Stellaris – 3 Planet Tall Strategy Guide

This guide is for players who don’t like managing many… It’s also for those who don’t want to take over every planet to keep up with the AI. If you want to beat the AI using science, like in Civilization games, this guide can help. It’s also good for players who like to optimize their strategy. My 3 Planet Guide will show you how to do all this.

Guide to 3 Planet Economy

Intro

With this build, you can expect to have the following by 2350:

• 300-500k Fleet power.
• Massive technological advantage (even on Grand Admiral).
• A partially built Megastructure.

This build focuses on staying under the admin cap to be more efficient. You build lots of research labs on two planets and use the third for resources. You follow the Synthetic Ascension path and focus on repeatable technologies. Around the year 2300, you can expand and build alloy foundries on new planets. You don’t need Habitats or Ecumenopolis for this strategy. Later, you can build any fleet or Megastructure you want.

The main problem with this strategy is that you’re weak early on. On harder difficulties, you might lose if someone attacks you. If you start next to an aggressive empire, you might need to restart the game.

The good part is you only manage three planets at first. You don’t need many planets to win, usually no more than 10 by the end. This means less work for you and better performance late in the game. You also get high-level leaders because they live longer with technology and becoming synthetic.

This build works best for fighting the Crisis or getting a high score. It’s not the best choice if you want to conquer other species.

Empire Setup

For this build, research is the name of the game, so we need to maximize the research generated by our pops and our growth speed. For our ethics we need:

Fanatic Materialist

• -20% Robot upkeep
• +10% Research speed

Pacifist

• +10 Admin cap
• +5 Stability

Technocracy

• Science director jobs. Researchers generate unity.

Mechanist

• Start with Robots. -5% robot upkeep

This combination gives you cheaper Robot upkeep, which is good when all your people become Robots. It also lets you control more systems early on without penalties. The extra stability helps when your planets aren’t happy.

The Mechanist civic gives you more Robot population at the start and makes it easier to get advanced Robot technology. Technocracy helps you finish tradition trees faster.

For authority, choose Dictatorial or Imperial. This lets you use Agendas, which can give you a 10% boost to research speed.

The main downside is that you can’t start wars to take territory later in the game. But you can still build a Colossus to destroy planets during other types of war.

For your species, you will want the following:

Rapid Breeders

• +10% Growth speed

Intelligent

• +10% All research output

Weak

• -20% Army damage
• -2.5% Worker output

Deviants

• -15% Governing ethics attraction

Growth is still extremely important in 2.3, so we want the fastest growing pops as possible with Rapid Breeders. Intelligent is also a no-brainer, since we want to squeeze out as much research as possible.

Weak and Deviants have the least downsides of any negative traits, and they completely disappear as soon as you synthetically ascend. Not only that, but Robot pops have a massive attraction to the Materialist faction, so ethics will never be an issue.

Traditions / Perks

Traditions are very important since we want to synthetically ascend as quickly as possible, so we want to be flying through the best trees and getting the perks that we need.

• Expansion – Discovery – Domination – Prosperity – Supremacy

Expansion is always the best to take first, giving us quicker colonization, growth speed and a free pop. The extra admin cap is also very useful. Discovery is mostly taken for the research speed bonus and upkeep reduction, which is very important.

Domination has some nice bonuses in it, and Prosperity comes in as we begin to widen out in the mid game. Supremacy is, of course, to help with your fleet in the late game.

As for Ascension Perks, you want the following:

• Technological Ascendancy – The Flesh is Weak – Synthetic Evolution – Galactic Force Projection – Galactic Contender – Colossus Project

In all reality, after you synthetically ascend, you can take whatever ascension perks you wish. The three I’ve chose will best prepare your empire for war, however.

Tech Path

Since technology is semi random in Stellaris, the best thing you can realistically do is to increase research alternatives and grab prerequisites in order to get the technologies you want.

The only real tech path we need to follow is:

• Droids – Synthetics – Synthetic Personality Matrix

These Engineering technologies are the ones we need to become perfect machines. In order to minimize time in getting these techs, you want to take any technology that increases base research (this applies to other fields as well) and when those are not available, take the technologies that take the least amount of time, in order to reshuffle the pool.

Some technologies to look out for are:

• Growth Technology
• Research Technology
• Statecraft Technology
• Sensor Technology (For Black Hole Observatory)
• Robot Technology (Extra Mod Points)

Early Game

To start things off, I usually restart my game until I get the Scientific Leap agenda, giving us 10% Research speed. This might seem trivial to some, but this build is focused around min maxing in the early game.

Before you unpause the game, you want to go into your policies and switch your Trade Policy to Consumer Benefits, Food Policy to Nutritional Plentitude, and Economic Policy to Civilian Economy. Doing this will increase your population growth and generation of Consumer Goods, and the less Civilian Industries you have to build, the better. Alloys will not be a concern until the mid game.

