Power of Glu Glu is Power over all

We are starting off hot and doing Dune with our cute little stuffed animal. First, the stats:

• Origin – Teachers of the Shroud
• Authority – Imperial
• Starting Civics – Ascensionists and Philosopher King
• Governing Ethics – Fanatical Spiritual and Pacifist
• Starting Planet Type – Desert
• Traits – Latent Psionic, Chromalogs, Unruly
• Name List- Necroid 3

As always, I’m playing on a large galaxy and commodore difficulty level with everything else set to default.

Why did I make these picks?

We are doing a Dune so most of the picks write themselves. Teachers of the Shroud, Desert, Spiritual, and desert planets are all self explanatory. Even better, the dead eyes that Glu Glu have really make me think that they’ve been taking morphine or spice on the regular.

I debated using Planetscapers in place of Philosopher King but I’ve been on a big big kick of using this Planetscapers and have an idea on how to use it for another empire in this series. I think at higher difficulty levels Planetscapers breaks down because you spend so much time and effort removing blockers early but at my difficulty level I can get away with it.

Pacifism is a really weird ethic that provides three main benefits and very large drawbacks. The increase in stability is just a great bonus and the reduction in population size is something that metagamers love. However, Sovereign Guardianship makes militarism the best ethic for empire size reduction and since the “downsides” of that civic are an increase to empire size for things that don’t matter like planets and branch offices it represents one of the weirds tradeoffs in the game. Fortunately, this Glu Glu empire is build on ascending to higher levels enlightenment over and over again. The real benefit of pacifism is the “We Come in Peace” agenda. The current state of the game is that most computer played empires either attack you or do nothing depending on your fleet strength. This pushes you to build lots of ships to avoid being bullied and turns you into a bully. We Come in Peace helps a pacificist empire bridge that gap by turning excess fleet capacity into reduced border friction and increased trust cap. What I think happens is that the computer players start looking at each other for a fight while you build up enough ships to get yourself in a good place to avoid being destroyed. As always, supremacy seems to be a required civic for all empires at all times.

Ascensionists is one of my favorite civics and I think that the 4.0 builds really favor moving towards a unity run. I love taking my unity planet and stacking all of the buffs from a holy covenant, harmony, and making my output so large I effectively reduce my empire size from 500+ to under 200 with every world maxed out.

Having the additional influence from power projection and strong council positions from Imperial just makes sense. I’m not too sure if Philosopher King does anything but I like having the additional ruler skill early. Another area that I didn’t think about too much was my species traits. Since I know I’ll be doing a psionic ascension.

How Does it Play?

I’m in the middle of my second playthrough after my first one was wrecked by a dual attack by my first two neighbors. It sucked, but that’s part of the risk you run when playing a pacifist empire. However, preventing myself from doing another inward perfection empire is was worth selecting it as my first choice. Like just about every 4.0 playthrough my first planet is an alloy planet and I’m doing everything in my power to build fleets without falling too far behind in technology.

I picked statecraft as my first tradition and would highly recommend using it to advance Mind over Matter and reset this agenda quickly.. I might even do mind over matter in front of Evolving Society. I also picked Prosperity, Psionics, and Supremacy and will need to get Harmony and Politics.

I’m unsure how the middle to late game will play. In all likelihood I’m going to get some population growth set up and start kidnapping other empires populations before taking over the galactic council and getting ready for the endgame getting bored. This is more the fault of the current state of Stellaris and my unwillingness to increase the difficulty level.

Since the next expansion is going to be focused on psionics I’d replay this empire

Is it Glu Glu Approved?

Hell no. In addition to being a blatant ripoff of Dune there isn’t ANYTHING remotely Glu Glu about this dumb empire. This is at best a humaniod or maybe bird empire but little aquatic things shouldn’t be associated with the desert. Even worse, the clothing options do not scream “god empresses”. However, the slight dead eyes give this a 1/5 on the Glu Glu scale.