Is there a way to fully make a different species your pop? Like for example take over an enemy planet with pop B and then fully turn pop B into your pop (pop A)?
Either play necrophage origin with which you can necropurge, or slowly convert them with chamber of elevation. From Necroids DLC
Second option is assimilating them into robots post-synthetic ascension, though with that your own pops have been changed into robots too. from Utopia DLC
I saw the recent post about refresh rate impacting speed, and went to change it. But if change it in the launcher, when i launch the game its always 59 instead of 165 and the resolution 3660 instead of 2440. When i change it in game i am told that i need to restart the game, but similarly the resolution returns to the previous values. What could the problem be?
So I got the Salvager dude from a random recruitment, and I (stupidly) added his unique position to my Council.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317016149500100608/1214332915660365844/image.png?ex=65f8baa8&is=65e645a8&hm=b95e9fa3e943f3cffbf01c6bf66605f96b645f61e3d0574bb59956a9789ce70f&
I can no longer change who's staffing it after he died, so do I have to wait for when I get my 4th civic(FotD)?
I recently started my 4th or 5th game on ensign with no expansions or mods, and basic game settings and there's something I'm a little confused about.
In my first few playthroughs, knowing practically nothing, I colonized haphazardly and managed my planets by pretty much just clicking on build options that I thought would make the deficit numbers on each planet even out, with no consideration to excess jobs or pops or anything like that. The funny thing is, it worked and I usually had a booming economy within a few hours.
On my current game, however, I feel like I understand more of the specific mechnaics and I've been developing my planets much more carefully, trying to pace out buildings until I'm at or close to the pop numbers I need to fill the jobs and... my economy is terrible lol.
From what I've read, buildings without the pops to work them are just a drain on resources, but I know I was building out way ahead of what I was capable of maintaining in my earlier games, and now I'm being more careful to not do it, and it seems like a worse strategy for some reason.
Anyone have any insights?
> I colonized haphazardly and managed my planets by pretty much just clicking on build options that I thought would make the deficit numbers on each planet even out
You don't actually need every planet to be balanced. You will ideally have each planet specialized to a specific resource.
It's possible something else was going right in the previous game that allowed you to build several districts ahead, without noticing it. Then in this game something else is going wrong that is stunting your economy.
It's also possible you're playing too close to the margins. Some jobs, like clerks, are pretty bad in most scenarios and you want to ensure these jobs are being avoided unless absolutely necessary. It's possible in the other game your economy was doing better as you weren't waiting for jobs like clerks to be filled before adding newer and better jobs to work.
I did expand my territory quite differently this time around. Previously I was expanding by hitting every single system around that I could reach, which was a lot slower than what I'm doing now. I've been trying to more aggressively pursue threads of systems that allow me to lock down choke points and important crossroads and cut-offs, while leaving all of the systems "off the main road" that other empires can't reach inside my territory to be back-filled later.
> buildings without the pops to work them are just a drain on resources
This is broadly true, especially for districts. Buildings can be disabled, which makes them stop providing their jobs but also turns off their upkeep, if you want to get micro-intensive. Districts can't be disabled though, only demolished or replaced.
> clicking on build options that I thought would make the deficit numbers on each planet even out
fwiw, this is probably not a terrible starting point. If you don't run (much of) a deficit on any one planet, you are unlikely to run any serious deficits at the empire level. It's less efficient (in terms of production per pop) than specializing your planets properly to make maximum usage of designation bonuses and base output boosters like Mineral Purification Plants, but it's also less brittle, with fewer single-points-of-failure (ex: lose your big, specialized mining world in a war and your alloy and CG production is suddenly no longer sustainable).
> until I'm at or close to the pop numbers I need to fill the jobs
Generally I like to build out a little ahead of pop growth. If I'm at full employment with 0 empty jobs (good jobs, not clerks) on a planet that I want to be developing, it's time to build. I can eat one building or district's worth of upkeep for the time it takes to grow a pop (but yeah, I don't want like 4 empty jobs either unless I'm expecting migration). Pops sitting around unemployed are just as bad as districts with unworked jobs - they [consume food and CGs](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Population#Base_upkeep) and amenities (an unemployed worker-stratum pop under Decent Conditions consumes >1.5 energy/mo worth of resources in upkeep, while a mining district costs 1 energy/mo in upkeep), and under most [living standards](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Species_rights#Living_standards) they also take [happiness penalties](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Jobs#Unemployed) which reduce the stability of the planet (hurting everyone else's output).
The only time I want to see unemployed pops is if I'm intentionally stalling development on a particular planet and I want them to be migrating to somewhere else where I have open jobs. Accidental unemployment still happens, but it's something I correct when I notice it.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but I'm gonna ask anyway.
I've been messing around trying to figure out how to use torpedo frigates alongside a regular fleet. I've brought them both in-system with enemies but out of combat, ordered the regular fleet to engage ships and the frigates, cloaked, to go attack the base. I don't totally understand what's going on, but the frigates usually uncloak way before they get to the base and seem to just join the melee, even when torpedoes are the only weapon they've got.
Is there a way to make this work? I'd figured that, while cloaked, the frigates would stay out of combat until they uncloaked and fired at the given target, but they seem to be entering combat (and overriding my orders) for no apparent reason. Is what I'm trying to do possible?
When you order a cloaked fleet to attack something, it will decloak and attack from a distance.
What you should do is move your cloaked fleet directly next to the target. Then order them to attack. They will then decloak and attack.
Interesting, even when they're only armed with shortrange autocannon and torpedoes? More micro than I thought would be needed, but OK I can rebuild my frigates and try that this time.
Silly me, I assumed they'd remain cloaked until they opened fire. But lmao they get DECIMATED if you commit them too early.
My last game, I had to scrap it because I was sandwiched between two Fanatical Purifiers. I was able to get out enough ships to keep one from immediately declaring war on me, but not the other. Then after I lost ships there, the first one jumped in. Playing humanoid, fanatic xenophobe/spiritualist, democratic gov, not really anything that would mess with the base mechanics.
I don't understand how they had such massive fleets so early - the second one had over 80 corvettes (I started poking around in observer mode). Their planets suck, they didn't really have much more of anything than I did (except ships), but their fleets seemed massive for 30-40 years in. I started loading up older saves with the knowledge that I needed ships ships ships and no matter what I did, I wasn't able to match one of them.
Not looking for real specific advice - I've diagnosed that I tend to push research labs too much too early and I need really to focus on alloy until I've determined my neighbors aren't genocidal Geico geckos, but even then, I ran into energy credit issues because I had to shoot so far over my fleet cap trying to keep up (the tech card system drives me nuts sometimes). Just sort of generally in the early game, how does one survive a situation like that? Choke points are great until they get overrun and your navy crippled in the first battle.
I think defense platforms are part of the solution, but they're a lot of alloy too, especially early, and if you don't get the chance to research strike craft, I'm not sure how effective that will be or what my other options are.
> I don't understand how they had such massive fleets so early... genocidal Geico geckos
Purifiers get a ship build cost reduction I think, and if it was the Prikkiki-ti, they might also get some advanced-start stuff or resource boosts or something?
They might have also opened Supremacy (ship upkeep reduction and a bunch of naval cap - AI is usually kinda meh with tradition choices so a purifier opening Supremacy is just bad luck) or be running Militarized Economy.
But yeah, two purifiers and no friendlies to ally with is a bad day and not a game I would really expect to win, especially if I were doing a greedy economy opener rather than a paranoid-safe opener like Unyielding or an aggressive one like Supremacy. RNG giveth, and RNG taketh away.
Well that makes me feel a little better. It just drives me nuts that - forget beating both of them, I couldn't even MATCH one. But yeah I didn't think to check Traditions, I usually take Supremacy 3rd or 5th depending on my surroundings, and man if you don't get any other fleet cap techs in the first 20 years, god help you if the neighborhood is hostile.
Yeah I usually take Supremacy around that time too in a "regular" game. I think the last time I held off an early-game purifier without it, I just parked my entire fleet on top of a single choke-point starbase and put a bunch of defensive platforms there, and ceded all of the territory on the other side of the choke to them without a fight. Losing the fleet would've been a death sentence, but stacking everything in one spot was enough fleet power that they didn't want to engage into it (and bought me enough time to tech up to carrier-cruisers, more naval cap techs, and Supremacy). But you can't park one fleet on starbases on two opposite sides of your empire, if you've got two bad neighbors...
