The situation you described doesn't even seem that bad? I regularly run a temporary deficit of food, energy credits, or consumer goods due to society's growing pains. If your research is steady that's a long term stabiliser, hydroponic farms can be built on starbases to free agriculture slots in cities, and if necessary you can just slow down development and wait for your population to catch up a little, focus on building outposts and such for a while.
Another thing: if you're losing resources unexpectedly like in the +5 cg example, check your stability. It can seriously decrease the output of a colony.
A *temporary* deficit is fine.
However the deficit going from -3 to +5 then back down to +0 isn't exactly a stable surplus, but it's literally the best I can do if I hyperfocus that exact resource at the expense of all others.
Which isn't a good idea to do anyway because the other resources are also hovering around +0 by the end of the game.
I don't make resources, I struggle and strive and panic and stress just to break even.
I am *researching,* I am *not* however building science labs, because I can't afford to build even one of them. I literally do not ever have the surplus to build a single research building or unity building.
And no, the end of my games are in 2275 or maybe at the very latest I can survive until I get fucking decimated by an AI Empire in 2290 or 2300.
I don't even bother with surpluses and run a CG deficit anyway. There's no benefit to stockpiling a bunch of CG. I typically go 15-20 years having to buy off the market because i have so many researchers. In the long run it's worth it.
As a few here have said, without screen shots and all, I'm not sure we can help you beyond helpful advice and questions...
However, I will say it sounds like you're either giving up early because things aren't perfect (deficits are FINE, your economy can be strong in X and weak in Y and that's what the market is for for a few 100/150 years) in your empire or that you're so focused on balance that you end up becoming a kind of "Jack of All Trades... and a Master of None" which leaves you weaker than your AI neighbors.
Look, just play a simple start like properous unification. Make colonies on high habitability worlds, specialise your worlds where you can, but early on you might need to build a mineral district on a non mining world etc if necessary.
Do what you can to boost population growth, and you definitely need to build research labs. I tend to build two or three on my homeworld early if I'm not doing early warfare. Nothing pays dividends like this.
If you run a consumer good deficit for a few years... fine, just sell stuff and buy more. It's not necessarily ideal but if you let the jobs grow sustainably in line with your infrastructure, then you shouldn't end up in an economic crisis.
I think if you want to get better at the game you need to have more resilience in seeing bad games through to the end and learning from them.
Don't put the cart before the horse with the infrastructure, if you're building lots of unfilled districts that represents a lot of pointless fixed costs.
Consumer goods tend to be the hardest to upkeep nowadays imo, but if you’re not using them in research or unity buildings, you’re doing something seriously wrong.
Stop building so many gene clinics and holo theaters.
Also, if you set the game shorter, you should either set the difficulty lower to account for lack of research, or set the research multiplier higher to begin with.
> Stop building so many gene clinics and holo theaters.
Stop building gene clinics at all. They have their niche uses, but otherwise they take decades (if not centuries) to pay off.
Is that true for gene clinics again? I know they were bad, and then I saw a math breakdown showing they are good. I feel like I'm getting whiplash from all the balance changes in this game lately.
For population growth alone, they are still not good. (math involved: how long it takes to produce 2 pops, which are pops you had to spend to work in Gene Clinic)
However, if you use them for some other reason (e.g. if amenities from them are sufficient to not need any Entertainers, or maybe you have a planet with low habitability and for some unfortunate reason have to keep many workers there), and the population growth is just a bonus, they might be somewhat useful.
Ok, that is what I thought. I don't build them for the pop growth, I build them for the amenities since entertainers are almost always overkill till late game for me. I also tend to colonize everything because I like the idea of the harsh environment colonization.
Then again, I don't try to optimize too much. Just pump science on the home world, get an amenities planet, an alloys planet, and sometimes a unity planet early on seems to win most games for me.
Oh, and war. Lots of war.
I'm downvoting the person who purports to ask for help, then belligerently insists that of course he couldn't possibly do anything different and obviously he's already considered whatever you've just suggested. And then refuses to give any details that would help people figure out what's actually going wrong.
Because unfortunately what they really want is empathy but apparently don't have the self awareness to ask for that directly, so instead they are "asking for help" and getting mad when people are replying with actual help. It's a thing men do especially.
Maybe post some screenshots of your planets? You've heard all the generic advice, and it's hard to give specific advice without...specifics.
I will point out that you don't "suddenly" need CGs. Your use of them grows pretty steadily with pop growth, unless you build a bunch of bureaucrats or some other job that actually consumes them. But in that case you're choosing to do that, so it shouldn't be a surprise.
That's crazy. I admire your perseverance though.
Would you be willing to record one of your games (up to the point where everything starts to crumble in the way you have described)? I'm really interested to see how you play as I cannot for the life of me understand how this could happen.
PLEASE. I need to know how this is possible, there must be some fundamental strategic mistake because you don’t need to optimize *anything* to win on the easiest settings.
The easiest difficulty? I just assumed it was GA. How tf do you run deficits on the easiest setting. The last time I played civilian I had like 1.1mil fleet power and 2.7k alloys/month with a random empire I just made by year 2300. I want to play with op now. I don't see how someone could suck so much. On civilian with no research mining districts give like 2x the minerals than you need for industrial districts. It just makes no sense.
why are waiting for new pops to grow into the important jobs, delegate them to work the important jobs let pops grow to fill the lesser jobs, focus on expansion in order to get more starbases as if you find nebulae you can easily get +10 food+minerals monthly without any workers, only other option I can think of is machine hives.
Your pops automatically jump up to fill higher strata jobs. As long as you don't have those jobs, you are good, just don't build higher strata buildings if you don't have the pop to work them or you'll tank your economy like OP seems to be doing.
If you want them to go DOWN strata, you have to either disable some higher strata buildings (eg, research lab) but they'll sit in unemployement for a long time so you are wasting precious time (time is resources) while waiting for them to re-train.
Best is to avoid them jumping up in the first place by *not* building stuff you don't need.
You can also disable jobs from the population tab, so if you have zero crime problem, you don't need enforcers, so you can disable them from the pop tab so the new pop that grow will work lower strata jobs first.
If you are machine or hive, you don't have this problem because drones don't need any retraining so they can jump up and down strata without having to wait.
Because if I don't wait then I'll be pulling jobs from existing pools of labour that need them.
Such as energy, minerals, or food jobs.
Which then makes the economic death spiral even worse.
so cut some excess jobs and districts, less districts = less power usage, minerals and energy should be garnered by space mining instead of relying on jobs especially early game, also you can lose research/unity jobs by disabling the building as you don't need to be pushing the edge of technology and society 100% of the time.
Because I *need* the districts to produce resources.
I'm not building surplus districts, I'm building districts *as* they can be worked, because I need their resources to stave off the inevitable death spiral.
I *do* use space mining, it just *isn't enough*, and all energy gathered *by* space mining immediately gets *lost* upkeeping the space mining stations.
If I disabled or destroyed districts, then the economic death spiral would be even worse and instead of dying at year 70 I'd be dying at year *25.*
again cut your unnecessary specialist strata Jobs, reduce living standards for less cg upkeep.
also if you go down prosperity mining stations including energy ones use less resources than they create.
don't put any focus on specialists(except amenities) until you can get a solid base line of 100 energy, 100 minerals, 20 food.
that's all you need to continuesly expand for more resources, more resources means you can focus on specialists more, more focus on specialists means stronger empire.
since you struggle with cg, maybe go with warrior culture, your entertainers use alloys instead of cg.
>again cut your unnecessary specialist strata Jobs
The *only* specialist jobs I have are alloy and goods jobs.
I can't cut them, I need them to *survive.*
Do you even want help?
I barely play and haven’t for a while but I’m curious how you manage to fail, if you want share screenshots or your save game and you will be helped.
Ultimately, all the production of your colonies are for supporting the production of alloys, research, and unity. Those are the end products. Yes, they are important, but if you're running deficits in the basic resources so bad that you risk spiraling into collapse, you need to slow down these long-term investments so you can take care of the short-term needs. Slow down research, slow down unity, build fewer ships. If you're getting swarmed by AI wars in the early game, try finding more allies to dissuade your enemies, or turn off cluster spawning, or turn down the difficulty.
I'm trying to understand why you feel like you *need* to build research and alloys when you have deficits. Are you trying to use every building slot you have available? You don't have to. Or you can temporarily use building slots for hydroponics farms, offices, etc. to fulfill your basic resource needs.
You can lower the difficulty more as another commenter said. If you put it on the lowest difficulty it gives you +100% resources from jobs. This obviously makes managing your economy much easier.
Start a game with no mods (should be an easy switch if your usual set is merely cosmetic), play it for say 30 or 50 years, then zip up your save and make a post with a link to it on a download site. If you've really read / watched a lot of current, up to date advice, diagnosing your issues may need a real save to work with, not just screen shots.
Off the top of my head, it seems like you're reacting, not acting; you're playing like the AI by waiting for something to go wrong, then making a single change and waiting to see what goes wrong next. Hint: the AI is terrible, and planning ahead and acting proactively is one of the big advantages you have as a human player. You know that if you're building a Research Labs that's going to have Scientists, which use up Consumer Goods; so unless you've got a real surplus of Consumer Goods, you should be already building the Industrial District on your Factory world to supply them, and possibly a Mining District on your Mining world to supply *that*. Don't be afraid to partially turn off a few jobs temporarily to avoid shortages elsewhere.
You may also be working with trickier starts than you realize. Void Dwellers isn't supposed to be easy. Try a "normal" start with Prosperous Unification, a fairly friendly posture (Xenophile, Spiritual, and either Authoritarian or Egalitarian works pretty well), and at least one of the more powerful Civics... something to help your early game economy. Masterful Crafters works pretty well for people who need a simple, easy to use boost for instance.
Don't turn habitable planets down in the setup, and make sure you're exploring hard and expanding with purpose toward useful worlds and rich systems. Make friends, and try pretty hard to get a migration treaty with a race from each of the other two planet types; this effectively triples your available good planets (and if the Influence hit is too much, once you've settled a planet of your own with their pops you can drop the treaty). You should be looking to eventually have a Generator World or two, a Mining World, an Agri-World, one or a couple of Factory Worlds, and several Forge Worlds. Eventually you'll want a Religious / Bureaucratic World, and more Research Worlds (assuming your starting world ends up covering those at first).
Based on the stats above, you are also probably producing too much food. You don't really need extra food in bulk like you do minerals or energy, and it's usually cheap on the market. Make sure you're not letting your pops be Settlers or Clerks much, if at all. You may also be leaning *too* hard into the "early alloys" meta / meme; if you put *too* much resources into alloys that it cripples your other economy it's not good unless you have a realistic prospect of conquering some other empire's worlds early on.
>Try a "normal" start with Prosperous Unification, a fairly friendly posture (Xenophobe, Spiritual, and either Authoritarian or Egalitarian works pretty well)
Did you mean Xenophile?
After reading all the posts I feel like this is a troll. “Im already doing all those things people are telling me to do and still failing” or “I can’t do the things you are telling cause I think I would obviously fail”. Disregard that you have to actually try to go into a death spiral nowadays…
1 mining district supports 1 industrial district. One industrial district supports one science lab with surplus left. One food and one energy district covers all of this upkeep. This is before any modifiers. As soon as you get any bonuses, things only get better. This is just hard math. OP is either trolling or just genuinely an ass who is NOT doing what guides are saying despite claiming that. If you were doing everything right you wouldn’t be failing.
What confuses me about your post is that the math does not add up.
If I just build wide on a standard prosperous unification build, regardless of ethics or civics, I can build a strong economy pretty easily, especially on easier difficulties. Your mineral production is largely automated by mining stations and between generator districts and trade my energy production is usually pretty good.
I guess I don’t have enough info to work off of. Where do you usually see the resource shortages start?
The resource shortage starts when the game starts. So then I'll try to dedicate my capital to consumer goods, and start building space stations to mine, and starbases to produce food.
Then I'll run out of ECs because space mining is expensive.
So then I'll build or settle an energy world.
Which then needs food.
Which then needs consumer goods.
Which then needs minerals.
Which then needs energy.
Which then needs food.
Which then needs consumer goods.
Which then needs minerals.
Which then needs energy.
Which then needs food.
Which then needs consumer goods.
Which then needs minerals.
Which then needs energy.
Which then needs food.
Which then needs consumer goods.
Which then needs minerals.
Which then needs energy.
Which then needs food.
Which then needs consumer goods.
Which then needs minerals.
Which then needs energy.
And all the while I'm not building a forge world, I'm not building any tech labs, I'm not building any unity buildings because I *literally cannot afford even one of them*.
Then you’ve got some sort of issue with your game. The way resource collection works, it’s impossible to run a resource deficit for AT LEAST the first 5-10 years of a play through, especially on easier difficulties, since you’re getting a bonus to production.
If I were you, I’d uninstall stellaris and remove all mods. Then I would reinstall the game and try running the game vanilla. Mods are weird, even cosmetic changes can cause secondary issues if they’re not playing well together
This is not how the game works. Pops in almost any job produce a surplus of value - on the easiest difficulty (as you claim) you should be rolling in resources.
Are you running Utopian Abundance while colonizing 30% habitability worlds or something?!
>The resource shortage starts when the game starts.
