Stellaris III: Shop at the Paradox Megacorp!

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Because my free-time is rather limited, and given the length of the videos it could be weeks before I actually start playing?

[Guancyto]

I guarantee you, guarantee you, whatever mistake you make five minutes in (accidentally demolishing your starting labs, settling a Holy World...) is not going to be more of a setback than the Doomsday Origin, and people do that one for fun. (And it is fun.)

Make sure your people have jobs, make sure you aren't going to clear out all your Workers when you make specialist buildings, make sure your Alloy income is good enough to keep your navy roughly on par with your neighbors' or they like you enough that it doesn't matter, and then do whatever you want.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

How DO I keep my navy on par with my neighbors? Up until now I've simply disabled AI empires to play without neighbors, but I'd still get kicked around by random pirates and Space Monsters, meaning some places were just barred for me because my only real ships were Science and Construction ships that couldn't defend themselves.

[Guancyto]

You... build ships.

You just build ships.

You literally just build ships.

Then you build more ships.

Then when you're at your naval cap for ships, you upgrade a starbase and put Anchorages on it.

Then you build more ships.

Then you research bigger ships, and build those.

Then you research more naval capacity.

Then you build more ships.

Edit: In the diplomacy screen, there'll be a bit where it tells you the naval, technological and economic power of the empire you're talking to compared with your own. Equivalent is what you're going for. If they're Superior to you you need more ships, and if they're Overwhelming then you need, well, any ships (unless they're a Fallen Empire, in which case they're going to be Overwhelming right up until the point when you're strong enough to roll them for their lunch money).

[Thufir]

How DO I keep my navy on par with my neighbors? Up until now I've simply disabled AI empires to play without neighbors, but I'd still get kicked around by random pirates and Space Monsters, meaning some places were just barred for me because my only real ships were Science and Construction ships that couldn't defend themselves.

You... build more (combat) ships? I'm confused as to why this needs to be explained. If you need a more powerful navy, build one.
If you don't have enough alloys to build the ships, try to get more alloy foundries; if your ships aren't so well equipped, try to get more research and research the techs for better weapons/armour/shields; if you're running up against your naval capacity, build more anchorages on upgraded starbases.

Also, while you certainly can learn a lot from youtube videos, the in-game tutorial is honestly pretty decent. It won't teach you everything, you will have to figure out some of it for yourself, and yes you may in some cases have to learn by losing to the AI and trying to correct the mistakes you made the next time around. It's rough to chalk up losing several hours of gameplay as just a learning experience; but on the other hand this is a game that you can easily sink hundreds of hours into, and the ultimate loss shouldn't negate the enjoyment of the preceding gameplay in which things were (presumably) going well.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

But which ships are the right ones? What composition of different types is most effective in a fight versus cost efficiency? How do I maintain a stable enough economy to both support said fleet AND my colonies and do research and stuff? The longest I ever played my empire was literally living hand-to-mouth as I was juggling selling out entire stockpiles of my resources to keep any of one of them from going into the red for too long, and again, it didn't HAVE combat ships to support.

[InvisibleBison]

Edit: In the diplomacy screen, there'll be a bit where it tells you the naval, technological and economic power of the empire you're talking to compared with your own. Equivalent is what you're going for. If they're Superior to you you need more ships, and if they're Overwhelming then you need, well, any ships (unless they're a Fallen Empire, in which case they're going to be Overwhelming right up until the point when you're strong enough to roll them for their lunch money).

Additionally, if you want more precise information about a country's fleet power, check their diplomatic weight. The base diplomatic weight from fleet (before the various modifiers from diplomatic stances, galactic community resolutions, etc) is equal to the country's total fleet power divided by 40.

[Thufir]

But which ships are the right ones? What composition of different types is most effective in a fight versus cost efficiency? How do I maintain a stable enough economy to both support said fleet AND my colonies and do research and stuff?

You remember when I said:

you will have to figure out some of it for yourself,

This is exactly one of those times. Balancing your economy is very much something you learn by doing. If you want specific advice, it's pretty difficult for us to give it short of actually being able to see the state of your empire in game.
Fleet compositions is something I wouldn't worry about until you already have the basics down. Which in turn means the answer to 'which ships' is 'any'. Though also, at the start of the game corvettes are the only type available. So, you know. Build them.

