Transcription
Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
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Every time you complete a tradition in Stellaris, you unlock an ascension perk. There's also one technology, the ascension theory technology, that gives you another one for a total of eight ascension perks. These perks are powerful and give you empirewide bonuses. In this video, I'm going to go through every single perk available to you in the game, break down what they do, and try to rank them in a tier list.
Before we dive into the tier list, I'd like to quickly mention that the Paradox summer sale is on now. If you'd like to pick up anything that also support this channel, there's a link down in the description below. I'll explain a bit more about that later on. Without any further ado, if you're ready, if you've got a drink and a snack, let's dive in.
As usual, we're starting right at the bottom with the F tier. It's important to remember that every single ascension perk does give you a positive benefit. So, the only reason you wouldn't want to take one of these ascension perks is the opportunity cost of using a slot on an ascension perk that doesn't give you a bonus that is particularly helpful. Everything down in this F tier is of course positive, though often it's much worse than better ascension perks we could be picking.
First up amongst these lower quality ascension perks, we have Executive Vigor. This has been down in the F tier for quite a while. It gives you plus 100 edict fund, which is basically 100 free unity. On the surface, that sounds great. However, you can only spend that unity on edicts. Given that most Empire ruler council positions also produce edict fund and there are other civics that give you this bonus that you could swap out of. They're not permanently locked in taking up a slot forever. This really isn't particularly good. Yes, the 15% council agenda speed is nice, but as the game goes on, that 100 edict fund is a flat buff and will not get any better, making this dramatically worse in the mid and late game.
Interstellar Dominion reduces your claim influence cost by 20% and your star base influence cost by 20%. It also gives you a 50% reduction to empire size from systems. Empire size from systems is one of the smallest contributors to your overall empire size. So that modifier, while massive in theory, in practice is basically not going to affect you at all. On very large maps with very few other empires, reducing your claim and star base influence cost will be helpful. However, on a small or standardsized map, I don't really think it's going to make that much difference to your overall gameplay. Definitely not enough to justify using an ascension perk slot on this.
Transcendent Learning increases your scientist capacity by two, your leader experience gain by 25% and reduces your leader upkeep by 15%. Leader capacity is a soft cap, so increasing your scientist cap by two, whilst useful, isn't amazing. There are lots of ways of getting additional leader experience gain, specifically through leader traits on the council, for example, and technologies and policies. So getting a bonus through an ascension perk isn't particularly useful. A reduction to leader upkeep will generally reduce your unity cost. In some builds, this can be relatively helpful, especially if you're going for under one rule, maybe, but overall it's still a very, very minor bonus as far as unity income is concerned.
Shared Destiny increases your number of available envoys by two. You get one extra subject that is exempt from the divided patronage modifier and a 20% reduction to subject specialization conversion time. Envoys are now only useful for increasing relations, decreasing relations, or setting up spy networks. Getting two extra is perfectly well and good, but generally speaking, unless you're playing a very diplomacy focused game against the AI, you're not really going to have much use for them. Divided patronage means that for every subject beyond your first you will get a minus one to loyalty and that is cumulative. So with three subjects they'll all get minus2. With four they'll get minus3. This gives you one more exemption. So with three you'll instead get minus one and with four minus2 loyalty. Overall though, as long as you have a big enough fleet, you can still bully your subjects into submission or make sure that their vassal contract includes them in your wars, declare war with them, and then they are stuck into the war with you. And then after that war, they'll also get a nice truce, so they can't declare war on their overlord for at least 10 years, giving you a window in which you can then declare war again to keep all these subjects in line.
If you get the climate restoration technology, which allows you to terraform baron worlds and additionally tomb worlds, then you can take the detox perk. This perk allows you to turn toxic terraforming candidates into actual planets. The number of these that you'll have in your space is generally quite low. This could provide you with a few extra worlds. Okay, you could also just go out and conquer a couple of planets as well or find other ways of getting planets or colonies, for example, with orbital habitats. You don't need to waste an entire ascension perk on getting additional living space.
