BENEVOLENCE is OVERPOWERED in Single Player [EDIT: On Larger Maps]

takes seven colonizations to get benevolent rank 3

on default map settings you have 2-5 more planets to colonize by that point

not that great

The Malevolent tree has +1 base moral for each planet you conquer, 10 base production + 100% military production for your homeworld + 25% production for all worlds, a +50% moral building you can drop on every planet and immunity to culture flipping in it.  It's pretty powerful as well.

Imo its just the pragmatic tree that needs work.  The trade buff doesn't matter and star bases are easy enough to build anyway so those two trees aren't worth taking.  If you're already losing the negotiator tree is alright, but since you have no real way of generating ideology points if your losing it doesn't really have a use either.

Its just the vigilant tree that has any use, mostly because the Preparedness center is such a good building.

Pragmatic has the starbase one which doubles mining production. I think it is actually broken at the moment, it's giving way way way more resources than it should.

I'm pretty sure my resources have gone from around 7, to 50+ just getting it. That doesn't seem right

Pragmatic have a very powerful start, get the 3 free constructors and upgrade them for 300 credits to colony ships and voila. 

I think the +5 population is a bit much, and +3 would make a lot more sense, especially with the changes to base food and colony ship modules.

I think the developers want ideology to be "overpowered" in the traditional sense.  I mean, what they really intend is for ideology choices to be game-changing, and they are.  Ridiculous traits exist in all 3 trees, so how OP can one tree be, when they are all, in the usual sense of game abilities, OP?  I agree that pragmatic can feel underwhelming at times, but even it has big ones - 3 free ships at every planet, for example.

While true, I would argue this is more of an exploit than an intended power of that ability.

This.

All three trees have VERY powerful options; game changing options; evenly distributed. I am not sure that makes them over-powered.

Paul used it on a livestream and called it 'working as intended'. Keep in mind these colony ships have 0 population.

The pragmatic tree is a great starting ideology but once you have the Builder choices and the Preparedness Center it is not so great.

This is somewhat true of all of them I guess. Lots of not so exciting choices. 

I also saw Frogboy use it in a stream, and I got a chuckle that he didn't know they had zero pop.

Actually, I think Malevolent and Benevolent both have a couple of great late-game tenets. I have always thought Pragmatic needed a buff in that regard.

Pragmatic has the 3 free ships round ever planet at rank four I am finding this huge. I don't normally build ships until I can build good ones. But when I take this I go from nowhere to strongest military. This keeps everyone off my back for ages.  

For "peaceful builders" the two modules for the price of one at the end of the constructor line is a godsend.  By that time one can usually stack up modules on ships so one can create a fully upgraded starbase with only one or two ships.

That's sneaky OP right there.  Colonize a new system?  Instant fully upgraded starbase.  Planning on Culture Flipping some fools? Send over thee or four maxed out double strength ships and start bombarding with influence.  If for some reason someone wants a military starbase for forward operations?  Send a constructor with your fleet, BAM maxed out and ready to go.  See some mining stuff you want right nownownow?  Next verse, same as the first.

In fact, I try to make sure I get to that trait as soon as possible in my games, given my starbase heavy style of play.

The thing about the Pragmatic tree is that it isn't as "in your face" as the other ones.  But there are still some very powerful ones out there if one is willing to play with them a bit.

(I am also curious to see if the game makes a distinction between "Homeworld" and "Civilization Capital".  If not, I can see some interesting exploits out of the Negotiator V trait - and even if there is a distinction, I can still see the exploit possibilites of intentionally letting someone conquer your homeworld to get everyone else to declare war, only to take it back next turn)

Also, the 3 constructors make excellent scouts, if you get them at the right point.

I'm playing the Iridium right now, and if I get them at the M3 level, they're faster than a scout, same vision range, and a heck of a lot more distance range.

It's really an excellent choice instead of spamming a cargo-sensor ship.  Particularly since you can use them to go a long distance, make a starbase, and then not need to load up colony ships with life support.

You do have to be careful when to get it, though. I've found the M3 level is optimal - beyond that, they lose the sensor range, and just have extra long range (which is mostly useless at that point).

In short:

1. research Interstellar Travel
2. Scout around to find a suitable planet to colonize.
3. Rush buy as cheap a colonizer when you do find a good planet
4. Colonize it, choose Pragmantic
5. Your Interstellar Travel is done by now, and poof!  You get 3 multi-purpose constructor/scouts well before turn 10 (generally, turn 6-8, depending on how far away the colonized planet was).

Yes this is a good one if it doesn't bankrupt you.

