Stellaris – Beginners Guide (Useful Tips and Tricks)

Useful Tips and Tricks for New Players

Early Game and Exploration

If you’re a new-ish player, in the Game Settings screen before you start the game, pick any galaxy except Ring (too easy to get boxed in), set Advanced AI Starts to 0 (amount of AI empires that start with additional bonuses), disable Ironman Mode (prevents you from saving) and, if you have MegaCorp DLC, Xeno-Compatibility (will murder your CPU in the late game by spamming subspecies). Feel free to reduce Habitable Worlds a bit if you want (the more colonies, the more lag and micromanagement), and do not touch End-Game Start Date (by default it gives you ~250 years before you reach the true end-game; you’ll die from boredom if you make it longer) and AI Aggressiveness (if it’s low, the entire galaxy will buddy up in a mega-federation and make waging war obnoxious, if not impossible; if it’s high, well, I hope you like Warhammer).

I will refrain from giving specific build advice, but I’d like to mention that it’s usually better to take one Fanatic and one regular Ethic rather than three regular ones – it helps to specialize you towards a specific niche and makes Faction management easier.

Go to the Policies screen and set Diplomatic Stance to Isolationist for the first decade or two – tasty Unity bonus for some diplomatic penalties, which aren’t really an issue until you end up border to border with someone stronger than you or until the Galactic Community gets founded. When you start actively expanding, switch to Expansionist to save 10 Alloys and 7.5 Influence (NB: game tracks decimals but UI doesn’t show it) on each outpost, and after you’ve grabbed as much land as you could/want, switch to either Cooperative if you want to kiss xeno ass or Belligerent/Supremacist if you’re just completely done with your dumbass of a neighbor.

While you’re still there, set Economic Policy to Militarized Economy – in any given game, your Alloy needs (ships, outposts, robots, with DLCs habitats and megastructures) will vastly dwarf your Consumer Goods needs (general pop upkeep, colony ships, Distribute Luxury Goods decision, Researcher and Bureaucrat jobs). You may or may not want to wait until you get 400 Consumer Goods for Colony Ships for your two guaranteed worlds, but nothing prevents you from buying Consumer Goods on the market rather than producing them.

Corvettes with nothing on them count for Power Projection and thus producing them increases your Influence on the cheap, even if those ships would realistically fail to do anything in combat unless you upgrade them to a different template before fighting.

Go to your homeworld and disable all Enforcer jobs – Crime is generally produced mostly by unhappy Pops, and unless you lack Amenities, have unemployment, suffer resource shortages or Negotiated with Crime Lords, that won’t happen – and deprioritize Clerk jobs – horribly inefficient unless you focus on Trade Value, and even then.

On your colonies, you can also disable Colonist jobs on your Colony planets – they only give 1 Food, a defense army and a bit of Amenities, the former two aren’t worth anything in the grand scheme of things and the latter for now are covered by 10 Amenities from Colony planetary designation and 3 Amenities from Reassembled Ship Shelter building. Note that Colony designation disappears when the planet has 5 or more Pops, so you might need to turn Colonist jobs back on; a far more preferable alternative is building a Holotheater (you’ll need it anyway) or Gene Clinic (not recommended – the bonuses to habitability and pop growth are too small to justify it. This is also coupled with the fact that you have to research a dead-end technology to acquire it).

If you don’t have anything to build at the moment, clear blockers whenever you can – each cleared blocker expands the planet’s Carrying Capacity, and Pop Growth is its direct function. Sprawling Slums blockers go first, they give a free Pop.

In the very early game, do not survey systems yet. Instead, use your Science Ships to scout (Explore System button) as much of your local area as possible. In particular, you should be interested in the location of your two starting habitable worlds (when you find one, immediately start surveying that system, move your Construction Ship there and start making a Colony Ship to build an Outpost and colonize the place the moment surveying is over), chokepoints that lead in and out of your cluster, neutral creatures and whether or not you have some other empire close by. Make more Science Ships, by the way, having at least 3 or 4 active ships plus whoever is stuck in archaeological digs is a good policy.

Similarly, when you start surveying, delay studying anomalies (with very few exceptions like archaeological digs and First League/Cybrex/Baol precursors) until your scientists have nothing else to do. First, this costs time your ships could’ve spent surveying and exploring the galaxy; second, the anomaly rewards scale with your Research production; since you aren’t really producing anything yet, you won’t get much if you rush those anomalies before getting your labs online.

