My journey with stellaris so far is play the game for a few minutes, survey plants, looking around at the menus then get overwhelmed and quit. Go to youtube and watch guides and get overwhelmed again and cycle repeats. Don't really have the head space right now to learn the game as quickly as I'd like but one day I'll commit to understanding the game. I really wanna love the game as much as others do.
I tried to play the game 2 years ago, got stuck on tutorial don't know what to do next, got overwhelmed. 2 years later, now tried it again and I can't stop playing. This game is legendary, just tyt
Exactly the same here! I feel like I'll love this game I just have to get over this initial learning curve. For some reason my brain never feels like it has the energy to figure it out
That initial information overload is big. One of the things I wanted to highlight in the video is that you don't need to actually take in most of that information straight away. Start of a game, research, planets, leaders - and you can ignore pretty much everything else. There's a LOT of systems in the game, but you can get through a game with only a surface level knowledge of them (and you can completely some). You've got to just take the game little by little, and know that you have all the time you need. I have a tendency to pause a lot - I don't think I ever make a decision while the game is running.
I'd have a look at some of Many A True Nerd's play throughs, one "The Impossible Run" shows how imperfect play can be far more entertaining than anything a polished MP meta player would show you. When you create the galaxy, try turning off AI empires (set count to zero), just leave fallen empires, marauders and pre-FTL primitives in the game, so you can focus on exploring and managing the economy. Mainly by being patient and only creating specialist jobs, when you have spare promotable workers (usually clerks) to fill them, not the people producing the energy or minerals that are balancing the books.
As a player of nearly 3k hours, good job on this! It was informative and clear cut, and your voice and audio were comprehensible and well suited to the job of instruction. Please make more like this! I don't want to offer tips as I don't want to overwhelm newcomers, but I will say this - don't go meta-chasing. Channels that I love - ASpec, Montu Plays, E3PO, Lathland - are all guilty of only focusing on the meta in many of their videos, optimizing and always going for gold. This game isn't strictly about that, and in my experience, offers a far more enriching experience when played for a story. Build your empire how you see fit, ignore people who will criticize you for picking "suboptimal" traits or civics or what have you, and enjoy your time in the galaxy.
Thank you for your kind words! And I completely agree with that suggestion. Obviously a lot of people like to really min-max and squeeze every drop of efficiency out, but it's dangerous for a newplayer. You learn to do, or not do something, but you don't really understand the system around it. Experimentation is one of the big joys of Stellaris, as is creating mad empires that don't quite work, but are fun anyway. At the end of the day, it's your game - play it how you want to.
Right, the "meta" has a narrow focus, when you discover they're used to playing in smaller galaxies with tech cost lowered with peace until 2230 then you understand why arguments are short term. People shouldn't optimise the fun from the game, the "bad" origins where you start behind have given me the most enjoyment, while meta like play lead to a dull long predictable grind of border expansion war after endless stupid border expansion war. OTOH I have won the game with just 200 pops and a highly developed core area in 2500
Well done. Only tip I could offer is the AI looks for the "Easy Mark" to attack early. Don't become that "Easy Mark". You will not require an Armada early, just enough Fleet power to let your neighbors know they should look elsewhere for expansion opportunities, and they will. :)
I may not be a beginner who will benefit from this video, but I really appreciate this guide nonetheless. It's concise, clear and focused on the core game mechanics. It's videos like this one that help make Stellaris more approachable, thank you for making this.^^ *Also;* I especially agree with your first advise. Base game is already a fully fledged game with a lot of mechanics, the additional features of the DLC's won't make your start easier. IIRC I already had over 800 hours on the base game before I even considered getting a DLC.
Thank you for your kind words! And yeah, there is so much to the game. I wouldn't recommend anyone speed in and try and experience everything ASAP - they're just going to get overwhelmed, and also not appreciate is already on offer
Impressive structure, story and quality! Been cooking food and listening to you and was surprised to see “only +3k followers”. You have a future here if you want it 😊
Thank you, that's touching to here! We're a small group on the channel and we only started recently. We're each turning over our own things,and I'm here each week doing any and all things strategy games and adjacent. And re: the other comment, I've been enjoying Vic3 lately, and want to dive in more. I love using PDX games as an engine to spin some wild narrative or live out some 'what if' scenario.