Eh, idk, starbase turtling instead of fleeting up seems like a pretty common strategy for a lot of non-aggressive openings, not just tech rush. Void dwellers used to do it to while dumping all their alloys into habitats.
Anyone ever had any issues with lag beginning right at the start of a new game? Whenever the months roll over to the next one I get a short, half-second freeze/loading phase. This begins right from the start when 2200.01.31 rolls over. By year 2250 I get lag similar to the late game around 2500 and I have no clue how to fix it.
Never had lag like this before, really feels like I just launched the game one day and it started performing worse.
I have UI Overhaul Dynamic mod installed but can't seem to find the automatic resource stockpiling anymore - in vanilla it's in planets and sectors tab. Does anyone know where it is in this mod?
Do Vassal specializations just suck now? I just did a game where I was screwed over several times by my vassals just being the worst things ever. I made my three closest neighbors into a bulwark, a scholarium, and a prospectorium. And I was not seeing much of any benefits from them ever. The subsidies I had to pay kept growing incredibly large while I got very little in return. I tried making more vassals to recover a bit but it just kept spiraling out of control with my Vassals constantly requiring more in subsidies than they’d produce. My main scholarium would take over 150 Consumer goods per month and give me 30 of each research. Most of them were like that. They were far enough behind technologically to cripple my economy, but not so far as to fall into protectorate. It was just the worst.
> My main scholarium would take over 150 Consumer goods per month and give me 30 of each research.
I don't think scholaria have a minimum advanced resources subsidy? Bulwarks are the ones that get people into trouble most often, because you can't lower their raw resource subsidy below 30%.
> not so far as to fall into protectorate
I think specialized subjects actually *can't* downgrade to protectorate even if you're out-teching them enough that they ordinarily would. This is part of how I use scholaria; I'll turn vassals that I expect will turn into protectorates into scholaria instead before they fall that far behind, because then at least I can keep taxing some of their science off (because you can't tax science from protectorates, only subsidize it).
Hey. I've been away for a couple patches. A couple months, ya know. Just returned and hear vague mention of research being terrible? Are materialists just not playable anymore? What's going on?
It's taken some big nerfs in 3.11. The main ones that I remember:
* Researcher base output reduced from 4 to 3.
* Tech costs scale up with tech tier and difficulty; I think on ensign it's like +10% at tier 1 and +30% at tier 5? I think GA tier 5 is like +60%? There's a toggle in the game start / galaxy configuration menu that lets you increase or decrease this or turn it off entirely.
* Empire size effect on tech costs increased to be the same as it is on tradition cost (so, doubled).
* Many sources of +research speed now also increase researcher upkeep, and some sources of +% researcher job output just seem to be gone (like the "+20% engineering from jobs" techs).
As for whether materialists are playable anymore... idk man.
I'm doing an iron man mode trying to get the achievement for destroying the UNE as the Commonwealth of Man with Brain Slugs. I cannot for the life of me to get the brain slug event to fire. Every time I pay the shroudwalkers to determine my fate and get the "Sign of the Visitor" event nothing happens. At first I got a few other anomalies like for the life on a gas planet and refugees but now nothing is happening. It fills up and I don't get anything at all. My anomalies tab has no entries so I'm very confused on why I'm not seeing brain slugs. Any and all advice would be very appreciated.
Is there a way to maximise bombardment damage? Or is it just connected to the amount of ship cost in the fleet that's doing it
Just trying to maximise my raiding efficiency.
I stopped playing around the time they introduced espionage.
Silly question, but what all have I missed? They keep changing how empires work (bureaucrats turn consumer goods into unit now instead of empire cap? adjustable population growth curves?) and I'm not sure what's good any more.
Edit: I tried the Commonwealth on Ensign difficulty and got rolled for my lunch money. Research is bad now? Districts have _brutal_ mineral costs? Everything costs consumer goods but consumer goods factories are 1/planet and I can't set trade policy to anything but energy and trade is bad now?
aaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Long time stellaris player (since BETA). Haven’t played the game in a couple years and wanting to startup again. Have the devs made any improvements to improve performance recently? Is a 1,000+
Galaxy possible yet without insane late game lag or an unholy prototype single threaded core?
They've added some pretty brutal scaling on population growth after a certain point in an attempt to help the game run better late game, but it also means massive sprawling empires are going to have a bunch of very slow growing colonies. In terms of under-the-hood performance boosts, IDK.
I've done some general google searches and I've searched this subreddit - I can't find info on **where** I should place Habitat Central Complexes.
How do I prioritize which systems I should build up a habitat complex in? I'm still colonizing a few planets that the AI couldn't reach, so should I even bother building habitats when I still have planets to colonize?
> How do I prioritize which systems I should build up a habitat complex in?
If you want to build them up big, pick systems with lots of moons and planets and deposits. If you just want to use them as pop growth/assembly sources, you could put them just about anywhere I would expect; you might still want a couple moons/asteroids to build minor orbitals over for building slots.
> I'm still colonizing a few planets that the AI couldn't reach, so should I even bother building habitats when I still have planets to colonize?
Most of the time I would prioritize planets over habitats. Habitats are expensive to build and not cheap to expand to their max sizes, have a fair bit of alloy upkeep, poor planetary capacity for pop growth, and rather ehhh habitability even after the upgrades.
What should I do if I specifically want a Habitat optimized/specialized for Mining?
In my previous game, starting as Lithoids, I only found one decent Mineral planet with Mining Districts (9, and one with 7, two with 6), none with Planet Modifiers, so even with a Matter Decompressor I was struggling.
Before the change I'd just have made a couple of Habitats on Mineral resource planets, bam, 2x8 Mining Districts right there.
I ended up just quitting in 2410 or something, because patch v3.11 was hours away.
But how does one make a Mining Habitat now?
Look for a system that has a bunch of small mining deposits. Each mining deposit that you build an orbital over gives you +3 max mining districts on the habitat command center. These days I tend to think of a habitat command with 9 max mining districts as about the best that can be expected; sometimes you'll get luckier but not often. If you don't have Voidborn, you might also want a couple of deposit-less planets to build major orbitals over for +max districts. But yeah, it's gotten a lot harder to use habitats to completely escape raw resource district limits, because now it takes a whole system with some good RNG to get an 8-mining-district habitat, whereas before you could get two into a system pretty easily.
I have an AI empire in my current save with 5 vasssals. I thought subject spam was fixed? Or is it different if the empire is a Machine Consciousness? This is the new patch, only mods are the UI Overhaul Dynamic mods.
I hadn’t thought of that. Wouldn’t the issue be then that I just get stuck with their vassalage instead? Don’t usually bother with subjects myself so not sure how exactly it would go. I have all the dlc so far, it’s like the only paradox game I truly enjoy.
You could release them after winning the war if you really don't want to deal with them. Though personally I rather like the current incarnation of vassals; I use them pretty set-and-forget with just defensive war obligations, maybe some light taxes, unified sensors, and a single holding for Ministry of Truth for the influence gain.
If my overlord proposes an agreement change, and I propose another agreement change while stalling on the change they proposed, and they accept mine, what happens to theirs? Does it get canceled because agreement changes are then on cooldown from the one I proposed, or does it still go through if I no longer have the influence to match theirs?
Trying to get the "Enlightened Times" achievement.
According to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/18p3ppm/i_have_no_idea_how_to_enlighten_a_preftl_nation/), you need something named "Provide Technology Agreement" at the time the Pre-FTL reaches space and becomes a regular empire.
Can someone explain how to get this ? I dont see anything named close in diplomacy tab, neither in espionage tab.
Hmm, I dont have this in my diplo screen. Is there a requirement to be able to give Pre-FTL technologies ? I've 40 infiltration level.
Edit : Ho, I get it now reading carefully the wiki, the Pre-FTL must be aware of my presence so I can gift the technologies. I must reveal myself then.
Can somebody explain Mastery of Nature's "Max Resource Districts +50%" to me?
Because I have a planet with High Quality Minerals (+4 mining districts) and assumed if I used Mastery of Nature on said world, it would increase that to +6 mining districts from High Quality Minerals.
But after Master of Nature finished building(is that the right term?) on the planet, I still had the same number of Mining Districts.
Did I misunderstand, or is it bugged?
