Stellaris Precursor Tier List

can you even imagine what it's like to remember everything I remember the six-year-old girl who asked me about dinosaurs 800 000 years ago I remember the last book I recommended in this video we're going to do a deep dive into the seven precursors you can find in Stellaris I am going to attempt to weigh all of the various factors all of the bonuses all of the modifiers each of the artifacts and the special buildings I have attempted to rank each precursor in a tier list however I want everyone to bear in mind that due to the large number of moving Parts in this equation personal preference and play style will have a heavy effect on how you view this tier list with that being said I'm fairly confident we can all agree on the top tier placings as well as the very bottom tier placings speaking of the bottom tier let's start there and let's look at what we have in the F tier in a surprising move that I hope very few of you didn't see coming the irasian concordant are right at the bottom in the F tier they are probably the worst precursor you have ever heard of when you complete the anomaly chain and find their home system you'll get a payout of unity physics output minerals some hundreds of minor artifacts and the javorian pox sample Relic we'll get to that Relic in a moment let's look at the actual system first of all that system isn't great there's 10 research available 10 minerals five Alloys 10 energy and five exotic gases that you can extract and that is it there are no planets nothing else in there as far as precursors go though this is a relatively standard system however it's definitely the worst of the possible systems you could get the only really redeeming feature is that exotic gas deposit which if you put a habitat above you would get access to building five exotic gas mining buildings giving you quite a large exotic gas income from only a single planet when you find this home system though you do get your hands on a relic the devorian pox sample has like most relics passive and active effects the passive effects are that you get plus 20 liter lifespan you get the javorian pox orbital bombardment stance and double the chance to discover biology technologies that first bonus is fine but generally not going to be very useful you'll find lots of other ways of stacking additional leader lifespan without needing an entire Relic for it the devorian pox bombardment stance can be useful what it does is it does not kill mechanical pops it only kills biological pops but it does basically Purge the planet and if the last pop is killed the planet will become a tomb world it is only good if you are trying to purge the enemy pops which nine times out of ten you don't want to do given the pops are the most crucial resource in the game if you decide to activate your Relic it will cost you 3 000 unity and Grant you plus 50 biology research speed for 10 years that is only one category of society research which means more often than not you won't actually benefit from it yes you have double the chance of discovering biology Technologies but you will still need to research some of the other non-biology Technologies in the society tree there is little doubt in my mind that this is the worst Relic you can get from any of the precursors once you find the Home world you also get given the chance of spending a large number of minor artifacts and Diving deep into the secrets of this precursor with the oracions doing so will grant you the next organic pops technology all the way up to Gene modification so if you are going for a genetic Ascension run and you get this one finished rather early it can be quite a nice boost you also get the secrets of the oracion's permanent modifier which grants you five percent pop growth speed and 20 biology research speed if you get the oracions as a machine you can only really make use of that javorian pox sample to purge Biologicals from other worlds and then you get something that is very new with patch 3.7 and that is a unique precursor building the oracion naval yards Grant you plus one Shipyard capacity for each Shipyard on a star base where you build this building it's going to cost you some Alloys and minor artifacts and it will also increase the ship build speed at that star base overall this is it's really not that useful if you have a massive limit on the number of star bases you can field then perhaps you could make use of this but once you're getting up a mega Shipyard or let's say you've just built an extra couple of star bases it's not going to be that useful basically ever if you do take the RKO Engineers Ascension perk you'll get a massive boost of plus 10 ship built speed to that building yes that's right you'll go from 20 to 30 percent it's it's honestly just not worth it here especially given the other bonuses and modifiers we can stack to far exceed well over a hundred percent by the mid to late game next up we get to the Sea tier there is possibly one of the other precursors from a higher tier that I could agree might need to go down into this tier however in the end I set it with just the yut in this seat here completing the various anomalies and finding six yacht artifacts will eventually lead you to the UT home system which is just as bad as the previous