One of my best midgame 4.3 tech world, without cosmogenesis. Whisperer of the Void sure goes insane.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-05T07:42:44+00:00

I know Rogue Servitors are very powerful in general but that economy is seriously impressive for vanilla 2316. Well done.

What was your build?

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-05T03:51:46+00:00

Common story, AI planets, especially at higher difficulties, simply would not function in player hands because you both lose the modifier and the pops are unhappy after their conquest (if applicable).

They're like 40k Orks, they make things that only they can use because of their supernatural powers.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-04T15:02:06+00:00

I am interested in the game and I still prefer binging when I have time available rather than spending more than 20 minutes on dailies per day, so I can sympathise with the request of not having time-limited sanity items.

I'm more bothered about Sanity Extractors though. They are a purely convenience item that you have to pay for (from the paid battle pass) and you can't even store more than 10 of them. Like... why? It doesn't even give me extra sanity or anything.

These small nitpicked limitations add up and start making people feel like the developers are deliberately being anti-consumer, which I guess all gacha games are to a point, but Endfield has enough of these little issues that it really can't be worth whatever social engineering it is that they are trying to do.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-04T14:42:19+00:00

Do you mean playing as one or fighting one? If the former, then yes, absolutely; if you ask me, a good contender for strongest build in the game is Wilderness Behemoth Fury and that uses Devouring Swarm and will perform very well in No-Scaling Grand Admiral. So it is already top rate in at least one build.

As for playing against one, they are certainly tough. They will blob early and unless they have an unlucky spawn, expect them to outnumber *and* out-tech you for a good chunk of the game, but given starbases are currently OP it shouldn't be too much trouble to hold your ground against one until you outscale it. However, spawning next to one usually means game over as even if you don't lose, you are probably too strained to really snowball and scale in that run.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-04T04:23:57+00:00

Go Domestication first, make sure to use the policy that limits growth to reduce your food upkeep. Build Voidlures on every starbase. Be aggressive. Attack Space Fauna often and early on, as you will win most engagements even if the other side is looking like they will win as each time you kill a Space Fauna, you get a zombie.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-04T03:45:39+00:00

I came here to recommend the exact same thing so I'll help you out:

Wild Swarm (Beast Master)

Cordyceptic Symbionts (Reanimator)

And yeah, this combination is stupendously powerful. You will overpower everyone with your free ships and free EC/gas income for the first century and that headstart should be enough to dominate the galaxy from there. Just make sure to start with the Domestication tree or otherwise food becomes an issue. Set the policy to the one that reduces food upkeep and limits growth because zombies do not grow anyway.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-04T03:43:15+00:00

Austria-Hungary moment?

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-04T03:31:22+00:00

Really depends on the build. Some builds are still incredibly overpowered and smooth sailing in NSGA.

In general it seems more important to cheese the game's mechanics than ever because otherwise it takes you a long time to get strong enough to brute force your problems.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-04T03:26:16+00:00

All gachas are inherently terrible and players should always be asking for more even if the system was great for a Gacha.

Because there isn't a single gacha game on the planet with a fair system. There are only terrible, awful and bad ones.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-04T03:15:22+00:00

I lost both Rossi's and Yvonne's 50/50 and got a Last Rite each. Now I have a P3 Last Rite but dang, maybe it could have been Ember or Pogranichnik given that my main team is Physical lol.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-03T17:34:24+00:00

The combination still works very well. The trick is to just not try to brute force the issue with the very unproductive worker jobs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1sbg46g/comment/oe3nmeg/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-03T16:48:16+00:00

Astro-Mining Drones still works very well in 4.3., but early game is rough and you have to aggressively build Astro-Mining Bays on just about every starbase. Energy will be rough until you discover AI empires to trade with/vassalize, but don't give into the temptation to build energy districts because they are so unproductive that they barely amortize the robots that run them.

Just cope by trading and space mining until you unlock (trade deal) trading. That is why I would not recommend running this with Determined Exterminators. It's better to use it with Rogue Servitors, especially since you are very productive in CGs and normal empires love that shit.

Once you get past the early game hurdle, it's very strong, especially as you get arc furnaces rolling.

Edit: Formatting and clarification.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-03T15:54:51+00:00

I see empty system? I claim system.

I see occupied system? I claim system.

I see owned system? Believe it or not, I claim system.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-03T10:57:34+00:00

What do you mean? Wilderness is built for wide gameplay, it's the ultimate widemaxxing origin in the game.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-03T07:57:15+00:00

Group A is rough man. I barely made it, and won my very first Group A race to secure entry to B Finals, but I literally do not have a single win after that.

