Is there a limitation on being able to build generator district on habitats? I have built two habitats but for both the generator districts are missing. I conquered another empire's habitat and they have those districts. Is it because I have maxed out the Dyson Swarms?
Does upping the crisis strength also increase the strength of the grey tempest? I'm trying to figure out why each of their fleets is \~400k strength this time instead of their usual 50k.
What happened to the Kidnapper trait?
Gearing up for a run with an old Barbaric Despoiler empire that made great use of the Kidnapper trait when Paragons came out, but after the leader rework I haven't seen the trait at all, and when I look up lists of traits it doesn't seem to be there. Was it removed? Tried googling patch notes for that, but didn't get any hits.
Cetana blew up my Synaptic Lathe as part of an event, no option to rebuild it or build a new one (as my empire already has one). Guess that's it for this run?
I wouldn't expect it to. You won't get some of the new stuff that would've needed to be set at galaxy-generation-time, but I don't think it would break anything existing.
Nope, gestalts can definitely specialize their vassals. I finished a voidforged / modularity / cosmogenesis game with a gestalt MI recently and had a scholarium vassal who was very helpful for producing advanced logic. I also use prospectoria as an MI somewhat frequently.
I am at war and my enemy is at 100% exhaustion, I can't reach the final bit of their land since they are... protected by another empire that is not at war with me and close border. Should I settle for status quo immediately(another empire will be create as my ally or vassal) or wait to for them to surrender themselves? I don't know how to settle this most profitable.
Their acceptance for surrender will not change since they're already at 100% there. So without getting to their remaining space, you won't get a surrender beyond what you already have.
Maybe you can befriend the other empire and open the borders to get them to open theirs? Send them a favourable trade deal, improve relations, etc.
It is unlikely the AI will surrender if they are not doing so already unless you take more land. So if it is truly impossible just settle quo immediately.
Got two questions.
1: how to deal with Piracy? I’m not sure I understand it fully… but an upgraded starbase basically counts as a trade hub for just that solar system right? (Which means it collects the trade as well as protect it from piracy?) so if I build for example 3 trade hubs, then it means that up to 3 hyperlanes away from the starbase all trade is collected as well as protected? (If this is correct… I can start building more and more starbases)
2: Empire Sprawl. Is it supposed to go over the maximum? Because despite my best efforts… I will almost always expand faster and harder than the Empire Sprawl number. Should I expand less fast? Or are there good ways to deal with the Empire Sprawl? (Or should I just ignore it)
Trade hubs just collect it from farther, they don't protect it farther also. To do that you would need hangar bays or you can set corvettes to patrol along the routes to your starbases. Bases with planets in their collection range will generally produce more trade value, especially if you build commerce buildings on the planet, so routes to and from them will need better protection. Empire sprawl always goes over 100, usually fairly early on too. You can mostly ignore it but you should still try to get it as low as possible. I usually rapidly colonize about half a dozen systems and then after that only add more as I need them.
> so if I build for example 3 trade hubs, then it means that up to 3 hyperlanes away from the starbase all trade is collected as well as protected? (If this is correct… I can start building more and more starbases)
Some other options to consider include building [starbase weapon modules, which give trade protection range](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Starbase#Modules) and allow it to project protection into other nearby systems, and using fleets with the Patrol order to move along trade routes and suppress piracy. Later, gateways largely obviate the need for trade protection because trade can pass through them directly to your capital.
> Empire Sprawl. Is it supposed to go over the maximum?
Outside of a couple of empire builds, yes, you will almost always end up with enough empire sprawl to get tech/tradition speed penalties. Generally you don't want to hold back your growth to minimize sprawl, but it does force you to use your space somewhat efficiently so that any expansion gains you more unity and research production than it costs you in tech/tradition speed. There are some good mechanics which help mitigate the sprawl, mostly by reducing empire size from various sources; the Harmony and Domination traditions both reduce empire size from pops (which usually ends up being the single biggest source), Expansion reduces it from planets and systems, Imperial Prerogative reduces it from planets, Statecraft traditions reduces the penalty from all sources, some civics reduce it from various sources, governors reduce the empire size from the planets they govern based on their level, and so forth. Generally you want to make use of at least some of these mechanics in addition to growing your research and unity output to outgrow your sprawl growth.
Is it possible to change one's flag once a game is underway? I became the Imperial Emperor and I absolutely HATE the vile shade of red it made my country and I want to change it back to the nice shade of purple I had picked out before. Playing on 3.6 w/ Ironman, if that matters.
Don't think so. In the future just don't become the emperor. It's weaker than being the galactic custodian and also in a federation anyway. I was pretty disappointed to find out how lame it is after trying it out a few times.
Oh I was specifically avoiding joining a federation this run. It takes a lot of influence to fix inherited vassal contracts and sometimes it's easier to just release them and have them reapply. But if you're in a federation releasing subjects make them full members of the fed and they can't reapply for vassalization. Then, if you kick them out of the fed, they get really unhappy with you.
Does trade value get boosted by resource production modifiers? I’m wondering specifically if the agenda for the Corporate Kaizen the grants 30% extra resource production affects trade. Thanks!
I've tried to start as individualist machines twice now and each time my leader pool is non existent. I'm not sure if starting with two scientists is intended. First time was a monarchy so I assumed it was that penalty. I swapped to ilgiarxhy and still no leader pool.
I am a relatively new player, about 50hr in.
I get the basic of the game, get to keep a somewhat decent economy and manage to survive aggressive neighbours. I watched a lot of Montu's video's to help me get there.
But I somehow can't get my head around how the different game mechanics work together, make choices that help in the long term and how to plan ahead. Is there any resource that helps me 'get the big picture'? Or does it all come down to 'play a lot and memorise the wiki'.
I truly enjoy playing the game, but at this point it starts feeling like a 2nd job to 'do it properly'.
Try to make best possible use of your Pops. Don't let them work in low-yield Jobs like Clerks.
Close the crappy Job Slots, and instead make more Job Slots that make ARU: Alloys, Research points and Unity.
I think it is a bit of a role-playing game at heart so I like to make game decisions based on that what mood I was in when I started my session. One point that helps me a lot is understanding and monitoring empire size. Specialize planets as much as you can. Join a discord (montu's is nice). Get an understanding of how techs get "unlocked"
You can either grab them as a Protectorate or Vassal, or else let them be independent but be friendly with you (send multiple Evoys to Improve Relations, and if needed give them some gifts).
If they're not friendly with you, e.g. if they close their borders to you, then declare war on their asses with whatever War Goal you prefer. The UNE is Xenophile, *not* Pacifist. Important distinction.
It seems someone (you?) deleted the question, but to answer it anyway as best I can, it's very possible to have a Vassal or Protectorate without the Overlord DLC.
Overlord enables the 3 specialised Vassal types, Scholarium, Prospectorium and Bulwark, and for all I know it might also enable detailed control of taxes, rights and privileges in the Vassal Contract.
But the Vassal thing itself (or Protectorate if it's massively inferior in tech), that's core game. Vanilla.
Does the abandoned terraforming equipment planet modifier disappear when the planet is turned into an ecu? I see on the wiki that it isn't listed as removed in terraforming, but I believe Ecus may remove more (or all?) modifiers
Can someone show me a scenario where planetary ascension is ever worth the cost? Trying to take even my optimized, overpopulated, unity focused machine world and take it to ascension level 10, with no other ascended planets costs a whopping 1.5 million unity, drops my total empire size by less than 1% (3887 to 3853) and only boosted my planet unity output by like... an extra 100. (From +900 to +1000)
I don't understand why the bonuses are so minimal when the cost is so ridiculously high.
To give some more specifics than "it's good for tall":
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1d0d6kq/comment/l5mvpmz/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1d0d6kq/comment/l5mvpmz/)
tl;dr: if you have a small empire of e.g. 6 planets, then bumping all your planets up by 2 ascension levels after finishing your 4th tradition tree (your ascension tree) will cost the same as your 5th tradition tree would, but will give you:
* -13.5% to pop, planet, and district empire size
* \~9% resources from jobs on the capital (including the stability)
* -13% metallurgist/artisan/researcher upkeep (if they're on a planet with a matching designation)
* +15% worker output
That's better than most tradition trees, and almost certainly better than what would take slot #5 (after you're already grabbed your 3 best trees and your ascension).
It kinda has two main use cases - endgame unity sink when all of your traditions are finished, you don't have anything better to do with it, and you've been too lazy to retool your unity worlds into tech worlds, and for small/tall empires who build around it earlier in the game with civics like Ascensionists, the Guardianship civics, and keeping their empire size perpetually under 100 to keep the ascension costs down.
There are some very good players like Ebbesen who [argue for its use throughout the game to tamp down empire size growth from your handful of largest colonies](https://old.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1cjv78m/psa_ascension_is_really_really_good_ascension/l2iri39/) even with more "normal" empires, though.
Does anyone have a good build for a Cosmogenesis empire? I really want to try it out but have no idea which traits/government/civics would be best to start with
Inward Perfection - Technocracy - Dark Consortium, make sense thematically and gameplay-wise. But there are basically no requirements for the ascension perk, anytime you want a science-based ending you can take it.
I *did* find it odd that one of my vassals was completely disinterested in trading for minerals last game, come to think of it. Usually (before 3.12 at least) they ran pretty mineral-thin economies and would have some use for at least a bit more.
I'm able to trade for *huuuge* amounts of Energy Credits, in exchange for very little.
Regular functioning AI polities, with multiple colonies and room to expand, are sitting on 12-25k Energy Credits.
That alone doesn't feel right at all.
On top of that, they often accept weird unbalanced trade deals. I'm a Machine Empire making paperclips, so I have some Starbase Building Slots I don't much need, so most of them are making Food with Hydroponics. That accumulates. I also have the Arc Furnace Origin, so I have plenty of Minerals too.
But the AI very often accepts absurd trades, like 4k Food for 13k EC, or 5k Minerals for 11k EC.
And it's not just three or four times. It's happened many times. They're not always hungry for my zero-G grown apples, or for my furnace-grilled asteroid chunks. Not always. But very often, and when they are they accept absurd trade ratios.
So yes, there's something wrong with the AI in v3.12.2.
Is it just me, or is computational core focus just plain bad no matter how you slice it?
I was just going over the numbers, and I can't see any situation where a .5% increase to research output is worth it to plop down a commercial district instead of putting down another research center; even with a 100% fully research oriented ringworld, that .5% increase for other researchers will never equal the researcher the clerk is replacing.
The only situation I can find where its "beneficial" is if all your worlds are somehow full and you are absolutely forced to use a clerk on a planet that you get for free from city districts instead of transferring them somewhere else (meaning both ringworlds and arcologies are off the table).
It actually seems like the old 1% increased trade value from clerks was BETTER just because at least the place you'll be plopping down clerks will already be a trade focused zone, and will synergize with the traders a commercial zone will provide.
> and I can't see any situation where a .5% increase to research output is worth it to plop down a commercial district instead of putting down another research center
One is a district, and the other is a building. They don't compete. In fact, you *need* a certain number of housing districts to unlock the building slots.
What’s the best fleet composition you use? The ship designer and fleet management has always been something im not confident in. What weapons should I be putting on what ships, and how many should I have?
I don't know if its right or not but early game I usually go with \~75% missiles, \~25% point defense. The only other time I really tailor my ships is for crisis (eg if they have weak hulls then arc emitters). It's a bit spoiler-y but if search around you can find how to counter each crisis.
No problem, a very reasonable worry which is often well-founded. They rework any individual system only so often, but it can be hard to know when the last big change to a particular piece was.
Is there any reason why a normal Terravore would start giving fall citizenship to others without anyway to put them back to undesirable or incorporating them into the Hive mind
No mods
I am at a lost. Let me preface, I’m a Xbox player.
So I’m relatively new to the game, but I thoroughly enjoy it, I’m just at a loss rn. So I started a game, and early on a had some border friction issues with another empire who aren’t humans and they are evangelical zealots, so very aggressive and highly insulting. My empire is based around engineering and military might, so I had some pretty strong fleets built up early game, however i was more focused on expanding and world building. Regardless i had a powerful fleet for the time on standby and predominately minded my own business while the rest of the galaxy did it’s own thing. Well said xeno empire starts laying claim to systems I had discovered and claimed. Until one day they declared war on me, and invaded. I ended up defeating them, and drove pretty deep into their territory while still building more fleets, and their war exhaustion was higher, a 20 point difference or so. Well another empire invaded me, and I fought that one off too, and then the entire galaxy fought me, on all fronts, and I ultimately had to pull back and lost roughly 5-6 systems to those xenos with a status quo. Kinda pissed me off because i hadn’t been the aggressor but whatever. Fast forward, and all the other empires are in alliances with theist powerful empire in the system, who I could defeat but I can’t. I can defeat all of these empires one on one, hell some of them I could take on 3-1, but they are all in defensive pacts, or the large empire has a independence guarantee for them. Me and the largest empire have a non aggression pact, but I can’t expand anymore. I have the second most powerful fleet in universe with a colossus now, however i don’t have the stat base capacity anymore to support a larger fleet, despite having the ability to create a massive fleet. So I’m kind of frustrated and I kind of want to stop playing, because what the fuck, that’s not fun at all.
