Transcription
I got to tell you, it was perfect. Perfect. Everything down to the last minute details.
At the start of any Stellaris game, when you design your empire, you get to pick two civics that define something of your society's kind of structure and principles, what they are all about. This is of course in combination with your empire's origin, and it goes a long way to painting the canvas for who you are as a nation.
In this video, I'm going to go through every standard civic available to your empires in the game and attempt to rank them in a tier list. This is going to be a very long video. There are 59 standard civics here that I am ranking, so make sure you've got a drink, you've got a snack, and you are ready for the long haul, ladies and gentlemen. Let's dive in. We'll start at the bottom with the worst civics down in the F tier, and by the end of the video, we'll work our way all the way up to the S tier.
It is important to remember that with civics, just like ascension perks and traditions, there are very few that are actually going to be bad for you to take. But we have limited availability to take civics. We can only have two at the start of the game. Later on with more technology, we can get to three. And that means in the majority, the civics down here in the F tier aren't inherently bad, they're just not very useful for your empire. You could be picking a civic that will do a lot more for you.
Efficient bureaucracy reduces your bureaucrat upkeep and gives you two edict fund per 100 bureaucrats or priests. You'll also get the superintendent position, giving you 2% more bureaucrat output per level. Reductions to upkeep are nowhere near as good as bonuses to your output. That is because it is generally much easier to raise the additional funds you need for upkeep, be that consumer goods or minerals or energy, than it is to get additional pops. So overall, you will have a bigger economy if your pops have more output rather than upkeep reductions. They are still good, let's not forget, but they're not that useful. The edict fund here as well, it's kind of garbage. I'd much rather get some unity from those additional priests or bureaucrats than edict fund.
I would say that agrarian idol is actually one of the civics that is bad for you to take. You're going to be worse off with this than without it. You see, when you take agrarian idol, you cannot research anti-gravity engineering or take the archeology project ascension perk, and that means you are completely prevented from having ecumenopolis planets anywhere unless you conquer them. This civic mainly reduces your housing from city districts and city segments, and gives you more housing for your basic agriculture, mining, and generator districts. Following that, you're going to get some amenities from your farmers or anglers or whatever, but really, that's not great. We're not really lacking for amenities in Stellaris anymore. I'd much rather see a bonus here, which was increased food-based output.
Aristocratic elite swaps your politicians for some noble jobs. Nobles provide you with some additional stability on top of the regular benefits you get from politicians. The amount of stability you get isn't very much. You get two per 100 nobles. You won't be getting this stability on your planet until you get nobles, so you will need to be upgrading your capital buildings in order to actually benefit from this civic. The reason it gets better over time is that over time, your planets will get bigger, and thus you'll get larger capital buildings providing you with more nobles and more stability. But there are other civics that give you base stability without needing to worry about these extra jobs. The lord steward position as well, getting 2% additional elite pop resource output is utter utter garbage.
Free haven increases your automatic resettlement destination chance and grants you 5% additional worker happiness. The council position reduces district upkeep and empire size from districts just a little bit. That is a minor bonus at best. Overall, free haven really doesn't do very much for your empire. You probably wouldn't even notice it if you removed this. Unless of course you're going for something like that born, and then that reduction to district upkeep can be very very pleasant.
Imperial cult gives you 100 edict fund and 100 priest jobs on your home planet per level of your ruler. That's basically it. The council position grants you 2% additional priest output per level. Wow. After the beginning of the game, this is going to get very useless very very quickly. In fact, even at the beginning of the game, you can't really access much value here until you unlock technologies to be able to use that edict fund. So it's really not great straight away. It has a brief moment where it's kind of useful, and then it's crap again very very quickly.
Masterful crafters replaces your artisans with artificers. That means they have a slight increase to their base amount of consumer goods output, and they make a little bit of trade value. That's basically it. It doesn't really do anything else. I am kind of shocked that masterful crafters has fallen so low down in this tier list, but basically since the 4.0 rework, one of its core abilities, the ability to be able to unlock building slots based on the number of industrial districts you had, has been completely stripped away because of the economic rework. And it hasn't had that ability replaced with anything, and thus it's now basically dog poop.
Pompous purists is very useful and can be a fantastic civic if you hate playing the diplomacy part of Stellaris. If you hate getting asked to do anything by an AI empire, then pompous purists, just for its meme value of ignoring any anything proposed by anyone else, basically you don't do diplomacy unless you are the initiator, that can be useful. Otherwise, the bonuses here really are pretty useless.
Selective kinship is basically the racism civic in Stellaris. Your empire really quite likes other species that share the same species class and hate every species that isn't in the same class. Class being things like mammalian, humanoid, um lithoid, etc. On top of that, you'll get some bonuses to happiness if you can share planets with species of the same class and oppress species of other classes, but the bonuses there are at a maximum plus 10%. That's not very much at all, and you really have to jump through hoops to get that. The speaker for the kin is an all right council position. 2% more citizen political power will grant your factions slightly larger outputs, but it really is only slightly larger.
Diplomatic corps is very very similar to pompous purists. You don't get the ability to ignore all of the alien AI empires, but you do get some additional trust cap. That can make it slightly easier to form lasting pacts with AI empires. That is about it, though.
Eager explorers basically starts you off as kind of a pre-FTL civilization. You have access to the subspace drive, which is kind of like a jump drive. You don't have access to regular FTL hyperlane travel, though. You'll have to research that. You'll also start with fewer pops and some technologies missing. This is a civic that gives you a challenge, though. So if you want to play a challenging start, if you want to start as something of a pre-FTL, eager explorers is for you.
Heroic past gives us plus one leader capacity for each class, and [music] the counselor gives us some more governing ethics attraction and leader experience gain. These bonuses are fine, they're just definitely not worth an entire civic slot.
Dimensional worship is going to boost your astral threads, give you more chance to find astral rifts, and a slightly higher chance to get rare technologies. You'll also unlock the dimensional shrine starbase building that can give you some unity. Then the counselor position is going to grant you a small amount of physics research per 100 priests. Overall, it's fine. I mean, maybe you could make a bit more use of the physics research on the priests if you're stacking other bonuses to get your priests or your bureaucrats to produce research in general, but yeah, I don't think it's really worth it overall. Better to have priests as priests and researchers as researchers.
Astro meteorology gives you some bonuses around storms. You'll get the astro meteorology observatory building, and your research lab will be replaced with one of these. Great. Um it's more storm crap, basically. I wouldn't even bother turning it on.
