Stellaris

INTRO:

It is not very often that game developers would dare to design a 4X title with real-time gameplay. The calculations that are needed to keep track of so many variables can be a considerable load on CPU resources. However, Paradox Interactive had achieved just that with its seminal Europa Universalis IP, and has gone to achieve so much more. Yet, conspicuously, it did not make a move into the sci-fi sub-genre of 4X games until much later.

Stellaris is the result of that move. Debuting in 2016, it has since benefited from continued attention from its developers, undergoing one major revamping and much, much fine-tuning amid plenty of feedback from fans who believe in the game. It has not had any reliable competitor in the same niche of real-time 4X games, at least not any with a profile as high as it has.

(Arcen Games’ The Last Federation is the closest to it, but it is a really a different cup of tea.)

PREMISE:

Any sapient species would eventually wonder what is out there, even if it could not reach it. Yet, like any sapient species would, it would eventually figure out a means for getting there. Of course, getting there. and knowing what is out there, are two very different things.

The player takes on the near-omniscient role of being the entirety of a civilization of sapients, starting out with a plan to colonize the stars and eventually exploring the rest of the galaxy. Along the way, depending on whatever content pack and playthrough conditions that the player has chosen, the player’s civilization would discover other civilizations, as well as secrets that are tucked away in nooks and crannies of the galaxy, and sometimes beyond.

Dealing with other civilizations and the secrets of the galaxy will be the overarching themes of any playthrough, because there is so much variety that the player can expect. Ultimately though, the player’s goal is to become the dominant civilization in the galaxy, through a range of means that includes diplomacy, scientific advancements and, of course, war.

PLAYTHROUGH CONDITIONS:

Perhaps the most important factors of the gameplay are those that the player set before the start of any playthrough. These are even more important than the traits that the player would pick for his/her civilization. This is because these factors affect the experience of the playthrough.

Pick wrongly, and the player might have experiences that would discourage any further interest. This can be a terribly unpleasant struggle against enemies that are already overwhelmingly powerful from the start, or the player’s civilization would eventually run out of challenges to overcome and become all but alone when they stay at the top of the pecking order for too long.

The problem with this aspect of the gameplay is that there are many variables to consider – too many for anyone that is not already a meticulous pedant. Furthermore, as the game gets more content from its expansion packs, more and more of these variables interact with each other in significant ways that a new player might not be able to readily extrapolate.

Fortunately, there are pre-sets that are different enough to result in different experiences, if the player does not want to spend too much time deliberating over the variables.

TUTORIALS:

The game can be dauntingly complex, so there is a set of tutorials for the player to follow. The keyword here is “follow”; the tutorials are not the hand-holding kind, for better or worse.

Most importantly, the tutorials only teach the basics, and only impart advice that is applicable to any playthrough, regardless of the nuances in the gameplay.

PAUSING AND GAME SPEEDS:

Stellaris may run in real-time, but being a 4X title, keeping up with the gameplay second by second can be daunting. There are also many advanced strategies that require impeccable timing. Therefore, the player can choose to pause the game at any time to think on some decisions or to check things. Alternatively, the player could slow down the game, just for scenarios where split-second timing is important. The player can also accelerate the gameplay speed, just to fast-forward through lulls in the playthrough.

MONTHS, DAYS AND YEARS:

At the default game speed, each second in real-life generally equates to one day in-game. However, the actual time elapsed may be different according to how much processing load is being placed on the CPU.

Days are usually used for things with short durations, such as the repair timers for starbases (more on this later). However, there are occasions where timers have four-digit counts in days.

Nothing in the gameplay uses weeks as a basis, but some of them use months. The system of months appears to be almost entirely based on the real-world Gregorian calendar, so there are months with 31 days and other months with 30 days. Every month, a civilization gets its income of resources, and its scientific research advances (more on these later).

PLAYER’S CIVILIZATION:

Most other 4X sci-fi games limit the scope of their content by establishing a series of canonical species while allowing the use of these as templates for custom-made civilizations. Stellaris has no canonical species, but it does have many pre-sets for the player to choose from, or edit as he/she likes by removing or adding traits.

PHYSIOLOGY DOES NOT MATTER MUCH:

The physiology of any species is relegated to mostly a cosmetic option. In fact, Paradox has released several packages of cosmetic content; this will be described later.

Other than its preferred climate, the only other part of a species’ physiology that has an effect on gameplay is the phenotype of the species. (Phenotypes are the general appearance of life-forms.) Generally, species of the same phenotypes are better disposed towards other species of the same phenotype in matters of diplomacy, though this is just a small variable. (Specifically, it alters the Xenophile or Xenophobe modifiers; otherwise it does nothing else.)

This can give a bad first impression of the game’s complexity, especially if the player is a long-time follower of 4X sci-fi games that are species-oriented. Furthermore, considering that contemporaries such as Amplitude Studios’ Endless Space has made a name for itself by focusing on the capabilities of each major species, there is the impression that Paradox might have lost an opportunity to make some trademarks of its own.

That is not to say that Paradox has not invested effort into making some species recognizable as something canonical. There are a few of these, but they are reserved for the “end-game” content, which will be described later.

MUTABLE CIVILIZATIONS:

Having mentioned that physiologies of its original species do not matter, the things that matter more to a civilization are how it is organized and its culture. There are many variables in such matters, but as a general rule of thumb, they are all changeable. (Expansions would later introduce “civilizations” that have fixed “cultures”, for better or worse.)

These changes can occur through either the decisions of the civilization’s leadership (the player’s decisions, in the case of the player’s own civilization) or the actions of others. There are means to force or subvert another civilization to take on different forms of organization and/or different cultures, which will be described later.

There are three factors that determine the organization and culture of a civilization: Governing Ethics, Civics and Authority. All three will be described in their own sections, but it should be said now that none of them are set in stone. They can change during the course of a playthrough, mainly through the player’s decisions, but there are factors that are not within the player’s control (especially if the player had been playing poorly).

GOVERNING ETHICS:

The player starts a playthrough by picking the Ethics of the government of his/her civilization. The Ethics of the government are the main factor in determining how much control that the player has over the policies of his/her civilization. They also determine the response of other civilizations to his/her civilization.

Interestingly, the populations within a civilization may have ethics that are different from those espoused by the government of a civilization. This contributes to the system of factions, which will be described much later in this review article.

The player does not suffer a game-over if the ethics that he/she has chosen for the government before the start of a playthrough are forced to change beyond his/her control, but he/she would have to deal with policies that he/she might not want for his/her preferred playstyle. Of course, he/she can always make decisions that eventually push his/her civilization back to the ways that he/she wants.

More importantly, changes in ethics will not alter the player’s control over the most basic and fundamental of decision-making in 4X games, such as deciding what buildings to build on a planet and which ships to build and how many.

Some very important ethics will be described before Civics and Authorities.

AUTHORITARIAN VS EGALITARIAN:

Authoritarian governments have a lot more leeway in implementing policies and even repealing them on a whim. This includes implementing harsh policies like slavery; indeed, slavery can only be implemented in authoritarian regimes. On the other hand, authoritarian regimes are resented by everyone except other authoritarian regimes.

Egalitarian governments insist on having decent living standards for everyone, which means that every population unit has a drain on resources, namely Minerals. However, paradoxically, such governments also have blanket percentage-based reductions on this drain (which is called “Consumer Goods” in-game). Egalitarian governments obviously do not have access to the slavery system, which means that they cannot exchange the happiness of their people for short-term gains (or long-term ones, if the player could keep unrest among slaves at a manageable level).

XENOPHILIA, XENOPHOBIA & SPECIES AMBIVALENCE:

The next set of important ethics are those that determine the presence of sapient species in a civilization.

A civilization could try to pursue the genre’s tradition of single-species civilizations (like those in Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations), which means that it is likely to have the Xenophobe ethic. However, having such an ethic would immediately put them at odds with just about any other civilization, especially xenophiliac ones.

Conversely, a civilization might be xenophiliac, ever eager to add new species to its diversity, for all kinds of reasons including wanton and whimsical ones. These civilizations are hated by the xenophobic ones, but they do not incur a flat-out dislike from the others – the other traits of their civilizations notwithstanding. Furthermore, having other species come into a civilization pose as many problems as opportunities, some of which will be described later.

Of course, a civilization could just opt for a species-neutral ethic (i.e. not having the Xenophile or Xenophobe ethics). However, the civilization will have to contend with species coming and going into the civilization; the measures that the civilization’s leadership (that includes the player) would take to “solve” these issues will colour the opinions of the citizens (through the system of factions, which will be described later). This may push the people of the civilization towards xenophilia or xenophobia; balancing these tendencies is an incredibly tricky act.

Such gameplay experience lends to a lot of role-playing opportunities, if the player is the kind that wants to include any role-playing moment whenever possible.

FAITH AND MATERIALISM:

For better or worse, religiousness and materialism are mutually exclusive ethics. This will decide how the player fares in managing the economy of his/her civilization, and its long-term growth beyond matters of the bottom-line. Spiritualist civilizations have a much easier time controlling the ethos of the people and advancing in the Unity system (more on this later), but Materialist civilizations have an easier time expanding their economies in the long-term because of their acceptance of technologies considered heretical by their antitheses.

START SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD:

For better worse, the player must pick Ethics, Civics and Authorities before the start of a playthrough. There is no option to create a civilization that is somehow completely ambivalent to everything.

The player can still try to start close to the middle of the road, if he/she so wishes - probably after deciding that the benefits of the extremes are not worth their setbacks. However, such playthroughs are – perhaps ironically – fraught with the most troubles. This is because the people of the player’s civilization might not see things their government’s way.

CIVICS:

Civics are additional characteristics that complement the Ethics, and are often the things that would define the player’s gameplay experience (unless they are changed, for whatever reason). In fact, some Civics are not available unless the player picked specific Ethics and, sometimes, at specific levels of Ethics.

Some of these civics, especially the ones that can be taken by any civilization without any pre-requisites, are just straight-up empire-wide bonuses – something that long-time followers of the space sci-fi 4X genre would be quite familiar with.

Some others though, can greatly affect the gameplay experience. Incidentally, these civics cannot be changed at all during a playthrough, barring significant events in which their pre-requisites are nullified. For example, civilizations that have Inward Perfection are isolationists that cannot have any interactions with other civilizations or even other species at all, but are compensated with benefits that make them quite self-sufficient.

The only way to “change” these civics is to make the civilization fail to meet their pre-requisites. Returning to the example of Inward Perfection, this civic can be disabled by forcing a civilization to be no longer Pacifistic or Xenophobic. This civic does not go away, however, and can be reactivated again as soon as the pre-requisites are met again.

AUTHORITIES:

The final character of a civilization is the type of its government. There are four base forms of government: Imperial, Dictatorial, Oligarchic and Democratic.

Oligarchies and Democracies are the only ones where elections are held, more so for Democracies. The main differences are how long the elected rulers get to stay in office, and how much control that the player has over who gets elected (if he/she has no qualms about meddling in fictional elections). The latter is important, because rulers come with agendas, and in the case of democratically elected rulers, they come with mandates too. These will be described – and bemoaned – later.

Obviously, Imperial and Dictatorial civilizations have supreme rulers for life. These are desirable to a player if he/she wants to maintain very specific agendas to fit his/her playstyle, at least until the ruler dies.

A civilization is given a name and lore description depending on the permutation of civics and authority that it has, but this is just a cosmetic trait.

SPECIES TRAITS:

Stellaris does allow civilizations to eventually have many species, but the premise of the game means that every civilization only ever starts with just one, specifically the one that has risen to dominance over their homeworld.

The player is given a few points to spend on species traits with varying costs in points, and the player can only pick up to five traits – good or bad. The player can at least get one good trait for the species, but any more very likely will require the selection of bad traits, which grant more points to select good ones. The player could opt to just pick good traits of course, but the player’s species is likely to never come across situations where they would greatly excel at something.

Species traits can be altered later, after a civilization has obtained the necessary technologies. However, this is not a matter that is as simple as swapping variables. This takes time, because the changes have to be implemented across selected population units. More importantly, this takes up resources that could have been spent on Societal research; this will be described further later.

SPECIES RIGHTS:

Then, there are rights for species. This system was introduced to make handling population units more complex yet simpler at the same time; examples of either extremes are mentioned later, where relevant.

There are many types of rights that a species (organic or non-organic) can have. Each type of rights has something to do with other gameplay systems in the game, especially those that concern population units. These rights will be mentioned later where relevant, but it should suffice to say for now that the player should make his/her decisions wisely, because species rights are a subset of the overarching system of policies, which will be described later.

That said, one of the important types of rights is citizenship status, or lack thereof. Full citizenship affords a species all of the fundamentals for a decent living; anything less makes them vulnerable to exploitation and oppression. (Indeed, a workable playstyle with exploitation and oppression can be achieved, if the player can manage the risks.)

Specific population units of the same species or sub-species cannot be given different rights; the game does not provide this versatility, apparently due to a decision on the developers’ part after observing how cunning players exploited the previous incarnations of the system for some overpowered playstyles. Blanket species- or sub-species-wide decisions have to be made, for better or worse.

POPULATION UNITS:

The people(s) in a civilization are quantified according to “pops”, which is the game’s term for groups of people; the in-game advisor even utters the word. Each group of people can be directed to do the same thing, namely sitting on and working on a tile. In this review article, the longer term “population unit” would be used, if only because “pop” sounds terribly awkward to me.

Anyway, the player starts with a few population units. In the case of people from organic species, new population units seem to spontaneously grow on any tile that is not already occupied by any population unit; the game explains this as internal migration, natural births and cloning (when the tech becomes available). If there are population units of different species or sub-species, there will be one growing population unit for each of them. The ramifications of this will be described shortly.

If the civilization purges a species, any population unit that appears later in the civilization will never be of the purged species. However, that species will still be in the civilization’s list of species, albeit as an undesirable.

POPULATION GROWTH:

A population unit that has just appeared will not be fully usable, initially. The population unit has a meter that shows how close it is to achieving maturity.

In the case of population units from organic species, the time that is needed to reach maturity depends on the number of population units that have been around on the planet; having more of them already around makes the maturity take longer to happen.

This runs counter to logic, since population growth should be proportional to the level of existing populations. Of course, this is a computer game thing, specifically something about gameplay balance.

There are other factors, such as any Civics or Traditions (more on these later) that provide bonuses to the speed of growth. These are much more reliable factors of growth than anything else.

Any surplus food that the civilization is making contributes to the growth of organic population units. However, the bonus is rather small. Considering that each population unit consumes 1 unit of food each month (more on food later), that each 1 surplus unit only produces a 1% increase over the default growth rate is rather disappointing.

Perhaps the most important factors in the creation of new population units are the numbers of species and planets that the player’s civilization has. Each planet can support the creation of one population unit of each species or sub-species that is allowed to multiply, so having more planets means that the civilization’s overall population levels can rise quicker.

Yet, a population unit of any species or sub-species can only be created by having at least one empty tile. This means that if the player wants to have each planet continue to contribute to the growth of the civilization, one tile would have to remain undeveloped on each planet. This can seem silly.

In addition, if there are multiple growing population units (all of whom would be of different species or sub-species) on a planet, the planet’s conferred growth rate is split between them. Generally, the species with highest proportion of total population on a planet gets the lion’s share, so its population units grow the fastest if there are more than one around. The other population units continue to hog their tiles while they mature much more slowly.

Growing population units cannot be destroyed, short of declaring that their species or sub-species are to be purged. They cannot be resettled to other planets either.

With all of these factors to keep in mind, managing the growth of population units of one species is already daunting enough; having to manage growth of multiple species or sub-species is even more complicated.

The player could choose to stop a specific species from being able to make new population units. This, of course, displeases them (quite greatly, in fact). However, they get to maintain their population units and remain productive.

MIGRATION:

If a civilization has enabled full migration rights for an extant species in the galaxy, a population unit of that species can choose to just move out to another planet in the same civilization, or another civilization that welcomes migrants of that species. The reasons for population units wanting to migrate are opaque, unfortunately.

There have been some observations made by players, of course. For example, migrating population units often follow progressive factions (more on these later) and they often come from planets with bad conditions (e.g. low habitability). The player can observe such examples when the player conquers a planet that has population units that are ill-suited to the world that they are on. (This can happen when CPU-controlled governments make some poor decisions; this will be lamented further later.)

Anyway, the main reason that the player might want to dabble in migration is that the player might have a lucrative planet that can be colonized, but does not have the correct species for its clime and does not want to subject the planet to terraforming (which take a long time). Getting into a migration agreement with another friendly civilization that has the species that the player wants can be helpful.

Unfortunately, again, the game does not inform the player about the factors that encourage migration. The rights of the migrant species are likely to be important, but not a guarantee. In one instance, I have set favourable conditions for multiple species but found that only one population unit of them took the proverbial carrot. In another instance (made through some save-scumming), all of the foreign species took the carrot and they came in droves.

There are buildings that encourage migration to the planet that they are on, but sometimes they do not seem to do much either. Perhaps the other civilizations have forbidden their species to migrate, but the player is not able to see whether this is so. (The player can certainly prevent the species of his/her own civilization from migrating.)

A population unit that wants to migrate has a label that shows that it is going to migrate, often after several months. However, this is not a guarantee; every month, they might change their mind, for whatever reason. (There are some observable reasons, such as more tiles being opened up on the planet that they are on.)

Furthermore, the migrants might not make the best choices, due to possible uses of fickle RNGs in their decision-making. For example, a population unit of a species that prefer tundra worlds might migrate to a desert world. (There will be more on planet habitability later.)

A migrant population unit effectively becomes like any other population unit, albeit with a short-term happiness bonus. It can be shuffled from tile to tile, or resettled in another world if the player wishes it (and it would retain the bonus anyway).

Overall, the migration system is unreliable in getting population units of other species, no thanks to how incomprehensible the factors of migration are. Unfortunately, migration is an issue that matters to one of the factions in the faction system, which will be described later.

DROIDS/ROBOTS/SYNTHETICS:

Eventually, a civilization gains the ability to build population units that are composed of semi-autonomous machines. They start their existence in servitude to the species that created them, and they tend to be incapable of anything other than working on mineral and energy production until they become more sophisticated. Indeed, there are three levels of sophistication to them, depending on the techs that have been developed for them: the simpleton robots, the slightly less clumsy droids and the fully realized synthetics.

When they are merely robots and droids, they do not have any happiness ratings whatsoever and have no issues with servitude. Once they are synthetics, however, they eventually gain sapience and have happiness ratings. This is a watershed moment for the player’s civilization, because the player will need to decide on what to do with them now that they are well aware that an existence of servitude is very dissatisfying. (The Synthetic Dawn DLC makes this event even more destabilizing – but that’s for another review article.) Granting them full citizenship makes them happy, but angers any spiritualist faction outright. (The irony is that machine population units can join spiritualist factions too.)

One reason to have population units of machines – sapient or otherwise – is that the habitability of planets is a non-issue. However, they do not gain any bonuses from being in the correct climate either. Another reason is that they are immune to diseases, if there are random outbreaks of plague.

However, perhaps the greatest reason to have them is that their population level can be controlled. On the other hand, their proliferation is slow and costly. Only one population unit of machines can be built on any planet at any time, and they have a building rate that can be improved with only a few ways. They also cost minerals to make, which complicate resource management. They may not need food, but they require Energy for maintenance instead.

SUB-SPECIES:

Every species starts with its original strain. More strains can be obtained when the player’s civilization comes across the means of genetic modification, but there may also be special events where the player is given the choice of creating a different strain. Of course, such events come with a price, namely societal upheaval about having “mutants” among the people.

SUB-SPECIES TEMPLATES:

Only new sub-species can be made; designing entirely new species is not possible during a playthrough, even with the Utopia DLC. A new sub-species will always be associated with its parent species.

The only exception to this is when a civilization gains machine population units for the first time, typically after gaining the tech for Robots. The civilization’s leadership is given the choice to design a machine “species” from scratch.

Nevertheless, the main limit on traits still applies: five regular traits of any kind and in any mix.

OTHER EXTANT SPECIES:

A civilization may allow migrations of species with other civilizations through agreements. A civilization might allow refugees to settle. A civilization might even defeat another civilization and gain their planets, as well as their populations from different species.

Together with the proliferation of sub-species, a civilization’s government will eventually have to decide how to manage the gamut of peoples.

The beneficent but not always wise decision is to grant them full citizenship, effectively turning a civilization into a multi-species civilization. However, the other species, especially those from defeated civilizations, may carry baggage, such as bad traits and factional allegiances that are just against the current government of the day. The government can choose to purge them, but this comes with its own problems, not least of which is revolt.

It is a balancing game that can be daunting to deal with, but it is manageable and can provide rewards in the form of convenience. For example, being able to colonize planets with different climes is a considerable advantage over civilizations that have to terraform planets, if they bother at all.

SLAVERY & SERVITUDE:

Of course, there is the darker but more gratuitous decision that is enslavement/indenture. Any species, including even the main original species of a civilization, can have their rights curtailed and relegated to a lower caste, or down to full slavery.

Relegation to a lower caste can result in a small minority of servants, or an apartheid where privileged sub-species reign. Only Authoritarian empires can have such limited and targeted inequality.

Furthermore, not all population units of a lower caste species are indentured; only those units that would gain a productivity boost from being indentured while working on certain tiles and buildings are indentured. For example, a species may be made to a lower caste, and pushed into chattel labour, which grants them a boost in mineral and energy production. Consequently, any population unit of that species that is on a tile that is producing minerals or energy will become indentured. Obviously, this is a much more versatile system than full slavery.

