Best Tips for a beginner?

[Miroslav Bulldosex]

Hello,


I just started a game of Stellaris, the complexity of the game seems out of this world (pun intended) compared to all other strategy games i've played before.
I've decided I want to become a space conglomerate based on trading/expanding/exploration.
Any tips you guys can give me? Trading? Expansion? Army? NRG creds spending?


Thanks

[coolman552]

exploration ends rather quickly after a few decades ( try to survey stars that continue to go somewhere with the hyperlane network instead of surveying isolated systems to cover more land)

trading with ai empires is nonexistent (you need to overpay way too much for basic ♥♥♥♥ and they just refuse to give you their systems) but the good thing is there is another trading system which is collecting trade value (those jewelry symbols you sometimes see in star systems) build a starbase and some trade hubs to collect them and theyll send it to your main capital (there are 3 trading policies: wealth creation which gives 1 energy cred for 1 trade value and the others give 0.5 energy 0.25 consumers goods/0.25 unity) there are also techs and stuff to further give you more trade value (commerical buildings for example generate 10 trade value on ur planet iirc)

for army if you want to make big ass fleets quickly you need to make alloy foundries which eat minerals (you get ♥♥♥♥ ton of minerals from the mining stations alone so no prob) and then just spam whatever ship you got (try fiddling with the ship designing itll help you out in the future)

if u dont want to expand like crazy and cover 100% of the galaxy you can become a megacorp (if u got the dlc lol) that focuses on generating trade value

[AngleWyrm]

I played several games out to about fifty years, and discovered that I was usually short on energy and commercial goods. So I redesigned my race and started looking for policies, edicts and tech that boost those shortages.

I use a bunch of mods, so your mileage may vary
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2063459746

[steven1mac]

Have more than one science ship so you can explore as much as you can, the science ships can be used to assist research on your worlds once they can't explore any more. Either use your diplomat to help relations with your neighbors or build your fleet close to the navel cap, or you will look like an easy target.

[galadon3]

covering it completely would need a full guise, so just some quick pointers:

a) in the initial phase of the game (especially if your galaxy has many AI-Empires) build at least 2-3 science vessels and send at least one of them out to explore the hyperlanes around you while the others survey systems fully.
That way you can identify possible bottlenecks in the hyperlane-network, then build outposts to those bottlenecks and initially block other empires border access, that way you secure an initial area for yourself.

b) In the first phase ressources from the star-systems will make up the bulk of your income and freshly colonized worlds will at first produce some losses and then give you pretty little till they start to really work and your tech makes them more efficient.

c) in the long run colonies are ofc what gets your economy really running, so its important to balance out between the day to day needs of your empire, your defense and expanding.

d) what will win you the game in the long run is having the best economy, and the bottleneck for economic expansion is POPs.

e) your initial production is not very efficient (considering upkeep for pops and buildings compared to the output), techs and traditions are the way to make it ever more efficient.

f) as point d and e make clear, investing heavily in traditions (produce unity), economic tech (produce science and take economy / science over military applications) and pop-growth (growth edicts, nutritional plentitude policy, genome clinics) is the ideal way to become quickly big and powerfull that just has one problem:

g) NEIGHBOURS, you will be surrounded by AIs and if you look tasty and helpless they will attack you, so you have to somewhat balance the economy-priority mentioned in f with your empires security, that can be done in two (and a half) ways:
1) have a fleet that deters enemies, the AI always weighs the military might on its side against that of the other side when deciding if it wants to start a war.
1.5) strong border fortresses, they cost a lot of alloys and they are only a viable strategy if you dont have too many bordersystems but when they back your fleet in a defensive war they can stop even more powerfull empires (fighting on their own they risk being overwhelmed)
2) Diplomacy, you have at least 1 envoy (maybe more) use him by sending him to a neighbour and improve relations, you want at least a non-agression pact in the long run, so that border is secured (the AI needs to break it and then wait 10 years before it can attack you, so that gives you ample warning time). A defensive pact with a militarily strong empire is a way to get strategy 1 going, since the AI will alwasy take your allies military strength into consideration you can have a fleetstrength detering attackers by having an ally who actually has said strength.
(for the diplomacy way, check a while after sending the envoy if he is making progress, its possible that a more aggressive AI-empire doesnt WANT good relations and sends its own envoy to harm relations, in that case send your envoy elsewhere, where you actually can get a treaty)

[grognardgary]

Exploration: Tailor your scout ships according to the skill of the operator where possible Have one or two specifically for researching high difficulty anomalies. There are science officer traits that get you big bonuses to anomaly study. and others that help with excavation. Your initial scouts shouldn't explore every available system. Often times you can explore and later build star bases on 2 or 3 star systems that might cut off four or five other systems from your opponents. Ability to occupy them it also makes it slightly more likely that events like the ransomers will occur with in easy reach or leave places for a precursors home world where you have an actual chance to get to it before some one else. Note this is for base unmoded stellaris vs the AI including federations. You will of course go back and fill in the spaces later.

One other hint don't build districts you don't have to. When an unemployed pop shows up build what ever district you need to fill in whatever potential shortages you have. Housing shortages build city districts energy districts unless you are going negative on food. Early on colonize as many planets as you can once you contact other civiliztions Build starports at points of contact with other civilizations especially with hostiles add defensive platforms to max and base a decent sized fleet there. A good offense always starts with a good defense and starports and defense platforms don't add to your fleet size.

[AngleWyrm]

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Have one or two specifically for researching high difficulty anomalies.

You can transfer leaders between ships for free, so if you come across a high difficulty anomaly, transfer a high-level (or anomoly-skilled, or both) scientist to that ship.

