Overview
A few things I have picked up from a dozens playthroughs.
First off…
NOTE: I am working on several play throughs of the 2.0 Cherryh patch, and will update the guide accordingly after. For the time being, a few things I have learned so far: Spam outposts, and build chains to systems to avoid higher influence prices or having a system cut off. The AI right now is very, very expansive oriented despite what their ethics might be. Watch your fleets, and watch your minerals. Minerals are much harder to stockpile now but costs are down in many areas. However, energy costs are up in other areas but energy is less of a hassle than it has been previously. War is not something to fear. A war does not mean a game is lost, much more balanced now. Watch your armies and make sure they are with a fleet or land them back on the planet. And above all, read the patch notes!
This guide is less about setting up your species than it is about managment of your empire. Whatever you choose for ethos and traits will obviously impact your playstyle, but lets run under the assumption that you will adapt this guide to suit your species particular niches.
I tend to play fanatic militarist/militarist and materialist. I make them strong and intelligent. To offset this, I make them sedentary. I have yet to go through a game where sedentary caused me problems, as it deals with migration and resettlement and they are two mechanics I never use. This is still true as of the most recent Sythetic Dawn DLC, althought I will now usually play authoritarian, militarist, materialist.
Research and Military strength are good fits to my play style. Namely conquer everyone and everything and be better prepared to do so. Right now, Stellaris is not a game you can win diplomatically, at least not nearly as easily as militarily. Oh, you could befriend, vassalize and absorb to reach the threshold of owned colonized planets, but the way modifiers are set now, you are much more likely to struggle to get a meaningful alliance, to vassalize neighbors without doing it through conflict, and in general playing nice doesn’t seem to pay off nearly as well as carrying a big stick. You want nuance and federations? Be a xenophile pacifist. I would suggest that if you are playing a xenophobic nation or take traits with diplo penalties, that you wait to do that in a later game. Although you can reduce AI aggressiveness, Being surrounded by empire that have closed their border to you may require you to play “tall” with a lack of strategic resources with no willing trade partners.
Management
The heart of this guide is managing your core worlds. These worlds matter most, you’ll likely colonize them first, and should be the most beneficial planets you own.
Here we can see my five core worlds in a early game. I have one selected, Asgard. Asgard has a lot of food, is generating a substantial amount of energy credit, and a mediocre amount of minerals. A lot of food is good while you are still trying to fill a planet with pops. Originally, surplus food was something wasted. Now, surplus food gives a heft bonus to population growth, and lack of food is extremely detrimental, as if you are running negative food you will have to potentiall move pops and respec tiles until you are a net producer once again. That leads us to tile attributes…
Its important to play to the strength of the tiles. occasionaly you will end up with tiles like the two you see above with one energy credit and one mineral. My experience is this, if your planet is already heavy in one of those resources, play to the strength not the weakness. Certain buildings will give you percentile boosts to overall production of a resource on a planet. Better to have those two extra buildings be adding to the total to increase the yield from the percentage. Short of it? Specialize your worlds in minerals, or energy credits. If you are running a pretty even split, consider passing that world to a sector. You want specialized core worlds.
In my experience, you want to be generating energy credits heavily. Yes, you build with minerals, and fleets and military stations require minerals as well as energy credits for upkeep, but from everything I have seen so far, minerals are far easier to generate through mining stations. Mining stations only take energy credits for maintenance. In the games ive played thus far, minerals abound. Energy credits, not so much. So I spec my core worlds to generate energy, and rely on stations for mineral wealth unless a particular core world is very well suited to mineral production. In addition, playing with robots requires energy rather than food for those pops, and the benefit to robot pops includes settling planets that otherwise would not be available for your starting species.
While you can techically be “in debt” with minerals as well as energy credits, i’ve never run into it. Even though energy credits have a lower storage ceiling that minerals, you want to hit that ceiling and stay there. You can and obviously need to splurge and spend those credits, but don’t feel like your doing something wrong if you hit that credit limit and stay there. If you are lucky enough to encounter a trading corporation early in game, take advantage of trading minerals or energy but understand its not an even trade. However, in the middle of a war this can be a vital way of procuring minerals or makeing up for a massive energy drain.
Colonize Early and Often
Colonize Colonize Colonize.
It used to be that you had to research colony ships, but thankfully now that is a default technology.
Your core planets is at first limited to three systems (or more depending on government type, but lets stick with the base 3 for now). Depending on your start, you may or may not have three systems of any type in your sphere of influence. You’ll need to survey. Fun fact, move your fleets ahead of your survey team. While they won’t survey a planet and allow it to be colonized, they will identify if a colonizable planet is even there. Also, they deal with the nasy threats that otherwise send your science ship running scared. Plus the trail of debris they leave behind gives your something to scan. Its a Win/Win/Win.
