Transcription
You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. In this video, we are going to rank all of the biological species traits and lithoid species traits available to your Empire. There are almost a 100 traits. We're going to be going through it. It's going to take some time. Make sure you're sat down, you're well hydrated, you've got a snack.
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One final comment before we dive into the tier list: I've not included any robotic traits whatsoever or cybernetic traits for obvious reasons. They are almost certainly going to be updated in the upcoming DLC, and for that reason, there's no point in ranking them now. Instead, we'll be releasing a new tier list to cover those traits when patch 3.12 comes out, probably around May.
Let's start right at the very bottom with the F tier. These are naturally the absolute worst traits, and you probably don't want to put them anywhere near any species in your Empire, except for maybe one or two niche edge cases.
First up, we have Communal. Communal gives you minus 10% pop housing usage. But what does that really do? Well, housing has two effects. First off, you must have more housing than your total housing usage, otherwise you take a stability hit, meaning you produce less resources. On top of that, your planet capacity takes into account housing usage. Having a much higher planet capacity than your population grants you logistic growth based on some rather complicated maths that I won't get into right now. This minor modifier, though, is very rarely actually going to be any use. It used to be quite useful on habitats, but now that we can get habitats to have lots and lots of districts after the rework, it it really doesn't fit in there either.
Conservationist reduces your pop consumer goods upkeep by 10%. Consumer goods upkeep for pops is usually the smallest aspect overall of your consumer goods usage. You're generally going to use many more consumer goods for jobs than you are population upkeep. If you are on Egalitarian and you are going for a Utopian Abundance living standard, this does reduce your consumer goods usage by one for every 10 Pops in your Empire, but even then, for an entire trait pick and one trait point, I wouldn't say it's worth it.
Venerable grants you a whopping 80 years of leader lifespan at the cost of four trait points. It is very, very, very expensive. Defensive. Why is this so low down in the tier list? Leaders now are better than ever. Well, you don't need an extra 80 years of leader lifespan at the start of the game to keep your leaders alive for at least 100 years. Through technologies, traditions, and possibly other traits, we can easily get over the first 100 years, then ascend and either go for some sort of synthetic ascension to keep our leaders alive forever, or possibly take some other traits that are also going to give us better bonuses at a lower cost than four points. This really doesn't fill any niche whatsoever.
Industrious grants you plus 15% minerals from jobs. There are many, many technologies in the game that are going to be granting us plus 20% minerals from jobs and other bonuses. A small 15% boost from our population is okay at the start of the game, but later on, it will be diluted lower and lower as we get more research and unlock more and more bonuses to our work output. Additionally, of the three basic resources, minerals have the lowest base output, so this plus 15% is the lowest overall increase of any of the basic resource increasing traits. One small note could be made if you are going for some sort of Crisis Rush build and you're going to make all of your ships out of minerals, it could be possible to use this, then possibly it goes up to something like the B tier, but generally no.
Quick Learners costs one point and gives us a 10% boost to leader experience gain. This is such a tiny and honestly insignificant bonus to leader experience gain. We can get so many larger bonuses from other places like traditions and technologies that I would not recommend you waste a trait slot on this trait.
Resilient increases your defense army damage by 50%. The issue with this trait is that defensive armies are the worst form of defending. As a battle on one of your planets continues, collateral damage will increase and start killing off your population. Some of the first Pops to go are the soldiers, and that means your defensive armies will then despawn. So there's really no point in boosting defensive army damage output if you're actually trying to defend, because defensive armies don't usually stick around.
Strong costs a whopping three trait points. It gives us plus 4% army damage and then a measly 5% worker and menial drone pop resource output. This will basically eat up most of your initial trait points and an important trait slot. Now that the Domination tradition grants us a total of around 40% bonuses to slaves, about 10 to 20% to workers, this really does pale in comparison to other options we have in the game. If you're going for some sort of weird aggressive military build, you might want that plus 40% army damage, but for three points, no. Later on in the game, if you completely genetically ascended, you might modify this onto a few of your warrior class species and then make a bunch of clone armies based on those, but for the rest of your gameplay, this really is not a good trait.
Noxious is a little bit complicated and it has now been massively nerfed into the ground. A pop with this trait will get plus 2% happiness per non-noxious pop on the planet, but this bonus maxes out at plus 40%. Every non-noxious pop will get minus 1% happiness for every pop with this trait on the planet. As well, you get plus 50% army damage and plus 30% minimum habitability. You also get minus 30% maximum habitability and plus 10% pop housing usage. You can combine this with Subterranean to lock all of your pops in at 80% habitability, just always forever. That's kind of cool, and it's a bit of a niche strategy in which case, yes, this can be all right. But generally speaking, you don't want to be capped out at 70% habitability for all of your pops, and you can no longer use just a few noxious pops to keep slave planets in line. It simply does not work like that now that the happiness bonus is capped at only plus 40%.
Inorganic Breath increases your pop upkeep by 50%. That is not just your species right, so consumer goods, but also your food or minerals or energy credits or whatever it is that you upkeep your pop with. Each pop then produces plus 0.02 monthly exotic gases. In which universe is this worth it? Oh, and I, I didn't mention as well, this is three points. Three points for this crap. I, I don't get it.
