Stellaris – Useful Tips and Tricks (Tutorial Doesn’t Cover)

This guide will aim to teach you basic information that isn’t readily apparent. This guide assumes you own all the DLC. Most should still apply even if you don’t.

Tips and Tricks for All Players

Please note: all credit goes to Fedrick1!

Basics

  • You can only colonize within your own territory.
  • Don’t be afraid to go over fleet size max to win wars. You can downsize after you win.
  • You have to conquer every star system and colonies in those star systems that you claim in order to force a surrender (technically if you get the score high enough you might be able to get away with not conquering all of them, but it’s less likely). Otherwise you will settle out with a white peace.
  • You can tell which systems you have fully conquered by seeing a ‘X’ like marking on that star system. If it’s a system in enemy territory that has your empire’s markings but doesn’t have an X like shape, it means there’s still planets you need to conquer with armies.
  • On that note, make some armies before you start the war, and only send them in when you have secured the star system and can make sure no other ships can take them out (they die very very easily to ships).
  • Influence is really important. It is just as essential as energy credits or minerals.
  • Get variety of weapons on your ships.
  • Purging all the pop from a planet uncolonizes it. Oops.
  • Explore the galaxy! Building a second science ship immediately and recruiting a new scientist is a smart way to start the game.
  • You don’t have to modifiy your entire species with bio upgrades/mech points.
  • The little number at the top of a planet’s overview screen is it’s size, which is how many districts you can build.
  • Enslaving lesser species can make other civs mad. Be aware.
  • Federations do help. But they are not to be relied on by the AI. Your AI ally is not as competent of a commander as you are. Do not trust it to save your ♥♥♥.
  • Keep your fleet docked at a station with a crew quarters when not at war.
  • Get lots of science all the time no matter your play style.
  • The bigger ship usually wins. You can google meta ship designs, but a huge fleet of nothing but battleships is hard to beat.
  • Make sure you have a mixture of weapons on your ships. Half railguns, half lasers, is the most basic combo out there and is really strong.
  • The endgame crisis is not to be taken lightly. It is a crisis of great magnitude.
  • Do not have touching borders with a militant isolationist fallen empire, or any fallen empire really…
  • Marauder clans can turn into Khanates that will be very tough to beat. Be ready for that.
  • A ‘skull’ icon on a ship means its worth about 20-30k fleet power. If you don’t feel confident you can beat it, inspect it and see what armor/weapons it uses. Then you can build a ship to counter it. 
  • Machine Empires are good for beginners, they have a slow start for populations need to be built, but reach repeating technology faster than any other empire and can create Machine worlds that are the best at resource production. Good species to practice empire management.
  • Building a ton of districts/buildings ‘in advance’ can really screw up your planet (building a single district early on a ringworld will usually do this), remember to disable them until they’re needed if you do so (accuracy varies depending on what’s built, open job slots, etc).Go to ship designer at the start of the game, click your corvette design, uncheck autocomplete designs.
Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 15056 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices.

10 Comments

  1. Larger fleets of Corvettes (50+) are more effective than a smaller fleet of larger ships in dogfights. Think of ants attacking a scorpion or large spider – the high number of targets for the low number of big weapons is overwhelming.

  2. But a smaller fleet of large ships optimized to engage as far away as possible can defeat an equally strong or even stronger fleet that cannot engage as far away because if you can fire first, you can land a devastating blow on your opponent before they even get within range to shoot back.

  3. I Imagine the closed boarder dispute has to do with power ranking. I don’t believe empires that are weaker than you will willingly fight you just be cause you closed boarders. In my experience it has to do with a combination of the negative relations impact from the boarder closing + their relative strength to you

  4. “Number 14: Keep your fleet docked at a station with a crew quarters when not at war.”
    No. DO NOT do this! you will get complacent, build to many ships, and kill your economy when you try to kill pirates. Have it on patrol going through as many hazard systems as possible, this causes xp to sloooowly build in admiral and ships.

  5. Number 21: go to ship designer at the start of the game, click your corvette design, uncheck autocomplete designs, right click on all the weapons and armor to strip your ship down, left click on the hyperdrive and set it to none, then click save, then hit esc, click on your ships, click upgrade to upgrade to the naked corvette and get like 160 alloys at the very start of the game. you can then sell the alloys to buy a scientist and some minerals for a research lab

  6. You know, it would be nice to have an auto complete for ships without it deleting your custom ships but meh, designing them you self is fun two

  7. I’d add some tips about how to win a war (specifically conquer wars):
    1. You HAVE to conquer every star system AND colonies in those star systems that you claim in order to force a surrender (technically if you get the score high enough you might be able to get away with not conquering ALL of them, but it’s less likely)
    2. You can tell which systems you have fully conquered by seeing a ‘X’ like marking on that star system. If it’s a system in enemy territory that has your empire’s markings but doesn’t have an X like shape, it means there’s still planets you need to conquer with armies.
    3. On that note, make some armies before you start the war, and only send them in when you have secured the star system and can make sure no other ships can take them out! (they die very very easily to ships)

  8. I’ve gotta side with Ced here. Crew Quarters are a great utility, but can really gimp you long-term if you overbuild your fleet. It’s better to have a slightly smaller fleet that you can run for forever as you invest in your economy (or more ships, if needed) rather than a too big fleet that hurts your economy and makes you have to limit your campaign length because your energy credits are negative.
    On the terms of ship experience, the fleet academy building is a must have – it’s a straight buff to all ships coming out of the shipyard, as it gets you up to the 1st Exp threshold for buffs.

  9. Maintenance rising isn’t usually an issue, most of the time when I do go to war my EC goes negative because I use crew quarters+remove all the equipment from my ships during peacetime to reduce spending but as soon as I go to war my economy tanks. BUT usually that’s not too big of an issue, the consequences of keeping a large fleet.

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