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So I downloaded Stelaris for my xbox and I'm running into lots of problems.

For one, how can I build up enough energy to have a worthwhile fleet? I keep getting attacked by things with like 6000 xp, I build 3 ships and my energy is in the negative. I keep building outposts and turning colonies into giant power plants, still I can't keep up.

And then, how do you get Influence? I set up rivalries, but that just makes other people hate me and kill me with their 6000xp fleets. I've gotten chunks of influece from research and stuff, but it just gets used up because my important people keep dying of old age.

I'm also having an issue where it suddenly won't let me build any new outposts, or collect resources, even if a planet is inside my borders. I have enough resources and influence to build stations, but it's always red and won't let me.. any idea what could be wrong?

Ah, the energy crunch.

A few questions...


1: What kind of civilization are you? Hive Mind? Robot? Normal civ?

2: What bonuses and negatives do you have from things like species traits, government traits, and ethics traits?

Aside from that, more generally, have you tried clicking the workers tab on planets and prioritizing the energy production?

For influence, the easiest early-game way to up your influence gain is research in the green field (Society/Biology/etc). I recommend being very careful with your influence spending as it is actually kind of the hardest thing to get aside from a few ultra-rare one-off resources that I'd have to spoiler. Aside from that, if you're a Democracy you can gain influence from fulfilling your democratic mandate, and some events (like finding another nation's broken down cargo ship and returning it to them) can net you influence as well. If you're a normal civilization and not a hive-mind or robot civ, you can also gain influence through gaining favor with various factions in your government, which will start to appear as your society grows (Democracies gain the most from these).

Xenophile Egalitarian Democracies have the highest potential influence gain-- particularly with the Democratic-only Civic Parliamentary System-- but require a lot of good choices and hard work to maintain them. Xenophobe Authoritarian provides a more flat expansionist route if you want to go warmonger. If you want to restart a bunch, you can attempt to start off with a Ruler individual who has Deep Connections, which is +1 influence. If you really love warmongering, Militarist makes making claims cheaper, as does the Militarist-only Civic Nationalistic Zeal. If you really love edicts which cost influence to use, Spiritualist makes them cheaper which really adds up in the long run, as does the generalist Civic Cutthroat Politics and the Authoritarian+Spiritualist only civic Imperial Cult.

You should generally only declare rivals against someone that you have enough military force to make them not want to invade you. Rivals are intended to be roughly equals in terms of political and military presence on the galaxy, and in fact if you're too weak or too strong, the rivalry can be nullified automatically by the game.

First off, in case you didn't know, the console edition is quite a few updates behind the PC version, so while wikis are usually a massive help for the game, make sure you're looking at pages specifically for the console version.

As for the questions themselves, they are fairly typical early-game problems, so you're certainly not doing anything wrong, the game just has quite a steep learning curve. Basically, at the core of it all is an exercise in spinning plates, knowing what resources of one kind to spend to secure more of another. Energy, minerals, influence, fleet power, generally you'll be spending some of one to get another.

The key is patience. It can be tempting to build up fleets really early, and sometimes necessary if you're next to very hostile neighbours, but in general I think it's best to prioritise infrastructure at least for the first few decades. Likewise, expand when you can afford to, and always try and have multiple areas being surveyed at once so you have options on which direction you're building out it. Some systems just aren't worth having, so sit on your influence and minerals until you have a cluster worth taking. In the mean time, try and lock down every resource within the territory you do have, so long as you can afford it.

An easy mistake to make early on is throwing down loads of mineral platforms/mines and neglecting energy a bit. This can be far too tempting as obviously minerals are the more immediately exciting currency, seeing as how they're what ultimately drives your empire becoming more powerful. In general, once you have a steady mineral income (eventually, you basically want to afford a corvette a month on a war economy, but early game one every few should be sufficient) you should go for energy over minerals, though obviously in the long run you want to grab everything within your borders. The goal with energy is necessarily to avoid a deficit so much as it is to build up enough of a stockpile that when you're needing to spend a load (on rapid expansion or war, for instance) you can afford to do so for a decent amount of time.