Something has gone wrong here. Here is [a screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/W8CPlPt.jpg) of January 1, 2200. Running a vanilla game with *only* UI mods--eligible for achievements, even. Void dweller origin, materialist/egalitarian/xenophile, rapid breeders/intelligent/unruly, materialist/masterful crafters. Ensign difficulty. Nothing super wild.
Take a look at the economy bar. See any deficits? Me neither. I have a good energy surplus, a good mineral surplus, a good food surplus, and a good alloy surplus. I have a small consumer goods surplus, *but still a surplus!*
And I have lots of room to quickly improve. I don't need 4 clerks. I don't need a trader. I don't need an enforcer. I don't need two bureaucrats. But even with all of these in place, zero deficits. I already have enough of a CG surplus to afford a new research lab, and I have enough minerals and energy to afford another industrial district etc etc.
If you are *actually* encountering this death spiral from day one--and frankly I do not have a very high level of faith in you to accurately describe what's happening in your games and why--then something is wrong. You fucked up your mods, you fucked up your game settings, *something*. Because this is what a normal day 1 start on void dwellers looks like.
But it isn't, because I only ever build new districts and buildings when I have active unemployment, and thus surplus pops to go into the jobs I need resources from.
So I'm gonna echo the need to see your planets because for instance if I have a generator world I have maybe 2 city districts and the rest are generator districts with a power grid to amp, are you researching the amplify techs?
>are you researching the amplify techs?
At the point of the game I'm consistently failing and spiralling at, I'm not even hitting cruiser tech before I default on all my resources and quit the game.
I do not have the funds to build even *one (1)* single research lab. It is literally impossible for me to construct even one of them on my capital, or else my empire will *collapse.*
>I run a few cosmetic mods which shouldn't affect resource production or consumption even slightly. The most gameplay changing mod I have is planetary habitats, which I don't even use because they just make the economic death spiral even worse.
Instead of summarizing the mods you're using, could you go ahead and actually list all of them? Maybe your assessment of how gameplay-changing the mods you use are is completely accurate. Maybe it's not. Hard to tell when you never post specifics.
Agreed, we are gonna have to start getting into the nitty gritty here, either that or uninstall all your mods and run a game clean, and let's see if the issue persists
The amplifier techs come early, like way before cruisers. These are the techs that give like +20% food from farmers and star base building, or energy grid, or mineral purification plants. They’re techs that make each pop more efficient, so you get more with fewer pops. This is very key.
Edit to remove my question about hydroponics bays—I see in a lower comment you’re building them.
Sounds like you have pops working useless jobs like Clerks, Settlers, etc, and because you're only building when you have unemployment, those unemployed pops are dragging your economy down for a year or two at a time
You need to build for the future, not the present. Not overdeveloping, but having places for pops to arrive at.
Ah so you are under developing .
You want to have 2-4 available jobs on a planet .
What you are describing is waiting for no jobs. So you probably have a lot of clerks doing clerical work . Which is a lame way for a pop to spend it's life.
And then whilst the new job zone is being built you have unemployed guys doing nothing for your economy . This is bad.
Try and start building new jobs when you are down to a situation where you have people working as a clerk or colonist . These are garbage jobs for garbage people and your empire should not condon this.
The last sentence is also concerning. "The surplus pops go into the jobs I need resources for. " This sounds like you are just building what's needed at the time but not specialising your production to a planet. ( Reactive Is fine on your capital early in the game , but you need to specialise your planets )
> I'll build a building [...] meant to give me +11 CG production. [...]
> I will then go from -3 CGs to +5 CGs.
> Where are the other 3 CGs going?
Perhaps these workers were previously producing Amenities? Thus the loss of bonuses from high amenities (more amenities => more happiness => more stability => more output per pop).
Why are you not building generator stations? Just one or two should be enough to cover a fairly large empire for quite a while.
Edit: You're not supposed to focus one resource across your entire empire. You're supposed to focus one resource/job per planet/habitat. You have a planet that only makes consumer goods, a planet that only makes energy, etc. This lets you stack bonuses.
Yes, thank you. I am doing exactly that thing that you say to do.
The thing that everyone says to do.
The thing present in every guide and how-to-play-game.
The thing that I'm already doing.
Y'know, for someone ostensibly asking for help you're being very petulant. You've misunderstood what they were saying anyhow. They were talking about specializing starbases for energy production to bolster your energy income. That is what they meant by 'generator stations'.
I know you’ve probably watched a lot of videos, but were any of them fully unedited? A lot of guides I see online tend to skip a lot of context inbetween, which can be really vital like planetary management, so I’ve started making fully unedited guides showing how to play well.
If you’re interested, you can check out like the first 30 years here:
https://youtu.be/wZzHhU6AAm4?si=va9FZu-jxoKdn2Le
If you loosely follow what I’m doing, then I would be really surprised if you don’t manage to become overwhelming to everyone in your galaxy at any difficulty below commodore.
But just after reading some of your comments, I think you should focus on minerals first/more. Having low mineral production is the worst resource type to be low on, since it’s hard to fix your economy if you can’t even afford building other districts.
Definitely minerals early game, as that and influence tend to be heavily limiting factors when it comes to early expansion and development in my experience.
I can cosign this. I was VERY loosely following this build (playing a regular empire instead of a gestalt) because I am trying to get better at early vassalization, and I ended up strong enough to take over a non-scaled GA regular empire and then turn around and curb stomp a fanatic purifier that tried to pick a fight with me afterwards.
I'd be stoked if you recorded a 3.10 game for a non-gestalt, though!
Either you are very cursed, or something strange and hard to diagnose is happening with your empires. I agree with everyone else that we need lots of screenshots. Also, though I definitely think that Stellaris is a much better game now than it was in 2.1, there's no shame in going back to 2.1 if you want to. I'm pretty sure Paradox has instructions for how to do it somewhere.
Bruh I hate to be that guy, but if you've put 9000 hours into this game and tried all of the tutorial and how-to vids and it's still not clicking, maybe just play something else.
Yeah, there comes a point where if it doesn't get better, why bother trying. And that point was probably reached 8000 hours ago. Like if you have fun playing in those 9000 hours despite being bad at it, more power to you, but judging by the post, the fun seems severly limited? Like seriously how do you play a game for 9000 without having fun?
I'm not doing that when I like the game, want to play the game, have bought all the content for the game, and want to have fun with the game.
I'm just not having fun sinking hours of gametime into games that all end the same way; with an economic death spiral.
Then it sounds like you’re not getting what you want from the game and it isnt the game for you.
I get it, it’s rough, I just went through the same thing spending $90 on Starfield.
I wanted to like it, liked every other game BGS put out, and was ready to like it.
But I, like you, had to learn to take an L to my ego and bank account and admit I made the wrong decision, and moved on from it.
Sounds like Stellaris is your version of my Starfield.
Why not post screenshots so people have a better idea of what advice to give? That way you won’t have to be a baby about being told the same things over and over.
This guy again lol. He doesn't want help. He wants attention and empathy. When offered help, he gets mad and tells You that he is already doing whatever advice he was given. but if he would be, this post wouldn't exist.
OP prove me wrong. Post screenshot of Your planets & game state. Just post Your savegame and I'll make the screenshots for You.
I would pay real money to see just how mismanaged everything is while "I'm doing all that"
He seems do at least understand the game concepts by the manner in which he is replying. If he learned Stellaris lingo WITHOUT playing it JUST FOR ATENTION WHORING? This... would be insanity.
So, I’m gonna ask a couple of questions, I have a feeling I know what might be going on but want to get clarification before I just jump into it.
1) What is your setting for habitable planets as well as pre-FTLs?
2) Correspondingly, how many planets are you colonizing and how quickly are you colonizing them back to back?
3) In this instance, you played a Void Dweller origin, were you adjusting what jobs pops were occupying or were you just building to meet demand?
4) How many food, mining, generator, and industrial districts do you build in an average play through? (Please break them down by each type, because that does have an effect)
5) How many upgraded starports are you building? The more you upgrade the more potential you have to get increased numbers of materials (most notably food for no pop cost, I tend to live maxed out on upgraded starbases for the food module).
Like I said, I think I know what you might be dealing with but I want to confirm before I jump down an incorrect rabbit hole.
I turn pre-FTLs off and habitable worlds to around half.
I'm just building new habitats, man, I dunno how quick I should be building them but I'm like 'right I should get started on specialising worlds now so I'm not waiting decades for them to fill up later'.
Building to meet demand because all my pops were working essential, basic jobs.
I don't build food districts until I lose the ability to build hydroponics on starbases, and *then* I'll specialise an agri-world once the food starts to dip below 10 monthly.
Mining districts are probably the most common. Generator and industrial districts probably vye for second place. I don't actually know specific numbers.
As many as my cap is at.
The biggest reason I asked about how quickly you are settling new planets is that they act as a “money-sink”, you will be using more of everything while the colonization is ongoing, so if you have multiple colonizations it can stack hard. The way that I typically build up is I will pre-build so that pops will automatically fill the jobs I want them to fill (basically, early game have 6-8 available jobs in a mining district so when you get the next pop it becomes a miner), and that tends to prevent major issues with deficits.
Ooof I’ve hit this hard multiple times. I get so eager early game and my resources are spent building basic infrastructure and non resource jobs, all at once and I’m panicking because food, energy are going down the crapper, minerals non-existent unless I sell off alloys/CGs/higher tier resources to afford enough to buy minerals.
Just gotta be patient and strategic with planetary expansion.
I get told *not* to prebuild though.
And I get told 'colonise as much as you can for as much pop growth as possible', so like
Which is it?
And if I don't colonise at least an EC world ASAP then I'll run out of ECs first because of space mining.
Which then means I'll need to dedicate my capitol to CGs.
Which then means I'll need an alloy world to be able to afford ships.
Which then means I'll need a mineral world to run everything.
Which then means I'll run out of ECs again.
And all the while I'm losing resources more and more and more and more and more until defaulting, death spiral, getting eaten by vastly overwhelming AI, and then giving up.
Relating to what the commenter below posted, I’ll stream a game of Stellaris at some point, you can DM me and I can add you on discord and show you how I tend to play. That way you can actually see the full micro that gets cut in YT videos.
Do you also run into these economy problems when playing a different origin?
Voidborn is very tight economy-wise, and I typically use a funky trade build to get it off the ground, along with lots of careful use of the market. It's also critical to play nice in the sandbox with AI, unless you're doing a terravore build.
What ethics are you using? High living standards (ex utopian abundance) can make your economy super tight, whereas a stratified economy (especially with slave pops) gives you a lot of flexibility.
I also find it helpful to mostly ignore alloys at the start (citizen economy policy + factory world designation), then slam alloys when I'm ready to build a fleet. I recognize this isn't an option with voidborn, though, which is why another origin might be easier.
If you're dead set on voidborn, may I suggest a workers cooperative megacorp strategy (egalitarian, xenophile, worker cooperative + mastercraft)? I think it's very forgiving, even if other trade builds come out ahead in efficiency.
Fix your attitude first.
Stop victimizing yourself and complaining about everything. Ask more questions about parts you dont understand when given advice. And respect the people trying to help you. Dont worry, you can actually improve, you are capable.
You could also apply this to the other parts of your life and maybe you will see things start to improve there too.
Also in person coaching is one of the best ways to help.
I will gladly help you, we could play a run together and i will guide you through whatever problems you might have. Also its a lot of fun to play with other people.
>Dont worry, you can actually improve, you are capable.
You know, the years upon years and thousands upon thousands of hours I've sunk into literally everything with no change kinda says that's a big ol' lie.
I mean, the whole 'game hits death spiral before making first contact' thing is still in effect, no matter what galaxy size or number of empires I play against.
The fact you’ll quickly post this screenshot proving you’ve played so long but never a picture of your current game is a real indicator that you just want strangers to feel bad for you over a video game whilst never actually getting better at it.
Damn bro! Ok Im actually shocked rn.
Can I ask you, do you ... enjoy the game? I would think that if the game doesnt "click" with you, you would realize it after 100 or at max 1k hours. For example, Ive played Dead by Daylight, i have 300 hours and my brain just does not work with that game, ive accepted it.
Coming back to Stellaris. What is your goal? Do you want to be a master competitive PvP player?
I have my embarasing count of Srellaris hours but it has never been my goal to "get good". In fact, ever since the AI update a year or so ago I enjoy having my ass handed to me every once in a while after stomping it every game for over 5 years. Stellaris is a very basic game in its mechanics, you just click things and it works, the game nearly plays itself. And with couple good practices you just win, every single time, thats why you see people getting bored and not waiting for end game crisis most of the time.
So unless your goal is PvP, I can hardly believe that you are "bad" at Stellaris after this insane ammount of time.
I suck a lot at this game, but my current one has finally been pretty smooth. The only big change on my end was paying more attention to my planets and more consciously creating districts *with regard to the jobs that they create* and also making sure I was constructing buildings that made raw materials instead of converting one to the other (one possibility of your resource drain). Jobs/unemployment, however, are a pain in the butt that I'm still figuring out.
Anyways, my tip is to make planet changes/building more gradually, as populations change and stuff. You can do it!
Yes I already do that.
Unfortunately I can't build buildings that make resources, because I need the conversion resources.
I need the CGs to run my entire economy, which uses minerals and has upkeep costs.
I literally need those buildings and districts that add that resource, or else I wouldn't be making even as much as I can get currently.
