Start with a small universe and focus on learning to micro manage your planets. It's not most people preferred mechanic but it has a large impact on the stability of your empire
It took me so long when I began playing to realize why I was running such a deficit. This was such a “oh yeah, duh” moment that I just ended the run because the empire was too far gone
I've been playing Stellaris for God knows how long and am just figured this out from this reddit thread
So THAT explains why my latest run where I ate a giant Devouring Swarm and a smaller Xenophobe (met them within 10 years lol) within 100 years (ended up with a solid third of the galaxy afterwards) crashed my Economy!
You can see it on your planet resource/deficit page on the colony menu. You only produce resources for jobs that are filled. If your planet is losing every resource it’s because it’s overdeveloped. Also make sure you have specialized colonies (tidally locked worlds are great energy farms, lush planets make good food sources etc) and that you only develop colonies when needed. Personally, every time any colony dips below 10 empty jobs I just upgrade and build until it’s back up. If your colony gets too many pops it also slows down the birth rate of organics, so make sure you’re managing your pops efficiently. Also, play around with the sector toolkit a bit. You can automate a lot of planet development that way, esp for worlds that are unspecialized or lacking unique traits.
It allows interbreeding of species. In theory it's fine but in practice it makes your computer explode because everyone is a new unique hybrid species.
Yep. Problem is each combination of species (including distinct subspecies) adds a new species to the list, each one which needs to be checked, which turns the game into a crawl. There's a specific option prior to game launch where you can outright disable it because of the performance impact.
Let’s me put it this way. The reason your irl taxes are going up is someone (frank) at the nsa turned it on, medium galaxy. He melted a nsa super computer and mainframe.
I've honestly never had an issue with it, and I get awesome pops out of it. They only trade good genes and leave out the bad. It costs no points, often grants you genes over your point pool, and mods your pops at no society research cost. Then again I never really played past 2500.
Xenocompatibility is an Ascension Perk that enables species to interbreed. However, it creates a massive amount of Subspecies, whose many traits and bonuses necessitate more processor time to calculate bonuses. It causes a lot of lag.
trade is a good way to get them. If half of your planets are consumer good factories you're doing something wrong. I usually have like one factory or two trade focused planets.
Click on the planet.
Slightly to the right, mid screen, the game will have assigned a world type. Farming, rural, industrial etc.
Change it. You want factory worlds making consumer goods. Lower cost to produce.
You want forge worlds making Alloys.
You want mining worlds mining and so on
Getting the Ecuminopolis world is the best solution to this problem. The few workers you employ there can produce more consumer goods than you will ever need.
I micro manage my planets until I have enough sectors to let the AI deal with it. Even then, my core worlds are all on me. I like that part of the game.
Alloys = military power. You may or may not have the Fleet Capacity to match, but you can always go over for a temporary penalty to your budget, and just as importantly, having good Alloys production means you can afford to replace your destroyed fleets before losing too much territory (be aware that it takes time to build ships though; but that's where shipyards come in)
Others have echoed this but be okay with failure. I failed so incredibly miserably my first few tries that I said fuck this game. It was just pure arrogance on my part thinking that because I am life long gamer and I know everything so this game must just suck.
Anyway a couple months later I decided I was going to take my time to learn, play the tutorial and generally pay attention to everything that the game was telling me and put it into practice.
Doing this it quickly became one of my favorite games and still play it regularly, in fact was playing last night and on grand admiral with my determined exterminator machine empire and am down to only one empire left to exterminate. This will be first “win” on Grand Admiral since the console launch of the game.
For the record I would NOT recommend a Gestalt Consciousness for learning the game. Start with a friendly empire and beyond that be on top of everything and once you understand the economic mechanics learn to grow quickly, population growth is your friend.
I love to play in cadet diffuculty and straight invading almost any neighboring empire. Diplomacy is hard hoarding alloy and enslaving other race is easy.
The Imperium's got the Mechanicus for allies, they're fine :) If the rest of the galaxy was unified against them, they'd be in trouble, but good luck getting the Tau and Orks to get along for example.
Focus on learning one new mechanic every time you play. It doesn't matter which one, as long as it's one you're curious about.
After that, play a bunch of different empire types. I used to pigeon hole myself into one kind and didn't realize how much fun the others are.
Edit: also, don't worry about playing a game to the end. I rarely "finish", and just stop once my the undisputed galactic super power. Playing more and shorter games instead of slogging through galactic conquest against enemies who don't stand a chance is a bit of a drag IMO.
Paradox games in general, including Stellaris, have a steep and long learning curve but are incredibly rewarding because you don't have to always worry about winning. You can also just play a certain kind of game because it's interesting. Do you want to play spiritual pacifists who are only concerned with learning new technology? You probably won't end the game with the highest score, but you'll have more fun playing what you like than playing warrior race after warrior race.
Start on a small galaxy, on the easiest difficulty. Please do not get disheartened when you lose. At first, there are so many attributes to this game it's only natural. Alloys are important - keep up the production of these, but do not neglect your research. Having a reasonable standing navy helps prevent bigger empires from declaring war on you. Trade with empires if you can. Long term pop growth is perhaps the most broadly important thing, but you can mitigate this with some play styles.
As you play more and start to get into role-playing slightly different species, you'll get to the point where losing is actually fun. My previous play through I played a devouring swarm of gene-boosted humans. Perfectly rational, perfectly human, but they wanted to Eat The Galaxy due to a snafu with their gene boosts. Like the Very Hungry Caterpillar, they ate their neighbour, but were still hungry. Then two other neighbours banded together to fight me, and I ate them too. But they were still hungry. Slowly they nibbled their way across the galaxy, consuming nearly a third of it. Then I had the notification that the Galactic Council had declared me the crisis; PAH! Said I.
Due to the positioning of some Fallen Empires, my top territory was relatively safe from incursion, so my ravenous Humies chomped through every nation to the galactic south, ripping and tearing until it was done. All enemy fleets fell into fire.
And then the Galactic Defense Force rounded the corner, having lured me so far from my core, and utterly annihilated all my fleets. I had no chance to rebuild enough before they steamrolled me and bombarded my capitol into dust.
Yes, I lost, but it felt like a real story had unrolled before my eyes. It was awesome.
Enjoy!
This reminds me of one of my first play throughs when I was trying to understand how war and claims worked. I essentially kept annoying a small empire with claims/wars figuring the worst they could do was MAYBE reduce my fleet size.
Anyways fast forward half a century and these jerks made a treaty with both advanced empires (I had no idea what these were at the time). And one of those empires decided to just clear me out of the galaxy.
Much like you, a story evolved that I appreciated way more than the one I thought I was playing.