To that end, there are a few ways to save or quickly gain energy. Always keep any ships that aren't doing something in orbit over your settled planets with starports, and they'll consume far less energy (science ships can also pick up an upgrade tech that allows them to passively boost Research while they do this). Throw down Solar Panels on your Starports as soon as you have the tech, they can be a significant boost early game and are easy to miss. Prioritise the technologies that get you more of the thing you need, so for energy that's the Power Plant upgrades and the Energy Grid building (which boosts a whole world's energy output and unlocks an Edict to do so even further). Trade is also good, if you've got surplus minerals or food setting up a monthly trade deal with a friendly neighbour can be a great solution, and also build trust with them.

Influence is always a bugger, there's a few ways to gain it. One is to please Factions within your empire, the more of them you keep happy the more Influence they'll generate (you can see what makes each Faction happy in the People menu). There's also a Civic you can choose on creating your Empire, Cutthroat Politics I believe, that gives you a permanent +1 boost which is great early game. Frontier Outposts cost 1 a month to maintain, so avoid throwing them down unless you're really getting some good stuff for it.

Not sure what would be stopping you throwing down more stations if you can afford them. If you hover over the planet/system, does it tell you anything? You do need to have Surveyed a System to build anything in it, so it could be that.

Hope that helps, happy to answer any more questions if you have them. I think my last tip would be to play through the early game quite a few times with different Empire setups. This will not only help you figure out the learning curve, but also gives you a sense of what suits your playstyle. I tend to go for fairly friendly empires and do a lot off trade/alliance/Federation stuff as I find that alleviates a lot of the early game burdens, but you really jjust need to experiment and keep at it to master it and experience the brilliance of finally getting an Empire up and running.

I'm not sure if Cutthroat Politics does that in the Console version, but in the PC version it just makes Edicts 20% cheaper.

Influence has always been a pain in the game and often the only way is to wait it out to build up whilst also avoiding declaring too many things that drain it away!


Also as per normal, expect to lose the first few games of a 4* game; and even just straight up have to stop games early and start all over again. Often as not you dont' do anything major wrong, just lots of little things that take time to build up an understanding.

Reading guides at this stage is also tricky, even without the version issue noted above; because the game is so new that it can seem overly complicated. So play more than read at this stage; get familiar with the tools and menus and options.

There's also the fact htat a lot of empires just play very, very differently from each other. Building up energy as a Robot empire is very different from building it up as a Normal empire, for example-- Robot empires don't have to deal with food and so can focus on energy instead, but they use energy for pop upkeep, and they don't gain energy from Trade.

Don’t overbuild sectors in your colonies. It’s a big temptation, but a massive resource sink. Only build when your population warrants it.

Thanks, so I stuck with it and was able to get my resources more under control.

At first I started with a human colony that was basically the UN spreading out into space. Thats the one where my influence got used up and I couldn’t do anything to get it back into the positive.. i couldn’t support a faction because I didn’t have any influence at all, and I already declared every rivalry. So I switched to a new game with a random empire and got some crazy alien monarch where all of my people were slaves and always unresting. I was able to get that under control eventually. I did get Cuthroat politics so that helped a little.

But now my problem is I have 3-4 random planets all cut off from the rest of the empire, because some huge other empire grew around them and expanded way faster than I could. They just declared war and wiped me out, but they were rivals and I kept insulting them I went back to an earlier save and hopefully they won’t wipe me out now. There’s 2 big empires on the map, and 3-4 smaller ones. None of them want my help, when I set up trades, it doesn’t give me any bonus points anymore. I have 3 factions I embraced that got me a nice influence bonus, but now it’s suddenly saying it’s giving me 0 from 2 of them. Are the faction bonuses just temporary?

And anyway, that big empire that wiped me out… how do they get so big? How can they have enough influence to control half the map, when I have like none?

Is it possible to abandon a planet and remove it from my empire? What about abandoning an outpost to try and get the influence back?

I tend to declare rivals on aliens a LONG way off who can't actually threaten me in the early game. You want to sweet talk your direct neighbours until you're in a position to take them over; whilst far off empires you can insult as much as you like- even if they hate you' they are too far to be a threat.

yeah I was thinking I'd like to end my rivalries, but if I do my influence will go into the negative because I have too many outpost spread across the galaxy. I went and found sone densely packed clusters of planets in the middle of nowhere and built outposts for the mining and research.

Also can you change your max planets? Right now I can only have 7, but like if I were to conquer another empire wouldn't I inherit all of their planets and suddenly be way over my limit?