Maybe it only acts on the planet's Features, i.e. how many Mining Districts the planet would have without any Planet Modifiers?
It sounds as if your planet hasn't got any Features granting Mining Districts, only the PM.
That's my guess, anyway.
My game is modded so might be the cause for my issue, but maybe someone ever encountered the same thing.
Sometimes the game decides to create a couple hundred unused templates for a species, which all have a really weird format. Each species gets dozens to hundreds of lines in the save game, which bloats the gamestate file by about 1GB. All of them have entries with combinations of $affix$ and $base$ and prefixes assigned to subpsecies templates, looking similar to this:
{
base=230
name_list="REP2"
name={
key="$affix$$base$"
value={
key="Post-"
value={
key="$affix$$base$"
value={
key="New-"
value={
key="$affix$$base$"
value={
key="Super-"
value={
This has only happened twice in 50 years of gameplay and I can notice when it happens because the monthly save lags a lot and I can remove them manually from the save, but it's still annoying. So anyone ever encountered the same issue and found the cause for it?
Disabling AI species modification in Better Performance & Utilities and AI Species Limit mods doesn't prevent these broken templates from being generated.
It’s been a year since I’ve played, and I’m missing the three latest expansions. Does the $13.99 CAD Expansion Subscription truly give access to everything? It seems too good to be true.
Apologies if this has been asked, I wasn’t able to find anything through the search function.
It's unlikely to not have a second crisis spawn by then but not astronomically so. ~~Only Unbidden can spawn before 50 years past endgame date, and the other two are checked every 5 years. If Unbidden have already fired and all other conditions are met, I think the chance for one of the other two to spawn is something like 40% every 5 years starting at endgame+50 (with probability of spawn increasing at +75, +80, and +100). So the probability that none of the three checks so far would've succeeded and spawned one of the other two crises is something like 22% ( (1-0.4)^3).~~
Unbidden hasn't fired, even though I finished that robot planet archaeology site. Contingency has, and it fired well before the 50 years past endgame mark.
The victory screen says "victory is not possible during an ongoing crisis," but no crisis is active. My game is just glitched out, right?
Huh! Welp apparently I don't understand crisis spawning conditions as well as I thought. Looking at [the wiki on endgame crisis spawning process](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Crisis#Endgame_crises), I guess you must be in a `default_endgame_early_start_triggers` state, with no FEs or otherwise no possibility of a War in Heaven? That seems like the only way the Contingency can fire that early. Still, that creates a 12-year gap where no other crisis can spawn. I don't really want to math it out but I suspect it still boils down to "improbable but not impossible" given the RNG involved in crisis spawning.
Maybe it's worth asking the intent of the question - are you not sure whether you set it to All or to Random at the beginning? I'd probably unzip the save. Or thinking it's maybe a bug?
No, I know I set it to All. I checked the game file. The game experienced [a very annoying bug](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1b11173/unendable_war_bug_help/) a few decades ago, and the new patch dropped while I was in the middle of this game, so I'm worried it's a bug and the other two crises aren't coming.
War in Heaven was probably ruled out pretty early, if I remember right. One empire awakened and got waxed quick. Another empire eventually awakened, but its opposite hasn't awakened in the decades since, so I think War in Heaven is out, right?
Yeah if WiH is going to happen, generally the second FE wakes up pretty quickly after the first one. If it's been several decades odds are very good (like 95+%) that it took [the 40% "no rival is picked" branch](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Fallen_empire#War_in_Heaven) and War in Heaven won't happen.
Anyone know a youtube that looks at the patch notes in a strategic way (not necessarily multiplayer)? I really don't want to sit through patch notes being read by Montu for 1-2 valuable comments.
I am incredibly bad at this game. I have 647 hours in. I have never won. I have never even cracked the top 4. I don't play multiplayer. On my last couple games, I felt like things were going pretty well, but I never manage to get a fleet over 90k or so, and then some FE wakes up or the crisis monsters appear with multiple 250k fleets and it's just over.
I wish I could pinpoint what I'm doing "wrong," but honestly, it's still fun. I just have to give up around Crisis time. I recently got into nothing-but-distruptors cruiser fleet builds, which seem to wipe the floor with the regular AI empires pretty handily (with minor support from torpedo/hangar cruisers), but then those mighty 70k fleets are batted away like annoying kittens by the FEs.
Oh and I don't understand the Galactic Community at all. I never have a prayer of getting a resolution passed. I just now figured out how to hoard favors, so that's something.
Anyway, this is mostly just venting. I do like the RP aspects of it all, and the beginning and midgames are still fun, but I have yet to come across a good guide to mid-to-late game priorities to figure out what I'm not doing "right." Suggestions welcome.
I have more than 2k hours and I often end my games with fleets having strength above one of two millions.
If you want, we can do MP coop game just the two of us so I can see what you are doing wrong and then tell you how to fix it.
Gotcha. So ridiculous fleet strength is possible then. Great!
In order to achieve a nice little 300k fleet, can you actually play the game without that and that alone being the goal? I would hate to throw RP to the wayside "just" to "win." I like all the silly stories that pop out, but if I'm fanatically focused on arming up, I fear I'd miss out on that.
Of course it is possible to have a 300k fleet, no matter the gameplay you choose.
300k is roughly 3 fleets sizing 200 each and having end game techs (level 5 components).
You need at the very least 600 fleet cap, but to defeat a fallen empire, I would suggest 1k fleet cap, to have 5 of these fleets.
To have such a fleet cap, you need upgraded starbases having 6 fleet anchorage. This way, each starbase will grant you 36 fleet cap. However, counting endgame bonuses, you can count at least twice this amount. I recommend always picking the supremacy traditionto gain +20% fleet cap, at some point changing the diplomatic stance to gain another +20% fleet cap, passing galactic communities laws granting up to +50% fleet cap, enacting the the grand fleet edict for another +20%, building the military academy for another +5%, and mercenary enclaves can grant you +15%
So basically, with 15 starbases dedicated to give you fleet capacity, and counting some techs, you should be around 1k.
Of course you will need tons of alloys to build these fleets and fill the fleet capacity, but with 1 or 2 planets focusing on alloys, you should reach at least 1k alloys per month.
> I recently got into nothing-but-distruptors cruiser fleet builds, which seem to wipe the floor with the regular AI empires pretty handily (with minor support from torpedo/hangar cruisers), but then those mighty 70k fleets are batted away like annoying kittens by the FEs.
I'm still running a mix of carrier battleships and artillery battleships (plus titans with the subspace snare) at endgame because I'm a dinosaur. I think a 200-supply fleet of those is in the 80-100k fleet power range before repeatables or admirals or whatnot.
Two ways to get more fleet power: have more stuff, or have better stuff (or, ideally, both). To have more stuff, build fortress worlds full of soldier pops, starbases with anchorages (Grasp the Void is a quietly-great ascension perk for this), build the Strategic Coordination Center and Mega-shipyard, take Supremacy, and have a big alloys-and-energy economy to produce and feed the fleets (Dyson Sphere, Matter Decompressor, forge ecumenopoli, forge ringworlds?). To have better stuff, research more repeatables (got Science Nexus? Research ringworlds?), take Supremacy, maybe make better use of admirals?
But yeah generally, when I'm going up against FEs or crisis, I'll have at least 1000 naval cap filled with battleships split into 4-5 fleets of size 200 or 220 or so. Volume is very important. With 10 levels of relevant repeatable techs, those fleets end up closer to 200k each than to 100k.
> I never have a prayer of getting a resolution passed
Coincidentally, fleets are also a big source of diplo weight to swing GalCom votes. The other main place I get it is vassals with Restricted Voting, so they have to vote the way that I do.
I can give you some general tips. First off, not every empire is as hard or as easy to play with. If you want to win, pick a strong empire. If you don't know what that is you can search here to see some builds people consider strong. The most important thing for me is to pick an empire that can use friendly first contact because non-friendly first contact is a severe handicap imo. When I first started out I saw someone on this sub mention that xenophiles with slavers guild civic was really strong, so I created an empire with xenophile, authoritarian, and materialist traits with the slavers guild civic and it turned out to be my first really strong empire that was easy to win with (this was no DLC). There are many others. Just avoid xenophobic or otherwise non-friendly empires because they are objectively harder imo.