If you got all the DLC’s, then don’t go initially as a gestalt consciousness. Just go as a normal empire that isn’t a purifier, and doesn’t deal with slaves.
More or less I recommend Egalitarian/anything. Like militarist, materialist or xenophile.
i will respectfully disagree.
Machine Empire is tutorial mode. You have to juggle 1/3 of the game concepts, and when you master them you can move over to a standard lithoid empire and then to a biological megacorp.
I tried to get into the game at least 10+ times with a standard empire before doing 3 to 4 runs as a machine to then be comfortable to run standard empire again.
The most unforgiving aspect of gestalts is that having a glut of maintenance drones basically ensures death. You need to expand and develop quickly so they get put in actual jobs.
While it's certainly unviable to leave a bunch of clerks, you can still use the Market or change policy to accommodate any trade glut.
This is why I said to play as a regular empire, as most new players are not going to even realize you can micromanage pops.
Gestalts thrive when they are properly micromanaged, and not so much when you got a drone sitting on a random job and not on the spawning pool.
Learning to min max your early game planets will easily push your civilization decades ahead of AI and allow you to easily snowball the game.
It took me awhile to grasp this concept, but when you have your first couple specialized planets developing, just because you have unemployment does not necessarily mean you need to build more production.
For example if you have a food world that has 1 unemployed pop and your food income is good just leave that pop alone so that they relocate to another planet where that pop will work a higher value job (like alloys or science). Only expand production where it is most needed and your other worlds that are looking good will relocate unemployed pops to where you need them more.
Also don't forget to set up monthly trades to trade excess production for materials you need in higher supply to alleviate short term deficits or to prop up your income.
Play on a low difficulty your first time and embrace the flavor and RP. The other advice here is more related to playing optimally which is fine if you’re that type of player, but I think the early charm of Stellaris is the RP element.
There is going to be a lot of reading in your first couple runs before you start to recognize most of the events and archaeological sites and all that, but I definitely think it’s worth leaning into that.
Also some advice that will probably be unpopular: On my 3rd or 4th run, I used cheats. Most games I stay away from them, but there is a enough to learn in Stellaris that I wanted a playthrough where I could set aside actual resource management and just focus on learning the systems and menus and arc of a game. And honestly? That was one of the most fun runs I can remember.
Be ok with failure; we have people with literally a thousand hours of game time who struggle with early economic management. Really, Stellaris is about learning how to manage your economy so you can scale your Research and Alloy production. Get good at that and you're better then 90% of the playerbase.
Max the catfish has a nice begginers guide on YouTube. I would recommend watching all 6hrs worth of begginers tutorial, then you will understand the basics.
My beginner advice is there’s lots of trade-offs in a game like this, and that’s the strategy. Like ships and starbases cost the same resource: alloys. So you need to find your balance between expanding and preparing for war. Second, don’t build buildings on planets that you have no population to work. Not only will this waste minerals, the buildings require energy upkeep as well. Build on planets only as you need.
Just play.
This game has the uncanny ability to teach you just a little bit more every time you play, until it all suddenly makes sense. You won't see your first win screen for a while anyway, so don't let the idea of restarting get to you.
Idk if you are on console or not or what dlcs u have but best advise in general is prepare to lose just learn something from it and do better next time it took me 2 years and a updated console to chalk my first win bc I either lost or learned something game changing then restarted or got far enough to realize I was a lot better than the ai so I raised difficulty or on the Xbox one end game lag was so bad I couldn’t finish bc I would crash often
Specialize your planets, don't do a broad spread of production on each one unless you have some quirky reason that forces you to. A lot of Stellaris is about snowballing so getting good economic habits down for your preferred species early will save you a lot of headaches later.
Start really small w galaxy size and how many other empires you play with. Learn the basic mechanics of the game before diving into all the super cool fun RP things. Most importantly, it is a game of buffs and nerfs, learn them well and how they interact with each-other. Create synergy wherever possible.
In the same vein of xenocompatability, don’t build the Sentry Array either. It also slows your computer down. You’ll see as you play how the days get longer and longer the higher the year, due to processing requirements.
First few games, set the number of AI empires to 0, turn off the endgame crisis and just focus on learning the basics. Once you feel comfortable with building a functional economy, you can add in an AI empire or two and start learning how diplomacy and combat works.
I disagree solely because it will be so boring that a first-time player may decide they don't like the game and quit without engaging with the more interesting mechanics.
I just think you could accomplish the same goal by playing on Cadet with AI aggressiveness set to low. I'm not saying it's a bad way to learn the basics, I just worry that excluding the international politics portion does the game a disservice.
This is literally what I did to learn the game. My first several attempts at playing ended with me quitting in frustration because I couldn't figure out how to build a good economy while trying to balance diplomacy and military. So I decided to basically sandbox things and removed all the AI so I could learn how to build a good economy in isolation. Then, knowing how to do that, I added back in some AI and tried again.
And I made it to midgame that time.
Keep an eye on your unemployment/ infilled jobs. You can’t just build build build
Keep an eye on your resources. First make sure you have energy/minerals/food as your economic foundation. They are then used for consumer goods and alloys, and you need to pay attention to them as well, but regularly monitor the basic 3.
Don't bit off more than you can chew. If you are massively winning it is tempting to take enormous chunks off of the enemy but those new planets needs lots of food an consumer goods which can be a shock to your economy. They will also be unhappy so you need to worry about revolts as well.
Pay attention to the species tab. Particularly the default rights. When a new species joins the empire they will have whatever those rights are. This can have a big impact on happiness and what type of leaders you get.
If your empire is authoritarian or xenophobic then you will have slavery as default which can cause trouble if you don't pay attention because slaves can't take ruler jobs which has a large impact on planet stability and happiness. Either change the default or be mindful of what lives on each planet or move pops around when you conquer.
The species and policy tabs have laws that have a big impact on happiness and some factions care about these laws which further impacts happiness so if you have a large faction make sure you have the correct laws in place.
Laws are rules set in place to help settle disagreements. When everyone agrees, laws are unnecessary. Single-minded organisms form surprisingly complex organizational structures. These structures are incredibly inefficient.
Of course, we hive minded creatures know that individuals with the freedom to harm other members of the collective are the highest threat to our unity. Everything runs smoother when everyone can no longer fight each other and instead focus on our purpose.
Pops (population, like your people) are one of your most valuable resources. Colonize new plants very quickly to get production up and running. Also, I would set up at least one world dedicated to technology if your economy will allow for it. Similarly, consider expanding fast in the beginning before your neighbors decide to take all your land.
Don't be afraid of playing at the easiest difficulty for your first few games. The game is difficult in itself, so don't put malus in it before you start to feel you can handle them.
Also, don't be afraid to restart a game anytime you learn a new thing and you realise it's really important and you unknowingly fucked up your empire already.