And how do you build defense stations? I researched them, but I'm not seeing how you can build them anywhere. None are in my spaceport lists where I build my ships. My main empire has a couple of nice choke points where it would be cool to be able to set up satellites that can blow bad guys away if they try to come in. Or do I have to just park my fleets there instead?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also my current game is really far along, like 400+ years since starting. Almost the whole map is claimed. almost every planet has been scanned, or if I didn't scan them I got the info from trading star maps

Yeah it's really a bad idea to spread yourself too much out like that, even if you see a fancy nice planet. Shoudl really only have one or two of those disconnected planets at most as it really adds up.

Maybe I'll see if I can get rid of those isolated worlds somehow.. I think I saw in the trade menu where you can trade a planet. That might make the big empire like me more too. Then I can just build or terraform a new colony closer to the rest

Automatically Appended Next Post:
jokes aside, this here wors rather well.




basically what he did, is going to a big AI empire that was militant isolationist, built a station, gifted said station the the AI that insultet him, and watched the fireworks.,

Necros wrote:yeah I was thinking I'd like to end my rivalries, but if I do my influence will go into the negative because I have too many outpost spread across the galaxy. I went and found sone densely packed clusters of planets in the middle of nowhere and built outposts for the mining and research.

Also can you change your max planets? Right now I can only have 7, but like if I were to conquer another empire wouldn't I inherit all of their planets and suddenly be way over my limit?

You can increase your maxmum planet cap (Core Sector Systems) through Technology in the Sociology tree, though 7 is about as high as it'll go in this version, I believe. What you can do is create Sectors, which basically amounts handing over a planet and some surrounding systems to the AI to manage for you; you lose the ability to micromanage a planet in a Sector like this (though you can still use its Starport) and its income is removed from that of your total Empire and used to fund its own development. You can then set the amount of Minerals/Energy you take from the Sector as tax, with the rest being used internally (though it's best to only put fully developed worlds into sectors, as the AI will develop them far less efficiently even if you leave them plenty of money.)

You can create Sectors through the Sectors section of the menu on the left that covers planets, expansion ect (can't think what it's called off the top of my head, but it's easy enough to find). In general, you want to give the planet in a Sector a few systems with mineral/energy stations to support itself, but don't give it too many as that'll hit your own Empire's income too much.

And how do you build defense stations? I researched them, but I'm not seeing how you can build them anywhere. None are in my spaceport lists where I build my ships. My main empire has a couple of nice choke points where it would be cool to be able to set up satellites that can blow bad guys away if they try to come in. Or do I have to just park my fleets there instead?

Honestly, especially this late in the game, Defence stations in this version aren't worth it. You can build them by selecting a Construction Ship and sending it to any open space within your systems and using its bottom left menu to build one on that location, but against the kind of fleets you'll be facing 400 years in, they're not goign to do much at all without an absolute ton of investment. This is one of the big changes in the 2.0 update where you genuinely can get a lot of mileage out of fortifying chokepoints, but the console version isn't there yet.

Necros wrote:
I have 3 factions I embraced that got me a nice influence bonus, but now it’s suddenly saying it’s giving me 0 from 2 of them. Are the faction bonuses just temporary?

Any faction that is happy will give you an amount of Influence per month, whether you Embrace them or not. The more Pops are in the faction, and the happier it is, the more you get, up to a limit determined largely by various Sociology Research projects. Embracing a Faction actually costs Influence, but allows you to shift your Empire's Ethics towards theirs (for example, a Spiritualist Xenophobe Empire might Embrace a Materialist Faction to become a Materialist Xenophobe Empire). This in turn will make that faction really happy, but will probably piss off the other Factions so it'll be a bet loss in Influence unless you're doing it early, when you only have a couple of Factions. It's more there as a way to shift your Empire without totally Reforming it, rather than to generate more Influence.

If it's Influence you need, you're better off trying to please as many Factions (or rather, Pops within Factions) as possible, rather than favouring one over the rest. Embracing three in a row will basically have shifted your Ethics three times, so the first two you Embraced will be very unhappy.

And anyway, that big empire that wiped me out… how do they get so big? How can they have enough influence to control half the map, when I have like none?

Is it possible to abandon a planet and remove it from my empire? What about abandoning an outpost to try and get the influence back?

