Stellaris Traits Tier List - 3.5 & NEW Overtuned

[@localcrazyrussian4511]

I love that moment in Overtuned when he says “it’s overtunin’ time” and then he overtuned all over them

[@evill01]

Truly a moment

[@olhi8445]

Truly one of the traits of all times

[@FireballKGK]

“Morbed”

[@troyscribner4342]

Dead meme.

[@Doomsquad99]

I know right. They were all like “you’re about to be turned” and he snapped back “jokes on you youre about to be overturned.”

[@gregoryhuizinga2286]

Fun fact: Noxious with subterranean locks all planets at exactly 80% habitability with no way to increase or decrease it, started a relentless industrialist build with it to see what happens, but seems interesting so far.

[@Nomadic_Gaming]

not the worst thing ever honestly i can see early game this being useful for rushing planets then mod out later

[@TheIncredibleTurk]

Plus free 2 trait points because nonadaptive trait dont give u any debuff

[@TheIncredibleTurk]

Great with mutagenic spa hive build because you dont get any habitability debuff

[@Nomadic_Gaming]

@@TheIncredibleTurk nice

[@nickgrout2502]

80% habitability for just sitting there underground bathing in terrible BO

[@berlindude75]

I wish they would finally add more regular (i.e. non-Overtuned) red negative traits with a cost of -2 trait points specifically (or more). It sucks to always only have a choice between *Unruly* (barely harmful early on and can be removed later), *Repugnant* (harmful early on and blocked by Charismatic), *Nonadaptive* (harmful early on and blocked by (Extremely) Adaptive), and *Slow Breeders* (harmful and usually blocked by taking Rapid Breeders) when creating or modifying your species.

[@Kiwi9552]

I asked about negative traits in the QnA since I thought new ones would've fit the theme of toxoids, sadly didn't got an answer. I assume that they think people wouldn't be excited enough about them, to be worth the developing time or that developing them is either not as fun or more complicated due to having to find interactions, where those would basically free points.

[@Sepaedius]

Frail was a good modded one; it's the equivalent for Very Strong with -30% army damage and -5% worker output. The funniest one from that set was literally just called "Stupid", at -3 trait points and it's just a -10% to research output.

[@CalamitasCalliope]

I'm so glad that Noxious is more niche than Aquatic was. You can pretty much slap Aquatic on any build that doesn't outright ban it and have the build be better. Noxious is actively bad in a lot of builds, but the builds it does work for it works really well. I love how overpowered Aquatic is, but I wish it was actually harmful sometimes so it's not an insta-pick when you're min-maxing

[@pagatryx5451]

Bit late but I think the Noxious pack sucks. Like sure, Aquatic is OP, but in the Noxious species pack, nobody is using noxious-style traits because they're just terrible for everything but really niche builds. Aquatics was admittedly TOO good, but you could make a thematically aquatic species that was very much viable and even was reliant on Ocean worlds. It was really cool. But with Noxious, the best things (both in regards to entertainment and ingame viability) are its Origins. It doesn't feel like a species pack, but a general update. It doesn't feel in fitting with the 'noxious' theme. I was hoping we'd see a species that would be built around Tomb worlds (and ideally) habitable toxic worlds. Maybe with bonuses to alloy production and less food consumption, but increased energy consumption and lower lifespans. If I was making the DLC, I'd go a step further and make their 'niche', strategic resource focused. Basically: Noxious species would be able to more effectively refine resources, and have that technology at the start of the game, but the noxious traits would passively consume strategic resources in exchange for their bonuses. With an ascension perk that allows for the modding of more OP traits that would consume rarer resources (like Dark Matter and Living Metal) in exchange for huge bonuses. Having a species that required a variety of metals and gases to sustain themselves, and being an empire composed of many refinery worlds, reinforces the noxious/industrial theme they were going for. And, like the Aquatic species pack, it would also allow for an ascension perk to 'boost' the species traits in a thematically interesting way. Like having a researcher species with a dark matter addiction, or living matter soldiers/workers, would be really interesting. Species packs should introduce a new species with their own unique method of play. But you're not going to be seeing Noxious species being played in MP games. At least not any deeper than aesthetically.

[@yzm2065]

Thanks for always providing us with clarity on these elements thru your tier lists, since the game is just so complex.

[@MontuPlays]

I hope it helps!

[@zethicalyt2406]

I wanna see a overtuned meta build, and knowing montu, it’s probably coming soon

[@antoineroca1690]

The build is overtuned right now... So its life span is too low for a video.

[@TheStartrek99]

I'm guessing authoritarian overtuned where you don't actually start out with any overtuned traits and immediately overtune a set of pops that you then ban from leadership positions.