War bots is only available to machine empires. It grants plus two commander starting level, 20% army damage, minus 20% army upkeep, and then the counselor gives you even more army upkeep reduction. That's all crap, honestly. The plus two to commander starting level can be very useful if we pair it with other bonuses to commander starting level, allowing us to, very late into the game, unlock basically level six, seven, or even eight starting commanders. So we could start off with a commander that can pick Yeah. destiny traits. That is useful, but otherwise in general, it's a piece of crap.
Entropy Drinkers starts you with an Autochthon monument building, the Leeching Tower, which is useful. The energy curator council position also grants you more leadership experience gain and some monthly energy increase. Then you'll unlock some special edicts. The edicts allow your leaders to live longer or be more powerful at the expense of a massive amount of pop growth. You'll also get more leader lifespan and a reduction to leader upkeep all of the time, but for this you're sacrificing 10% resources from jobs, 10% research speed, 10% growth speed, and 10% mechanical pop assembly speed. I do not think that this is worth it overall. And the net negatives here far outweigh the positives. I think Entropy Drinkers is actively a bad civic to take.
Storm Devotion could be kind of passable if you're taking it alongside the Storm Chasers origin. Otherwise, for the love of God, don't touch this crap. The founder species gets the Storm Touch trait. You're going to replace entertainer jobs with storm dancers. Spoiler alert, you don't even want entertainers, let alone storm dancers. And then it does more bull poo when storms come along. Wow. I honestly cannot recommend vehemently enough that you basically turn off cosmic storms or at least don't use these parts of it.
Secret Societies allows you to have early access to the proxy war diplomatic action, which I have to say is a very, very powerful action if used correctly and if the context allows for it. You'll also get a reduction in cost to using proxy wars, a reduction to operation costs for all of your spies, some encryption and another envoy. You'll also start in contact with two empires. So far, none of this sounds specifically bad, so why is it all the way down here in the F tier? Well, you unlock secret societies, which replace your regular factions that can produce unity with other factions that don't make unity. This massively hemorrhages your early ability to produce unity. Unity is very important in the early part of the game. More unity means faster traditions, faster traditions means a faster ascension path, and a faster ascension path means you are stronger earlier.
Oppressive autocracy is thematically very, very fun. You will get the dystopian society living standard. You'll start with a precinct house building. You cannot construct hall of theaters to have any entertainers. Only your elites and enforcers will produce and use amenities. So, most members of your society are trodden into the dirt. But that is the problem with this civic. It's very thematic, very fun, very authoritarian, but dystopian society means that most of your population will have very little faction power, very little political power. That massively reduces the power of your factions and thus their output. So, just like the previous civic we looked at, you're going to be very hampered when it comes to your unity output from factions. This is not a good thing. On top of that, it is actually quite hard to balance oppressive autocracies and play it well, but that is also by the by.
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We're now up to the C tier. Items here are considerably more useful than they were in F, but you're probably not going to run any of these unless you really want the theme of that civic as part of your empire if you're doing some type of a role play probably.
Cutthroat Politics reduces your edict upkeep by 20%. This can be quite pleasant if you combine it with a high level of spiritualism and other edict upkeep reductions. However, it's not that strong in isolation. The plus one code breaking is barely relevant, and the prime speaker can be good, plus 3% faction resource output. That can be very, very helpful. However, that's really brought down by the rest of the civic.
Citizen Service gives you plus two unity per 100 soldiers, plus 15% naval capacity, and full citizenship for all pops that have full military service. Would you like to know more? Well, it also gives you the chief of service granting you minus 1 and 1/2% army upkeep and plus 25 army starting experience per level on the council. That is honestly a trash councilor position. The main benefit here is that plus 15% naval capacity. The unity bonus is very rarely useful, but I do love a naval capacity increase.
Corvée System gives us a small bonus to worker pop resource output, a small increase to automatic resettlement chance, removes the unity cost for actually resettling pops, and reduces their regular cost, that's energy credits, by 10%. The council position here granting more worker pop resource output as well. The problem with this civic is there are lots and lots of ways that we can stack worker pop resource output from edicts to technologies. So, these bonuses are really not that impactful. It will never actually be plus 10%. Effectively, you're looking at something more like 4 or 5% bonus, and you know, 1/2 to 1% bonus worker pop resource output per level of that leader. And then on top of that the resources that workers produce don't win you the game. They don't make research. They don't make alloys. There is an argument to be made that food can build ships, so that could be seen as one of the most important resources, but there are better civics for boosting our food output than Corvée System.
Environmentalist reduces our pop consumer goods upkeep. That is generally the smallest expenditure of consumer goods in your nation, though. Most of the time you're spending a lot more when it comes to your job upkeep. Then you'll get the first warden council position, which reduces the amenities usage of the pops in your empire. These days, though, amenities usage is one of our lowest priorities and lowest concerns. It's so easy to get more amenities that this is nice, but nowhere near as strong as it used to be. The range of lodge buildings and getting unity from tiles along with other bonuses can be fun, but usually it's very, very low power.
Feudal Society gives you plus 5% subject naval capacity contribution. So, you're going to get a small amount of naval capacity leeched from each of your subjects. If you take this and you manage to defeat the Great Khan, get your hands on the Khan's throne then you can turn all of your vassals into satrapies to get even more naval capacity. That is fun. You'll also get plus 25 subjugation acceptance, making it much, much easier to diplomatically subjugate neighbors, plus one subject exempt from divided patronage, so you can have more subjects without suffering as much negative loyalty from those subjects. You can always propose subjugation, making it very, very easy to diplomatically subjugate other nations. And then there are certain subject contract terms you cannot use. You'll also get access to the chief herald of arms council position granting you plus five unity per level per subject. That's honestly not very much unless you're very early into the game. Overall, it can be quite hard to actually make use of feudal society. That plus 25 subjugation acceptance is only actually useful if they're not already bigger than you, hating you, or a vassal. So, yeah, it can be very hard to get this rolling. If you can get it rolling, amazing, but um yeah, very difficult indeed.
Idealistic Foundation grants you plus 10% citizen pop happiness. That basically converts into plus six stability. Though, of course, if you're already at 100% citizen pop happiness, it won't be doing anything. In order to take this, you do have to be egalitarian, so it's highly likely you are going for something like utopian abundance as a living standard, putting you already perilously close to that 100% happiness and thus making this civic kind of useless. The council position reduces amenities usage, which is still good, but as mentioned before, nowhere near as good as it used to be as amenities usage is rarely an issue for most empires.
