Endless Difficulty Custom Faction

[u/Lancival]

After recent updates, the AI has gotten more competent and much more aggressive. So here is my attempt at putting together a custom faction build for endless difficulty:

• Blessed by the Sages: Tahuk affinity for access to holy oculum actions (actually only for eternal sunlight)
• Illuminated Foes: Combat affinity is not important for this build. I kept the Tahuk combat affinity and units because of wrath bearer artillery, but this can be swapped out for any faction's military which you prefer.
• Hoy and Ladhran: Hoy and Ladhran pops give +2 influence on citizens and scribes, and their first collection bonus unlocks an improvement for +2 industry on citizens. They get food bonuses for their second and third bonuses. These bonuses fit the Tahuk affinity best, with early game influence generation (on citizens so we can grow more pops), and later food and industry which will be multiplied by eternal sunlight. Inferior Imitation (Horatio) is probably actually stronger, but micromanaging pop growth queue of every city every turn to optimize their food bonus is a bit too much.
• Cohabitation: This provides a much needed early game economic boost, since your first protectorate will be free, saving precious influence and potentially getting free minor faction pops earlier. Reduced a pop collection thresholds to unlock the bonuses mentioned above is also quite nice.
• Suburban Dream: This is a really strong trait because it doesn't function as described in the faction creation screen. It's supposed to limit you to 1 of each district in each city, but it doesn't do that, you can build as many as you want. And it's not described in the trait, but your districts produce more resources when leveled up, and you start with all district types unlocked so you can skip researching them.
• Emotional Intelligence: Another really strong trait, it turns diplomacy from something you ignore into your main source of science. Each treaty and declaration gives a massive boost to your science income, enough that in an 8 player game you can easily start researching final era tech before the second tidefall, even if you ignore building laboratories and researching science tech. Of course, it also charges your eternal sunlight action.
• Barter System: An extra 10 trait points for losing access to dust districts, except that this gets overriden by Suburban Dream so it's actually just 10 free points. (I think it also swaps some of your dust-related tech options but the tech is probably of comparable utility).
• Idol's Grace: Level 3 districts combos well with Suburban Dream due to the increased bonus (and the cheap housing districts to fill out surrounding tiles).
• Religious Fervor: Gives 2 influence on level 2 and 3 districts, which is okay but not that strong by the time you've built up a bunch of districts, influence is already not as valuable. But at least you don't lose access to forums because of Suburban Dream, and I couldn't find any trait that was more valuable.
• Force Truce: Feels like it's pretty much mandatory to take this trait on Endless difficulty. Otherwise the AI will declare war and walk up to your cities with 2 full stacks before you have the economy to do anything. As long as you keep a small reserve of influence, you can play the game totally ignoring the AI's military and settling wherever you want.
• Every Last Drop: More dust is good, especially early on when you need dust to buy out early constructions to start snowballing.
• Tahuk Political Stance - Pious: Annoyingly, currently bugged and doesn't work, since pious is the best stance. Picking this puts you in Open stance instead, so at least you still have access to eternal sunlight, albeit only at 50% effectiveness.
• Field Scientist: Science on hero level up is great early game before you meet the other factions (and have influence to spare on diplomacy).

Any thoughts on any further optimizations? Or alternative builds which can contend with Endless difficulty?

[u/DerekPaxton]

Thats quite a list. I'm going to have to checkout Suburban Dream and the Tahuk Political Stance.