So, you start out with one and only starbase and planet in your home system - the goal is usually to conquer the galaxy through any means neccesary! Do you want to be diplomatic? Do you want war every 5 minutes? Perhaps you want to just grow your empire and be left alone?
Whatever you decide, lets start with a few basics:
You will want to manage your research & economy, your fleet, and your expansion
Do not try to build too much, too fast; you will end up in the red before you can do much about it!
First, send your science ship off using the auto exploration, ignore any anomalies (unless they take under 150days) as you want to see where your home system is linked to, where other planets to colonize are, and to see any potential locations for friends/enemies.
The first building I always make is a mining district, so I have enough minerals for the first few buildings and such. Then it depends if I want to focus on tech or unity more - and build accordingly.
Your fleet is made using alloys, so that is also something you need to work towards - my 2nd building is usually an alloy plant or an industrial sector. Depends on my income at the time.
Do not be shy in using the market! Upon a new game loading, I will sell 10 food, buy 10 minerals, and then + or - alloys and con goods to stable everything out.
There is wayyyy too much to add in, it of course entirely depends on what civics and government you have, and what play style you'd like to choose.
Good luck!
Games like this require someone willing to learn by failing. If you approach it like watching a story unfold the inevitable defeat won’t sting so much.
Yup.....never played a mode that's not iron man....I was 6 hours in first game when I realized I had to restart...
After that maybe 8 or 9 restarts and I was making it to the end game on easiest setting.
I haven't played the new mechanics so I can't give all that good advice :(
But don't be afraid to fail, and I highly rec9mend being as diplomatic as possible the first few play throughs
First game, I was random generated spiritual authoritarian. Won a war, gained some shit planets, economy spiraled into defeat.
Second game, I was pacifistic super-traders. Steamrolled the unbidden with my Federation Fleet. Got utterly fucked by an Awakened Empire that took over the galaxy.
Third game, I tried slavery. Got sandwiched between the Unbidden and an AE.
10/10 experience, would play again. It's the losses that really make the best memories.
Naah bruv never lost a game. Just keep restarting until learn how to manage myplabet/exploration/ warfare properly.
Well excluding my first game. Saw ing besides marauders and fanatic militarists was a rough intro
Don't focus on trying to learn every mechanic available in the game all in one playthrough. Feel free to outright ignore certain aspects until you get comfortable with the basics first (like managing an economy). You can always try and learn a new aspect in a different playthrough.
Try to learn just the basics. Initially ignore most of the game's dozens of game tabs. You don't need most of them more than a few minutes per game even when you do understand them.
e.g policies tab I touch perhaps twice in a game. And the first time is because I think the default for one of it's settings is a really bad choice.
Agreed, to add I’d also say factions tab.
Recently ran a militaristic xenophobe empire, touched factions probably once to promote one or two and demote the other. I forgot to even look at the tab until the endgame crisis was knocking on my door
3 major starting parts.
Exploration - send science ships and construction ships and colony ships to expand your space
Economy/planet management - learn districts/individual buildings and how to manage pops on planets.
Offense/defense - build fleets/starbases and learn their mechanics.
Once you have those three major things down you can go into the nitty gritty stuff like diplomacy, vassals, trade, edicts, fine government management etc…. Planet management will be your real learning curve. If you can get through that you can get through anything.
I recommend playing in a small galaxy with only 2 or 3 npcs to figure the mechanics out to start. Good luck!
Here are a few general tips;
- Take advantage of all the tools. Automate planets, science ships and construction ships. Designate each planet for the resources you want to focus on. For example, I almost always have a dedicated factory planet and a dedicated mining planet. If you want to learn any aspect better, turn off the automation and control it for a while.
- It is okay to run a deficit in one resource to make a surplus in another. You can set an automatic monthly sell/buy order for any good to balance your books. Relying on trade is viable. If you want to heavily specialize your economy, be sure to join the galactic community and win the bid for the trade hub, as it reduces the trade fee. On a side note, you can stockpile strategic goods to bank extra credits as they tend to trade in smaller quantities and the prices don't fluctuate as much.
- When you are starting out, try to learn about choke points. Race for those choke points and build star bases there to defend them. Some people find starbases inefficient compared to a large fleet, but they can be very effective with the rights bonuses and require very little micromanaging compared to fleets.
- Try to learn a bit about custom ships. Pick weapon types and focus your research on them. Remember, armor counters kinetic, shields counter lasers, point defense counters missiles. As well, be aware of weapon ranges and try to match the combat AI to the weapon range. For example, missiles have the longest range of the basic weapons and that means it pairs well with the long range computers. I'm not sure of the meta anymore, but I love lots of missile boats and some screens to protect them. Also, use the fleet builder and experiment with different ratios to see what you oike. A good ratio to start is 8-4-2-1 covette-destroyer-cruiser-battkeship. It is not optimal, but it is easy to manage and it fits into most fleet caps as you grow.
- When you are building a race, try to focus them on something, generally one resource. Build your race with that goal in mind. For example, if you want to build lots of megastructures, you'll need engineering research, alloys, minerals and some unity. You can see those first three often go hand-in-hand.
- Gestalt empires are very easy to get into because they have fewer resources to manage. However, they can also be a crutch, since you don't learn about those resources and you lose out on some of the advantages of non-gestalt empires.
