Stellaris NEW Ascension Paths - Which Is Best?

clearly don't know who you're talking to so let me clue you in I am not endangered I am the danger I am the one who knocks I am the Senate Ascension paths have been entirely reworked with Stellaris 3.6 Orion the latest patch we're going to be getting for Stellaris not only had they been reworked the synthetic Ascension has been split into two paths cybernetic and synthetic but all of this has got me wondering which is now the most powerful Ascension path in Stellaris in today's video we're going to look at each of the new Ascension paths available break them down and then figure out which one is going to be the best for you given your situation but before we jump into that let's talk about the sponsor of today's video Star Trek Fleet command Deep Space Nine is now coming to Star Trek Fleet command this new arc will offer something for everyone with three new officers focused on ship survivability New Missions following the Fantastic Narrative of Deep Space Nine and a new mechanic Alliance star bases you can finally add the Epic Cisco rare Kira and rare Miles O'Brien to your crew the first two of these officers will be useful in any Armada and the final one can only be used against Alliance Starbase armadas you see Alliance star bases are a physical embodiment of an alliance's strength they push members to work together for shared progression and mutual benefits as they navigate inter-alliance diplomacy conflict and sometimes all-out Warfare you can try out this brand new social feature on iOS Android and Windows take the con and Journey Through the Wormhole with me in Star Trek Fleet command the first Ascension path we'll look at is the synthetic Ascension path before patch 3.6 this was traditionally looked at as the most powerful Ascension path over a long enough period of time to recap on why that was basically we used to be able to get the most pops and the best pops though it did come somewhat later than some of the other ascensions like the genetic Ascension or the psionic Ascension as of patch 3.6 in order to unlock synthetic Evolution you will need to complete these synthetic technology this gives you synthetic workers basically robots that can live at any strata except ruler jobs unless you have full AI rights and an additional 10 robot output Empire wide once we have that and enough Unity we can then start completing the synthetic tradition one of the first tradition picks is the synthetic age which will allow you to unlock a special project and upgrade all of your biological citizens into synthetics once you've ascended your population you'll then get access to all of the machine traits that you can then mod into your pops not only that you'll be getting a whole host of other bonuses from the tradition and your Technologies because you're now robots just like before patch 3.6 once you switch over your population to synthetic you'll get a whole bunch of Pop Assembly Building lots of these synthetic robots and you'll want to make sure you've still got some biological Pops in your Empire too so that you can benefit from biopop growth as well now I've done the math so you don't have to let's break down the bonuses you can get from being synthetically ascended so in terms of generic bonuses we can get five percent resources from jobs from efficient processors 10 more resources from jobs from optimization algorithms and don't forget we can get another 10 resource output from just the synthetic technology so that is a base of plus 25 for all of your pops that are synthetic across the Empire don't forget that I did mention you'll want to grow regular biological Pops in your Empire as well so they won't be benefiting from all of those bonuses that I just went through but it is very likely you'll have robot and robotic pops representing anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of your Empire as long as you occasionally keep setting the rights to assimilation and assimilate a whole bunch of Organics every now and then whenever you find an new organic species to bring into the Empire but that is not all we're also going to be getting an additional five percent worker pop resource output as long as our Governors are synthetic so all of your workers will be at plus 30 output and because you can put the machine trade logic engines onto these robots you can go to a total of plus 35 research output across all of your synthetic pops on every World overall these bonuses specifically the base of plus 25 resource output across the board are some of the best bonuses that any Ascension path has access to install RS 3.6 synthetic scientists get five percent extra research speed and synthetic Admirals get an additional plus 10 ship fire rate now that additional research speed puts them about average compared to all of the other Ascension leader bonuses you'll be getting across the board and the fire rate is one of the worst bonuses now there's two different types of bonus you can get here additional fire rate and also additional damage generally speed King you only need your fire rate to be higher than your opponent and thus you'll get additional rounds of shooting in before they can otherwise if you'll have more fire rate than they do having more damage will always assist you in killing them but an extra 10 fire rate if you're already faster than them isn't actually always a bonus the main drawback of synthetic Ascension now and the reason I would probably say it could possibly be viewed as the weakest Ascension path around is that these synthetic technology is required to take this Ascension path meaning it is the last and latest Ascension path any species pretty much anywhere in