Pi2repsilon
Posts: 42
Joined: 6/15/2020
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For new players, I'd recommend either:
a) Playing to the policy profiles of the political factions they start out with, as that makes it easier to manage relations, or
b) Playing Meritocracy, Commerce, Heart.
Reason being, apart from understanding the logistics mechanics, I expect most new players to have most trouble handling loyalty and happiness - or to put it another way, it is so much easier to learn the rest of the game mechanics when you don't have to worry overmuch about loyalty and happiness in either populations or personnel.
Meritocracy is primarily for the bonuses to diplomacy, operational, and administrative rolls - arguably the three most important skills - and secondarily for the other fixed bonuses and their very nice human resources cards.
Commerce primarily for the POP happiness bonuses, secondarily for the increased strength of the private economy making it difficult for the player to starve it by mistake; but their cards aren't shabby either
Hearts for the character and population loyalty bonuses. Better morale isn't bad either, but loyalty is what it is all about.
This combination has further advantages:
It is the perfect combination for the Mystic Temple cult (commerce, heart), which boosts private economy and population happiness. The Mystic Follower feat of +20 oratory, +20 leadership is also one of the more useful ones.
It also plays nice with the Anima Circle cult (democracy, heart), which reduces unrest and boosts espionage; Not quite as good a fit as Mystic Temple, but since meritocracy suppresses democracy in the politics profile it works out well enough in practice
It even plays somewhat nicely with Eternity Movement (meritocracy, mind), which increases research and loyalty, but it does make it hard to get high heart due to mind suppressing heart in the psychology profile.
So as soon as you get one or more of these in your empire, you can start benefiting significantly from cults. Always support Mystic Temple when they make it into your realm. Support or don't take a stance on Anima Circle. Don't suppress them unless you want to roleplay Mystics.
As for Eternity Movement, once you've got Mystic Temple you'll probably want to suppress it unless you go for the tri-cult option of supporting Mystics and supporting or tolerating both Anima Circle and Eternity Movement... which works and makes it easy to maintain really high meritocracy and commerce, but means you probably stop heart at Joint Struggle (60+ to gain, 50- to lose), which has already gained you both the basic loyalty bonuses and the morale bonus.
It is easier dealing with just supporting Mystic Temple and Anima Circle and suppressing all others, though.
The profile is really good for dealing with corporations as allies; you may need to reign them in if they get too powerful and you might want to tax them a bit, and when you do so you can easily cope with their relations loss as their events tend to have options that mostly benefit your profile while increasing relations. Their population unhappiness penalty isn't a big deal as you've got so many things helping population happiness (passive bonuses and profile cards) and their siphoning of private funds isn't generally a problem as your people are stinking rich. So get those board memberships and other fringe benefits while you are at it.
I won't claim it is the best or strongest profile combination, but it seems to me to be the one that is most lenient of player error, and that's a big thing while learning the game.
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What Regime Profiles and Combinations to go for? - 
) are avoiding war? Yes! But do they refuse to intervene for their own benefit? No! 
Yes, that was exactly what I'd thought after reading manual. 
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