A few people seem to be struggling with the economy and a few other things in Stellaris. IN general regardless of the difficulty level you should be able to do alright as long as you have the 2 guaranteed worlds things turned on. Only on the higher difficulty levels with aggressive AI and a crap start should you have any drastic difficulties.
First things first I make the following assumptions about 2.2/Megacorp.
1. Population growth is key. More pops= more resources, more resources= less economic problems.
2. Tech is key, rushing tech is better than focusing on and rushing unity.
3. Early on prioritise basic resources over specialist resources. This is because if you have some economic problems you can sell minerals/food etc. Build to many mineral conversion buildings and you run out of minerals you are gonna struggle to created more basic or advanced buildings and might even struggle producing enough consumer goods. AKA the economic death spiral.
4. Ecumenopilis are very very good even if you create a small one early on (size 10-12). Late game they are key to having a massive fleet (1 million power+). Earlier you get one the better things are (example Fen Habbanis).
The best traits, ethics,civics etc.
For the most part I don't think this matters to much it comes down to personal preference. I think Democracy is weak and I am not a fan of egalitarianism (shared burdens is great however). Mitigating any draw backs is also key such as deviants+ spiritualist or repugnant+ agrarian idyll.There are a few that stand out however.
Traits
Rapid Breeders. Pop growth is key.
Agrarian. Food is valuable, changing your food policies and enabling decisions= faster pop growth.
Natural Engineers. The techs are heavily weighted towards engineering that gets the least amount of buffs to research speed (black holes for physics, gene clinics etc for social).
Intelligent. Research is very important now and you want to get key techs like roots, droids, terraforming, and pop growth boots ASAP.
For civics any of the special requirement ones are great (eg technocracy, exalted priesthood, aristocratic elite, shared burdens). Ones that are better early in the game are great while others are better off as your 3rd civic (eg aristocratic elite, Byzantine Bureaucracy as 3rd pick, technocracy/exalted priesthood 1st pick).
Rushing unity is usually a bad idea (unless you focus on tech as inward perf/exalted priesthood) this is because a lot of the good perks are tech locked behind requirements. You don't want to tank unity either just don't get to carried away on spamming it early. Anything that reduces influence, give more influence or makes edicts last longer are also good. The techs that grant edicts for farm, minerals and energy are very good.
What Ships To Use?
At a most basic level use corvettes early, Cruisers in the mid game and battleships late game. Destroyers are mostly trash and are worth skipping IMHO. At an advanced level you can focus on anything and you can easily conquer the galaxy using cruisers or even in the late game take down AFEs and the crisis using cruisers. But you need very specific builds if unsure about what to do use about 1/3rd kinetics and 2 3rds energy and a 50/50 split between armor and shields. Kinetics tend to be good vs shields and lasers/plasma are good at chewing up the hull. BBs can hit corvettes late game with certain builds or you can add smaller weapons on them to hit them. AI builds are so bad it doesn't matter to much what you use as long as you don't build complete crap. If you know how to design a counter fleet do that but defaulting to a decent vs everything build is not to bad as you might get hit by multiple enemies and your counter ships for A might suck vs B. Don't use missiles generally- there are exceptions but if you don't know them don't use them (this is a simple 101 guide).
So What To Build First?
Generally I build a energy then food district then a unity building then research on my home world. Things like robot factories, gene clinics, clone tanks and the various unity buildings should be built early. The exception being your 1st 3 worlds world 2 should probably have a forge or 2 on it early, world 3 will probably need civilian goods. Anything that generates/reduces consumer goods are good early. Pay attention to policies you use early on but you want to save up 1000 food to enable the pop growth decision your capital. The trade policy that produces consumer goods is also great. Anything that will let you build a gene clinic, unity building and perhaps a research lab without having to build a civilian goods plant early is good. If you are under little pressure shipping off new pops to world 2 and 3 until they hit size 10 is also good. You will delay developing your homeworld but overall will drastically accelerate your empires early growth. I only build forges on my homeworld if I have one of those interesting starts where I have a close by genocidal empire and there will be early war. Not that early on you can't actually build research building on your colonies but you can build forges and civilian fabricators until you upgrade your capital. This is another reason why I put research buildings on my capital. After that I tend to specialise key planets, planets with an even spread of districts or few districts tend to be turned into urban worlds with various good stuff located on them. Good stuff mostly being whatever I need at the time.
