Transcription
No, I am your father.
One of the most important narrative choices and mechanical choices you will make in Stellaris before you've even begun playing is the origin of your empire. This represents the background of a species before it unifies into an empire. Today, we're going to go through every single origin in Stellaris, break down what it does, and rank it in a tier list. There are currently 50 separate entries in this tier list. So, make sure you've got a snack and a drink. We're going to be here for a little while, ladies and gentlemen.
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We're going to start in the bottom in the F tier. Now, origins in this tier will actively hinder your gameplay. That means you're basically picking something that will give you a disadvantage. There are a couple of exceptions to that rule, and I will highlight those when we get there. They are here basically because I think they kind of suck and need some improvement, and I want to highlight how bad they are and how they could be much better.
Life Seeded starts you off on a size 30 GIA world with a bubbling swamp, crystalline cavern, and dust cavern planetary features. That means when you unlock the correct technology, you'll be able to harvest those rare resources. This is where the good news ends. The bad news is you'll get the GIA world preference, meaning that your species have 0% habitability on basically any other normal planet type. And if that wasn't enough, your two guaranteed habitable worlds, or however many you've got, depending on your settings, will not exist. So, your early game expansion options are massively, massively limited. Because you can't go out and colonize new planets, there is an effective way to play this origin by rushing for alloys, building up lots of ships, and conquering somebody else's world and stealing their species, then using that for colonization, or finding a way to make friends with an alien very quickly. But you are going to miss the early and very critical years where getting up some initial colonies will vastly boost your economy around the mid game, thus pulling you back quite a bit in terms of power level.
Doomsday is basically the krypton origin. You're going to start on a planet and that planet will explode within 35 to 45 years. Yes, you're going to get some bonuses to energy, mineral, and alloy production, but those bonuses will basically only counteract the negatives from all of that devastation and reduce stability that the events and different effects are going to give to you on the planet. On top of that, you won't get any guaranteed habitable worlds near your home system. This is a challenging origin, and the game labels it as such.
Subterranean gives you a bunch of bonuses for your mining. You'll get uncapped mining districts, plus 200 housing from those districts, and some bonuses to do with defending your planets. You'll get minus 75% orbital bombardment damage reduction and a minus 25% cosmic storm devastation reduction. You'll get a slight increase to planetary infrastructure cost and upkeep, as well as a reduction to planetary infrastructure build speed. Then you'll also get the cave dweller trait if you are organic. Cave dweller reduces the biological pop growth speed by 20%. Which is quite a big reduction. If you're Lithoy, this won't affect you, but you're already suffering the minus 25% pop growth speed and pop assembly speed. You do get plus 50% species minimum habitability. So on absolutely no planet will you have less than 50% habitability. That's not amazing, but it is better than nothing. You'll also get plus 15% mining job efficiency, so you will be producing more minerals. Overall, this is going to hamper your economy unless you go for lithoids and some sort of crisis rush where those minerals are going to be very, very useful. There's not really much additional power to gain here.
Broken Shackles gives you a few pregame nerfs. You're going to have fewer techs actually researched when the game starts. You will get some bonuses in terms of having your factions spawn straight away and getting more unity from them, somewhat like parliamentary system, but the negatives here are going to set you back quite a few years in terms of technology. By having multiple species on your starting world, you will have a better chance of finding habitable worlds that you can colonize at maximum efficiency at the 80% 60 or 80% level in terms of habitability. But overall, the negatives here do mean that you will be behind other empires. And on top of that, you'll have to deal with the minima specialized industries.
Payback is similar to broken shackles. However, now you're going to get fewer pops on your capital. And if that wasn't enough, this origin basically sets you on a collision course directly with Minimar Specialized Industries. It is very hard not to have to fight them, and they will be stronger than you in the Midame. Both this Origin and Payback are very fun. They're very thematic, but you definitely start at a disadvantage compared to any other empire in the game.