@@ginxtvglad to hear it! You got me interested in giving Stellaris a new go as it has been yeears since last playing. Also slight typo in the first comment: Strange = Story 😅
I love the anomaly that gave my planet mole people... by the way I had no idea the manually designing your ships had any real purpose (I just trusted the auto-best and right clicked) so thanks for that!
The ship designer isn't super deep (compared to other games like this) but it makes a big difference. You can do some very cool things with the designs and put all those crazy ancient space weapons to good use. The auto-best ignores certain weapons or decides 'I need to use this everywhere' - it makes some confusing decisions!
I’ve been playing on console since the game came out ik console but still I love watching this video it’s a great guide for new players and it even showed me even tho I’ve played for years a few things
Going to watch the tutorial, thanks for doing it, the experience I had most recently was the game wanting me to push out beyond my solar system far too quickly, in my head I wanted to expand at my own pace, build up my forces, planetary defence, space defence, ensure my species had all it needed before leaping out into the universe, I wanted to utilise the planetary resources, not for my empire to be thinly spread and weak if a new species found us, hope this makes sense, I don’t know if this can be adjusted in the settings, but would be helpful.
There may be a mod that tailors the game a bit more to those settings, but it sounds like you want to approach the game in a tall manner (if you're unfamiliar with the term, tall means a small empire that's very build up - opposed to wide, which is very thinly spread out). Playing wide and spread out is the usual approach to Stellaris as more systems means more minerals, means more alloys - however you can make tall play work. You'll have to expand a bit outside your starting system to progress, but you can go just as far as a few healthy chokepoints and then hold there and build up behind it. I've made it work on higher difficulties, but it takes some special builds. If you play on lower difficulties though, you should be able to make it work. Just take the points from the video, secure your chokepoints, build defences, platforms and keep a navy amassing and you'll be safe to expand your planets in your own time. Spiritualist is a good empire type for this sort of play, and if you take the unyielding tradition (it's with Overlord or Apocolypse DLC iirc) you can really build up those defensive points to the point where bigger empires or even the crisis will be stopped on your doorstep.
@@ginxtvthis is very helpful. I had the game downloaded for a month untouched. I just recently started playing it. Kinda on my third play through, to be honest I have no idea what I'm doing. But I'm very intrigued by this game, and it satisfies my passion for space and the universe.
I have almost 600h hours in the game (so I'm halfway through the tutorial) and I only just now learned that you can build armies directly in the space stations. I've always built them planet by planet. How long has this been possible? Great video!
My Stellaris journey is me learning there are much quicker ways to do a lot of the stupid things I was doing. (Me realising there's an 'auto-upgrade' button for components on the ship designer was an embarassing moment. I'd spent a veeeery long time changing each part individually every time I researched an upgrade)
@ginxtv yeah, it took me a long time to discover that as well. Which is why I never designed my own ships until I got to the very late game. This really hindered my game for a long time
Thank you for this, I was considering getting Stellaris but was intimidated by the complexity and the number of DLCs. How does Stellaris compares to Endless Space 2 Is it way more complex and difficult or about the same?
I'd say Stellaris is more complex than ES2 - but that's mostly 'cos of sheer quantity. A ton of content comes from DLC, but I'd ignore all that to start. If you're comfortable with ES2 you should settle in well to Stellaris. I think it's simpler to pick up if you've got past 4X experience as most of the concepts are familiar - it's more the finer details you'll have to adjust to.
There is - but tbh I'm not great at following it. I tend to keep things fairly balanced, focus on armour and hull damage on artillery, shield damage on corvettes and line ships, a few carriers to intercept and some torpedo boats here and there. I'll sub in any particularly powerful items that don't fit in the upgrade path, and usually it works out. I'll revaluate designs if I get smooshed in combat despite similar fleet power. I've just settled into several habits (some of them probably bad) - but if you're looking to really be in the know, I'd recommend checking out Montu Plays. His ship builder content helped me get familiar with the system and he's really smart with his approach.
Great video! I'm in my second campaign with 2 issues. First I'm sitting with a big empire with vassals and a ton of resources. I feel I'm missing something to do with those resources, I don't know if this I should be more aggressive, or if I should have researched better things to get to megastructures to dump the resources. Second is that I'm having an specially chill run, I had like 2 or 3 wars, and none were for my profit, instead I defended some allies. I think next time I'll go more aggressive because I'm finding the playthrough boring while waiting for a crisis to appear. My question is, is this a common experience, having a ton of resources and not being able to expend them and having a chill galaxy of friends?