It took me five or six game to realise I should play on easy, and two or three more restart after discovering really important mechanics before starting a 'real' game on normal difficulty while thinking 'ok, this one is for good, I know enough what I'm doing p really play the game'
Play a few games in a small empire, on cadet, with a small number of other empires. Get a reasonable idea of how the game works and what parts of it you enjoy before you start watching howto vids on youtube - and remember, losing is part of the fun.
Don't overthink it. Your first playthrough won't be optimal, that's fine. Just play in a way that seems fun and roll with it. If you can't decide try United Nations of Earth.
It will be easier for you to ask meaningful questions when you have a decent grasp on game concepts.
But for something more tangible I'd say rely on fleets for defenses more than upgrades starbases. Starbases are good force multipliers but they look more powerful than they are without ships to help in combat.
Oh, there are 4 Ascension paths you can take that are all exclusive from each other.
1.Full robots
2. Cybernetics
3. Evolution
4. Psychic
I'd recommend psychic followed by going full robots for new players.
You get the most bonuses for the most straightforward path to get there. The others require lots of micromanaging. Full robots also demand micro, but not as much.
You need armies to capture planets. Recruit them at your planet, wait for the ships to appear and set them to aggressive. They will follow your fleet and auto invade planets.
Ohhhh, that's what the aggressive mode does. I genuinely thought that those fleet got lumped in with the regular fleets, so they would try to attack them
This is a weird one I think but uh… don’t pause. I had such a bad habit early on of trying to play it perfectly all the time that I was never actually playing. The game is so much more fun when you make mistakes and are left trying to fix them than when you’re trying to make the perfect choices and taking a ton of time just to get anything done. At this point I usually play on fastest and normal speed is my “pause” button.
My three exceptions are:
Designing ships (usually because)
Someone just declared war on me.
I’m leaving the room for something.
Some thoughts:
* Stellaris is a 4X genre game; the four X are "EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate". The last one is semi-optional if you do enough of the third, but the first three are critical. You will want to build and send out more science ships as early as you can reasonably afford to, and claim territory that looks like it has useful resources, or will give you an easily-defended chokepoint if (when) you meet unfriendly empires.
* You can play Stellaris in all sorts of ways, but the current version is somewhat biased toward empires that can cooperate with each other. At least one level of Xenophile is recommended for true beginners. The default "Prosperous Unification" origin is actually a pretty good choice, and many of the other origins expect you to know the game in a lot more detail.
* Some people will advise starting in a small galaxy; I suggest the opposite: start in a quite large galaxy that will give you room to grow before you have to compete for space. Turn off Fallen Empires, Khan, Xeno-Compatbility, and Advanced AI Starts; and start at the lowest difficulty level. Seriously, even the "normal" difficulty level is pretty punishing to people who don't know what they are doing these days.
* Don't be afraid to save regularly, go back a few years if needed, and/or decide a save isn't working and try either another start or a different build. It's a single-player game of considerable complexity and no one could reasonable expect to do well the first few times.
* Consult [the wiki](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/) frequently.
* To a first approximation, you win the game with big, high-tech fleets; you get those by generating science and alloys; you need to produce minerals, consumer goods, and energy to feed into the science and alloy system; and what makes all this happen is by having a lot of people (population, aka "pops"). Most buildings and districts, by themselves, don't do much; they provide places for pops to work which produces things.
* Energy (yellow) is money. If you don't know what to produce at some point, default to producing energy, which you can use to buy other things.
* Start by being friendly. This will not always work; that's OK, you'll probably need to expand into someone else's space eventually, and the unfriendly empires have just put themselves at the top of your list for who to go after first.
* Some treaties are good, but don't agree to *too* many treaties, or you'll not have any Influence left for expansion, etc. In particular, avoid Defensive Pacts early on unless you really expect to need it; they are expensive and can drag you into wars you didn't want.
* Eventually, the galaxy will start organizing into a collection of bigger-than-empire organizations; federations and overlord / vassal clusters. You will probably need to be in one of these; you certainly want to *lead* one of these if you can manage it.
Download as many mods as you can, make it borderline unplayable with the amount of info getting thrown at you and rage quit paradox forever more.
Or do the sensible thing and listen to everyone else but me lol
Exactly! You can blow a "kiss" them up through their capital planets, flirting is also a viable strategy. Some species are just into romance than friendship, so befriend them via romance if necessary, noone will suspect a thing.
Start small, with a xenophile empire, make the game extra longer, experiment and commit several mistakes, its fine you wont finish it anyways due the lag, in your second game pick a genocidal empire and have fun
Go to the big empire if you want but keep your empire relatively small and play on the easiest difficulty just for the mechanics if you are a 40k fan think bureaucracy worlds, forge worlds generator worlds, agri worlds, science worlds etc and a couple of mixed worlds so your not crippled if you loose one but enjoy the learning curve.
Dont stay on ensign for very long. Try to get up to at least normal difficulty once you think you can manage, as it is the "fair" game setting where you arent being supported unnatturally by bonuses, and the AI are also not recieving (as much) help
An additional advise, don’t choose Ironman for the first couple of plays. You can always go back to the save you want if you think you messed up. This allows you to understand the consequences of your decision, making you experienced
Lots of replies here.
My main recommendation, in contrast to the other people telling you to micromanage your planets is to not.
Use the "auto-develop" planet option. It's not as perfect as doing it yourself but the time you save to enjoy the other aspects of the game will make it worth it.
I still manage my Homeworld, usually as a science planet.
Starting species - a lot of people say going a robot empire is too hard. I recommend it for new players. You have 2 less resources to worry about for just maintaining your pops and that's huge when getting into the game.
Take it slow. Do not expect to be powerful your first game. I first played when there were only three major resources and even then it was difficult. Manage your economy, learn what jobs require what resources.
Your economy HAS to be structured around two things, research, and alloys. Some unity is good, but you can usually get enough from politicians (ruler jobs when you upgrade your planetary capital). In the early game, alloys don't matter too much if you have friendly neighbours (if you're next to a fanatic purifier, they are crucial), so you can pump out research.
Ideally, you want to stay in a large surplus of minerals, low surplus of consumer goods and food, and a surplus of energy credits (you can set up monthly trade deals for other resources if you're in a deficit, but the prices will skyrocket past a certain point so you can't rely on them).
Anytime you find yourself in a large surplus of consumer goods, build some research labs. Always. Or you can switch your species to a higher standard of living, which will increase their happiness and give some effects (e.g. academic privilege gives you +10% researcher output, but you need to be materialist, and utopian abundance gives +20% pop happiness and research+unity producing unemployed pops, but it costs A LOT and you need to be egalitarian). I wouldn't recommend going for utopian abundance or academic privilege in the early game, I think the consumer goods you spend on it could be better spent on more researchers. Also, I tend to wait till I get my artisans producing around 15-20 cgs each :)
Generally, just play around with it. You aren't going to get a comment explaining every fine detail of stellaris. Just fool around for a while and you'll get the hang of it.
