or player crisis and also increase everyone's opinion by 20. the opinion increase is quite frankly irrelevant but getting a solid 50 extra damage to crisis factions uh when they just kind of show up on your doorstep is very very good the reason why i ranked the defender of the galaxy so high in the tier list is because if you are fighting crisis you probably definitely want to go for defender of the galaxy no matter the cost otherwise if you're not fighting crisis and have no plans on doing so it is honestly quite useless twenty opinion isn't gonna do basically anything to your relations uh because all the thresholds require 200 opinion but anyways let's now move on to s tier and take a look at some of the best essential perks in the game first one being technological ascendancy overall research makes or breaks empire's installers and having 10 extra research is always very good if you don't want to go for research or have already taken technological ascendancy you can go for executive vigor instead honestly this one might be slightly better as of the current version because it gives you plus to eating capacity and the edicts introduced in 3.0 specifically mining farming and capacity subsidies are quite broken being able to get plus 50 extra output on your technicians miners and farmers is extremely powerful and so going for executive vigor can really help you out with your early economy the only other sources of eating capacity are the imperial authority imperial occult and inverse perfection without those you will be stuck at one and you will not have access to a lot of these unless you go over cap in which case you are going to be suffering a pretty hefty admin cap penalty next up we have galactic wonders this perk will give you access to ring worlds managing compressors and dyson spheres the other requirement for it is that you have completed or restored any other megastructure in our case we have made a science nexus and now we're able to take galactic wonders funnily enough they actually removed the three uh essentia perk requirement for it and so in theory this can be taken as your first essential perk uh as of the current version of the game ring worlds aren't really all that worth it to build but malady compressors and dyson spheres really are humanity compressor for example will produce 2 000 minerals that you can convert into alloys or anything else you want and a dyson sphere will produce 4 000 energy credits per month they only cost about 50 000 alloys each so if you can scrounge that together these things are amazing next up on the cheerless we have hive worlds and of course as the name implies these are exclusive to hive minds terraforming into a hive world is quite expensive it requires 10 000 energy and 20 years of terraforming but once you do complete it a hive world is going to be perfectly habitable for any hive mind it'll give extra resources from jobs and give an extra spawning drone job which is going to give you two organic pop assembly otherwise the planter will have all of its building slots unlocked and you'll be able to build as many of a certain district as you want the hive districts on a hive world are also going to be quite good and will provide you insane amounts of housing you can easily get massive amounts of planet capacity on these hive worlds and so your growth is going to be off the charts the fact that this planet type can easily be spammed across your empire and considering how you can easily specialize them to be very very good at producing one certain resource makes it that going for hive worlds is a very good idea and honestly i would prioritize that above all else for a high of mind you can easily increase empire power in the same way with a machine empire machine empires get a very similar type of world to hive minds and it gives basically the same exact bonuses except on machines you get minus 10 to pop housing usage on a machine world the reduced housing usage actually does make sense unlike normal empires you're not affected by the growth curve and so you really just want to have housing stay above zero and now we move on to the final perk in the tier list become the crisis the crisis essential perk should really be considered differently from any other central perk it's not a perk that's meant to be balanced and so it's not a perk that can really compete against any other such a perk when you actually make the choice to go into crisis you have two stages the first stage is collecting metas and overall becoming a galactic nuisance to gain metas you have to do various naughty things but honestly just consuming other empires is the most effective way to get menace once you do build up metis you're gonna be getting a lot of various bonuses to your ships and you unlock medicine cruisers destroyers and corvettes these medicine ships have basically no upkeep and can be built for minerals when it comes to destroying the galaxy those things really help you out and speaking of destroying the galaxy you actually get special ships specifically star eaters at the final stage of metas you'll have to go around and crack stars in exchange for dark matter and using that dark matter you'll be able to build up an atherophagic engine which produces a whole lot of resources until it gets finished at which point the galaxy just kinda uh blows up there are a lot of things that go into this essentia perk and uh honestly it deserves a video all on its own for now though i can direct you guys to a stream where i played as german assimilators and basically sped run the crisis to be able to blow up the galaxy in 2308 hopefully you guys find that interesting and i'll have the link in the top right corner and in the description but anyways that's gonna do it for the tier list make sure to like and subscribe i haven't been telling you guys to subscribe so go do that i have more videos like this coming and i'd like to give a special thank you to my patreon supporters for making this sort of video possible but anyways thank you all for watching and i'll see you guys in the next one bye