Fear of the Dark reduces your starting population by 800, which is very, very nasty. Even worse than that, you get minus one research alternatives, making early tech choices very, very limited. You'll also get a reduction of leader pool size by one as well, making your leader choices even narrower. Having said that, there are some positives. A quick spoiler alert if you've not played this origin before, but in the mid to late game, you can get access to either another civic slot or you can become a fanatic purifier. Both of these are very, very helpful and very strong. You start at a massive disadvantage, but there are benefits. There is a light further down the tunnel.
Rift World starts you off with an ancient dig site on your capital and you also get some bonuses to astral rift exploration speed and a reduction to astral rift fail probability. You'll start with the astral harvesting technology research but not the technology to actually dive into astral rifts. Yes, if you play this correctly and RNG is on your side, it can be very very good. possibly even B or A tier if the RNG is really with you with the astral rifts, but it can also just be completely useless. Honestly, this Rift World Origin is very hit and miss. I'd like it to get some bonuses that actually bring it up. Maybe some additional population or a Midgame event chain, something minor to give it a little bonus to push it up maybe into the C or B tier. This origin doesn't give you a distinct disadvantage like the previous ones we've looked at, but I think it does need a little bit more love and affection from the developers.
Before we dive into exactly what Stormchasers is, I want to point out there is a red exclamation mark here. Any items with a red exclamation mark mean that there is a specific way of playing this origin that is more powerful than the tier it is placed in. However, you're not necessarily pushed into playing that way or it requires a very specific combo. Meaning that generally it's not more powerful, but if you play it in that, as I mentioned, specific way, it will be boosted. Stormchasers gives you the storm rider trait on your leaders, which improves them if they are within a storm. You get a bonus, an increase to the chance of storm technology research options and storms appearing within your borders. And you'll also get some special projects as the game goes on to spawn some storms all the way up to a nexus storm further into the game. If played correctly, this can be very very powerful. I have been told. I don't know exactly what this correct really good way of playing it is, but if you play it right, this is probably B tier. Otherwise, the storms hurt and they hurt and generally they hurt and increase devastation. So, you probably don't want storms in your border. And also, storms are annoying and I don't like them. And yeah, that whole storm DLC was just weird, wasn't it, ladies and gentlemen? Let's move on.
Fruitful Partnership is thematically very interesting. You will load up your seeds onto Tianki, who will then go and plant them on other planets out there in the galaxy. You can then spend energy in order to open your seed pods and colonize worlds way outside of your borders. In practice, generally this doesn't really give you very much unless you're playing on a very large galaxy with very few empires. There isn't enough time for the Tanke to go out and spread your seed. So, you actually don't really get to colonize very many planets this way. This really isn't a very negative origin. The downsides are not large here, but I just wish there was a bit more to it. I wish there was a way of getting seeds out faster or maybe some manual ti control so we can actually have an impact with this origin early on in the game when it's important before all of the planets have been owned and colonized.
Cybernetic creed used to be a really interesting origin. It's currently broken and that's why it's in the F tier. Your spiritualist population basically just don't grow if you take this origin which is a massive massive nerf. especially given that they generally are the population with all of the implants, all of the cybernetic stuff. If it gets fixed, I'll probably put it back up to the A or B tier, but until that time, it's down here in the F tier because it just doesn't work properly. This is a similar story for many aspects of Stellaris at the moment.
Welcome to level C. Origins here are generally not bad for you. They're going to be net more positive than negative, but they're usually just not that impactful overall. If you want to play a game where your origin isn't that important, probably or at least isn't going to give you a power boost relative to other empires, you'll want to look at origins in this level.
Lost Colony is probably about as vanilla and non- origin as you can get. The impacts of this origin are very, very few, at least for you. An advanced empire with the same species as you will spawn elsewhere in the galaxy, and you should be able to go and find them during the game. Your home world will not get the plus 30% habitability bonus, but it does start with a positive modifier that should increase habitability a bit and give you some other benefits. Overall, this is not a very impactful origin one way or the other. If I really had to search for positives here, I would say it's very positive that you have an advanced empire with exactly the same species as you, as you can go out and conquer them and get a host of your own pops, get more of your own population very easily. That's about the biggest bonus I can see here.