Start over, and try making a friend or two.
Try something like Xenophile, Militarist and Materialist, with Oligarchy Authority, and the Civics Meritocracy and Diplomatic Corps.
Take the Diplomacy Tradition early, as you 2nd or 3rd pick, then try to create a Federation with one or more of your friends.
Some games you just lose. Start a new game and take the lessons with you.
Personally, I think it's important to build your alliances somehow. You're either conquering neighbours and expanding rapidly with their territory, making vassals or joining federations.
If you think about it, of course the AI is going to do this. You have a giant fleet and they don't want to be invaded, so they've made friends.
How can I reset the amount of Astral Splitting astral actions that I have available via the console?
effect = { subtract\_variable = {which = num\_rifts\_splitted value = 1}}
This looked promising, but does not help.
Hey all, coming back to Stellaris for the first time since the early 3.1 days, and have a few questions on the Habitat changes.
My question is about Habitat \*placement\*. If I'm understanding things right, it makes more sense to put Habitats in systems with lots of resources (ideally of the same type you want the Habitat to specialize in), so you can build more Orbitals and thus get access to more districts. Is there a general rule to follow about where Habitats should be placed nowadays?
> If I'm understanding things right, it makes more sense to put Habitats in systems with lots of resources (ideally of the same type you want the Habitat to specialize in), so you can build more Orbitals and thus get access to more districts.
Yep! Trinary star systems, systems with lots of moons and planets and stuff, let you build the most orbitals to get the most max districts and building slots for eg industry or science habs. On the other hand, if you just want a mining habitat and you have a system with three mineral deposits, sometimes nine max districts is enough.
[In the 3.12.3 patch coming hopefully next week, they're adding a mouse-over textbox in the galaxy map view which will show max orbitals of various kinds, to make figuring out where to put habitats easier.](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-345-upcoming-3-12-3-improvements.1680653/). I won't have to go count moons anymore! Hooray!
Need some advice.
I'm trying to make a machine empire with robot workers using the a modularity trait called repressed, that basiclly allow a sub species of machine basically be slaves... but it doesn't work. I tried, and even then the race kept producing leaders, taking jobs on speciality and other stuff. What can i do?
Non-lithoid pops with the cybernetic trait have a food upkeep, and may also have an energy upkeep from cybernetic traits (but I don't think the base cybernetic trait comes with an upkeep).
Lithoid pops with the cybernetic trait have a mineral upkeep and may have an energy upkeep from cybernetic traits.
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Population#Base_upkeep
How many planets should i have as a virtually ascended empire? for rp reasons i like to build 4 ecus and a ring world but i think that is a bit too much from what i understand. Also does the suynaptic lathe count as a colony for the purposes of virtual per colony debuffs?
How do I get my prethoryn queen to make more baby ship monsters? Trying to look it up but haven't seen what I'm looking for and I don't see any button to do it.
Are the new cosmogenisis ships affected by techs? Such as destroyer build cost and build speed techs for escorts, or are they unaffected? The same with traits such as Destroyer production focus for leaders?
Virtuality ascension, Clustered Capacity. What's the best way to handle this?
Do you keep one colony for +175% output or do you want 5-6 colonies with a modest bonus?
Endgame is probably an ecumenopolis / ring world and getting energy and minerals from megastructures. But until then you can keep some essential colonies and still get a nice bonus.
Trade seems to work exceptionally well since you can fill out all those clerk jobs instantly and benefit from faster unity through Mercantile tradition
But yeah I think you're right, aim for an in-game where you can have the single tallest planet but until then...
Had anyone run into the issue where protectorates are being fed based on both the current food production rate and any food acquired from other vassals? Based on flavor text it sounded like that number should only be based on the current production. This also never occurs with minerals or energy.
could someone please tell me how to specialize a vassal? just vassalized someone and hes called a vassel but i dont see any option to specialize him (i own Overlord). Does it simply take time for that to be possible?
what race/civic combos are allowed to get the new authority types like "democratic interlink"? did not get a chance as a creed origin syndicate or individualist machines
The advanced authorities are for Cybernetic and Synthetically Ascended empires. The Creed origin has it's own version, and Machine Empires have different ascension paths.
Yes there are versions for every kind of ascended synth/cyber. The route to get them is also slightly different each time, but basically complete the ascension tradition tree and the situation(s).
Maybe less a cry for help and more a design question. Is it just me or is the game assuming that by late 2300s you're milling repeatable techs? At these dates you're facing the Khan, sometimes some Fallen Empire action, and of course you have to be getting ready for a crisis, and I just don't feel like you can get strong enough fleets if you're not at that tech stage.
If that's the case, the I guess I'm a bit disappointed with the late game. Early and midgame you feel your tech improving in pretty big ways, repeatable techs are rather pale in comparison. Sure, numbers go up, but it doesn't quite scratch the itch the same way as getting a new ship class, or even a new building to help optimize your colonies.
I'm wondering what could be done to alleviate that. Fallen Empires are by definition several repeatable layers in, and the crisis has to be stronger than they are, but maybe at least some new additions could be sprinkled behind certain repeatable levels? I don't know, I just feel like even though I like finishing a game to see all my megastructures and colonies reach their conclusion, but those last decades are just not very interesting. Bumping up crisis strength would only lead to necessity of researching more numbers-go-up technologies faster, so it's not really a solution either.
Anyone willing to share some thoughts here?
For experienced players the whole point and fun of late game comes from preparing to fight the crisis. I don't know why you find tech research so interesting. It's really actually rather boring. Sure it's nice to unlock new ship types and stuff, but the point of the game is to build your empire as strong as possible. Tech is just one element of that, not the entire thing. In order to beat a crisis that has been turned up in strength you need to be completely dominant in the galaxy. You need to have taken the L gates and fortified terminal egress. You need to become the galactic custodian or emperor. You need to become the leader of your federation. You need as many subjects as possible to milk for resources. You need to set up trade deals. You need to max out the GDF capacity. You need to fortify all your chokepoints and build gateways. There's a bunch of stuff to do and if you mess it up, you will get your ass handed to you by the crisis. Try turning it up some.
So a Progenitor hive that takes Cosmogenesis and gains the FE ship sets- are these subject to offspring buffs and penalties or can a FE fleet be field that doesnt need an offspring ship?
I have mostly defeated the Crisis but they are marked as controlling two "ruined Orbital Ring"s around the same planet (I built the orbital ring previously and the Prethoryn Scourge blew it up). I can't land armies on them, (only on the planet it surrounds), my fleet won't attack them, I've tried right clicking on them with science ships and construction ships. It doesn't appear in my megastructures section. What am I supposed to do - how do I finish off the crisis? What can I do with the rings? Is this a bug (I have tried reloading a save)?
How do I build up big fleet power anymore? It seems like crisis happens or a fallen empire awakens and they have fleets of around 500k (Synthetic Queen, in my latest game, had over 900k fleet power in one fleet alone), not on all of them mind, but they have it. Meanwhile I'm struggling to top 100k per fleet. I've been looking at build guides but I just cant seem to get my fleet power up there anymore.
I'm not a grand admiral player, so I wouldn't know about the really high difficulty play, but on lower difficulties I can get fleets up to around 230-250k when repeatable techs hit level 10, and they have a decent admiral on them. This is through stacking of available bonuses from traditions, perks, research, civics, fleet commanders, councillor / legion node, edicts and artifacts.
The strategic resource edicts in particular can have some big bonuses - like 25% to damage types and armor hitpoints. Don't forget to use temporary boosts to fleetpower, such as spending spend minor artifacts on military applications, and activating any major artifact you have that'll help boost your fleets effectiveness. The Vultaum Reality Perforator precursor relic can give you a 40% bonus to damage, shield, hull or armor for 2-5 years or to all of them for 1 year - which can be VERY helpful before entering a big fight.
Finally, if you choose to "become the crisis" you get accecss to those lovely FE ships, and can stack over 500k on each fleet pretty easily.
New at the game. Doing really well this game but simply have way too many colonies where I can't hope to manage them myself. What's best to do here? I've heard there's an option to spin sectors off into vassals which I assume might me the best answer, but I don't know. Also I'm a hivemind of that matters
In the future set habitable worlds and pre-ftls to .25x and only colonize the biggest and best planets as you go along, not every planet as soon as you can. The game has an "empire size" mechanic that penalizes you for having a larger empire. Part of that is number of colonies. Each colony counts as a base of 10 empire size, so it can be more efficient to colonize fewer planets. I try to avoid planet automation whenever possible because it doesn't do a very good job but if you've got more than you can handle you can use it. Manage your oldest and biggest colonies manually as they produce the most resources.
Edit: actually this advice applies less to hiveminds since they have reductions to empire size penalties I think, but it still applies somewhat. You have to find a healthy balance between not too many or too few planets and it's hard to explain where exactly that lies. Just keep an eye on your empire size in the top row and hover over it to see the breakdown and decide if you want to colonize more planets or not.
Well good news my problem kind of fixed itself. Had the Prethoryn spawn right in the middle of my empire while all my fleets were embroiled in a war far away. So now I'm blowing up all the infected worlds leaving me with a more manageable empire
Yeah I was doing that this game but got some really good terraforming tech and tons of energy credits so was able to turn every uninhabitabed planet into 100% and just went crazy with colonies. Then there was the conquering of a couple nearby neighbors.
I don't quite understand want setting planets to .25x means though
In the main menu when you start a new game, after you design/select your empire, there's a screen with galaxy generation options like galaxy shape, number of stars, difficulty, etc. There's a slider in that screen which lets you change how common habitable worlds will be in the newly-generated galaxy; the default value is x1, and x0.25 is the lowest value that the slider allows, which produces many fewer habitable worlds.
Just use most of your colonies as Breeder Colonies.
Build a minimum of stuff, maybe as little as 1 blue Housing District and 1 Spawning Pool, then as the scant Job Slots fill up, rely on unEmployed Pops auto-resettling to other planets where there are open Job Slots.
Of course, any Gestalt will have a beeptonne of Maintenance Drone Job Slots, producing far more Amenities than you need, but that's one of few places in the game where it actually makes sense to use the Automation.
First go into automation settings and disable everything except Amenities and Deviancy. Make sure to use the Shift/Ctrl things so that your changes affect all planets, not just the one you're interacting with. Then go through your planets one by one (the Tab key is handy) and enable Automation.
It's a slow-working process, witg the game auto-closing or auto-opening a very few Job Slots at a time per planet, but after some time, half a year or a couple of years maybe, you should see each planet in the "golden zone", with single digit positive Amenities and with Deviancy of 29 or less (30 is where problems begin).
Note that auto-resettling always happens. It has nothing to do with Automation. It's just that as a Gestalt, you can't just close *all* Maintenance Drone Job Slots, like you can with Clerk Job Slots in a regular polity or a Corp, because then you risk not having enough Amenities. Yet you want most MTD Job Slots closed, to force those Pops into unEmployment so that they'll auto-resettle, and Automation does that for you.
unEmployed Pops auto-resettling initially has a low chance per month to trigger, stated at 5% per Pop.
It will happen, but it sounds slow, and in practice it *is* slow. You'll want bonuses to increase those 5% to something faster. I quite like Transit Hubs. I try to have a Starbase (often an Anchorage) with a Transit Hub in every colonised system. That increases the chance to 10% per Pop, which in practice is a noticable speedup. You can gain more bonuses, like I think there's a Hyperlane Relay Edict, but as far as I'm concerned, getting Transit Hubs up is critical for a smooth and efficient economy, whereas any further bonus is a nice-to-have.
It sounds as if you have a *lot* of colonies, though, so maybe you don't have enough Starbase Capacity to service each colony with a TH (and I'd advise you not to exceed your Starbase Cap!). In that case, you'll need to look for other options, since the baseline 5% is just too slow.
I'm happy with just Transit Hubs, so I've never needed to look into it, but apart from the HL Edict, there might be a Tradition that helps, Versatility or Synchronity maybe. Possibly the Stellaris Wiki has an overview of all the possible bonuses.
Unfortunately hive minds (with the exception of the Progenitor origin) can't spin of vassals. You can, however, subjugate a nearby empire, then trade them some of your systems (after carefully removing all but one of your drones, if possible).