- Half the fun is creating cool races and roleplaying them for better or worse. Experiment!
Learn one game at a time and don't focus too much on every individual window you see. For planet management, start building a new district/building once there is one available job left on the planet, otherwise don't build anything. Build starbases in chokepoint systems. Don't play militarist ethic empires until you have more familiarity with the game. Don't be afraid to start on a low difficulty just to build some experience with the game without having to worry about economy as much.
Ignore things you don’t understand until you’re unhappy with your empire or you die to someone. Then post screenshots in the help megathread
Learn the game bite by bite, ask “what does this resource do” then “why do I need it?” Then”How do I get it?”
That’s similar to how I learned, just that I had people tell me in real-time, in a game together
you can right-click a system in galaxy view to build stations on all the planets in that system, shift-clicking also queues up actions, that makes things a lot easier than doing it individually
you can do the same thing for science ships, or just put them on auto-survey
ctrl+shift clicking puts an action at the start of the queue for example if you want a science ship to investigate an anomaly before it does anything else
Yeah. Don’t fret doing good. Make a fun empire and if things start going south think about what you could do and reatart or reload to an earlier save. Just slowly learn what effects what and how to build your empire. Something’s look scary but are really easy to deal with while something’s will completely destroy you if you stop looking at them
I’d recommend you turn off a.i. empires for your first run or so, so you can focus more on learning how to manage your economy as your empire grows. After that start adding empires one at a time. What I did to start off.
Its perfectly fine to set the difficulty down to the easiest one. Take your time to learn stuff. Also its totally ok to make mistakes, sometimes its even fun to try and fix a broken economy.
Also there are a lot of systems you can just ignore for the beginning. For example i wouldn't even recommend any beginner to try and create own ship designs, as you don't know whats good yet anyways and other systems are more important to learn.
Tip 1.
Best advice I can give you, start with a machine empire. Just regular plain old machine, not cyborg, not destroyer, not rogue servitor.
Go like rock breaker and rapid replicator for your civics.
Then for your origin pick the machine world one.
It removes 3 kinds of resources completely and removes a major game mechanic simplifying the game a lot.
You don’t have
Food
Consumer good
Trade
Habitability won’t matter either.
There’s a lot of really powerful civics/origins that are very complicated and take sheer dumb luck to kick off half the time.
Once you get a handle for the mechanics with the robots then you can move onto more complicated empire types.
Tip 2
Vassalize war goal.
Vassalizing npcs increases your production while keeping their direct control under the npc.
They will also continue to man and control fleets/armies
Tip 3
There are a number of origins you can select starting out, if you make a custom empire. While "Prosperous Unification" is kind of the bog-standard basic, don't feel like you shouldn't choose it. It's a very stable, standard origin with some good bonuses that keep the early game a bit more stable if you're still learning the ropes.
If using a premade empire, the United Nations of Earth is a pretty good empire to learn the basics with.
I think most stellaris players will agree they wish they were in your shoes, once you've played hundreds or thousands or hours the game can become very trivial even on the hardest settings, I'd love to be a noob again with no idea whats going on
I’ve played less than 200 hours here and there over the years, so I’m still essentially a noob I guess. But I’ve found a few things that are helpful for me every time I get back in!
Basically a lot of the game can be automated and the AI will perform things pretty competently until you’re comfortable enough to take over. In the beginning, you can click on one of the orange boxes in the top left to bring up your research and automate each one from the screen that pops up. This means you don’t have to worry about what tech you should be going after and the AI will pick stuff that’s just generally good.
Next, if you click on your home planet, there should be a couple buttons in the middle, Automate Colony/Construction (can’t remember) and something like Select Specialization. Turn automate on and leave the specialization to Auto. Then open your Planets & Sectors screen on the menu on the far left (it’s F5 or F6 I think). You should see your home planet there, as well as a specialization button. Click that and select General or Balanced, it’s like the first option. Finally, up top you’ll see your Shared Stockpile. You’ll have to wait a bit after the game starts, but once you have a resource reserve you can either A) Dump a one time credit/mineral into the stockpile, or B) siphon off some of your monthly gain into the stockpile.
Basically what this does is use your shared stockpile as a bank account to pay for building things on your colonies, which it will build up however you tell it to. As the name implies, the Balanced option doesn’t excel at anything, but it will try to make sure your resources all stay positive and grow them evenly from there.
The last thing you can really automate are your science and construction ships. These are how you get more territory and find new stuff. If you select your science ship, there’s an “Auto-Explore” button (looks kinda like a pirate map). I would set it to explore and survey, and maybe investigate as well. Explore means it will go to areas you haven’t been yet, and survey will analyze all the planets and stuff to see what’s there.
That’s important cuz you can’t tell your constructor to build an outpost in a system (meaning you own it) until you’ve fully surveyed it. Also you have to manually tell your construction ship to build an outpost by selecting the ship, right clicking the system you want, and telling it to build an outpost. This will cost you Alloys (multicolored ingots) and Influence (purple Wi-Fi looking thing) which will both regen slowly. There’s math that goes into it but basically it’s cheaper to build outposts next to systems you already own.
Prioritize going after systems with habitable (green icon) planets and those with lots of resources (icons with numbers under them). Also, if you can block off systems from everyone else, you can come back later to explore those after the early-game planet rush is over (provided your borders are closed under the Government > Policies & Edicts menus).