[Silverraptor]

Well, yes, but I don't want to lose because I made a mistake 5 minutes in that results in me getting blindsided by something 30 minutes later.

I do wanna have fun, but having fun in this game requires a certain level of "know what the heck I'm doing." Yes, the wiki is there, but it's also very dense and hard for me to parse what's relevant when, and the alternative is delaying actually playing the game for more than a few hours to watch ASpec's video tutorials.

Just getting into the game is the best way to learn. I started a half dozen games at the start with no idea what I was doing and not planning for anything in the future and had great fun. The first time I played, I was the United Earth default race. I had the unbidden spawn right in the middle of my empire and I was so shocked and absorbed into the story of it all that it actually felt like a full blown crisis and I was trying to solve things on the fly. As they grew more and more, taking over some planets, I was trying to rebuild my fleet and preparing an army as they were invading my worlds. When my counter-attack occurred and I realized I couldn't liberate my planet from these invaders because they were all *eaten*, I was in so much shock and righteous furry that I purged these extradimensional invaders from the galaxy at large. It was the best 3 hours I've ever had in this game, all because I didn't know anything about the mechanics and story and it just happened to me and I responded.

But in events, just play around. I like to start a game with a theme in mind because "That seems like my kind of story this way." I don't have the thought of winning on my mind when I play, I play to grow my species and for them to flourish. Their needs and benefits are all I care about, and if that involves expanding my territory, or even winning the game in the end, so be it. But I want to make sure they're getting the best with what they are offered.

But which ships are the right ones? What composition of different types is most effective in a fight versus cost efficiency? How do I maintain a stable enough economy to both support said fleet AND my colonies and do research and stuff? The longest I ever played my empire was literally living hand-to-mouth as I was juggling selling out entire stockpiles of my resources to keep any of one of them from going into the red for too long, and again, it didn't HAVE combat ships to support.

There is no exact way to compose a fleet, but here are a few pointers. Try to get sensors range and see if you can see the enemy fleet that you could potentially fight. See what weapons they have on their ships and what they are most effective against and what they are ineffective against. Then build your fleet to counter theirs. Smaller weapons hit smaller ships better, while bigger weapons attack from farther and do more damage as they hit. I like to use kinetic larger weapons because they attack from farther and do more damage to knock out shields, then have smaller energy weapons for when the ships get close and it's just the armor left so my ships cut them up then. But there are many combinations, including missiles and strikecraft and everything. Just build up your fleet with ships and see what happens. Just think what would be the best combination in a battle, and try it out. Even if you're not right and you lose a fleet fight, just look back at your fleet combination and ask yourself why it failed and see how to revise your fleet to be better. A lot of this game is just simply problem solving.

So enjoy space travel and have fun!

[factotum]

There is no exact way to compose a fleet, but here are a few pointers. Try to get sensors range and see if you can see the enemy fleet that you could potentially fight. See what weapons they have on their ships and what they are most effective against and what they are ineffective against. Then build your fleet to counter theirs.

Frankly, at normal difficulty levels and against regular AI empires (e.g. not Fallen/Awakened Empires or endgame crisis) this is entirely unnecessary, and in fact just leads to annoying busywork where you're rebuilding your entire fleet whenever you change which enemy you're fighting. Just select a good balance of guns (I like to mix lasers with kinetics, since one is good against shields and the other is good against armour and hull), click the Auto Complete button to get a reasonable selection of shields/armour/power etc. and you'll do fine for most of the game.

[Guancyto]

Just getting into the game is the best way to learn. I started a half dozen games at the start with no idea what I was doing and not planning for anything in the future and had great fun. The first time I played, I was the United Earth default race. I had the unbidden spawn right in the middle of my empire and I was so shocked and absorbed into the story of it all that it actually felt like a full blown crisis and I was trying to solve things on the fly. As they grew more and more, taking over some planets, I was trying to rebuild my fleet and preparing an army as they were invading my worlds. When my counter-attack occurred and I realized I couldn't liberate my planet from these invaders because they were all *eaten*, I was in so much shock and righteous furry that I purged these extradimensional invaders from the galaxy at large. It was the best 3 hours I've ever had in this game, all because I didn't know anything about the mechanics and story and it just happened to me and I responded.

This x1000. Some of the best moments I've had in Paradox games have been when I was just beginning and didn't know how to get the exact outcome I wanted, so kept trying things in hopes they would work, or didn't know what the outcome of a particular choice or event would be and turned out to choose very wrong.