When building Outposts, prioritize valuable systems, don’t just waste Influence on any random 2 Energy 3 Physics dump. Habitable planets (even if you can’t settle them yet, eventually you will), rare resources (or 10+ of basic ones), chokepoints leading into your territory – all of those are good reasons to grab that system immediately. You don’t even need to maintain an unbroken border – while the Influence cost increases for every jump away from your border, it could be worth it to snap those systems before your neighbors do. The same principles apply when making claims on other empires – claiming their homeworld and most populated worlds is equivalent to going for the throat and will permanently cripple them even if those were the only systems you’ve taken from them.

Economy

Don’t be too afraid to run a resource deficit – if you, say, have 100 Food and a deficit of -10 per month, you should be reasonably okay as long as you remember to build a few farms and/or schedule a monthly trade sometime within 10 months. The only number that truly matters is zero in stock.

Click to enlarge…

Stability is one of the most important stats, as each point of stability above 50 is worth 0.6% resource output from Jobs and Trade Value (so 30% bonus at perfect 100 Stability), and each point below 50 gives -1% resource output from Jobs and Trade Value, as well as spawns negative events and planet modifiers under 25 Stability, culminating in outright rebellion under 10 Stability. To keep your Stability in green, you should take care of your Pops’ Happiness, which is chiefly influenced by Species Rights, Amenities (or rather lack thereof), Housing (ditto), Unemployment (under most Living Standards, unemployed Pops receive a massive -20% Happiness malus), Faction Approval (every pop has an ethic, and their Happiness is influenced by the corresponding faction’s approval) and resource shortages. Note that most of the time Stability-boosting buildings and jobs (e.g. Noble Estates, Psi Corps) are situational and usually worth it only with a large number of other jobs, such as on Ringworlds and Ecumenopoli.

You should focus as much as possible on acquiring Alloys and Research; they’re the two most important resources in the game on account of giving you permanent and tangible advantages. Out of basic resources, Minerals is the most important – it’s the true lifeblood of your economy, you will need a large amount of Minerals for districts, buildings, Alloys and Consumer Goods. On the other hand, don’t put too much emphasis on Food and Consumer Goods, just produce exactly as much as you need and no more; they have no use outside of pop upkeep and building Colony Ships.

A valuable tip is that certain monthly trades on the market (not regular trades) do not increase the price – or, rather, the increase is so minor it disappears within this month. If you can afford it, you should be pretty much always buying 52 Minerals (all things considered it’s actually cheaper than owning 13 Miners and their districts), 26 Consumer Goods (replaces ~7 Artisans, ~9 with Militarized Economy) and selling your surplus Food production up to 52 (after you’ve done building your colony ships, of course). FYI the amount of resources you can get away with is 13 for Alloys and 5 for Gas, Motes and Crystals.

Engineering is the most important research tree – it brings new ship types, it brings Mineral and Alloy boosts, it brings robots/synths, mining and refining Gas and Crystals (Motes are Physics), Mega-Engineering along with Ring World, Ecumenopolis prereq tech, you name it. In comparison, Physics is mostly valuable for advanced labs, Research Speed and Energy bonuses, while Society provides blocker removal, habitability, Gene modifications, third civic and Ambitions. Engineering is also the rarest research type, as there’s a sizable amount of space Physics deposits, and Society is a byproduct of Culture Workers/Priests/Chroniclers, as well as some planetary features.

Optimize your Research. While the pulled techs might seem random, there does exist a research tree, with each tech having its own, not always apparent prerequisites; e.g. to research Robots you first need to research Powered Exoskeletons, and to research Droids you also need Colonial Centralization tech from Society tree. Also note that technologies have different tiers – tier 1 is available at the start, and each following tier requires researching at least 6 techs of the same tree from the previous tier, e.g. you can’t research Torpedoes (tier 2 tech) until you’ve researched 6 techs from tier 1. Focus on the most important techs, such as robots, improved buildings, pop growth, resource output, good weapons, new ships and Mega-Engineering prereqs, and leave the cheaper but not necessarily useful technologies (like +Destroyer Hull or Penal Colonies) to quickly research later for essentially a reroll of available tech picks.