Cherry pick worlds or colonize whats closest? Tough one. Personally, I don’t think you will find such a diversity of worlds you can actually colonize in the early game that you will have to pick and choose. Here is the more pressing issue. You colonize your first worlds, youre still early on and the next planet you colonize is going to put you over the limit. Firstly, thats what sectors are for. Secondly, with more recent updates, you have a suprising amount of control on sectors.
Its important to note that the limit is systems, not worlds as it used to be. If you see a system with two continental worlds with better tile specs, it may be better to colonize those than chosing a system with one continental world thats larger than both combined (assuming your planet type is continental but this principle applies to whatever your default world type is). More planets mean more spacestations (until the next update Cherryh) which means more modules and bonuses, again giving a reason why a system with multiple planets can be better (so long as you can colonize them) Terraforming tends to generate fairly quickly in the research fields, so worlds in your category are just as desirable in my opinion
Geographic location does not matter when it comes to core worlds. It would be sure nice to be able to highlight core worlds on the map in some way (talking to you paradox). Outposts are handy but only when you need to snatch up amazing systems ASAP. Otherwise, you are better off using colonies to grab territory as they are more productive than territory held by an outpost. Outposts are great for snatching territory with worlds that are in your default homeworld’s category (tropical and oceanic for continental) This goes with what i said previously about terraforming; Drop a frontier outpost on a system with that drab yellow colored planet icon, terraform, colonize, then disband outpost.
Fleets
Your stick. It needs to be big.
Make your fleet work. Yes while its in orbit its maintenance is lower. But then your admiral isn’t clearing the way for your science ships, zapping baddies for debris, and scouting ahead to cherrypick which systems to survey first (the ones with world types you can colonize).
Keep your fleet upgraded, but do so in managed steps. Don’t upgrade everytime you get one new component researched. Your fleet should be busy, and upgrading costs downtime along with minerals. Make the downtime worth it. Better a few long overhauls where a second fleet can be out working then a pit stop every few months for the newest deflector or a slightly higher tier weapon.
Now, here’s the rub. When you update your design, you might use the auto-complete button. That results with ships often with an excess of power. At the time of the original writing of this guide, excess power does nothing. Now it provides a small boost in stats.
Make sure to keep an even spread of small medium and large weapons and point defense. You need to have a fair balance of each in order to engage targets in a nominal fashion
I tend not to specialize my ships too much. But corvettes and destroyers are for engaging each other, while cruisers and battleships are for taking on everyone, if they are built diversely. Keep an assortment of weapon systems on board. Do not specialize in one weapon type, even on one ship and then build another with a different type. When able, every ship should have at least two different weapon types, not just two energy types or two ballistic. Some players like to specialize in one weapontype alone, but when it comes to tackling different empires, and especially crisis, you’ll find yourself in trouble. While that wont happen right away, I suggest keeping up on weapon research in more than a single category in order to offer at least a little diversity in what you use in fighting your opponents.
Research
The truly random section of the game.
The random, card deck style system used by the game means you will not always research the same things in different playthroughs. Your ethos will help dictate what techs pop up. Certain research missions will up the progress towards a specific tech and make it available as a research option. Truly, this is the section where your luck comes into play as much as anything but I have some suggestions.
Diversify your weapons as soon as you can. Like I stated earlier, you need to have option in multiple weapon types when you design your ships and upgrade them. But, is it better to have options in all three categories or higher tier options in two categories? I go to quality over quantity.
Shields are your friend, research them early and often. Same with energy producing modules. A module giving you more power placed in the right spot means more room and options for weapons and shields.
Research tile blocker removal whenever possible. Your core worlds don’t do any good if you are not utilizing every tile available. This tech also lets your sectors to clear and use those tiles as well, making them more productive, giving you a higher tithe. However there is an alternate to this; rush your unity to gain the ascension perk which allows almost all blockers to be cleared at half-price. This is, especially for starting empires, one of the best ascension perks available.
All these considered, if you are having a hard time deciding what to research, I default to the cheapest choice in terms of research points required. The sooner you get the tech, the sooner you can implement it and have it benefit you. It also reshuffles and presents the deck again more quickly. The only times I will pick the most expensive option is if it is a rare card that I actually want (I ignored psionics a half dozen times and it kept popping up anyway the one time I had spiritual ethos) or a tech that can 1. Improve my fleet through new ship class or 2. give me a higher tier weapon in one of the two or three categories I am focusing on, like say plasma throwers (energy armor killers), torpedoes (shield ignorers) , and kinetic (high rate of damage).
There you have it
This guide is just one way of playing the game. Play to your strengths, and most of all, play to have fun and enjoy yourself. Unless you are on an achievement run. God have mercy on you.
Thanks for reading, and remember to make space great again!
(November 12th 2017: I just went through and did some updates. I should have been updating after every patch but life kept me occupied otherwise. As of today, I updated info for the most recent patch. Thank you to everyone pointing out outdated information. I appreciate that immensely and ask you to continue to do so if I am in error somewhere in the guide.)