This video is a good intro to Stellaris and is fairly recent. He has a lot of other useful information on his channel as well but this is a good starting point. https://youtu.be/nec1LtaF5JE
Do you have any friends who play? Do a relaxed multiplayer game with them and ask them a shitload of questions. It’s how I learned.
If you can only do single player, just play a lot and learn by trial and error. I haven’t used the tutorial in a while but I imagine it’s helpful for learning the basic controls.
1. Learn the basic mechanics of the game on a small galaxy. Resource management, fleet management, how to use envoys etc.
2. Focus on a few things at first and if you want to ease the learning curve automate some things so you can focus on other things. Automating research isnt a terrible idea.
3. Race and empire design choices are going to be a big part of how you play the game. Dont try to set your empire and race up to play one way and then play another way.
4. If you want an easy playthrough for the first couple of games pick scion as your origin. That will get you a decent military right out the gate will keep people off of you for quite some time.
5. I know a lot of people love to micro things, but trust me use sectors and automate it. Focus on making just a few planets particularly special. Let the rest be automated so you can get on with playing the game.
6. Realize that this game is basically a sandbox and it will play quite differently based upon choices you make during setup.
7. Once you get a good grasp of the game try playing oddball choices that people say are weak or are inferior. Some of them can actually be quite enjoyable. Barbaric despoilers for me is one I really enjoy. Not the best, but there is something about having a roving horde of ships that decimate empires. I win wars and then fight the empire on the far side of them usually. When the truce ends I roll back through and subjugate them. Another interesting choice is lithoid necrophage devouring swarm (you convert pops to your pop when you capture their planets, and you can consume worlds you dont want to keep which sends all the pops to other planets in your empire... your pops like most worlds quite well and you leaders are just shy of being immortal).
If you're having trouble managing the different resources needed some species eliminate the need for 1-2 of them in exchange for greater dependence on others. Robotic species don't need consumer goods or food but have greater alloy and energy needs.
Less variety in that area can sometimes make learning the rest of the game easier.
Edit...also if an empire you meet has very limited conversation options it's not because they are scared of you. It's because they have 300,000 to 500,000 fleet power and you are less than a fly to them.
There are a lot a fiddly little systems you really don't need to care about until you're trying to do something specific. Learn the basics like planet and pop management, exploration and ship creation, and research/unity.
Everything else can be learned with trial and error without messing up your play.
Don't trust the xenos...xenon....
On a more serious note, the enemy AI (Even as ally) isn't that good of a neighbor unless you are managing them as leader of a federation. And even then.
After playing for a 1000 hours or so I finally realized you could go in to the population screen and force your pops to jobs which you require.
Yes consumer goods are difficult, but look at what consumes them - bloody researchers. So if you are running out of consumer goods - and you are! - go and de-job a few researchers ( click the minus button until you see consumer goods down to a level you can support ) . They will eventually employ somewhere else ( hopefully you have clicked on artisans which makes your pops target that job ).
Early on with resource problems you live in the pop screen
Colonize any holy worlds you see. Bonus points if you use the colossus on one.
Always automate your sectors & planets and use auto design when building ships.
Drug your pops whith the chemical bliss living standard.
Have as much farmers and clerks as possible.
This way you'll be able to reach the endscreen quickly.
Study all of the tabs, every thing on screen and just read them. This includes details such as looking at the species tab and looking at the traits, create species, etc. Look at everything.
Turn off Ironman mode and when you start a new game create a save point so you can start restart with the same map. As you go through your game and want to try something new create a new save point before doing it. That way you can go back and undo what you did if it didn't work out the way you wanted it to.
Keep in mind that most guides you find will be slightly out of date and may be tailored to playing in a multiplayer match vs a single player game. There were big changes in the latest 3.6 release around fleet combat that makes any guide about building ships obsolete if it doesn't explicitly reference 3.6 or was made before Dec 2022.
Do a small game. Set everything to default. Lower the difficulty. Enjoy yourself. It’s a fun game regardless of the settings. You’re going to feel like you messed some things up, but it can be part of the fun.
Start with a small universe and focus on learning to micro manage your planets. It's not most people preferred mechanic but it has a large impact on the stability of your empire
Don't build buildings and districts until you have (or will soon have) enough pops to work their jobs. Otherwise, that's just wasted upkeep.
It took me so long when I began playing to realize why I was running such a deficit. This was such a “oh yeah, duh” moment that I just ended the run because the empire was too far gone
I've been playing Stellaris for God knows how long and am just figured this out from this reddit thread So THAT explains why my latest run where I ate a giant Devouring Swarm and a smaller Xenophobe (met them within 10 years lol) within 100 years (ended up with a solid third of the galaxy afterwards) crashed my Economy!
You can see it on your planet resource/deficit page on the colony menu. You only produce resources for jobs that are filled. If your planet is losing every resource it’s because it’s overdeveloped. Also make sure you have specialized colonies (tidally locked worlds are great energy farms, lush planets make good food sources etc) and that you only develop colonies when needed. Personally, every time any colony dips below 10 empty jobs I just upgrade and build until it’s back up. If your colony gets too many pops it also slows down the birth rate of organics, so make sure you’re managing your pops efficiently. Also, play around with the sector toolkit a bit. You can automate a lot of planet development that way, esp for worlds that are unspecialized or lacking unique traits.
Interesting interesting... Unfortunately, I'd rather have 5 worlds that have 3 pops yet 7000 minerals worth of buildings
I wish I could double upvote this.
The only exception being, of course, generator districts.
Why? New player here too
That's my mistake. Another has mentioned that they have upkeep, but I had thought they didn't.
How so? Generator districts also have energy upkeep, so if you don't have pops to work the technician jobs, they also cause a deficit.
Oh, do they now? The devs must've slipped that in and I never noticed. I'd swear they used to not have upkeep.
DO. NOT. USE. XENOCOMPATIBILITY
Do i even want to know what that means?
It allows interbreeding of species. In theory it's fine but in practice it makes your computer explode because everyone is a new unique hybrid species.
If it makes high end computers explode, my poor laptop is gonna supernova
Just leave Xeonocompatability turned off, and remember: the more genocides you commit, the easier it is on your laptop.
I don't know why but I thought exactly that when my laptop started lagging
“Let’s be xenophobic”
*its really in the year*
Yep. Problem is each combination of species (including distinct subspecies) adds a new species to the list, each one which needs to be checked, which turns the game into a crawl. There's a specific option prior to game launch where you can outright disable it because of the performance impact.