If they're aggressive Empires, it's possible they've expanded through conquest, which in this version doesn't really need Influence as you're not taking unoccupied systems, just absorbing territory from Empire that exists already (either directly or through Vassalisation, which takes a lot longer but is much easier as a War Goal). Alternatively, they could be an Advanced Start Empire if you had those on, where the game gives them a few decades' head start... much more fun, but for beginners I would recommend turning them (and Fallen Empires) off. In general though, successful Empires tend to snowball, as each conquest or big expansion brings in more income which funds more conquest or expansion, so on and so forth. It's entirely possible that these Empires have been doing well the entire game, and are just getting stronger and stronger.

You can as mentioned sell a planet, and if you want to ditch an Outpost, just select it and then Disband it from its menu in the bottom left. Though this will then leave a hole in your territory, and you'll lose the benefits of any mining or research stations you have in the area it would be covering.

So I decided to get the PC version. The console was a nice free intro to the game, but I'm liking the PC version a lot more. I dunno why they didn't give the console version the same updates. I like it better how I can survey a system then send a constructor in to claim it and start farming.

So I started a new game as humans again but I set the game to have less advanced races and go on forever with no victory. And of course, the first aliens I came across were super advanced and didn't like me at all. Just my luck I guess. I've still been able to expand a lot and I haven't had any resource issues at all. My Influence is +5 and even with 2 constructors claiming lots of sectors it's still adding up fast, i haven't needed to set up any rivalries or anything. I have 3 colonies and they're all kinda close together, but I'm starting to run out of room to expand my borders.

There's still a lot of other features in on the PC that I still have to figure out but it seems to be going well so far. Still have the same problem though where I have a tiny fleet and everyone around me is so much tougher. My corvettes are mostly just on amoeba hunting duty right now.

Probably a good shout there, especially if you didn't actually pay for the console version (Game Pass, I assume?). It's certainly a much more nuanced game in the current PC version, I just stick with the Xbox one as my current laptop wouldn't manage anything more complex than FTL!

I believe the console version is aiming to update to the same point eventually, but the reason it was so far behind is because several of the updates (with the Apocalypse and Megacorp expansions) have come out since they started the port and changed the game massively. They started developing the console version on version 1.6, I think, and all their effort was more focused on getting it to actually work on a console rather than keeping it up to date. I do hope they at least get around to the 2.0 update eventually though, there's so many big improvements in that.

 Necros wrote:
So I decided to get the PC version. The console was a nice free intro to the game, but I'm liking the PC version a lot more. I dunno why they didn't give the console version the same updates. I like it better how I can survey a system then send a constructor in to claim it and start farming.

So I started a new game as humans again but I set the game to have less advanced races and go on forever with no victory. And of course, the first aliens I came across were super advanced and didn't like me at all. Just my luck I guess. I've still been able to expand a lot and I haven't had any resource issues at all. My Influence is +5 and even with 2 constructors claiming lots of sectors it's still adding up fast, i haven't needed to set up any rivalries or anything. I have 3 colonies and they're all kinda close together, but I'm starting to run out of room to expand my borders.

There's still a lot of other features in on the PC that I still have to figure out but it seems to be going well so far. Still have the same problem though where I have a tiny fleet and everyone around me is so much tougher. My corvettes are mostly just on amoeba hunting duty right now.

Console version is a few updates behind the PC at this point. That currently includes the major territory revamp that you're running into here. Paradox have stated they want to get the consoles caught up, but dont have a timeline for when that will be.

Its a resource allocation thing unfortunately.

Yeah it was a game pass game. Hopefully they will update the xbox version soon (and keep it on gamepass). I have a pretty decent gaming PC but in my old age I much prefer playing on the sofa instead especially for games that take a really long time to play

So, having the same problem now .. :( Game is going great till someone declares war, then I get totally wiped out. This time I was in a federation with 2 neighbors, and neither of them bothered to help. If they did help I would have been fine. Guess I just have to focus more on building big war fleets.

Sterling191 wrote:
Don’t overbuild sectors in your colonies. It’s a big temptation, but a massive resource sink. Only build when your population warrants it.

Aye.

That said, planet development is probably one of the better ways to gain energy in the long term.

Not sure how much of this will apply to the console version as I play on PC, but here is what I do.