You should take advantage of Edicts and the advantages they offer. Capacity Subsidies and Mining Subsidies in particular will be a massive boon to your economy and should be taken ASAP.

Build Robot Assembly Plants wherever you can, this effectively double-dips your pop growth with robots being produced at the same time as your biological pops grow naturally.

Make sure to use Governors, they’re quite good (+2% resources from all jobs per level). If you can’t put a governor on a planet that doesn’t have one, split the planet (and all systems within 4 jumps that aren’t part of another sector) off into its own sector by pressing a button with hexagon and a plus on the right in the planet screen (make sure to turn auto-development off in the sector screen, it’s dumb as a brick).

To the right in the planet screen above the building queue should be a button that, by default, depicts a planet and a gear. It opens the menu to pick a Planetary Designation, all of which offer extremely valuable bonuses, in particular Forge World designation (replaces Artisans with Metallurgists in Industrial Districts). Note that you can’t set the designation of your capital world (always set to Empire Capital), Thrall-Worlds, Penal Colonies and Resort Worlds (special world types available from research).

As such, it pays to specialize your planets towards one specific goal and then further enhance their performance with booster buildings (e.g. Energy Grid, Research Institute, Ministry of Production) and a proper designation. Rename planets if it helps you.

• Alloy and Consumer Goods planets should go on your largest planets as the only thing that matters is their size (those are also first in line for Ecumeno, Gaia and Hive/Machine conversion);
• Energy, Mineral and Food planets should have as many of respective districts as possible (at least 6, better 8);
• small resource poor planets (Habitats very much included) are prime candidates for Tech, Unity, Urban (+20% Trade Value) and Refinery worlds, as they require little more than building spots.

Do not build more districts and buildings than you have Pops for, they’ll just sit there, producing nothing and consuming upkeep. By the same token, you don’t want Unemployment or lack of Housing either, as both will affect your Stability and, potentially, Crime. A good rule of thumb is to start building/upgrading stuff when you have 1 or 2 Jobs or Housing left, to account for the construction time.

In mid to late game, if you’ve done everything you’ve wanted there it’s perfectly fine to just leave a colony as is (preferably around 22 Pops, this is the sweet spot for Pop Growth) and concentrate on other worlds – unemployed and homeless pops will eventually migrate to other planets on their own, especially if you’ve built a Transit Hub on a Starbase in the donor planet’s system.

You can reroll for leader traits by repeatedly hiring and firing them, although this will cost Unity. Best Governor traits are Intellectual (+10% Research) and Retired Fleet Officer (+20% Ship build speed and -10% Ship cost); best Scientist traits are Maniacal and Spark of Genius (+5%/+10% Research Speed to all specializations and greater chance of rare technologies); best Admiral traits are Engineer (free, constant repair anywhere outside of combat), Gale Speed (+5% Evasion is more than meets the eye, particularly on Corvettes) and Trickster (better survivability thanks to disengagement chance; especially valuable when outnumbered/outteched).

It’s also possible to cycle leaders depending on your current needs – for instance switching Retired Fleet Officer to queue ship construction or Environmental Engineer to queue blocker clearing then bringing science governor back afterwards, or using +movement speed Admiral to get to the place and then switching out for +fire rate one. Note that even inactive leaders consume 2 Unity/Energy upkeep each (Eager trait reduces it to 1, but it’s a garbage trait anyway).

After you’re done with space exploration assign Science Ships to assisting planetary research to increase the planet’s Research production depending on Scientist’s level.

Build Hydroponics Bay module on every Starbase. It’s 10 Food for 1 Energy and zero Pop involvement, this is a bargain, and it’s not like there are many better module options. Nebula Refinery (10 Minerals and, if you researched the extraction tech, 1 Gas for mere 2 Energy), Black Hole Observatory (15 Physics and with extraction tech 1 Dark Matter for 2 Energy) and Deep Space Dark Site (+5 Stability and +25% ethics attraction across the system for 2 Energy) are also great deals, but they’re contingent upon being located in nebula, around black hole and in the inhabited system respectively.

Transit Hubs are great for making people go to your Ringworlds and Ecumenopoli. You need to put them in a donor system to have an effect, e.g. to facilitate the migration from your Homeworld to your Ringworld you need to put a Transit Hub on the Homeworld’s Starbase.