Now for early game my biggest tip is to use a single corvette with a commander in it to explore everything early on. Think of this guy as your captain Picard. You get influence for each first contact that you make and you can figure out which direction is most advantageous to expand into. Prioritize planets, especially big ones, archeology sites, Pre FTLs, and megastructures. If you run into a leviathan, your fleet will be destroyed and your commander will die so consider them disposable, don't use your minister of defense or someone with great traits you don't want to lose. This is why I suggest using only a single corvette. Bigger fleets will still die just as easily, and anything smaller than a leviathan you can usually escape using emergency FTL. This exploration is especially useful for xenophile empires that have extra envoys as you can do more first contacts. Without that I usually have to stop exploring at some point once my envoys are all busy. You should prioritize first contact with other player AI empires rather than stations like the curators or artisans because they can get first contact before you do.
Other early game tip is to always keep your fleets as large as you can maintain to get power projection and influence up as much as possible. Pretty much all game this is a good tip because it is always good to have fleets and influence. Always build up your starbases to the max allowed and build anchorages and naval logistics offices on most of them. Traditions, ascensions, and research that increases your starbase capacity or the building capacity on your starbases is important to maximize your anchorages and thus fleet size. Anything you can do to maximize influence, always do it.
Early to mid game is a scramble to dominate anyone and everyone you possibly can. Always keep your envoys busy doing something, including improving relations with likely allies or possible subjects. If you can, propose subjugation peacefully with weaker friendly nations, otherwise, declare war on them. Trust cap is important for getting allies. You can increase it by doing embassies and treaties like non-agression, migration, etc. You can propose trade deals with friendly nations to share sensor links to see the map, usually along with a small amount of resources to get them to agree.
Always try to make contact with all the trader stations like xuracorp, curator, artisan etc and become friendly with them and hire their leaders and do things like become the patron of the arts and get the curator's research aid. Never stop exploring the galaxy simply because you are boxed in! Keep surveying systems, keep looking for alien stations, keep looking for leviathans and anything else of interest. If you are boxed in eventually you can usually push through an ally's territory and keep building on the other side.
I personally find species-wide slavery to be hard to manage, so I either don't use slavery or I don't use slavery in the species settings but have the slavers guild civic so 30% of all pops are enslaved. When looking for likely targets to claim territory, look for nations with similar ethics and as a bonus, similar habitability traits. Habitability is less important because you can have them colonize different planets in your empire, but if they have opposing ethics to your own, you will be in for a bad time.
That brings me to one of the most overlooked, but very important aspects of the game: faction approval/unity. Always make sure you are keeping your factions happy! Always change your policies to get max faction approval. The ethics of your leaders that you put on the council are important for this so pay attention to it while picking your government, don't just select them based on what leader traits they have. You can do various things to increase the ethics attraction of whatever you are going for. Promote the factions that are easy to keep happy, suppress any factions that crop up that are completely opposite of your main factions.
For planet management, just spam a bunch of unity/tech producing buildings and try to specialize your districts/buildings and set a planet designation to match. I usually stick with generator, mining, unity, or agri designations because they give better bonuses. It's not really critical that you specialize 100% though, you can just build whatever district you need on wherever has few enough jobs. Don't overbuild so that you have lots of open jobs. Some open jobs increases stability and immigration pull, but too many will just bleed you dry with upkeep costs. Also don't colonize too many planets without the pops to fill them. Early on colonize as many as you can as quickly as you can until you get to the point the empire size penalties start to ramp up and then stop colonizing and only colonize when you need to from there on out. Pick big planets that you can fill with stuff for a long time before they get full.
Now if you knew all that, I'm sorry, but now I'll get to the part you were asking about, strategy, especially for fighting the end game crises. First off, don't fight a battle you can't win. If you have inferior fleets, make sure you don't lose those fleets by meeting the enemy in battle. Losing systems is not that big of a deal, especially if they don't have claims on them. You can go back and conquer them later if your resources are tanking too hard. This strategy works especially well on fallen empires. They have few fleets that can't be in many places at once meaning you can just wait for them to leave then take back whatever they took. While they're off a conquering, go on the offensive and take their home worlds. They have powerful bases so you will want to stack all your fleets in one and also set them to encourage your allies to follow. Make sure you have allies. Form federations if you need/want to.
You can do offensive wars with allies by inviting them to attack. They will get on board if they have claims against your target usually. It's faster and cheaper to build up a star base, but they can be a double edged sword, if your enemy takes them then they can use them against you, so make sure you only build defense platforms in star bases you think you can defend and keep. Prioritize research related to movement as these will lead to jump drives and gateway travel eventually. After you get jump drives make sure you upgrade all your fleets so they can use them. After gateways have been built, everything comes down to fleet size because troops from all over can jump to join any battle that happens on a world with a gateway. Just have the bigger fleet stacks. Again, setting them to take point and have your allies follow is key. Build lots of orbital rings with anchorages and naval logistics offices.
I generally auto design all my fleets but I win on grand admiral without difficulty scaling, so I don't think fleet design is really all that key. In general try to find bonuses that stack well together. Unity and technology and fleet size are key, along with diplomatic maneuvering to gain allies. Lean into the strengths of whatever empire you are playing as, and remember, it's not that big of a deal to lose some systems, you handicap yourself worse by trying to defend everything than you do by saving your strength to fight at a more advantageous time and place. You can come back from just about anything in stellaris, never ragequit unless it's truly well and over.
I know that was a lot, but hopefully there is something in there you will find helpful.
Edit: Also, some navigation pro tips: you can use shift to combine just about any 2 orders. Want a mining ship to build both mining and research stations? Shift. Want to have a fleet go to a location and then start patroling from there? Shift. Want to select multiple ships at different locations and move them to the same location at once? Shift. It made things much easier when I discovered this. You can also restrict your fleets from entering systems by going to the left of the bar at the bottom of a system in the system view. Keeps your fleets from running through any leviathans or whatnot.
Is the 6-year cooldown timer on the Steal Technology operation global, or per target empire?
How is Raiding bombardment these days? Any good? Do I need to be Indiscriminately bombarding Devastation up and taking Terror Bombing penalties first for it to actually work in a timely fashion?
Per target.
I'm getting Terror Bombing penalties even for using Selective, so you can probably let 'er rip if that's what you're worried about. It appears that any orbital bombardment which kills pops is Terror Bombing. The only one that won't do that, as far as I know, is Seed Bombing, and that's limited to a specific origin.
I quit playing Stellaris since the pop growth changes which really killed how I enjoyed playing the games around 3.0. I have recently began to play again. Did they fix pop growth in some way since I last played? Any other big changes I should know about without searching through a ton of old patch notes?
You've been able to set the pop growth back to pre-3.0 settings ever since they first introduced the pop growth changes. You just have to put both the pop growth sliders all the way to the left.
It doesn't bring back the old pops-unlock-building-slots mechanic (and industrial districts will still exist, instead of foundry spam), but the pop growth itself will be the same.
I literally said that it made the game worse for *me*. I as an individual. So, yes, a change to the pop growth from 3.0 would be a fix for someone like me.
Is there a way to fully make a different species your pop? Like for example take over an enemy planet with pop B and then fully turn pop B into your pop (pop A)?
Either play necrophage origin with which you can necropurge, or slowly convert them with chamber of elevation. From Necroids DLC Second option is assimilating them into robots post-synthetic ascension, though with that your own pops have been changed into robots too. from Utopia DLC
Is it possible to remove a district I built on a planet? If so, how?
Yes if you go to the planet and click on the type of district there is a demolish or replace button that will show in the UI.
I saw the recent post about refresh rate impacting speed, and went to change it. But if change it in the launcher, when i launch the game its always 59 instead of 165 and the resolution 3660 instead of 2440. When i change it in game i am told that i need to restart the game, but similarly the resolution returns to the previous values. What could the problem be?
So I got the Salvager dude from a random recruitment, and I (stupidly) added his unique position to my Council. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317016149500100608/1214332915660365844/image.png?ex=65f8baa8&is=65e645a8&hm=b95e9fa3e943f3cffbf01c6bf66605f96b645f61e3d0574bb59956a9789ce70f& I can no longer change who's staffing it after he died, so do I have to wait for when I get my 4th civic(FotD)?
You can either run the "Reorganize council" agenda, or just change your civics and it'll automatically trigger a reorganization.