Xenophobic and/or Authoritarian empires can have full slavery for all population units of entire species, though the original species cannot be relegated to full slaves (likely due to gameplay balance reasons). This would seem to make things simpler (as in that species will definitely be overall unhappy), but reassigning already considerable numbers of population units to different tiles can be daunting.

In the base game, there is only one option of indenturing and slavery: Chattel Slavery, which reduces a population unit to just little more than workers who produce Energy and Minerals. Changing slavery types is relatively easy, especially with the Caste setting, and is quite wise if the player intends to micromanage slaves for maximum efficiency. (However, such rights changes can only be done once every ten years, like all rights changes.)

Slaves are definitely unhappy, but their unhappiness does not affect their productivity. Obviously, voting rights are withheld from slaves too (if the people of the civilization has any voting rights, such as in Oligarchies). Of course, unhappy people are very likely to revolt, and they often desert the state for egalitarian civilizations.

SLAVE OWNERSHIP:

The risk of revolt is always manageable, as long as the government suppresses uprising. However, there is one other gameplay balancing measure against the slavery system.

Any indentured/enslaved population unit is to be “shackled” to a population unit of non-slave species (i.e. not officially relegated to a lower status). This will automatically happen, whether the player likes it or not. (There can be more slave population units than “owner” units on a planet.) If the “owner” units lose their servants/slaves for whatever reason, they suffer a considerable happiness setback.

NO OFFICIAL SLAVE TRADING:

Curiously, slave trading is not implemented in the game. Even with the content in the expansion packs, especially the Enclave system, this has not been implemented.

Explanations that have been given by both developers and long-time veterans of the game is that the current system of having one population unit per tile, and the need to have the population unit work the tile, does not make trading slave population units feasible or balanced in the long run.

Perhaps any solution to this would require a new user interface, one that would combine both the characteristics of the leader screen and the planet surface screen. This UI would only be available to slavery-practicing civilizations, and it would have dedicated tiles that are only ever used to grow slave populations. The convenience of this would have to be balanced with opportunity costs, of course.

HAPPINESS:

Every sapient population unit has a happiness rating. Of course, this would be nothing new to veterans of 4X games. As to expected, happiness ratings determine the productivity of the people, and how likely they are to cause unrest. It is par for the course for the 4X genre, and it works the same way in Stellaris. However, Stellaris does have an additional layer of complexity, specifically the factors that contribute to happiness, or lack thereof.

Firstly, there are the usual bread-and-butter factors. Population units are not subjected to taxation, but Stellaris does use a facsimile of this genre staple: living standards. Planet habitability is also another factor, as any veteran of Masters of Orion would know. The planet itself may also have special modifiers of its own.

Secondly, there are the facilities that the player can build on the planet. Expectedly, some of these affect happiness. However, Stellaris differs a bit from its peers by not having happiness-increasing buildings available early on in the playthrough. In fact, they are very rare and coveted things.

Thirdly, there are special (and often random) events that have the player making decisions. One of these decisions might affect the people’s happiness, usually in return for a price or a benefit.

Finally, and this is how Stellaris is different from its peers in this matter, there is the faction that each population unit follows. There will be more on factions later.

RESETTLING POPULATION UNITS:

If the player so wishes, the player can have a population unit resettled to some other planet. This can be useful in getting a planet to reach thresholds on numbers of population units, which are pre-requisites for upgrading the administration centre of the planet. It is also useful to fill in a tile that has already been built up by the player; this is likely to be the main reason that the player would resettle population units. After all, it is often faster to build facilities than to grow (or build) population units.

However, this convenience is not available to egalitarian civilizations. Of course, this compensates against the considerable bonuses that egalitarian civilizations have, among other drawbacks that result in lack of control over the people. That said, servile machines can still be shuffled around.

PURGING/DISASSEMBLING POPULATION UNITS:

One way to remove an organic population unit is to purge it, obviously in a lethal manner. To do so, the species of that population unit must have their rights diminished to anything below “residence”; this allows the player to select specific population units to remove. Any species that is considered “undesirables” have all of their population units immediately purged.

Obviously, this makes the population unit very angry and also disables their productivity. Until they are purged (which is a long process), they continue to occupy the tiles that they are on.

Servile non-sapient machines can be disassembled, but they would not do anything else but wait for their recycling. Sapient synthetics are definitely not fond of dissolution, and will respond just like organic species when faced with extermination.

Overall, the option to eliminate population units in such a manner has considerable opportunity costs and risks, even though purging can be done in parallel with other activities. The worst of these risks is that other civilizations whose primary species are those that a civilization has purged will be very much angry.

DISPLACEMENT & REFUGEES:

A lesser-known mechanism for the removal of population units from a colony is “displacement”.

The first case of displacement is when an existing colony from another civilization is acquired, through whatever means. If the acquiring civilization’s policy on land appropriation does not respect whoever has been there in the first place, at least five tiles will be emptied outright on random, their population units forced offworld and elsewhere as refugees if they have not been granted full citizenship. Such a case is, of course, there for the player’s convenience, specifically for bringing in other population units.

The second case of displacement is the consequences of war. A population unit that is unfortunate enough to be tagged as collateral damage might either die, or they might be lucky enough to escape. They will always escape to other civilizations, which can cause problems, or provide opportunities.

The third case of displacement is escape from slavery. In such cases, the refugees will almost always escape to civilizations with an egalitarian bent, or failing that, civilizations with policies that do not turn away refugees. Their second choices tend to be wildly random, however.

The fourth case of displacement is official species cleansing. Instead of outright violent purging, the population units of that species are eventually forced to move off-world, ostensibly due to systematic discrimination. This is less likely to make other civilizations angry, but someone will definitely not be happy.

The fifth case is, of course, outright purging. Escaping victims would not be much of an issue to the civilization that is purging them, because they are not wanted in the first place.

Fleeing refugees might be accepted by other civilizations, whether through principle or for convenience. The most obvious benefit is that the receiving civilizations gain free population units to use, but refugees also pose problems, such as introducing their factional allegiances if the receiving civilization does not have similar factions already.

PLANETS & TILES:

As any sci-fi 4X veteran would expect, any civilization would be out and about looking for other worlds to call home too. However, not all planets are habitable; most would just be useless balls of rock and dust not even worth mining. Even the habitable ones come with caveats, which will be described later.

Habitable planets have limited potential too, much of which is decided by the number of developable ‘tiles’ that they have. The system of tiles will be familiar to followers of the 4X genre; they work a lot like the tile system in Sid Meier’s Civilization series. The player places a population unit on a tile, and any resources that can be produced by that tile are produced and collected.

PLANET HABITABILITY:

There are many types of planets, most of which are of barren, i.e. lacking the means to support life. Not all of the habitable ones are usable by everyone, due to climes in which they evolve into sapient beings.

However, unlike the system of climes introduced by Masters of Orion and practised by Galactic Civilizations, there is no particular connection between the productiveness of a planet and its clime, e.g. a desert world can be just as productive as a continental world. Rather, the matching between the clime of a world and the species of the population units that would be living on it decides its productiveness.

The list of habitability ratings that planets of specific climes would offer them shows the climate preferences of any particular species. This is important to keep in mind, because the habitability of a planet greatly determines both their happiness and productivity. That said, the player should not go around colonizing any planet that he/she finds, unless his/her civilization has multiple species. Indeed, having multiple species gives the player more opportunities to own world – unless of course, the civilization happens to have Xenophobia as a Governing Ethic.

It should be pointed out here that, with the exception of Gaia worlds (more on this shortly), only a species’ own homeworld can provide 100% habitability to its people. Even worlds of the same climes cannot provide this; this is explained away as slight biological incompatibilities that a species may have with the different ecologies and micro-ecologies that the other worlds have.

GAIA WORLDS:

The jewels of the galaxy are not the most exotic substances, rarest metals or most bounteous stars, but worlds that can somehow support any kind of life. These are Gaia worlds.

Gaia worlds guarantee 100% habitability to any species, and they often have many tiles. Obviously, this makes them irresistible to just about any civilization.

COLONIZING PLANETS:

The claiming of a planet does not happen to be instantaneous; in fact, it is an arduous process that can put a drain on a civilization’s resources.

Firstly, the civilization must build a colony ship. Colony ships take the longest to build among civilian ships. Then the civilization has to pick a species as the first settlers.

After the colony ship is built, it puts a considerable drain on the civilization’s Energy economy; it is in its interest to send the ship to its destination as soon as possible. This design was implemented to discourage a civilization from having a colony ship on stand-by, waiting to snatch a planet before others do. (CPU-controlled civilizations will still do this, however.)

After the colony ship has reached the planet, the player has to choose where to place the administration centre (which is always the first building built). This is an important decision, because the administration centre will grant productivity bonuses to most buildings on the tiles that are cardinally adjacent to it. However, it is not always easy to make optimal decisions because of the presence of tile blockers (more on this shortly).

While the colony is being started – which is a process that can take many months – the colony drains energy as much as the colony ship did. There are some technologies that greatly accelerate this process, which is a short-term benefit with payoffs down the line (namely having the colony up and running earlier). The technologies may also be useful later, after the player has obtained technologies to terraform planets.

Having colonized planets, the player might want to cross his/her fingers. Some planets have nasty seeds that trigger bad events shortly after they have been settled. Some of these can even outright kill off the first population unit, especially if the player does not have the resources to prevent bad outcomes.

PLANET MODIFIERS:

A colonisable planet might have modifiers that impart their effects to everything on it. Such modifiers are rare, and they are not all beneficial.

More often than not, there are special research projects that are associated with the modifiers. These modifiers may be the reward for pursuing the projects, or they are removed by the projects, if they happen to be bad.

Most of the bad modifiers are removed by terraforming, especially if they concern weather or indigenous life-forms. Therefore, it might be tempting to consider terraforming a planet first before colonizing it, even if it is of the correct clime. Unfortunately, the game does not inform the player about which modifiers can be removed with terraforming.

BLOCKER TILES:

Taking a leaf from Galactic Civilizations, Stellaris does not have all tiles on planets available from the get-go. More often than not, some of them are blocked. The causes of the blockages are illustrated in their artwork, but gameplay-wise, the player does not need to worry more than just getting the right technology to remove them. However, the tile blockers that require later-game technologies often demand more Energy to be cleaned up. They also take longer to remove.

The main headache about tile blockers is their random placement. This can complicate the placement of administration centres when the planet is colonized. Even after the planet is colonized, clearing tile blockers take up time that could have been spent on developing tiles instead.

If the player is terribly unlucky, the player might get one of those events that happen shortly after a planet has been colonized, specifically the one that introduces tile blockers into empty tiles.

Terraforming removes all blocker tiles, regardless of their type. This can be convenient, if a planet has a ghastly number of difficult tile blockers.

TILE RESOURCES:

Most planets have tiles that have resources already on them. When the galaxy is procedurally generated, the resources are assigned to tiles on each planet with very few overarching rules other than to have some tiles of each common resource type. Therefore, there can be a lot of variation between planets. Unlike other contemporary space 4X sci-fi games, the player might want to consider not having planets specialize in one thing or another. Rather, the player should consider placing buildings that eke the most out of a tile.

If there are multiple resources on a tile and a building is built on it, only the resources that match those provided by the building can be utilized; the others are supressed. For example, if there is a tile that provides both Energy and Minerals, the player can only build either an Energy-generating building or a Mineral-generating one to benefit from the Energy or Minerals, respectively. (There are very few buildings that can generate both Energy and Minerals, by the way.)

After colonizing a planet, there might be an event that change the resources on tiles. Some are beneficial, but others can be unpleasant, if the player is unlucky enough to get the nasty ones.

SPECIAL RESOURCES:

Some tiles might have special resources, such as Betharian Stones or Alien Animals. In order to utilize these, the player needs to have the correct technology and the correct building that the technology unlocks. For example, Alien Animals can only be profited from with Alien Zoos. The player’s reward is usually a very high yield of resources.

Of course, the player could just build over the tile and keep in mind where it is for later, if the techs required are not available. However, these special resources are not shown on the icons for star systems. Fortunately, they are included as details in the list of planets that the player has colonized, so checking the list might help remind the player that they are still there.

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE:

There should be a word of warning about any tile with uncommon bonuses. More often than not, there is a nasty caveat to them.

For example, there is a random event that grants a tile a special building. This special building is an ancient but functional alien relic that produces both Energy and Minerals. However, it would turn out that this relic is a deadly practical joke that happens to have hidden pitfall traps, which would cause the population unit that is working it to simply disappear.

Eventually, the special events that triggered the appearance of these bonuses would progress to a point where the player can make a “keep it or ditch it” decision. Ditching it may grant some temporary benefits as compensation for the trouble that they have caused, but keeping them often inflicts long-duration setbacks. Of course, if the player’s civilization could endure the setback and outlast it, the tile becomes a significant asset of a planet.

There are plenty of other “too good to be true” content in the game (and even more in the expansions) that do not concern tiles. Incidentally, most of them occur through event chains, which will be described much later.

ADJACENCY BONUSES:

The administration centre of a colony, which is always the first building in any colony, grants adjacency bonuses. Thus far in the history of Stellaris, it is the only building that has this trait. It has been mentioned earlier that it is not always possible to profit from the adjacency bonuses in the long run, due to the presence of tile blockers on a planet. Rebuilding the centre later is unwise too, because of its long construction time and the opportunity costs of having to spend time to rebuild it.

There are some special tile blockers that grant adjacency bonuses, but often with a setback (other than the blockers obviously blocking tiles from being developed). These tiles are often associated with special events that have been assigned to planets during the generation of the galaxy.

BUILDINGS - OVERVIEW:

The tiles on a planet are unproductive until a building has been placed on them for population units to work with. That said, without a population unit to work them, a building and its tile are useless too.

Buildings often incur monthly costs in Energy, unless they are already Energy-producing buildings. Buildings without population units to work them are automatically deactivated, which is convenient. The player could deactivate buildings that are being worked on to free up Energy incomes, but that is a sign that the player has been terribly unlucky or has planned poorly.

Generally, all buildings have to be built with minerals. There are a few that have to be built with Energy too and some do not consume Minerals, but are already paid for through other means.

Minerals are used for other things too (more on these later), so the player will need to plan the construction of buildings carefully. As a rule of thumb, the player should only build buildings when a fledgling population unit is about to mature.

REPLACING & UPGRADING BUILDINGS:

Buildings do eventually become obsolete, either because there is new technology that provides a better version, or the player believes that the tile could be used for something else.

In the former case, buildings can be upgraded to their next level upon obtaining the next piece of technology that are associated with them. It should be mentioned here though that the player must always build upgradable buildings at their default lowest level first, and then upgrade them to the next level. This can be tedious, but meticulous players might appreciate as this allows them to fine-tune their spending plans. Besides, upgrades happen quite quickly.

Replacing buildings is perhaps one of the most pleasant game designs in Stellaris. The player can choose to build the replacement building while continuing to have the original one being worked on. There is no noticeable setback to this.

REPAIRING & DEMOLISHING BUILDINGS:

Bad events or the rigours of war can inflict severe damage on buildings. This usually damages them to the point of loss function, but particularly nasty cases can result in the buildings being completely obliterated (often with the population unit that tended them).

Anyway, buildings that have lost their functions but have not been obliterated can still be repaired. This costs some resources, but restoring them is a process that is much faster than replacing them.

Considering the convenience of replacing buildings, there are very few reasons to demolish a building. However, what reasons there are, they are very good reasons. For one, the building might be something that the player does not want to stay around at all. This is especially the case for buildings that have been built by Spiritualist civilizations; their temples make spiritualist ethics more attractive, which is not desirable if the player’s civilization is not a spiritualist one.

UNIQUE BUILDINGS:

Some buildings are marked as “unique”. Long-time followers of the 4X genre may recognize these as facsimiles of Wonders in other 4X titles (though there are specifically-named “Wonders” in one of the expansions). Generally, the player could not readily build them like the more common buildings.

There are two types of “uniqueness”: “planet-unique” and “empire-unique”. Planet-unique buildings include the administration centre, and anything that provides planet-wide buffs, such as the Energy Grid and Mineral Processing Plant. Unlike the empire-unique buildings, planet-unique buildings have upgraded versions that make these buildings worthwhile to have in the long run. Planet-unique buildings tend to provide science points too (more on these later).

Only one of each type of empire-unique buildings can be built in any civilization. They are incredibly rare to get, and are often the product of special events or the attainment of rare technologies. It is generally in the player’s interest to build these, but where the player places them is important, because the enemy can seize them for themselves.

Furthermore, some of the empire-unique buildings can only be built on the capital world. Considering that the capital world is often the homeworld, which in turn is the first world to be fully developed, having to have existing buildings make way for them can be tricky.

There are no galactic-unique buildings in Stellaris, or to be more precise, there is no race down tech trees to get them. The expansions do introduce similar gameplay elements, but there is still no race down tech trees to get them. (Besides, the tech progression in Stellaris is quite different from other 4X games, as will be described later.) Indeed, one could argue that Stellaris has a far more reverential treatment of unique buildings.

TERRAFORMING PLANETS:

Eventually, the player obtains the technology to literally overhaul planets. This is a considerable undertaking, costing much Energy and taking a long time to work. There are two means of terraforming planets: terraforming them while they are uninhabited, or terraforming them while they are inhabited.

The first option means that a planet takes longer to be eventually colonized. The second option freezes a lot of options to develop the planet, and the inhabitants are greatly inconvenienced by the terraforming. The second option also needs an additional technology.

ABANDONING PLANETS:

It is possible to abandon a colony, even though there is no official and convenient way to do so. There is only one condition to be met: having no population units whatsoever on the planet. As for the reason to do so, the player might have obtained a far better planet, but the player wants to keep the number of owned planets low. Maybe the player has obtained a planet from another civilization that has made poor decisions with the planet.

This is easier said than done, because population units are not so easy to kill outside of really bad luck, and purging is a risky option with considerable opportunity costs, as had been mentioned earlier. The most reliable way of doing so is by opening a new colony, and then resettling population units from the one to be abandoned whole-sale onto the new one – assuming that the new one has enough tiles to house all of them.

Alternatively, the player could release the planet as a vassal, which has its own benefits and advantages, which will be described later.

(As a side note, a system with an inhabited planet cannot be relinquished by demolishing its starbase.)

RE-COLONIZING PLANETS:

The player might want to return to a planet after it has been abandoned, for whatever reason. If so, it has to be re-colonized through the usual way. Any buildings are still there, including even the old administration centre. Amusingly, this results in two administration centres on the same planet. This design oversight can indeed be exploited to create a very productive planet (including having the centres bolster each other), as well as a very defensible one (because centres produce garrisons too). However, this can take a long while.

Another reason to re-colonize planets is not to get the planet, but to gain the population unit that is spawned on the administration centre and resettle it elsewhere. Granted, this can be very costly: the wait is long, the Energy overhead has to be paid, there are the Minerals spent on the Colony Ships and the planet being colonized does count towards the number of owned planets. However, colonization happens independently of the maturity of population units on the planets that the player wants to keep.

SPACEPORTS:

Interestingly, Stellaris separates the facilities for building ships into two types: spaceports and shipyards. Spaceports are only used for building non-combat vessels, such as Colony Ships, Construction Ships and Science Ships. All colonized planets automatically have spaceports, which always function regardless of the state of their tiles and populations. Their building rates are independent of the state of the planets too.

ENERGY:

“Energy” has been mentioned more than a few times in this article already. This is one of the three tradable (and hoardable) resources in Stellaris. It is perhaps the most important one because it is also used like a currency to pay fees and the like.

Energy is spent on the upkeep of things, be they buildings, ships or space stations (more on these later). Any leftover energy (and there should be much of it) goes into a hoard. The size of the hoard starts at a respectable 5000 at the beginning of a playthrough, but gaining technologies increase the limit, allowing the player to hoard more. This is just as well, because there are many options later in a playthrough that require four-digit expenditures.

MINERALS:

Minerals are mainly used to build buildings and ships. They are also needed to produce robotic population units. In short, the minerals go into the development of the infrastructure and hard-power of a civilization.

There is a lesser need to hoard Minerals than Energy, because there are not a lot of ventures that require four-digit amounts, at least until much later in a playthrough. Rather, Minerals are likely to be consumed at a more noticeable rate than Energy, so maintaining a high income of them is more important than keeping significant reserves.

UPKEEP COSTS:

Just about everything in a civilization requires resources for maintenance. Energy is usually the payment for this, but in the case of ships and starbases, Minerals are needed too, at a default of 1% of their costs per month. Upkeeps can eventually become hefty enough to be a problem, so the player might want to consider on investments to keep the costs low, especially during peace-time when the navies are not able to earn their keep.

TECH FIELDS:

Each sci-fi 4X title is guaranteed to have some form of progression system, often given names such as “research” and “technology”. Stellaris does the same, but with some conveniences that prevent any waste of effort; this will be described later, after a quirk with its system has been mentioned.

There are three fields of science and technology: “Physics”, “Society” and “Engineering”. The Physics field concerns the usual sci-fi things that are typically flashy and bright, like lasers, plasma and fusion reactors. Chief among these are the technologies that improve Energy generation and increase the power pool for ships (more on these later).

The Engineering field also concerns the usual sci-fi things, albeit things that are chunky, hard, loud and sometimes impractical in terms of engineering, such as railguns, thick armor plates and heavy industry with unexplained processes. The most significant Engineering techs are those that involve Mineral extraction and structural scales.