Philosopher King gives you plus five effective ruler skill level, and on top of that, the council position will grant you more councilor experience gain, which does pair rather nicely with statecraft. It is one of the weaker councilor positions, but it's still a fun one to pair with statecraft as you can level up your councilors really quickly using the statecraft tradition abilities and put any leader type into that lord chancellor position. The plus five effective ruler skill level can be good, but mainly that's just granting you a bit more unity indirectly in the way of edict fund. It does vary, of course, with your government type and what your government ruler actually gives you. So, this does get better or worse with some governments, but overall I'm pretty comfortable keeping this down here in C.
Police state gives you plus five stability, which is basically a 3% increase to resource output from jobs. It also gives you plus one unity per 100 enforcers, making it kind of fun to pair with oppressive autocracy, but overall it's just a middling bonus. Plus five stability is nice to have, but there are other civics that do more for you. The chief of secret police grants you plus 5% governing ethics attraction per level, which is going to overall boost the happiness of your empire and the output of your factions, because if your pops are more aligned with your ethics in general, that usually means you're more able to make those factions happy and thus they've got higher happiness and therefore higher production output on unity or science or whatever it is your factions are making. But as there are so many different ways of getting governing ethics attraction, it's kind of a waste to use a council position on just this.
Shadow council reduces your election cost. So, if you are an oligarchy, it's much cheaper to reelect the same leader. You'll also get plus one effective councilor skill, making all of your councilors a bit better. That's good. That's quite nice. Plus one code breaking, 10% infiltration speed, and then kind of annoyingly plus five election term variance in number of years. That means that if you have a democracy, your democracy will have an election every five to 15 years rather than every 10. Oligarchies being 15 to 25 rather than every 20. This is quite annoying actually, cuz you don't know when it's going to land. On top of that, the council position is a reduction to pop upkeep, but not all pops, just elite pops, which is a very minor subsection of your overall population. Yes, they do generally have a slightly higher upkeep than other pops, but you have so few of them, they aren't the main issue when it comes to pop upkeep. So, this is really kind of a trash council position.
Slaver guilds gives you plus 15% job efficiency from slaves. That is very tasty. I don't believe that even if you pair this with indentured servitude, it's going to be granting you job efficiency for your specialists, but even if it were giving you 15% more job efficiency for your indentured servants, you do not want to have a population absolutely full of slaves. Slaves have much less political power than other pops, especially specialists, and thus contribute far lower to factions. They're also usually aligned against you, not with you, and that means you're getting massively reduced unity output, and you're not getting the bonuses to happiness for the population granting you increased job output. So, while slaver guilds says it's plus 15% job efficiency, in reality you're already losing 5 to 10% job efficiency here from happiness bonus reductions and other issues in terms of, you know, unity output from factions. The labor magistrate here granting you 2% slave happiness, honestly I think that's a cruel joke.
Warrior culture replaces your entertainers with duelists. You shouldn't have any entertainers, so replacing them with duelists is like saying we're going to take zero and turn it into zero. It's still zero. You'll also get plus 20% army damage and minus 10% war exhaustion gain. I do quite like that reduction in war exhaustion gain. That will keep you in the fight for longer in a war. Plus one enclave capacity also allows you to set up a mercenary enclave early in the game, which is very useful for rushing a neighbor and getting your hands on their economy. If you can stack enough levels on the leader that takes on the arbiter of duelists council position, which grants you plus 10% duelist output, that can make the duelists kind of all right, kind of usable, but you do need to get this thing to level 15 or 20, so plus 150 to 200% bonus before I'd really recommend running duelists.
Mutagenic spas gives you access to the mutagenic spa building, which gives you access to mutagenic spa attendants. These will increase the pop growth speed of pops on a planet based on the number of city districts, and it will be doubled if you have an industrial foundry or factory zone. You do pay quite a bit of habitability and happiness for this increase to pop growth speed, and overall the payoff is definitely not worth it. Maybe on one or two worlds you might want to have a growth world, but then again, if you've got so many industrial foundry or factory zones, you'd probably want to be actually utilizing those, and thus having massively reduced habitability is a pain in the bum.
Dark commoditium cannot be removed after you add it in if you add it in at the start of the game. It's going to grant you access to the dark matter drawing technology straight away and give you a one dark matter deposit in your home system. This basically translates to a small boost to your trade income at the start of the game as you'll probably want to sell off that dark matter deposit rather than hoarding it to use with the dark matter agendas you'll get to use later on. The dark matter strategic resource edicts are pretty cool, but they do require vast amounts of dark matter that you honestly will not be getting access to until your economy is much, much larger, and you can either find these dark matter deposits out there in the galaxy, probably not to be honest, or you can spend enough to actually purchase them. This usually makes the economic dark matter strategic resource edicts kind of worthless unless you're focusing on massively reducing your empire size and thus having very low edict cost, but some of the others can be pretty nice. If you take it right at the start of the game, you can also use those dark matter breakthrough agendas to get access to dark matter technologies much later on. It's usually easier to just go and fight a fallen empire though, or take the cosmogenesis ascension perk.
Static research analysis is only available to clankers. This one gives you plus one research alternatives, plus one code breaking, plus 10% head of research experience gain, and then the council position reduces your researcher upkeep just a little bit. That plus one research alternatives is very nice at the start of the game, but there are other methods of getting plus one research alternatives than taking this civic. The other bonuses honestly are kind of mediocre to poor at best.
Genetic identification gives you plus one encryption, minus 15% crime, and plus one and a half society per 100 bureaucrats. If you're trying to go all in on a bureaucrat only strategy, you can combine this with some other civics to make sure your bureaucrats produce physics, society, and I'm pretty sure as well engineering research, and that would make you less reliant on researchers. Let's not forget though, these incomes as a base income are much, much lower than what you could otherwise get with actual researchers. You'll also get access to the indexer council position granting you 2% biology research speed and minus one and a half percent bureaucrat upkeep. Again, upkeep reductions are nowhere near as strong as output or efficiency bonuses. So, we'd much rather see something like that. And if you're enjoying this video, please genetically identify yourself with that like button.
