Playing as a megacorp is different from playing as a standard empire in more ways than one. They have unique civics; they have access to special holdings, unique quests, and their own vassal types.

Recommended Read: What Is the Best Vassal Type in Stellaris?

In this guide, there will be ten tips to help you become a better Megacorp player. If you keep these tips in mind, they will lay the groundwork on your path to becoming a great Stellaris player.

The ten tips for becoming a better megacorp player in Stellaris are: build holdings, focus on trade value, unlock economy traditions, research is still king, never play a criminal megacorp in multiplayer, host the galactic market, rush megastructures, role play, use special civics, and don’t forget your military. 

Table of Contents

• 10 Tips for Playing a Megacorp in Stellaris

10 Tips for Playing a Megacorp in Stellaris

Way back in 2018, Paradox released the Megacorp DLC. Instead of playing standard empires, players could embrace their inner capitalist and form a cold, calculating megacorporation.

Playing as a megacorporation is a new experience, but not one that will change the game in any drastic ways. The best way to learn to play is by booting up Stellaris now and getting some practice in.

The second-best way is to check out the following 10 tips we prepared for novice Megacorp players: These tips, mixed with your practice time, will lead to mastery before you know it.

Build Branch Offices 

Establishing branch offices across the galaxy is crucial for expanding your influence and revenue streams.

Each holding represents a foothold in a different empire, providing access to resources, markets, and opportunities for economic growth.

In almost all cases, creating a branch office is beneficial to both parties. You can’t build a branch office anywhere you want, though, unless you are a criminal megacorp.

You must have a commercial pact or another formal relationship, such as federation partners.

Only one branch office can be created per planet. The planet owner will receive a new job for their pops to carry out, and the megacorp empire will receive a reward of resources and energy credits equal to half of the host planet’s trade value.

You can’t build offices in genocidal empires, hive-mind empires, robot empires, or other corporate empires.

Focus on Trade Value 

Trade is the lifeblood of a megacorporation. I have written multiple guides about how trade value works in Stellaris, and I encourage you to read up on them if you are serious about becoming a better Stellaris player.

I will cover it in brief now. Trade value is a numerical representation of the internal trade of your empire. What this means is how much profit your empire produces from the exchange of goods and services.

Now, by default, your trade value is exchanged one for one into energy credits. Meaning if you have 100 trade value, that is turned into 100 energy credits every month.

You can change what is produced with trade value by changing your empire’s trade policy.

You can boost your trade value by forming commercial pacts, protecting your trade routes from piracy, keeping stability high, unlocking new technologies, species traits, and planetary designations, and changing people’s living standards.

Unlock Traditions that Improve Your Economy First

Traditions are the upgrade paths that determine what is important to your empire.

There are meta-routes, and some traditions are always a must to include in any empire, but what is the most important thing to a company? Profit, of course.

There are two traditions, in particular, you should hold in high regard when you are playing as a megacorp. They are the mercantile tree and the prosperity tree.

Mercantile synergizes well with the previous tip of focusing on your empire’s trade value. This tree will give you flat trade value buffs, extra clerk jobs, more trade protection, a reduced market fee, and the ability to form special trade-focused federations.

Next is the prosperity tree, which is more production-oriented. This tree is very powerful for any empire and double so for corporate empires. You will get bonuses for housing, resource production, mining station output, and upkeep discounts, and you can build more districts.

Research is Still Your Best Friend

The most important resource for any empire isn’t energy; it isn’t alloys or even how strong your military is; it is your research output. This is no different for corporate empires either; huge profits are great, but if you can’t keep up with the technology race, the galaxy will eat you up.

The reason research is so important is that there is no problem the game has that isn’t solved with research in some way.

All the tactical savvy and economic power won’t mean anything if your enemies can just research ways to become better than you.

Lucky for corporate-based empires, they receive no penalties for research and can even use their stronger economies to bolster research further.

Most research comes from jobs, and this requires consumer goods for upkeep.

Producing and purchasing consumer goods is one of the megacorp empire’s many strengths. This means you will be able to run more research labs and, thus, produce even more research points.

Never Play a Criminal Megacorp in a Multiplayer Game

Criminal Megacorp comes from a special civic and is a lot of fun. They allow you to bypass the need for a formal relationship before you can build holdings on other empires’s planets.

These holdings produce crime and other negative effects on the host planet.

You may be thinking to yourself, I play PvP multiplayer. A criminal empire sounds like the perfect empire for that kind of game. I’m sorry, but criminal empires are the worst kind of grieving you can do in multiplayer.

Don’t even ask for permission before the game starts; just don’t do it.

Not only are you drawing a massive target on yourself, but your fellow players will be saddled with a disgraceful amount of micromanagement to contend with due to all your nefarious plots.

Please, never do this. Be kind to your fellow players and play anything else.

Become the Host of the Galactic Market

At a certain point in the game, the galactic market will be formed by the galactic community. It goes without saying that your empire wants in on this market, and even more, they should attempt to become the host.

Failing to become the host of the market is by no means the end of your run, but it makes dominating the galactic economy a little bit easier, for sure.

Also, the galactic market also means the opening of the slave market if your empire is not above that sort of thing.

To become the host of the galactic market, you will need to nominate one of your planets with a high trade value; the higher, the better.

You can use money and influence to increase the odds that the planet you nominated is picked.

After enough time has passed, the galactic market hub world is announced. If you are successful, your empire will pay 10% less market fees for every transaction carried out on the galactic market.

Over time, this discount can add up to some insane discounts.

Rush Your Megastructures

This advice is good for all empires, but again, some of the structures will help shore up the few weaknesses that megacorp empires have. Mainly, there is a lack of unity and military weaknesses.

This tip pairs with research being your best friend, which was discussed earlier.

You will need a strong research base to get your megastructures started, as a lot of them are rare technologies. The higher your research, the faster you will get these behemoths unlocked.

There are three structures that should be high on your acquisition list for the non-galactic wonder set. That is the mega-art installation, the strategic coordination center, and the mega-shipyard.

If you decide to go down the galactic wonders route, you will want ring worlds and lots of them too. The districts you can build on them provide you with vast amounts of secondary resources.

Role Play as Your Megacorp 

Megacorp empires can be played in almost the exact same way as a standard empire. But if you do it that way, you are stealing some potential enjoyment of the game from yourself. If you play as a megacorp, you may as well act like one.

Instead of focusing on being a military powerhouse or creating a space cult, try something new.

How about a business that collects slaves and sells them on the market? Or a corporation that uses its economic might to advance itself in the galactic community.

What you can do is only limited by your own imagination, and let that imagination run free.

There are loads of inspirations you can take from books, TV shows, or even other video games you could choose to emulate. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation springs to mind.

Corporate-based empires are strong and have held a pretty healthy place in the meta for a while. Play them for that reason if you wish, but it won’t be long until you tire of them. Spice up your next game and do some role-playing.

Use the Special Civics

Corporate empires are lucky; like hive minds and machine intelligence, they have their own unique civics to pick from. Now, a lot of the civics are versions of the standard civics with a different name, but some are unique.

Some of these civics can change the way you play the game in some interesting ways.

There is the permanent employment route, which fills your empire with zombie workers. Or even a space mafia with the criminal heritage civic; just don’t use it in multiplayer.

Take the time to read these civics and see if any of them jump out at you.

Try to ignore what you think sounds the strongest and take what sounds the most fun instead. And if playing the strongest civics is what sounds fun to you, take them.

Don’t Neglect Your Military

When running your multi-planet space conglomerate that is determined to put a fast food chain on every planet in the galaxy, it is easy to forget that Stellaris is a war game as well.

Before you know it, you have neglected your military, and your fleets will fall behind the power curve.

You might not notice it, but that neighbor who’s been making claims on your border territories will notice it, for sure. I can’t stress enough that you need to keep an eye on your military power.

Having large fleets isn’t the only part of this equation either. When it comes to research, you shouldn’t just unlock economic upgrades but new weapons and ships, too. Ensure your defenses are set, and you have strong allies out in the galaxy.

Not only is it sensible, but consider it a long-term investment against the late-game threats that are on the horizon. 

This is everything you could ever need to know about tips on playing a megacorp in Stellaris.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. As always, have fun playing as a megacorp in Stellaris.

Paradox Interactive even saw fit to devote an entire DLC to changing how vassals work with the Overlord DLC. As with all their major content releases, it was released with a substantial patch, so there is advice in this guide for non-overlord owners as well.

Recommended Read: How to Play Necrophage in Stellaris

This guide will cover what different types of vassals there are, what they bring to the table, their strengths, and their weaknesses. By the end of the guide, you will know what the best vassal type is in Stellaris.

From best to worst, the best vassal types in Stellaris are tributary/subsidiary, standard vassal, scholarium, satrapy, prospectorium, bulwark, and protectorate. Vassals are a nice commodity to have, but they are never a vital component of a powerful empire.

