Stellaris - Ascension Perks Tier List (2.7)

ascension perks they were added back in utopia and they were an absolutely great addition to the game allowing you to customize and personalize your empire in ways that you never thought possible now over time the developers have added more and more of these whether or not it was in vanilla or in several expansions a lot of them been reworked and that's why today we're going to be doing a tier list with these here ascension perks now you may have noticed that uh we actually only go down to the d tier on this one because anything below the d is um yeah i don't think anything applies to anything below to that so we can actually take a look at that later but still we're going to have a structure for this one and that is that we're going to be going over the vanilla ones first followed by the expansion ones then the some of the more special ones which are listed in the on your screen right as well basically those are specific um ascension perks that are only applicable to certain types of empires and then finally we have the ascension paths which are a completely separate category but they still fall under ascension perks in general so we are going to cover them in this particular video let's uh strap in this could be a long one as the ascension perks are gonna get teared first of all there is eternal vigilance this is a star base orientated ascension perks and you can only get it as soon as you uh unlock the star fortress technology what does it do well it improves your star basis to a certain extent you get more damage your hull is stronger your platforms do more damage by five percent and on top of that you get plus five defense platforms this is where the problem comes in however i don't necessarily feel that uh any sort of platforms are worth it in terms of resources as well as the time it takes to build them sure in the extremely late game you can have extremely powerful star bases that can hold the line for a certain amount of time but i don't feel that star bases in general are really worthwhile when it comes to the defensive part of the game at least not to the point where i want to spend a ascension perk on them therefore eternal vigilance gets a a solid d tier for me yeah that's right it goes into the d tier that's uh it's not great it does the life do feel that it needs a little bit of love in order to make it more viable and to make it a interesting pick for you sure if you're pushed all the way back and you need something quickly then this could be something that is useful to you but there are other ways to boost all of these such as repeatable technologies as well as some of the tradition trees like the supremacy tier also boosts the power of star bases and i think eternal vigilance is not powerful enough to be on par with some of the other stuff that you can get in the game it's an ascension perk it needs to be powerful you need to have a reason to pick it and that right there is a little bit unfortunate executive vigor this one used to be one of my favorites actually um at least i would pick it relatively frequently due to its power basically what it used to do was it would make your edicts last 50 percent longer and especially if you were gagging for influence and you didn't have all that many resources to go around to actually get those edicts then yeah this this was something that was rather useful because instead of having something last 10 years it would last 15 years and then with repeatables you could stack that even more however as of the latest updates this the whole edic system has been changed and it's now a plus two edict capacity is this a good thing or not i actually don't think it is i think it's it's one of the weaker approaches of rework here adding a plus to edit capacity on paper may sound nice but it's just another way to spend more influence in different categories something that oh you're only going to have thing problems with in the late game as in you'll have enough influence for it eating capacity is nice sure you can get even more either capacity by playing as a dictatorial or an imperial setup and then even with the oligarchys and the democracies you get one whole edict um it is it is not that great it um i i do feel it needs a little bit of a rework to do more things because plus to eat it capacity to me it's just not worth it if you have a decent economy then a then you just don't need a lot of these particular things sure if you need to run research grants or greater than ourselves in parallel then you can easily offset that with a good economy so that's why it's going to be a d tier yes that's right d tier on this one over here i like other hexes by the way they fit very nicely into each other but yeah executive vigor needs a little bit of rework in my personal opinion which brings us to imperial prerogative another one that i don't think is all that great it increases your admin cap by 20 as of the 2.6 update we now have the wonders of bureaucrats and bureaucrats completely negate any need of generating more admin cap being able to build habitats being able to have worlds full of bureaucrats makes anything involving improving your atmo cap completely useless and therefore imperial prerogative is also going to go into the detail it is in desperately in need of rework here imperial prerogative just because the