precursors home system if you decide to bite the bullet in minor artifact cost and delve into the secrets of this precursor you'll be rewarded with the atmospheric filtering technology along with hostile environment adaptation as a research option or a bunch of society research if you've already completed it or are in fact a machine intelligence unlike the other special projects you don't get an empire-wide secret modifier instead with the yut you can initiate yacht cleansing process and and if you're enjoying this video please uncover the secrets of that like button this decision will permanently give you a plus 10 habitability modifier on the planet at the cost of 500 energy and a whopping 50 Devastation now that Devastation will tick down over time but for a while your planner will be hit with 50 less housing amenities trade value resources from jobs a 50 increase in upkeep a 50 reduction in growth speed and immigration pull pops will also not migrate to a planet that has at least 10 percent Devastation by the time you get access to this you're probably already at a hundred percent if not close to that on habitability and by completing one of the three Ascension paths or terraforming your colonies you can get all the way up to a hundred percent and I think that situationally means this decision is almost never worth it delving into the secrets of the yacht will also give you access to the yut astronomical interferometer this one is a star-based building that will provide you with an unparalleled increase in sensor range and ship hyperlane detection taking arcue Engineers increases the sensor range to plus 10 and ship hyperlane detection to plus 20. when paired with some cloaking detection modules this should mean only a single star base will cover the vast majority of your Empire around 15 to 20 hyperlink Connections in each Direction whilst this building is definitely a fun one I think it's quite thematic it can also be very useful to have that extra sensor range from a tactical and strategic perspective during wartime and the peace time when you're preparing for war overall we do have other systems like Espionage that can do this for us and I think that makes the interference to feel somewhat lackluster overall now at this point you may be a little confused why on Earth I didn't put the yacht down in the after with the oracions everything I've said so far pretty much sounds worse than the previous precursor well ladies and gentlemen that is because of their Relic the UT cryo core gives two fantastic passive abilities the first is plus one extra pops when establishing a colony and the second is a flat plus 20 energy weapon attack speed the main bonus for the yacht kryocore though is the active effect spending 3 000 Unity will grant you for 10 years A minus 20 ship upkeep now in the early and mid parts of the game that is not going to be so fantastic you will probably not be going that far over your Naval capacity and if you do only a 20 and decrease will not let you field many ships but in the mid to late game as your Naval capacity is hitting 1 000 then possibly 2 000 then possibly even higher especially if you're going for a 25 times crisis run the yacht kryocore becomes indispensable in order to maintain the largest Fleet you possibly can if we were only looking at the relics you get from the different precursors the UT cryo Court would definitely be up in the a tier not all the way down here now let's dive into the B tier first up we have the vowel or Bell and with this precursor I could definitely hear the arguments as to why it should be one tier lower I owned and I Ard about it for quite a while but in the end I have tentatively decided to put it in the seat here this precursor has definitely received something of a NERF with the changes to minor artifacts that came in patch 3.7 in order to get to the home system of the bowel you'll need to complete the various archeology sites however with the current balancing the minor artifact you get from these archeology sites are nowhere near as useful as they used to be you used to be able to use a whole ton of minor artifacts and burn through them for lots and lots of energy however with 3.7 you'll barely be able to sell minor artifacts more than a few times as you complete the archeology sites the home system of the granure is pretty desolate it includes a size 22 world and not much else I would argue this is still better than the previous home systems we have seen because you can very easily turn that size 22 world into a Gaia World by using a cheeky trick we'll look at in a moment or just terraform the planet into your preference a little later in the game and a size 20 planet is much better than a few resource deposits delving into the secret of the bowel will either give you the epigenetic triggers technology allowing you to uplift presapients or the terrestrial sculpting technology allowing you to get your hands on the terraforming process in the rest of your Empire secrets of the battle Empire modifier will also give you a minus 15 terraforming cost for the rest of the game whilst it's nice to have a reduction that's not going to have a major impact on your game hardly at all the secrets will also give you access to the bowel organic plant building the base