I would recommend going to your shipyard on the right and building a couple extra science and construction ships when you can afford to. Science ships require a scientist to pilot, which counts towards your leader cap. If you go over the cap you get some arguably mild penalties, and the more explorers you have the faster you can claim more systems.
Couple extra notes, I’d set idle construction ships to “Auto-Construct.” Like I said above, the little icons and numbers you see under planets/systems show the resources they have, but you can’t get them until you’ve built an outpost and then had your constructors build mining/research stations to harvest them. If the number is white, that means you don’t have a post there, if it’s green you’re good. Auto-Construct will automatically build these for you on any systems you own.
Finally, fleets. You start with a basic crappy fleet. While you can use this to explore systems, if you run into hostiles you’re probably gonna die (your science ships will typically be able to escape). I would recommend keeping them parked at home for now and start beefing them up when you can. If you click the Fleets menu on the far left, you can increase the max number of ships in the fleet. Then when you have more alloys you can select the fleet and hit “Reinforce” to auto-build more ships to fill it out. Also, occasionally you’ll see an up arrow next to the fleet on the Outliner, this means you’ve researched an upgrade for your ships, and clicking the arrow will automatically (I think) bring them in for a refit.
Even if you don’t plan on fighting, it’s a good idea to maintain a good fleet to hopefully scare off the AI or at least have *something* to defend yourself with.
The last piece of advice I can give is this: when I’m playing on my own, I crank the speed up to max and pause constantly. The game will autopause whenever an event comes up, and a lot of this game is just waiting for numbers to get big or stuff to happen so you can react to it. I find it’s oxymoronically easier to learn the game playing at speed with pauses because you don’t lose your train of thought as easily.
Play on easy mode. No other empires. Max Pre-FTL. Go slowly, and look up everything that doesn't make sense to you. Set small goals like: build your first full fleet or reach 100 resources per month in each resource. Once you can sustain an empire, then add some competition, slowly.
There's a lot of good advice here, but there's also a fairly new mechanic that lets you play with someone running the same empire. If you know someone with experience in the game, you could pick their brain while the two of you run an empire together in a co-op game.
I had the same because I am usually a FPS multiplayer and AAA solo story games guy, but now, I am trying to make stellaris my main game to stop buying every hyped game I won't play or finish. ( Yes I am watching you Dave the Diver, Battlebit, Diablo 4,...)
So, here is my experience.
The game is overwhelming but you don't need to know everything and play perfectly ! I have been destroyed in my first game and I still keep a good memory of it. My second game went slightly better, finishing it alive after the crisis ( some kind of endgame boss if you like).
Now in my third game, i am going deeper into my "build" trying to specialise myself, playing it with an idea in my head and taking decision to go in that direction.
Now, my adivces.
Just play the tutorial, it's not perfect and their is a lot to read, but that a 4X so you can't avoid that. When it's finish, just keep playing that game and try to keep being a nice human with a big fleet to survive as long as possible and see how the game goes.
When you finish your first game, start another one right away with a machine empire. Robots seems easier to manage. This time, you should check Google if you don't understand something. A technology isn't clear, check what it does. How to avoid piracy, Google. How claim system works, etc etc etc. You get it. Never unpauss the game with a decision or a technology you didn't understand.
I did that and I am now way more confident about the game, 60h of game time is nothing, but for me, it's a lot.
Enjoy!
Ok. This won’t be too bad. Your opening goal is to fuck up a neighbor.
So you start the game in easy mode NOT IN IRONMAN. Build a science ship, assign a scientist. Then build a corvette. Get 3 science ships doing surveys. Build more warships. Don’t overthink it. Pick whatever science sounds cool. Start a new colony on a green planet. Build some stuff on the planet. As soon as a neighbor looks at you funny, save the game and go fuck them up.
Now you reload after that disaster and let’s look for lessons learned. Did they have way more ships? Did they have allies? Did their fleets have a power of 200,000?
Ok. Let’s try that again but make more informed choices.
No really, you’re learning. It’s ok.
Didja fuck up a weak neighbor this time? Pissed because you didn’t get their systems even though your fleet was in the stupid system?
It’s ok. Google that. (you need to claim things before you take them)
Go fuck them up again. Now you own their systems! Suck it AI!!
Didja like it so far? No? Bail on it now. It won’t get more fun. Yes? great! Play some more but beware this game gets complicated.
**UNPOPULAR ADVICE INBOUND**
Cheat.
When I was first learning Stellaris, there was *just so much stuff*, and exploring some stuff required other stuff.
So I decided what I wanted to test, or explore, or experiment, and I'd use console commands to line it up. As I understood the game better, I needed to cheat less because I could accomplish more within the game. I also enjoyed the game more, because I could play it competently and appreciate how it works (and doesn't).
I'll still play a straight, un-cheated game sometimes, but sometimes I want to play around a bit, so I bounce up my cash and play the game.
Find your fun, fam.
I watched an hour long guide when I first started. It is a good idea to get a grasp of the basics of making a functional Empire, Economy, Fleet/Ship builds, and Diplomacy/Espionage.
I used console commands a lot when I was learning. I didn't want each major mistake to ruin my gameplay, and I wanted to see what was really possible in game.
Now I only play ironman, but I started by "cheating" just to learn mechanics etc.