We're now on to one of the overtuned traits. These are yellow traits. You'll notice them frequently throughout this tier list. Now, overtuned traits are only available to Empires that take the Overtuned origin. They're a little special in that they generally cost far fewer trait points but always give some reduction to leader lifespan.
First up, and possibly the worst overtuned trait in existence, Express Tradition. It is exactly the same as the regular trait. You get plus 10% Unity from jobs. There is an identical trait to this available to normal biological Empires. It costs one trait point, that's exactly the same, but it slaps you with a minus 10 years of leader lifespan. Why would you pick this when you could pick another trait that does exactly the same thing but without the 10 years of leader lifespan? You could double it up with that other trait, but again, why would you be doing that? You don't need to use lots of these little traits for plus 10% Unity from jobs. I, I don't get why this trait is not better or cheaper or just something different.
Low Maintenance is again the same, pretty much as what we just looked at, uh, the Express Tradition. You'll notice it's very similar to Conservationist. We get minus 10% pop consumer goods upkeep. We do only spend one trait point, that's exactly the same as Conservationist, but we get hit with minus 10 years of leader lifespan. Why? Why would you pick it? I mean, I guess you could stack it, but is it really worth it? No.
We've now come to the negative traits in the F tier. You'll notice negative traits are always in red. They always give you some sort of negative modifier that does actively hurt your species. The reason you would take one of these traits is that they refund some trait points, allowing you to pick bigger, better, and more expensive positive traits for your species. So what we really want to do here with the negative traits is pick traits that don't actually impact our Empire very much, and thus it's basically free points.
Non-Adaptive refunds two points and gives us minus 10% habitability. This is very, very bad. It basically means on all of your initial colonies, you are going to be suffering from 5% lower pop growth speed, 5% fewer resources from jobs, and if that wasn't bad enough, you'll also have 10% increased pop upkeep and amenities on top of any other modifiers you may have. The one exception that I would say to the rule here is if you are playing a Void Dweller species, in which case you can completely ignore this minus 10% habitability and just get on with it, because you have perfect habitability on orbital habitats anyway.
Repugnant reduces your amenities from jobs by 20% and refunds you two points. The issue with this one is that it will mean we need more of our Pops working amenities producing jobs, unless we're going for some sort of trade empire, in which case you can kind of ignore this one a little bit better. If you know you're going to have lots of clerks and lots of traders producing lots of small numbers of amenities, then it's kind of all right, probably B tier at best, but otherwise this is very terrible. It's going to massively reduce your pop efficiency and require you to have more amenity producing jobs and thus less resource output of other resources that your Empire critically needs.
Last up here, we have Slow Breeders. This reduces your pop growth speed by 10% and refunds you two points. There's two big issues with this. First off, you never really want to reduce your pop growth speed if you can help it. Pops produce all of your resources, meaning pops equals power. The more Pops you have, the more powerful your Empire should be. It also coincidentally blocks off our ability to take any positive traits that would increase pop growth speed, so it's really a double whammy here.
In the C tier, you are going to find traits that are much better than the F tier, but again have their drawbacks. Often those drawbacks are simply that there is another better pick available that is going to be more helpful to your Empire than the option here in this C tier.
Extremely Adaptive grants plus 20% habitability, but costs a whopping four trait points. The big issue with this one is how quickly it drops off in terms of usefulness. Your starting ideal worlds will be at 100% habitability, so any habitability boosting techs or tradition bonuses will actually undercut the Extremely Adaptive and make it less useful. Yes, you can colonize non-ideal worlds with a starting habitability of 40%, but even then, they're not very economically viable. You will get some pop growth that is somewhat useful, but it, it, it's really generally not worth it. You should probably stick to getting technologies and traditions that boost your habitability, or modify your species to be better habitable on those other worlds you'll find, or simply change the planets through terraforming if, if that's the kind of thing you'd like to do. It's going to be faster and cheaper than trying to fiddle around with 40% habitable worlds with Extremely Adaptive.
Agrarian grants plus 15% food from jobs. It has all of the same issues that Industrious suffered from, but food output is slightly higher in terms of base numbers, and we could combine this with something like Anglers and Catalytic Processing, which is very, very powerful at the moment. That's the only reason it's up here in the C tier and not languishing down in the F tier with Industrious.
Conformists cost two trait points and gives us plus 30% governing ethics attraction. This should mean your factions generally stick more closely to your governing ethics, making them easier to manage and increase your happiness and unity gain empire-wide just a bit. However, this can easily be replaced by a couple of veteran traits on our leaders on the council, and thus it's not really very powerful for what it does. It does fall off very quickly in terms of relative power compared to other options.