I think one of the biggest steps you can take in Stellaris is using your resources. I don't mean generating them, but really putting them to good use. Knowing how to generate resources is the first step, knowing how to spend them is arguably more important. It's easier said than done. Usually I start out and see how long I can squeeze every drop out of my resources. I'll do a monthly trade of any excess food and consumer goods to keep them steady - and buy in minerals. Minerals are generate in excess early, but if they're stacking up faster than you can spend them, it usually means you need more alloy production. This is where all your resources should be going, and the most important resource in the game. The first 50 / 100 years are so are really trying to cut everything as close as I can, keep everything in the black - and generate alloys. Though the main expenditure of Alloys is ships - if you're at your cap, you're going to start generating a stockpile - but that stockpile isn't doing anything for you. So, you either throw your ships into a neighbour to try and get something for them, or you increase your navy cap with anchorages. Also, make sure your space stations are upgraded, and excess alloys can be spent on defence platforms. It's funny, I feel like the more I play the game, the less resources I have to work with, but that's a good sign. It shows your spending properly, not just letting them stack up and go to waste. It's a really common thing that'll come with experience though.
"You now know how trade works" Me: *Shakes head* "I lied" Me: *Nods* "No one knows how trade works" Me: *Nods more* I feel like I know how to play this game just fine, but not having time to play means watching videos like this is the best I can usually do. Biggest thing that caught me off guard was using the capital for unity or trade. Wouldn't catch me dead not using my capital for anything but science once I've gotten my other planets going XD
Using your capital for science is usually the best option. If I'm honest, I go trade or bureaucracy on capital just for the RP flair, and most of the time it's how I imagine my empire's homeworld. Just millions of beurocrats getting flustered trying to keep up with what the rest of the empire is doing.
Great video. What is funny, for my first game Ive done everything other way. I play with almost all dlc, I made my faction, I set my ow options of galaxy. Was it hard? For the start, oh yeah. Would I do it again. Yes. Accidently, I made one of the best galaxy stories Ive ever met. Yet, for begginers I would recomend what U have said in here
Totally agreed on turning DLC off, I would go further and say play the first time without rival empires, just Marauders, Fallen & Primitives. Now I don't think the UI overhaul or outliner mods are necessary, the standard has improved greatly. I would introduce mods, when you want added content alternative to paid DLC.
Taking out rival empires is a good shout, definitely a good way to go to just nail down the game's core mechanics. The UI overhaul definitely isn't essential, it's completely up to individual tastes. I opted to mention it directly 'cos the last video had a ton of comments asking about the UI mod - and whether the mod is used or not, good for folks going in to know they can tailor the game experience to their tastes. Stellaris is very far from 'what you see is what you get'
@ I'll have to give vanilla another go in the next expansion, see if I can be converted back - and tbh, it makes it easier for making videos if I'm using the original UI.
@ginxtv somebody like Montu covered it in a patch note video, but the Outliner now has tabs and you have configurable scroll wheel acceleration. Once you set up a colony planet designation automation is reasonable now. In the 3.0.1 open beta, I made sure to test that stuff out and reported it say switching back to bot assembly in a part spiritual bio empire replacing the clone vats. But despite it working it wasn't discoverable enough in the UI, but is now simplified under the planet button. One can spin off sectors as vassals so they can grow fast & expand while paying their taxes, winning the game with as few as 200 pops. Your micro may be better, but you cannot overcome empire size. For beginners, letting the game handle their fifth mining colony and finding the AI control options is important, so they can promote themselves to strategy instead of micro-addiction. Way too many players over-obsess on management details, some queue up a load of buildings early, then suffer economically when the galaxy bites back with low occupancy colonies. I actually figured out automation back in 2.4, reported many bugs in it in the play tests around 3.0 when the game director was focused on automation improvements. In general it has a bad reputation because people didn't take the time out to understand it and we all have seen badly run AI colonies through branch offices and intel gathering. Sometimes taking over from AI, it doesn't make sense because of changing civics and tech. But somebody learning the game can avoid triggering the bad cases (like creating a vassal with bots against spiritual faction preferences, rather than employing them to develop the new frontier). There's way too many commenters on Stellaris who will focus on details, rather than build a highly pop efficient core empire and concentrate on grand strategy.