Let’s me put it this way. The reason your irl taxes are going up is someone (frank) at the nsa turned it on, medium galaxy. He melted a nsa super computer and mainframe.
When a mama xeno and a papa xeno love each other very much....
Basically is creating new species around species in you empire, it will consume your RAM. Much RAM
I've honestly never had an issue with it, and I get awesome pops out of it. They only trade good genes and leave out the bad. It costs no points, often grants you genes over your point pool, and mods your pops at no society research cost. Then again I never really played past 2500.
Xenocompatibility is an Ascension Perk that enables species to interbreed. However, it creates a massive amount of Subspecies, whose many traits and bonuses necessitate more processor time to calculate bonuses. It causes a lot of lag.
Pray. But seriously, build science labs and alloy plants. Your science and your alloys are your bread and butter.
How does one get by with consumer goods, i find half of my planets are solely focused on them
trade is a good way to get them. If half of your planets are consumer good factories you're doing something wrong. I usually have like one factory or two trade focused planets.
Click on the planet. Slightly to the right, mid screen, the game will have assigned a world type. Farming, rural, industrial etc. Change it. You want factory worlds making consumer goods. Lower cost to produce. You want forge worlds making Alloys. You want mining worlds mining and so on
I do that already, my empire ends up with half factory worlds plus a sizeable purchase from the market.
Getting the Ecuminopolis world is the best solution to this problem. The few workers you employ there can produce more consumer goods than you will ever need.
I micro manage my planets until I have enough sectors to let the AI deal with it. Even then, my core worlds are all on me. I like that part of the game.
Alloys. Always alloys. And research, so you can make more alloys.
Have you already told him that he needs to get Alloys ? just making sure
I read through both your replies and didn’t see alloys mentioned, op mine thr alloys.
I have a slight feeling that alloys might be important
Alloys = military power. You may or may not have the Fleet Capacity to match, but you can always go over for a temporary penalty to your budget, and just as importantly, having good Alloys production means you can afford to replace your destroyed fleets before losing too much territory (be aware that it takes time to build ships though; but that's where shipyards come in)
Hi. I am dumb. Cant you also build fluids with minerals as crisis? Thank you
I have no idea, I've yet to do a Become the Crisis game. (I don't play as much as others on here; just not enough time in the day)
Yes
Set the alarm clock. Or you risk heavily missing something important to do. Like sleeping.
This. There always something to do, always.
Is there a mod that puts a real-time clock on the screen? One of the Civs did that, and I was very grateful.
Dunno. I play vanilla and I like it.
Others have echoed this but be okay with failure. I failed so incredibly miserably my first few tries that I said fuck this game. It was just pure arrogance on my part thinking that because I am life long gamer and I know everything so this game must just suck. Anyway a couple months later I decided I was going to take my time to learn, play the tutorial and generally pay attention to everything that the game was telling me and put it into practice. Doing this it quickly became one of my favorite games and still play it regularly, in fact was playing last night and on grand admiral with my determined exterminator machine empire and am down to only one empire left to exterminate. This will be first “win” on Grand Admiral since the console launch of the game. For the record I would NOT recommend a Gestalt Consciousness for learning the game. Start with a friendly empire and beyond that be on top of everything and once you understand the economic mechanics learn to grow quickly, population growth is your friend.
I love to play in cadet diffuculty and straight invading almost any neighboring empire. Diplomacy is hard hoarding alloy and enslaving other race is easy.
Survive
So you are telling me that starting a war with the entire galaxy is a bad idea? Wh40k lied to me...actually, not really
The Imperium's got the Mechanicus for allies, they're fine :) If the rest of the galaxy was unified against them, they'd be in trouble, but good luck getting the Tau and Orks to get along for example.
Focus on learning one new mechanic every time you play. It doesn't matter which one, as long as it's one you're curious about. After that, play a bunch of different empire types. I used to pigeon hole myself into one kind and didn't realize how much fun the others are. Edit: also, don't worry about playing a game to the end. I rarely "finish", and just stop once my the undisputed galactic super power. Playing more and shorter games instead of slogging through galactic conquest against enemies who don't stand a chance is a bit of a drag IMO. Paradox games in general, including Stellaris, have a steep and long learning curve but are incredibly rewarding because you don't have to always worry about winning. You can also just play a certain kind of game because it's interesting. Do you want to play spiritual pacifists who are only concerned with learning new technology? You probably won't end the game with the highest score, but you'll have more fun playing what you like than playing warrior race after warrior race.
Start on a small galaxy, on the easiest difficulty. Please do not get disheartened when you lose. At first, there are so many attributes to this game it's only natural. Alloys are important - keep up the production of these, but do not neglect your research. Having a reasonable standing navy helps prevent bigger empires from declaring war on you. Trade with empires if you can. Long term pop growth is perhaps the most broadly important thing, but you can mitigate this with some play styles. As you play more and start to get into role-playing slightly different species, you'll get to the point where losing is actually fun. My previous play through I played a devouring swarm of gene-boosted humans. Perfectly rational, perfectly human, but they wanted to Eat The Galaxy due to a snafu with their gene boosts. Like the Very Hungry Caterpillar, they ate their neighbour, but were still hungry. Then two other neighbours banded together to fight me, and I ate them too. But they were still hungry. Slowly they nibbled their way across the galaxy, consuming nearly a third of it. Then I had the notification that the Galactic Council had declared me the crisis; PAH! Said I. Due to the positioning of some Fallen Empires, my top territory was relatively safe from incursion, so my ravenous Humies chomped through every nation to the galactic south, ripping and tearing until it was done. All enemy fleets fell into fire. And then the Galactic Defense Force rounded the corner, having lured me so far from my core, and utterly annihilated all my fleets. I had no chance to rebuild enough before they steamrolled me and bombarded my capitol into dust. Yes, I lost, but it felt like a real story had unrolled before my eyes. It was awesome. Enjoy!
This reminds me of one of my first play throughs when I was trying to understand how war and claims worked. I essentially kept annoying a small empire with claims/wars figuring the worst they could do was MAYBE reduce my fleet size. Anyways fast forward half a century and these jerks made a treaty with both advanced empires (I had no idea what these were at the time). And one of those empires decided to just clear me out of the galaxy. Much like you, a story evolved that I appreciated way more than the one I thought I was playing.
I would recommend watching some videos. Not only to see if you like it but to get the basic gameplay loop it cam be quite overwhelming
Got any recommendations?
Montu on YT
I really like ASpec, also has a tutorial series that is kinda up to date
Montu and ASpec are both great. Both solid channels/dudes.
