4% isn’t always the case though. As your penalty increases, the effect of a single bureaucrat decreases. Reducing a 4% penalty to 0% increases effective research speed (ERS) by 4%, but reducing a 104% penalty to 100% only increases ERS by 2%. In this case the magic number of scientists would be 50. This also fails to factor in that there are other sources of research than scientist jobs. Things like research stations and other jobs like science directors. This reduces the impact of adding new scientists by a potentially significant margin.

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy..."

This really does describe Stellaris in a nutshell. Choosing between increasing your percentages by a percentage of the percentage or reducing the percentage penalty of your percentages by a percentage.

*Video tells me to ignore admin cap* Me: *Dedicates 3 worlds to bureaucracy*

Stefan: "don't want you guys to be pulling out a calculator when you're playing a freaking game" Me: Laughs in Factorio

"You should always place your bureaucrats on the lowest habitability worlds" - YES

"It's not worth employing bureaucrats, just for bureaucrats' sake." *THE ADMINISTRATUM WANTS TO KNOW YOUR LOCATION*

A friend of mine was ignoring admin cap in a game, like usual and I pointed out how it's been changed, so he just build a habitat and filled it wtih buerocrats. Never hated him more than in that moment.

BTW Megacorps can be THE SENATE by building that +10% diplomatic power to economy on every planet AI allows them to.

Empire Sprawl - The literally *only* condition that ever gets close to nerfing exxagratedly *OP* Artificial Intelligence

"Playing a game with a calculator is not as fun" Me, a former EVE Online player: *Speak for yourself* One additional thing though, Administrative Offices can be built with a Modified Ship-Shelter while Research Labs require a bona-fide capital building. if your only planets that will gain building slots in the foreseeable future are fresh colonies, those buildings might be the only way to increase research speed.

*happy synapse drone noises*

I remember the days when after half an hour there would be at most 10 views, now however 39 views after 2 minutes... Praise the Birb for she protects. Also another good guide as per usual!

Dude, thanks for making these. I got this game a week ago and of course have been binging tutorials. These vids are the most direct and concise I've found so far. Kudos to you sir!

Stefan: Administrators only produce admin cap so they are useless don't build extra and they cost consumer goods. Me: laughs in indentured slaves with byzantine bureaucracy

Cant wait till this is added to the console version, my friend just always holds up in the smallest possible cluster and doesn't typically expand, he sits in a small area and slowly consumes other empires by making them vassels.

Awesome info, thanks for sharing, Stefan! 😄🌌🙏🏽

Another great video, thanks for continuing this series. It really helps to have up to date info, with all the massive changes. One minor point regarding Hive Minds: they gain Unity from the same pops that generate Admin Cap. While I agree that Unity is not overpowered like many techs, there are a few great traditions for Hive Minds (like the "all your planets get a free extra building" one). Also, Synpase Drones, for Hive Minds at least, appear to generate a percentage modifier to the output of other drones, much like Slave-errr, "Pampered Bio-Trophies" do for Sims Play-errr, "Rogue Servitors" :)

Call the spiffing Brit

Perfect timing. Was just trying to fix my sprawl

For hive mind each synapse drone can increase menial labor by 1% and stability by 2 with the incorporate artifact relays planetary edict. So with enough of them you can forgo housing

Thanks for all these helpful videos! Didn't even know I could build more districts and was running in quite a lot of trouble because of that xD Waiting on that Planet specialization video!

I have to say, in this series, this is my favorite video, because it's mainly just about numbers and covers pertinent variables (ie. empire type). Most of the other vids seem to apply to very specific strats and empires, and gloss over a lot. So while I also enjoy synth ascension playstyle, I wonder how useful they might be for someone playing a different type of empire.

Thank you, this Guide helped alot. Also all the bits of Fun like the Xenophobia or the one TTS Thumbnail kept me entertained :P

is the secret increasing admin jobs when selecting traditions in the early game when over the cap?

