Short answer: yes.
The number of empires left has no influence on when or what kind of crisis happens. The victory screen has even leas influence on gameplay. The only thing that changes is that you can't get the same screen twice.

That being said, it could be decades before the crisis fires and if you truly rule the galaxy none of them will be any real challenge. Unless you are trying to get an achivement I would recomend against waiting for it.

 

I just got this game from the humble monthly. I've enjoyed CK2 a fair bit, so I expect I'll enjoy this. How's the learning curve comparatively? I found the paradox game set in Colonial times TOO complicated comparatively.

 

IMO Stellaris is loads easier to get into than CK2, partially because it's more empire focused and less Dynasty/Character focused.

As a sidenote, I just got an Anomaly on an ocean planet called 'Echoes in the Deep', the planet now has an 'Ancient One' modifier on it.

tl;dr: I think I found Cthulu.

 

Like Wildfeather , I bought Stellaris in the monthly deal, and loved it. I'm currently 80 hours in, and bought the DLC at about 50.

I just ragequit what had been my best game so far.

The Djomar Ascendancy (pacifist, spiritualist, authoritarian) were going well. Under the guiding light of Inquisitor Flora Lite, we'd banded together to escape our earthly cradle. She'd pushed for the research into psionics, and it was her who held the kingdom together, bribing neighbours until they liked us. Under her guidace, we'd surveyed the entire galaxy, delved deep into the shroud, and were closing in on the end of the tech tree. And it was at her direction that we managed to maintain a happy populace, even in their shackles (the mind control lasers had nothing to do with it, neither did sticking any pops who followed unhappy factions into work camps. It was all just happy accidents)

We'd fought off the Etherdragon, the Dimensional Horror, and the forgotten Battlestation. We'd captured the abandoned megaship, and found proof of a higher power in the form of the Orb of Eternity.

We'd colonized our tenth planet, and our twentieth habitat. And, finally, all Djomari had their promised reward - we maintained a toehold on the ground on our new capital of Flora's Memorial, but had otherwise ascended to the stars - the long work in the mines and fields had paid off, and the entire species was now living leisurely in orbit, leaving the old caste system behind. Our uplifted client races (gene-modded to specialise, of course) would work the planets for us, in return for our gracious cast offs, and the results of our scientific achievements. We had achieved our dream, and the only problem was our guiding light had left us.

Every empire bar one (and the Fallen) were Inferior. We had a gargantuan fleet, capacity, and science advantage.

And then it went wrong.

Our galactic neighbours offered us entry into their federation. They were, for the most part, peaceful. Given that two other of our neighbours were Fallen Empires, and the third a militant xenophobe (apparently our equal, overall), we accepted.

At which point the fucking shit-for-brains mushrooms leading it decided to declare war on the Fallen Empire.

We manage to avoid most of the damage, popping in and out, losing a few ships, but picking up interesting curios from the debris.

Eventually, we managed a white peace.

And then the unbidden appeared. On the border between us and the other Fallen Empire. Who managed to mostly hold them at bay, even if they suffered heavy casualties. And then... The fallen fell further. Wiped out completely, their ringworlds left empty.

The Unbidden turned their sights to the Djomar, and so we truly marched to war. For six months, we held them back, taking heavy losses, but picking their fleets apart, bit by bit.

And then the mushrooms got back into power, and declared war on the xenophobic militantants to my other side.

Because that's a fucking perfect plan.

They warped in across the entire Ascendancy, and wiped out our clients. First the mining Birbs. Then the Electric Reptilians... And then the farmer Elves.

And then they came for us.

Caught between the endless fleets of the Unbidden, and the unscathed ships of the lions and their Holy Tribunal (or something), we bled out.



Lessons learned:
Never trust a mushroom.

Don't end slavery (seriously, some of my pops were happier as chattel than free - they joined the freedom parties, which had a happiness of about 4%, as opposed to the base of 20 for slaves...)

Don't build mining stations everywhere. I did for my first few games, but always ended up falling behind on everything, then getting warred. Instead, I only went for +3 or higher. I had a much more balanced economy.

