Tips for Building a Successful Empire - Stellaris Guide - IGN (2024)

Once you have your feet on the ground, and understand the core concepts, what's next? Well, as your Empire expands, things will get increasingly complicated as you have to deal with rival alliances, huge sectors, attacks on multiple fronts, and unhappy populations. Below are some useful tips to help you build the strongest Empire possible, while dealing with these issues!

Remember to Constantly Upgrade Ships

Something that can easily be forgotten, is that you must constantly be upgrading your ships. When you unlock new technologies, they aren't automatically applied to your ships.

First, you must go into the Ship Designer and add the parts to the ship you want. You can do this manually, or hit the auto-complete button to have the game estimate what the best parts for that ship would be. Once you save this, any freshly built ships will have these upgrades, and your old ones can be upgraded by clicking the upgrade button, which is right next to the heal fleet button.

Remember, ship upgrades aren't just for the military ones. Your stations, science and construction ships, and even army transports can all be upgraded as well.

Avoid Multi-Empire Wars

One of the most troublesome and annoying things that can happen in Stellaris is a massive, multi-empire war. Being attacked on several fronts can spread your fleet of ships thing very quickly, and travel times between stars makes getting from one hotspot to another tricky.

For this reason, we suggest avoiding them all together. In the early to mid game, this can be done by maintaining a small army of ships, so people know not to mess with you. Keep your close neighbours happy and this will also discourage them from attacking you. If you need to make rivals for extra Influence, choose Empires that are very far away, so that they are less likely to go to war with you over it.

As the game goes on, this will be harder to avoid. If you find yourself in a position where the other Empires seem to be going after you a lot, we suggest you turn a couple Empires into your Vassals. This will make them your allies anytime a war begins, and ships will arrive to help you should you be attacked.

Late Game Invasions

As you get further in the game, the possibility of a late game invasion grow. These are special events that will pop up, and a new faction will appear in your galaxy. A common one is The Unbidden, a race of extraplanar beings who arrive via a tear in space, a result from overusing the Jump Drive technology.

These factions are very powerful, and will slowly take over the sections of the galaxy they appeared in. If they appear beside you, you're going to be in for a tough fight. The best thing to do is to avoid them if possible until you have a massive fleet. These late game invaders usually have 40-50K worth of fleet damage, so you'll need something similar before trying to deal with them.

Once they arrive, it's best to get your army ready, as a fight is fairly inevitable. Another wise move is to put up Military Space Stations around your border colonies. They won't stop their armies, but they will keep them preoccupied until your own fleet arrives. If you don't have any Vassals at this point in the game, it's a good plan to join an alliance. If you're attacked by them while in an alliance, your allies will come to your aid.

Energy Management

One of the toughest things to balance late game is the constant drain of Energy due to your massive Empire. Ships need it, buildings and stations, meaning late game, you're Energy demands will be very high. There are some ways to mitigate it though, so you aren't constantly in the negative.

For your fleet, you should pick one or two planets as a home base, and have a Crew Quarters built. This is a upgrade for your Spaceport that lowers Fleet Upkeep by 20%, so long as the fleet is in orbit. This is a huge bonus, and allows you to maintain a large fleet of ships without losing all your energy.

The next is surface building management. As you get further in the game, you will find there is less need for Food generating buildings. You can replace these with Energy to help boost your income. You should also be constantly monitoring your stations. Notice some that aren't useful anymore, or that don't need to be operational? Shut them down to save Energy.

Sectors

Creating a Sector is pretty simple, and you might forget that you have this valuable resource just sitting there as the game goes on. Although you can't directly control a sector, you can influence what they do by pressing F2 and going into the Planets section. Here you can give them one of 4 different focuses, change their allotment of resources they give you and how they build surface structures.

Early on, your smaller sectors should probably be left to their own devices, so they can continue to build and grow. However, if things take a downward turn, you can alter what they do to help you. You can turn them into Energy generators, pumping out vast amounts of Energy so you can build up a massive fleet without worry. On the flip side, you can tell them to build up huge fleets, although you can't directly control where they go. Although easily forgotten, managing Sectors properly can go a long way to easing the difficulty of the late game.

Overpopulation

Your technology research is directly influenced by your total population. The more people in your Empire, the longer technologies will take to learn. This can be very detrimental later on as some technologies take dozens, even hundreds of months to complete due to the size of your Empire.

As you expand and take over new plants, always keep an eye on your total population, and your research. Do you notice things taking a long time to complete? Maybe you've expanded too fast, too quickly and don't have the necessary Physics, Society and Engineering income to keep up. This can cripple you, as you suddenly find yourself being outclassed by all your allies, who might turn into enemies.

Always expand at a moderate, and sustainable rate. Take over just a few planets at a time, and make sure you supplement your various research branches with new buildings and ways to generate Physics, Society and Engineering.

Mix Up Your Fleet

Although it may seem like a great idea to have nothing but Battleships, it's extremely costly and won't actually provide the best possible fleet.

By default, Battleships will always try to remain further away from combat, where as Cruisers and Destroyers like to get right into the fight. For this reason, we suggest always having a Fleet made up of these three types. First, put heavy hitting, long range weapons on the Battleships. Missiles and other long range weapons are the best here. For the Cruisers and Destroyers, give them Lasers and other short range weapons, that fire very rapidly.

Defense wise, you will want to load up the Cruisers and Destroyers with a little more defense, since they will be taking the brunt of the damage. This might mean sacrificing a gun slot or two, but it's worth it, since it will keep your Battleships alive, which should be decked out with the maximum amount of damage they can handle.