Thank you for a great job you have done! Your calculations clarified admin cap mechanics, now it`s a bit easier to decide what end when to do about bureaucracy

*In a nutshell: don't go above admin cap if you can avoid it. Build an admin building when there is demand, but make sure you have 1 per colony at some point.* (unless you specialize heavily) There might come a point in the game, depending on the size of map you play, where you want to focus a system with sector specific governor 10% admin bonus to do nothing but churn out admin buildings, and specialize the colony for bureaucracy. To do so, understand that your total maxpopulation on any given planet is housing x 1.5 which will give you a decision which planets to go for with full admins. 1 upgraded admin building gives you 5 jobs, so that's where you start your math. Increased admin capacity is allowing you to either push more edicts than you normally could, or take down admin buildings from other planets for something more useful. Specializing always gives you more benefits the moment you actually have enough colonies to have specializations to be worthwhile. Usually, it's totally enough to have one admin building per colony, and since everything grows along nicely you only need to plant it down when you actually need it. But in the end you might end up with a colony only for bureaucrats if you have several huge planets that you put only commercial districts on, so they have quite the large population chunk that needs to be offset by an admin world. Why you NEVER want to be above admin cap in later stages is due to the severe penalties you receive on your research and it also takes longer for you to get the traditions done. Campaign cost (in the edict window) hurts not much if you're small, but campaign cost also increases with total empire sprawl size. It's totally correct and valid to nudge down bureaucrats in favor for scientists early on and it's very good advice. Just to avoid micromanaging, you'll just plop down research building first and only build the 1 admin building per colony once you actually need it. That means: don't focus on the x scientists for normal empires. Because usually every colony you populate, you will have a research and admin building anyway. It's only when you specialize and restructure is when you have to pay attention to how many admin buildings have to be rebuilt elswhere.

in my games, I would drop ~3 admin buidings on my homeworld as the game progressed, while trying to tech up to habitats to make Admin station in space is slow going. Now that I'm thinking about it. I think if you come across a really crappy habitable world (like 11 sectors, no good resources) it might be be useful to plop down an urban world there, build city districts and level 1 Comercial Zones. It nets you some trade value over the course of the game, but also as you need admin cap you can swap out a commercial zone for the administrative office. Granted this assumes you dont have a bunch of the DLC like me.

Actually there are times to pre-emptively build admin in bureaucracy centres: to add an edict where 25% sprawl penalty may cause an admin cap which doubles costs. Similarly when about to take out a fallen empire or some other types, they won't have enough bureaucracy to take over, so building a capacity margin avoids crippling research or desperately panic building bureaus on every colony with a spare slot.

Stefan, these videos are good. Really good. I thought I knew the game. Turns out I know the game. : D Feels good...

Awesome! I loved the comment about not pulling out a calculator during a game! My sentiments exactly!

thank you so much for the vid. Ever since the release of this system the game got so confusing that i uninstalled it. Now with federations, i want to give it another go...and your vids are helping :D

Now we just need more ways to generate Influence!

Detailed tutorial & amazing summary... excellent tutorial overall! new player here. Thanks

Handy to know, as I placed too much worry on this and it’s good to know it’s not a big deal. Especially as my next multiplayer game with friends will be as a hive mind

To put it even easier, with a regular empire make 1/25 planets into bureaucrat centers (or just one when you have less planets than that by the midgame), or 1/[numbers stated in video] for specials. That even leaves margin as you specialise some planets to forge/industry worlds.

Good tips, I try to maximize my bureaucracy on one planet as well. Make it a “bureaucratic centre” designation and have multiple admin complexes as the game progresses. That way you aren’t needing one as the first building every time you expand.

Is it just me, or did Byzantine got a lot more powerful than ever?

Stefan... Stefan~ We know you want to give us that little extra secret ;) Something to do with that crime level and -42 housing on your Capital Planet ? Hm~ ?

They could fix this by making a Resolution that significantly increases sprawl from number of systems and another opposit one that does it with number of pops. Of a resolution gets passed that increases sprawl from systems alot then wide empires will run into an issue of having to set up more beurocrat worlds wich will stall them quite abit.

-I don't want you guys to do maths when playing a game EVE Online players: No, I don't think I will

@Stefan Anon: Just started out playing, so I hope this video helps me. Shouldn't the number of bureaucrats be related to my amount of sprawl rather than the number of researchers? When should I start caring about sprawl? Should I limit my sprawl to a specific amount and the rely on research? What other ways are there to deal with it anyways?

"It's more efficient sure, but not as fun." And who said efficiency isn't fun?

Can you do a planet management tutorial? Like how to specialise them for a good economy?

