Note: This Tier List assumes an experienced player on brutal difficulty.
S-Tier:
%Knowledge:
This bonus is S-tier because it is essential for one of the strongest strategies in the game. While it may not seem impressive when only stacked a bit, experienced players who stack huge amounts of it can achieve over 70,000 research per month from a single meganation 10 years into the game.
%Space Program:
This bonus is S-tier because it is strong for some of the strongest strategies in the game. New players often have the false impression that this only effects how fast a nation built its initial space program, when it also impacts how fast any nation under your control build Mission Control. When experienced players use over 500 ground based Mission Control, 10 years into the game, to absolutely dominate space, this priority is how they got there.
A-Tier:
%Spacemining:
This bonus is A-tier due to its strength past the earlygame. The only reason it's not considered S-tier is that it is not as powerful in the early years, where the opportunity cost of running it is significant, especially for mega nation strategies. After 2030, experienced players stack 300-600% space mining bonuses to support their space game.
%Social Science:
This bonus is A-tier because many relevant early-game techs and projects require social science, and while you don’t want more than 50% bonus from org’s to it, being able to swap the bonuses while researching them is strong.
%Energy Science:
This bonus is A-tier because many relevant late-game techs and projects require energy science, especially when teching for good engines, and while you don’t want more than 50% bonus from org’s to it, being able to swap the bonuses while researching them is huge.
B-Tier:
%Materials Science, %Information Science, %Life Science, %Military Science, %Space Science, %Xeno Science:
They are B-tier because while not as commonly used as social and energy science, they are still very useful to have. And while you don’t want more than 50% bonus from org’s to it, being able to swap the bonuses while researching them is huge.
C-Tier:
%Spoils:
This bonus is C-Tier because it's strong at an unsustainable strategy. Spoils is actively ruining the nations you control as well as hurting the earth's climate. This bonus helps you to do this even more effectively. However, the large amount of money it generates can be used to rescue a player from going bankrupt or finance space expansion until money-generating stations come online.
%Economy:
This Bonus is C-Tier because it’s very strong in a specific timeframe for mega nation strategy’s. It’s used in meganation strategies to rapidly increase the GDP to 48.75k GDP per capita while also massively increasing CP cost.
D-Tier:
%Military:
This bonus is D-Tier because it's strong at an unneeded strategy. It not only increases how fast the military technology of a nation increases, but also how fast a nation builds armies. The reason it's D-Tier is because that's not needed in this game. Experienced players don't need strong ground armies, because even on brutal difficulty it's not hard for an experienced player to shoot down every assault carrier before it even gets a chance to land. This priority becomes really strong in brutal+ scenarios like “Against All Odds”, but those are out of the scope of this tier list.
%Unity:
This bonus is D-Tier because not enough IP is invested in it to make the bonuses for it worth it. Unity increases the nation's unity and gives a one-time public opinion boost in the nation, but because it does not provide any lasting bonuses, players rarely invest in it in the long-term. Thus, it is not worth getting bonuses for.
E-Tier:
%Funding:
This Bonus is E-Tier because it is bad at the bad strategy. The amount of money generated by funding is not enough to justify investing in it, unless you plan to continue playing far beyond the point where an experienced player wins the game. This hard to obtain bonus cannot be stacked enough to make it viable.
F-Tier
%Welfare:
This bonus is F-Tier because it is bad at the useless strategy. Welfare is more effective in nations with a lot of population, and it reduces inequality in a nation. The reason it is F-Tier is because inequality is irrelevant in meganations, as it only affects the resting cohesion point, which will always be 0 regardless of inequality. Meganation strategies do not care about this, as the knowledge and unity priority ensure that it never reaches the resting point. Additionally, while it does improve the earth's climate slightly, that effect is too small to be relevant in the time frame to win.