With Ancient Relics DLC Minor Artifacts can be sold for 500 Energy each; while there are other uses for them this is an excellent way to shore up your economy deficit in early to mid game, doubly so for Remnants and On the Shoulders of Giants origins. Proclaim Superiority (40-100 Influence for 2; Xenophobe only) and Secrets of the Cybrex (Mega-Engineering tech option and +10% to Megastructure construction speed) / Irassians (+20% to Biology research speed, +5% to Pop growth) / Zroni (+10% to Psionics research speed and Psionic Theory tech option, good as a last-ditch attempt at getting Psionic ascension) are other good applications. While Reverse-Engineer Arcane Technology has a chance to boost your research speed or enable you to build a random Fallen Empire building once, it’s not really practical in my opinion.

Building Habitats over resource deposits modifies the available districts and buildings:

• Energy deposit enables building Reactor Districts (3 Housing, 3 Technicians);
• Minerals or Alloy deposit enables Astro-Mining Bays (3 Housing, 3 Miners);
• Research, Dark Matter, Living Metal, Zro or Nanite deposit enables Research District (3 Housing, 3 Researchers);
• and building Habitats over Gas, Mote or Crystal deposit allows building the amount of corresponding exotic resource mines equal to the amount of collectable resources (e.g. 2 Gas deposit allows to build 2 Gas Extraction Wells).

Note that the deposit’s bonus is lost except Alloys, Dark Matter, Living Metal, Zro and Nanites (they provide a planetary feature with the same amount of resources) – in particular, this means that Habitat built over exotic deposit is effectively a net loss (unless you have Mining Subsidies and a considerable amount of Worker/Slave bonuses miners can benefit from) due to the fact that Refineries produce the same amount as Exotic Mines and that space mining stations receive bonuses from technologies (up to 50%), so e.g. by building a Habitat over 1 Mote deposit rather than building a mining station and a Chemical Plant somewhere else you’re trading 1-1.5 Motes for 10 Minerals and 2 Energy (difference in upkeep of Chemist and Chemical Plant compared to Mote Harvester and Mote Harvesting Trap).

Diplomacy

Don’t get into too many diplomatic pacts – all of them demand 0.25 Influence upkeep, with the exception of the Defensive Pact which takes 1. Commercial Pacts are the most immediately useful and even then situational; Migration Treaty allows you to get pops of the other empire, which is handy if you have a planet that isn’t habitable for your pops but great for the migrant pops; Research Agreements quickly lose relevance if you’re on point in regards to technology and outpace other empires; Non-Aggression Pact is pointless because if the empire likes you enough to sign it, they generally like you enough to not attack you anyway, and Defensive Pact is a double-edged sword, and an expensive one at that (don’t expect actual help from them, it’s more for discouraging would-be attackers and forcing them to chase your ally’s fleets as well).

Unless you have the Federations DLC, I don’t recommend joining or creating a Federation in singleplayer.

• You will need to take the Diplomacy tree to get the ability to create one (you don’t need it to join an existing Federation);
• You’ll lose 15% of your Energy income as federation tax;
• You’ll have to transfer up to 30% of your Naval Capacity (depending on Federation laws) to the Federation Fleet (which is controlled only by the president);
• You’ll have to join wars declared on your Federation members or declared by your Federation members (when AI decides to declare war, it accounts for the fleets of all Federation members; this often results in situations where some galactic equivalent of an angry chihuahua with a handful of Destroyers wishes to declare war on a Fallen Empire or something because they expect your fleet to carry them to victory);
• You won’t be able to declare wars yourself without passing the vote on it first (which without Federations DLC requires a unanimous vote) and won’t be able to end wars unless your federation mates are satisfied (which, knowing the AI, will probably mean capturing the entire enemy territory; war between two Federations can last decades because of this);
• To add insult to injury, without Federations DLC you can only create a Galactic Union (which is the weakest Federation type that overwhelmingly focuses on improving relations between federation members and offers little to no benefit compared to other types) and have far fewer Federation laws available to you.
  If you do have Federations DLC and want to join/create a Federation, I heavily recommend setting Succession Type to something that ensures you’ll always be the president (such as Strongest Diplomatic Weight or Challenge Psionic Battle) and set War Declaration to President Decides (or at least a Majority Vote).
  Go to war on your own terms. Avoid fighting until you’re sure you’re ready (my benchmark for non-sweaty games is a Cruiser fleet and full Supremacy tree); early wars aren’t really to your benefit unless you’re deliberately going for an aggressive playstyle (which is high risk-high reward and requires a substantial amount of game knowledge to pull off). If you have someone unfriendly and/or stronger than you, build defensive Starbases on chokepoints and/or send gifts and Envoys to Improve Relations; this will buy you time, if not prevent the war outright. If you can’t (say, because it’s a Fanatic Purifier or similarly genocidal civilization, or because there are too many hostile empires nearby to curry favor with all of them) then do everything you can to sign a Defensive Pact or several with the friendliest and/or strongest empire(s) you can find around.

