Tips for a diplomacy/federation playthrough

[SamsTheMan]

I'm wanting to try a game that really takes advantage of the federation system and I don't really know how to do it. Typically I can get one person to join my federation and that's it. I also fall way behind the other empires while I'm concentrating on being nice and doing diplomacy stuff.

Separately I also have a big problem with governing when I do take over someones planet because the population doesnt follow my ethics. How do I convert them?

[VoiD]

Just because you're not a psychopath/genocidal doesn't mean you can neglect your military, people won't even want to listen to you if you're weaker, so you'll need to optimize and produce great fleets anyway.

One trick I've heard people talking about is spamming autocannons as they have very high fleet power, but in reality they suck and can't take on a station half as strong, but that's still good enough to impress your neighbors if you can afford to avoid going to war with them.

As you won't be expanding much playing tall should be a better idea, the easiest way would be spamming habitats wherever you can, since paradox decided late game structures are not meant to be used and ringworlds are never going to get filled up, you can safely ignore them, specially if you're not going to conquer over 1k pops to transfer to those big worlds leaving behind empty breeding planets.

Also, playing as a regular pacifist may be ideal, just so you can unlock ideological wars, just because you're being diplomatic it doesn't mean you can't use war in your favor, some empires just won't accept you no matter what, but you can change them with this CB, making it much easier to invite them to your federations, or even as a vassal.

[CrUsHeR]

The classic federation building is pretty much dead, at least since the AI has become so much stronger economically, and almost all extra sources of influence have been removed. Just a few basic agreements will drain all of your influence, crippling yourself to the point of incapacity.

Since Overlord, it is much much more profitable to establish vassalage first, with Regulated Expansion actually feeding you tons of influence. The best empire for this is a fanatic xenophile megacorp, because everyone loves you and defaults to Subsidiary with the 30% minimum tax and restricted voting / expansion.



Indeed the Autocannons are the key for this. Their DPS on corvettes is 3x higher than Plasma, resulting in a crazy bloat in fleet power.

What i do is to focus on tech, with the goal being 1k monthly research by 2250 (minimum). If you can manage that and keep pushing for even more research, you are well on your way to completely outtech the AI until they accept becoming protectorates.

Once you hit that point of tech superiority, keep building those autocannon corvettes. If one accepts protectorate status, all his direct neighbors may also accept. So theoretically you can vassalize the whole galaxy like this.

Note that the Defender of the Galaxy perk now gives +200 opinion with everyone, even including Fallen Empires. So if you can weave that into your ascension perk strategy, it is pretty strong.

With everyone being your vassal, you now just need one junior partner to start a federation. You can do this with an enlightened pre-FTL empire sharing your ethics, or better place one vassal of your founder species in a backwater sector of your empire, release him from subject status, and form the federation with him. A single habitat will do as capital for them.

Then, voila, all the galaxy is under your protection without firing a single shot.

Originally posted by VoiD:

Also, playing as a regular pacifist may be ideal, just so you can unlock ideological wars, just because you're being diplomatic it doesn't mean you can't use war in your favor, some empires just won't accept you no matter what, but you can change them with this CB, making it much easier to invite them to your federations, or even as a vassal.

Impose Ideology wargoal can be used by simply switching to Defensive Wars. Then switch back to unrestricted whenever you want/need.

Pacifists cannot change to unrestricted wars, meaning a severe penalty when trying to federate with AI empires since they choose their war type randomly (e.g. xenophiles will randomly demand or condemn unrestricted wars)

[VoiD]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Originally posted by VoiD:

Also, playing as a regular pacifist may be ideal, just so you can unlock ideological wars, just because you're being diplomatic it doesn't mean you can't use war in your favor, some empires just won't accept you no matter what, but you can change them with this CB, making it much easier to invite them to your federations, or even as a vassal.

Impose Ideology wargoal can be used by simply switching to Defensive Wars. Then switch back to unrestricted whenever you want/need.

Pacifists cannot change to unrestricted wars, meaning a severe penalty when trying to federate with AI empires since they choose their war type randomly (e.g. xenophiles will randomly demand or condemn unrestricted wars)

Never realized this, thanks.

[SamsTheMan]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Just because you're not a psychopath/genocidal doesn't mean you can neglect your military, people won't even want to listen to you if you're weaker, so you'll need to optimize and produce great fleets anyway.

One trick I've heard people talking about is spamming autocannons as they have very high fleet power, but in reality they suck and can't take on a station half as strong, but that's still good enough to impress your neighbors if you can afford to avoid going to war with them.

As you won't be expanding much playing tall should be a better idea, the easiest way would be spamming habitats wherever you can, since paradox decided late game structures are not meant to be used and ringworlds are never going to get filled up, you can safely ignore them, specially if you're not going to conquer over 1k pops to transfer to those big worlds leaving behind empty breeding planets.

Also, playing as a regular pacifist may be ideal, just so you can unlock ideological wars, just because you're being diplomatic it doesn't mean you can't use war in your favor, some empires just won't accept you no matter what, but you can change them with this CB, making it much easier to invite them to your federations, or even as a vassal.

habitats are pretty late game right? what do you mean by 'late game structures are not meant to be used'? And why will ring worlds never get filled?

[ScreamCon]

Originally posted by SamsTheMan:

habitats are pretty late game right? what do you mean by 'late game structures are not meant to be used'? And why will ring worlds never get filled?

Your first ring worlds may fill but pop slow makes more and more of them stay empty late game.