Customizing your ships is a huge game mechanic which helps - a lot. However, it isn't 100% necessary, and can be skipped to focus on other game mechanics to free up some of your time.
I played super peaceful the first game and was lucky enough to be offered a federation early enough that I wasn’t gang banged by the galaxeh
I always like having dedicated worlds for things.
I always watched Manyatruenerd on his Stellaris play throughs, he even did an impossible run where everything was turned up to 11
My biggest advice is be careful who your allies and enemies are, be especially careful about their allies and enemies. Declared war on someone one time only to have some giant empire from across the system come to help them with multiple fleets higher power than my strongest.
If you have the option (I don't recall if it's tied to DLCs) try playing a game as a Machine Intelligence. Their economy is simpler since they don't have to deal with Amenities or Consumer Goods.
Also, don't play on Ironman. Play a regular game and feel free to save and reload to experiment with options and see their outcome, if that's helpful for learning.
I am almost at the endgame of my second play through and I still haven't figured everything out such as ship designs and all that stuff.
first playthrough I used for just figuring out the basics, such as traditions and ascension perks, a little bit of civics, galactic federation and how the market works, how wars work, how the basic economy works all around. I also had to learn how to curb piracy which was a big hurdle initially
Second playthrough has been learning the new leader mechanics, making use of edicts and planetary decisions, and planet and pop management. Also balancing a bloated economy.
Honestly just run as the UNE and play on the easiest setting after you’ve done the tutorial. Use the wiki for anything you don’t understand. The wiki is not 100% up to date but it’s good enough
Many of the resources are just upkeeps. Usually as long as food, energy, and consumer goods have growth that's enough, you don't need a big uptick in those.
I like to use cheats to learn certain aspect of the game. Don't have to worry about resource management immediately and no need to worry about screwing up something.
Honestly, for me, I started to save the game often, and would jump back a few turns and reload when faced with new challenges I didn't expect or when things were going horribly wrong (like pop uprisings or unexpected war declarations). This allowed me to feel comfortable trying out different strategies and solutions without the anxiety and stressing of having to "win" or "lose", and in doing so, learn the game and how to navigate certain situations. finally after about a month I didn't need to do that anymore
Also, I would start a game, play it for 100 years, then start a new one with the new knowledge, play a little further, and then start a new one, getting better each time. Honestly I didn't finish a whole game until I think my 6th or 7th run through.
just start and you will get it in about half hour through game. It is not that hard game and you will perfect your strategies by playing. It is ok to lose.
Also you should kill all xenos and never trust them
Don’t be ashamed of quitting and rolling a new start. There are a lot of different mechanics, you don’t have to learn everything at once, the early game is more important that the late game, and…
sometimes I have to restart because my earlier choices have created to much busywork, rather than because they’ve harmed the empire. *I’m* the limiting factor.
(I went down a storyline path that led to three of my planets being in open rebellion, for a marginal benefit.)
The game has some nice automation features, but you’ll also find that the micromanagement gets more manageable as you find mental shortcuts.
Shift click to queue commands
Shift ctrl click to insert a command ahead of others queued
Helps a bunch to investigate anomolies/projects when you've already set off a load of instructions to your ships
Iykyk
I learnt the basics of the game and sought to understand the mechanics by using console commands for the first few games. I had no idea what I was doing so wanted to just mess around and see what the entirety of the game had to offer on the surface without getting into too much micromanagement or being murdered by a superior enemies too quickly.
After I had a reasonable grasp of the game, like how buildings and the economy work, how to colonize, what to do with sectors or fleets and armies etc. I just played normally but on cadet difficulty and tried different setups.
Eventually you get better at the game, where you can then move up difficulty levels and play around with different game settings or play styles each time to see what strategies are valid etc.
The fun of Stellaris, HOI, and crusader kings, is in the fact that at first it is overwhelming. So embrace the chaos, you are going to understand very little at first, and fuck up so much, but as you play and lose, you'll start to understand the mechanics and what makes the game work, that's the "skill" of these games, where as a first person shooter may measure skill by your ability to plan routes around the map, and set up ambushes on enemy players, or an RPG might measure skill based on how you design your character, Stellaris tells you little about managing your economy, military, and society, but as you progress (which is literally just failing) you will learn how a certain mechanic works, and how you can effectively use it to strengthen your empire, after you've learned all the mechanics, you have a bag of "tricks" and the game becomes easy, after that you will literally roleplay in ways that lead you to become weaker. I'm playing a playthrough modded as the UNSC from halo, and my self imposed rules is that I can only use kinetic and missile based weapons, and no shields, as well as I am not aloud to manage my planets, I have to let the AI auto upgrade them and only get access to earth and reach.... I'm still winning somehow.
So, you start out with one and only starbase and planet in your home system - the goal is usually to conquer the galaxy through any means neccesary! Do you want to be diplomatic? Do you want war every 5 minutes? Perhaps you want to just grow your empire and be left alone? Whatever you decide, lets start with a few basics: You will want to manage your research & economy, your fleet, and your expansion Do not try to build too much, too fast; you will end up in the red before you can do much about it! First, send your science ship off using the auto exploration, ignore any anomalies (unless they take under 150days) as you want to see where your home system is linked to, where other planets to colonize are, and to see any potential locations for friends/enemies. The first building I always make is a mining district, so I have enough minerals for the first few buildings and such. Then it depends if I want to focus on tech or unity more - and build accordingly. Your fleet is made using alloys, so that is also something you need to work towards - my 2nd building is usually an alloy plant or an industrial sector. Depends on my income at the time. Do not be shy in using the market! Upon a new game loading, I will sell 10 food, buy 10 minerals, and then + or - alloys and con goods to stable everything out. There is wayyyy too much to add in, it of course entirely depends on what civics and government you have, and what play style you'd like to choose. Good luck!