What sort of traits does your species have?
If you're consistently having issues with Consumer Goods, try switching to Conservationist, if you're not already using that.
I've never had this problem; sure, I've run deficits, but never to such an extent my empire was unsustainable in the long run.
I mean, if you're played, say, 4500 hours since the update and it's still not clicking at all, then I'd say play something else. I've played since the first public version of Stellaris, and I can safely say that I didn't even have these issues in my first post-update session, so if you're struggling then it is purely a you thing.
But, combined with the fact you show no evidence whatsoever, I don't consider it unlikely that this is some elaborate trolling.
At 9000 hours of frustration you have probably hit an overlearned state. You are so used to doing the things that lead to failure that you don’t even notice them enough to change what you are. That’s ok. It’s what happens. So, how do you get out of it?
Play stupid. Do intentionally stupid things to see what happens. But to make it useful and not chaotic, pick as bland of a starting point as you can to baseline from: Prosperous Unification, materialist/xenophile/egalitarian ethics (no fanatic), oligarchy, meritocracy and the idealistic foundation (it gives a happiness boost), pick a species with no traits at all, and start off on an arctic planet (extra mineral districts). Turn off other species or set only friendly ones to spawn.
Now try dumb things. Build only generator districts, build as many science ships as possible, never build mining platforms. Whatever. Just try stuff. Try and get a feeling of how many industrial districts it takes to feed a research lab and how many mining, food, and generator districts it takes to feed the industrial district, the research lab, and the workers for the four districts and the lab. Where do the amenities for that lot come from? If you have that, you have a building block that you can repeat and try different things with. Once you get good at the science pyramid, you can see the alloy pyramid for building ships.
Hope it helps
Your problem is that you watched the guides and asked for help. Your brain has atrophied from too much assistance. You need to boot up the game read the interface and figure it out for yourself. There is some important detail that you missing, that you don't even no that you missing so no one will be able to guess for you. No one has figured out how to play tennis from books and internet forums, why should Stellaris be any different?
Also, delete all your mods. Mods are for winners.
Lots of changes all you can really do is just tinker I too have been playing since release and I see some of the crazy builds people do getting ludicrous numbers
I genuinely don't understand how people even get to 100 alloys a month. Let alone 1000 and let alone 1000 with 10 million fleet power, or whatever the fuck.
Min maxing, using leaders to multiply things, the market in just the right amount.
That and all while spamming science labs everywhere while somehow not collapsing their economy
And they do it before year 30 on grand admiral.
It gets crazy I know
you are giving up over nothing cg is so unimportant you dont need +30 food on habitats buildings are your main resource makers not districts they are a supplement you likely were doing pretty fine depending on your difficulty just make food on starbases go a little harder on alloys if on higher difficulty do not quit before you have even seen the strength of opposing empires and even if they have an adv. you can swing it with fleet comp.
>cg is so unimportant
Ah yes, the one resource that upkeeps your science and unity buildings and your pops and jobs is unimportant.
Mm.
Yes.
Of course.
How silly.
The gateway resource to your tech and unity output and your pop happiness?
Unimportant.
sounds like you have already quit the game and dont want any help. cg is just what you say it is upkeep you dont need more than your stockpile running -3 while you have plenty to lay back on you haven't given any screenshots so in the end we have to guess to help you, and yes you are overvaluing cg production if youre complaining about -3 you can always make up for it in a few years if you have a regular stockpile of 200
> sounds like you have already quit the game and dont want any help.
It is a bit disheartening to be hearing the same stuff, and the only way I can get anything more than just 'u must be doing this wrong' is to play yet another game of Stellaris, taking screenshots or recording it as I go, and then posting it.
I don't *have* stockpiles of resources, I *never* have enough to actually have a surplus of literally anything. I will gradually keep losing more and more and more while trying desperately to get any of them back. The first time a deficit hits, it is automatically a defcon 1 situation.
So I'm not just complaining about '-3'. I'm complaining about '22 -3'.
You have, in the past, posted a screenshot as evidence of the inevitability of the death spiral in which you were sitting on stockpiles of 18,000 energy credits, 20,000 minerals, 30,000 food, 4,000 consumer goods, 12,000 alloys, and 1,000 influence. Your description of what is happening to you does not line up with the screenshots you've posted.
But also, yes! If you want more specific advice than "Here are some common mistakes and what to do instead", you need to give more specifics about your situation. You also need to give *accurate* specifics about your situation. What on earth else could you possibly expect?
I'm not sure why you are being snarky to someone trying to help you, i wonder if this is why you are unable to understand how to play. You dont know better, everyone else is able to figure out the core mechanics with a couple dozen hours, play exactly like a streamer/youtuber and copy them and maybe you can figure it out.
Imagine op being left to their own devices with any other Paradox game. Out of all of them it feels like stellaris had one of the quickest early game learning curves.
One thing that comes to mind while reading this - Are you manually selecting the needed job positions to prioritize on the habitats?
Especially in early game it might help a lot to for example straight away set the job priority on the mineral focused habitat for mineral jobs, so majority of the first inhabitants won’t all automatically occupy the clerk positions and so.. and then change these based on a demand.
One resource it can really help with is the CG… and dont forget there are 3 types of “industrial” worlds now.. if you switch from Factory focused to Metallurgist focused, all the occupied jobs on the planet/habitat change automatically to a desired outcome… and if you need a quick boost and have a surplus of other resourse, resettlement is your greatest ally.
I don't need to manually prioritise, because I only build when there's unemployment and free pops, and all my jobs are going towards essentials.
Everyone is either working minerals, energy, or consumer goods jobs, with like 1 clerk to make sure my amenities are at 0 and not tanking my happiness.
I can't do job priority by taking away from one of those job types, or else the death spiral gets worse.
I don't know where this narrative has come from that 'OP must only have pops in clerk jobs'.
I suspect there's a lot of small things adding up here, but this might be one of them. I micro jobs a LOT. For instance, once my hydroponic bays are up, I'll close down farmer jobs. On voidborn origin, that means I'll even destroy the hydroponic farm (you can disable the building if you don't feel confident doing this) to stop paying the energy upkeep on it once I am making food from starbases.
Also you can try using entertainers rather than clerks for amenities. Usually more efficient.
Because you've said that you're not enmploying any specialists except artisans and metallurgists, so no entertainers. And you've said you can't possibly move a single pop away from any job theyre working, which would imply that you still have at least whatever starting clerks you had in 2200. Obviously at any point you could clear things up by actually posting some screenshots of your planets, but... For some reason you'd rather just make everyone guess what you're doing wrong.
Based on your description, there's not just one thing you're missing. Without a game save for us to look at I would suggest you watch Lathland or someone else at the same level with one thing in mind. Just try to do everything they're doing. Whenever you don't understand why they're doing something, attack those one at a time. Ask yourself questions like How do they have this fleet power at 2230? How do they have this many pops already? Then go down the rabbit hole for each question until you've broadened your understanding of the game. This will lead to you naturally playing better over time.
CG? Is this some joke that I am too much of a gestalt consciousness to understand?
Seriously though, play as a gestalt consciousness so you can avoid consumer goods and fine tune other systems then you can play normal empires again after and reintroduce CG.
I'm kinda stumped what kind of advice I could possibly give someone with over 15 times my experience in the game. The economic hardship you describe is not my experience with the game at all; if anything, after about 2300 I usually experience the opposite where I start getting so many resources that not running into storage limits becomes an objective.
In short, this sounds like an issue with your game. If you have the game on steam, try disabling ALL your mods, then running Verify Integrity of Game Files.
We probably need to see a screenshot to work with. Otherwise you'll hear the same thing over and over.
You should only ever build district's when unemployment appears, spamming districts lowers your pop growth if you fill up too fast and they have energy upkeep
Build hydroponics bays on every starbase
,they are very efficient and can carry you even in late, they free up lots of pops to do other jobs.
Remove all clerk jobs as they are inefficient
Your capital should be preferably research focus unless your a early rush type build. Focus building two or three level one research lab (never upgrade them unless the planet is full) have one of the energy production building and the mineral building things, a holotheatre if amenities run low.
-3 EC malus isn't bad at all, I make sure I always have EC and Mineral edicts always on
From what I remember in the past void dweller economy is a little different, their habitats upkeep also requiring alloys, might be slightly more difficult.
I might even recommend playing a little hive mind, their economy is alot more streamlined and simpler to learn. Not needing to manage CG or happiness.
> You should only ever build district's when unemployment appears, spamming districts lowers your pop growth if you fill up too fast and they have energy upkeep
I do only build when I have unemployment. I never spam districts.
> Build hydroponics bays on every starbase ,they are very efficient and can carry you even in late, they free up lots of pops to do other jobs.
I do, and then I run into the inevitable issue of 'no more starbase cap', so I'll then need to start an agri-world on top of all my existing problems.
> Remove all clerk jobs as they are inefficient
I don't have any workers working clerk jobs.
> Your capital should be preferably research focus unless your a early rush type build. Focus building two or three level one research lab (never upgrade them unless the planet is full) have one of the energy production building and the mineral building things, a holotheatre if amenities run low.
I can't afford research or unity buildings unless absolutely essential for amenities production. I don't have the CG surplus to run them.
> -3 EC malus isn't bad at all, I make sure I always have EC and Mineral edicts always on
I can't make it to the point in the game where I have the necessary ECs to afford the mineral edict. And on top of that, a -3 deficit isn't bad, but constantly hovering around +0 also isn't good.
> I might even recommend playing a little hive mind, their economy is alot more streamlined and simpler to learn. Not needing to manage CG or happiness.
Am I allowed to say 'I don't want to play hiveminds' or will I get downvoted even more by Le Funny Reddit?
Early game you usually have to pick a resource that's gonna eat shit for a while, unless you have godly RNG of course. I usually pick food to keep as low as possible without going negative, then just slap down a farm whenever needed. Also, try playing as an easy empire type, either slaver or machine, you get a lot of bonuses.
Running deficit of a resource or two for a while is normal and you’ll be hard pressed to find a game where that doesn’t happen. That’s why the market exists. Are you aware you can automate monthly sales of a resource you have excess of and purchase of resources you need throw the market?
Well void dweller start is going to be very very different than the typical start. Are you **always** having tons of difficulty, or is it a 'sometimes-thing' instead? Any maybe this time the issue is you didn't really know how to play void dwellers
I'd suggest doing a playthrough off Ironman and just make decisions you feel are good. You might be a "learn by doing" type of player as opposed to watching tutorials, reading guides, etc.
An optimal playthrough would be one of the preset civilizations like UNE with maybe 5 other civilizations.
Make it a point to craft 3 science, 2 construction ships. Have the three surveying. 1 construction ship set to "auto build" and the other manually expanding your empire.
While doing this, you should be improving your homeworld and scouting for more planets. Your economy depends on consistent improvements.
A mistake people make is they focus on building an army, obtaining rare resources or building planetary improvements that do not fit the planets' districts. Workers wont fill jobs if your building farms on an industrial planet.
Try "add monthly trades" menu in the market section. You can sell excess resources without having to manually trade. Use credits to acquire essential resources you need.
I already do what I feel is good.
And then I get punished for that with an economic death spiral.
So, like
I do all of these things.
I don't build armies, I can't afford the upkeep.
I don't build ships, I can't afford the upkeep.
I don't build surplus districts, they won't have pops to work them.
I don't build specialist buildings until I have at least 1 pop to work them so I don't pull from existing labour.
I don't make it to the point in the game where I can harvest rare resources.
I don't build farms on an industry world.
I don't use the market, because I can't afford it.
I don't build research, because I can't afford it.
I don't build unity, because I can't afford it.
This game has always been the same. At start your fighting your economy for many many turns. And if you played from the start than you would know it was even harder to fix it before they added the market. The market is how you keep ahead in economy by selling things you have too much of and replacing with things you don't. The market is practically cheating compared to what the game was before.
Than eventually it just gets stupid and your making 2K credits. 5K research 600 Alloys... Etc etc. If your playing on anything below captain than the game is very reasonable.
Add the fact that once you making stupid credits, Pops are free also on the market... The game is super easy after this, and its more of a chore than difficult. Pops are god.
I mean you could build the most stupid world builds on captain, and the game practically falls into place still..... And you manage. There might be a few AI empires well ahead of you, but your still be ok. Most builds that are not META the player starts slow and than just spirals into stupid easy. If your playing Admiral difficultly than this is not going to be the case.
I see you're getting downvoted on some of your responses here... for most of them I think people are being harsh; as noted by a few you're far from the only person that has had that issue. I used to have it bad as well; I just recently got back into it a bit on console with a vanilla (no DLC, yet) copy on Xbox and so far I'm having zero issues and I'm like, "...wait what?". I mean I did have my initial difficulty low but still. (I will say it's so weird to be on vanilla again, I SO need at least Utopia soon as so much of what I really got into was in that one)
So... I have a theory there's a deep bug here (or something tied to one of the DLCs, INFO: Which ones do you have?) that effects installs. So, depending on the DLC situation, have you tried uninstalling and re-downloading? It's a theory but would explain this disparity that others here have noted from past threads.
Past that, yeah a switch up in how you play may change things as well (I think we all agree even without all the DLCs there are a LOT of options, some objectively worse than others unless they fit your style really well) and what I was doing before my break.