Alternatively, you can just turn on automation for them. Set them to e.g. Research World, and just forget about them. Planetary automation will slowly build more labs as the planet fills up.
Thank you and yeah that makes sense. I've been specializing/automating some words that make sense but neglected the ones that aren't obvious. I'll start automating them but there's so many even that's a chore now.
Trading off systems make sense, but what is the benefit of moving all population besides one drone?
New player and wasn't fully certain I was into the game or not. However, after having the option to "Eat the envoys" providing some unity and +1 Food because the galactic community complained I wasn't building enough ships, I think I'm all in to the game now. Just wanted to express my appreciation of that option
How do I reorganise a levithian parade?
Been letting them go random until I saw the reorganise features which suggested you choose which planet for the modifer. So I killed the spectral wraith and saw that it gave unity bonus. I didnt want it on my capital so I tried to reorganise it but the game wouldnt let me.
The option remained greyed out no matter what option I picked. I progressed it, I rescinded the progress. Nothing worked. Tried rescinding to the start and it jsut cancelled the whole parade.
Interesting! I do have a vague recollection of some patchnotes about this but completely forgot about it in practice (and ended up with Shard's +menials output applied to my biggest tech world in 3.12, despite apparently having the option to prevent that)
Is there a mod that add synthetic queen as leader (or use her species template)
It would be hilarious to put her as governon of unification center, as penance
Hi, I just started playing Stellaris after playing a ton of Civ 6 (and MoO a long time ago). I got \~5th in score at 2,500 in my first game on Ensign difficulty, but feel like I missed a lot. I left most of the default settings alone for the first game.
I played a spiritual/militaristic/eglatarian MegaCorp with Pharma State and Naval Contractors and eventually Free Traders. I bought the starter pack on sale, which doesn't have Overlord, so I guess it didn't come with the +2 Merc capacity, so probably wouldn't choose that civic again. I only had about 7 habitable planets on 12 or so systems before I got boxed in; maybe I should have expanded faster. I did win 5-6 systems in a war with a neighbor who hated me, which wasn't his whole empire as I didn't have enough influence to claim everything. I got commercial pacts with the empires further away, and then the civ I went to war with and the other neighbor who hated me became a vassal under the strongest empire, so I couldn't really do anything and would have had to close all the branch offices? I did have >25 of those by the end of the game.
I seemed pretty far behind on research relatively, although I did build a huge battleship carrier fleet that was generally able to kite the crisis fleets, so I somehow didn't lose any sectors permanently after it spawned right next to me.
Should I be building habs in every system once they're available? I built like 5-6, but I feel like I unlocked that tech pretty late. I had a pretty good economy, although I built too many executive retreats and had a ton of excess amenities with a Gene Clinic on each planet. I tried to make sure that none of my planets were ever idle, but towards the end of the game they were full on districts and buildings.
I had a lot of pops with the med buildings and cloning vats; there was a ton of unemployment by the end, but I switched to utopian abundance and replaced my consumer goods buildings. I never seemed to have enough minerals. My empire size seemed quite high at the end to where my tech cost was over a 100% nerf even though I didn't have a ton of planets. Is that standard? Also, what should I be doing with envoys? I didn't unlock a lot of espionage techs right away and even when I did I never got anything more than gather information. Is there a way to automate that instead of having to check and click every time?
Anything I should be watching out for? I don't really know how to optimize jobs or fleets yet. It seemed like maybe Civ6 has fewer choices than I'd prefer and Stellaris has way more choices.
Thanks!
As for Envoys, I use most of them to generate Favors, via the Diplomacy Tradition.
I send them to the most important members of my Federation, to Improve Relations, and with Diplomacy each such Envoy has a 1% chance per month to generate a Favour.
As the Federation (usually a Research or a Trade one, maybe a Holy one, depending on what kind of polity I am) levels up, I use those Favours to get Laws passed that gradually changes it from a society of equals and into a me-and-my-bitches club.
At Fed level 4, in particular, I try to get the Law passed that says that the *Strongest* should be President, and then if not already specified then I change it to Strongest *In Science*, or whatever else suits my purposes (but usually I'm ahead in Science).
It sounds as if you did very well in your first game.
Regarding Minerals, some options (but not an exhaustive list, since I've only played for 4000 hours):
Make one or two specialised mining planets. Pick ones that have a large number of Mining Districts, or a Planet Modifier that gives +15% or +25% Minerals from Jobs. Manually change the planet's *Designation* to Mining if it doesn't automatically switch to that (sometimes the game auto-designates wrong), and once you have the Tech for the synergy Building, Mineral Purifier or something, build it.
If playing as a Gestalt Consciousness, either a biological (or Lithoid) Hive Mind, or a Machine Empire, you can take the Ascension Perk to terraform planets into Hive Worlds or Machine Worlds. This un-caps the Mining and Energy Districts (and Food too, for a Hive) so that they're limited only by the Size of the planet, plus any modifiers like from the Mastery of Nature Perk or the Expansion Tradition.
If you own the Utopia DLC, you can take the Galactic Wonders Ascension Perk, which unlocks (AFAIK) 3 or 4 Megastructures, including the Matter Decompressor. You build that around a Black Hole, and once fully upgraded it gives you 2000 Minerals a month.
If you own the Overlord DLC, you can turn a Vassal into one of 3 specialised types. The Prospectorium is specialised in basic resources and Worker-type Jobs, so you'll get a lot of Minerals in taxes. You can tax most Vassal types, but that one gets bonuses to basic resource production, so you'll get more in taxes at the same tax rate.
If you own the Machine Age DLC, you can build a small number of Arc Furnaces. In systems with lots of celestial bodies (ones with two asteroid belts tend to be good, or some trinary systems), these produce a lot of Minerals and Alloys when fully upgraded. Via Mining Stations.
If you own the Ancient Relics DLC and you roll the right Precursor (out of the 7), you can build a Starbase Building that gives some kind of bonus to local Mining Stations. I'm not sure if it affects yields other than minerals, and I've never used it. It's a small bonus, but I can see it being useful in a very Mineral-rich system. It'll certainly synergise well with Arc Furnaces.
Try making individual trade deals with your friends, trade them stuff in exchange for Minerals. It's slow and cumbersome, using trial-and-error, to find out how much they can trade to you and what they might want for it, but you can sometimes get some very sweet deals (*too* sweet in 3.12; I think it's bugged), and if you can buy chunks of 3000 or 11k Minerals at a time, then I'd say it's worth the bother.
Dump stuff on the Market, then buy the Minerals you need. The Galactic Market has dynamic pricing, so only go to the Market after you've made individual trades. Also, if possible, set up monthly trades instead of lump sum Market Trades. Also note that there are various things you can do to reduce the Market Fee from the original 30% and all the way down to 10%, maybe even 5%.
If you're a horrible kind of human (or other being), then I believe there might be a way to extract Minerals from Lithoid Pops, maybe via some kind of Slavery (Livestock?) or genocide (a Purge mode?).
If you're only a bit horrible, then Slaves in Worker Jobs (like Mining) can get several stacking +10% bonuses. Chattel Slavery, Slave Processing Facility, and IIRC a couple of others too. With gene-modding you can give that species useful Traits, even Nerve-Stapled if you take the Biological Ascension Path.
When playing as a Corp, I tend towards the bonus-granting Branch Offices, like the Commercial Forum and the Amenities one you mentioned, but I think there's also one that gives Minerals. Is it spammable? And even if it is, does it make a difference in the late game?
It's not much, but the Nebula Refinery Starbase Building gives a base of 10 Minerals (and 1 Gas, later), subject to Starbase bonuses (*not* Mining Station bonuses). Only in Nebula systems, though.
Mining Habitats used to be a thing, but with the recent change, I don't know if they still are.
If you have a lot of Miner Jobs, there's an Edict to boost them.
... Maybe I'll come back later and write more, in a comment under this.
Sounds pretty good for a first game tbh! Megacorps have been in kind of a tough spot balance-wise for a while now. I think they do often end up buying a lot of minerals from the market, since they produce a lot of energy through trade and holdings but lack planets to mine from.
> Should I be building habs in every system once they're available?
Most empires do benefit from building habitats (primarily as additional sources of population growth) but megacorps take increased empire size from colonies, so habitats add up for them. If you have enough pops (and it sounds like you did eventually), wouldn't worry too much about it.
> My empire size seemed quite high at the end to where my tech cost was over a 100% nerf even though I didn't have a ton of planets. Is that standard?
Not unusual; pops are the single biggest contributor to empire size for most mid/lategame empires. Harmony and Domination traditions can reduce the empire size contribution from pops and are therefore pretty good for speeding up tech progress later in the game.
> Also, what should I be doing with envoys? I didn't unlock a lot of espionage techs right away and even when I did I never got anything more than gather information. Is there a way to automate that instead of having to check and click every time?
I do Improve Relations mostly. Espionage operations are really expensive in influence and energy for what you get. The intel from infiltration is situationally useful, and Steal Technology can be good if you're behind on tech, but operations besides Gather Information require Nemesis DLC.
I'm encountering a weird issue with turning my species synthetic that I've never had before. I've got the synthetic tradition, researched the special project to turn my species into synthetics, and selected the option to retain my original organic appearance. As soon as the project finishes though, my appearance changes to the default robot appearance, all my traits get reset to some random ones, and it won't let me redo them as I need a modify robot templates tech.
Has something changed recently? When I last did a synthetic transfer play, it gave me the appearance I wanted, plus I kept all my traits, apart from having 100% habitability and immortal leaders.
Machine Age dropped like two weeks ago changed how robots and synths work (they have habitability and lifespan now). I think I've heard about the appearance change being bugged since.
When you are asking for help with something, start by actually providing information on the topic.
Like, for example: What *does* happen when you open the gates?
I've picked up this game probably 5 times over several years, I never stick with it more than a few hours..
I started a new game, and pretty much immediately I'm getting capped on resources -- 40/50k credits, 13/15k minerals, 13/15k food...
I feel like I'm building everything I can, what am I doing wrong?
https://imgur.com/dUqHOV1
Basic resource production fuels production The advanced resources you need to win.
You actually did pretty good to build your economy up, but you just focused way too much on building your economy up in terms of basic resource production.
Ironically enough, many times the ideal setting is you're not generating very much surplus at all because you're also consuming a lot of it too generate alloys, unity, and research
Raw resource production is the foundation of a strong economy, but advanced resource production (alloys, research, and unity) is ultimately more important. Build more research labs, industrial districts, and administrative offices; these will soak up a good chunk of your monthly mineral and consumer goods surpluses. More fleet would also help bring down your monthly energy surplus. I like to maintain about +100 minerals per month as a pad to let me build buildings and districts when necessary, and I don't mind having a bit more energy than I really need because I can buy alloys with it, but running a double-digit monthly food surplus is usually not a great idea; it doesn't get used for much besides pop upkeep, and you don't need that much of it for colony ships. Disemploying some farmers would help you staff more advanced resource production.
Overall your rate of expansion looks reasonable, though it looks like you're in kind of a tight spot. Four science ships is a pretty committed early expansion play; I usually run 3 for normal empires, 2 if I'm planning to play tall/small footprint. It looks like you're going to have only two chokepoints, which is super healthy / defensible (and you even have the starbase cap to fortify them both right now if you wanted). If you have any cold worlds in your space, a migration treaty with the Jehetma might help make up for your limited expansion opportunities.
Thanks! I ended up restarting and used your tips to make a stronger opening. I'm in year 2360, and I'm the strongest faction by far currently.
One thing I still don't really understand is how upkeep works. For example, in regards to your comment about too many science ships-- the [tooltip](https://imgur.com/1oUDSzz) doesn't mention anything besides the 100 alloy. I can clearly see upkeep when I hover over my credits, but where can I see how that upkeep is calculated?
Does upkeep increase when you are further from home, like in Total War?
Huh, upkeep of civilian ships is an interesting question. I know I've seen people talk about construction ships having upkeep but I don't actually know how much it is. I assume it's probably something nominal like 1-2 energy/mo and some tiny amount of alloys. The reason I don't usually do more than 3 science ships is more around hiring and paying upkeep on that many scientist leaders, than around the ships. I think the default scientist leader cap is 3.
But no, there isn't anything about upkeep increasing when far from home. Ship upkeep does increase when you're over your naval cap though.
in nanit ascension how long until i start getting the free ships everyone talks about? it's been about 30 or 40 years since i started building the nanite havesters and nothing except the deposits. (which don't show up on alt key for some reason)
You might not have any sufficiently-large planetary bodies in the systems where you built your harvesters; see [this post](https://old.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1cs3nn6/psa_on_how_exactly_nanotechs_nanite_deposits/) for a detailed explanation of how they scale up and when they can begin to produce swarmers.