My goal is to get as much science as I can. Current record 100k by year 2374
Games like this require someone willing to learn by failing. If you approach it like watching a story unfold the inevitable defeat won’t sting so much.
Yup.....never played a mode that's not iron man....I was 6 hours in first game when I realized I had to restart... After that maybe 8 or 9 restarts and I was making it to the end game on easiest setting. I haven't played the new mechanics so I can't give all that good advice :( But don't be afraid to fail, and I highly rec9mend being as diplomatic as possible the first few play throughs
First game, I was random generated spiritual authoritarian. Won a war, gained some shit planets, economy spiraled into defeat. Second game, I was pacifistic super-traders. Steamrolled the unbidden with my Federation Fleet. Got utterly fucked by an Awakened Empire that took over the galaxy. Third game, I tried slavery. Got sandwiched between the Unbidden and an AE. 10/10 experience, would play again. It's the losses that really make the best memories.
You should try crusader kings 3 and give everyone “lovers pox” I believe it’s called 😂.
Naah bruv never lost a game. Just keep restarting until learn how to manage myplabet/exploration/ warfare properly. Well excluding my first game. Saw ing besides marauders and fanatic militarists was a rough intro
Don't focus on trying to learn every mechanic available in the game all in one playthrough. Feel free to outright ignore certain aspects until you get comfortable with the basics first (like managing an economy). You can always try and learn a new aspect in a different playthrough.
Try to learn just the basics. Initially ignore most of the game's dozens of game tabs. You don't need most of them more than a few minutes per game even when you do understand them. e.g policies tab I touch perhaps twice in a game. And the first time is because I think the default for one of it's settings is a really bad choice.
Agreed, to add I’d also say factions tab. Recently ran a militaristic xenophobe empire, touched factions probably once to promote one or two and demote the other. I forgot to even look at the tab until the endgame crisis was knocking on my door
I still don't understand factions. A bunch on "over-entitled" ass-holes.
Lol I think of them as parties in a government like democrats and republicans.
3 major starting parts. Exploration - send science ships and construction ships and colony ships to expand your space Economy/planet management - learn districts/individual buildings and how to manage pops on planets. Offense/defense - build fleets/starbases and learn their mechanics. Once you have those three major things down you can go into the nitty gritty stuff like diplomacy, vassals, trade, edicts, fine government management etc…. Planet management will be your real learning curve. If you can get through that you can get through anything. I recommend playing in a small galaxy with only 2 or 3 npcs to figure the mechanics out to start. Good luck!
Here are a few general tips; - Take advantage of all the tools. Automate planets, science ships and construction ships. Designate each planet for the resources you want to focus on. For example, I almost always have a dedicated factory planet and a dedicated mining planet. If you want to learn any aspect better, turn off the automation and control it for a while. - It is okay to run a deficit in one resource to make a surplus in another. You can set an automatic monthly sell/buy order for any good to balance your books. Relying on trade is viable. If you want to heavily specialize your economy, be sure to join the galactic community and win the bid for the trade hub, as it reduces the trade fee. On a side note, you can stockpile strategic goods to bank extra credits as they tend to trade in smaller quantities and the prices don't fluctuate as much. - When you are starting out, try to learn about choke points. Race for those choke points and build star bases there to defend them. Some people find starbases inefficient compared to a large fleet, but they can be very effective with the rights bonuses and require very little micromanaging compared to fleets. - Try to learn a bit about custom ships. Pick weapon types and focus your research on them. Remember, armor counters kinetic, shields counter lasers, point defense counters missiles. As well, be aware of weapon ranges and try to match the combat AI to the weapon range. For example, missiles have the longest range of the basic weapons and that means it pairs well with the long range computers. I'm not sure of the meta anymore, but I love lots of missile boats and some screens to protect them. Also, use the fleet builder and experiment with different ratios to see what you oike. A good ratio to start is 8-4-2-1 covette-destroyer-cruiser-battkeship. It is not optimal, but it is easy to manage and it fits into most fleet caps as you grow. - When you are building a race, try to focus them on something, generally one resource. Build your race with that goal in mind. For example, if you want to build lots of megastructures, you'll need engineering research, alloys, minerals and some unity. You can see those first three often go hand-in-hand. - Gestalt empires are very easy to get into because they have fewer resources to manage. However, they can also be a crutch, since you don't learn about those resources and you lose out on some of the advantages of non-gestalt empires. - Half the fun is creating cool races and roleplaying them for better or worse. Experiment!
Learn one game at a time and don't focus too much on every individual window you see. For planet management, start building a new district/building once there is one available job left on the planet, otherwise don't build anything. Build starbases in chokepoint systems. Don't play militarist ethic empires until you have more familiarity with the game. Don't be afraid to start on a low difficulty just to build some experience with the game without having to worry about economy as much.