Use Rivalry for Influence and cheaper claims. Might be obvious, but somewhat easy to forget. Be aware that your rival’s Defensive Pact members will receive an Opinion malus towards you, and your rival will receive an Opinion bonus to other empires that rival you.

War

Use and abuse Status Quo. AI is far more agreeable to it, and with Conquer CB if you’ve already fully captured all systems you’ve claimed (this includes invading all colonized planets) without giving them any of your ground, there’s no real difference between Status Quo and Surrender.

Don’t keep idle fleets and armies in early to mid-game. If you aren’t at war, find another war or send them to hunt neutral creatures, pirates, or Leviathans. The upkeep hurts, and your fleet would be relatively quick to rebuild anyway. In high mid to late game, you actually should keep a standing fleet because rebuilding several dozen Battleships and/or a few hundred Corvettes in a short timeframe isn’t feasible, and your economy should be able to keep them afloat without going into negatives the instant you undock.

Auto-designed ships suck so much they have an event horizon. Always make your own if you can. It might also be a good idea to tailor your ships to counter the enemy armaments – the ship composition for each empire is fixed and doesn’t change, and you don’t need to have 100 Intel on them to know it – just get into a fight and read the battle report.

Always use Admirals; they’re so cheap yet so good.

Gas/Mote/Crystal Edicts provide very good buffs. Additionally, you can save resources by turning them on before a battle and off after the battle.

Keep all your fleets in one blob (“doomstack” in common parlance) if you can help it. Lanchester’s square law is a bitch – even a 10% numerical advantage can be the ever-crucial edge.

Try to fight on advantageous territory. A friendly Starbase (this is crucial because Starbase alone is merely a speed bump and Defense Platforms are all but worthless after early game), a Black Hole (reduced disengagement chance means fewer escaped ships and more casualties), a Neutron Star (movement speed reduction is great when you’re focusing on long-ranged weapons and Strike Craft), a Pulsar (disables shields), a Space Storm (Neutron Star and Pulsar combined), a Nebula (blocks vision from outside the nebula) – all of those can be used to your advantage if you’re canny enough, and all of those can give you a lot of grief if you’re careless.

During war, convert the nearest non-defensive Starbase to the border into a shipyard and set it as a homebase for your fleets. It will allow you to get repairs, upgrades, and reinforcements quicker and closer to the front, and it’s also going to be the place retreating fleets will return to (if you set it as a homebase). Rather than sending the entire fleet back for repairs, you can also split part of the fleet to repair and upgrade while the remainder clean up small fleets and outposts.

In regards to planetary invasions, there’s no real strategy. Just build assault armies of your choice – aside from special ones like Gene Warriors or Xenomorphs, I prefer Robotic Assault: while they deal less damage pound-for-pound, they’re tankier, immune to morale damage, and I don’t need to go out of my way to research Gene Banks or whatever – until your score is 1.5x (2-3x if it’s a Reanimator or Fallen Empire) that of the planet you want to invade. Don’t forget to hire a general and just drop them in. There’s no strategy, there are no tricks, just embrace your inner Commander Chenkov and drown the enemy in meat.

In case you’re wondering about Orbital Bombardment – the fleet that’s bombing the planet is a fleet that’s not capturing Starbases and trouncing enemy fleets, not to mention that it also produces Devastation and kills Pops. Orbital Bombardment isn’t worth it unless your fleets have nothing else to do, e.g., if you’re stopped by an FTL inhibitor at a chokepoint, or if the rest of the enemy empire is smoking ruins and you just need to capture this one planet to win the war.

