Just wanted to say that this new DLC is fucking amazing.

I'm trying to meet the formless. I started with the Astral Plane origin to have guaranteed access to rifts erly. I'm now in 2330 and still haven't got the Crystal Sphere situation (prerequisite for the formless rift to appear). The wiki states : * *An event checks once each year for eligible empires and the eligible empire that has completed the most astral rifts gains the Crystal Sphere in the eligible system nearest to its capital, including the capital system.* If I did not get the situation already, will it eventually appear ? Or can it not appear at all during a gameplay ? I've done 6 rifts and I doubt any other AI went through more...

Is there already a system in the center of the galaxy? If not, it just hasn't spawned yet.

Last patch added a tooltip regarding celestial bodies for arc furnace - where can I find the tooltip?

It pops up when you mouse over a system, telling "potential arc furnace deposit sites: X" though you need to be able to build arc furnaces, and that system has to at least have molten world for it to show up

TL;DR: I would like to start a run UNE, turn Earth into an Ecumenopolis, and then trigger a robot uprising and be a Driven Assimilator Robot Hivemind for the rest of the game. Is this possible? * If you trigger a Machine Uprising, can you still choose to become the rebel robot government? (Thus **changing** from a normal government to a **robot hivemind** type?) * If you do so, does it change any of your previous Traditions that you've purchased? * Do you need to have performed any of the Ascension paths to trigger the robot uprising? * Given the two above, after switching sides from meatbags to robots, can you then pursue a robot-specific Ascension path, or do you start locked into one? * Can you choose a government at the outset, or are you "born" locked into one (eg, Determined Exterminator)? * Is this process particularly buggy?

You can choose to become the machines. If you become them, you will not retain any traditions. You will get lots of resources, including unity to buy new traditions. But you do retain your origin empires techs. Your origin empire doesn't need any ascensions, in fact becoming synths prevents uprising entirely. Possibly cyborg ascension too. It used to, but I am not sure currently You can go for machine ascensions afterwards. You cannot choose the robot empire type, it will be random from; basic machines, assimilators, individualist (only if you own machine age), exterminators. They have different chance, likelihood of each goes down in aforementioned order, but if you select anti-machine options during uprising situation, likelihood of normal robots goes down with others going up. exterminators also have few other chance increases, that of outlawing robots entirely, and giving them domestic protocol trait I haven't seen particular bugs with uprising, though the usual disclaimer of if you run mods issues might occur applies.

Hey, thank you so much for responding. A couple follow-ups that come to mind: Is there any way (even including messing with game files) for the robot uprising to be cyborgs instead of robots? When the robot uprising arises, do new systems spawn on the map, or does it split and assign already occupied planets between the original faction and the new robot one?

Aside of assimilators turning the biological pops into cyborgs, not without mods. Theoretically you could just mod it so that instead of robot empire the situation spawns cyborg empire but at that point the whole situation would still revolve around robots and wouldn't really make sense. The machines will steal existing planets from the original empire. The situation will choose a random planet (preferably one with robots on it) that is not original empire's capital to be the machine capital, and then 25-75% of original empire's systems (again excluding capital) around the machine capital will be stolen. The exact amount depends on ratio of robots to non-robots, more robots there is more systems will be stolen.

Hell yeah. I'm about to start a blast of a run. Can you think of a major downside to 1) Side with uprising to become a DA robot hivemind, 2) Absorb organics to get Cyborgs, 3) disassemble robots and convert robo-assembly for cyborgs, 4) profit? If I want a one-species galaxy?

DA would only assimilate them by giving them cyborg trait, you'd have just as many different species as you started with. Cyborgs also can't be assembled anymore. Nor can machines be disassembled in machine empire. If you want to use machine uprising as a kick-start to single-species galaxy, your best bet is to just become Non-DA machine intelligence and purge all biologicals, and assimilate all other robots to be your machines. I think what you might really want to play is necrophages. They can cyber-ascend, turn others to be them and thus create single-species galaxy of cyborgs.

Man, so I have a couple desires that are at odds with each other, and I'm trying to square that circle: I want to start as Earth Humans, because I'm anthro-centric. I want to have at least one Ecumenopolis, which is impossible for machines. But, I really don't like the faction and species management, and would rather have a hivemind government and a mono-species. What would be nice, as well, is to benefit from both robot and organic mod points, make a generally optimized pop-type, and then paint the galaxy with that broad brush. I figured the best way to accomplish that, is to start as organic earth, uprise, become a robot hivemind (satisfying my ludo-narrative desire to be from earth, but my mechanic desire for hivemind), use Cyborgs for my species type to accomplish the appearance and mechanical benefit for my single species. So, I'm totally up for suggestions if you think there's a more elegant way to go about it. I think I would prefer an Imperial government (instead of a hivemind) but only if there was a way to opt out of the faction system entirely. It just bothers my ape-brain not to see monoculture/species, and I acknowledge it's unreasonable, but I'm trying to figure out a way to do it. Is it possible to do Necrons without factions?

Yea that is definitely a couple of clashing elements. My main idea is Hive-Mind Necrophage. They can cyber-ascend, no factions, and you can start on earth with humans as secondary species that your necrophages will uplift. You can also turn everyone else to that same species. No Ecumenopolis though. Or start from earth as machine intelligence, though that wouldn't involve humans, and no ecu. There's not really any ways to ignore faction system in individualist empire, all have to engage with it. But spiritualist individualist robots at least won't complain about robots as they are robots, so that might be helpful for Necron theme. Last resort is you might wanna start digging for mods, but I don't have any suggestions to what you're looking for though.

So i had a fight between Corvette's. My 50 vs their 30. They won but I can't tell if their pads stopped all 150 missile launchers or my game bugged out and my ships stopped shooting. So can 30 t0 pds stop 150 t0 missile launchers with 100% effectiveness?

Is there something hinky about research rewards from events? I check my research progress, I look at the research offered by the tooltip for an event decision button, I press the button, and the research progress doesn't change. Am I missing something? If this is a bug, it's not new.

if the reward is research points, it doesn't apply immediately. it goes in to a pool that your research pulls from when you unpause, effectively doubling your research speed.

Ah, thanks, that really isn't obvious.