Idyllic bloom allows you to build gaia seeder buildings to slowly convert your worlds into gaia worlds. There's also a council position making this cheaper in terms of build cost and upkeep. Once you've reached the final stage of the gaia seeder building, you will terraform the planet into a gaia world, get some happiness bonuses, some immigration pull, and get the bloom trait on 300 to 500 fungoid or plantoid pops every five years. That trait basically increases all of the bonuses you're going to get from your gaia world, giving you more job efficiency, more pop growth speed, reducing your amenities and pop housing usage. On top of that, gaia worlds do give you further bonuses. So, you might be confused about my placement down here in the C tier. I know there are some idyllic bloom fanatics out there that think this nonsense should be all the way up in probably A tier. Now, I'm not going to address you, I'm going to address everyone else. Let us not forget, genetic ascension is now a thing, which gives us access to mutagenic habitability, allowing us to basically have any planet with easily 100% habitability. Yes, we can further boost it, but there is a maximum bonus from mutagenic habitability at I'm going to say it's at plus 200% habitability, though maybe it's at 150 now. I've forgotten where they finally placed it. Anyhow, is gaia world as good as it used to be? No, because we now have genetic ascension, allowing us to basically bypass all of that with species that can live on any planet as if it was pretty much the best planet.
Natural design gives you a bit of a boost right at the start of the game. Your species will get two more organic species trait points and picks, and you'll get a little bit more society research from your medical workers. You'll also start with a genomic services center building. This building grants you 10% more resources from jobs, and for each ascension perk you pick, you'll get two and a half percent pop growth speed and plus one unity per 100 medical workers. But by taking this, you cannot take any Ascension path and cannot research any genetic modification technologies, basically locking you in with your starting species. Yes, the grand genocist is going to increase your citizen pop happiness a little bit, but this is not overall worth it. It is so much better to be going after an Ascension path and taking the massive and juicy bonuses that are on offer there. Let's not forget, it's now easier than ever before to unity rush and ascend as quickly as possible.
Welcome to the B tier. I can't quite believe we've made it this far through this massive tier list. Thank you for sticking with me. We're now in the middle of the pack. Items here are generally quite good. They either come with a drawback that I think prevents them being in the A or S tier, or alternatively, they're just a bit too generic. There's also one or two items here that I have a special spot in my heart for. I will mention those. This is, of course, after all, my opinion. You may disagree with me. Let's dive in and find out what's in the middle of this tier list.
Beacon of Liberty is going to boost your empire with plus 15% monthly unity. You'll also get minus 15% empire size from pops. This means that you're going to be able to get to your Ascension a little bit quicker. Nice that you've got that 15% unity. And later in the game, your empire size will be a little smaller thanks to this minus 15%. If you're trying to reduce empire size from pops down to zero, this civic is also essential for getting it as low as possible. It is unfortunate that the protector of liberty is kind of so-so. It is nice to have lots of pops loving you in a single faction. Um this does allow you to do that by pushing everyone into the egalitarian faction. But overall, I don't think the specific ethic attraction bonus here is really worth it when we can just get governing ethics attraction in so many other ways and from so many other sources.
Mining Guilds increases the base output of your miners, giving you plus one minerals per 100 miners. You'll also get access to the chairman of the mines council position, granting you a small amount of stability for every 100 miners per level of the leader slotted into this position. To be honest, this is definitely at the bottom of B tier. I could see an argument for being at the top of C tier, but I think that basic resource bonuses are just very, very strong. We've got lots of bonuses to job efficiency or percentage output from jobs, so increasing the base output is going to have a cascading effect through all of that, giving you so much more in terms of output.
Nationalistic Zeal has two main benefits. The first is that minus 20% war exhaustion gain. That is going to keep you in the fight, keep you fighting the war for a little bit longer, allowing you to get the claims you need. The other main benefit here is that minus 15% claim influence cost. The 5% diplomatic weight per rival really isn't that great. You can't have that many rivals. And the bonus of only plus 1% naval capacity per leader level in your council position is all right, but there are better council positions.
Technocracy gives you plus one research alternatives right at the start of the game. That's very useful for finding the technologies you need. You also start with your scientist getting a random expertise trait, giving them a bonus to certain science categories. On top of that, expertise traits increase job research output for their fields if you assign a scientist as a planet governor or sector governor. That's giving you basically more research output, again, very good. On top of that, you'll get some science directors in your capital building, giving you yet again more science output. Where this falls down is in the council position that is just granting you a small reduction to research upkeep. It is really nice to get additional research income, but I kind of wish it was more to get this into the S or A tiers, it would need to get a small bonus to research output somewhere. Maybe a percentage bonus in the council position, or maybe a percentage bonus in [music] the actual civic.
Shared Burdens is basically the communism civic. It's going to place everyone somehow on a living standard which is communist and doesn't instantly cause your nation to turn into a totalitarian regime. Exactly how that works, I don't know, but anyway, Shared Burdens living standard is slightly worse than the utopian living standard. It does grant you a little bonus to happiness empire wide, and you get a little bit more political power from all of your pops and a slight increase in upkeep. The plus five stability is nice, and the communal housing being replaced with utopian communal housing is very, very good. Utopian communal housing gives you a lot more in the way of amenities and housing than regular housing buildings. The head arbiter council position is kind of weak, only a small bonus here to worker pop resource output.
Scavengers enables the research and salvage debris policy, meaning when you are using your science ships on enemy debris, you can both get research towards the components in the enemy ships you destroyed and get some resources. Sometimes you'll even get entire fleets. On top of that, you'll get a very tasty minus 5% ship alloys upkeep. That is really, really nice. The other bonuses here, bonuses to infrastructure refund, megastructure refund, opinion with salvagers, well, they are not so great. The master scrapper further boosts that 10% chance per ship debris to create a ship of equal size by plus 1% per level. Overall, [music] it does fit, I think, comfortably in the B tier.
I will hold my hands up and say that vaults of knowledge probably does not deserve to sit in the B tier. It should probably be in the C tier, but I have a soft spot in my heart for this civic. It grants you plus one leader starting skill and plus one effective councilor skill. On top of that, you get the vaults of knowledge building, which gives you plus 1% leader experience gain and plus five unity per leader that gains a destiny trait in your empire after you build the vault. The council position is nothing special. It gives you a reduction in leader cost and upkeep, which is pretty bad, to be quite honest with you. What I really like about this one is the ability to stack leader starting skill level, so you can get some very high level leaders right at recruitment.
