Hi I am a new player and would appreciate some pointers :)

[Blunder Bro]

Thanks to HOI4 and EU4 I generally understand the concepts and some base ideas, but this game is obviously not the same. Any good tutorial playlists, reads, or tips is appreciated. I am just upgrading ♥♥♥♥ left and right, building fleets and creating colonies, just because? I don't know why or what I should be doing hehe.

My main question is how do I get more stability? I understand that you need food, consumer goods, and amenities. But i've had issues in my first game with Earth's stability going down, then up when I build amenities stuff, then ticking down a lot despite having more of the 3 resources above.

I tried looking up how to get stability, and I got "you need high happiness". I then googled how to get high happiness, and I got "you just need high stability". So kinda catch 22.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Stability is influenced mostly by happiness, amenities and housing.
Happiness itself is affected by living standards and amenities, among other less variable things. With the average happiness being affected by the weight of the different tiers of the pops - i.e. a ruler pop's happiness has a bigger effect on the planetary happiness than worker happiness.

You don't need a lot of consumer goods, you just need to have a stockpile bigger than 0.

[bjamminloe]

There are a lot of starter guides and tutorials online. Best bet - watch a few of those.

After that, play games with the expectation you will lose a while. You can also not use ironman mode, then go into Observer more (console command: observe) and just see what the AI does. If you have the lower settings on they won't be cheating (much), so you can see what is going on with each civ. You can see how the AI prioritizes things, when/where it builds things, and so on.

[cswiger]

Everything you can do to improve pop growth is extremely important.

Specialize your planets, especially if there is a planetary modifier which gives a bonus to some specific area like energy or minerals.

One simple tip is to build new districts and buildings only once they can be useful. If your planet has a bunch of un-filled jobs, adding more won't help. Save your resources for where they are more effective, and build so as to balance your production so you don't have to fill in major gaps via the market.

[HappySack]

Stability is mainly determined by the happiness of pops and any external modifiers that increase it directly, for example: having a pacifist ethic or from traditions.

Happiness is rather difficult to increase: aside from having higher amenities or doing specific things like a special deal with an Artisan Enclave, living on a Gaia world or having higher living standards; the easiest way is to obey your factions and do everything that leads to their approval (as well as promote your majority factions to phase out your minority ones), this will both increase the happiness and unity of pops that belong to those factions and thus lead to higher stability.

[Scrapmetal_Dragon]

if stability goes haywire you can use armys and martial law as an emergency measure
edit: if it is a planet you just conquerd send some pops over for police roles and start a anti crime campain too if you can.
and dont forget buildings like the holotheater.

[mss73055]

To get a stable start go
- Ultra Egalitarian, Spiritual, Scion origin.
- Civics: Parliament system, Shared Burden

From here you can tinker.

Avoid slavery: egalitarian does this for you
Keep your amenities in check.
Offer enough jobs to employ your pops, but not too many to drain primary production.

[radwyn]

Memorialist, Police state, Byzantine bureaucracy, Nobles are starting ethics that boost stability directly. Harmony tradition helps. Attract pops to high approval factions set policies to what factions demand

[yuzhonglu]

If unsure what to do, build a mining district.

[Quill]

Originally posted by Blunder Bro:

Thanks to HOI4 and EU4 I generally understand the concepts and some base ideas, but this game is obviously not the same. Any good tutorial playlists, reads, or tips is appreciated. I am just upgrading ♥♥♥♥ left and right, building fleets and creating colonies, just because? I don't know why or what I should be doing hehe.

My main question is how do I get more stability? I understand that you need food, consumer goods, and amenities. But i've had issues in my first game with Earth's stability going down, then up when I build amenities stuff, then ticking down a lot despite having more of the 3 resources above.

I tried looking up how to get stability, and I got "you need high happiness". I then googled how to get high happiness, and I got "you just need high stability". So kinda catch 22.

Outside of civics like Police State, and buildings like the Psi-Corps. Stability is directly affected by the planets "Approval Rating". Which is on a scale of 0 - 100%. Each point over 50% adds 0.6 Stability, up to +30 at 100% approval.

The planets "Approval Rating" is tied to the happiness of your pops, and their weight towards the "Approval Rating is tied to their "Political Power", which is tied to their Stratum. (Ruler > Specialist > Worker > Slave)

For example, your rulers have a much higher "Political Power" than your slaves. Meaning you could have about 30 slaves who are all extremely upset, but only 2-3 rulers that are happy and you'd have a stable planet.

You can influence "Political Power" through living standards. For example, "Academic Privilege" gives rules 900% power, and specialists 400%.

"Stratified Economy" Gives rulers 900%, specialists 100% and workers -25%.

"Utopian Abundance" and "Shared Burdens" I believe equalises "Political Power" so everyone has the same.

I wouldn't bother trying to shoot for 100% stability unless you're really trying to min-max. So long as it's above 50%, you won't be experiencing any losses to production.