version of this building grants you two farmer jobs or two angler jobs if you are an angler all of your farmers will also get plus one food and plus half a consumer good output now I am definitely of two minds about this building on the first hand I hate farmer jobs I want to minimize the number of Pharma jobs in my Empire because Having excess food is literally pointless you can only sell it for energy there is nothing else you can do with it so you'll want to minimize farmers in general in your Empire and a lot of the time through either Market manipulation or just using the star-based building or possibly some tributes from another Empire you can get enough food and thus not require any Farmers however if you're going down the bio Ascension path you might need a hell of a lot more food and if that is the case minimizing farmer jobs is what you want to do thus increasing the efficiency of each farmer is still a net positive I don't love this building I generally think it's worthless although if you have to use it it is somewhat Pleasant to minimize the number of farmers we have and if you take archaeo Engineers you'll double those bonuses per Pharma up to plus two food and plus one consumer good I don't think this small benefit would justify taking RKO Engineers just like the last two precursor buildings we looked at we also of course get the Relic for this precursor and that is the last battle it will grant us plus 10 pop growth speed or plus 10 Society research if you're a machine Empire we also get the active effect which is we can use the new bowel live seeding decision we can only use this decision once every 10 years and it will cost us 3 000 Unity we can use this decision on any inhabited planet we own it will take two years and then the planet will become a Gaia World on top of that we'll also get given four new pops on that planet it can be particularly useful to use this decision to turn that tomb world you just found from the bowel home system straight into a Gaia World Gaia worlds not only give you 100 habitability but they give you increased happiness and increased resources from jobs so the earlier you can get access to this Relic and this decision the better it will be for your Empire you can relatively quickly turn your core worlds in to Gaia worlds but don't forget we can only use this Relic every 10 years so the main drawbacks to this precursor are going to be how quickly you can complete the archeology chains and find the home system as well as the delay between the conversion of one planet into a Gaia world and the next one on your list the first league are the other precursor that I have placed here into the B tier unlike the rest of the precursors we'll look at today the first League do not give you an actual Relic when you find their home system instead the main Jewel the main benefit of this precursor is that their home system houses Fen habanis 3 a size 25 Relic World a size 25 Relic world is good for two reasons first off when you just take the Relic world you can clear some blockers and get an Unholy amount of researcher jobs with some very good bonuses at very low cost compared to having to build actual research labs and the cities needed to open up the building slots on any other world not only that but later on in the game it will give you the perfect candidate to build an EQ monopolis World a q monopolist worlds are the best planet type in the game for regular biological Empires finding a relic world that you can turn into an acumenopolis is even better than just building your own and that's for two reasons as well the first being you won't need to take an Ascension perk in order to build your acumenopolis so this will be plus one Ascension perk saved and also we'll get a special bonus for our Relic World becoming an acumenopolis in the form of a plus 10 modifier to research output after you've completed that transition diving into the secrets of the first league is going to help you get that acumenopolis up and running faster than ever you'll get given weather control system technology and you'll unlock the research option for anti-gravity engineering anti-gravity engineering incidentally is required to convert your Relic world into an ecumenopolis Planet you will of course get a special modifier for completing this Secrets project and that is secrets of the first League plus 15 to all industry type Tech Technologies and plus 10 Planet build speed that planet build speed will stack with lots of other build speed modifiers you will have and it's definitely quite a pleasant bonus and last but by no means least we also get the first League filing offices precursor building unfortunately unlike the rest of the precursor buildings this one is an Empire unique building it is going to give us a whopping plus 50 edex fund which is basically equivalent to 50 Unity especially if you're overspending on edicts on top of that you'll get a planetary modifier of plus one Unity from all bureaucrat managers and Priests and if all that wasn't enough your bureaucrats will now produce an additional plus one amenities I believe this also applies to priests too but I don't know for sure this building would be absolutely fantastic to put on a primary Unity producing world and if you have a world big enough if it is