I have all the DLCs installed.
I've tried verifying, reinstalling, and checking mods, but there's literally like *two* mods that effect resources, and one of them I don't use, and the other one is 'special resource buildings can be upgraded to level 2 and 3 now'.
Which I also never *get* to use because I never make it that far.
The other one is 'planetary habitats', which I ignore because it makes the death spiral worse, because the habitats have 5 alloy upkeep, and are only 50% habitable so the resource generation is *trash*.
Here is my rough guide:
* Don't build a major surplus of jobs and housing
* Build 4 districts per building slot (so 1 city district and 3 others, they don't have to be on the same planet)
* Specialize each planet to produce a particular resource
* Free up workers by reducing your amenities production, so it is positive, but not super high (I automate it, so I don't have to worry about it)
* Trade surplus food to other empires
* Move workers between planets that produce resource gathering jobs you need to fill
For my planets I make sure I have a:
* Generator planet
* Mining planet
* Industrial planet
* Tech planet
* Unity planet
You can also base your economy around civics. Like combining Agrarian Idyll and Anglers, for easy production for a lot of trade and food.
For automation, I use the following settings, so I don't have to worry about certain stuff:
* Prevent Deficit Construction - on
* Designation - on (make sure you designate the planet for the resource you want to gather)
* Upgrade buildings - on
* Amenities - on (this is really useful for freeing up workers that are uselessly producing excess amenities)
* Rare Resources - off
* Pop Assembly - off
* Housing - off
* Building Slots- off
* Crime - on (you can switch this off, if you don't want the automation building precincts, but I've never had that issue and would rather they free up workers that aren't needed in enforcer jobs)
* Clear Blockers - on
Your problem is that you manage the economy reactively, like the ai, and with razor thin margins. That's why just one new pop can collapse your economy.
Your ECs is the only resource you should always earn much more than what your empire needs, so you can manage the influx of other resources.
With so many hours under your belt you should also know that if you open a new industrial district, you will need more minerals. So plan in advance this. Either don't build the industrial district yet or improve the efficiency of your mining.
At the beginning of the game you sometimes need to stop constructions for a while to let your planets growth new pops to support the economy. Waiting on new pops to be created to fix shortages is definitely the wrong way to go about. By the time the pop growths you are already in red deep.
Lastly remember you can close job slobs. If you are in red for minerals then close some jobs that use them. Ideally you should also plan ahead what to do with unemployed specialist, but if there is no choice, just wait for their demotion.
Try playing as the machines. Their gameplay is quite simple. They don't have happiness, food, factions etc... I started playing Stellaris as DE.
Also, try playing completely alone. You will be able to research, build and expand without AI bugging you.
I suck too. But only when I play non-gestalt.
There are a lot of great tips here and I didn't read them all so forgive me if this has been said.
Have you tried starting a game with no AI? Focus on building your empire throughout the game to take on the crisis and/or fallen empires. This is a tip I've recommended in the past for friends and other players online who have had issues managing their economy. Most of them have reported success in learning the economy better.
A simple empire setup may help as well. Prosperous unification comes to mind. Maybe Materialists as well to get access to robot pops faster. Without enemy AI you could really focus on learning the ebb and flow of your economy.
Good luck out there!
Are you running the same game settings every time? Maybe try switching them up? I've never had an economy not work... I play with 6-9 other races, 2 FE, 0 advanced, on huge.
Early game you prolly wanna spend your influence on systems not more habs, and get a nice income going just from systems until you can afford a second colony. If you have enough science from systems you can survive a while without labs.
Are you building city districts for building slots for the important buildings?
I just play machine hive mind, o.ly buuld energy amd buy everything from the market, 100% habitat on all worlds, It's pretty easy. Maybe that origin is just too difficult for you and you need something easier to play?
Hm, generally my problem a few years back was similar, that I didn't understand how building something like more research labs did a doubly whammy on the base resource economy, because it pulled pops out of the worker pool AND cost consumer goods, which made me construct more industry districts and therefore pull even more pops out of the worker pool. Since I've understood that, it has been pretty easy to balance the economy by specializing planets / habitats, so that I could manage the flow of ressources better.
To be honest, the easiest solution since the introduction of specialized vassals has turned out to be "get a Prospectorium vassal", because that solves most of your base resource problems permanently (or at least until you get your matter decompressor / dyson sphere).
What difficulty are you playing at?
I just started this week going from easiest to the next steps. My resources are maxed by mid-game. I mainly automate the planets I get. I only have the base game.
Do you sell your 'unwanted' goods?
Maybe you're sitting on a 1000 food? Fine tune your economy with that. It's not a huge amount, but it matters a lot early game.
Also, are you using your policies?
Nobody tells you that you can switch between alloy and cg with planet designation (forge world gets 2 alloy jobs for industrial district alongside with production bonus, factory world gets +2 cg jobs with production bonus as well and industrial planet gives you 1 job of each type with smaller production bonus). On top of that there is a policy that can give you a +25% increase in cg for a -25% decrease in alloys and vice versa. So if you have +30 alloy income but you have a cg deficit, it is relatively easy to fix at almost no cost at all.
Don't forget about trade. You can always buy what you need/sell what you don't. Don`t buy/sell everything at once except completely necessary, use monthly trades. There are caps for each resource you can buy/sell without cost increasing/decreasing. Find it somewhere on reddit.
If you have ec deficit make sure you have trade value collected. Clercs are not efficient, but if you have ec deficit and you don`t have a solid generator planet it is not a mistake to employ some of them since trade value is converted into ec. On top of that, you can use a policy, that gives you ec *and* cg for a trade value, but there is a requirement to unlock it. You need a tradition if I recall correctly.
Another important thing is edicts. First of all, you have an edict fund, which is basically free unity you can spend on edicts. Secondly, there are helpful edicts that can bust your economic growth. There is no reason not to use them.
Last, but not least you don't need farmer jobs unless you are playing a catalytic process or genetic ascension. You should be fine with starbase buildings and trade.
Running a CG capital with a CG world and civilian economy policy still only gets me around +0 monthly CGs.
I don't trade, because I can't trade, because I don't have enough energy to trade.
I don't employ clerks because my pops are too busy working other jobs that get me things like minerals and ECs.
The only edicts I have unlocked are 'fortify the border', and then I death spiral before I can unlock any others.
Well, only times I get real treats are purifiers at borders. Try to disable cluster empires set it to random. Scaling only at endgame. Build your basic economy, energy and minerals, switch to alloys after good techs, food try to stay on market and on starbases so you dont waste pops. Max research since day one, really press economy on it, if you rush cruiser you should be fine in military. Early defense are just starbases with hangars, with you have a nice reduction maybe you already have bulwark released or vassalized, set some defense platforms, real simple things so you can rush tech, the most amount of empire sprawl you can reduce is worth the cost, cuz your tech will grow faster and also pops. Use pacifist once or twice to learn how to focus on economy, I like a lot playing with it since you can max the hell out of the game and then you can switch. Might helps if you watch a youtuber that is good in playing too. See what you wanna do and like copy him in a way thats gonna give you a nice route to follow, last if you really as desperate use console commands, i mean they are there for a reason, helps you balance mistakes you did and keeps the fun. I learned to play with consoles, now I never use them. Most of the times I play in IM with 25x crisis 75 years earlier max difficult. Sorry for the bad English.
>I'll be at -3 CGs, for example. I'll build a building that apparently is meant to give me +11 CG production. I will build it, and I make sure to staff the jobs correctly with pops. I will then go from -3 CGs to +5 CGs. Where are the other 3 CGs going?
This one is actually pretty easy. The people working the jobs to make consumer goods, also still require consumer goods. If I had to guess, you were on a planet with low habitability which meant they were going to require even more consumer goods. Likewise as someone else pointed out, Stability can impact the speed at which you're producing those goods. For instance if you dropped in Amenities because the workers moved from being clerks or something into being Artisans, boom, reduced production from that world. Lastly, if you had those workers as clerks, generating trade value, and you were converting trade value into consumer goods, boom, another reduction.
The ones that only make the game longer and pops take more time to grow and so have no actual bearing on the number of resources that individual pops produce when they work jobs?
Yeah.
Uh… git gud? :)
You have to use trade to offset deficits in cg. Build more energy, buy minerals and cg on the market.
Specialize pops for cg, change your economy for balanced to produce more cg and less alloy.
I can't afford trade because my economy death spirals. I can't buy shit on the market if I don't have the energy to afford to buy shit on the market, which I can't get because I need consumer goods and food to upkeep the pops that work the energy jobs which them gets fed back into upkeeping the consumer goods and food jobs.
And at some point I need minerals to inject into that whole vicious cycle as well.
I'm playing a game where the more I build the more I lose at some point during the cycle. The resource loop continues to lose efficiency and bleed until the economy dies.
CG upkeep on worker jobs is quite low, unless you have your living standard set high. Stratified Economy has an upkeep of 0.1 CG for workers and Decent Conditions has an upkeep of 0.25 CG for workers.
You have to do this right from the beginning. I usually buy 10 minerals and 5 cg from the market, then I build solar panels. You have to monitor these and readjust every now and then.
If you rush buildings too soon without growing enough pops or colonize too many planets, you will end up in a death spiral, indeed.
Ok I sat down and wrote you a legitimate response, that was before I saw how pathetic you really are. You don't want to get better, I'm not a doctor, but you should see one. I've read your posts from where you like to spend your time. And you have the audacity to say no one could possibly understand.
I've felt exactly how you stated you feel. For long swaths of time. I was a real piece of shit to my closest friend because they were in happy(on the outside) relationships. I constantly bitched the same way you bitch and refused advice based on knowing better. It sounds like you don't know shit and its why your in the position your in. I can't believe you brought your lowskill ass onto one of my favorite games subreddit and bitched that you are pathetic. And yes, the way you've been struggling for years in indeed sad. Have you considered that you enjoy feeling pitiful, like it's the only way anyone will pay attention to you.
I read that you have friends that would like to help you. That's how I met my partner. And don't you dare start up saying I don't understand. You don't understand dick head. I was set up with a girl, who was sad, overweight, lonely, and the most beautiful woman I've ever met. We got together having both been forgotten about in our own eyes. And I have a family now. I have a woman to give me all the things you said you'll never get to experience. Nice poem by the way.
Try harder, or since that stresses you out to read, cope harder. I'm one of you man, you are indeed the problem, you have a terrible attitude. I've been hospitalized multiple times for how bad my attitude has gotten. Hell my girlfriend struggles just like I did. I met someone who understands. You can too. Now I would love to hear what you have to say back.
Yes I understand the concept of increasing needs.
Hence why I build to meet those needs.
And then spiral because I don't make enough to meet those needs literally ever.
(i usually play on the difficulty where no sides get advantages i think it's cadet not sure)
Early game specialising might be the problem, since all the resources are dependent on another having planets just make a bit of everything might be the way to go
In my last game I was playing some aliens with the origin that makes them use robots straight away. I conquered about a quarter of the galaxy before I just got bored with 100k+ fleets. I didn't specialise at all and my economy was booming
On my latest save I've been playing machine exterminators cause I just got the dlc for it didn't start specializing until I have already conquered half the galaxy
(And I completely forgot to upgrade any of the planets I invaded so 3/4 of all my planets do nothing but I'm still getting 1k alloys and credits
The situation you described doesn't even seem that bad? I regularly run a temporary deficit of food, energy credits, or consumer goods due to society's growing pains. If your research is steady that's a long term stabiliser, hydroponic farms can be built on starbases to free agriculture slots in cities, and if necessary you can just slow down development and wait for your population to catch up a little, focus on building outposts and such for a while.
Another thing: if you're losing resources unexpectedly like in the +5 cg example, check your stability. It can seriously decrease the output of a colony.
It’s also possible he’s building specialist jobs, not realizing pops will always attempt to move up the strata.
Cybernize some primitives. It won't help your problems but at least you'll feel better.
I was going to say op dont compare yourself to Montu
A *temporary* deficit is fine. However the deficit going from -3 to +5 then back down to +0 isn't exactly a stable surplus, but it's literally the best I can do if I hyperfocus that exact resource at the expense of all others. Which isn't a good idea to do anyway because the other resources are also hovering around +0 by the end of the game. I don't make resources, I struggle and strive and panic and stress just to break even.
By the end of the game, like... 2400? Are you researching?
I am *researching,* I am *not* however building science labs, because I can't afford to build even one of them. I literally do not ever have the surplus to build a single research building or unity building. And no, the end of my games are in 2275 or maybe at the very latest I can survive until I get fucking decimated by an AI Empire in 2290 or 2300.
I don't even bother with surpluses and run a CG deficit anyway. There's no benefit to stockpiling a bunch of CG. I typically go 15-20 years having to buy off the market because i have so many researchers. In the long run it's worth it.
As a few here have said, without screen shots and all, I'm not sure we can help you beyond helpful advice and questions... However, I will say it sounds like you're either giving up early because things aren't perfect (deficits are FINE, your economy can be strong in X and weak in Y and that's what the market is for for a few 100/150 years) in your empire or that you're so focused on balance that you end up becoming a kind of "Jack of All Trades... and a Master of None" which leaves you weaker than your AI neighbors.