Once you start unlocking your building slots, you want to fill the vast majority of them with Research Labs. the build order for your 3 planets are as follows:

• First Planet: Autocthon Monument – Research Lab – Research Lab – Civilian Industries – Research Lab – Research Lab

After this point, I usually build a couple more labs, and then an Energy Nexus. Some more labs, a Research Institute, and usually a housing building or two will cap off the planet. I also never upgrade the Civilian Industries buildings on this planet, as they get replaced later.

• Second Planet: Robotic Assembly Plant – Autocthon Monument – Research Lab

This planet will be almost purely labs, so I just spam City Districts and build up the labs. Energy Nexus and Research Institute included.

Third Planet: Robotic Assembly Plant – Autocthon Monument – Civilian Industries – Exotic Gas Refinery

Your resource planet supports the other two. Build refineries and commercial buildings as needed. You’ll often need many gas refineries for your research labs.

For districts, build Generator Districts first on all planets. Energy is very important. Then, build City Districts on your two research planets and Mining Districts on your resource planet.

Build enough Agriculture Districts to keep 1000 food available. This lets you use the Encourage Planetary Growth option. After you become synthetic, you can change these districts to whatever you need.

Don’t make migration treaties with AI empires. Their people aren’t as good as yours, and treaties cost influence. It’s best to avoid most diplomacy with AI empires. You might make a trade agreement with a Megacorp if you want.

With all this set up, you can now start the game!

First colony down in 2205. I recommend you activate the Map the Stars edict as soon as you get your second Science ship up and running; This just makes your ships better, and I don’t think it’s worth activating before you get your second one going.

Second colony down in 2208. Since we are trying to stay under admin cap, expand slowly and meaningfully. Go for systems with high resources and planets.

Ran into my first AI in 2218. Oddly enough, my custom version of the UNE spawned right next to me. They have similar ethics to me, so things should be peaceful between us. I also rolled the Cybrex as our precursor civilization. I know you get a ringworld as a reward for that quest chain, and I also know it’s very powerful right now. So for the purpose of this guide, I won’t be using the ringworld. I also got lucky enough to have 2 Exotic Gases in space in my territory, so that will help a bit.

As a note, don’t be afraid to dip into the negatives with Consumer Goods in the early game. You should be able to float your economy with other resources in the meantime, provided you get your planets up and running in a decent timeframe.

Droids tech in 2236. Before this point, I usually have some unemployment problems since Robots can only do mining and food jobs and I don’t want to spam Agriculture Districts. Droids will let them fill in the jobs they couldnt do before, minus a few important ones.

Also discovered the Xenophobe FE on the other side of me, so it seems that as long as I stay away from them and chummy with the other humans, this might be a very peaceful early game.

Cyborgs in 2240! The early game was going relatively slow (Space resources being crappy) with my other test games getting Droids tech much earlier. But I ended up becoming cyborgs by my predicted time of 2240, so everything worked out fine in the end.

Around this time you want to be focusing on upgrading labs and upkeeping those costs with buildings on your third planet.

Reformed my government in 2248 and added a third civic, Mining Guilds. This will help us in the late game when we start mass producing alloys.

By this time, I’ve met a few more AI’s, and we’ve hit the 1k research mark. We also have a pact with the Curators for research speed, as well as the edict Research Grants. Be sure to keep both of these active; it’s one of the reasons energy is so important.

Around this time, I started using the Academic Privelege living standard to keep Scientists happier. This will use a lot more Consumer Goods, so be prepared. Because you are not expanding, you can also use all of the influence/energy edicts like Peace Festivals, Healthcare Campaign and Capacity Overload regularly.

Finished the Cybrex chain in 2256. Didn’t know you got this crazy Artifact as well as the ring world. I will also refrain from using this for the guide purpose, but just know that using this would be insanely powerful after ascending.

The AI’s have mostly been fighting amongst themselves. There is a spiritualist empire encroaching on my borders currently, but they are constantly at war and never get time to turn their attention to me.

Ascended in 2268. This is the earliest I’ve done it ever, with my last being 2270. Now, we can replace all of our Agriculture Districts with more useful ones. You will also have an excess of Consumer Goods, so you can replace the Civilian Industry buildings on your home planet with a Galactic Stock Exchange and whatever else you choose.

After you ascend, change your Refugee Policy to Refugees Welcome. This will allow you to grow your population even faster, and with the assimilation species right, you can transform any refugees into perfect machines.

Picked up Galactic Contender in 2280. This will make the FE’s easier if you choose to go to war with them in some way. Also have hit the 3k research mark.

