klingonadmiral said:
The Baol
Baol Organic Plant
Planet Unique Building
Farmers gain +1 food and +0.5 (+1 with Archaeo-Engineers) consumer goods output. Gestalts instead get +1 food, +1 (+2 w Archaeo-Engineers) Energy from Farmers
Provides 2 Farmer jobs
Verdict: Farmer jobs are, at least for normal empires, a job that should be minimized at all costs. Making them somewhat less bad does not change that. But perhaps Catalytic Processing hives can make use of this to some degree. But tbf, the Baol were already a top-tier precursor and didn't need any further help.
I'd agree in general point (that food should come from taxes), but I think you miss the second, third, and fourth step implication.
The second step implication is that catalytic processing is never taken on its own, but in conjunction with other civics or build as a combo. As a normal empire, if you're taking catalytic you're taking or have already taken either Agrarian Idyll or Anglers as well. It's basically a group of mutually reinforcing civics, and Anglers in particular will be going from an already hefty base 8 food job to a base 13 food before modifiers (2 from planet building, 2 from ring, 1 from baol), even as building/orbital ring miners are still base 8. This opens implications of massive pop-efficiency in favor of catalytic processing over other forms of alloy funding, which has second line implications for your ability to rebalance what your internal pop economy does while remaining resilient.
The third step implication is the implications of releasing and transfering systems to vassals. Anglers have their own consideration set for vassal releases as part of their trade-build game with a trade federation, but even without the catalytic combo club, a basic premise of vassal-release strategies is that you want to release the basic resource tributaries so that you can get the most basic resources out of them without paying the sprawl. This building directly supports this, as the +1 food is functionally a 10+% increase to the base food taxes from the planets you're releasing for the purpose of not having to have the food. More situationally, having a farm world you transfer to a gestalt subject is again improving their base economic taxes. It's perfectly fine to get the benefit from not having a building in your empire.
The fourth step though is the implications of a precursor that uses let minor relics for buildings is that it's also a precursor that has more minor relics available for the competing use cases. This includes your minor relic decisions, reverse engineering, or your ship components.
These general points apply to all the precursor buildings, obviously- the point isn't to necessarily spam them, but how they interact with your broader empire strategy and minor relic usage. A building that you only want a few of is not, in and of itself, a bad thing- it means that it leaves more relics for other benefits.
klingonadmiral said:
The Cybrex
Cybrex Mining Hub
Starbase Building
+100% Mining Station Output (+150% with Archaeo-Engineers)
See AlsoStellaris - What Are the Best Precursors? - Gamer EmpireArchaeotechs and their quality (collaborative, contains arguable spoilers)Stellaris Dev Diary #286 - Fear and Archaeotechs in First ContactRare Earth Minerals Discovered Near Sheridan
Verdict: Boring, but can under the right circ*mstances provide serious benefits. Find a system with tons of minerals and/or strategic resources, than plop one of those things down for even more resources.
This is probably the weakest one on a pure building level. The only systems even possibly justifiable on a basic resource basis will be homeworlds, but by the time you have multiple homeworlds, you have no basic resource shortages that would be alleviated by this. It's nominal use case would be the systems with strategic resource deposits that can't have habitats built over them, but this comes at the cost of your starbase emplacement strategy.
This does mean the most minor relics for other uses.
klingonadmiral said:
The First League
First League Filing Office
Empire Unique building, requires upgraded capital building
Empire wide effect: +50 edicts fund (+100 with Archaeo-Engineers)
Bureaucrat, Manager, Priest Unity Output +1
Provides 2 Specialist-level Unity jobs (Bureaucrats, Managers, Priests depending on government)
Verdict: Decent. You can get one world to massive unity output and get an effective 50/100 unity from the building itself, but in the end unity still isn't a crucial resource. But considering that you get a free ecumenopolis, a non-broken building does not hurt too much.
I agree it's balanced, though I think you undersell unity value.
The key point that is that this is a spammable building across the empire, if I've heard correctly, when means a huge investment of minor relics that aren't available for other things. That can absolutely be worth it for the value in edicts, but it's a tradeoff.
klingonadmiral said:
The Irassians
Irassian Naval Yards
Starbase Building
provides an additional shipyard
Ship Build Speed +20% (30% with Archaeo-Engineers)
Verdict: You slap this thing on every single of your shipyards. Great. Finally a reason to not reroll on getting the Irassians.