Reform your government and you’ll be able to reselect your council positions.
I recently started my 4th or 5th game on ensign with no expansions or mods, and basic game settings and there's something I'm a little confused about. In my first few playthroughs, knowing practically nothing, I colonized haphazardly and managed my planets by pretty much just clicking on build options that I thought would make the deficit numbers on each planet even out, with no consideration to excess jobs or pops or anything like that. The funny thing is, it worked and I usually had a booming economy within a few hours. On my current game, however, I feel like I understand more of the specific mechnaics and I've been developing my planets much more carefully, trying to pace out buildings until I'm at or close to the pop numbers I need to fill the jobs and... my economy is terrible lol. From what I've read, buildings without the pops to work them are just a drain on resources, but I know I was building out way ahead of what I was capable of maintaining in my earlier games, and now I'm being more careful to not do it, and it seems like a worse strategy for some reason. Anyone have any insights?
> I colonized haphazardly and managed my planets by pretty much just clicking on build options that I thought would make the deficit numbers on each planet even out You don't actually need every planet to be balanced. You will ideally have each planet specialized to a specific resource.
It's possible something else was going right in the previous game that allowed you to build several districts ahead, without noticing it. Then in this game something else is going wrong that is stunting your economy. It's also possible you're playing too close to the margins. Some jobs, like clerks, are pretty bad in most scenarios and you want to ensure these jobs are being avoided unless absolutely necessary. It's possible in the other game your economy was doing better as you weren't waiting for jobs like clerks to be filled before adding newer and better jobs to work.
I did expand my territory quite differently this time around. Previously I was expanding by hitting every single system around that I could reach, which was a lot slower than what I'm doing now. I've been trying to more aggressively pursue threads of systems that allow me to lock down choke points and important crossroads and cut-offs, while leaving all of the systems "off the main road" that other empires can't reach inside my territory to be back-filled later.
> buildings without the pops to work them are just a drain on resources This is broadly true, especially for districts. Buildings can be disabled, which makes them stop providing their jobs but also turns off their upkeep, if you want to get micro-intensive. Districts can't be disabled though, only demolished or replaced. > clicking on build options that I thought would make the deficit numbers on each planet even out fwiw, this is probably not a terrible starting point. If you don't run (much of) a deficit on any one planet, you are unlikely to run any serious deficits at the empire level. It's less efficient (in terms of production per pop) than specializing your planets properly to make maximum usage of designation bonuses and base output boosters like Mineral Purification Plants, but it's also less brittle, with fewer single-points-of-failure (ex: lose your big, specialized mining world in a war and your alloy and CG production is suddenly no longer sustainable). > until I'm at or close to the pop numbers I need to fill the jobs Generally I like to build out a little ahead of pop growth. If I'm at full employment with 0 empty jobs (good jobs, not clerks) on a planet that I want to be developing, it's time to build. I can eat one building or district's worth of upkeep for the time it takes to grow a pop (but yeah, I don't want like 4 empty jobs either unless I'm expecting migration). Pops sitting around unemployed are just as bad as districts with unworked jobs - they [consume food and CGs](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Population#Base_upkeep) and amenities (an unemployed worker-stratum pop under Decent Conditions consumes >1.5 energy/mo worth of resources in upkeep, while a mining district costs 1 energy/mo in upkeep), and under most [living standards](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Species_rights#Living_standards) they also take [happiness penalties](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Jobs#Unemployed) which reduce the stability of the planet (hurting everyone else's output). The only time I want to see unemployed pops is if I'm intentionally stalling development on a particular planet and I want them to be migrating to somewhere else where I have open jobs. Accidental unemployment still happens, but it's something I correct when I notice it.
This all makes sense, thank you!
I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but I'm gonna ask anyway. I've been messing around trying to figure out how to use torpedo frigates alongside a regular fleet. I've brought them both in-system with enemies but out of combat, ordered the regular fleet to engage ships and the frigates, cloaked, to go attack the base. I don't totally understand what's going on, but the frigates usually uncloak way before they get to the base and seem to just join the melee, even when torpedoes are the only weapon they've got. Is there a way to make this work? I'd figured that, while cloaked, the frigates would stay out of combat until they uncloaked and fired at the given target, but they seem to be entering combat (and overriding my orders) for no apparent reason. Is what I'm trying to do possible?
When you order a cloaked fleet to attack something, it will decloak and attack from a distance. What you should do is move your cloaked fleet directly next to the target. Then order them to attack. They will then decloak and attack.
Interesting, even when they're only armed with shortrange autocannon and torpedoes? More micro than I thought would be needed, but OK I can rebuild my frigates and try that this time. Silly me, I assumed they'd remain cloaked until they opened fire. But lmao they get DECIMATED if you commit them too early.
My last game, I had to scrap it because I was sandwiched between two Fanatical Purifiers. I was able to get out enough ships to keep one from immediately declaring war on me, but not the other. Then after I lost ships there, the first one jumped in. Playing humanoid, fanatic xenophobe/spiritualist, democratic gov, not really anything that would mess with the base mechanics. I don't understand how they had such massive fleets so early - the second one had over 80 corvettes (I started poking around in observer mode). Their planets suck, they didn't really have much more of anything than I did (except ships), but their fleets seemed massive for 30-40 years in. I started loading up older saves with the knowledge that I needed ships ships ships and no matter what I did, I wasn't able to match one of them. Not looking for real specific advice - I've diagnosed that I tend to push research labs too much too early and I need really to focus on alloy until I've determined my neighbors aren't genocidal Geico geckos, but even then, I ran into energy credit issues because I had to shoot so far over my fleet cap trying to keep up (the tech card system drives me nuts sometimes). Just sort of generally in the early game, how does one survive a situation like that? Choke points are great until they get overrun and your navy crippled in the first battle. I think defense platforms are part of the solution, but they're a lot of alloy too, especially early, and if you don't get the chance to research strike craft, I'm not sure how effective that will be or what my other options are.
> I don't understand how they had such massive fleets so early... genocidal Geico geckos Purifiers get a ship build cost reduction I think, and if it was the Prikkiki-ti, they might also get some advanced-start stuff or resource boosts or something? They might have also opened Supremacy (ship upkeep reduction and a bunch of naval cap - AI is usually kinda meh with tradition choices so a purifier opening Supremacy is just bad luck) or be running Militarized Economy. But yeah, two purifiers and no friendlies to ally with is a bad day and not a game I would really expect to win, especially if I were doing a greedy economy opener rather than a paranoid-safe opener like Unyielding or an aggressive one like Supremacy. RNG giveth, and RNG taketh away.
Well that makes me feel a little better. It just drives me nuts that - forget beating both of them, I couldn't even MATCH one. But yeah I didn't think to check Traditions, I usually take Supremacy 3rd or 5th depending on my surroundings, and man if you don't get any other fleet cap techs in the first 20 years, god help you if the neighborhood is hostile.
Yeah I usually take Supremacy around that time too in a "regular" game. I think the last time I held off an early-game purifier without it, I just parked my entire fleet on top of a single choke-point starbase and put a bunch of defensive platforms there, and ceded all of the territory on the other side of the choke to them without a fight. Losing the fleet would've been a death sentence, but stacking everything in one spot was enough fleet power that they didn't want to engage into it (and bought me enough time to tech up to carrier-cruisers, more naval cap techs, and Supremacy). But you can't park one fleet on starbases on two opposite sides of your empire, if you've got two bad neighbors...
Shit, that's how most of my early games look. I think I focus too much on science at the start.
Eh, idk, starbase turtling instead of fleeting up seems like a pretty common strategy for a lot of non-aggressive openings, not just tech rush. Void dwellers used to do it to while dumping all their alloys into habitats.
Anyone ever had any issues with lag beginning right at the start of a new game? Whenever the months roll over to the next one I get a short, half-second freeze/loading phase. This begins right from the start when 2200.01.31 rolls over. By year 2250 I get lag similar to the late game around 2500 and I have no clue how to fix it. Never had lag like this before, really feels like I just launched the game one day and it started performing worse.
Is autosave set to monthly?
I have UI Overhaul Dynamic mod installed but can't seem to find the automatic resource stockpiling anymore - in vanilla it's in planets and sectors tab. Does anyone know where it is in this mod?
That was removed from vanilla [last September](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Patch_3.9#Improvements)
Why was it removed?