for example an acumenopolis world you could stack a whole lot of bureaucrats on that planet again the main issue with this is that it has an Empire limit of one so you can't put this building down multiple times on multiple planets it encourages us to focus all of our Unity production efforts onto a single planet and try to maximize that given the amount of unity we realistically need to generate in the mid to late game I don't think that's a terribly bad thing you don't need more than one or two Unity focused worlds across your entire Empire but it would definitely be nice to be able to stack that edict fund again and again and actually have a decent sized edict fund oh and if you take archaeo Engineers from this you'll get plus 50 additional edict fund which is just terrible this one is definitely not worth the RKO Engineers Ascension perk if it is the only reason you are taking that perk the precursors we have seen so far have offered us good benefits but nothing game changing from now on with the atier precursor civilizations and above we're going to be looking at some massive game-changing impacts on the surface the voltam star assembly look almost identical to the yut and oracion precursors we saw just a bit earlier in fact their home system is another one of these crappy systems that are just filled with a bunch of admittedly nice deposits when you find and complete the six anomalies you need to get that home system you'll then be given access to the secrets of the voltaium this grants you a whole heap of physics research and if you are a fanatic materialist that is able to delve a little bit deeper into the specifics of the voltam's own research by the way that is research that they are living within a video game yes this is the most meta of all precursors but if you're a fanatic materialist you'll get even more benefits possibly some downsides it's entirely up to you though you will of course also get a permanent Empire modifier this Empire modifier is slightly different depending on if you are a machine intelligence or not either way you'll be getting plus 15 to your Computing research speed but regular Empires will get a juicy plus 10 amenities and machines will get a modest but still rather good plus five percent mechanical pop assembly speed and then there is the unique voltam building the reality computer this is a very very thematic building which in essence looks into researching the physical constraints of the universe you find yourself in which happens to be a video game in fact when the voltam actually found out they were in a video game they took some rather drastic measures which I don't think we have the time or stomach to get into today needless to say the Voltaire reality computer is amazing you you get plus one science director jobs and then the unique bonus unavailable to any other Empire in the game of getting additional basic research you heard me correctly your basic physics research will go up by plus one for every researcher on your planet with one of these voltm reality computers and they are not Empire limited These reality computers can be built on any planet with a tier 3 Capital meaning you can sprinkle them throughout your entire Empire and I just want to reiterate this is the only way in Stellaris to increase the base output of a researcher why is increasing base outputs so good well when you increase the base output all of those other modifiers you've accumulated throughout the game such as resources from jobs which you can get from stability or increases to researcher output say 20 there are quite a few physics Tech technologies that do that well all of those different bonuses will apply to your plus one so in fact plus one is more like plus two or plus three or even more and if you take the RKO Engineers Ascension perk that plus one physics research bonus doubles to plus two that is a base increase of fifty percent and in real terms fifty percent which in the late game is massive to all physics research you can do anywhere in your Empire that you build one of these great buildings but ladies and gentlemen we aren't even done yet the voltam are pulling absolutely no punches anymore they now have a fantastic Relic the voltam reality perforator this is going to Grant you a base empire-wide reduction in pop amenities usage of 10 that alone is absolutely fantastic on top of that if you ever deign to activate your reality perforator at the cost of 3000 Unity you will get some very very good bonuses you'll get a random combat modifier that lasts between two and five years you'll either get plus 40 armor hit points which is very good plus 40 Shield hit points which is not as good as it used to be plus 40 ship Hull points which is definitely quite good and then best of all in my opinion plus 40 ship weapons damage just a flat 40 damage increase which is absolutely phenomenal and if you are really really lucky you can get all four at the same time for an entire year that is really really good to fire just before you go into your massive battle at the start middle wherever it happens to be in a war you can use the final sanction against your enemy of activating the reality perforator and dealing a knockout blow to their defenses the voltam are good I'd say the zroni are usually even better the