The “Society” field is perhaps the oddest of the three, because it includes economic, political and biological techs. The most important techs are those that affect the populations in a civilization.

All three fields of tech are worked on simultaneously; this is something that Stellaris does differently from most sci-fi 4X titles, which usually only allow one research project at a time. This means that the opportunity costs of focusing on specific groups of technologies are not as significant in Stellaris.

These fields are further differentiated into sub-fields/specializations, typically according to the overarching function of the techs. For example, there is Propulsion, an Engineering sub-field that concerns how ships move about. Some scientists specialize in these sub-fields, so it is wise to consider changing the current lead researcher if the next research project is the specialty of others.

NO TECH TREE:

What has been described about these three fields are learned through first-hand experience and third-party sources (namely the wiki) – none of these are learned through in-game documentation. Notably, Stellaris lacks any UI screen that shows the progression of technologies. There are some techs with labels that mention that they lead to other technologies, but these other techs are not told to the player.

Perhaps the starkest difference that the progression system of Stellaris has compared to those of other 4X titles is that there are few fixed prerequisites and almost no tech branching.

PROCEDURAL SEEDING OF RESEARCH OPTIONS:

When a research project has been completed and the player is going to select the next one, the game picks several research options, but not all of those that are available to the player.

To determine the mix of options, the research system uses an algorithm on the technologies that the player’s civilization already has. The variables of the algorithm are not clear to the player, but one of them is very likely the average of the points of all techs that the civilization has, as well as the points costs of the research projects that have yet to be undertaken.

The technologies that have yet to be researched are compared to this average. If their point costs are low compared to the average, they have a very high chance of appearing as a research option, excepting rarity modifiers (more on these later). Those with higher point costs are less likely to appear, while those with costs far higher than the average would not appear at all.

This means that the player will still be able to research the most basic of technologies, barring some very bad luck. However, options with higher point costs – and greater benefits – can appear too and tempt the player into making a decision with significant opportunity costs and risk.

There are some research options that will not appear until earlier related ones have been obtained. The most obvious of these are the weapon and resource technologies. The prerequisites are mainly implemented for the purpose of gameplay balance.

Purportedly, the number of techs in specific sub-fields is a variable too. Projects in sub-fields that have not been invested much in have a greater tendency to come up as options.

RARE TECHS:

Some research options are categorized as “rare”. These have a negative modifier that makes them less likely to appear, even late into a playthrough. They are not strictly needed, but they can give significant advantages if the player pursues them, though some of them do have risks.

For example, there is “Wormhole Stabilization”. This allows a wormhole to be stabilized, effectively turning it and its counterpart elsewhere in the galaxy into stable, freely usable Gateways. Obviously, this is a great advantage if the player has the strength to force through whatever is on the other side, but the wormholes work both ways.

Undertaking the research of rare techs is not without problems. Rare techs apply a penalty to the research speed if the lead researcher is not an expert in the sub-field that concerns the rare techs. Having a stable of Scientists with different expertise can be impractical, however. (The Leviathans expansion addresses this problem with an expensive alternative.)

DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW PLANS OF TECH PROGRESSION:

The lack of tech tree screens and the procedural seeding of research options make the planning and following of tech plans much more onerous than some 4X sci-fi veterans would like. Of course, the player could look at the wiki of the game and keep the point costs of the options in mind, albeit at the cost of immersion. Even so, these players would have the dilemma of following their master-plan or going after rare options when they appear.

Of course, there is the argument that this is a deliberate design decision on the developers’ part; they are well aware of the usual tropes in sci-fi 4X gameplay, and they are not fond of the typical tech trees, as are a number of jaded players (myself included). More importantly, this system does work in preventing players from coming up with guaranteed gameplay-imbalancing plans of progression, or at least plans that do not have considerable opportunity costs.

SCIENCE POINTS:

Most sci-fi 4X titles use point-based systems for research options; they are often nicknamed “science points”. The points are generated through pouring other resources into making them, like in the Galactic Civilizations titles, or making the buildings that generate them. Stellaris does the latter, but diverges in how science points are applied.

Where the other 4X titles apply them automatically to any research project that is being undertaken, Stellaris lets the player hoard them, if he/she so chooses. This is done by simply not taking any offered options.

There are few reasons to do this, and the game does alert the player about not having undertaken science projects with a rather annoying audio clip. However, the player could do this in anticipation of getting bonus research options, which will be described later. For example, the player may be expecting that he/she would get a bonus option from the wreckage of enemy vessels that have equipment that the player’s civilization can reverse-engineer. He/She can hoard points so as to accelerate the research of said equipment.

The keyword here is “accelerate”. Not all of the hoarded points can be spent immediately. Rather, they are spent at the same rate as the civilization’s rate of science point generation. In other words, the researching goes twice as fast.

The main opportunity cost here is that the lead researcher in the field of science that has been put on the backburner continues to age, so the player might not want to do this if the scientist is already close to passing away. (There will be more on the aging of leader characters later.)

Any currently undertaken research project can be switched out for another at any time. The progress that has been made is not lost, and the project remains an option after another project has been finished. It will not count as a bonus option though, and will continue to take up a slot for a regular option.

Such nuances are not told to the player, but then, only experienced players would be able to take advantage of them.

BONUS RESEARCH OPTIONS:

The player might be lucky enough to gain opportunities to obtain special or regular techs through advantageous circumstances. However, more often than not, the player will need to undertake research of these techs. Conveniently though, the options for these techs will always be there in the lists of projects that can be undertaken. The player could choose to postpone their undertaking, at least until more favourable circumstances come up, such as the emergence of a scientist with the appropriate expertise.

SCIENCE COST INFLATIONS:

The science point costs of official research projects increase as a civilization’s number of owned systems and planets increases. The number of planets, in particular, is a greater inflation factor.

This setback was implemented for the purpose of gameplay balance, in an attempt to prevent massive civilizations from getting too far ahead by simply having many assets. This is a notable difference that Stellaris has compared to earlier sci-fi 4X titles, which usually have the biggest empires winning playthroughs.

Therefore, the player has to be meticulous in planning the expansion of his/her civilization, with an eye out for optimizing productivity of planets.

RESEARCH PROGRESS BONUSES:

Fortunately, there is a long-term way to counter the inflation: progress bonuses. These are percentage-based multipliers to the worth of each science point, and each field of science has its own bonus statistic.

The main contribution to these bonuses is the skill of the scientists that have been chosen as lead researchers. However, there are other sources of bonuses, such as a certain Edict, other even more specialized Edicts, and certain empire-unique buildings, to name a few.

That said, there are some modifiers that are not bonuses but are penalties instead. These are often applied by rare techs. In the base game, this penalty can be addressed by having the correct expert lead the research project, but as mentioned earlier, maintaining a stable of experts can be too much.

REPEATABLE SCIENCE PROJECTS:

Repeatable science projects only appears at the very end of a playthrough, when the dominant civilization in the galaxy has already researched all techs there ever were. When this has happened, repeatable techs begin to appear as options for this civilization, and eventually there are only ever these. As the name of their category suggests, these techs can be researched over and over, granting cumulative bonuses each time. These have the highest science point costs in the game, but they allow the civilization to simply break through any gameplay balance limitations that had been put in place, if only to surge faster towards the end of the playthrough.

SPECIAL RESEARCH PROJECTS:

There are some special research projects that are not listed together with the official ones. Rather, they are included in the Situation Log (which is practically Stellaris’s equivalent of a quest log in RPGs). Special research projects have their progression measured in days instead of months.

Special projects can be grouped into two types, according to how they are enacted. One type only requires that the player has a Science Ship on-site to undertake the project; this one will not affect the official research projects. However, it does freeze the Science Ship’s activities, at least until the player cancels the project (upon which all progress made is lost and has to be regained from scratch).

The other type does not require a Science Ship. Instead, they need investments of science points. They do not hold any Science points like regular projects do, however; if they are disrupted in any way, all progress is lost, though the points are refunded.

More importantly, this type of special research projects will take priority over any current normally chosen research project. Its progress tracker is shown in the Situation Log instead of the research UI.

A select few research projects require Construction Ships or even Transport Ships to undertake them. In these cases, the type of ship required would indicate the rewards that the player would get: using Construction Ships usually means special ships can be obtained relatively free, whereas Transport Ships might result in special population units or leaders being recovered by the armies on the Transports.

The problem with these particular research projects though is that they often have timer limits; failing to undertake them in time means that the opportunity is lost. Considering that Science Ships would be going to places where Transports or Construction Ships might not be able to go, clinching these projects can be difficult. On the other hand, the player could still have the foresight of having a Construction Ship and/or Transport follow each Science Ships around.

MODIFYING POPULATION UNITS:

Genetically modifying any organic species or redesigning machine models are special research projects that are parked under the situation log too. Their science costs are proportional to the number of population units of a species that the player wants to modify and the number of traits that the player wants to give to them. The projects also have a fixed base cost that is added to the variable costs.

The main reason that the player might want to modify population units is to produce sub-species, either as an improved version of the original or a substitute when the original does not fit the player’s schemes. However, these special projects are very expensive and time-consuming undertakings (mainly due to the aforementioned fixed costs). Therefore, the player might not want to do them unless the benefits far outweigh the opportunity costs.

For example, a civilization’s main species may have dozens of population units, thus making the special projects to reengineer them particularly long and daunting. However, if the benefits are considerable, such as a significant boost in inherent happiness, it might be worthwhile to enact them so as to reap the fruits down the line.

Of course, the player could invest in infrastructure that provides a lot of Society science points. Yet, the opportunity costs for this strategy are that all those Minerals that went into the Society-generating buildings, and the tiles that they are built on, could have been used for something else.

THE GALAXY:

Much as some (including myself) would like to think that space is three-dimensional and should not be anything simpler, the galaxy has been described by researchers as a two-dimensional plane in its entirety. Most sci-fi space 4X titles cleave to this description, for both believability and gameplay simplicity. Stellaris would do the same.

Any galaxy that is generated by the game is composed of star systems that are connected to each other on a 2D plane, or rather, a 2D annulus (ring) to be precise. The centre of the galaxy is composed of dense clusters of stars, and is curiously inaccessible. Therefore, almost all playthroughs would be about civilizations trying to expand and reach around the galaxy.

SOME VERTICALITY:

That is not to say that the galaxy is completely flat, like galaxies in so many other space 4X titles. The galaxy in Stellaris is not a piece of 2D artwork; rather, it is a lattice of icons in 3D.

Indeed, some of the star systems are located higher or lower than the others on the galactic plane. In fact, one of them could be right on top or below the other.

Unfortunately, this causes problems just as much as it improved the complexity of the game. The problem is an issue of parallax; it can be difficult to notice that the icons for two star systems are overlapping each other.

STAR SYSTEMS:

Each star system is also represented as a 2D plane; even the orbits of planets around their sun are located on the same plane.

Speaking of orbits, the planets, stars, moons and other celestial bodies are always situated on the same spots in their star systems all the time throughout a playthrough; planets do not even orbit around their stars. This is a lost opportunity for more complexity in gameplay, but perhaps this was so for the sake of simplicity.

Planets and non-star bodies that are not moons almost always appear around stars. Habitable ones are almost always in systems with orange, yellow or sometimes red stars. On the other hand, the types of stars do not appear to determine what kind of climes that a planet would have, at least not with any predictable certainty. The types of stars do determine what resource that they provide, however.

There are observations about some star types that are close to being guarantees. Habitable planets almost always never appear in systems with pulsar stars and black holes, or any stars that inflict penalties on ship movement. Speaking of which, these star systems are often at lynchpin or chokepoint locations, making them useful defensive strategies, e.g. having defense platforms loaded with armor or hull-shredding weapons only to complement a starbase that is in a system with a pulsar.

In the Niven build of the game (which this review is based on), there can be more than one star in a system, representing binary stars and trinary stars that are described to exist. Having more stars in a system might be a good thing, because more stars means more Energy sources, and perhaps more planets. However, the planets often have at best a decent number of tiles, apparently because of gameplay balance measures.

STARBASES:

Claiming an unowned system is as simple as planting a starbase in it. Building starbases requires some Minerals, and a considerable amount of Influence, which will be described later.

All default-level starbases only cost a small amount of resources every month to be maintained, and all of them are armed. However, starbases do take a while to build, their default level is laughably weak and without upgrades, it does nothing else other than float in space.

A civilization can choose to upgrade its starbases. Upgraded starbases are more capable in defensive combat and are harder to bring down. They also attain slots for the installation of modules, of which there are two types, which will be described later. Upgrading starbases is costly, however, and they take a long time, so the player has to be careful about which ones to upgrade. (Generally, every system with a colonized planet or more should have an upgraded starbase, because of limitations on the mechanism of invasions that will be described later.)

However, the player cannot have many upgraded starbases. Firstly, upgraded starbases cost more to maintain. Secondly, there is a “soft cap” on the number of starbases that can be upgraded. It can be exceeded, but doing so significantly increases the maintenance expenses of the starbases, including any expenses for their modules. The soft cap can be raised by having more population units, or through certain techs, but the soft cap will always be a limitation.

Letting systems go is as easily done as dismantling its starbase. However, the player has to downgrade the starbase if it has already been upgraded; there is no option to immediately outright dismantle the starbase, regardless of its upgrade level. This tedium is caused by limitations in the user interface for starbases.

It should be mentioned here that when a starbase is engaged in combat, any project that it is working on is suspended. Progress on the project is not lost, unless the starbase is defeated.

STARBASE COMPONENTS:

Each starbase always has the same default set of components for the purpose of combat; there is always a battery of lasers, a battery of kinetic weapons, and a silo of missiles. It also has a balance of armor and shield kits. They can have modules installed to give them more weapons, which also happens to increase their shields, armor and hitpoints too. However, a starbase cannot have its components customized in detail at all.

Like the Science Ship (which will be described later), a starbase automatically has its own components upgraded when the relevant technologies have been obtained. This can result in some memorable moments of great lucky coincidences, such as a starbase getting massive upgrades in its firepower and/or toughness just before a powerful hostile navy falls upon it. A starbase can even receive upgrades during combat, which sometimes causes glitches such as their armor and shield resetting to full.

However, the updating of the components for defense platforms are handled separately; defense platforms will be described later.

STARBASE REPAIRS:

If a damaged starbase is not under pressure or suppression from any attacking enemies, a timer starts; the timer is generally 30 days. Once the timer runs down to zero, the starbase rapidly regains its armor, hitpoints and shields. This process can be interrupted by having the starbase come under attack again.

There is a small problem in the in-game documentation/tooltips about repairs on starbases. The game mentions that Construction Ships can help in the repairs of Starbases. Presumably, the player needs to get Construction Ships close to Starbases, but this does not appear to do anything. Perhaps the replenishment of the starbase’s statistics becomes faster, but this is difficult to confirm. (The wiki and forums for the game have little on this matter either.)

STARBASES CANNOT BE DESTROYED:

Even with the most powerful of weapons, starbases cannot be destroyed. This is likely because they are used to denote ownership of star systems. Anyway, a defeated starbase is merely defeated and will soon repair itself after the aforementioned timer is up. In the case of being defeated by the navies of enemy civilizations, the starbase changes its ownership over to that of the victorious civilization for the duration of the war. However, if the system was retaken before the starbase is reactivated, it reverts its ownership (and restarts its timer).

STARBASE MODULES:

There are two categories of starbase modules.

The first category of modules can be added to an upgraded starbase in any permutation. For example, a starbase can have as many anchorages as there are slots for this category of modules. However, there are not as many entries in this category. The Trading Hub is the only module that contributes to the owning civilization’s economy, to cite an example of a deficiency. Two other modules are for the civilization’s fleets, whereas the others are modules of weapons.

The other category has a lot more options, but only one of each can be built on any starbase. Some of these augment the modules of the first category. For example, the Off-World Trading Company module enhances the Energy income of trading hubs by two points (and it is also an obvious reference to a certain management game published by Stardock Entertainment).

These modules have requirements, and more often than not, these are lucrative modules. For example, Mineral-providing Nebula Refineries can only be built on starbases in systems that are located in nebulae.

Every starbase has limited slots for modules. Every upgrade for a starbase opens up a few more slots, but there can only be so many that can be had. This is in contrast to Stellaris’s contemporary, Galactic Civilizations, which allow space stations to have any modules as long as the prerequisites are met.

DEFENSE PLATFORMS:

Defense platforms are supplementary defensive measures for starbases. They can be built by the starbase, using the same construction facility that is used for starbase upgrades and module installation.

Statistically, they have armaments that are heavier than destroyers and they are tougher. Of course, they do not move, because they are practically floating turrets. They can be separately targeted for destruction, which means that the player would lose the minerals that had been spent on making them. On the other hand, that means that their parent starbase is not being struck, allowing it to stay around longer to use its more significant firepower against enemies.

Defense platforms do cause Energy to maintain. Yet, since defense platforms cannot go anywhere, their usefulness is rather limited, and they continue to incur maintenance costs during peace-time.

SHIPYARDS:

Shipyards are facilities that are needed to build warships. Shipyards, in turn, can only be built on starbases (meaning that at least one upgraded starbase is needed to maintain a military presence). Interestingly, each shipyard module on a starbase can independently work on a ship; this means that a player can have a starbase tricked out with multiple shipyards so that it can raise a navy quickly.

LOCATIONS OF STARBASES IN-SYSTEM:

One of the minor design oversights concerning starbases is the location of a starbase within its system. Generally, this is somewhere close to the centre of the system, but if the center is occupied by a star, the starbase is placed somewhere next to the star. The location is always fixed, but the factors that determine its exact location are not entirely clear.

Wily players may notice that they can attempt to have a fleet evade a nasty starbase by having a fleet travel around the fringe of the system. This is handy if the player is trying to lure a hostile fleet into combat away from the starbase.

However, a certain gameplay element prevents the cunning player from sneaking past starbases into the next adjacent system. This will be described later.

CELESTIAL BODIES & RESOURCE STATIONS:

Almost any celestial body that is not a planet may be a potential economic and/or research resource. In order to profit from them, the owning civilization has to build stations next to them. These stations convert the resources into actual income.

Indeed, these stations will be any civilization’s first sources of income at the start of any playthrough (excepting “Advanced AI” civilizations, of course), at least until the civilization has developed their colonies into potent sources of income.

Afterwards, the player has to consider the yields that each system can provide, if it does not have a planet. This is due to the cost inflations in the research and Unity systems. (Unity will be described later.)

Interestingly, planets that have yet to be colonized can have resource stations built on them. The type of “loose change” that they provide is consistent with the properties of the planet. For example, planets with peculiar weather or gravity often provide Physics science points (in addition to having a considerable number of tiles with Physics science resources). The stations on planets disappear without any refunds after they are colonized, but eking out a profit until the player gains the means to colonize them is always a good thing.

STRATEGIC RESOURCES:

Not unlike the Galactic Civilizations titles, there are special resources that are strewn across the galaxy. They are only ever found on non-planet celestial bodies, though which of these have them are not known until they have been surveyed. (There will be more on surveys later.)

When they are found by any civilization, be they player- or CPU-controlled, they are likely to be the target of expansion races, especially if the civilization has yet to obtain strategic resources of their types.

Interestingly, their appearances are not all set during the procedural generation of the galaxy. There is a chance that the player may get lucky enough with surveys and finds them; there will be more elaboration on surveys later.

The benefit from having them is often significant and desirable. For example, Orillium Ore grants considerable bonus percentages of shield points. However, there are no stacked bonuses from having multiple units of a type of strategic resource. Instead, any excess units of strategic resources become bargaining chips in diplomatic trades between civilizations; it so happens that these chips are worth a lot.

That said, any strategic resource that has been obtained through trade has their benefits applied too. Since trade deals are not easy to break (there will be more on them later), trading is a good way to obtain them without having to look around for systems that have them (or start wars over them).

BUG IN TRADING STRATEGIC RESOURCES:

Unfortunately, there might be a bug that prevents the player from trading excess strategic resources; it is that the option for strategic resources do not appear on the player’s list of options. Followers of the game had brought up this problem for discussion many times for many years. Yet, a substantial response from the developers has yet to come.

Followers of the game have discussed the factors that determine the appearance of the option, such as the techs that different civilizations might have obtained. However, there has yet to be any reliably observable cause for the absence of the option in the player’s list.

TECHS FOR BENEFITING FROM STRATEGIC RESOURCES:

For better or worse, there are techs that need to be obtained before most strategic resources can be utilized. These techs are named after their associated strategic resources, and appear to be only relevant to this purpose.

Stellaris’s contemporaries such as the Galactic Civilizations and the Civilizations series have techs that not only unlock the ability to exploit special resources, but also enable other things. That the techs in those other games do more things can make Paradox’s developers look like they have deliberately introduced these techs just to apply limitations for the sake of gameplay balance. (That the descriptions for the techs are bland further reinforces this impression.)

UNITY:

“Unity” is a resource that represents a civilization’s progress towards developing its culture. It works a lot like the culture system in the Civilizations titles.

Unity is accumulated from buildings that represent the civilization’s authority and/or appeal. Administration centres always produce these, so a civilization will be obtaining Unity from the get-go. However, the other buildings require tech unlocks, which is just as well because they tend to produce more unity than the administration centres. There are also other ways to gain Unity, such as the completion of election mandates (which is only ever available to democracies). Nevertheless, Unity-producing buildings are the main sources.