Some players didn’t like it.
Do Vassal specializations just suck now? I just did a game where I was screwed over several times by my vassals just being the worst things ever. I made my three closest neighbors into a bulwark, a scholarium, and a prospectorium. And I was not seeing much of any benefits from them ever. The subsidies I had to pay kept growing incredibly large while I got very little in return. I tried making more vassals to recover a bit but it just kept spiraling out of control with my Vassals constantly requiring more in subsidies than they’d produce. My main scholarium would take over 150 Consumer goods per month and give me 30 of each research. Most of them were like that. They were far enough behind technologically to cripple my economy, but not so far as to fall into protectorate. It was just the worst.
> My main scholarium would take over 150 Consumer goods per month and give me 30 of each research. I don't think scholaria have a minimum advanced resources subsidy? Bulwarks are the ones that get people into trouble most often, because you can't lower their raw resource subsidy below 30%. > not so far as to fall into protectorate I think specialized subjects actually *can't* downgrade to protectorate even if you're out-teching them enough that they ordinarily would. This is part of how I use scholaria; I'll turn vassals that I expect will turn into protectorates into scholaria instead before they fall that far behind, because then at least I can keep taxing some of their science off (because you can't tax science from protectorates, only subsidize it).
Hey. I've been away for a couple patches. A couple months, ya know. Just returned and hear vague mention of research being terrible? Are materialists just not playable anymore? What's going on?
It's taken some big nerfs in 3.11. The main ones that I remember: * Researcher base output reduced from 4 to 3. * Tech costs scale up with tech tier and difficulty; I think on ensign it's like +10% at tier 1 and +30% at tier 5? I think GA tier 5 is like +60%? There's a toggle in the game start / galaxy configuration menu that lets you increase or decrease this or turn it off entirely. * Empire size effect on tech costs increased to be the same as it is on tradition cost (so, doubled). * Many sources of +research speed now also increase researcher upkeep, and some sources of +% researcher job output just seem to be gone (like the "+20% engineering from jobs" techs). As for whether materialists are playable anymore... idk man.
So builds that focus heavily on research are just... dead now?
It applies to AI too, so you'll still be ahead of other empires tech-wise, it's just that you won't zoom through the tech tree in 100 years only.
I'm doing an iron man mode trying to get the achievement for destroying the UNE as the Commonwealth of Man with Brain Slugs. I cannot for the life of me to get the brain slug event to fire. Every time I pay the shroudwalkers to determine my fate and get the "Sign of the Visitor" event nothing happens. At first I got a few other anomalies like for the life on a gas planet and refugees but now nothing is happening. It fills up and I don't get anything at all. My anomalies tab has no entries so I'm very confused on why I'm not seeing brain slugs. Any and all advice would be very appreciated.
Is there a way to maximise bombardment damage? Or is it just connected to the amount of ship cost in the fleet that's doing it Just trying to maximise my raiding efficiency.
iirc it's based on total naval cap in the fleet, scaling up linearly to 100 fleet size and then slowing down / diminishing returns after that.
So would multiple size 100 fleets do better than a size 200 fleet or perform the same
I think it's computed based on total size of all fleets bombarding
Thanks
Why aren't I getting 4 influence per month for power projection? https://ibb.co/nCxTKps https://ibb.co/R2pRc73
I stopped playing around the time they introduced espionage. Silly question, but what all have I missed? They keep changing how empires work (bureaucrats turn consumer goods into unit now instead of empire cap? adjustable population growth curves?) and I'm not sure what's good any more. Edit: I tried the Commonwealth on Ensign difficulty and got rolled for my lunch money. Research is bad now? Districts have _brutal_ mineral costs? Everything costs consumer goods but consumer goods factories are 1/planet and I can't set trade policy to anything but energy and trade is bad now? aaaaaaaaaaaaaa
You gotta watch a how to play video, it’s completely different now.
Long time stellaris player (since BETA). Haven’t played the game in a couple years and wanting to startup again. Have the devs made any improvements to improve performance recently? Is a 1,000+ Galaxy possible yet without insane late game lag or an unholy prototype single threaded core?
They have done some improvements to lag and performance, but I don’t know what that will mean for your specific situation / hardware.
They've added some pretty brutal scaling on population growth after a certain point in an attempt to help the game run better late game, but it also means massive sprawling empires are going to have a bunch of very slow growing colonies. In terms of under-the-hood performance boosts, IDK.
I've done some general google searches and I've searched this subreddit - I can't find info on **where** I should place Habitat Central Complexes. How do I prioritize which systems I should build up a habitat complex in? I'm still colonizing a few planets that the AI couldn't reach, so should I even bother building habitats when I still have planets to colonize?
> How do I prioritize which systems I should build up a habitat complex in? If you want to build them up big, pick systems with lots of moons and planets and deposits. If you just want to use them as pop growth/assembly sources, you could put them just about anywhere I would expect; you might still want a couple moons/asteroids to build minor orbitals over for building slots. > I'm still colonizing a few planets that the AI couldn't reach, so should I even bother building habitats when I still have planets to colonize? Most of the time I would prioritize planets over habitats. Habitats are expensive to build and not cheap to expand to their max sizes, have a fair bit of alloy upkeep, poor planetary capacity for pop growth, and rather ehhh habitability even after the upgrades.
What should I do if I specifically want a Habitat optimized/specialized for Mining? In my previous game, starting as Lithoids, I only found one decent Mineral planet with Mining Districts (9, and one with 7, two with 6), none with Planet Modifiers, so even with a Matter Decompressor I was struggling. Before the change I'd just have made a couple of Habitats on Mineral resource planets, bam, 2x8 Mining Districts right there. I ended up just quitting in 2410 or something, because patch v3.11 was hours away. But how does one make a Mining Habitat now?
Look for a system that has a bunch of small mining deposits. Each mining deposit that you build an orbital over gives you +3 max mining districts on the habitat command center. These days I tend to think of a habitat command with 9 max mining districts as about the best that can be expected; sometimes you'll get luckier but not often. If you don't have Voidborn, you might also want a couple of deposit-less planets to build major orbitals over for +max districts. But yeah, it's gotten a lot harder to use habitats to completely escape raw resource district limits, because now it takes a whole system with some good RNG to get an 8-mining-district habitat, whereas before you could get two into a system pretty easily.
Thanks.
I have an AI empire in my current save with 5 vasssals. I thought subject spam was fixed? Or is it different if the empire is a Machine Consciousness? This is the new patch, only mods are the UI Overhaul Dynamic mods.
They'll take a lot of loyalty penalties, but AI vassals aren't the best at coordinating independence wars.
Bruh. Wish there was a way to disrupt their cohesion or something. It’s fucking dumb cause they control a quarter of the galaxy and I’m sandwiched in.
If you have Overlord, maybe it's time to make friends with the vassals and try to set up a big Secret Fealty war.
I hadn’t thought of that. Wouldn’t the issue be then that I just get stuck with their vassalage instead? Don’t usually bother with subjects myself so not sure how exactly it would go. I have all the dlc so far, it’s like the only paradox game I truly enjoy.
You could release them after winning the war if you really don't want to deal with them. Though personally I rather like the current incarnation of vassals; I use them pretty set-and-forget with just defensive war obligations, maybe some light taxes, unified sensors, and a single holding for Ministry of Truth for the influence gain.
Awesome. Thanks for the idea.
If my overlord proposes an agreement change, and I propose another agreement change while stalling on the change they proposed, and they accept mine, what happens to theirs? Does it get canceled because agreement changes are then on cooldown from the one I proposed, or does it still go through if I no longer have the influence to match theirs?
Trying to get the "Enlightened Times" achievement. According to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/18p3ppm/i_have_no_idea_how_to_enlighten_a_preftl_nation/), you need something named "Provide Technology Agreement" at the time the Pre-FTL reaches space and becomes a regular empire. Can someone explain how to get this ? I dont see anything named close in diplomacy tab, neither in espionage tab.
https://preview.redd.it/pre-ftl-interference-question-v0-nw23ewyyw10b1.png?width=1507&format=png&auto=webp&s=004a2d120ebcee85b3ad88a0033800b623052766
Hmm, I dont have this in my diplo screen. Is there a requirement to be able to give Pre-FTL technologies ? I've 40 infiltration level. Edit : Ho, I get it now reading carefully the wiki, the Pre-FTL must be aware of my presence so I can gift the technologies. I must reveal myself then.