Docile reduces your Empire size effect from pops by 10% at the cost of two points. Now, this effect is calculated before other Empire size reductions, like those from traditions. This is calculated on a planet level, so this means that the pops on your planet will only contribute 90% of their empire size to the overall empire size from pops number, that could then be reduced by 50%, 70%, some other percentage, but those are two separate calculations and do not stack. Additive, instead, they stack multiplicatively. This means, for example, if you stack Docile and Beacon of Liberty, you don't have a 25% reduction to empire size from pops, you have a 10% reduction and a 15% reduction, which equals out to be around a 23.5% reduction. And this effect gets more prominent as the modifiers get bigger and you get bigger reductions. Empire size increases our cost for edicts, traditions, and technology, so reducing it now is very, very good, especially as they've doubled the cost increases from empire size for technology. At the start of the game, this bonus is entirely useless, but later on, it does get better and better as you get up to 500, 1,000, possibly even two or 3,000 Pops in total.
Ingenious is basically the same as Industrious and Agrarian, but it grants 15% energy credits from jobs. This is good, but it will be watered down, diluted massively as you progress through the game and stack other bonuses on on top of that. If you're using vassals or megastructures for your basic resource output, and no Pops in your Empire are actually working miner or farmer jobs, this trait then becomes entirely useless.
Nomadic boosts your pop growth from immigration by 15% and reduces your resettlement cost by 25%. Early in the game, with your initial colonies, this is a relatively nice bonus to have for those first two planets, and later on, if you have very large worlds with lots of open jobs and lots and lots of migration pacts, you can get some pop growth bonuses from this. The main bonus later on, though, will probably be that reduction to resettlement cost, allowing you to move pops around your Empire much more cheaply and therefore much more easily.
Strong is a watered-down version of Very Strong. It has half of the bonuses but only costs a single point. 2 and a half% worker and menial drone pop resource output, though, is basic ally non-existent. You can pretty much ignore the bonuses you're getting here.
Radiotrophic costs two points and can only be given to species that are either fungoid or plantoid. It replaces half of your food or mineral upkeep with energy. No energy upkeep on tomb worlds, and you're going to get plus 10% tomb world pop growth speed and 10% tomb world habitability. That is, of course, not enough to live on a tomb world, but it is a nice little bonus. Last longer and 50 years of additional leader lifespan. So all of your leaders will last longer. Instead of consuming food, you consume minerals now. Generally, this is bad because minerals are slightly harder to produce than food. On top of that, you'll also get minus 25% pop growth speed, which is a stifling modifier to have, and minus 25% pop assembly speed. Early on, that pop assembly speed won't be too noticeable, but later on, if you genetically ascend, it's going to be very, very tough.
Now, Lithoid does pair rather nicely with this next trait, which is called Cave Dweller. Cave Dweller again is a free trait, but is only available to Empires that have taken the Subterranean origin. You get 50% minimum species habitability, which is basically the same as plus 50% habitability, though a little bit worse in certain situations, and you'll also get plus 15% minerals from jobs. You will get minus 20% biological pop growth speed, which is very bad, but that is completely ignored and replaced with the worst modifier if you are also a lithoid. So Lithoid Cave Dwellers generally get the best of both worlds. On top of that, you do take a 10% increase to Empire size from pops, but generally that's not too big a deal. You can manage that with other reductions to Empire size at a tradition and civic level.
Clone Soldier Descendant is only available to Clone Army origin Empires that at the Genetic Crossroads event decided to descend. You'll get 20% additional governing ethics attraction, 20% army damage, and all of your commanders gain The Descendant Clone Army Commander trait, which gives them a small reduction to ship upkeep and a small increase to ship fire rate. Unlike the other clone traits, the main bonus here is that you can actually reproduce the old-fashioned way.
Drake Scaled is a Leviathan trait that can only be added by Empires that have researched the Leviathan Trans Genesis technology and defeated a certain guardian. In this case, either The Ether Drake Shard or a Sky Dragon. Drake Scaled grants 50% army health, somewhat like a lithoid, and a measly plus 0.025 monthly alloys per pop. You also have to pay three points for this trait, so normally it's not really worth it. Do bear in mind, though, by the time you have this trait, you will have fully genetically ascended, and thus three points at this point in the game are far easier to come by than right at the start of the game when this trait is completely not available.
Juiced Power is Overtuned's version of Very Strong. You get 5% worker pop resource output and 40% army damage. It does only cost one point, as opposed to Very Strong, which costs three, and only grants minus 10 years of leader lifespan reduction. If you want to build an Overtuned military with lots and lots of strong armies, this could be reasonably good.
Farm Appendages, Dedicated Minor, and Technical Talent all increase the basic resources from a certain job – uh, they are food, mineral, and energy, specifically by 15%. This is the same as the other traits we have for regular pops. They only cost one trait point and reduce our leader lifespan by minus 10 years. They generally have the same issues that the other basic resource output increasing traits have, though.
Fleeting is a negative trait that refunds one point and gives us minus 10 years of leader lifespan. If we are biological, and if we're lithoid, a whopping minus 25 years. For lithoids, this is definitely F tier. For everyone else, it's a comfortable C tier. In the later game, when we've got lots and lots of other bonuses to leader lifespan, you could take Fleeting, it could be reasonable, though generally we do not want our leaders to die anymore. We want to keep them alive with their lovely Destiny traits. And speaking of Fleeting, we're going to have a Fleeting secret call out here in the C tier. If you're still listening to me and you haven't skipped ahead all the way to the end, let me know down in the comments below. I would love to hear from you. Try to use the word fleeting in your comment as well.