the Galaxy will be able to take and this means that whilst yes you'll be getting some great bonuses for all of your robotic pops once you actually take this all of the other Empires that take another Ascension path will have already completed their Ascension path and be getting all of their bonuses long before you even start completing this tradition additionally they've changed up the way the pop growth now works you only get one additional roboticist job from your capital and you can get a total of two more from the robot assembly complex and then an additional plus one monthly mechanical pop assembly from your leader being synthetic giving you a total base pop assembly Hero 7 which whilst okay and definitely much better than base pop growth across any Empire isn't as good as some of the other ascensions we'll be looking at in a moment especially when we combine the fact that we won't really be able to do much to these additional biological pops and as I said this Ascension path comes very very late and if you're enjoying this video please critically evaluate the changes that have happened to that like button next up we have the cybernetic Ascension in order to unlock this path you'll need to take the Flash's week Ascension perk and to unlock that perk you must have completed the integrated cybernetics technology giving you plus five percent habitability once you take cybernetics you'll unlock a special project to give the cybernetic trait to everyone in your Empire the cybernetic trait is fundamentally much worse than just fully upgrading to synthetic you'll get plus 20 habitability some increased Army damage and plus 40 Years of leader lifespan it is a direct downgrade from being fully synthetic as I didn't mention previously something that is important to take into account with synthetic is that you have full habitability on every planet and Immortal leaders though by the late point of the game that you have that through other technological means you can definitely achieve 100 habitability and probably keep most of your leaders alive indefinitely anyway the cybernetic trait does give us access to special leader trait and we'll go through those in a moment but first let's take a look at the cybernetics tradition first up we'll be able to assimilate other Pops in our Empire and turn them into cyborgs once we get the gene tailoring technology we'll also get access to special additional cyborg traits that we can modify onto our species we get the ability later on to choose that our roboticists can now build cyborg pops via organic assembly and because they're now producing monthly organic pop assembly this can actually stack with not just other pop assembly if you're a hive mind but also with the budding trait that gives you additional pop assembly for every pop on your planet and the finisher here gives you a nice tidy plus 10 resources from cyborg pops so when we look at the total bonuses we've got both this 10 resources from cyborg pops as well as the fact that we can shove efficient processes on for an additional five percent giving us a total of plus 15 resources from jobs for every cybernetic pop in our Empire don't forget you can still research synthetics so you'll be able to get to plus 15 additional resource output from jobs from all synthetics but let's take a moment here with the cyborg so when you add something like efficient processors you do get a very annoying plus 0.3 energy upcreep to the pop that will be mitigated by the fact that your cybernetic Governors have possibly the worst trait around giving them minus 10 pop-up keep and you get an additional minus 10 cyborg upkeep from metabolic reprocessing but even then efficient processors might actually be a bit too expensive to justify taking it from an energy credit perspective all of the time now if you're just trying to push out extra Alloys and you can afford it absolutely it does become a no-brainer but I think that these additional cyborg traits are rather expensive now of course we also have a special technology and that is quantum neuro links this gets unlocked and given as a research option when we take the cybernetics Ascension perk this will give us an additional plus five percent specialist pop resource output meaning that all of our specialist cyborg pops will be getting plus 20 resource output overall the bonuses we're getting here from our cybernetic species and our synthetic species are net lower than the bonuses we will be getting if we had just fully synthetically ascended but depending on the balance of biological to synthetic Pops in your Empire it could be that they roughly even out because the synthetically ascended Empire will be getting no additional bonuses for their Normie biopops when it comes to pop assembly and pop growth you will end up with lower pop assembly and therefore a combined lower pop growth when we add in regular pop growth and pop assembly than the synthetic Ascension but you can get this so much earlier because the technology required to take the flashes week Ascension perk is a very early technology to get so cybernetic Ascension can happen decades before a full synthetic Ascension for that reason I actually play cybernetic now as slightly more powerful than synthetic Ascension so far I've put the old Titan in fourth place synthetic Ascension and cybernetic in third place all that is left is a biological and psionic Ascension let's discuss which of those is actually the best the final two ascensions are very interesting when we compare them to the others because they both have an origin that basically fast tracks the Ascension process and in some cases means it's pretty much unlocked right from the very start so the