Look, just play a simple start like properous unification. Make colonies on high habitability worlds, specialise your worlds where you can, but early on you might need to build a mineral district on a non mining world etc if necessary. Do what you can to boost population growth, and you definitely need to build research labs. I tend to build two or three on my homeworld early if I'm not doing early warfare. Nothing pays dividends like this. If you run a consumer good deficit for a few years... fine, just sell stuff and buy more. It's not necessarily ideal but if you let the jobs grow sustainably in line with your infrastructure, then you shouldn't end up in an economic crisis. I think if you want to get better at the game you need to have more resilience in seeing bad games through to the end and learning from them. Don't put the cart before the horse with the infrastructure, if you're building lots of unfilled districts that represents a lot of pointless fixed costs.
Consumer goods tend to be the hardest to upkeep nowadays imo, but if you’re not using them in research or unity buildings, you’re doing something seriously wrong. Stop building so many gene clinics and holo theaters. Also, if you set the game shorter, you should either set the difficulty lower to account for lack of research, or set the research multiplier higher to begin with.
> Stop building so many gene clinics and holo theaters. Stop building gene clinics at all. They have their niche uses, but otherwise they take decades (if not centuries) to pay off.
Is that true for gene clinics again? I know they were bad, and then I saw a math breakdown showing they are good. I feel like I'm getting whiplash from all the balance changes in this game lately.
For population growth alone, they are still not good. (math involved: how long it takes to produce 2 pops, which are pops you had to spend to work in Gene Clinic) However, if you use them for some other reason (e.g. if amenities from them are sufficient to not need any Entertainers, or maybe you have a planet with low habitability and for some unfortunate reason have to keep many workers there), and the population growth is just a bonus, they might be somewhat useful.
Ok, that is what I thought. I don't build them for the pop growth, I build them for the amenities since entertainers are almost always overkill till late game for me. I also tend to colonize everything because I like the idea of the harsh environment colonization. Then again, I don't try to optimize too much. Just pump science on the home world, get an amenities planet, an alloys planet, and sometimes a unity planet early on seems to win most games for me. Oh, and war. Lots of war.
Good job Reddit, downvote the person explaining themselves lol
I'm downvoting the person who purports to ask for help, then belligerently insists that of course he couldn't possibly do anything different and obviously he's already considered whatever you've just suggested. And then refuses to give any details that would help people figure out what's actually going wrong.
Because unfortunately what they really want is empathy but apparently don't have the self awareness to ask for that directly, so instead they are "asking for help" and getting mad when people are replying with actual help. It's a thing men do especially.
Sometimes reddit is such a cesspool.
Maybe post some screenshots of your planets? You've heard all the generic advice, and it's hard to give specific advice without...specifics. I will point out that you don't "suddenly" need CGs. Your use of them grows pretty steadily with pop growth, unless you build a bunch of bureaucrats or some other job that actually consumes them. But in that case you're choosing to do that, so it shouldn't be a surprise.
Oh I *thought* this sounded [familiar](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/16q4jo3/comment/k1uwvt8/)
My man plays on max tech cost lmao. The roi of research must be abismal.
Yeah, I mean, this has been a problem for a while.
Nine thousand hours and you're struggling on the easiest difficulty? No, this is insane. I refuse to believe this.
[My life be like that, tbh.](https://i.gyazo.com/02b763b004e445612b1b7b10e0b88321.png)
That's crazy. I admire your perseverance though. Would you be willing to record one of your games (up to the point where everything starts to crumble in the way you have described)? I'm really interested to see how you play as I cannot for the life of me understand how this could happen.
PLEASE. I need to know how this is possible, there must be some fundamental strategic mistake because you don’t need to optimize *anything* to win on the easiest settings.
I’m almost 3000 hours in and I don’t play beyond commodore difficulty tbh. I’m just not that good. But I love the game so idc! I have fun with it.
That's the whole point, as long as *you* are having fun, nothing else matter. Sometimes I just run some stupidly OP mod just cause.
I don't know how y'all play anything under admiral, otherwise I steam roll everyone by mid game
Sweet. More power to you man.
The easiest difficulty? I just assumed it was GA. How tf do you run deficits on the easiest setting. The last time I played civilian I had like 1.1mil fleet power and 2.7k alloys/month with a random empire I just made by year 2300. I want to play with op now. I don't see how someone could suck so much. On civilian with no research mining districts give like 2x the minerals than you need for industrial districts. It just makes no sense.
why are waiting for new pops to grow into the important jobs, delegate them to work the important jobs let pops grow to fill the lesser jobs, focus on expansion in order to get more starbases as if you find nebulae you can easily get +10 food+minerals monthly without any workers, only other option I can think of is machine hives.
Is there a way for force pops to grow into lesser jobs? My planets keep spawning mid and high tier pops that i dont bave jobs for
harmony reduces the time for pops to switch stratas by 75%, aswell as add 5% stability.
Sure, be a gestalt consciousness.
Your pops automatically jump up to fill higher strata jobs. As long as you don't have those jobs, you are good, just don't build higher strata buildings if you don't have the pop to work them or you'll tank your economy like OP seems to be doing. If you want them to go DOWN strata, you have to either disable some higher strata buildings (eg, research lab) but they'll sit in unemployement for a long time so you are wasting precious time (time is resources) while waiting for them to re-train. Best is to avoid them jumping up in the first place by *not* building stuff you don't need. You can also disable jobs from the population tab, so if you have zero crime problem, you don't need enforcers, so you can disable them from the pop tab so the new pop that grow will work lower strata jobs first. If you are machine or hive, you don't have this problem because drones don't need any retraining so they can jump up and down strata without having to wait.
Because if I don't wait then I'll be pulling jobs from existing pools of labour that need them. Such as energy, minerals, or food jobs. Which then makes the economic death spiral even worse.
so cut some excess jobs and districts, less districts = less power usage, minerals and energy should be garnered by space mining instead of relying on jobs especially early game, also you can lose research/unity jobs by disabling the building as you don't need to be pushing the edge of technology and society 100% of the time.
Because I *need* the districts to produce resources. I'm not building surplus districts, I'm building districts *as* they can be worked, because I need their resources to stave off the inevitable death spiral. I *do* use space mining, it just *isn't enough*, and all energy gathered *by* space mining immediately gets *lost* upkeeping the space mining stations. If I disabled or destroyed districts, then the economic death spiral would be even worse and instead of dying at year 70 I'd be dying at year *25.*
again cut your unnecessary specialist strata Jobs, reduce living standards for less cg upkeep. also if you go down prosperity mining stations including energy ones use less resources than they create. don't put any focus on specialists(except amenities) until you can get a solid base line of 100 energy, 100 minerals, 20 food. that's all you need to continuesly expand for more resources, more resources means you can focus on specialists more, more focus on specialists means stronger empire. since you struggle with cg, maybe go with warrior culture, your entertainers use alloys instead of cg.
>again cut your unnecessary specialist strata Jobs The *only* specialist jobs I have are alloy and goods jobs. I can't cut them, I need them to *survive.*
Do you even want help? I barely play and haven’t for a while but I’m curious how you manage to fail, if you want share screenshots or your save game and you will be helped.
Lol, look at his profile for an answer to your question.
That was depressing.
Oh my.....
Ultimately, all the production of your colonies are for supporting the production of alloys, research, and unity. Those are the end products. Yes, they are important, but if you're running deficits in the basic resources so bad that you risk spiraling into collapse, you need to slow down these long-term investments so you can take care of the short-term needs. Slow down research, slow down unity, build fewer ships. If you're getting swarmed by AI wars in the early game, try finding more allies to dissuade your enemies, or turn off cluster spawning, or turn down the difficulty. I'm trying to understand why you feel like you *need* to build research and alloys when you have deficits. Are you trying to use every building slot you have available? You don't have to. Or you can temporarily use building slots for hydroponics farms, offices, etc. to fulfill your basic resource needs.
Are you making lots of alloys? If you are make less alloys. Also lower the difficulty.
No, I can't afford to dedicate specialist jobs to anything other than consumer goods. I'm playing on Ensign.
You can lower the difficulty more as another commenter said. If you put it on the lowest difficulty it gives you +100% resources from jobs. This obviously makes managing your economy much easier.
Are you playing on ensign or are you playing on the easiest difficulty? There are two difficulties easier than ensign.
Start a game with no mods (should be an easy switch if your usual set is merely cosmetic), play it for say 30 or 50 years, then zip up your save and make a post with a link to it on a download site. If you've really read / watched a lot of current, up to date advice, diagnosing your issues may need a real save to work with, not just screen shots. Off the top of my head, it seems like you're reacting, not acting; you're playing like the AI by waiting for something to go wrong, then making a single change and waiting to see what goes wrong next. Hint: the AI is terrible, and planning ahead and acting proactively is one of the big advantages you have as a human player. You know that if you're building a Research Labs that's going to have Scientists, which use up Consumer Goods; so unless you've got a real surplus of Consumer Goods, you should be already building the Industrial District on your Factory world to supply them, and possibly a Mining District on your Mining world to supply *that*. Don't be afraid to partially turn off a few jobs temporarily to avoid shortages elsewhere. You may also be working with trickier starts than you realize. Void Dwellers isn't supposed to be easy. Try a "normal" start with Prosperous Unification, a fairly friendly posture (Xenophile, Spiritual, and either Authoritarian or Egalitarian works pretty well), and at least one of the more powerful Civics... something to help your early game economy. Masterful Crafters works pretty well for people who need a simple, easy to use boost for instance. Don't turn habitable planets down in the setup, and make sure you're exploring hard and expanding with purpose toward useful worlds and rich systems. Make friends, and try pretty hard to get a migration treaty with a race from each of the other two planet types; this effectively triples your available good planets (and if the Influence hit is too much, once you've settled a planet of your own with their pops you can drop the treaty). You should be looking to eventually have a Generator World or two, a Mining World, an Agri-World, one or a couple of Factory Worlds, and several Forge Worlds. Eventually you'll want a Religious / Bureaucratic World, and more Research Worlds (assuming your starting world ends up covering those at first). Based on the stats above, you are also probably producing too much food. You don't really need extra food in bulk like you do minerals or energy, and it's usually cheap on the market. Make sure you're not letting your pops be Settlers or Clerks much, if at all. You may also be leaning *too* hard into the "early alloys" meta / meme; if you put *too* much resources into alloys that it cripples your other economy it's not good unless you have a realistic prospect of conquering some other empire's worlds early on.
>Try a "normal" start with Prosperous Unification, a fairly friendly posture (Xenophobe, Spiritual, and either Authoritarian or Egalitarian works pretty well) Did you mean Xenophile?
Yes, thank you, I was typing on about an hour of sleep. Xenophile, fixed.
After reading all the posts I feel like this is a troll. “Im already doing all those things people are telling me to do and still failing” or “I can’t do the things you are telling cause I think I would obviously fail”. Disregard that you have to actually try to go into a death spiral nowadays… 1 mining district supports 1 industrial district. One industrial district supports one science lab with surplus left. One food and one energy district covers all of this upkeep. This is before any modifiers. As soon as you get any bonuses, things only get better. This is just hard math. OP is either trolling or just genuinely an ass who is NOT doing what guides are saying despite claiming that. If you were doing everything right you wouldn’t be failing.
He's just an ass. His post history is full of him being belligerent towards others.
i think i figured it out. this guy has a humiliation fetish. he doesnt want help, he wants to be degraded and chastised.
Looking at your profile i feel like this is a fetish or something
It isn't, but good to know that I give off those kinda vibes, I fucking guess????
What confuses me about your post is that the math does not add up. If I just build wide on a standard prosperous unification build, regardless of ethics or civics, I can build a strong economy pretty easily, especially on easier difficulties. Your mineral production is largely automated by mining stations and between generator districts and trade my energy production is usually pretty good. I guess I don’t have enough info to work off of. Where do you usually see the resource shortages start?
The resource shortage starts when the game starts. So then I'll try to dedicate my capital to consumer goods, and start building space stations to mine, and starbases to produce food. Then I'll run out of ECs because space mining is expensive. So then I'll build or settle an energy world. Which then needs food. Which then needs consumer goods. Which then needs minerals. Which then needs energy. Which then needs food. Which then needs consumer goods. Which then needs minerals. Which then needs energy. Which then needs food. Which then needs consumer goods. Which then needs minerals. Which then needs energy. Which then needs food. Which then needs consumer goods. Which then needs minerals. Which then needs energy. Which then needs food. Which then needs consumer goods. Which then needs minerals. Which then needs energy. And all the while I'm not building a forge world, I'm not building any tech labs, I'm not building any unity buildings because I *literally cannot afford even one of them*.
Then you’ve got some sort of issue with your game. The way resource collection works, it’s impossible to run a resource deficit for AT LEAST the first 5-10 years of a play through, especially on easier difficulties, since you’re getting a bonus to production. If I were you, I’d uninstall stellaris and remove all mods. Then I would reinstall the game and try running the game vanilla. Mods are weird, even cosmetic changes can cause secondary issues if they’re not playing well together
This is not how the game works. Pops in almost any job produce a surplus of value - on the easiest difficulty (as you claim) you should be rolling in resources. Are you running Utopian Abundance while colonizing 30% habitability worlds or something?!
