General tips for Stellaris Stellaris guide, tips
Last update: 14 March 2019
This part of the guide contains general tips involving all elements of the game, including industry, research, military, or campaign progression.
Beginning
1. Always read the message pop-ups on the screen. They usually contain info about the story, and factors which can influence its development.
2. The tutorials are the best introduction into the subject of the game's mechanics. You can omit individual parts, but you should keep it enabled so it can inform you about all the stuff that you're not going to pay attention to during the initial hours of the campaign.
3. Spend your influence points wisely, remember that, for example, taking full control of a region during the initial stages of the game is more important than assigning a commander to a unit.
4. Stop the gametime whenever you need to give a thought to something or to read some info. Issue orders to individual units during the pause.
5. Learn the hotkeys. The combat takes place in real time, so this is the only way to not overuse the active pause.
6. Colonization requires a lot of energy. Do not attempt to colonize a new system if your energy balance is negative or you do not have considerable power supplies.
7. Never stop to develop your empire technologically. The budget doesn't suffer from conducting research, which are the foundation of the galactic conquest.
8. Always survey neighbor systems. Gathering data is an important factor standing behind discovering resources and special items.
9. Never cease to develop your army. Hostile empires will not hesitate to lessen your influence if they discover you're unable to defend a system.
10. Always investigate anomalies. Despite the fact that you can lose men and ships, they allow you to discover laws of the Galaxy than can't be revealed otherwise.
11. At the beginning of the game, wage war only against those who declare war to you. If you don't have an efficient infrastructure, war can ruin you.
Geography
1. If on the Galaxy Map a system is displayed in gray, it means that you haven't checked all the planets, or worse, you didn't check any of them. Get over there.
2. A name of the system displayed in white means that it has been fully explored, consequently, you have access to all the information about planets and resources in that system.
3. In the detailed view of the Galaxy, underneath the name of each system, you can see what resources were discovered on the planets of that system.
4. Sometimes strategic resource deposits are discovered in places where you already have a mining infrastructure placed. Because of that, at the beginning of the game you should use all available resource sources.
5. Remember that when selecting spiral galaxy you will be able to move between the spirals only in specific places.
6. Systems can be located in such way that enemy's area of influence might enter your systems as his technology advances. In order to avoid that, build outposts and colonize planets.
7. Carefully read description of each star. Its class can tell you what sort of planets you can expect in the system.
8. Notice the special factors in some systems. They can for example damage the hull of a unit which remains for too long in it.
Industry
1. Try to build as many power plants on the surface of a planet in order to make sure you're not short on Energy Credits.
2 Each mine and science lab requires energy for maintenance, the more you develop the building, the higher will the monthly cost be.
3. Energy credits will be more valuable than the minerals, of which you can store a lot in warehouses. Try to make sure you have a big monthly income so that your energetic balance stays profitable.
4. Try fully utilizing the potential of the slot coming from its passive income.
5. If a slot offers passive income, then the game won't inform you about the unemployment in the slot. In case of a planet which belongs to an additional sector you don't need to worry about it. If the planet is part of main sector then you must control the growth of population.
Management
1. Don't build frontier outposts in all neighboring systems. Each outpost has a certain range, which allows you to expand your borders without losing a lot of resource.
2. If there is a colonized planet in your system, you can disassemble the outpost, which will increase the influence points income. Colonized planets have a still greater range than the outposts, and they also enhance your area of influence.
3. When creating a sector, give a good thought to which system would you like to involve in it. Removing systems from a sector is very expensive.
4. You can relocate a population on the given planet, as to move people into the slot in which you've constructed a building.
5. If an alien empire tries to contact you, remember that your first words should either be very positive, or at least neutral. You can perform different diplomatic actions later on, but at the beginning, it's best not to make enemies.
6. You should establish embassies in those empires, of which you're the most afraid of. If the given nation has a significant technological and military it's best to keep good relationship with them. The embassy will also positively influence other empires opinion towards your civilization.
7. Remember that planetary administration building give additional Profits to the neighboring slots of the planet. Make sure to set them up so that they're surrounded by other slots from all four directions. This rule applies mostly to the colonization, because that's when you can decide where to place the main building.
8. You can change planet and system names at all times, which will make navigation in the situation log much easier.
9. Before attempting to re-build a planet, see what's the food surplus among its inhabitants and secure at least two units in surplus each month.
10. Population of a planet will develop spontaneously until it fills every available slot. If a slot provides bonuses without any buildings on it, you will not get the unemployment pop-up. If a slot gives e.g. 2 units of minerals each month, you ought to build a mine there, so that the output from the mine will be added to the passive bonus. If you build a power plant there, you will lose that bonus.
11. Remember that the sectors are developed automatically, but you can chose a particular strategy of development of them.
12. Don't forget that a declaration of competition and a declaration of ware are two different things. Competition will provide bonus monthly income of influence points.
13. Frontier and military outposts and subspace tunnels are the only buildings that you can construct outside your empire.
14. A Protectorate provides an opportunity of catching up with other empires that are more advanced technologically. Remember, however, that after researching more than 40% of your protector's technology, you become their vassal - in such a case, the only way to part with your master is war.
Research
1. When doing research try to also develop buildings, so they will be more efficient.
2. You need special technologies for removing Obstacles on alien planets.
3. When choosing which research to run, pay attention to those that can provide significant monthly income of influence.
4. The best way to increase the capacity of warehouses is to develop the technologies concerning this.
5. When building an empire, remember about the situation log. If you're trying to do one of the special missions, or are gathering data about a newly discovered civilization, you can cease the basic research for a while.
6. Remember that the special missions have a time limit. If you want to receive additional bonuses, it's a good idea to spend some resources on more research ships.
7. After examining a planet that you're planning to colonize, you have to investigate any anomalies discovered on it's surface, for the colonization to be even possible.
8. Remember that you can hire few additional scientists and assign them to a task which can fully utilize their potential.
Military
1. To get better warships, you need to upgrade the Spaceport and provide it with required modules.
2. Thanks to new technologies, you can design new ships, that will suit your needs. You are able to balance your ships between better equipped but more expensive, and cheaper, but less effective.
3. Try using various equipment and weapons in order to achieve diversity of units.
4. Land armies are cheap in maintaining, so you should successively increase their numbers and as the game progresses provide additional equipment for them.
5. Remember that units become truly effective after hiring a squad leader.
6. The most effective weapons are the ones that ignore shields and armor of the opponent.
7. Place orbital stations at the entrance to border sectors, preferably near to each other. In case of more important systems and buildings you should build a few fortresses around (for example near the home planet).
8. Each cosmoport level increases the maximum limit of units by 1.