modify is not worth it plus 20 admin cap now i i'm not a fan of it whatsoever interstellar dominion now we're starting to get into something a little bit more interesting it's a vanilla one of course and what does it do well it reduces your claim cost as well as your starbase influence cost both by 20 which by itself can be a big impact if you are in war and you want to spend your influence on claims and getting more territory this is a very situational one if you are in a game and you are gagging for territory because you just don't have that much space then this could be an interesting thing to have uh interstellar dominion by itself is like i said very situational and that's why i'm gonna put it into the c category uh not so much because it is useless it does have its own uses in very specific scenarios but it's not something that i would spend an ascension perk on it's just not powerful enough to um to go for it especially in the early game where you don't have that much influence you don't have that much territory on the enemy side to claim the only real bonus is the star base influence cost modifier which by itself is nice but let's be honest here if you're gonna go and take enemy territory then you're gonna have star base influence cost modifiers anyway so yeah that's you don't gonna need that because you're claiming their territory plus expansion tree already uh negates quite a lot of this stuff but it's it's nice to have i guess uh you can stack this with several other of the claim cost modifiers and get free claims but it's like a whole different discussion we will talk about that at a later date mastery of nature back in 1.2 or 1.3 mastery of nature was a de facto number one pick because it was such a strong thing to have you didn't need to attack a whole bunch of blockers because back then mastery of nature would unlock every single blocker check you will be able to just get rid of them super quickly super easily but that's no longer the case now it just removes um blockers at a reduction reduced cost of 33 percent and top of that you get the mastery of nature decision now what does the master of nature decision actually do well it gives you two additional districts per planet for a cost of 2 000 in energy and 100 influence again this is a very situational scenario let's say you're playing with not too many planets or you don't have that many big planets you don't have habitats or anything along those lines because for instance you didn't get utopia or federations then well mastery of nature is probably a good pick however in general i would put this one into the c category because if you have all the expansions and you know how to play the game and then master of nature doesn't really add all that much value sure it's an economical boost but the real boon here is mastery of nature decision which adds those additional districts but for 2000 energy it's more of a mid to late game item here you're not going to spend 2 000 energy on anything in the start of the game because you just won't have the energy it's not gonna happen anytime soon unless you're maybe a mega corporation but still it's it's just one of those things that i don't think is all that viable one vision one vision used to be one of my de facto picks and that was because of its 10 monthly unity bonus which by itself is really nice you know you want to get more unity you can go up the tree really quickly it's rather good plus the reduction in amenities usage by 10 also really nice especially if you're playing voidborn for instance uh you don't have that many amenities to go around and then you can just um do whatever you don't need any of those special buildings that generate amenities plus there is the governing ethics attraction bonus of 50 which may really make sure that you can keep your factions in line especially if you combine that with a deep space black site one vision is pretty powerful however overall because of the amenities uses reduction the um the meager 10 monthly unity bonus i actually don't think unity uh one vision is all that great anymore it used to feel really good but since then i've kind of changed my mind about it which is why i'm going to put it into the c category as well i'm sure a lot of people are not going to agree with this one i do feel that one vision needs a little bit of rework to make itself work even better but yeah one vision it's nice but it's not great it's not something i would spend a a ascension perk on let's put it down like that we only have eight of them and this feels just like a waste in general shared destiny what does it do it reduces your subject integration cost by 50 and all of your subjects well they'll just trust you more i i guess that is a nice thing to have if i would you know integrate my subjects which is not something that i do personally i do like my tributaries as well as my vassals for the passive bonuses that i get i just don't want to deal with all the additional pops that are floating around out there sure it's nice to have but if unless you're playing really really wide and you want to have all the empires in your galaxy uh joined with you then shared destiny it's just yeah this is not that great it's uh it's a d tier for me sadly and shared destiny is going to go down here into the d tier objectively it just needs rework it needs to have something involving