Habitats are mid early game. Tech wise unlock at 10k range. Or was that the special tech? Either way their not late game. Thing is you don't need them with pop slow and they eat alloys sooooo, you will not want to build as many as before.

Since planets are free, organic growth is free... speaking of which building pops gets more and more expensive for what you get late game.

Planet count and growth over planets is meta to high population. Fewer planets is meta for lower research penalty.

It balances on the fact building pops will still give you more pops than empires that didn't and push you to conquer the pop growing empires that are more efficient, economical over their resources.

[SamsTheMan]

Originally posted by ScreamCon:

Originally posted by SamsTheMan:

habitats are pretty late game right? what do you mean by 'late game structures are not meant to be used'? And why will ring worlds never get filled?

Your first ring worlds may fill but pop slow makes more and more of them stay empty late game.

Habitats are mid early game. Tech wise unlock at 10k range. Or was that the special tech? Either way their not late game. Thing is you don't need them with pop slow and they eat alloys sooooo, you will not want to build as many as before.

Since planets are free, organic growth is free... speaking of which building pops gets more and more expensive for what you get late game.

Planet count and growth over planets is meta to high population. Fewer planets is meta for lower research penalty.

It balances on the fact building pops will still give you more pops than empires that didn't and push you to conquer the pop growing empires that are more efficient, economical over their resources.

what is "pop slow"

[ScreamCon]

Originally posted by SamsTheMan:

what is "pop slow"

The developers added a feature I call "pop slow". At game start you can adjust the variable. Basically every new pop in your empire increases the amount of growth needed on every world to grow the next pop. The reason they added it was to allow you to reduce number of pops late game for performance. They realised their game was getting too heavy on cpu late game so started balancing around.

Unfortunately, or not depending on your perspective, it has changed the meta or how the game plays.

[CrUsHeR]

For Ring Worlds, you may wanna consider moving pops there in increments of ~20 (then wait for building upgrades and repeat)

They're basically the only thing where planetary ascension has a measureable effect on empire performance, because they get their effects from the designation instead of the planet type (like ecumenopolis is always fixed 20%)

Then your research starts spinning out of control, like 10k, 20k, 50k

[ScreamCon]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

For Ring Worlds, you may wanna consider moving pops there in increments of ~20 (then wait for building upgrades and repeat)

They're basically the only thing where planetary ascension has a measureable effect on empire performance, because they get their effects from the designation instead of the planet type (like ecumenopolis is always fixed 20%)

Then your research starts spinning out of control, like 10k, 20k, 50k

Their the go to world type for research thats for sure. Then just hook in resources from a large planet or Dyson sphere and set to go.

I think the eccumonopolis on a large planet might be better for unity based on special districts. Whats your thought on those?

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by SamsTheMan:

Originally posted by ScreamCon:

Your first ring worlds may fill but pop slow makes more and more of them stay empty late game.

Habitats are mid early game. Tech wise unlock at 10k range. Or was that the special tech? Either way their not late game. Thing is you don't need them with pop slow and they eat alloys sooooo, you will not want to build as many as before.

Since planets are free, organic growth is free... speaking of which building pops gets more and more expensive for what you get late game.

Planet count and growth over planets is meta to high population. Fewer planets is meta for lower research penalty.

It balances on the fact building pops will still give you more pops than empires that didn't and push you to conquer the pop growing empires that are more efficient, economical over their resources.

what is "pop slow"

The actual name of the setting, since ScreamCon failed to mention it, is "Growth Required Scaling". You can set it during galaxy creation.

[SamsTheMan]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

For Ring Worlds, you may wanna consider moving pops there in increments of ~20 (then wait for building upgrades and repeat)

They're basically the only thing where planetary ascension has a measureable effect on empire performance, because they get their effects from the designation instead of the planet type (like ecumenopolis is always fixed 20%)

Then your research starts spinning out of control, like 10k, 20k, 50k

I'm not familiar with what you are talking about. What is planetary ascension? By empire performance do you need the penalty 'empire sprawl'?

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by SamsTheMan:

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

For Ring Worlds, you may wanna consider moving pops there in increments of ~20 (then wait for building upgrades and repeat)

They're basically the only thing where planetary ascension has a measureable effect on empire performance, because they get their effects from the designation instead of the planet type (like ecumenopolis is always fixed 20%)

Then your research starts spinning out of control, like 10k, 20k, 50k

I'm not familiar with what you are talking about. What is planetary ascension? By empire performance do you need the penalty 'empire sprawl'?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2959800697

Marked in red, it is a bit hidden next to the planetary designation interface.

https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Designation#Planetary_ascension

So this is with a fresh Research Ring World, and Harmony Traditions boosting the planetary ascension effect by 25%

+62% research output
+41% pop growth speed
+41% assembly speed

Other planet types mostly get an upkeep reduction from their designation which is completely irrelevant.
The price goes up exponentially, so you can only do this to a few planets.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by ScreamCon:

I think the eccumonopolis on a large planet might be better for unity based on special districts. Whats your thought on those?

Absolutely, nothing comes even close.

In fact my common strategy with Remnants is to turn the capital into an admin center, with a couple of alloy arcologies on the side until i can relocate them to a real foundry ecumenopolis.

Mainly because the unity production becomes quite stagnant by the time you get the restoration project through.

[Raikon]

Im in the same boat. I bought this game recently due to a 75% sale, and some of my friends have praised it. I dont really understand what the goal is, or what im supposed to be doing to secure a victory.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2959809938

What am I supposed to do?

[Raikon]

I have diplomancy filled out, and nearly everyone likes me. I feel like I could go for a diplomatic victory.