The six peoples
Each starts with different hands and different problems. None of them is the easy one; they are each easy at something and badly stuck at something else.
Caelari Conclave
Kharaxi Brood
Sepharai Shoal
Varkesh Host
Maketh Assembly
Nemora Bloom
The six at a glance
Read straight out of the game's own data, so these are the figures you will actually play with. The last column is the thing that belongs to that people and to nobody else.
| People | Good at | Poor at | Theirs alone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caelari Conclave | Research, Sensor range | Production, Soldiers | Advanced Surveying from the first turn |
| Kharaxi Brood | Mining, Production, Farming, Life-support power | Research | A quarter more of everything material |
| Sepharai Shoal | Population growth, Survives wounds, Ground defence | — | Caisson Works, and the Tidewall it unlocks |
| Varkesh Host | Soldiers, Survives wounds, Ground defence | Population growth, Appetite | A world one rung milder |
| Maketh Assembly | — | Research | Citizens built, not born |
| Nemora Bloom | Farming | Mining, Production, Soldiers, Ground defence, Survives wounds | Research out of the ground |
What the differences actually do
A people's traits are multipliers on what their workers produce, not bonuses handed out once. A Caelari laboratory and a Kharaxi laboratory are the same building; the Caelari simply get more out of the same scientist, and rather less out of the same factory.
Three of the six break the pattern rather than bending it. The Maketh Assembly are machines: they are not born, they are built in a construction queue, and they draw power instead of eating. The Sepharai Shoal live under water, which changes what ground means to them — dry land is the hostile place, and they have a building whose whole purpose is to drown it. The Nemora Bloom read their research off their own fields, which makes their choice of ground matter more than anybody else's.
Which to play first
The Kharaxi Brood are the gentlest introduction: a quarter more of every material yield covers a great many mistakes, and their weakness — arriving at every technology last — is slow rather than sudden. The Varkesh Host are the next kindest, because a hostile world treats them as one rung milder than it is and they are very hard to kill while you are learning.
Leave the Shoal until you know the map. Water is a small fraction of the ground in any galaxy and none at all of any moon, and a Shoal player who has not planned for that stops expanding around turn forty.