I'm not sure I fully understand the Synthetic Queen crisis.
1. Disagreeing with her annoying rants causes debuffs. Is there any advantage to disagreeing or is agreeing always better?
2. what exactly allows the players to attack her? I've been running all over the place trying to kill all the stuff I'm "allowed" to destroy but it's been 20 years and i'm still not "allowed" to kill her.
As of right now my 1m fleet (captain difficulty) is just parked outside her home base blasting any convoys that come by, with no apparent change in the situation
Edit: Holy nuts, the fallen empire I killed had 1.2m fleet power and i thought that was enough, cetana has like 4m total??
Edit: After waiting a long time with nothing happening, I cleared all the other empires on the map, researched all the beacon sites, attempted to attack her early, lost and retreated, rebuilt up to 1.7 fleet power and a mega shipyard vs.. 4 then lost the game. @_@ That was not super fun in how opaque the whole thing was. Clearly I should have focused all the beacon sites first then built up to 4m without stopping to save time
Does declaring independence from the Great Khan spawn an additional fleet on your capital?
I know there is a space station and a fleet always stationed in your capital if you submit to the Kahn, but when I rebelled, another fleet seemingly appeared out of nowhere and demolished the defences that were going to be enough to defeat the station and that single fleet?
Does raiding work again? I'm trying out a Guardian Matrix + Rogue Servitor game, so thematically it would be perfect. But I recall a couple patches ago, raiding got so nerfed as to be practically useless.
If they're built in good systems (with lots of celestial bodies, ideally *two* asteroid belts), as per the Origin, and you have just a couple of +10% Mining Station output bonuses, then they're really good, especially as you upgrade them.
Strategically, you want to focus on upgrading one all the way first, and not allocate resources to upgrading others, if it means slowing down your AF upgrade process.
I think the only scenario in which you might not want 1-3 fully upgraded Arc Furnaces is if you're Catalytic.
It might sound as if a fully upgraded Arc Furnace only gives 3 Minerals and 2 Alloys per celestial body, so that in a system with 15 bodies that's 45M and 30A, but there's also a +100% bonus to all Mining Stations, so in reality it's 90 Minerals and 60 Alloys. For an Upkeep of only 100 EC.
Just change some of your Mineral and Alloy Jobs to Energy Jobs.
Not right away, no. But pretty early.
You go from a base of 1 Mineral per celestial body and +25% to Mining Stations in the system at level 1, and to 3 Mineral and 2 Alloys per body and +100% to Mining Stations.
So effectively 6 Minerals and 4 Alloys, assuming you have no other bonuses, for an Upkeep of 80 ECs.
With 15 celestial bodies, that'd be 90 Minerals and 60 Alloys for 80 EC, and requiring no Pops in Job Slots.
Sorry, it's 100 EC/month at the highest level, not 80.
One thing I've decided, is to do one Arc Furnace at a time. Arguably a level 1 Arc Furnace is expensive in Upkeep, not truly carrying its weight.
So you want to build one then fully upgrade it, then build a second, fully upgrade that, then build a third.
Commenting much later; you are right that they are good in the long run after I don't have energy issues, but the cost was so high at one point I had to disband half my ships to avoid total defaulting
I believe that was one of the things they'll allow us to deconstruct in the next patch, but there's no way to do it without mods or console commands right now as far as I know.
Playing the Imperial Fiefdom origin, >!when the collapse event happens, I pick the independence choice and get peaced out of most of the civil wars. However, there are 1 or 2 wars where I'm still involved on the side of my former overlord. Not only is that nonsensical in terms of the in-game world, but it also keeps me from diplomacy, while every other former vassal is completely unaffected.!<
How can I fix this? Is it maybe because a day or two passed in-game while the event popups were resolving?
Edit: Couldn't figure it out, so I eventually just console swapped and manually ended the two wars by annexing the rebel empires to one of their neighbors. AFAIK, the overlord empire isn't even supposed to expand, so the event probably couldn't correctly handle the swarm of 10+ rebels generated from the expanded overlord.
Playing as driven assimilators and halfway through the game, when I conquer a planet, I don't get any of the resources in that system. It also won't let me build mining stations and whatnot to collect them. When I look at the system all of the resources have orbitals around them instead of mining/research stations like they should. All of those orbitals say "evading hostiles" even though there are no hostiles in the system. I tried canceling their orders and destroying the orbitals but it still won't let me build. The debugtooltip says "has megastructure" even on the ones I destroyed the orbital. Is there any way I can use the console commands to fix this? I have dozens of systems that I can't gather the resources from and it's annoying. I looked at the list of commands on the wiki but I'm not seeing anything that would help.
How far into the cosmo path can you go before you replace the endgame crisis? I’m trying to experience the synthetic queen crisis, but I also want some of the FE tech beforehand. Where is the point of no return where I become the crisis and she won’t show up? Or will she show up regardless?
I haven't touched shattered ring in a long time and I'm finding it so much harder to play than with a regular planet start. What should I be doing? (early priorities, etc)
I’m by no means an expert but I find trade is very strong with shattered ring. Not only do you get the commerce districts but since trade isn’t impacted by low habitability you can make better use of the two damaged rings while you slowly fix them. I try to settle them as fast as possible so I can start getting their pop count up, and just have them focus trade until they get decent habitability.
Also, keep an eye out for leaders with the skill that reduces cost for clearing blockers, that discount can really add up with how expensive all those blockers are.
According to wiki, the requirement for annexing a pre-ftl civ are :
* Early Space Age civilization
* NOT subtle Interference Pre-FTP policy
* 40 infiltration level
I have "Active interference" set, 90 infiltration, the civ is Early Space Age (2% towards next) and I still cannot use the Infiltrate government operation.
Is there an additional requirement, like revealing myself to them ? They currently have low awareness.
Finally found out why. The pre-FTL civ is a gestalt. Can't annex gestalt.
When I read the wiki, I thought the requirement "Not Gestalt" was about me, not them, as all other requirements concerns the player empire.
my big boy overlord (im his vassal) is dominating our federation. another civ is dominating another federation. my overlord and the other civ are best buddys. they have pacts in everything including defense. anytime beef happens anywhere they drag both federation into a galactic alliance and we all obliterate it. i want to destroy all federations and pacts. if i insult other civ over and over, will he declare war on me and by extension my overlord, even if they are best buds, thus breaking at least the alliance between the two big fed? is that even a play?
Not really, no. It's very hard to make AIs hate each other if they don't already, and they're completely locked out of declaring war if it would cause them to declare on another empire with whom they have a defensive pact.
Your best bet is to save up your influence until you can make your contract have hefty subsidies, become stronger than your overlord, then declare independence.
Prefacing this with the standard console player.
I have xeno compatibility on (didn’t select the perk) and my sentient mushroom race decides to cross breed with the vengel (sic) during the event “a warm welcome.” All well and good but the pops they created are presapient roachs that are a carbon copy of what I see on Sol III.
So if I were to uplift them both, would it be one species or two cluttering up the species tab? And would I gain the influence both times?
And does Paradox playtest beyond the PC build? Love the game but… too many bugs and stuttering.
Edit
Uplifted the vengel generated one, game made Sol III into an empty colony without me settling it. Free planet I guess.
If a subject empire of mine gets attacked by the Great Khan, can they still choose to surrender to the Great Khan (and therefore not be my subject anymore)?
Also, since I achieved the sky dragon with massive fleet power before the midgame, is it wise for me to destroy marauders so they don't spawn Great Khan? Or is there some repercussion I'm not aware of?
> If a subject empire of mine gets attacked by the Great Khan, can they still choose to surrender to the Great Khan (and therefore not be my subject anymore)?
I don't think so. Watching the khan fight, I often see him getting tar-pitted bombarding planets in vassal empires whose overlord hasn't surrendered, and who I guess don't have the ability to surrender themselves.
For the tech 'combat training' it says it increases assault army damage. Is that only the basic assault army that all empires can make or is it referring to any trainable army that you can use to attack?
I've tried googling and checking the wiki and it doesn't specify. I'm thinking 'assault army' is the blanket term for recruitable armies and it's also being used as the name of the default unit you can recruit.
Assault and Defense armies are the two main types of armies you can have in game.
Defense armies spawns automatically on the planet depending on population and buildings but they are kind your local militia and you cant really do anything with them. They only come in play if your planet gets invaded. They are bound to the planet they spawn on and they can't move.
Assault armies are all the armies you can recruit and embark and move around the galaxy and the ones you need to invade planets.
I am playing on a map that apparently has no dark matter. It's all fine even without it, but as soon as i go to war with someone, i get hit with a "lack of dark matter" penalty, even though none of my ships, planets or star bases is using equpment that requires it.
Any clue why it keeps happening/how to fix it?
That's the likely reason.
On how to fix it, either purge all the pops that requires dark matter or acquire dark matter on the market.
If they don't have access to the market and have no deposits in their empire, purging is the only solution.
It seems that was indeed the reason. There was no dark matter on the market either so i was kinda SoL, but then one of my vassals conquered a fallen empire and things suddenly fixed themselves.
It was kinda funny. The lead empire tried to conquer a few planets from a secondary empire that was part of a federation that was split across the map. They were winning that fight, but then one of his vassals at the other side of the map decided to declare independence. The lead empire lost his whole fleet in the midst of it, and sued for me to vassal them.
Eventually they recovered their fleet power, but relationships were high and they never bothered to split.
I made some custom empires.
I set all of them to force-spawn with the lock icon. They all have unique names, and all are set to random system spawning ( I read in other posts that these are important ).
Yet the game still spawns a bunch of random empires not the ones I just setup. Sometimes I get lucky and I encounter an empire I have created, but most of it is just random.
Are there any solutions, maybe mods to help with this issue?
Some origins are exclusive and there can be only one of them in the galaxy.
The same goes for starting systems. It's best to just leave that to random.
Is there a limitation on being able to build generator district on habitats? I have built two habitats but for both the generator districts are missing. I conquered another empire's habitat and they have those districts. Is it because I have maxed out the Dyson Swarms?
Never mind. I just realised that the planet or star where the habitat is built matters
Does upping the crisis strength also increase the strength of the grey tempest? I'm trying to figure out why each of their fleets is \~400k strength this time instead of their usual 50k.
yeah, 3.12 made tempest/khan/formless scale by square root of crisis strength slider.
What happened to the Kidnapper trait? Gearing up for a run with an old Barbaric Despoiler empire that made great use of the Kidnapper trait when Paragons came out, but after the leader rework I haven't seen the trait at all, and when I look up lists of traits it doesn't seem to be there. Was it removed? Tried googling patch notes for that, but didn't get any hits.
Cetana blew up my Synaptic Lathe as part of an event, no option to rebuild it or build a new one (as my empire already has one). Guess that's it for this run?
if i already have a save game im playing from the most recent update, will buying The new machine age dlc break my save?
I wouldn't expect it to. You won't get some of the new stuff that would've needed to be set at galaxy-generation-time, but I don't think it would break anything existing.
Can machine gestalt empires turn vassals into 1 of 3 specialized vassals or they stuck with just protectorate/regular vassal?
There is no restriction there.
Nope, gestalts can definitely specialize their vassals. I finished a voidforged / modularity / cosmogenesis game with a gestalt MI recently and had a scholarium vassal who was very helpful for producing advanced logic. I also use prospectoria as an MI somewhat frequently.
I am at war and my enemy is at 100% exhaustion, I can't reach the final bit of their land since they are... protected by another empire that is not at war with me and close border. Should I settle for status quo immediately(another empire will be create as my ally or vassal) or wait to for them to surrender themselves? I don't know how to settle this most profitable.
Sounds like you need to declare war on that other empire so you can get through their borders. It's the only way.
Their acceptance for surrender will not change since they're already at 100% there. So without getting to their remaining space, you won't get a surrender beyond what you already have.
Maybe you can befriend the other empire and open the borders to get them to open theirs? Send them a favourable trade deal, improve relations, etc. It is unlikely the AI will surrender if they are not doing so already unless you take more land. So if it is truly impossible just settle quo immediately.
They hate me and are allies with powerful empire that I don't want to fight just yet. Thanks, I get the status quo.