Slow Learners reduces our leader experience gain by 10% and refunds a single point. Early on, this is actually going to be quite nasty, the first 10 to 20 years, but once we get a couple of bonuses, you can basically ignore this one. So that means it's better to mod this trait in later on in the game. Uh, though early on, you possibly don't want to start with it.
Psychological Infertility refunds two points and has something of a strange effect. You get minus 30% pop growth speed, which is terrible, but only whilst you are at war or when the crisis is running around in the galaxy. If you're playing as a Fanatic Pacifist, this is possibly a free pick. For any other Empire that probably is going to engage in war every 20 years or so, you don't really want to have minus 30% pop growth speed for 5 or 10 years every 10 or 20 years. That's not very good for your economy.
We've now reached the halfway point in the B tier. Let's just get on with it.
Adaptive grants you plus 10% habitability. Now, of course, this will have no effect on your capital, which is already at full habitability. But on your initial colonies, you'll be getting increased pop growth speed, reduced job upkeep, and increased resource output from jobs, because higher habitability translates into bonuses for that category, in as much as being below 100% gives you negatives in those categories. So increasing habitability to get higher is an effective bonus. Given that this is only plus 10%, though, it doesn't fall off quite as quickly as Extremely Adaptive, especially on 80% habitable worlds, but it does still fall off as you research technologies that boost the habitability of your species or you ascend with your species.
Talented Red reduces your leader upkeep by 10% and in the long run gives you minus one leader maximum negative traits. So your leaders will not only be better, but be cheaper in unity costs to upkeep. This trait is especially effective on Empires that start with higher level leaders or alternatively that get lots and lots of leader experience. If your build is focused around having lots of high level leaders early in the game, sometimes you can struggle with unity production in order to upkeep not just those leaders, but complete new traditions. So Talented will fit into that niche if you're going down that path. Otherwise, though, it is just a mild bonus to your unity production.
Traditional gives you plus 10% Unity from jobs. This increases the unity output from your jobs. It's very similar for early game unity production to Talented. You'll probably around year 10 to 20 be getting roughly the same amount of unity increase, but with Talented, you also get that minus one leader maximum negative trait. So I think Traditional is slightly worse, but, but it is very, very equivalent.
Existential Iteroparity increases your pop growth during wars and crises by 30%. Now, you can very much gain this if you're playing with an Empire that will constantly be at war. You can absolutely make use of this 30% bonus for most of the game. However, in most playthroughs, I'd say you'd be at war for about a fifth to a third of your gameplay, and that is still a good bonus to have, but it, it's not a constant bonus, and this does cost you two points.
Volatile Excretions is only available to Lithoid Empires, or if you've genetically ascended and researched the technology, you can stick it on some bio Empires. It gives you an income of plus 0.01 monthly volatile Moes per pop. This can be useful early on in the game if you want to buy volatile Moes from the marketplace, you can do that before having the technology.
Gaseous Byproducts is identical to Volatile Excretions, however, you output monthly exotic gases.
Civiles grants you a nice plus 10% resources from jobs and plus 10% happiness, however, the pop cannot work any ruler or specialist jobs, and they cannot generate leaders. If you manage your economy correctly and with a lot of micromanagement, this can be a very powerful and useful trait. However, if you need to rebalance your economy, you will find it very difficult as you won't be able to move those workers into specialist jobs, which then leaves you with an undynamic economy if the situation changes, for example, if you take on a vassal that starts producing a lot of your basic resources.
Clone Soldier is the basic trait that comes with the Clone Army origin. You get 50% governing ethics attraction and 50% army damage, but a whopping minus 40 years of leader lifespan. If you push very quickly, you can generally, uh, upgrade and either ascend or descend your clones, and thus get the better traits, or possibly worse trait in the case of descended, before your leaders die off. Clones cannot reproduce naturally, and they also decline without sufficient ancient clone vat buildings. However, with those vats, they are created at a phenomenal rate. On top of that, your commanders gain the Clone Army Commander trait, which gives you a massive boost to their weapons fire rate and quite a nice reduction to ship upkeep.
Perfected Genes increases your leader lifespan by 25 years, but devastatingly gives you minus 20% leader experience gain. You will only get this trait if you take the Under One Rule origin, in which case your entire species must have it. It is completely free, but very much a mixed bag. Yes, your leaders are not going to die off very quickly at all. You'll probably be able to keep them alive for pretty much all of the game when we factor in ascensions and the like. However, that minus 20% leader experience gain debuff is going to hurt us at the start. As we get more bonuses either from traditions or leader traits, we can negate that that negative and push beyond it, but it is still a painful negative in a lot of ways.
Nerve Stapled is simply a worse version of Survival. It grants only plus 5% resources from jobs and has basically all of the same issues. You cannot employ these pops as ruler, specialist, or complex drones. They cannot generate leaders. They also cannot join a faction, meaning that they do not count towards your population levels for factions, thus you'll get lower unity income. And this is a mixed bag, but they are not affected by happiness. If you have some very, very unhappy slave pops, you might want to Nerve Staple them, thus improving the overall happiness of your planet and thus getting more stability, meaning more resource output. However, if the pop is above 50% happiness, this is a debuff.
