Is this the Apotheosis of Jellyfish Empires?

This is the one. This is the empire that I dream about playing during a 72 hour dreamhack conference or other place where I can’t be disturbed, bothered, or talked to. It has taken me months and months of planning and thinking about the jellyfish people to really get into the details of the Ocean Paradise play and manipulating all the different little things. This isn’t about a meta game or a tier list. This is it.

Minimum Requirements –

There is a great deal of flexibility in how you can play this Ocean Paradise start but the ultimate goal is going to be to be able to take any ascension path and form any federation. It’s possible to do this with any authority (even a hive mind) and I’m excited to play the game.

Starting Species – Jellyfish People – As always, they are the best. In theory you could do this with other portraits but they suck

Starting Origin – Ocean Paradise – Unlike many of my other starts Ocean Paradise is actually an essential part of the build.

Starting Ethics – Any Form of Militaristic. Everything else is on the table and they all work together. This is how you can unlock every single federation

Starting Traits – Aquatic (duh) – Do you need anything else?

Starting Civics – Sovereign Guardianship and Planetscapers. Yes, we are locking into two civics that can’t be cancelled. Sovereign Guardianship is a cheat and one of the most broken civics in the game. For some reason giving 50% empire sprawl from population is put on a militaristic civic and the game thought it would be alright. With only a few adjustments and civics it’s extremely easy to get to -100% population contribution from empire size.

Planetscapers is a completely different type of civic that has huge downsides for early expansion. In stellaris early choices are everything and one of the reasons that Ocean Paradise (a perfect origin that everyone loves) isn’t loved by the meta is that you lose out on two guaranteed habitable worlds. Planetscapers forces you to select technology that you normally wouldn’t want to, clear blockers, and suffer penalties while you have those blockers on your planets. While the bonuses are great, including extra jobs, extra pop growth, a better version of mastery of nature, and less pop upkeep the front loading of these makes it extremely difficult to overcome and profit from.

This is where having Ocean Paradise as an origin and combining two downsides turns them from negative to positive. With Ocean Paradise it is extremely unlikely that you will be near an Ocean Planet to start with meaning that the primary downside of Planetscapers, slow growth of newly settled worlds, is negated. Additionally, as we will see in the tradition we will select, Adaptability is nearly always a pick to unlock Hydrocentric and terraform the non-ocean worlds into perfect balls of water. When you terraform a planet you immediately destroy all of the blockers on it meaning you don’t need to research the clear blockers, you don’t need to worry about the lower growth and output, and you can gain all of the benefits of Planetscapers without any of the downsides.

Planetscapers works SO WELL with Hydrocentric –

There are significant downsides The real downside is that you don’t have an open civic slot until you unlock your third slot. A more “meta” complaint is that you’re not able to pick Parliamentary System for the early boost to unity production. However, I think that both of these civics provide so many benefits to larger planets that making a third or fourth planet unity focused won’t completely destroy your game or experience.

Governments

Since we are forgoing Parliamentary System it makes Imperial extremely attractive since you get additional influence and a productive bonus to your capital. For the first few years nearly all of your production is going to take place on your capital anyway.

Democratic is always “ok” and if you’ve taking egalitarian as an option I can using it to boost the faction unity production as much as possible. A dictatorship only seems useful as part of a more roleplay roleplay since we’re going to have plenty of edict fund and amenities won’t be too important in the early game. Oligarchy is interesting as our first tradition, Statecraft, will also focus on boosting our council positions.

Traditions

Here is where things get extremely proscribed. A big part of the reason this is a “roleplay empire” despite all the meta shenanigans is our lack of mercantile as a tradition and slow unity rush. Our traditions will be Statecraft, Adaptability, Harmony, Subterfuge, Supremacy, Domination, and our ascension pick. The order is pretty much up to you but taking Statecraft first and Supremacy third is pretty standard. I’d finish Subterfuge second to access proxy wars and get faster intel on the universe sooner.

Adaptability is being picked for two reasons. First, and most importantly, it opens up Conquer Nature agenda. We don’t care about the effects of the agenda, even if we are going to be terraforming a lot of planets. What we care about is unlocking terrestrial sculpting as early as possible. We 100% should pick Adaptability as a second pick of traditions and then ignore it for a long long time. Secondly, the finisher boosts the planetary designation of our worlds and pairs nicely with Harmony as we dump excess unity into our planets.

Harmony and Domination are picked for the reduction in population they provide. Harmony is one of the best economic traditions for ascension of planets and the early game reduction in pop upkeep allows for higher living standards early in the game. Domination, except for the -10% population upkeep, sucks. I could see an argument for the +0.5 power projection in the early game for a democratic government or the additional worker output for an imperial government except there are so many better choices. Civil Exclusion is a pretty good agenda.

Statecraft and Supremacy are meta picks. At this point they are so automatic in most games that not picking them feels wrong and weird. Statecraft creates powerful leaders, allows for faster agenda rushing, and provides a lower cooldown for your council agendas. As an added bonus it reduces empire size by 5% as a finisher. Getting the increased impacts from the early game council positions cannot be understated. Supremacy is great for increasing your fleet power and reducing the cost of your fleets. I wish that the game would be rebalanced after so many years with it on top as a civic but it is on a dynastic run.

Subterfuge is currently the most fun pick with proxy wars and has almost always been an OK pick with the additional tracking and evasion it provides. Now that we have proxy wars it allows for additional gameplay choices and the intel on other empires is extremely useful in finding out who your enemy is in a cold universe. Proxy wars are great for moving the universe around and pushing larger blocks of empires into war with each other (or fanatical purifiers).

Unfortunately I’m on a bit of a Stellaris break at the moment as two sicko games have been released in EU 5 (fine) and Anno 117 (Weird as hell).