Hyperspace Specialty is great to start the game with. You will know the layout of all systems within three hyperlane jumps of your capital, basically giving you immediate knowledge on where your guaranteed habitable worlds are, so you are guaranteed to have the optimum build path to get to them and thus get your early colonies up as quickly as possible. After that, you are still getting plus 10% sublight speed, which is a very good combat bonus, plus two planet sensor range, which is honestly worthless, and then plus 15% physics research speed. The council position gives you plus one stability per hyperlane registrar starbase building per level of the leader. I've honestly not used this very effectively, though you could use this to get quite a bit of stability in your empire if you really want to.
Rapid Replicators is a very generic machine civic. You'll get plus 20% mechanical pop assembly speed, and the council position reduces your roboticist upkeep, which makes it cheaper to reproduce your species. Don't forget, as a robot, you're not reproducing through pop growth, you have to build every single robot.
Experimental Sentencing is a very new civic, and honestly, I'm I'm kind of of two minds with this civic. You'll get access to the experimentation chambers building, which basically allows you to have orderly slave types. Orderlies grant you a flat percentage bonus to the research output of your researchers. [music] That is very, very good. It is, in a lot of ways, a bio version of rogue servitors. But only for research. The main downside with this is you do need large slave populations in order to get your numbers quite high, and they come with very low political power. Slaves are not a good thing to have economically at the moment in Stellaris, at least as far as unity is concerned. And unity is very important. We do need to try and rush those ascensions as quickly as we possibly can.
Inward Perfection is the ultimate pacifist civic. This one, of course, is locked. Once you take it, you cannot remove it. Basically, you can't really do diplomacy with this civic. You do get some lovely bonuses to unity production, pop growth speed, citizen pop happiness, edict fund, and encryption, but you then can't do anything. You have to be pacifist to [music] take this and some degree of xenophobic. You'll also be unable to access the minister of state position, making you very much weaker in the galactic community. The council position boosts your defense platform damage and whole points, which can be good if you stack it with something like sovereign guardianship, but usually isn't probably worth it. The negatives here, losing diplomacy, losing the ability to attack people and take subjects or territory, is not something I would recommend.
Barbaric Despoilers is a lot of fun. You can immediately build an enclave allowing you to get mercenaries and they do replenish themselves much faster than your own ships because you don't have to spend any alloys on losses. You'll also get the ability to raid other planets. This basically means you can steal their population. This allows you to offset certain pop growth issues that certain builds may have. On top of that, you can use the despoliation uh war goal. This one lets you, when winning, take some minerals and energy credits from the defeated enemy. Overall, I think it's a lot of fun. It can solve some issues that some empires have, but it just really does have a few drawbacks here. Namely, that it is a locked civic. Once you've probably done plenty of stealing, you can't get rid of it and take a civic that actually gives you some power-based bonuses.
Planet scapers is in essence the mastery of nature ascension perk in civic form. You'll get a whole host of bonuses as long as you've cleared all the blockers on your planet. You'll start with two extra natural blockers on your home world and for every natural blocker, you'll take a big penalty, minus 10% resources, minus 10% pop growth speed, and plus 15% pop upkeep. That is very, very unpleasant. You do get plus 10% resources, 10% growth speed, minus 15% upkeep on your planets in general. And so that does mean when you finally cleared all these blockers, you do have better worlds. You also get the cultivated world scaping decision to make your planets even better. The council position though, it's not so great. It gives you a tiny boost to worker pop resource output and decreases the clear blocker cost. Honestly, I would never recommend the council position though, planet scapers itself can be fun. The negatives here generally slow you down a lot and you don't want to be slowed down in the early game, but once you get later on into the game, the bonuses are very good.
Galactic curators is all about specimens. You'll get reductions to building your grand archive. You'll get a bunch of unity whenever you complete an archaeological site, when you finish the grand archive, when you get a specimen. You'll also start with some extra specimens and get plus 10% specimen output. If you combine this one alongside the uh the specimen tradition and also take the treasure seekers origin, I think it can be quite strong. There's also a few other builds that I really can't elucidate too much on that can utilize this in the early game to get some really good bonuses, but you do have to go all in on the specimens and hope you find some really good ones.
Chosen is a new civic added with Shadows of the Shroud. This one locks you into the psionic ascension and forces you on day two to choose a major patron to contact and gain some attunement with, so you'll already start attuned with one of the four major entities in the Shroud. You get some bonuses to unity and zero when you first delve into the Shroud and it can help you to speed up doing your Shroud nonsense. You do start with the psionic aura technology and you get more psionic aura intensity gain allowing you to get your psionic auras up and being nuisances earlier, which is strong and helpful. But overall, I I just don't think this one as a locked civic is really so useful. I think it's better to just rush straight for that psionic ascension with a unity focus civic boosting your unity output right from the get-go, so you can start attuning earlier, delving earlier than actually taking chosen.
Welcome to the A tier. Every civic in this A tier is certified fresh. It is A-okay with Montu. These civics are not auto picks and they may have some downsides or simply not be as powerful as certain other picks we could choose. Let's dive in and see what we've got.
Functional architecture is immensely strong at the start of the game and probably right into the mid game. This one reduces your planetary infrastructure cost and increases your planetary infrastructure build speed. Planetary infrastructure build speed alongside population growth are the two bottlenecks for increasing your economy in Stellaris. So reducing one of those bottlenecks can be very, very powerful. By the end of the mid game and into the late game though, you probably want to swap out of functional architecture in favor of something that's actually going to give you a good power boost. On top of this, you can specialize districts without any technology, allowing you to specialize not only your basic resource districts, but also re-specialize districts on things like a resource consolidated start as a machine. Very, very strong. The master architect further increases your planetary infrastructure build speed. If this really is the bottleneck for you, let's say maybe you're playing something like a clone army origin, then you might want to take this council position before reforming when you get your third civic and dropping master architect.
Exalted priesthood has really risen up through the ranks since the last time I did this tier list. Exalted priesthood now grants you plus one unity per 100 priests. That is a base output which is further modified by bonuses to either resource output or unity, etc. And having increases to base output is very, very strong. Taking something like exalted priesthood can help you rush for a unity-based ascension very, very quickly. You'll also get some high priest jobs on your capital which give you even more unity. The council position though, reducing priest upkeep by 2%, well, that's basically worthless. I would never recommend you take it.
