How To Assimilate Faster – Stellaris Strategy
How To Assimilate Faster – Stellaris Strategy
Fanatic spiritualist has a basic -30% ethics divergence. Add -10% from “divine mandate” and you start with 40% before lifting a finger. An early tech for spiritualists is the “symbol of unity” at ~150? minerals and no upkeep- this gives 10% more. Down the collectivist tree you’ll get -20% from “frontier commissars” technology and another -15% from the “ministry of benevolence” you can build on your homeworld- this is empire wide.
Slavery: its the nuclear option. Enslaving too many non-collectivists will skyrocket your “malcontent slave” faction. This is a short-term solution for populations you just need that extra push to assimilate. Particularly early game while trying to assimilate a xenophobic or opposite ethos (in this case, individual/material pops), you can enslave everyone to gain extra ethics convergence. I think it caps their unhappiness so it doesn’t tank ethics divergence as much… but it definitely works. Again, this is a short-term solution. Having over half your population as malcontent slaves will lead to rebellions you’ll need to staiton multiple armies to oppress, whle dealing with sabotaged buildings, unrest penalties, riots, and the underground railroad running off with your pops. If you have to do this, also run the happiness/reeducation edicts with your highest level governor. Hopefully you can make a breakthrough before everyone goes apeshit. Then emancipate the rest or just leave them if you feel like you can handle the faction now.
I HAVEN’T EVEN TALKED ABOUT GENERIC OPTIONS YET! All of the above are just from ethics choices.
On top of those, you have +2% per level of your governor in happiness, -10% divergence/+10% happiness from planetary edicts. Eventually you can learn the social welfare +15% happiness empire-wide edict to go with an “information quarantine” -10% divergence (at the cost of research). These last two drain 1 influence a turn each, but are much more efficient to run on large empires. IIRC, the ship shelter provides less ethics divergence than a planetary administration, so check for this when conquering. If your enemies capital had the empire-capital-complex it’ll have been completely torn down on their homeworld (only one per empire), so you’ll have to build a shelter->upgrade it. Same with any recent colonies of theirs (still has shelter). If habitibility is a question, you can always try raising that to raise the cap on happiness, or genetically engineer the pop to be more suitible to its world/move it. You can also genetically modify populations to have the communal trait for +5% happiness or conformist for -20% divergence.
Also, you can try the liberate->vassalize->integrate path for populations you either know you can’t handle or just otherwise can’t afford to handle. Instead of ceding planets, choose liberate. The trick is to not chop off so many planets you can’t just turn around and dominate it diplomatically. Once vassalized, you wait 10 years and integrate them. Its costly in terms of influence per planet, but it will help convert the people to your ethos.
EDIT: I almost forgot about strat resources. Teldar crystals and Lythuric gas give +10% happiness and -10% ethics divergence (respetively) empire wide, with double that bonus on its home planet. If you can’t find them yourself, regularly look at other empires and try and trade for them. Empires that have nebulaes are where you should look first- many SR have a higher spawn chance inside them. Space kittens (alien pets) can be used to build +10 happiness zoos, but this is on a planet-by-planet basis, not an empire-wide solution.
Aaaand one final note. Be aware that in terms of stabilizing a population, ethics divergence > happiness. Happiness debuffs cap at 0%, but they can continue to accumulate. Thus, if someone has -75% worth of reasons to hate you, they’ll need 76% reasons to love you to break 1% happiness. Thus, if that some -75% hatred has a population at 0% happiness, adding 10% happiness (from space kittens) will still leave them… at 0% happiness. On the other hand, ethics divergence will always show an effect.