um automated voting for your goals if they are part of the galactic community or something along those lines but shared destiny and its current form is just not all that great technological ascendancy oh you knew this one was coming the de facto number one pick that everybody always should pick in any scenario plus 10 research speed and rare text become 50 percent more common my god it is so good i'm not even gonna i'm not even gonna question this this is straight up s tier for me right here why s terrible because technology growth is what wins the game together with pops but that additional bonus of having rare attack becoming 50 more common is so good because sometimes you're just trying to get that that rare tech that you're been looking for for such a long time and it's just not popping up and this really helps so much especially when you're working um in combination with uh specialized researchers that you want to focus on they say you want to go down spaceships so you can get voidcraft so in that particular way so this is all stacks and it's great i love i love technological ascendancy it's a de facto number one pick of what is available in the game transcendent learning oh boy um plus two leader a level cap as well as a 50 leader experience gain bonus i guess is nice but it's not something again that i would spend a ascension perk on it's just not really worth your while um sure the the leader cap is is annoying normally it's i think at five and having a plus two is nice and then of course you can go down the discovery tree and you can get a couple more level cap bonuses and in the late game you could go for that level 10 leader or something along those lines but is that going to be powerful enough that is the real question really transcended learning let's put it this way by the time that you need transcended learning and you're really aching for that additional leader level cap it's not going to be worthwhile because there's going to be better ascension perks available to you whether or not you want them or not transcendent learning is really catering towards that early game where you want to get more leader levels on your scientists for instance or on your governors just so that they can be more effective at their jobs but overall transcendent learning is just not worth it and that's why transcended learning again it goes into the d category it's it's nice on paper but by the time it becomes relevant it's just not all that good speaking of things i don't know that not all that good grasp the void you get plus five star based capacity and that is it in a perfect world grasp void would be merged together with eternal vigilance in order to get a little bit more flavor out of it graphs of void is one of the few um ascension perks that i think has almost zero value mainly due to technologies like repeatables and stuff like that as well as well what would you use star bases for let's be honest here defense not really for anchorages to get more naval capacity possibly maybe some trade value or as soon as you get gateways that becomes completely useless as well so yeah starbase capacity plus five was nice is not all that awesome and it's the only one that gets a d minus so that's why we're gonna go and have it hang out here in the bottom of the d tier uh grass devoid plus five star base capacity it's just not worth it it's not worth it at all world shaper wow world shaper world shaper is curious because it does reduce your terraforming cost by 25 you can then create gaia worlds for a exorbitant amount of uh you know energy credits and on top of that you need climate restoration technology to make this world work gaia worlds are they worth it sometimes yes sometimes no is it something you want to spend an ascension perk on absolutely not this is not something i am too happy with the 25 terraforming costs sure great by the time that you are going to be terraforming worlds on mass you'll have so much energy that the terraforming costs are not even going to be a problem anymore gaia worlds is a nice little extra bonus but let's say that you roll hypothetically the ba ul or something along those lines then well you can just generate guy or worlds whenever you want really and uh yeah that's pretty much it it's it's again situational it's one of those things where oh i've got a lot of planets and i want to terraform them to something else and it's going to cost a lot of money but to be honest the terraforming costs are completely negligible and that's why i reach for the stars oh god i already oh god what did i do here where the transcendent where did where did reach for the stars go oh god there it is um well we'll just leave it at that world shaper it gets a c tier very situational not all that great and i still out there is world shaper but yeah um world shaper situational very situational unless you absolutely need it i wouldn't pick it let's put it that way then we get to a duo it's the defender of the galaxy and galactic con contender we're gonna actually merge these together into a duo pack because they are effectively the same and what they do uh defender of the galaxy again a vanilla one uh it does 50 damage to all end game crisis and it also gives you a 20 opinion to all uh alien empires and galactic contender which gives you twenty percent opinion uh extra diplomatic weight which is actually