[grognardgary]

Originally posted by AngleWyrm:

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Have one or two specifically for researching high difficulty anomalies.

You can transfer leaders between ships for free, so if you come across a high difficulty anomaly, transfer a high-level (or anomoly-skilled, or both) scientist to that ship.

True that but in the early game that ship in system needs to be moving on to the next system not sittng there puzzling out a level six anomaly or excavating an archeolgy site.

[claedag74]

Originally posted by AngleWyrm:

I played several games out to about fifty years, and discovered that I was usually short on energy and commercial goods. So I redesigned my race and started looking for policies, edicts and tech that boost those shortages.

I use a bunch of mods, so your mileage may vary
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2063459746

Thanks for adding my mod, Building Pop Requirements, to your must have list. It is the only mod I have on here that works, lol.

[PCM]

Start easy, start slow.... ( maybe use the scaling difficulty option if you don't like the word easy ) don't shy away from problems you don't understand give them time to settle into that brain of yours

In the contact screen you can easily see how the empires around you do fleet/economy and tech wise with words such as superior, inferior equal etc

Based on your playstyle you want to be at least friends with the big boys or carry enough guns around to make it very hard to get into your empire

Take a look at the policies screen too... maybe you see yourself carrying around options you really don't like such as the approval of all out war, as a trader you might want to think defensive and let your white collars do the war on the tradefloor

another thing you want to tingle with is how certain goods such as energy or trade are distributed.
at a certain point i decided i needed more materials from my trade income halving energy income, this ment i dropped to a -200 for energy income for a while and with an edict you can't change for i belief 10 years. I had the luck of just starting up some generator worlds and had enough energy mining sites left before this situation could get any worse

[galadon3]

Originally posted by Zimerius:

Start easy, start slow.... ( maybe use the scaling difficulty option if you don't like the word easy ) don't shy away from problems you don't understand give them time to settle into that brain of yours

In the contact screen you can easily see how the empires around you do fleet/economy and tech wise with words such as superior, inferior equal etc

Based on your playstyle you want to be at least friends with the big boys or carry enough guns around to make it very hard to get into your empire

Take a look at the edicts screen too... maybe you see yourself carrying around options you really don't like such as the approval of all out war, as a trader you might want to think defensive and let your white collars do the war on the tradefloor

another thing you want to tingle with is how certain goods such as energy or trade are distributed.
at a certain point i decided i needed more materials from my trade income halving energy income, this ment i dropped to a -200 for energy income for a while and with an edict you can't change for i belief 10 years. I had the luck of just starting up some generator worlds and had enough energy mining sites left before this situation could get any worse

Just to avoid confusion, is it possible you mean "policies" ? Edicts are the thing you activate for influence / ressources

[Nightmyre]

By far the biggest mistakes people make are misusing / misunderstanding the relationship between pops and jobs.

1) Try to avoid constructing districts and buildings until you have pops to support the jobs they create - IE try to always be as close to the exact number of available jobs as the number of pops you have on your planet. This is unlike most other games, where you typically would just build and wait for them to be filled. The reason for this is that the reassignment of pops to jobs is not always ideal, and can result in big swings in your overall output.

2) Generally, don't upgrade buildings if they incur a rare resource cost, especially if you can't support the cost. Generally, you're better off just sticking with normal districts and buildings, and shuffling pops between planets instead.

3) Remember that buildings almost always produce specialist jobs, and that means you get a double hit to your basic resources - your specialist job will consume minerals or energy (or consumer goods, which in turn requires minerals), and will also remove those workers from the basic job that produces those resources. Especially if you're building several buildings simultaneously across planets, you could have a sudden swing in your basic resource production.

[PCM]

Originally posted by galadon3:

Originally posted by Zimerius:

Start easy, start slow.... ( maybe use the scaling difficulty option if you don't like the word easy ) don't shy away from problems you don't understand give them time to settle into that brain of yours

In the contact screen you can easily see how the empires around you do fleet/economy and tech wise with words such as superior, inferior equal etc

Based on your playstyle you want to be at least friends with the big boys or carry enough guns around to make it very hard to get into your empire

Take a look at the edicts screen too... maybe you see yourself carrying around options you really don't like such as the approval of all out war, as a trader you might want to think defensive and let your white collars do the war on the tradefloor

another thing you want to tingle with is how certain goods such as energy or trade are distributed.
at a certain point i decided i needed more materials from my trade income halving energy income, this ment i dropped to a -200 for energy income for a while and with an edict you can't change for i belief 10 years. I had the luck of just starting up some generator worlds and had enough energy mining sites left before this situation could get any worse

Just to avoid confusion, is it possible you mean "policies" ? Edicts are the thing you activate for influence / ressources

yes, thank you! policies!! edited post

[Boshedo]

You guys have any specific tips or traits for "creating" your own race? Like Materialists, etc? Also, what race or faction would be good to start with? Just completed my purchase of all the dlc so now I have options. Thanks. New player as well.

[Nightmyre]

Certain traits are almost auto-takes, while others are almost auto-ignores.

Typically, the "very good" positive ones are:

Rapid Breeders
Intelligent
Industrious / Ingenious (if applicable for your build)

and the "very bad" positive ones are:

Conformists
Docile (for game-start. becomes more useful later in the game, to genemod)
Venerable (way too expensive)
Very Strong (way too expensive)

The "very good" negative ones are:

Deviants
Unruly
Decadent / Weak (specific to the Syncretic Evolution start. otherwise, don't take them)

The "very bad" negative ones are

Repugnant
Slow Breeders

[Boshedo]

Cool thanks. Maybe I'll start with a faction that is already in the game to get my feet wet and then venture out to create my own.