Naked Corvettes are OP. I lost most of my (100K) fleet, but had about 10K in Corvettes left, with about 90% evasion. They lasted about a month or two in direct combat against a 250K Unbidden deathstack. I'd seen online it was supposed to be good, but hadn't imagined it being quite so powerful.

Specialising planets and pops works wonders, although you need to go biological to get the most benefit (so you can remove positive traits). Otherwise you either have the spare points, or not best equipped.

Learning curve is really weird - I was getting stomped in multiple games, until this one. I didn't play perfectly, but still managed to maintain a lead for most of the game. But I've been doing a load of wikiwalking and reddit browsing for this, so ymmv.

 

Wildfeather

The key difference, I think, is that fewer of the things that materially affect you are completely outside your control. Stellaris' learning curve is considerably smoother than Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis' (a lot smoother than EU especially, since the curve there is more of a cliff).

 

Hm I'm not really sure how the 'timing' works in this game. The game just started recommending I make sectors, because I was 5/5 on colonized planets (and had just terraformed a 6th). So I guess I'm I'm the mid game?

My first mistake this game was being a pacifist. I cannot get weapons techs to spawn for me so despite the fact that I have really fast research and a full Navy I have like... 800 military power in my Navy. I guess it's okay though, because of the other 3 neighbors that are anywhere near relevant, one is a warmonger that has never went to war, and the other two I have defensive pacts with.

I'm working on making a federation for us, which makes sense given the landscape. I guess I'm in the 'mid game' and I just ran out of stuff to do on a macro level. I can micro my worlds and stuff to maximize their productivity, but otherwise there's no events or quest chains to do. I'm going to put my second science ship onto auto explore since I can't find any systems I haven't surveyed yet that are anywhere near my territory, except the ones filled with hostile until with 4x my military power.

I could reform my government to not be pacifist but that was the 'plan' behind the run and I'm loathe to disrupt the plan just to war monger. Unlike in ck2, there doesn't seem to be a clear advantage to conquering stuff.

 

So, first thing, you can have more than 5 planets at a time. It's not actually a planet limit but a System limit. If you manage to find a system with more than one colonizable planet in it, they only count as one system.

You can also get:
+2 system limit (SL) from finishing the Expansion tradition tree
+2/4 SL from being Pacifist/Fanatic Pacifist.
+2 from the Efficient Bureaucracy Civic
+5 from an Ascension perk
And you get a number of repeatable techs that give +1 Core System limit ea.


Weapon techs aren't tied to ethos. 800 military power is very early game fleet power. (Mid game is generally about 20-30k FP, and endgame can be well over 200k~ FP)

Always upgrade your spaceports on your worlds to get more Fleet Capacity btw.

There's always a benefit in Stellaris to conquering things. Specifically, you can reform your government into Fanatic Xenophobe and Militarist/Spiritualist and go purge the filthy Xeno's.

(No but seriously, conquering other empires gives you more planets, increases your borders, etc. The bigger you are the more fleet/minerals/etc. you can get.)

 

I can't seem to build spaceports on my planets. It says I need some kind of starter module or something.

 

Yeah, the way it works is (As an example) if you start with Kinetic type weapons, when building a spaceport you have to select one of the 3 types of weapons for that spaceport.

In this example, since you started with Kinetic you probably have to select kinetic weapons.

Eventually you can unlock Red Laser, and Nuclear missiles to unlock the ability to build spaceports that use those instead.
(Never use missiles- point defence is far too effective against them currently, Kinetic is generally best for Spaceport's because they're effective against shields and armor.)

 

Oh I started with laser weapons (pew pew) and I never researched kinetic weapons. I guess I should so I can build spaceports....

 

You should be able to build them with the laser attachment.

 

Yeah, you can build spaceports with any module. I just used Kinetics as an example. Basically when you go to the spaceport tab on a planet, in the middle of the screen it should tell you how much it'll cost, and list 3 different module types (Kinetics, missile, laser)

You pick one of the module (Unavailable ones will be greyed out), and then you can click build.

