Sometimes you’re right back where you started

For my second empire I wanted to pick a few of my least played traits to see what they were like. I ended up making an absolute copy of the Voor Technocracy and went back to the drawing board.

• Origin – Under One Rule
• Authority – Dictatorial
• Starting Civics – Technocracy and Planetscapers
• Governing Ethics – Fanatical Materialist and Authoritarian
• Starting Planet Type – Artic World
• Traits – Perfected Genes, Intelligent, Natural Engineers, Permeable Skin
• Name List- Cyberpunk

Why did I make these picks?

I’ve never played dictatorial as a government type. If I’m going mean the benefits from Imperial with power projection are just too great. To my knowledge there isn’t a broken government type that really pushed me to try it either. My original picks were a mirror of the Voor with xenophobia and materialism. For some reason you can be a xenophobe and use mutual aid so I decided to get authoritarian as a pick out of the way. Planetscapers is one of my current favorite picks with a significant early game downside in research and growth. My plan is to use my advanced technology to get those techs, reshape the planets, and benefit from the increased population growth and output.

Materialism with Technocracy has always been one of my favorite picks and one of the few build that allows me to keep up with the AI on my current difficulty in the early years. Materialism hasn’t been my favorite ethic lately as the bonus robot product just hits differently. I’ve been 50/50 on robots and have put more time and effort into alloy production for ships and less into robots to serve as workers. Too many of my recent games have included a biogenesis accension and I haven’t gone synthetic since 3.14.

Since this was a roleplay empire I didn’t mind taking Authoritarian. I really don’t have a use for it outside of unlocking the hegemony federation. Slavery never really appeals to me and there is a real conflict between my desire to keep the empire size small and not fight in aggressive wars. While the domination tradition appears to be underpowered I really like it for the Civil Exclusion and empire size from pop reduction abilities. Getting a little extra influence early game isn’t that bad either.

I picked Under One Rule because if I didn’t pick it now I never was going to pick it. It felt weird and I don’t really like the ‘story’ origins with long event chains. This did nothing to change my mind and the less said the better.

How Does it Play?

I tried three playthroughs of this empire and I just don’t like it. I don’t like how the Under One Rule story keeps popping up and I really don’t like how random planetscapers feels with the game. I think if I was setting up a build to try Under One Rule I would have a much better time rather than setting up Under One Rule as an extra to meet a self-imposed requirement. I just can’t get behind this type of story and am glad some people like it.

One thing I did like after playing so many unity heavy builds was just being able to rush science output and unlock tech after tech after tech. I had no problem taking discovery, Transcendent Learning, Supremacy, and then Technological Ascendancy and forming a very early galactic council. Creating an entire science sector with all of the planets headed up by analyst class science leaders was a lot of fun.

Authoritarian is a civic that is begging for the internal politics pass. As it stands Egalitarian is strictly better but this could be balanced by having to actually listen to the population and have them make demands. I’m not saying this would be a simple thing to implement in a game with 10+ years of bolted on development but many of the best parts of the Authoritarian governing ethic can be easily found and replaced by other options with better outcomes.

I wouldn’t recommend taking this combination of traits together unless something is inspiring you. At the end of the day I had a self-imposed deadline and had made three attempts to play this and couldn’t wait to move on. Part of this is my fault and I might try a science dictatorship again in the future with militarism or xenophobia to add some flavor instead of Under One Rule.

Is it Glu Glu Approved?

Hell yeah it is. the domination and control imposed by a single Glu Glu, and his devotion to the pursuit of science in artic climates is 100% approved. All will worship Glu Glu in despair and gratitude as he orders the reshaping of the land. Artic is the best non-aquatic biome for a Glu Glu IMO and I’ll give this a 4/5 on the Glu Glue scale.