Top 10 Stellaris Tips for Advanced Players

Did we miss any? Let us know your top advanced tips!

my super tip is... screw mechanics, just roleplay the game ;D

related to docking fleets, planets near the outer edge of a system are ideal anchorages if you kit them out with orbital rings and place a gateway as close to the ring as possible- speeds up reaction time from fleet order to them getting to the target system - especially on defence

Im pretty new using the mech dlc and a mod for it i can start white planet crackers but i cant get minerals frome buildings or planets if i do but im starting to ting its worth it. I hate the ai he lost a d he stile won frome my stupid ai ally.

1. Heard that tracking does nothing, but against AI I add Targeting Grid aura to my Titans. Every 10 points to tracking brings large and X weapons closer to actually hit destroyers often and corvettes now and then.
2. I stopped colonizing far away planets unless they are really worthy (relic). I colonize first the planets within my capital starbase's trade collect range and, then, spam habitats for research and trade (again within the collect range).

* Tips against the AI and average difficult levels (role-playing instead of min/max).

how is gene modding an advanced tip?

I wish I knew you could use gateways to completely avoid piracy

Everyone seems really helpful in these comments. I feel like I’m getting a good grasp of the game, but I keep having a ton of unemployed pops playing as the terminator robots. I’ve been relocating them to outer habitats and then letting them revolt and then killing them 😅

Today I Learned:

Defeated fleets retreat to their home base. (How did I not notice this before now...)
Setting troop transport fleets to aggressive causes them to follow your navy and intelligently auto-invade.

Ive been trying to figure out how to pump alloys stupid fast. I build alloys factories on every planet and got the research to boost it by 15%. But its still not enough. Do ring worlds allow multiple alloy factories?

I love this game. Only game that allows you to become a race of sentient psychic mushrooms 🍄 who's goal it is to enslave the entire known galaxy. All will be one with the psyshroom!

MAX.
We meet again.
Mainly because I keep binging his tutorial videos.

little trick, I pause the game to switch scientists around without moving them long distances or changing their orders (moving, research or assisting... doesn't work for scientists involved in a project/anomaly)

The layers to this game never ceases to amaze me; I've been playing for thousands of hours and never thought to change fleet stance on my armies. (also didn't realize there were secret modifiers affecting how likely a tech would show up) Mind blown.

Theres an achievement for doing ten projects in one game but what does it mean specifically about what those projects are do you know? thnx in advance BTW. :)

I havw taken over every living thing in the galaxy and own everything , but I cant research two of those sites for some reason , did my enemy research them first?
It was single player SYK.

Considered all of this basic tips but then I came across the auto deploy armies and I felt like an idiots.... 1000s of hours and I didn't knew that goddamn xD thanks for the video. This saves so much micro when conquering.

In the early game - scientists on ships advance in level by exploring far faster than your core research scientists. Add new scientists with a focus and send them to the stars - when they get to level 3 or so, rotate them back to be a researcher, especially in their chosen skill

Okay so basically for both power projection and pirat supression the armament of your ships doesn't matter so you can spamm "empty" corvetts to increas you influence gain or to get a chep pirat supression fleet.

My secret stellaris skill is, press stuff i have no idea what they do and end up slave in 20 years.

So far I’ve lost two games. One because I crashed my economy, second time I opened the L-gate and me (and most of the other empires) were overwhelmed (“delved too deep”). I like how the game creates a story as you play.

I have a great tip: when chosing traditions, people try to complete a tree in order to obtain the ascension perks as soon as possible. But, I noticed that these ascension perks are not very useful at the beginning, so I am now chosing the best options of different trees without completing them. This is very important at the beginning. I usually start with some options of the expansion tree in order to be able to capture as many systems as possible, then I use some of the economy tree to improve the economy. Then, as year 30 approaches, I use some of the supremacy options to create a better fleet, and if I notice that I have some good neighbors to establish a good federation, I go for the federation, all this without completing any trees. This gives me a clear advantage during the first decades of the game.

The agressive army trick, hidden modifiers for tech appearance. Was news to me.

I love how he says several hundred hours like that is a lot these days...

I can't remember but I got a science leader to gain the Psyonic Theory trait from an anomaly. Wondering if it increases my roll for it

Thousands of hours here and I didn't know I could set army transports to aggressive.

to paraphrase Christopher Walken, "Needs more Catfish"

600 hours here and I actually knew all of them. But I'd like to add some more pro tips.

