Traits Discussion – Stellaris

I’m hoping that the more experienced Stellaris Pro’s can educate me on the traits for species because I find some to be “must takes” and others to be barely a detractor.

1. Taking “Intelligent” each and every time is hard to pass up in a game where science really is king.
2. Rapid Breeders (pos) / Slow Breeders (neg). It’s +10% either side of the ledger here. I never pick the negative but I am tempted to considering some of the math that’s popped up on this forum indicating how little population growth buffs actually do due to Paradox calculating it in a very ridiculous way.
3. Talented and Quick Learners……….always seen it as interesting but……can somebody shed some light on if that trait(s) is remotely worth the points? Talented leader cap +1 I think doesn’t register for me as being worth it but buffing the experience gain by 25% does seem worth.
4. Traditional. Unity from jobs +10%. I kind of think its good but I’m not fully comfortable saying I know exactly what it means. What each worker (who’s employed) contributes 10% unity greater than normal? Where is that calculated? How is that seen?
5. Communial: -10% pop housing usage. Seems like a useless pick.
6. Solitary: +10% house usage. Seems like an easy to take slap on the wrist to free up a point.
7. Charismastic: +20% amenities from jobs. I think this is not worth its 2 cost as all the games I’ve played I have not had issues with amenities at all.
8. Conformist/Deviants: Ethics attraction or deviancy. In the positive case I don’t think ethics attraction seems to have an impact in my games much. But then again perhaps because I’ve never picked deviancy. Interested to hear more.
9. Decadent -10% to happiness. Again slap on the wrist penalty it seems. Happiness I felt before Le Guin made an absolute difference to output and it was visually easy to see each pops happiness. In Le Guin I don’t even notice it.
10. Resilient: +50% army defence. I guess this could be good if you were Turtling hard. But my idea has always been if you’re at the point where you’re getting invaded and have no Navy to ward that off. You’ve lost already.
11. Weak” -2% worker output and like -20% army damage. Again seems a slap on the wrist. 2% is not much when you think of the sheer number of output buffs available in the game in short order. Army damage? So what. If you’re at the point where you can invade systems you can just build a fat stack of 600 DMG army and wipe away. If didn’t work. Repeat.
12. Venerable and Enduring Traits for your leader. On these ones I feel there needs to be a total re-work. Leaders these days in all my games so far have all been “Fine”. Nothing wrong with any of them. Having them live longer hardly seems to offer me anything. If I had a new leader once every year I doubt I’d notice a thing.

So why are these traits still as they are for point 12?

Anyways interested for posters to educate me more because it seems there are a small handful of must get traits and a large number of mediocre to useless ones.

Answer

Intelligent is indeed hard to pass up.

yep, Quick Learners better. there are many easy ways to increase leader cap. not so much exp gain to get to that cap before they are 200 years old. I often take this.

Traditional: problem with any unity traits imo is that late game unity production essentially becomes worthless. can’t remove starting traits. just don’t waste your perk slots on shitty perks and u’ll be fine. 10% isn’t exactly that much for something that slows down so damn fast. tech, on the other hand, doesn’t really slow down anywhere near so much.

Communal: I like to put on later by gene modding. certainly not as a starter trait though, but housing takes districts, which are almost always better spent on resource districts, esp mining, then farms, lastly energy. (arguably, even clerks are better than technicians as they can also make “minerals” via consumer benefits, leaving more for juicy alloys.) Solitary is fine malus early game, but not as good as non-adaptive which gets 2 points for 1 pick, and only costs u a bit of consumer goods. Solitary also forces you to build shitty city districts though or suffer stability (and production) loss: as the production districts have 2 jobs and 2 housing. Oh and workers will all try and take the clerk jobs.

Charismatic is plain trash imo, but I wouldn’t take repugnant as amenities malus causes unhappiness.

Decadent isn’t even a malus if you run syncretic and/or have slaves. and it boosts +auth attraction which is otherwise almost impossible to get.

Resilient, Weak yes, basically.

Venerable/Enduring the value in this (and quick learners) is that you get to benefit from a max level leader for much longer. lvl X governors give a big production bonus. science is king. and venerable can basically get you through the entire game with only your starter leaders, they never die and are permanently max level. by the time they would die you heave already researched more lifespan.

Many of the lesser/more specific traits imo are good to add in later as gene modding: only ones u need to bother min-maxing are your starter traits as the positive ones cannot be removed.

Original Link – Continuation of discussion