Exploration is Key.
How many scout ships is to many? The correct answer is more. A lot of players tend to build 3 or 4, I usually go for more like 8-10. This is the main reason I build an early energy district. Yes I know food can be sold but food is often being spent early on paying for growth boosts on my colonies that are more important IMHO than selling for credits on the galactic market. See previous point about growth is key. In my last 4 MP games I have always gotten my precursor events before the other players (Fen Habbanis X2, Yuht, Cybrex). Fen Habbanis is obviously the best (and broken/OP), Cybrex Prime is the worst one. Yes you read that right if you can afford megastructures you have already won the game for the most part, Cybrex Prime is win more. The Yuht and Irassians are better because their systems usually contain X5 gas, X5 alloys, X10 research of each category and 10-13 energy. Being able to use that gas early on to power research stats in infinitely more powerful than repairing a ringworld in 100 years time. In 4X games expansion is always key and in Stellaris that includes expanding your research. Getting key techs early is always better than later. Exploring rapidly finds you more anomalies, finds choke points, and locates AI empires ASAP.
With scouting I also tend to bypass early anomolies as I am scouting for choke points. Follow on ships can crack them open. I usually try and hire a +33% or +50% anomoly research scientist (or 2 or 3). Think blitzkrieg the more stuff you find ASAP the better. Only crack anomiles early if they are very low level/quick or if they are a precursor one near an AI empires border. Its not about how fast you crack the 1st anomaly but how fast you locate them and then crack IMHO. Bypassing them early also gets you more mileage out of the Reach for the Stars edicts which you want to run once or twice early on.
The 1st Idea
I almost always go for expansion. This is because it has to many good things that help you early. More pops, 10% growth rate, reduced influence cost of star bases, and even the administration efficiency boost matters early. I usually take reach for the stars, colonization fever and a new life.
The 1st perk.
For me its mostly a choice between 2 options. Interstellar Dominion or Executive Vigor. Your early scouting basically tells you which one to pick. If you have lots of room to expand take ID, if you get blocked in take Executive Vigor. Both in effect let you use more influence.
Minerals Are Important.
Well duh but this is also key. If in doubt about what to build more mining districts are always good. This is important if you want to rush an Ecumenopilis as 20k minerals add along with building a lot of city districts. This is why sometimes my 1st Ecumenopolis is often a small one (if I don't find Fen Habbanis). A small Ecumenopolis is worth way more than a large one 50-100 years later. Think how good Fen Habbanis is with 6 districts vs one you built with 10. A small Ecumenopolis tends to feed into a larger one later on anyway as you won't have to refine many allows or civilian goods from minerals (maybe only 1 forge and industrial world needed).
Ascension Perks.
Biological Ascension is by far and away the best perk IMHO. This is because you get cloning tanks and later on you can engineer rapid breeders on there as well. If you're a Xenophile Xeno compatibility is also great (+1 traits, +1 trait points, 20% growth speed, 33% immigration). Compare these growth boosts to a spiritualist psionic empire who may skip robots (to keep factions happy). Put simply you will end up with double or triple the population.
Zards Easy Mode Empires.
These are the ones I think will be good for new players to mess around with. Or if you are struggling with the mechanics. Generally materialists are good at tech, spirtualists are good at unity, and Xenophiles and Xenophobes good at population growth.
Space Mecha Communists.
Ethics
Fanatic Eglartarian
Materialist
Civics
Shared Burden
Mechanist
Rapid Breeder
Natural Engineers
Traditional
Solitary
Deviants
The basic idea here is to go easy on housing needs and cram in as many pops as you can. Solitary mostly doesn't matter and you can bio engineer it away later even if you don't go down bio ascension path. You also get robots right from the get go as it can take several decades to aquire the robot tech. This is very rapid population growth right from the get go.