It is now 2290 and we are starting to research repeatable technologies. We have managed to secure 5 planets in our borders (6 but one turned out to be a dragon) and now we can start to expand to them. Since we are perfect machines now, we have 100% habitiabilty everywhere, so we can just colonize it all.

Mid Game

Now that we have all the non repeatable technologies, we can widen out. Our focus will be to produce as much alloys as possible in order to get a fleet going.

The buildings on these planets aren’t that important (except of course on the Forge Worlds). You are mostly just trying to feed your alloy production at this point. Build as needed.

By 2310, we already are up to +219 alloys a month and have a 35k fleet. I’ve planned out the 5 worlds to be 2 Mining Worlds, 2 Forge Worlds and a Refinery World.

Around this time, your 3 original planets will begin to overcrowd. When you run out of jobs on those planets, move them over to your Forge Worlds to get the alloy production going. That’s how I boosted my alloy production so quickly. Also hit the 4k research mark.

2320 and we have very close to a 100k fleet. We’ve almost doubled our alloy production, but nothing too much else to report at this time; It’s a fairly boring part of the game.

2330. We have 200k of fleet power and more than enough Unity to keep multiple ambitions active at once. Also hit the 5k research mark. All of the AI’s have been trying to buddy up to me since they are all laughably pathetic now.

2340. 350k+ fleet. Even the Fallen Empires are starting considered Equivalent. We’re also at +7/+8 in many repeatable technologies. I’ve also stopped microing my planets, as I simply have everything I need to win.

We have arrived at the end date of this guide. 2350, and we have well over 500k fleet power, which will allow us to curbstomp anything in the galaxy. Continuing down this path with more planets + continued micro could easily have you going toe to toe with a 5x crisis by 2450.

Late Game

• Wait and win by score. You’ll eventually beat even the Fallen Empires.
• Become a Galactic Defender and fight the crisis for other empires.
• Build Megastructures.
• If you want action, you can insult Fallen Empires until they attack you. Then you can defeat them and take their homeworld.
• Join a federation and hope they want to go to war.
• Keep getting more tradition trees and ascension perks. You’ll have lots of unity to spend.

As a final note, I’ll show you my optimal ship setup for this build:

This corvette will penetrate through almost everything and go directly for the hull. Very effective against FE’s who can’t hit small targets as well, and have massive shields.

This battleship, along with the artillery AI, is a long range death platform. Having this thing following behind your corvette swarm has caused FE fleet to vanish in seconds. Be sure to include a Titan in your fleet for the ship aura.

General Tips

• If your capital has jobs that produce less than what the outcome of a technician can purchase, replace them with a technician. (But this doesn’t scale beyond market cap.)
• Either build science on your capital or make it a forge world early on and find a different way to get CGs.
• Worlds with resource buffs get the corresponding designation, e.g. worlds with excellent minerals get the mining designation. (But what do you do when that world is your only big planet for a forge world?)
• Use a leader with the Unifier trait as your core sector governor, and build an autocthon monument on every planet for efficient unity production.

Capital should either be full tech (capital designation being one of the few things that actually grants bonus resources to tech) or full industry (alloys/cgs, this is useful espicially for military rush, and espicially if you are intending to steal a capital planet from another empire. It’s also useful for Knights of the Toxic God since your habitat covers Tech/Unity for a lot of the game) dependent on empire build/intent (very rarely it should be something else, for example Payback wants to make it a capital extraction world).

With your two guaranteed you should optimize based off of modifiers but the ideal is to get at least two out of the three basic resources handled, preferable Energy and Minerals (with food you can just subside on Hydroponic Bay starbase buildings until later down the line). If you have a turbo cracked food planet, you should swap to Organic Reprocessing and abuse superior Alloy production compared to your neighbors.

If I’m playing something with a simpler economy, my guaranteed planets can be more weighted towards advanced resources like tech/alloys but I usually wait til planets 4-5. Sometimes you need to make your guarenteeds tech/alloys purely due to the lack of available generator/mining districts on them.

If you are a gesalt, economy is even easier without CGs.

Once you get vassals you should see about converting your basic resource planets into more advanced resources.

FAQ

Why is the admin cap important?

Going over the cap can hurt small empires. It also affects repeatable technologies, which are expensive.

How does this build work with low amenities?

Stability is what matters. Keep it above 49% and you’ll be okay. Living standards and happiness bonuses can help. If things get bad, you can give out luxury goods.

How do you survive the early game?

You can’t really fight off big attacks until around 2250. Try to be friendly with other empires until your starbases get stronger.

What planet types should I use?

Make your main planet a Tech World and the other one a Generator World. Don’t bother with Refinery World. We need all the energy we can get.

Why do you have mods if you said it was unmodded?

I have some visual mods that don’t change how the game plays. I can’t turn them off without redoing all my empires.