[@paweplaczek2191]

would not supprised if its something like budding, permutation pools, preplanned growth.

[@nunaparu1508]

Aquatic, augmented intelligence, pre-planned growth, phototrophic, unruly. If I'm counting the points right then that sounds really powerful

[@paweplaczek2191]

@@nunaparu1508 if you run overtuned you might want to actualy skip aquatic and mod it in later.

[@cmdrtianyilin8107]

Yay! Another Tier list! Always love these. Let me get a beer and a bag of crisps.

[@MontuPlays]

They can definitely get pretty long. I think this covers like 50+ traits now, which was a barmy number

[@cmdrtianyilin8107]

@@MontuPlays I really like your long videos. Thanks very much for upload.

[@dragonjo7550]

i remember a long time ago, building leader level cap plus leader lifespan as a build for an empire, and it actually worked decently. i also remember a month later finding out it was then useless lol. those perks haven't been updated ever, and kind of deserve to be. id smash the +25% exp gain and leader lvl cap +1 together for only 1 point and still rarely take it

[@MontuPlays]

Yeah, the concept is great. I just wish it worked in game. Perhaps leader levels and outputs need a rework

[@dragonjo7550]

extremely adaptive works if you expand fast and colonize everything as a hivemind, along with taking the civic that gives you +5% habitability. you get pretty much 40% minimum habitability on almost every planet. it drops off late game with hive worlds yes, but by then you are already triple the population of every other empire minimum.

[@28lobster28]

@@MontuPlays perhaps if level 1 leaders gave a slight malus and the bonus from higher level leaders was increased, you could see build focused on leaders and lifespan

[@viimmdlii7516]

You should include the acquirable bio traits in your future tier lists, such as brain slugs, limited regeneration, etc. Can’t be leaving my favorite little wormy bois out.

[@alexanderdittrich9743]

They are mostly all S tier, no need to include them into the list :P

[@thomasbrundigejones5780]

It seems like Fleeting is more manageable for hive mind empires which recruit leaders much younger, but I haven’t done the math on that

[@ValiduzZ]

This has been my thought too and often take it with my hivemind. I'm no expert by any means but i absolutely see the value in it.

[@anthonyaguilar2894]

hivemind lithoids so their leaders live even longer

[@alienstar3293]

It’s also fairly simple over the course of the game to get technologies, empire bonuses (like from the tree of life) or gene modding to override and even surpass the fleeting trait for your leaders

[@kai8016]

You remind me of the shouting interview teacher guy and now I can't get it out of my head. Love the video

[@rockswe]

Great list! I do think that several of the bad ones can be good for role playing purposes, but there really are some really abysmally bad traits around

[@frankmuller1196]

I mean like if u r RPing its anything goes anyway , isn't it?

[@rockswe]

@@frankmuller1196 Yeah, I maybe wasn't clear but I was thinking those are intentionally bad but are there for the RP:ers. I agree that with RP, anything goes anyway

[@WhiteManOnCampus]

I always watch through your tier lists. For traits and ethics, you tend to be the most competent of the Stellaris KZbinrs at least in my opinion.

[@VoidicHerald]

I actually got into Montu's content because he really knows the numbers Great to have someone to help me parse the exact outcomes of all these mechanics

[@reflectivegaming9979]

Overturned pop: I’m amazing Imperfect pop: can I see all your traits and modifiers? Overturned pop: not necessary!

[@brylythhighlights4335]

The way I see it, you *could* value Inorganic breath as 4 points of positive, and two points of negative (to get radiotropic) but this just doesn't work out at all because a) you're spending two trait picks and b) this only works for hive minded plantoids/fungoids/lithoids and c) you need to only live on tomb worlds. Even assuming all of those constraints are fine because that was your plan from the start, it STILL costs one point more than it's worth.

[@AliceEucliwood]

KomradTruck made a solid point about Noxious yesterday, Montu, in that its actually extremely broken when combined with the Necrophage origin. Necrophages with Noxious can stack unbelievable modifiiers to their own happiness to the point it basically breaks the game, and according to him, is getting banned as a combination pretty much immediately for competitive multiplayer.

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

I'm not sure why that is

[@geraldvanlaar]

I get the sense that Enduring is going to see more use now with Overtuned species, at least early game. But greed is good, therefore I suspect that the real play is probably to take Natural Sociologist for the research and chance for lifespan upgrades.

[@kotzpenner]

It’s weird that leader lifespan reduction does not decrease pop growth. I mean if you have people dropping in their thirties you won’t have a big population unless you’re going the fast growing insect route. I know that it would make the traits far worse but maybe there could be a rework for pop growth in the future.