psionic Ascension has teachers of the Shroud which basically blocks you into the psionic Ascension path you gain latent psionic at the start of the game and in essence you don't have to take the Mind Over Matter Ascension perk to begin taking the psionic Ascension tradition then there is overtuned overtuned is available to any Empire that is not a machine intelligence and this one doesn't specifically lock you into genetic Ascension although because it gives you the gene tailoring technology right from the start of the game you'll be able to unlock the genetic Ascension Ascension perk from your second Ascension perk meaning your third tradition can be the genetic Ascension tradition it is briefly worth mentioning there is an origin mechanist which in some ways is a version of a cybernetic or synthetic Ascension as An Origin although this is so drastically underpowered compared to the other two it does not guarantee you any research options it does not put you on a fast track really except for giving you the first robotics technology and some robots right from the start of the game yes if you complete synthetic or cybernetic Ascension you'll get these great bonuses like plus 15 mechanical pop assembly speed and plus one mechanical species trait picks but that is just a bonus for the end of the path not really for the beginning so let's start by looking at the genetic Ascension in order to go down the biological Ascension path you'll need to take the engineered Evolution Ascension perk that Ascension becomes available once we have the gene tailoring technology as you can see for any Empire which takes overtuned because you start with the gene tailoring technology there are no RNG elements now you will simply be able once you have unlocked one other Ascension perk to take engineered Evolution as your second Ascension perk engineered Evolution lets you build clone that which add biological pop assembly and like cybernetic Ascension it is one of the only two Ascension paths available to a hive mind Empire going down the right hand side here clonevats will first produce more additional organic pop assembly as well as reducing the cost of modifying species special project the modify species special project is the main benefit of genetic Ascension as we're going to unlock the ability to not only remove beneficial traits and add detrimental traits as well as adding beneficial traits but also getting more modification points and more organic species trait picks while finally getting the rare transgenesis Technologies by completing this path from a resource output perspective the best traits you're really going to be fitting on these pops are robust giving you five percent resources from jobs and basically giving you maximum habitability when you stack this with other texts and the ability to change Planet preference erudite giving you not only leader traits but also plus 20 physics society and Engineering research and finally natural machinist a new trade giving you plus 10 Alloys from jobs and plus 10 consumer goods from jobs that additional alloy output from jobs is really really good though so overall we don't really get any special bonuses for our resource output other than these traits so basic resource output from jobs is pretty much the worst here of any Ascension path by giving you only plus five percent that scales up to 15 for Alloys and a whopping 30 for research as the erudite trade gives you an extra five percent research output from your jobs for a total additional research output of 30 percent so this is basically across the board roughly the worst stats you've heard so far in terms of additional bonuses now that is somewhat made up for by the fact that you can stack things like budding you can add fertile for additional pop growth or alternatively that grown for additional organic pop assembly to get some of the highest pop growth and assembly combined in the game especially for hive mind Empires this is a phenomenal level of total output once your pops grow though you'll probably want to convert them into having the research traits the robust traits things are going to help your economy overall but you will have the most pops probably for any Empire out there the leader bonuses for research are relatively low and for your Admirals again relatively low here it's additional ship fire rate and now combat disengagement chance is basically the worst stat in the game giving you only have a set number of disengage opportunities an aerodyte ruler gives you plus one research alternative but by the the late stage of the game this really isn't fairly necessary so genetic Ascension is probably the second fastest Ascension around now especially if you go with the overtuned origin in fact if you go with overtuned origin that is when the genetic Ascension probably becomes the best because you can not only add those fantastic genetic end line technology traits in but you can also add the overtuned traits in which are carbon copies of the end game traits we can get pre-planned growth along with fertile for plus 60 pop growth speed we can get elevated synapses augmented intelligence and erudite together for a total of 50 additional research output from jobs where women combine that with something like robust and the governor trait you're going to be getting an additional 60 research output in your Empire which is now starting to get really really high before I make a judgment call on what I think the best Ascension path is let me know your prediction down in the comments below but without any further Ado let's move on to to the final Ascension path and that is the psionic Ascension so there's two ways to go down the psionic path the first is