Hard reset starts you off with cyber commando trait. You'll also get to use cyborg trait options during species creation, but you'll have the negative trait unplugged, which is very, very nasty. You'll get minus 50% pop amenities usage for the first 10 years, which offsets unplugged a bit. And you will get a doom world with 100% devastation and an archaeological dig site starting in your home system. You'll also start in combat with three corvettes. And neighboring systems are guarded by hostile fleets. Their size depends on the game difficulty. Factions will also form after just one year. So, that's a big bonus here for this origin. If you play this origin with scavengers and make sure to utilize these enemy fleets that you're having to fight, you can actually get quite a lot of alloys, quite a lot of research, quite a lot of stuff from these early game ships. If you play it in that way, it's probably Btier, maybe even A tier. Otherwise, without scavengers, it sits down here in C.
Postapocalyptic gives you the survivor trait of your organic or radiation shielding if you are mechanical. This trait gives you plus 70% to your tomb world habitability, making two worlds viable colonization options for you. You'd also get plus 10 years of leader lifespan. That is it though. If you don't find any other tomb worlds outside of your home world, which is a tomb world now, then this origin basically is just plus 10 years of leader lifespan. If you do, you can use them, but that is the only bonus you are getting, making post-apocalyptic a very vanilla origin.
On the shoulders of giants gives you a dig site in your home system, which changed into more and more dig sites. This should give you a glut of minor artifacts at the start of the game. You'll also get the on the shoulders of giants midgame event chain that can give you quite a nice little bonus. However, you are completely unable to discover precursor anomalies or sites before you complete your story. Once you do that, you are three times more likely to discover precursor anomalies or sites. But this means that other empires can go out there and discover the precursor you will get first and complete it before you and completely lock you out of that precursor, getting the unique system, getting whatever relic comes with it. That is a massive downside in my opinion. If this origin did not lock you out of precursor anomalies, and if minor artifacts were a little more impactful like they used to be, this would definitely be up in B tier, but at the moment, it deserves its place down here in C.
Shattered ring starts you off in a shattered ring world. The big negative here is you get the ring world preference, meaning your species cannot live on other planet types. They'll get 0% habitability basically everywhere else. Based on the number of guaranteed habitable worlds you set in your options at the start of the game, you will get the ability to colonize other ring segments up to three in total, including your capital, which does make this quite a bit stronger and more useful than the Guire world origin, but it's still a bit of a nerf. You will generally be able to get a good Midame economy up and running, but you must utilize conquest or change your species habitability preference by rusting research. That one's a bit harder to do. Or get a migration treaty to offset the midame impact of not being able to colonize even more worlds. As long as you come at this origin with a plan, though, you should generally be all right.
Hereby dragons starts you off with a sky dragon guardian in your capital system. You can eventually kill the dragon and if you've got the right uh civics or whatever, you can resurrect it. You can also make friends with a dragon quite a bit later and take control of it as well. Basically, this is great for turtling. Almost no empire is going to be able to take your capital system in the early game, but you're not really getting very much of a bonus outside of that. Yes, you can defend, but attacking until you get the dragon, either by killing and resurrecting it or by making friends is not really going to be buffed at all.
Ocean Paradise starts you off on a size 30 ocean world with a modifier, a bonus, and you'll get the crystal reef planetary feature along with three submerged ore veins, three underwater vents, and eight teeming reefs. This is very similar to the Guia world origin in that you will lose access to your guaranteed habitable worlds. They'll instead be frozen worlds. However, you will still be able to colonize any ocean worlds you find. So, if you don't even have guaranteed turned on, this isn't even a debuff. And if you do, it's a debuff that you can work around with proper scouting and good luck and colonization. You'll also have to choose aquatic or waterproof. That trait can be very, very useful.