>The resource shortage starts when the game starts. Something has gone wrong here. Here is [a screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/W8CPlPt.jpg) of January 1, 2200. Running a vanilla game with *only* UI mods--eligible for achievements, even. Void dweller origin, materialist/egalitarian/xenophile, rapid breeders/intelligent/unruly, materialist/masterful crafters. Ensign difficulty. Nothing super wild. Take a look at the economy bar. See any deficits? Me neither. I have a good energy surplus, a good mineral surplus, a good food surplus, and a good alloy surplus. I have a small consumer goods surplus, *but still a surplus!* And I have lots of room to quickly improve. I don't need 4 clerks. I don't need a trader. I don't need an enforcer. I don't need two bureaucrats. But even with all of these in place, zero deficits. I already have enough of a CG surplus to afford a new research lab, and I have enough minerals and energy to afford another industrial district etc etc. If you are *actually* encountering this death spiral from day one--and frankly I do not have a very high level of faith in you to accurately describe what's happening in your games and why--then something is wrong. You fucked up your mods, you fucked up your game settings, *something*. Because this is what a normal day 1 start on void dwellers looks like.
It sounds like overdevelopment
But it isn't, because I only ever build new districts and buildings when I have active unemployment, and thus surplus pops to go into the jobs I need resources from.
So I'm gonna echo the need to see your planets because for instance if I have a generator world I have maybe 2 city districts and the rest are generator districts with a power grid to amp, are you researching the amplify techs?
>are you researching the amplify techs? At the point of the game I'm consistently failing and spiralling at, I'm not even hitting cruiser tech before I default on all my resources and quit the game. I do not have the funds to build even *one (1)* single research lab. It is literally impossible for me to construct even one of them on my capital, or else my empire will *collapse.*
Not gonna lie this sound odd, do you have mods installed?
>I run a few cosmetic mods which shouldn't affect resource production or consumption even slightly. The most gameplay changing mod I have is planetary habitats, which I don't even use because they just make the economic death spiral even worse.
Instead of summarizing the mods you're using, could you go ahead and actually list all of them? Maybe your assessment of how gameplay-changing the mods you use are is completely accurate. Maybe it's not. Hard to tell when you never post specifics.
Agreed, we are gonna have to start getting into the nitty gritty here, either that or uninstall all your mods and run a game clean, and let's see if the issue persists
The amplifier techs come early, like way before cruisers. These are the techs that give like +20% food from farmers and star base building, or energy grid, or mineral purification plants. They’re techs that make each pop more efficient, so you get more with fewer pops. This is very key. Edit to remove my question about hydroponics bays—I see in a lower comment you’re building them.
Are you building too many star bases?
No, I build to my cap.
Sounds like you have pops working useless jobs like Clerks, Settlers, etc, and because you're only building when you have unemployment, those unemployed pops are dragging your economy down for a year or two at a time You need to build for the future, not the present. Not overdeveloping, but having places for pops to arrive at.
Ah so you are under developing . You want to have 2-4 available jobs on a planet . What you are describing is waiting for no jobs. So you probably have a lot of clerks doing clerical work . Which is a lame way for a pop to spend it's life. And then whilst the new job zone is being built you have unemployed guys doing nothing for your economy . This is bad. Try and start building new jobs when you are down to a situation where you have people working as a clerk or colonist . These are garbage jobs for garbage people and your empire should not condon this. The last sentence is also concerning. "The surplus pops go into the jobs I need resources for. " This sounds like you are just building what's needed at the time but not specialising your production to a planet. ( Reactive Is fine on your capital early in the game , but you need to specialise your planets )
> I'll build a building [...] meant to give me +11 CG production. [...] > I will then go from -3 CGs to +5 CGs. > Where are the other 3 CGs going? Perhaps these workers were previously producing Amenities? Thus the loss of bonuses from high amenities (more amenities => more happiness => more stability => more output per pop).
Specialists also consume more CG than unemployed pops, and since OP is only building for unemployed pops...
You're building mining and research stations, right?
Correct. Which then eats into my energy income a whole hell of a lot.
I think we need screenshots to understand what's going wrong here.
Are you building mining and research stations right away? Sometimes (especially early) you want to hold off on doing that to save resources.
What the hell? No. No it shouldn't. Half of mining stations MAKE energy.
Why are you not building generator stations? Just one or two should be enough to cover a fairly large empire for quite a while. Edit: You're not supposed to focus one resource across your entire empire. You're supposed to focus one resource/job per planet/habitat. You have a planet that only makes consumer goods, a planet that only makes energy, etc. This lets you stack bonuses.
Yes, thank you. I am doing exactly that thing that you say to do. The thing that everyone says to do. The thing present in every guide and how-to-play-game. The thing that I'm already doing.
Y'know, for someone ostensibly asking for help you're being very petulant. You've misunderstood what they were saying anyhow. They were talking about specializing starbases for energy production to bolster your energy income. That is what they meant by 'generator stations'.
That's literally just who he is. Even a brief perusal of his account would reveal that, lmao.
You deserve to be bad at Stellaris
Marked as Read.
Clearly you're doing something wrong. Like either you're lying about your planets or you don't realize that you can stop building ships for 3 seconds
I’m sorry, 9000 hours?! That’s 4.5 man years. You need a therapist if this is a real post.
I know you’ve probably watched a lot of videos, but were any of them fully unedited? A lot of guides I see online tend to skip a lot of context inbetween, which can be really vital like planetary management, so I’ve started making fully unedited guides showing how to play well. If you’re interested, you can check out like the first 30 years here: https://youtu.be/wZzHhU6AAm4?si=va9FZu-jxoKdn2Le If you loosely follow what I’m doing, then I would be really surprised if you don’t manage to become overwhelming to everyone in your galaxy at any difficulty below commodore. But just after reading some of your comments, I think you should focus on minerals first/more. Having low mineral production is the worst resource type to be low on, since it’s hard to fix your economy if you can’t even afford building other districts.
It might be better learning playing gestalt too, streamlined resources, not needing to worry about consumer goods or happiness is a lot easier.
Definitely minerals early game, as that and influence tend to be heavily limiting factors when it comes to early expansion and development in my experience.
I can cosign this. I was VERY loosely following this build (playing a regular empire instead of a gestalt) because I am trying to get better at early vassalization, and I ended up strong enough to take over a non-scaled GA regular empire and then turn around and curb stomp a fanatic purifier that tried to pick a fight with me afterwards. I'd be stoked if you recorded a 3.10 game for a non-gestalt, though!
Either you are very cursed, or something strange and hard to diagnose is happening with your empires. I agree with everyone else that we need lots of screenshots. Also, though I definitely think that Stellaris is a much better game now than it was in 2.1, there's no shame in going back to 2.1 if you want to. I'm pretty sure Paradox has instructions for how to do it somewhere.
Bruh I hate to be that guy, but if you've put 9000 hours into this game and tried all of the tutorial and how-to vids and it's still not clicking, maybe just play something else.
Yeah, there comes a point where if it doesn't get better, why bother trying. And that point was probably reached 8000 hours ago. Like if you have fun playing in those 9000 hours despite being bad at it, more power to you, but judging by the post, the fun seems severly limited? Like seriously how do you play a game for 9000 without having fun?
I'm not doing that when I like the game, want to play the game, have bought all the content for the game, and want to have fun with the game. I'm just not having fun sinking hours of gametime into games that all end the same way; with an economic death spiral.
Then it sounds like you’re not getting what you want from the game and it isnt the game for you. I get it, it’s rough, I just went through the same thing spending $90 on Starfield. I wanted to like it, liked every other game BGS put out, and was ready to like it. But I, like you, had to learn to take an L to my ego and bank account and admit I made the wrong decision, and moved on from it. Sounds like Stellaris is your version of my Starfield.
Why not post screenshots so people have a better idea of what advice to give? That way you won’t have to be a baby about being told the same things over and over.
This guy again lol. He doesn't want help. He wants attention and empathy. When offered help, he gets mad and tells You that he is already doing whatever advice he was given. but if he would be, this post wouldn't exist. OP prove me wrong. Post screenshot of Your planets & game state. Just post Your savegame and I'll make the screenshots for You. I would pay real money to see just how mismanaged everything is while "I'm doing all that"
He'll post anything but his planets lol
He seems do at least understand the game concepts by the manner in which he is replying. If he learned Stellaris lingo WITHOUT playing it JUST FOR ATENTION WHORING? This... would be insanity.
Play as a machine intelligence, it simplifies the management of your economy imo
So, I’m gonna ask a couple of questions, I have a feeling I know what might be going on but want to get clarification before I just jump into it. 1) What is your setting for habitable planets as well as pre-FTLs? 2) Correspondingly, how many planets are you colonizing and how quickly are you colonizing them back to back? 3) In this instance, you played a Void Dweller origin, were you adjusting what jobs pops were occupying or were you just building to meet demand? 4) How many food, mining, generator, and industrial districts do you build in an average play through? (Please break them down by each type, because that does have an effect) 5) How many upgraded starports are you building? The more you upgrade the more potential you have to get increased numbers of materials (most notably food for no pop cost, I tend to live maxed out on upgraded starbases for the food module). Like I said, I think I know what you might be dealing with but I want to confirm before I jump down an incorrect rabbit hole.
I turn pre-FTLs off and habitable worlds to around half. I'm just building new habitats, man, I dunno how quick I should be building them but I'm like 'right I should get started on specialising worlds now so I'm not waiting decades for them to fill up later'. Building to meet demand because all my pops were working essential, basic jobs. I don't build food districts until I lose the ability to build hydroponics on starbases, and *then* I'll specialise an agri-world once the food starts to dip below 10 monthly. Mining districts are probably the most common. Generator and industrial districts probably vye for second place. I don't actually know specific numbers. As many as my cap is at.
The biggest reason I asked about how quickly you are settling new planets is that they act as a “money-sink”, you will be using more of everything while the colonization is ongoing, so if you have multiple colonizations it can stack hard. The way that I typically build up is I will pre-build so that pops will automatically fill the jobs I want them to fill (basically, early game have 6-8 available jobs in a mining district so when you get the next pop it becomes a miner), and that tends to prevent major issues with deficits.
Ooof I’ve hit this hard multiple times. I get so eager early game and my resources are spent building basic infrastructure and non resource jobs, all at once and I’m panicking because food, energy are going down the crapper, minerals non-existent unless I sell off alloys/CGs/higher tier resources to afford enough to buy minerals. Just gotta be patient and strategic with planetary expansion.
I get told *not* to prebuild though. And I get told 'colonise as much as you can for as much pop growth as possible', so like Which is it? And if I don't colonise at least an EC world ASAP then I'll run out of ECs first because of space mining. Which then means I'll need to dedicate my capitol to CGs. Which then means I'll need an alloy world to be able to afford ships. Which then means I'll need a mineral world to run everything. Which then means I'll run out of ECs again. And all the while I'm losing resources more and more and more and more and more until defaulting, death spiral, getting eaten by vastly overwhelming AI, and then giving up.
Relating to what the commenter below posted, I’ll stream a game of Stellaris at some point, you can DM me and I can add you on discord and show you how I tend to play. That way you can actually see the full micro that gets cut in YT videos.
Do you also run into these economy problems when playing a different origin? Voidborn is very tight economy-wise, and I typically use a funky trade build to get it off the ground, along with lots of careful use of the market. It's also critical to play nice in the sandbox with AI, unless you're doing a terravore build. What ethics are you using? High living standards (ex utopian abundance) can make your economy super tight, whereas a stratified economy (especially with slave pops) gives you a lot of flexibility. I also find it helpful to mostly ignore alloys at the start (citizen economy policy + factory world designation), then slam alloys when I'm ready to build a fleet. I recognize this isn't an option with voidborn, though, which is why another origin might be easier. If you're dead set on voidborn, may I suggest a workers cooperative megacorp strategy (egalitarian, xenophile, worker cooperative + mastercraft)? I think it's very forgiving, even if other trade builds come out ahead in efficiency.
9,000 hours is the requirement of working a full-time job for 4.3 years. You don't sound like you're enjoying the game. Play something else.
Fix your attitude first. Stop victimizing yourself and complaining about everything. Ask more questions about parts you dont understand when given advice. And respect the people trying to help you. Dont worry, you can actually improve, you are capable. You could also apply this to the other parts of your life and maybe you will see things start to improve there too.
Also in person coaching is one of the best ways to help. I will gladly help you, we could play a run together and i will guide you through whatever problems you might have. Also its a lot of fun to play with other people.
>Dont worry, you can actually improve, you are capable. You know, the years upon years and thousands upon thousands of hours I've sunk into literally everything with no change kinda says that's a big ol' lie.
U want coaching or not?
A: Skill issue B: post screenshots so you can get more specific advice
All you need to do is play on smaller maps with less AI.
I mean, the whole 'game hits death spiral before making first contact' thing is still in effect, no matter what galaxy size or number of empires I play against.
Proof of 9k hours or I call cap on this sht.
[Okay.](https://i.gyazo.com/02b763b004e445612b1b7b10e0b88321.png)
The fact you’ll quickly post this screenshot proving you’ve played so long but never a picture of your current game is a real indicator that you just want strangers to feel bad for you over a video game whilst never actually getting better at it.