Exotic Metabolism increases your leader lifespan by 50 years, but in exchange, you have to pay a small amount of exotic gases as upkeep. It only costs one point, so in some ways, it's much cheaper than Venerable. However, in other ways, that exotic gas upkeep is very, very expensive. Do note, though, you won't get access to this trait until you've genetically ascended, so the fact that it costs a small amount of exotic gases may be negligible later on in the game.
We're now on to the B overtuned traits. First up, we have Crafted Smiles. This one grants you a lovely 15% additional amenities with jobs and can be stacked with Charismatic for a total of plus 35% amenities from jobs. This means we can have much higher pop efficiency than other Empires, vastly reducing the number of workers or specialists we need to have working amenities producing jobs. It does, of course, give you a 10-year reduction to leader lifespan, but only costs a single trait point.
Excessive Endurance is basically the overtuned version of Robust. You get plus 5% resources from all jobs and plus 30% habitability. These are some fantastic bonuses that are very good to have early on in the game. However, that habitability bonus will get worse over time as you research other technologies and find other ways of increasing your habitability over 100%. It does cost a whopping three points and reduces your leader lifespan by 30 years, though, so do be careful with this trait.
Gene Mentorship in a lot of ways is the inverse of Perfected Genes. Instead of getting a leader experience gain debuff and extra years of leader lifespan, instead, you'll pay 10 years of leader lifespan but get a 25% leader experience gain bonus. Honestly, I think this might be worth it, as long as you take Enduring and don't take too many other overtuned traits to reduce your leader lifespan further. If you're already running minus 30 years of leader lifespan, this is definitely not worth it, but if you're only sprinkling in one or two traits, this could be an addition.
Decadent is a negative trait that refunds you a single point. It gives your worker and slave pops minus 10% happiness. If you put this trait on an Empire that is Authoritarian or Xenophobic, an Empire that can minimize the political power of workers and slaves, then it might actually be worth it. You can probably ignore this penalty. However, on most Empires, especially Egalitarian Empires, this trait will hurt you quite a lot.
Weak reduces your army damage by 20% and your resource output from workers by 2 and a half%. The worker reduction is generally negligible, though you don't really want to take any traits that are going to voluntarily reduce any resource outputs if you can help it. On top of that, having weak defensive armies only dealing 80% combat damage is quite tough when it comes to defending or attacking other worlds. You'll need to put considerable additional investment into assault armies in order to conquer planets that actually has quite a large economic cost, needing another 25% armies compared to another Empire.
Quorum reduces your Unity from jobs by 10% at the refund of a single point. It is the complete inverse of Traditional, though honestly, this trait is possibly better as a negative pick for your Empire than Traditional is as a positive pick. Minus 10% will be less effective on reducing Unity output than plus 10% will be on increasing it, because of the way that extra modifiers will stack together.
Last but by no means least, we have Jinxed. This increases the leader maximum negative traits by one, and it does refund a single point. Early on in the game, this has absolutely no effect, but as your leaders level up, they will express more and more negative traits, making them worse and worse and worse. RNGesus might be on your side and give you traits that actually don't matter, but it could also absolutely hobble your Empire and mean that you have to completely switch up your council. It really is a very RNG focused trait if you pick it. And if you're enjoying this video, please Jinx that like button.
We're now up in the A tier. Traits in this tier I expect to see often in many games. If you're looking to get the maximum power out of your pops, though, there are of course better traits above us up in the lofty S tier.
Charismatic gives you an additional plus 20% amenities from jobs. This means that you don't need to have as many other workers, other non-essential workers, working amenity jobs, thus increasing your population efficiency, which means the number of Pops you can have working critical jobs like alloy production or research production or basic resource production, rather than working things like Entertainer or, uh, Gene Clinic jobs in order to generate amenities and keep your stability positive. You of course generate natural amenities from your ruler class jobs, the politician jobs. This buffs them with an additional 20% output, which generally means each, uh, ruler class job can look after one additional pop, which is pretty, pretty excellent.
You might be surprised to see Enduring all the way up here in the A tier, given that Venerable was down at the bottom in the F tier. Well, Enduring gives you just 20 years of additional leader lifespan at the cost of only a single point. This extra 20 years, though, is usually enough for you to get some extra technologies, get some extra traditions, and then ascend and thus keep your leaders alive pretty much for the entire game, at least until 2300, if not 2350. Of course, it falls off later on in the game as you get closer to the endgame date, and if all of your leaders die of old age, you probably only go through one to two rounds of leaders through the entire game. If you pick this trait, however.
Natural Sociologists increases your society research from jobs by 15% at the cost of a single point. Society is honestly the weakest of the three research branches, and that's why this trait is down here in the A tier. Do note, however, though, because there are very few ways now of increasing our research output from jobs, we have to do it through modifiers that increase specialist output or, uh, resource output in general. We no longer have these stacking technology bonuses. This is much more valuable than it used to be. It does preclude you from taking the other two type of Natural Thinkers, and you have to kind of weigh that into the equation.
