TL;DW: The Psionic Efficiency potential of KotTG is pretty insane, while a few bonuses slipped my mind, we were still sitting at around 350% Psionic Efficiency, though I'm pretty sure the current maximum is somewhere around 392% or maybe a little higher, higher certainly if you put Shroudshaper on your gov instead of your ruler for the chance roll.
TL;DW: Psionic Shroudshaper is absolutely absurd, specifically >!the civic's council position, which, when used properly, can allow someone to reach an easy 350% job eff for every single job in your entire economy!<
This one was a bit of a blast to record, though I'm using a new mic, let me know what y'all thing about the audio difference for those who've seen one of my videos before.
No second video this week, got back from a trip feeling jet lagged to hell and back
TL;DW: Arkships in general make it easy to chase the storms, but Storm Chasers drastically improve the consistency and speed upon which you can do so, leading to you being able to chase massive bonuses for specific build types, priest focused in this video. This is specific to 4.5 given Storm Chasers was an open beta origin for arkships.
I will note, I would've used the Storm Dancers, but the attraction and repulsion buildings are currently glitched, at least last I checked, so it wasn't particularly worth it to chase a 10% efficiency when you cant fully obtain the full suite of bonuses.
Other videos posted this week:
Tuesday Theme Build:
Halcyon Holdings Corporation Inspired Build: https://youtu.be/4uKY2WK7_Rg
TL;DW: Frozen Assets + Free Traders + Overtuned, Authoritarian "Xenophile" Militarists
I have to admit, after the Nomads of the Toxic God build my midgame perception of what's normal for research was warped af to the point I had to re-record when I realized Nomadic Toxic God is just absurd XD
But honestly Nomadic Evo Pred is honestly the best direction for the origin, it just frankly synchronizes perfectly with the concept of Evo Pred, going around everywhere and eating everyone, with the beauty of fast situation evolution that results from it.
TL;DW: Barbaric Despoiler + Experimental Sentencing Evo Pred, going around and eating and enslaving the entire galaxy into our science matrix to output a hell of a lot of science from a minimal research populace by abusing orderly eff bonuses.
Likewise, here's this week's Tuesday Theme Build:
Fallout 4 Institute Inspired Build: https://youtu.be/aCI_MPe0EIc
TL;DW: Technocracy + Experimental Sentencing + Syncretic Evolution = Massive tech rush with very little effort
The open beta is here! (And has been for a little bit lol) and with it comes a swath of new origins Nomads can utilize!
The most fascinating of them (IMO) being Knights of the Toxic God, which, for those of you who do not know, turns your former habitat into a special arkship, possibly unique based on your choices, and frankly, its midgame research potential is absolutely insane!
TL;DW: I utilize Knights of the Toxic God with a military arkship, Citizen Service, Meritocracy, Recursive Learners + Very Strong to get absurd growth, honestly folks though, if nothing else you need to try Nomadic Knights for yourself, it's an absolute blast that removes so many of the downsides of the Knights, and it just feels like such a pure upgrade to an already great origin
On top of that, we've released two other dwarf theme videos this week:
Deep Rock Galactic Inspired Megacorp:
https://youtu.be/CDjC3L828Fk
TL;DW: by stacking Overtuned, Augmentation Bazaars, Free Traders, with the 3 trade traits associated, you can start out the gate with an insane +75% trader eff from traits alone. Absolute blast I won't lie
Embracing the Dwarfpill:
https://youtu.be/xwBgTICV1qA
TL;DW: Subterranean + Mining Guilds + Planet Forgers (for the volcanic), not the strongest build, but for a larp it's a great time and frankly has good synergy in multiplayer
(Note: this does not apply to the Open Beta)
Star Seekers is just absurd in its many interactions in the game. This build goes from an early 5 year ascension into a cloning civilian build, the pop growth during a festival got up to 100 peeps every month from the base 33.
TL;DW: Star Seekers has interesting interactions with unity events that in the right circumstances can allow you to reach your species ascension consistently by year 4 or 5 when merged with origins like the Sacred Path.
They are thinking a ***100% Eff and 100% OUTPUT TO ALL JOBS*** will fix the "+1000% is too OP"
>Star Seeker Celebrations now provide +100% all Job Efficiency, +100% Resources from Jobs, +100% Pop Growth Speed, and -75% Diplomatic Weight from Economy.
I hate to break the bad news, but this is going to do them so much worse than a base 1000% to specialist EFF
Let me paint the picture, not including any other bonus except High Priests from Exalted Priesthood, and the ***base just +x unity per 100 elite jobs*** from Sacred Path alone every 100 elites will be producing fucking 56 unity a month, a total of 112 for the baseline 200 elites you start with.
Again, repeating, this is not including any other bonus from traits or civics, this is pure star seekers + the +1 from High Priests + the 8 unity per 100 from the sacred path.
I cannot understate this folks, unity rushing is about to be so much worse than ever in the wake of this open beta.
It's just pure mechanics, but the mechanics are total shit. The passengers just function as special civilians, the elite jobs? Not actually elite jobs via testing with cybernetic, the code considers them entertainers, but neither specialist nor elite, presumably not to self-reference given they modify specialist jobs. They get entertainer bonuses, so you'd think someone could probably do something with that given the number of entertainer civics but NAH, they're really iffy on the entertainer civic based bonus, they don't get the unity bonus for example, but for some reason they get the storm dancer physics? What the fuck is up with that?
Overall? It's just a slog fest and fundamentally unfun, it sucks for me because I was really excited for them when I first heard about them, but it's just so underbaked.
I'm sure someone out there can make an interesting build with it as the origin, but I am just beyond pissed out of my mind thinking of any situation for it that isn't purely exceeded by another origin.