Slingshot to the Stars reduces your star base influence distance cost by 75%. Meaning you can forward set when you can go and steal choke points at a massively reduced cost in terms of influence. You'll also get access to a ruined quantum catapult mega structure nearby and this increases your chance of rolling mega engineering later in the game. You can repair the quantum catapult even without mega engineering. And there is a dig site nearby that gives you some bonuses towards that. You get plus 50% quantum catapult accuracy and all catapulted fleets receive a 50% fire rate bonus after they arrive. The biggest bonus here I'd say is definitely the reduction to influence, but there's basically no negatives. Um, you could play this and not really utilize any benefits from it, or you could play this in a very aggressive way, trying to scout out and steal habitable worlds from other empires before they have a chance to get to them.
Under one rule, forces your species to pick perfected genes trait that reduces your experience gain, but increases the lifespan of your leaders. You will get a special luminary trait on your ruler, which must be the great dictator. And your ruler starts at level four. You can also select some pretty good unique traits for that ruler. There is some interesting shenanigery that will befall your empire. Every 40 years or so, something crazy happens. You can go down the Golden Throne route and go full Warhammer 40,000 if you want. You can also do some other things. Overall, the impacts are generally minor. Honestly, even the leader itself isn't that strong and impactful, but the negatives, especially if you play the situations wrong and get a civil war, can be very, very unpleasant. So, just make sure you don't screw things up. Good luck.
Primal calling is basically the space fauna origin. You'll get bonuses to your space for you. get an increased amount of vavarium capacity to hold more space fauna. You'll also get some space fauna after you complete contacts with them and all sorts of crazy little bits and pieces. And you get some research options. Isn't that nice? Some research options. Not full technologies, just just options. Overall, space fauna are not the most powerful way to play the game. Yes, you can get some crazy broken nonsense early on with Amoeba and other such such trifles, but it's really not that strong in the long term.
Treasure Hunters has some pretty fun bonuses for you, but they are locked behind defeating quite strong and powerful fleets, meaning you can't get access to those bonuses until the midame at the very earliest, often sometimes even later.
Trailblazer is quite a good trait. You can get some unique ruler traits, of which one of them is Trailblazer. I definitely recommend that one for early game exploration. That's awesome. And you'll also get access to treasure troves and some great specimens. This is basically the specimen origin, and it is a lot of fun, though it's really not that strong overall.
Evolutionary Predators starts you with the malleable genes trait, meaning you'll have to start with a bunch of negatives to make up for that trait. you will get plus one organic species trait picks and you'll start with the adaptive evolution situation which grants you some more traits over time. So over time your species will get more and more traits making them somewhat better in a kind of randomized way. However, it does lock you into the biological ascension and more specifically the worst of the three base paths of the mutation path. It's not great honestly. It's not terribly negative for you, but it it's really not great. Strong C at best, even if played well.
We're now in the B tier. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. In this tier, you have to believe that you're getting a bonus because you you actually are. These are generally positive for your empire.
Prosperous unification is kind of the generic starting origin. However, that does not stop it being a good origin. You'll get more initial population plus 400 which is excellent. That gives you the ability to increase starting colony size quicker than other empires whilst not limiting your economic output on the capital too much. You can make those early colonies viable faster. Basically producing their own populations faster and contributing faster. Colonies aren't really useful until they get to around a th00and to 2,000 population at the minimum. So getting there sooner is better. You'll also gain the prosperous unification modifier on your capital for the first 20 years, and that is a very strong powerful leg up as well. Overall, this is always positive, though not as strong as some of the origins we'll see in the SNA tiers.