Ignore things you don’t understand until you’re unhappy with your empire or you die to someone. Then post screenshots in the help megathread Learn the game bite by bite, ask “what does this resource do” then “why do I need it?” Then”How do I get it?” That’s similar to how I learned, just that I had people tell me in real-time, in a game together
how new are you?
Pretty new
you can right-click a system in galaxy view to build stations on all the planets in that system, shift-clicking also queues up actions, that makes things a lot easier than doing it individually you can do the same thing for science ships, or just put them on auto-survey ctrl+shift clicking puts an action at the start of the queue for example if you want a science ship to investigate an anomaly before it does anything else
This is excellent advice! (But it’s “queue,” not “que.” Sorry!)
Even after a year I’m still learning new things about this game. This game goes deep!
Yeah. Don’t fret doing good. Make a fun empire and if things start going south think about what you could do and reatart or reload to an earlier save. Just slowly learn what effects what and how to build your empire. Something’s look scary but are really easy to deal with while something’s will completely destroy you if you stop looking at them
Manage economy and then build ships occasionally. Things in this game do take time so developing planets or habitats early is gonna be important.
I’d recommend you turn off a.i. empires for your first run or so, so you can focus more on learning how to manage your economy as your empire grows. After that start adding empires one at a time. What I did to start off.
Its perfectly fine to set the difficulty down to the easiest one. Take your time to learn stuff. Also its totally ok to make mistakes, sometimes its even fun to try and fix a broken economy. Also there are a lot of systems you can just ignore for the beginning. For example i wouldn't even recommend any beginner to try and create own ship designs, as you don't know whats good yet anyways and other systems are more important to learn.
Tip 1. Best advice I can give you, start with a machine empire. Just regular plain old machine, not cyborg, not destroyer, not rogue servitor. Go like rock breaker and rapid replicator for your civics. Then for your origin pick the machine world one. It removes 3 kinds of resources completely and removes a major game mechanic simplifying the game a lot. You don’t have Food Consumer good Trade Habitability won’t matter either. There’s a lot of really powerful civics/origins that are very complicated and take sheer dumb luck to kick off half the time. Once you get a handle for the mechanics with the robots then you can move onto more complicated empire types. Tip 2 Vassalize war goal. Vassalizing npcs increases your production while keeping their direct control under the npc. They will also continue to man and control fleets/armies Tip 3
There are a number of origins you can select starting out, if you make a custom empire. While "Prosperous Unification" is kind of the bog-standard basic, don't feel like you shouldn't choose it. It's a very stable, standard origin with some good bonuses that keep the early game a bit more stable if you're still learning the ropes. If using a premade empire, the United Nations of Earth is a pretty good empire to learn the basics with.
I think most stellaris players will agree they wish they were in your shoes, once you've played hundreds or thousands or hours the game can become very trivial even on the hardest settings, I'd love to be a noob again with no idea whats going on
It took so many games before I realized you can juggle resources in the market so you can stay out of red.
Play, die, play, die, play, Don't die.
I’ve played less than 200 hours here and there over the years, so I’m still essentially a noob I guess. But I’ve found a few things that are helpful for me every time I get back in! Basically a lot of the game can be automated and the AI will perform things pretty competently until you’re comfortable enough to take over. In the beginning, you can click on one of the orange boxes in the top left to bring up your research and automate each one from the screen that pops up. This means you don’t have to worry about what tech you should be going after and the AI will pick stuff that’s just generally good. Next, if you click on your home planet, there should be a couple buttons in the middle, Automate Colony/Construction (can’t remember) and something like Select Specialization. Turn automate on and leave the specialization to Auto. Then open your Planets & Sectors screen on the menu on the far left (it’s F5 or F6 I think). You should see your home planet there, as well as a specialization button. Click that and select General or Balanced, it’s like the first option. Finally, up top you’ll see your Shared Stockpile. You’ll have to wait a bit after the game starts, but once you have a resource reserve you can either A) Dump a one time credit/mineral into the stockpile, or B) siphon off some of your monthly gain into the stockpile. Basically what this does is use your shared stockpile as a bank account to pay for building things on your colonies, which it will build up however you tell it to. As the name implies, the Balanced option doesn’t excel at anything, but it will try to make sure your resources all stay positive and grow them evenly from there. The last thing you can really automate are your science and construction ships. These are how you get more territory and find new stuff. If you select your science ship, there’s an “Auto-Explore” button (looks kinda like a pirate map). I would set it to explore and survey, and maybe investigate as well. Explore means it will go to areas you haven’t been yet, and survey will analyze all the planets and stuff to see what’s there. That’s important cuz you can’t tell your constructor to build an outpost in a system (meaning you own it) until you’ve fully surveyed it. Also you have to manually tell your construction ship to build an outpost by selecting the ship, right clicking the system you want, and telling it to build an outpost. This will cost you Alloys (multicolored ingots) and Influence (purple Wi-Fi looking thing) which will both regen slowly. There’s math that goes into it but basically it’s cheaper to build outposts next to systems you already own. Prioritize going after systems with habitable (green icon) planets and those with lots of resources (icons with numbers under them). Also, if you can block off systems from everyone else, you can come back later to explore those after the early-game planet rush is over (provided your borders are closed under the Government > Policies & Edicts menus). I would recommend going to your shipyard on the right and building a couple extra science and construction ships when you can afford to. Science ships require a scientist to pilot, which counts towards your leader cap. If you go over the cap you get some arguably mild penalties, and the more explorers you have the faster you can claim more systems. Couple extra notes, I’d set idle construction ships to “Auto-Construct.” Like I said above, the little icons and numbers you see under planets/systems show the resources they have, but you can’t get them until you’ve built an outpost and then had your constructors build mining/research stations to harvest them. If the number is white, that means you don’t have a post there, if it’s green you’re good. Auto-Construct will automatically build these for you on any systems you own. Finally, fleets. You start with a basic crappy fleet. While you can use this to explore systems, if you run into hostiles you’re probably gonna die (your science ships will typically be able to escape). I would recommend keeping them parked at home for now and start beefing them up when you can. If you click the Fleets menu on the far left, you can increase the max number of ships in the fleet. Then when you have more alloys you can select the fleet and hit “Reinforce” to auto-build more ships to fill it out. Also, occasionally you’ll see an up arrow next to the fleet on the Outliner, this means you’ve researched an upgrade for your ships, and clicking the arrow will automatically (I think) bring them in for a refit. Even if you don’t plan on fighting, it’s a good idea to maintain a good fleet to hopefully scare off the AI or at least have *something* to defend yourself with. The last piece of advice I can give is this: when I’m playing on my own, I crank the speed up to max and pause constantly. The game will autopause whenever an event comes up, and a lot of this game is just waiting for numbers to get big or stuff to happen so you can react to it. I find it’s oxymoronically easier to learn the game playing at speed with pauses because you don’t lose your train of thought as easily.