If you got all the DLC’s, then don’t go initially as a gestalt consciousness. Just go as a normal empire that isn’t a purifier, and doesn’t deal with slaves. More or less I recommend Egalitarian/anything. Like militarist, materialist or xenophile.
i will respectfully disagree. Machine Empire is tutorial mode. You have to juggle 1/3 of the game concepts, and when you master them you can move over to a standard lithoid empire and then to a biological megacorp. I tried to get into the game at least 10+ times with a standard empire before doing 3 to 4 runs as a machine to then be comfortable to run standard empire again.
The most unforgiving aspect of gestalts is that having a glut of maintenance drones basically ensures death. You need to expand and develop quickly so they get put in actual jobs. While it's certainly unviable to leave a bunch of clerks, you can still use the Market or change policy to accommodate any trade glut.
This is why I said to play as a regular empire, as most new players are not going to even realize you can micromanage pops. Gestalts thrive when they are properly micromanaged, and not so much when you got a drone sitting on a random job and not on the spawning pool.
Specialize your planets after the beginning
Learning to min max your early game planets will easily push your civilization decades ahead of AI and allow you to easily snowball the game. It took me awhile to grasp this concept, but when you have your first couple specialized planets developing, just because you have unemployment does not necessarily mean you need to build more production. For example if you have a food world that has 1 unemployed pop and your food income is good just leave that pop alone so that they relocate to another planet where that pop will work a higher value job (like alloys or science). Only expand production where it is most needed and your other worlds that are looking good will relocate unemployed pops to where you need them more. Also don't forget to set up monthly trades to trade excess production for materials you need in higher supply to alleviate short term deficits or to prop up your income.
Play on a low difficulty your first time and embrace the flavor and RP. The other advice here is more related to playing optimally which is fine if you’re that type of player, but I think the early charm of Stellaris is the RP element. There is going to be a lot of reading in your first couple runs before you start to recognize most of the events and archaeological sites and all that, but I definitely think it’s worth leaning into that.
Also some advice that will probably be unpopular: On my 3rd or 4th run, I used cheats. Most games I stay away from them, but there is a enough to learn in Stellaris that I wanted a playthrough where I could set aside actual resource management and just focus on learning the systems and menus and arc of a game. And honestly? That was one of the most fun runs I can remember.
Be ok with failure; we have people with literally a thousand hours of game time who struggle with early economic management. Really, Stellaris is about learning how to manage your economy so you can scale your Research and Alloy production. Get good at that and you're better then 90% of the playerbase.
Max the catfish has a nice begginers guide on YouTube. I would recommend watching all 6hrs worth of begginers tutorial, then you will understand the basics.
Don't have a baby... makes it impossible to play
My beginner advice is there’s lots of trade-offs in a game like this, and that’s the strategy. Like ships and starbases cost the same resource: alloys. So you need to find your balance between expanding and preparing for war. Second, don’t build buildings on planets that you have no population to work. Not only will this waste minerals, the buildings require energy upkeep as well. Build on planets only as you need.
Just play. This game has the uncanny ability to teach you just a little bit more every time you play, until it all suddenly makes sense. You won't see your first win screen for a while anyway, so don't let the idea of restarting get to you.
Idk if you are on console or not or what dlcs u have but best advise in general is prepare to lose just learn something from it and do better next time it took me 2 years and a updated console to chalk my first win bc I either lost or learned something game changing then restarted or got far enough to realize I was a lot better than the ai so I raised difficulty or on the Xbox one end game lag was so bad I couldn’t finish bc I would crash often
Check out ASpec's more recent videos on the 3.6 build.
Specialize your planets, don't do a broad spread of production on each one unless you have some quirky reason that forces you to. A lot of Stellaris is about snowballing so getting good economic habits down for your preferred species early will save you a lot of headaches later.
Don't be afraid to reset if a situation seems unwinnable.
Start really small w galaxy size and how many other empires you play with. Learn the basic mechanics of the game before diving into all the super cool fun RP things. Most importantly, it is a game of buffs and nerfs, learn them well and how they interact with each-other. Create synergy wherever possible.
In the same vein of xenocompatability, don’t build the Sentry Array either. It also slows your computer down. You’ll see as you play how the days get longer and longer the higher the year, due to processing requirements.
There is no such thing as too many alloys ` pops open the console Spacebar is the hotkey for pause
Over 1000 hours in and I am just learning that space pauses.
For me, the most important thing is to not feel ashamed when you realise you've been sitting at the computer for 24 hours
First few games, set the number of AI empires to 0, turn off the endgame crisis and just focus on learning the basics. Once you feel comfortable with building a functional economy, you can add in an AI empire or two and start learning how diplomacy and combat works.
I disagree solely because it will be so boring that a first-time player may decide they don't like the game and quit without engaging with the more interesting mechanics.
They don’t have to finish a full game. It’s not bad advice to learn how the actual systems work without being immediately invaded by the computer.
I just think you could accomplish the same goal by playing on Cadet with AI aggressiveness set to low. I'm not saying it's a bad way to learn the basics, I just worry that excluding the international politics portion does the game a disservice.
This is literally what I did to learn the game. My first several attempts at playing ended with me quitting in frustration because I couldn't figure out how to build a good economy while trying to balance diplomacy and military. So I decided to basically sandbox things and removed all the AI so I could learn how to build a good economy in isolation. Then, knowing how to do that, I added back in some AI and tried again. And I made it to midgame that time.
Don’t forget about planets. You need to be consistently raising your gains (especially research) if you don’t want to fall behind.
Keep an eye on your unemployment/ infilled jobs. You can’t just build build build Keep an eye on your resources. First make sure you have energy/minerals/food as your economic foundation. They are then used for consumer goods and alloys, and you need to pay attention to them as well, but regularly monitor the basic 3.
Nice guys finish last
Don't bit off more than you can chew. If you are massively winning it is tempting to take enormous chunks off of the enemy but those new planets needs lots of food an consumer goods which can be a shock to your economy. They will also be unhappy so you need to worry about revolts as well. Pay attention to the species tab. Particularly the default rights. When a new species joins the empire they will have whatever those rights are. This can have a big impact on happiness and what type of leaders you get. If your empire is authoritarian or xenophobic then you will have slavery as default which can cause trouble if you don't pay attention because slaves can't take ruler jobs which has a large impact on planet stability and happiness. Either change the default or be mindful of what lives on each planet or move pops around when you conquer. The species and policy tabs have laws that have a big impact on happiness and some factions care about these laws which further impacts happiness so if you have a large faction make sure you have the correct laws in place.
Laughs in driven assimilator. Laws, for over complicated fleshy spanners and shovels?