I've watched a decent amount of Stellaris videos from other UA-camrs so I thought I could try, I got it on my PS4 with PS+ and decided to play the tutorial at 3 am completely vanilla.... ITS 7:24 PM AND IVE BEEN PLAYING NON STOP AND IM STILL IN THE GOD FORSAKEN TUTORIAL WAGING AN INTERGALACTIC WORLD WAR AND I STILL HAVE LIKE 200 YEARS LEFT like wtf
I've got the base game on Xbox Series X. But none of the DLC or expansions. I want to start playing, but I will admit. I want to plag like Warhammer 40K. Nothing but war and a war economy.
Best way to learn is without expansions - and while I'd say it's good to do a peaceful run first, if you won't have fun doing that, don't. Playing an aggressive empire, alloy productions are more important than ever. Every spare alloy from the start of a game, make ships. Even before you have advanced ships, you can still take out a nearby neighbour with corvettes if you have enough of them. From there, you just need to make sure you're never slacking on your ship production - increasing your navy cap with starbase anchorages - and researching new upgrades for your ships. If you can get to cruisers before another empire, you'll get a huge power spike and you can roll through the galaxy. There's a lot of ways you can approach a 40K themed run, and as you play the game, you'll start to understand these little quirks. I enjoy doing Adeptus Mechanicus runs, playing very reckless with augments and slowly replacing all the flesh in the galaxy with steel.
Why does no one (with a decent mic) have a lets play from start to finish on UA-cam? (Not twitch) Like Arumba had for EU4. . This explains concepts without showing you how to do stuff. Build an extra science ship he says... Sure... How though? I have 3000 hours on EU4. So i really want to like this game. If anyone can recommend me something a full let's play series, I would be very grateful
I didn't want to go too deep into the basic mechanical how and what's - simply just to keep the video length down. That's the trade off with Stellaris, can get through the core functions, but there's a bunch of small mechanical motions. As I'd recommend with any PDX game, spending a bit of time doing nothing but just clicking on things and seeing what they do goes a long way. In terms of your request, honestly, nothing I can think of on YT. Montu is the creator I'd recommend (he has a great 2 hour quick start guide - that might be what you're looking for if you want to go deep into the mechanical functions of the game) - and there's some great tutorials that cover everything Stellaris. I don't think he's done any complete games however. I did notice a full let's play from Quill18 but I haven't seen it so can't comment on whether it'll fit with what you're after.
I have mad respect for anyone who can play strategy games (especially Stellaris) on a console or controller. I tried with AOM and I lasted about 20 minutes and achieved nothing.
@ginxtv try frostpunk, the camera is a nightmare If I recall correctly, the first strategy game I played on console was Supreme Comander 2, it was slow enough for me to keep up, then the difficulty got higher and the Game more faster, but I adapted, good learning curve, You should try it!
@@ginxtv Try frostpunk, the cameras are a nightmare If I recall correctly, the first of that type that I played on console was Supreme Commander 2 (A RTS), the game was slow, so it was easy to learn and play, whe the difficulty got higher, so did the speed, but I keep up, you should try it!
@@delta9-87 I'm pretty sure I played that on console back in the day along with Halo Wars - it's all coming back to me! RTS games on console seem especially scary to me now, but when I think about it, most of the time I'm playing AOE or whatever on PC, it's mostly hotkeys - so I guess it kind of makes sense on a controller. The thought of being able to chill and play on the sofa is pretty appealing, may have to make that one of my 2025 missions.
My journey with stellaris so far is play the game for a few minutes, survey plants, looking around at the menus then get overwhelmed and quit. Go to youtube and watch guides and get overwhelmed again and cycle repeats. Don't really have the head space right now to learn the game as quickly as I'd like but one day I'll commit to understanding the game. I really wanna love the game as much as others do.
I tried to play the game 2 years ago, got stuck on tutorial don't know what to do next, got overwhelmed. 2 years later, now tried it again and I can't stop playing. This game is legendary, just tyt
Exactly the same here! I feel like I'll love this game I just have to get over this initial learning curve. For some reason my brain never feels like it has the energy to figure it out
That initial information overload is big. One of the things I wanted to highlight in the video is that you don't need to actually take in most of that information straight away. Start of a game, research, planets, leaders - and you can ignore pretty much everything else.
