I love the smell of burning xenos in the morning

Enemy: 500 ships lost, half their planets taken over, every system taken over Result: 5% exhaustion Me: Loses one corvette Result: 80% war exhaustion

So, in a nutshell: EU IV - Fleets are "useless," build armies. Stellaris - Armies are "useless," build fleets. Got it!

"in the endgame stations don´t really matter" "KZfaq recommendations: Here watch how lathland builds a scourge zoo with 800k stations"

The 4D chess move for subjugation is to join a federation, make the enemy your tributary, and then they'll fight for you like a vassal, while still giving you tribute.

Stefan when starting this quide: "three chokepoints, not really good" Stefan now: "one was a dead end, the other a fallen empire, everything is back where it should be"

>My fleet is at least two times as big as theirs at the start >I conquered more than 9/10 of their systems >I took over all of their planets and killed all of their strongest star bases >I killed just about their entire fleet *_And even then I still have the most war exhaustion_* mfw

My Stellaris playthrough in a nutshell: OH GOD MY ECONOMY!

“War, huh, what is it good for?” “Absolutely anything.” And with that, you have earned a sub.

"Enough bodies thrown at a problem will generally solve it" As a human rights student, I cringe. As a Stellaris player, I completely endorse you, my friend.

I much prefer warfare on a spiral galaxy. Locking down choke points and preventing the enemies reinforcements is so good.

Here's my strategy: 1. Do not prepare at all 2. Do not build any ships 3. Make an entirely civilian focused economy 4. Surprised pikachu face when you get invaded 5. Panic 6. More panic 7. Convert your entire economy to alloy production and trade every single one of your ressources for alloy 8. Start defeating in detail with hordes of corvettes 9. Block the enemy inside of your territory with starbases 10. Great patriotic war 11. Annex everything you can 12. Congrats, you are the most powerful empire in the galaxy This is actually how most of my games play out, I never learn to build up my fleet. I'm just too cheap

My tatics: 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕰𝖒𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖔𝖗 𝕻𝖗𝖔𝖙𝖊𝖈𝖙𝖘

You called war the most exciting thing in Stellaris. I wanted to let you know that I could not disagree more. War is tedious and annoying. Empires will basically never surrender a long lost war. AI keeps recapturing system after system with two ship fleets which can barely take out unupgraded stations. Conquering planets is just micromanagement without the basest form of interaction. Status Quo peace deals are not easily transparent. There is nothing between a weird Status Quo and a complete surrender of the enemy. CBs are inconsistent and hard to get aside from making claims for single systems via the rarest ressource in the game that you can't even really get actively. Just wanting to let you (and perhaps Paradox) know that there are plenty of ways to play Stellaris and I might be alone in my economy simulator and Federation/community leader playstyle but I don't think I am. Also much thanks for doing these guide. The rest of your stuff seems really entertaining as well as far as I've watched!

Do you think armies and ground warfare should be expanded on? Or would this become somewhat tedious on larger maps?

3:20 cruiser design is awful. Lasers and strikecraft is a terrible combination, lasers will be forced to target shields since strike craft ignores it and strikecraft will destroy a lot of armor before lasers can be used against it. Kinetics and strikecraft is much more powerful, since the kinetics will quickly deal with shields while strike craft deals with armor and both can take on hull. Coil guns are superior to UV lasers in hangar only cruiser fleets.

I miss the original original peace deals so much. I can liberate, flip ethics, take systems, demand war reparations, and humiliate all in one war. Additionally, though I should post this one the diplomacy video, the ability to sell my technology to other factions. Pretty much you offer a research agreement with a sliding time usage in exchange for resources. I only used this in the early game to give myself an economic boost since the technology isn't all that different yet or I am facing an existential threat and need ships to keep them at bay. I also did it in my multiplayer games with friends to help them out since they were still learning the game.

"If you dont have a dedicated alloy world, well you better go to my previous video with Democracy" Well guess that clarifies my concerns.

AI allies have actually been useful for the majority of my wars in my experience. In one war, a vassal of mine was helping to defend my territories against an empire I didn't even know entered the war. In another war I was in against a fallen empire, all my federation allies close by sent their fleets to divert the attention of the main FE fleets while I was able to clear out their territory with ease.

As a wise man once said “you split an empire you divide it’s people, you attack an empire you unite it’s people” - P Diddy

it's nice to have corvettes and destroyers in the fleet specifically to keep your more vulnerable battleships and cruisers from engaging in melee combat.

thank u so much for all these 10 guides but I'm sure 10 only scratches the surface of this beautiful game. hope there's more in depth guide in the future from u.

Thanks for this short series. It's just what i needed to pick up the game again after not playing it for a long long time !