really nice plus 33 damage to fallen awakened and build gate builders so when should you use this when you're playing on high difficulty as well as high crisis modes galactic contender especially can be extremely useful but it's not something that you'd want to use in general because the fleets that you can field are going to be able to quote unquote contend with a fallen and awakened empires by the time they become a problem and therefore these particular ones are actually going to go into a bc tier mainly because they are they are so incredibly situational and completely based on whatever you decide uh when it comes to your um difficulty really so galactic contender as well as defender of the galaxy are going to go into a b seat here which is why they're going to go hang out over here they're good again very situationally but they're not all that good when you're playing on easy mode let's put it that way galactic force projection galactic force protection used to be one of the main picks if you were going to play tall back before 2.0 but that's obviously no longer the case and in all honesty galactic force projection giving you plus 20 command limit which means that you can add a couple more ships to your fleet plus the 80 naval capacity it's naval capacity is such a such an easy thing to get and plus 80 is totally not worth it you can just crank out a couple of fortress worlds or anchorages all over the shop and just get insane amounts of naval capacity anyway the fleet command limit is nice for getting slightly larger fleets but instead of having a slightly larger fleet you can just have a second fleet that is as large as the previous one so why on earth would you take galactic force projection this is one of the few ones that i would do a heavy rebuild on because this is a full detail for me so we have wrapped up every single vanilla ascension perk and as you can see none of them are particularly great except for maybe technological ascendancy a lot of them are very situational and it leaves the a and b category strangely empty don't worry there is definitely a and b category ascension perks out there there may be not that many but we will see down the line first of all we're going to go into utopia utopia adds galactic wonders i'm a little bit cheating here because yeah sure megacorp adds the amount of decompressor but overall having the ability to build absolutely enormous galactic wonders is incredibly good ring worlds dyson spheres and of course megacorps matter decompressor are incredibly powerful and a must have in a late game economy you just simply cannot work without these especially in ring worlds are so useful for taking up in the late game the dyson sphere for basically giving you unlimited energy and amount of the compressor for giving you unlimited minerals and especially if you're working with ecu monopoly the amount of decompressor is a must-have and of course you need to pay for the upkeep for all the megastructures that you're going to be building which is also where the dyson sphere comes in galactic wonders for me is a solid s tier no no discussion right there solid s here it is it is incredibly good it's probably one of the main reasons why you would want to buy utopia master builders master builders is also a utopia based ascension perk what does it do it gives you plus 50 megastructure build speed as well as the ability to build a another megastructure in parallel to any that you're currently building uh it's objectively good it's not s tier but still having the ability to very quickly build mega structures and start rolling out of control is really nice especially when it comes to ring worlds so you can get additional building capacity but of course you can always get the unity ambition to get yet another megastructure build capacity you can get the final tier of the science directorate alliance to get you yet another megastructure build capacity which basically means that you can build three slots would i really spend an ascension perk on master builders yes but and this is a big but only if i have space for it in my build it is exceptionally good don't get me wrong but sometimes there is not enough space for master builders within my particular planned route for the ascension perks again we only have eight slots so that's why um master builders in this particular case is gonna go into the eight year it's the very first a tier one everybody hooray voidborn technically part of utopia mostly part of utopia also a little bit of federations because of the avoid dweller origin what does it do well we've discussed this at length in the past it gives you plus 20 habitability on habitats plus two habitat building slots you can now build advanced housing on those habitats such as the utopia dome and of course every single habitat attack is automatically available to you once you've researched the next tier in a total of three is it good objectively yes is it always a pick no it is not if you're playing wide you most likely don't need voidborn if you're playing with a lot of planets you most likely don't need a voidborn is it good for teching absolutely should you generally build one if you can yes at least in terms of habitats but to the extent that you need voidborn to make them viable no i don't necessarily think so habitats if you habitats are nice for voidborn if you are