Tips when starting a game and some help(read)

[Empress Lina]

I've had the game a long time but gave up now i'm trying to get into it again. I played my longest game right now and stopped right after i met the other aliens because i can tell i wasn't doing stuff right. bleeding resources and no army etc.

When you first start a new game what should you do?
The game i played i was slow but i built like 4 science and construction ships and explored and didn't build starbases everywhere and took a while to actually start building resource stations and i still was bleeding them later in my game. Also I had no army. I tried building a small army to fight against one of the entities in space and i didn't know it was so strong.


Is there any required research you need? I just picked whatever i thought looked good. I picked the ship unlocks but it seemed it took a long longer to unlock a new military ship than i expected.

[Cryten]

My starter tips:

~ Build a extra science ship straight away. You only have a limited time to explore, claim space and get anomaly bonuses. building up to 4 science ships over the next 7-10 years is common. Some people go for much more.

~ Construction ships are low priority. You shouldnt need more than 2 until you start making gateways and habitats. Generally you should only have as many construction ships as you need to build new star bases and exploit resources smoothly.

~ An early alloy building should help keep you up with expansion costs but beware of your mineral income. Getting a second science building is also high priority as the first one doubles your research.

~ The most important thing to do is to claim your 2 guaranteed habitable worlds. Pop growth is the only way to make your empire stronger. With that said enabling nutritional plenitude early on is a big plus, as is the expansion traditions.

~ You expect to be behind the ai early. They are strongest early as they focus on fleet power and basic resources over any form of synergy. Send an envoy to your first neighbour in an attempt to keep them friendly. Be prepared for them to turn on you just in case by building a combat station (bastion) in a choke point towards their territory. How much you build you military is up to how safe you feel. After the first 15 years dont neglect to make starbases with anchorages to expand your military capacity.

~ For technology its just a matter of learning whats important. Dont be afraid of losing. If you go into it expecting to loose a game you can learn so much. You might even surprise yourself by making a brilliant choice.

~ I do recommend picking up science, combat and the synergy resource buildings over other tech.

~ The whole point of stellaris is to build an economy to support production of science and alloys. Everything else feeds into this.

~ I highly recommend for newbies to try a hive mind if they have utopia (Arguable the most significant dlc). They are alot easier to manage as they do not worry about consumer goods, happiness or factions. And devouring swarms are insanely powerful.

[Empress Lina]

Originally posted by Cryten:

My starter tips:

~ Build a extra science ship straight away. You only have a limited time to explore, claim space and get anomaly bonuses. building up to 4 science ships over the next 7-10 years is common. Some people go for much more.

~ Construction ships are low priority. You shouldnt need more than 2 until you start making gateways and habitats. Generally you should only have as many construction ships as you need to build new star bases and exploit resources smoothly.

~ An early alloy building should help keep you up with expansion costs but beware of your mineral income. Getting a second science building is also high priority as the first one doubles your research.

~ The most important thing to do is to claim your 2 guaranteed habitable worlds. Pop growth is the only way to make your empire stronger. With that said enabling nutritional plenitude early on is a big plus, as is the expansion traditions.

~ You expect to be behind the ai early. They are strongest early as they focus on fleet power and basic resources over any form of synergy. Send an envoy to your first neighbour in an attempt to keep them friendly. Be prepared for them to turn on you just in case by building a combat station (bastion) in a choke point towards their territory. How much you build you military is up to how safe you feel. After the first 15 years dont neglect to make starbases with anchorages to expand your military capacity.

~ For technology its just a matter of learning whats important. Dont be afraid of losing. If you go into it expecting to loose a game you can learn so much. You might even surprise yourself by making a brilliant choice.

~ I do recommend picking up science, combat and the synergy resource buildings over other tech.

~ The whole point of stellaris is to build an economy to support production of science and alloys. Everything else feeds into this.

~ I highly recommend for newbies to try a hive mind if they have utopia (Arguable the most significant dlc). They are alot easier to manage as they do not worry about consumer goods, happiness or factions. And devouring swarms are insanely powerful.

Here is a screenshot from my that game. I thought the minimum year was 2100 so apparently i only played 26 years. It felt far longer than that. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2071995151 Can you tell me what i am issing?

[Cryten]

Your research is low for 51 years in (2251, starts from 2200).

You have no fleet at all. You will never build up enough ships in time if you get attacked unless your playing a defensive alliance turtle strategy. I recommend against this as a newbie.

I cant judge planets without looking at them but your producing low amounts of resources so you probably are not specialising planets to to use planet type bonuses (Energy, Mineral, Food Alloy, Research). The unemployed pops and overcrowding warnings on your planet overview on the right are concerning.

All your planets have pops who are not working so you are wasting them. Are you keep up with your basic resource districts? Also 69 pops at 51 years is extremely small. Understandable since your a newbie but try and settle those unsettled green planets in your territory.

