How do I actually win?

[Ash//Fox]

First game, I have about 150~ years left until the time victory; I carved out a nice big chunk of territory on the outer rim of the galaxy and have a great big handful of planets that are all rapid developing into major metropolises, a robust science apparatus, and a powerful navy of battleships. My people are a peace loving lot so I can just tear up the galaxy killing everyone in sight to take people down a notch; and my people are nearly at the top of the leader board except there's two fallen empires that due to their advanced technology just have a bubillion more points than me; now the last 50 years of this game at least I've just been chilling out researching things but I haven't really seen an incredible increase in my points. So am I just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ because I didn't choose to be the type of aliens to sally forth and just kill anyone who displeases me?

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Well, you could try to get them to start a war with you, if you believe that you can defeat them. Winning the game peacefully can be a challenge because your ability to use force to drive down the scores of your opponents is very limited.

If you don't want to be forced to overcome the score hurdle represented by fallen empires then you do have the option to turning the number of them in your game down to zero, which may result in a game with no fallen empires.

[The Former]

I suppose that means something different to different people. For me, Paradox games are about survival. If you're surviving and prosperous and there are no foreseeable threats, you've already won in my book.

[xycotta]

Winning - that point where you are bored or feel like the challenge is gone and restart

[Ryika]

If you can't overtake fallen empires before the victory timer hits, then your empire simply wasn't efficient enough for most of the game.

As a peaceful empire, to get a lot of points from your "people", you have to have a lot of habitats and/or ringworlds filled with people. If you just sit around on the planets that happen to be in your territory, and maybe a few habitats or so, then that's not really going to get you anywhere.

Alternatively, beating up the endgame crisis also gives a ton of points.

Or you could just ignore the victory condition, since it's not really all that meaningful anyway.

[Jurazon]

Well, there is a victory screen that has set victory conditions. You can also keep playing after the victory year. However, I and many players don't really care about it. I will play entire games without even looking at that screen once. I play until I am no longer having fun with that empire. I then create another empire and play that. Sometimes I might take a break for the game for a few weeks or months and play something else, but I will always come back and build another empire.

[Danny]

You definitely want to fight a tech pinata (fallen/awoken empire) atleast once, just for the ship techs which are just miles better.
Without them, it will be much more difficult to win.

[Ash//Fox]

Originally posted by Ryika:

If you can't overtake fallen empires before the victory timer hits, then your empire simply wasn't efficient enough for most of the game.

As a peaceful empire, to get a lot of points from your "people", you have to have a lot of habitats and/or ringworlds filled with people. If you just sit around on the planets that happen to be in your territory, and maybe a few habitats or so, then that's not really going to get you anywhere.

Alternatively, beating up the endgame crisis also gives a ton of points.

Or you could just ignore the victory condition, since it's not really all that meaningful anyway.

Wait can I make a Halo?

[IPWIW]

Originally posted by Ash//Fox:

Wait can I make a Halo?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/553280/Stellaris_Utopia/

[OctoSavage]

I don't really play stellaris to win most of the time. not really sure how the community as a whole sees it, but they removed all the victory conditions from the game except score a few updates ago. I like it as it lets peaceful empires compete some if they turtle up and tech up enough, and it doesn't force you down down certain paths to win.

The game, IMO, plays more like a sim than a true 4X game (though you can of course play it like a 4X). a lot of the fun i have is creating new races and role playing as them through a play through. The game, especially if you have the bigger DLCs, has a lot of randomness built in that is made to mix things up as thins get stale (though the mid-late game is still pretty stale).

a few species types are simple and play the same the whole way through. But its fun playing as a race inspired by the Vulcans from star trek, an open democracy and focus on logic, and then ending the game with them being more like the Vodyani from endless space, a completely virtual civilization living in robots/computer mainframes with a god-king-program ruler wanting to upload the entire galaxy to their computer systems; because it is only logical

[Ash//Fox]

Originally posted by IPWIW:

Originally posted by Ash//Fox:

Wait can I make a Halo?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/553280/Stellaris_Utopia/

Oh I bought that before starting this game, hype!

[Ash//Fox]

Originally posted by OctoSavage:

I don't really play stellaris to win most of the time. not really sure how the community as a whole sees it, but they removed all the victory conditions from the game except score a few updates ago. I like it as it lets peaceful empires compete some if they turtle up and tech up enough, and it doesn't force you down down certain paths to win.

The game, IMO, plays more like a sim than a true 4X game (though you can of course play it like a 4X). a lot of the fun i have is creating new races and role playing as them through a play through. The game, especially if you have the bigger DLCs, has a lot of randomness built in that is made to mix things up as thins get stale (though the mid-late game is still pretty stale).

a few species types are simple and play the same the whole way through. But its fun playing as a race inspired by the Vulcans from star trek, an open democracy and focus on logic, and then ending the game with them being more like the Vodyani from endless space, a completely virtual civilization living in robots/computer mainframes with a god-king-program ruler wanting to upload the entire galaxy to their computer systems; because it is only logical

Well I'm just trying to avoid some Civilization "haha you didn't get the most points you loser!" end screen. If it's just a self-defined victory that's fine.

[Boyks]

Embrace your militarist faction, reform your government to fanatic militarist, launch your great crusade to purge the galaxy of all xeno scum.
Victory.

[Anguille]

If you look at the achievements, you'll see that barely anyone has ever actually won a game (5,1%) at least in Iron Mode.

[AkumulatoR]

That's probably because barely anyone plays vanilla ironman for achievs when modded Stellaris is so much better.

[Anguille]

Originally posted by AkumulatoR:

That's probably because barely anyone plays vanilla ironman for achievs when modded Stellaris is so much better.

I doubt the majority of players use mods...or Iron mode