specifically building for them especially if you go tall but it's not always applicable in every single scenario so that's something you want to keep an eye on also galactic wonders what are you doing you're supposed to be over here but yeah voidborn it's it's definitely definitely ranging into the extremely good category but i would put it in s tier um voidborn is yet another eight-year ascension perk if you don't need it then you don't need it if you feel that you can work without voidborn because of the because of the building slots then go right forward it is very very good but it's not game breaking good unless of course you're playing extremely tall or if you're playing as a void one oh boy this is a weird one enigmatic engineering i used to pick this one as my default number two um mainly because of what it does but then after a lot of soul searching i'd realized that um animatic engineering it gives you plus two sensor range which is nice you can see inside of enemy territory a lot easier and see what's going on uh you have plus four ship hyperlink detection range so if you are at war then you can see enemy troops come in a lot quicker so that you can respond to the enemy a lot easier and on top of that when your ships are destroyed it doesn't leave any debris which means that nobody can get your technology oh boy i used to think this was a maybe even s but sadly it's d because this is very much something that is useful in multiplayer and even then i don't even think that people are gonna pick it because when it comes to technology and that's really the main reason why you would get this so that the enemy cannot pick this particular uh sort of enemy cannot steal your technology it's not all that great in all honesty i don't really don't really care about it in general sure do i do i think that the enemy shouldn't have my tech absolutely but by the time they can actually research it you've already won the war and crushed them so yeah also this is an apocalypse one by the way just so you're aware this is a d tier that's uh it's not all that great there's different mechanics in the game that can um make sure that you cover all of this stuff like uh sensor range like seriously it's it's not all that great which brings us to the colossus project now the colossus project obviously it allows you to build a colossus did you want to build a colossus uh it's they were it was touted as one of the big expansion features for apocalypse and are they objectively cool sure having the power to blow up a planet is amazing but it is nothing compared to the power of pops my lord why would you want to kill the pups blowing up the planet is just such a terrible thing to do it's a place of resources where you can build buildings and structures you can have pops there again um the neutron blasts it kills the pops infrastructure can be rebuilt the only real thing that the colossus project is good for is a the god ray that only spiritualists get the assimilation ray which is driven assimilators and c the total war cb that you can get with it and that is kind of good but it is such a situational thing the colossus by itself is awesome it's a planet killer sure on paper awesome it's expensive takes a long time to get and it's vulnerable the only real reason you want one is objectively the cb and that's why the colossus project is the very first one that gets a b tier it's cool sure is it flexible and not really it's it's it's very situational not as situational as some of the other ones but still interesting to have but not all that awesome nihilistic acquisition i'm about to uh rough a lot of feathers over here because it's not actually a d tier not in my personal opinion a lot of people would say nihilistic acquisition is the worst of all the ascension perks sure i can i can see why people would would say that um yeah what does it do it allows for the raiding bombardment stance sure barbaric the spoilers they get it for free barbaric spoilers are awful don't you worry i'm building a mod for it just to fix it but still the rating bombardment stands would you want to get it it's it's not all that great sure you can suck in a planet of primitives completely dry with it for funsies but why would you do that you can just invade the planet and just take the pups that's how that works um you can steal enemy pops from other worlds is that is that viable yeah if you want to keep them down that's that's a good way of doing it and completely them in the early game it's a nice way of doing things but unless you are rushing with military it's not all that useful in the late game it's just a case of do i really want to steal those pops over there no i'll just take the planet that's a much easier way of approaching it unless you're our focus slaver empire or or are a hardcore rp or nihilistic acquisition it's not all that great it's not all that great at all and that's why it goes into the detail it's one of those that needs a little bit of rework it's uh just the ability of being able to do the raiding bombardment stands as an ascension perk this is not worth it it's just not worth it at all then we get to the arcology project one of my favorites this one is all about building ecu monopoly oh yes the planet that is covered in a shell of buildings advanced districts for alloys consumer goods unity trade awesome they're so good