Table of Contents

• The Best Vassal Type in Stellaris
  • 1. Tributary/Subsidiary
  • 2. Standard Vassal
  • 3. Scholarium
  • 4. Satrapy
  • 5. Prospectorium
  • 6. Bulwark
  • 7. Protectorate

The Best Vassal Type in Stellaris

Vassals are a cool feature in Stellaris. It is a great way to farm end-of-game points; they widen your empire’s influence, and it feels good to bring troublesome empires to their knees. They also come with a laundry list of risks.

There is the constant threat of insurrection; they can end up costing you money, and managing them is yet another tedious task one must manage. Not only that but there is a long list of subsystems you have to be aware of to make the most of the vassals.

Your vassals create value in a lot of different ways; they may pay you resources, assist with research, help in wars, or, in the case of specialized vassals, provide unique empire-wide modifiers. This all depends on the type of vassal they are and the vassal contract itself.

While we won’t cover the intricacies of the vassal contract in this guide, you should be aware that this is a set of promises between the overlord and the subject that both parties must adhere to. These terms may be a symbiotic relationship, or one side may leach from the other.

This brings us to the vassal types, of which there are eight. For the most part, the difference in power level between the vassal types is very minor.

The exception is the final vassal type that we cover; that one is bad, and you should always avoid it.

Vassals also add great role-play opportunities for your empire.

If you run a military dictatorship, collecting multiple vassals will probably be high on your priority list; conversely, pacifist isolationist empires will tend to avoid vassals altogether.

The following headings list all the vassal types, from best to worst.

The ranking only takes into account power levels and doesn’t consider the type of empire you may be playing. The order is also very subjective due to the minor differences in power level.

1. Tributary/Subsidiary

The first and foremost choices for vassals are the tributary and subsidiary vassal types. They are two different types of vassals, but they are exactly the same in terms of gameplay.

The difference is that tributaries are for standard empires, and subsidiaries are for megacorps.

These are available to almost every empire, and you do not need to own any DLC to make use of them. What makes them so great is the profits you can make with them and how easy they are to manage.

Almost no terms are off-limits when it comes to tributaries and subsidiaries. For all intents and purposes, they are the same as standard vassals, with one major difference: they can and will pay you tribute, and never the other way around.

There are no terms that can get forced upon you that involve you paying the vassal. That is everything we could ever want right there. They are not here to fight with you, and they will have to look out for themselves.

Having a great relationship with a tributary is like having a passive income; the money comes in with little to no effort, and everyone is happy. You will need to help them in defensive wars, but that is a small price to pay.

2. Standard Vassal

If you are looking for a more bespoke experience when it comes to managing vassals, look no further than the standard vassal type. Once again, this type is available to all empires, and you do not need to own any DLC either.

Often, you take on these empires as a slow and steady process of taking over all of their territory by integrating them. It takes time but is a lot cheaper and less hassle than waging an all-out war on them. Plus, your empire may not approve of that kind of aggression.

When it comes to modifying the vassal contract, you are free to do whatever you want here. You can force them into your wars, limit their diplomatic power, integrate them, or even do something nice.

Of course, if you keep bullying your subjects, they will grow to resent their lot in life over time. You will have to keep a close eye on them for signs of mutiny. Sometimes these vassals can cost you resources as well; be sure to check the vassal contract often.

If you use the contract properly, you can make cheap copies of every other type of vassal in the game. While the bonuses you get will never match the vassal type you are copying, you do get to choose the drawbacks instead of the game forcing them on you.

3. Scholarium

Never far from the top is the option that revolves around research. The scholarium is the first vassal type that is one of the specialized editions and does need the Overlord DLC installed to use.

As a specialized vassal, both the overlord and the subject receive some rather unique bonuses that exist outside the vassal contract system.

The overlord will gain bonuses for research speed and can build special holdings on the vassal planets.

What makes a scholarium the greatest of the specialized empire types is that you may not have to pay any form of tithe to them, and they will always be paying you free research, no matter what. So helping them develop into a research powerhouse is best for everybody.

As always, research is king in Stellaris, and this vassal type can net you some pretty outrageous research output if you set it upright.

You will, of course, have to protect your vassal, but you will want to do that anyway to ensure their scientific advances do not wane.

The problem is that as your vassal increases in level, so do the penalties they receive towards military power. This makes your task of defending them a harder one, as before long, they will not be able to defend themselves, making them easy targets for your enemies.

4. Satrapy

The hardest kind of vassal to acquire is satrapy because the galaxy needs to be in a very specific state before it is even an option. First, the great Khan mid-game crisis has to happen in your galaxy.

You must defeat the Khan in fleet combat and kill them. Then, the Khan needs to channel their inner Palpatine and somehow return.

After defeating them in ship combat a second time, there is a chance that you may receive the Khan’s throne relic as a reward.

This relic allows you to create satrapy vassals, which are offense-focused vassals. Great for conquering, but won’t come to your aid if aliens are bombing your home world. This is the best role-play vassal, but it also comes with a few good power benefits.

Satrapies will never expect a tithe from you and can provide you with tribute if you choose to go down that path. Also, 30% of their naval capacity goes to their overlord. This enables the overlord to create even more doom stacks to combat the late-game threats Stellaris will throw at you.

Satrapy vassals are immune to integration, but other than that, you are quite free to control them as you see fit. For those who have always wanted to make themselves the Khan, this is the route you want to take.

5. Prospectorium

Continuing the trend of specialized empire types having dumb names is the prospectorium vassal type. These vassals are all about producing gargantuan amounts of resources and sharing that wealth with their overlord.

Of course, this vast wealth does come with a cost. As a specialized subject, they can never get integrated by their overlord, and the overlord will have to provide research aid to the prosectorium.

Apart from that, you can do what you like with these vassals. You are never expected to protect them, nor are they expected to come to your aid either.

Although you are getting a good income from them, it would make sense for you to offer those services to your subject to guarantee their loyalty.

As the overlord of a prospectorium vassal, you also get some unique bonuses. Both mining stations and planetary buildings become cheaper and faster to build. This is an advanced version of the tributary in a way.

The reason this is weaker than a tributary is the very steep research costs one of these vassals can cost you at later levels.

You should always be prioritizing research until very late in the game, and a prospectorium is a deadweight to your research potential.

Once you have researched supertechnologies such as megastructures, the value of this vassal increases, but before then, you may want to think twice about this type of subject.

6. Bulwark

The final of the good vassal types is also the last specialized type of empire, and that is bulwark. This subject focuses on bolstering the defenses of both parties and can become very expensive.

Bulwarks are always expected to support you in some form of warfare, and you assisting them is always a choice. You also receive boons for starbase upgrade costs and upgrade speed.

A much more useful bonus is the crime reduction and stability boosts to planets within your shared relay network.

While bulwarks are not a bad choice for vassal types, they are certain to be one of the weaker choices. You will always be paying them some sort of resource, and at later levels, the amount they expect can get pretty ridiculous.

Their worst feature, by far, is that they are a little bit boring.

Their bonuses encourage them to set up hard-to-breach defense points, which, while not being the most effective strategy, is also a bit dull. You want to be taking the fight to the enemy, not waiting for them to fall on your axe.

I should also mention that you will need to have the Overlord DLC enabled to try out this vassal type.

7. Protectorate

The first and only bad vassal type is the protectorate vassal. This is only for vassals that are so weak in comparison to yourself that you have taken pity on them and declared them under your protection.

Now, I know I said this is a “bad” vassal type, and I do mean that if we only look at it through the lens of pure game power. But if we shift our focus a bit, protectorate could be the greatest vassal type.

You may be playing a game of Stellaris, and you are role-playing an empire of peaceful spiritualists. Well, then taking on protectorates could be the most important thing to your empire as you seek to defend them.

If playing this way is fun for you, then congratulations because that is what the game is all about. But getting back to a numbers perspective, protectorates stink and are seldom anything but a financial burden for your empire.

You will be paying them resources and research, and you have to protect them in wars.

Lucky for us, they are so weak that making the decision to integrate them into your own empire is allowed, and they won’t be able to do much to stop you either. 

This is everything you need to know about the best vassal types in Stellaris.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. As always, have fun creating the most powerful vassals you can in Stellaris.

A unique and interesting way to play the game is by playing as a necrophage. This is a special origin in the game that makes your species a parasitic entity that takes over pops for control.

Recommended Read: What Is the Best Species in Stellaris?

Playing as a necrophage is a little bit different from playing any other type of empire that exists in the game, and this guide will help make sense of all the new mechanics players need to know to be successful as a necrophage empire.

To play as a necrophage in Stellaris, you create a ruler species and a host species during empire creation. Then, during gameplay, you will need to obtain different pops, which can be hosts for your necrophage species.

Table of Contents

• How to Play As a Necrophage in Stellaris
  • Creating a Necrophage
  • Playing As a Necrophage in Stellaris

How to Play As a Necrophage in Stellaris

Necrophages are not all science fiction gobbledygook, as they do, in fact, exist in our own world.

A necrophage is any organism that gets food from dead biomass; vultures, maggots, and other insects are all examples of necrophages.

In Stellaris, the necrophage origin makes your species a parasite that takes control over the host and acts as a vessel for furthering the species. Again, this exists in our own world; the Cordyceps fungus made famous in The Last of Us games, does this to insects.