Galactic doors stop used to be the butt of all jokes, but has since reformed into the great galactic doorstep. Basically, this grants you a derelict gateway in the capital. When you unlock this gateway, when you activate it, you'll get 95% progress to gateway construction, allowing you to build more gateways. You'll also get a 33% chance to get Grand Sharp Beak if you have Galactic Paragons installed, the DLC. This gives you 25K of ultra powerful battleship, which is very good if it's early. It also has a jump drive, by the way. And when you reactivate subsequent gateways, you'll get a 67% chance to roll Scrand, which is pretty good. That means more often than not, this Origin will get access to Scrand Sharp Beak. Wowzers. If you can get Scrand early, that's basically GG. You can kill all the empires around you. Subjugate them and force them to be your vassels or whatever you want. Steal their worlds. Like literally, you can do anything. Um, yeah, that's the main bonus here is Scram.
Did you know you can also play life seeded as a machine empire? If you do, you must simply research the machine template system technology. It's a very easy tech to get your hands on. And then you can modify your species to no longer have GIA preference. And that basically allows you to sidestep all of the negatives that regular bios take a lot longer to deal with because they have to get to their species modification technology and society research which is tier 2. Machine template modification however is just tier one. It does cost 4,000 research but you get access to this much much earlier. It also gives you plus 20 years of leader lifespan and 5% more habitability. It's a very juicy technology to get. Oh, yes. Yes.
Common Ground lets you start as a member of a Federation. You'll be giving up your guaranteed habitable worlds, which is negative, but you will get two buddies. You'll also get to choose your Federation type. So, you could start straight away as a trade lead to get access to that fantastic trade policy. And then the reason this has an exclamation mark is that you could kick out one member of your Federation and then eat them, still maintaining the Federation and gaining a second habitable home world for your empire. That is a very strong early play. Regardless though, depending on which Federation type you choose, this can be more or less powerful. If you pick a Federation type that has very early access to a Federation fleet, it can also be very good for conquest as you can set the laws to mean that the other Federation members will be building ships for this fed fleet. You will be the president controlling it and then you can go to war and use the fled fleet as your beating stick to steal stuff from other aliens.
Hegimon is basically identical to Common Ground. However, it forces you to be in the hijgemony federation type, whereas common ground lets you pick any federation type other than hegemony. That's it. It's exactly the same. Otherwise, it should not even be an origin. It should just be rolled into common ground. The whole thing makes no sense to me. It is feature creep. What the hell? Please change it. Get rid of this. Just put it all into common ground for the love of God. Or at least make Himon different in some way or do something. Thank you for your time.
Speaking of time, I don't think you'll believe it, but we're now at the secret call out. Not in the C tier, but actually I've hidden this one in the B tier, just behind a boring expose about how Hegimon needs to be removed. I'm not going to get back into that again as much as I want to. But anyway, if you're still listening and you've made it to this part, let me know down in the comments section. And please try to weave the word hegeimon or common ground into your comments so I know that you've heard this.
Starlit Citadel gives you plus one mega structure build capacity and plus one deep space citadel system capacity. You'll also start with a deep space citadel in your home system. You'll start with the technology and you'll also get some hostile fleets coming through to fight you. Don't worry, your deep space citadel should handle them mostly. you might want to buff it a bit. Combine this with unyielding and you have a very strong defensive start. Additionally, once you've gone over and taken the abandoned hatchery, you could have a nexus system leading to multiple other systems depending on how many other Starlet Citadel origins are out there. It's fun, it can be strong, and it's definitely defensive.
Calamitus Birth lets you as a Lithoid build meteorite colony ships, allowing you to hurl meteorites into other planets. This also starts you with a massive crater planetary feature on your capital and give some more features on other planets that you hit with your colonies. It's fun. It's more positive cuz you'll get some of these Lithoid pop blockers to clear that grant you more lithoid pops than regular lithoid empires. Uh but but overall it's not that much stronger. It's it's it's low B at best.
Ladies and gentlemen, Tree of Life is basically the origin that the Na'vi from James Cameron's Avatar have. You'll start with a giant tree of life on the planet, and you can take cutings of it and put them on more colonies that you have. It's a small bonus overall, but it is a positive bonus, a strong bonus that you'll definitely want to expand out with. This used to be one of the strongest ways of playing Hivemind. It's not anymore, but it still has a lot of economic value there.