Rapid Breeders increases your pop growth speed by 10% on every planet that these pops are growing on. Having more pops means that you have a larger economy, because pops work jobs and jobs produce resources, so pops are king in this game.
Phototrophic is only available on, uh, fungoid or plantoid species. It replaces half of your food upkeep with energy upkeep. Generally, this can be easier to produce at the start of the game if you're not going down a food-focused economy, and if you are, if you're going for Catalytic Processing, this means it should be easier to maintain a higher alloy output with fewer farmer jobs early on. It should basically mean you can get rid of all of your farmers and entirely replace the food income in your Empire with Hydroponics Bays on Starbases, which are much more efficient than any other type of food production.
Scintillating Skin is the third lithoid rare resource trait. It grants you a small income of monthly crystals per pop with this trait. The reason this is slightly higher than the other two is that we have a special Rare Crystals edict that allows us to increase our sensor range by one and thus explore the entire galaxy much, much, much faster without needing extra leaders. We can actually send out just a single military ship or a single research science ship with no leader on it and still survey the galaxy using this rare crystal income, which means that early on, it is a little bit more powerful than the other two.
Survivor grants you plus 10 years of leader lifespan, which isn't quite as good as Enduring, but it is entirely free. Honestly, in my opinion, that's the biggest bonus with this trait. Otherwise, you also get 70% additional tomb world habitability. If you can find some tomb worlds or make some tomb worlds, that's great, but if you can't, just be happy with the extra leader lifespan. It's pretty nice.
Zombies are created by Reassigns. Those are a special job that only certain Megacorp Empires with the Permanent Employment civic have access to. Zombies are created via not pop growth, but instead pop production. They have minus 100% pop upkeep, meaning on completely habitable worlds, they have zero upkeep. But on anything less than 100% habitability, they will have a slight upkeep. On top of that, you do get a negative modifier of minus 25% resources from jobs, but amenities and trade value are not a resource. So if you employ zombies as clerks, they will cost no upkeep on perfectly habitable worlds and produce exactly the same number of resources as other pops, because they're not making any resources, they're making trade value and amenities. It's quite a nice system, if you ask me. They are not affected by happiness, cannot generate leaders, be employed in ruler or specialist jobs, colonize, or reproduce naturally. So they have a lot of negatives, but they're basically extra free pops you wouldn't otherwise be able to get that don't cost pretty much any upkeep. It's a no-brainer. You, you should take them.
Aquatic is only available if you have the Ocean Preference trait, meaning your home world must be an ocean world. It costs only two points and gives you some very good bonuses early on in the game, but some negative modifiers that might hurt you a little bit later. You'll get plus 20% ocean habitability, so your starting guaranteed habitable world will be maximum habitability, thus granting you more population growth, increased resources from jobs, and a reduction in upkeep, which compared to other Empires that wouldn't have access to full habitability on all of their guaranteed habitables is very good. You'll get minus 10% housing usage on ocean worlds, which is all right, and then a really good buff, which is plus 10% worker output on all of those ocean worlds as well. So all of your workers get a massive 10% boost to their output. The negatives are that dry and frozen planets have minus 20% habitability, which means they are 0% for you at the start of the game, and 30% housing usage on those planets. You cannot change habitability without removing this trait, so you will need to biologically ascend to change the habitability of this primary species, and you're also going to have some issues on habitats and ruined worlds. If you take the Hydrocentric Ascension Perk, these traits are buffed by an additional 50%, but I don't really think that is worth an Ascension slot.
If you biologically ascend, you can modify species to be either Delicious or if their lithoid, Fails it. This increases the food output you get from livestock or mineral output from livestock if they are a lithoid. This is pretty nice if you're going to turn some pops into livestock, and, uh, it's a simple trait to take just to give you a buff to their output and production. Don't forget to also add in either Agrarian or Industrious to give you further bonuses.
Robust costs 4 points. It gives you a whopping 50 years of leader lifespan, 30% habitability on all planets, and 5% resources from jobs. At the point you get this late in the game, the habitability is generally not really worth it. The leader lifespan can be good. The main bonus here, though, is the extra 5% resources to all jobs across the board. That will increase our science, our alloys, anything you really need.
Void Ling is only accessible if you have killed a Void Spawn. You'll get plus 20% species minimum habitability, so no world can be below 20% habitability. Your pops will also consume energy instead of food or minerals. This does cost you three points, but it is basically a straight up better version of Phototrophic.
Spliced Habitability grants you 20% habitability at the cost of only one single point and 10 years of leader lifespan. This is very, very good because as an Overtuned Empire, you can modify out Spliced Habitability when you no longer need it or modify it in when you do need it. So you could put it on pops on your initial colonies after they leave your home world and thus bring them up to full habitability, but not have it on your capital. The dynamic nature of being able to use this with the Overtuned origin is why it's higher up here in the A tier, but of course, like other habitability bonuses, it falls off as you get more technologies and traditions that increase your base habitability rating.
Wasteful is a negative trait that refunds one point and increases your pop consumer goods upkeep by 10%. Early on, that's basically negligible. Later on, we can spend some energy to run an edict to completely counteract this, and thus Wasteful is usually a trait that's not too bothersome if you want to take it.