The best way to generate energy overall is to generate it planetside. Colonize a planet that has a relatively high ratio of energy district slots and focus on building it as an energy planet. The same applies for the other districts as well. You make Agri-worlds, Generator Worlds, Mining Worlds, etc... based on what the planet has to offer. This, combined with the planet size, is the most important aspect of a planet. Habitability is honestly not as big of a deal, as low habitability 'just' increases the population upkeep(IE: food and consumer goods). So if you can deal with that slight extra cost, settling a slightly less habitable planet that is bigger and has better district distribution would be better than settling a smaller planet with a more ideal habitability.

Because of this it pays to be patient with setting up additional colonies. They do cost quite a bit of energy to maintain before they can get up and running, so its not always a good idea to immediately colonize every planet you come across. Once a planet is in your territory, or at least blocked off from any other factions plonking down a space station, its not going anywhere.

Thats the other thing. You don't need to have an outpost on every star system. You only need to put them down at choke points or in systems you want to develop. I will jump ahead in a cluster and block off the access points to prevent the AI, or any human players, from getting into an area, which I can then explore and colonize at my leisure. This saves you the cost of maintaining a million outposts while still having the benefit of a lot of secure territory.

Yes, an outpost that is further out will cost more influence to build than once that is adjacent to your territory. In fact, the cost linearly scales with the distance. The difference is that one outpost placed a good ways out will instantly secure a lot of territory.


Regarding influence. Aside from what the others have said,

Democratic civilizations do have the highest influence gain, in theory. However, playing a Democracy is playing on hard mode for a number of other reasons. Elections are annoying and happen with such rapidity and mandates can be completely counter productive to what you were trying to do. Basically, the game starts playing you rather than you playing the game. And IMO thats not fun.


As far as being attacked by aggressive empires. This is where you are at the mercy of the random personality generator as well as placement of empires. You might get screwed by having a militant xenophobe spawn 5 jumps away from you. About the only thing to fix that is either generate the galaxy to have even empire distribution, OR have a larger galaxy with a smaller number of empires than is recommended(IE: more space for everybody). And in a situation like this, your only choice is to get lots of ships quick and hope you can either out tech or out fight them.

Do note that in the event of early wars, the fleets involved are usually still tiny. If you manage to fight off an initial fleet, that was probably the enemy's only fleet. Always open diplomacy regularly and check the relative fleet strength. I once had an aggressive empire go from an overwhelming advantage to being pathetic relative to my strength after I defeated one of his fleets. I had a 'weaker' fleet. But I had tailored my ship and station loadout to the enemy's ship layouts and thus wiped their fleet. This allowed me to counter attack and ravage their empire unopposed. They quickly made peace and the time period they spent rebuilding meant they quickly fell behind and became irrelevant. Where they once had a big tech and fleet advantage, they soon became the most backwards and weak empire on the map.

If your ships are all equipped with anti-shield weapons and your enemy is using mostly shields for defense, your weapons will cut their ships down astonishingly fast. Even if they outnumber you by a moderate amount. The same applies defensively. If they have antishield weapons and your ships are all equipped with armor, then they will struggle. There is a pretty hefty game of rock-paper-scissors going on with space ship loadouts, if you can get the rock to the enemy's scissor, even if they out tech you you can annihilate them. And then as a bonus you can have your science ships research the debris of their ships to gain their tech for yourself.

The nice thing is that the AI does not generally switch their preferred loadouts. If an AI is programmed to favor Lasers, they will always use laser weapons on their ships. Which means you can use ships that are meant to defend against lasers, and have weapons that counter whichever defensive tech they favor.



Another question. How is your population growth? Compared to other empires? Population is power, as it directly translates to production.

This is one reason why I like the Xenophobic ethic. It grants you a 10% pop growth boost, as well as -20% starbase influence cost. You can double this if you bump up to fanatic xenophobe.

Combine this with Authoritarian, which gives you +0.5 Influence monthly, as well as 10% worker output, and you can really generate a lot of influence and population quickly.

On top of this, you should try to generate enough food to always have the Nutritional Plenitude food policy. It increases the food upkeep of pops by 25%, but it increases pop growth by 10% and increases happiness.

This will give you more population, which will let you develop your planets faster. or even let you shift a bunch of extra pops to a new colony to get it up and running right away, which will increase your overall efficiency and production. This does cost energy, but it is worth it. This is another reason to be Authoritarian, its easier to alter your policies and shift pops around.