What would you say the optimal amount of unity producers per bureaucrat is? In a lot of my wide play through I don’t feel that I make enough unity.

what about using edicts over the cap? would it ever be worth it to increase admin capacity to balance off with that

Huh, I was building way too many cities and didn't specialize my planets enough. I don't know if it's still the case, but there were buildings increasing the production of a particular resource, for example power grid gave 15% or 25% extra energy to technician jobs. Therefore it is worth it to look at available districts and if a planet has 9 mineral districts, but only 3-4 energy and food, consider specializing it as a mine and building mining districts to capacity and a mineral extractor building. The downside of specialization is that loosing a single planet can cripple a civilization in some way, while loosing one of a few less efficient all-rounder colonies won't. Another one of my mistakes was building "spare" districts and not just enough for my pops growth in 5 years, which spread among multiple planets increased my sprawl by quite a bit. I would keep the starting planet at at least 40 pops, but eventually you get enough colonies to resettle new planets to 10 pops shortly after colonizing and having enough housing. The downside is, some planets will pretty much permanently stay at 10 pops by producing colonists to resettle.

What do you think about the docile and unruly traits which increase and decrase empire sprawl from pops?

Admin cap, or the thing I foreshadowed to be utterly irrelevant, bureaucracy is dead and now the xeno have cooontrol. But the secret shall remain, the devorer of knoweldge wills it!

Excellent I just started a Commonwealth of Man. Can you do a video on leaving the galactic community?

I feel inlove playing a authrotian technocracy and void borne origins the tech boost is very huge.

With the Hive mind demonstration Stefan just wanted to showcase all the pop-up icons the game has to offer.

So, the new admin building added in federations. Would you consider them pretty good? Because I literally build one and it covers a whole lot of sprawl and speeds up my early game tech advancement by a lot keeping myself under sprawl limit. I’ve never done that before

@Stefan Anon Is this still the case now in 3.0? I'm not sure if you discussed this in your live stream.

Thats cool and all but htf do I assign or build bureaucrat buildings?

you are saying that I should make bureaucrats on *25* scientists pop, are the normal pops also included in those scientist pops? or the normal pops are excluded from the *25* pops number.

So if I understand this correctly what you're saying is I should trade out my Center for a science building asap when game starts

How does Hive minds factor into this though? The first thing I noticed when trying out a hive mind for the first time with the new expansion installed was that their admin cap producing buildings also produce amenities (in addition to unity and admin cap) and since I needed amenities I added one of the hive nodes (or whatever they are called, the spire like buildings that only hivers get) to each of my worlds that had negative amenities. The only reason I did this was that through extensive genetic manipulation I had at that point put the "Fertile" and "Erudite" traits on every single drone and at some point my worlds started a slow death spiral into deviancy, and since you cautioned against building precinct buildings I naturally thought the same applied to hunter-killer drones. That particular save is now probably hard to save because what next happened after I'd stabilized that situation was that the neighboring empire begged me to take them on as a vassal because the mean fanatic purifiers next door was bullying them, and I might have glassed some planets, eaten some pops and then tried to integrate the homeworld of said purifiers into the hive mind...

Ever since I started ignoring Admin Cap on console, I’ve been having much more fun. Long as I have one or two dedicated Tech worlds, I can offset the penalties. I don’t even take the admin cap ascension perk. Highest I’ve gone was like 400 over. But I also encompassed half the galaxy by that point.

Really useful video thanks! I don't think you covered what Campaign Cost actually means though?

6:21 I wonder why people are intimidated by this game. Wtf even is going on on screen xD

Yo, it’s been a year since this video, does tip #4 still apply that warrants you to keep it a secret or is it patched? cuz as a new player teasing a tip like that just makes me feel like im missing something crucial and in hindsight it’s a dick move. Im trying to learn the game here, not get cock teased.

I think i can guess tip nr 4, unemploy bureaucrats in the when you have spare jobs and empire sprawl. good early game when you have start with way more admin cap than sprawl

10:24 are you talking about +% to simple drones that synapse drones can give if you have something... ancient?

Thank you for the video. So I guess right then choose Unruly trait ) BTW, I other traits I take was +Unity +Sciense +Minerals (playing as the Lithoids) and sedentary (I do not bother with migration and resettlement - to much micro management for me... and I do not like force pop control, just my quirk ;) )

Would you consider the ascension perk that increasesthe admin cap by % ?

Will you make a guide covering how to make a playable multiplayer lobby? I always suffer dsync in mine

Now THIS is some high-quality advice! Curse you for keeping your secrets though.

So as a machine empire I make 3 researchers and then just bureaucrats? Or is it a one for one after that point?

One note, the 3rd Bureaucratic building can't be unlocked in current patch without a mod to fix it. Not sure if its intentional or not, but the code looks like a typo.