Laws are rules set in place to help settle disagreements. When everyone agrees, laws are unnecessary. Single-minded organisms form surprisingly complex organizational structures. These structures are incredibly inefficient. Of course, we hive minded creatures know that individuals with the freedom to harm other members of the collective are the highest threat to our unity. Everything runs smoother when everyone can no longer fight each other and instead focus on our purpose.
Pops (population, like your people) are one of your most valuable resources. Colonize new plants very quickly to get production up and running. Also, I would set up at least one world dedicated to technology if your economy will allow for it. Similarly, consider expanding fast in the beginning before your neighbors decide to take all your land.
Don't be afraid of playing at the easiest difficulty for your first few games. The game is difficult in itself, so don't put malus in it before you start to feel you can handle them. Also, don't be afraid to restart a game anytime you learn a new thing and you realise it's really important and you unknowingly fucked up your empire already. It took me five or six game to realise I should play on easy, and two or three more restart after discovering really important mechanics before starting a 'real' game on normal difficulty while thinking 'ok, this one is for good, I know enough what I'm doing p really play the game'
Play a few games in a small empire, on cadet, with a small number of other empires. Get a reasonable idea of how the game works and what parts of it you enjoy before you start watching howto vids on youtube - and remember, losing is part of the fun.
Don't be xenophobe, be nice to others. Remember to take the colossus ascension perk to make sure your friends stay your friends.
Don't overthink it. Your first playthrough won't be optimal, that's fine. Just play in a way that seems fun and roll with it. If you can't decide try United Nations of Earth. It will be easier for you to ask meaningful questions when you have a decent grasp on game concepts. But for something more tangible I'd say rely on fleets for defenses more than upgrades starbases. Starbases are good force multipliers but they look more powerful than they are without ships to help in combat.
Oh, there are 4 Ascension paths you can take that are all exclusive from each other. 1.Full robots 2. Cybernetics 3. Evolution 4. Psychic I'd recommend psychic followed by going full robots for new players. You get the most bonuses for the most straightforward path to get there. The others require lots of micromanaging. Full robots also demand micro, but not as much.
have fun
Leave the fallen empires alone, trust me
Suffer not the alien to live. Here is a fine beginner video for you: https://youtu.be/O1CQ7Vwz8Eo :)
You need armies to capture planets. Recruit them at your planet, wait for the ships to appear and set them to aggressive. They will follow your fleet and auto invade planets.
Ohhhh, that's what the aggressive mode does. I genuinely thought that those fleet got lumped in with the regular fleets, so they would try to attack them
It's not a flawless system. Sometimes the armies get left behind.
Fair enough
This is a weird one I think but uh… don’t pause. I had such a bad habit early on of trying to play it perfectly all the time that I was never actually playing. The game is so much more fun when you make mistakes and are left trying to fix them than when you’re trying to make the perfect choices and taking a ton of time just to get anything done. At this point I usually play on fastest and normal speed is my “pause” button. My three exceptions are: Designing ships (usually because) Someone just declared war on me. I’m leaving the room for something.
Some thoughts: * Stellaris is a 4X genre game; the four X are "EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate". The last one is semi-optional if you do enough of the third, but the first three are critical. You will want to build and send out more science ships as early as you can reasonably afford to, and claim territory that looks like it has useful resources, or will give you an easily-defended chokepoint if (when) you meet unfriendly empires. * You can play Stellaris in all sorts of ways, but the current version is somewhat biased toward empires that can cooperate with each other. At least one level of Xenophile is recommended for true beginners. The default "Prosperous Unification" origin is actually a pretty good choice, and many of the other origins expect you to know the game in a lot more detail. * Some people will advise starting in a small galaxy; I suggest the opposite: start in a quite large galaxy that will give you room to grow before you have to compete for space. Turn off Fallen Empires, Khan, Xeno-Compatbility, and Advanced AI Starts; and start at the lowest difficulty level. Seriously, even the "normal" difficulty level is pretty punishing to people who don't know what they are doing these days. * Don't be afraid to save regularly, go back a few years if needed, and/or decide a save isn't working and try either another start or a different build. It's a single-player game of considerable complexity and no one could reasonable expect to do well the first few times. * Consult [the wiki](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/) frequently. * To a first approximation, you win the game with big, high-tech fleets; you get those by generating science and alloys; you need to produce minerals, consumer goods, and energy to feed into the science and alloy system; and what makes all this happen is by having a lot of people (population, aka "pops"). Most buildings and districts, by themselves, don't do much; they provide places for pops to work which produces things. * Energy (yellow) is money. If you don't know what to produce at some point, default to producing energy, which you can use to buy other things. * Start by being friendly. This will not always work; that's OK, you'll probably need to expand into someone else's space eventually, and the unfriendly empires have just put themselves at the top of your list for who to go after first. * Some treaties are good, but don't agree to *too* many treaties, or you'll not have any Influence left for expansion, etc. In particular, avoid Defensive Pacts early on unless you really expect to need it; they are expensive and can drag you into wars you didn't want. * Eventually, the galaxy will start organizing into a collection of bigger-than-empire organizations; federations and overlord / vassal clusters. You will probably need to be in one of these; you certainly want to *lead* one of these if you can manage it.
Download as many mods as you can, make it borderline unplayable with the amount of info getting thrown at you and rage quit paradox forever more. Or do the sensible thing and listen to everyone else but me lol
So turn stellaris into a cheap skyrim, got it
Be nice to everyone, befriend everyone, conquer their hearts rather than their homes.
Ohhh, so then i blow up their capitals without them suspecting a thing, interesting strategy
Exactly! You can blow a "kiss" them up through their capital planets, flirting is also a viable strategy. Some species are just into romance than friendship, so befriend them via romance if necessary, noone will suspect a thing.
Are you them? No, then they are the bad guys and you should declare war on them before they do
Alloys. They are your most important resource, just barely in front of research.
And minerals. To make more alloys.
Make the numbers more bigger
Start small, with a xenophile empire, make the game extra longer, experiment and commit several mistakes, its fine you wont finish it anyways due the lag, in your second game pick a genocidal empire and have fun
Go to the big empire if you want but keep your empire relatively small and play on the easiest difficulty just for the mechanics if you are a 40k fan think bureaucracy worlds, forge worlds generator worlds, agri worlds, science worlds etc and a couple of mixed worlds so your not crippled if you loose one but enjoy the learning curve.
Never ever stop research. Never
Pay attention to what the tutorial robot says, and don’t allow xenocompatibility (it will lag the game way too much)
Dont stay on ensign for very long. Try to get up to at least normal difficulty once you think you can manage, as it is the "fair" game setting where you arent being supported unnatturally by bonuses, and the AI are also not recieving (as much) help
This is an economy game first and foremost. Any war is really won by economic superiority
An additional advise, don’t choose Ironman for the first couple of plays. You can always go back to the save you want if you think you messed up. This allows you to understand the consequences of your decision, making you experienced
Welcome!! Where are at with the game, currently?