[@LG-jn5fx]

I wanted a single leader through my own campaign so I took the +40 extra years. Lion Ho of the Thundercats did not become the chosen one until he was 150 years old so I think I needed it for my goal. Now in the steam roll phase until the crisis arrives.

[@AmryL]

You can hover the mouse over their age and the tooltip should tell you their maximum age before they are at risk.

[@nekonsk]

I sometime lose my place when trying to follow along with which icon matches up with the trait you are talking about at the time. It would be nice if you had somehow to show which trait we are focusing on at the time, like an arrow or a box selected around the trait icon.

[@EyeOfMagnus4E201]

I was thinking with the decadent negative trait that it might work with syncretic evolution and mechanist fairly well in addition to with necrophage.

[@ThatGuyNicho]

Firstly & quickly, this video has me thinking about how the F and C tier Traits could be subtly modded to be a bit better balanced, making them B tiers. I already have some ideas. So if I can find the time I might test out making that mod. Anyway, main point. Montu, I respectfully disagree with you about Extremely Adaptive. I've recently started a few games based around an Empire which takes ExAdp then the Adaptability Tradition tree, for +30% Habitability very quickly into the game. I find this makes a huge number of planets at least Yellow and frequently Green habitability very early, letting me colonise a lot of worlds and get a big starting advantage. I agree it gradually gets worse throughout the game (as Gene Clinics/Terraforming/Habitability Modding) comes in, however as you say in the video, an initial advantage can and does snowball. Particularly as I use either 0 or at most 1 Guaranteed Habitables in all my games. To me, ExAdp is B tier at least. I'm currently using this build with the Planetary Diversity Suite with Reworked Habitability - meaning my species can have a lot of good habitability on a lot of worlds - and Expanded Traditions, which gives another +10% habitability tradition. However, even in Vanilla, I think this would be a decent game.

[@hristsunstrider7817]

I would very much like a tier list for empire edicts.

[@TheIncredibleTurk]

I think noxious underrated because you can stack him with cave dweller trait so your minimum habitability going up to %80 so you are basically can live everywhere like machines but with ethic buffs

[@AeciusthePhilosopher]

It's interesting to see how many of these change once you start accounting for having additional species. Weak and decadent aren't as big a deal when you've got another species filling the worker slots, and as you mentioned leader lifespan or learning is less of an issue on species that never provide leaders. That said the most important thing you didn't mention is that overtuned traits stack with their regular counterparts. So you can definitely have dedicated miners mixed with industrious for some absurd increases in power. Similarly Expressed Tradition probably becomes a lot better on a species that is already Traditional. (EDIT: Though you do mention this later with the intelligence traits) On that note, I suppose you could think of fleeting as turning one of your existing traits into an overtuned trait without the need for the origin.

[@MadArtillery]

One note about exotic metabolism is starting as prospectorum can get you +20 gas from just orbits before the unrest which can make it pretty free very quickly.

[@pierrev6]

Enduring is great with overtuned. You can take the two best overtuned trait + enduring you end up having "only" -40 lifespan

[@AntonKrinichniy]

There is a niche usefulness for the Natural Sociologists trait. If you're planning to go for bio-ascension you rush it first and remove the Natural Sociologists trait later when finish the ascension

[@PerfectAlibi1]

Most times when I'm planning and fully geared towards going bio ascension, I get the Zroni precursor...

[@MrMarinus18]

One addition I think they should make is to have lifespan also affect the population growth. That it influences the cap and makes it less severe. That the overtuned traits also reduce your max population.

[@samueljames0908]

Hmmm. Maybe it would make sense to have ships and armies require a food upkeep based on which races can be in the military. That would give a big reason to have high food production and food reserves. It would also give a big reason to disallow certain races from being conscripted as right now it's pretty much useless.

[@Kaiser282]

Venerable is at least C tier for me when I really don't feel like opening the leader tab. I'm kinda surprised they haven't done anything to make this perk better though. Arguably that's what the overturned was for but I feel like most people, myself included, will just let the leaders die until the research and traditions are done.

[@ulruc]

I might have another crazy scenario for you to try, if you dare of course. I am playing as a Rogue Servitor and I just ate a Toxoid empire. As I wanted to add to them some Unity bonuses as Bio trophy, I saw I could give them the Noxious trait. It could get broken since they share the place with a huge number of robots (who don't care about happiness). The thing is, I am right now terraforming all my planets to be Gaia Worlds (except for the few Relics who will turn into Ecunopolis) and Ring Worlds (started with the Ring origin). I wonder how Noxious will work on a Gaia world :)

[@ulruc]

So, to add to this since I tried a bit myself last night, either the trait does not work with machine pop as neighbors or something is wrong as the happiness of the trophies went down went I added Noxious to one planet of trophies (or maybe they are not numerous enough). Either way, there is also a problem: Noxious is counted as a positive trait so I can't remove it without the tech Gene Tailoring, which is hard to get as a Rogue Servitor.