If you struggle to imagine what a necrophage species may be, there are some amazing examples in fiction you can use to spark your imagination.

The Brain Slugs from Futurama, the Goa’uld from Stargate, and even Venom from Spider-Man are all good examples of a necrophage.

Playing as a necrophage is a game of two halves. There is the creation phase and the gameplay phase.

Creating a Necrophage

The first and most important part of playing as a necrophage is selecting the necrophage origin. Without this, your empire will never be one.

After selecting this, you will notice a new trait in your main species called necrophage.

This trait provides:

• 50% reduction in pop upkeep
• Leaders will live a whopping 80 more years
• 5% increased production in specialist and leader jobs
• 10% reduction in worker job output
• 50% reduction in pop assembly speed
• 75% reduction in pop growth speed

Options will now become available for you to design a host species, called a prepatent species, in the game.

These exist to one day become hosts for your ruler species, carry out the worker jobs, are your ground soldiers, and make up for your necrophages weaknesses.

This mechanic is very similar to the Servilles origin, in which you have a symbiotic relationship with a weaker species that also originated in your home world.

Example Build of a Necrophage Empire

Here is a powerful build you can try out if you are struggling to think of your own.

For starters, you should choose to be a lithoid. This gives you the lithoid trait, which synergizes so well with the necrophage trait to the point where I would consider it a broken combo.

An extra 50 years of life and 50% habitability will carry your leaders and regular pops to new heights.

When it comes to ethics, government, and civics, you can take pretty much whatever you like. I recommend a militarist and spiritualist empire with imperial authority.

For civics, take distinguished admiralty and reanimators to add to that necroid feel. What is important about this build are the species traits.

This build lives and dies by some clever usage of negative traits that will have literally no impact on you. For your main species, take slow learners and fleeting.

Your species is so long-lived due to the lithoid and necrophage traits that these will not hinder you in any way.

For positive traits, take intelligent because why would you ever not? Then traditional, for extra unity, and nomadic. Nomadic will help reduce the cost of moving your ruling pops to newly conquered worlds.

For your prepatent species, they can be any biological species you like. You have three negative traits: slow learners, fleeting, and jinxed. These traits all affect leaders, which this species will never be, so they are all free points.

The positive traits are rapid breeders and very strong. This allows you to speed up their production, and you get bonuses for their output on their worker jobs.

Feel free to edit this build as you see fit to accommodate your own play style.

Playing As a Necrophage in Stellaris

For the most part, playing as a necrophage is not all that different from playing as any other empire. You are still trying to create a flourishing space empire and defend yourself from the threats the galaxy has in store.

Where necrophage is different is that you have one master species, which presides over all the other species in your empire.

The game enables you to do this with some special buildings, actions, and a few perks that come with the necrophage origin.

By default, habitable worlds will spawn close to your home world. This allows you to get a good start on creating a multi-planet empire.

If you have the necrophage origin, these inhabitable worlds are instead populated with pre-FTL civilizations, primitive aliens, if you will. 

What are these aliens great for? Well, they would make perfect hosts for your necrophages to use to grow their population. They should make easy prey for your empire. You can abduct the pops or invade.

How do You Make More Necrophage Pops

One of the most important buildings that only necrophage empires have access to is the chamber of elevation. This special building will have your prepatent species working as necrophytes.

The necrophyte job produces unity and amenities, which is very nice on its own. What also happens is that every ten years, there is an uplifting ritual that takes place. This ritual converts the necrophyte pop into one of your necrophage pops.

Due to all the substantial negative modifiers, you get to pop growth as a necrophage, this is the best way to create more of the ruling class.

You can build these on multiple planets, allowing you to produce more necrophages on any world you take over.

If your empire uses slavery, these pops also make amazing hosts for your empire. Making the slave market a very valuable commodity for necrophages.

This is everything you need to know about how to play as a necrophage in Stellaris. As you can see, the game does not change all that much. The new mechanics can be a bit obtuse to get your head around at first, as the game does not explain them very well.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. As always, have fun playing as a necrophage in Stellaris.

The beauty of Stellaris is that not only can you meet these strange alien races, but you can play as them, too.

Recommended Read: Best Galaxy Shapes in Stellaris

With so many different possibilities of alien races to choose from, a lot of new players wonder: what is the best species to use in Stellaris?

This guide will cover every race in the game, their strengths and weaknesses, which DLCs you need to play as them, their unique gameplay mechanics, and, of course, which ones are the best.

The best species to use in Stellaris, starting from the best, are standard biological empire, robotic empire, lithoid, hive mind, aquatic, plantoid, toxoid, and necroid.

Table of Contents

• What Is the Best Species in Stellaris?

What Is the Best Species in Stellaris?

A lot of things in Stellaris come down to personal preference. Due to the expansive nature of species in Stellaris, a lot of players tend to pick their favorite and then stick with it.

Your species choice is so much more than a cosmetic choice as well. Your type of race will determine what your pops eat, how other empires treat you, the civics you can select, and so much more besides that.

Something you should be aware of as well is that certain races will lock you out of certain game mechanics altogether. This can sometimes make the game easier or sometimes even harder.

Deciding which of these races is the best is no easy feat. The criteria used are how easy they are to play, their unique mechanics are fun, the strength potential of the species, and how impactful their weaknesses are.

We didn’t take into account any unique story elements or quest lines that by owning certain DLC packs. Remember, this list is an opinion; if your favorite race is low on this list, tell us why you love it in the comments section.

1. Standard Biological Species

Call this a cop-out, if you will, but without a shadow of a doubt, the best empire you can play is a plain old vanilla biological empire.

This means creating a normal empire, using whichever species portrait you like, and making use of no special civics or traits.

What is great about these types of empires is the sheer variety you can create. You want to make a race of rat-like pirates who plunder the galaxy? Go nuts. Or maybe a race of science-obsessed bird people? Go right ahead.

If you want to recreate your favorite factions from popular science fiction media, a standard empire is, more often than not, the route you will take. The only limit you have here is your imagination.

Not only that, but most options for a standard empire are not locked behind any pay walls or DLCs. On the other hand, there is a humanoid species pack you can get if you want to expand your choices.

A standard empire is likely to be most people’s first species, too. Almost all gameplay mechanics are available to biological races, too.

Making a great place for newer players to learn the ropes before moving on to the more complicated options available to them.

2. Robotic Species

If you own the Synthetic Dawn DLC, you will be able to create your own robotic race to play as.

If you are a Stellaris fan, you are more than likely a big sci-fi nerd, so the notion of playing as a robotic empire should fill you with nothing but joy.

The good news is that Stellaris doesn’t disappoint in this department either.

Robots have their own unique portraits, civics, traits, and gameplay mechanics. The game will change a lot when you are the head of a robotic star empire as well.

Your pops no longer need food, the faction system is now removed, they have their own tradition trees, you have 100% habitability on every planet, and you have unique ascension paths, too.

There are some downsides to be aware of as well. Other empires will be naturally wary of you; after all, something built you, and where have they gone?

Your pops will consume much more energy in lieu of food. And spiritualist empires often believe that your existence is an insult to them.

Don’t let these negatives deter you, as robotic empires have some unique gameplay mechanics that no other empire can do.

Want to imprison biological pops and force them to live lives of luxury in trophy cabinets? Exterminate all biological life. Or even assimilate them all Borg style? You can do just that.

A lot of players never return from the robotic empire rabbit hole, as it is such a blast to play. Give it a try; there’s a reason Synthetic Dawn is one of the best-selling Stellaris DLCs.

3. Lithoid Race

A super cool choice for an empire’s species is a lithoid race. Now, lithoids are living rocks, and in the background lore of Stellaris, they are silicone-based life instead of carbon-based life like ourselves.

Regardless of whether rock-based life is even possible, you have to admit that it does sound pretty cool. Being a rock makes the game very different for players, and a lot of them make the game very beginner-friendly.

Lithoid pops are less picky about where they live and have a much higher habitability score when populating planets; leaders live longer; instead of food, lithoids eat minerals, and their armies are much stronger.

The cost of this is that your pops grow a lot slower as a lithoid, and your empire will need to produce more minerals to manage your pops upkeep costs. Oh, and the biggest cost is, of course, that all of these features require you to purchase the Lithoids DLC.

Lithoids are an easy species to manage and a great transition for new players who struggle to reach the later stages of the game.

The greatest feature of the Lithoids DLC is that they have their own flavor of genocidal empire called Terravore. As a terravore, your species gets the option to consume planets, eating them and rendering them useless.

4. Hive Mind Empire

This species really does push the boundaries of science in Stellaris. A hive mind is where every living being in an empire shares one mind through some form of telepathic link. That can be difficult to imagine, but you may have seen examples in popular media.

Unity from the Rick and Morty series, the Tyranids from Warhammer 40K, and the Arachnids from Starship Troopers are all examples of hive minds you may have seen.

More often than not, they are the villains in works of fiction, but that isn’t always the case in Stellaris.

You need to own the Utopia DLC to play as a hive mind. These empires have their own unique civics but share species traits with standard biological empires.

They are a great way for new players to learn the ropes, as your empire is free of those pesky ethics, pop happiness, and factions always demanding you send your empire down a particular path.