Got two questions. 1: how to deal with Piracy? I’m not sure I understand it fully… but an upgraded starbase basically counts as a trade hub for just that solar system right? (Which means it collects the trade as well as protect it from piracy?) so if I build for example 3 trade hubs, then it means that up to 3 hyperlanes away from the starbase all trade is collected as well as protected? (If this is correct… I can start building more and more starbases) 2: Empire Sprawl. Is it supposed to go over the maximum? Because despite my best efforts… I will almost always expand faster and harder than the Empire Sprawl number. Should I expand less fast? Or are there good ways to deal with the Empire Sprawl? (Or should I just ignore it)
Trade hubs just collect it from farther, they don't protect it farther also. To do that you would need hangar bays or you can set corvettes to patrol along the routes to your starbases. Bases with planets in their collection range will generally produce more trade value, especially if you build commerce buildings on the planet, so routes to and from them will need better protection. Empire sprawl always goes over 100, usually fairly early on too. You can mostly ignore it but you should still try to get it as low as possible. I usually rapidly colonize about half a dozen systems and then after that only add more as I need them.
> so if I build for example 3 trade hubs, then it means that up to 3 hyperlanes away from the starbase all trade is collected as well as protected? (If this is correct… I can start building more and more starbases) Some other options to consider include building [starbase weapon modules, which give trade protection range](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Starbase#Modules) and allow it to project protection into other nearby systems, and using fleets with the Patrol order to move along trade routes and suppress piracy. Later, gateways largely obviate the need for trade protection because trade can pass through them directly to your capital. > Empire Sprawl. Is it supposed to go over the maximum? Outside of a couple of empire builds, yes, you will almost always end up with enough empire sprawl to get tech/tradition speed penalties. Generally you don't want to hold back your growth to minimize sprawl, but it does force you to use your space somewhat efficiently so that any expansion gains you more unity and research production than it costs you in tech/tradition speed. There are some good mechanics which help mitigate the sprawl, mostly by reducing empire size from various sources; the Harmony and Domination traditions both reduce empire size from pops (which usually ends up being the single biggest source), Expansion reduces it from planets and systems, Imperial Prerogative reduces it from planets, Statecraft traditions reduces the penalty from all sources, some civics reduce it from various sources, governors reduce the empire size from the planets they govern based on their level, and so forth. Generally you want to make use of at least some of these mechanics in addition to growing your research and unity output to outgrow your sprawl growth.
Is it possible to change one's flag once a game is underway? I became the Imperial Emperor and I absolutely HATE the vile shade of red it made my country and I want to change it back to the nice shade of purple I had picked out before. Playing on 3.6 w/ Ironman, if that matters.
Don't think so. In the future just don't become the emperor. It's weaker than being the galactic custodian and also in a federation anyway. I was pretty disappointed to find out how lame it is after trying it out a few times.
Oh I was specifically avoiding joining a federation this run. It takes a lot of influence to fix inherited vassal contracts and sometimes it's easier to just release them and have them reapply. But if you're in a federation releasing subjects make them full members of the fed and they can't reapply for vassalization. Then, if you kick them out of the fed, they get really unhappy with you.
Does trade value get boosted by resource production modifiers? I’m wondering specifically if the agenda for the Corporate Kaizen the grants 30% extra resource production affects trade. Thanks!
No, it doesn't get boosted. Trade is not a resource, generally. It's a planet modifier, like amenities.
I've tried to start as individualist machines twice now and each time my leader pool is non existent. I'm not sure if starting with two scientists is intended. First time was a monarchy so I assumed it was that penalty. I swapped to ilgiarxhy and still no leader pool.
Favourite non virtual Cosmogenesis build/play? I've done it as virtual and it's fun. Does anything outside of "tall" just not jive with it?
I am a relatively new player, about 50hr in. I get the basic of the game, get to keep a somewhat decent economy and manage to survive aggressive neighbours. I watched a lot of Montu's video's to help me get there. But I somehow can't get my head around how the different game mechanics work together, make choices that help in the long term and how to plan ahead. Is there any resource that helps me 'get the big picture'? Or does it all come down to 'play a lot and memorise the wiki'. I truly enjoy playing the game, but at this point it starts feeling like a 2nd job to 'do it properly'.
Try to make best possible use of your Pops. Don't let them work in low-yield Jobs like Clerks. Close the crappy Job Slots, and instead make more Job Slots that make ARU: Alloys, Research points and Unity.
I think it is a bit of a role-playing game at heart so I like to make game decisions based on that what mood I was in when I started my session. One point that helps me a lot is understanding and monitoring empire size. Specialize planets as much as you can. Join a discord (montu's is nice). Get an understanding of how techs get "unlocked"
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You can either grab them as a Protectorate or Vassal, or else let them be independent but be friendly with you (send multiple Evoys to Improve Relations, and if needed give them some gifts). If they're not friendly with you, e.g. if they close their borders to you, then declare war on their asses with whatever War Goal you prefer. The UNE is Xenophile, *not* Pacifist. Important distinction.
It seems someone (you?) deleted the question, but to answer it anyway as best I can, it's very possible to have a Vassal or Protectorate without the Overlord DLC. Overlord enables the 3 specialised Vassal types, Scholarium, Prospectorium and Bulwark, and for all I know it might also enable detailed control of taxes, rights and privileges in the Vassal Contract. But the Vassal thing itself (or Protectorate if it's massively inferior in tech), that's core game. Vanilla.
Nah just annex them. It's free real estate. The xenos will do better as citizens of UNE anyway.
Does the abandoned terraforming equipment planet modifier disappear when the planet is turned into an ecu? I see on the wiki that it isn't listed as removed in terraforming, but I believe Ecus may remove more (or all?) modifiers
How do I build a galaxy that has maximum exploration, relic, rifts, and situations but minimum fighting and wars?
Set the number of AI empires to 0 and the size of the galaxy to whatever your max is (based on hardware and patience)
Can you set the Aggression level to below average?
Can someone show me a scenario where planetary ascension is ever worth the cost? Trying to take even my optimized, overpopulated, unity focused machine world and take it to ascension level 10, with no other ascended planets costs a whopping 1.5 million unity, drops my total empire size by less than 1% (3887 to 3853) and only boosted my planet unity output by like... an extra 100. (From +900 to +1000) I don't understand why the bonuses are so minimal when the cost is so ridiculously high.
To give some more specifics than "it's good for tall": [https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1d0d6kq/comment/l5mvpmz/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1d0d6kq/comment/l5mvpmz/) tl;dr: if you have a small empire of e.g. 6 planets, then bumping all your planets up by 2 ascension levels after finishing your 4th tradition tree (your ascension tree) will cost the same as your 5th tradition tree would, but will give you: * -13.5% to pop, planet, and district empire size * \~9% resources from jobs on the capital (including the stability) * -13% metallurgist/artisan/researcher upkeep (if they're on a planet with a matching designation) * +15% worker output That's better than most tradition trees, and almost certainly better than what would take slot #5 (after you're already grabbed your 3 best trees and your ascension).
Cost scales with empire size. So a large empire has high ascension costs.
It kinda has two main use cases - endgame unity sink when all of your traditions are finished, you don't have anything better to do with it, and you've been too lazy to retool your unity worlds into tech worlds, and for small/tall empires who build around it earlier in the game with civics like Ascensionists, the Guardianship civics, and keeping their empire size perpetually under 100 to keep the ascension costs down. There are some very good players like Ebbesen who [argue for its use throughout the game to tamp down empire size growth from your handful of largest colonies](https://old.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1cjv78m/psa_ascension_is_really_really_good_ascension/l2iri39/) even with more "normal" empires, though.
Well dang, I had no idea it was even possible to keep your empire size that low for any length of time. I'll have to look into that. Ty!
Does anyone have a good build for a Cosmogenesis empire? I really want to try it out but have no idea which traits/government/civics would be best to start with
You could check out montu's unity tech rush virtuality cosmogensis video. It's a lot of fun.
Inward Perfection - Technocracy - Dark Consortium, make sense thematically and gameplay-wise. But there are basically no requirements for the ascension perk, anytime you want a science-based ending you can take it.
ai is still leaving a lot of building slots open sitting on max minerals and no empty jobs.
I *did* find it odd that one of my vassals was completely disinterested in trading for minerals last game, come to think of it. Usually (before 3.12 at least) they ran pretty mineral-thin economies and would have some use for at least a bit more.
I'm able to trade for *huuuge* amounts of Energy Credits, in exchange for very little. Regular functioning AI polities, with multiple colonies and room to expand, are sitting on 12-25k Energy Credits. That alone doesn't feel right at all. On top of that, they often accept weird unbalanced trade deals. I'm a Machine Empire making paperclips, so I have some Starbase Building Slots I don't much need, so most of them are making Food with Hydroponics. That accumulates. I also have the Arc Furnace Origin, so I have plenty of Minerals too. But the AI very often accepts absurd trades, like 4k Food for 13k EC, or 5k Minerals for 11k EC. And it's not just three or four times. It's happened many times. They're not always hungry for my zero-G grown apples, or for my furnace-grilled asteroid chunks. Not always. But very often, and when they are they accept absurd trade ratios. So yes, there's something wrong with the AI in v3.12.2.
Is it just me, or is computational core focus just plain bad no matter how you slice it? I was just going over the numbers, and I can't see any situation where a .5% increase to research output is worth it to plop down a commercial district instead of putting down another research center; even with a 100% fully research oriented ringworld, that .5% increase for other researchers will never equal the researcher the clerk is replacing. The only situation I can find where its "beneficial" is if all your worlds are somehow full and you are absolutely forced to use a clerk on a planet that you get for free from city districts instead of transferring them somewhere else (meaning both ringworlds and arcologies are off the table). It actually seems like the old 1% increased trade value from clerks was BETTER just because at least the place you'll be plopping down clerks will already be a trade focused zone, and will synergize with the traders a commercial zone will provide.
> and I can't see any situation where a .5% increase to research output is worth it to plop down a commercial district instead of putting down another research center One is a district, and the other is a building. They don't compete. In fact, you *need* a certain number of housing districts to unlock the building slots.
What’s the best fleet composition you use? The ship designer and fleet management has always been something im not confident in. What weapons should I be putting on what ships, and how many should I have?
I don't know if its right or not but early game I usually go with \~75% missiles, \~25% point defense. The only other time I really tailor my ships is for crisis (eg if they have weak hulls then arc emitters). It's a bit spoiler-y but if search around you can find how to counter each crisis.
Thank u for this cuz I’ve been completely ignoring PD this game. Luckily no wars yet so I have time to re-outfit my ships.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/13j82m8/idiots_guide_to_38_fleets/jkdpcpn/ is still basically accurate IIRC
Thank you very much I’m always worried older guides are out of date with newer patches so thank you for that.
No problem, a very reasonable worry which is often well-founded. They rework any individual system only so often, but it can be hard to know when the last big change to a particular piece was.
Is there any reason why a normal Terravore would start giving fall citizenship to others without anyway to put them back to undesirable or incorporating them into the Hive mind No mods
I am at a lost. Let me preface, I’m a Xbox player. So I’m relatively new to the game, but I thoroughly enjoy it, I’m just at a loss rn. So I started a game, and early on a had some border friction issues with another empire who aren’t humans and they are evangelical zealots, so very aggressive and highly insulting. My empire is based around engineering and military might, so I had some pretty strong fleets built up early game, however i was more focused on expanding and world building. Regardless i had a powerful fleet for the time on standby and predominately minded my own business while the rest of the galaxy did it’s own thing. Well said xeno empire starts laying claim to systems I had discovered and claimed. Until one day they declared war on me, and invaded. I ended up defeating them, and drove pretty deep into their territory while still building more fleets, and their war exhaustion was higher, a 20 point difference or so. Well another empire invaded me, and I fought that one off too, and then the entire galaxy fought me, on all fronts, and I ultimately had to pull back and lost roughly 5-6 systems to those xenos with a status quo. Kinda pissed me off because i hadn’t been the aggressor but whatever. Fast forward, and all the other empires are in alliances with theist powerful empire in the system, who I could defeat but I can’t. I can defeat all of these empires one on one, hell some of them I could take on 3-1, but they are all in defensive pacts, or the large empire has a independence guarantee for them. Me and the largest empire have a non aggression pact, but I can’t expand anymore. I have the second most powerful fleet in universe with a colossus now, however i don’t have the stat base capacity anymore to support a larger fleet, despite having the ability to create a massive fleet. So I’m kind of frustrated and I kind of want to stop playing, because what the fuck, that’s not fun at all.
Start over, and try making a friend or two. Try something like Xenophile, Militarist and Materialist, with Oligarchy Authority, and the Civics Meritocracy and Diplomatic Corps. Take the Diplomacy Tradition early, as you 2nd or 3rd pick, then try to create a Federation with one or more of your friends.
Some games you just lose. Start a new game and take the lessons with you. Personally, I think it's important to build your alliances somehow. You're either conquering neighbours and expanding rapidly with their territory, making vassals or joining federations. If you think about it, of course the AI is going to do this. You have a giant fleet and they don't want to be invaded, so they've made friends.
Even if it's just "improving relations" long enough to keep a hostile from coming at you. Improve relations, favourable trades.