Planet automation! Stellaris only tells you that you can upgrade your capital but not outher buildings. If you set planet automation to only upgrade buildings you won't suffer from you forgeting to check.
Sectors. There was a time back at 2.something when sectors were complete utter shit and it made me not create them anymore. But now they are super strong. If you leave planet automation on on planets in not your main sector and dump some energy credits to your shared stockpile, the sectors will upgrade buildings using these credits instead of strategic resources and minerals. And also secotrs in general allow you to minmax economy even further by creating research only secotrs and giving them governors that boost the desired effect even further.

Going by Montus tests here tracking is a modifier for evasion. The tests have shown that even against 90% evasion corvettes the difference between small and large weapons isnt that big. Large slots have a much higher range doing damage much earlier while also able to fit much higher damage weapons like neutron launchers. All in all he concludes that you shouldnt bother with small weapons and especially later on go with the large variant. Corvettes are better dealt with by adding ships with strike craft capability into the mix.

Rogue servitor tip:
If you have hundreds of bio-trophies on an ecumenopolis, handling amenities is extremely hard. Just go compliance protocols (robot martial law) and use just a few soldiers to get stability to 100. It’s insanely pop efficient even with the debuffs.

Btw. Thx for the aggressive armies tip!

A thousand hours and didn't know the army trick

I'm not sure if you still have to do this manually, since I haven't played much of 3.5 yet:

After modifying a species or robot series, go to each planet which builds the old type.
Change what they're building to the new type.
Now you won't get any more of the old version built.
Nothing you can do about natural pop growth or immigration though.

I'm coming back after a year without playing and finding that so much has changed. Industrial districts, building slot mechanic on planets has changed, spy networks, and many other things. Been playing about six hours as Lokken Mechanist to learn new dynamics because they're a simplistic empire. Finding it's a lot more balanced and challenging. it's been interesting to see how this game has evolved through the updates these years. Getting better and better. Appreciate the video. Didn't want to have to watch basics again just for the new features.

i do not now why i do not make stellaris vids

Still beginner stuff.

Eh.. The population difference with treaties.. Some politics there in the developers, bit twisted in my opinion.
I have a problem with that outlook.

Instead of doing a 2nd project for pop modification, for Robots you can go to the pop assembly tab on each planet and select the desired unit to produce. This doesn’t require any engineering research or another special project and saves some time.

Tip for advanded ones: whenever you lose any battle and one of your fleets is forced to retreat to "warp" and it doesnt appear anywhere yet, it will later on (depending on a distance from system of battle to the home port system of the fleet) appear in fleet's home system.

However, if you had that fleet binded on any hotkey prior to the undesirable end of a battle, you may select it through a hotkey while the fleet is "travelling in warp" and immediately change a home port before it will spawn somewhere far away from a recent ballte location. It will make it appear earlier in any selected home system and may save your systems from being overtaken by an enemy. It helped me dosens of times especially when the great khan suddenly attacked.

ctrl-shift-click to queue tasks before the other tasks (e.g. science ship researching special project it just discovered before continuing its survey-journey). Huge quality-of-life improvement.

To keep planetary stability high, resource income high, and empire sprawl down do not build any empty districts or buildings.

When a planet is running out of available jobs then build the next set of jobs for that planet.

Didn't learn anything but cool, I'd like to see actual advanced tips like min-maxing stuff

What can I say?
open arms
Thanks! :D

These are not advanced tips. I'd say these are intermediate at best and some are extremely basic. For players who have less than 1000 hours.

And why do you need to prevent spoiling precursor events for advanced players who have completed each precursor event chain a dozen times. Come on. These are intermediate level tips.

An actual advanced tip on weapon size should break down the hit chance formula, conduct multiple test battles with different weapon sizes, graph the results, etc. I believe montu plays has plenty of videos like that for those you you who want actual advanced tips and guides.

ayo can someone explain this to me:
when youre looking at a planets habitability, and there's like multiple species in your empire, how do you know which species' habitability is shown on the planet screen? for example; i design an aquatic species with ocean preference (which means like 0% habitability or something close to it) on a desert planet, but when in game it could say something like 90% or even 100% habitability even when there are pops of that species on the planet.
wish it would say on the planet screen the habitability for every type of species in your empire.

You made one mistake. You purge the xeno filth. that how you manage other pops that clutter your planets.

Its good that they sponsor someone for this, because paradox games tend to be....rather Noob-hostile

i did not know the tech tree tricks and Auto-Assault thing but i knew the rest cause ill do different modded runs that focus on different areas of my empire so i end up having to learn tricks to win via where my mods are focused. i dont always win though

Dear Author, if you'd like to put something into to the table for advanced players, just do it together with Montu Plays. i have 4k hours and he still amazes me