The Irassians were already good for any empire open for going Bio-Ascension, which is on very strong footing in the current setup. Again, the value of the precursors aren't in individual bonus categories, but strategic synergies.
klingonadmiral said:
The Vultaum
Vultaum Reality Computer
Planet Unique Building
Researcher Physics Output +1 (+2 with Archaeo-Engineers)
Provides 1 Ruler-level Science job
Verdict: A worse Science Institute that does not cost Gases to keep running. And considering that the Science institute is already niche, it's not worth building outside of ringworlds. Would be better if it were Engineering research instead.
Others have already pointed out how rare raw base modifiers are to researcher jobs, and I'll add that the value of the Science Institute is not just the pop-efficiency of the pops (which nearly always outweighs the value of the building slot efficiency), but the third implication is the value of Ruler-pops in the stability game of living standards. The value of a ruler pop in stratified economy/academic privelege isn't always the direct output, but how they support the output of the rest of the planet.
This, in turn, makes this possibly the MOST spammable precursor building, and thus the highest opportunity cost for other minor relics.
klingonadmiral said:
The YuhtYuht Astronomical Interferometer
Starbase Building
+7 starbase sensor range (+14 with Archaeo-Engineers)
+10 hyperlane detection range (+20 with Archaeo-Engineers)
Verdict: The worst precursor gets the worst archaeotech. Even more reasons to reroll a Yuht game.
The Yuht are the hard-counter to cloaked ships not just inside your empire, but inside your target's empire recapturing what you already occupied. That alone would make this a massive quality of life / convenience function in any war where the splintering of fleets is the real challenge, especially in federation wars where tracking fleet movements as early as possible is key to not having to run your own fleet back and forth.
I typically don't draw to other bonuses, but the value of the Yuht in the current setting cannot be separated from their +20% energy weapon attack speed. In an armor-centric meta, which just got more armor-biased with cloaking, when energy weapons are your primary anti-armor weapon, this is a non-trivial good thing.
klingonadmiral said:
The Zroni
Zroni Storm Caster
Starbase Building
Creates an artifical storm that:
Blocks Sensors
Nullifies Shields
Nerfs ship speed by 50%, accuracy by 30% and ship fire rate by 30%
With Archaeo-Engineers: The storm additionally provides a constant 1 point of hull damage/day against all hostile ships
Verdict: Pulsars-on-demand. While the nerfs to accuracy and fire rate suck, in the end those are symmetrical (so your enemy will suffer them as well) and you can build your defenses around high-range weapons focused on taking out armor and hull (perdition beams and tachyon lances ahoy). Probably the best precursor tech. The bonus from Archaeo-engineers seems pointless however, 1 hull/day is simply not enough. Can't wait to see a fully built-up Terminal Egress with amassed ion cannons and a storm caster rip crises apart.
The Zroni is incredibly situational, strategically limited primarily to the difficulty settings where a fully built-up terminal egree amassed with ion cannons and a storm caster is needed to rip crisis apart, as opposed to having the AI steamroll them without your help.
End-game starbase strategy still revolves around not the starbase being effective, but having a fleet in the same system that can win the fight while the starbase and ion cannons provide support. The issue remains that if you have a fleet that can defeat the enemy in your starbase system, you almost certainly have a fleet that can defeat the enemy outside of it, and if you have a fleet that can clearly defeat the enemy outside of the starbase system, the chances of the enemy attacking into the starbase are questionable at best, meaning you'll have to go out and beat them up.
This means that the real strategic use case of this will be in the mid-game... but this comes back down to offense versus defense bias, especially for psionic ascension and the zroni synergies. By the time you complete the zroni chain and have these bases, you should be on the offense, either directly conquering or having buffer-vassals and allies between you and real threats. If you have a buffer-ally, then the defense starbase is almost certainly unnecessary. If you are being thrown back by a superior fleet, then you've made a significant strategic error. This does leave a gap for things like trying to harvest fallen empire tech, but that's about it.
Zroni is the one precursor building with 0 actual economic value outside of combat economic efficiency... which has a solid chance of never being relevant. This does give it being the dubious distinction of possibly having the most minor relics for other things, I suppose.