Your resources are balanced so thats at least good. Alloys are okay for late early game. You should probably have a bureaucrat building to expand your sprawl cap to speed up research.

If I was in your boots I would make settling your remaining green planets a priority. Developing some of your planets into mass producing minerals and energy and then using those minerals for making CG's to feed into research buildings. Keep all those pops employed. Force migrate them if you have too to get them jobs. But getting more minerals to build buildings and districts for employment is your immediate goal.

You have secured a large territory which should set you up for the mid game if you can exploit it. Securing cybrex alpha is a must since its your precursor system.

[Empress Lina]

Originally posted by Cryten:

Your research is low for 51 years in (2251, starts from 2200).

You have no fleet at all. You will never build up enough ships in time if you get attacked unless your playing a defensive alliance turtle strategy. I recommend against this as a newbie.

I cant judge planets without looking at them but your producing low amounts of resources so you probably are not specialising planets to to use planet type bonuses (Energy, Mineral, Food Alloy, Research).

All your planets have pops who are not working so you are wasting them. Are you keep up with your basic resource districts? Also 69 pops at 51 years is extremely small. Understandable since your a newbie but try and settle those unsettled green planets in your territory.

Your resources are balanced so thats at least good. Alloys are okay for late early game. You should probably have a buerocrat building to expand your sprawl cap to speed up research.

If I was in your boots I would make settling your remaining green planets a priority. Developing some of your planets into mass producing minerals and energy and then using those minerals for making CG's to feed into research buildings. Keep all those pops employed. Force migrate them if you have too to get them jobs. But getting more minerals to build buildings and districts for employment is your immediate goal.

No fleet because i was working on other things and i was trying to unlock other ships to build then i just built a few and sent to to attack the sun eating monster and they got destroyed instantly. This play through was just to mess around really and figure things out.

Uh working? I built the things on the planet that produce resources on the planet. I didn't have a lot of space on each planet though. most had 2 slots only. I must be missing something.

[Cryten]

Districts on the left side of the planet screen. with the coloured squares underneath them. They give you resource jobs and provide housing. The left most is your city district that provides housing and a small amount of traders. Then there is energy districts, mineral districts and farm districts. Until you unlock tier 2 resource buildings (and on resource specialised planets) they will be your main way of filling jobs once your buildings are full. Always have enough housing for your pops by getting a city district when you run low.

Im honestly surprised you have positive food without knowing this.

[Hapxier]

Originally posted by Kayle x Morgana:

No fleet because i was working on other things and i was trying to unlock other ships to build then i just built a few and sent to to attack the sun eating monster and they got destroyed instantly. This play through was just to mess around really and figure things out.

Uh working? I built the things on the planet that produce resources on the planet. I didn't have a lot of space on each planet though. most had 2 slots only. I must be missing something.

I bet I know what's up- You saw the big grid for planetary buildings, thought "Aha! This is the way to improve my planets!" and thus passed over districts. The districts are the four options to the left of the building grid, and while much less prominent on the planet window, they're really important.

The leftmost, blue one is most important of all- you need those city districts, otherwise your planets will quickly get bogged down with overcrowding, as I can see in your screenshot. All districts provide more housing space, but city districts do it best, and the clerk job they provide helps meet your population's demand for amenities. The three other types also provide a smaller bit of housing, but they're mostly for adding on to your baseline production of energy, minerals, and food.

District construction is a bit tough to balance when you're starting out, but fairly easy to keep up with since the game will pop up warning icons for overcrowding. Just responding to the warnings is fine for a first couple games, but you'll want to get to the point where you can roll out those districts just as your planet's population will need them. Overcrowding is bad, yet unoccupied space is a waste- becoming proficient at giving them just enough is the key.

I would suggest queuing up a bunch of city districts on all your worlds, at least enough so the overcrowding issue will go away. Then, pick one planet with the largest number of possible agricultural districts, and build lots of those to meet your empire's food needs. Don't worry too much about optimizing districts at this point- they're replaceable, and you'll likely want to replace quite a few of them anyway as your planets grow in population. Sprinkle other types of districts around to get everyone else employed, and that should get your empire as a whole humming along. Then you'll be able to build a much bigger fleet, and go punch that sun-eating monster in the face! Or they'll all get wiped out. Tricky business, those sun-eating monsters...

[Slice]

Biggest tip:

Start the name of your empire with "AAA". That way your empires pops will always be on the top of the list, saving you time when looking for them on the list. Seriously, when you have 50-60 different pops listed, it makes a difference.