teachers of the Shroud and the second is just to be a regular Empire and roll the psionic theory technology rolling Sonic theory is as difficult as it has ever been however being teachers of the Shroud is very easy you just click a button at the start of the game there have also been some massive reworks the way Sonic Ascension works so let's dive in and have a look at everything now so we can get a good overview so if you have taken teachers of the Shroud you'll only need to research cyanic Theory which starts as an unlocked technological option for you from the start of the game you won't need to take any Ascension perks and from that point you'll be immediately able once you have it to take the psionic tradition tree just as a little exercise here I've decided to try only researching Sonic Theory from the start of the game and doing nothing else with my Society research it's taken me almost 10 years to do this now I've probably not done this the fastest either this is just a throwaway play through to see how it would go but it's entirely possible to get this done in the first 10 years once I did that I also saved up all of my Unity so I can simply and easily completely unlock psionic Ascension in one go and there we are this is probably the fastest Ascension ever in the game at all you can be fully psionically ascended as early as the first 10 years or so how does that actually help us well let's look at the cyanic tradition here when we actually take Sonic we'll gain access to the telepathy technology which is kind of alright as well as an edict upkeep reduction and some shroud delve cooldown on the left here we'll get access to the scicor building which is now probably the biggest possible bonus you can get as a psionic Empire we'll get mind readers which is nice we'll get latent ionic big turning into false ionic which is a fantastic trait that we'll look at in a moment we'll get trial communication which is all right and finally the ability to breach into the Shroud along with our telepath from our psionic core buildings now adding an additional five percent resource output from jobs for a total of plus 10 resource output from jobs from every cycle telepath we'll also get access to the breach the Shroud special project which you'll want to do almost straight away because once you've breached the Shroud you will get the ability to form a covenant now the covenants basically allow you to align with one of the four dark powers that rule the Shroud there is a fifth Covenant I'm not going to cover that here but I do know it exists but we're not going to look at end of the cycle Purge it from your minds and basically of the four covenants there are in essence slanesh nurgals each and corn they've got in-game names but let's think of them that way corn here is going to add additional bonuses to your ship damage and there's going to be other bonuses too to your leaders bonuses to your telepaths lots of bonuses in lots of different places in my opinion the two most powerful from an economic perspective which is what we're looking at here today is neither corn or zich but instead said nurgle or slanesh that is the composer of strands for nergal and the instrument of desire for slanesh now they are the best partly because their covenants are fantastic the upgraded Covenant for nurgle gives you plus 20 pop growth speed and the upgraded Covenant for slash just gives you a flat plus 10 resources from jobs which is really really good let's start looking at what happens when we combine these bonuses so the first bonus you will always get is the psionic bonus here that's from having the psionic trait that gives you plus 10 research plus 10 unity and plus five percent happiness now that plus five percent happiness what does it do well it gives you an extra 60 of that happiness in terms of stability so plus three stability extra stability gives you not only additional trade value output but it also gives you sixty percent of the value of that as resources from jobs so plus five percent happiness here is plus 1.8 percent to your resource from job output so far all of this sounds pretty run-of-the-bill but now let's combine that with our additional cycle building telepaths so the cycle gives you plus five stability that's another three percent resources from drops and three percent trade value and each of these telepaths produce some Unity but very importantly they give you plus 10 resources from psionic Pops everywhere on that planet so two telepaths gives you plus 20 resource from job output not only that if you're on the nurgle inclination you'll get additional pop growth speed from your telepath as well as the plus 20 pop growth speed I mentioned from the Covenant pact there's also a special sanctum building that gives you an empire-wide bonus to your planet in the case of nurgle it's an additional five percent resources from jobs meaning that any regular world with two telepaths and all of your Sonic pops on will be getting plus 29.8 additional resources from jobs across the board that is in line with synthetic Ascension but interestingly slightly higher making it the highest additional resource output from jobs based sick anywhere for any Ascension path when we look at Unity you'll be getting 10 more Unity from being psychic as well as 10 more from this trade so you're looking at about 49.8 additional unity and for research around 39.8 research though don't forget you can still take traits like natural engineers and intelligent to boost that further on your world but that isn't all you see wherever you put your special sanctum that comes with three additional telepath jobs meaning that on this special sanctum world we now have five