being able to deal with overflow population from whatever worlds that you have awesome being able to support your alloy economy and building gigantic fleets as well as building megastructures awesome arcology project is a must-have in my personal opinion it is so good uh that if even in the situations where you you really shouldn't be building one let's say you are void dwellers so situational that doesn't even apply um eki monopoly are just awesome if you can support them which is also why it's sitting right next to galactic wonders which you can use to support them because you're gonna need those minerals to upkeep this place because it's gonna get pretty busy in terms of those workers that are down there as well as it's hungry a hungry need for more and more minerals xeno compatibility xeno compatibility is probably one of the most interesting ascension perks that are available everybody is always hammering on about oh boy i can cross breed my pups with other pops this is going to be awesome yeah that's not why you get uh xeno compatibility as xeno compatibility is the reason why the game has slowed down to a crawl in some scenarios and it's also well the only ascension perk you can permanently turn off in the settings menu which is rather interesting the real reason why you want to get xeno compatibility is not hybrid species it is the immigration poll bonus of 33 and it is the pop growth speed bonus of 20 xeno compatibility is one of the strongest ascension perks when it comes to growing your pops there's one other one that's even better but we'll touch upon that one later but yeah it's so good a plus 33 immigration pull bonus especially on gaia worlds is insane you will be cranking up pops like no tomorrow 20 grow speed on pops insanely good it is so good i love it i love everything about it i don't really care about the hybrid pops it's uh it's it's a nice little extra thing to have sure you can have a hybrid pop that all of a sudden you know um gets additional traits and they've got some weird stuff going on and it takes forever to gene taylor which is why this is not a nest here but still it is a eight-year for me a lot of people are definitely not going to agree with me on this one because gene tayloring as uh is also one of the gateways but still um i i don't care about the hybrid pops at all it's it's a fun little quirk it's the growth speed that is good growth means pops and pops means winning the game ah yeah it's about a mega corp by the way uh yeah and that basically is all the basic ascension perks it's not all of them we still have a bunch more on the list and we're going to be covering these shortly we're going to start off with the special perks consecrated worlds you may not even have heard of this particular ascension perk because it is relatively obscure and it's only available to spiritualists it's also part of vanilla so there you have it what does it do well it's arguably one of the more convoluted ascension perks that are in the game first of all as soon as you select consecrated worlds you can have three consecrated worlds and you can basically assign a world as a quote-unquote as i already mentioned consecrated world upon selecting said world as you know the thing that i just said a million times uh you will no longer be able to colonize it this world is off limits to anybody but if it has a high enough ranking let's say it's a gaia world it has a 100 chance of cranking up your unity bonus by eight percent and also increases your amenities by four percent you can do this three times up to a stack of well 24 and that's a huge amount a huge amount of unity 24 is really really good it's much better than one vision ever was but the thing is that you need gaia worlds to do this at least there's a good there's a chance of getting it on normal worlds it's about 10 but a guy world is a guaranteed eight percent bonus so do you really want to do this if you're playing with a lot of planets yes absolutely consecrated worlds is really really good if you roll the ba ooh precursor absolutely it's an it's an absolute it's a no-brainer you just go for it because you can just turn any world into a gaia world and it becomes a sacred world instantly which is really nice and then you know you can stack that up to 24 which is really good and then of course you get the 12 amenities bonus which means that you will never have to build any amenity buildings anywhere ever again to uh to basically um compare this to say a resort world which generates a amenity bonus of 15 within your empire it's pretty good even though resort worlds don't come in until the mid game but it does stack which is really really nice but yeah as i mentioned um you do need gaia worlds for it for maximum efficiency so either getting the precursor is really nice or getting world shaper but that means spending yet another ascension slot on uh getting consecrated worlds which is a yeah it's it's just you only have eight of them so what are you gonna do it's uh it's difficult to work with it's it's good it has it's it has its practicality i still think this is a b tier over here it's gonna hang out here with the colossus project um if you are spiritualist you probably want to go for this for the unity growth because spiritualists have a really easy time going through those uh unity trees and becoming extremely powerful but still