 

Not when I last looked but I'll check again. The box to build it was greyed out but it's been a few days. That being said I should research kinetics anyway if it's the best type defensively. I got a blue laser research card and did that one, but that was a long time ago and I've never gotten another weapon research yet.

According to various sources of the Internet being pacifist does change the chance that you will get weapon tech cards. Did they change it?

 

You always start with a weapon tech. You choose it during empire generation. That should open up the option to build a spaceport from game start.

 

All boxes are greyed out if you don't have enough money for the spaceport. Need 360 I think?

 

This. You need to save up about 360~ish minerals to build the spaceport, if you don't have the minerals everything is greyed out.

 

Questions about Sectors:

I've found and colonized a near perfect system - two planets (21, 23) which have been terraformed, and seven hab spots. It's slowly being built up to be self sufficient, with research centres on basically every space, but enough farms to feed everyone, and enough energy to power everything.

But waiting for the habs to build, the colony ship to land, and then the colony to fully establish takes some time.

If I sectorize it now, and stick it on a research focus (maintaining current building, not worrying about tile resources), will I still get research if I set tax to 0%, or do I need to tax the science out of them?

Also, can I just start construction on the habs and then leave them to the AI to colonize and build up, or should I do that myself?

And, finally, will the sector build it's own habs, or do I need to do that for them?

 

You would get science, you could just start the Habitat's, though the AI might or might not colonize (I've never tried to have sector AI colonize Habs.)

It will not build it's own Habitat's.


That said, it may be better to try and find a different system you control with only one planet-(ideally fully developed) to put into a sector.

Reason being you'd have two starports with the new system, which would make it easier to queue ships up if a war develops.

Edit: As a note, food is now empire wide, and not planet based. A planet doesn't have to have positive food production to still grow. As long as your empire food is (ideally) at it's stockpile limit with +food production, your pops will grow.

 

GAH I DIDN'T HIT THE CHECKMARK IT DELETED THE WHOLE POST FFFFF

Looking to get into multiplayer have a few questions on things that don't really matter in single player.

Depots and Refineries - ever worth it? Seems like best bet is only building mines on >2 minerals and building science or power on +1s. Unless it's getting capital adjacency bonus.

General rule for having a fleet of power X by year Y? Same for science - general rule for what is acceptable time-to-research?

General rule of thumb for planets you never colonize. Is a <15 ever worth it, even with a good resource spread?

Anything else that doesn't matter in single player but could cost you bigly in MP that you'd wish you'd known ahead of time? Other than not building missiles learned that one already.

Cheerz.

 

Corvette spam is generally king in MP. Most people now (at least until the next patch hits) tend to just build naked corvette's (the basic one you start with, un-upgraded) in huge numbers, vastly outstripping the recommended fleet-power limits.

The basic idea being the upkeep cost of say, 50~ 'Naked'-vette's is equivalent to the upkeep cost of 15~Upgraded-vette's, but with many more guns while still being cheaper to replace.
[Naked vette~65? Minerals ea., Upgraded vette~270? Minerals ea. as an example]
~Note: The preceeding was an example, and you may get more or less naked-vette/upgrade-vette ratio.
~Also, if playing naked Vette spam, note that Wormhole tech is possibly best FTL because you don't need to upgrade the ship's FTL/Power ever.

Not sure what you're referring to with Depots and Refineries, as I don't recall any building/structure called that.
~If you're running mods it can dramatically change all the various facets of the game.

Science in MP, thanks to the 'Vette spam, a lot of people will just say to focus on building the fleet, conquer others, and get research by scanning Battle Debris.

<15 planets are only worth it if they have exceptional modifiers. (2-3 Betharian stone, the very rare event buildings that give +18 Minerals, etc.)
[Sidenote: If it has a ridiculously good planet modifier like the extremely rare +50% mineral production, it can possibly be worth it to colonize and make nothing but mineral production on that planet]


Biggest thing is to recognize how you plan to win. If you're playing a coop game with the other humans, you can disregard most of the above and just play it similar to a single-player game if you want.

If it's competitive, it's currently kind of a boring who can blob the fastest via naked corvette spam.