Unity, being an abstract resource, cannot be traded around.

COST OF TRADITIONS & INFLATION:

Unity is – and only ever – spent on adopting “traditions”. Traditions are practically tech trees with nodes that are unlocked by “buying” them.

The opportunity to purchase one is represented by a meter with a threshold. When the threshold is met, the player is given a point to buy a tradition. The player will not earn any more points without spending the previous one, but the player’s civilization continues to accumulate Unity anyway.

The threshold extends further with more traditions that are unlocked, the number of colonized planets that the civilization has, and the number of systems that it owns. This is not unlike the inflation of the costs of research options, but the inflation here occurs at a much greater exponent.

TRADITIONS:

Traditions are categorized into seven categories, according to their overall functions. Some of them may have different names according to the official playstyle that has been picked for a civilization, but they serve the same purpose.

Supremacy is a tradition that is about warfare. It makes it easier to raise navies and armies, and to come up with excuses to wage war on neighbours. Prosperity is a tradition that is about economic success and efficiency. Expansion is about opportunities for further growth. Harmony helps civilizations keep their peoples happier. Discovery is perhaps the tradition that most players would adopt early on, because of its benefits to research (which is always worth investing in early in a playthrough).

Diplomacy is a category of traditions that is available to “regular” civilizations that do not have ingrained problems in interacting with other civilizations. Obviously, as its name suggests, it makes it easier for the player to interact with other civilizations. Interestingly, most of its benefits work mainly for player-controlled civilizations (though CPU-controlled civilizations that adopt Diplomacy drive harder bargains.)

For the civilizations that do not have “normal” interaction with other civilizations, such as the Inward Perfectionists, they get Adaptability traditions. These generally make them more self-sufficient, which is just as well because they cannot trade so easily with other civilizations, if at all.

Domination is a category that is about having servile civilizations; this is handy if a civilization wants reliable allies. For the aforementioned “irregular” civilizations, they get the Purity traditions, which make them even more self-sufficient.

The complete adoption of an entire category of traditions grants the final and most significant benefit of that tradition, so there is an incentive to follow through with one category of traditions. (With the Utopia expansion, there is one more incentive too – and it is a juicy one; that’s for another article.)

Apparently, traditions have been implemented to augment the player’s playstyle, and to accentuate the quirks of CPU-controlled civilizations further.

CORE SYSTEMS & SECTORS:

Most other space sci-fi 4X titles allow the player plenty of freedom in expanding his/her empire, assuming that he/she can handle the costs of consolidating the gains. Stellaris deliberately holds the player back with the implementation of soft caps and cost inflations; some of these have been mentioned already. There are more.

The first of these is the number of star systems with colonies that are in the player’s direct control. These are known in-game as “core systems”. If the player breaches the soft cap, the player’s civilization incurs an inflation on the maintenance of buildings on all of its planets. This is definitely undesirable.

For better or worse, the game has an official way to work around this. The player can set up “sectors”, which are clusters of adjacent star systems. To nominate a sector, an owned system with at least one planet has to be selected as the “capital” of the sector. Next, adjacent star systems, and those that are adjacent to these, can be selected for inclusion in the sector. The player can also add more systems with planets, if he/she wants to.

The systems with planets in a sector will not count towards the number of core systems. However, this work-around comes with the consequence of additional complications, which will be described shortly.

SECTOR INCOMES & STOCKPILES:

After a sector has been formed, a major change occurs in the economic contribution of the planets and systems that now make up the sector. They keep a certain amount of their Energy and Mineral incomes; these go into the accounts that are associated with their sector (called “stockpiles” in-game). The rest go into the civilization’s coffers. The player can select three options that represent the ratio between these amounts, but the player can only order the sector to give a maximum of 75% of its incomes to the main treasury.

The player can order the sector to hand over all of its stockpiles, but at the cost of 100 Influence points, which can be too precious. However, if the player decides that some development should be done on systems in the sector, the costs for the development are drawn from the sector’s stockpiles first. The remainder is paid for by the civilization’s own coffers. The game does track where the resources came from, so if the player cancels the development plans, the refunds go to where they came from.

PROBLEMATIC SECTOR ADMINISTRATION:

The main consequence of setting up sectors is that they come under the control of CPU-controlled managers. Veterans of computer games would already be furrowing their brows upon the mention of this. As they would expect, the scripts do not always make good decisions.

Most of the time, they can follow fundamentals and basics, such as building Mining Networks on tiles with Mineral resources on newly colonized planets.

However, they can make terrible decisions. More often than not, a player might check the planets within a sector and found that its administration has built unwanted buildings on top of tiles. For example, it might put a farm over a tile with considerable Energy resources.

These bad decisions occur despite – or perhaps because of – any priorities that the player has set for them. Speaking of which, the player could set priorities for the sector administration, such as focusing on making buildings that produce resources. Yet, these priorities cause conflict with the player’s plans.

In fact, most players would just use sectoring on planets that have already been developed, if they bother to do so. However, this has the problem of having them accumulate stockpiles that they will hardly use, and withdrawing resources from the stockpiles is a costly Influence drain.

MIN-MAXING PLANETS & SYSTEMS:

Considering the cost inflations that are inflicted on research and Unity accumulation by the number of systems and planets that a civilization has, and the complexity of managing the size of an empire, a meticulous player might want to min-max the acquisition and maintenance of planets for optimal efficiency. This is easier said than done, due to inherent limitations in the gameplay that have been implemented for gameplay-balancing.

Ostensibly, it is in the player’s interest to go after planets with high numbers of tiles when making new colonies. On the other hand, such planets take a long time to develop and mature, so the player must consider the opportunity costs of doing so, versus other candidates that might have tiles with juicy resources. The planets with many tiles may also have climes that are incompatible with the civilization’s species.

Similarly, the player would have to balance strategic considerations against the bounty that an already developed enemy-held planet would provide after a war of conquest. The player also needs to spend Influence on making claims too, which is another layer of complexity to peel through (and will be described further later). Conquering a planet that can be attacked from many sides or is too isolated from other systems to be quickly rescued can pose serious headaches. There is also the matter of the people on the conquered colonies (they are not likely to be happy). Indeed, consolidating gains is in itself a daunting task.

Therefore, to summarize this section, the player can only ever have colonies of many tiles without serious opportunity costs or risks if he/she had been very lucky. Depending on the circumstances, pouring in the effort and resources just to min-max planets might not be worthwhile.

BANDITS:

Every sapient civilization has its share of misfits, miscreants and ne’er-do-wells. This is represented in-game as the “piracy risk”. The piracy risk increases greatly if the civilization’s borders are porous and incomplete. Most civilizations attempt to minimize this whenever possible by claiming star systems until there are no more unclaimed star systems in their territory or in its fringes.

As long as the piracy risk is non-zero, there is a chance in every several months that the aforementioned wannabe rebels would appear in unclaimed systems next to or in the territory of the civilization. They always have a weak space station as their holding area, but they also spawn with a sizable fleet. This bandit fleet goes into any neighbouring system, intent on blowing up space stations and disabling starbases. This can threaten the civilization in the early stages of a playthrough.

Every dozen or so months, the pirate base will spawn another fleet, which makes things worse if the previous one has not been curtailed. (There is a formula to their spawning rates, but the variables of the formula make it such that the average spawning rate is a year or so.)

They are not much of a challenge to any civilization in the mid-game – if they spawn at all. Indeed, any starbase that has been upgraded to a star fortress can handle them quite readily, perhaps with a defense platform or two for help. These bandit fleets do scale over time, eventually packing a battleship-class vessel, but they never advance technologically (even if they came from a civilization that might already have tech levels beyond what they are using).

A wily player might have some reasons to have them keep spawning. Early on in the game, their tech levels would exceed that of the player’s civilization. Indeed, the player could obtain techs like Autocannons from defeating them and examining their debris.

Afterwards, the only reason to have them around is target practice. They do get tiresome eventually, however. (The Distant Stars expansion does give another reason to have them around to shoot; this will described in another article.)

NOMADS:

Nomads appear to be remnants of space-faring civilizations. They are pacifistic, and might just cruise by the systems of civilizations without doing much of anything. They might open communications though, and may even be the first other sapient species that a civilization meets.

Nomads are mainly there to give civilizations some opportunities in the early-game segments of a playthrough. They might make requests about leaving some people behind as settlers, effectively giving population units of different species to the civilization. They may also offer to sell cruiser-class vessels, which can be devastatingly overwhelming if obtained early in a playthrough (both to the buyer, due to their maintenance costs, and to their nemeses, obviously due to their firepower).

However, the nomads might just choose to create new civilizations, which can be a problem as they might turn out to be testy neighbours.

SPACE MONSTERS:

Of course, just about every space sci-fi tale is going to have creatures that have somehow adapted to life in the void. More often than not, they are gargantuan, and they happen to eat ships for lunch too.

In the base game of Stellaris, the space monsters often come in flocks. They are not always hostile; creatures such as the Tiyanki Space Whales are ambivalent about the presence of the fleets and starbases of the civilizations and will leave them alone as long as they are left alone. However, the Space Whales are actively followed by Space Amoebae, which hunt and attack them, and which are definitely hostile to any ships and fleets. There are also other space monsters, such as crystalline things that are aggressively territorial.

Some special techs can be obtained from studying them (either when they are alive and doing their thing, or when they are dead and are just floating gore in space). However, these techs are only potent in the early-game segments.

PRE-FTL CIVILIZATIONS:

A civilization might come across proto-civilizations. These are worlds that have yet to achieve space travel, and they might not even be aware that there are others out there.

Paradox’s developers being as meticulous as they are, these proto-civilizations have many stages of development. They might start in the equivalent of the Stone Age, in which case it would be a long time before they even advance to the next age. As a general rule of thumb though, whichever stage that they are at, they are less than a match for a fully-fledged FTL-capable civilization.

These proto-civilizations will eventually discover FTL travel on their own and turn into an actual civilization, but they are likely to be so far behind that they are doomed. Alternatively, something bad might happen in their Nuclear age: they go boom. Their species might die outright; if they survive, they can still progress, but their worlds are guaranteed to turn into something awful. A civilization that is observing them can choose to intervene to prevent a devastating nuclear disaster, but this might fail and causes them to regress.

Other civilizations that come across them can choose one of several options on what to do with them. Each has its own setbacks and rewards.

The first is to just dominate them outright, if the civilization’s policy on pre-FTL worlds allows it. Unfortunately, the natives’ population units are struck with the Culture Shock penalty, which makes them unhappy, inflicts a penalty on their Science point generation for years, prevents them from joining Factions and prevents their world from being released as a Vassal. The duration of this penalty depends on how far they have progressed. Other civilizations will also hear of this, and they tend not to be happy about this.

The second option is to observe them via the construction of an observation post. This grants a bonus to Society research, which in itself could be lucrative if the civilization is not interested in their worlds. The level of invasiveness of the observation can be varied, however, and the level determines how risky things get. There is a risk that the emergent civilization can turn out Xenophobic.

The third option also requires the construction of an observation post, but it is turned to very active purposes instead. One of these purposes is the enlightenment of the proto-civilization. This consumes some Society and Energy incomes, but guarantees the emergence of a servile civilization (more on these later). Alternatively, the observer can choose covert infiltration, if the prerequisites are met (and there are four of them). This guarantees annexation of the world, together with its native species, all of whom would be quite happy to have joined a greater society.

PRE-SAPIENT SPECIES:

Instead of finding a proto-civilization, a civilization might come across worlds with pre-sapient species (or even worlds with both these and proto-civilizations). Worlds with pre-sapient species can be colonized, but their population units are not within the control of the civilization’s leadership. There is a separate policy that the civilization has regarding their existence. (There will be more on policies later.)

It is in the interest of the civilization that discovered them to do something about them as soon as possible, because the pre-sapients are practically feral and will cause trouble.

There is always the choice of exterminating them. However, pre-sapient species still counts as actual species, so this will anger other civilizations that are not xenophobic. The other choice is to uplift them, which takes some effort.

The discovery of pre-sapient species unlocks the research option for the Epigenetic Triggers tech. This tech is specifically for the purpose of uplifting the species, if the civilization so chooses. Afterwards, it is a simple matter of completing a special research project that fully converts the species into a sapient one, which then joins the civilization. The species also gains the Uplifted trait, which gives them a permanent happiness buff as long as they are part of the civilization that raised them. The civilization also gains a whopping 500 Influence points from this achievement.

INFLUENCE:

“Influence” has been mentioned more than a few times before. Lore-wise, “Influence” refers to the politicking and internal debates within the player’s civilization over what to do in order to progress. Gameplay-wise, this is a currency, and it is easily the one that the player would covet yet worry about the most. It is practically a statistical representation of the greatest kinds of opportunity costs in the game.

Early in a playthrough, Influence is spent to build starbases in unclaimed star systems, effectively annexing them into the civilization. This does not appear to cost much, but as more things that consume Influence appears, each point becomes so precious that even expanding the borders is a worrisome decision.

Other things that demand Influence are the issuance of Edicts (which will be described later), making claims on the territory of other civilizations, and the construction of empire-unique buildings. There are more, but they are not as common as the mentioned ones. These rarer ones include skewing elections, the maintenance of defensive pacts, and the building of federations. (There will be more on these later.)

Any civilization has a base Influence income of three points. More can be had by having rulers with the relevant quirks (again, more on this later), but for any civilization in the base game, the player has to play the game of factions, which will be described in their own section.

Interestingly, choosing to prevent the start of or to stop event chains (more on these later) grants influence points. The event chains are often substantial (if rather troublesome) “quests”, to use RPG terms, so the player, especially if he/she is inexperienced, might choose to pursue the event chains anyway. For more experienced players, who know what lies ahead, they might choose the Influence reward instead, if only because the Influence points are more precious at the time.

EDICTS:

Edicts are special civilization-wide temporary bonuses that can be activated, mainly by spending precious Influence. They cost a lot, enough to curtail the other kinds of Influence expenditure. Yet, the bonuses are too lucrative to pass up so easily. For example, Research Grants apply a flat 10% bonus to all research efforts.

Edicts do not last forever. By default, any Edict lasts only 10 years, which theoretically is more than enough time to gain the Influence necessary to re-issue the Edict again. However, there are plenty of other things that are asking for Influence too.

Most Edicts are revealed through techs, Ethics and Civics, but there are some special ones that can be obtained from event chains.

POLICIES:

Within the same UI screen as Edicts, there is the list of policies. As of the build of the game that this review is based on, it is a mess of drop-down menu tabs, with bulleted checklists. It looks clumsy, but is otherwise functional and has working tool-tips that explain what the policies do.

Some of these policies have been mentioned earlier, such as the policy on resettling population units, the purging of species and refugee statuses. Indeed, many of these policies concern population units. However, other policies concern very important aspects of the civilization too, such as how it conducts wars and how much food it stockpiles before going into surplus.

How policy changes go into effect is perhaps where Stellaris differs from many other space 4X titles: the policies, when changed, cannot be changed again for many years. The player is not warned of this in any tutorial though. That said, the player has to be very careful with his/her policy decisions. (A tip here: it is best to leave the Resettlement policy as it is, enabled by default. Of course, it angers the Progressive factions, but having the convenience of shuffling population units in between planets helps.)

LEADERS:

“Leaders” had been mentioned a few times already. Leaders are characters who lead organizations in the civilization, such as governors for sectors, generals for armies, admirals for navies and scientists for fields of science and Science Ships. The player can recruit any leaders from each category at any time; the game randomly generates the characteristics of the leaders, and there are usually about five candidates available to pick from.

The proportion of a species among the peoples of the civilization often determines the species of the leaders that are available for recruiting; the species also must have full citizenship. Also, their species often determine the traits of the leaders. For example, species that have an apparent advantage in scientific pursuits are very likely to have traits that grant them bonuses in doing research. Most of the time though, the species of leaders is barely an issue, except if there are xenophobic factions and the current ruler is of a species that is not the original one in the civilization.

Generally, it is in the player’s interest to pick leaders that have versatile bonuses, because they are best poised for long-term service. For example, Scientists with the Maniacal or the Spark of Genius trait are much more favoured than the Scientists who specialize in specific sub-fields of science, if only because they can be switched from one field to another and still contribute anyway.

Ultimately, leaders are little more than attachable and detachable bonuses with which the player “equips” his/her civilization’s assets. Indeed, the player could (usually) remove and/or reassign leaders at any time. There is the opportunity cost of having to wait 10 days before the leader’s bonuses are applied, but it is a small price to pay for the convenience of swapping them around, even from one end of the galaxy to another.

LEADERS GAINING EXPERIENCE:

An experience system determines the progression of the capabilities of leaders. A leader gains experience by not being idle; doing just about anything that they do gives them experience points. For example, in the case of Governors, any population unit that is maturing (or being purged) grants them experience points, and so do buildings that have been built.

In the case of Generals and Admirals, they only gain experience in combat - especially for Generals, who only gain experience from participating in invasions or defence against invasions, which only ever happen in war. However, these leaders gain experience much more quickly than the other leaders.

Upon gaining enough experience points to breach the threshold, leaders gain a level. Gaining a level grants a small but noticeable improvement in the bonuses that they provide.

LEVEL CAPS:

There are limits to the levels that leaders can earn. By default, this is level 5, but there are some technologies and traditions that can extend this further, allowing them to reached hallowed levels of 6 and above. This makes each leader more and more valuable – and riskier to lose.

SEMI-RANDOM TRAIT ACQUISITIONS:

For better or worse, long service or substantial events that a leader has lived through can result in him/her/it gaining additional traits. Level-ups also provide a chance of gaining traits. These traits are not always positive.

For example, after an intense space battle, the Admiral that participated in it might gain traits that affect his/her/its leadership performance. The outcome of this battle is important; if it ended with the Admiral’s fleet being routed, chances are this trait is not good at all.

LEADERS AGING:

Most organic species produce leaders that eventually die of old age. Conveniently, the median age of each leader is shown to the player. After the leader has gone past his/her/its median age, the chance for him/her/it to simply die in the next month increases for each year past the median. The aging leader also has higher chances of getting lousy traits that stifle his/her/its growth.

Contrary to what the in-game description says about machine leaders, they are not entirely immortal. There is a hidden scripting that makes an awful RNG roll every ten years that have passed for a civilization with machine leaders (the exact start of the count is not clear too). This RNG rolls can result in one randomly chosen synthetic/robotic leader suffering an accident that breaks it outright.

RULER:

The ruler is a special kind of leader. There is a ruler at the start of the game, but eventually, the ruler can end up dead, even if he/she/it might be immortal. When this happens, a new ruler has to be “elected”.

In the case of dictatorships and oligarchies, four candidates for the next ruler are randomly selected from the list of leaders in the civilization. These four candidates might not all be to the player’s liking, and they have randomized agendas too (more on these later).

In the case of imperialistic civilizations, the next ruler has to be nominated when the incoming ruler is installed. The player has to be careful with such decisions, because although having an heir brings certainty, there is no guarantee that what he/she brings is beneficial to the civilization when he/she comes to power. (There are some exceptions, such as leaders with research- or economics-oriented bonuses, which are always good.)

In the case of democracies, the leaders of factions are automatically candidates, so there can be a lot of them. The leader of the most numerous factions almost always wins.

When selecting the next ruler, the player has a choice of influencing the choice for the next one by, well, spending Influence. Indeed, if the player does nothing, the game makes the choice for the civilization – and its choices are not always good. Therefore, if the player wants more control, Influence has to be spent. As mentioned earlier, Influence points are very, very precious.

Incidentally, Stellaris may have a take on (allegedly) Abraham Lincoln’s quote of “testing a person’s character” by “giving him power”. When leaders are nominated for rulership, they reveal their personal quirks, which provide even more traits – for better or worse.

When a ruler is installed, all of his/her traits are applied civilization-wide. Therefore, the process of getting the next ruler is not to be taken lightly.

Neither should it be postponed. The player could stall the selection of the next ruler for a few months, probably to accrue the Influence necessary for a better guarantee of getting the ruler that the player wants. However, during this time of stalling, the absence of the ruler means that unrest is not suppressed, which can be bad if the civilization happens to have a colony that is in uproar over something or another.

In addition to their traits, rulers come with other modifiers in the form of “mandates” (for democracies) and “agendas” (for any other civilization). Interestingly, the mandates and agendas of leaders are all positive benefits for the player’s civilization, so whichever way the player chooses, there is always a good thing to be had. On the other hand, there are considerable differences in sophistication between agendas and mandates.

RULER MANDATES:

Mandates are short-term quests that a democratically elected leader introduces. They can be optionally pursued, or ignored; there are no penalties for not fulfilling mandates, strangely enough. However, there is a reward in the form of a one-time award of Unity points to be had from achieving the mandates. (Before the Niven build, players obtained precious Influence points instead. It so happens that some wily players have figured out how to cheese the system, so the Influence gain was replaced.)

The problem with mandates is their lack of diversity. There are officially only two types, and both concern the building of space stations over resources in star systems. Considering the diversity of other content in the game, this limitation is disappointing. (There had been mods that expand the mandates, but they come with technical problems, such as modders who forgot to write code for other languages.)

RULER AGENDAS:

Rulers of non-democratic civilizations provide agendas. Agendas are much more diverse, and therefore so are the benefits that they provide. However, the diversity of agendas also comes with the trade-off in their general usefulness; many agendas provide very specific benefits, which the player might not able to exploit if the current circumstances do not allow that.