As for how to get more Amenities? Buildings, mostly. A single holo-theater will usually keep you covered, especially if your species has the "Charismatic" trait. But keep in mind; Pops use more amenities (as well as consumer goods and food) if the given planet has low habitability rating for that species.

Keep in mind, too. Amenities can only boost happiness to a max of +20% if there is a surplus of double what is being used. So don't go too nuts with amenity buildings.

[Peter34]

It's not a catch-22. Happiness is *not* affected by Stability.

Stability is affected by multiple elements. Try hovering the mouse cursor over Stability on the Planet View and read the tool top that appears.

[kingKOng]

The one thing you need to know is that all the civics play very differently. Basically stellaris is a game in a trench coat hiding many games beneath. What you learn playing egalitarian machinist will not help you while playing spiritualistic autocratic. The xenofil trade empire will come toe-to toe with the insane growth of the isolationist.

Im so happy for you. You have hours of fun before you.

My only suggestion is that you roleplay alot. I could teach you to master Stellaris in an hour so that you could conquer the galaxy with any race (just blob).If you are egalitarian, and so are the rest of the galaxy, it becomes pointless to conquer them all. Instead start a new game and convince every other empire to follow your spiritualistic ways, or if you are dead set on conquest, become a slavere and make sure all the bases belong to you.

In the end, here are some tips

spiritualist and authoritarian work good together. If you have plenty of slaves, they'll be happy beliving in good.

You dont need robots if you have slaves, and you dont need slaves if you have robots. So egalitarian and mechanics also works well.


Popcount(growth) / tech / and resources are the rock, paper, scissor of stellaris. More pops are always good for any empire, but if all else is equal you gotta eather ourproduce or out tech your opposition.

Naval capacity is only a suggestion. If you can pay for it the energy will do no good sitting in a vault.

Conquer 1 (or 2) of your first neighbours. In the beginning they have the same popcount as you. Add them to yours and you have twice as much

Subjugation is insanely powerful. The game will always end between a blob and a federation, or in combination with a superpower and plenty of vassals. This tradoff is the core of the game. Should I take just a few planets for my self and control them completely, or should I vassalize them and hope they like me when the war comes.

[Blunder Bro]

Sorry for late response, I don't check up on things like this very often. Thanks you everyone who has chipped in. I have realised a few mistakes in my build. I am assuming that I should aim to specialise every planet. If no special modifiers exist, then I am guessing specialising a planet in whatever it has the most districts slots is best?

I do not know how to make each population type happy. So more tips on that is appreciated.

I appreciate suggestions about starting with x traits or civics etc, but I am not looking to min/max or go with the best traits for stability. I am more so looking to understand the mechanic and how to influence it when it is low.

I will respond to specific comments in a bit. But they are all helpful. I have basically gone for any traits that give army or naval buffs. Seemed like a good idea. I did take "slow breeders" and I forget what the resettlement and immigration negative one is. Not sure if they were bad choice.

[Xaphnir]

The fundamentals of keeping pop happiness high are: enough amenities, enough housing, and keeping their faction happy. You're probably getting factions that are unhappy. Even if a pop is on a planet with high surplus amenities and enough housing, if they're part of a faction with low approval they'll still be unhappy.

[jamesmanson801]

Create 5 terrible custom empires. Make them as bad as possible. Then set them so they spawn every game. Its the yellow bird symbol. Now Start a game, set to 5 AI empires(or how many you want to play against). start game, now you are playing against severly weakened AI. Also console commands are good,sometimes.

[Quill]

Originally posted by Blunder Bro:

Sorry for late response, I don't check up on things like this very often. Thanks you everyone who has chipped in. I have realised a few mistakes in my build. I am assuming that I should aim to specialise every planet. If no special modifiers exist, then I am guessing specialising a planet in whatever it has the most districts slots is best?

I do not know how to make each population type happy. So more tips on that is appreciated.

I appreciate suggestions about starting with x traits or civics etc, but I am not looking to min/max or go with the best traits for stability. I am more so looking to understand the mechanic and how to influence it when it is low.

I will respond to specific comments in a bit. But they are all helpful. I have basically gone for any traits that give army or naval buffs. Seemed like a good idea. I did take "slow breeders" and I forget what the resettlement and immigration negative one is. Not sure if they were bad choice.

Generally speaking you want to avoid anything that reduces pop growth. Pops are your main resource. Try to push it as high as possible

As for happiness, keep your amenities high, you get a max of +20% happiness if you have double the amenities your planet is using.

To be honest, the only real specialisation you need to worry about is "Forge World" since that directly changes how the industrial district works. By default each industrial district is 1 Forge worker and 1 Consumer Goods worker. Setting the world to a forge world makes each district provide 2 Forge workers. Often the planet will "auto designate" depending on what the majority district is.

Army buffs are sadly quite useless. Most people either swarm a planet with overwhelming numbers, or simply bombard it until all the surface armies are dead.