You can land armies on your own planets, and they’ll join the defensive armies in fights; depending on the situation, it might be cheaper and/or more convenient than creating Soldier and Enforcer jobs. AI loves wasting time on Orbital Bombardment, and the presence of additional armies can buy you more time. Note that assault armies are slightly weaker than comparable defensive armies.

Research FTL inhibition in the Physics tree. It will prevent enemy ships from moving past your Starbases and any planets with a Fortress (tier 2 Stronghold) built on them unless they capture it or, in the case of a Fortress planet, inflict at least 50% Devastation. A Fortress Planet/Habitat on a chokepoint would be a huge delay since it would require either a massive invasion, several years (if not decades) of Orbital Bombardment (Planetary Shield Generator and Fortress World/Station designation will help with that), destroying the world with a Colossus, or Jump Drive bypass (which gives a considerable -50% damage and movement speed debuff for 200 days, as well as essentially leaving the fleet without a way out aside from Emergency FTL or another jump). Note that Unbidden and Contingency ignore FTL inhibitors and can move freely.

How to Beat the Endgame Crisis

Midgame Bad Boys

So we’re gonna start off simple with papa Khan, the great khans are a group of drug dealing tribals th- wait that’s the wrong game? My bad guys. Okay so one of the marauder empires may unify under one great khan, this great khan is a super admiral with psychic powers (theoretically) and has their eyes set on literally anyone.

How to Beat:

There are three ways to survive papa Khan.

• Version 1: Just kill him, this ones simple, just throw your fleets at him, the fleets are essentially marauder fleets on drugs, after you kill his first fleet he’ll come back with a vengeance! dun dun dunnn then just kill him again and you’ll get a funny throne that gives you the satrapy subject type and more ship damage.
• Version 2: The coward method, if you’re a little baby and scared of him you can choose to submit, if you do so you’ll give him like 30% of your lunch money and naval capacity.
• Version 3: Cancer, no I’m not even joking, just wait like 20 years and he’ll get assassinated or die of space cancer, yeah that’s about it.

After he dies the remaining marauders will reform into rather a marauder empire again, a special khanate remnants empire, or theres a 10% chance if they have two satrapies that they’ll become fanatic egalitarian xenophiles and make a federation with the satrapies.

Nanomachines Son!

The gray tempest are nanites that come from the L cluster, they’re the most common outcome of opening the L gate and the most dangerous of the 4.

Random lore fact but technically all of the outcomes are the grey tempest but yeah.

So, they can’t be reasoned with as they are nanites but theres an advantage to that, nanites don’t think, you do, they’re going to oftentimes launch ill fated (or not ill fated) attacks on you or other peoples borders, take advantage of this and attack while they’re not home.

How to Beat:

They have literally no cloaking detection and their fleet comp is super big ships, I think you can see where this is going.

Go go gadget cloaked frigates! once you destroy the factory then they’ll all die, now go and turn terminal egress into an indestructable bastion that you’ve dreamed of.

Now we’re done with the midgame crises, if you’ve survived this far, good job!

Now we’re in the avengers endgame, avengers.

Captain America in Avengers Endgame.

Starting off with no bias we’ve got the worst and most stinky of the crisis, the unbidden, the abberant, and the vehement, they’re super lame and not cool and they don’t like anyone and don’t deserve the throne.

The Extradimensional Invaders

Anyways, the extradimensional invaders are quite simple and dumb and stupid, they have no purpose except to devour, they will obliterate your planets and stuff, here’s how to beat them.

Due to their big dumb stupidity they only use matter disintegrators, these will obliterate armor but as you can expect don’t do good against shields, if the unbidden somehow survive long enough they’ll start building more dimensional anchors strengthening their foothold on the galaxy, if they survive even longer they’ll call in their frenemies the aberrant and the vehement, they will all fight everyone including eachother.

How to Beat:

They have no armor, no point defense, no shield hardening, no bi-, and no throne, this all culminates in use ships with kinetic weaponry or explosives that have shields, to destroy their portal you must destroy any existing anchors so destroying them early is advised, when you kill them you will kidnap one of them which will make your jump drives and catapults and stuff way better.