Galactic weather control is honestly almost as big a joke as the Cosmic Storms DLC itself. This allows you to have science ships creating cosmic storms on the galaxy map. Whoopde-doo. You also get, and bear with me, make sure you're sat down for this massive payoff, the research options of storm dampening generators and payload padding. You don't get the actual research. You get two research options. That is it. That is the entirety of what this ascension perk does. Yeah, I'm very very underwhelmed as well.
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We're now up to the C tier. Perks in this tier are a little better than F, though still not fantastic. They do have some niche uses, which is why I've rated them a little bit better than the F tier and put them one level above.
Mastery of Nature is much, much better if you're attempting to play tall. If you're limited in the number of worlds you have, and let's say you can't get any more because you're a fanatic pacifist and you haven't got access to technology yet, then this is going to give you a little breathing room. The Mastery of Nature decision gives you two additional district slots to build districts on, and possibly more importantly, it increases the number of basic resource districts available by 50%. This means you can make your worlds bigger and make sure you're producing enough of the basic resources you need, energy, minerals, and food.
Consecrated Worlds gives you access to the consecrate world decision. You can use this on up to three uncolonized planets within your borders at the cost of 500 unity a piece for this decision. It's going to boost your unity empirewide amenities empirewide and governing ethics attraction. There is some RNG involved because some worlds that are consecrated could be holy worlds, others could be a little worse, venerated, respected, or profane. The bonuses here are quite nice. The main negative is that you cannot colonize the worlds you consecrate, meaning that they are entirely economically lost to you. There's another ascension perk that basically does exactly the same thing without requiring you to give up some planets. We'll come to that one a bit later, but if you are trying to rush Unity as fast as you possibly can, consecrated worlds can definitely help with that.
If you are a mega corporation, you can take universal transactions. This will give you plus one official capacity, 15% reduction to branch office cost, which is both energy credits and influence. Your commercial packs will be free, no longer requiring influence, and they will not require an embassy to establish. Overall, this is nice. Depending on how many empires are in the game that you can actually trade with, this could get quite a bit better. Let's say you're playing on a very, very large map and there are 20 other empires you want to trade with. This is probably all the way up in the A tier. Otherwise, you're going to be using all of your influence on commercial packs. Otherwise, in a normal game, this is a small bonus to your influence and a reduction to that branch office cost, which overall isn't amazing.
Hydroentric is only important if you have the aquatic trait on your founder species. You'll get a 25% reduction to ocean terraforming cost. You'll be able to construct ice mining station star-based buildings, which will then give you a decision you can use on your planets to increase their size. You can also terraform worlds with the frozen terraforming candidate modifier, kind of like detox, but these are few and far between. You'll get a 50% boost to the effects of the aquatic trait, both positive and negative. And you'll unlock the deluge machine colossus weapon, a colossus weapon that will convert a planet into an ocean world whilst saving any aquatic life forms and killing everything else. Aquatic is a good trait, but it's not as good as it used to be, especially relative to some of the newer traits we have at our disposal. And when considered with reference to the 4.0 economic rework, if you're not going to go down the synthetic ascension route, if you're staying biological and you're keeping aquatic, this is definitely an option. Though, there are other better options you could think about, too.
If you grasp the void, you'll get plus five star base capacity and a 50% increased chance to research FTL technologies. These are the hyperdrive technologies, jump drive technologies, wormhole technologies, gateway techs, hyperrelay techs, and the quantum catapult technology. Whilst those are useful technologies, the overall impact of this ascension perk is minimal. Five more star bases is a small economic boost, but in my opinion, not worth an entire ascension perk.
Galactic Contender requires that you have already picked three other ascension perks, meaning you can only take this as your fourth pick or beyond, which unless you're rushing Unity very hard, limits it to the mid and late game. You'll get plus 20% diplomatic weight, which is pretty crap to be honest, given that you only need two levels on an official to get plus 20% diplomatic weight in the community. Then you'll also get plus 33% damage to awakened empires, fallen empires, and the gate builders. If this is enough additional damage to push you over the edge and allow you to defeat a fallen empire earlier, that can be good. Though, I don't think this is going to have that much of an impact. We're probably looking at 10 to 15 years earlier in game.