it's still only a beat here and it's even though it's specially for spiritualists only it needs a little bit of tweaking to be really really good then we get to the illustrious duo of the hive worlds and the machine worlds a part of utopia and synthetic dawn respectively and basically what it does is hive world you can tear form a planet into a hive world and machine worlds guess what you can terraform worlds into a machine world very exciting stuff takes 20 years takes 10 000 energy you can build any district you want wherever you want and you get bonuses to what to your own species whether or not you're hive minds or robots but do be aware that only hive minds and robots can live on those respective worlds now they are functionally the same except one is for hive minds and one is for robots so are they any good yes if you are playing with hive minds and if you're playing with robots then these are s tier absolutely i am going to go oh consecrated worlds is going to go on a little bit of a journey there yeah definitely this is s tier but in a kind of a different way i'm going to put this in like in a separate little line over here because if you are playing as robots or hive minds you want these there is no other choice they are so good let's put it that way you want to have these ones and you want to spend an ascension perk on these planets they're just too good to ignore synthetic age this isn't yet another synthetic dawn related ascension perk and uh what does it do well it gives you two additional machine modding points is it worth it yes absolutely it's uh it's pretty good mainly because it also gives you a reduction to cost which means that you can tech faster down the line which is rather nice if you're robots then you should definitely get synthetic age because two extra points on your robo modding is just totally worth it you can get any sort of perk on top of what you already have and boosts your economy even more and that's why it's going to go into this special list here up in s tier universal transactions it's the only one from megacorp that is specifically designed for said megacorp so what does it do well it um it reduces your branch office cost by 15 which is an influence related item and on top of that commercial packs no longer cost influence which means that you will have more influence to go around which is really nice because you want to get as many of these commercial packs with everybody around the galaxy it's really really good and it's uh for it's a specialist for megacorps and it's an s tier it's what can i say it is just awesome um if you are a megacorp you should get universal transactions mainly probably as your second or your third one depending on whether or not you've got any sort of first contact already going on if you are a criminal mega corp then you already have it by default which is rather nice but still it's it's just too good too good to give up and then finally we get to the ascension paths all six of them and they all have their own uses and they are all pretty darn good they are only available through utopia and you should be aware of that and they are one of the primary reasons why you'd want to get utopia they are all very very good but they're not all asked here for a various reasons that we're going to be explaining in the very very near future first of all there is engineered evolution plus three trade points for you to deal with with your empire um you get a minus 25 cost modifier on changing your trades you get gene troopers and most importantly you get cloning vats cloning vats are one of the best buildings in the game because it will boost your pop growth like mad as soon as you get engineered evolution you just spam those those cloning vats everywhere because you just want to get more and more pops there are just so good that's why engineered evolution goes straight up in the est here it's probably one of my favorite ascension paths and we'll do a video in the future about why that is the case but still it's engineered evolution is just so good it's it's amazing i love it which leads us straight into evolutionary mastery again plus three trade points you get another 25 cost modifier for your changing your trades and then on top of that you get advanced traits the best traits in the game bar none and on top of that it allows hive minds to assimilate our species so if you are hive minds you definitely want to go down this route now that you have a lot of choice but still you get the general idea so good absolutely amazing the advanced traits by themselves make this a s tier pick bar none i am i'm not even kidding here i'm sure there's a lot of people that don't agree with me here but still evolutionary mastery is just so good and it's just not worth giving up mind over matter i i really want to like mind over matter because it it does give you a bunch of really cool things sure it turns your species latent psionic which means that all your all your jobs will generate either five percent extra energy or research which is nice especially if you're a spiritualist empire you're not really focusing all that much on that research what you should do anyway but still you know it's it's it's nice to have being able to um get all those traits is nice and it also gives you the telepathy research which is also cool on top of that it gives you uh the psycho