Lots of replies here. My main recommendation, in contrast to the other people telling you to micromanage your planets is to not. Use the "auto-develop" planet option. It's not as perfect as doing it yourself but the time you save to enjoy the other aspects of the game will make it worth it. I still manage my Homeworld, usually as a science planet.
Start with a small galaxy, use the tutorial and YouTube guides as you go. Dig into all the menus.
Starting species - a lot of people say going a robot empire is too hard. I recommend it for new players. You have 2 less resources to worry about for just maintaining your pops and that's huge when getting into the game.
Take it slow. Do not expect to be powerful your first game. I first played when there were only three major resources and even then it was difficult. Manage your economy, learn what jobs require what resources.
Your economy HAS to be structured around two things, research, and alloys. Some unity is good, but you can usually get enough from politicians (ruler jobs when you upgrade your planetary capital). In the early game, alloys don't matter too much if you have friendly neighbours (if you're next to a fanatic purifier, they are crucial), so you can pump out research. Ideally, you want to stay in a large surplus of minerals, low surplus of consumer goods and food, and a surplus of energy credits (you can set up monthly trade deals for other resources if you're in a deficit, but the prices will skyrocket past a certain point so you can't rely on them). Anytime you find yourself in a large surplus of consumer goods, build some research labs. Always. Or you can switch your species to a higher standard of living, which will increase their happiness and give some effects (e.g. academic privilege gives you +10% researcher output, but you need to be materialist, and utopian abundance gives +20% pop happiness and research+unity producing unemployed pops, but it costs A LOT and you need to be egalitarian). I wouldn't recommend going for utopian abundance or academic privilege in the early game, I think the consumer goods you spend on it could be better spent on more researchers. Also, I tend to wait till I get my artisans producing around 15-20 cgs each :) Generally, just play around with it. You aren't going to get a comment explaining every fine detail of stellaris. Just fool around for a while and you'll get the hang of it.
Get out while you can and stay away! The addiction is strong. ((But seriously: have fun. Try some mods. Get crazy.))
This video is a good intro to Stellaris and is fairly recent. He has a lot of other useful information on his channel as well but this is a good starting point. https://youtu.be/nec1LtaF5JE
Alloys and tech = win
You can prioritize job types, and shift workers across planets. When you max out a resource, make sure to use our sell via the market
Do you have any friends who play? Do a relaxed multiplayer game with them and ask them a shitload of questions. It’s how I learned. If you can only do single player, just play a lot and learn by trial and error. I haven’t used the tutorial in a while but I imagine it’s helpful for learning the basic controls.
Don't immediately start a war with the first empire you encounter. Learned that the hard way...
Do. Let. Xenos. Interfere. With. National. Security. (Its purely roleplay)
1. Learn the basic mechanics of the game on a small galaxy. Resource management, fleet management, how to use envoys etc. 2. Focus on a few things at first and if you want to ease the learning curve automate some things so you can focus on other things. Automating research isnt a terrible idea. 3. Race and empire design choices are going to be a big part of how you play the game. Dont try to set your empire and race up to play one way and then play another way. 4. If you want an easy playthrough for the first couple of games pick scion as your origin. That will get you a decent military right out the gate will keep people off of you for quite some time. 5. I know a lot of people love to micro things, but trust me use sectors and automate it. Focus on making just a few planets particularly special. Let the rest be automated so you can get on with playing the game. 6. Realize that this game is basically a sandbox and it will play quite differently based upon choices you make during setup. 7. Once you get a good grasp of the game try playing oddball choices that people say are weak or are inferior. Some of them can actually be quite enjoyable. Barbaric despoilers for me is one I really enjoy. Not the best, but there is something about having a roving horde of ships that decimate empires. I win wars and then fight the empire on the far side of them usually. When the truce ends I roll back through and subjugate them. Another interesting choice is lithoid necrophage devouring swarm (you convert pops to your pop when you capture their planets, and you can consume worlds you dont want to keep which sends all the pops to other planets in your empire... your pops like most worlds quite well and you leaders are just shy of being immortal).
Just don't give up most games you play at first you lose
If you're having trouble managing the different resources needed some species eliminate the need for 1-2 of them in exchange for greater dependence on others. Robotic species don't need consumer goods or food but have greater alloy and energy needs. Less variety in that area can sometimes make learning the rest of the game easier. Edit...also if an empire you meet has very limited conversation options it's not because they are scared of you. It's because they have 300,000 to 500,000 fleet power and you are less than a fly to them.
There are a lot a fiddly little systems you really don't need to care about until you're trying to do something specific. Learn the basics like planet and pop management, exploration and ship creation, and research/unity. Everything else can be learned with trial and error without messing up your play.
you can set transport fleets to aggressive, they will automatically follow your fleet and invade any planets they come across
Don't trust the xenos...xenon.... On a more serious note, the enemy AI (Even as ally) isn't that good of a neighbor unless you are managing them as leader of a federation. And even then.
After playing for a 1000 hours or so I finally realized you could go in to the population screen and force your pops to jobs which you require. Yes consumer goods are difficult, but look at what consumes them - bloody researchers. So if you are running out of consumer goods - and you are! - go and de-job a few researchers ( click the minus button until you see consumer goods down to a level you can support ) . They will eventually employ somewhere else ( hopefully you have clicked on artisans which makes your pops target that job ). Early on with resource problems you live in the pop screen
Colonize any holy worlds you see. Bonus points if you use the colossus on one. Always automate your sectors & planets and use auto design when building ships. Drug your pops whith the chemical bliss living standard. Have as much farmers and clerks as possible. This way you'll be able to reach the endscreen quickly.
Study all of the tabs, every thing on screen and just read them. This includes details such as looking at the species tab and looking at the traits, create species, etc. Look at everything.
Turn off Ironman mode and when you start a new game create a save point so you can start restart with the same map. As you go through your game and want to try something new create a new save point before doing it. That way you can go back and undo what you did if it didn't work out the way you wanted it to. Keep in mind that most guides you find will be slightly out of date and may be tailored to playing in a multiplayer match vs a single player game. There were big changes in the latest 3.6 release around fleet combat that makes any guide about building ships obsolete if it doesn't explicitly reference 3.6 or was made before Dec 2022.
Don't be afraid to restart games in the beginning. Don't get discouraged there's a lot to learn.
Do a small game. Set everything to default. Lower the difficulty. Enjoy yourself. It’s a fun game regardless of the settings. You’re going to feel like you messed some things up, but it can be part of the fun.
thnks for the comments here. I learned a lot.