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS:

Other civilizations – especially break-away rebels – may attempt assassinations against a civilization’s leaders; rulers and governors are favoured targets. RNG rolls often decide such occasions all the way, unfortunately. On the other hand, capture of the assassin leads to some interesting choices, including a chance for a considerable dollop of Influence.

NOTHING FROM ACCIDENTAL OR PEACEFUL DEATHS OF LEADERS:

At least leaders who die from assassinations still give their civilizations something. Leaders who die from other causes do not give much of anything, unless the event that caused their death is scripted to provide rewards. In particular, natural deaths do not give anything. One would think that a life-time of service would be celebrated or mourned, thus leading to rewards like one-time awards of Influence points as those who survive them are inspired to one thing or another.

GOVERNMENT REFORM:

With a considerable expenditure of Influence, a civilization can reform its government so as to change its authority type and chosen Civics. There is often little reason to do this, especially if the player has already decided on a playstyle right from the start. However, there are some Civics that are best used for the early-game segments, and then changed to others that are more useful in the long run.

(There is also one tech that grants an additional Civic point, which has to be spent through government reform.)

The Governing Ethics of the civilization cannot be changed through reform. Rather, this is done through the system of factions, which will be described much later.

HYPERLANES:

Before describing Hyperlanes, it has to be mentioned that during its debut, Stellaris offered players one of three methods of having ships move about in the galaxy. One of these was found to be overpowered, despite its drawbacks, while another was found to have a lot of inherent risks. These two were redesigned as late-game methods of moving about in the galaxy, while the third method of travel was retained and became the standard method.

Players who have played Arcen Games’s A.I. War or Stardock’s Sins of a Solar Empire would recognize this standard travel method immediately. It may be called “hyperlanes” in Stellaris, but a hyperlane does the same thing that a pair of Warp Gates in A.I. War does: link one star system to another. Until the other methods of travel are discovered, and even afterwards, hyperlanes are the main way of moving about in the galaxy. (Space monsters even know how to use hyperlanes.)

This means that a civilization can control access to its systems through its border policies vis-à-vis other civilizations. Powerful starbases (preferably with long-ranged weapons) can also be placed at chokepoint systems, which generally deter CPU-controlled civilizations.

(This might not work against human players, who know that they might be able to position fleets in-system such that the starbase is out of range when a naval engagement occurs. However, there are problems that diminish the effectiveness of this tactic, which will be described later.)

Entry into a hyperlane is not an immediate thing. Ships have to charge their hyper drives before being able to do so. In the case of a fleet, the ships in the fleet that have the slowest charging will be holding back the rest of the fleet (so the player might want to keep this in mind when mustering fleets).

When they are charging, the ships can be forced to engage in combat, though the ships do not appear to suffer any penalties; they simply stop charging. However, this also means that it is not easy to have ships retreat from an incoming, overwhelming enemy fleet.

FTL INHIBITION:

A system can prevent incoming enemy ships from progressing any further past them if it has assets that can inhibit faster-than-light travel, which includes hyperlane entries. These assets are usually upgraded starbases, or planets with Strongholds or their upgraded versions, the Fortresses. When inhibited, the opposing fleet can only leave through the hyperlane that they came from.

This means that they still have an avenue of retreat, but they cannot progress any further until they completely defeat and occupy the star system’s starbase and planets. This can greatly delay the progress of an overwhelming force, especially if their owning civilization forgot to have invasion forces follow in the wake of the vanguard fleet. (More often than not, it is the player that makes this mistake.)

WORMHOLES:

Wormholes are mid-game means of moving about. After the player has obtained the Wormhole Travel tech, Wormholes can be “explored” by simply having any ship attempt to move through them. The ships actually will not appear at the other Wormhole, but the other Wormhole’s location is revealed – which is just as well because the other end might be in a star system that is guarded by vicious space monsters or owned by a hostile civilization.

Anyway, after both ends of the wormholes have been discovered, they are henceforth available for any civilization with the Wormhole Travel tech to use. This is risky, because the wormholes cannot be closed in any way whatsoever. Systems with wormhole ends are also cheaper for civilizations with the other ends of the wormholes to claim.

GATEWAYS:

Gateways were one of the three aforementioned original means of travel. It was re-designed after it was discovered that civilizations that depend on them can be badly gimped by going after their gateways first.

In the builds of the game after the re-design, gateways are immense structures that connect one star system to another, which is often across the galaxy. There are two means of getting Gateways.

The first is to discover ancient derelict Gateways, and then research the Gateway Activation tech; indeed, the tech has a very low chance of appearing as a research option until such a Gateway has been found. Afterwards, the interested civilization would have to expend lots of resources to reactivate them. Incidentally, CPU-controlled civilizations almost never bother with this, due to the costs.

After the derelict Gateway has been activated, its twin is activated too. If its twin happens to be in a system that is controlled by a hostile civilization, then too bad – the Gateways are unusable until the player expends the effort to capture the system on the other side.

That said, travel between Gateways is easy to shut off, because both linked Gateways have to be either in systems owned by the same civilization, or owned by different civilizations that have not closed borders to each other and are at peace. During war, opposing civilizations who own opposing ends of the Gateway link simply shut them off, as mentioned earlier.

This also means that Gateways are next to unreliable for the purpose of warfare, unless the player has already prepared a fleet at borders closest to the system with the Gateway that the player wants to capture. Even so, while the system is occupied, the Gateway remains closed. (There will be more explanation on occupation later.)

JUMPING:

The third method of travel is the riskiest, but also the most strategically useful. Jump drives allow ships to simply jump from one star system to another one that have been explored earlier. Unexplored systems are no-go’s, but at the time when this tech becomes available, chances are that there are few unexplored corners of the galaxy left.

Jumping takes time, not only for charging, but also for transition. During transition, the ships are considered to be missing in action. (MIA status will be described further later.) After they arrive, they suffer a temporary but considerable penalty to their combat performance, so jumping is not to be done lightly.

Jump drive techs also happen to enable the onset of one of the late-game events – it is a nasty one too.

SCIENCE SHIPS:

Science Ships are not unlike Survey Ships in Galactic Civilizations, albeit the latter are often armed to the teeth and can be progressively upgraded by special finds. The ones in Stellaris, in contrast (or perhaps appropriately) are helpless things that will try to run away from hostiles, just like Construction Ships.

As of the Niven build of the game, Science Ships are the only ships that can enter unexplored systems, meaning that they are any civilization’s only method of reconnaissance in the early parts of a playthrough.

They are not merely throwaway recon ships (though they can be used as such), because they can accommodate the leadership of Scientists. With a Scientist leading it, a Science Ship can do so much more.

SURVEYS:

The primary purpose of Science Ships is to examine celestial bodies that have yet to be surveyed. Surveying a celestial body reveals resources that it has, if any. If a habitable planet has been detected, surveying it reveals its tiles and any resources that they have. Most surveys are usually uneventful, but some surveys lead to special events or the discovery of anomalies. Generally, the eventful surveys provide opportunities for profit, but there are some that can result in nasty outcomes; these will be described later.

FINDING RESOURCES THROUGH SURVEYS:

As mentioned earlier, a survey of a celestial body might reveal the presence of resources, or more uncommonly, strategic resources. The factors of these lucky occurrences are not entirely clear, but some factors are visible to the player, such as the description of a certain edict that benefits surveys directly.

Some other factors, such as the level and expertise of the scientists doing the survey and the geology of the celestial body, have to be discovered through quips by developers and observations by fans, typically via the wiki, the official forums of the game, and the developers’ social media feeds. This can take some effort that only an ardent fan of the game (or a meticulous purveyor of games) would be willing to eke out.

Sometimes, these occurrences do not automatically end with the resources being revealed. Rather, the player faces a decision point: expend resources to reveal them, or leave them be forevermore in return for precious Influence points.

Revealed resources will be visible to other civilizations too; they do not have to expend any effort or get the luck to reveal them. This also means that they will begin to race to claim these resources, if the player has not done so already. Ultimately, this means that the player will want to consider the distance of his/her own civilization’s borders when making a decision to spend resources to reveal more resources.

ANOMALIES:

Sometimes, surveys reveal anomalies. Anomalies are described in-game as odd occurrences that do not meet the expectations/assumptions of the Scientist observing them. Of course, this means that there is an opportunity to get more science points or reveal resources.

Anomalies are differentiated from special research projects by their exclusion from the Situation Log, and the microscope-shaped icons that represent them. When they are found, the player can direct the Science Ship (and Scientist) that found it to postpone its orders and examine the anomaly. The Science Ship will follow whatever orders that it had been given earlier after examining it, which is convenient (assuming that it survives the outcome of the examination of course).

Usually, the rewards for examining an anomaly are some Science points, and perhaps more resources for whichever celestial body that was examined. However, there might be other strange occurrences, depending on the anomaly seed that the player has obtained.

SPECIAL RESEARCH PROJECTS FROM SURVEYS:

Special research projects had been mentioned earlier. Some of these are attained through surveys with lucky (or perhaps unlucky) results. More often than not, these projects require on-site research vessels, and they happen to be analysed like anomalies are.

The problem though, is how they are coded. More often than not, these special research projects are associated with event chains, so they have to be placed in the Situation Log. However, since they do not use the user interface for researching anomalies, the player has to manually direct a Science Ship (usually the one who discovered the opportunity for the project) to undertake it. This messes up any order sequences that it had. This is a minor complaint, but it is still an annoying problem.

ANOMALIES AND SPECIAL RESEARCH PROJECTS INSTANCED FOR CIVILIZATION:

To cite a term that has been made popular by World of Warcraft’s debut many years ago, “instances” of anomalies and special research projects are made for the civilization that has found them. Only the Science Ships of this civilization can interact with them. This also extends to debris fields from space combat, which will be described later.

ASSISTING RESEARCH:

In perhaps a moment of not-entirely-wise foresight, Stellaris’s designers have implemented a feature to have Science Ships with Scientists assist the research that is occurring on a planet. However, this feature has to be enabled through one of the Discovery traditions.

Eventually, a civilization’s Science Ships would run out of things to examine because the galaxy has been mostly explored. Therefore, those Scientists are better off helping boost research. Perhaps the game could have been better if they could do this without the Discovery tradition.

Considering that Governors, Generals and Admirals have only so many functions to perform, especially if the player has been efficient in his/her staffing choices, it is worthwhile to have the rest of the capacity of leaders filled up with Scientists instead, so that they can bolster the research output of science-pumping planets. (Preferably, the Scientists should have different expertise too.)

EXPERIMENTAL SUBSPACE NAVIGATION:

Long before regular ships get jump drives, Science Ships can gain the ability to jump to anywhere that has been claimed by the civilization (or its allies) through the acquisition of the Speculative Hyperlane Breaching tech. This can only be done if the Science Ship is led by a Scientist, meaning that the Scientist is incommunicado during the jump.

Anyway, the main benefit of this move is to skip over any blockade that may be put in place by hostile civilizations. The jump does not inflict any penalties on the Science Ship, which reappears in several months, compared to the Jump Drive’s year-long limbo.

However, the destination must be a system that is owned by the civilization or another friendly one. The game does not inform the player of this limitation, however. Even the wiki of the game and forum discussion do not make this clear.

ARMIES:

Armies are needed for invasions, and to defend against invasions. Armies are raised using a special tab in the user interface for planets. Their raising is done parallel to anything else done on planets, i.e. the other activities are not affected in any way. This is an odd but much appreciated convenience, considering that the rest of the gameplay in Stellaris concerns so many opportunity costs.

Anyway, armies automatically come with their own transports when they are raised. Armies do not take much Energy to maintain, but there is not much else that they can do outside of wartime. On the other hand, armies (and their Generals) gain experience very easily from doing what they do, which increases their attack power and toughness. Therefore, the player might want to keep them around for future wars. However, the player should not expect to be able to reliably hold onto them, due to limitations in a gameplay feature that will be described later.

Armies that have been depleted but not annihilated will eventually recover automatically over time. There does not appear to be any means of accelerating their replenishment.

As an army takes damage, its fighting strength diminishes. This means that armies that have been in a ground battle might be too worn down to attempt another invasion, unless the player is uncaring of them.

TRANSPORTS PARALYZED IN BATTLE:

Army transports are very weak, unarmed and cannot be directed to escape if they are engaged; they just literally fly in circles, even while they are under attack. Furthermore, transports cannot be directed to force themselves through enemy fire; Stellaris is certainly not a nitty-gritty sci-fi IP like Starship Troopers, or Warhammer 40K, for that matter.

Therefore, transports should only come in the wake of successful naval engagements. Perhaps the game could have been better if they could force their way through naval blockades, but of course, Stellaris is not that kind of game, and there has yet to be any space sci-fi game where army transports can attempt to do this.

GARRISONS:

In addition to the armies that are raised for waging wars other than the planets that they came from, there are the garrisons, which are generated by the administration centres of planets and any strongholds or fortresses on them.

The game does not inform the player that the population unit that works these buildings will determine the type of armies that are created. Generally, it is in the player’s interest not to have species that are physically weak or have poor happiness work the buildings.

Garrisons are used to help suppress unrest; indeed, the number of garrisons determines the amount of unrest that is reduced. However, the primary purpose of garrisons is to withstand invasions – something that they might not be able to do easily because most invasions are likely to outnumber them.

On the other hand, garrisons have considerable defence bonuses, and can even recover their strength during battle, albeit slowly. They just might be able to stall an invasion long enough for reinforcements to arrive; this will be elaborated shortly.

INVASIONS & COUNTER-INVASIONS:

The invasion of any planet cannot be enacted until the starbase in the same system has been defeated and taken over. Perhaps the starbase is somehow blocking invasion attempts, but this appears to be little more than a gameplay-balancing measure.

If the defending civilization can drive away the invading fleet, or wait for it to go away, it could land armies of their own. They automatically join in the defense, and will enjoy the same defensive bonuses that the garrisons get too.

The invaders can choose to retreat, but only after a month or so. However, this almost always results in severe losses, such that it is probably wiser to just have a doomed invasion continue hammering at their target until they perish.

LINE WIDTH & ROTATION:

There is a limitation to prevent invaders with overwhelming numbers from simply bringing their entire numerical might to bear; this is something that contemporaries like Galactic Civilizations lack.

Depending on the size of the planet, eight to twelve armies on each side can engage the enemy. The others wait for their turn to fight. Any army that broke or is severely depleted has a chance of being rotated out for fresher armies, though only garrisons get to replenish their own. However, if the armies that had been rotated out are the only ones left, they are immediately forced back into the fight.

This means that a sizable garrison or defending army can stall an invasion for quite a long time, or a considerable defensive army can eventually be ground down by waves of reinforcements.

The main problem with this gameplay element is that the player cannot seem to select which army to field and which to rotate out. Rather, the game randomly fields armies, usually aiming for a balanced mix of veterans and rookies.

BOMBARDMENT:

The invading fleet can choose to soften up the defenders before the invading armies land. In this case, the invading fleet’s goal is to inflict enough planetary damage (more on this shortly) to remove either the defending armies or to knock out buildings that might be giving them an advantage.

There are several bombardment modes. The nastier ones inflict more damage with every day of bombardment, but cause a lot more collateral damage and often target random things. The selective ones do less damage, but always remove defensive buildings first, which can help an invasion.

Bombardment can be performed while a ground battle is underway, but it hurts both sides (though the defending side gets the worst of it).

PLANETARY DAMAGE:

The main goal yet also main concern of any invasion is planetary damage. Both orbital bombardment and the ground battle contribute to this counter. When it reaches 100%, something bad happens to the defending side’s planet.

A tile is randomly selected - unless selective bombardment is used, in which case a tile with a defensive structure is likely to be selected instead. Any building on the tile is ruined. There are also additional chances for worse outcomes, such as any population unit on the tile being killed.

If the tile that is selected already has a ruined building, the ruins are removed outright. The population unit that is on it is more likely to be killed too.

If the tile that is selected is devoid of any building, it is replaced with a tile blocker (typically a crater). Any population unit that is somehow in that empty tile is also killed.

Orbital bombardment, if it is not obvious already, is a nasty thing to do to a world, even if it is owned by a very hostile civilization. If the bombarding side kills any population units, other civilizations will hear about it, and unless they are militaristic (in which case they understand the value and risks of orbital bombardment), they would not take kindly to this.

The damage that the ground battle causes is also a consideration to keep in mind. Some types of armies are particularly notorious at causing collateral damage. For example, Xenomorph armies (which are practically monsters bred for war) are especially infamous at doing this.

MORALE:

In addition to their fighting strength, armies also have morale. Morale damage is inflicted together with actual damage. Some armies inflict considerable morale damage, such as the aforementioned Xenomorphs. Once an army’s morale has been broken, its combat performance drops considerably. They might be swapped out for fresher ones, though those will now have their morale ground drown in turn.

ARMY EXPERIENCE:

Armies gain experience too, assuming that they can survive the rigours of war. They gain greater damage output, higher morale and more durability. However, as mentioned earlier, due to the inability to select who gets fielded, the player would not be able to conserve veterans as much as he/she would like.

OCCUPATION:

If the invaders win, they form occupation armies to keep the locals in line; presumably, the occupiers are formed from the invading armies, but they do not appear to lose any of their strength. Anyway, occupied planets suspend their productivity; they practically do nothing while they await the end of the war, or until they are retaken.

As for the starbases and any space stations in an occupied system, all of their economic contributions are suspended; the occupier cannot benefit from them. However, starbases are still available for the invading fleets to use to accelerate their repairs, and if they have any shipyards, they can be used to perform upgrades.

BEHAVIOR OF NON-COMBAT SHIPS:

Non-combat ships like the Science Ships and Construction Ships can adopt the “Evasive” stance. If they are in this stance, they will attempt to flee from any hostiles that are in the same system as them, usually by entering the nearest hyperlane (unless, of course, the hyperlane leads to a hostile system).

At other times, the player might want to disable their Evasive stance, usually to have them follow a powerful fleet and quickly set up things in the wake of their (hopefully) victorious battles.

It should be mentioned here that the Evasive stance hampers the ability of Science Ships to use their Experimental Navigation Systems, which have been described earlier. The game does inform the player about this though.

CONTROLLING NON-COMBAT SHIPS WHILE THEY ARE ENGAGED:

Curiously, the player can control Science Ships and Construction Ships while enemies engage them. Obviously, the player will want to put as much distance between them and their aggressors.

However, any non-combat ship that is attempting to enter a hyperlane while enemies are engaging it will be automatically destroyed. This can be very unpleasant if the ship is a Science Ship, especially if it has a scientist on-board. The player is not informed of this risk, however.

COMBAT SHIPS – OVERVIEW:

Combat ships are practically a civilization’s projection of its hard power. As mentioned earlier, they rely on hyperlanes to move between systems, thus allowing them to bring to bear their might. Other means of travel come with problems, but these problems will not prevent them from shooting things anyway.

The first combat ships are nimble corvettes. These are best used to overwhelm enemies with an abundance of targets. Next, there are the destroyers. They are not nimble and are often the targets of other destroyers and cruisers, but they are very effective meat-shields for heavier and more valuable ships. Cruisers are the main-line ships of any navy, and they have the most versatile armament loadouts. Battleships are the biggest ships that a civilization can build, at least in the base game; they have the distinction of being the only category of ships that can have weapons that are not mounted on turrets.

Tech-wise, all civilizations start with corvettes, eventually working their way up the weight classes. Generally, bigger is better, but when heavy weapons and battleships make their debut, the bigger ships become quite vulnerable to being destroyed outright by these bruisers. Incidentally, these bruisers are quite vulnerable to being swarmed by corvettes; they are terrible at hitting such nimble ships.

NAVAL CAPACITY:

Naval capacity is the capability of a civilization to support and maintain the presence of combat ships. Each combat ship takes up some naval capacity, with corvettes taking the least and battleships taking the most. It is not possible to build ships such that their combined points go over the capacity threshold – the game prevents any further building. The naval capacity of a civilization can be improved through certain techs, or by having more population units. (Presumably, the second reason is the rationale that a more populous civilization requires greater hard power for their protection.)

However, it is possible for a civilization to lose some naval capacity, typically through losing starbases with Anchorages or having its planets taken.

FLEET COMMAND LIMITS:

Putting ships into the same fleet means that they move together in perfect cohesion. More importantly, all of the ships can benefit from the bonuses that the fleet’s Admiral provides. These two reasons are good incentives to lump as many ships as possible into the same fleet – but there is a limit to how many there can be. This is the “fleet command limit”.

The limit is generally increased through techs and some other means – except having the admiral level up. One would think that a more experienced admiral would be able to command more ships. (On the other hand, experienced admirals increase the fire rates of ships under their command; this bonus alone is considerable.)

ACCURACY, TRACKING & EVASION:

Combat ships have three statistics that are related to each other, but this relation is not described in any in-game documentation. In truth, they are variables that are used for simple addition/subtraction, which in turn results in a threshold that is used for RNG rolls, for better or worse. The RNG rolls are the kind that have to land under the threshold, by the way.

Accuracy is the main statistic that determines the threshold for the RNG roll of an attack against a target. However, the Evasion rating of the target reduces the threshold, making the RNG roll less likely to succeed. In turn, the Tracking rating of the attacker reduces the Evasion rating of the target, but does not increase the threshold.

Each of the attacker’s weapons has its own Accuracy and Tracking ratings; the rating of the attacker’s Combat Computer further bolsters them. Each weapon makes its own RNG roll, so a fleet of fully armed ships can make many, many rolls – sometimes enough to negate the fickleness of luck.