Wilderness completely locks you into taking the purity path, which thankfully is the strongest path in the game. However, it doesn't give you any specific bonuses towards that path, and that's why it's not further up. Yes, it locks you into the strongest ascension path at the moment before we've had our psionic rework, but doesn't give you any bonuses to that path. It also gives you something of a different play style. You use biomass instead of pops, meaning you can kind of get worlds faster in some ways. You don't build colony ships. You instead terraform worlds to grab them. Overall, it's a little bit stronger, I'd say. That's why I've bumped it up here to the B tier, but it's not it's not massively powerful. Uh it's mainly a fun, unique play style that I definitely recommend you try out at least once. In terms of negatives, it does also lock you out from taking the Galactic Nemesis, Cosmogenesis, or Baamoth Fury perks, meaning you cannot be a player crisis.
Ark welders reduces the number of population you have on your starting world by 300 and your home world is set to be a size 15. This is a massive economic nerf. The positives are you get an arc furnace in your starting system and you get another system that has access to a good arc furnace site with lots of available deposits. It's it's good, but it's now definitely mid. Uh it's not not better than that anymore. Constructing a second arc furnace unlocks the mega engineering technology for research, which is definitely fun, but it's very expensive to grab that early. Guaranteeing it as a research option forever is nice, but it's it's not better than B tier, unfortunately.
We're now up to A tier. These are some of the very strongest origins in the game. They generally have very few downsides, and if you play with one of these origins, you're in good standing to take on a 10 or 25 times crisis. and you're also going to be doing well relative to your AI neighbors regardless of the difficulty level of the game.
Remnant starts you on a size 22 relic world. You'll also get some bonuses on the first two colonies you take because they are technically previous colonies you once had. That means they will develop a little bit faster. You can build infrastructure there a little bit quicker. You'd also get ruined archology blockers. Removing those grants you minor artifacts alongside technologies. Yes, you heard me right. You get free tech and on top of that you'll get a faculty of archo studies building which is pumping out minor artifacts for you if you churn these out quick enough and you really can get a lot of them. You should actually be able to support in the early and mid game a fleet equipped with archo weapons. Taking the archo studies ascension perk alongside that gives you a very strong start for a strong origin. And then in the Midame, if you want, you can convert this relic world into an Acumanopoulos and get an early Accumanopoulos, producing lots of alloys, lots of research, lots of whatever you want because Aumanopoulos worlds are now very moddable.
Mechanist starts you off with the powered exoskeletons and robotic worker technology already unlocked. You'll also get access to the machine template system tech as a permanent research option. Once you research that, you can alter your robots. Speaking of robots, you start with robot population on your capital with the adaptive frames trait, meaning they can work and be good at any of the basic worker jobs. You'll get 15% more mechanical pop assembly speed, plus two mechanical modification points, and plus one mechanical species trait picks. Also, and this is really good, the adaptive frames trait costs one point less. Wow. This gives you a lot more pop growth at the start of the game because you're getting pop assembly for machines mixed in with your biop growth here for maximized growth. You can also build more assembly plants on your initial colonies, getting more growth there, too. And because of the way that population growth now works, getting that fixed early uh assembly is very very useful to get to a sustainable population that will actually grow over time. Those additional mechanical modification points and trait picks makes this a great choice for a synthetic or cybernetic ascension.
Ladies and gentlemen, what a time to be alive. Syncretic evolution has had a meteoric rise. This is good if played with a mechanical primary species or a biological. Having your surviles end up being livestock, that's really quite good. that's going to give you pretty much all the food you need to run a food based economy, which you may want to do in order to get access to your bio ships or if you've got um food turning into alloys with the civic there. That's going going to be good as well. What's crazy is this is basically now as strong as Necroofage. There used to be a funny meme or a joke that Syncratic Evolution was the necroofage we have at home, mum, but now I wouldn't mind having Syncratic Evolution at home.
