How to win a game or be minimally respectable?

[Alrevencazo]

Hey guys, I've been playing the game for 74 hours and I know as a Paradox player it might not be good enough yet hahahaha, but I have several doubts. In other games, crusader, europe, etc, I always reach that level of dominance, being a power, relevant, even a winner, but stellaris costs me a lot.

I lose games, I'm always very behind, economically, politically and militarily. In the list of nations I occupy the lowest places, and with each passing game I notice that I improve, I try to advance well in the investigations, stay within the limits of the size of the empire, have a respectable fleet, but nothing. I don't move forward, I'm always behind.

What do I have to do to be a power, what are the steps to be important, occupy the first positions in the Galactic Community (is this necessary? I always wonder if it is worth joining), have a brutal economy, be technologically advanced , have a powerful army, etc.

Thank you very much in advance.

[yuzhonglu]

Play Clone Army and make sure no one is a clerk or unemployed in the first 25 years. You must be colonizing your first two worlds by 2205. You do not have any resources in excess of 3000 except for alloys. Do this and you will be a powerhouse by 2230, at which point you begin invading your neighbors.

[Alrevencazo]

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

Play Clone Army and make sure no one is a clerk or unemployed in the first 25 years. You must be colonizing your first two worlds by 2205. You do not have any resources in excess of 3000 except for alloys. Do this and you will be a powerhouse by 2230, at which point you begin invading your neighbors.

Thank you very much, but I have doubts. Do I have expansion limits? namely, ? I colonize only two worlds as you say until that date, at some point should I exceed the size of the empire? Does it matter if I'm too small? What ideas should I select?

[Alrevencazo]

That is, I could use some basic advice to get what I want, expansion guidelines, traits, if I should exceed the limit the empire to cost of research, etc.

[PlutonArioch]

Here are your expansion guidelines: Yes!

That is to say: always expand if you can. Don't worry about the "limit", there is none. You get some minor research and unity penalties, but you can easily outproduce them if you expand, and keep building up research and unity production.

If you want to become powerful, you should try to produce as much research and alloys as you can, which also means to keep increasing your income of basic and advanced materials as demand grows, and to constantly increase your population, which needs space to live in.

Playing "tall" or "small", is for those who want to challenge themselves. You will have less space, therefore less population and less jobs, and that means less income, so less resources to use to become stronger.

[Wokelander]

Pops = production = power.

Colonize and, if you can, conquer early so you can add pops to your empire because pops make all your numbers go bigger (assuming you make sure they have jobs)

[yuzhonglu]

Originally posted by Alrevencazo:

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

Play Clone Army and make sure no one is a clerk or unemployed in the first 25 years. You must be colonizing your first two worlds by 2205. You do not have any resources in excess of 3000 except for alloys. Do this and you will be a powerhouse by 2230, at which point you begin invading your neighbors.

Thank you very much, but I have doubts. Do I have expansion limits? namely, ? I colonize only two worlds as you say until that date, at some point should I exceed the size of the empire? Does it matter if I'm too small? What ideas should I select?

You'll figure it out once you play Clone Army and their unique mechanics. Keeping everyone employed in non clerk positions will be a test of your early game skills. But if played well they are the strongest start in the game.

Once you can manage this challenge, you will have mastered all early game.

[yuzhonglu]

Pluton's advice is not good. With regular empires, never expand more than 4 times before 2230. Most of your empire growth should be through conquest.

With Clone Army on most games you never expand more than twice.

[PlutonArioch]

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

Pluton's advice is not good. With regular empires, never expand more than 4 times before 2230. Most of your empire growth should be through conquest.

With Clone Army on most games you never expand more than twice.

Conquest is one way of expanding...

Also your way to play, is not the only way to play. Some day even you might learn that.

[HappySack]

Easiest way is to play to the strengths of your empire, otherwise it just takes experience.

[yuzhonglu]

Originally posted by PlutonArioch:

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

Pluton's advice is not good. With regular empires, never expand more than 4 times before 2230. Most of your empire growth should be through conquest.

With Clone Army on most games you never expand more than twice.

Conquest is one way of expanding...

Also your way to play, is not the only way to play. Some day even you might learn that.

Ok, but he wants the best advice. The most efficient way against AI is to play Clone Army, settle 2 other planets, tech rush, get to cruisers and x-ray lasers (proton launchers if possible is better), save up 8k alloys or more, build cruisers, and conquer.

The best players get like 20k + or more fleet power by 2230.

The issue with over expanding early is they don't become net resource positive until 2240 or so.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by Khorvale:

Pops = production = power.

Colonize and, if you can, conquer early so you can add pops to your empire because pops make all your numbers go bigger (assuming you make sure they have jobs)

One thing to add to that: pops need useful jobs. Having +1k energy/minerals/alloys/C-goods/food per month when you've hit your storage max for that resource is wasteful. Some of the pops in that situation could be making a different resource, like research or unity, both of which you can never get enough of. That said, having too small of a military can also lead to a "surplus" of materials, so you need to make sure you are keeping up with (ideally surpassing) your neighbors. . . . Especially the grumpy ones.