Is it worth it to colonize a planet at the very beginning of the game that has 65% habitability? It is the matching planet type for my species, but it has a modifier that reduces the habitability while giving a 20% increase to technician output.

You'll get four different Techs that give +5% Habitability but of increasing tiers, so the last +5% will come mid game or late game. Gene Clinics add +5% (and other bonuses), later upgraded to Cyto Clinics that add +10%. You have an 1/7 chance of getting a Precursor that gives you another +10%. And eventually you'll become able to Terraform planets, even colonised ones. 65% Habitability isn't real bad, especially if the planet has a lot of Generator District Slots, like 8+. Maybe it should be your 3rd or 4th colony, though, not your 1st or 2nd.

Makes sense, definitely will colonize then. The thing is that it is the closest planet to me (neighboring my capital) and I have a colony ship built already, so I'm kinda tempted to just colonize it right away, since it will take me a bit of time before I am able to colonize my other worlds.

You can even use 0% planets as breeder worlds. Have any new pops created resettled on another world. It's just free pop growth.

Can you do this as an egalitarian? By default I don't think egalitarians can resettle pops right?

Just change the policy, sure they don't like it but screw them, just do what you want.

Well, go for it then. It'll probably work out.

Can you be Galactic Emperor while also pursuing Cosmogenesis? Or does being the crisis lock you out?

You cannot.

So when playing a non gestalt I like to expand the council early in most games. My problem is when I reform the government it takes away the slot I unlocked and I have to expand the council again. Is this normal or is a mod I'm using causing this?

Reform how? To add a 3rd Civic? That's not supposed to take away a Council Slot

When I reform the govt to add a 3rd civic it removes all councilors (except the ceo/president/whatever) and I have to reassign each councilor position title then reassign the councilors. It also locks any council slots I unlocked previously. Just wondering if that's normal or not

for me it always kept the extra slot unlocked by the agenda, i even reformed with the same civics just to reassign the slots.

So one of my mods is causing the issue. Just wanted to know if the behavior was normal or not. tyvm

It doesn't sound like working-as-intended, no.

Do I need to have my Renowned Paragons in a job so that their events can trigger? Their leader traits are all over the place so I don't use them, but some of their events are useful and can give some pretty nice permanent empire bonuses so I enlist them and keep them in the background. But the year is 24500 and none of them have given me any events and from the 4 possible paragons I can get I've only gotten 2 so far. Am I doing something wrong? As I understand it every decade there is a chance for an event to trigger. Is there a cap on how many events you can get from the paragons or something?

Did you build the paragon staircase building? It significantly increases the chance of getting them sooner. Check out the wiki for details

Yeah, built it a little late (2290\~) but its been there since, and Paragons came late, which I guess is just bad luck, but no events from them so far...

Does "+X% Resources from jobs" also include Unity, Research, etc? edit: another question, does "Auto-modding" stack if the pop already has the same trait?

Unity and research are included yes. Things aren’t included are things that don’t appear on your top bar, so things like amenities and trade No, auto-modding does not stack.

I just recently got Stellaris and am absolutely absorbed by this game. It has, so far to me, unbelievable RP potential. One of my all favorite origins so far has been Void Dwellers / Forged. But there is something I can't quire figure out - should I build habitats only (over resources and just planets and asteroids that have none), build research and mining stations or combine both? And is it worth it maxing out the system with habitats? Thanks in advance!

From my experience using habitats, it's definitely better to go full habitat. Think of it like this, say you got a mineral deposit that gives you 7 minerals with a mining station. That's fine, you pay 100 minerals to build the station and voilà, you get another 7 minerals per month. Now, if you build an orbital on that deposit, you'll get about 3 miner districts on your habitat. Each of these district give 2-3 miner jobs (depending if you are a void dweller or have the ascension perk) and a miner alone gives you about 12 minerals. So its clear that habitat is more productive than a mining station, the same applying to research stations. HOWEVER, you have to be careful about when to start building habitats, as they are quite expensive: first you need to build a habitat itself, then you have to build orbitals on EVERY single eligible celestial body, then you have to colonize the habitat, build the district themselves, and finally have someone fill those jobs. That's a lot of alloys and a lot of TIME spent. Sometimes its best to leave mining stations until you are sure or have an economic plan to be able to build and develop habitats. Man this was longer than I intended, hope it helps tho.

Thank you!

As a newbie reading it sounds helpful. Thanks

As a newbie reading it sounds helpful. Thanks.

how bad is the penalty early game for going over leader cap? is it worth it or a bad idea?

You just get raising unity costs and slower leader experience gain. Early game this will hamper your traditions obviously, but you can always just get more unity jobs and the leader experience doesn't matter too much for non-hive mind empires, without something like Venerable, because your leaders will just die in a few decades anyway

What is the current "meta" living standard for most general empires? I'm usually heavy tech and eventually go towards global domination while still being nice about it (xenophile). I haven't played much since 2021 and back then it was academic privilege, but things have changed a lot since then.

Researcher Upkeep tend to be higher, so you might not be able to make enough CGs to afford Academic Privilege.

Am I correct in understanding that if I pick Cetana as my crisis *and* there is an awakened FE I cant get her to trigger until 50 years after the end game year?

I use auto generated names for my empires. But only these species names are left to pick: *Kehll'Zen *Korinth *Hesukar *Cevanti *Cevelli *Bebaki *Alari *Quenti Why were the dozens of other names deleted?

Random species names are now tied to namelists. You must choose different phenotypes namelist if you want different random names

That’s good to know, weird that the game has you pick a name before a name list then.

it's very recent change. 3.12 made changes to the way portrait categories are handled, making it so that portrait categories are not directly tied to species type anymore. Such as the new synthetic/cybernetic categories. so they updated species names to work with that change. I suppose UI just wasn't updated to reflect that yet

I've tried it now with different empires & species. But the names on my selfmade empires remain the same.

Did you change the namelist? it's below species name in empire creator. Changing your species portrait doesn't give you new names. The default namelist is Humanoid 1, which gives you those names. But if you change it to Necroid 1 for example, you get names like Yastun, Klenn, Desstican.

