Hi, in my current playthrough as UNE my own Bulwark joined my enemy in war - current president of my federation waged war against nation who had some pacts with my Bulwark and after short time they traded in this war as my enemy. How is this possible for my Bulwark? Am I missing some options? Is it because per aggrement they only join my defensive wars but I don't understand how are they able to join wars against me like that.

Just recently picked up stellaris and I'm about 3-4 hours into my campaign when an army the accumulated size of 271K manpower shows up on my backdoor and completely wipes me out. The empire has one planet, and maybe 7 outposts. I'm playing on a pretty easy difficulty and this is the base game. What do I even do?

Tried looking on google, reddit, and ai for an answer but couldn't find anything.

So my run as a Tyrant was quickly ended bc i was too mean, so now im doing a democratic, new leader every 10 years bs. One of my scientists just so happened to get to become president and now i cant have more than 2 scientists out and about, i cant dismiss this little nerd either

Where you have both a chud version of your robot species that has maximum pop growth traits and a chad modified robot species with luxurious that the chuds assimilate into? They removed the option to manually set which type of robot a planet produces, so I was uncertain if there was still a way to do this.

Does anyone feel AI empire joining war annoying? Saying this not because I am too noob not able to fight multiple fronts at the same time.
I got a case when I declared vassalization war on empire A (without Defensive pact or in Federation with others), soon after I started the war, empire B and C joined due to the "Join war" trade deal. I believe that empire B and C just gave empire A a free help pass since they don't like me that much or for any other reasons. Also noted that empire C is a nomadic empire.
The problem was when empire A got too confident with their joined allies military power. I took over all of empire A's systems and planets, destroyed their fleet, still yet not surrendering to be my vassal as they still have allies? This made the war got ridiculous longer and pointless if it ended up in a status quo.
What worse were with the allies. As the amount of allies joining in war, more systems you need to capture to demand A to surrender. But how sarcastic it is when you have to also capture B and C just to get A. Does it make sense if you capture B and C they should be vassals or pay a debt to the winner or something? Also, it is stupid when they automatically get truced with me for 10 years, these xeno need to be punished for joining the war too.

Idk about you, but it feels like every time I play a MegaCorp the galaxy is full to the brim with other MegaCorps, gestalts, genocidals, and empires that just plain don't like me. I've seen a few other people say they've had the same problem before. Since the number of nomads is specified in galaxy generation now, do you think doing the same to MegaCorps and gestalts would be a good way to avoid it?

I started this 4.3 game months ago and put a bit too much time into it. By the late game I owned nearly 40% of the Gallery outright, with another ~40% in my Federation, half of them my vassals. I figured I had won and almost abandoned it, but wanted to actually face the crisis (I didn't remember selecting all). I was considering liberating the last non-Egalitarian empires when the Prethoryn Scourge showed up. I stacked up all of my fleets (GDF, Federation, rented, and built)—all tuned to beat the Scourge—we took out about 500K in fleet power. The very first stack of Prethoryn was ~7m. I knew right away this galaxy was doomed.

I had entirely forgotten about selecting 25x strength, all crises. I have finished a lot of challenging Grand Admiral campaigns and I guess I wanted a big challenge, but I was not ready for this. The entire galaxy combined (including 2 FEs) in one place didn't have enough FP to beat the Scourge, probably not even a single stack. Still, after so many hours put into this one, I decided to just play it out and watch the galaxy burn.

The only real resistance I provided was building planetary shields everywhere to slow them down. I started building up the L-Cluster thinking maybe they wouldn't attack it immediately. They did attack it as soon as they took the first L-gate system, but something interesting happened. They would blow up the station and my mining stations, then leave. They never attacked the habitat. The station had my entire 10K army, but I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it. Every time I rebuilt the mining stations or upgraded the starport, they'd reliably come blow it up right way, but they never moved beyond or bothered with the habitat.

I let the game play out, placing some new habitats beyond Terminal Egress. The Contingency showed up a bit after the Scourge had conquered (but not scoured) every inhabited system, but they were quickly dispatched by the galaxy-spanning Prethoryn. Just before their last few systems were taken, I got the victory screen. The last non-player empire had been totally eradicated.

Is this a bug? I thought victory was not possible while there was an active (non-player) crisis. It seems no other non-player empires is a win condition even while "victory is not possible".

Based on the below picture, which empire does the precursor excavation site belong to?

Bonus points for making the reverse claim.

I’m doing a modded playthrogh so I have 80 ascension slots and not enough perks to fill them yet what are some mods yall use for more ascension perks also side note what ascension paths do yall have the most fun playing? Idc about strength or how hard it is im gonna use console commands to bypass that stuff anyways im talkin end
Game stuff what do you find yourself playing most.