Meritocracy is very simple. You'll get plus 10% specialist pop resource output. This is different, as I mentioned before, to pop efficiency. They stack in different ways and are multiplicative with each other. Let us not forget specialists produce the most important resources in Stellaris, alloys, research, and unity. This is a boost that directly helps you with things that give you a victory. You'll also get plus one additional leader trait options which allows you to specialize your leaders in kind of more correct ways, let's say. It allows you to pick the traits that are going to be more useful for you. The council position is all right. It gives you plus 2% leader experience gain per level. It's It's not great. It's all right. What I would generally take the council position for here is the ability to put any leader in that principal instructor council slot and thus you statecraft for any leader type. That is quite nice.
Ascensionist boosts your planetary ascension effects by 25% and also reduces their cost by 10%. On top of that, it grants you a minus 25% tradition cost from empire size and that can be very useful in the mid and late game, especially if your empire's getting very, very large. The council position here grants you plus 2% monthly unity. That is amazing before you have ascended. After you've ascended, it's much less useful because you're not rushing for that juicy ascension. This is very, very, very good if used in conjunction with the instrument of desire, which is all about boosting your specific ascension level on all of your planets. The aura from instrument of desire can give you free ascensions and the special abilities with the covenant do as well. 25% boost to those ascension levels is honestly very, very good. This civic is better to take in the late game or as a third civic, I would honestly say, but you can take it early, I suppose. I wouldn't really recommend it though.
Pleasure seekers replaces your civilians with hedonists. You'll also get access to the decadent lifestyle living standard, which is honestly one of the best living standards in the game. It's going to give your pops lots of political power, which boosts your faction outputs. That's great and it's going to give you lots of happiness. And in some ways, it's actually cheaper than you utopian abundance, which is another great thing. On the other hand, the council position here is utter dog poo. Never, ever, ever run the minister of extravagance. There is simply no point.
Byzantine bureaucracy is pretty much the same as exalted priesthood. You're going to take this for plus one unity per 100 bureaucrats or priests. The good thing you'll get here as well is a nice plus one stability per 100 bureaucrats or priests. If you spread your priests out a little bit, you can pick up a few extra points of stability on your planets, though that's definitely not the most optimal way to play this. The most optimal way to play Byzantine bureaucracy is to simply bank that plus one unity on your priests or bureaucrats on a single world and just ignore the stability bonuses. The administrative coordinator is again an upkeep position. You don't really need to be reducing the upkeep of your jobs that much. It's much more effective to get output increases. If you have a council position giving you output increases, take that for the love of God over administrative coordinator.
Death cults gives you access to sacrificial temples and sacrifice edicts. Currently, there is something of I would say a bit of a bug in the game. You can sacrifice just a single pop and still get access to most of the sacrificial edict bonuses. One pop in Stellaris now is basically worth nothing. That's generally less than one month growth. When you sacrifice a pop and have a sacrifice edict running, you're going to boost your death cult death priests from three unity base production up to six, which is two unity more than your regular priests or bureaucrats.
This, in essence, basically is a plus two unity civic for all of your priests. The answer is yes, you absolutely want to have unity bonuses. You want to be rushing that ascension and getting out as soon as possible.
Reanimators let you do meme, stupid, funny things with defensive armies. When you fight in a ground combat, you have a 33% chance to gain an undead army per organic army killed. Yes, this means nothing against robots, but against most other empires, you're going to win pretty much every ground combat as long as it goes on for long enough or you have enough armies. If you can also stack bonuses to army output, it just becomes ridiculous. The dread encampments are all right, but much less powerful than they used to be. Another great bonus from this is that you can resurrect dead guardians like space dragons and make them fight on your side. Combining reanimators with something like the dragon origin, killing the dragon and resurrecting it can be a sure-fire way of an early power spike in this game, allowing you to take lots of territory, lots of subjects, lots of whatever you'd like.
Relentless Industrialists let you build the Coordinated Fulfillment Center. This boosts your income from alloys and consumer goods at the cost of some pop growth. It will also eventually either turn your planet into a tomb world or you'll have to pay lots of upkeep to prevent that tomb world formation. Never forget that this is absolutely nothing to a habitat or an ecumenopolis world. At the moment, it's actually very difficult to get bonuses to alloy output in general, so Relentless Industrialists is one of the few ways to get some fantastic bonuses for that resource production.
Crusader Spirit locks your war philosophy into liberation wars only. On the surface, this would seem like a terrible, terrible thing. You cannot conquer any territory. That is true. What you can do is flip your neighbors into the same ethical alignment as you or, if they are gestalt empires, just eat them up anyway. And then, you can make them into subjects because they're going to be very friendly towards you. You've just saved them from the ravages of whatever ethics they used to have. On top of that, you'll get Crusader traits on all of your admirals. That's really quite nice. It's a nice bonus to unity output, allowing you to unity rush through wars. And eventually, when you get it up to the very top level, you're going to get some great bonuses to ship damage to rivals, army damage, morale, etc. On top of all of that, we're also getting 5% more ships' weapons damage and 5% ship build speed. And the council position is fantastic. Plus 1% ship fire rate per level and then 2% army damage. The army damage we don't need to talk about, but that fire rate bonus is delicious.
Genesis Guides was really, really good pre-4.0. It's not quite as good anymore. You're still going to get some good unity output from this, but quite honestly, you'll get a better unity rush stacking bonuses onto your bureaucrats or priests in terms of unity output or getting more unity from trade. It also increases the alloy cost of all of your colony ships, slowing down your initial expansion. Yes, you will get some pre-sapient pops on all of the worlds you colonize. And when you unlock the technologies, this guarantees you the ability to have pretty much full habitability on all of your planets because you will have species that can live on your worlds. After uplifting, you also do get the Genesis Preserve, um, turning into a Genesis Monument, which does mean more unity. That's nice, too. The Master of Guidance, though, plus 5% biology research speed, generally not so great. If you're going down the bio-ascension path, it can have some niche uses, but it is a very, very niche council position.