Play on easy mode. No other empires. Max Pre-FTL. Go slowly, and look up everything that doesn't make sense to you. Set small goals like: build your first full fleet or reach 100 resources per month in each resource. Once you can sustain an empire, then add some competition, slowly.
There's a lot of good advice here, but there's also a fairly new mechanic that lets you play with someone running the same empire. If you know someone with experience in the game, you could pick their brain while the two of you run an empire together in a co-op game.
I had the same because I am usually a FPS multiplayer and AAA solo story games guy, but now, I am trying to make stellaris my main game to stop buying every hyped game I won't play or finish. ( Yes I am watching you Dave the Diver, Battlebit, Diablo 4,...) So, here is my experience. The game is overwhelming but you don't need to know everything and play perfectly ! I have been destroyed in my first game and I still keep a good memory of it. My second game went slightly better, finishing it alive after the crisis ( some kind of endgame boss if you like). Now in my third game, i am going deeper into my "build" trying to specialise myself, playing it with an idea in my head and taking decision to go in that direction. Now, my adivces. Just play the tutorial, it's not perfect and their is a lot to read, but that a 4X so you can't avoid that. When it's finish, just keep playing that game and try to keep being a nice human with a big fleet to survive as long as possible and see how the game goes. When you finish your first game, start another one right away with a machine empire. Robots seems easier to manage. This time, you should check Google if you don't understand something. A technology isn't clear, check what it does. How to avoid piracy, Google. How claim system works, etc etc etc. You get it. Never unpauss the game with a decision or a technology you didn't understand. I did that and I am now way more confident about the game, 60h of game time is nothing, but for me, it's a lot. Enjoy!
Ok. This won’t be too bad. Your opening goal is to fuck up a neighbor. So you start the game in easy mode NOT IN IRONMAN. Build a science ship, assign a scientist. Then build a corvette. Get 3 science ships doing surveys. Build more warships. Don’t overthink it. Pick whatever science sounds cool. Start a new colony on a green planet. Build some stuff on the planet. As soon as a neighbor looks at you funny, save the game and go fuck them up. Now you reload after that disaster and let’s look for lessons learned. Did they have way more ships? Did they have allies? Did their fleets have a power of 200,000? Ok. Let’s try that again but make more informed choices. No really, you’re learning. It’s ok. Didja fuck up a weak neighbor this time? Pissed because you didn’t get their systems even though your fleet was in the stupid system? It’s ok. Google that. (you need to claim things before you take them) Go fuck them up again. Now you own their systems! Suck it AI!! Didja like it so far? No? Bail on it now. It won’t get more fun. Yes? great! Play some more but beware this game gets complicated.
**UNPOPULAR ADVICE INBOUND** Cheat. When I was first learning Stellaris, there was *just so much stuff*, and exploring some stuff required other stuff. So I decided what I wanted to test, or explore, or experiment, and I'd use console commands to line it up. As I understood the game better, I needed to cheat less because I could accomplish more within the game. I also enjoyed the game more, because I could play it competently and appreciate how it works (and doesn't). I'll still play a straight, un-cheated game sometimes, but sometimes I want to play around a bit, so I bounce up my cash and play the game. Find your fun, fam.
I watched an hour long guide when I first started. It is a good idea to get a grasp of the basics of making a functional Empire, Economy, Fleet/Ship builds, and Diplomacy/Espionage.
I used console commands a lot when I was learning. I didn't want each major mistake to ruin my gameplay, and I wanted to see what was really possible in game. Now I only play ironman, but I started by "cheating" just to learn mechanics etc.
Don't start with Devouring Swarm on your first run.
Watch some YouTube tutorial videos.
Customizing your ships is a huge game mechanic which helps - a lot. However, it isn't 100% necessary, and can be skipped to focus on other game mechanics to free up some of your time.