Other empires will be scared of you, and can you blame them? It would be very unsettling to speak to a group of individuals and have them all speak as one. You can also choose to be the scary hive mind if you wish.

If you select the devouring swarm civic, your hive mind will only view life in the galaxy as prey and will consume it on site. The best way to play a genocidal empire, if you ask me.

5. Aquatic Species

Alien races that live in water are a hallmark of the science fiction genre. You have the Gungans from Star Wars, the Zora from Zelda, or even Mermaids from our own ancient mythology.

Owners of the aquatic DLC get to create a very hyperfocused biological race. This race will receive amazing benefits from living on ocean worlds, but they will suck on worlds without vast oceans for them to live on.

Staying away from desert planets would be the best advice.

Aquatic aliens have access to some unique civics, ascension perks, and special advanced tech to make being a fish alien even better.

You can even outfit your colossus ships with weaponry that will flood entire planets while destroying the current population.

If you are willing to take the time to terraform worlds, take the right upgrades, and live only on ocean planets, your pops have the potential to become some of the most powerful you can create in Stellaris.

It won’t be easy to do, and you will have to embrace the aquatic lifestyle first.

Every science fiction and fantasy setting needs a token aquatic race to make the place seem more diverse. Well, now you can play as them and make the greatest space fish empire there ever was.

6. Plantoid/Fungoid Empire

If the notion of playing as a sentient plant or fungus takes your fancy, then perhaps you should consider buying the Plantoids DLC.

While plantoids species portraits are available in vanilla Stellaris, extra portraits and gameplay mechanics will require you to buy the Plantoids DLC.

This DLC unlocks four special botanical traits that, at empire creation, are only available to aliens with a plantoid or fungoid portrait.

There is the phototrophic trait, which halves food consumption for energy consumption instead. Essentially, making your plant people require photosynthesis to survive.

The radiotrophic trait allows your plants to gain energy from radiation, such as from tomb worlds. The budding trait increases your pop’s growth speed. Last is the invasive species trait, which provides a stacking bonus to habitability and pop growth depending on how many negative traits your pops have.

This is a very low-impact species to play with; it isn’t uncommon to even forget that you are playing as a species that needs energy for upkeep, as the change in moment-to-moment gameplay is pretty much zero.

This is a pack for those who like to create weird and wonderful alien races and role-play as them while they are spreading out across the stars.

7. Toxoid Species

A unique race that Stellaris has to offer you is the toxoid variant.

These are aliens that have grown up on poisoned worlds and have been mutated by the poisons to the point where they require a toxic environment to survive. This makes them very hardy, and they also possess a strong constitution.

A lot of toxoid races have elected to make use of the toxic sludge they call home and use it to advance their own species. In gameplay, this manifests as overtuned traits.

The super traits provide staggering bonuses to your pops at the cost of their lifespan.

To unlock the toxoid species, you will need to own the Toxoids DLC, and this is a very niche DLC as this race is not for everyone. But you don’t buy this DLC for the species; you buy it for all the story content that comes with it.

But the amazing story content does not make the species any more fun to play, hence why it is so far down on this list. Players seeking a high-risk, high-reward gameplay style should pick up the Toxoid DLC at their earliest convenience.

On the other hand, players who don’t like taking risks and instead prefer to know what mess they could be getting themselves into should avoid this DLC.

8. Necroid Race

Last and very least are the necroid species. Before going on, I should say that if you wish to play as a necroid, you need to buy the Necroids DLC. But I really advise that you do not, as it is not very good and very expensive for the content it provides.

The only saving grace of this DLC is the necrophage origin, which allows you to play the game like a brain slug from Futurama. This is an interesting way to play the game, and it is pretty much the biological equivalent of the driven assimilators civic that machine empires have access to.

Other than the necrophage origin, there isn’t very much else to speak about. Two civics that are low on power level but high in flavor. Some new portraits, a ship set, names for species, and other cosmetic features.

And that is it, really. There is nothing special about playing as a necroid species unless you take necrophage origin. If you are a completionist and must own all the DLCs, go right ahead and buy this.

If not, either avoid this one altogether or wait for a good deal on one of the sales. Necroid is a cosmetic race and not much more.

This is everything you need to know about which species is the best in Stellaris.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. As always, have fun playing as the best race in Stellaris.

One of the easiest changes you can implement into your next game is changing the type of map you play in the game. The variety of maps available to players has grown a lot since the game was first released.

Recommended Read: Best Defense Platform Builds in Stellaris

This guide will cover all the different map shapes, the tactical implications of each map, and a couple of tips for each map.

No DLC is required for any of these maps, so even base-game enthusiasts can extract some good value out of this guide.

The best galaxy shapes in Stellaris, in our opinion, from worst to best, are ring, elliptical, spoked, cartwheel, starburst, barred spiral, and spiral. However, you should use the one that you prefer to play and that gives you the best gameplay experience.

Table of Contents

• The Best Galaxy Shape in Stellaris

The Best Galaxy Shape in Stellaris

Whether you enjoy a map type in Stellaris or don’t is about as subjective an opinion as you can get. Some players may not care what map they play on, while others will fight tooth and nail to defend the honor of their preferred map type.

That is why we can’t tell you which map is the best in Stellaris and can only provide you with our own opinion on it. Whatever map you choose, the core gameplay of Stellaris will not change a bit.

Your job will still be to spread across the galaxy, meet aliens, and try to create the greatest star empire you can. Specific galaxy shapes will affect some micro-level tactical decisions, such as where you set up your choke points.

The next headings will provide some information about every map type. The order they are in is our own preference from “worst” to “best”.

None of the galaxy maps are a bad choice, and they are all great fun to play on, but if there must be an order, this is it.

Ring Galaxy Shape

First up on the list is the Ring Galaxy, which lives up to its name rather well. Most galaxies in Stellaris connect to a center point of mass; this is not the case here.

There is a gap between this mass and the hyperlane network that connects the stars.

This means if you want to get from one side of the galaxy to the other, your fleets must traverse the ring to reach the other side. This can make reacting to threats difficult, thus increasing the value of faster-than-light travel methods.

Problems can arise when neighbors begin shutting their borders to you; this has the potential to block your empire from the rest of the galaxy, resulting in a boring game for the player.

You can, of course, elect to bully your way out of that situation if your empire isn’t above a little violence.

There is no minimum galaxy size for this galaxy. Players who seek a much slower pace in their games should consider using a ring galaxy for their next play-through.

Elliptical Galaxy Shape

A much better name for this galaxy would have been spaghetti junction. In this galaxy, a mass of hyperlanes orbits the center with little to no gaps in the circle pattern itself.

Little pockets of stars spawn in clusters, often with multiple points of entry.

From a tactical sense, defending your empire’s borders in an elliptical galaxy is a logistical nightmare. Your enemies will be able to take their pick of attack routes on you, and you must be ever vigilant of potential threats.

Of course, that means these easy attack lanes are ripe for the picking for your own empire as well. Those who enjoy rapid attacks from multiple angles will be in heaven in an elliptical galaxy. Made even better by the fact that traversing the galaxy is a breeze.

There is no minimum galaxy size for elliptical galaxy shapes, and it shines more when used as either a tiny or huge empire size.

A tiny galaxy will provide a breakneck speed match, while a huge galaxy will provide a difficult tactical challenge for you to cut your teeth on.

Spoked Galaxy Shape

One of the stranger galaxy shapes we have access to in Stellaris is the spoked galaxy shape. Here, spokes of stars spread out from the galaxy center, like spokes on a wagon wheel.

There is no wheel on the outside of these spokes, thus forming tight avenues that empires must contend with.

Getting from spoke to spoke will often mean a trip to the center of the galaxy first, although sometimes a few hyperlanes may connect some spokes further out from the center.

It goes without saying that launching attacks at the farthest reaches of the spokes can be dangerous.

A great countermeasure to the spokes is the use of jump drive technology. This technology will allow your ships to hop the spokes without the need to travel along the hyperlane network.

Researching this technology early can be a great boon to your empire despite its dangerous nature.

Defending your empire in a spoked galaxy is a piece of cake if you get your positioning correct. If you spawn on the edge of one of the spokes, the defense of your empire is about as easy as it gets.

To play in one of these galaxies, your galaxy size will need to be set to medium as a minimum. 

Cartwheel Galaxy Shape

I would forgive you if you looked at a cartwheel galaxy and a spiral galaxy and failed to see the difference between the two. The differences are subtle, but they do render them very distinct from each other.

Like a spiral, a cartwheel creates a circle pattern around the galaxy center. Where it differs is that the arms of the cartwheel are not separate from one another, making a complete circle pattern all around the galaxy.

This speeds up the pace of the game much in the same way an elliptical-shaped empire would. The clusters of star systems often spawn very close together, making the galaxy a tight contest for territory and resources.

There is no connection through the center of the galaxy either, making long trips a lot more dangerous for your empire.

The minimum galaxy size for this shape is medium.

Starburst Galaxy Shape

This galaxy shape is about as unique as it comes. For all intents and purposes, it is like a spiral galaxy, but with some of the spirals missing. The results are a galaxy of two halves.