We're now at the B tier. This is the midpoint of our tier list. Items in this tier are good, though I wouldn't necessarily pick them in every single playthrough.
Technological Ascendancy used to be one of my automatic first picks as an Ascension perk, but I believe it's fallen on hard times. Before you jump down into the comments section to spew hate in my direction, let me explain my reasoning. This ascension perk can be picked at any time. It grants you plus 10% research speed and plus 50% rare technology chance. This is equivalent to basically one and a half traits on your leaders on the council. Yes, it is in addition to those traits, but if you simply get a scientist on the council in a council position, that will have a much bigger impact than technological ascendancy. On top of that, as we can stack so many other research speed bonuses now in the game, tech ascendy's plus 10% will very quickly be minimized as these bonuses are additive. For example, let's say we already have plus 90% research speed. Adding plus 10% to that will have an effective increase of only plus 5%. The boost to rare technology chance is nice. That's why it's up here in the B tier. But I no longer think this is an automatic pick every time you open your first ascension perk slot.
And if you're enjoying this video, please technologically ascend with that like button.
Imperial prerogative gives you a 50% reduction to empire size from planets. This is particularly effective if you combine it with other bonuses to get your empire size from planets all the way down to zero. That is right. You can get your empire size from planets modified down to 0%. Meaning no matter how many planets you have, you will not get any increased empire size. Yes, you'll still have to worry about population systems and districts, but this is still a very good bonus, especially early on if you're trying to keep your empire size below 100. At the start of the game, this is only minus five per planet, but later on as you get more planets or get other bonuses to bring it to zero, this becomes better and better. The plus two official capacity is nice, but honestly, I wouldn't even notice it. I should briefly explain why keeping your overall empire size below 100 is good. Below 100 empire size, you can rush your agendas at the minimum possible cost and you will get no negative modifiers. That means no increase to research costs or tradition costs. So staying below that 100 is the magic number when it comes to empire size.
Lord of War gives you access to a mercenary enclave. You'll also get 25% more diplomatic weight from fleet power and a reduction of 2 and a half months to the dividend wait time if you're the patron of a mercenary enclave, which you should definitely be. Why would you like to build mercenary enclaves? Well, the positives of a mercenary enclave is that once you're up to 50 naval capacity on a fleet and you have an admiral, you can pay some energy credits, alloys, and influence and set up a mercenary enclave. This can then expand at no further cost to you the number of ships in that fleet. Yes, you will have to pay some energy credits to rent the fleet out, and this fleet will have a higher energy credit upkeep than normal, but it means you will not need to spend precious alloys or food on additional ships. You can also provide technology to this mercenary enclave, which they can then use to improve the ships. But overall, this is going to be a massive cannon foder fleet that you should put at the front of your other forces and use it to soak up enemy fire, knowing that the ship designs aren't great, knowing that it's not going to be amazing, but knowing that replacing it will not cost you anything. So, if it dies, that's not your problem. And very early on in the game, mercenary enclaves can be used to attack your enemies and build fleets bigger and faster than they can. Basically allowing you to do something of a rush.
If you already have one ascension perk and you've completed the climate restoration technology, that's the tech that allows you to terraform tomb worlds and terraforming candidate worlds, you can get world chaper. This will reduce your terraforming cost by 25% and allow you to terraform worlds into GIA worlds. These are basically the second best world type in the game for any empire. They're going to have 100% habitability, and on top of that, you'll get some bonuses to biological and lithoid pop happiness, so they're not as good for hive mines or machines, and a 10% bonus to resource output.
Welcome to the A tier. Ascension perks in this tier will be regularly chosen during your games and usually help in a variety of situations or their bonus is so good and so necessary with certain strategies. If you're going for that strategy, you want to pick this every single time.
