Tips for setting up a Driven Assimilator? (2024)

civic: more minerals
cyborgs: negative trait can be minus happiness and habitability, as they are irrelevant stats. positive: i went for intelligent and thrifty, and longer lives. maybe add faster growth instead.

so my bots do all the mining and cyborgs do the rest.
you can snowball pretty fast, remember you dont need food for your pops to grow

Second civic: Rockbreakers
Bots:
+ Logic Engines/Learning Algorithms
- Uncanny/Bulky
Cyborgs:
+ Industrious/Very Strong
- Decadent/Solitary/Deviants (all three no effects)

Strategy:
Bots do research and unity. Immortal leaders, they lvl faster with learning algorithms, and you should find ways of expanding leader lvl cap later in the game, for the early to mid they'll quickly go to lvl 5. That's why you first pick learning algorithms and only later Enhanced Memory. You will avoid leader cyborgs in this strategy, focus on immortal high lvl bots instead. Uncanny won't do much for someone who got -100 relations with organics and will likely go to war and gemerate threat, Bulky you'll never have to resettle bots, only cyborgs, who will be the ones colonizing too. Bots you simply build.
Cyborgs: they do minerals, energy, and provide a powerful army. You will pick very strong over thrifty in this strategy, as much of your energy will come from starbases anyway. Your very strong cyborgs will help you quickly conquer the enemy.
Also, you can assimilate organics for unity and then amalgamate them for 8 energy/pop for more than a decade, it's quite helpful in the early/mid game, and later you can fill the planets with your own perfect cyborgs. You'll amalgamate them with no unrest, feels like exterminators on easy mode. That more than compensates the lack of Thrifty trait.
Later you can increase leader level with Transcendent Learning, which combined with Enhanced Memory will give you lvl 9 leaders, and then Adaptability Peak Performancy will increase to 10, so you don't need Factory Overclocking as third civic later. Third civic you pick whatever you want, you can even dismiss Rockbreakers by then.

TheTam said:

civic: more minerals
cyborgs: negative trait can be minus happiness and habitability, as they are irrelevant stats. positive: i went for intelligent and thrifty, and longer lives. maybe add faster growth instead.
so my bots do all the mining and cyborgs do the rest.
you can snowball pretty fast, remember you dont need food for your pops to grow

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Soo imo this is bad advice. You get a building that ups energy and minerals with yoir cyborgs. Soo set your cyborgs up for energy and minerals and your machines for science.

The building is in a unity tree the far right one forget its name right now. Go for that fairly quick.

+10% mineral civic is the way to go as you want to spread out fast and get a large mineral income asap. Going to war a little early can pay off with these guys as you assimilate planets fairly quick.

Also your unity will suck. Try to find a artist enclave asap and buy their unity stuff. It will help keep your unity a little more reasonable.

Edit: starbases with anchorages can really hep you get your naval capacity up for earlier wars. Paricularly if your playing on higher difficulties and with one if the good ai mods.

TheTam said:

Positive: i went for intelligent and thrifty, and longer lives. maybe add faster growth instead.
so my bots do all the mining and cyborgs do the rest.
you can snowball pretty fast, remember you dont need food for your pops to grow

Click to expand...

JMensch said:

Cyborg traits: Intelligent, Slow breeders, Natural Physicists

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Did the cyborg building get nerfed to the ground when I wasn't watching?

For me, I always went Thrifty/Industrious cyborgs with happiness/ethics penalty traits while my robots are "smart" (forgot the trait name) and capable leaders, while making them slow to build and ugly to look at.

pryr said:

Assimilators have "Neuro-Electric Amplifier" (synchronicity tradition) that grants +15% to mineral and energy production for cyborgs. So obviously good way to play is tweak cyborgs for energy/minerals and bots for science. Also, building itself produces 2 energy/ 2 minerals, so it can get double adjacency bonus from capital.

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That. It is really important to focus the Cyborgs on Minerals/Energy. Focus a bit more on energy then minerals. Especially as they do not benefit from Pop Maintenance reductions.
Pop growth is actuallly a big factor. So do not pick poor habitability and growth traits.
The Cyborgs also make really good Armies.

Civic: Minerals

Metal:
positive: research bonus, bonus leader level cap
negative: anything will do , I prefer extra mineral cost (early you won't need to build machines) and /or extra time to build
Bio:
positive( version #1): minerals + extra strong -> good for early ramp up , and cheaper(less armies need for same effect) conquests at first primitives then neighbours
positive( version #2): minerals + energy -> imo better for energy balance very early in the game
negative: anything affecting happiness, reaction mauls in diplomacy, extra cost for pop transfer (hurts but it's acceptable )

Strategy is to use metal(machines) for research, unity from nodes and keep their leaders (I still prefer bio leaders for governors). Early you do not produce metal (no research
investments early) only once you develop minerals and energy. Rest (energy and minerals and some unity from special buildings) is worked by bio pops ides is to get
assimilator special buildings (neuroelectric something) to get 15% bonus on bio pops for energy and minerals.
Your goal is to assimilate new pops from primitives and latter from regular empires tis will improve economy fast (you will get not only pops butr also buildings).
If you have energy shortages you can set conquered species for chemical processing .. they will die in 15 years but in mean time it will produce 8 energy (unafected by
anything) but you can disable this policy after 10 years (and reenable 10 years latter).
Do not expect good relations with bio neighbors at best they will tolerate you (being strong helps) only machine empires will like you but once you start killing off your drone
species they will start to hate you , they start slowly dislike you for primitive annexation, and conquests (threat). Only determined exterminators are capable to overlook
your bad actions - in fact they are best most reliable allies.
Preferably try to get bio pops with traits that are better at enery or mineral production, races with optimal habitat diffrent that your starting bio. Others are either to have population controls enabled or just destined for chemical processing.