The Prethoryn Scourge

Next, we have the other biological crisis, the Prethoryn Scourge. They’re hungry like the extradimensional invaders but not as bad. They will spawn at a random point on the edge of the galaxy with a “Vanguard Fleet” that’s bigger and scarier than the normal fleets. They have construction ships and stuff to expand normally, but they will still try to kill you.

How to Beat:

They have natural armor and no shields, so they can easily be dispatched with matter disintegrators if you reverse-engineered those. They will mostly do well against shields, and they have point defense and strike craft. You’ll want to stop their expansion as fast as possible and make sure to steal their tech (if you can call it that).

If they eat 15% of the galaxy, your knights in shining armor shall appear: the Sentinel Order! Dun dun dunnnnn! They’ll spawn next to any Fallen or Awakened Empires if possible and will have Fallen Empire ships. The initial fleet has an FE Titan. If the Scourge eats 50% of the galaxy, then they’ll make a breakthrough in how to kill bugs and will give everyone extra damage against them. They are very nice and cool and are welcome in Azilash, 10/10.

So basically, don’t use shields. If it’s bad, get big papa Sentinel Order to help you. Don’t let them expand, and use energy weapons. Anyway, I’ll do the rest when I get motivation to write.

The Contingency

Lore stuff: The Contingency is here to stop a class 30 singularity event, whatever that is (for reference, Fallen Empires can contain a class 4 singularity; it’s believed that the class 30 is the Aetherophasic Engine from Galactic Nemesis, but more on that later).

There will be some game-affecting forewarnings that come as the Ghost Signal. The pre-Contingency Ghost Signal comes in four stages, which will affect empires that have robots.

Big Daddy Contingency appears with a beefed-up Ghost Signal that starts at 5 and reduces by 1 each time a hub is destroyed (more on that later). These give massive debuffs to sapient combat computers, mechanical pops, and increase their fleet reinforcements.

How to Beat:

The Contingency starts out by taking 4 planets chosen randomly that will now be called Sterilization Hubs. These hubs can’t be invaded and will spawn fleets. You have to beat them by bombing them into 50% devastation, at which point they will be destroyed, or you can just use a Colossus on them.

The Contingency does espionage mostly based around murder. You can be straight-up immune if you complete a special project, if you’re a machine empire and complete a special project, or if you’re psionic or a hive mind, as it’s a known fact that robots are weak to mind powers.

Once you’ve killed their 4 hubs, they reveal to you their mega hub on the edge of the galaxy. You just have to kill everyone there also, and boom – Contingency? More like Contingedummy.

Random Other Stuff:

The Contingency’s fleet composition is something unheard of and horrifying: kinda balanced! Collective gasp, but don’t worry, they still have an easily exploitable weakness: they don’t have much hull, so just use bypass weapons.

If they eat 15% of the galaxy, the Cybrex will appear. I know you’re definitely saying something along the lines of A: “What the hell, they died 600 thousand years ago” and B: “What the hell, they’re hell-bent on killing everyone”. They function similarly to the Sentinel Order with the Prethoryn, but instead of spawning next to an FE, they spawn at the edge of the galaxy with a ringworld called Cybrex Beta. They’ll disappear after the Contingency dies, though.

Are you still getting whooped? Don’t worry, if there are Ancient Caretakers, they will awaken with a 66% chance of getting the good ending where they prepare to sacrifice it all to whoop the Contingency, or a 33% chance of trying to kill everyone because of the Contingency’s super elite hacking skills. After the Contingency dies, the Caretakers will fly away to skies unknown, leaving their sweet, sweet ringworlds behind.

Cosmogenesis

Cosmogenesis is a science-based player crisis that robs Fallen Empires. Cosmogenesis aspirants will likely be much more subtle as they don’t get massive combat buffs. While they do get Fallen Empire ships, these are very expensive. They also don’t get as big of an opinion debuff, making diplomacy mildly possible.

How to Beat:

The main way to handle them is through their research, since the stuff they get has to be obtained through lengthy research projects. It is entirely possible to kneecap them majorly by taking their research planets or megastructures (mainly Science Nexuses or the Lathe). When they reach stage 5, their goal will be to build a Horizon Needle, take all of their pops, and throw it into a black hole (or do a special project in their home system). In this stage, you’ll want to throw whatever you’ve got at the needle, but beware: it’s a tricky one to catch with beefy armor and a jump drive. If the Cosmogenesis empire “wins,” then the galaxy will not end. Instead, every other non-capital colony across the galaxy has something happen to it, ranging from gaining a major buff to being obliterated, and the Cosmogenesis empire will become a Fallen Empire. Overall, fighting isn’t advised alone as they will have Fallen Empire ships, super scary components, Fallen Empire ships again, and other stuff.