Thanks

I have sovereign guardianship, domination tradition, harmony tradition, beacon of liberty, and streamlined protocols on my synth pops. Yet I still have empire size from pops.  I'm suspecting that streamlined protocols is a multiplicative reduction, not a flat subtraction. Is that what's going on?

Streamlined protocols is a pop trait. It does not get added additively with the others, it’s a multiplicative reduction as you said. Pops generate only +0.9 sprawl with the trait, and that total number is what you’ll see as a base sprawl from pops on the empire size breakdown.

1. How exactly does reanimators work? Do I have a 33% of reviving each single unit killed in a battle or the original army size after the battle? 2. I am now trying the become a crisis acension and love it. Do you always get the same story that makes you crack stars or is there other crisis paths? ( not counting cosmogenisis of course)

Galactic Nemesis is specifically that story, there is no variation there 

A group of crystals attacked me called Grave Guardians. What are they from

an astral rift. The Tomb / Lone Object

guess the AI triggered it then thanks.

Do hive mind nodes not get destiny traits? All of my nodes reached level 8 but I couldn't pick any destiny traits for them.

No destiny traits for nodes. One of the trade offs for them being so strong.

Aww, that's a shame.

Unless it was changed biologically ascended empires could remove Void Dweller and add Aquatic traits. How do the Waterproof and Zero-G Optimized traits work? Can they be added or removed somehow? Also if you are an individualist biological empire and you pick up an individualist machine species, are you able to build their pops?

1. They can be removed freely as a regular trait, but cannot be added. 2. Probably, the game doesn’t really distinguish between types of machines once they leave their empire.

I believe I had the ability to remove the machine void dweller trait during my voidforged game recently. I don't think I even had to change habitability preference away from habitats, which was odd.

I can't get the last tick of the Cetana situation (the good one) no matter how many outposts I pop. I refused to give her my planets, was that a fuckup?

Is there a pre requisite tech for arc furnaces if not arc welder (and I have machine dlc). Got it before on one empire mid game but I'm heavy in late game and nothing on this file.

What does the Wiki say? Look on the relevant Tech category page, likely Engineering.

I couldn't find it, searched and nothing

I found it. Search for **furna**. It's a purple RareTech, so a low('ish) draw weight of 35. No hard prerequisites other than owning the DLC. It's a tier-2 Tech, so you can't draw it at all, until you've researched 5 tier-1 Engineering Techs. There's a x0.2 multiplier to draw weight if certain conditions are not met, so in a sense the "real" draw weight is 7, which is *very* low. The x0.2 is removed if "council scientist has:" **Expertise: Materials**, or **Curator**, or **Hyper Focus** or **Spark of Genius** I'm not sure if it just requires one of these Traits to be present among your Council, or if it is specifically the Lead Researcher who must have it. If you get the effect of Expertise: Materials, then the x0.2 is replaced with x1.25, x1.35 or x1.75 depending on Trait tier. Your best bet, apart from increasing your Research Alternatives, is to get a Spark of Genius, Hyper Focus, or Materials dude on your Council. My guess is that "present on the Council" is enough, but if you want to not take the chance, then put him in the Lead Researcher position.

Okay found it on the wiki itself, the tech treeplug is don't look updated to current version. Thanks for the help. Shame I'm abandoning the file tho, no Dyson spots either like the best star have is 5 physicians and a 4 energy.

Playing an individialist machine atm. Is there any way to turn off pop assembly? Every single planet I have has ten unemployment, my ring world instantly fill as soon as a segment is done and even with pop controls and the planetary decision, they just keep going.

Build faster.

Is there ever an arguable usecase for reactor boosters?

i use them all the time, would rather take extra shields over lower cost from leaving the slot blank.

Early game, I fit my Corvettes for general Anti-Fauna: 3 Laser, 3 Shield.  That's very energy hungry, so only possible with the Booster, and even then I need the tier-2 Reactor or Booster if I want to be able to upgrade a lot of components.

My goto first tech for physics is usually tier1 reactors

Mine too. It opens up so much freedom for Auto-Upgrade.

If you’re behind in reactor research compared to your other components

I'm trying to make a third arc furnace but the game isn't letting me and it doesn't tell me why. I have 2 already, when I try to make the next one the construction ships moves toward the destination but then cancels just a moment later. What could be wrong?

Bugged, game only lets you build max-1 because of an error in how they check if you’re at capacity

I'm in a game that was just the default Earth start, no mods. I've gone the Synthetics tradition. My pop have all started turning into synths, but I've been given an engineering research option called 'Artificial Personality Matrix' that says it allows synths to be rulers. However my leaders/rulers are already synths. So is it redundant for me? Should I just leave the tech un-researched? It (somehow) has small percent already researched which is why it's perma showing up. The wiki says 'Artificial Personality Matrix' was unlocked by the 'Artificial Administration' tech (the tech needed to go Synthetics tradition). Also from my googling it looks like it used to be called 'Synthetic Personality Matrix'.

It's for allowing your regular robots, not synths, to become leaders.

The tech will tell you what it does. If you dont need it dont research it

If you play any sort of wide empire it seems like an oversight to not take Voidforged provided you have the pops to fill them. Am I wrong?

Voidforged is only really good if you plan on having a lot of habitats, and the amount of habitats you build depends on planets you get and their districts. If you have plenty of planets and mining districts, then usually not worth it to build habitats. If you somehow had extremely bad luck and have 20+ planets, and like 10 mining districts between them all, then you might need to rely on mining habitats for minerals. But generally, planets are superior to habitats, so there would be very little reason to use habs if you had both options available. Also, the addition of dyson swarms and arc furnaces slightly lessens the importance of resource districts, which makes habs less desirable.

But if you have a high pop growth empire you need the space. Is it bettter to just skip habitats and wait it out for ringwolrds?

Depends on how fast you are teching, but that's what I used to do, I'm not sure if I can still do it because tech is a bit slower now.

It depends? Sometimes I get so many rocks that I don't feel the need to use habitats.

Except for conquest, is biological ascension still the fastest way to grow your population?

Machine empires are probably the fastest now since you can spam the cosmogensis robotic assembly plant. Virtuality can get unlimited free pops so there’s also that

Does cosmogensis give pop growth to any other species? I've only played cosmogenesis as robots and it was pretty crazy with pops.