Fanatic Purifiers gives you 33% fire rate, 33% naval capacity, minus 15% ship cost, and the council position gives you plus 2% monthly alloys. What more could you ever want from a civic? What are the problems? Well, you cannot use diplomacy, you cannot found enclaves, and you can't really conquer territory effectively. That's why it becomes worse over time. Yes, you'll be great at fighting and you will need to be good at fighting because all of your neighbors are going to fight the living crap out of you because you're a monster. You've got too much fire rate and too little ship cost and you're too dangerous to be left alive. But, when you actually do win those battles and conquer them, you'll be forced to purge all of the enemy species. If you combine this with something like Necrophage, you can kind of mitigate this by getting some of those purged pops returned to you as your own primary species. Win, win, win. But, for most empires, this means your expansion is limited to only your own pop growth. You cannot conquer other empires and utilize their pops for your own nefarious or, of course, entirely righteous means.
Tankbound is a brand new civic. It's a civic that's locked in after taking it. This civic is really quite odd. You will have absolutely no worker jobs. All of your worker districts are automated, basically making this like a a bad biological version of Virtua, but only for worker jobs. Those districts that are automated will also have plus 600% energy upkeep, so generally speaking, they're very expensive. You can mitigate the upkeep of those districts by stacking district upkeep modifier reductions, and that makes those reductions really important for any build using Tankbound. You'll also be unable to use soldiers with your primary species. Combining Tankbound with something like maybe Necrophage, that gives you early access to a secondary species for both armies, and also means that you do have somebody that can do jobs like civilians, you know, boosting other parts of the economy. Your secondary species can, of course, do your secondary jobs if you're Necrophage, too. Do your specialist roles, I should say, not secondary roles. Doing things like working in research, so you're not losing the pops entirely, and they will have pop growth speed because the the Tankbound pops have the Tankbound trait, which is a great trait, but does massively limit pop growth. I think this civic is going to be much more powerful than we've currently seen. I don't think we've seen any really strong builds with it yet. I think there's a really strong build in there. If we never find it, I might agree it should go down to the B tier, but at the moment, I've got a lot of belief in Tankbound, and I think it's going to go somewhere.
Superstitious Beliefs is very similar to Byzantine Bureaucracy and and the Exalted Priesthood. It's going to be boosting your base output of priests. That's excellent. You want that. The cycle modifiers in the start of the game can be very, very negative, but the Chief Medium council position is almost essential if you run Superstitious Beliefs. For every level of the leader assigned to this, you'll get minus 13% negative cycle effects. This very quickly allows you to entirely mitigate any negatives from the cycle modifiers, basically meaning it's kind of neutral or overwhelmingly positive for you. That is really cool. On top of that, it gives you more council agenda speed, which is great. And it is one of the highest reductions for bureaucrat upkeep or priest upkeep that you can get from a council position. This is actually a pretty good council position when you take it combined with a Superstitious Beliefs civic.
All right, we are Oh my goodness, I've lost track of how far we are through this video. My goodness me, 59 civics. This is This is mind-bogglingly long. If you're still paying attention, if you've not skipped ahead, if you are superstitiously with me, please let me know. This is the secret callout. Let me know down in the comments below. Make sure to include superstitious or, you know, something to do with astrology in your comments so I know that you've seen this. Anyway, let's move on and jump straight into that S tier. The S tier. The best tier. These civics are pretty much all to include. They are almost always going to be good for you. I have to make an omission before we dive in. There is one civic that definitely doesn't deserve to be here, but I have a soft spot for it, and this tier list is my own opinion, and I'm open to being wrong. I know I'm wrong, but I want to put it here anyway because I like it so much. And that's actually the first civic in our list, Distinguished Admiralty.
This one gives you plus 20% commander experience gain, plus two commander starting level, so they will always start at level three. And if you stack more bonuses, you'll start even higher. If you are machines, you can also stack warbots and then also stack Vaults of Knowledge, so you'll be starting at a minimum, assuming you've taken the Supremacists tradition, of level seven. That means that if you're lucky, you'll actually have admirals that you can recruit that have destiny traits ready to go. I just think that's overwhelmingly overpowered and hilarious. On top of that, you're getting 10% more ship fire rate and plus 20 fleet command limit, allowing you to make bigger fleets. The Lord High Admiral council position not only sounds really cool, it's really really good. You're getting plus 1% naval capacity and plus 50 ships' starting experience. If you can stack modifiers to get up to plus 1,000 ship starting experience, you start at the penultimate ship level, giving you some amazing bonuses to ship damage, ship hull, all sorts of great things. More naval cap is good, more fire rate is good, more commander experience gain gets you to destiny traits sooner, and destiny admirals, destiny commanders, are one of the most important things in the game in terms of ship firepower. If you've got a really good destiny trait admiral, and you're fighting against someone who doesn't have that, sometimes, if it's the right trait, you can win with half of the fleet in terms of naval power. That, in my opinion, is really good. I will hold my hands up and say, this probably should be in the A tier at best, but I just really like it, okay? Let me have one, please.
Catalytic Processing replaces your metallurgists with catalytic technicians. The council position further increases their output by 2% per level, which is excellent, but not only that, the catalytic technicians have an increased base output. Yes, they use more food, but relative to mineral production, because farmers produce more base food than miners produce base minerals, it's actually basically the same upkeep cost in terms of pops, and you're getting more alloys, more bang for your buck. There are so few ways of boosting base alloy output that this cannot go anywhere but the S tier.
You've probably seen Parliamentary System in a lot of meta build videos. That's because it is one of the fastest ways of rushing for an ascension path. This civic allows you to start the game with factions, well, within 3 months, thus boosting your income for unity, because your factions produce unity, but it also gives you plus 40% faction resource output. Usually, you'll want to reform out of this after the first 10 to 20 years, and definitely after you've done your ascension, though you do need to be careful and make sure to actually find some aliens before you lose Parliamentary System, as your factions can despawn, and that is really quite detrimental if that does happen to you. So, so don't make that mistake. It It is a skill issue, but but don't do it. And thus, using this, you're going to get so much more unity. It's It's just really strong. I mean, I I There's not really much to say. You get loads of unity basically for free. Why wouldn't you want it? You're also getting more happiness for your pops, which thus gives you more resource output across the board. It's It's just really really strong. It's probably one of the strongest civics in Stellaris, especially because you can get rid of it and replace it with something stronger like Catalytic Processing when you're done with it.