If you want to just skip straight to the part where you're experienced at the game and don't have to struggle with the unexpected, you will miss out on a LOT of the fun of the game.

[Caelestion]

Just getting into the game is the best way to learn.

And on top of this, quite frankly, if you think you're going to need tutorials before you even start play, it is going to be literally impossible to plan 20 years ahead, let alone 250!

[Aotrs Commander]

I've got the DLC, it's just that I haven't actually played the game with it installed, and while I do know the basics of gameplay, I'm terrible at wider strategy and planning ahead, since my understanding is you want to start preparing for the endgame and direction you wanna take things in from the word "Go!" especially in Ironman Mode.

If youre bothered about this then one might suggest not playing ironman mode, where you can go back and try again.

(Yes, you lose achievements. But thing about the ones in PDX games is most of them seem to be actually hard to get, and are really more like challenges for the veteran players - this is, to be honest, how achievements should work, rather than "do x thing y many times," - so actually getting them seems to require you to invest the time, I suspect. (I've never given the Stellaris ones a second glance, but that's certainly how they work in stuff like CK2/EUIV and stuff.) I personally have never bothered, because I won't play ironman in anything, full stop.)

(If you want to be really wotsit about it, save editing isn't hard. I've done on PDX GSG mor than once when the range throws me something I refuse to deal with. Since, I'm not playing with anybody else, for my own amusement.)



Other than that, make sure you always have some PD ships, torpedo covettes and kinetic battleships are still very strong as I understand it; and really the only time you want to seriously consider adapting your entire load-out is to fight stuff like Fallen Empires, the Grey Tempest or Crises. And in those instance, the wiki (you should ALWAYS have the wiki to hand) is your friend, since it will tell you what the good counters for those are.

[Rockphed]

If youre bothered about this then one might suggest not playing ironman mode, where you can go back and try again.

(Yes, you lose achievements. But thing about the ones in PDX games is most of them seem to be actually hard to get, and are really more like challenges for the veteran players - this is, to be honest, how achievements should work, rather than "do x thing y many times," - so actually getting them seems to require you to invest the time, I suspect. (I've never given the Stellaris ones a second glance, but that's certainly how they work in stuff like CK2/EUIV and stuff.) I personally have never bothered, because I won't play ironman in anything, full stop.)

(If you want to be really wotsit about it, save editing isn't hard. I've done on PDX GSG mor than once when the range throws me something I refuse to deal with. Since, I'm not playing with anybody else, for my own amusement.)



Other than that, make sure you always have some PD ships, torpedo covettes and kinetic battleships are still very strong as I understand it; and really the only time you want to seriously consider adapting your entire load-out is to fight stuff like Fallen Empires, the Grey Tempest or Crises. And in those instance, the wiki (you should ALWAYS have the wiki to hand) is your friend, since it will tell you what the good counters for those are.

Paradox games tend to have a mix between "you will get this if you play long enough without trying" and "to get this you need to dedicate your run to this right down to the starting character" for achievements. However, the mechalich speaks troth: if you want to learn the game just play in not-ironman mode and make saves every 5 years. If something goes horribly wrong, go back enough saves that you can change things and try again.

[Artanis]

But which ships are the right ones? What composition of different types is most effective in a fight versus cost efficiency? How do I maintain a stable enough economy to both support said fleet AND my colonies and do research and stuff? The longest I ever played my empire was literally living hand-to-mouth as I was juggling selling out entire stockpiles of my resources to keep any of one of them from going into the red for too long, and again, it didn't HAVE combat ships to support.

It's hard to give specific advice without more details, but it sounds like two things are happening here:
1- You're overbuilding in one area, and it bites you in the rear, at which point you overbuild whatever you're short on, and the cycle continues.
2- You're overthinking and overplanning.

For #1, all I can say is don't build things you can't actually afford, and back off if you've overbuilt. Running out of consumer goods? Stop building science buildings, and even take some scientist pops off of science for a while until you get another consumer goods building up and running. Short on Energy? See if there's some miners or farmers that you can switch over to generators. Even if it means putting a building on a planet that you've earmarked for something else - you can always rearrange things later when you've stabilized.

For #2, you need to be flexible. It doesn't matter what the plan is if you need something right now. If you need ships, then build ships. If you don't have the alloys, then build an alloy building, even if it means deviating from The Plan. Something that works is better than something that's perfect but that you can't afford - two Corvettes with Guns That Shoot Things will beat one Corvette that's "perfect".