[@ulruc]

I will add another bit of info: It is because I had more than one species acting as bio trophies on that first planet that it seemed to not be working. As such, the Noxious was happy but the rest were not. When I turned all my Bio Trophies as Noxious, all of them went up to 80-90% happiness, putting all of my stability in the 90%+ on all my planets. Combined with Gaia Worlds, it give a huge bonus :)

[@louiswinterhoff334]

bio trophies already have 90% happiness, so whats the point?

[@ulruc]

@@louiswinterhoff334 This is not what the tooltip for them was saying when I checked. Unless I checked too fast of course. But I definitely saw a 10-15% increase in the approval section of the Pop tab for sure when I converted them up. And my stability also went up.

[@letsplaysvonaja1714]

I think venerable is too low even when there's a lot of modifiers *later* in the game it's pretty nice to have your guys from day 1 survive for the whole campaign especially admirals who don't really get all that much experience when you aren't the most aggressive player ever also you can never have enough leader lifespan, the longer the game goes the more you need >w< althought I might be biased because I did a slightly silly build with venerable lithoid necrophages, those definitely survive the entire campaign unless they get killed >w

[@MrMarinus18]

It's also that high leader levels just are not a very powerful thing in general. The bonuses are nice but not critical as a scientist of a lower level with the right specialization will still easily outcompete a scientist of a higher level without.

[@letsplaysvonaja1714]

@@MrMarinus18 but your scientists working on anomalies or the infinity machine can never be high enough in level

[@MrMarinus18]

@@letsplaysvonaja1714 Of course it does help but the effect just isn't that big.

[@therealspeedwagon1451]

You should’ve talked about the ethics attraction that comes with having certain traits and how that can make them better or worse. Weak pops for example have increased pacifist ethics attraction while having pops with the repugnant trait increases xenophobe ethics attraction, and vice versa for charismatic pops. And finally having pops with the decadent trait increases authoritarian ethics attraction.

[@HoneyBadgerVideos]

Really?!

[@ApocRNG]

Incubators is arguably SS+ tier, its a must have for starting your game competitively.

[@MontuPlays]

Well, first I'd say the tierlist isn't balanced just for multiplayer. Then there is also the annoying mirco element required for incubators to really shine, and if you don't want to micro/ modify your pops, you'll end up with -10% pop growth on most planets after the first 30-40 years which is quite unpleasant. For Void dwellers, it's 100% SS. And to survive a year 30 war it's probably going to be very meta. But across a few hundred in-game years iI think it deserves it's place in A tier

[@loveluclins]

A couple of these seem really odd. 1. rating industrious over the overtuned version, which is literally cheaper at only a mild cost, letting you fit in better traits alongside it. 2. Nonadaptive has to be considered with overtuned's endurance. This effectively makes the combo give you a net 50% habitability (with the overtuned edict) that partially pays for itself for only 1 point, two trait slots. Sure, your leaders will suffer, but you're able to effectively squeeze out an extra 10-25% growth on each early colony, and be able to use them as effective planets! This is an underrated combo when focusing on pop growth and needing the extra space. 3. Engineering research trait seems overrated as well. Don't get me wrong, it's good, engineering is the best tree. But is it as good as the super cheap intelligent trait from overtuned? No, it's leagues below that, even though you can combine the two. 4. Probably the most overrated perk. But sedentary. Why is it that high up? Compared to solitary or even wasteful consumerism. Migration = pop growth. At least if it's below, or above the normal value of 100%. The way migration works, this means that if you have a colony attracting 2growth/month, only 1.7/month will arrive. you're now bleeding 0.3 growth/month, the equivalent of rapid breeders... This can be especially bad with multiple new colonies, or distributed luxuries. Trap trait for sure. Especially when Montu himself considers growth to be the end all be all. 5. Budding is not as powerful as rapid breeders early game. The early game is far more important than the mid-late game, otherwise it's only good on hive game-start. A lot of the growth is wasted thanks to the monthly increase growing with pops per empire, meaning you really need clone vats just to use the trait effectively. It doesn't really belong in the same tier. 6. Pre planned growth is probably the most powerful trait in the game right now. With the edict you're getting a whopping 60% more growth. It's not balanced in the slightest. 7. Where's the lithoid trait? >:O 8. Where's them ascension perk traits? >:O 9. Where's them unique robot perks? >:O