Elites? The Sacred Path excels far beyond.
Journeying around the galaxy for the flavor of your origin? Again, Sacred Path.
More interesting origin-based buildings? So many origins and civics already excel at this so much better, hell the science bullshit for the first-class passengers are both done better by technocracy AND the Sacred Path once again. "Oh but you can technically have infinite FCP" I ***guess dawg*** but given they get very little in dedicated modifiers outside of the buildings, you just end up having like 40000k FCPs doing about as much science research (frankly less) as literally 2400 elites in the right conditions, which damn near every elite focused build ***has*** the right conditions for the elites to actually do shit.
Hell, if you do shenanigans, you can literally make the Sacred Path use Technocracy by pulling off the semi-difficult Spiritualist to Materialist shift and just straight output 2 research of every type per 100 elites, which is probably what I'm going to end up trying soon.
I think the theory of Forever Cruise is so cool, I'm just so bummed out the Cruise itself sucks and basically just exists to be a ferry to "oh another relatively difficult achievement that people'll just stack by turning every mechanic off, turning the years down severely, and screwing with the mechanics to get.
Oh and one other thing, it's so fucking micro intensive for literally nothing. "Oh do more micro constantly than every other build combined for literally no payoff just so the build doesn't implode" -Forever Cruise
I dunno, maybe I'm missing something, maybe I'm crazy, feel free to let me know either way.
Sorry for the repost, I realized I got really heated and it came off too much in the title
I keep making new builds, but every time I ask myself a question regarding what I want the build to do, I just always end up coming back to the Sacred Path no matter what the situation is.
Elite build? Easy, Sacred path has a ton of modifiers for that.
Tech Rush? Easy, again Sacred Path, while it doesn't give direct researcher bonuses, it gives a ton of bonuses that still supplement researchers, like making the priests produce research, or having the elites full produce all unity so you can focus on research.
Fanatic Purifiers? Again, Sacred Path, it gives a direction that helps you find people to purge and modifiers to help your economy so you can purge them faster. Embracing Chaos at the end gives armor hardening, shield hardening and evasion
The list goes on, it's so versatile that it's hard to not consider it at minimum if you're going nomad.
Which is awesome tbh. I still need to give the other two main nomad flavor origins more of a chance though, I got insanely bored of Khans and Forever cruise so much faster than I thought I would.
I just want to say, Jesus Christ Starseekers is insane, especially when built up with the Sacred Path's secular portion that focuses on specialists.
TL;DW: A lot of y'all requested this last time so I'll give it now. The Sacred Path has two general paths, the elite path I focused on last time, and the specialist path that I focus on this time.
This game I mostly stack specialist effects to get the most bang for your buck out of Starseekers, and then use that to purge the fallens before mid-game and then do an all crisis run after that, this video generally shows the why and how all that is handled.
Four total military arkships are built, one civilian to handle the full economy, but you get into repeatables around year 80 or so, but this build is very scalable and frankly you *should* make more military arkships than I had, I made the bare minimum to kill a 4th crisis Cetana, just barely enough to inch on by.
I do also have an unlisted that just does the battles for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing, a lot of these were cut out of the full: https://youtu.be/r2l_PAFkg_A
They're 100% going to end up nerfing it, but until then the absurd modifiers provided by the Sacred Path IMO make it the best origin for 4.4.
Edit:
TL;DW: Sacred Path provides a huge number of elite-focused bonuses and elite output. By stacking elite civics and cybernetics on top of it, you can generate absurd amounts of unity (and other elite outputs) very early in the game. This video explores that potential and demonstrates how to get there.
The video explores this as a single arkship, but this build is very scalable given it only relies on elites themselves and no specific single planet focused strategy.
A massive textwall came to us in Dev Diary 424, but overall there's some huge changes coming in 4.4. The Stellar Engine, orbital ring dismantling, war joining/leaving, AI improvements, and a ton of QoL features all stood out to me.
How are y'all feeling about Nomads and 4.4 so far?
Personally, after the EU5 1.3 beta wobble, I was a little nervous going into another major Paradox release, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic about this one.
I also put together a short breakdown covering the diary if anyone's interested.
Lowkey, I think I’ll make a video on this, this was absolute torture, but I got lucky on a couple of +10 take mana off your cabinet member events.
I hope they fix the voting system so you don’t have to do it this way forever because this is stupid.
Ver 1.3 but it’s also accurate in 1.2
They changed how the voting system worked, it's now based on economic base, but for some reason, they didn't notice the elections just straight don't trigger, not even if you're the only person left in the high kingship, ironically though they did remove the free cbs from the lower levels of the high kingship, but never being able to be the high king basically makes Ireland unplayable as you cannot fight the English with the reclaim land cb
It’s surprisingly fire, 7 speed actually feels stable for me now with no graphics change
Tinto Talk #111 is a shorter one, but honestly I think it might be one of the more important dev diaries thus far.
The big thing is obviously that EU5 1.3 is going into open beta, opening today, with the focus being on Italy, the Italian Wars, Guelphs and Ghibellines, balance, performance, and feedback collection.
What stands out to me is that this does feel like Tinto directly reacting to the biggest complaints people have had: situations feeling too passive, performance still needing work, and certain systems needing more player interaction. The fact that they’re planning daily feedback threads and weekly beta updates makes me a lot more hopeful than I was a few weeks ago.
I made a quick 3-minute breakdown here:
https://youtu.be/NyUaBEL6ZdY
And a breakdown of the livestream here:
https://youtu.be/_5psSMR2Z7A
Curious what people think: are you planning to opt into the beta, or are you waiting for the full 1.3 release?