droni are another precursor that I spent a long time working out the placement for I considered putting them in their own tier between the 80 and the S tier I considered moving them up a tier just to be in the S tier in the end I've set up for them here in the a tier and I think that is Justified because for a large number of Empire types specifically those not doing psionic Ascension a lot of the droney benefits aren't that great however even then there is an updated feature that the droney now have that is completely unique to Stellaris so let's find out why the zroni are all the way up here in the a tier completing a series of archeology sites will give you access to the zroni home system on a Surface inspection this home system seems to be worse than any of the others we have previously looked at you only get five zero from this system there's no planets you can take or anything like that however zro is a much harder resource to find out there in the galaxy and it is one of the resources we cannot manufacture more of unlike exotic gases energy Alloys minerals or research we cannot artificially increase our production and we are forced to rely on finding specific deposits and the whims of the galactic Market before we delve into the secrets of the zroni I'm gonna say this is the secret call out where over 26 minutes through if you haven't skipped ahead if you're still watching now I'd love to hear from you let me know down in the comments below if you want to psionically ascend the secrets of the zroni special project is absolutely for you it will grant you the psionic theory research option which is the prerequisite to taking cyanic Ascension this basically means the zroni precursors are the psionic precursor and terrifyingly I mean that in more more ways than one do not ask what the zero is made of people you'd also get the secrets of the zroni Empire modifier which gives you a tasty plus 10 psionic research speed that is going to help you get to psionic Ascension faster but what if you're a guest out Consciousness and thus cannot access ionic Ascension or you are so materialist you simply cannot fathom the idea of giving up on synthetic or cybernetic Ascension well there are still benefits to the zaroni remember those Road deposits I talked about earlier well generally speaking you'll get a bunch of zero deposits on some of the worlds where you get the zroni archeology sites they can be instrumental early game if sold for energy credits in boosting your early economy and with the minor artifact rebalance fully in place at the moment they're quite a bit more useful than the minor artifacts you'll be getting at least for the time being oh yeah and there's something here about getting tactical Deployable space weather Yes you heard me correctly the zroni get access to the zroni storm Caster this star-based building literally creates a space storm in the system it is in this storm has some pretty amazing environmental effects not only will it block sensors into the system like a nebula it will also give complete Shield nullification meaning yes this system is also a pulsar and it gives sublight speed reduction yep it's also a neutron star and it will also reduce accuracy and ship fire rate by 30 percent a piece if you take the RKO Engineers Ascension perk and upgrade this building which I absolutely must recommend you do if you get your hands on the zroni then Not only would it have all of the previous effects but it will also constantly damage hostile ships in the system this polarization module gives minus 10 daily whole region now basically the way that works is while outside of combat enemy ships will get minus ten percent Hull points per day so in 10 days they are dead on the other hand though once in combat that reduces by a factor of 10 down to minus one percent Hull points per day meaning that enemy ships if they're unable to repair will all be dead within a hundred days so as long as you can stack Subspace reduction modifiers in the system don't forget we're already getting a reduction from the storm Caster itself but there are other star-based buildings other space modules out there that will reduce enemy sublight speed we should stack those and then basically laugh as their ships crumble you can even take this one step further by becoming a bulwark so you can get multiple negative Hull regeneration modifiers stacked onto enemy ships just make sure you don't lose these star bases because getting them back will be nigh impossible the number of such modules we can put in our Empire is only limited by our zero production and don't forget we should have quite a bit of Zorro being made from all those deposits we had from the beginning of this precursor chain and if that wasn't enough because of the nature of the precursors only one Empire can find one home system and thus only one Empire in the whole galaxy can ever build droney storm Casters in a single game and I almost forgot there's also more there's of course A Relic uh minus 50 breach into the Shroud cooldown on passive of course if you're not psionic that's useless you enable the zero additives edict which is all right and it gives you something to spend that zero on if you're not just throwing it into the market for energy credits are you burning it and finally