[@UnknownTuber450]

I was not expecting this today, but I will not complain

[@Valiguss]

I’ve made a Overtuned build with +40% to all research it’s going really wel

[@Level30Commoner]

30:00 minutes mark broken. Still going strong. Thank you very much! I was unsure how the recent changes affected your last tier list which I last referenced two days ago. 🤗

[@ryanwinters9375]

I love the minus leader, experience and leader level traits as their perfect to give to slaves or other species that you’ll never become leaders in the first place

[@TheSpectralFX]

I love that the idea I had way back to make an aquatic ravenous swarm that rushes tech with intelligent and rapid breeders is still out there as a very meta option. Also... how about running lithoids to counter-act the leader life span lost from those overtuned? Would that work?

[@louiswinterhoff334]

Yes, that would work, but you'll need to counteract the massive pop growth reduction that lithoids get. I'm sure it would be easy enough to accomplish but still something to consider.

[@meowzibub3525]

Hear me out. I would put volatile excretions far higher up if you have an origin that gives your home world alot of expensive blockers as it makes it far cheaper and easier to gain the benefits of clearing them early on.

[@grealalal]

Hi Montu, the greater good kroot painter here. Im just here to comment on the secret callout while still painting my kroot and listening to this great list :3

[@bilgemadamseyis1414]

Great, now we need a necrophage playthrough so you can show us how to properly min-max traits when we have 2 species. I've seen Komrad's playthrough but his was more inclined towards multiplayer where you need to pick either master crafters or aquatic.

[@MadShimmin]

I'd like to see more negative traits with higher point values as it would make for some fun roleplay options alongside the positive ones.

[@PerfectAlibi1]

Montu's tier lists are so very geared toward HIS preferred play style. When they should be more looked to with ALL play styles in mind.

[@someone-pz4dg]

That's how a tier list works

[@ShadowoftheMask]

I mean, adding in venerable when you get bio ascension to keep your overtuned leaders alive is nice :D

[@pieterfaes6263]

Some of these traits really could use a bit of tweaking with their numbers. It's a bit dull that Unruly is almost always the go-to negative trait, although sprawl atm is just too insignificant making generating pops that important. Cohesion is just not that important currently.

[@srslyno5809]

Is that true that Traditional and Expressed Tradition give identical bonuses? I sort of assumed that the little work helmet on the pop for Traditional meant just workers and the lack of hat for Expressed Tradition meant specialist, in which case the latter applies to more of your core Unity builders. If not, TIL.

[@redtsun67]

Let's all take a moment to remember that nearly every single one of these traits, regardless of cost or benefit, has value in roleplaying scenarios, which is where most of the fun in Stellaris comes from in my opinion. If you wanted to RP a "wise and long lived" species you might take Venerable and Slow Breeders, something along those lines. Yes, it wouldn't be optimal, but if we all went the most optimal build every game there would be no variation. The game would get kinda stale.

[@sirensoulegaming4158]

On the food based economy point with agrarian, you're completely ignoring bio-ascension and their use of clone vats. In that situation, having more food is good. I'd put it in with the "don't have St the start, mod in later" pack, where you mod pops on an agri world with agrarian to fuel your clone making.

[@MrMarinus18]

Indeed. Food is easily the weakest of the resources but he is exaggerating it quite a bit and making it feel completely useless. Hydroponics bays are still ridiculously overpowered though. I feel they should have their production cut in half. 5 food feels like the right amount. Strong enough to be worthwhile but not so strong that it makes farmers obsolete.

[@sirensoulegaming4158]

@@MrMarinus18 oh, I agree completely, hydroponics bays give too much for how easily spammable they are, and food is definitely the lowest priority basic resource in the early game. I think the reason so many people prefer to opt for synth evolution is just things like e.g. You're already optimizing you're economy for energy and alloys so no "econ shift" is required - if you've been spending all game minimizijg food generation and maximizing alloys and energy, suddenly needing a massive agri world to use your ascension bonus is probably a pain. Thing is, for me personally, using robots in the early game is a pain - I'd much rather put those alloys towards a fleet and roll a neighbour over - you still get extra pops anyway. And then once you have bio ascension you get food and clone vats going, and if you overdo it on food gen then hey, you have nutritional plentitude until you can no longer sustain it. The other big problem in a tier list like this is that bio ascension throws a lot of these things out of the window - a lot of "meh" traits suddenly become much better in the context of bio ascension "pick and choose" shenanigans, but it's clearly not stuff people think about much so it's easier to stick those in lower tiers.