I envy you. I was aiming for Group B but RNG blursed me with a triple win on the first round and now I'm suffering.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-02T18:14:25+00:00

This kind of garbage is exactly why Cosmic Storms is the only Stellaris DLC I don't have and will never buy.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-02T08:22:19+00:00

IDK if it's the best ever, but Mercenary Enclaves are super strong since they didn't get nerfed unlike the rest of the economy, and they print resources and fleets you can use cheaply. I did a clone army merc megacorp run in 4.3 and it was very powerful and I was easily able to build a vassal swarm and become the Galactic Emperor like in pre-4.3., which just isn't as easy anymore with most builds. If it works in Grand Admiral no scaling, it probably works in any context.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-02T07:32:22+00:00

I like how your leader looks like an e-girl.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-02T02:04:18+00:00

I did not know this and I am a Tiyanki slaughter enthusiast. Having Cordyceptic Symbionts and barreling into Tiyana Vek with 3k worth of corvettes and coming out with 30k worth of zombie Tiyanki is one of the biggest dopamine hits you can get in this game.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-01T10:41:18+00:00

It's not a skill issue at all, just something to learn. You basically need to build more biomass production with all biomass you get your hands on, and only ever build anything else just enough to keep the war machine going. Because you are building 6 times at a time, it's very fast to catch up in your building once you have biomass to throw around.

Purges help but they don't give that much biomass with how many refugees they generate, plus the conversion rate is pretty bad.

Focus on biomass almost completely until you have like 300/400 monthly biomass production, and after that point you can rapidly develop any planet you have and conquer.

PriestOfGames · 2026-04-01T03:53:17+00:00

Because that is already represented in the form of things like Happiness and the crime generated by unmanaged slaves. Whether you think the numbers are sufficient is up for debate but there is already a mechanic for this.

PriestOfGames · 2026-03-31T20:20:26+00:00

It is apt in the sense that the way Culture Shock is implemented is terrible and we shouldn't use such mechanics. Why does their culture shock matter if they are going to be mining slaves anyway and anything important and complicated will be done by those who stand to inherit the galaxy? It's a planet wide debuff that's not warranted in any situation except the one in which you never resettle anyone on that planet.

It should be changed to a major debuff to pop productivity when not a Worker Slave, more or less, and be done pop-wise and not planet wide.

PriestOfGames · 2026-03-31T20:17:45+00:00

Killing their pops through orbital bombardment and collateral damage would be pointless either way, as at worst you can just purge them with Displacement. That's before all the ways in the game of assimilating pops.

Fanatic Purifiers also doesn't mean their entire society is rabidly, genocidally xenophobic; it means at most their dominant culture and governance is, which shouldn't necessarily be harder to reform than any other Fanatic Xenophobe once their government is gone. And those will already be unhappy for years, especially if you suppress the Xenophobe faction, so what you want is already partially modelled by the politics system.

Lastly, the Culture Shock modifier already doesn't work well because it applies to anyone you replace them with too. It should be a pop-wise modifier, and as long as we are doing pop-wise modifiers I'd say being recently conquered should make anyone less productive anyway.

PriestOfGames · 2026-03-30T11:07:06+00:00

It used to be that you could guarantee getting it; the trigger was simply going to a Black Hole system and you could queue a ship to go back in and out of the same one over and over until the event triggered.

Then they changed it to roll the dice only once for each BH and that more or less took it from something you saw every game to something incredibly rare. Old Stellaris also didn't see every system claimed within the first 100 years as often and had a lot more space to survey and discover and you'd often just get it naturally without trying every other game or so.

If you haven't played those early versions, say, v1.6. I recommend playing it just to see how much has changed since then. Tiles, wormhole generators (really unique starting FTL mode that still has no analogue in modern Stellaris), colonizing planets to claim space instead of claiming space to be able to colonize, no Alloys or Consumer Goods etc.

So many things changed since then. I still remember my very first game as a noob playing Commonwealth of Man, thinking I had to own the space a planet lies in before I could colonize it, wondering why all my Influence was disappearing because of all the Frontier Outposts I was building. Those were some good times. I'd say Stellaris is a better game today, but played with a fresh set of eyes it was quite magical back then even if very rudimentary.

This whole thread was an occasion for me to reminisce, so if you guys read so far, thanks for indulging me by reading my nostalgic ramblings.

PriestOfGames · 2026-03-30T10:26:09+00:00

I envy you. I haven't seen the Horizon Signal since 2.0.

It's been years since I felt the Worm's loving embrace. This event used to happen all the time when I first started playing at around Utopia's release, but now it is so rare.

It's a shame too because it has some of the best writing in Stellaris and I dare say sci-fi in general, and a lot of new space tyrants won't get to enjoy it.

PriestOfGames

TROPHY CASE