Nihilistic acquisition gives you access to the raiding bombardment stance. You will have to be either authoritarian or xenophobe in order to pick this one up. The raiding bombardment stance allows you to abduct pops instead of killing them when you're bombarding the planet. You'll never kill or abduct the last 200 pops. And each defense army on the planet will prevent 200 pops from being abducted. So on larger worlds with many defense armies, you'll have to bombard those defense armies down, destroy them, and then you'll be able to steal all of their juicy juicy pops. Stealing these pops will probably put them into slavery, depending on your species rights, but grants you a great way of boosting your core world population without having to actually go out and conquer enemy worlds. Having said that, it can sometimes be faster to just straight up conquer those worlds, though. you may end up with some stability issues.
Necromancy is only available to machine intelligence empires. You're going to get a very great 15% weapons damage bonus to all large, extra-large, and titan slot weapons. That basically means your artillery battleships, artillery destroyers, artillery cruisers, and titans are going to have a fantastic time. You'll also get a 33% chance to resurrect each purged pop as a cyborg zombie if you're purging them. That can be very, very useful. On top of that, defeated organic guardians like space dragons can be resurrected. And lost space fauna that you had control of can also be resurrected, bringing it back into the fight. There's a whole host of military potential here, plus some economic bonuses with those purged biopsy zombies. I think this is a fantastic perk that's often slept on.
With Stellaris 4.0 and the planetary management rework, we've now been given a way of getting our hands on more minor artifacts than ever before. For that reason, Archo Engineers is actually really, really good. there. The only reason it wasn't good previously is that you could never get enough minor artifacts to actually put minor artifact components on your ships. Now though, we are closer to achieving that goal. This will grant plus one scientist capacity, which is honestly neither here nor there. plus 33% Archotech weapon damage, which is excellent, especially with those lovely Archotech missiles that are basically long range artillery disruptors. They're insane. You'll get minus 20% minor artifact ship cost, reducing the cost of minor artifacts for your ships, plus 25% specimen output, boosting all of your specimens, and additional effects from ship components and starbased modules. On top of that, I think you'll get additional effects from all of your archotech buildings that you may be placing on your planets. If you choose to go down a minor artifact strategy path, this is completely essential and completely overpowered.
If you want to build habitats in any number, void is necessary. This gives you a 20% reduction to habitat build cost and habitat district cost. All of your habitats can have two additional districts, making all of them bigger. And you'll get plus 0.25 habitat maximum districts from every asteroid and moon in the system. You'll get plus 50% jobs from habitat districts, meaning that any district that provided 200 jobs now provides 300, for example. You can upgrade housing buildings on habitats, meaning you can get more people on your habitats, and you will always have the next tier of habitat technology unlocked as a research option. You can't take this if you've gone for the void dweller origin, but void dweller basically has all of these bonuses as its origin bonus. This ascension perk makes habitats really, really good. And if you're going to build them in any large number, I would always recommend it.
Galactic Wonders technically doesn't require you to have any other ascension perks in order to take it. However, you must have researched the mega engineering technology. So, this is a late game ascension perk and built or repaired a multi-stage mega structure that is fully built as well. You have to get to the very end. You can't just build one stage of it and then take Galactic Wonders. Galactic Wonders gives you access to the ring world, Dyson sphere, and matter decompressor research option. Ring worlds are fantastic, but usually come a little bit too late in the game to use properly. Dyson spheres are brilliant. They are going to give you a massive boost to energy, plus 4,000 when fully upgraded. And matter decompresses are going to give you more minerals than you could ever need. This isn't essential, and honestly, I would say these days, Galactic Wanders is near the bottom of A tier. I considered placing it down in B tier, but I had to fight against that instinct because I do like ring worlds, Dyson spheres, and matter decompressors, even if they're not as relevant in today's game.
In order to take enigmatic engineering, you must have one other ascension perk. You might be a little confused as to why this is up here in the A tier, whereas previously it's been all the way down in the F tier. Well, it grants plus two encryption and plus two cloaking strength. Also, whenever your ships are destroyed, they will not leave any debris, and enemy civilizations cannot steal technology from you. That spy operation will always fail. Those bonuses are kind of fine, but would not bring this ascension perk above Ftier. The reason I've shot it all the way up to A tier is that you will get a 1.5% chance to draw Fallen Empire building research options. If you take Cosmo Genesis, Enigmatic Engineering jumps down to F tier again, unless you're doing some sort of weird zany cloaking build. However, in a normal game, you won't be taking cosmogenesis, so you won't get any other access to Fallen Empire building research options without enigmatic engineering. Generally, you can get up to four different Fallen Empire buildings before I think it locks you out. Though, that might just be due to chance that everyone is reporting this four limit. Why am I going on and on about Fallen Empire buildings? Well, they're basically the best buildings in the game, providing you with not just lots of jobs, but some fantastic planetary or empirewide bonuses.