Doomsday kind of sucks. Unless you play it with a machine empire, then you can ignore a lot of the debuffs and you can also colonize pretty much any planet type you want. Why is that? Well, you can change your species preference type on your machines from the start of the game. So, no matter what type of planet you find, it will be viable for a colony. You can produce a lot of energy, minerals, and alloys thanks to the bonuses, and generally ignore the debuffs from habitability, thank goodness. It's not as good as it used to be, but it is still a very strong option if you're a machine race.
I've got void dwellers in here twice, ironically. One time for bio and now a second time for machine. If you pick this, you basically start off with all of the effects of the voidorn ascension perk. You'll also get the void dweller or zerog optimized trait on your species depending on if you are mechanical or organic. You'll get the habitat preference, meaning you don't really want to live on worlds other than habitats, but that's fine because habitats are pretty good now. and you can get quite a lot of output from them. This is especially good for getting a bit of an early alloy rush. You can easily get 50 or 60 alloy production at the start of the game without doing pretty much anything. Push those alloys into early corvettes and conquer a neighbor or make them into a vassel or something. And then from that point, you're just laughing all the way to the bank.
Necrofase grants your primary species the necrophase trait and your secondary prepatent species will not get that trait which reduces pop growth and instead just grow up normally. You will get chambers of elevations in order to convert your prepent species into your primary species. However, because of the way pop growth has changed overall this is a reduction to the growth of your species. Having a bunch of pops being necroofage and thus getting massive reductions is bad. Okay, Necroofage is at the bottom of A. I almost put it into B tier. I just couldn't quite bring myself to do that. Having many, many bonuses from the Necrofase trait for your rulers, your elites, and your specialist is good, but it's just not as good as it used to be. And if you're enjoying this tier list video, please take a note out of the Necroofage playbook and elevate that like button.
Teachers of the Shroud locks you into choosing the psionic ascension path. Your species start with the latent psionic trait and you unlock the mind over matter agenda right at the start of the game. So you can already begin getting down the psionic theory technology path pretty quick. It's also unlocked as a permanent research option, too. This isn't as good as it used to be, though it might get better with the Sonic Rework coming very soon. Yeah. All praise be to the Sonic Rework, in whose name we trust. I did consider moving this down to B tier, but I wanted to leave it here partly out of hope and partly because Psionic is still relatively good. You can get some good buffs to resource efficiency from those telepaths. Though, it's not as good as it once was where you could get an almost infinite number of telepaths. Damn you devs. Why did you take away our toys?
Progenitor Hive has honestly not shifted. I I'm barely even going to cover it. It gives you some bonuses. You're going to get the offspring nest building on the capital alongside getting your progenitor nest planetary feature. You get some debuffs if you don't have an offspring ship with a fleet, but you get some positive benefits if you do. It's still good. It's still strong. It's not as strong as some other ps and pieces, but it is still a strong hivemind origin.
We now come to the subterranean origin, but if you are a machine, it's significantly easier to offset the machine assembly speed debuff from mole bots. So, the negatives here are really not that important to you. If you go down crisis again, it's going to be very strong having all of those minerals to turn into crisis ships. And that's basically all there is to it. You can pretty much sidestep the negatives very quickly. You can also just modify out the mole bots trait. I'm fairly confident um relatively quickly. And given that you can ascend and then go for modularity as well and get rid of it that way very quickly too, it's it's really not that bad.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the S tier. This is the best of the best when it comes to origins. Some of the items here are steadfast and have remained here since time immemorial. Others are going to be a surprise to you, or at least they were a surprise to me. Anything picked from here basically is guaranteeing you a win unless you really screw up your game somehow. But they're all really strong.