One half of the galaxy tends to be dense and packed to the brim with systems and hyperlane networks. This half is where the majority of the action in the galaxy will take place.

The other half is far more sparse and less populated than the rest of the galaxy. There tends to be one route in and out of this section, making it easy to defend, but resources tend to be few and far between.

If you are on the farthest reaches of the starburst, you better hope you get along with your neighbors; otherwise, they can close their border off to you, neutering your expansion potential.

It will be tough to overcome this obstacle without access to jump drives or a gateway system.

The minimum galaxy size for a starburst galaxy is medium.

Barred Spiral Galaxy Shape

The barred spiral galaxy shape highlights how poor the names for the galaxy shapes are in Stellaris. If someone asked you to draw a barred spiral, would you know what shape that is? I know I wouldn’t.

The easiest way to describe it is as an “S” shape that is on its side. Think of it like a two-arm spiral galaxy, but rather than thin spirals spreading out from the center, the arms are much thicker.

As mentioned in the previous section, this galaxy also creates a galaxy of two halves. This time, the halves are equal.

Don’t be surprised if you see two factions originating from each spiral, and you can bet all your empire’s energy credits that they won’t like each other.

Getting around each half of the spiral tends to be an easy affair, as each spiral is jam-packed with star clusters and hyperlanes. Logistical difficulties tend to arise from transitions from one spiral to another.

Empires that call these transition routes home have a difficult choice to make. Do they try to play both sides and remain neutral to either spiral? Or do they pick a side to support and become the first line of defense against any would-be invasion?

There is no size restriction for a barred spiral galaxy.

Spiral Galaxy Shape

Last but not least is the big daddy of galaxy shapes, and the most customizable is the spiral galaxy. Fun fact: our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a two-arm spiral galaxy.

Spiral galaxies have arms that originate from the center of the galaxy and expand out in a spiral pattern. The player gets to choose the number of arms at the beginning of the game, and this will dictate the minimum galaxy size.

Spiral galaxies tend to be the most well-balanced of all the galaxy shapes. The spirals often have hyperlanes connecting them throughout various pints of their arms. This negates the strength of funnels and choke points.

Seldom are players blocked from other parts of the galaxy, as there are often multiple routes to reach a particular destination.

Sensible space empire rulers often find a particular cluster of stars and attempt to claim them all. Once all entry points to that cluster are under control, defenses are set accordingly to make it difficult for the enemy to get in. 

A two-arm spiral has no size restrictions. A three-arm spiral must be at least small. A four-arm spiral has a minimum size of medium. And a six-arm spiral must be large.

This is everything you need to know about the best galaxy shape in Stellaris.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. As always, have fun deciding which galaxy shape is best for you in Stellaris.

Your fleets cannot be everywhere at once, and the enemy won’t make things easy for you either.

Recommended Read: How to Stop a Revolt in Stellaris

So, if your fleets can’t defend your starbases, you are going to need to use defense platforms. This leads to the question: what is the best defense platform builds in Stellaris?

This guide will explain how defense platforms work in the game, go through some great builds for you to try, and give some general tips and tricks for your defense platforms.

The best defense platform builds in Stellaris are the aniti-corvette build, the anti-missile build, the missile build, and the all-rounder build.

Table of Contents

• How Defense Platforms Work
• The Best Defense Platform Builds in Stellaris
  • Anti-Corvette Defense Platform Build
  • Missile Defense Platform Build
  • Anti-missile Defense Platform Build
  • All-Rounder Defense Platform Build

How Defense Platforms Work

Defense platforms are a contentious topic within the Stellaris community. Some people think they are great, while others say they are a total waste of alloys. Whatever your opinion is, there are a few things you should know about defense platforms first.

Platforms are exactly what they sound like – a construction that orbits a starbase equipped with weaponry to fight enemy ships.

You can customize them in the ship designer menu like any regular ship, and for all intents and purposes, they are a static ship in the game.

The number of platforms that you can build on a starbase depends on the base level plus any modifiers acquired through gameplay.

In terms of designing a platform, the game allows a lot of flexibility. Each platform has two sections, and you can equip them with either light, medium, heavy, point-defense, missiles, or hanger sections.

This allows you to tailor your defense systems to counter your enemies if you wish or spam your favorite weapon systems as you see fit.

There will be more on-ship design soon, but first, you should know about the strengths and weaknesses of defense platforms.

The Strengths of Defense Platforms

Some players love defense platforms and believe them to be a vital component of an effective empire.

The reasons for that love are as follows:

• An amazing deterrent in the early game. Defense platforms are an easy way to boost your military score. Having this score high can deter the AI from declaring war on you. Genocidal empires and advanced start-up empires will be more powerful than you at the start of the game. If you don’t want them breaking into your borders and stealing your lunch money, defense platforms are a great tool for that.
• Corvettes are Starbase’s worst nightmare. Due to their size differences, corvettes can easily avoid the basic weaponry equipped on starbases. This means a small fleet of corvettes can take on a starbase with a much higher power level. If you outfit your starbase defense platforms with anti-corvette weaponry, you can make this problem disappear. You can make your enemies regret a hit-and-run-style corvette spam attack.
• They buy you time. If you have an enemy within your borders and your fleets are on the other side of the galaxy, you have big problems. Starbases with the maximum number of defense platforms are never going to be a match for most mid-game fleets. What you need now is time, and if you use some of the stronger defense platform builds, they can give you just that.
• Splitting enemy focus. A platform is at its strongest when supported by your fleets. Running a joint defense in this way will split the enemy fire between your valuable ships and your expendable platforms. The shots that don’t hit your ships will allow them to close width and engage the enemy on their terms.

The Weaknesses of Defense Platforms

No mechanic is perfect in Stellaris, and defense platforms are no different.

The people who don’t like defense platforms will often make the following arguments:

• Starbases are no match for most fleets. There is no build, configuration, or modifier you can apply to starbases that will ever make them a match for late-game fleets. That is a cold, hard fact, too; most starbases last seconds against late-game fleets. This begs the question: why waste time and resources on defense platforms for them to get wiped out in seconds?
• Destroyed platforms contribute to the war score. This point ties in with the previous one: every defense platform you lose counts towards your enemy’s war score, just like destroyed ships do. This means that if your enemy walks into your system and wipes your starbases off the map before they could even fire a payload, you are handing the enemy free points toward winning the war.
• They can be expensive. Depending on the modules and weapons you equip on these platforms, their cost can get quite high. Don’t forget, like everything else you build in Stellaris, it also has an energy upkeep cost you must manage. If you spent the same amount of resources on ships, you would gain much more value from those alloys that way.
• If your borders expand, they lose their value. Creating defense systems at choke points is the hallmark of a great defensive strategy. Entry systems often have upgraded defense starbases to deter would-be invaders. If you expand past these defensive systems, you are now paying huge costs for nothing. Sure, you can deconstruct them, but with everything else you have to manage, are you going to remember to do that?

The Best Defense Platform Builds in Stellaris

Now that you know the strengths and weaknesses of the platforms, you can make your own decision on whether they are right for your empire or not.

If you do decide they are for you, this next section has all the builds you should need.

Like all problems in Stellaris, there is no definitive one-size-fits-all solution. Which is a good thing, because otherwise the game would be boring.

You will need to specialize your defense platforms so that they can complete a specific job.

The builds here will be an anti-corvette build, a missile build, an anti-missile build, and an all-rounder build.

Anti-Corvette Defense Platform Build

Corvettes are famous for their speed and evasion potential. This makes them the bane of starbases everywhere. If you want any hope of your starbase taking on a fleet of corvettes, you will need defense platforms.

This build will feature weaponry with high tracking to counter the corvettes speed. For that, the two modules we should install are one small section and one hangar section.

The small section should have all four slots filled with the highest-level version of the autocannon you have access to. These weapons have some of the best tracking in the game and will give your starbase a fighting chance.

Now, a viable option could be to add a second light section with more autocannons. But a much better option is adding a strike craft section.

Strike crafts have a 100% tracking score and can tear corvettes to shreds in large numbers.

As for defenses, prioritize armor over shields and use the fire control module for your auxiliary slot. The extra chance to hit will go a long way with corvettes.

It is great for anti-piracy attacks on your outpost stations that are not covered by your piracy suppression network. They are best in large numbers and are relatively cheap for defense platforms, at least.

Missile Defense Platform Build

If you have enough of these, and they have enough time to fire one or two salvos at the enemy, it can be a devastating blow to your opponent.

They are easy to design, and they are the ones I would recommend if you are defending a choke point with a support fleet in orbit, too.

The build, of course, features two missile sections and nothing else.

For every weapon slot, fill it with neutron launchers or proton if you haven’t unlocked neutron yet. These mid- to long-range missiles are very accurate and hit like a truck.

It is up to your supporting fleets to keep your enemies’ long-range weaponry away from the platforms so they have time to fire their barrages.

This can decimate enemy battleships, allowing your other platforms and ships to clean up the stragglers that remain.

For defense, only use armor and no shields to keep costs down. For auxiliary components, you want to use the fire control module again. The benefits won’t be amazing, but no other module is very useful to this build.

