Alright here goes something.
Stellaris is a rather complicated game when you want to get down to it. I'll say that for more in depth
guides look up youtubers Aspec and Stefan Anon for guides. A bit outdated but the concepts behind
them are the same. It is an empire building game and an economy simulator all at once. I
recommend playing a pre-built empire before deciding to make your own just to get a taste of the
game.
I'll start with your planets, districts, and building slots. Planets have a certain size to them, normally
up to a size 25 planet. The size of the planet dictates how many districts can be built on it. There are
5 different districts, city districts, industrial districts, generator districts, mining districts, and farming
districts. They all add a certain amount of jobs in that relative field, jobs need top be worked by a
population to gain the benefits of the job.
Farming districts give you farmer jobs which make food, mining districts give miners which make you
minerals, generator districts give you technicians which make you energy credits. These are your
base resources.
Food is what you use to feed your organic population. You don't really need this in excess all that
much so try to keep yourself above positive but not overly so in surplus.
Minerals are used to build the different districts and mining stations as well as a few other things.
Mineral income is very important. Having an excess in mineral income is a great way to get the ball
rolling as you can develop faster.
Energy Credits is what you use to upkeep things. Think of it as electricity or money. Having an
excess of this is useful because you can use it on the market to buy the other resources.
Onto industrial districts, industrial districts create Artisan jobs and metallurgist jobs. Both of these
jobs use minerals to create another resource so keep that in mind.
Artisans make consumer goods. Consumer goods are used to upkeep more specialized workers
such as bureaucrats, researchers, and other jobs that are created with buildings.
Metallurgists make you alloys using minerals. Alloys are used in building spacey things. Such as
Starbases and ships. (And robots)
City districts create clerk jobs and a building slot. Clerks provide amenities (happiness) to everyone
on that planet. How many amenities you have is relative and you should try to keep it above even.
They also provide trade value. Which is something I'll talk about later.
Now for your buildings. Each planet has separate building slots that provide something the districts
don't. The four buildings that I will talk about are research labs, Forges, Factory, and administrative
buildings.
Research labs are how you get more research points. They use consumer goods to be upkept as
well as energy energy. Research in this game is key. If you don't have anything else to build then
build a research lab.
Forges increase the output of your metallurgist jobs to make you more alloys and also create a
metallurgist job.
Factories increase the output of your artisan jobs to make more consumer goods and also create an
artisan job.
Administrative buildings provide politician jobs. These jobs produce unity which is needed for a
variety of things within the game such as hiring leaders, edicts, relics, moving pops, and several
others that I can't think of in this moment.
I know that was a lot but that's a pretty good summary of planets. I'll talk about expansion next.
Expanding your empire in space is something that can be really daunting. But a few tips here and
you'll find yourself much better off. To expand your empire you first need to survey the system you
want to expand to. This is done by using a science ship. At the beginning of the game you get one
but I recommend building two more sooner than later to help this process along. After surveying
them you can build a starbase with a construction ship in that star system and claim it as your own.
You can then build different stations within that system with your construction ship to get some more
resource income.
Now as for the best way to expand you'll want to prioritize two things. Other plants of your type,
which generally speaking there are usually 2 guaranteed habitable planets within 2 jumps of your
starting planet. And choke nodes.
Choke nodes are what we call systems that are a "gateway" into your cluster of stars. Basically they
are the only way into the cluster of stars in your starting space. More than likely you'll have 2 or 3 of
the systems. By claiming these you deny other empires from building into your space. This way you
can guarantee a certain amount of space for your empire. It can be tricky at times but after doing it a
few times you'll get used to it.
Traditions are locked behind the Utopia DLC. As such the ascension paths are locked
behind Utopia as well.
Now I'll talk a little bit on policies and traditions. Policies are like a guideline as to what your empire
interacts with itself and can only be changed every 10 years. There's a tab in the menu with a bunch
of different policies. I recommend giving them a look over but one I will look at specifically is your
trade policy.
This is where that trade value I mentioned earlier comes into play. Your trade policy is auto set to
wealth creation which gives you 1 energy credit per trade value. There are 3 other policies called
marketplace of ideas, consumer benefits, and trade league but these are locked behind a tradition
tree. (Trade league is locked behind a specific federation type)
This leads into talking about traditions. You have different tradition trees to go into that you spend
unity to unlock. Without going into too much detail the first tradition tree you're going to go through
should be expansion then discovery followed by mercantile. After that it's up for debate. The
expansion tree makes it easier for your empire to grow and expand and the discovery tree is used
for science and surveying stars faster. While mercantile helps with your economy by allowing you to
have your trade policy and improving clerk jobs.
Now ascension perks. After finishing a tradition tree you gain an ascension perk. These ascension
perks can be used to gain a perk that is strong. They’re are quite a number of these but I will say
that getting technology Ascendancy, then one vision are my personal go to perks as it creates a
pretty solid foundation.
Now that Ascension perks have been talked about I will bring up the 3 ascension paths that most
empires will be going down as they are strong (respectively as one is stronger than the other two.)
The three ascension paths are Bio Ascension, Psionic Ascension, and Synthetic Ascension. Each of
these paths are locked behind specific techs and are also ascension perks. Most of the time this will
be your third and fourth ascension perks unless you are unlucky with RNG and then it will be your
fourth and fifth perks.
Bio ascension lets you heavily modify your organic population traits to make them much better. This
can be a bit micromanagy, but is worth it if you know what you are doing and what traits to pick up.
(Is in the middle of how quickly you can get this going)
Psionic ascension is the most RNG based of the ascension paths and without going into too much to
spoil it, your population basically becomes space wizards. (Usually the quickest to get online)
Synthetic ascension is widely considered the best of the paths as your population becomes
synthetic, taking your organic population and turning them into cyborgs then into machines. It comes
with a lot of buffs to your entire population. (Takes the longest to get going)
These are locked behind the Federations DLC
Onto Federations, federations are locked behind the Diplomacy tradition tree but by taking points in
the tradition tree you can make yourself a federation with an allied empire making it so you share
relatively close ties and you and the members of the federation gain certain buffs depending on what
type of federation you make. As a note, if someone declares war on a single federation member then
the entire federation goes to war as well.
I will talk about the three important federation types. Hegemony, science cooperative, and trade
League.
Hegemony is a military type of federation that focuses on military might. The federation president
gains a very large fleet that is under their control and doesn’t go against their naval cap. At a certain
level the president will gain a new Cassius Belli (I.e. a reason to go to war) to go to war with an
independent empire and force them to join the hegemony.
Science cooperative is a research focused empire and can help strengthen the tech production of all
the empires in the science cooperative.
Trade league, the strongest of them, is focused solely on the trade value of empires and allows
access to the trade league trade policy which combines marketplace of ideas and consumer benefits
into one. Allowing for a very strong economy to be built up relatively early as every member of the
trade league increases the trade value of every other empire within the league as well.
Alright I think that's it for this post, I know it was a good amount of information so I apologize if it's a
bit overload. Hopefully you find this all helpful and I'll answer any questions you might have!
Have fun out there!