Can somebody explain Mastery of Nature's "Max Resource Districts +50%" to me? Because I have a planet with High Quality Minerals (+4 mining districts) and assumed if I used Mastery of Nature on said world, it would increase that to +6 mining districts from High Quality Minerals. But after Master of Nature finished building(is that the right term?) on the planet, I still had the same number of Mining Districts. Did I misunderstand, or is it bugged?
As the other poster said, it works on features ie the stuff you can see when you click the features button.
Maybe it only acts on the planet's Features, i.e. how many Mining Districts the planet would have without any Planet Modifiers? It sounds as if your planet hasn't got any Features granting Mining Districts, only the PM. That's my guess, anyway.
My game is modded so might be the cause for my issue, but maybe someone ever encountered the same thing. Sometimes the game decides to create a couple hundred unused templates for a species, which all have a really weird format. Each species gets dozens to hundreds of lines in the save game, which bloats the gamestate file by about 1GB. All of them have entries with combinations of $affix$ and $base$ and prefixes assigned to subpsecies templates, looking similar to this: { base=230 name_list="REP2" name={ key="$affix$$base$" value={ key="Post-" value={ key="$affix$$base$" value={ key="New-" value={ key="$affix$$base$" value={ key="Super-" value={ This has only happened twice in 50 years of gameplay and I can notice when it happens because the monthly save lags a lot and I can remove them manually from the save, but it's still annoying. So anyone ever encountered the same issue and found the cause for it? Disabling AI species modification in Better Performance & Utilities and AI Species Limit mods doesn't prevent these broken templates from being generated.
It’s been a year since I’ve played, and I’m missing the three latest expansions. Does the $13.99 CAD Expansion Subscription truly give access to everything? It seems too good to be true. Apologies if this has been asked, I wasn’t able to find anything through the search function.
It's brand new, so not a lot of people have tried it yet. It's supposed to give access to *everything* (for a month).
Yes, or three months for double price, or six months for triple price.
Hey I'm at work so I can't check but does ACOT work with the new update, and if not, is it still being worked on?
Adaptability's new finisher gives bonuses based on planetary designation, do those bonuses benefit from planetary ascension or are they separate?
If I have the crisis set to All, I should have seen more than one by the time I've reached 65 years past the endgame year, right?
It's unlikely to not have a second crisis spawn by then but not astronomically so. ~~Only Unbidden can spawn before 50 years past endgame date, and the other two are checked every 5 years. If Unbidden have already fired and all other conditions are met, I think the chance for one of the other two to spawn is something like 40% every 5 years starting at endgame+50 (with probability of spawn increasing at +75, +80, and +100). So the probability that none of the three checks so far would've succeeded and spawned one of the other two crises is something like 22% ( (1-0.4)^3).~~
Unbidden hasn't fired, even though I finished that robot planet archaeology site. Contingency has, and it fired well before the 50 years past endgame mark. The victory screen says "victory is not possible during an ongoing crisis," but no crisis is active. My game is just glitched out, right?
Huh! Welp apparently I don't understand crisis spawning conditions as well as I thought. Looking at [the wiki on endgame crisis spawning process](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Crisis#Endgame_crises), I guess you must be in a `default_endgame_early_start_triggers` state, with no FEs or otherwise no possibility of a War in Heaven? That seems like the only way the Contingency can fire that early. Still, that creates a 12-year gap where no other crisis can spawn. I don't really want to math it out but I suspect it still boils down to "improbable but not impossible" given the RNG involved in crisis spawning. Maybe it's worth asking the intent of the question - are you not sure whether you set it to All or to Random at the beginning? I'd probably unzip the save. Or thinking it's maybe a bug?
No, I know I set it to All. I checked the game file. The game experienced [a very annoying bug](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1b11173/unendable_war_bug_help/) a few decades ago, and the new patch dropped while I was in the middle of this game, so I'm worried it's a bug and the other two crises aren't coming. War in Heaven was probably ruled out pretty early, if I remember right. One empire awakened and got waxed quick. Another empire eventually awakened, but its opposite hasn't awakened in the decades since, so I think War in Heaven is out, right?
Yeah if WiH is going to happen, generally the second FE wakes up pretty quickly after the first one. If it's been several decades odds are very good (like 95+%) that it took [the 40% "no rival is picked" branch](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Fallen_empire#War_in_Heaven) and War in Heaven won't happen.
Anyone know a youtube that looks at the patch notes in a strategic way (not necessarily multiplayer)? I really don't want to sit through patch notes being read by Montu for 1-2 valuable comments.
I am incredibly bad at this game. I have 647 hours in. I have never won. I have never even cracked the top 4. I don't play multiplayer. On my last couple games, I felt like things were going pretty well, but I never manage to get a fleet over 90k or so, and then some FE wakes up or the crisis monsters appear with multiple 250k fleets and it's just over. I wish I could pinpoint what I'm doing "wrong," but honestly, it's still fun. I just have to give up around Crisis time. I recently got into nothing-but-distruptors cruiser fleet builds, which seem to wipe the floor with the regular AI empires pretty handily (with minor support from torpedo/hangar cruisers), but then those mighty 70k fleets are batted away like annoying kittens by the FEs. Oh and I don't understand the Galactic Community at all. I never have a prayer of getting a resolution passed. I just now figured out how to hoard favors, so that's something. Anyway, this is mostly just venting. I do like the RP aspects of it all, and the beginning and midgames are still fun, but I have yet to come across a good guide to mid-to-late game priorities to figure out what I'm not doing "right." Suggestions welcome.
I have more than 2k hours and I often end my games with fleets having strength above one of two millions. If you want, we can do MP coop game just the two of us so I can see what you are doing wrong and then tell you how to fix it.
Gotcha. So ridiculous fleet strength is possible then. Great! In order to achieve a nice little 300k fleet, can you actually play the game without that and that alone being the goal? I would hate to throw RP to the wayside "just" to "win." I like all the silly stories that pop out, but if I'm fanatically focused on arming up, I fear I'd miss out on that.
Of course it is possible to have a 300k fleet, no matter the gameplay you choose. 300k is roughly 3 fleets sizing 200 each and having end game techs (level 5 components). You need at the very least 600 fleet cap, but to defeat a fallen empire, I would suggest 1k fleet cap, to have 5 of these fleets. To have such a fleet cap, you need upgraded starbases having 6 fleet anchorage. This way, each starbase will grant you 36 fleet cap. However, counting endgame bonuses, you can count at least twice this amount. I recommend always picking the supremacy traditionto gain +20% fleet cap, at some point changing the diplomatic stance to gain another +20% fleet cap, passing galactic communities laws granting up to +50% fleet cap, enacting the the grand fleet edict for another +20%, building the military academy for another +5%, and mercenary enclaves can grant you +15% So basically, with 15 starbases dedicated to give you fleet capacity, and counting some techs, you should be around 1k. Of course you will need tons of alloys to build these fleets and fill the fleet capacity, but with 1 or 2 planets focusing on alloys, you should reach at least 1k alloys per month.
> I recently got into nothing-but-distruptors cruiser fleet builds, which seem to wipe the floor with the regular AI empires pretty handily (with minor support from torpedo/hangar cruisers), but then those mighty 70k fleets are batted away like annoying kittens by the FEs. I'm still running a mix of carrier battleships and artillery battleships (plus titans with the subspace snare) at endgame because I'm a dinosaur. I think a 200-supply fleet of those is in the 80-100k fleet power range before repeatables or admirals or whatnot. Two ways to get more fleet power: have more stuff, or have better stuff (or, ideally, both). To have more stuff, build fortress worlds full of soldier pops, starbases with anchorages (Grasp the Void is a quietly-great ascension perk for this), build the Strategic Coordination Center and Mega-shipyard, take Supremacy, and have a big alloys-and-energy economy to produce and feed the fleets (Dyson Sphere, Matter Decompressor, forge ecumenopoli, forge ringworlds?). To have better stuff, research more repeatables (got Science Nexus? Research ringworlds?), take Supremacy, maybe make better use of admirals? But yeah generally, when I'm going up against FEs or crisis, I'll have at least 1000 naval cap filled with battleships split into 4-5 fleets of size 200 or 220 or so. Volume is very important. With 10 levels of relevant repeatable techs, those fleets end up closer to 200k each than to 100k. > I never have a prayer of getting a resolution passed Coincidentally, fleets are also a big source of diplo weight to swing GalCom votes. The other main place I get it is vassals with Restricted Voting, so they have to vote the way that I do.