Galactic Force Projection requires that you've already taken two other ascension perks. It gives you plus one commander capacity, which is very, very good. Commanders is actually kind of the thing you'll always have in short supply by the late game when you have many, many fleets. You'll get plus two max influence from power projection. This is kind of neither here nor there usually. Plus 50 fleet command limit. Very good. And plus 100 naval capacity. Other modifiers will boost that nav cap limit yet further. By the late game, I generally find that this will allow me to field an additional fleet of around 200 naval capacity worth of battleships or whatever else it is that I want. The only reason I wouldn't take this is if I'm not going for a militaristic game. If I'm not building ships. If I'm not building ships, I'm generally asking to be killed by the crisis or my neighbors, though. So, take it as you like.
Master Builders is probably better than Galactic Wanders. This is going to grant you plus one mega structure build capacity and plus 50% Mega Structure build speed. This means you can be building an additional mega structure simultaneously. Normally, you have a mega structure build capacity of just one, meaning you can only be building or upgrading one mega structure at a time. Master builders will bring this up to two. And then with the ascension edicts, you can get another mega structure build capacity, bringing it up to three and additional mega structure build speed. Faster build speeds means you will finish those mega structures earlier. And by building more simultaneously, you'll also get more mega structures out earlier. This should give your empire a power boost relative to your neighbors. And if you're looking at facing something like a 25 times crisis a little early, you'll want those mega structures and you'll want them as soon as possible. So, Master Builders is a very good pick if that's the way you're going.
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the S tier. Well done if you've resisted the temptation to skip all the way to the end right at the beginning. If you have just joined us though, welcome, welcome. In this tier, we are going to list all of the ascension perks that are basically auto picks. In my opinion, they're the best in class and they're going to do the most for your empire. Let's dive in and find out what we're working with.
One vision is going to boost your monthly unity by 10%, your governing ethics attraction by 50%. And that's it. On the surface, this doesn't sound so great. However, this is probably the first and best first choice that you are going to have when it comes to ascension perks. A lot of the other better ascension perks are locked behind technology you won't have access to after you complete your first tradition. Getting more monthly unity will speed up your further tradition acquisitions and allow you to get to your ascension path faster, your crisis path faster, whatever it is you want to do faster. Unity rushing is more powerful than ever before and more possible than ever before in Stellaris. And that's why one vision has come out on top.
Eternal vigilance has gone from zero to absolute hero. This ascension perk is basically a fire and forget ascension perk. You can turn it on and then forget about your defenses. Everything's going to be worked out for you, ladies and gentlemen, I promise you. What does it do? Well, you'll get plus one commander capacity, plus 25% star base hull points and star base damage output, plus 25% defense platform damage output, minus 50% defense platform upkeep, which is very, very good. Plus five defense platform cap, which can be further modified by the unyielding tradition, and plus one deep space citadel system capacity. If that wasn't enough though, you now get access to the eternal vigilance policy. This policy allows you to basically spawn free defense platforms every few months. This means that you can get defense platforms on not just your star bases and your bastions, but also your unupgraded outposts. As long as you are designing your defense platforms yourself, you can get some fantastic defensive options for absolutely no cost upfront. Yes, you do still have to pay upkeep, so make sure you have got some alloys and some energy credits or some energy credits and some food depending on what your ship type is. And then you can defend yourself. So, well, if you're going for a Magino build, eternal vigilance is for you. You'll either need the Star Fortress technology or you must have completed the unyielding tradition in order to pick this one.