Merchant Guilds gives you a few bonuses. You're going to get your politicians replaced with merchants, giving you a little bit more trade value, and you can use the Mercantile diplomatic stance. Honestly, these bonuses pale in comparison entirely to the council position. This one grants you plus 0.4 trade for every 100 traders per level of the counselor. That means at level 10, you're getting four extra base trade output on your traders. Trade is the new energy credit and can be used to buy basically anything. On top of that, if we take the right trade policy, for example, from the Mercantile tradition or from a trade league, we can convert trade into unity, consumer goods, quite a few great things, actually. This makes the Director of Trade, I would say, probably the strongest council position in the game, as long as you are actually utilizing that trade and focusing a little bit on your traders.
Memorialists is a very strong early rush civic again for unity. You'll notice quite a lot of strong unity civics are up here in the S tier, because getting an early ascension, I've said it before, I'll keep saying it, is very very important for rushing power in Stellaris. What Memorialists does is it grants you early access to your version of the Autochthon Monument, which in your case is the Sanctuary of Repose. This grants you not only bonuses to your civilians, but also allows you to swap your bureaucrats with some Death Chroniclers, giving you not just unity from bureaucrats, but also stability, alongside some other effects based on your empire's ethics. This basically allows you to get loads more unity. More unity from your civilians, excellent, and more stability from your, basically, your bureaucrats, which again, is excellent. The council position is also good for rushing your ascension, plus 2% monthly unity. Just like Parliamentary System, you'll probably want to swap out of this, though it doesn't really lose any power or potency after the early game, because you still want to have bonuses to your civilians, and it's still great to get lots of additional stability from your bureaucrats.
Lubrication Tanks is the machine version of Mutagenic Spawns. Whilst Mutagenic Spawns is down in the C tier, and rightly so, Lubrication Tanks is one of the best civics in the game for a machine empire. This allows you to construct the Hyper Lubrication Basin, which, unlike the Mutagenic Spa, allows you to swap your robotocists for lubrication terminals. This one, instead of taking away your habitability or happiness, gives you mechanical pop assembly speed in exchange for an increase in pop amenities usage. You can offset that by making more amenities, and amenities are very easy to make now in Stellaris. If you stack enough bonuses here, you can basically be making pretty much one full district's worth of pops every single month. That entirely then limits your economy either by your ability to actually build new districts, or alternatively, if you go for a civilian build, which I have to recommend you do here, basically allows you to have an infinite economy that just explodes out of control. It is wild. This is definitely one of the strongest machine civics in the game now for individualistic machine empires.
Civil Education is another civic that's going to be buffing our civilians. This replaces some enforcers with educators, and allows you to build State Academies instead of Precinct Houses. These buildings buff the research output of your civilians. Yes, it comes at quite a high consumer goods cost, but you're going to get quite a lot of research from the civilians, giving you a very very effective civilian economy. You're going to get unity, amenities, and research. What more do you need?
Crowdsourcing is to research what Parliamentary System is to unity. This one spawns your factions in early, and instead of producing unity, those factions will be producing research. If you want to go for a research rush, if you're trying to rush Synthetic Ascension, for example, this may be more useful than instead taking Parliamentary System. You're going to be getting quite a lot of research in the beginning, and then later on into the game as your factions get bigger and bigger and bigger. The Enbiggening here is wild. The council position further boosts the faction resource output by 4% per level. You do have to be careful with this council position, though, as it reduces governing ethics attraction by 4% per level, as well. Make sure you've got some bonuses to governing ethics attraction to offset this, otherwise you may end up with some splintered factions, and that's very very nasty.
Anglers goes with Catalytic Processing like PB goes with J, like pigs in blankets. In order to take this one, your species must have the aquatic trait, but that's not a terrible trait in and of itself. You'll unlock the aquaculture specialization, and you can specialize agriculture districts without any technology on wet planets. Not only that, you'll get access to the Angler and Pearl Diver jobs. Anglers produce more base food than farmers. They produce eight base food, which is massive, and plus two trade value. The Pearl Divers make quite a few consumer goods and trade value, as well. This allows you to get rid of some of your consumer goods jobs on the capital, demolishing certain buildings, not building certain specializations. Overall, this is most effective when paired with either bio ships or with Catalytic Processing to turn all of that lovely lovely food into alloys. Don't worry, the big farm may have gotten to me just a little bit, but that's only because we can now make ships out of food. I mean, come on, what did you expect, ladies and gentlemen?
Sovereign Guardianship is amazing, as long as you don't overextend, as long as you don't have too many planets and take too many systems. The big negatives here are plus 100% empire size from planets and 150% empire size from systems. In exchange, you'll get minus 50% empire size from pops and districts. You'll also replace your defense armies with Fanatic Guardians that are better the lower your empire size. You'll be able to construct Reloading Base starbase buildings and the council position for Citadel is honest to God basically the best council position in the game. You'll get more starbase hull and armor, more defense army damage, more shield hit points in friendly systems, fire rate in friendly systems, and accuracy in friendly systems. That makes you a defensive behemoth. Oh, and did I mention you'll also get access to the Inner Focus edict and plus one unity per soldier jobs and 20% diplomatic weight. Sovereign Guardianship allows you to easily defend in the early game and then as long as you go for a conquest strategy where you take vassals rather than straight-up conquest, you will be absolutely fine in the mid and late game. Being able to stack empire size reduction modifiers for pops also allows you to get down to zero empire size from an infinite number of pops. Sovereign Guardianship is hilarious.
Beastmasters I had to think long and hard about before placing it. Originally I had this one in the A tier, but after a lot of reflection, I think it does deserve a spot up here in the S tier. Yes, it is a locked civic and if you take this, you cannot remove it. You will get plus 200% artificial ships naval usage, but I think I'm I'm 99% sure if you take bio ships, that's pretty much gone. You'll be locked into taking space fauna at the start of the game, but space fauna are very strong early on and you can rapidly outgrow any AI empire on any difficulty level in terms of military power with space fauna than the well than with anything else. Basically taking this allows you to get a really early really strong fleet to go out and conquer all of your neighbors and as much as you can and then use those neighbors for either resources or ships or whatever it is you need to do to go and win the game later on. Yes, it drops off massively in power in the mid to late game because space fauna don't scale that well. They they kind of have artificially high fleet power. You don't want to be going up against an end game crisis with the things, but they are still good for winning the meat and potatoes of this game. The early conquests, which are very important, can be won very quickly using Beastmasters.
That wraps up my civic tier list. If you have any comments, if you think things are in the wrong place, please let me know down below in the comment section. If you'd like to find out a little bit more about what we can do after we picked our civics at the start of the game, which traditions we might want to take to optimize our build, you might want to click the video on screen now.