Stellaris

Lendarios said:

So how the heck do you win this game? How does federations work?
I picked it up and the first try was horrendous, I kept running out of influence with the human conquest guys, then said fuck it went with human democratic, and the infusion of influence every 4 years is very nice.

Is it normal to run energy deficits on mid-late game? What is a good fleet size? 200-300?

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You win the game by conquering 100% of the galaxy or controlling 60% of colonizable planets in a Federation or owning 40% of colonizable planets.

Federations need to be first researched in the diplomacy tree through Unity points. Then, you set one up through the diplomacy window

Are you blowing your influence on stupid shit like planetwide edicts, election influencing, lots of frontier outposts or hiring lots of unnecessary leaders? Influence deficit shouldnt be a problem if youre managing it prudently. I basically use influence only to colonize planets and maybe build 1-2 frontier outposts to claim some real estate if I think that the AI is going to colonize some shit I want.

I wouldnt say Energy deficits are normal, but to make sure you dont have any - that requires long term planning from early stages and a fairly clear idea of what your game strategy will be (are you just going to Hitler everyone and go all out war or are you going to try build a federation, play diplomacy games, etc. war will require lots of credits). Basically, if you hit serious deficits its pretty hard to reverse them because it starts turning into feedback loop, it takes long time to turn them around, and you might run out of credits before fixing the issue. First thing I look is where the drain is coming from. A lot of the time it will be due to building a lot of ships in preparation for a war, and then the war dragging on much longer than expected. If you cant reduce the expenditures and find places to cut costs, you can trade away credits for minerals to friendly empires at almost a 1:1 to ratio practically in perpetuity as a quick stopgap solution, you can also drain sector surpluses (75% of entire surplus for 100 influence points. 25 points if you didnt start the war) - but the long term solution usually involves picking 10-20% planets that you own that already produce high levels of credits, gutting everything on those planets that isnt producing energy (unity buildings, mineral mines and silos, farms, labs, etc.) and replacing everything with power plants, upgrading those plants to the max, and then adding the energy modifier buildings like energy nexus which increases planetwide production by 20%

Fleet size isnt dependent on number of ships, but rather on their "battle score". Fleet power will also vary based on the size of the galaxy due to less resources, less planets, less starbases and thus less naval capacity. So a 10K fleet might be as big as you can go on a small map but on a huge map you'll probably have multiple 100K fleets. So there isnt an optimal fleet size or score other than the bigger battle score fleet typically crushes the lower battle score fleet even if the difference isnt that large

Ty Ara.
My initial game was with the military human, influence there was hard, also because it was my first game. The second human race, the democratic one, gets an influence of influence every four years, with the presidential mandate. So by just expanding and building I fulfill the mandate and boom easy influence.

For early expansion I'm having more success with frontier expanding than with planet expansion. I disable the inner frontiers after I have expanded my borders a second time.

I read you barely need frontiers, but I'm having problem not relying on them.

What is a good colonization strategy?

Lendarios said:

Ty Ara.
My initial game was with the military human, influence there was hard, also because it was my first game. The second human race, the democratic one, gets an influence of influence every four years, with the presidential mandate. So by just expanding and building I fulfill the mandate and boom easy influence.

For early expansion I'm having more success with frontier expanding than with planet expansion. I disable the inner frontiers after I have expanded my borders a second time.

I read you barely need frontiers, but I'm having problem not relying on them.

What is a good colonization strategy?

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I used to have influence problems all the time until I realized that you will never gain more than 5 influence points per turn even at your best, so you better ration it wisely. So I tend to use influence only as much as needed and typically thats recruiting leaders, colonizing planets and sometimes I will have 1 empire edicts running (one of the tech grants that gives a 20% bonus for research)