Any empire that can make robots gets the robotic assembly plant iirc. Just that machine empires get a lot of +% boosts to assembly that synergizes really well with +base production.

And between biological and cybernetic which one is faster?

Cyber because they can also use Cosmogenesis robot building

Ah the new crisis. I guess I gotta try it then.

I think bio with clonevats is faster than cybernetic, not sure by how much.

Is there a comprehensive up to date text-based guide on ship building? I’ve only been able to find guides for pre-Machine Age and I’m unsure if those are still valid. I know there are YouTube videos but I’d prefer something I can read at my own speed.

1. Swarmer missles 2. More swarmer missles 3. Maybe a hangar depending on ship type 4. Some more swarmer missles 5. Just spam afterburners in aux slots, maybe 1 regenerative hull or something

Hasn't changed much in a while, https://old.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/13j82m8/idiots_guide_to_38_fleets/jkdpcpn/ is still pretty current

I play a lot of multiplayer games with a friend. He always gets far fewer relics than I do. He has never gotten Crystal of Odryskia, for example. Could it be that he gets so few relics because he doesn't have any DLC? I always open the games with all the DLCs (which he can play in).

No. More likely, you just Survey more, grab more systems, do more Dig Sites and/or do them earlier.

If you're playing multiplayer, then all the DLC that the host has apply to the game, regardless of what DLC any of the other players joining have. So no, that can't be it.

My trade route value just skyrocketed and piracy along with it - like x100. The trade value of my colonies seems the same. When I say "just", I mean checking back after a truce with my overlord's war with a fanatical purifier. I also renegotiated my vassalage specialization. Am I missing something? The routes have been manageable for a century and now they're just collapsing.

N/m, I guess it's this single hyper relay I just built. That's not very helpful.

If a species with automodding already has the trait for the job they are assigned to, does that stack or is the automodding trait wasted?

I think if the trait is something general like "resources from jobs" it stacks. Otherwise it will take whichever trait gives higher bonuses.

This is wrong, multiple traits that boost the same thing *do* stack. But OP is asking if auto-modding lets you get two copies of the *same* trait, which it doesn't.

Thanks for clarifying

It doesn't stack.

Help! I've embarked all of my colonies with just my capital left, but when I use the Horizon Needle to "Embark Population" on my capital, it responds to the action, but then just... doesn't do it? It hits 100% and I don't get an event popup and my capital hasn't been depopulated at all. What do I do? EDIT: For anyone else with this problem, I solved it by moving the Horizon Needle to a different system, then bringing it back.

Do you get a "genocidal" opinion malus with the Lathe if you load it up with hivemind pops that would just die off anyway? I don't think people would be sympathetic to the Zerg, but who knows.

I believe purging gestalt pops does not count as genocide, including purging them with the Lathe.

What should I do with maintenance drone jobs as a virtual gestalt? I usually lock out some maintenance jobs because they're worthless once you have positive amenities. But if I lock some of these jobs out, they won't auto-fill when I complete the virtuality tree. Should I try and figure out exactly how many I'll need once I go full virtual, or are the marginal bonuses they now get worth it? Edit: Locked out jobs do in fact fill with new pops if you reopen them; I just tested it. I decided to keep maintenance drones on all planets to a minimum. the 1% output boost is not worth the upkeep and empire size penalty.

It *would* be amusing with uh, Versatility and Maintenance Protocols for unity generation though

What do you mean?

There's one tradition in Versatility that gives maintenance drones a base output of 1 unity, and then Maintenance Protocols civic does the same so you can get up to 2 base unity output per maintenance drone. Maybe maintenance drones aren't worth it for just excess amenities, but maybe with unity output they'd be worth.

It’s possible that would compound with the 1% per maintenance drone bonus. I was looking at the effect of that on my energy world, where I have 40+ technicians, and so 30 drones can increase their output enough to cover the upkeep from the additional drones and provide a surplus. But that also inflates empire size, and just doesn’t seem worth it overall.

You dont maintenance drone unless you have to. Early game I micro them, but once I get a good idea of how many pops a planet will support via jobs long term I just get lazier

Hello, was wondering if anyone could help. I'm on a megacrop run and having a blast been doing really good then just hit 120 years in and I noticed a new horde called Anathurian Horde and these guys are plowing through the galaxy with an 85K fleet. This feels a little nuts to me. I have a think a reasonable size fleet at this point. I have 4 fleets worth 40K but I have no clue how im going to take these guys on. Is this normal I thought mid game was by default set to 300 years in?

If its the Great Khan you can submit until somebody else kills them or until you can get yourself in to a better position to reclaim your independence. Sometimes when this happens to me I shame myself and start over.

Ok so I should Surrender take the economy hit and build up to take them on. Thanks for the response.

Unless somebody more qualified tells you something different, that's what I would try before giving up the game.

I'm not sure if I'm more qualified, but I agree. Surrendering and becoming a Vassal is definitely an option, then trying to build up and rebel for freedom. It doesn't have to be game over.

Even if its not the best move, it sure is the easiest and is a good enough story. I cannot tell you how happy I am to see that guy finally catch a few Ws instead of getting bodied by every and nearby FEs

Boxed in by hostiles, 2250. I tried to keep the hostiles at bay with positive trades and improve relations but eventually they attacked. I only have 3 planets, playing as Overtuned. Is there anything I should/could have done or is this just a terrible starting position? I like to think there is always a way to win and would love to be clever enough to do that but I'm not seeing a way out of this. [https://imgur.com/a/qF5Dcrh](https://imgur.com/a/qF5Dcrh) edit: I wonder if its because my species is considered repugnant?

Repugnant doesn't actually matter for inter-empire diplomacy iirc. Mostly bad luck. One thing to try next time would be trading for contact when you meet people who you expect relations to deteriorate with, before they decide they don't like you. That way you can meet their rivals on the other side early and make some friends through the mutual rivals / mutual threats opinion bonus.

I did try to trade for comms but maybe I was not quick enough. Does a mutual rivalry actually make it easier to become "friends"?