And as others have said: don't do Ironman. Plan non-Ironman until you work out what you're doing wrong and how to stop doing it wrong, THEN go to Ironman.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Before I get into this discussion, I'd like to state something as a preface that I feel is far more valuable than any assistance on any of the minutiae of the game:

This is a classic 4X game. You're going to make mistakes. The goal is to learn from your mistakes, and do better next time. Start on a low difficulty, disable advanced AI starts, and just start playing. Making mistakes along the way is simply an opportunity to learn how to do better next time. If this doesn't sound enjoyable, then this game is probably not for you, and likely Paradox Interactive isn't a company you need to pay particular attention to because most of their games is based on this philosophy of 'learn by doing'.

Now then, lets address a few specific things you've been asking about:

* Ship construction, what ships to build, how many to build

Okay, so this is a really big and complicated question, boiling it down into a few bullet points is... challenging, but I shall attempt to make it as simple as I can.

In general (and there WILL be exceptions), you build the largest size ship you have researched, fill it with the best weapons you have researched, and hope for the best. I'd suggest an even mix of shield and armor as an easy 'all purpose' defense system, if you don't want to min-max every last erg of advantage by refitting ships based on your opponent's payload. While not the absolute most optimal thing to do, it's a generally successful strategy overall that requires minimal thought or consideration.

Building them is another matter. Building ships requires Alloys and requires Shipyard slips to build them in. Shipyards are built in starbases, not colonies. As your starbase increases in size (Starhold, Citadel, etc...) you will have more slots in which you can put things such as shipyards. I would advise having a dedicated shipyard with maxed out number of shipyards in it, because each shipyard at your starbase has its own build queue. Again, this isn't the absolute *most* optimal, but is a generally successful strategy that requires little micromanagement.

And now we get to maintaining them, which requires alloys and energy credits as a monthly cost. You can minimize this if you station your fleet at a starbase which has a facility that reduces upkeep for docked ships, but don't forget that once you move your fleet into action, your costs are going to spike. Managing your economy is... probably about a third of the game's total difficulty, with many nuanced decisions, which also bleeds over into colony management and other things that are outside the scope of this 'few brief points'. So instead of diving down that rabbit hole, I shall simply say: Do you have enough energy coming in? If yes, build more. If no, then get your economy in order before building more. You generally will always want more alloys, because it is also used in building and maintaining starbases and many other things.

You generally want to hit your initial Fleet Cap in fairly short order, certainly pirates showing up is a good indication that you should prioritize this. However, just because you run into amobeas or mining drones or crystalline beings doesn't mean you have to immediately attack them. If you have other venues for exploration, use them as a defensive barrier against anyone who might be on the other side while you focus your efforts elsewhere. You'll eventually want to take them down, but it doesn't have to be a priority unless they're in a critical chokepoint that you can't get around.

[KillianHawkeye]

Because my free-time is rather limited

To be honest, if this is the case and you don't want to put in several failed runs into the game in order to learn the basics, this might not be the game for you. Pick up something more casual, like Master of Orion.

[Silverraptor]

Alright, I need to ask for some advice. I'm playing a fanatic authoritarian/xenophobe empire with syncratic evolution. I want the main species to be the elite pampered (hence them being weak) and the other species to be the enslaved masses. I have both slaver guilds and byzantine bureaucracy. And I have a number of specialist slots waiting for pops while I'm overpoped in workers. I thought 40% enslaved from slaver guilds was just going to do 40% of my entire population of the 2 species, but it seems that a good portion of my regular species are enslaved as well. Do you guy recommend that I don't have slaver guilds with this build? Or do you have another solution? I've been going up and down the species rights to try and get my pop properly promoted to specialists and nothing I do fixes this unique problem I'm having. (Those that don't have a basic worker job becomes a servant instead.)

[tonberrian]

Alright, I need to ask for some advice. I'm playing a fanatic authoritarian/xenophobe empire with syncratic evolution. I want the main species to be the elite pampered (hence them being weak) and the other species to be the enslaved masses. I have both slaver guilds and byzantine bureaucracy. And I have a number of specialist slots waiting for pops while I'm overpoped in workers. I thought 40% enslaved from slaver guilds was just going to do 40% of my entire population of the 2 species, but it seems that a good portion of my regular species are enslaved as well. Do you guy recommend that I don't have slaver guilds with this build? Or do you have another solution? I've been going up and down the species rights to try and get my pop properly promoted to specialists and nothing I do fixes this unique problem I'm having. (Those that don't have a basic worker job becomes a servant instead.)