Technocratic Union
Fanatic Materialist
Militarist (or whatever)
Technocracy
Mining Guilds
Natural Engineers
Intelligent
Deviants
This is the tech rush build although you can take variants of it but you want intelligent+ natural engineers+ fanatic materialists. You can switch out militarist for Xenophile/Xenophobe and mining guilds for mechanist if you want to focus on pop growth. The opportunity cost of not taking mechanist is lower however as you tends to reach robots very fast anyway.
Irenic Dictatorship
Agarian Idyll
Inward Perfection
Xenophobe
Pacifist
Spirtualist
Traditional
Agrarian
Rapid Breeders
Deviants
Repugnant
This is a unity/food rush build with decent population growth as well so you can skip droids (might want to go bio ascension over psionic anyway). A variant switched agarian idyll for exalted priesthood which is the unity spam build. If you go psionic and become a god emperor its the only way left in the game AFAIK to dump inward perfection later in the game. If you want to be a warmonger Going Xenophobe/Spitiualist in whatever combination you prefer + exalted priesthood+cutthroat politics give you very good unity and good influence reduction+ pop growth. Note you can still use druids as a spiritualist empire but later in the game that robot rebellion thing can happen and you get less influence. The choice is yours.
Gaia World Start
Free Haven
Life Seeded
Fanatic Xenophile
Materialist
Rapid Breeders
Agrarian
Nomadic
Deviants
Non Adaptive
This gives you 90% habitability and maximises your chances at immigration and Gaia worlds tend to have rare features you can mine. This is a very powerful build that once you get some migrant treaties (expansion then diplomatic recommended) or rackets you can go forth and settle other worlds. The extra resources off a gaia world and xenophile give you good trade power niche means more consumer goods as well so you are also good at tech rushing. Later on you just dump Free Haven and bio engineer away nomadic. By then your species will likely be an extreme minority anyway being the scientist caste on your home world for the most part.
First things first I make the following assumptions about 2.2/Megacorp.
1. Population growth is key. More pops= more resources, more resources= less economic problems.
2. Tech is key, rushing tech is better than focusing on and rushing unity.
3. Early on prioritise basic resources over specialist resources. This is because if you have some economic problems you can sell minerals/food etc. Build to many mineral conversion buildings and you run out of minerals you are gonna struggle to created more basic or advanced buildings and might even struggle producing enough consumer goods. AKA the economic death spiral.
4. Ecumenopilis are very very good even if you create a small one early on (size 10-12). Late game they are key to having a massive fleet (1 million power+). Earlier you get one the better things are (example Fen Habbanis).
The best traits, ethics,civics etc.
For the most part I don't think this matters to much it comes down to personal preference. I think Democracy is weak and I am not a fan of egalitarianism (shared burdens is great however). Mitigating any draw backs is also key such as deviants+ spiritualist or repugnant+ agrarian idyll.There are a few that stand out however.
Traits
Rapid Breeders. Pop growth is key.
Agrarian. Food is valuable, changing your food policies and enabling decisions= faster pop growth.
Natural Engineers. The techs are heavily weighted towards engineering that gets the least amount of buffs to research speed (black holes for physics, gene clinics etc for social).
Intelligent. Research is very important now and you want to get key techs like roots, droids, terraforming, and pop growth boots ASAP.
For civics any of the special requirement ones are great (eg technocracy, exalted priesthood, aristocratic elite, shared burdens). Ones that are better early in the game are great while others are better off as your 3rd civic (eg aristocratic elite, Byzantine Bureaucracy as 3rd pick, technocracy/exalted priesthood 1st pick).
Rushing unity is usually a bad idea (unless you focus on tech as inward perf/exalted priesthood) this is because a lot of the good perks are tech locked behind requirements. You don't want to tank unity either just don't get to carried away on spamming it early. Anything that reduces influence, give more influence or makes edicts last longer are also good. The techs that grant edicts for farm, minerals and energy are very good.