[Meewec]

Originally posted by Kayle x Morgana:

No fleet because i was working on other things and i was trying to unlock other ships to build then i just built a few and sent to to attack the sun eating monster and they got destroyed instantly. This play through was just to mess around really and figure things out.

things with a skull are usually fleet power of 30k-45k, avoid them until much later

Originally posted by Cryten:

Im honestly surprised you have positive food without knowing this.

based on the screenshot, they don't

[Empress Lina]

How do you use FTL? I unlocked it and i built the hyperlane registrar and i still cannot get it to work.

When i build the ship it says it has FTL capablilities.

Also i played through again. I got to most of where iwas above a lot sooner and built the things on the planet to make resources but i keep running out of alloy fast. I was attacked and built ships and ran out of electricity.

[Meewec]

Originally posted by Kayle x Morgana:

How do you use FTL? I unlocked it and i built the hyperlane registrar and i still cannot get it to work.

When i build the ship it says it has FTL capablalities.

ftl is how ships go from system to system. only tech with ftl in it that i can think of is the ftl inhibitor, that tech makes it so that enemy ships have to fight a starbase in order to leave a system by any way other than the one they came in.

[Empress Lina]

What do you do to balance resources and keep gaining them?

Like at max i've seen my alloy gain +50 i think in 50 or under years. do you need to wait a 1 or 200 years to get it higher?

[Cryten]

In the first 50 years that acceptable as you will want to focus more on research instead of military. But thats a simple question to answer. Pops equals power. Have pops mine minerals and then turn the minerals into alloys with a few providing basics such as food and consumer goods on the side.

[Todalio]

Some of the things I've got over with many playthrough;

Don't be afraid to have a credits deficit early on (As long as it's not overwhelming).
You must focus on JUST enough food (Unless Tree of Life) and get as much science and minerals (Including alloy with it). Minerals later becomes trivials, but early, it's very important.

That it be after 10-15-25 years. Strenghten your science anyway possible. 1st tradition finished should generally lead to the research focus or the unity focus if you want to start strong.

(But for some, it will be nihilistic aquisition if it's about your specie's gameplay, and the one with reduced blocker can also be a priority, depending. (Lithoid with Calamithous birth, I believe, should go for this factor, as they get extra pops from it. The youtuber, Spiffing brits, if I'm not wrong, made a whole "Exploit video" based on this start.

I mostly play gestalt, so I'm not an expert on dealing with consummers goods.

GO FOR THE CHOKEPOINT. Spot that system which, you might not want, but it is the entry for neighbours to create a mess where there is no "War path". You want clearly identified defence system and a clear "Free and peacefull" area to do Anchorage stations or shipyard, for example.

[Empress Lina]

Originally posted by Cryten:

In the first 50 years that acceptable as you will want to focus more on research instead of military. But thats a simple question to answer. Pops equals power. Have pops mine minerals and then turn the minerals into alloys with a few providing basics such as food and consumer goods on the side.

"focus on research instead of military"
So do not research the new military ships then?

And "turn minerals into alloy"?

Originally posted by Todalio:

Some of the things I've got over with many playthrough;

Don't be afraid to have a credits deficit early on (As long as it's not overwhelming).
You must focus on JUST enough food (Unless Tree of Life) and get as much science and minerals (Including alloy with it). Minerals later becomes trivials, but early, it's very important.

That it be after 10-15-25 years. Strenghten your science anyway possible. 1st tradition finished should generally lead to the research focus or the unity focus if you want to start strong.

(But for some, it will be nihilistic aquisition if it's about your specie's gameplay, and the one with reduced blocker can also be a priority, depending. (Lithoid with Calamithous birth, I believe, should go for this factor, as they get extra pops from it. The youtuber, Spiffing brits, if I'm not wrong, made a whole "Exploit video" based on this start.

I mostly play gestalt, so I'm not an expert on dealing with consummers goods.

GO FOR THE CHOKEPOINT. Spot that system which, you might not want, but it is the entry for neighbours to create a mess where there is no "War path". You want clearly identified defence system and a clear "Free and peacefull" area to do Anchorage stations or shipyard, for example.

I have been playing machine now since i don't have to deal with the food.

[Cryten]

No you want military tech as that will keep your fleet competitive. You just dont want to gear your economy to be fully alloys. You want to get tech to outscale the AI. Alloys are essential Absolutely but not at the sacrifice of everything else.

Turning minerals into alloys is via the alloy production job. It costs minerals and makes alloys. And a good specialised alloy planet will benefit from the 20% reduced upkeep from alloy production so it will reduce its burden on your minerals.

I find that early game when I dont have tier 2 alloy buildings I will usually specialise the planet to whatever its dominant basic resource is but then switch to alloys as the planet evolves into a alloy production house once tier 2's come online.

The major thing in stellaris is economy. Economy feeds into Research and Alloys. And pops provide your economy. Which is why the stellaris saying is Pops is Power. Growing pops is essential.