Using platforms this way is a very high-risk but high-reward strategy. Without a supporting fleet, this build is all but useless against stronger opponents.

If they fail to get their bursts off, these expensive platforms are a big waste of resources.

Anti-missile Defense Platform Build

On its own, this build looks very weak. It does very little damage to enemy ships, and if your enemy isn’t running missiles, they are more than useless.

On the other end, if you are facing an enemy that uses missiles a lot, the value of this build opens up. Their true power comes from working in conjunction with the anti-corvette build discussed earlier in the guide.

The AI and human players alike love to use missiles on corvettes. Corvettes swoop into fringe systems, mince up the defenses, and leave before any defensive forces have a chance to muster a counterattack.

Picture this, if you will: your starbase is beset by a fleet of corvettes. Your anti-corvette auto cannons begin to deplete their numbers, but their speed allows them to close width and fire the missiles at your defense platforms.

Then the anti-missile batteries open up, destroying the missiles before they can cause any harm. This neuters your opponent’s alpha strike, allowing you to focus elsewhere for defense.

Install two-point defense modules on these platforms. Add three-point defense weapons to each and one flak battery in the extra slot. Armor is only for defense and, of course, fire control modules.

All-Rounder Defense Platform Build

Sometimes, you are desperate and don’t know what you are up against, or you just need a quick, cheap, and effective solution to your defense problems. This is where the all-rounder build comes into play.

This will never win any awards for damage or anything like that, but it will do a solid job of defending against average threats in the earlier stages of the game.

Let’s get defenses out of the way first. You want a perfect mix of shields and armor for this build; three of each will do nicely. An auxiliary fire control module will go a long way in this build, too.

There are two versions of this build, and they achieve the same results. When building platforms of this type, you want an even split of both builds. One is called the kinetic variant, and the other is the laser variant.

Both feature a large module and a medium module. For the kinetic version, add a mass driver weapon to the large slot and your best lasers to the medium slots.

In the laser variant, you add a laser to the large slot and mass drivers to the medium slots. If you build ten all-rounders, you should have five of each type.

Splitting it this way allows for a healthy mix of shield and armor damage to your enemies. If you notice that your enemy prefers a certain type of defense, you can focus on one variant over the other.

Lasers for armor and mass drivers for shields.

This is everything you need to know about what the best defense platform builds are in Stellaris.

If you have any suggestions or questions about this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. As always, have fun defending your starbases in Stellaris.

A revolt is when a group of planets decides they don’t need your empire anymore and decides to go at it alone. This could result in you losing some key defensive positions and economic clout. You need to learn how to stop revolts if they become a possibility.

Recommended Read: How to Manage Planets in Stellaris

This guide will teach you what a revolt is, how revolts begin, steps you can take to prevent the revolt, and some other handy tips along the way.

To stop a revolt in Stellaris, you want to increase the stability of the planet as much as you can, station armies on the planet, improve the starbase in orbit of the revolting planet, increase the stability of planets in the same system, provide employment, and make your slaves happier.

Table of Contents

• How to Stop a Revolt in Stellaris

How to Stop a Revolt in Stellaris

If you don’t care about your people in Stellaris, they are not going to roll over and accept that. There is always the looming threat of the people uprising and annexing themselves from your empire.

Don’t think you are exempt if you have slaves either. Treat your slaves badly enough, and they, too, will bite the mandible that feeds them.

You are probably wondering what happens if your people revolt, and it is worse than you think.

If the situation becomes so bad on a planet, the threat of revolt can spread to your other colonies, and if you continue to do nothing, these insurrectionists will rise up and form their own empire.

Let’s say you have four planets at risk of revolt; if they do decide to do so, you will lose all of those planets because they form their own empire.

This means all the pops, buildings, districts, and upgrades you spent there are no longer yours anymore.

There is no situation where this is a good thing; not only have you lost your planets, but now you have a neighbor with pre-established infrastructure who hates your guts.

Of course, you can go to war with them and take your territory back, but this is time and effort that could be better used on other matters.

Prevention is always better than the cure, so how do we stop revolts? First, you should understand how the darn things work.

How Do Revolts Work in Stellaris

Your pops won’t start revolting unless they have a reason to. If they have a high happiness score, the planet is stable, and you aren’t purging pops, the people won’t have any reason to set out on their own.

A revolt can’t trigger unless a colony has at least ten pops on the planet. Second is that the planet’s stability score has been below 25 for at least a year.

If your empire has slaves and your pops have a low happiness score, the event chain is a slave revolt instead.

You will know when a threat of revolt is incoming, as an in-game pop-up will let you know exactly where the threat is. The game will offer you some choices to take to help prevent the revolt, or you can choose to do nothing.

There is an invisible stat that begins to accrue, and collecting enough of this stat will advance it to the next stage. Stages two and three make it harder to reduce this stat, and if stage four is reached, the revolt will trigger.

Things that contribute to the revolt are:

• Having low stability
• Having unemployed pops
• Having a population over 60
• If you are assimilating any pops on the planet
• Purging pops
• If other empires choose to support the revolt
• If other planets in the system also have low stability
• If any other colony has the Spreading Turbulence modifier

There are some direct things you can do to decrease the revolt stats in the next section. It is worth mentioning that reducing the number of things that increase this stat also contributes to stopping a revolt in its tracks.

Get your pops some jobs, and maybe stop neutering them for a while. You can always come back to it later if you have your heart set on neutering them.

Steps You Can Take to Prevent a Revolt in Stellaris

No matter how hard you try, at some point in your Stellaris career, the threat of revolt will show its ugly little head. It doesn’t make you a bad player or anything; the game has so many moving parts, and you are human.

Lucky for you, there is a large list of steps you can take to prevent the revolt from advancing any further:

• Increase your planet’s stability to over 40. The higher you can get the stability stat, the better this reward pays off. Not only that, but your population performs better at their jobs when you have high stability. Ensure there is housing for all of your pops; they have jobs, and your planet has plenty of amenities. Keep those three stats in order, and your stability issue will fix itself.
• Increasing your garrison strength. This is how many defensive armies you have on the planet. Think of it like the national guard and how they have a domestic peacekeeping role. As long as you have at least 200 garrison strength, you will start to get this bonus. Building strongholds and getting more soldiers is the key to increasing your garrison.
• Upgrading your starbase. An easy one to take advantage of here is that if you upgrade the orbiting starbase into a citadel, it will help prevent revolts. If you also make your starbase a bastion, it will provide an equal bonus to the citadel upgrade. A bastion is any starbase that only has weapon modules equipped.
• The last step is to ensure all other planets in the same system also have high stability. This only applies if there are planets, of course, but it is still important to know. You will want the other planets above 40, as well as the planet where the revolt is taking place. This is a sensible move all around because production will improve on the planet, the revolt is less likely to spread, and you reduce the strength of the current revolt.

If All Else Fails, Try Violence

If you can’t prevent the revolt from happening, there is one more tool you have up your sleeve. That is, to quash their insignificant little revolt like the good space dictator you were born to be.

When the revolt triggers, you get a choice: do nothing or go to war with the new empire. If you think you can take them, chances are you probably can.

Declare that war, make claims on all their planets, and make them regret ever standing up to you.

This may not always be viable, depending on the galactic situation. If you have the end-game crisis kicking in your back doors, it would be foolish to divert fleets to a minor insurrection on the other side of your empire.

This may take more than one war to achieve, depending on the strength of the new empire, but Stellaris is a long game, and good things come to those who wait.

This is everything you need to know about how to stop a revolt in Stellaris.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. As always, have fun preventing those planetary revolts in Stellaris.

There are so many different mechanisms to manage in Stellaris; some are minor, such as picking traditions or enacting edicts. Other mechanics are larger in scope, like ship design or planetary management.

Recommended Read: How to Close Borders in Stellaris

Planets are what your economy will live and die by in Stellaris, and taking the time to learn all you can about this will serve you well. Don’t expect to be an expert right away; that will come with time and experience.

To manage a planet effectively in Stellaris, you must ensure the population is happy, manage crime, enact planetary decisions, construct buildings, designate districts, and plan its future progress.

Table of Contents

• Planetary Management Guide for Stellaris
  • Characteristics of a Planet
  • Pop Happiness
  • Planet Stability
  • Planetary Buildings and Districts
  • Crime and Deviancy
  • Planetary Decisions

Planetary Management Guide for Stellaris

Managing planets and supporting their development is one of the most complex and engaging game mechanics that Stellaris has to offer. So much so that you could make an in-depth guide for most of the small parts that make up the planetary management sphere.

The focus of this guide is to provide a brief introduction to the most important aspects of managing a planet.

Before getting into those mechanics, we should first explain why this system is so important to producing a great empire.

Planets are celestial bodies found in almost every system in Stellaris. Some of these are fit for colonization by space faring empires to expand their production potential, influence, and population.

Planets are where pops live, allowing them to work jobs that improve the economy of your empire.

Each planet has a finite amount of space and output potential. Therefore, the more planets you can manage well, the more powerful your empire could become.