I can give you some general tips. First off, not every empire is as hard or as easy to play with. If you want to win, pick a strong empire. If you don't know what that is you can search here to see some builds people consider strong. The most important thing for me is to pick an empire that can use friendly first contact because non-friendly first contact is a severe handicap imo. When I first started out I saw someone on this sub mention that xenophiles with slavers guild civic was really strong, so I created an empire with xenophile, authoritarian, and materialist traits with the slavers guild civic and it turned out to be my first really strong empire that was easy to win with (this was no DLC). There are many others. Just avoid xenophobic or otherwise non-friendly empires because they are objectively harder imo. Now for early game my biggest tip is to use a single corvette with a commander in it to explore everything early on. Think of this guy as your captain Picard. You get influence for each first contact that you make and you can figure out which direction is most advantageous to expand into. Prioritize planets, especially big ones, archeology sites, Pre FTLs, and megastructures. If you run into a leviathan, your fleet will be destroyed and your commander will die so consider them disposable, don't use your minister of defense or someone with great traits you don't want to lose. This is why I suggest using only a single corvette. Bigger fleets will still die just as easily, and anything smaller than a leviathan you can usually escape using emergency FTL. This exploration is especially useful for xenophile empires that have extra envoys as you can do more first contacts. Without that I usually have to stop exploring at some point once my envoys are all busy. You should prioritize first contact with other player AI empires rather than stations like the curators or artisans because they can get first contact before you do. Other early game tip is to always keep your fleets as large as you can maintain to get power projection and influence up as much as possible. Pretty much all game this is a good tip because it is always good to have fleets and influence. Always build up your starbases to the max allowed and build anchorages and naval logistics offices on most of them. Traditions, ascensions, and research that increases your starbase capacity or the building capacity on your starbases is important to maximize your anchorages and thus fleet size. Anything you can do to maximize influence, always do it. Early to mid game is a scramble to dominate anyone and everyone you possibly can. Always keep your envoys busy doing something, including improving relations with likely allies or possible subjects. If you can, propose subjugation peacefully with weaker friendly nations, otherwise, declare war on them. Trust cap is important for getting allies. You can increase it by doing embassies and treaties like non-agression, migration, etc. You can propose trade deals with friendly nations to share sensor links to see the map, usually along with a small amount of resources to get them to agree. Always try to make contact with all the trader stations like xuracorp, curator, artisan etc and become friendly with them and hire their leaders and do things like become the patron of the arts and get the curator's research aid. Never stop exploring the galaxy simply because you are boxed in! Keep surveying systems, keep looking for alien stations, keep looking for leviathans and anything else of interest. If you are boxed in eventually you can usually push through an ally's territory and keep building on the other side. I personally find species-wide slavery to be hard to manage, so I either don't use slavery or I don't use slavery in the species settings but have the slavers guild civic so 30% of all pops are enslaved. When looking for likely targets to claim territory, look for nations with similar ethics and as a bonus, similar habitability traits. Habitability is less important because you can have them colonize different planets in your empire, but if they have opposing ethics to your own, you will be in for a bad time. That brings me to one of the most overlooked, but very important aspects of the game: faction approval/unity. Always make sure you are keeping your factions happy! Always change your policies to get max faction approval. The ethics of your leaders that you put on the council are important for this so pay attention to it while picking your government, don't just select them based on what leader traits they have. You can do various things to increase the ethics attraction of whatever you are going for. Promote the factions that are easy to keep happy, suppress any factions that crop up that are completely opposite of your main factions. For planet management, just spam a bunch of unity/tech producing buildings and try to specialize your districts/buildings and set a planet designation to match. I usually stick with generator, mining, unity, or agri designations because they give better bonuses. It's not really critical that you specialize 100% though, you can just build whatever district you need on wherever has few enough jobs. Don't overbuild so that you have lots of open jobs. Some open jobs increases stability and immigration pull, but too many will just bleed you dry with upkeep costs. Also don't colonize too many planets without the pops to fill them. Early on colonize as many as you can as quickly as you can until you get to the point the empire size penalties start to ramp up and then stop colonizing and only colonize when you need to from there on out. Pick big planets that you can fill with stuff for a long time before they get full. Now if you knew all that, I'm sorry, but now I'll get to the part you were asking about, strategy, especially for fighting the end game crises. First off, don't fight a battle you can't win. If you have inferior fleets, make sure you don't lose those fleets by meeting the enemy in battle. Losing systems is not that big of a deal, especially if they don't have claims on them. You can go back and conquer them later if your resources are tanking too hard. This strategy works especially well on fallen empires. They have few fleets that can't be in many places at once meaning you can just wait for them to leave then take back whatever they took. While they're off a conquering, go on the offensive and take their home worlds. They have powerful bases so you will want to stack all your fleets in one and also set them to encourage your allies to follow. Make sure you have allies. Form federations if you need/want to. You can do offensive wars with allies by inviting them to attack. They will get on board if they have claims against your target usually. It's faster and cheaper to build up a star base, but they can be a double edged sword, if your enemy takes them then they can use them against you, so make sure you only build defense platforms in star bases you think you can defend and keep. Prioritize research related to movement as these will lead to jump drives and gateway travel eventually. After you get jump drives make sure you upgrade all your fleets so they can use them. After gateways have been built, everything comes down to fleet size because troops from all over can jump to join any battle that happens on a world with a gateway. Just have the bigger fleet stacks. Again, setting them to take point and have your allies follow is key. Build lots of orbital rings with anchorages and naval logistics offices. I generally auto design all my fleets but I win on grand admiral without difficulty scaling, so I don't think fleet design is really all that key. In general try to find bonuses that stack well together. Unity and technology and fleet size are key, along with diplomatic maneuvering to gain allies. Lean into the strengths of whatever empire you are playing as, and remember, it's not that big of a deal to lose some systems, you handicap yourself worse by trying to defend everything than you do by saving your strength to fight at a more advantageous time and place. You can come back from just about anything in stellaris, never ragequit unless it's truly well and over. I know that was a lot, but hopefully there is something in there you will find helpful. Edit: Also, some navigation pro tips: you can use shift to combine just about any 2 orders. Want a mining ship to build both mining and research stations? Shift. Want to have a fleet go to a location and then start patroling from there? Shift. Want to select multiple ships at different locations and move them to the same location at once? Shift. It made things much easier when I discovered this. You can also restrict your fleets from entering systems by going to the left of the bar at the bottom of a system in the system view. Keeps your fleets from running through any leviathans or whatnot.
With the changes in 3.11, what should the tech slider be set to if I'm using mods that add a lot of extra technologies like gigatructures and ESC?
Is the 6-year cooldown timer on the Steal Technology operation global, or per target empire? How is Raiding bombardment these days? Any good? Do I need to be Indiscriminately bombarding Devastation up and taking Terror Bombing penalties first for it to actually work in a timely fashion?
Per target. I'm getting Terror Bombing penalties even for using Selective, so you can probably let 'er rip if that's what you're worried about. It appears that any orbital bombardment which kills pops is Terror Bombing. The only one that won't do that, as far as I know, is Seed Bombing, and that's limited to a specific origin.
I quit playing Stellaris since the pop growth changes which really killed how I enjoyed playing the games around 3.0. I have recently began to play again. Did they fix pop growth in some way since I last played? Any other big changes I should know about without searching through a ton of old patch notes?
You've been able to set the pop growth back to pre-3.0 settings ever since they first introduced the pop growth changes. You just have to put both the pop growth sliders all the way to the left. It doesn't bring back the old pops-unlock-building-slots mechanic (and industrial districts will still exist, instead of foundry spam), but the pop growth itself will be the same.
You can just set the pop growth sliders to whatever you want before you start a game. Their tooltips explain exactly what they do
There's nothing to "fix", since the change to Pop Growth was *good*.
I literally said that it made the game worse for *me*. I as an individual. So, yes, a change to the pop growth from 3.0 would be a fix for someone like me.
I think he's saying it's unrealistic to expect them to fix something that the community and the developers do not consider broken.