There's a LOT of systems in the game, but you can get through a game with only a surface level knowledge of them (and you can completely some). You've got to just take the game little by little, and know that you have all the time you need. I have a tendency to pause a lot - I don't think I ever make a decision while the game is running.
I'd have a look at some of Many A True Nerd's play throughs, one "The Impossible Run" shows how imperfect play can be far more entertaining than anything a polished MP meta player would show you.
When you create the galaxy, try turning off AI empires (set count to zero), just leave fallen empires, marauders and pre-FTL primitives in the game, so you can focus on exploring and managing the economy. Mainly by being patient and only creating specialist jobs, when you have spare promotable workers (usually clerks) to fill them, not the people producing the energy or minerals that are balancing the books.
same. Ive had the game for years and im trying again. Never got past the learning curve yet.
As a player of nearly 3k hours, good job on this! It was informative and clear cut, and your voice and audio were comprehensible and well suited to the job of instruction. Please make more like this!
I don't want to offer tips as I don't want to overwhelm newcomers, but I will say this - don't go meta-chasing. Channels that I love - ASpec, Montu Plays, E3PO, Lathland - are all guilty of only focusing on the meta in many of their videos, optimizing and always going for gold. This game isn't strictly about that, and in my experience, offers a far more enriching experience when played for a story. Build your empire how you see fit, ignore people who will criticize you for picking "suboptimal" traits or civics or what have you, and enjoy your time in the galaxy.
Thank you for your kind words!
And I completely agree with that suggestion. Obviously a lot of people like to really min-max and squeeze every drop of efficiency out, but it's dangerous for a newplayer. You learn to do, or not do something, but you don't really understand the system around it.
Experimentation is one of the big joys of Stellaris, as is creating mad empires that don't quite work, but are fun anyway. At the end of the day, it's your game - play it how you want to.
Right, the "meta" has a narrow focus, when you discover they're used to playing in smaller galaxies with tech cost lowered with peace until 2230 then you understand why arguments are short term.
People shouldn't optimise the fun from the game, the "bad" origins where you start behind have given me the most enjoyment, while meta like play lead to a dull long predictable grind of border expansion war after endless stupid border expansion war.
OTOH I have won the game with just 200 pops and a highly developed core area in 2500
Congrats on finishing your first game!
@braidiaz4289 lmfao
Well done. Only tip I could offer is the AI looks for the "Easy Mark" to attack early. Don't become that "Easy Mark". You will not require an Armada early, just enough Fleet power to let your neighbors know they should look elsewhere for expansion opportunities, and they will. :)
A really important piece of advice. Get those ships into space early, and don't stop - even if you're a pacifist.
I may not be a beginner who will benefit from this video, but I really appreciate this guide nonetheless.
It's concise, clear and focused on the core game mechanics.
It's videos like this one that help make Stellaris more approachable, thank you for making this.^^
*Also;*
I especially agree with your first advise.
Base game is already a fully fledged game with a lot of mechanics, the additional features of the DLC's won't make your start easier.
IIRC I already had over 800 hours on the base game before I even considered getting a DLC.
Thank you for your kind words!
And yeah, there is so much to the game. I wouldn't recommend anyone speed in and try and experience everything ASAP - they're just going to get overwhelmed, and also not appreciate is already on offer
Thanks for this!
My pleasure!
Impressive structure, story and quality! Been cooking food and listening to you and was surprised to see “only +3k followers”. You have a future here if you want it 😊
I’m currently +500h in Victoria III (also Paradox) and really love the narratives and stories you can create in their games
Thank you, that's touching to here! We're a small group on the channel and we only started recently. We're each turning over our own things,and I'm here each week doing any and all things strategy games and adjacent.
And re: the other comment, I've been enjoying Vic3 lately, and want to dive in more. I love using PDX games as an engine to spin some wild narrative or live out some 'what if' scenario.
@@ginxtvglad to hear it! You got me interested in giving Stellaris a new go as it has been yeears since last playing.
Also slight typo in the first comment: Strange = Story 😅
Awesome video!