The hull type of the defender determines its evasion ratings. Corvettes have very high evasion ratings, whereas battleships have almost none. Evasion ratings are generally difficult to improve, but some techs and civilization-wide modifiers do provide these bonuses.

WEAPON TARGET ACQUISITION:

Almost all weapons on ships have turret mounts and therefore follow targets independently of each other. This is just as well, because the turrets select enemies in range that they are best used against. Unfortunately, the same kind of smarts is not exhibited by whoever is piloting the ships, as will be described later.

SHIP DESIGNS – OVERVIEW:

One of the features of space warfare in Stellaris is the opportunity to design ships. In the present-day, this is par for the course in space sci-fi 4X titles; Stellaris’s peers like Galactic Civilizations and Endless Space have them, so it is only fitting that Stellaris does too.

The first stage of ship design is to select the hull type. There are several, as had been mentioned already. Each hull type in turn has a section or more; corvettes only have one section, whereas destroyers have bow and stern sections. Cruisers and battleships have bow, core and stern sections.

Each section in turn has a few types of sections; the exception is the sections for defense platforms, both of which use the same types. The types of sections often define the role of the ship that is being designed. However, the player could mix and match sections to create all-rounded ships that can hopefully do more than one thing effectively.

Any section has a number of slots that can be fitted with things. Interestingly, the player does not need to have all slots filled, though there are few reasons not to.

SECTION TYPES:

The section types determine the size and variety of the weapons that can be mounted on ships. In the case of non-corvette ships, their bow sections usually include one type that allows the mounting of the biggest guns that the ships can have. There is also at least one section type that allows the mounting of as many as three guns, thus giving the ship the role of fire saturation.

In the case of the battleships, they have a section type for their bow section that allows them to mount weapons that are unique to them. As to be expected, these are very big guns. (The Apocalypse expansion would introduce another ship type that has even bigger guns.)

The stern sections usually have the least weapon mounts, but they enable the mounting of auxiliary parts, which will be described later. The core sections of cruisers and battleships have the most types, including sections that have hangars for strikecraft. Indeed, only battleships and cruisers can have strike-craft. (Not even the Titan or the Colossus that is introduced in Apocalypse can have them.)

CORE COMPONENTS:

Each ship always has slots for its core components: these are its reactor, FTL drive, combat computer, sub-light engines and sensors. Each of these core components concerns a certain gameplay element; FTL drives concern travelling about the galaxy, which has been described already. The following sections describe the others.

REACTORS & POWER SUPPLY:

Reactors determine the amount of power that can used to equip other components, most of which require power. Generally, a higher pool of power is better; this allows the mounting of more power-intensive components. Any excess power goes into improving the sub-light speed of a ship. If the player so wishes, the player can include an auxiliary power reactor in the design of a ship. This grants it an even larger pool of power.

Interestingly, the player could have a ship mount components of lower marks; these require less power and are of course less expensive. However, this does not change how much fleet capacity that the ship takes up.

COMBAT COMPUTERS:

When combat ships engage their enemies, their behaviours are determined by the core components known as combat computers (even though these ships may be crewed and commanded by actual people). Unfortunately, their combat computers do little more than control the distance that the ships put in between them and their targets. There may be some tactical value to be had from ships that try to back away from their targets so as to outrange them, but that is just it. (Besides, range is not a factor that is used for the aforementioned RNG rolls.)

SUB-LIGHT SPEED:

Sub-light speed is the speed at which ships move about when they are in star systems. Generally, better sub-light engines provide higher sub-light speeds. However, the player might also want to keep in mind that fleets always move at the speed of their slowest member.

It may be tempting to downgrade the engines of smaller ships so that they match the heavier ones, so as to free up more power. However, the engines also provide Evasion bonuses. Furthermore, there are times when the player might want to break off faster ships from a fleet, usually to catch a fleeing enemy fleet before they can jump; in this case, being faster is imperative.

SENSORS:

Ships and starbases have sensors. It is not entirely clear how sensors work. Presumably, they let ships and starbases spot things from a number of distance units equal to the rating of the sensors, but how the distance units are measured is not described in-game. What is observable is that the sensor ranges work on basis of radii.

Sensors also happen to provide tracking bonuses too, which is an incentive to make sure that the sensors on every ship are state-of-the-art.

Sensors can spot unidentified space creatures too, but in order to gain the research projects that are associated with them, a Science Ship needs to be in the same star system as them.

DEFENSIVE COMPONENTS:

Every section, except the stern, has slots for defensive components, which determine the durability and toughness of the ship. The type of section that is used does not determine the number of defensive components that can be mounted; there are always six slots for these components for each section.

Anyway, there are a few types of defensive components. Shield components provide shielding, which is the first layer of defence of a ship. Next, there are armor components, which provide a layer of ablative hit points; this is important, because damage to the hull can impair a ship’s performance. These two components are the most common, and the most readily upgradable.

WEAPON COMPONENTS:

Then, there are, of course, guns for ships. As mentioned earlier, almost all weapons have turret mounts, so they can generally attack anything within range. The only exception are the very big guns of the battleships, which use spinal mounts, meaning that they have to face anything that they want to shoot at. Ship sections are often designed according to specific permutations of weapon slots.

Ship weapons generally do not have any ammunition concerns whatsoever. Ships can continue engaging in battle for entire in-game months without having to reload or resupply. All weapons have ranges, beyond which they cannot shoot. However, they do not have minimum ranges either.

There are several main types of weapons: energy, kinetic, point-defence, strike craft and missiles. Among these, energy and kinetic weapons function in straightforward ways – just point and shoot. They even occupy the same type of slots on ship sections.

Energy weapons further differentiate into four sub-types. There are lasers, which can chew away armor, but shields dampen them. There are plasma cannons, which are particularly nasty on hulls and armor, but are terrible against shields. There are particle launchers, which are better suited against hulls than armor. There are disruptors and emitters, which unlike the other energy weapons, simply go around shields and armor in return for having unreliable damage output.

There are few sub-types among kinetic weapons, as brutishly unsophisticated as they are. There are mass accelerators, which inflict extra damage on shields, but armor resists them. Then there are autocannons, which are available only to smaller ships; these shred apart shields and hulls, but are resisted by armor.

Point-defence weapons are primarily there to counter strike-craft and missiles. However, they have terrible range and damage; any ship that has them is effectively down-gunned against other ships, but the ship sections that have slots for point-defence weapons often have at least one slot for a bigger gun.

Generally, against CPU-controlled civilizations, a balanced load-out is the wisest thing to have; failing that, a balanced fleet of specialized ships. As bad as the CPU-controlled civilizations can be at making decisions, they are well aware of any unwise favouritism on the part of the player and will refit their ships accordingly to exploit that mistake.

SIZES FOR KINETIC & ENERGY WEAPONS:

Interestingly, kinetic and energy weapons have different sizes, for the purpose of being mounted on ships of, well, different sizes. Typically, the bigger ones inflict a lot more damage and have longer range, but they cost more and are generally worse at hitting more evasive targets. Indeed, the player might want to keep these differences in mind when designing a ship, because these differences can help bolster the ship’s intended role (or diminish it, if the player made mistakes).

However, there are some weapon sub-types that are only available in specific sizes, usually for the purpose of gameplay balance or to make certain ship types retain their value in the long run. For example, Autocannons are always in small sizes, meaning that they are best mounted on corvettes or destroyers, or big ships that are given the roles of short-ranged bruisers.

STRIKECRAFT & MISSILES:

Interestingly, strike-craft and missiles share similar coding. Both are actual units with armor, hull points and shields. Both can only be targeted with point defense weapons, both bypass shields, and both can persist even if after their parent ships have been destroyed (although they disappear after the battle ends). The only difference between them is how they move about and how they attack their targets.

Strike-craft spawn out of the hangars of their parent ships. They swirl about their targets like corvettes do. However, they are not always shooting all the time, so their statistical ratings should be taken at face value.

Missiles, obviously, only apply their damage after they collide with their targets. Their parent ships can continuously launch more missiles, regardless of how many missiles there are already trying to reach their targets.

Where there are generally only one category of strike-craft, typically that of a fighter-bomber role, there are three different types of missiles. Swarm missiles counter corvettes and overwhelm point defences, regular missiles should be used against anything other corvettes and torpedoes are there for big and hard targets like cruisers and battleships. (However, it is not entirely clear which missiles that point-defences would target first.)

Missile weapons do not have size variations. This means that a corvette packing a torpedo bay will do as much damage as a battleship packing a torpedo bay. Indeed, the player might want to have some corvette designs pack missiles, if only to make them competitive against bigger ships.

UPGRADING & REFITTING:

If the player has designated a ship design to be auto-upgradable, there will be a prompt to upgrade ships of this design when new tech provides higher-tier variants of components. Alternatively, the player could designate a bunch of ships to convert to another design; the same prompt would appear too.

Refits and upgrades have to be done at starbases with shipyards. As for the costs, they are the costs of the components; incidentally, these are shown when the player is designing a ship. Some techs and traditions can provide discounts for refits and upgrades, which make keeping ships more economical than building replacements. (There is one more reason to keep ships, which will be described later.)

COMPONENTS FROM SPECIAL RESEARCH PROJECTS:

Some ship components cannot be obtained through regular research. Some come from techs that are the rewards of special research projects. For example, the Energy Siphon is obtained from observing space whales. As another example, there is Crystalline Hull Plating, which is obtained from defeating crystalline monsters and analysing their remains.

However, these components are not upgradable in any way. This means that, at best, they are stopgap measures before the player gains better components from regular techs.

SECTIONS DO NOT MATTER IN ACTUAL BATTLE:

Despite ships being made up of sections and turrets, this complexity does not matter in actual combat. Each and every ship has its durability represented by lumps of hull points, shields and armor, but there is no further layers of complexity. There is no means of disabling individual weapons or components on a ship.

SHIP COSTS & BUILDING TIMES:

The hull type and components of a ship determine its costs in Minerals. However, only the hull type determines the building time. This is in contrast to other space 4X titles, such as Endless Space, where the sophistication of a ship determines how long its building time is.

SHIP & FLEET POWER RATINGS:

Every ship has a “power” rating of sorts that represents its overall combat statistics. When a ship joins a fleet, it adds its rating to the fleet.

However, “power” ratings only matter in some scripting as a rough estimate of the hard power of a civilization. It is a poor indicator of a ship’s or fleet’s actual performance – unless the difference between the ratings of the two opposing sides in a battle is immense, of course.

Speaking of which, if there are great differences between power ratings, the overwhelmingly outgunned side gets a bonus to its firing rates. This would not change the outcome, but it means that the overwhelming side would still get some bruises, rather than being able to use its overwhelming strength to end a battle as quickly as possible and minimize incurred damage.

Even in the build of the game at this time of writing, there are bugs in the calculation of the power rating of fleets. They often fluctuate wildly, presumably due to the scripts that calculate their rating being triggered here and there. These glitches make the power rating of a fleet even more unreliable as a gauge of expected performance in battle.

PENALTIES FROM HULL DAMAGE:

The combat performance of a ship – specifically its firing rate and movement speed – degrades with cumulative damage to its hull. The game does not make this clear, however; the power rating of a ship does not appear to degrade as it takes damage. However, close observation would reveal that a ship fires slower and moves slower as it takes more damage.

Therefore, it is important to have a balanced mix of shields and armor, if only to absorb as much damage as possible before the hull begins to be broken down. Of course, some weapons reach hulls directly, but these tend to have unreliable damage.

SHIP EXPERIENCE:

Ships gain experience as they engage in combat; they appear to get more if they are victorious. As ships gain experience ranks, they gain the usual benefits of damage bonuses and increased durability. Ships also retain their experience when they are upgraded or refitted. This is very convenient.

NO CONTROL OVER NAVIES IN COMBAT:

Unfortunately, the space combat in Stellaris starts to show its many problems as a playthrough progresses. Worse, they have been around since the debut of the game.

The problems can be boiled down to the lack of control over navies in combat, no thanks to the almost-ridiculous obstinacy on the part of the developers. The specific problems about the lack of control over ships in combat will be described in their own sections.

POOR PRIORITIZING:

To compensate for the lack of control over ships during combat, ships have scripts that help them prioritize targets. However, there are gaps in these scripts.

Ships always prioritize enemies that their weapons favour. This is understandable, but these priorities rank higher than enemies that are already on the verge of being defeated. It can be frustrating to watch navies fail to finish off already-weakened ships, but instead go after fresher ones while the weakened enemies continue to contribute to their side in a battle (even though they have become weaker).

An even worse case is that already-engaged ships break-off to engage faraway targets, such as starbases with long-ranged weaponry, just because they have weapons that favour such enemies. This means that they will ignore enemies that are already close to and shooting at them.

Manual overrides of default target priorities could have addressed the complaint about the lack of effective target priorities, but alas.

STRAYING INTO RANGE OF STARBASES:

Corvettes and strike-craft always move about, swirling around their targets. Unfortunately, they might just fly into the range of hostile starbases. The starbases would of course fire their longest-ranged weapons, most of which would be quite useless against such nimble targets (especially if they have point-defense weapons).

However, the main problem is that this drags the starbase into combat, which in turn means that the enemy starbase is now the target of the fleet too. The target prioritizing scripts then grind their wobbly wheels; this can result in ships breaking off to go after the starbase.

NO CONTROL OVER CENTRE OF FLEET IN COMBAT:

As a fleet moves about outside of combat, it stays in a tight formation relative to a centre of geometry around which the fleet congregates. This centre is promptly forgotten during combat.

This means that the fleet can scatter about an entire system, going after entirely different targets no thanks to the previously mentioned problems. Indeed, all of these problems could have been alleviated if the fleet keeps to this centre and the player has control over this centre.

DEVELOPERS’ PURPORTED EXCUSES:

Purportedly, the developers’ reasoning for the limitations and setbacks in space combat is that they want the player to be the decision-maker for a civilization, not an armchair admiral playing an RTS game. If true, this is a poor excuse for not working on coding for player-controlled inputs, especially considering that players still have control over non-combat vessels due to what appears to be a coding oversight.

MISSING IN ACTION:

There are many ways through which fleets or ships go missing. The most common of these is being in unfriendly territory when the civilization that owns the territory decides to close borders. This causes any ship or fleet that are within the territory to disappear. They will only reappear after a month or two.

This can be taken advantage of, if the player could somehow lure the fleets of civilizations that he/she wants to attack through his/her territory before closing borders. However, generally, the other civilizations keep their fleets out of their neighbours’ territory most of the time.

Eventually, these ships return to their home bases, if their home bases have been assigned. Otherwise, they return to the nearest star system owned by their civilization – which might not be a safe place when they do come home.

DISENGAGEMENT:

A fleet or ship can also go missing in action if they disengage from battle. Every time a ship, be it on its own or in a fleet, is about to be destroyed, it has a chance of simply going missing in action. However, this occurs on an RNG roll, so the player should not count on this being able to save every ship.

Interestingly, the player could also have an entire fleet disengage, disappearing into the aether. In fact, wily players have used this trick to save fleets from being overwhelmed, or simply to get them home faster.

To prevent the player from abusing this function, there is a 30-day delay before being able to have an entire fleet retreat. During this 30 in-game days, the fleet might destroy its victim, preventing the player from using the retreat function to warp back home, or the enemy might just do too much damage.

Using the mass retreat function does damage some ships in the fleet; a few might even be destroyed. The factors that determine these occurrences are not clear, however.

DEBRIS FIELDS:

Naval engagements might result in the creation of debris fields, especially if the opposing side has tech that the civilization does not have. However, at least one ship from the opposing side must be destroyed, and it must be one that has components that the civilization does not have.

These debris fields are a type of special research project, and like the others, are only available to the civilization that is seeing them. The debris fields will eventually break down in five in-game years, though this is (usually) plenty of time to get a Science Ship over to them.

Every debris field shows the techs that can be partially researched. Finishing its examination grants the civilization a 10% bonus to the progression of the techs. This also permanently makes those techs available for research, if their prerequisites have been met. Indeed, debris fields are a good way to profit from engagements against more advanced civilizations.

However, this can be used against the player too; the player might see the Science Ships of hostile civilizations going around the site of an engagement scanning something unseen.

SPECIAL SHIPS:

There are special research projects that result in special ships being granted to the civilization that undertook them. These ships often have tech that is beyond those of the regular ships in the civilization, thus providing an edge – at least at the time.

The components in these ships can be upgraded, but they cannot be refitted at all, because they are generated using a ship design that is not included together with the list of ship designs that the player made. This means that they will eventually outlive their usefulness.

The worst examples of special ships are those that are so special, they cannot be included in any fleet. It is unclear whether this is a bug or a gameplay-balancing measure.

KILLING LEADERS IN COMBAT:

In both space and ground battles, leaders are always attached to certain units. More often than not, these are the toughest or most experienced units. If these units are destroyed during battle, there is a small chance that the leaders are killed. This can be infuriating if it does happen.

NO BOARDING ACTIONS:

There are no boarding actions to be had. This is a missed opportunity to have more complexity in space battles, such as the chance to commandeer enemy vessels or a way to reliably assassinate admirals.

FIRST CONTACTS:

During the early parts of the playthrough, first contacts with other civilizations are often a significant occurrence (especially for a new player), because the player does not know what kind of civilization that they might be. First contacts also grant Influence points.

However, there are some noticeable trends, if one has played enough playthroughs. One of the first contacts is almost always a diametric opposite of the player’s civilization. For example, a Fanatic Materialist civilization might start less than a dozen star systems away from a Fanatic Spiritualist civilization. This ensures that there is almost always conflict by the mid-game parts of a playthrough.

After the first contacts have been made, diplomacy becomes an important part of the gameplay.

DIPLOMACY:

Diplomacy is communications between civilizations, but it is of course more complex than just this. There are several diplomatic options, but not all of them are always available.

Amusingly, throwing insults is always available. It sours relations almost immediately, and can be repeated to mightily anger anyone. It seems almost exploitative, since players could use this to force a CPU-controlled civilization to quit the player’s federation. However, there are otherwise very little use for this.

Next, there are Non-Aggression Pacts. This is primarily used to build Trust (which will be described shortly), but also requires a minimum level of Trust.

As for the other diplomatic options, they are sophisticated enough to be described in their own sections. However, before getting to them, there are two statistics that are important to diplomacy and should be described first: Opinion and Trust.

OPINION:

Opinion is the main factor of diplomatic efforts. Opinion is a rating of how another civilization treats a civilization; a civilization has as many Opinion ratings as there civilizations.

More often than not, the first contact determines the Opinion rating. Civilizations with diametrically opposite ethics often have sour relations from the onset. CPU-controlled civilizations are very unlikely to try to improve relations, so the player can expect them to readily go into conflict with each other if they already have bad relations from the start. Of course, the player does not have to follow such tropes.

Opinions are often changed by the actions of a civilization. For example, waging war willy-nilly and causing a lot of collateral damage is often frowned upon. This is often expressed through the Threat rating, which will be described later. Furthermore, certain actions would please some civilizations, while angering the others.

In the early parts of a playthrough, border friction is a source of negative Opinion; border friction happens between immediate neighbours, whose attempts to expand are stymied by each other’s presence. It remains a perennial problem, at least before servitude and federations come into play.

TRUST:

Trust is a component of Opinion that a civilization has long-term control over. However, Trust has to be continuously built upon; neglect eventually erodes Trust. Of course, committing treachery (and hurling insults) quickly reduces Trust to zero.

Trust is built over time – monthly, to be precise – by having certain diplomatic arrangements that benefit the other civilization in the long-term; these arrangements will be described later. Depending on the inclinations of the other civilization, the Trust rating is added to Opinion on a one-to-one ratio or lesser.

RESEARCH AGREEMENTS:

In the early parts of a hopefully positive relationship with another civilization, research agreements are the only means of building trust; specifically, the other party has to be handed a one-way research agreement.

Anyway, a civilization that has been handed a research agreement gains a 25% bonus to the progress rate on any tech that the giving civilization has but that the civilization has not. Obviously, this is advantageous – if the civilization can make full use of it.

Wily players eventually discover that they can rather easily exploit research agreements for their gain, especially considering that CPU-controlled civilizations are very bad at developing their planets (more on this later) for the purpose of research. The players’ own civilizations would eventually outstrip the others in tech progression, even if there are “advanced AI” civilizations around.

As the technological gap widens, any research agreement that the player hands out inflates in value. Consequently, a wily player can gouge CPU-controlled civilizations for many things in return for the research agreement.

INDEPENDENCE GUARANTEES & DEFENSIVE PACTS:

Of course, research agreements are only useful tools if the player’s civilization has a lot of techs to offer, and there is always the risk of the other civilization being able to catch up (highly unlikely as it is). The second choice of a diplomatic option that can build Trust at any level of Opinion is Independence Guarantees, even if it is a distant second.

The main reason for this distant second place is that it costs monthly Influence. Influence, as mentioned already, is very precious – perhaps too precious for most players to consider this option, especially if one also factors in the baggage that it has.

The baggage is that the civilization that handed out the guarantee is obliged to immediately come to the defence of the other civilization if it is attacked. Besides, only up to three guarantees can be handed out.

Perhaps this option would have been better if it considers the strength of the civilization that is handing out the guarantees. Strong protectors should get more Trust.

Defensive Pacts are practically two-way independence guarantees, but can only be performed at a high enough Opinion level. These cost even more Influence.