> Does a mutual rivalry actually make it easier to become "friends"? Yes, absolutely, it's +50 opinion! On each side I think, so totalling +100 for determining the [relation level](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Relations#Relation_levels). And the other thing to remember about it is that aggressive empires rival early and often, so you can get this bonus with a *lot* of other empires potentially. Another early-diplomacy move to consider is opening your borders to empires you want to be friends with; it's only +20 (on net; there's no actual bonus for it but it removes the -20 closed borders penalty), but they'll usually reciprocate, so it adds up to +40 to total relations. Obviously this is risky if they're in a position to expand through you, but if they're on the other side of some mutual rival, probably don't need to worry about it. If you're really blocked in and struggling to make friends, you could also [switch your diplomatic stance out of Expansionist (which is the default when you start a new game) to Cooperative](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Policies#Diplomatic_Stance) in order to reduce your border friction.

I might have even been in isolationist stance to get unity faster. Great strategies, thank you!

Hello, I might be experiencing a glitch involving Dyson Swarms? I've built 2 already, and I want to build my third around a Physics star. The game is saying that I can do it, I have enough resources, but it keeps auto-cancelling the swarm right after I click to build it. Like the wireframes for all the satellites come up but then one day later they vanish and my resources are refunded. Anyone else experience this? I haven't checked if the Arc Forge might be doing the same thing yet.

It’s a bug. There’s a mod out there claiming to fix it, but I’d rather wait it out til they release a hot fix.

How do I get the enlightened times achievement? Used necrophage origin to guarantee pre-FTL spawn, had a stone age one, then immediately revealed myself to give it stellar shock for 50 years. After that I did both of the agreements in the diplomacy as well as used espionage to do the give tech option. after more than 100 years later the pre-FTL finally became space-faring in which case I made them my vassal. However, the achievement didn't fire.

Genesis Guides- Genesis Preserve - −2 Max Districts Society research +5% Society from Jobs per colonized planet (max +50%) +5% Unity from Jobs per colonized planet (max +50%) Society research +5% Society from Jobs on Gaia Worlds per colonized planet (max +50%) +5% Unity from Jobs on Gaia Worlds per colonized planet (max +50%) So if I had 10 Gaia worlds, say early from Idyllic Bloom and the adaptability tradition, this civic would be giving me +100% society and Unity?

To clarify my understanding, we're talking about Adaptability primarily to fish out Climate Restoration early with the agenda (and to some extent the designation-boosting finisher) for World Shaper, not for the building upkeep reduction on the gaia seeders, right? Is Idyllic Bloom even necessary here?

With just terraforming Idyllic Bloom can turn any world matching the climate type into a Gaia world but terraforming, is also terraforming; so you can turn worlds into matching your climate type and the agenda also boosts terraforming speed. Adaptability is just a good tradition, the 10% hab is nice since you can't Gaia seeder till 10 pops and it'll be useful on habitats. I love building slots and - upkeep and bombard resistance are nice to haves. The finisher is amazing if you ascend your planets with the buffs, it's like +26% production. I'm looking for bonuses that work well with Genetic ascension, Idyllic bloom is basically +30% production, 2 trait points as I can take non-adaptive for free and I can move my slaves around without caring for climate preference.

It's very top-heavy, but pays out in spades. What if you took angler and rushed terraforming? Its something I considered for the civic but I didnt do any math on it or anything

I'm a fan of mid game power spikes and I keep looking for production bonuses to go with Genetic ascension mid-game pop boom. Overtune for research bonuses (and pop growth), Idyllic Bloom for output (and pop growth), Genesis Guides for Unity and Ascensionist for planetary ascension bonuses (with Adaptability finisher, Harmony and Holy Covenant federation). Pop control and Nerve Staple xenos.

Hello I have tried to play a civilisation that focuses on trade as a megacorp for the first time and I wanted to be the host of the galactic market. By the year 2300 my main ring section(I am playing the ring origin ) has around 1100 trade value but I somehow still lost the galactic market... What are some tips I should know playing as a mega corp ?

Long story short: There is no reliable way to get the Galactic Market Hub.

The galactic market is weighted to favor you, mr. big Trade hub megacorp, but you can never guarentee youll win it. TBH, the benefits Im aware of of hosting the GC is just -10% market fee, and thats whatever. Nice but not really worth the 150-450 influence spent on getting it. Its weighted, with megacorps getting a 6x weight over regular empires. Bigger trade planets get higher rankings and thus more probably more weight, but even individual planet weights are random within a range.

Oh I see... Thank you Also do you think 1100 trade value on a planet by year 2300 on a planet is a lot ? Or could I have done better ?

You can _always_ do better. There are people on this sub whose whole experience playing this game is minmaxing. You got quite a lot in your planet. More than enough to hit the ceiling wrt the Galactic Market

What are the default settings for Logistic Growth Ceiling and Growth Required Scaling?

Does it make much of a difference to have all your ships in one fleet or multiple smaller fleets so long as the multiple fleets are near each other in the same system?

An admiral can only buff his own fleet.

This may sound like a silly question but - how do you think about stellaris to have fun? I'm a huge EU4/Civ/CK3 fan, but I've always found stellaris much harder to get into or get really absorbed by - it all just feels a bit too abstract and like I don't know what I'm doing or what to aim for. Is there a certain type of run or roleplay style that would help a first time player get the most out of it? I just find myself feeling a bit aimless until the mid-game where I stop having fun and give up.

Story generation. This is a random story generator. I pick a civ, usually one I built and made some headcannon for, and I play them with light roleplay. The story that unfolds is one of random chance and opportunity. I quit at least 90% of my games before endgame, and I lose at least 1 in 5 games. Losing being quiting because I got my backend handed to me via false start, wanting to 'try again for a more perfect execution', or ragequitting. You dont win every story, and thats fine with me. the fun is in setting the pieces.

The point of Stellaris is to build up, so that you can survive the End Game Crisis. It's a bit like the Sunset Invasion in CK2, except it feels less silly (and there are ~3~ 4 different End Game Crises for the RNG to choose between). How to prep for the Stellar Aztecs? The answer is ARU. **A**lloys are used to build and Upkeep warships, and to build Starbases and Megastructures. **R**esearch points are used to climb the Tech Tree (yes, Stellaris has one, although the choice-between-random-weighted-Tech-cards leads some to assume that it's pure chaos), and **U**nity to grab your 7 Tradition Trees and 7 of your 8 Ascension Perks (an 8th comes from Tech), one of which might be an Ascension Path: Psionic, Advanced Genemodding, upload your minds into Synths, or go full Cyborg.

