Explanation of Empire Size Reduction Build
First off Unity rush only works well if you’re willing to go for a diplomatic early game, and not really in MP or for 2250 endgame, so a bit of a disclaimer.
I run a Corporate that starts as Democratic with parliamentary system and vaults (as long as resource traits are around, but if not you can still go for vaults to kickstart your governors for aptitude). Pick Imperial Prerogative while you’re Democratic, it’ll continue to work and you get governor slots and the empire size reduction counters the increase from Corporate.
The threshold of 100 empire size is pretty important when it comes to rushing agendas, so I pick docile from the start, and regular pacifist (you can go fanatic but Corporate liberation wars are fun); You’ll also need spiritualist for ascensionists civic later down the line, and the last point is up to preference – I go xenophile for migration edict (more on that later).
For traditions I run aptitude (flat size reduction, leader xp agenda), harmony (pop size reduction, stronger planetary ascensions), statecraft (leader xp, you can spam agendas for the 300 per), gene ascension (maximizing growth per world), diplomacy (holy covenant for further stronger planetary ascensions), supremacy (yes) and politics (as a custodian you can put the Influence back into the galcom to pass resolutions really fast for the 18 months of Unity each time). Roughly in that order, but you can go statecraft first for 300 xp from the early agenda that starts almost complete.
As for origin, a fun pick is Here Be Dragons – although it’s worth knowing the exact mechanics which is kind of a spolier if you haven’t played the origin before, and somewhat buggy (fixable with console if caught), you can get strong enough to start slaying leviathans without ever building a ship, and you really wanna go for the matriarch; it’s also a great time to get vassals if you don’t find them too cheesy.
The Corporate will eventually have ascensionists, franchising (empire size reduction from branch offices) and brand loyalty (Unity and branch office value council seat), though the last two are less important – you can go for something with a scientist seat if you’d rather.
With all those ascension boosts, especially once in a lv 3 holy covenant (liberation CB can help), you can get your worlds up to a multiplicative 85% empire size reduction as well as insanely boosted designation benefits, but the cost scales sharply with both empire size and number of ascensions in your empire (so number of ascended worlds), so you wanna make the most out of each world, so your focus will be great worlds over many worlds. You’ll be converting as much as you can into forge and factory ecumenopoleis, which when 10-ascended don’t actually need that many Mineral, and moving your research into ringworlds, which when 10-ascended get not only massive job boosts but also growth and assembly ones.
The other aspect of the cost, empire size, you need to manage from the start – you’ll need ascension theory (T5 tech) and all 7 traditions before you can 10-ascend, and those 10-ascensions will be prohibitively costly if you get high empire size – so you’ll need a T5 tech while relatively small. As such, as much of your econ as possible will go into Unity first – until the sky dragon thing happens, remember you can get the ascension path required tech with Unity now – and then both that and research, which is why you need to be diplomatic with xenos and want the sky dragon for protection.
Because of growth mechanics, many worlds have an inherent advantage you’ll need to counter. There are two things that help a lot: Getting polymelic trait by slaying the matriarch once you’ve gene-ascended, which is assembly per pop rather than per world (and in turn makes gene clinics a lot more appealing), and getting 10 immigration on your worlds by having enough open jobs – worlds like ecumenopoleis and ringworlds can easily pump those numbers up – AND xeno-outreach agencies on your branch offices.
All those ecus and ringworlds are very rare resource hungry, but fortunately you already want governors for aptitude – if you get architectural interest 2, urbanist 3, and possibly even champion of automation, you can make a whole ecumenopolis or ring segment cost pennies easily covered by ancient refineries.
Oh and I forgot one more fun fact – even if you’re getting lots of growth from migration, if you have population controls enabled, you can uh.. “gene enhance immigrating pops” by setting a grown species, which can be a really nice fertile nomadic template, of which you turn most pops into a polymelic + assembly template every couple decades.
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