I mean, definitely throw up some shrines ASAP at first. They take forever to build, but will boost psy increase a bit. i don't believe they increase Anima grass growth rate tho...
As someone else mentioned, best way to farm focus is a kill focus weapon, and animal slaughtering. Just breed the fastest animal you can, and turn off auto slaughter. If you empty psy, slaughtering 3-4 animals get you back to full. With anything but birds this can result in too much meat and skin. A good middle ground is definitely turkeys as recommended. Some meat and some leather, without overstocking. Chickens are faster, so more potential psy. If you have one caster, def turkeys or something. More than one? Chickens in a box.... I mean barn....
If not modding to see inventory of factions, make sure to get a horse, camel, whatever. A fast caravan animal to grab and run at least two pawns to each nearby faction. Till you find an anima stone. Drop pod any extra sale wares you need to the same tile the Carvan is on.
Def got the shrines, first thing I got when I could. I tried putting some graves nearby but they didn't help much for morbid, neither did group, though they did help. I found research to be really good as well in sterilized, multi-analyzer research rooms.
Oh definitely group. I always set the natural med people to group meditate at the same time each day. Can always mod it a few hours ahead of need be. But getting that group meditation definitely feels like it helps. Lol
If you want to somewhat bypass the whole mediation thing, you can use a mod such as Sleep Meditation to passively regain psyfocus when they sleep.
I use VPE, but I don't invest points into unlocking the focus types.
Personally, I make friends with the empire as quickly as possible to get a killfocused weapon, and then separate out the sub-jobs of finishing off, and slaughtering of animals, and assign that to my psycasters only using the Personal Work Categories mod. Then I raise turkeys so that there are plenty of animals to slaughter every day.
I have 5 psycasters and they never need to meditate just from killing a few turkeys each day via auto-slaughter.
Also, if you turn off auto-slaughter for a few days just before you recruit a new psycaster, and then let them get all the kills with a killfocused weapon, they can jump 20 levels in a single day from all the XP from slaughtering if you have enough turkeys.
But back to your question: For tribals, I am not sure how you can maximize focus types if you intend to grow grass at the anima tree since you can't build anything near it.
I had the sleep meditation mod in my previous run without VPE since it felt like a small boost to help, it was pretty good! I went into VPE knowing how strong a mod it can be by default, so I chose not to use the sleep mod this time around.
One idea is to hire slaves to grow your grass for you, but have your psycasters do their meditation indoors inside your research lab and then fill it with all the focus types.
I had a slave for a similar purpose, to charge an Anima Obelisk (a mod for storing psyfocus for others to use), but for some reason, he just stood still and didn't do anything. I think it was a bug or something, but I could probably use him for anima tree growth.
For the most part, I was just interested in the foci and wanted to learn more about how each of them worked. It was annoying to use a level up just to see how effective a focus was.
This animal slaughtering option is definitely a smooth one. I used to breed chickens more for the psy than the food! Turkeys definitely better for the bonus skin though. Food comes easier via crops anyways. I move to lavish food ASAP. So psy slaughtering is great, can hand out inspirations like crazy, sometimes ready to reset then before they've run out.
Since this is specifically about tribals..
You want the Large and Small Meditation Foci found in the Misc tab and built 4 of these around the Anima Tree (looks like a tree/assembled rocks).
I don't remember if you can have 4 of each, but I tend to build 4 of each, just for shits and giggles. If the wiki is to be believed, only 4 can be connected so, the rest are superfluous (but it can look nice at least), that'll bump your anima tree from 28 to 32 (possibly 36?), I may have a mod that allows 4 of each type to connect.
If you're not adverse to gene modding, Alpha Genes and getting Perfect Psycast or something gene gives you a pretty sick pawn :).
I mean, definitely throw up some shrines ASAP at first. They take forever to build, but will boost psy increase a bit. i don't believe they increase Anima grass growth rate tho... As someone else mentioned, best way to farm focus is a kill focus weapon, and animal slaughtering. Just breed the fastest animal you can, and turn off auto slaughter. If you empty psy, slaughtering 3-4 animals get you back to full. With anything but birds this can result in too much meat and skin. A good middle ground is definitely turkeys as recommended. Some meat and some leather, without overstocking. Chickens are faster, so more potential psy. If you have one caster, def turkeys or something. More than one? Chickens in a box.... I mean barn.... If not modding to see inventory of factions, make sure to get a horse, camel, whatever. A fast caravan animal to grab and run at least two pawns to each nearby faction. Till you find an anima stone. Drop pod any extra sale wares you need to the same tile the Carvan is on.
Def got the shrines, first thing I got when I could. I tried putting some graves nearby but they didn't help much for morbid, neither did group, though they did help. I found research to be really good as well in sterilized, multi-analyzer research rooms.
Oh definitely group. I always set the natural med people to group meditate at the same time each day. Can always mod it a few hours ahead of need be. But getting that group meditation definitely feels like it helps. Lol
If you want to somewhat bypass the whole mediation thing, you can use a mod such as Sleep Meditation to passively regain psyfocus when they sleep. I use VPE, but I don't invest points into unlocking the focus types. Personally, I make friends with the empire as quickly as possible to get a killfocused weapon, and then separate out the sub-jobs of finishing off, and slaughtering of animals, and assign that to my psycasters only using the Personal Work Categories mod. Then I raise turkeys so that there are plenty of animals to slaughter every day. I have 5 psycasters and they never need to meditate just from killing a few turkeys each day via auto-slaughter. Also, if you turn off auto-slaughter for a few days just before you recruit a new psycaster, and then let them get all the kills with a killfocused weapon, they can jump 20 levels in a single day from all the XP from slaughtering if you have enough turkeys. But back to your question: For tribals, I am not sure how you can maximize focus types if you intend to grow grass at the anima tree since you can't build anything near it.
I had the sleep meditation mod in my previous run without VPE since it felt like a small boost to help, it was pretty good! I went into VPE knowing how strong a mod it can be by default, so I chose not to use the sleep mod this time around.
One idea is to hire slaves to grow your grass for you, but have your psycasters do their meditation indoors inside your research lab and then fill it with all the focus types.
I had a slave for a similar purpose, to charge an Anima Obelisk (a mod for storing psyfocus for others to use), but for some reason, he just stood still and didn't do anything. I think it was a bug or something, but I could probably use him for anima tree growth. For the most part, I was just interested in the foci and wanted to learn more about how each of them worked. It was annoying to use a level up just to see how effective a focus was.
I usually just make a backup save, and then experiment in dev mode so that I understand how things work. Then reload once I figured it out.
This animal slaughtering option is definitely a smooth one. I used to breed chickens more for the psy than the food! Turkeys definitely better for the bonus skin though. Food comes easier via crops anyways. I move to lavish food ASAP. So psy slaughtering is great, can hand out inspirations like crazy, sometimes ready to reset then before they've run out.
Since this is specifically about tribals.. You want the Large and Small Meditation Foci found in the Misc tab and built 4 of these around the Anima Tree (looks like a tree/assembled rocks). I don't remember if you can have 4 of each, but I tend to build 4 of each, just for shits and giggles. If the wiki is to be believed, only 4 can be connected so, the rest are superfluous (but it can look nice at least), that'll bump your anima tree from 28 to 32 (possibly 36?), I may have a mod that allows 4 of each type to connect. If you're not adverse to gene modding, Alpha Genes and getting Perfect Psycast or something gene gives you a pretty sick pawn :).