I love the anomaly that gave my planet mole people... by the way I had no idea the manually designing your ships had any real purpose (I just trusted the auto-best and right clicked) so thanks for that!
The ship designer isn't super deep (compared to other games like this) but it makes a big difference. You can do some very cool things with the designs and put all those crazy ancient space weapons to good use. The auto-best ignores certain weapons or decides 'I need to use this everywhere' - it makes some confusing decisions!
I’ve been playing on console since the game came out ik console but still I love watching this video it’s a great guide for new players and it even showed me even tho I’ve played for years a few things
Going to watch the tutorial, thanks for doing it, the experience I had most recently was the game wanting me to push out beyond my solar system far too quickly, in my head I wanted to expand at my own pace, build up my forces, planetary defence, space defence, ensure my species had all it needed before leaping out into the universe, I wanted to utilise the planetary resources, not for my empire to be thinly spread and weak if a new species found us, hope this makes sense, I don’t know if this can be adjusted in the settings, but would be helpful.
There may be a mod that tailors the game a bit more to those settings, but it sounds like you want to approach the game in a tall manner (if you're unfamiliar with the term, tall means a small empire that's very build up - opposed to wide, which is very thinly spread out).
Playing wide and spread out is the usual approach to Stellaris as more systems means more minerals, means more alloys - however you can make tall play work. You'll have to expand a bit outside your starting system to progress, but you can go just as far as a few healthy chokepoints and then hold there and build up behind it.
I've made it work on higher difficulties, but it takes some special builds. If you play on lower difficulties though, you should be able to make it work. Just take the points from the video, secure your chokepoints, build defences, platforms and keep a navy amassing and you'll be safe to expand your planets in your own time. Spiritualist is a good empire type for this sort of play, and if you take the unyielding tradition (it's with Overlord or Apocolypse DLC iirc) you can really build up those defensive points to the point where bigger empires or even the crisis will be stopped on your doorstep.
@ awesome, thanks for the reply mate, I’ll definitely be looking at this, much appreciated.
@@ginxtvthis is very helpful. I had the game downloaded for a month untouched. I just recently started playing it. Kinda on my third play through, to be honest I have no idea what I'm doing. But I'm very intrigued by this game, and it satisfies my passion for space and the universe.
@ I hope the guide helps. The game is daunting at first, but when it clicks - if you've got the spark for space & sci-fi, it will drag you in deep
I have almost 600h hours in the game (so I'm halfway through the tutorial) and I only just now learned that you can build armies directly in the space stations. I've always built them planet by planet. How long has this been possible? Great video!
My Stellaris journey is me learning there are much quicker ways to do a lot of the stupid things I was doing.
(Me realising there's an 'auto-upgrade' button for components on the ship designer was an embarassing moment. I'd spent a veeeery long time changing each part individually every time I researched an upgrade)
@ginxtv yeah, it took me a long time to discover that as well. Which is why I never designed my own ships until I got to the very late game. This really hindered my game for a long time
Thank you for this, I was considering getting Stellaris but was intimidated by the complexity and the number of DLCs.
How does Stellaris compares to Endless Space 2 Is it way more complex and difficult or about the same?
I'd say Stellaris is more complex than ES2 - but that's mostly 'cos of sheer quantity. A ton of content comes from DLC, but I'd ignore all that to start.
If you're comfortable with ES2 you should settle in well to Stellaris. I think it's simpler to pick up if you've got past 4X experience as most of the concepts are familiar - it's more the finer details you'll have to adjust to.
I absolutely love this game! I've been playing a lot more recently and was wondering if there is a meta for ship/fleet building?
There is - but tbh I'm not great at following it. I tend to keep things fairly balanced, focus on armour and hull damage on artillery, shield damage on corvettes and line ships, a few carriers to intercept and some torpedo boats here and there.
I'll sub in any particularly powerful items that don't fit in the upgrade path, and usually it works out. I'll revaluate designs if I get smooshed in combat despite similar fleet power.
I've just settled into several habits (some of them probably bad) - but if you're looking to really be in the know, I'd recommend checking out Montu Plays. His ship builder content helped me get familiar with the system and he's really smart with his approach.
