Megacorporations in Stellaris offer a unique gameplay experience. If you ever wanted to play a soulless and profit-focused super empire, this is the way to do it. Owners of the Megacorp DLC can form these special empires, and they offer some unique gameplay mechanics.
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.
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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.
