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Game play notes 8
There are a few traditions that you can only pick one or the other on, Collectivism vs Individualism is one of them (I believe Foundation and Confederacy are like this as well). I sat on it for a while because individualism is what I usually go with, but thats because I generally don't go wide. What collectivism provides is:
-10% consumer goods upkeep and -15% resettlement cost
+5% monthly unity and +10% governing ethics attraction
+5% resource output on planets with no crime
-15% army cost and +15% naval capacity
Army morale increased by 20% and +5% worker pop happiness
Once completing it we can have an additional edict active.
This is from the Potent Rebellion mod. On one of your planets you click "sow unrest" and it'll effect planets within so many jumps of that planet. It gave a -15 stability to our planets, but I got so many stability stacking that it didn't really work out.
This is the second time I've seen the space race, first time I gave everything equal attention, this time the thrusters, both times failed because of shielding. I don't know if its random or if you should always focus on shielding.
Mega-Engineering is infamous in how much it does not want to show up in your research deck. I've had games happen where I'm hitting the crisis and just would not get mega-engineering, but some other games I can get it like 2030. I'd argue Cybrex is the best precursor simply because you can look into the secrets of the cybrex and will get this tech in your deck until you finish researching it.
And yet, I got this tech before getting Resort Worlds.
I had suspicions this is where the second marauder faction would be, thank god I jumped into the only sector without any hostiles! Jump drives are great for this purpose but just note that there is a 200 day cooldown between jumps and while the cooldown is on your ships will have -50% firepower and speed.
I would like to claim this sector, but it'll require 1k influence.
God look at all of those strike craft! Besides being useful before neutron launchers they just look so cool zipping around
This was unexpected, it seems me wrecking the Mandate ships made the Empire go "oh our rivals are weak!" and declare war. I didn't even do any bombardments because at this point my army numbers are so much higher there was no need to. Then these fuckers came along.
I'm pretty positive this is from a mod, and its great because I don't believe in vanilla there is any way to get relics from other empires. We don't have to conquer to get the relics either, any empire who has a relic will have a CB to take the relic.
Now for the worst part of conquering an AI empire: Fixing its worlds. Not shown: the 10 administration buildings that was on the planet. I tore them all down while the pops were being assimilated, which means they don't contribute to unemployment while they wait to be chromed up..
Thankfully this capital is a relic world, so I can make it an ecumenopolis and put those pops to work. I was almost caught up to my empire sprawl and it went from ~550 to 850.
Koko-Ko is either Siren or Silent Hill. It has Ominous Fog which gives -10% happiness
Everytime it gets dark, a strange dark purple fog starts seeping out of the ground. Our scans show this to be just water vapor, yet there is something strange about it. THe fog moves around as if it has a will of its own.
Red oceans, which gives +22.5% minerals from jobs but -22.5% food from jobs
Very rich in iron, the oceans on this world appear red in color
And our old favorite, Frequent Thunderstorms. So of course I made it out Resort World (which took for GOD DAMN EVER to draw). A resort world removes the vast majority of building options and locks basically every district down. In exchange you get 1 clerk job per 2 pops, every colony gets +15% amenities and +15% immigration pull and the planet has its habitability set to 100%.
Landscaped to perfection and featuring a fully customizable global weather control system, every facet of this world's design is devoted to providing a wide range of vacation options for citizens in need of relaxation
Oh and the building restrictions stuff? Its weird, you CAN build a robot assembly plant, but not a clone vat. Robots are all about nature and shit, yeah? There is an exploit though: Begin building the clone vat then designate the planet as a resort world. Also with the modded districts, most of those lock up too but I can build a suburban housing district and garden districts. I assume if this planet had a tourism district it would also let me build that.
I imagine this is what the vacation sounds like
It also has the Scrapyard District, which provides 2 engineer jobs who give a good chunk of engineering research for no consumer goods.