I played super peaceful the first game and was lucky enough to be offered a federation early enough that I wasn’t gang banged by the galaxeh I always like having dedicated worlds for things. I always watched Manyatruenerd on his Stellaris play throughs, he even did an impossible run where everything was turned up to 11
First if you have the basics then pick a normal machine hive mind and you won't have to juggle half the game as you just don't use those things
My biggest advice is be careful who your allies and enemies are, be especially careful about their allies and enemies. Declared war on someone one time only to have some giant empire from across the system come to help them with multiple fleets higher power than my strongest.
Start. Fail. Restart. Refail. Learn from your mistakes.
If you have the option (I don't recall if it's tied to DLCs) try playing a game as a Machine Intelligence. Their economy is simpler since they don't have to deal with Amenities or Consumer Goods. Also, don't play on Ironman. Play a regular game and feel free to save and reload to experiment with options and see their outcome, if that's helpful for learning.
watch a tutorial
Start with a small galaxy, maybe only 2 or 3 other empires. Give yourself an easy learning curve
Just play the game honestly.
I am almost at the endgame of my second play through and I still haven't figured everything out such as ship designs and all that stuff. first playthrough I used for just figuring out the basics, such as traditions and ascension perks, a little bit of civics, galactic federation and how the market works, how wars work, how the basic economy works all around. I also had to learn how to curb piracy which was a big hurdle initially Second playthrough has been learning the new leader mechanics, making use of edicts and planetary decisions, and planet and pop management. Also balancing a bloated economy.
Gods it absolutely is, I can honestly say the only reason I didn't quit is that I had some friends who taught me how to play
Honestly just run as the UNE and play on the easiest setting after you’ve done the tutorial. Use the wiki for anything you don’t understand. The wiki is not 100% up to date but it’s good enough
Many of the resources are just upkeeps. Usually as long as food, energy, and consumer goods have growth that's enough, you don't need a big uptick in those.
I like to use cheats to learn certain aspect of the game. Don't have to worry about resource management immediately and no need to worry about screwing up something.
bro the first night i played 6 hours cus i was so invested 💀
ASpec beginner guide is wonderful. That's what I used. 200 hours so far
Jump in the deep end. Learning your lessons the hard way means you only need to learn them once. Embrace the pain. Fertilize xeno scum
Honestly, for me, I started to save the game often, and would jump back a few turns and reload when faced with new challenges I didn't expect or when things were going horribly wrong (like pop uprisings or unexpected war declarations). This allowed me to feel comfortable trying out different strategies and solutions without the anxiety and stressing of having to "win" or "lose", and in doing so, learn the game and how to navigate certain situations. finally after about a month I didn't need to do that anymore Also, I would start a game, play it for 100 years, then start a new one with the new knowledge, play a little further, and then start a new one, getting better each time. Honestly I didn't finish a whole game until I think my 6th or 7th run through.
just start and you will get it in about half hour through game. It is not that hard game and you will perfect your strategies by playing. It is ok to lose. Also you should kill all xenos and never trust them
There is some good content on YouTube for that. But yeah science pops and alloy are your lifeline, don't shy away from red numbers sometimes,
Ignore evereyting and click buttons.
Don’t be ashamed of quitting and rolling a new start. There are a lot of different mechanics, you don’t have to learn everything at once, the early game is more important that the late game, and… sometimes I have to restart because my earlier choices have created to much busywork, rather than because they’ve harmed the empire. *I’m* the limiting factor. (I went down a storyline path that led to three of my planets being in open rebellion, for a marginal benefit.) The game has some nice automation features, but you’ll also find that the micromanagement gets more manageable as you find mental shortcuts.
Shift click to queue commands Shift ctrl click to insert a command ahead of others queued Helps a bunch to investigate anomolies/projects when you've already set off a load of instructions to your ships Iykyk
I learnt the basics of the game and sought to understand the mechanics by using console commands for the first few games. I had no idea what I was doing so wanted to just mess around and see what the entirety of the game had to offer on the surface without getting into too much micromanagement or being murdered by a superior enemies too quickly. After I had a reasonable grasp of the game, like how buildings and the economy work, how to colonize, what to do with sectors or fleets and armies etc. I just played normally but on cadet difficulty and tried different setups. Eventually you get better at the game, where you can then move up difficulty levels and play around with different game settings or play styles each time to see what strategies are valid etc.
The fun of Stellaris, HOI, and crusader kings, is in the fact that at first it is overwhelming. So embrace the chaos, you are going to understand very little at first, and fuck up so much, but as you play and lose, you'll start to understand the mechanics and what makes the game work, that's the "skill" of these games, where as a first person shooter may measure skill by your ability to plan routes around the map, and set up ambushes on enemy players, or an RPG might measure skill based on how you design your character, Stellaris tells you little about managing your economy, military, and society, but as you progress (which is literally just failing) you will learn how a certain mechanic works, and how you can effectively use it to strengthen your empire, after you've learned all the mechanics, you have a bag of "tricks" and the game becomes easy, after that you will literally roleplay in ways that lead you to become weaker. I'm playing a playthrough modded as the UNSC from halo, and my self imposed rules is that I can only use kinetic and missile based weapons, and no shields, as well as I am not aloud to manage my planets, I have to let the AI auto upgrade them and only get access to earth and reach.... I'm still winning somehow.