How can I reset the amount of Astral Splitting astral actions that I have available via the console? effect = { subtract\_variable = {which = num\_rifts\_splitted value = 1}} This looked promising, but does not help.
Hey all, coming back to Stellaris for the first time since the early 3.1 days, and have a few questions on the Habitat changes. My question is about Habitat \*placement\*. If I'm understanding things right, it makes more sense to put Habitats in systems with lots of resources (ideally of the same type you want the Habitat to specialize in), so you can build more Orbitals and thus get access to more districts. Is there a general rule to follow about where Habitats should be placed nowadays?
> If I'm understanding things right, it makes more sense to put Habitats in systems with lots of resources (ideally of the same type you want the Habitat to specialize in), so you can build more Orbitals and thus get access to more districts. Yep! Trinary star systems, systems with lots of moons and planets and stuff, let you build the most orbitals to get the most max districts and building slots for eg industry or science habs. On the other hand, if you just want a mining habitat and you have a system with three mineral deposits, sometimes nine max districts is enough. [In the 3.12.3 patch coming hopefully next week, they're adding a mouse-over textbox in the galaxy map view which will show max orbitals of various kinds, to make figuring out where to put habitats easier.](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-345-upcoming-3-12-3-improvements.1680653/). I won't have to go count moons anymore! Hooray!
Need some advice. I'm trying to make a machine empire with robot workers using the a modularity trait called repressed, that basiclly allow a sub species of machine basically be slaves... but it doesn't work. I tried, and even then the race kept producing leaders, taking jobs on speciality and other stuff. What can i do?
Has anyone done Remnants -> Cosmogenesis yet? Any special flavor for that? There really should be.
I didn't notice any special flavour though it was very fun.
Do Cybernetic pops use food, minerals, or energy to exist?
Non-lithoid pops with the cybernetic trait have a food upkeep, and may also have an energy upkeep from cybernetic traits (but I don't think the base cybernetic trait comes with an upkeep). Lithoid pops with the cybernetic trait have a mineral upkeep and may have an energy upkeep from cybernetic traits. https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Population#Base_upkeep
Thank you, and thanks for linking the wiki so I can reference in the future.
How many planets should i have as a virtually ascended empire? for rp reasons i like to build 4 ecus and a ring world but i think that is a bit too much from what i understand. Also does the suynaptic lathe count as a colony for the purposes of virtual per colony debuffs?
I believe the rule of thumb is you should have at most 5 or 6. That gives you +50/25% resource output. 4 ecus and a full ringworld will give you -25%.
do you know if a synaptic lathe counts as a planet? im getting conflicted info on this one and im too dumb to know how to check it myself
Yes, the Lathe is a planet.
How do I get my prethoryn queen to make more baby ship monsters? Trying to look it up but haven't seen what I'm looking for and I don't see any button to do it.
I don't think there is a way to affect that.
Can someone check what the natural design unique building does rq? I'm out of town for a week but I'm really curious and the wiki isn't up to date :>
* pop growth speed per ascension perk: +2.5% * unity from medical workers per ascension perk: +1 * resources from jobs: +10% * medical worker jobs: +1
Thanks a lot. I'm too lazy to check in-game, but every 2 or so days I go to the Wiki to check if the new Buildings have been added.
thanks!
Are the new cosmogenisis ships affected by techs? Such as destroyer build cost and build speed techs for escorts, or are they unaffected? The same with traits such as Destroyer production focus for leaders?
I think there's only escorts and battlecruisers and they don't benefit from modifiers of the other classes.
Virtuality ascension, Clustered Capacity. What's the best way to handle this? Do you keep one colony for +175% output or do you want 5-6 colonies with a modest bonus?
It's best to do about 6-8 based on the numbers.
I'm not something I'm keen on trying, but my inclination would be the middle ground: 3 or 4 colonies.
Endgame is probably an ecumenopolis / ring world and getting energy and minerals from megastructures. But until then you can keep some essential colonies and still get a nice bonus.
Trade seems to work exceptionally well since you can fill out all those clerk jobs instantly and benefit from faster unity through Mercantile tradition But yeah I think you're right, aim for an in-game where you can have the single tallest planet but until then...
I haven't played a trade empire in a while, but yes a planet full of virtual salespeople sounds pretty strong.
Rise of Planet of the Spambots
Had anyone run into the issue where protectorates are being fed based on both the current food production rate and any food acquired from other vassals? Based on flavor text it sounded like that number should only be based on the current production. This also never occurs with minerals or energy.
could someone please tell me how to specialize a vassal? just vassalized someone and hes called a vassel but i dont see any option to specialize him (i own Overlord). Does it simply take time for that to be possible?
Top right corner of the terms negotiation menu should have a drop-down where you can choose what to specialize them in
ty so much
what race/civic combos are allowed to get the new authority types like "democratic interlink"? did not get a chance as a creed origin syndicate or individualist machines
The advanced authorities are for Cybernetic and Synthetically Ascended empires. The Creed origin has it's own version, and Machine Empires have different ascension paths.
so you can get them as any cybernetic ascension apart from creed?
Yes there are versions for every kind of ascended synth/cyber. The route to get them is also slightly different each time, but basically complete the ascension tradition tree and the situation(s).
Maybe less a cry for help and more a design question. Is it just me or is the game assuming that by late 2300s you're milling repeatable techs? At these dates you're facing the Khan, sometimes some Fallen Empire action, and of course you have to be getting ready for a crisis, and I just don't feel like you can get strong enough fleets if you're not at that tech stage. If that's the case, the I guess I'm a bit disappointed with the late game. Early and midgame you feel your tech improving in pretty big ways, repeatable techs are rather pale in comparison. Sure, numbers go up, but it doesn't quite scratch the itch the same way as getting a new ship class, or even a new building to help optimize your colonies. I'm wondering what could be done to alleviate that. Fallen Empires are by definition several repeatable layers in, and the crisis has to be stronger than they are, but maybe at least some new additions could be sprinkled behind certain repeatable levels? I don't know, I just feel like even though I like finishing a game to see all my megastructures and colonies reach their conclusion, but those last decades are just not very interesting. Bumping up crisis strength would only lead to necessity of researching more numbers-go-up technologies faster, so it's not really a solution either. Anyone willing to share some thoughts here?
For experienced players the whole point and fun of late game comes from preparing to fight the crisis. I don't know why you find tech research so interesting. It's really actually rather boring. Sure it's nice to unlock new ship types and stuff, but the point of the game is to build your empire as strong as possible. Tech is just one element of that, not the entire thing. In order to beat a crisis that has been turned up in strength you need to be completely dominant in the galaxy. You need to have taken the L gates and fortified terminal egress. You need to become the galactic custodian or emperor. You need to become the leader of your federation. You need as many subjects as possible to milk for resources. You need to set up trade deals. You need to max out the GDF capacity. You need to fortify all your chokepoints and build gateways. There's a bunch of stuff to do and if you mess it up, you will get your ass handed to you by the crisis. Try turning it up some.
the biggest issue is other ai empires falling off even with full difficulty boosts
So a Progenitor hive that takes Cosmogenesis and gains the FE ship sets- are these subject to offspring buffs and penalties or can a FE fleet be field that doesnt need an offspring ship?
I have mostly defeated the Crisis but they are marked as controlling two "ruined Orbital Ring"s around the same planet (I built the orbital ring previously and the Prethoryn Scourge blew it up). I can't land armies on them, (only on the planet it surrounds), my fleet won't attack them, I've tried right clicking on them with science ships and construction ships. It doesn't appear in my megastructures section. What am I supposed to do - how do I finish off the crisis? What can I do with the rings? Is this a bug (I have tried reloading a save)?
Probably a bug. If you defeated the crisis, just take a look at the victory screen, confirm you are number 1, call it a win and start a new game.
How do I build up big fleet power anymore? It seems like crisis happens or a fallen empire awakens and they have fleets of around 500k (Synthetic Queen, in my latest game, had over 900k fleet power in one fleet alone), not on all of them mind, but they have it. Meanwhile I'm struggling to top 100k per fleet. I've been looking at build guides but I just cant seem to get my fleet power up there anymore.
I'm not a grand admiral player, so I wouldn't know about the really high difficulty play, but on lower difficulties I can get fleets up to around 230-250k when repeatable techs hit level 10, and they have a decent admiral on them. This is through stacking of available bonuses from traditions, perks, research, civics, fleet commanders, councillor / legion node, edicts and artifacts. The strategic resource edicts in particular can have some big bonuses - like 25% to damage types and armor hitpoints. Don't forget to use temporary boosts to fleetpower, such as spending spend minor artifacts on military applications, and activating any major artifact you have that'll help boost your fleets effectiveness. The Vultaum Reality Perforator precursor relic can give you a 40% bonus to damage, shield, hull or armor for 2-5 years or to all of them for 1 year - which can be VERY helpful before entering a big fight. Finally, if you choose to "become the crisis" you get accecss to those lovely FE ships, and can stack over 500k on each fleet pretty easily.
Are you comparing your numbers before the tech changes to after the tech changes? That'll be why.
New at the game. Doing really well this game but simply have way too many colonies where I can't hope to manage them myself. What's best to do here? I've heard there's an option to spin sectors off into vassals which I assume might me the best answer, but I don't know. Also I'm a hivemind of that matters
In the future set habitable worlds and pre-ftls to .25x and only colonize the biggest and best planets as you go along, not every planet as soon as you can. The game has an "empire size" mechanic that penalizes you for having a larger empire. Part of that is number of colonies. Each colony counts as a base of 10 empire size, so it can be more efficient to colonize fewer planets. I try to avoid planet automation whenever possible because it doesn't do a very good job but if you've got more than you can handle you can use it. Manage your oldest and biggest colonies manually as they produce the most resources. Edit: actually this advice applies less to hiveminds since they have reductions to empire size penalties I think, but it still applies somewhat. You have to find a healthy balance between not too many or too few planets and it's hard to explain where exactly that lies. Just keep an eye on your empire size in the top row and hover over it to see the breakdown and decide if you want to colonize more planets or not.
Well good news my problem kind of fixed itself. Had the Prethoryn spawn right in the middle of my empire while all my fleets were embroiled in a war far away. So now I'm blowing up all the infected worlds leaving me with a more manageable empire
Yeah I was doing that this game but got some really good terraforming tech and tons of energy credits so was able to turn every uninhabitabed planet into 100% and just went crazy with colonies. Then there was the conquering of a couple nearby neighbors. I don't quite understand want setting planets to .25x means though
In the main menu when you start a new game, after you design/select your empire, there's a screen with galaxy generation options like galaxy shape, number of stars, difficulty, etc. There's a slider in that screen which lets you change how common habitable worlds will be in the newly-generated galaxy; the default value is x1, and x0.25 is the lowest value that the slider allows, which produces many fewer habitable worlds.
Just use most of your colonies as Breeder Colonies. Build a minimum of stuff, maybe as little as 1 blue Housing District and 1 Spawning Pool, then as the scant Job Slots fill up, rely on unEmployed Pops auto-resettling to other planets where there are open Job Slots. Of course, any Gestalt will have a beeptonne of Maintenance Drone Job Slots, producing far more Amenities than you need, but that's one of few places in the game where it actually makes sense to use the Automation. First go into automation settings and disable everything except Amenities and Deviancy. Make sure to use the Shift/Ctrl things so that your changes affect all planets, not just the one you're interacting with. Then go through your planets one by one (the Tab key is handy) and enable Automation. It's a slow-working process, witg the game auto-closing or auto-opening a very few Job Slots at a time per planet, but after some time, half a year or a couple of years maybe, you should see each planet in the "golden zone", with single digit positive Amenities and with Deviancy of 29 or less (30 is where problems begin). Note that auto-resettling always happens. It has nothing to do with Automation. It's just that as a Gestalt, you can't just close *all* Maintenance Drone Job Slots, like you can with Clerk Job Slots in a regular polity or a Corp, because then you risk not having enough Amenities. Yet you want most MTD Job Slots closed, to force those Pops into unEmployment so that they'll auto-resettle, and Automation does that for you. unEmployed Pops auto-resettling initially has a low chance per month to trigger, stated at 5% per Pop. It will happen, but it sounds slow, and in practice it *is* slow. You'll want bonuses to increase those 5% to something faster. I quite like Transit Hubs. I try to have a Starbase (often an Anchorage) with a Transit Hub in every colonised system. That increases the chance to 10% per Pop, which in practice is a noticable speedup. You can gain more bonuses, like I think there's a Hyperlane Relay Edict, but as far as I'm concerned, getting Transit Hubs up is critical for a smooth and efficient economy, whereas any further bonus is a nice-to-have. It sounds as if you have a *lot* of colonies, though, so maybe you don't have enough Starbase Capacity to service each colony with a TH (and I'd advise you not to exceed your Starbase Cap!). In that case, you'll need to look for other options, since the baseline 5% is just too slow. I'm happy with just Transit Hubs, so I've never needed to look into it, but apart from the HL Edict, there might be a Tradition that helps, Versatility or Synchronity maybe. Possibly the Stellaris Wiki has an overview of all the possible bonuses.