What Ships To Use?
At a most basic level use corvettes early, Cruisers in the mid game and battleships late game. Destroyers are mostly trash and are worth skipping IMHO. At an advanced level you can focus on anything and you can easily conquer the galaxy using cruisers or even in the late game take down AFEs and the crisis using cruisers. But you need very specific builds if unsure about what to do use about 1/3rd kinetics and 2 3rds energy and a 50/50 split between armor and shields. Kinetics tend to be good vs shields and lasers/plasma are good at chewing up the hull. BBs can hit corvettes late game with certain builds or you can add smaller weapons on them to hit them. AI builds are so bad it doesn't matter to much what you use as long as you don't build complete crap. If you know how to design a counter fleet do that but defaulting to a decent vs everything build is not to bad as you might get hit by multiple enemies and your counter ships for A might suck vs B. Don't use missiles generally- there are exceptions but if you don't know them don't use them (this is a simple 101 guide).
So What To Build First?
Generally I build a energy then food district then a unity building then research on my home world. Things like robot factories, gene clinics, clone tanks and the various unity buildings should be built early. The exception being your 1st 3 worlds world 2 should probably have a forge or 2 on it early, world 3 will probably need civilian goods. Anything that generates/reduces consumer goods are good early. Pay attention to policies you use early on but you want to save up 1000 food to enable the pop growth decision your capital. The trade policy that produces consumer goods is also great. Anything that will let you build a gene clinic, unity building and perhaps a research lab without having to build a civilian goods plant early is good. If you are under little pressure shipping off new pops to world 2 and 3 until they hit size 10 is also good. You will delay developing your homeworld but overall will drastically accelerate your empires early growth. I only build forges on my homeworld if I have one of those interesting starts where I have a close by genocidal empire and there will be early war. Not that early on you can't actually build research building on your colonies but you can build forges and civilian fabricators until you upgrade your capital. This is another reason why I put research buildings on my capital. After that I tend to specialise key planets, planets with an even spread of districts or few districts tend to be turned into urban worlds with various good stuff located on them. Good stuff mostly being whatever I need at the time.
Exploration is Key.
How many scout ships is to many? The correct answer is more. A lot of players tend to build 3 or 4, I usually go for more like 8-10. This is the main reason I build an early energy district. Yes I know food can be sold but food is often being spent early on paying for growth boosts on my colonies that are more important IMHO than selling for credits on the galactic market. See previous point about growth is key. In my last 4 MP games I have always gotten my precursor events before the other players (Fen Habbanis X2, Yuht, Cybrex). Fen Habbanis is obviously the best (and broken/OP), Cybrex Prime is the worst one. Yes you read that right if you can afford megastructures you have already won the game for the most part, Cybrex Prime is win more. The Yuht and Irassians are better because their systems usually contain X5 gas, X5 alloys, X10 research of each category and 10-13 energy. Being able to use that gas early on to power research stats in infinitely more powerful than repairing a ringworld in 100 years time. In 4X games expansion is always key and in Stellaris that includes expanding your research. Getting key techs early is always better than later. Exploring rapidly finds you more anomalies, finds choke points, and locates AI empires ASAP.
With scouting I also tend to bypass early anomolies as I am scouting for choke points. Follow on ships can crack them open. I usually try and hire a +33% or +50% anomoly research scientist (or 2 or 3). Think blitzkrieg the more stuff you find ASAP the better. Only crack anomiles early if they are very low level/quick or if they are a precursor one near an AI empires border. Its not about how fast you crack the 1st anomaly but how fast you locate them and then crack IMHO. Bypassing them early also gets you more mileage out of the Reach for the Stars edicts which you want to run once or twice early on.
The 1st Idea
I almost always go for expansion. This is because it has to many good things that help you early. More pops, 10% growth rate, reduced influence cost of star bases, and even the administration efficiency boost matters early. I usually take reach for the stars, colonization fever and a new life.