Another waste of pops can be amenities; if you aren't careful, some of your planets could end up with 1/3rd of their pops producing surplus amenities. That's even more of a problem for a machine empire, where maintenance drones are kinda bad. I inadvertently sabotaged myself with that initially, because I basically assumed that as long as the pops were employed (and none of my resources were in the red) I was doing good.

And yet, I "mysteriously" dropped down to last place on the victory scoreboard until I started paying a lot more attention to what jobs were actually available/being filled. After that I was able to jump up to 4th place pretty quickly, but the decades of poor early game management simply made it too difficult (for me) to catch up.

Another, separate bit of advice for OP: when possible, try to take control of chokepoints leading into/out of your territory. Having to secure ~4 systems instead of 8-12 greatly simplifies the task of setting up adequate defenses. Oh, and if you don't already, try to specialize the output of your planets as much as possible, due to the way bonuses work. For example, a research world, alloy world, etc. And while you are at it, make sure to manually set the planet designations; while the game frequently auto-selects something relevant, it's not always the one you have in mind for the planet.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by shadain597:

Originally posted by Khorvale:

Pops = production = power.

Colonize and, if you can, conquer early so you can add pops to your empire because pops make all your numbers go bigger (assuming you make sure they have jobs)

One thing to add to that: pops need useful jobs. Having +1k energy/minerals/alloys/C-goods/food per month when you've hit your storage max for that resource is wasteful. Some of the pops in that situation could be making a different resource, like research or unity, both of which you can never get enough of. That said, having too small of a military can also lead to a "surplus" of materials, so you need to make sure you are keeping up with (ideally surpassing) your neighbors. . . . Especially the grumpy ones.

Another waste of pops can be amenities; if you aren't careful, some of your planets could end up with 1/3rd of their pops producing surplus amenities. That's even more of a problem for a machine empire, where maintenance drones are kinda bad. I inadvertently sabotaged myself with that initially, because I basically assumed that as long as the pops were employed (and none of my resources were in the red) I was doing good.

And yet, I "mysteriously" dropped down to last place on the victory scoreboard until I started paying a lot more attention to what jobs were actually available/being filled. After that I was able to jump up to 4th place pretty quickly, but the decades of poor early game management simply made it too difficult (for me) to catch up.

Another, separate bit of advice for OP: when possible, try to take control of chokepoints leading into/out of your territory. Having to secure ~4 systems instead of 8-12 greatly simplifies the task of setting up adequate defenses. Oh, and if you don't already, try to specialize the output of your planets as much as possible, due to the way bonuses work. For example, a research world, alloy world, etc. And while you are at it, make sure to manually set the planet designations; while the game frequently auto-selects something relevant, it's not always the one you have in mind for the planet.

^
Probably the most important tip of all.

Clerks are terrible and you should always forbid them all, only ever allow a couple if you absolutely need a few extra amenities and you can't build a holoteather at the moment.

As for Maintenance Drones, they are the same as clerks, but worse, if you're a hivemind ascetic civic is not optional, charismatic pops are almost mandatory as well, and getting the synchronicity tradition first just to get +amenities from synapse drones (then you can fill another one too) is a must, always aim at having 0 maitenance drones/clerks whenever possible.

As for planets, they are not all the same, and they don't all matter the same, specialization is key, and the special buildings that make certain jobs more productive (+minerals per miner, +alloys per factory worker, etc..) are mandatory, each planet should focus on one thing only, and fill the rest of the empty slots with science labs and/or unity production.

Also, you don't need 2 mineral worlds until you have one full mineral world without any extra room for any other worker, so isntead of developing 2 worlds with lots of mineral district slots, develop one, leave the other planet empty (try to get it to 10 pops and upgrade the capital first, if you're not a hivemind, then empty the planet) by forbidding every job except rulers and pop assembly (usually robot production), just let your pops grow on that planet and get unemployed, they will migrate on their own to the bigger, more developed and productive worlds unless their species have no migration rights, or are simple robots which need to be manually moved. Only start developing a 2nd mineral world when your first one is complete and you need more minerals. Minerals are just one example, the same goes for every other type of resource.

If you optimize your economy and make it efficient then you'll be crushing even the highest AI in the game with ease, the AI is very incompetent in Stellaris and it doesn't even understand the most basic concepts, early on, when it gets tons of difficulty level boosts it can be a bit challenging, but later on when the AI gets more choices, and manages to make every single bad choice they can, like chosing bad research paths, using clerks, not developing worlds properly, not making fleets focused on anything, not using synergy bonuses from admirals, using cruisers into the late game, etc... It will get very easy to beat the game, after all, bonus production over no production is still no production.

[Mikessnow]

Youtube videos will help you like montu, he is informative.

[Mikessnow]

Also read the wiki for stellaris 🖖

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

MontuPlays om YouTube has some great tutorials. He had somewhat of a series on how to start, but it was for a couple of versions back.

I was going to write some paragraphs about economy but I think it's way too much, lol.

But yeah, close the clerk jobs, get a surplus of the basic resources, and then open as many science jobs and alloy jobs as the minerals allow.

Minerals are usually the limiting factor, in my experience. Either you expand, you build habitats, or you build a matter decompressor.