Fortunately, there are other means of military alliances, as will be described later.

MIGRATION TREATIES:

Migration treaties allow population units of the participating civilizations to move from one civilization to another. This is the only direct way to gain population units of other species in a peaceful manner (not counting the acceptance of refugees).

However, due to the vagaries of migration that has been described earlier, taking advantage of these treaties is not easy. Besides, all it takes to make such a treaty useless is to deny any species the right of migration. On the other hand, Migration Treaties do build Trust.

TRADE DEALS:

The main purpose of having diplomatic relations is to have trade deals. Trade deals are exchanges – or one-way hand-overs – that civilizations engage in.

The player should not expect Stellaris to have the full breadth of trade deals as had been seen in the space 4X scene, like those in Galactic Civilizations, for example. Apparently, the reason for this is that Paradox’s developers do not want players to gouge the CPU-controlled civilizations, like a cunning player could in other games (especially Galactic Civilizations).

The trade offers are nowhere near as complex as those in contemporary 4X titles either. The player cannot includes options outside of those included in the UI for trade deals.

Anyway, the kinds of trade that the player could enact include the usual exchanges of common resources. Strategic Resources can also be exchanged, though not always due to a problem that has been mentioned earlier.

Contacts with other civilizations can also be exchanged; this is handy, if the player wants to gain Influence quickly from first contact with other civilizations. Sensor information can also be exchanged, thus allowing a civilization to see what other civilizations are seeing. There is also the aforementioned research agreement.

Most of the time, the player is the one extending trade offers. Sometimes, CPU-controlled civilizations do approach the player, often offering deals that are lopsided in favour of the player, at least in terms of trade value. In most cases, it is usually worthwhile agreeing to their offers.

TRADE VALUE:

The main factor in deciding the success of a trade offer is the perceived value of the trade items. This comes into play when dealing with CPU-controlled civilizations.

The player has to fiddle with the trade items that are offered by the player’s civilization and those that are demanded from the other civilization. The goal of the fiddling is to achieve a positive trade value, specifically a trade value that is seemingly beneficial in favour of the other party. At least a rating of +1 is needed, but +2 is needed for others (especially if the civilization is not on friendly terms with the player).

The trade value of each item in the deal is dependent on the other civilization’s circumstances. For example, if the other civilization is in need of its Mineral incomes, any minerals demanded of them have much higher value. As a general rule of thumb, monthly resource incomes are always worth more than immediate transactions of resources.

Amusingly, if the other civilization does not want to trade away something, the nett value of the trade is immediately set to “-1000”. This is actually just a work-around for limitations in the user interface for trade deals; it just means that the trade deal is guaranteed to fail. That said, the ones in negative values are likely to fail too, but they just might get through.

The trade values of deal items are further modified by a percentage that is always visible. This percentage is dependent on the other civilization’s personality and their regard for the other party. The trade value of any item offered by the other party is multiplied with the percentage. Generally, isolationists have the lowest percentage, meaning that trade deals with them often have to be made in their favour.

CANNOT TRADE IMMEDIATE RESOURCE TRANSACTIONS WITH MONTHLY INCOMES:

Trade items in the same list can include both monthly incomes and immediate transactions; this allows a player to eke the most out of a trade deal.

However, both of these items can only occur on one side of the deal. If the other side has any of these items too, the trade deal is guaranteed to fail. The in-game description of the reason is simply that the other civilization does not want to trade monthly incomes with immediate transactions and vice versa. This happens when trading with any CPU-controlled civilization.

Perhaps this limitation was put in place to prevent players from min-maxing deals just to squeeze the most out of them.

GOUGING CPU-CONTROLLED CIVILIZATIONS:

Of course, as is typical of the 4X genre, the CPU-controlled civilizations have the advantage of having the player’s offerings being automatically undervalued and theirs being overvalued. Despite this, the player could still gouge them.

The main reason for this is that the CPU-controlled civilizations are terrible at calculating opportunity costs. For example, the player could put forth a research agreement that is very valuable to them, but demand their monthly Mineral incomes in return, which hobble their ability to upgrade their research labs or build new ones. With consistent use of such a trade deal, the player could actually cause the other civilizations to fall far behind technologically – which in turn makes any offered research agreement even more valuable, as mentioned earlier.

BUTTERING UP THE OTHER PARTY:

Of course, the player could choose to lavish the other party instead. The overall trade value is a good indicator of this; half of a positive trade value is applied as a positive modifier to Opinion. This is best done through transactions of spare resources. However, the modifier will degrade over time – more on this later.

POINTLESS OPTION TO TRANSFER PLANETS:

Like most other space sci-fi 4X titles, there is a “trade” “option” to hand over ownerships of planets, and like other space sci-fi 4X titles, CPU-controlled civilizations will never agree to hand over planets. This option is only there for the player to use. Yet, if the player has to resort to this, he/she might already be a bad player.

Perhaps this option could have been more useful if its trade value is higher. As of now, there are far better trade items, such as research agreements (due to reasons that have been mentioned earlier). Besides, if the player wants to divest himself/herself of unwanted planets by foisting them to CPU-controlled entities, he/she can always create a vassal (more on this later).

CLOSING BORDERS:

For better or worse, border closures are the most common diplomatic announcements that the player would encounter, next to declarations of war. Indeed, this is perhaps the only diplomatic option that has direct strategic value.

As mentioned already earlier, when a civilization closes its borders to another during peace-time, the ships of the other civilization immediately go missing in action. This can be exploited by an immediate follow-up declaration of war, with the hope of capitalizing on the absence of the other’s ships. On the other hand, the player’s civilization is usually more vulnerable to this happening, because CPU-controlled civilizations rarely have reason to move fleets through the territory of other civilizations if they are not already at war.

Borders that have been closed are closed indefinitely, usually until relations improve. However, isolationist civilizations always keep everyone out, no matter how much relations improve, if at all.

Of course, there is always one way to force open borders: war. Once that happens, the borders mean nothing and fleets can come and go as they please, if they are not countered.

DISTANCE:

Faster-than-light technology may have made space travel possible, but distance is still a major factor in everything, including diplomacy.

Distant civilizations generally want to have little to do with other civilizations. This is represented as a penalty to Opinion that is calculated according to the distance between the star systems of the two civilizations that are the closest to each other. This variable in the calculation is important, because relations could become better simply by having one civilization snake a thin trail towards the other.

CLAIMS:

“Regular” civilizations cannot go to war with each other willy-nilly. They need justifications, the easiest of which are claims on the territory of others.

Claims are not to be done lightly. They cost Influence, and once these are spent, they cannot be regained, even if the claims are withdrawn (usually for the purpose of improving relations). Claims also become more expensive with increasing distance. Obviously, claims also sour relations.

Claims are also more expensive during times of war, so it is best to make them in peace-time. However, civilizations with any war philosophy policy other than Unrestricted Warfare cannot make claims outside of war.

Even if wars are not started over them, any claim becomes a secondary goal of almost any kind of war. Claims are also part of the outcomes of any war, when it is resolved; these will be elaborated further later.

Interestingly, if a civilization loses control of a system to another, the civilization that lost out automatically makes a claim over that system, free of charge. Claims also make options to transfer planets appear in trade deals.

RIVALRY:

Declaring rivalries is the first step towards true hostility. The main reason to do so is that war can be declared for no reason other than to spite the face of the rival; having a rival also reduces the Influence cost of making claims on the rival’s territory. Rivalries also entertain the militarist faction, which will be described later.

However, for another civilization to be declared as a rival, it has to be of comparable power. Rivals that have lost a lot of power, or which have grown considerably in strength, are automatically disqualified as rivals.

TRIBUTARIES, PROTECTORATES & VASSALS:

In following a tradition in 4X (and grand strategy) games by Paradox Interactive, Stellaris allows civilizations to have others as servants. There are three grades of servitude: tributaries, protectorates and vassals.

Tributaries suffer the least, even though they tend to become so due to bad relations and subsequent defeat in a subjugation war. The tributary has to pay 25% of its income to its lord, but is protected by an automatic Independence Guarantee by the lord. However, Trust builds quickly afterwards, and a tributary can always ask to be converted to a protectorate.

Protectorates do not hand over any of their income, and as their name suggests, they are protected by their lords. Furthermore, protectorates gain massive research bonuses for the acquisition of any tech that their lord already has but they do not. (Taking full advantage of these bonuses is another matter of course.) However, the protectorates are corralled to whatever territory that they have. The lord’s only benefit is that it gains a small Influence bonus (and the satisfaction of any Militarist faction).

When Protectorates have gained 50% of their liege lord’s techs, they are considered to be capable of defending themselves (even though this might not be the case) and become independent. However, if their liege lord already has the necessary Domination traditions, they are converted to vassals – which is not always a good thing for them.

Vassals are the worst off, because they have to hand over so much and get so little in return. Firstly, their diplomatic options are severely curtailed. They do not gain anything from their lord, other than protection. Worst of all, the vassals have to hand over 20% of their naval capacity to their liege lord, making it likely that they might not be physically powerful enough to break away; this is worse if their liege lord has more Domination traditions. They also have to join their lord’s wars. Worst of all, they are forced to changed their governing ethics, if they are incompatible with their lord’s.

In the late stages of a playthrough, it might be prudent to have vassals instead of having more planets, due to the penalties to research and Unity that has been described earlier. Besides, vassals count towards the liege lord’s goal of galactic domination in a playthrough.

Interestingly, demanding that other civilizations become vassals is not possible if they are terribly weak, technologically. The protectorate option replaces this instead. Therefore, vassals are always in a position that they might be able to fend off their lords with whatever technology that they have, if they attempt to gain independence.

INDEPENDENCE BIDS:

Speaking of which, vassals who are confident enough (or resentful enough) can attempt to break away. More often than not, they will do so after they have obtained support from other civilizations, often ones strong enough to oppose their lord. Their lord is not automatically aware of these diplomatic exchanges, by the way.

When these bids happen, the first blow is the withdrawal of the offered naval capacity; the lord is then sidled with over-limit fleets, which can cause considerable economic setbacks. This is just one of the inherent risks of being an overlord.

CREATING INDEPENDENT CIVILIZATIONS:

At any time, the player might choose to simply create a new civilization from his/her own, or release servants from their bondage. In the case of Vassals, they simply regain their capabilities, but do not gain anything else.

This is not to be done lightly with planets that are already in the player’s control. Granting them independence means that a copy of the player’s civilization is created, complete with its tech level. Other civilizations are often quick to take advantage of this, asking for research agreements. After all, bonuses from different research agreements do stack.

INTEGRATING SUBJECTS:

Alternatively, if the player believes that he/she can handle the penalties of having his/her civilization become much bigger, the player can attempt to absorb the vassal, effectively ending its existence in exchange for hegemony.

This has severe costs, not least of which is a monthly Influence penalty that can last for a long while. Furthermore, the Vassal might be underpowered, thus requiring sweeping upgrades, which can be costly. Worst of all, if the vassal is a CPU-controlled civilization, it might have made some bad decisions in developing its planets.

If there is any reason to make this otherwise big mistake, any techs that the vassal has but the lord does not – as unlikely as this seems – are transferred over too.

REBELLIONS:

The worst outcome of severe unrest is rebellion. If there are enough disaffected population units on a planet, and the civilization failed to stifle unrest, it breaks off and becomes its own civilization; this civilization never shares its “parent’s” ethics, and are inherently hostile to its “parent”. Most importantly, it has the tech level of its “parent”, which can make things complicated as other civilizations scramble to obtain relations with the break-aways.

WAR DECLARATIONS:

For better or worse, war is guaranteed to happen in any playthrough. Even if the player tries to be pacifistic, there are almost always belligerent empires around. Therefore, there are war declarations.

War declarations cause severe damage to Opinions, especially if the civilizations were on friendly terms and there were no gradual break-down in relations. In such cases, the declaration is seen as a betrayal and will not be forgotten for a long, long time.

One important thing to keep in mind about war declarations is that any ships that belong to one civilization will immediately go missing in action if they are in the territory of the other civilization. Apparently, this setback was put in place to prevent unscrupulous players from parking their fleets next to others’ starbases or invasion armies on top of their planets.

Declarations of war against regular civilizations require justifications (tackily called “Casus Belli” in-game). This can be the pursuit of any outstanding claim, humiliation of a rival or the subjugation of weaker civilizations.

There is also the justification of forcing changes in the Governing Ethics of another civilization, which is a benefit that is unique to the Liberation Wars philosophical policy. This particular option actually causes an ally to emerge if the war is successful, instead of simmering bad blood.

WAR EXHAUSTION:

“War is hell” is a mantra that present-day game developers often like to present in their games, either through style or substance. In the case of Paradox Interactive, it is of course the latter. It appears to have been implemented to ensure that the outcome of a war is within a player’s control, independent of the movement of navies and armies.

“War Exhaustion” is the representation of the time that is left before a stalemate resolution can be achieved, if it is not possible to have a more decisive outcome. There does not seem to be any penalties for letting a war drag on, however, other than the obvious loss of lives and material. If the war is in between non-genocidal civilizations, a status quo resolution can be achieved when either side reaches 100% exhaustion. (There will be more on genocidal civilizations, in the review for the Utopia expansion.)

The components of War Exhaustion are myriad. One of these is always Attrition, which is guaranteed to rise over time. The other components are the outcomes of battles. Apparently, the side that loses more accrues more exhaustion.

WAR GOALS:

War goals are the factors that determine whether a war would result in a Status Quo outcome or something more decisive. War goals make the opposing side angrier and less likely to cede defeat prematurely, but if they are achieved, they break the other side faster.

War goals include any claims that have been made, and any special demands. If they are achieved, the side that achieved the goal is one step closer to winning a war.

RESOLUTION OF WAR:

There are two outcomes to any war: Status Quo resolutions, which are practically stalemates, or the surrender of one side.

The important element of the resolution of any war is any outstanding claim. In any type of war, including any war fought in defence, any relevant claims will be processed first before other outcomes. For one, any system that is claimed by other civilizations and have been captured and occupied by them has their ownership changed. This happens even in Status Quo outcomes.

Obviously, with Status Quo outcomes, any wargoals other than Claims are not achieved. However, with a clear victor and a loser (who surrendered), these other wargoals are enforced. Decisive outcomes often have significant impacts on the balance of power across the galaxy.

CONFLICTING CLAIMS BY PARTICIPANTS:

If a war involves participants with overlapping claims and the participants are on the same side, there would be a contest for the claims.

The amount of influence that has been spent on a system for the claim is the main determinant for who gets what. Those who spent more than the others get the system; the others are left out and do not have their Influence reimbursed. For this purpose, more influence can be spent on a claim just to ensure a favourable outcome. The claims by the others can be seen, by the way, but not necessarily the amount of Influence used. (Considering that Influence is supposed to be an internally-used resource in a civilization, this prioritization can seem odd.) If the claims tie in amounts of Influence, whoever is occupying the system is granted ownership.

Considering what has been described about claims thus far, the system of claims makes warfare in Stellaris a lot more complex than warfare in most other space 4X titles (or grand strategy titles). Debatably, this complexity can be perceived as unnecessary complications, rather than genuine sophistication. However, this does prevent powerful civilizations from simply taking what they want.

THREAT:

Going about waging war makes the other civilizations anxious, especially if one had been particularly successful at smashing apart their enemies. This is represented in-game as a “Threat” rating that is applied as a penalty to Opinion ratings, among other things. That is not to say that Threat is all negative to anyone who has accrued a high score; it is actually applied as a positive modifier in demands for another civilization to be made a servant.

RELATIVE POWER:

In the mid-game and end-game segments, relative differences in hard power between civilizations matter. This hard power is, of course, determined by the expansiveness of their fleets, which as had been mentioned earlier, are the main ways through which civilizations project their strength. This factor is generally used in coercing the other civilizations into making anything but trade deals.

GRACE PERIODS AND MODIFIER DEGRADATION:

To prevent players from exploiting the system of diplomacy, there are grace periods, not unlike the periods in which policies cannot be changed after having already been changed.

The most notable of these is the inability to declare war on another civilization after having already waged war against it. Ten long years must pass before hostilities can flare up again. Similarly, any borders that have been forced open by war cannot be closed again during that time too.

Some modifiers to Opinion will degrade over time, on a yearly basis. The most notable of these are the positive modifiers from trade deals that favour the other party. Of course, the degradation represents the diminishing memories of one-off events.

FEDERATIONS:

One of the tradition categories allows for the setting up of Federations. A Federation is a collective of civilizations that are generally on good terms with each other, and are often neighbours. Federations are also effectively multilateral defensive pacts and independence guarantees too.

At any time, the Federation is presided by one of the civilizations; the presidency rotates from one member to the next every decade, though the first president is always the founder of the Federation. If there are changes to the membership, members who have yet to be president will have priority, whereas those that have led the federation the most times get the least priority.

The first benefit of Federations is a diplomatic one. Full members of a Federation do not have issues of border friction. The second benefit is a militaristic one; fleets of each member can use the starbases and shipyards of the other members to refit and repair. The third benefit is mutual defense, of course.

The setback is that if a member wants to go to war with another civilization, every member must agree; the war cannot happen without a unanimous decision. This tends to happen only if the other civilization is much hated by the other members. On the other hand, some members might refuse to go along, because they might not be strong enough.

Of course, if a member could somehow goad another civilization into attacking it, then the entire federation comes together against the aggressor (if they could). In practice though, the effectiveness of a federation at war greatly depends on how many fronts that can be opened up. If a member is the only one physically next to the aggressor, it is quite screwed.

FEDERATION FLEET:

The elephant in the room in any federation is the Federation fleet. This fleet is formed by detaching 20% of the naval capacity from each member, and then summing them together to provide capacity for the fleet. In return for this sacrifice, the Federation fleet incurs no maintenance cost at all. (A certain tradition doubles the contribution of a member as a bonus, further increasing the size of the fleet.) The fleet often starts out small, but as more members join, the Fleet can balloon to an incredible size, possibly reaching even the hard cap of 500 points.

Federation fleets have to be given their own ship designs, have to be reinforced with ships built by the Federation leader, and upgraded and refitted by the leader too on its own expense. The compensation for such hassle is that the fleet is completely under the control of the Federation leader. Federation fleet ships also cannot be detached or reverse-engineered by the federation leader too, however, so a lesser civilization is not able to profit from having the leadership rotated from a more technologically advanced member.

(A Federation fleet will leave behind debris fields that enemies can analyse, however.)

Speaking of which, the Federation fleet is mainly there to give weaker members a chance at defending themselves, especially if they are the current leader. Ultimately, the fleet performs at its bests when it is used by a human player.

LEAVING FEDERATIONS:

For whatever reason, a member may want to leave a federation – usually to save itself from certain destruction at the hands of a very powerful civilization that can overwhelm even a Federation. Of course, those that left the Federation, for whatever reason, are seen as traitors by the ones who remain. That said, the Federation fleet’s capacity would shrink in size too, which prevents any further reinforcement.

A member can also be ejected by the others, but this would require a considerable loss of trust by the other members in the target of the ejection.

If a Federation falls apart badly enough, it is disbanded. The fleet is also disbanded, thus wasting a lot of effort and resources. It is rare for Federations to be disbanded, because Federations that include powerful members are difficult to isolate and defeat. However, it can be done, but often only by cunning players who know where and when to prey on members of an opposing Federation.

FEDERATION ASSOCIATION:

The prerequisite to membership in a Federation is association status. This is effectively a variant of the non-aggression pact, albeit applied to every Federation member too. However, subsequent membership might require a lot of sucking up to each and every member, because membership admission has to be unanimously agreed on. This might include having to change the governing ethics and policies of one’s own civilization.

FALLEN (ASLEEP) EMPIRES:

Even if the player did not select the option to have “Advanced AI” civilizations, there are always special civilizations that are far beyond the upstart civilizations in terms of capability. They even have some technologies that are not available to regular civilizations at all, such as a very big cannon that bypass shields and armor completely. These are called “Fallen Empires” in-game, though they have hardly fallen on hard times.

Fortunately, they do not start out active. Rather, there is an air of lethargy about them; the upstart civilizations barely even register on their radars, and the most that they would express about the upstarts is amusement or irritation. They will not look beyond their own borders, at least not without anything more than curiosity. It is in the interest of the upstarts to keep it that way, because once they awaken for any reason, things often get worse for the upstarts.

Anyway, while they are in their sleepy phase, their behaviour is determined by the type of Fallen Empire that they are. There are four, each of which has its own quirks.

The Enigmatic Observer is a collector of sorts, often asking lesser civilization for “samples” of their species. The Keepers of Knowledge is also a collector, often asking for the player’s best scientists. The Holy Guardians can be quite overbearing about colonization attempts and others having robotic population units. Finally, there is the Militant Isolationists, who prefer that everyone else keep away.

With the exception of the Militant Isolationists, the Fallen Empires might, on their whims (which means RNG rolls), make requests of lesser civilizations. Fulfilling these requests makes them patrons of the lesser civilizations, but often at the cost of upsetting the lesser civilizations’ peoples. On the other hand, having them as a patron can lead to lucrative rewards, such as gifts of resources, special ships and most coveted of all, techs and research access.

However, such gifts are dependent on RNG rolls, and therefore good luck. Meanwhile, while waiting for a windfall that may never come, the Opinion rating of the Fallen Empire dwindles, until it eventually forgets that the lesser civilizations have even talked to them.