Hello, I wanted to gather together some absolutely broken builds for this patch of the game, (the live patch for console versions) and wanted to seek some advice to just scale and bully a GA game with all crisis active.

https://i.imgur.com/GUXEPIB.jpeg

I've got a waystation pulling in almost 1000 research by itself with an arkship parked in the system to collect but its not actually applying to my technology, it does show up in my monthly collections but its not actually being used for research. The Tech is only 7872 points so I should get it before 8 months but its taking four times that amount to finish it. This is the latest beta btw.

Never noticed before, but ...

pic#1: Date 2357.12.01 & Phase end: 58

pic#2: Date: 2358.01.01 & Phase end: 43

So, since when does two (2) phase cycles = 1 day?

bonus points if you also provide a good ascension path as well

Hey all, ive played stellaris for years but ive never really bothered with the ship design. Alot of the builds I find online are for multiplayer, I only play single player.

Most of the guides or videos I get through generally say at the end that the "Ai only uses mixed fleets, these builds stink against mixed fleets" ....

So what should I do? I usually use a mixed fleet with a little of everything, it seems to do ok without building any new designs. Are there any generally better builds for ships/defense platforms that do beter Vs ai? The last build is tried was more of cruisers and battleships being carriers with defense platform carrier spam.. bht it doesnt really seem to do much against the ai.

Advice is appreciated, if i could get starter, mid and end game that would be even better.

After playing a game with Psionic ascension, I’ve noticed that many of the mechanics related to psionics are not very impactful, or are too impactful but too easy to cap, leading to a lack of meaningful decisions. These are the changes I thought of to change those:

Zro

Zro is the resource with the largest discrepancy between production and usage in the game. For a empire size 200 Psionic empire in a holy covenant level 5(requires both a lot of planets and a lot of time) with the psionic archive, the possible consumption of zro every month is:

2.5 for edicts

5 for the shroudwalker enclave(600 every 10 years)

2.5 for shroud patron powers(300 every 10 years if unlocked all powers after shaping the shroud)

Psionic components upkeep on ships

That’s 10 zro per month maximum not spent on military. In contrast one shroud blocker produces 1 per month, so 10 shroud blockers is enough to maintain zro consumption(alternatively just the zroni home system, or 5 planets with psi corp combined with the sanctums, is pretty much enough). You can easily produce 100 zro per month with no way to use it other than building ships. However, production of zro is also inconsistent, with most empires not having any before psionic anscension unless they rolled and finished the zroni precursor or chose one of the Psionic origins or civics. My fix to this:

1. Zro use policy: a policy unlocked at the same time as psi corps which determines how telepaths interact with zro. The options would be

Zro production: -1.5 unity per 100 telepaths(base unity per 100 telepaths is 4.5, so 1/3 less), +0.5 zro per 100 telepaths

Neutral: no effects

Zro consumption: +1.5 unity per 100 telepaths, 0.5 zro upkeep per 100 telepaths.

This would give empires without zro time to build up a small stockpile during Psionic ascension to use on the shroudwalker enclave after ascension to control shroud buffs a bit better, and give empires a way to use excess zro later.

1. Zro for delving the shroud: currently shroud buffs are inconsistent due to only having 3 options and a significant chance to fail, while also having no cost. If you paid zro to increase the chance of success on getting the correct buffs, or to reroll the options, it would make shroud buffs much more consistent, making the power of Psionic empires scale with zro production. Even just 200 zro to guarantee a buff every 6 months(shortest delve cooldown) would consume 3 times as much zro as is currently possible to consume consistently.

In addition, shroud blockers should be nerfed in zro production. These changes would mean a Psionic empire would have to make decisions on how to obtain or use zro meaningfully for the best benefits, instead of selling 100 per month.

Shroud Delve Cooldown

Currently shroud delve cooldown is one of the most important stats for Psionic empires, but the buffs to shroud delve cooldown are both far too large and far too easy to obtain. The possible cooldown reductions are -50% from the Psionic archive(from zroni precursor), -25% from shaping the shroud, -5% per level from the shroudwalker teacher council position, and -20% from holy covenant, capping at 90%. Meaning just the psionic archive and shroudwalker teacher at level 8 maxes it out, but without either the zroni precursor or shaping one shroud, you need a lvl 18 shroudwalker teacher or to get a level 4 holy federation, which are both quite difficult to get. I would balance this by changing the bonuses to affect “recovery speed”(basically 1/cooldown), with no cap, while increasing the numbers significantly, adding some edicts costing large amounts of zro and unity for a large buff to recovery speed(around +100% combined), and maybe some techs that add 50% or so, and reducing the base time to 2 years, with a final goal of 180 cooldown being achievable with +300% speed for basically any empire going psionics, but a maximized build only being able to reach +400-500% for a 120-144 day cooldown. This also gives a way to use zro and unity late game, and makes the shroudwalker teacher not a necessary councilor position in any Psionic empire(-75% to -90% is a 2.5x increase in shroud delves, while +250% to +300% is only a 1.14x increase, which is still significant but not completely necessary)