I think my pop growth seems OK. I'm a xenophile too and I keep getting refugees landing on my planets. I've been doing pretty good with the energy and influence now, both are usually maxed out. When my last war started the energy went way into the red, but I had so much stockpiled that I was able to handle it till the war ended and it went positive again. Alloys are another problem though but I started building alloy factories on all my planets and that seems to be getting better, around +100 a month now. I'm also buying some monthly on the galactic market

I was having trouble with a really militant neighbor. We're in our 3rd war now. I figured out a strategy that has been working.. when the war starts they send their strongest fleet at one of my colonies on their border.. They usually just attack it, then leave. so I see where that's gonna be, and how big it is, and then load up an autosave from a year or so back in the timeline and then I can start sending ships that way, or stay out of the way and let them leave then send my fleet into their system from a different direction. I also joined a federation with some Jar Jar looking guys and at first it seemed like they weren't doing anything, but now I'm seeing all kinds of alien ships showing up in my fleet list automatically. So now I have 2 fleets around 10k each and I'm mowing through all of the enemy systems. They only have 1 planet left, and a couple of small bases. after I capture that will their whole empire become mine? Or does it all turn black and you have to survey and build empty spaces again? He had FLT inhibitors all over the place that was slowing me down till I figured out you have to capture the planet with the inhibitor on it to shut it down.

I recommend (if you haven’t already) is as a new player turning off advance AI starts. A expansionist empire starting off at Cruisers while you are just starting is a bit crushingly unbalanced when you are new.

 Necros wrote:
So now I have 2 fleets around 10k each and I'm mowing through all of the enemy systems. They only have 1 planet left, and a couple of small bases. after I capture that will their whole empire become mine? Or does it all turn black and you have to survey and build empty spaces again? He had FLT inhibitors all over the place that was slowing me down till I figured out you have to capture the planet with the inhibitor on it to shut it down.

It depends.

Did you make claims on your opponent's territory? When a war finishes between two factions who use diplomacy(IE: Not Devouring swarm hive minds*) and the war was NOT declared as a Total War(One faction has a Colossus and declares Total War*), the winning side gets any systems that they made a claim on.

If no claims were made by the winning side all territory switches back to its original owner.

Note that if any claims are made, it becomes harder to win a war unless you are occupying the territory you made a claim on. IE: The enemy will be less likely to agree to a peace treaty handing over territory if you haven't actually seized that territory.


*In the case of a Devouring Swarm Hive Mind or a Total War, conquered territory immediately becomes permanent territory of the conquering empire immediately without any peace treaty necessary.

Another thing with Hive Minds is that if a Hive Mind is defeated, any unconquered territory reverts to black unclaimed systems and all their pop's begin dying/committing suicide. You can't integrate Hive Mind pops into a non-hive mind empire, and vice verse as well. Hive Minds begin eating any conquered pops, though a Hive Mind with advanced genetic engineering can genetically modify conquered pops to become part of the hive mind(they have to do it quickly before they eat them all though).

hmm. Well, the first 2 wars they started, they had demands like they wanted this or that system, and the only option I had for demands was to humiliate them (which I did twice). This 3rd time I got no options at all, unless I missed it somehow. So in the war window the surrender and then stats quo buttons are all grayed out so I assume it's just a fight to the death. Before I go in and take his last planet, should I stop and claim stuff? I have a bunch of allies right now, so I'm kinda worried they are gonna all swarm in through my territories and start taking all of the new open spaces as fast as they can if they get an opening.

To make claims, open up the diplomacy screen with the target empire and click on claims. This will let you see any claims you have already made and let you make new ones. Claims cost Influence though, so its something you really need to be doing over time and not all at once.

Its basically impossible to completely outright conquer an empire in a single war because of how claims work, even if you have total superiority(unless you have Colossi). You'll need to burn influence to make any gains permanent.

Don't worry about empty space appearing though. Unless the enemy empire is a hive mind, they're not going to disappear and leave a chunk of unclaimed space. Basically once territory is claimed by someone, someone will always own it. Outside of some very unusual circumstances.

So if I capture all of their planets, their empire will still be there on the map, aside from any I can claim first? I have a good chunk of influence right now, I think it's maxed, so I should be able to claim a few.