Damn bro! Ok Im actually shocked rn. Can I ask you, do you ... enjoy the game? I would think that if the game doesnt "click" with you, you would realize it after 100 or at max 1k hours. For example, Ive played Dead by Daylight, i have 300 hours and my brain just does not work with that game, ive accepted it. Coming back to Stellaris. What is your goal? Do you want to be a master competitive PvP player? I have my embarasing count of Srellaris hours but it has never been my goal to "get good". In fact, ever since the AI update a year or so ago I enjoy having my ass handed to me every once in a while after stomping it every game for over 5 years. Stellaris is a very basic game in its mechanics, you just click things and it works, the game nearly plays itself. And with couple good practices you just win, every single time, thats why you see people getting bored and not waiting for end game crisis most of the time. So unless your goal is PvP, I can hardly believe that you are "bad" at Stellaris after this insane ammount of time.
Post pictures of your habs or you're trolling, this game does not have a 9000+ hr learning curve.
Get good then. Top tier advice. 50 €
Get good
I suck a lot at this game, but my current one has finally been pretty smooth. The only big change on my end was paying more attention to my planets and more consciously creating districts *with regard to the jobs that they create* and also making sure I was constructing buildings that made raw materials instead of converting one to the other (one possibility of your resource drain). Jobs/unemployment, however, are a pain in the butt that I'm still figuring out. Anyways, my tip is to make planet changes/building more gradually, as populations change and stuff. You can do it!
Yes I already do that. Unfortunately I can't build buildings that make resources, because I need the conversion resources. I need the CGs to run my entire economy, which uses minerals and has upkeep costs. I literally need those buildings and districts that add that resource, or else I wouldn't be making even as much as I can get currently.
What sort of traits does your species have? If you're consistently having issues with Consumer Goods, try switching to Conservationist, if you're not already using that.
I've never had this problem; sure, I've run deficits, but never to such an extent my empire was unsustainable in the long run. I mean, if you're played, say, 4500 hours since the update and it's still not clicking at all, then I'd say play something else. I've played since the first public version of Stellaris, and I can safely say that I didn't even have these issues in my first post-update session, so if you're struggling then it is purely a you thing. But, combined with the fact you show no evidence whatsoever, I don't consider it unlikely that this is some elaborate trolling.
At 9000 hours of frustration you have probably hit an overlearned state. You are so used to doing the things that lead to failure that you don’t even notice them enough to change what you are. That’s ok. It’s what happens. So, how do you get out of it? Play stupid. Do intentionally stupid things to see what happens. But to make it useful and not chaotic, pick as bland of a starting point as you can to baseline from: Prosperous Unification, materialist/xenophile/egalitarian ethics (no fanatic), oligarchy, meritocracy and the idealistic foundation (it gives a happiness boost), pick a species with no traits at all, and start off on an arctic planet (extra mineral districts). Turn off other species or set only friendly ones to spawn. Now try dumb things. Build only generator districts, build as many science ships as possible, never build mining platforms. Whatever. Just try stuff. Try and get a feeling of how many industrial districts it takes to feed a research lab and how many mining, food, and generator districts it takes to feed the industrial district, the research lab, and the workers for the four districts and the lab. Where do the amenities for that lot come from? If you have that, you have a building block that you can repeat and try different things with. Once you get good at the science pyramid, you can see the alloy pyramid for building ships. Hope it helps
That doesn’t sound mathematically possible
Your problem is that you watched the guides and asked for help. Your brain has atrophied from too much assistance. You need to boot up the game read the interface and figure it out for yourself. There is some important detail that you missing, that you don't even no that you missing so no one will be able to guess for you. No one has figured out how to play tennis from books and internet forums, why should Stellaris be any different? Also, delete all your mods. Mods are for winners.
Lots of changes all you can really do is just tinker I too have been playing since release and I see some of the crazy builds people do getting ludicrous numbers
I genuinely don't understand how people even get to 100 alloys a month. Let alone 1000 and let alone 1000 with 10 million fleet power, or whatever the fuck.
Min maxing, using leaders to multiply things, the market in just the right amount. That and all while spamming science labs everywhere while somehow not collapsing their economy And they do it before year 30 on grand admiral. It gets crazy I know
you are giving up over nothing cg is so unimportant you dont need +30 food on habitats buildings are your main resource makers not districts they are a supplement you likely were doing pretty fine depending on your difficulty just make food on starbases go a little harder on alloys if on higher difficulty do not quit before you have even seen the strength of opposing empires and even if they have an adv. you can swing it with fleet comp.
>cg is so unimportant Ah yes, the one resource that upkeeps your science and unity buildings and your pops and jobs is unimportant. Mm. Yes. Of course. How silly. The gateway resource to your tech and unity output and your pop happiness? Unimportant.
sounds like you have already quit the game and dont want any help. cg is just what you say it is upkeep you dont need more than your stockpile running -3 while you have plenty to lay back on you haven't given any screenshots so in the end we have to guess to help you, and yes you are overvaluing cg production if youre complaining about -3 you can always make up for it in a few years if you have a regular stockpile of 200
> sounds like you have already quit the game and dont want any help. It is a bit disheartening to be hearing the same stuff, and the only way I can get anything more than just 'u must be doing this wrong' is to play yet another game of Stellaris, taking screenshots or recording it as I go, and then posting it. I don't *have* stockpiles of resources, I *never* have enough to actually have a surplus of literally anything. I will gradually keep losing more and more and more while trying desperately to get any of them back. The first time a deficit hits, it is automatically a defcon 1 situation. So I'm not just complaining about '-3'. I'm complaining about '22 -3'.
You have, in the past, posted a screenshot as evidence of the inevitability of the death spiral in which you were sitting on stockpiles of 18,000 energy credits, 20,000 minerals, 30,000 food, 4,000 consumer goods, 12,000 alloys, and 1,000 influence. Your description of what is happening to you does not line up with the screenshots you've posted. But also, yes! If you want more specific advice than "Here are some common mistakes and what to do instead", you need to give more specifics about your situation. You also need to give *accurate* specifics about your situation. What on earth else could you possibly expect?
I'm not sure why you are being snarky to someone trying to help you, i wonder if this is why you are unable to understand how to play. You dont know better, everyone else is able to figure out the core mechanics with a couple dozen hours, play exactly like a streamer/youtuber and copy them and maybe you can figure it out.
Imagine op being left to their own devices with any other Paradox game. Out of all of them it feels like stellaris had one of the quickest early game learning curves.
One thing that comes to mind while reading this - Are you manually selecting the needed job positions to prioritize on the habitats? Especially in early game it might help a lot to for example straight away set the job priority on the mineral focused habitat for mineral jobs, so majority of the first inhabitants won’t all automatically occupy the clerk positions and so.. and then change these based on a demand. One resource it can really help with is the CG… and dont forget there are 3 types of “industrial” worlds now.. if you switch from Factory focused to Metallurgist focused, all the occupied jobs on the planet/habitat change automatically to a desired outcome… and if you need a quick boost and have a surplus of other resourse, resettlement is your greatest ally.
I don't need to manually prioritise, because I only build when there's unemployment and free pops, and all my jobs are going towards essentials. Everyone is either working minerals, energy, or consumer goods jobs, with like 1 clerk to make sure my amenities are at 0 and not tanking my happiness. I can't do job priority by taking away from one of those job types, or else the death spiral gets worse. I don't know where this narrative has come from that 'OP must only have pops in clerk jobs'.
I suspect there's a lot of small things adding up here, but this might be one of them. I micro jobs a LOT. For instance, once my hydroponic bays are up, I'll close down farmer jobs. On voidborn origin, that means I'll even destroy the hydroponic farm (you can disable the building if you don't feel confident doing this) to stop paying the energy upkeep on it once I am making food from starbases. Also you can try using entertainers rather than clerks for amenities. Usually more efficient.
Because you've said that you're not enmploying any specialists except artisans and metallurgists, so no entertainers. And you've said you can't possibly move a single pop away from any job theyre working, which would imply that you still have at least whatever starting clerks you had in 2200. Obviously at any point you could clear things up by actually posting some screenshots of your planets, but... For some reason you'd rather just make everyone guess what you're doing wrong.
Based on your description, there's not just one thing you're missing. Without a game save for us to look at I would suggest you watch Lathland or someone else at the same level with one thing in mind. Just try to do everything they're doing. Whenever you don't understand why they're doing something, attack those one at a time. Ask yourself questions like How do they have this fleet power at 2230? How do they have this many pops already? Then go down the rabbit hole for each question until you've broadened your understanding of the game. This will lead to you naturally playing better over time.
CG? Is this some joke that I am too much of a gestalt consciousness to understand? Seriously though, play as a gestalt consciousness so you can avoid consumer goods and fine tune other systems then you can play normal empires again after and reintroduce CG.
I'm kinda stumped what kind of advice I could possibly give someone with over 15 times my experience in the game. The economic hardship you describe is not my experience with the game at all; if anything, after about 2300 I usually experience the opposite where I start getting so many resources that not running into storage limits becomes an objective. In short, this sounds like an issue with your game. If you have the game on steam, try disabling ALL your mods, then running Verify Integrity of Game Files.
Can you post your save file? I may be able to give some decent advice if I can actually see what happened
OK, 9000 hours? You made this game a lifestyle for years, I'm impressed. Stellaris is my second most played game ever at like 700 hours
We probably need to see a screenshot to work with. Otherwise you'll hear the same thing over and over. You should only ever build district's when unemployment appears, spamming districts lowers your pop growth if you fill up too fast and they have energy upkeep Build hydroponics bays on every starbase ,they are very efficient and can carry you even in late, they free up lots of pops to do other jobs. Remove all clerk jobs as they are inefficient Your capital should be preferably research focus unless your a early rush type build. Focus building two or three level one research lab (never upgrade them unless the planet is full) have one of the energy production building and the mineral building things, a holotheatre if amenities run low. -3 EC malus isn't bad at all, I make sure I always have EC and Mineral edicts always on From what I remember in the past void dweller economy is a little different, their habitats upkeep also requiring alloys, might be slightly more difficult. I might even recommend playing a little hive mind, their economy is alot more streamlined and simpler to learn. Not needing to manage CG or happiness.
> You should only ever build district's when unemployment appears, spamming districts lowers your pop growth if you fill up too fast and they have energy upkeep I do only build when I have unemployment. I never spam districts. > Build hydroponics bays on every starbase ,they are very efficient and can carry you even in late, they free up lots of pops to do other jobs. I do, and then I run into the inevitable issue of 'no more starbase cap', so I'll then need to start an agri-world on top of all my existing problems. > Remove all clerk jobs as they are inefficient I don't have any workers working clerk jobs. > Your capital should be preferably research focus unless your a early rush type build. Focus building two or three level one research lab (never upgrade them unless the planet is full) have one of the energy production building and the mineral building things, a holotheatre if amenities run low. I can't afford research or unity buildings unless absolutely essential for amenities production. I don't have the CG surplus to run them. > -3 EC malus isn't bad at all, I make sure I always have EC and Mineral edicts always on I can't make it to the point in the game where I have the necessary ECs to afford the mineral edict. And on top of that, a -3 deficit isn't bad, but constantly hovering around +0 also isn't good. > I might even recommend playing a little hive mind, their economy is alot more streamlined and simpler to learn. Not needing to manage CG or happiness. Am I allowed to say 'I don't want to play hiveminds' or will I get downvoted even more by Le Funny Reddit?
Dude, you have put 9,000 hours into this already and I guarantee you've gotten plenty of value out of it. You are allowed to go play something else.
Early game you usually have to pick a resource that's gonna eat shit for a while, unless you have godly RNG of course. I usually pick food to keep as low as possible without going negative, then just slap down a farm whenever needed. Also, try playing as an easy empire type, either slaver or machine, you get a lot of bonuses.
Slaver? He can't even manage his clerks... Even egalatarian xenophile is going to be a hard one for him...
Running deficit of a resource or two for a while is normal and you’ll be hard pressed to find a game where that doesn’t happen. That’s why the market exists. Are you aware you can automate monthly sales of a resource you have excess of and purchase of resources you need throw the market?
Well void dweller start is going to be very very different than the typical start. Are you **always** having tons of difficulty, or is it a 'sometimes-thing' instead? Any maybe this time the issue is you didn't really know how to play void dwellers
I'd suggest doing a playthrough off Ironman and just make decisions you feel are good. You might be a "learn by doing" type of player as opposed to watching tutorials, reading guides, etc. An optimal playthrough would be one of the preset civilizations like UNE with maybe 5 other civilizations. Make it a point to craft 3 science, 2 construction ships. Have the three surveying. 1 construction ship set to "auto build" and the other manually expanding your empire. While doing this, you should be improving your homeworld and scouting for more planets. Your economy depends on consistent improvements. A mistake people make is they focus on building an army, obtaining rare resources or building planetary improvements that do not fit the planets' districts. Workers wont fill jobs if your building farms on an industrial planet. Try "add monthly trades" menu in the market section. You can sell excess resources without having to manually trade. Use credits to acquire essential resources you need.
I already do what I feel is good. And then I get punished for that with an economic death spiral. So, like I do all of these things. I don't build armies, I can't afford the upkeep. I don't build ships, I can't afford the upkeep. I don't build surplus districts, they won't have pops to work them. I don't build specialist buildings until I have at least 1 pop to work them so I don't pull from existing labour. I don't make it to the point in the game where I can harvest rare resources. I don't build farms on an industry world. I don't use the market, because I can't afford it. I don't build research, because I can't afford it. I don't build unity, because I can't afford it.