Cetana

So, Cetana, she’s by far the scariest of the crises but she’s the nicest, she blows up the galaxy out of love, not of hatred, anyways lore time: (I’m spoilering this because it’s a lot of lore and I really don’t want to spoil you).

The synthetic queen (originally cetana) comes from ancient times when the FE’s were in their prime and Zarqlan was Zarqlaning, before being a synthetic queen she was just a queen until for unkown reasons she decided to end all the suffering in the galxy, awww! (Not aww she wanted to blow it all up), and she was doing good until Zarqlan (yes, the zarqlan) snorted a lot of space coke and called up the animator of clay to imprison her, she was given to the isolationist FE as they were deemed the best to keep her there as they didn’t want her out (duh), it was all going well until the people who guarded her cell, forgot about her, the systems that kept her imprisoned gradually wore down and were forgotten about until she escaped, nobody was there to stop her and she ran rampant

Gameplay Stuff: The place where big synth mommy will be is determined in a priority list, this list coming as follows: The homeworld of the isolationsts FE, the homeworld of any other FE, any relic world, any tomb world, and finally any habitable planet, where she emerges will be taken, no takesy backsies until you declare war

When she emerges after 6 months she will yoink any adjacent systems, and then again after a year, she will yoink the systems, she will also declare total war on any and all FE’s in the galaxy, so hope you didn’t get attached to any of them. You might be thinking: John Formless, why can’t I just attack her?

An indestructible nanite storm covers all of her territories, if you send a ship in, it’ll go MIA and you’ll get a special research to see what’s going on in there, once you complete that you get a SECOND project which will allow you to enter her outposts (discussed later) but not her main system

Outposts: When she starts to spread out she will build outposts, these can’t be entered like her main system until you complete that funny special project but the defenses there are much weaker, she will send convoys to the outpost every so often to advance a different special project, you can attack these for materials and advances to the situation but beware as it will invoke her ire

The other special project, once you complete that first special project a new situation will start to find out how to take down her nanite shields, this is done in 10 stages and once you complete half you’ll no longer gain an opinion debuff from here for destroying convoys or outposts, once you reach stage 10 you will be able to attack her main system finally

The other other special project, Cetana is working on a project of her own to blow up the galaxy, if she does this, it will blow up (duh), once her work reaches 80% every empire will be at war with her since they don’t want the galaxy to blow up

How to Handle Her:

• Version 1: Play it as normal and kill her, her defenders are well balanced but her heralds have no shields, hit and run tactics are ineffective as her ships have special nanite repair systems (that you can reverse engineer)
• Version 2: Drugs even more Super Major Spoilers ahead, no literally if you’ve breached the shroud and complete both of her special archaeology sites can call out to the animator of clay when entering the shroud for 500 zro and 2,000 dollars, after that you can pay a whole lot of zro, a planet, or your ruler, paying this toll will disable cetanas big scary colossus and start a special project to bring a transport ship to it to instantly kill her and get her colossus

There’s a whole lot more that’s not covered so uh, actually fight her for once to get a good taste of what to do.

Actual serious time, this segment is gonna be shorter and with more clear information:

• Extradimensionals: Attack the portal immediately so they can’t get reinforcements, use ships that have mainly shields with kinetic weaponry, don’t let them get a foothold.
• Prethoryn: Use mainly armor as they have good shield destruction, they have no shields so lasers are effective, same as extradimensionals, don’t let them expand.
• Contingency: They have balanced weapons, armor, and shields but weak hulls, use bypass weapons, take their hubs as fast as possible and try and get their relic as its really good.
• Nemesis: Take their main system as fast as possible, don’t let them complete the engine.
• Cosmogenesis: Avoid if possible, don’t fight unless victory is confirmed, kneecap science.
• Cetana: Try and get her favor till you declare war, heralds have no shields, don’t use hit and run tactics.

I hope the above information was helpful. Happy gaming!