Then after this war is done, i claim more of their spaces and then declare war on them?

They also have an ally that was helping them but I'm pretty sure I wiped out most of their fleets as well, so I was hoping I could just steamroll both of them right now rather than letting them build up again between wars. They're the only ones around me that were giving me any trouble, everyone else has been nice so far.

Yes. Basically, once you win all territory claimed by the winning side will become their territory. While any unclaimed territory that was conquered will be returned to the losing Empire. You will also have a forced cease fire as well as open borders to each other for a short period.

This means that even a typical empire will take several wars to actually fully conquer as unless the war takes centuries you'll never generate enough Influence to claim their whole territory in one go.

Note that what determines when a war ends is when one side's war weariness reaches 100%. Once that happens, the other side in the war can force peace talks. You can do this even if you are losing and the enemy happens to reach 100%. Its one way to force a war to end without actually having a decisive victory. Its particularly good against Democracies as they gain war weariness faster(usually). Note that the enemy can do the same. If your empire's war weariness reaches 100% they can force a peace settlement.

Getting the hang of it now. So I had 2 wars yesterday and won both, against that same enemy. In the last one, I had every single one of his sectors conquered, and in the end I only took over the 3 or 4 sectors that I put a claim on. Was it because they started the war before I could so they set the terms? He also had an ally, and after that last war his ally broke off and now wants to be my friend, so he's all alone. I just have to wait 10 more game years now to start the next war.

But now, it's not allowing me to claim any of his planets.. the claim menu button at the bottom of the window is all grayed out, so I can't select any sectors. Do I have to wait 10 years for that too? He was able to put a claim on a bunch of mine, right after the war ended. So when our next war ends, will he get all of my sectors that he's claiming?

Also I keep demanding vassalization, but he says no each time. When I do it says I can use a subjugation corvus beli or whatever on him. How do I do that? Does that mean it will just be an option when I declare war next? I really don't think they can do much now, they are listed as pathetic and have no more allies. I'm gonna see if I can get his old ally to join us too.

Also one of the empires in my federation asked to become my vassal, so I said yes. Can I get them to turn their sectors over to me and integrate them so we're just 1 big empire instead of 2?

So Vassals still act independently, they just give you a huge chunk of all their resource income each month(50% I think). The Subjugation Casus Belli will let you, when you win the war, forcibly turn them into a vassal.

When a war is first declared each side gets to set their own war goals. So even if you are defending you'll have the option to pick a war goal. Just click on the war indicator in the bottom right and you'll be able to select a war goal.


What planets can and cannot be claimed depends on your War Philosophy policy. Which is limited by your Ethics. Note that if you are a defender you are not limited on what you can claim, but if you are the aggressor what you can claim is limited by this policy.

The 3 Philosophy's are Unrestricted(all claims can be made), Liberation Wars(claims can only be made in defensive wars, Animosity Casus belli replaced with Ideology Casus Belli), Defensive Wars(claims can only be made in defensive wars).

This is probably why you couldn't claim any more of his systems. You probably have Defensive Wars as a philosophy and he has Unrestricted. But don't worry about him getting your planets. A side only gets their claims if they win. If you win the war he won't get what he's claimed.

I figured it out.. I did a subjugation war against the empire that was attacking me, then they became my vassals and a few game years later were absorbed into the united nations.

Then right after that happened, some crazy bug swarm from another galaxy showed up right on my doorstep and started eating everything in it's path. The pyrithians or something like that. All of my fleets combined were like 50k, and they showed up with like 12 fleets all 70-80k each. There was really no way I could stop them so I had to cheat and use console codes to keep pumping resources in and build huge multi-fleet attack squadrons. At one point my energy was -11k a month. I spent pretty much my whole saturday getting rid of them. Then I had an ancient empire that hated everyone, so I sent my fleets in to conquer them and get my excess ships blown up rather than deleting them. Now things are back to normal. i guess that was the mid game crisis.. will there be any other big crisises, or is it just one per game?

Now there are just 2 big unfriendly empires on the map but they are way on the other side of the galaxy. There’s a few smaller ones that just have 1 or 2 systems so I’ll focus on those first I guess.

What do you have to do to get another empire in your federation to want to be your vassal? Like is there a certain number you have to shoot for, for how much they like you? A lot of them are listed as pathetic compared to me, but they always turn down vassal requests