As you might expect, the Manti are pretty distrustful of aliens and this natural caution provides them with some rather effective Civilization Abilities and Traits to help win with the game with.
Their other defining feature is that their Citizens are Aquatic and gain a decent Approval boost from Oceanic planets, and when playing the Manti, seeking out and colonising these desirable water-worlds will allow you to squeeze more performance out of a less-stressed out population. The downside is that there’s a much smaller Approval penalty to Manti on all other worlds, and you’ll have to consider this as you expand out into space.
The Manti get a really nice Improvement that can only be built on Oceanic worlds too: the Tide Pool.
Oceanic worlds become your best Influence generators, and so make sure you beeline for these. While not a Culture push Civilization per se, the borders that Influence produces are part of the Manti’s most dangerous weapon and so a big part of their game-plan, and Oceanic Worlds will become the bastions of your empire.
Why? Well, let’s take a look at their Civilization Abilities and Traits and see how this informs their playstyle overall. As a hint, I’d suggest that the key phrase here is “get off my lawn!”
Paranoid provides a huge boost to your combat performance within your own territory: Manti fleets are a real nightmare to fight on their home turf, which works nicely with with Courageous (+1) and allows your people to hold the line in a siege and await rescue.
In defense, the Manti are monstrously strong, and all other things being equal, you’re well set to win any war of aggression made against you. And when the time comes for the Manti to muster their own forces and strike out at an enemy, it can pay to lure them into your own territory and defeat much larger and more dangerous fleets with these large combat bonuses. The Manti will get a lot of mileage out of Military Starbases, further boosting their already considerable combat abilities to almost absurd levels.
As if that wasn’t strong enough, the Manti’s second Civilization Trait Warriors piles the pain on even more.
I don’t think this needs much explanation. Manti are very tough to kill, and rain a lot of heavy firepower down on aggressors in return. This synergizes in deadly fashion with Paranoid, and when supported by a well equipped Military Starbase, fuggedaboudit!
With Persuasive (+1) the Manti are better at avoiding enemy aggression in the first place, and alongside their terrifying defensive potential, are well set to play a peaceful game.
Productive (+1) and its large Manufacturing bonus ensures the Manti can more than keep up with their rivals in terms of sheer industrial might, although their industry must grow slower than everybody else, for reasons discussed later in this journal. Eventually, they’re able to switch over to the production of ships and fleets if war does come knocking, and this will somewhat offset the reduction in overall industrial output you’ll suffer from Manti Citizens not liking drier Core Worlds and their slower growing industry.
That +1 Manufacturing also ensures you’ll expand faster, and with access to Draft Colonists the Manti can project their borders out quite far, quite quickly. In turn, this means your optimal military force projection extends faster too, as you make use of that meaty combat bonus from Paranoid and Warriors.
If this all seems rather combat oriented, don’t worry, the Manti have more tools to help their general Civilization development. The Manti make best use of the Traditionalism Ideology, which has some rather helpful Cultural Traits for improving Approval, Growth of Citizens, eliminating Crime, extra Control for more Executive Orders and more.
With this focus on growing Citizens and making them safe, law-abiding and productive workers, you need to avoid Pollution and the nasty penalty to Growth that it can incur. Productive will help offset the lack of Manufacturing Districts you’ll face early on, and making a beeline for Techs that help reduce Pollution, available a little further down the Science branch, can be valuable in the long term.
Once your planets are full of healthy, happy shrimps, you can start building a cleaner industry and really start pumping out ships, Improvements and Districts for new worlds, or pretty much anything you like.
Let’s have a look at the Manti themselves.
Now you see why we want to avoid Pollution: they’re really sensitive to it. While the Manti themselves are generally rather optimistic and have very low expectations (that drive to find their young keeps them fighting on in even the worst conditions), they don’t like Pollution at all. They’re also not the fastest researchers, but making up for that by being exceptionally hard workers.
This is why you want lots of Manti Citizens: that Manufacturing bonus from Productive will go a long way, and the more Citizens you have the harder it works for you.
So, keep Pollution low, and house as many Citizens on your planets as you can. You will have an overall lower industrial output at first, but once those environmental techs are researched, you’re gonna be off the charts. You can’t just ignore Manufacturing Districts though, and so I’d strongly recommend having just a couple of “industrial” worlds that will be heavily polluted and the accompanying abysmal Growth rate, and instead having one or two super-Growth planets for hothousing the generation of new Citizens, which you can regularly ship off for some mandatory service on those hell-hole factory planets, safe in the knowledge that their efforts will eventually be rewarded in finding their lost generation.
Overall, the Manti are a strong Civilization that favor a defensive playstyle but can tangle with the most aggressive of neighbors and fight them on an even keel. And while they may have a slower industrial start than other Civs, owing to their sensitivity to Pollution, they’ll generally be able to defend themselves with even rather small fleets until they get the environmental Techs necessary to really start pumping the ships out.
Once they do, the galaxy is your oyster!