Great video! I'm in my second campaign with 2 issues. First I'm sitting with a big empire with vassals and a ton of resources. I feel I'm missing something to do with those resources, I don't know if this I should be more aggressive, or if I should have researched better things to get to megastructures to dump the resources. Second is that I'm having an specially chill run, I had like 2 or 3 wars, and none were for my profit, instead I defended some allies. I think next time I'll go more aggressive because I'm finding the playthrough boring while waiting for a crisis to appear. My question is, is this a common experience, having a ton of resources and not being able to expend them and having a chill galaxy of friends?
I think one of the biggest steps you can take in Stellaris is using your resources. I don't mean generating them, but really putting them to good use. Knowing how to generate resources is the first step, knowing how to spend them is arguably more important.
It's easier said than done. Usually I start out and see how long I can squeeze every drop out of my resources. I'll do a monthly trade of any excess food and consumer goods to keep them steady - and buy in minerals. Minerals are generate in excess early, but if they're stacking up faster than you can spend them, it usually means you need more alloy production. This is where all your resources should be going, and the most important resource in the game. The first 50 / 100 years are so are really trying to cut everything as close as I can, keep everything in the black - and generate alloys.
Though the main expenditure of Alloys is ships - if you're at your cap, you're going to start generating a stockpile - but that stockpile isn't doing anything for you. So, you either throw your ships into a neighbour to try and get something for them, or you increase your navy cap with anchorages. Also, make sure your space stations are upgraded, and excess alloys can be spent on defence platforms.
It's funny, I feel like the more I play the game, the less resources I have to work with, but that's a good sign. It shows your spending properly, not just letting them stack up and go to waste. It's a really common thing that'll come with experience though.
"You now know how trade works"
Me: *Shakes head*
"I lied"
Me: *Nods*
"No one knows how trade works"
Me: *Nods more*
I feel like I know how to play this game just fine, but not having time to play means watching videos like this is the best I can usually do. Biggest thing that caught me off guard was using the capital for unity or trade. Wouldn't catch me dead not using my capital for anything but science once I've gotten my other planets going XD
Using your capital for science is usually the best option. If I'm honest, I go trade or bureaucracy on capital just for the RP flair, and most of the time it's how I imagine my empire's homeworld. Just millions of beurocrats getting flustered trying to keep up with what the rest of the empire is doing.
I'm 3000 hours into, and the pop-ups alone still overwhelm me
Loading into a midgame match when at war is like opening a glitterbomb of notifications.
Great video. What is funny, for my first game Ive done everything other way. I play with almost all dlc, I made my faction, I set my ow options of galaxy. Was it hard? For the start, oh yeah. Would I do it again. Yes. Accidently, I made one of the best galaxy stories Ive ever met. Yet, for begginers I would recomend what U have said in here
Totally agreed on turning DLC off, I would go further and say play the first time without rival empires, just Marauders, Fallen & Primitives.
Now I don't think the UI overhaul or outliner mods are necessary, the standard has improved greatly.
I would introduce mods, when you want added content alternative to paid DLC.
Taking out rival empires is a good shout, definitely a good way to go to just nail down the game's core mechanics.
The UI overhaul definitely isn't essential, it's completely up to individual tastes. I opted to mention it directly 'cos the last video had a ton of comments asking about the UI mod - and whether the mod is used or not, good for folks going in to know they can tailor the game experience to their tastes. Stellaris is very far from 'what you see is what you get'
@ginxtv OK, but vanilla is good enough now. I used to use Dynamic & Tiny outliner myself except when play testing new releases to submit bug reports.
@ I'll have to give vanilla another go in the next expansion, see if I can be converted back - and tbh, it makes it easier for making videos if I'm using the original UI.
@ginxtv somebody like Montu covered it in a patch note video, but the Outliner now has tabs and you have configurable scroll wheel acceleration.
Once you set up a colony planet designation automation is reasonable now. In the 3.0.1 open beta, I made sure to test that stuff out and reported it say switching back to bot assembly in a part spiritual bio empire replacing the clone vats. But despite it working it wasn't discoverable enough in the UI, but is now simplified under the planet button.
One can spin off sectors as vassals so they can grow fast & expand while paying their taxes, winning the game with as few as 200 pops. Your micro may be better, but you cannot overcome empire size.
For beginners, letting the game handle their fifth mining colony and finding the AI control options is important, so they can promote themselves to strategy instead of micro-addiction.