Clone Army grants you access to the ancient clone vat which gives you very quick production of population. You'll also get the ability to either ascend or descend your clones. If you ascend them, they become much stronger. If you descend them, they get to reproduce biologically. So, you can get a massive initial population up very quickly with those ancient clone vats. Then start having them screw each other in order to get more population or just make them all stronger. It just works, ladies and gentlemen.
Scion makes you a Fallen Empire's little However, you can go and complain to Mummy that you're being treated unfair in the playground, and they will come in and help you out. They'll also give you free gifts every now and then. Basically, it's the game on easy mode because Big Brother is watching you and will be looking after you. And I don't mean a 1984 style Big Brother. I mean, a friendly, warm, compassionate, loving brother who's a little bit weird and esoteric and likes to play in the corner.
Shattered ring as a machine is much stronger than Shattered Ring as a normal empire. You can quite quickly remove your ring world preference and replace it with another preference once you get access to that template system technology. I'm pretty sure though actually maybe you can just do it from the get- go. Either way, as soon as you've gotten rid of ring world preference on your population, then you can just inhabit any world and it and it just works. Like this origin then just becomes so strong. There's only upsides. You're also going to get a ring world later on. I mean, how much more do I need to say, ladies and gentlemen?
Overtuned does two massive things for you. It's now kind of the most powerful origin in the game to a large degree. And that's because you're going to get access to overtuned traits. Excellent. Some of those are very, very strong right from the start, and they will be strong later on. And on top of that, you need one less ascension perk in order to pick the biomorphosis ascension perk and go down the biological ascension path. If you go down the purity path alongside picking some options from mutation and cloning, you can get the strongest ascension path in the game. And you'll even have some bonuses here because you'll have access to the overtune traits, making it kind of more powerful alongside plus two modification points and plus one organic species trait picks. This is just really, really good. Now, you can generally in the first kind of 10, 20, maybe 25 years at a push get that ascension path completed and then you're just laughing all the way to the bank.
Imperial scion starts you as a specialized subject of your leege. This is going to grant you a load of bonuses, especially if you completely screw over your overlord and make them pay through the teeth if you're, I don't know, let's say a bulwark or something like that. Haha. And then the overlord will implode about 50 years in, granting you access to a whole host of worlds ready for conquest. Those are going to be big guy worlds with large populations, making them really, really good to conquer. This is just bonus after bonus after bonus.
Synthetic fertility rushes you down the synthetic ascension path. This is going to mean you synthetically ascend very quickly, and that's good. If you become slightly virtual in your ascension, you get access to the virtual economic policy, granting you insane bonuses to either research, unity, or leader experience gain. I'd recommend the research bonuses, to be honest. You'll also get some nice buffs from your identity repository on the capital, which is going to make all of your robots better. Yes, it does take a little bit of time to get going. You need to not be attacked in the first 15 to 25 years of the game, but once you've ascended, you are cooking with gas.
Resource consolidation has gone through something of a metamorphosis with the 4.0 update. You now start on a machine world, which is to all intents and purposes a better version of an accumnopouloolis, but only for machines. That is honestly amazing. This starting world is so good that you are going to have the bulk of your economy fixed here. This machine world is going to give you access to many, many more jobs on your capital, giving you a lot of fluidity with the movement of population between one job type and another.
Knights of the Toxic God used to be a bit of a joke. It used to be down in the C tier previously. Actually, I think it was in the F tier briefly. There are or there were some economic issues at the start of the game. Now you can churn out so much research and a bit of unity through the knights that it's honestly just ridiculous. This origin is such a tech rush. You can get uh quite a lot of trade value as well if I'm if I'm not mistaken through this origin. You Yeah, it's just really really strong in a way that I think nobody saw coming. It used to be good and now it's just completely busted.
Don't forget you can click the link in the description and wishlist elemental reforged on Steam today and also support this channel. If you enjoyed this video where I ranked every Origin in a tier list and you've got a hankering for more new Stellaris 4.0 tier lists, you might want to see my breakdown of ascension perks in Stellaris 4.0. To do that, click the video on screen.