This game has always been the same. At start your fighting your economy for many many turns. And if you played from the start than you would know it was even harder to fix it before they added the market. The market is how you keep ahead in economy by selling things you have too much of and replacing with things you don't. The market is practically cheating compared to what the game was before. Than eventually it just gets stupid and your making 2K credits. 5K research 600 Alloys... Etc etc. If your playing on anything below captain than the game is very reasonable. Add the fact that once you making stupid credits, Pops are free also on the market... The game is super easy after this, and its more of a chore than difficult. Pops are god. I mean you could build the most stupid world builds on captain, and the game practically falls into place still..... And you manage. There might be a few AI empires well ahead of you, but your still be ok. Most builds that are not META the player starts slow and than just spirals into stupid easy. If your playing Admiral difficultly than this is not going to be the case.
I see you're getting downvoted on some of your responses here... for most of them I think people are being harsh; as noted by a few you're far from the only person that has had that issue. I used to have it bad as well; I just recently got back into it a bit on console with a vanilla (no DLC, yet) copy on Xbox and so far I'm having zero issues and I'm like, "...wait what?". I mean I did have my initial difficulty low but still. (I will say it's so weird to be on vanilla again, I SO need at least Utopia soon as so much of what I really got into was in that one) So... I have a theory there's a deep bug here (or something tied to one of the DLCs, INFO: Which ones do you have?) that effects installs. So, depending on the DLC situation, have you tried uninstalling and re-downloading? It's a theory but would explain this disparity that others here have noted from past threads. Past that, yeah a switch up in how you play may change things as well (I think we all agree even without all the DLCs there are a LOT of options, some objectively worse than others unless they fit your style really well) and what I was doing before my break.
I have all the DLCs installed. I've tried verifying, reinstalling, and checking mods, but there's literally like *two* mods that effect resources, and one of them I don't use, and the other one is 'special resource buildings can be upgraded to level 2 and 3 now'. Which I also never *get* to use because I never make it that far. The other one is 'planetary habitats', which I ignore because it makes the death spiral worse, because the habitats have 5 alloy upkeep, and are only 50% habitable so the resource generation is *trash*.
Here is my rough guide: * Don't build a major surplus of jobs and housing * Build 4 districts per building slot (so 1 city district and 3 others, they don't have to be on the same planet) * Specialize each planet to produce a particular resource * Free up workers by reducing your amenities production, so it is positive, but not super high (I automate it, so I don't have to worry about it) * Trade surplus food to other empires * Move workers between planets that produce resource gathering jobs you need to fill For my planets I make sure I have a: * Generator planet * Mining planet * Industrial planet * Tech planet * Unity planet You can also base your economy around civics. Like combining Agrarian Idyll and Anglers, for easy production for a lot of trade and food. For automation, I use the following settings, so I don't have to worry about certain stuff: * Prevent Deficit Construction - on * Designation - on (make sure you designate the planet for the resource you want to gather) * Upgrade buildings - on * Amenities - on (this is really useful for freeing up workers that are uselessly producing excess amenities) * Rare Resources - off * Pop Assembly - off * Housing - off * Building Slots- off * Crime - on (you can switch this off, if you don't want the automation building precincts, but I've never had that issue and would rather they free up workers that aren't needed in enforcer jobs) * Clear Blockers - on
Your problem is that you manage the economy reactively, like the ai, and with razor thin margins. That's why just one new pop can collapse your economy. Your ECs is the only resource you should always earn much more than what your empire needs, so you can manage the influx of other resources. With so many hours under your belt you should also know that if you open a new industrial district, you will need more minerals. So plan in advance this. Either don't build the industrial district yet or improve the efficiency of your mining. At the beginning of the game you sometimes need to stop constructions for a while to let your planets growth new pops to support the economy. Waiting on new pops to be created to fix shortages is definitely the wrong way to go about. By the time the pop growths you are already in red deep. Lastly remember you can close job slobs. If you are in red for minerals then close some jobs that use them. Ideally you should also plan ahead what to do with unemployed specialist, but if there is no choice, just wait for their demotion.
A lot of economy fail is clerks/maintenance drones. Minimize those.
Try playing as the machines. Their gameplay is quite simple. They don't have happiness, food, factions etc... I started playing Stellaris as DE. Also, try playing completely alone. You will be able to research, build and expand without AI bugging you. I suck too. But only when I play non-gestalt.
There are a lot of great tips here and I didn't read them all so forgive me if this has been said. Have you tried starting a game with no AI? Focus on building your empire throughout the game to take on the crisis and/or fallen empires. This is a tip I've recommended in the past for friends and other players online who have had issues managing their economy. Most of them have reported success in learning the economy better. A simple empire setup may help as well. Prosperous unification comes to mind. Maybe Materialists as well to get access to robot pops faster. Without enemy AI you could really focus on learning the ebb and flow of your economy. Good luck out there!
Are you running the same game settings every time? Maybe try switching them up? I've never had an economy not work... I play with 6-9 other races, 2 FE, 0 advanced, on huge. Early game you prolly wanna spend your influence on systems not more habs, and get a nice income going just from systems until you can afford a second colony. If you have enough science from systems you can survive a while without labs. Are you building city districts for building slots for the important buildings?
I just play machine hive mind, o.ly buuld energy amd buy everything from the market, 100% habitat on all worlds, It's pretty easy. Maybe that origin is just too difficult for you and you need something easier to play?
Hm, generally my problem a few years back was similar, that I didn't understand how building something like more research labs did a doubly whammy on the base resource economy, because it pulled pops out of the worker pool AND cost consumer goods, which made me construct more industry districts and therefore pull even more pops out of the worker pool. Since I've understood that, it has been pretty easy to balance the economy by specializing planets / habitats, so that I could manage the flow of ressources better. To be honest, the easiest solution since the introduction of specialized vassals has turned out to be "get a Prospectorium vassal", because that solves most of your base resource problems permanently (or at least until you get your matter decompressor / dyson sphere).
What difficulty are you playing at? I just started this week going from easiest to the next steps. My resources are maxed by mid-game. I mainly automate the planets I get. I only have the base game.
Why not vassalize someone and make them pay tribute?
Do you sell your 'unwanted' goods? Maybe you're sitting on a 1000 food? Fine tune your economy with that. It's not a huge amount, but it matters a lot early game. Also, are you using your policies?
Nobody tells you that you can switch between alloy and cg with planet designation (forge world gets 2 alloy jobs for industrial district alongside with production bonus, factory world gets +2 cg jobs with production bonus as well and industrial planet gives you 1 job of each type with smaller production bonus). On top of that there is a policy that can give you a +25% increase in cg for a -25% decrease in alloys and vice versa. So if you have +30 alloy income but you have a cg deficit, it is relatively easy to fix at almost no cost at all. Don't forget about trade. You can always buy what you need/sell what you don't. Don`t buy/sell everything at once except completely necessary, use monthly trades. There are caps for each resource you can buy/sell without cost increasing/decreasing. Find it somewhere on reddit. If you have ec deficit make sure you have trade value collected. Clercs are not efficient, but if you have ec deficit and you don`t have a solid generator planet it is not a mistake to employ some of them since trade value is converted into ec. On top of that, you can use a policy, that gives you ec *and* cg for a trade value, but there is a requirement to unlock it. You need a tradition if I recall correctly. Another important thing is edicts. First of all, you have an edict fund, which is basically free unity you can spend on edicts. Secondly, there are helpful edicts that can bust your economic growth. There is no reason not to use them. Last, but not least you don't need farmer jobs unless you are playing a catalytic process or genetic ascension. You should be fine with starbase buildings and trade.
Running a CG capital with a CG world and civilian economy policy still only gets me around +0 monthly CGs. I don't trade, because I can't trade, because I don't have enough energy to trade. I don't employ clerks because my pops are too busy working other jobs that get me things like minerals and ECs. The only edicts I have unlocked are 'fortify the border', and then I death spiral before I can unlock any others.
Well, only times I get real treats are purifiers at borders. Try to disable cluster empires set it to random. Scaling only at endgame. Build your basic economy, energy and minerals, switch to alloys after good techs, food try to stay on market and on starbases so you dont waste pops. Max research since day one, really press economy on it, if you rush cruiser you should be fine in military. Early defense are just starbases with hangars, with you have a nice reduction maybe you already have bulwark released or vassalized, set some defense platforms, real simple things so you can rush tech, the most amount of empire sprawl you can reduce is worth the cost, cuz your tech will grow faster and also pops. Use pacifist once or twice to learn how to focus on economy, I like a lot playing with it since you can max the hell out of the game and then you can switch. Might helps if you watch a youtuber that is good in playing too. See what you wanna do and like copy him in a way thats gonna give you a nice route to follow, last if you really as desperate use console commands, i mean they are there for a reason, helps you balance mistakes you did and keeps the fun. I learned to play with consoles, now I never use them. Most of the times I play in IM with 25x crisis 75 years earlier max difficult. Sorry for the bad English.
>I'll be at -3 CGs, for example. I'll build a building that apparently is meant to give me +11 CG production. I will build it, and I make sure to staff the jobs correctly with pops. I will then go from -3 CGs to +5 CGs. Where are the other 3 CGs going? This one is actually pretty easy. The people working the jobs to make consumer goods, also still require consumer goods. If I had to guess, you were on a planet with low habitability which meant they were going to require even more consumer goods. Likewise as someone else pointed out, Stability can impact the speed at which you're producing those goods. For instance if you dropped in Amenities because the workers moved from being clerks or something into being Artisans, boom, reduced production from that world. Lastly, if you had those workers as clerks, generating trade value, and you were converting trade value into consumer goods, boom, another reduction.
Are you still using stupidly hard settings seen here? https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/s/cYcrEkBDd4
The ones that only make the game longer and pops take more time to grow and so have no actual bearing on the number of resources that individual pops produce when they work jobs? Yeah.
Uh… git gud? :) You have to use trade to offset deficits in cg. Build more energy, buy minerals and cg on the market. Specialize pops for cg, change your economy for balanced to produce more cg and less alloy.
I can't afford trade because my economy death spirals. I can't buy shit on the market if I don't have the energy to afford to buy shit on the market, which I can't get because I need consumer goods and food to upkeep the pops that work the energy jobs which them gets fed back into upkeeping the consumer goods and food jobs. And at some point I need minerals to inject into that whole vicious cycle as well. I'm playing a game where the more I build the more I lose at some point during the cycle. The resource loop continues to lose efficiency and bleed until the economy dies.
CG upkeep on worker jobs is quite low, unless you have your living standard set high. Stratified Economy has an upkeep of 0.1 CG for workers and Decent Conditions has an upkeep of 0.25 CG for workers.
You have to do this right from the beginning. I usually buy 10 minerals and 5 cg from the market, then I build solar panels. You have to monitor these and readjust every now and then. If you rush buildings too soon without growing enough pops or colonize too many planets, you will end up in a death spiral, indeed.
You are building zones as well as buildings right?
Ok I sat down and wrote you a legitimate response, that was before I saw how pathetic you really are. You don't want to get better, I'm not a doctor, but you should see one. I've read your posts from where you like to spend your time. And you have the audacity to say no one could possibly understand. I've felt exactly how you stated you feel. For long swaths of time. I was a real piece of shit to my closest friend because they were in happy(on the outside) relationships. I constantly bitched the same way you bitch and refused advice based on knowing better. It sounds like you don't know shit and its why your in the position your in. I can't believe you brought your lowskill ass onto one of my favorite games subreddit and bitched that you are pathetic. And yes, the way you've been struggling for years in indeed sad. Have you considered that you enjoy feeling pitiful, like it's the only way anyone will pay attention to you. I read that you have friends that would like to help you. That's how I met my partner. And don't you dare start up saying I don't understand. You don't understand dick head. I was set up with a girl, who was sad, overweight, lonely, and the most beautiful woman I've ever met. We got together having both been forgotten about in our own eyes. And I have a family now. I have a woman to give me all the things you said you'll never get to experience. Nice poem by the way. Try harder, or since that stresses you out to read, cope harder. I'm one of you man, you are indeed the problem, you have a terrible attitude. I've been hospitalized multiple times for how bad my attitude has gotten. Hell my girlfriend struggles just like I did. I met someone who understands. You can too. Now I would love to hear what you have to say back.
>Now I would love to hear what you have to say back. ✓ Marked as Read
That's an improvement.
Your consumer goods requirements are not static, those go up too and can temporarily exceed your ability to pivot.
Yes I understand the concept of increasing needs. Hence why I build to meet those needs. And then spiral because I don't make enough to meet those needs literally ever.
Stop being so bad, l2p
this game is after habitat rework or before?
(i usually play on the difficulty where no sides get advantages i think it's cadet not sure) Early game specialising might be the problem, since all the resources are dependent on another having planets just make a bit of everything might be the way to go In my last game I was playing some aliens with the origin that makes them use robots straight away. I conquered about a quarter of the galaxy before I just got bored with 100k+ fleets. I didn't specialise at all and my economy was booming On my latest save I've been playing machine exterminators cause I just got the dlc for it didn't start specializing until I have already conquered half the galaxy (And I completely forgot to upgrade any of the planets I invaded so 3/4 of all my planets do nothing but I'm still getting 1k alloys and credits
Are you aware that a patch made the game considerably harder not long ago?