Channel: Stefan Anon

Views: 367,951

Keywords: stellaris, stellaris guide, stefan anon, stefan stellaris, stellaris gameplay, patch, stellaris update, stellaris 3.0, stellaris 3.0 gameplay, stellaris nemesis, stellaris 3.0.1, stellaris 3.0 guide, ascension perks, stellaris ascension perks, stellaris ascension paths guide, stellaris ascension paths, stellaris bio ascension, stellaris synthetic ascension, stellaris psionic ascension, ascension perk tier list, stellaris 3.0.3, stellaris ascension perks guide, psi ascension

Id: 18x3G6ffULo

Length: 35min 33sec (2133 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/hktaru]

Any tierlists should include game settings they are based on. Having three planets to work with vs ten planets vs twenty will lead to very different picks being strongest, especially after the pop growth rework. Same with mid/late game years and crisis strength.

Also, I just wanna quickly brag about always picking executive vigor before it became s-tier.

[u/Darvin3]

Thoughts/Disagreements:

Interstellar Dominion: definitely much more valuable than C-tier. I get where he's coming from, in that you can often get into situations where you're waiting for mega engineering and don't have anything to spend influence on in the mid-game, but if you've got a position with lots of open space or you're going to be going to war and making claims this can easily save you 1000 influence. It's the difference between having a full tank of influence to start building megastructures or running on empty. It's silly to put it lower than B-tier. Not something you'll pick every game, but usually it's a solid option.

Mastery of Nature: gotta disagree; I'd say this is more of a C-tier perk. While some start positions will lack good options to spend influence in the mid-game, almost no planets actually need this and you can hit maximum capacity bonus without it while developing it the way you want. There are just so few planets that need this it's a waste of a perk in my view. C-tier at best.

Grasp the Void: this can be somewhat decent now that starbase buildings have been buffed, but you can't take it in the first slot which kinda ruins it since that's the only place you'd really be inclined to take it. C-tier at best.

World Shaper: World Shaper is easily A-tier material, possibly even S-tier although I'm a bit hesitant to go quite that far (though if you're putting Machine/Hive Worlds in S then this deserves to be there too). This is by far the best "planetary improvement" perk available right now, and is actually even better than Arcology Project. It's just solid economic bonuses everywhere at no influence costs while easily putting every planet into maximum capacity without having to spam city districts.

Xeno-Compatibility: really more of a B-tier perk in my view. It's a solid pick, but it's something you have to commit to pretty early to get it to combo off well and it's not as impactful on your overall economy as the other A-tier perks.

Arcology Project: this perk was nerfed really hard in 3.0; it's not obvious because it's subtle, but if you actually spreadsheet it out, it turns out that the Ecumenopolis actually became less efficient in terms of upkeep per job, and this caused it lose its edge over gaia worlds. If gaia worlds and the ecumenopolis are about equally efficient, then why would you choose the option that's more expensive in both resources and influence and takes longer to set up? The Ecumenopolis isn't unviable, but I'd only ever take the perk as a Lost Colony origin to piggyback off of the Colonial Spirit modifier. In any other case I'd stick to only restoring relic worlds. This is C-tier in my view.

Colossus Project: I'd say that total war casus belli on its own is an S-tier perk.

Technological Ascendancy: this perk is just ludicrously overrated, and it's really just an average B-tier perk. In a typical game, you're looking at being maybe one extra T4 tech ahead in every category by 100 years into the game. That's a solid benefit, but not the game-changing bonus you'd expect coming from an S-tier or even an A-tier option.

Executive Vigor: I'm a bit iffy on putting it in S-tier, but I can see where he's coming from. Personally I'd put it more in A-tier since a lot of the time you can't afford to be running 3 or 4 edicts in the early-game and in the late-game many of those edicts aren't nearly as impactful.

Machine/Hive World: why are these in S-tier when World Shaper is in B-tier? They're if anything worse than World Shaper as they are more expensive, take longer to terraform, and give smaller bonuses. They do open up all building slots, but most planets don't need all their building slots. They're A-tier perks in my view.

[u/Advocatus_Maximus]

These really depend on your playstyle. Interstellar Dominion is great if you are playing a inward perfection/ pacifist run. Where getting a system first may be the only safe way to get it and lets be frank during the first 50 years your influence is your major limit on expansion. If you play a more aggressive playstyle then you can just take the system from them via war.