Characteristics of a Planet

Every planet that is colonizable will have a few characteristics that are important. First is the size of the planet; the larger a planet, the more districts you will be able to build.

Next up is the habitability score. The game displays it as a percentage and also color-codes it for us. There are three climate types: dry, wet, or frozen. Each of these climates is then split into three climate types.

Arid, desert, or savanna for dry planets. Ocean, continental, or tropical for wet worlds. And alpine, arctic, or tundra for frozen worlds.

The homeworld you selected at the beginning of the game will belong to one of these categories.

The more planets’ climate matches a pop’s home world, the higher the habitability score will be. Obviously, aliens that live on a desert planet will not fare well on a snow-covered, frozen world.

As a result, a low score results in various happiness, production, and upkeep costs for your pops.

There’s a lot more to know about planetary characteristics, such as planetary features, modifiers, and blockers. For this whistle-stop tour, size and climate are all you need to know when learning the ropes of planetary management.

Pop Happiness

Assuming you already know how to colonize a world, the next step is ensuring the pops you have living there are happy. Every pop on a planet has a happiness score, which is again expressed as a percentage.

It goes without saying that a high happiness rating is good, and a low rating is bad. A high rating reduces the risk of rebellion, crime, increases governing ethics attraction, and increases the approval rating.

What determines happiness depends on a lot of factors. Whether your pops have housing, if they are slaves, living standards, habitability score, active edicts, faction approval rating, planetary modifiers, and so much more.

Having negative or positive happiness can trigger gameplay events such as revolts or inspired scientists.

While low happiness is never the end of the world, steps should sometimes be taken to repair low morale on your worlds if possible.

Planet Stability

This stat is at the top of the main page of the planet menu. Represented by a set of scales and, you guessed it, expressed as a percentage. The base score is 50%, which represents a planet doing fine.

Lower scores are a sign of political upheaval, government corruption, civil unrest, and a lack of cohesion among the planet’s populace.

Higher scores represent the planet turning into more of a utopian society, a free haven, if you will.

For every one percent you go above the base of 50, the planet receives bonuses to resource production, trade value, and immigration pull. Points below 50 imply much stronger penalties for those same stats.

Low stability can even lead to planetary unrest events, and if below 25%, it can lead to a full-blown planetary revolt.

Stability depends on pop housing availability, amenities, crime, and pop happiness. If you notice your stability declining on a planet, improve those stats, and it will soon climb back up.

Planetary Buildings and Districts

These are what produce the jobs for your pops to carry out. Without a doubt, the most important factor when managing planets is the buildings and districts you put on them.

Districts are macro-level structures; these are large areas filled with various buildings. They represent large hubs of trade and commerce. You could imagine them as specialized areas in our own world.

For instance, the Strip in Las Vegas would be a trade district. The famous rice terraces in East Asia are great examples of food districts.

Any city you can think of with large, sprawling suburbs could be a housing district in Stellaris.

Buildings are, more specifically, single structures. Think of these as single specialist buildings supported by work going on in your districts.

Some good examples in our own world would be things like the Hadron collider, which improves our science research. Or perhaps the Parken Stadium in Denmark, which provides entertainers and amenities for the local population.

You can build a number of districts equal to the planet’s size, plus or minus any modifiers you may have. These can come from traditions, technology, or other sources.

When it comes to building, you have 12 building slots that unlock as your population increases. Extra building slots are rarer, but you can obtain them through events, special projects, or planetary modifiers.

Crime and Deviancy

For all intents and purposes, crime and deviancy are the same thing. Crime is a stat standard empires accrue, while hive-mind empires produce deviancy. Machine intelligence pops will never produce crime or deviancy.

Pops will turn to crime for a host of reasons. They may be unhappy with their living situation, planetary events may force them into a life of crime, or a criminal syndicate empire may be promoting that lifestyle.

Crime starts at a rating of zero and, when accrued, cascades into many negative effects for your planet. Having high crime rates forces your pops to work criminal jobs, which reduces your planet’s trade value and pulls them away from other, more important jobs.

Crime can be fought by using the planetary decision system or by having your pops work as enforcers or hunter-seeker drones. 

Producing criminal jobs isn’t the only negative consequence of not dealing with crime. It can also lead to devastation on the planet, lower stability, further trade value penalties, and less resource production.

Removing crime from planets is a long-term project, and in most cases, it is not an easy fix.

Planetary Decisions

To focus your planet more or to rectify issues that have appeared, you can enact planetary decisions. Nations on our planet do things like this all the time, such as distributing government aid or protecting endangered species.

Similar decisions exist in the game, but for the most part, planetary decisions come with a cost and provide some form of benefit.

This can range from a tiny level, like making a deal with crime lords, to huge-scale decisions that turn the planet into a worldwide prison.

There are so many planetary decisions that creating a list would be pointless. The Stellaris Wiki is the best place to go for a full list of the well over 200 potential decisions there are.

There is so much that goes into effectively running a planet, and it would never be practical to cover it all in one guide. There are tons of guides available on Gamer Empire to help answer any further questions you may have, as well as the Stellaris Wiki too.

This is everything you need to know about the most important aspects of planetary management in Stellaris.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. As always, have fun managing planets in Stellaris.

If you don’t want other space empires to enter your space, you can close your borders to them and prevent access. This guide will teach you all the different ways to close your borders in Stellaris.

Recommended Read: Stellaris – Best Starting Setups

While closing borders is a quick and easy process, there are limitations to who you can and can’t block from entering your space.

You can close borders in Stellaris either via the diplomacy screen, by setting a closed border policy, or by declaring someone a rival.

Table of Contents

• How to Close Borders in Stellaris
  • Closing Borders Through the Diplomacy Screen
  • Declaring a Rival to Close Borders
  • Setting Your Border Policy to Closed

How to Close Borders in Stellaris

Allowing other space-faring nations into your borders is not always the wisest of moves. They can scout out your defenses, find where you are vulnerable, and, worst of all, they may notice that you were planning to attack them first.

In competitive multiplayer games, forgetting to close borders with your fellow players can be a fatal mistake.

There are other reasons to close borders: you could be role-playing as a xenophobic empire, or you may not like the look of the aliens living next door to your systems.

Whatever your reasons, you will want to know each of the three methods you can use to close borders to other empires.

Closing Borders Through the Diplomacy Screen

The easiest way to close borders is by using the diplomacy screen. It only takes a few clicks, and the application of closed status is instant.

To do this, open the diplomacy interface with the empire you wish to block from entering your borders.

You can open the diplomacy menu by clicking on their flag or by finding them on the contacts menu (the shortcut is F10 by default).

One of the options on the diplomacy interface will read “Close borders.” Click that option, hit confirm, and as easy as that, your borders are now closed.

Any of their ships in your space will disappear from your territory, and they won’t be able to get back in.

There are a few restrictions on who you can close your borders to that you should be aware of. If you are already rivals with the target empire, you cannot close your borders to them; more on this later in the guide.

If you are in the same federation, you cannot close borders with them. There is no way to change this, not even via federation law or galactic community resolution. Overlords and vassals cannot block access to each other either.

Finally, you cannot close borders with someone you have a truce with. Truces are always called after wars conclude. This is to give each side time to retreat their forces before borders are likely to close again.

Closing borders this way will reduce relations by 20 points and come with a trust cap of 50.

Declaring a Rival to Close Borders

Another option you have for closing borders is declaring another empire your rival. Doing this will more than likely ruin your relationship for a very long time, but you didn’t get along anyway.

If you are declaring someone a rival, the reason is seldom to have closed borders with them. The closed borders are a happy consequence of declaring someone your rival.

The rules around rivalry are quite simple; they are what the game calls unilateral agreements. This is a fancy way of saying that the other party has no say in whether the agreement happens or not.

To declare a rival, you must first have terrible relations with the empire in question. You can get this by fighting wars with them, sending insults, making claims on their territory, and, in general, being a big meanie to them.

Declaring a rival grants you an extra 0.5 influence per month, closes borders with them, lowers opinion by 100, grants the animosity casus belli, and reduces claims on their systems by 20%.

Declaring a rival is done through the diplomacy screen.

Setting Your Border Policy to Closed

The third way of closing borders to other empires is by changing the initial border status on the policies menu.

Policies is a submenu on the government page (F2 by default). Open that, then click the policies and edicts tab at the bottom.

This will open two menus at once, with policies on the left and edicts on the right. If you do not know much about the policies menu, you should change that posthaste. This menu allows you to change your empire’s laws, economic policies, stances on slavery, and a lot more.

The policy that matters for this guide is the initial border status policy. There are only two options for this policy: open or closed.

An important note: this policy dictates the border policies of any new empire you meet. What that means is that if you have already met an empire, changing this policy will not change the current border status.

After setting it to closed, any new empire you meet while exploring space will be blocked from entering your borders by default.

You will still have to close borders via diplomacy to empires you met before setting the closed policy (explained earlier in the guide).

If you change the border status, there is a ten-year cool down before the policy can be changed again.

Your border status does not affect the other methods of closing borders explained earlier in the guide. You can still open and close borders at will by using the diplomacy menu.

This is everything you need to know about how to close borders in Stellaris.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. As always, have fun keeping those pesky aliens out of your borders in Stellaris.

