Biogenesis Empire Builds
Table of Contents
- Tollkeepers (Starlit Citadel origin)
- Solaris (Wilderness origin)
- Predator (Camouflage species trait)
- Caviar Corps (Egg Laying species trait)
- Eccentrica (Spare Organs species trait)
- The Botched (Chromalogs and Nascent Stage species traits)
- The Grand Fleet Updated (Spatial Mastery species trait)
- The Kroot Updated (Evolutionary Predators origin)
- Tyranids Updated (Wilderness origin)
- A Smuggle Population Operation Empire Build
Biogenesis Origin Builds
In this section we will find empire builds featuring the new origins of Biogenesis.
Meat vs the Machines – The Tollkeepers
This empire build uses the Starlit Citadel origin. In this origin we get early access to the new Deep Space Citadel. This origin also allows us early access to the Wormhole Stabilisation technology and puts a wormhole in our home system.
The Tollkeepers are a civilisation of individualist machines who set up shop next to a wormhole. There they hope to exact lucrative tolls from entities using the wormhole as a shortcut. Unfortunately the only entities using the wormhole so far are a mysterious biological empire in meat ships who refuse to pay!
To ensure compliance the Tollkeepers have heavily fortified the mouth of the wormhole with a gigantic space fortress, the Deep Space Citadel.
The Tollkeepers are a Megacorp using the Starlit Citadel origin. They have the Corporate Protectorship civic which has various buffs to starbases that also affect the Deep Space Citadel. The Tollkeepers take Trading Posts for their second civic. This civic has some bonuses to trade, especially for starbases.
The additional starbase capacity is handy because Corporate Protectorship strongly increases empire sprawl for systems and we need to have systems to increase our starbase capacity.
Early wormhole tech is very useful for a Megacorp as it can reduce the cost of branch offices by reducing the distance penalty.
Ethics are militarist, xenophile and materialist.
The Toller species are machines with the Trading Algorithms trait and Quarelsome. Trading Algorithms increase trade output. Quarrelsome is a penalty to unity for bureaucrats. This should be a free penalty because we will get most of our unity from the Inner Focus edict and soldier jobs. Potentially we can also get unity through the market place of ideas policy.
Getting unity from other sources besides bureaucrats also frees up more Tollers to work as traders.
The Solaris Ocean of Thought
This empire is inspired by the novel called Solaris written by Stanislaw Lem. The story concerns a group of scientists attempting to communicate with planet spanning ocean of consciousness. The planet attempts to communicate back by projecting the scientist’s own deep memories back at them as hallucinations.
To recreate this creature in Stellaris we have the new Wilderness origin. The homeworld will be an ocean world and the species traits will be Aquatic.
We will use the Natural Neural Network civic, as this is a planet spanning intelligence. To recreate the creature’s attempts to communicate through hallucinations we will use the Familiar Face civic.
Biogenesis New Species Trait Builds
In this section we will find empire builds featuring some of the new species traits introduced by Biogenesis.
The Predators – Camouflage Species Trait
When I saw the new Camouflage species trait I immediately thought of the hunter alien in the 1987 movie Predator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The trait does not really do much by itself, a small buff to army health and a bonus to physics research, but it was fun to try to recreate an approximation of the Predator’s civilisation with the other options available.
Primal Calling is an excellent origin for representing the Predator’s obsession with recreational hunting.
The Warrior Culture civic speaks for itself but the Galactic Curators civic wants a little expanding upon. Galactic Curators can represent the Predator’s obsession with trophy taking.
For ethics we have Fanatic Militarist but also Xenophobe to allow us to be extremely unfriendly to xenos, including purging and keeping them as livestock.
The remaining species traits probably should include the Solitary trait to represent an individual Predator’s need for space.
Caviar Corps – Egg Laying Species Trait
The Caviar Corps is an empire build built around the Egg Laying species trait. This trait gives the primary species a very strong rate of population growth when enjoying a food surplus.
If we then take the Trawling Operations civic we can have uncapped agriculture districts on ocean worlds for boundless food. Food producing jobs also produce trade resources with this civic.
Trawling Operations also forces the Aquatic species trait for extra habitability on wet worlds as well as increased job efficiency at the cost of decreased habitability on non-wet worlds.
If we take the Ocean Paradise origin we will have a very large planet for many food districts.
As this empire is a mega corp, we suffer additional empire size penalties from the number of planets but Trawling Operations and Aquatic limits the number of planets which are useful to us anyway.
The negative species traits we take will be Permeable Skin and Sedentary. In 4.0 Sedentary increases the cost of resettlement, which will be free for us as we will have few worlds with high growth rate. Permeable Skin further reduces habitability on non-wet worlds, which is again a free penalty as we will not use those worlds with this species.
Finally a food focus suggests using Catalytic Processes for our second civic. This allows artisans and metallurgists to use food as a resource instead of minerals. This enables us to have more workers employed producing food and through Trawling Operations trade resources also.
The best ethics here will be pacifist and xenophile. Pacifist reduces empire size due to pops. Xenophile boosts trade and makes it easier to score commercial pacts for branch offices.
Eccentrica – Spare Organs Species Trait
The Eccentrica have the benefit of the Spare Organs trait but they are the victim of a corrupted wish so they also get Jinxed. See their entry in my Corrupted Wish empire builds for Stellaris here.
The Botched – A Chromalogs Empire Build
Chromalogs is a new species trait introduced with the Biogenesis DLC. It is a bit of weird one with quite a variety of strong effects. The notable effects for this build are a +20% job efficiency for Physicist and Bureaucrat jobs.
