Picking mind over matter as non spirutalists (2024)

Well, not going Synth ascension when you have the Cybrex is just shooting yourself in the foot for fun (arguably, failing to go Synth under any situation but Spiritualist is shooting yourself in the foot, but with Cybrex it's really a no-brainer), but hey, if that's your thing...

Going psi when you aren't spiritualist is definitely asking for some trouble. Spiritualists really like three things: having lots of spiritualists, having spiritualist ethics, psi ascension, and no robots or AIs. 1 will happen in time but up until that time you'll have a moderately pissed-off faction, and it won't grow as fast as usual because you won't have temples. 2 will become an option soon enough if you want to blow 500 influence, but your best bet is to survey your ass off until you find "An Asteroid, Carved" and take the option to go spiritualist (assuming none of your existing build is really dependent on your current ethics). 3 will make them somewhat happy (so long as you don't flub a boon) but takes a while to get fully. 4 will piss them right off, especially if you give them sentience (and if you do plus you adopt Spritualism, you'll also risk robot uprising since then you can't give them full rights).

Now, a pissed-off faction isn't that big a deal, usually. It'll lower your influence income (though if you aren't using temples and are using sapient synths, the faction shouldn't get too big to begin with). It'll lower your stability some due to the unhappiness (but there's lots of ways to boost happiness, and having a small part of your population unhappy is not really a big deal, especially if you're also Egalitarian or at least use Social Welfare standards of living).

Finally, you could also just not use robots. Sure, that's throwing away about half of the benefit of finding the Cybrex, but hey, you're the one who decided to go psi (despite not even being spiritualist!) after finding the cybrex. It's also going to murder your pop growth, but that's just PDX's idea of what "balance" apparently is: use robots or just... suck. It'd keep your spiritualists happy, at least!

Let's look at ethics attraction

Relevant from spiritualist is

1. +25% from researching psionic theory
2. +50% from taking mind over matter
3. +50% from taking transcendence
   
4. -25% from giving AI full citizen rights
5. Total +100% spiritualist

Relevant government ethics (non-spiritualist non-materialist)

• Psychic ruler gives +10%
  
• Total -10% spiritualist

Relevant from materialist (which cancels out spiritualist)

• +33% research agreement with materialist empire
• +25% pop has natural engineer/sociologist/physicists
  
• Total -58% spiritualist

With everything you add it up to ~+32% spiritualist ethics attraction

Yes you should expect SOME spiritualists (and they are a very hard to please faction) but they will be a small faction, any large empire will have every faction eventually. A small number of angry pops or a small angry faction is nothing to worry about. They're not going to take over or go on a general strike.

The time you will want to pick Mind Over Matter over the others is when you are playing with a friend who supports you as a genetically ascended bio to build the ultimate lifeform. Even better served in a spiritualist megacorp from your position.

A bio-psi ascended empire with the shoulder of giants origin has the highest science yield of any empire type in the game per pop, greater than ME (per pop, over-all ME are most efficient), greater than synth, than all. There are some bugs, some intended that keep erudite and psi from crossing paths in some areas, but most apply. If you aren’t going for science and trade value bombing and aren’t playing with a friend you may not want it so much. Very niche but very useful.

Here is a mid-game example without even using the specialist slaves which produce more by a significant amount if I had gone that route.

Never spent so much time on a forum, this quarantine has me looking for things to do I didn’t know were entertaining >.>

in my latest run i got the zroni precursor so the prerequisite tech was free to grab. i went with full psionics but the spiritualist faction never became an issue. i didn't check individual pops but i think the faction only ever popped up after a signed a migration treaty with some spiritualists, so it could well be that those guys were immigrants and not even domestic pops that became spiritual through the attraction from the psi path.

the materialist faction that was formed by all the (now free citizen) synths is much larger and both government factions (egalitarian and xenophile) are still huge.
the spiritualists aren't too happy about some of my policies but they really aren't an issue since it's just a (relatively) small movement.

that's just anecdotal evidence, though. maybe i just got lucky.

Spiritualist faction doesn't have much problem with only robot(prob only -5 or -10), it's full ai right that will full triggered them lol.

Though it's quit hard to please them if your ethic isn't spiritualist.

Tech Noir Synth said:

Don't play Spiritualists unless you either roleplay or have not tried the Psionic Ascension. You should always go for Synth Ascension, its by far the strongest ever since 2.2.6 and it has only gotten stronger since. Technocracy /Slaver guilds is the new meta, I predicted this as soon as the new specialist slave type was revealed. Enslaved Synth specialists are the best pops in the game and you grow the fastest = easy win.

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Ok I wanted to rp to some degree but... I was looking more into it and noticed that... if your leader is psiconic you will attract governing ethics more too so it pulled my attention because it can actually reduce the amount of spirutalists you have if you are not a spirutalist
I mean synths are still very strong I suppose but this very last second I decided to not drop possibilty

Tech Noir Synth said:

Don't play Spiritualists unless you either roleplay or have not tried the Psionic Ascension. You should always go for Synth Ascension, its by far the strongest ever since 2.2.6 and it has only gotten stronger since. Technocracy /Slaver guilds is the new meta, I predicted this as soon as the new specialist slave type was revealed. Enslaved Synth specialists are the best pops in the game and you grow the fastest = easy win.

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by the way I wasnt gonna play spirutalist anyway(wich I think I can... spirutalists CAN use robots even syths as long as they dont give them rights) you can keep them happy if you are spirutalists even with robots wich means you can still have synth slaves while having great scientists and rulers.

makaramus said:

by the way I wasnt gonna play spirutalist anyway(wich I think I can... spirutalists CAN use robots even syths as long as they dont give them rights) you can keep them happy if you are spirutalists even with robots wich means you can still have synth slaves while having great scientists and rulers.

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Good luck with your Synth slaves without rights then! Hope you took Flesh is weak.

Tech Noir Synth said:

Good luck with your Synth slaves without rights then! Hope you took Flesh is weak.

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Or I will get "hotfix" event(I did) and avoid disaster all together yea I was kinda lucky I suppose but also my navy and hegamony was ready
I am kinda playing a star wars empire right now by accident... my leaders are not "no machine" kind of people but they still got access to shroud and its benefits.
I must say mind over matter as non spirutalist is really strong when synths are slaves