Should you colonize every planet?

[Cohj]

So I currently have over 200 hours on Stellaris. It's enormously fun but something I've never been able to do is "win". I've gotten close but often I'll lose to some federation being formed which just happens to cover 60% of the globe.

So here's my question, generally you have 2-3 planets near you that are "perfect". I will ignore them if the planet is 15 or less unless I absolutely need borders there or it has some special effect. My lastest game (I also lost because the entire map formed a federation and instantly won) but I played hive mind. I had 13 planets extrermely quickly.

And I did well, I had a ton of income, fleet capacity and the enemies weren't "Superior" but my research was god awful slow. Which is why I generally resisted taking every planet before but without that fleet capacity and that energy. It gets really hard to field fleets strong enough to take out the AI.

Is this what I've been missing? Should I be coloizing every world down to the 10 slot ones for those starports? How do you guys play it?

[Hugh]

I always do

[76561198340377227]

There's 2 ways to play Stellaris. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but people who play tall are "wrong".

Colonize everything. Plant your flag on every rock in the galaxy until there's not a single square inch of dirt to drop a flagpost in.

Yes tech advance slows with every new colony, so do traditions... but each new colony can make up for it with research and unity production to partially offset it.

What can't be offset in a tall campaign is the sheer mineral and fleet cap spam you can get with a wide empire. So what if they have better lazer guns and better pew pew. DROWN THEM IN THE CORPSES OF YOUR SLAVE ARMY! Go for the zerg tactic.

My current campaign I went wide AND vassalized everything around me. About half the other empires have "superior" tech level but "pathetic" fleets compared to me and I have the muscle to break up most federations that form before they can blob. It's all about that zerg, bruh.

[NixBoxDone]

You know, you'd really do yourself a favour by omitting that last part of the second sentence.

There's not much point in trying to look all open to new ideas and tolerant when you end it that way. Kinda like Jim Jefferies: I respect your right to have a religion and believe in god but please know that you're wrong, okay? >_<


Kaedmonus advice is better for beginners, that much is right. With more planets comes more naval capacity and more production which will be much more useful to a starter than having 1 more tier of weapons and only 1 weapon for every 3 of the enemy.

Most tall strategies require a player to know their way around, correctly identify who is a potential ally or foe, butter up your allies while keeping your foes as starved for territory and allies as possible and potentially subjugate them as vassals or tributaries when you get the chance, all the while devoting most of your available resources and modifiers (be it ethics, civics, pop traits, traditions or tech) towards snowballing.

Most strategies focus on doing so in an effort to get to the Science Nexus as fast as humanly possible, blaze through all of the tech tree until you have a couple of repeatables in your chosen weapon types and defense types and then spread like a wildfire to get the minerals and naval cap you need to balloon out of control.
All that tech will mean that you're going to have no trouble colonizing any of the planets within your borders, but it'll also mean having the tech to build habitats and ringworlds or a dyson sphere to finance a disproportionally huge navy even at the very beginning of this expansion process.

If you're a competent player going tall, you'll end up with vastly more ships and material income by 2400 than a beginner going for wide, simply because each pop will be vastly more productive and each system will contain one or two planets that focus on whatever resource they'd be best for (be that energy credits, minerals or science) and enough habitats to pay for them and a healthy chunk of fleet to protect your holdings. Each will also be productive enough to easily pay for the upkeep of 1 to 3 fortress stations of around 20 k fleet power - enough to demolish most smaller empires and discourage federations with weaker members from trying to swarm you.



I'd suggest going for wide gameplay as you learn the game and gradually working your way into playing tall as you learn about the various things available to you in the game.

[Cohj]

I wish I could pick two answers. That's some really solid advice on both sides. I have tried to play tall but without rushing a science nexus. I can see how that would make a difference but I also thing playing wide is pretty valuable, with 10 planets. I was able to effectively create new fleets instantly even if they were beaten.

I apperciate all the feedback.

[NixBoxDone]

Both playstyles are really fun, but for different reasons. Playing wide will keep you busy, give you plenty of wars and have you feel like a sci-fi Alexander the Great as your enemies are driven before you and you hear the lamentations of their women equivalents. It also gives you a lot of opportunity to play with different fleet designs (as you'll have ships left over). I particularly like declaring war on smaller enemies and fighting them with a smaller fleet that I try to custom design to beat them, while my bigger peace-time navy sits in the rear as insurance.
This lets you test counter-building and will let you learn from experience how big your fleet has to be when properly counter-designed to beat an enemy without significant losses.

Playing tall will give you a hefty chunk of feeling like a plotter, a devious schemer who carefully plans his eventual ascension to near godhood. Enemies might scoff at you and only spare you because of your bigger friends while your friends only protect you to benefit from your bribes, but once that Nexus is complete their days will be numbered.

They will learn once your armadas throw a shadow over their homeworlds.

[Big Mad Wolf]

At first I only colonize those planet, that will give me more space. If a planet is all ready inside of my empire, I will colonize them at a later point. Colonizing everything early, slows your research and your ascending down.

Though in Cherryh this will change, because colonizing won't increase the size of your empire anymore.

[76561198340377227]

Originally posted by NixBoxDone:

You know, you'd really do yourself a favour by omitting that last part of the second sentence.

There's not much point in trying to look all open to new ideas and tolerant when you end it that way. Kinda like Jim Jefferies: I respect your right to have a religion and believe in god but please know that you're wrong, okay? >_<

You're an intelligent fella Nix, you should be able to recognize a tongue in cheek comment like that for what it is. Unless you think Jim Jeffries actually meant it too.

In my personal experience, playing tall doesn't always work. Maybe cuz I don't "know my way around" as much. But my attempts to play tall, sit back and be the evil Bond villain scheming from the corner of the galaxy, usually end up where 2/3 of the galaxy has federated in a single unassailable blob and the only friends I can sink my teeth into are the village dunces. At that point the game kinda turns into a boring stalemate where I can't crack the super federation and they're too mamsy pansy goody 2 shoes to want a piece of me either. Yawn.

I prefer the wide strategy because it allows you to have the military muscle early enough to prevent blobbing. Breaking up a federation is easy when you can nip it in the bud before it has 8 members and the galaxy turns into a massive carebear.

Maybe it's just that my warmongering nature doesn't allow me the patience for all that dastardly scheming. That's something beautifully honest about terror bombing people that disagree with you and then designating them as food. It seems more civilized.

[NixBoxDone]

It's definitely fiddly and more prone to having you get wrecked even if you do everything right - that much is true. I think I just enjoy it because I played Space Rome once too often, lol.

As to your joke: I've been on Steam so long that people being dumb, people being funny and people playing dumb to be funny just sort of runs together into a huge blob of durrrrr.

[76561198340377227]

Originally posted by NixBoxDone:

As to your joke: I've been on Steam so long that people being dumb, people being funny and people playing dumb to be funny just sort of runs together into a huge blob of durrrrr.

I can't believe you feel that way Nix. Every single person I've ever met on the internet seems intelligent and well-spoken, with thought-provoking opinions that can add value and context into all of our lives. Shame on you.

[Cerebral Daemon]

Originally posted by Kaedmonus:

Originally posted by NixBoxDone:

As to your joke: I've been on Steam so long that people being dumb, people being funny and people playing dumb to be funny just sort of runs together into a huge blob of durrrrr.

I can't believe you feel that way Nix. Every single person I've ever met on the internet seems intelligent and well-spoken, with thought-provoking opinions that can add value and context into all of our lives. Shame on you.

A moment of silence, please, for we have found the Blorgs!