[@howzany6832]

Basically the most OP build in the game now... is this Space Seaweed build: Plantoid Overtuned Origin Oceanic Preference Traits: Budding Preplanned-Growth Aquatic Unruly (late game swap this out for Docile) Sedentary Civics Masterful Crafters Meritocracy Fanatic Zenophobe Egalitarian Oligarchy This build can do whatever it wants and beat all the other builds I have made even if AI is playing my other builds. The ONLY build it can't beat is a necroid build I made that is technocracy meritocracy BUT you have to understand that the necroid build's slaves are basically THIS seaweed race with aquatic, budding, and servile. Soooo in the end Seaweed is the most prolific space race in Stellaris.

[@louiswinterhoff334]

Ok Montu, I'm expecting some crazy new builds using the Overtuned origin and some of the other new traits

[@exantiuse497]

Why is venerable marked as "gets worse over time"? Leaders cannot die until they reach their guaranteed lifespan, which by default is 80 years. Normal biological leaders are recruited at around age 50 and hive mind leaders at younger than 20. This means that the trait does literally nothing until 30 years into the game. I would not say it gets worse over time if it literally starts out useless In fact, playing as a hive mind, since your leaders start so young, it is possible to reach the leader life extending repeatables before any of your leaders die of old age without the life extending traits, making the venerable trait a pay 4 points, gain nothing type of deal. This trait is hot garbage even compared to other bad traits. It deserves a tier of its own

[@electriccatnd]

Good to see that I'm not a complete dumb dumb on this. That said, could we get a similar tier list but for robots/synths?

[@MontuPlays]

I have an outdated one, but an update is on my to-do list!

[@LCInfantry]

Most the ones I pick are at the bottom xD love using venerable and seeing that gold X on my leaders. Maybe if they ever come out with a leader build where cap is double to XX (20). Idk.

[@tohon]

I know it’s a minor complaint, but you may want to give some sort of highlight on which trait icon in the list you are discussing.

[@PerfectAlibi1]

Montu, do a leader traits tier list! ^^

[@wildesanity]

I really wish Overtuned was a tech choice, RED tech or even part of the Genetic Ascension tree. It just feels weird now to not have overtuned traits as a G-ascended empire. I understand why the psionic origin locks you in, but Overtuned doesn't make as much sense.

[@MrMarinus18]

I have used "very strong" when biologically ascended to make a soldier form.

[@Tamizushi]

Nomadic is, in my opinion, the most underrated trait in this game. It's definitely not S thier, not even A thier, but I would personally put it in the B thier. It requires a specific strategy to take advantage of, but when done properly, it can give your empire great empire growth. Basically, to take advantage of migration bonuses in general, you are gonna need to refrain from fully developing every world you have. On the worlds that you don't want to fully develop, only keep a skeleton crew and you are gonna purposefully create a small housing shortage. Make sure the housing shortage is never higher than 5, because this could completely stop growth. Since you can't rely on housing to increase your planetary capacity, , you are gonna have to leave some districts not constructed. Districts that are available but not constructed increase a world's capacity by 3 on habitats and tomb worlds, by 6 on ecunemopolis, hive worlds and gaia worlds, and by 6 on every other worlds. Knowing that, you can have high logistic growth while maintaining negative housing which means most of that growth will be turned into emigration. The on the world that you do want to develop, you can multiply the resulting immigration by up to 1.5 if you combine nomad, Land of Opportunity and either Corvée System or free even. If you can get your hands on Starborn primitives and the Trium Atmospheric Deodorizer Deployment decision, you can bring that up to 1.85. It works very well combined with incubator.

[@falcore4782]

I've found that if you want to micro your empire, some of the F tier traits can be very effective. Create an alternate species off of your main and give it all the leader bonuses then make them the only ones that can be leaders while halting their pop growth could be a viable strategy. Also having some of the army damage traits on a Battle Thrall species can maximize your army uptime. I've found that armies in the late game are the bottleneck for planetary invasion, especially Fallen Empires. Repugnant is another example of a contextually bad/good trait. Slave pops could be extremely effective with this trait since they won't be contributing amenities. Speaking of Micro, I would really love to see a ban mechanic added. With it you can ban Species from certain planets or jobs while not effecting their ability to automatically resettle and will stop them from appearing in the pop growth section('which is extremely frustrating when you're trying to maximize your empire's traits).

[@beastebeat4956]

Expressed tradition and gene mentor ship can be stacked with traditional and quick learners so they're not really f tier in my opinion.

[@michaelschmidt9857]

You have one unemployed pop and two jobs available, a clerk and a farmer where do you send them?

[@rabidchoco1]

Purge them, apparently.

