Quick Guide to Idyllic Blooming
Idyllic bloom is a highly underused civic (in my totally unbiased opinion) even after its rework, Idyllic Bloom basically only served as a way to make gaia worlds without using an ascension perk. It didn’t provide anything more than world shapers.
Tthe final stage of the Gaia Seeder building stages after it has terraformed providing huge bonuses to the planet. Every 5 years, 3-5 pops are given gaia world preference and a new unique trait to idyllic bloom called “bloomed”. This happens on every planet with a stage 4 Gaia Seeder, so can actually give it to your entire population surprisingly quickly. Paragons also provides a council position which reduces the cost and upkeep of Gaia Seeders significantly.
The bread and butter of bloom now, other than creating gaia worlds is the new bloomed trait. This is one of the best traits in the game. Providing +10% resources from jobs, +10% pop growth speed, -10% ameneties usage and -10% housing usage. To make this even better, if the pops planet has a stage 4 Gaia Seeder, this trait and the budding trait are both buffed by an additional 50%. Meaning all of those previous 10%s are now 15%. This 15% is on top of the innate 10% bonus from gaia worlds too.
The only downsides of the trait is that is can only be applied to plantoids and fungoids, and it is only active on gaia worlds. This provides a significant issue when it comes to ecumenopolis. Which the trait and bloom do nothing to support. This can be a simple remedy, due to the bloomed trait not applying to anything that isnt fungoid or plantoid, simply put other phenotypes onto the ecus in order to maximise production.
Here are two build ideas, that I have done that I would recommend trying, one hivemind and one regular, these empires have to be either fungoid or plantoid.
Hivemind
- Origin: Fruitful partnership
- Civics: Idyllic Bloom and Void hive
- Recommended traits: Budding and Invasive Species
The vibe of this empire I wanted to give was a species that just slowly grows on its own and perfects what it leaves behind. Due to fruitful partnership, you don’t need to build colony ships and will slowly spread your seeds throughout the stars, with void hive you will automatically build mining stations in your outpost (which has the added benefit of possibly getting early exotic gases for idyllic bloom), using idyllic bloom you can spread around the stars slowly converting planets into beautiful paradises.
Budding is recommended due to it being very strong especially with idyllic bloom atm. Invasive species is due to the empires idea of spread everywhere automatically, I just think it fits well. I really enjoyed this save, it was genuinely the most fun I’ve had playing the game in a long while.
Regular Bio Empire
- Ethics: At least spiritualist, the others are optional, I chose xenophile.
- Origin: Teachers of the shroud (optional)
- Civics: Idyllic Bloom and Heroic Past (or vaults of knowledge)
- Traits: Budding, Quick Learners and anything else you want
The vibe I wanted from this empire is how many resources from jobs could I stack on top of each other. The main drive of the empire is entering a covenant with the instrument of desire for its +10% resources from jobs and also getting high level leaders to make planets even stronger.
You could also take Ascensionists as a civic in order to ascend planets more to get more bonuses, this is what I did with my 3rd civic. Added together, these buffs were simply stupidly high, it was great fun.
once you get all the pops on a planet to have the bloomed trait, you can remove the Gaia seeder building? or “new born” pops dont get Bloomed and need the gaia seeder to “upgrade” them whenever a new pops spawns?