The Ironseed Ascendancy is ready to hunt
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A few highlights of my empire design:
As required, Intelligence is 50% and I took Naturalists.
Berzerkers culture, of course, along with max aggressiveness/defensiveness
Max Political Savvy (for when the monsters meet)
Max Construction Aptitude
Natural Merchants (with no expansion, every facility counts)
Trans-Dimensional
Mechanoids, Psionic Clairsentience, and all Religious Ethos (I did some testing, these are the only racial techs that work at all with monsters. I will not research them unless it turns out the monsters need toughening)
For points to pay for all those racial tech traits:
Minimum Mining, Farming, and Refining Aptitudes (resources are never a problem for monsters)
Minimum Maintenance Aptitude (even more negative maintenance, plus some points to keep more options for toughening the monsters open)
Endemic Wastefulness (with quantum reactors inherent in the hulls, who cares?)
Choleric happiness type because it looked very good by the numbers (including reaction to wars), though I'm not quite sure how a positive natural decrease works (become more angry or more jubilant, depending?), but it should be overwhelmed by the 22 bases + ships I'll have over every planet anyway.