[@tanker00v25]

To the Gulag

[@malthejensen]

Great list but I think you forgot the origin traits like necrophage and cave dweller or is there a reason you didn't include them.

[@MontuPlays]

Exactly that. They are origin specific and you can't add them into your species. They also cost 0 points. So whether you include them or not is no cost in points or picks

[@malthejensen]

@@MontuPlays Oh yeah I forgot that they are free.

[@VIC-jk2qd]

I only got into stellaris a month ago. I’ve been finding all my trait picks and ascension perks are terrible according to these lists😂. My main civ is a human technocracy with venerable and non adaptive + decadent.

[@robertlynch1834]

What in god's name is a point. I have base game and some dlc and I've yet to hear of anything called a point

[@HernTheHunter]

Made it to the call out!

[@frederickmollenkopf4100]

Thanks!

[@MontuPlays]

Thanks for your support!

[@Tantive]

Venerable + higher leader caps is a nice combo for a tall empire with lots of research imo.

[@tanker00v25]

I do love me a tierlist firm Montu

[@tanker00v25]

Firm? God damn you autocorrect!

[@tribsta1018]

Just messing about with syncretic evolution both lithoid slave aquatic with slaver guilds and able to get all the rare resources with pops 👍

[@apollogamer8758]

Good video agree with most of what you said. Incubators though is very much an 'S' tier trait. Just on a playthrough with a race with that trait and honestly one of the easiest games I have ever played. I thought it would be good till I actually used it, then I realised it is stupidly powerful. As you often say the most important asset is pops and the more you have of them the greater its affect on your economy. This trait ensures in the early games that you have far more pops compared to most other empires and this makes a huge difference to your economy. More pops means more science, minerals, energy and alloys and this trait gives you so much more pops, especially early on its bonkers. The trait is at its most powerful in the early game and makes sure that your colonies are up to full speed in record time and well before anyone else. I took this trait with I think intelligent and strong and I am light years ahead of other empires. It is 'S' tier because it guarantees a powerful snowball affect. Combine it with any degree of xenophone for the growth increase there as well for truly entertaining results. Its power is a guaranteeed early powerful economy.

[@mitchellkrever421]

I'm curious, have you tried combining it with Overtuned Preplanned Growth? My build is Incubators, Preplanned Growth, and Fanatic Xenephobe which is +80% growth speed.

[@apollogamer8758]

@@mitchellkrever421 I havent but I am going to give that one a go! :) In my present game trying incubators and fanatic xenophone on a lithoid race and its growing like mad.

[@ReinKarstein]

Hi. Slow learned changed, any idea where it places now ?

[@limontree476]

I usually run the mote trait for lithoids with the idea that it lets you use the land clearance right away to quickly clear your settlement and 2 buried lithoids blockers for 3 extra pops very quickly

[@antarcticf0x377]

Thanks for the trait tier video! I'll definetly keep this in mind when im playing a stellaris game, also, would you say agrarian idyll and Catalytic progressing is a good combo? I tried it out and it seemed pretty good.

[@MayaWu44]

This cost of trait expanding leader lifespan, Venerable? I wonder why it is so high. I never took it, but as far as I remember the cost of it was 3 before? It scratches my head now, it has to be something with it, since devs whooped cost so high. Does having this trait from beginning of the game impacts things so much?

[@Osmotic]

I kinda disagree with the reasoning, if not the placement, for the overtuned F tier. The duplicate traits can be used to further specialize your species (e.g. +20% unity)

[@trioxide2503]

That’s what I was thinking, especially with a Unity rush with spiritualists

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

Doesn't Aquatic cost two points now? Where it would rank now?

[@tekoimming1943]

I don't see the "vat grown" anywhere. The one with +30% pop assembly and -10% pop growth. Or something like that at least. Should be s Tier, right?

[@Thunder-h9h]

Thanks for this, love your videos.

[@justincronkright5025]

Is Decadent then never good (have the maths been done yet), even with Stratified Economy Living Standards? If Decadent double-dips negatively for a slave-worker, then that sucks (I usually residency them anyway). But overall I usually have two single point negatives (housing and deviancy - sometimes take off housing for unruly for extra point)... but have tried once or twice with Decadent to take away from that negative housing. I assume decadent is still worse since it hurts your early game economy, whereas with housing you can just mod that out RIGHT BEFORE it starts to really take effect later in the game!

[@djbobas]

Got a question: i assume this is made with the basic points available. How would it change if you had to consider genetic ascension and additional points available so its not such an opportunity cost?

[@alekzanderor5489]

It should be still about the same opportunity cost , since ascended biotraits are expensive in points

[@nagi603]

6:31 adding also: in case of an immortal... you will reach the limit, but there is also a global limit of 10 last time I checked, and that IIRC can (almost?) be reached just by tech alone.