I think we must be living in an alternate dimension because I have seriously and really at length considered whether or not this was a reasonable life choice. Ladies and gentlemen, Zeno compatibility is in the S tier. Why is that? Let's dive into what it does. Please don't start shouting in the comments section just yet. So, this is going to grant you plus 20% pop growth speed if the world has at least two different species. So if you've got some slaves, if you have a syncric evolution origin, if you are a necroofage, if if if you basically just gone out and grabbed another empire, if you've uplifted population, there's so many ways of getting a second different species that this is basically a given. As long as you move at least 100 of those pops to every single one of your worlds, you'll get this 20% pop growth speed modifier. That's fantastic. If that alone was the only bonus here, then I'd probably put this in the B tier. But that isn't all, ladies and gentlemen. No, no, no. You'll also get a kind of confusing bonus. Your species will grow evenly and then their growth is pulled together. This basically means you'll be maximizing population growth on your planet because it will be working differently to the current system. The current system looks at the actual pop numbers of an individual species and compares that to the carrying capacity of the planet using the logistic growth equation. It's a differential. Don't worry about it. Basically, this maximizes the population growth on the planet. The only reason you wouldn't take this is if you have only one species type. But do you know what xenocompatibility doesn't do anymore, ladies and gentlemen? It doesn't create half breed mongrel species. Yes, you can still maintain your genetic and racial purity. You will not be bombarded with a thousand different types of subspecies by taking this. They've gotten rid of all of the negatives and they've made it entirely a positive. This is without a doubt one of the best early game pop growth speed bonuses. If you have the gene tailoring technology, for example, if you've gone overtuned or you've just managed to research it early because you're, I don't know, going down the biological ascension path or you've just got it, you could take this first or even second and it is a massive bonus your economic output. Pops give us workforce. Workforce work jobs. Jobs give us an economy and an economy lets us conquer the stars. Ladies and gentlemen, xeno compatibility is up there and I am not mad.
Archology project should really be lumped in with hive worlds and machine worlds. Unfortunately, unfortunately, it is now slightly worse than hive worlds and machine worlds. Let's dive in and work out why. So, Archology Project gives you the Archology Project decision. You have to have the anti-gravity engineering technology and you can't be an agrarian idol. This lets you turn a world into an Acumanopoulos world. Accumopoulos worlds are the best planet types for a regular non-hive mind non-machine empire. These planets give bonus job output. They also give you bonus population growth and they are at 100% habitability. On top of that, each district provides additional jobs and you can specialize districts into things like research districts. You still have the of course alloy districts. You can make alloy archies, but now you can do trade archies or research archies or so many other different type of archies. The only thing you can't do, which is something that hive worlds and machine worlds can do because those world types are now basically identical to a humanopolis worlds, is you can't put down basic resource districts on archies. That kind of sucks and it makes them technically worse and less versatile than hive worlds and machine worlds, but they're still really, really good. To take hive world and machine world, you'll need to be a hivemind and machine intelligence, respectively, and have unlocked the climate restoration technology. Machine worlds also double the output from resource districts on machine worlds, which is kind of crazy. And then they also allow you to build an unlimited number of basic resource districts because you'll then be specializing your districts in a similar way to the Acumanopoulos planet type, but without that silly limit on basic resource districts. These are the best in-class planet type for their respective empires. Oh, and if it's not obvious, you should always try to get this perk every single game depending on your empire type and turn worlds into this world type.
One more reason that Archology Project is a little bit worse than hive world and machine world. Well, with those planet types, you will actually terraform the world into a hive world or machine world, allowing you to continue to develop that world while the terraforming is ongoing. With the archology project decision, it costs you many more minerals. It costs you influence, so it's much more expensive, and it blocks you from building anything on the world for 10 years while the archology project is underway. On top of that, you can't speed it up with things like terraforming gases. So, all around, it's just worse, and I don't really understand why. If one of the devs knows, I'd love to hear about it. If you've got a theory, let me know in the comments section.