As far as i'm aware, Slaver guilds means 40% of every species in your empire will be slaves. So it just won't work the way you want. Slaver Guilds is bad in that way.

[Silverraptor]

As far as i'm aware, Slaver guilds means 40% of every species in your empire will be slaves. So it just won't work the way you want. Slaver Guilds is bad in that way.

Yeah, I noticed. Ah, shame. Guess it's back to the drawing board.

[Guancyto]

Not quite, it's 40% of the pops on every planet become slaves.

So if you've got a 60-40 mix of your guys/indentured xenos it'll work just fine, but actually getting to that point with the population growth mechanics requires more micromanagement than any sane human being wants to do.

Edit: Oh, if you need members of your main species to become Specialists despite being slaves, pop open your Species rights and set their slavery policy to Indentured Servitude. It lets slaves work Specialist jobs, at the cost of them having more political power than slaves otherwise would. If they're becoming Servants, you have them set to Domestic Servitude.

[Silverraptor]

Not quite, it's 40% of the pops on every planet become slaves.

So if you've got a 60-40 mix of your guys/indentured xenos it'll work just fine, but actually getting to that point with the population growth mechanics requires more micromanagement than any sane human being wants to do.

Edit: Oh, if you need members of your main species to become Specialists despite being slaves, pop open your Species rights and set their slavery policy to Indentured Servitude. It lets slaves work Specialist jobs, at the cost of them having more political power than slaves otherwise would. If they're becoming Servants, you have them set to Domestic Servitude.

Huh. Let me check that then.

Edit: Yup, that was it. Instant fixed my lack of specialists problem.

[Silverraptor]

Yeah! That build is working out great with that change. Better than great! It's fantastic! The pops that are going from worker to specialist are still enslaved! Yes they have less happiness but being enslaved actually has them producing more! And they are even affected by the Slave proccessing facility, increasing their research production even more while also reducing their political power, even though they are in a specialist role! And I have been expanding like crazy, discovering a whole bunch of tomb worlds for me to colonize! This is a strong start and I can't wait to see how this develops.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I've been doing some rudimentary playing this morning and it was going smoothly, until the Pacifist Empire I'd force-spawned in to be my neighbor apparently decided to demand I become their vassal. What the heck?! We were supposed to be friends! I'm NEVER going to get the Peacekeeper achievement at this rate.

[Silverraptor]

Okay, need new advice, how to you form a hegemony without taking the Origin at the start? Because Space Elves need more subjects without having filthy xeno's populating on our already perfect planets...

[tonberrian]

Okay, need new advice, how to you form a hegemony without taking the Origin at the start? Because Space Elves need more subjects without having filthy xeno's populating on our already perfect planets...

You could try releasing a system when you've got the form federation perk, then offering to form a federation with the resultant independent empire.

[Silverraptor]

You could try releasing a system when you've got the form federation perk, then offering to form a federation with the resultant independent empire.

So, it has to be a voluntary formation to make a Hegemony?

[tonberrian]

So, it has to be a voluntary formation to make a Hegemony?

I'm pretty sure yeah. You can have subjects in a hegemony, but you got to make the hegemony first and then level it up enough to let them in.

[Narkis]

I've been doing some rudimentary playing this morning and it was going smoothly, until the Pacifist Empire I'd force-spawned in to be my neighbor apparently decided to demand I become their vassal. What the heck?! We were supposed to be friends! I'm NEVER going to get the Peacekeeper achievement at this rate.

It would seem you were too weak for them to take you seriously, and they figured you'd get conquered by someone else if they didn't offer you "protection". You really should try to be at least equivalent in fleet power with your neighbours.

So, it has to be a voluntary formation to make a Hegemony?

Yes, a federation has to be voluntarily formed, even if it is a Hegemony. Theoretically you can change form a different kind of federation and change it later to a Hegemony, but I imagine that will be hard to do with AI members.

[KillianHawkeye]

So if your goal is to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy, is it bad if your fleets are weaker than everyone else's? I just got my butt kicked and quit the game.