AWAKENING EMPIRES:

Fallen Empires will eventually awaken, even if the other civilizations are not poking them. The factor that guarantees their awakening is the growing strength of an already grown-strong civilization. This is purportedly decided by the total sum of the power ratings of ships owned by this civilization. Whether the Awakened Empire sees this civilization as a threat or worthy rival, this civilization is likely to be the target of their attention.

Of course, they will also awaken if a civilization is stupid enough to poke them hard. (CPU-controlled civilizations will not poke them at all.) In such a case, their ire is directed at whoever poked them. It is either an unwise human player that pokes them, or one whose civilization has grown awesomely powerful enough. Even so, the Fallen Empires might have awoken already.

Anyway, once they awaken, they change their personalities. They become more assertive, often to the detriment of the upstarts. They begin to expand their territories, typically through war against anyone whom they dislike. In the case of the Militant Isolationists, they effectively turn into belligerent conquerors, aiming to subjugate and corral the upstarts.

Anyone that any Awakened Empires conquer can expect to be severely curtailed in one way or more. They often demand things that hobble the lesser civilizations.

Alternatively, they could awaken in a benevolent manner, often in response to one of the nastier end-game crises; only the Enigmatic Observers and Keepers of Knowledge readily do this. They wake up, and brazenly declare themselves “Guardians of the Galaxy” (never mind that this is a reference to a certain Marvel Comics IP). They will actively seek out the threat to the galaxy, and often run over anyone else that is stupid enough to be in their way. However, they will gladly join any Federation that is threatened, provided that the offer is made.

FACTIONS - OVERVIEW:

The last major gameplay system to be described is the system of factions. Factions are groups of people who follow the extremes of a certain Ethic. Whenever a civilization starts a playthrough, it has as many factions as there are Governing Ethics. For a while, they are the only ones around – until the civilization comes into contact with other civilizations with different ethics.

When contact happens, other factions that follow the ethics of the other civilizations might appear. This can happen in one of three ways.

The first way is proximity and good relations, especially open borders and migration treaties. After these conditions are met, there is a chance that a new faction might appear. However, if there are circumstances that suppress the appearance of the faction, and these are all the circumstances there are, the faction will not appear at all.

For example, if a civilization has population units and leaders of multiple species and free movement of its peoples, that civilization will likely never experience the emergence of a xenophobic faction.

The only exception is the Progressive faction, which follows the Egalitarian ethic. Contact with democratic civilizations will cause this faction to surface, whether the civilization’s government want them to or not. Similarly, the Spiritualist faction can pop up upon contact with Spiritualist civilizations.

Some factions have stricter prerequisites for appearance. For example, getting Federation associations is often the first step to getting a xenophilic faction, if there is not one already.

The second way is to “acquire” already inhabited planets with population units that follow other factions, and these population units are given residency or full citizenship. Presumably, they spread their teachings, causing the emergence of their faction.

The third way is through the election of rulers. As mentioned earlier, ruler candidates reveal their slants. These slants can result in them becoming the leader of a new faction.

Anyway, after a faction appears, it gains a randomized name that hints at its leanings. If the player cannot surmise its leanings from its name, its icon and tool-tip for the icon should tell this.

One of the civilization’s leaders leads the faction. This leader is randomly chosen from among the civilization’s cadre, though there are a few variables at play. For example, a governor often leads the totalitarian faction, which follows authoritarianism. However, if there are fewer leaders than there are factions, the faction’s emergence is suppressed.

Generally, there is one faction for each major ethic. The exception is that there are two factions that follow the Xenophobic ethic: the assertive Supremacists and inward-looking Isolationists.

Each non-slave population unit follows one of these factions. Which faction that it follows depends on the attractiveness of each ethic. Generally, the Governing Ethics are the most attractive, but the machinations of other civilizations and certain circumstances can increase the attractiveness of an Ethic and thus the faction that follows it. For example, during war, the imperialist factions often gain more support. Incidentally, there are also techs and tradition that bolster the attraction of the Governing Ethics.

The population units in the civilization will change their allegiances regularly, until the proportions of their representation among the factions more or less match their attractiveness ratings.

The proportion of followers that a faction has is very important, as will be explained later. However, any citizenship status other than full citizenship that a population unit has reduces its representation.

(Also, as a general rule of thumb, all slaves eventually align to the progressive faction, if any.)

FACTION ISSUES & HAPPINESS:

Every faction has a set of issues that it fusses over. Not all of these issues appear initially, but more will appear as circumstances that affect the civilization changes.

For example, the technologist faction does not have any issue about robots until after any civilization gains robotic population units. Afterwards, it does; if its own civilization does not have any robots, its followers become upset with envy.

Fulfilling the issues removes their sources of unhappiness, and may also make them happy too. However, doing so might just anger the faction that is their faction’s diametric opposite.

The issues of any faction that are fulfilled or unfulfilled lead to a modifier to the base happiness rating of the population units that follow the faction. This can result in a population unit being very happy, even when things around them are bad, or it being very upset even though it is living luxuriously.

The player might want to avoid concentrating population units that are following an upset faction, unless the player has some master plan to get rid of all of them in one fell swoop. If there are too many of them on a planet, the unrest on that planet can spike severely due to their unhappiness. This scenario is most likely to happen if the player has just captured a planet from a civilization with diametrically opposing Governing Ethics.

That said, the player would want to push as many people as possible to the factions that follow the Governing Ethics, if only to obtain maximized benefits from his/her preferred playstyle.

INFLUENCE FROM SATISFIED FACTIONS:

The main reason to play the game of factions is to obtain Influence points from them. Any faction that is satisfied, i.e. have a base happiness rating of 60% or higher, generates Influence points. Any faction that is unsatisfied does not generate any, but does not inflict penalties either.

There is actually a base number of Influence points coming from each satisfied faction. However, this is multiplied by proportion of their representation among the peoples of the civilization. For example, if the faction is only followed by a third of all populations in the civilization, it only generates a third of its potential Influence income. Hence, it is desirable to herd as many people into one faction as possible – preferably the one that matches the player’s playstyle.

SUPPRESSING & SUPPORTING FACTIONS:

If one of the factions is being particularly pesky and it is small enough to anger further without any serious consequences, the player could choose to suppress it. One of the ways to do so is to simply corral its followers in harm’s way. Also, if the faction is small enough, just some more reduction in their attractiveness could spell their demise. If its followers happen to be mostly of one species, purging them might help. (The player might also want to remove its current leader, though another leader might just step in instead.)

Of course, the player could just use the Faction screen’s built-in function to suppress the faction. However, this comes at a cost of one point of monthly Influence income, which might be too precious. It also merely reduces the attractiveness of the faction.

If their number of followers drops below five population units, the faction gives up and is disbanded. There is no guarantee that they will not return in another name, however.

Alternatively, the player could prop up a faction by changing circumstances in ways that are favourable to its attractiveness, or the player could just spend Influence to promote the faction.

The greatest expression of support for a faction is to usher in Ethical changes that match the faction. This costs a lot of Influence, however, and angers everyone else.

MACHINE POPULATION UNITS FOLLOWING SPIRITUALISM:

One of the most amusing yet troublesome design oversights in the game is that synthetic population units that have been raised above servitude can join the traditionalist faction, which favours Spiritualism. One of the issues of this faction is the presence of sapient machines, which is anathema to them. Obviously, this leads to an awkward situation of synthetic population units hating themselves.

Supposedly, one of the official work-arounds to this is that the machine population units are not included among the faction’s numbers. Yet, the happiness rating of the faction is applied to them too. Furthermore, the leader of the faction can still be a synthetic, which makes things even sillier (and even worse if the Ruler of a spiritualist empire is a synthetic).

This is a long-standing problem that has yet to be addressed by the developers. Fans have mods that address this, of course, but often in ways that imbalance the game (not that they would mind; spiritualist civilizations have been decried as being underpowered).

EVENT CHAINS:

Throughout a playthrough, a civilization may come across discoveries and circumstances that set off long story-lines. Pursuing these story-lines requires a lot of resources, effort and time. However, the reward is usually something monumental. Some of the rewards even include free changes in Governing Ethics, if the player so chooses. They might also be special civilization-wide bonuses, or special techs that are otherwise unobtainable.

The longer event chains often include nastier challenges, especially if they concern ancient ruined civilizations that were lost through unknown calamities or perturbing unexplained phenomena with plenty of warning signs. The player could always quit early and get reduced rewards; persevering to get the final pay-out often means a lot of pain along the way.

Interestingly, some event chains are always in any playthrough, and are tailored according to the player’s choices in designing his/her civilization. For example, there is the Precursors event chain, in which the player’s civilization learns about a ruined civilization that may have similarities to its chosen Governing Ethics.

There may also be permutations to these event chains too. For example, the Precursors event chain may reveal a star system that may have plenty of wrecks (with a lot of mineral resources), or it may have pristine Gaia worlds – or it might have an entire horde of space monsters.

MID-GAME:

The mid-game section of a playthrough usually begins when the civilizations have finished exploring and expanding, eventually being hemmed in by their neighbours. This is when the wars begin, and when they focus more on raising navies and armies. Incidentally, this is also when diplomatic exchanges are rife.

In the base game, there is not a lot of other gameplay content in this part of a playthrough. However, later expansions would introduce content for this phase.

END-GAME:

The end-game segments of a playthrough happens after the year that the player has chosen as the start of the end-game. It can happen earlier too, especially if a civilization (usually the player’s own) has become incredibly powerful, enough to challenge anything that the galaxy can throw at them.

One of the end-game scenarios has been described: the awakening of Fallen Empires. This ensures that any civilization that has grown quite powerful (which is often the player’s own) by the endgame threshold will be challenged by a similarly powerful, if not slightly more powerful, rival.

On the other hand, the Awakened Empires may be a known quantity, especially if the player has been keeping tabs on them; after all, their systems are not hidden from sensors. However, there are nastier end-game scenarios, which incidentally might cause the Fallen Empires to awaken anyway.

Many of these scenarios are Paradox’s take on typical space sci-fi tropes, such as those popularized by movies or other games. For example, there is the arrival of extra-galactic or even extra-dimensional forces, bent on consumption of all things.

When these other scenarios occur, the surviving civilizations in the galaxy have a tendency to put conflicts aside and band together for mutual survival. The player is often in a position of leadership in these scenarios, because his/her civilization would likely be on top of everyone else if he/she had been skilled enough to persevere to this stage of a playthrough. This is the best time to get everyone into a massive Federation, and crush anyone else who would not play ball.

Later expansions would introduce even nastier end-game crises.

CIVILIZATION-WIDE MODIFIERS:

There is a list of civilization-wide modifiers, viewable in the government info screens. Some of these have been described already, such as certain rewards from special research projects.

In truth, the list is a stopgap measure by the developers to list any civilization-wide bonuses that could not be easily listed anywhere else because they are not managed like the others. For example, strategic resources grant civilization-wide bonuses too, but they are under their own list because they are also used as bargaining chips in trade deals.

The expansions for the game would introduce more things that go into the list, for better or worse. (Indeed, the list is a cluttered mess by the time the player discovers the content of the latest expansion pack at this time of writing.)

PLAYTHROUGH VICTORY:

The main victory condition of any playthrough is control of 60% or more of the colonized planets in the entire galaxy by any party. This can be a single monolithic civilization that did not fall apart under its own weight (typically this is a player with a meticulous end-game plan), a federation that has encompassed much of known space (often guided by a player with a diplomatic bent), an overlord with many vassals (again, the player, albeit with an imperious and cunning streak), or a survivor that has somehow caused everyone else to die (also, again, a player, but a gleefully nihilistic one).

Ultimately though, all of the means of victory leads to domination of the galaxy. There are few other victory conditions, such as those seen in Galactic Civilizations. This is because they have already been worked into the gameplay. For example, Stellaris’s equivalent of a diplomatic victory is domination by a massive Federation. As another example, its equivalent of a scientific victory is represented by an unstoppable civilization becoming the aforementioned overlord; after all, knowledge is power.

In other words, the bulk of the valuable experience of a playthrough is the journey to the end. There are players who remember the road more fondly than the destination, due to the gratifying (or harrowing) decisions that they have made to come out on top (of a pyramid, or a pile of ashes).

BAD DECISIONS BY CPU-CONTROLLED CIVILIZATIONS:

Yet, there may be some sources of dissatisfaction throughout a playthrough. One of the most irksome of these sources come from the relative ineptitude of CPU-controlled civilizations.

The main cause of their ineptitude is their inability to consider opportunity costs. Granted, many CPU-controlled entities in computer and video games are quite bad at this, but this deficiency is even more apparent in a game that is as complex as Stellaris.

They could be making bad decisions, like not placing a building that further stacks on the resources in a tile. Another example is having fleets go right into the path of the more powerful ones, especially if they are already moving through a system.

These poor decisions are infrequent of course, but they can all stack up because the CPU-controlled civilizations do not correct their mistakes.

There have been mods that attempt to improve the AI. Yet, they could do little more than change the weightages that are used for their decision-making, or add more variables and scripts. Unfortunately, the burgeoning complexity results in another kind of ineptitude: crippling doubt and lethargic conservativeness.

Furthermore, they often prioritize their navies and defences first, because they just could not have the foresight to make friends with their neighbours whenever possible

NO ESPIONAGE:

From the debut of the game to this time of writing, there had been plenty of content for the game, mainly to pad out the mid-game and end-game, and to address gameplay balance issues. There has even been content that allows for different playstyles.

Yet, there is one glaring omission that Stellaris has compared to many other 4X (and grand strategy) titles: there is no espionage system, much less any covert operations or intelligence assets that civilizations can have for use against other civilizations.

Perhaps there are plans to have this, but right now, Paradox’s developers are content to include more space monsters, calamities and bizarre celestial phenomena in their expansion packs.

MULTIPLAYER:

Stellaris has a multiplayer feature that makes use of a peer-to-peer connection, albeit with a proprietary network as the underlying infrastructure. Interestingly, it allows the host to use game-saves that had been made in single-player. Each participating player chooses a civilization to play.

In the case of new playthroughs, the host has control over the variables that generate the galaxy. There is also a chat lobby, just in case the players desire discussion. When such a session starts, every player gains a file that represents the galaxy that has been generated.

Peculiarly, the host can choose to load an existing game-save instead. The players choose which surviving civilizations to play, though the host has priority. This can result in some skewed and possibly amusing experiences, such as players playing vassal states, assuming that everyone is willing. A new game-save is made for this purpose; it will not overwrite the original game-save.

VISUAL DESIGNS - OVERVIEW:

Like most other Paradox-developed 4X games, Stellaris was not made with high-end computers in mind. The game can run quite well on computers with older graphics assets, though like the other 4X titles, they require considerable CPU power for all the computation that goes on in real-time.

On the other hand, Stellaris is still the most visually diverse among Paradox 4X titles. After all, there are plenty of things to be seen in fictitious space than in fictitious medieval Europe or fictitious Earth circa World War II.

There are some aspects of the game’s graphics that are interesting enough to have their own sections.

UNFETTERED APPEARANCES:

Having divested the matter of physiology of any species as mostly a cosmetic option, as mentioned earlier, Paradox’s developers have gone quite wild in their implementation of visual content for the appearances of sapient species. There are elves in space, Hobbits in space, Klingon-look-alikes, species that look a lot like those in the Mass Effect IP, plenty of furries (albeit with more eyes than usual), bugs and even fungus colonies with appendages, to name just some. Finding out how another civilization’s people would look like when the player meets them for the first time is a hilarious moment that takes a long while to become stale.

CLIME ARTWORKS:

The looks of a world almost immediately makes its climate recognizable. Beige sands indicate that it is a desert world, expanses of blue indicate that it is an ocean world, and wisps of white show that it is an arctic one. This is, of course, nothing new to a veteran of the 4X genre.

The Gaia worlds might look interesting to jaded players. There had been attempts by artists to envision such worlds in 4X games, such as the weird purple planets in the Galactic Civilization series. In Stellaris, at least in the Niven builds, they are represented by mish-mashes of terrain that are somehow next to each other. For example, there are places with sleets of ice all over a planet other than the poles, and they are next to patches of meadows. Lakes are located throughout the world, and the clouds have so many swirls moving in all directions. Gaia worlds look as unbelievable as they are silly.

VISUALS OF CELESTIAL BODIES AND SPACE SHIPS:

Stellaris uses a dedicated game environment for the purpose of showing star systems and the things in them; the models in this environment are changed every time the player switches from one star system to another. Sometimes, if the player switches fast enough, the player might see particle effects from a previous scene (such as a space battle occurring in another system) continue to animate in the next scene (in another star system).

Almost all celestial bodies, such as planets, moons and stars, are conveniently spherical. They are given textures with light and shadow mapping. The lighting and shadowing do change if the player rotates the camera. Speaking of rotation, the planets and their stars do rotate, but the planets will never orbit around their stars, as mentioned earlier. This is unbelievable, but perhaps this minimized the graphics overhead for the game.

Space vessels are barely animated. The player might see rotating sections on starbases and turrets turning on ships, but that is the most animation that the player would see from them. They do have a lot of particle effects, however, especially if they still have shields and they are using energy weapons.

SOUND DESIGNS:

The music of the game is the first thing that the player would hear. After all, the game’s launcher has to be brought up before the game could actually be run. Even after entering the game, the main menu greets the player with more music.

Most of the music is quite forgettable to a jaded veteran of space 4X titles. There are the usual epic orchestral “space is the final frontier” tracks that are a staple of the genre, and there are the less energetic but wonder-inducing tracks that supposedly represent curiosity of the unknown. Then there are the tracks that sound more ominous, because there have to be reminders that the dark void of space hides horrors. (These were introduced sometime before the release of the Leviathan expansion).

As a game with a space sci-fi setting, Stellaris has the usual noises to be expected from space sci-fi settings. There is the zinging crack of lasers, whooshes of plasma, roaring ship thrusters and, of course, plenty of warbling and beeping that has been made all too popular by Star Trek and Star Wars.

There are some other aspects of the game’s audio that are worth pointing out in their own sections.

VOICE-ACTING:

The player might meet clearly human civilizations (especially if he/she is playing a not-human one), but their greetings are not always recognizable.

The advisor that informs the player of important things is the only character that has legible voice-acting that goes beyond a few words. There are quite a number of voice packages, some of which are not in the base game. There is still a chance that the player does not like any of them, in which case the robotic original voice package – typically used for a HAL-like AI – would still be the most tolerable.

Then there are the voices for the myriad of species. Most of the things that they utter are complete gibberish. These voice-overs accompany the animated portrait assets that came in the cosmetic DLC packages of the game, but they seem to number a lot less than the visual assets.

EASTER EGGS & REFERENCES:

There are a lot of references that the content in Stellaris makes to things in science fiction. Arguably, most of these are conjectures by fans, but there are quite a few references that are recognizable signatures of classic science fiction. The most obvious among these are the animated portraits of certain humanoid species: one of them is likely a reference to Star Trek’s Klingon.

Then there are the more whimsical references. Examples include dwarves, halflings and trolls in space, just because elves and orcs have been in space too. There are also references in the writing for tool-tips and events; these pay tribute to novels and stories. H.G. Wells is one of the authors that are cited.

FREQUENT INCOMPATIBILITIES BETWEEN UPDATED GAME AND GAME-SAVES:

Paradox’s developers have updated this game many, many times. They have plenty of reasons to, because according to their own boasts, the game has sold many licences and continues to do well.

Unfortunately, it is inevitable that major updates would invalidate save-games for playthroughs made with the previous builds of the game. The developers try to maximize compatibilities as much as possible, but ultimately there may be instability if the player attempts to continue an earlier playthrough with updated builds of the game.

SUMMARY:

There are many things that Stellaris does differently from other 4X titles, and often for the better. The real-time gameplay is the most obvious, showing that 4X gameplay can indeed work in real-time. Other much-appreciated differences include the omission of tech races to get wonders, as well as the lack of an actual tech tree that, in hindsight, added to the game’s complexity in significant ways.

The versatility of the systems that determine the make-up of a civilization and its leadership allows players to include layers of role-playing into their gameplay experiences, if they are of such inclination. Very few other 4X games allow this, especially if they have opted for lore-centric and/or species-oriented gameplay.

The developers’ capability for attention to detail is incredible; this can be seen in the many elements and sub-elements of the gameplay. Learning how they affect each other is an entertaining experience.

On the other hand, Stellaris’s burgeoning complexity has caused gaps to appear in the lessons that the game tries to impart through its tutorials and description tool-tips. There are still some gameplay elements that are opaque, such as the migration system. There are some others that could do with more explanation, such as the nuances between types of servitude by a subjugated civilization. Even the decision-making scripts of CPU-controlled civilizations have fallen behind.

There are parts of the game that have their potential held back by gameplay balance concerns that are only mentioned in forums with developer responses, such as the diplomacy system. There are ill-justified deficiencies that are odds with the sophistication of the game, such as the lack of control over navies when they are engaged in combat. The same design policies have caused potential for more gameplay complexity to be deliberately wasted too, such as the lack of an espionage system.

These deficiencies had been there since the inception of Stellaris. This is so despite the obvious talent of Paradox’s developers and complaints from players who do not accept the developers’ (and die-hard fans’) stance. These problems speak much about how the developers value their overarching design policies over customer feedback, for better or worse.

Overall, Stellaris is a good case of where very talented and skilled developers express their love for things that they adore in wonderfully meticulous ways. Yet, its developers stubbornly refuse to work on things that concern reliability of gameplay just because they perceive them as old tropes, or are beyond what they like.