Way too many players over-obsess on management details, some queue up a load of buildings early, then suffer economically when the galaxy bites back with low occupancy colonies.
I actually figured out automation back in 2.4, reported many bugs in it in the play tests around 3.0 when the game director was focused on automation improvements.
In general it has a bad reputation because people didn't take the time out to understand it and we all have seen badly run AI colonies through branch offices and intel gathering. Sometimes taking over from AI, it doesn't make sense because of changing civics and tech.
But somebody learning the game can avoid triggering the bad cases (like creating a vassal with bots against spiritual faction preferences, rather than employing them to develop the new frontier).
There's way too many commenters on Stellaris who will focus on details, rather than build a highly pop efficient core empire and concentrate on grand strategy.
I've watched a decent amount of Stellaris videos from other UA-camrs so I thought I could try, I got it on my PS4 with PS+ and decided to play the tutorial at 3 am completely vanilla.... ITS 7:24 PM AND IVE BEEN PLAYING NON STOP AND IM STILL IN THE GOD FORSAKEN TUTORIAL WAGING AN INTERGALACTIC WORLD WAR AND I STILL HAVE LIKE 200 YEARS LEFT like wtf
I've got the base game on Xbox Series X. But none of the DLC or expansions. I want to start playing, but I will admit. I want to plag like Warhammer 40K. Nothing but war and a war economy.
Best way to learn is without expansions - and while I'd say it's good to do a peaceful run first, if you won't have fun doing that, don't. Playing an aggressive empire, alloy productions are more important than ever. Every spare alloy from the start of a game, make ships. Even before you have advanced ships, you can still take out a nearby neighbour with corvettes if you have enough of them. From there, you just need to make sure you're never slacking on your ship production - increasing your navy cap with starbase anchorages - and researching new upgrades for your ships. If you can get to cruisers before another empire, you'll get a huge power spike and you can roll through the galaxy.
There's a lot of ways you can approach a 40K themed run, and as you play the game, you'll start to understand these little quirks. I enjoy doing Adeptus Mechanicus runs, playing very reckless with augments and slowly replacing all the flesh in the galaxy with steel.
Why does no one (with a decent mic) have a lets play from start to finish on UA-cam? (Not twitch)
Like Arumba had for EU4.
. This explains concepts without showing you how to do stuff.
Build an extra science ship he says... Sure... How though?
I have 3000 hours on EU4.
So i really want to like this game.
If anyone can recommend me something a full let's play series, I would be very grateful
I didn't want to go too deep into the basic mechanical how and what's - simply just to keep the video length down. That's the trade off with Stellaris, can get through the core functions, but there's a bunch of small mechanical motions. As I'd recommend with any PDX game, spending a bit of time doing nothing but just clicking on things and seeing what they do goes a long way.
In terms of your request, honestly, nothing I can think of on YT. Montu is the creator I'd recommend (he has a great 2 hour quick start guide - that might be what you're looking for if you want to go deep into the mechanical functions of the game) - and there's some great tutorials that cover everything Stellaris. I don't think he's done any complete games however. I did notice a full let's play from Quill18 but I haven't seen it so can't comment on whether it'll fit with what you're after.
@ginxtv thanks for the detailed response
giving you a bump for Al Gore.
... me, who plays on console:
.__.
I have mad respect for anyone who can play strategy games (especially Stellaris) on a console or controller. I tried with AOM and I lasted about 20 minutes and achieved nothing.
@ginxtv try frostpunk, the camera is a nightmare
If I recall correctly, the first strategy game I played on console was Supreme Comander 2, it was slow enough for me to keep up, then the difficulty got higher and the Game more faster, but I adapted, good learning curve, You should try it!
@@ginxtv Try frostpunk, the cameras are a nightmare
If I recall correctly, the first of that type that I played on console was Supreme Commander 2 (A RTS), the game was slow, so it was easy to learn and play, whe the difficulty got higher, so did the speed, but I keep up, you should try it!
@@delta9-87 I'm pretty sure I played that on console back in the day along with Halo Wars - it's all coming back to me!
RTS games on console seem especially scary to me now, but when I think about it, most of the time I'm playing AOE or whatever on PC, it's mostly hotkeys - so I guess it kind of makes sense on a controller. The thought of being able to chill and play on the sofa is pretty appealing, may have to make that one of my 2025 missions.