the last passive is you get better shroud alt so as you can see this is a relic heavily focused on being a psionically ascended Empire if you actually activate it there are now much better benefits even if you're not psionic you can choose between your ruler leveling up which the higher ruler levels can be quite hard and thus makes this relatively useful you can get plus 20 ships weapon damage for five years also really good you can get stability reduced edict upkeep and government ethics attraction for five years which is again good economically early on you'll probably fire this thing off but later in the game when you have some better relics I imagine you'll simply stop using it most of the time we're now at the very top of the table there is nothing better in my opinion than this final precursor you probably guessed what it is already given the distribution of other precursors but unsurprisingly the cybreaks have been and will be the best precursor in Stellaris for I think a long time to come let's go through what you get when you find this ancient and decrepid machine Empire because oh boy until now we've been dealing with Petty Powers it's time for a superpower to enter the game you get a ruined Ring World Yes you heard me correctly a ruined megastructure ring world as the home system of the cyberx precursor this alone is probably good enough like this will put it in the ATA or at least the high B if this was all you got and that's because having a ruined Mega structure gives you a much higher chance of rolling the mega engineering technology which you need in order to repair and build Mega structures but wait there's more delving into the secret of the cybrex gives you full up gives you Mega engineering as a research option that you can then take at your Ledger yes it does cost you 1200 engineering research to complete this special project but now if you rush for it you can probably get major engineering finished like in the first 40 years it's absolute bananas and when you do finish Mega engineering the first thing you'll probably want to do is turn your attention back to that ruined ring world and repair a segment for the low low price of 10 000 Alloys you'll get your hands on a ring World segment probably around the year 40 to 45 so we're going to get a ruined Mega structure and we're basically going to be handing the keys to that Mega structure on a silver platter but not only that the secrets of the cybrex will grant us a further 10 mega structure build speed it's just getting a bit ludicrous you can also build the cybrex mining Hub in every single one of your star bases this building grants you plus 100 mining station output in terms of minerals that is really really good when you can stack it with other modifiers it's going to make your mineral economy very very strong archaeo engineers bust that by another 50 percent up to a plus 150 Mineral output bonus I honestly don't think this one's actually worth it though for that Ascension perk unless you're taking it for the weapon bonuses which yeah that's something else we'll get into in a later video but unless you're taking it for that probably best not to use it here and then I wish I could say we were done but unfortunately the cybrex is putting every other precursor to shame here because there's even more there is of course The Relic the cybrex war Forge this war Forge has a passive effect that allows you to recruit cybrex War form armies at your Capital these are the best armies in the game and if your Empire is one of the rubbish Empires that can't get their hands on many good armies like a synthetically ascended Empire that can only really build robotic armies and then if you do have Biologicals maybe some clones that sort of thing but nothing to too strong War forms on the other hand are strength and then for an active effect at the cost of 3 000 unity and an Associated mineral cost you can convert those minerals you've just spent directly into Alloys you'll start by paying 2 000 minerals to get your hands on 1 000 Alloys and every time you activate the war Forge which you can do every 900 days a lot less than most other artifacts that alloy amount will increase by a thousand until it caps after 20 uses and I believe 20 000 Alloys which is a whole lot of Alloys later in the game as your metaler just become more and more efficient it won't make a good cost sense to build Alloys in this way probably though if you've got spare minerals lying around why not convert them into Alloys to make fleets or Mega structures I think it's safe to say when we look at all of the various bonuses and things you get given when you find the cybrex they are without a doubt the most powerful precursor in Stellaris the origins of alien empires in Stellaris can be deeply fascinating if you'd like to know what I think of the origins for your empires in the game then click the video on screen now

Channel: Montu Plays

Views: 115,186

Keywords: Stellaris, stellaris gameplay, montu plays, montu plays stellaris, stellaris precursor tier list, stellaris tier list, montu plays tier list, montu plays precursor tier list, stellaris precursor relics, stellaris precursor tier list 2023

Id: 5Q76nFqbr2s

Length: 37min 2sec (2222 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 11 2023