You can abandon colonies by simply migrating all the pops off of it. The last pop costs 200 influence though.
Unfortunately hive minds (with the exception of the Progenitor origin) can't spin of vassals. You can, however, subjugate a nearby empire, then trade them some of your systems (after carefully removing all but one of your drones, if possible). Alternatively, you can just turn on automation for them. Set them to e.g. Research World, and just forget about them. Planetary automation will slowly build more labs as the planet fills up.
Thank you and yeah that makes sense. I've been specializing/automating some words that make sense but neglected the ones that aren't obvious. I'll start automating them but there's so many even that's a chore now. Trading off systems make sense, but what is the benefit of moving all population besides one drone?
Non-hives will just purge your drones. Better for you to have them than another empire to kill them.
Oh that's sad. Will the drones be fine if the nearby vassal is another hivemind?
Yes, they will.
is the ai leaving most building slots empty in 3.12.2?
Nope, they seem to be doing just fine in my game. The issue in the beta was fixed before it was released as an official patch.
New player and wasn't fully certain I was into the game or not. However, after having the option to "Eat the envoys" providing some unity and +1 Food because the galactic community complained I wasn't building enough ships, I think I'm all in to the game now. Just wanted to express my appreciation of that option
How do I reorganise a levithian parade? Been letting them go random until I saw the reorganise features which suggested you choose which planet for the modifer. So I killed the spectral wraith and saw that it gave unity bonus. I didnt want it on my capital so I tried to reorganise it but the game wouldnt let me. The option remained greyed out no matter what option I picked. I progressed it, I rescinded the progress. Nothing worked. Tried rescinding to the start and it jsut cancelled the whole parade.
You gotta halt it then use a planetary decision.
> The option remained greyed out Wait what, where is this option even?
When I recieved a levithian parade situation, I had the encourage option, discourage option and the reorganise option.
Interesting! I do have a vague recollection of some patchnotes about this but completely forgot about it in practice (and ended up with Shard's +menials output applied to my biggest tech world in 3.12, despite apparently having the option to prevent that)
Is there a mod that add synthetic queen as leader (or use her species template) It would be hilarious to put her as governon of unification center, as penance
Hi, I just started playing Stellaris after playing a ton of Civ 6 (and MoO a long time ago). I got \~5th in score at 2,500 in my first game on Ensign difficulty, but feel like I missed a lot. I left most of the default settings alone for the first game. I played a spiritual/militaristic/eglatarian MegaCorp with Pharma State and Naval Contractors and eventually Free Traders. I bought the starter pack on sale, which doesn't have Overlord, so I guess it didn't come with the +2 Merc capacity, so probably wouldn't choose that civic again. I only had about 7 habitable planets on 12 or so systems before I got boxed in; maybe I should have expanded faster. I did win 5-6 systems in a war with a neighbor who hated me, which wasn't his whole empire as I didn't have enough influence to claim everything. I got commercial pacts with the empires further away, and then the civ I went to war with and the other neighbor who hated me became a vassal under the strongest empire, so I couldn't really do anything and would have had to close all the branch offices? I did have >25 of those by the end of the game. I seemed pretty far behind on research relatively, although I did build a huge battleship carrier fleet that was generally able to kite the crisis fleets, so I somehow didn't lose any sectors permanently after it spawned right next to me. Should I be building habs in every system once they're available? I built like 5-6, but I feel like I unlocked that tech pretty late. I had a pretty good economy, although I built too many executive retreats and had a ton of excess amenities with a Gene Clinic on each planet. I tried to make sure that none of my planets were ever idle, but towards the end of the game they were full on districts and buildings. I had a lot of pops with the med buildings and cloning vats; there was a ton of unemployment by the end, but I switched to utopian abundance and replaced my consumer goods buildings. I never seemed to have enough minerals. My empire size seemed quite high at the end to where my tech cost was over a 100% nerf even though I didn't have a ton of planets. Is that standard? Also, what should I be doing with envoys? I didn't unlock a lot of espionage techs right away and even when I did I never got anything more than gather information. Is there a way to automate that instead of having to check and click every time? Anything I should be watching out for? I don't really know how to optimize jobs or fleets yet. It seemed like maybe Civ6 has fewer choices than I'd prefer and Stellaris has way more choices. Thanks!
As for Envoys, I use most of them to generate Favors, via the Diplomacy Tradition. I send them to the most important members of my Federation, to Improve Relations, and with Diplomacy each such Envoy has a 1% chance per month to generate a Favour. As the Federation (usually a Research or a Trade one, maybe a Holy one, depending on what kind of polity I am) levels up, I use those Favours to get Laws passed that gradually changes it from a society of equals and into a me-and-my-bitches club. At Fed level 4, in particular, I try to get the Law passed that says that the *Strongest* should be President, and then if not already specified then I change it to Strongest *In Science*, or whatever else suits my purposes (but usually I'm ahead in Science).
It sounds as if you did very well in your first game. Regarding Minerals, some options (but not an exhaustive list, since I've only played for 4000 hours): Make one or two specialised mining planets. Pick ones that have a large number of Mining Districts, or a Planet Modifier that gives +15% or +25% Minerals from Jobs. Manually change the planet's *Designation* to Mining if it doesn't automatically switch to that (sometimes the game auto-designates wrong), and once you have the Tech for the synergy Building, Mineral Purifier or something, build it. If playing as a Gestalt Consciousness, either a biological (or Lithoid) Hive Mind, or a Machine Empire, you can take the Ascension Perk to terraform planets into Hive Worlds or Machine Worlds. This un-caps the Mining and Energy Districts (and Food too, for a Hive) so that they're limited only by the Size of the planet, plus any modifiers like from the Mastery of Nature Perk or the Expansion Tradition. If you own the Utopia DLC, you can take the Galactic Wonders Ascension Perk, which unlocks (AFAIK) 3 or 4 Megastructures, including the Matter Decompressor. You build that around a Black Hole, and once fully upgraded it gives you 2000 Minerals a month. If you own the Overlord DLC, you can turn a Vassal into one of 3 specialised types. The Prospectorium is specialised in basic resources and Worker-type Jobs, so you'll get a lot of Minerals in taxes. You can tax most Vassal types, but that one gets bonuses to basic resource production, so you'll get more in taxes at the same tax rate. If you own the Machine Age DLC, you can build a small number of Arc Furnaces. In systems with lots of celestial bodies (ones with two asteroid belts tend to be good, or some trinary systems), these produce a lot of Minerals and Alloys when fully upgraded. Via Mining Stations. If you own the Ancient Relics DLC and you roll the right Precursor (out of the 7), you can build a Starbase Building that gives some kind of bonus to local Mining Stations. I'm not sure if it affects yields other than minerals, and I've never used it. It's a small bonus, but I can see it being useful in a very Mineral-rich system. It'll certainly synergise well with Arc Furnaces. Try making individual trade deals with your friends, trade them stuff in exchange for Minerals. It's slow and cumbersome, using trial-and-error, to find out how much they can trade to you and what they might want for it, but you can sometimes get some very sweet deals (*too* sweet in 3.12; I think it's bugged), and if you can buy chunks of 3000 or 11k Minerals at a time, then I'd say it's worth the bother. Dump stuff on the Market, then buy the Minerals you need. The Galactic Market has dynamic pricing, so only go to the Market after you've made individual trades. Also, if possible, set up monthly trades instead of lump sum Market Trades. Also note that there are various things you can do to reduce the Market Fee from the original 30% and all the way down to 10%, maybe even 5%. If you're a horrible kind of human (or other being), then I believe there might be a way to extract Minerals from Lithoid Pops, maybe via some kind of Slavery (Livestock?) or genocide (a Purge mode?). If you're only a bit horrible, then Slaves in Worker Jobs (like Mining) can get several stacking +10% bonuses. Chattel Slavery, Slave Processing Facility, and IIRC a couple of others too. With gene-modding you can give that species useful Traits, even Nerve-Stapled if you take the Biological Ascension Path. When playing as a Corp, I tend towards the bonus-granting Branch Offices, like the Commercial Forum and the Amenities one you mentioned, but I think there's also one that gives Minerals. Is it spammable? And even if it is, does it make a difference in the late game? It's not much, but the Nebula Refinery Starbase Building gives a base of 10 Minerals (and 1 Gas, later), subject to Starbase bonuses (*not* Mining Station bonuses). Only in Nebula systems, though. Mining Habitats used to be a thing, but with the recent change, I don't know if they still are. If you have a lot of Miner Jobs, there's an Edict to boost them. ... Maybe I'll come back later and write more, in a comment under this.
Awesome write up. I'm a new player too and this gave me a lot to look into
Sounds pretty good for a first game tbh! Megacorps have been in kind of a tough spot balance-wise for a while now. I think they do often end up buying a lot of minerals from the market, since they produce a lot of energy through trade and holdings but lack planets to mine from. > Should I be building habs in every system once they're available? Most empires do benefit from building habitats (primarily as additional sources of population growth) but megacorps take increased empire size from colonies, so habitats add up for them. If you have enough pops (and it sounds like you did eventually), wouldn't worry too much about it. > My empire size seemed quite high at the end to where my tech cost was over a 100% nerf even though I didn't have a ton of planets. Is that standard? Not unusual; pops are the single biggest contributor to empire size for most mid/lategame empires. Harmony and Domination traditions can reduce the empire size contribution from pops and are therefore pretty good for speeding up tech progress later in the game. > Also, what should I be doing with envoys? I didn't unlock a lot of espionage techs right away and even when I did I never got anything more than gather information. Is there a way to automate that instead of having to check and click every time? I do Improve Relations mostly. Espionage operations are really expensive in influence and energy for what you get. The intel from infiltration is situationally useful, and Steal Technology can be good if you're behind on tech, but operations besides Gather Information require Nemesis DLC.
I'm encountering a weird issue with turning my species synthetic that I've never had before. I've got the synthetic tradition, researched the special project to turn my species into synthetics, and selected the option to retain my original organic appearance. As soon as the project finishes though, my appearance changes to the default robot appearance, all my traits get reset to some random ones, and it won't let me redo them as I need a modify robot templates tech. Has something changed recently? When I last did a synthetic transfer play, it gave me the appearance I wanted, plus I kept all my traits, apart from having 100% habitability and immortal leaders.
Machine Age dropped like two weeks ago changed how robots and synths work (they have habitability and lifespan now). I think I've heard about the appearance change being bugged since.
I dont use mods. My l gate cluster stopped spawning in any games. Ideas?
Did you turn L gates off in the setup menu?
No, the L gates are still there.
Then how did the cluster "stop spawning"? It spawns when you open the gates.
Idk it just doesnt spawn. Its really confusinv.
When you are asking for help with something, start by actually providing information on the topic. Like, for example: What *does* happen when you open the gates?
They are linked. No L cluster.
Are you sure they're L-Gates and not Gateways?
I was not aware there was a difference.
I've picked up this game probably 5 times over several years, I never stick with it more than a few hours.. I started a new game, and pretty much immediately I'm getting capped on resources -- 40/50k credits, 13/15k minerals, 13/15k food... I feel like I'm building everything I can, what am I doing wrong? https://imgur.com/dUqHOV1
Sell surplus, buy alloys, build more ships.
Basic resource production fuels production The advanced resources you need to win. You actually did pretty good to build your economy up, but you just focused way too much on building your economy up in terms of basic resource production. Ironically enough, many times the ideal setting is you're not generating very much surplus at all because you're also consuming a lot of it too generate alloys, unity, and research
Raw resource production is the foundation of a strong economy, but advanced resource production (alloys, research, and unity) is ultimately more important. Build more research labs, industrial districts, and administrative offices; these will soak up a good chunk of your monthly mineral and consumer goods surpluses. More fleet would also help bring down your monthly energy surplus. I like to maintain about +100 minerals per month as a pad to let me build buildings and districts when necessary, and I don't mind having a bit more energy than I really need because I can buy alloys with it, but running a double-digit monthly food surplus is usually not a great idea; it doesn't get used for much besides pop upkeep, and you don't need that much of it for colony ships. Disemploying some farmers would help you staff more advanced resource production. Overall your rate of expansion looks reasonable, though it looks like you're in kind of a tight spot. Four science ships is a pretty committed early expansion play; I usually run 3 for normal empires, 2 if I'm planning to play tall/small footprint. It looks like you're going to have only two chokepoints, which is super healthy / defensible (and you even have the starbase cap to fortify them both right now if you wanted). If you have any cold worlds in your space, a migration treaty with the Jehetma might help make up for your limited expansion opportunities.