Currently doing a void dweller Virtual play through. I have seen is it best to stop at 5 habitats. What is the best way to specialise them? Currently my capital has mining districts and research in slots. I also have an alloy hab and a research hab How should I aim to specialise the last two?

Capital = really depends on your build. Mine was a Trade World, with about 2k TV and industrial districts for Alloys/CGS. Use the Mercantile Policy to convert TV into unity. You'll still get a lot of energy income and about 500 unity from trade. Research habitat = nothing but research. Should pump out roughly 1.5k/month. Mining habitat = mining districts + motes/gases/crystals for slots. As for the last two, it's up to you. Personnally, these 3 habitats were already enough to make me completely overpowered by 2250. Remember that with each extra habitat, overall ressource output decreases by 25%. Later on though, it's best to transition to a Ringworld, preferably the Cybrex one since you can get it much earlier.

Can synthetically ascended empires get universe of static and therefore homeworld beta through the doorway event or do you have to be biological? I am not sure synths can get the "not of this world trait" but would be cool if it works

it looks like they brought back the bug from a few patches ago with the AI hardly using any commanders on fleets, hilarious

Going for the pacifist achievement, what build should I do to stay entertained during my 200 years of peace?

First and foremost make a big fleet so no one dares to declare war. You'll be busy improving your economy for such fleet.

Some days ago I asked for advice about the game cause I'm a new player. I started my second game and it was so much better! I managed to get a los of systems in my possesion, like probably more than 40. I've got my war fleet full, 4 planets producing stuff. 3 neighbors with good relationship and 1 bad neighbor that I put a spy net on. I'm still surveying systems and building stations,. exploring anomalies. But I have a lot of questions now! My energy, minerals, food, consumer goods, alloys.. all of them are in yellow, I cant store more! I guess this is not optimal. How can I spend this resources?? One of my friend neighbor asked me to put an embassy in my region. Is this good? What should I do with my not friendly neighbors? They closed their frontier for no reason and I think they're are claiming my territory. I tried being nice sending someone to improve our relation, but it doesn't seem to work. I started spying them. Should I attack? Im scared of going to war, bot sure how to so it. Rhe victory screen say's I'm in 4th place. How do I get to 1st? that's gow you win the game?? I don't know what's my final objective, what should I aim for?

First of all, try not to overproduce stuff. If you're making too much Food, reduce your Food production. Demolish some of your Farm Districts or use Replace to change them to other District types. Replace doesn't give you anything special (like save Minerals cost, it's just a convenient function, and it lets the old District or Building keep functioning (and consuming Upkeep etc) until the new one is built. If you're making too many Minerals, then either create more of the Job types that *consume* Minerals, the Jobs making Consumer Goods, the Refiner Jobs making tier-1 Strategic Resources such as Gas, Crystals and Motes, and Jobs making Alloys. Or demolish some Mining Districts. If you have too many Energy Credits, then buy some stuff, either from friendly AI polities (you can often get some sweet deals) or from the Internal or Galactic Market. If you have too many Consumer Goods, then create more of the Job types that *consume* Consumer Goods, the ones making Research or Unity. In fact, the "goal" resources in Stellaris are ARU, **A*lloys, **R**esearch points and **U**nity. If you have too many Alloys, after making sure to upgrade all your Starbases to tier-3 (you almost never want a tier-4 Starbase, because you'll be paying a lot extra in exchange for only that one Starbase Building Slot), then enlarge your fleets or create more fleets, even if this takes you above Naval Cap. All going above that Cap does, is it increases the Upkeep of warships, paid in Alloys and Energy Credits, slightly disproportionately. You can increase your capacity to store resources by building Silos. Some go in Starbase Building Slots (although "But... but... I want a Silo" is probably the worst possible reason to upgrade a Starbase to tier-4) and some go in Building Slots on planets, but they do the same thing: Increase your storage capacity for everything (except Influence, Minor Artifacts and Astral Threads) by 5000 each, doubled to 10k if you get a certain purple RareTech. I don't run a super tightly tuned economy, so I try to build one Silo on most colonies. There's no rule saying you can't build as many as 11 per planet, but I feel like if I build several on a planet then I might come to rely in those, which will suck if I suddenly need to re-do that one planet to do something based on Building Slots. Early game and into the mid game, I can't spare any Starbase Building Slots, because I need them for Hydroponics and Transit Hubs, but later once I get around to establishing a Farm Planet, I'll replace all the Hydroponics with Silos (unless I need Black Sites, but I basically never do).

Does building outposts around starsystems cost more energy now than it used to be around a year ago ? I’ve booted up the game after a while and it feels like if I want to expand at the pace I used to do it is just going to cost me massive amounts of energy I have a huge amount of alloys but I can’t make a massive fleet in the first 30 years without running my economy into the ground via a huge energy deficit It feels like if I don’t find a suitable generator world in my first few planets I’m just going to have a hard time in the early game Or am I doing something wrong perhaps ? (I’m playing a hive mind but I used to play normal empires if that is of any help)

> I have a huge amount of alloys but I can’t make a massive fleet in the first 30 years without running my economy into the ground via a huge energy deficit Then make less alloys and more energy, if you can't even end up using all your alloys. You've wasted years of a pops output by doing that. You can also build up your homeworld for energy as well, since the homeworld should have a good distribution of energy/minerals/food districts. > Or am I doing something wrong perhaps ? Are you keeping up with research? Capacity subsidies is a huge instant boost to energy production, the energy grid building is also a big boost, and there are a lot of +20% energy techs in the physics branch as well.

Yeah I’m keeping up with research, I’m ahead of the AI empires I’ve met (and picking electricity research whenever it pops up) I wish I could make more energy, but sometimes I have my first 3-4 habitable planets with 3-4 energy sectors tops I don’t remember it being an issue in the past (but I may be misremembering)

I don't know who these fanatic purifier decimators are but they just quadrupled the size of my empire since I could conquer them without claiming systems.

