There is a long list of problems that can occur in Stellaris. Some of these are threats that could end all life in the galaxy, while others are much closer to home. If your pops don’t like their lot in life, there is a good chance they could revolt.
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.
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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.