I will call this empire build, which is based around the Chromalogs species trait, The Botched Experiment for reasons I shall explain later.
The next thought I had was to combine that buff to physicists with the Dark Consortium civic. This is a civic I had not tried out yet. It is a great fit for a buff to physicists because it provides access to a unique councillor position, The Shadow Weaver, which provides The Dark Matter resource to physicist jobs. And yes, the Chromalogs job efficiency bonus also applies to Dark Matter production by this means!
This fruitful synergy between Chromalogs and Dark Consortium is gamey enough on its own to allow me to get narrative with the remaining characteristics of this empire. So next I am wondering, how does a newly space faring species get such early access to such an exotic resource as Dark Matter?
The obvious answer to me is that they have the Scion origin. They were a species uplifted by a Fallen Empire. Perhaps they were even engineered specifically to serve as Dark Matter workers for their masters.
Now we have a narrative origin, we might wonder if things went entirely as the Fallen Empire intended? Chromalogs is an expensive species trait, so I still have to select some negative traits to balance it. Since The Botched were uplifted perhaps the uplift did not go entirely as intended…
So then we can balance Chromalogs with the equally new Nascent Stage species trait, where your newly born species spend some time as a pre-sapient before being able to do any real jobs.
Now that we have settled the species traits and the origin I feel like this might be an appropriate build to try out the Genesis Arks civic. This civic makes your empire a baby sitter for pre-sapient species. The main benefit is that you get a special planetary feature on every planet called a Genesis Reserve in which you can keep a pre-sapient creature unique to each planet.
This reserve also gives a buff to Society Research jobs and unity jobs on the planet. This civic also allows early access to the Uplifting tech and provides a number of baked in pre-sapient creatures to uplift. After uplifting the Genesis Reserve becomes a Genesis Monument which provides some biology jobs and a bonus to unity jobs.
The narrative here is that our Botched Experiment species having been uplifted, by what they thought were gods originally, now feel inspired and morally obligated to also uplift other pre-sapients they encounter in turn.
This is the story which ties these two very different civics together.
Finally we have to think about ethics to finish the build. Xenophobe is forbidden by the Scion origin and Genesis Arks does suggest Xenophile anyway. So I go with Xenophile.
With these baked in buffs to physicists and biologists, it is tempting to look at Materialist but recall Chromologs and the Genesis Preserves also buff unity jobs. So the Spiritualist ethic also works well.
I like to imagine the Botched half-way see their Fallen Empire masters in god-like terms. Perhaps there is some lively theological debate whether the Fallen are gods or daemons but still they still see them in religious terms.
I do not see The Botched as fanatical in anything so we have one more ethic point to spend. I think Egalitarian works nicely. An egalitarian ethic would explain a desire to uplift their inferiors and may in time explain the motivation behind their eventual revolt against the very masters that uplifted them…
Updated Empire Builds
In this section we have older builds from this site updated to use the new options.
The Grand Fleet
The Grand Fleet Empire is very much as it was originally except we can now take advantage of some new and very thematic species traits.
Spatial Mastery is an expensive trait which makes our leaders still better, important for this empire, and makes armies much more resilient which also useful for this pure military build. It also offers a very decent discount to housing usage, potentially useful and thematic for void dwellers.
For a strong benefit we must balance with strong penalties and so we will take Hollow Bones. This trait reduces worker output scaled to planet size. This penalty is however virtually free for this build as orbital habitats are very small planets. Moreover since this empire’s strategy relies on using the Rapid Early Conquest Strategy to acquire multiple tributaries, we will soon have no need to employ our species as workers at all.
To finally balance the books we are keeping the Quick Learners trait so that our Admirals will progress faster.
Kroot Clans
The Kroot are a minor faction from the Warhammer 40000 universe. They already have a write up in my fantastic Warhammer 40000 empire builds for Stellaris. However one of the Biogenesis origins is a great fit for the Kroot and so we have a revised version of the Kroot here.
Biogenesis gives us the Evolutionary Predators origin which is a very close representation of the way the Kroot can shape their genetics through consuming the flesh of other creatures.
In order to allow us keep xenos as livestock we have to change the kroot ethics from xenophile to xenophobe. Keeping xenos as livestock allows us an extra way of expanding our genetic options.
For the civics, we keep Environmentalist but swap out Death Cult for Crowdsourcing. Death Cult was a very imperfect way of representing the Kroot’s peculiar genetic craft which is much better represented by the new Evolutionary Predators origin.
No other civics particularly leap out as appropriate for the Kroot. I have chosen Crowdsourcing mostly just to try it out.
Tyranid Swarm
The Tryanids are another faction from Warhammer 40k for which I have created empire builds for Stellaris. The Biogenesis DLC, with its biological ship-sets could almost have been made with the Tyranids in mind. Now we can use the Wilderness origin for the Tryanids along with the biological ship-sets. Of course they are still a Devouring Swarm (now a Devouring Wilderness).
I would also replace the Strength of Legions civic for the new Aerospace Adaption civic. This civic reduces the upkeep of biological ships when in orbit of both friendly and hostile planets. It is also increases the bombardment damage by 100%, which is rather terrifying given the Devouring Swarm civic gives them the Armageddon fleet stance!
This would be a nice build to try out the new Behemoth Fury Ascension Perk!
A Smuggle Population Operation Build – The Skaven Revised
Biogenesis also introduces a new espionage operation, the smuggle population operation. Inspired by this addition, I have revised my sneaky pure espionage build to take advantage of it. See here for the revised version of the Skaven Under Empire.
For more great Stellaris articles see here!
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