If you take one of the crisis ascension perks, you'll notice they're a little bit to the right, then you cannot take this ascension perk. Defender of the Galaxy requires you have three other ascension perks already. You're going to get a 50% damage bonus to endgame crisis factions, and that should include player crisis factions, I believe, and you'll get plus 25% damage to void worms. You'll also get plus 200 opinion from all regular empires. This means that it is much easier to convince other empires to become your vassel. So that's excellent if you can rush up here and people aren't going to be randomly declaring war on you, making your game just that little bit easier. On top of that, fighting the endgame crisis, especially if you're against a 25 times crisis or even a 10 times crisis, it is essential to take defender of the galaxy. You want this plus 50% damage.
Colossus Project no longer gives you access to the Total War war goal. That's a massive change. However, it's not that big a deal because you can still get access to the Total War war goals. In fact, anyone can because it's now a technology. With this ascension perk, you'll get access to the Colossus ship type and the Colossus project special project. This allows you to basically build the Death Star so you can destroy planets at a rate of one every four months. And that is ignoring whatever armies and defenses are down on the world below, letting you destroy even the most fortified world. On top of that, there's a few more bonuses. Now, you're going to get minus 5% ship upkeep, which is excellent, and minus 15% war exhaustion gain, keeping you in the fight for longer and preventing your enemy from forcing peace too soon.
I placed all three of the crisis perks together. These are basically double or triple S tier. They are pretty much the best ascension perks in the game. Galactic Nemesis is going to give you access to menace and a bunch of special abilities, allowing you to build ships out of minerals, allowing you to eventually blow up stars, stealing dark matter from them. And then once you have enough dark matter, you can blow up the entire galaxy, winning the game. Cosmogenesis is all about researching technology. You'll get access to Fallen Empire ships, Fallen Empire modules, Fallen Empire buildings, Fallen Empire technologies. On top of that, you'll get ways of researching even more technology with the Synaptic lathe. And then eventually, you'll have a way of winning the game by kind of escaping and going to another reality. With Behemoth Fury, you will get access to Leviathan's giant behemoths. basically that can go around the space Kaiju can fight getting bigger and stronger. It's going to take a lot of food, but eventually once you've defeated all of the other behemoths in the galaxy and done some other special side quests, you will again win the game because you can win the game with each of these ascension perks. They are so very, very strong. And that's without even looking at their other bonuses. If I had to rank these, I would say Galactic Nemesis is the strongest. Then depending on whether or not you're able to tech rush enough, if you can get enough tech out early enough, Cosmo Genesis is up there. Otherwise, it's definitely Behemoth Fury in second place with Cosmo Genesis behind in third if we're looking at the power levels of each of the three crisis paths.
The very last item we should cover is the ascension paths. Each of the five ascension perks here, mind of a matter, synthetic evolution, the flesh is weak, biomorphs, and synthetic age, unlock an ascension tradition tree. This allows your species to undergo their ascension, and it's one of the most powerful things you can do with your species. You probably want to ascend in every single game you play, picking one of the ascension paths. After you've got two ascension perks, you can pick this as your third perk, allowing you to get the ascension tradition you want as your third tradition. In terms of the power levels, mind over matter at the moment is roughly the weakest, followed closely by the flesh is weak. However, the psionic ascension path is going to be getting an update soon with the next DLC. Cybernetic is not so lucky, but it's still quite strong. Then we have synthetic evolution and the synthetic age for virtuality and modularity being very, very strong with biomorphosis currently coming out on top as the strongest ascension path once the devs have done their whatever it's been. What's it been 15, 20 updates since the release of Biogenesis? Something like that. But yeah, so number one, genetic now terrifyingly. Then we have the modularity, virtuality, and synthetic ascension. Then cybernetic, then finally, and last placed, psionic. You can also get biomorphs done really, really quickly if you pick overtuned, for example. There's some zany strategies out there. Overall, ascending with your species, it's really good. You should always do it. I always recommend going for this at some point in your run through. Probably the earlier the better. In fact, don't forget if you'd like to pick up anything from the Paradox Interactive summer sale, which is on until July 10th, and also support this channel, you can do so using the link down in the description below, or going to the Paradox Interactive store and using the code Montto plays. If you enjoyed this video on Stellaris 4.0 do and you want to watch another Stellaris video, then you might want to click the video on screen now.