I have found that my own military efforts are usually enough deterrent, but to be honest my planets are largely undefended and there will probably come a time when I wish I had taken that one.

It certainly does. If you change your capital, your homeworld is still marked "Homeworld" in-game, and thus it keeps all bonuses that come from being the homeworld no matter where you move your capital.

Quoting Franco, reply 15

Yes this is a good one if it doesn't bankrupt you.

End of Franco's quote

Yeah, the maintenance costs can be a bit of a pain.  But, then again, the sweet sweet cash for decommissioning them shouldn't be ignored either (presuming that you get cash for decommissioning them),

On the large maps (gigantic or larger) 7 colonizations to get Benevolent rank III is nothing.  You can easily get 100 colonies during the expansion phase with my strategy.  

The trick is to pair up the Benevolent rank III (free 5 pop) with the super trait Free First Building.  What you do is you colonize a planet with EMPTY (or virtually empty) colony ships.  With the Benevolent rank III and the super trait, your new colony IMMEDIATELY starts with a shipyard (free first building) AND Five population points, which means that that new colony can immediately start producing colony ships too.  

As I said in another post: your growth becomes exponential.  You don't need to spend ANY points in social spending or research.  From turn 1 you focus ALL of your points into building colony ships.  

To get better engines, pick up anomalies.  Also, the research line of Benevolence will get you enough research points to upgrade your engines.  

I'm playing on Tough (I'll probably change it to the hardest setting after this) on a gigantic map and it's like super duper easy.  Benevolent research rank V plus 100 colonies = 500 free research per turn.  That's a lot.  

And my maintenance is paid for by my population because my colonies literally have nothing on them.  Most colonies have a shipyard (first free building), and all of their points is spent on spamming out mostly empty colony ships.  

The great thing about Benevolence is how you can use it to create population from nothing.  

Using a colony ship with 0.1 people, you can create 5 people by landing it on a planet.  And you get a free shipyard too if you choose the trait "Free First Building."  

And you can do this from turn 20 or 30 once you get Benevolence rank III.  If you want, rush buy colony ships from turn 1 so you can colonize and get Benevolence rank III faster.  On larger maps this ability is OVERWHELMING.  

Yeah, much like the Patriotic ability, the power of Benevolent is directly proportional to how large a map you're playing on.

I think the Pragmatic tree is being overvalued by a lot of people, in particular the Starbase buffs:  They aren't worth nearly as much as they appear.

First, the default Constructor you're given is absurdly bloated with unnecessary and expensive modules, and you should never build it---not ever:  It comes loaded with six (six!) Life Support Modules, two Hyperdrives (for when you really need that base on the other side of the galaxy), and, for reasons that escape me entirely, Sensors.  If you're relying on that monstrosity to build up your Starbases, of course getting three of them for free is going to look like a sweet deal.

Except... Small Hulls can be yours via Orbital Construction only a few short turns after starting the game.  Slap a Constructor onto a Small Hull, and you get a ship that's nearly three times faster to build than the default model.

It doesn't move as fast or travel as far, but you don't need it to at the beginning of the game when you're securing local resources---certainly not at such expense.  (Sure, if you see a distant resource you absolutely must have, just design another Constructor with an engine---and it'll still be cheaper than the default). Besides, your slower Constructor may arrive at its destination at the same time the faster one would have, because it gets to leave the Shipyard sooner---this has the added benefit of freeing up your Shipyard to start on a new ship.

And later in the game, you can be cranking these Constructors out once per turn, delivering a conga line of upgrades to your Starbases.  "Free Constructors" and "Free Starbase Modules" quickly become jokes, compared to the more resilient perks offered by the other ideologies.

At least for me, the three constructors are not for securing nearby local resources. Rather, they can:

1) Explore. As you so neatly described it, default constructors come with a lot of not strictly necessary goodies. Rather than build scouts at the start, focus on colony ships and leave initial exploration for the constructors.

2) Capitalize on resources far from the homeworld before anyone else gets to them, leaving local ones for cheap constructors.

3) If in combination with 2), act as a bridge for cheap-ass, no life support colony ships.

I'm not sure any are really overpowered.  In the end the AI isn't good enough to strike you down so the fact that you have an "endgame easily" button doesn't matter.  You already won earlier when you got to critical mass with enough warships to carve the AI empire down planet by planet.  This has little to do with population booms and more to do with some serious step functions in the game.  If you get to the point where your single fleets beat their single fleets then it's GG.  Especially since it's relatively easy to invade undefended planets.

The only single ideology that is truly OP based on it being better then every other first pick...proven by all the strats and videos that use it....is the 3 free constructors.  This is balanced by the rest of the pragmatic tree being weak.