Ultimate Feudal Society Build for Stellaris – The Void Dragons – Updated for Overlord
This build for Stellaris is something special and probably my favourite.
There are all sorts of interesting things going on here. It is both tall and wide at the same time. It is a leader build. Also it is a unity build. It is an influence build too. Although more martial than the Diplomat Build it is still a good build for becoming the Galactic Emperor.
The primary species combines the Lithoid species traits with the Void Dweller trait for slow growing primary pops. This is fine because our primary species will only be rulers and leaders. Lesser species will do the work.
We will become a multi-species civilisation through conquest. Authoritarian will default newly conquored species to be chattel slaves but most will probably be promoted to residency.
Importantly no other species will ever get full citizenship. This is to prevent our leader pool becoming tainted with species less optimised for making quality leaders. Stacking Lithoid with Venerable will give our leaders very long lifespans.
We also have the fun Feudal Society civic which does interesting things for leaders, especially governors. It also allows some interesting things with vassals.
Combining Feudal Society with Void Dwellers will allow us to spam governors across numerous micro sectors. Governors usually have upkeep but Feudal Society makes them give unity rather than cost it.
There is a fantastic and convoluted strategy I would use to weave using all these elements into a powerful but quirky synergy. First let us summarise the initial build.
Initial Void Dragon Build Recipe
- Government: Imperial
- Civics: Feudal Society, Philosopher King (3rd Aristocratic Elite)
- Ethics: Authoritarian, Militarist and Spiritual
- Species Traits: Lithoid, Void Dweller, Venerable, Quick Learners, Unruly and Sedentary
- Origin: Void Dwellers
- Preferred Federation: Hegemony
Overlord Update to Feudal Society
Unsurprisingly given the changes to vassals made in Overlord, the very vassal focused Feudal Society has had a few changes.
Feudal Society still plays much how it did before. Except in place of vassals being able to expand on their own, you can not now disallow them from expanding in your contract with them and a few other things.
However you get extra loyalty from them and no penalty for having multiple vassals. That was an issue for me playing The Grand Fleet recently.
All in all, Feudal Society looks like an ideal civic with which to explore Overlord’s new vassal mechanics. Which of course makes the Void Dragons an extra fun build to try out in Overlord.
Strategic Analysis
The Void Dragons are a good balance of martial and economic power. As far as the wide vs tall dichotomy goes, the void dragons have their cake and eat it. They can have the cheap traditions, edicts and campaigns like a tall empire. All while having the brawn, diplomatic weight and strategic spread of a wide empire.
Leaders
The species is geared for making great leaders, they learn quick and have very long lifespans. Lithoid and Venerable together adds +130 years to leader lifespans. This means Void Dragon leaders will level up faster and stick around at high levels for longer.
This synergises with Feudal Society which gives us cheap leaders and Philosopher King which reduces the chance of Governors and Rulers picking up bad traits.
Skillful rulers increase the Edict fund. Skillful Governors reduce empire size from pops, increase pop productivity and reduce crime.
Flying Fortresses
Void Dwellers together with Feudal Society allows us to create unlimited micro sectors anywhere. Micro-sectors could have all sorts of interesting tactical options especially with Feudal Societies expanding vassals.
One use is to allow us to play very tall while still having owned shipyards spread all over a vast map spanning empire.
The Void Dragon Play Algorithm
Flip from Expansionist to Isolationist diplomatic policy before unpausing. Later we will flip to Belligerent or Supremacist but at first we are going for unity not outposts.
Early research preferences will be for weapons and ship techs. Planetary Unification is a grab too.
Explore
Optimise initial colonies for alloy and unity production. Build a lot of science ships. Set them to explore to find nearest neighbours. Then have them play the anomaly game hard. Most initial research will come from investigating anomalies.
Discovery tradition first for map the stars edict.
Construction ship will go to sleep to save alloys. No outposts will be built yet. The alloys and influence will be saved for building a fleet and claiming our neighbour’s planet systems, preferably all of them.
Conquest
Supremacy tradition now, probably to completion. Alongside and after Supremacy we will go for Domination. Build massive fleet then serially conquest war for the claims. Prefer normal organic empires as targets not gestalts, especially at first. We can not use their drone pops and as void dwellers we can not use their planets directly without subjugated pops.
Once we have some subjugated peoples then we can colonise former gestalt planets with them.
Exploit
If we take all an empire’s planets then all the systems we did not claim will be abandoned as the empire dissolved. This is good. We can then have a chance to have our science ships go over that ground for anomalies and see which is the very best systems.
Only the very best systems will be taken for direct ownership in order to stay tall. Later we will create some vassals from some of the conquered planets. They can then reclaim the poor systems we did not bother with. Our vassals can then give us a wideness without hitting our Empire Size.
Policy Check
Importantly, disallow land grabbing policy before winning! Land grabbing is on by default for authoritarians. However this policy if very bad for void dwellers! Our pops will take the best jobs on the planet but our pops are absolutely miserable on planets even if Lithoid gives them passable habitability.
Stratification living standards give rulers lots of political power. This is fine if they are happy but grounded Void Dragons will be very unhappy and this will absolutely smash stability.
Species Stratification
Our dragon bois will rule from the stars in their sky castles where they are happiest. The ruler and specialist jobs of conquered planets can be given to dirtsider subjects.
We will keep slavery as the default status for newly conquered pops but in most cases we will upgrade them to resident status so that they can take the planet side specialist and ruler jobs.
Once the best systems of a conquored empire have been sorted into keepers and vassal fodder. Then we will let one or two planetary systems become vassals to fill up all the empty space for us.
Sky Castles and Planetary Plantations
The better planets will be kept to support our orbital habitats with resources. As more and more research, minerals, energy and alloys is sourced from our planetary plantations we can convert our habitats over to unity, naval capacity and trade production.
Perhaps we could grab a few traditions from Mercantile to allow nearly unlimited Merchant jobs on our habitats. Also we could get Aristocratic Elite for a few more ruler jobs too.
Hegemony
When the Domination tree is done we can put a few points in Diplomacy to unlock Hegemony Federations. With many weaker vassals we can comfortably stay in the top position of this Federation indefinitely.
Now it is simply a matter of leveraging our hegemony for making our hegemony ever larger with more and more vassals. In time we should have the diplomatic weight to get on the Galactic Council, become Galactic Custodian and then finally become Galactic Emperor.
That is it for the Void Dragon build and strategy guide. Do you think it sounds fun?
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