building which gives you plus five stability and it also gives you telepath jobs which reduces crime by 5 35 and also generates three units of unity is it good yes is it amazing no this is a solid b tier for me over here um it can hang out here with consecrated worlds yet another spiritualist thing by the way if you're playing as materialists mind over matter is extremely unlikely to appear because well you just don't have access to psionics to begin with unless you're extremely lucky with your randomized roles but yeah mind over matter be tier to me which takes us to transcendence transcendence gives you the psionic trait which gives you plus 10 energy per pop job as well as 10 um research per uh pop job it's the same for energy by the way and also makes pops happier by 5 which is kind of nice and on top of that it gives you access to the shroud why am i going to put this in the beat here because the shroud is way too random to make it interesting for a min max player if you're playing in an rp environment if you like your role playing mind over matter and transcendence are super fun and really good to work with but from an objective standpoint transcendence and mind over matter are a solid b tier because they just don't do enough in terms of randomization are they fun absolutely are they are they powerful if you can get the size shields if you can get a chosen one if you can get a decent uh patron sure but that's all a roll of the dice it's just not good enough to be objectively good is it fun yes is it practical no no it's not and then we're left with the last two it's the flesh is weak and synthetic evolution the flesh is weak okay what does it do well it reduces your robot upkeep by 10 it increases your robot assembly speed by 10 and it gives you the cybernetics trait which gives you additional army damage additional habitability and your um your leaders will live 40 years longer is it good yeah it's it's pretty good if you want to go down that route is it as good as say genetic engineering like engineered evolution no it is not because it does not give you access to the wonders of the cloning vats um the pop jobs you can get from it are pretty good the bonuses to leaders pretty good as well but i just don't think it's worth all that while in terms of tiering them here a tier absolutely they're practical they're good but not nearly as good as engineered evolution and i'm sure that a lot of people will have very very strong opinions about this one synthetic evolution well it goes into the a tier together with the flesh is weak it gives you additional robot modification points your modification for species uh is reduced by 50 your robots will do 10 additional output and your entire species and turned into robots with all the traits that come with that is it good sure is it as good as engineered evolution no it goes into the eight here in in all honesty it's sometimes a good idea to go for just the flashes we can not ignore synthetic evolution because then you can have cyborg pops whilst also building robo pops in parallel is it is it nice to have sure is it amazingly good i would disagree sure the robot output is nice and being able to live anywhere is nice but synthetic evolution gets the a tier from me and i'm sure a lot of you will disagree with this and uh feel that it needs to be on the same level of uh engineered evolution and evolutionary mastery but we'll do a separate video about why ascension perks are good and why they are not necessarily all that good and now there wraps up our ascension tier list wow we've got a lot in str we've got a lot of them in detail and bna does need a little bit of polish is this what you were thinking when you were clicking on this video do you agree with some of these setups feel free to leave your comments down below because your opinions do matter to me in addition we're going to do a video in the near future looking at the d-tier ascension perks and seeing how we could potentially improve them and tell you what i'll write a mod after that once we've discussed that in the comments below um about what to change that's right i will i will write a mod specifically for a video based on your comments in this video so there's your cta give me your ideas why the dtr ones need to be improved but also why do you feel some of these rank higher or lower in your opinion in the meantime though i want to thank my patrons for making this video possible if it wasn't for you well we wouldn't be here would we ah it's it's always good to have the patrons uh on my back making sure that these videos happen on your screen right now there is a bunch of other videos that may be interesting to you if you feel that you want to click on one of them go right ahead there's a playlist as well about the mechanics within the game but in the meantime we're gonna go and wrap up this video here thank you so much for watching and until next time take good care of yourselves and as always make sure you pick your ascension perks right because you only have eight slots

Channel: ASpec

Views: 238,902

Rating: 4.8482499 out of 5

Keywords: Stellaris, Ascension, Traditions, Ascension Perks, The Shroud, Utopia, Apocalypse, Megacorp, Tierlist, Tier, ASpec, A_Spec, 2.7, Overview, Mechanics, Perks

Id: FHfNXFLvSi4

Length: 46min 18sec (2778 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020