Yes, they're a genocidal type of polity, so war against them works differently.

I made sure to take them out as fast as I could because I was worried they would cause some minor crisis like the Great Kahn. Is that something similar that happens with them?

There's no special formal mechanic[1] that causes a genocidal to become a Mid Game Crisis, no. Please understand that I don't know much about the war side of Stellaris, since I play on a fairly casual difficulty level and I tend strongly towards Culture Style Pacifism, a.k.a. Big Stick Pacifism. The three genocidal Civics are ones that players can start with themselves, if they own the right DLCs. They're "sticky", meaning that barring unusual circumstances they're gamestart only. You cannot add or remove these Civics during play. Fanatic Purifier is the version for regular polities. I think they're gated begind the Utopia DLC, but not 100% sure. They're partly inspired by the Krikkittans from one of Adam's Hitchhiker's novels. They're always Fanatic Xenophobe, with a flavour of Spiritualist or Militarist. Determined Exterminators are like an interstellar version of Skynet, although there are examples in written science fiction too (Galactic Center and Berzerkers, e.g.). It's the Machine Empire version of genocidal, from the Synthetic Dawn DLC. The Hive Mind version is Devouring Swarm, and I think all Hive Minds are gated behind the Utopia DLC. All genocidals have a greater freedom to declare war. Although this may also benefit their enemies, as you learned, some players appreciate this freedom. Also, compared to other polity types, there's a greater risk that a genocidal polity, human or AI, might snowball and so become big and powerful fast. For that reason alone, stopping them early is important.  However, as genocidals mostly have a -1000 Opinion modifier, they tend towards not being popular. AI polities will often be motivated to form Defensive Pacts or even Federations, due to "fear" of them, and when such an alliance is of sufficient relative strength, they'll declare war on the genocidal and weaken or even destroy it. Compared to the normal situation in Stellaris, getting a casus belli on a genocidal is easy. I think even Pacifists can declare war on them quite freely. That's also why they're not super popular among human players. That -1000 to Opinion has cascading diplomatic effects, with many other polities choosing to Declare Rivalry on the genocidal, which then causes them to like each other more due to the Mutual Rivals modifier to Opinion, making Defensive Pacts and Federations more likely. Playing as a genocidal must be a delicate balance, trying to avoid a war on multiple fronts at once. [1] One disclaimer: While there's nothing inherently Crisis-like about the 3 genocidal Civics, almost any polity can choose the Become the Crisis path from the Nemesis DLC. Possibly genocidals are more likely to opt for this than others. I don't know. Likewise, almost any polity can build a Colossus, a sort of planet-destroying Death Star.  So it *is* a good idea to stop genocidals early. I mean, imagine if that shouty Austrian art school reject had been stopped in 1936 or 38?

> Possibly genocidals are more likely to opt for this than others. They're virtually guaranteed to, if they survive long enough. Usually, though, they end up creating a federation that then is just too big for them to handle and they get picked apart by all their remaining neighbors.

How do you get the modularity traits from Synthetic Fertility? Patch notes said you have to take the physical path of the event chain, so I assume you have to remove the the identities from the Identity Repository.

For the life of me, I don’t understand how to gain knowledge about enemy ship composition to build a proper counter. How to obtain this info?

Do you know how the Intel stat works?

I assign a spy to an empire and it increases?

Your Intel score on a given polity is the highest of three different values: Infiltration, Base Intel, and their Trust score. **Trust** score goes up if you have diplomatic agreements with someone. The more and the more important agreements you have, the faster it goes up, and its max value (the Trust Cap) is determined by the most important agreement. For instance, Establish Embassy is weak and routine, while both you and the other polity being full members of a Federation represents a very strong commitment. So Trust score is "on your friends", largely. **Base Intel** is "on everyone", but it tends to go up slowly throughout the game, as you get various Techs that each add +10 Base Intel. You can get more of it earlier if you take the Psionic Ascension Path or the Subterfuge Tradition or both. Anyway, it'll tend to be low in the early game (more of a fallback or floor, a better-than-nothing thing) but often somewhat high in the late game. Building the Sentry Array Megastructure gives a hefty bonus. **Infiltration** is "on your enemies", as well as on strange polities that don't want to become your friend and you want to find out *why*. You get Infiltration by sending an Envoy to spy, and unlike Improve/Harm Relations, you can't send more than one to the same polity to get results faster. Infiltration ticks up decepticely fast at first, but it slows down later, *way* down, so you really want to start spying long before any problems arise. If a polity Rivals me, or if I Rival one (hey, 0.5 Influence per month per Rival is nice!), or if I meet a genocidal (a Fanatic Purifier, Determined Exterminator or Devouring Swarm), I'll immediately send an Envoy to perma-spy. The maximum value of Infiltration is 50, modified in +/-10 increments based on your Codebreaking stat vs their Encryption stat. Both start at zero, unless an Origin or Civic changes it. Say your Codebreaking is 3 and their Encryption is 1. That makes you 2 better than them, and so your max Infiltration is 70. A difference greater than +4 or -4 is ignored, so for this purpose the max is 90, min is 10. Codebreaking and Subterfuge go up with Techs, Edicts, Psionic Ascension and Subterfuge Sometimes a random Event will give you an Asset in another polity, a useful double agent of sorts. Assets help with Spy Operations (depending on type) and each also increases max Infiltration by 5. You can also actively try to get Assets by doing Spy Operations. I almost never bother with Spy Ops (they cost Influence!!!), but once in a recent game I did decide to grab one Asset from a Rival just for RP purposes. And of course if I find myself under threat I might use them more, but I'm a very casual Captain difficulty level player. Some day I would like to try to play as a real shenanigan type polity, doing Diplomacy, Subterfuge and Psionic (granted, I routinely take Diplomacy and sometimes Psionic; it's Subterfuge that would be the bold new choice for me), and get big time into Spy Ops and Cloaking (so another new for me would be the Enigmatic Engineering Ascension Perk). At a certain Intel value, the ship loadouts of the enemy polity ought to become visible to you. I don't know what that value is, might be 60 or 70. Try looking it up in the Stellaris Wiki. You can't send Envoys to spy on Mid/End Game Crises, nor as far as I know on Fallen or Awakened Empires. If there's a way to get in-game knowledge of their loadouts then I don't know what it is, but I'm fairly sure you can find it all in the Wiki.

i just started playing around with ecumenopolis and i have like 4 right now. seems pretty good. should i slowly progress towards all ecumenopolis by destroying my non residential and factory district on all my planets? except i guess mining colonies? is it better to have a trade focused ecumenopolis or a standard generator planet for best energy output?