The 1st perk.
For me its mostly a choice between 2 options. Interstellar Dominion or Executive Vigor. Your early scouting basically tells you which one to pick. If you have lots of room to expand take ID, if you get blocked in take Executive Vigor. Both in effect let you use more influence.
Minerals Are Important.
Well duh but this is also key. If in doubt about what to build more mining districts are always good. This is important if you want to rush an Ecumenopilis as 20k minerals add along with building a lot of city districts. This is why sometimes my 1st Ecumenopolis is often a small one (if I don't find Fen Habbanis). A small Ecumenopolis is worth way more than a large one 50-100 years later. Think how good Fen Habbanis is with 6 districts vs one you built with 10. A small Ecumenopolis tends to feed into a larger one later on anyway as you won't have to refine many allows or civilian goods from minerals (maybe only 1 forge and industrial world needed).
Ascension Perks.
Biological Ascension is by far and away the best perk IMHO. This is because you get cloning tanks and later on you can engineer rapid breeders on there as well. If you're a Xenophile Xeno compatibility is also great (+1 traits, +1 trait points, 20% growth speed, 33% immigration). Compare these growth boosts to a spiritualist psionic empire who may skip robots (to keep factions happy). Put simply you will end up with double or triple the population.
Zards Easy Mode Empires.
These are the ones I think will be good for new players to mess around with. Or if you are struggling with the mechanics. Generally materialists are good at tech, spirtualists are good at unity, and Xenophiles and Xenophobes good at population growth.
Space Mecha Communists.
Ethics
Fanatic Eglartarian
Materialist
Civics
Shared Burden
Mechanist
Rapid Breeder
Natural Engineers
Traditional
Solitary
Deviants
The basic idea here is to go easy on housing needs and cram in as many pops as you can. Solitary mostly doesn't matter and you can bio engineer it away later even if you don't go down bio ascension path. You also get robots right from the get go as it can take several decades to aquire the robot tech. This is very rapid population growth right from the get go.
Technocratic Union
Fanatic Materialist
Militarist (or whatever)
Technocracy
Mining Guilds
Natural Engineers
Intelligent
Deviants
This is the tech rush build although you can take variants of it but you want intelligent+ natural engineers+ fanatic materialists. You can switch out militarist for Xenophile/Xenophobe and mining guilds for mechanist if you want to focus on pop growth. The opportunity cost of not taking mechanist is lower however as you tends to reach robots very fast anyway.
Irenic Dictatorship
Agarian Idyll
Inward Perfection
Xenophobe
Pacifist
Spirtualist
Traditional
Agrarian
Rapid Breeders
Deviants
Repugnant
This is a unity/food rush build with decent population growth as well so you can skip droids (might want to go bio ascension over psionic anyway). A variant switched agarian idyll for exalted priesthood which is the unity spam build. If you go psionic and become a god emperor its the only way left in the game AFAIK to dump inward perfection later in the game. If you want to be a warmonger Going Xenophobe/Spitiualist in whatever combination you prefer + exalted priesthood+cutthroat politics give you very good unity and good influence reduction+ pop growth. Note you can still use druids as a spiritualist empire but later in the game that robot rebellion thing can happen and you get less influence. The choice is yours.
Gaia World Start
Free Haven
Life Seeded
Fanatic Xenophile
Materialist
Rapid Breeders
Agrarian
Nomadic
Deviants
Non Adaptive
This gives you 90% habitability and maximises your chances at immigration and Gaia worlds tend to have rare features you can mine. This is a very powerful build that once you get some migrant treaties (expansion then diplomatic recommended) or rackets you can go forth and settle other worlds. The extra resources off a gaia world and xenophile give you good trade power niche means more consumer goods as well so you are also good at tech rushing. Later on you just dump Free Haven and bio engineer away nomadic. By then your species will likely be an extreme minority anyway being the scientist caste on your home world for the most part.
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