A build will determine your empire’s power level, how you interact with other empires, what technology is available to them, and a lot more besides that. A question a lot of new players have is: what are the best starting set-ups in Stellaris?

Recommended Read: Best Federation Types in Stellaris

This guide will cover a few different builds you can try out for yourself in your future games of Stellaris. They each focus on a theme, and while none of them would be considered meta, that does not make them any less interesting to play.

The best starting builds in Stellaris are ones that are easy to play and enable players to play the theme of empire they desire. This guide will cover a pacifist build, a genocidal build, a military powerhouse build, a machine empire build, and a build for becoming the emperor.

Table of Contents

• The Best Starting Setups in Stellaris
  • Genocidal Build
  • Pacifist Build
  • Machine Empire Build
  • Become the Galactic Emperor Build
  • Military Powerhouse Build
• Creating Your Favorite Sci-fi Faction in Stellaris

The Best Starting Setups in Stellaris

Before we get into the setups, it is important to distinguish what a build comprises. There are a lot of decisions to make during empire creation, but only a handful of them have any direct impact on gameplay.

When you create a new empire to play as you select a species, you name it, choose a home world type, determine your empire’s ethics, select an authority, choose an origin, design a flag, nominate your ship’s appearance, select an advisor voice, and pick a ruler.

Some of these are nothing choices. When creating a build, we only care about species type, species traits, government authority, ethics, civics, and origin.

Sometimes, the type of ruler is important, but we are dabbling in min-max or role-play territory there.

If you know nothing about builds or how the system works, do not worry. There is a full guide here on Gamer Empire that walks you through the process of creating an empire from scratch.

It teaches you a great beginner build and has tonnes of handy tips for getting the most out of it. Start there and come back here after.

Genocidal Build

Playing as a genocidal empire is not for everyone, but everyone should try it once. For those who don’t know, a genocidal empire cares about only one thing: destroying all life in the galaxy.

This disables any diplomacy you can have with other empires, bar declaring war on them.

There are three flavors of genocidal empires: robotic exterminators, biological life eaters, and religious fanatics. Fanatical purifiers are the route we will take, as this one impacts the game the least.

Beginning at origin, I advise the clone army origin. This has a cool story to follow and makes your people designed for war. You’ll be doing a lot of war, so it will help.

Species traits will be jinxed, intelligent, and enduring. Jinxed is a new trait that is about as free as negative traits get.

Intelligent is the best trait in the game. You want to tech-rush this empire, and this is a great way to set it off on the right foot. As you will only have one species, you will always get this bonus.

Enduring exists only to counteract the clone soldier’s short life span. You get that trait from your origin.

Authority will be democratic to enable us to take the meritocracy civic. The second civic is the backbone of this build and is the fanatic purifiers civic; without this, your empire will not be a genocidal one.

To enable fanatic purifiers civic, you need to be a fanatic xenophobe and have either militarist or spiritualist civic as your other choice. Either is fine, but I recommend the militarist ethic.

The build has strong military might and research potential. Your enemies will rue the day they crossed paths with you.

Pacifist Build

On the complete other side of the spectrum is the pacifist empire. War isn’t the only path in Stellaris, and this build seeks to enable that play style.

Beginning at ethics this time, you want to be a fanatic pacifist and a spiritualist. Think of this empire as a group of space-faring monks.

For civics, you want agrarian idylls and mining guilds. Both of these will help your economy grow at a healthy rate. Expansion is slow with a pacifist empire, and this will offset that.

The origin will be syncretic evolution. This will give you a second species in your empire; they won’t be as smart as your primary species but will be useful in menial jobs.

Your primary species should adopt the traits of traditional and natural sociologists. Your syncretic species should be jinxed and slow learners; they can’t become leaders, so these are free trait points.

For positive traits, they should be rapid breeders and strong. These will synergize with the servile trait they must possess.

As for authority, it is a free choice. I would recommend Imperial, as this will further increase the resources from job bonuses you get from your previous trait picks. If you don’t want to take Imperial, feel free to pick something else.

This build relies on a slow and steady expansion policy. Make the most of what you have at your disposal, make allies with your neighbors, and overcome galactic threats together.

Forming a federation and developing a strong economy will empower this a lot. If you seek a nice change of pace from constant space battles, this is a great build to try.

Machine Empire Build

This build will need the Synthetic Dawn DLC to play. This DLC allows you to play as robots and is one of the best ones that you can buy for Stellaris.

You need to select a species portrait from the machine section during empire creation. If you don’t, you can’t select the machine intelligence authority and thus cannot play as a robotic empire.

Moving on from that, selecting an origin is easy. The best origin for machines is resource consolidation. This turns your home system into a machine world.

Machine worlds stack tonnes of bonuses for robotic pops, making it an easy choice.

The traits for your robots involve two negative picks and two positive picks. Starting at the negative, you should use repurposed hardware and high bandwidth. As you unlock more build points, you can remove these traits if you wish.

For positive traits, you should use superconductive and logic engines. Machine empires live and die by their energy output and research production. Having these traits will make the game easier for you.

The last part of the build is the civics. Rapid replicators are a great choice here to grow your population quickly. Next is introspective, which pairs very well with the logic engines trait we picked earlier in the build.

Playing machines is different from a standard empire. Other space nations will be wary of you, more so for spiritualist empires. Making allies is difficult, but who said you had to be friends with everyone?

Spread out fast with this empire; use your 100% habitability on all planets to expand faster than your neighbors. If they try to mess with you, put them in their place.

Become the Galactic Emperor Build

If you’ve played a few games of Stellaris now and maybe even won a game, it may be time to set a challenge for yourself.

One common challenge is embracing your inner Palpatine and forming a galactic empire. This is a long-term goal and not an easy one to achieve, which is why designing a build around completing that goal is vital.

By far the most important aspect of this build is picking the correct origin. If you have designs on becoming the galactic emperor, there is no better origin than the hegemon one. This will make you head of a hegemony federation at the beginning of the game.

Being president of a hegemony will eventually allow you to force other nations into your federation, whether they like it or not. Of course, you will have to fight them first.

If you can get a good chunk of the galaxy into your hegemony, your diplomatic weight will become so vast that the rest of the galaxy won’t be able to stop you from declaring yourself emperor.

I dare you to try and take over the galaxy this way without saying to yourself, “I am the senate.” It is not possible.

Civics will focus on increasing your military and economic power. For that, we take distinguished admiralty and masterful crafters.

Ethics will be authoritarian, xenophile, and militarist. You can replace authoritarian with fanatic xenophile if you think you need the extra envoys to level up your federation faster.

For traits, we are keeping it simple and only taking the thrifty trait. This will synergize with our xenophile ethic and create a lot of energy credits for your empire.

Take any authority you want; it doesn’t matter in this build. Imperial is a good role-play choice.

Military Powerhouse Build

Just because your empire loves war doesn’t mean they want to destroy all life in the galaxy. A true military powerhouse build will never be as strong as a genocidal build, but that shouldn’t stop you.

Ethics is a bit of an obvious choice; you want fanatic militarist. The second choice will be materialist. The research bonuses will help us unlock stronger weapons faster and enable us to take a very strong civic.

Government authority is a tough one, but I think the best choice for this build is dictatorial.

Stronger leaders are starting to become better in Stellaris, and strong military leaders can make or break close battles. More so at higher difficulties, which this build aims to be viable in.

For species traits, take unruly as your negative trait. For positive traits, you want to be adaptive and industrious. This enables faster growth, and you want a lot of minerals so you can create a strong military fast.

Civics are distinguished admiralty for the combat boons and technocracy for the research boons. More firepower from one and the other unlocks better firepower faster.

Keep it simple with origin and go with the vanilla choice of prosperous unification. You can experiment with others if you like. Clone army could be a good choice as well, or the here be dragons one as well.

Don’t let anyone push you around when you run this build. If your neighbor has something you want, go and take it from them.

Focus on military powers when it comes to selecting research projects, and enjoy being the schoolyard bully.

Creating Your Favorite Sci-fi Faction in Stellaris

Stellaris’s empire creation is so diverse and open that you can create almost any kind of faction you want. One of the most fun things you can do is recreate some of your favorite factions from popular media.

The Federation, the Jedi, the Imperium of Man, the Geth, and anything else you can think of can become playable races for you to use.

When creating one of these factions, you should start with ethics and build around whatever you decide. The most important point is that you are never going to be able to create a perfect copy of the faction without modding the game.

Once you have your ethics selected, move on to civics and government authority. Where it gets a bit harder is selecting your species traits.

Species traits can be a bit vague in a lot of cases. I mean, which species from science fiction would produce extra unity or have less ethics attraction?

When it comes to species traits, I would recommend choosing traits that complement any previous choices you made. The exception, of course, is when some traits make the most sense.

If you were making the Ogryn from Warhammer 40,000, you are, of course, taking the very strong and slow learners traits.

For some players, this build craft is their favorite part of the game. Go try it out and see what you think.

This is everything you need to know about the best starting setups for Stellaris.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. As always, have fun playing with the best builds in Stellaris.