I play a 5 Core strategy which basically is a rush to colonize 5 planets as fast as possible, build up your fleet to keep enemies at bay and set yourself up for the mid game.
I break up my first 3 Corvettes into separate fleets and have them scout all the star systems around me for planets. Typically I can scout 20-30 star systems in first 2-3 months. At the same time I have my science ship survey home system, while I immediately start building 2nd science ship on 1st turn. By now 1st ship finishes surveying home system, 2nd ship finishes building - now I can send them directly to star systems where corvettes found planets and see whats habitable. This saves you a ton of time from blindly surveying nearby systems. Corvettes keep fanning out and searching more systems for planets. At this point you probably have 500 minerals, start building first colony ship. Only make improvements on homeworld to keep unemployed pops working (could be minerals, farms or energy whatever needed, but no research buildings). You want to maximize minerals yield right now so you can crank out your 5 colony ships and start applying surpluses to building planetary buildings, warships, making upgrades, etc. Also, dont build any mining or research stations in space, you dont break even typically for 3+ years at this point so you're not in position to make those investments yet.

From the beginning I adopt Traditions in this order to minimize credit expenditure and maximize colonization and growth speed, this will probably take a few years
Expansion adoption +100% Colony development speed
Supremacy adoption +20% Border range
Harmony adoption +25% Growth speed


After a year, your first colony ship is finished building. You probably found 2-3 habitable planets by now, pick what you think is best one, either by size or habitability. The further away the better to check the expansion of other empires. Go colonize it, start building another colony ship right away. You should be making enough minerals (500+ a year) at this point to keep colony ships constantly producing 1 at a time until you make 5 and colonize 5 planets. In the mean time, research tech that will help you maximize planetary yields so Mine II, Farm II, Power Plant II, etc. Gradually build up your military fleet, keep regularly checking the diplomacy screen to check the relative strength of your opponents power (see screenshot below) to see if they are outpacing you in military strength and offer everyone a non aggression pact to get some breathing room. You can also guarantee independence of states that are further away from others so they are less likely to get into an early war, that helps you get your diplomacy score up early with them and set up a non aggression pact and research agreements. Research agreements are also really important as they can boost your tech research 25-50%. Discontinue independence guarantees as you get closer to mid game so you dont get sucked into someone else's war. I also trade star charts with friendly states to minimize exploration/surveying time to find habitable planets. Keep doing all the quests in the mean time too, its an easy way to pick up minerals, energy, influence, etc.



So just keep doing this, now you'll start seeing some energy and mineral surpluses. Start looking around for high yield space resources (4 minerals or 4 energy) to see where you can go send your constructor ship and build stations over them.

Basically thats what I do. Then I typically just build up during mid game, wait for a war to break out around me, so I can join in and attack whos likely going to lose and pick off a bunch of planets for myself. Then beat up on smaller empires around me and take more planets, then get ready for the final slugfest with the final empire whos probably same size as me by the point.

Onigen said:

I basically do the opposite of this. Open up with Discovery tradition to get the +15% chance to discover anomalies (also -10% chance to fail) and follow up with full expansion (usually supremacy after that for midgame warfare) and I -never- trade star charts because you lose all the chances for anomalies that way. There's just too many great rewards from them and I'm pretty sure you don't share them with other races 'cause I've found anomalies from systems that have been surveyed by others but not yet yourself.

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Yeah I can see that. I dont spend unity points on Discovery tradition though and my surveying is 100% focused on supporting my expansion. I adopt the first 3 traditions I mentioned and then go hardcore into "Prosperity" and then get all 5 traditions there and close it out to build an economic base for mid game. I dont like the rest of the "Expansion" tradition after adopting it for border range increases because it focuses on frontier outposts and I dont heavily rely on those, so it feels kinda wasteful. Plus I dont normally have influence point issues so a lot of those are moot to me too.

Anyways, turns out they are removing star charts in upcoming update

Thanks for the tips. I never thought of scouting with corvettes.

Lendarios said:

Thanks for the tips. I never thought of scouting with corvettes.

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I usually lose 1-2 in the process to some uber powered aliens or pirates, but to me thats a justifiable cost when the alternative is to blindly and slowly survey nearby systems with science vessels.

The trick to the Democratic influence is just to dis-assemble 4 stations and then rebuild them. It is a bug but whatever. Or worse case, keep 4 stations without upgrades, then build them get credit and then disable them.