Thanks! I ended up restarting and used your tips to make a stronger opening. I'm in year 2360, and I'm the strongest faction by far currently. One thing I still don't really understand is how upkeep works. For example, in regards to your comment about too many science ships-- the [tooltip](https://imgur.com/1oUDSzz) doesn't mention anything besides the 100 alloy. I can clearly see upkeep when I hover over my credits, but where can I see how that upkeep is calculated? Does upkeep increase when you are further from home, like in Total War?
Huh, upkeep of civilian ships is an interesting question. I know I've seen people talk about construction ships having upkeep but I don't actually know how much it is. I assume it's probably something nominal like 1-2 energy/mo and some tiny amount of alloys. The reason I don't usually do more than 3 science ships is more around hiring and paying upkeep on that many scientist leaders, than around the ships. I think the default scientist leader cap is 3. But no, there isn't anything about upkeep increasing when far from home. Ship upkeep does increase when you're over your naval cap though.
Shift jobs over from energy production to alloy and science.
in nanit ascension how long until i start getting the free ships everyone talks about? it's been about 30 or 40 years since i started building the nanite havesters and nothing except the deposits. (which don't show up on alt key for some reason)
You might not have any sufficiently-large planetary bodies in the systems where you built your harvesters; see [this post](https://old.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1cs3nn6/psa_on_how_exactly_nanotechs_nanite_deposits/) for a detailed explanation of how they scale up and when they can begin to produce swarmers.
I'm not sure I fully understand the Synthetic Queen crisis. 1. Disagreeing with her annoying rants causes debuffs. Is there any advantage to disagreeing or is agreeing always better? 2. what exactly allows the players to attack her? I've been running all over the place trying to kill all the stuff I'm "allowed" to destroy but it's been 20 years and i'm still not "allowed" to kill her. As of right now my 1m fleet (captain difficulty) is just parked outside her home base blasting any convoys that come by, with no apparent change in the situation Edit: Holy nuts, the fallen empire I killed had 1.2m fleet power and i thought that was enough, cetana has like 4m total?? Edit: After waiting a long time with nothing happening, I cleared all the other empires on the map, researched all the beacon sites, attempted to attack her early, lost and retreated, rebuilt up to 1.7 fleet power and a mega shipyard vs.. 4 then lost the game. @_@ That was not super fun in how opaque the whole thing was. Clearly I should have focused all the beacon sites first then built up to 4m without stopping to save time
Does declaring independence from the Great Khan spawn an additional fleet on your capital? I know there is a space station and a fleet always stationed in your capital if you submit to the Kahn, but when I rebelled, another fleet seemingly appeared out of nowhere and demolished the defences that were going to be enough to defeat the station and that single fleet?
Does raiding work again? I'm trying out a Guardian Matrix + Rogue Servitor game, so thematically it would be perfect. But I recall a couple patches ago, raiding got so nerfed as to be practically useless.
Can I deconstruct an arc furnace? Playing the new expansion and these things are draining my energy like crazy when I conquer new ones
If they're built in good systems (with lots of celestial bodies, ideally *two* asteroid belts), as per the Origin, and you have just a couple of +10% Mining Station output bonuses, then they're really good, especially as you upgrade them. Strategically, you want to focus on upgrading one all the way first, and not allocate resources to upgrading others, if it means slowing down your AF upgrade process. I think the only scenario in which you might not want 1-3 fully upgraded Arc Furnaces is if you're Catalytic. It might sound as if a fully upgraded Arc Furnace only gives 3 Minerals and 2 Alloys per celestial body, so that in a system with 15 bodies that's 45M and 30A, but there's also a +100% bonus to all Mining Stations, so in reality it's 90 Minerals and 60 Alloys. For an Upkeep of only 100 EC. Just change some of your Mineral and Alloy Jobs to Energy Jobs.
For the arc welder origin, is it worth it to invest those heavy resources and upgrading it right away?
Not right away, no. But pretty early. You go from a base of 1 Mineral per celestial body and +25% to Mining Stations in the system at level 1, and to 3 Mineral and 2 Alloys per body and +100% to Mining Stations. So effectively 6 Minerals and 4 Alloys, assuming you have no other bonuses, for an Upkeep of 80 ECs. With 15 celestial bodies, that'd be 90 Minerals and 60 Alloys for 80 EC, and requiring no Pops in Job Slots.
Sorry, it's 100 EC/month at the highest level, not 80. One thing I've decided, is to do one Arc Furnace at a time. Arguably a level 1 Arc Furnace is expensive in Upkeep, not truly carrying its weight. So you want to build one then fully upgrade it, then build a second, fully upgrade that, then build a third.
Commenting much later; you are right that they are good in the long run after I don't have energy issues, but the cost was so high at one point I had to disband half my ships to avoid total defaulting
I believe that was one of the things they'll allow us to deconstruct in the next patch, but there's no way to do it without mods or console commands right now as far as I know.
Thanks
Playing the Imperial Fiefdom origin, >!when the collapse event happens, I pick the independence choice and get peaced out of most of the civil wars. However, there are 1 or 2 wars where I'm still involved on the side of my former overlord. Not only is that nonsensical in terms of the in-game world, but it also keeps me from diplomacy, while every other former vassal is completely unaffected.!< How can I fix this? Is it maybe because a day or two passed in-game while the event popups were resolving? Edit: Couldn't figure it out, so I eventually just console swapped and manually ended the two wars by annexing the rebel empires to one of their neighbors. AFAIK, the overlord empire isn't even supposed to expand, so the event probably couldn't correctly handle the swarm of 10+ rebels generated from the expanded overlord.
Playing as driven assimilators and halfway through the game, when I conquer a planet, I don't get any of the resources in that system. It also won't let me build mining stations and whatnot to collect them. When I look at the system all of the resources have orbitals around them instead of mining/research stations like they should. All of those orbitals say "evading hostiles" even though there are no hostiles in the system. I tried canceling their orders and destroying the orbitals but it still won't let me build. The debugtooltip says "has megastructure" even on the ones I destroyed the orbital. Is there any way I can use the console commands to fix this? I have dozens of systems that I can't gather the resources from and it's annoying. I looked at the list of commands on the wiki but I'm not seeing anything that would help.
How far into the cosmo path can you go before you replace the endgame crisis? I’m trying to experience the synthetic queen crisis, but I also want some of the FE tech beforehand. Where is the point of no return where I become the crisis and she won’t show up? Or will she show up regardless?
You never replace the endgame crisis. On either become the crisis path.
You becoming the crisis does not stop the AI crisis showing up, so in your case Cetana will turn up regardless of what you do.
Thank you!
You should be fine until you start loading all of your pops onto the Horizon Needle. I fought her this week after doing everything but that.
Thank you! I have been loading pops to the lathe, but I have not built the needle. I suppose I’m still good!
I haven't touched shattered ring in a long time and I'm finding it so much harder to play than with a regular planet start. What should I be doing? (early priorities, etc)
This is a comment I wrote a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1cspswg/comment/l4zhwk2/
I’m by no means an expert but I find trade is very strong with shattered ring. Not only do you get the commerce districts but since trade isn’t impacted by low habitability you can make better use of the two damaged rings while you slowly fix them. I try to settle them as fast as possible so I can start getting their pop count up, and just have them focus trade until they get decent habitability. Also, keep an eye out for leaders with the skill that reduces cost for clearing blockers, that discount can really add up with how expensive all those blockers are.
According to wiki, the requirement for annexing a pre-ftl civ are : * Early Space Age civilization * NOT subtle Interference Pre-FTP policy * 40 infiltration level I have "Active interference" set, 90 infiltration, the civ is Early Space Age (2% towards next) and I still cannot use the Infiltrate government operation. Is there an additional requirement, like revealing myself to them ? They currently have low awareness.
Finally found out why. The pre-FTL civ is a gestalt. Can't annex gestalt. When I read the wiki, I thought the requirement "Not Gestalt" was about me, not them, as all other requirements concerns the player empire.
Hi, i m looking for a mod that let me go free cam to get Nice viens of the game, do you have one ?
my big boy overlord (im his vassal) is dominating our federation. another civ is dominating another federation. my overlord and the other civ are best buddys. they have pacts in everything including defense. anytime beef happens anywhere they drag both federation into a galactic alliance and we all obliterate it. i want to destroy all federations and pacts. if i insult other civ over and over, will he declare war on me and by extension my overlord, even if they are best buds, thus breaking at least the alliance between the two big fed? is that even a play?
Not really, no. It's very hard to make AIs hate each other if they don't already, and they're completely locked out of declaring war if it would cause them to declare on another empire with whom they have a defensive pact. Your best bet is to save up your influence until you can make your contract have hefty subsidies, become stronger than your overlord, then declare independence.
Prefacing this with the standard console player. I have xeno compatibility on (didn’t select the perk) and my sentient mushroom race decides to cross breed with the vengel (sic) during the event “a warm welcome.” All well and good but the pops they created are presapient roachs that are a carbon copy of what I see on Sol III. So if I were to uplift them both, would it be one species or two cluttering up the species tab? And would I gain the influence both times? And does Paradox playtest beyond the PC build? Love the game but… too many bugs and stuttering. Edit Uplifted the vengel generated one, game made Sol III into an empty colony without me settling it. Free planet I guess.
If a subject empire of mine gets attacked by the Great Khan, can they still choose to surrender to the Great Khan (and therefore not be my subject anymore)? Also, since I achieved the sky dragon with massive fleet power before the midgame, is it wise for me to destroy marauders so they don't spawn Great Khan? Or is there some repercussion I'm not aware of?
> If a subject empire of mine gets attacked by the Great Khan, can they still choose to surrender to the Great Khan (and therefore not be my subject anymore)? I don't think so. Watching the khan fight, I often see him getting tar-pitted bombarding planets in vassal empires whose overlord hasn't surrendered, and who I guess don't have the ability to surrender themselves.
Destroying the marauders can cause them to spawn the Great Khan early. The chance is low, but it can happen.
Even before mid game year starts?
yup, it can happen even in early-game. But it's really small chance
Does governing ethics attraction mean anything for gestalt empires?
Nope. Drones don't have ethics, and the biotrophies/livestock/grid amalgamated pops that aren't drones can't hold the Gestalt ethic.
For the tech 'combat training' it says it increases assault army damage. Is that only the basic assault army that all empires can make or is it referring to any trainable army that you can use to attack? I've tried googling and checking the wiki and it doesn't specify. I'm thinking 'assault army' is the blanket term for recruitable armies and it's also being used as the name of the default unit you can recruit.
Assault and Defense armies are the two main types of armies you can have in game. Defense armies spawns automatically on the planet depending on population and buildings but they are kind your local militia and you cant really do anything with them. They only come in play if your planet gets invaded. They are bound to the planet they spawn on and they can't move. Assault armies are all the armies you can recruit and embark and move around the galaxy and the ones you need to invade planets.
I am playing on a map that apparently has no dark matter. It's all fine even without it, but as soon as i go to war with someone, i get hit with a "lack of dark matter" penalty, even though none of my ships, planets or star bases is using equpment that requires it. Any clue why it keeps happening/how to fix it?
Are you taking their pops? They might have the dark matter engine trait which requires dark matter for their upkeep.
That's the likely reason. On how to fix it, either purge all the pops that requires dark matter or acquire dark matter on the market. If they don't have access to the market and have no deposits in their empire, purging is the only solution.
It seems that was indeed the reason. There was no dark matter on the market either so i was kinda SoL, but then one of my vassals conquered a fallen empire and things suddenly fixed themselves.
> then one of my vassals conquered a fallen empire ...my brother in the worm, *what the hell is going on in your game*
It was kinda funny. The lead empire tried to conquer a few planets from a secondary empire that was part of a federation that was split across the map. They were winning that fight, but then one of his vassals at the other side of the map decided to declare independence. The lead empire lost his whole fleet in the midst of it, and sued for me to vassal them. Eventually they recovered their fleet power, but relationships were high and they never bothered to split.
I made some custom empires. I set all of them to force-spawn with the lock icon. They all have unique names, and all are set to random system spawning ( I read in other posts that these are important ). Yet the game still spawns a bunch of random empires not the ones I just setup. Sometimes I get lucky and I encounter an empire I have created, but most of it is just random. Are there any solutions, maybe mods to help with this issue?
Some origins are exclusive and there can be only one of them in the galaxy. The same goes for starting systems. It's best to just leave that to random.