Now for the other planets we got:
Vish has the Living Planet modifier which gives -15% habitability, -60% food from jobs and -9 max agriculture districts
The world itself is seemingly alive, as in its a single giant organism. It says hello 
Kelck-O and Piuh-Pah both have Colonial Remains, which provides -25% to building and district costs. This is unique to the remnants origin.
Eugizim III has Alien Flora which reduces food from farmers by 2
Exotic flowers, trees and all types of grasses flourish on this world
And Contaminated, giving -10% habitability
This planet's radiation level is noticeable elevated. Not enough to make life impossible, it nevertheless can make it unpleasant.
Lolompi has Dark Skies which... does nothing
Even during daylight hours, this planet receives paltry amounts of sunlight.
I love that it got a tourism district, continuing the trend of our tourists only wanting to go to utterly miserable places.
I believe this is a mod decision. Zro is very expensive to get, getting 1k units had to run me like 30k credits. As a bonus, after it turns into a shroud world we will get 1 zro out of it.
Planet size effects how many districts you can build on the planet, but to use some planetary decisions as well. You need a planet size 15 to make resort worlds and...
Penal colonies! The Prison was a size 6 planet, now its 15. And hey here is a fun fact: An ecumenopolis will NOT be upgraded in size, so make sure you get the perk before it finishes! Making a planet a penal colony only effects the crime rate and the immigration pull, there is no restrictions or anything else to worry about. Whats funny is that even as a penal colony there is 0% crime on this planet.
In a hegemony the president can invite anyone to the federation and they get final say, for whatever reason giving association status to other empires is up to a vote. The Kelbrid just kept blocking it until the federation hit rank 3 and I can set it so votes are based on diplomatic weight and not 1 vote per member.
Another reason I wanted mega-engineering is that its a requirement to build gateways. Every gateway in your empire connects with one another, letting you drastically decrease travel time by peppering them around your systems. I don't need to explain how good it is to have your dedicated shipyards have a connection with the front lines? Oh and when it comes to trade collection to your capital, the gateway also extends it, so make sure you got a gateway in there too.
Macroengineering is all about megastructures, but there are a few bonuses not relating to megastructures in there:
-20% starbase upkeep, -10% ship upkeep and +10% colony development speed
-10% resettlement cost, +30% mining station output and +10% kinetic weapons damage
-10% star upgrade costs and +10% upgrade speed
+15% terraforming speed and -15% terraforming cost
-10% to megastructure upkeep.
Finishing increases megastructure build speed by 20%. Megastructures take a long time to build, every build speed increase is gold.
Our first curse strikes! And its just something that will make a few pops shift to another faction. The horror
Now we're getting into some space structures! This amazing structure gives us 220 consumer goods in exchange for 100 credits in upkeep. This lets me not have to worry about having pops work as artisans. And there are 3 other asteroids in this sector alone...
I was surprised this worked out, though it is kinda buggy. The arcology ring will not be visible unless you go to another world with an arcology, then this one will load properly. And now this planetary habitat that is meant to have a low district count now has 16 districts!
This series of events just kept going and going and going. Just wait till you see the epic payoff next update!
The technology given here allows us to put the "Children of 04" trait on our robots. And it is an amazing trait that gives +10% resources from jobs, -10% robot upeekp and +25% engineering research. Oh and it only costs a single trait point, meaning I could afford to remove the Identifying Gems trait.
All of these events happened at once, nearly 80 years into the game. I found signs of a precursor all the way on the southwestern part of the galaxy, then burned some of my artifacts to get a clue. Then finally the private collector and the other empire selling a relic are supposed to be failsafes to ensure you can complete this chain when you get dicked over by being boxed in and unable to survey. There is another event that just goes "oh hey some of your citizens noticed something weird here"
They really need to put a hard timer on this. I don't think its a lot to ask that maybe these events should fire off I dunno, 30 years after game start?
Cause maybe if I got this 30 years ago I wouldn't be so irate that the passive bonus is now utterly pointless!
On the upside I guess the Yuuht homeworld has an exotic gas deposit. When you find the homeworld of your precursor you also get a chunk of unity, which scales to a max of 9,999.