Very informative video. For an experienced player, this is the best video so far. I presume the "exploity" tip has to do with Synapse Drones and maybe also Coordinators from Machine empires due to their effects with relics? Since 2.6 you can build and endless amount of Synapse Drones, 50 would already be enough to create 100 stability on a planet by using the Relic decision. I haven't tried it myself, but from watching the video it seems you can go deep into negative Housing and still grow pops? Or just resettle tons of pops onto the planet and have stability outweight the penalties from negative Housing? So... one planet Challenge is now a thing for Hiveminds aswell?

Want to note empire sprawl is no longer now Unity (the resource) has changed and now bureaucrats produce this resource; the effects of empire sprawl can no longer be negated so you just have to out produce (like in anno 1800 with royal taxes); but unity is used to form traditions which requires more correlating with empire sprawl. Certain technologies and ascension perks can minimize the effect empire sprawl has by limiting it. (This is my understanding of it) and I really like this change as you can focus on unity and still gain buffs through that way.

Can I switch all my unity to admin to reduce my sprawl in the last couple of years ? The unity won't get me any more traditions so I might as well right ?

hello sir! ty for all the nice videos. Could you make a video for Tall Megacorp play with all the new expansions and origins in mind?

"I don't want you pulling out a calculator and doing math while you're playing a frickin' game." This guy... this guy gets it. Actually subbed.

What do you think about Stellaris vs Aurora 4x?

Can we please talk about the fact that the totally mugged up to force robots into a tall playstyle as intended by the designer?

ahhhhh shit I've been building too many admin offices. And not nearly enough researchers.

Going back through these since us console plebs are jumping to 2.6.3 in less than two weeks...

The Administratum has come

my guess for the secret is that since the beaurocratic synapse drones create amenities it is able to provide more of a bonus than adding housing thus allowing you to kill two birds with one stone and making you OP in the process

When playing hiveminds you really need to micromange your synapse drones (or completely disable them) because they hurt your economy early game so hard and you gain absolutely nothing from them. Earlygame Hivemind is more microheavy than any other start I've played so far.

Hey Stefan, are you planning to update civics tier list?

Thumbnail was so clear that I didn't watch the video, and gave a thumbsup before leaving

One thing you might want to keep in mind... a bureaucrat uses 1 amenities and a scientist uses 2. I feel that he didn't address this cost delta effectively.

Hey Stefan how do you deal with desync in multiplayer games? I noticed that you were playing in a large multiplayer game on stream yet had no issues? How do you deal with it?

I try to keep it under control.

Could running tall vs wide still be viable(if not optimal)? I'm just getting back into the game and want to play around with an empire with small, easily defend-able territory.

So is the magic number of 25 or 60 regarding the amount of researchers on one planet or in total in all of your empire?

How can I see how many researchers I have on all planets not just one planet at the time?

So I learned 2 things. 1) Not having to worry about going slightly over the empire sprawl cap, and 2) I found a use for those crappy low habitability planets. :P

I have been praying to The Birb for quite a while now. Does anyone know at what point will I reach enlightenment by learning the secret tip?

I had a great game going where I completely ignored the admin cap before the update and I tried to continue and it was completely unsaveable. And absolute travesty

Ok, how do you open the Colony Designations Tab at 8:00? I've looked this up multiple times and I still can't figure it out.

:O what about hive minded machine races in regard to scientists and beaurocrats ?

The secret is employing bureaucrats for one month once you already have the base tech cost done, to drop the cost of the tech down to its base cost. The tech will complete, and then you can send the bureaucrats back to being whatever they were beforehand.

One thing that is not considered here is that scientists and unity workers require more consumer goods. You always need to support them with more artisans. So it's much more complicated than the simple increase of science/unity. Also the efficiency/availability of building slots should be considered. In my experience it's harder in the early game to produce enough consumer goods. Tldr if you struggle with consumer goods/minerals admistrators can fulfill the same job while being easier to maintain. Also: still a great video.

Hiveminds will make you have a lot of admin cap IF you rush traditions for some bizzare reasons. BTW, that +1 unity might make beurocrats be a little bit better. Don't know how good it is.

do you use the trick of changing specialisations on planets to take a bonus then switch back say like building houses

Saying it's a secret while you over your mouse on the Hive Mind Synapse Drone... *Stares at his Devouring Swarm.* If i make my bugs looks cute and not purge birbs will you tell me ? All joke aside, what's with that high level of deviancy ? I mean, i always built a lot of Sentinel Post to prevent it but is it useless ? I did the ring world start and with 225 pops i needed 4 Sentinel post to make sure it stays at 0. Is it bad ?