telepaths giving us a massive 59.8 additional resource from job output on the planet if you can manage to get your chosen to be a governor you'll get another five percent bonus of having a nurgle chosen Governor to resources from jobs for a whopping 64.8 resource from job output on a single world if that world isn't a humanopolis you're basically printing resources here it's pretty Bonkers when we combine that with the bonuses to Unity and research we're looking at 84.8 percent additional unity and you could be getting a massive 89.8 additional research before we take anything else into account the the the production the bonuses are just phenomenal switching over to instrument of desires or Nash those numbers are well I'll put them on your screen but basically you're looking at 34.8 resources from jobs that are on a basic World 54.8 unity and 44.8 research but 67.2 percent resources from jobs on your special world and then 87.2 for Unity and 77.2 for research before we take into account traits like intelligent or natural Engineers so psionic is basically the earliest Ascension path you can unlock if you take teachers of the Shroud origin if you don't you do still have to be lucky and roll the right thing in order to take mind over matter but once you take Mind of a matter you'll gain access to the psionic tradition entry which you can complete to mainly gain access to these covenants which are both fun and flavorful as well as absolutely wildly powerful now what is the main problem that scionic suffers from well that is a lack of Pop assembly yes you could build a single robot facility and that would massively upset your spiritualist faction which hate having any robots around but that is somewhat manageable although it's nice to get additional happiness bonuses here because this is basically just free resources for making them very happy but overall unless you do go for something like nurgle and get lots and lots of bonuses to pop growth speed and even then you will be barely competing with a biological Ascension you have the worst pop growth in the game this means any Empire that synthetically ascends with mind over matter and goes down Sonic must use that to Pivot and attack and steal pops you need to because as a psionic Empire you're ascending first use your power psych to take advantage of it and attack other the empires and knock them out if another Empire hasn't ascended before you you'll be getting lots of nice bonuses I also haven't even bothered mentioning the fact that you'll be getting a whopping 10 research speed from the psychic pops making it the best additional researcher trait in the game as well as 10 ships weapon damage and 10 Shield hardening the best hardening type this means that I think psychic leaders are pretty much the best leaders in the game though second death when it comes to Admirals slightly behind cybernetic overall I would place the overtuned genetic Ascension as the best Ascension path in the game for an overall game-wide perspective although psionic Ascension is the best if you haven't got overtuned and if you can get it earlier and eat that overtude Empire while you're going to be doing really really well following genetic it probably goes cybernetic and then synthetic because of again the time that you take to unlock these does have a major impact on the gameplay just in terms of raw numbers here when we ignore pop growth Sonic is the best it then becomes synthetic with finally cybernetic and biological being somewhat the worst though you have overtuned both the cybernetic and biological Ascension paths will be definitely buffed machines have to take synthetic and I definitely recommend they do that and finally for hive mind Empires I would generally recommend you go with the genetic Ascension that way you'll get access to clone Vats because as a hive mind you'll just get plus two augmentation drone jobs from sporting pools which is is an additional plus 1.5 monthly organic pop assembly net this means your pop assembly will be much much better if you go down the genetic path rather than the cybernetic path for hive mind Empires and that's not even before we look at the better traits available if you're a hive mind biologically ascended Empire an important and fun little thing to note here as well I'll just tack on at the end trading algorithms is now available to all synthetic Empires or that is machinely ascended Empires and or cybernetic Empires to put into their cybernetic pops if we add this trait in we can combine it with the Thrifty trait which means that cybernetically ascended Empires are the best empires in the game at producing trade value that's something to bear in mind if you're a trade value build Empire and could be a good enough reason to cybernetically ascend of course none of this has been released live though we're in the final days before the open Beta moves from open Beta stage to a full live release once we get to that live release point we'll see if anything has changed I'm expecting there may be one or two minor modifications but I'm hoping the major changes are now behind us and that's why I brought this video to you let me know your thoughts on the Ascension path and which one you think is the best down in the comments below if you've enjoyed this video on the new 3.6 update and you'd like to know my thoughts on the combat rebalance as well as what I believe will be the new meta as of patch 3.6 click the video on screen now

Channel: Montu Plays

Views: 244,119

Keywords: Stellaris, stellaris gameplay, montu plays, montu plays stellaris, Stellaris ascension paths

Id: sRZ_tPtc9cY

Length: 27min 40sec (1660 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 30 2022