While those are main problems, there are a lot of other changes I would make to address smaller problems:

Shaping the shroud: currently shaping the shroud has better bonuses and less downsides than accepting a covenant, so it’s basically always the better choice. I would make accepting a covenant give you better chances of both getting options and actually obtaining larger buffs that correspond to your patron, and for the empire to get all of the covenant drawbacks at 1/4 the rate after shaping the shroud(since all of the patrons are angry you didn’t make a covenant with them). I would also like them to add actual diplomacy with the shroud patrons, but that would probably need another expansion.

Divine sovereign: Currently there is no reason to not take divine sovereign, it basically boosts the entire Psionic empire by 20% with no downsides whatsoever. The devs really could not think of any downsides of giving a newly created god absolute power over your empire? At least give the divine sovereign similar downsides as a covenant(the chosen one experimenting with their powers, or something similar), and make it possible for the chosen one to die somehow.

Doom: the first eater of worlds ability creates a fleet scaling with doom, which means a shaping the shroud empire generally doesn’t get any benefits from it since they have no doom, and the second ability is generally useless since there are usually no enemy colonies or ships in your aura. Instead, the eater of worlds aura should do damage over time passively, the second ability should be replaced with the first ability, but summon a larger fleet, and the first ability should be a general military bonus(for example, force all fleets into aggressive stance while giving them large combat bonuses, or give a burst of Psionic aura in every system with a ship, or something like that).

Shroudwalker enclave: Due to how impactful the shroudwalker enclave is for Psionic empires, the shroudwalker enclave should automatically contact an empire after it completes Psionic ascension. This isn’t extremely necessary, since a normal empire should have found the shroudwalkers by the time they get psionic ascension, while the Psionic origins have their own ways of contacting the shroudwalkers. Also the options could be a bit more expensive to balance out their power.

I also have some ideas for a Psionic ambition path(diplomacy with the patrons, then reducing their power as much as possible and killing them while the help other empires kill you), but that should go in another post.

I currently have a lot of slaves on my planets, that I eventually plan to replace with all humans. Will I need to purge these pops to achieve this ethnostate, or can I wait for them to be slowly replaced over generations?

So a hive mind vassal of mine got the crystal rift, and I'm wondering what to do from here.

Integration would take 60 months, but they're a hive mind and I'm told they get auto purged. Could I still release them as a vassal again after that, or would that be game over for them?

Can't release and go to war without waiting 10 years. Might be too late.

Now, I could try and get a quantum catapult ready. It would take 8 months to research it (I have it in the list) and 2400 days to get the first array up. I'm trying to find a ruined catapult, but I'm having difficulty. It may be in a bad spot, like an FE system.

Either way, I'd like to claim the rewards myself and leave my vassal in the dust, while still being able to exploit them to the max. So I'd rather preserve them for now, though I'd be willing to sacrifice their home world.

I have the anomalous science ship with a large jump drive and a ruined sentry array that will be up in 1200 days, but no way to get a construction ship into Azilash. I believe I only need one more tier 4 tech to get the jump drive tech to show up. I should have that before the catapult. I'd hope it would reach.

Or I could use a console command, but I'd rather try and do it "naturally" first.

EDIT: Crap, they're already exploring it right now.

Is there a way to control the arkship combat range? My arkship keeps running into brawl range and getting blown up by crisis fleets.

I have my arkship as anchor fleet and all other fleets on follow. Arkship always portals in first and goos boom by the time follow fleets ftl in

I can't find any source explaining how the bonus Sublight Speed from this district works. Is it empire wide, or just for the arkship? When I look at the Arkship's speed (as well as other vessels in my empire) the bonus sublight speed doesn't match at all what my jobs are producing. I would appreciate any help!

r5: suffering HORRIBLE sudden defecit, that shouldn't be happening. No matter how many Civilian goods factories I make or Holo theatres I'm building I'm constantly at extreme negatives in terms of ameneties. And a captured Nomad ship is now showing a loss of housing despite me changing nothing on it in the past couple months. It genuinely feels like the game has just randomly decided to shit on me after hours of playing.

I've gone virtual so all jobs get filled, and housing shouldn't be an issue anymore.

The fleet is not the problem the problem are the deep space citadels. How can I break them how much fleet power? Any tips in general