Deviant decreases your governing ethics attraction by 15%. This gives you one point in exchange. The reason it's not so great is that if you don't get other modifiers to increase your governing ethics attraction through leader traits or other traditions and that sort of thing, you may find other factions spawning which have ethics that are not aligned with your governing ethics, and thus they are harder factions to make happy, which will reduce your overall unity output and the economy of your nation if they are getting happiness debuffs.
Sedentary gives you an extra point to play with. It increases resettlement cost by 25%, meaning it will cost you slightly more energy and unity to move pops around, and it does reduce your pop growth from immigration by 15%. That pop growth from immigration is basically negligible later on, by the mid to late game, so you can kind of ignore that. Though early on, it is somewhat unpleasant unless you just turn off your migration, and that's completely fine as long as you are not an Egalitarian Empire. Resettlement cost is the bigger issue if you're needing to move pops around and resettle them quite a bit, which generally is quite necessary in the late game to fill up your, you know, arcologies and your ring worlds. This will will be giving you some more pains in terms of energy and unity cost, but not that much. That is why it's up here in the A tier.
We're now in the S tier. If you haven't skipped ahead, you'll see a clear progression from tier to tier where the traits are getting slightly better over time. The S tier traits now are pretty much the best traits. Generally, I'm going to be using them in most of my Empires. There is one exception. There is one trait in here that I probably will only use under certain circumstances, but if those circumstances arise, it is the best trait possible to grab.
Intelligent increases your output of research from jobs by 10%. It is now one of the few ways that we can actually increase our research output for our researcher jobs, and that makes it a very, very valuable trait to have. It does cost two points, but research is very, very important in Stellaris. It allows us to improve our economy, our military, and our diplomacy. It basically improves everything other than alloys, which are required to build ships. It is arguably the most important resource in Stellaris.
Natural Engineers and Natural Physicists preclude you choosing the other one of these, or Natural Sociologists. They grant 15% engineering from research jobs and 15% physics research from jobs respectively. As I mentioned before in Intelligent, there are very few ways of increasing your output for researchers, and thus these are now very, very powerful traits. Unless you are looking to play a trade-focused Empire.
Thrifty is pretty useless and you should not use it. However, if you want to generate income from trade, Thrifty is the best trait in the game and will be the first pick in your trait pick list. It grants you plus 25% trade value from jobs. This modifier is applied before the planet-wide modifiers that further increase your trade value, and thus it increases the base trade value output from your job. It is very, very powerful indeed.
Incubators is arguably the best initial pick you can take if you want extra pop growth. It will grant you between 30% pop growth if you have very few pops on a planet and minus 10% pop growth, which is bad, if you have quite a lot. The numbers for this are: if you have less than seven pops, you get that plus 30%; between 7 and 47, you'll go from plus 30% down to minus 10% at increments of 1% per additional pop; and then of course, at 47 and above, you're at that minus 10%. This does mean your initial colonies will grow as fast as possible. Initial growth is better, and it is worth taking the late term sacrifice with that minus 10% in order to get your economy up and running faster than your neighbors and potential opponents or enemies. Later on, you could, if you go for genetic ascension or you go for some other ascension path like synthetic, get rid of this trait altogether, and that makes it even more enticing if you're planning on going down that route.
Budding is only available to plantoid or fungoid species, whereas Crystallization is only available to lithoids. Both increase your monthly pop assembly per pop that you have with this trait by 0.02 on any planet with 23 pops or more. This is outright better than Rapid Breeders. It gets faster and stronger as well the larger the population you have, and thus the longer you are playing. If you are planning on genetically ascending, it's also very, very good. You can stack this pop assembly with clone vats and other bonuses that go in that category, so it's really quite a nice trait to have.
Invasive Species, like Budding, is limited to plantoid and fungoid Empires. If you take this trait, you cannot pick any positive traits other than botanical traits like Budding, Radiotrophic, or Phototrophic, but you get 5% habitability per negative trait that your pop has and 5% pop growth speed per negative trait as well.
Normally, you can stack two to three negative traits along with something like Budding and thus get 15% additional habitability and pop growth speed, which is a phenomenal bonus. Combine that in with Budding and you've got a very fast-growing species.
Void Dweller is a trait that you get if you pick the Void Dweller origin. You get a beautiful 15% pop output on habitats, and given that you only live on habitats, that's amazing. You will get minus 15% pop output on non-artificial worlds and the big kicker here: minus 30% happiness on planets. Include into that the fact that you also have 0% habitability on normal worlds, and it means you are basically entirely limited to artificial habitats in space habitats. But that plus 15% resource output across the board is simply amazing and cannot be ignored.
Necrophage is available if you take the Necrophage origin. You'll get a whopping 80 years of leader lifespan, minus 50% of pop upkeep, 5% additional resource output from ruler and specialist jobs. You will lose 10% resource output from worker jobs and then get minus 75% pop growth speed and minus 50% pop assembly speed. But that doesn't matter because your Necro pop should not be growing. This also means Necro pairs quite nicely with Lithoid, giving you a wrapped-up minus 100% of pop growth speed and also meaning you'll never accidentally have your Necro species trying to grow naturally. You'll want to keep your species growth to your pre-sent or other slave species that you find. And the Necrophage really ticks a lot of boxes. All of that lead lifespan, reduced upkeep, and increased resource output is simply amazing, especially when this trait is absolutely free.