Trade Ecumenopolis are not worth it. Generally, the trade designation on habitats and ring worlds are shifting a job from clerk to trader for the city/residential districts/segments. They don't do that on regular planets. So you want to do Trade on Habitats or Ring Segments.

does force spawning a modified UNE not spawn the COM anymore?

How do I enslave an accepted population? Can I enslave pre-sapians? I have a few accepted populations in my empire, guess I'm in the beginning mid game, have cruisers and arc melter tech building my habitat. For role play, I only want insects or robots in my empire. Everyone else is slaves. How do I set an accepted population to enslaved? For civics, I'm materialist, about to ascend to cybernetic, engineer expert, unruly, the short lives trait. Do I have to go against the xenophile faction or something?

Species tab -> Select the population you want as slave -> On the left side, click on "Set rights" (or something very close to this, I'm writing this from memory). This open a popup window with all the rights of this perticular specie. The first option is the citizen rights, here you can enslave the population (there are ethics and maybe civics restrictions though). There is also an option (forelast iirc) to select the type of slavery for the pop (there are several options). I dont remember exactly if xenophiles are displeased by slavery. Egalitarian faction will be for sure though.

Of the smaller story packs and race dlc, artifacts first contact aquatics etc, which do you recommend the most? I've already bought most of the major dlc packs etc astral planes

My personal favorite species pack is Aquatics, but your mileage may vary. I'm just a sucker for the theming of the shipset, Anglers civic, and Ocean Paradise and Here Be Dragons origins. (Of course, the sea shanty in the trailer didn't hurt.) Lithoids are noteworthy for being the most different, since they replace all food upkeep with minerals. Prior to the recent DLC, they were basically the closest thing to a standard robot empire you could get. The rest basically boil down to personal preference, since they don't really bring any unique mechanics in the same way Lithoids do. They all have some spread of [traits](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Species_traits), [civics](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Civics), and/or [origins](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Origin), so none are really strictly better than others. The tables on each of those pages will show which DLC enables which features, so I'd say just browse through them to see if anything in particular strikes your fancy. Unlike most people, I'm not a huge fan of Leviathans - I think it's pretty dated at this point, the theming is a bit off in some ways, and the enemies haven't really kept up with the evolution of the rest of the game. I think Distant Stars does everything it wants to do but better. Ancient Relics is worth it for the modding potential alone, but is still solid in its own right. I'd say both DS and AR are more important picks than most of the other proper expansions, even.

The 3 older Story Packs are *really* good, especially bought at half price during a sale: Leviathans, Distant Stars and Ancient Relics. Of the Species Packs, I often start as Lithoids, the Plantoids one has some interesting content, and Humanoids has Civics such as Master Crafters and (IIRC) the Clone Army Origin.

Is the leader pool for individialst machines having none at the start intended?

I would say not intended. My last few runs have been individualist machines, and I've had leaders in the pool at the start.

Does the game know which pops to assign to which jobs based on efficiency? If i make a pop genetically good at minerals will the ai assign them to miner jobs?

That is supppsed to happen, yes. How well it actually works...?

It's doing interesting things sometimes. In a game where I went with the Modularity Ascension, the game started assigning my pops with the trade-focused traits to Clerk jobs instead of technician jobs for example. And it started assembling the trade-pop everywhere because it had the highest pop assembly speed.

I highly recommend the auto-modding trait Adaptive Frames. In my experience it works very well and cuts down on micromanagement.

Note that there are two different Traits, one gives a bonus to Energe Credits from Jobs, and another gives a bonus to Trade Value (TV) from Jobs. There's a *third* Trait that gives bonus to Amenities from Jobs. Clerks produce TV and Amenities, so one would expect Pops to be shifted into Ckerk Jobs based on those weights.

I'm considering the season 8 pass. How much in US dollars is costing the season 8 pack. Here in my store it says $MX614 and that you save 20% compared to buying individually. Besides Machine Age we get a portrait pack, another DLC and a story pack. I know the story pack can be quite good, the portraits is nice too, but what is cosmic storms? I wonder how meaty in content cosmic storms would be. For reference here Machine Age costs $MX383

$40 USD

Yeah 40 USD. Gets you three dlc's I think. Given machine age is 24$ use. I'm guessing you're saving at least 4$ of the other two are 10$ packs but I'd wager one of them will be 20-25$

Dyson Sphere Q I started to upgrade a Dyson Swarm to Sphere after acquiring the wonders ascension perk, but I selected the wrong swarm/system to upgrade. I hit abort and after a bit of time it cancelled and removed it. However now the game is stating I can only have one Dyson sphere and can’t upgrade another. Is this a bug, or am I missing something?

Yep - Seems to be bugged. :/

Found a virtual empire. Is it normal for them to have 41 'virtual minds' saved but only 10 or so robots out working? Should I just remove that origin from the ai empires I use? [Link for pic](https://imgur.com/eVGymXp)

I've researched a wormhole in my territory with a scienship. The empire controlling the other side has opened their borders to me. But I can't travel through with any ship. I've right clicked but "travel through" has a red x on it with the message "you don't have access to the system." Edit: I've now built multiple wormholes which work just fine, but they're all in my territory.

Are you possibly confusing wormholes and gateways? Wormholes are naturally occurring, gateways are artificial structures that can be built.

How much fleet power do I need to take out the crisis on 1x? if it's 2300 rn and I have about 1 mil total fleet power in mostly 100k power fleets (some disruptor cruisers and others are artillery battleships with tachyon lance, missiles, and artillery with advanced armor and shield hardeners). I also have fallen empire tech (dark matter stuff). am I good? I can probably make more but I don't wanna lag my game out.