[@benjaminknode6268]

Worth saying that enduring paired with overtuned traits can offset the negative life span very cheaply

[@afriendofafriend5766]

But then you're just paying the trait points you'd normally be paying.

[@benjaminknode6268]

@@afriendofafriend5766 not really, since it's +20 years instead of +10 it offsets 2 of the traits, or even makes it a little easier to take the -30 years at the start

[@nickgrout2502]

I think there's a place for the "bad" Overtuned perks in that you can use them to hyperfocus on a certain benefit. Sure they're terrible on their own, but you can stack them with the regular version in the early game and then mod them out later.

[@VasiliyOgniov]

Or you can not include them at all in the beggining, rush to conquer enemy/annex primitives and make overturned slaves out of them

[@AmryL]

I am outraged, OUTRAGED!!, to see delicious in A tier. Considering your dislike of food-jobs, the livestock job is in every way a worse farmer job. Spending any Tp to bring their output inline with normal farmers is a waste, and the trait DOES NOT effect farmer jobs. Funny, yes, especially if you cram 90+ of them on a T1 habitat (and give them budding, so they will still grow pops). But not useful in any way.

[@ghostban3743]

Edit: Decile is late in the game very very powerful (for research) I only know this in german but in the most (of the most) cases, are -25% immigration the best mali to pick ( 2 pts ) and one of the better boni, hability 10% ( also 2 ), if I spell out my translation rigth ^.^" For machines its - montage costs ( even better imo than pics for breeding) for swarn....well I do not play swarm in over a thousand hours ... edit: ehm, betetr watch before writ ^^ well, next time I think

[@026Abes]

Would you further increase or decrease the rank of a trait for a ascending clone army empire? Or is the inability to remove traits later unimportant for the list?

[@elizabethlougee6322]

*laughs in Very Strong, Venerable, Nonadaptive (+decadent and something else) Gaia start cause rp fun* Edit- oh yeah and Warrior Culture cause apparebtly fuck optimization

[@angelhood101]

Authoritarian empires can very frequently reach 100 stability, especially with nobles or as a spiritualist empire. Worker political power affects pop approval rating when stability is taken into account so it's very possible to end up with stability in the high 80s to 100 with worker/slave happiness well below 30%, especially if a slave processing facility is used. This makes Decadent a very minor hit overall.

[@Travkirby2]

Getting a massive 60% pop growth speed (which can be 90% pop growth speed with damn the consequences) is completely broken (even more so with budding and hive mind, plus clone vats from biological ascension). The same goes with research since intelligent, augmented intelligence, and elevated synapses means 40% research output (or 70% research output with damn the consequences). I can see a hive mind empire or xenophobic empires having absolutely broken economies from large population (being perfect for tall and wide builds, but I would say wide would be better since you want to get your pops on as much worlds as you can find) in the early game or materialist empires have endgame tech in the early game just from these traits. I don’t even think the materialists with this origin may even lose a leader if they do their tech rush despite having -40 leader lifespan. While this origin may be meta, I think veteran empires would get the most out of it as they know what research to grab and what to prioritize in their economies for maximum research and growth respectively.

[@Michael-yf1wo]

I'd be interested in a video where you play an empire whose traits and ethics are from the C-F tier lists - could you still "win", or at least do better than average? Seems to me that if one wants to "win" a game of Stellaris, there are aksually a relatively small number of traits to select, and that results in a bland sameness in every game; conversely, if one wants to RP, a losing game seems all but certain. Decline and collapse has been the fate of all historical 'great civilizations' so far, so I suppose it's par for the course. Made the 30 minute mark (using the 1.75 playback speed, so I arrived almost before I started).

[@furiouskaiser9914]

Uhhhhh Houstin.... we have a problem.

[@MisterManTheBestMan]

With overtuned and damn the consequences, you can collectively get up to an 75% learning doo-what, making your leaders very good :) Especially with democracies where leaders are often swapped.

[@petervelchev6246]

Noxious is complete garbage imho. Trading 15% production loss for 30% happiness is a very very very bad deal.

[@Jablecznik]

What's the point of putting Non-adaptive in F tier if you say that it's a free pick for Void Dwellers? Then it's S tier for them. Overall niche, but not totally crap - not F tier.

[@the_returned]

Hey man - great vid! But could you er, highlight which icon you’re talking about as you show the descriptions on screen? I don’t know which icons belong to which trait… 😅

[@duross101]

I made it to your secret callout

[@kepprr]

Does this mean, genetic accession + overturned could be a new meta?