If you take the Clone Army origin and branch to become an ascendant species at the Genetic Crossroads event, you will get the best pops in the game very early on. This trait gives you 20% extra habitability, 50% governing ethics attraction, a whopping 40% resources from ruler jobs, which is honestly not that great. It's basically Unity only unless you get something like a Technocracy up and running. But better than that is the massive 25% resources from specialist jobs. That is your researchers, that is your alloy workers, that is the backbone of your economy, given a Titanic boost. You'll also get 75% additional army damage, 25% army health, and the commanders gain the Ascendant Clone Army Commander trait, giving you the highest bonus of any clone army leader for fire rate and for ship upkeep reduction. Do note that you still cannot reproduce naturally, be genetically modified, and if you don't have any clone vats, you will start dying. This limits your population of ascendant clones to only 100, but you can do an awful lot with those 100 ascendant clones and like build some robots, take some slaves, get pop growth in other ways.
Natural Machinists cost two points and it gives you a nice tidy plus 10% alloys from jobs and plus 10% consumer goods from jobs. You should definitely put this on any pops on an alloy or consumer goods world. It's really, really good to stack bonuses on our alloy or consumer goods output.
That Grown prevents your species from reproducing organically. It costs two points, but then you get plus 25% organic pop assembly speed and minus 10% pop housing usage. You should create some pops with this trait if you are going for a genetic Ascension and then select them to be bred in your clone vats because they can be grown much, much more quickly.
Fertile gives you 30% pop growth speed and minus 10% pop housing usage for four points. This is very, very good to boost your production. Put this on a bunch of breeding worlds as a genetically ascended empire and laugh as you get lots and lots and lots of new pops. You could then move those pops to another planet and genetically modify them to take away the fertile trait, and thus the pops actually working your jobs will be specially tailored for those jobs, and the pops growing on planets that are growth worlds will be specially tailored for growing. It's uh, it's a bit micromanaging, but it can give you some very good results.
Erudite gives your whopping 20% resources from research category jobs. That's a lot. Minus 10% leader upkeep, minus one leader maximum, negative traits, and all of your leaders get special erudition traits, basically making them better at their jobs, be they commanders, officials, or scientists. You cannot stack this with Intelligent, but you can stack it with some other overtuned traits, so it's pretty darn nice.
Psionic is just a better version of Budding or Crystallization. You get if you have killed the Tän Matriarch. This trait and it gives plus 0.05 monthly organic pop assembly per pop. That's one organic pop assembly per 20 pops. That is wild. This is just so very, very powerful. If you genetically ascend, definitely go and try and find a Tän Matriarch and kill them to grab their DNA sequence.
We've now got the best traits available for overtuned empires. First off is Pre-Planned Growth, which is in essence Fertile. Instead of costing four points, it only costs two. It does give you minus 30 years of leader lifespan, which is a lot, but getting 30% pop growth speed on every single planet at the start of the game is amazing. You'll also get minus 10% pop housing usage, which does help you with your logistic pop growth as well.
Later on, you can modify this trait out as well if you really want to. Elevated Synapse is similar to Erudite, except you don't get the special leader trait. You will get 20% research from jobs, minus 25% leader upkeep, and minus one leader maximum negative traits. Also, you can stack this with Intelligent to start the game off with a whopping 30% research from jobs output right at the start. It's very, very tasty.
There's also Augmented Intelligence, which is the same as Intelligent, granting 10% research from jobs but minus 10 years of leader lifespan, all at the cost of a single point. I'm pretty confident as well that you can also stack Augmented Intelligence with Elevated Synapse and Intelligent to push you up to 40%, however that does come at a cost of minus 40 years of leader lifespan at the start, which is not very pleasant. Yes, you could take Enduring to offset that, but do have a think about your leaders all just dying. It's probably better to specialize one of your worlds early on into a research world and then modify all of these research traits onto that one planet of pops. As long as none of your pops have that planet as their home world, they shouldn't have a leader lifespan reduction. Also, don't accidentally employ any leaders that were born on that blighted planet.
Unruly is honestly still the best negative trait in the game. You get a whopping two points and it only increases your empire size from pops by 10%. That is at a planetary level, so it can be offset by empire-wide reductions. At the start of the game, you will not have more empire size than 100, so there's basically no issue. Later on, it does become an issue, but you can modify it out of your species, and those extra two points are very, very tasty. That allows you to take something like Intelligent or Incubators or whatever you'd like.
Last but by no means least on this tier list, we have Solitary. This increases your pop housing usage by 10% and refunds a single point. This means that during some periods of the game, fractional periods as well, I should add, when you are in between logistic pop growth being below the maximum, you will have slightly less pop growth, but those situations are so fleeting, if you'll pardon the pun, that you really can basically ignore it.
Species traits are only one aspect of your empire creation that defines your civilization. Another integral part is the Civics you pick. If you'd like to see a breakdown of all the Civics available to you as a regular biological empire and see them in a tier list, click the video on screen now.