You ideally want to figure out their ship builds before declaring war. If you alter your ships to counter theirs you'll have a far easier time. Your fleet got wiped because it just wasn't a good build for their fleets

This was such a fantastically well-put-together series, thank you, Stefan! 😃🙏🏽 May the light of our Universe guide your way 🌌

I watched 3 other videos before i came across this and this one by far explained war so much better. Thank you for your work!

STOP! PURGING TIME!

0:12 Thank you for inserting that joke, it really helped my mood lol

I'm very glad that you got sponsored by Paradox, because I can't think of anyone who does Stellaris guides better.

And remember kids: Unity Do First Dont, High-ish Hab. Nekkam Prime!

Very useful video, the info I needed started at 7:00 with the War Exhaustion. Was annoying in my game because I just started moving in with a superior fleet to counter attack the race who had made a move on my territory, then the game says war will be automatically resolved with Status Quo in 24 months.

Only thing missing from this game is a war room where you can speak with your Admirals or if in a federation other leaders where you can coordinate attacks, plan future attacks, defensive strategy, possible strategies of enemies, pay traitors of enemies to give intel on fleet movements there’s potential in a war room to make this game even better

I just got into stellaris - I've always been an endless legend/space2 fan so stellaris never really appealed to me. I just bought it on sale and and some DLC and I love it, but there is sooooo much to process. These up to date guides have been really helpful thank you sir. you are a queen.

I really need an admiral / grand admiral guide too because the AI is dominating me...

Dude, thank you. I have no idea why the war mechanic in this game is so convoluted but thanks to this video it's a lot clearer.

You can also use the trade window to determine how many reserves of a resource an empire has. Just CRTL-Shift click on the other empires alloy trade, where it maxes out at is its reserve and the monthly is it's production. This can also be used to decide which planets to take from an empire, since losing a consumer goods world when you are already low on consumer goods production is crushing. Attacking an equivalent empire with 5k fleet but ~15k alloy in store, means that in 90 days in there will be a BIG reinforcement wave coming.

Cloud Lightning and Focused Arc Emitter battleships: Killing fleets twice their power before their weapons are even in range.

it might be useful to have a corvette swarm (so 20+) with afterburners that can act as a rapid deployment force to both react to small raiding parties, and basically scoop up the level 0 starports in the internal regions of an opponent's empire. Corvettes with afterburners because your ship speed is based on the slowest ship in your fleet, so the corvettes can blitz places and dodge out when their fleets show up.

The one we’ve all been waiting for

everybody: "I like war" Everyone liking gameplay of passive empires minding their own business and TONS of diplomacy: REEEEEE

Great videos. Thanks for posting!

I like what you did with the intro :D

Nice series, it helps my gf a lot to pick up the game and understand it. Keep it up! One thing to note however, while in previous patches it may have been useful to build up your fleet only when you need it I would argue that in this patch you want to keep it around at all times if you're into the whole galactic senate and want that extra weight you get from your fleet size. What do you think?

dude, thank you so much for explaining how wars work. even thohg ive won three wars all ready, i still didnt understand how i was suffering more war exhaustion than the alliance i was fighting

I want better ship battles with actual tactics. Right now the fights boil down to the spec of your ships and the number of them. Kinda boring

Loved this serie, but you talk quick ^^ It's hard to understand everything as a foreigner. But I learned a lot anyway. THX

I wonder if every time a galaxy is made, it pops into existence somewhere? 😱💚

Definite improvement in AI battle tactics in 2.6. Usually play Grand Admiral with success. Last two games since update got dogpiled with massive multiple fleets. Pretty early in game with a weak federation so not much help from allies.

I’m a year late, but still. You can look at diplomatic weight gained from fleets to have a better comparison of yours and enemy’s fleets than just knowing that you’re ~equal. You need to look at the base diplomatic weight without any modifiers (such as 20% or so from the supremacist, great fleet, etc).

I thought I had war figured out and everytime I get them to accept status quo it never flips to me... it says I'll be taking the systems I have claimed but when the war ends they have retained them.... what am I doing wrong? Have tried so many different things and countless reloads of save files but can never get the outcome. Still pretty new to the game and only have about 80 hrs in.. I'm sure I'm missing something?

If you take on the AI as a tributary, if you have good relations you can ==> protectorate which you can then integrate. It doesn't start the 10-year timer when you convert them, so if they've been your tributary for 10 years before this point, you can just immediately start the process.

Excellent video! It nails the most important aspects of warfare very precisely. Thank you for taking the time to create it. A slight digression but how do you feel the Cruiser design you shared fares against the Battleships outfitted with Tachyon lance and Neutron Launchers? Is there a late game alternative that utilizes Strike Craft better than this Cruiser design?

You went on to praise strike craft, yet gave us a clear demonstration of why they actually aren't all that great. They get pulped with even miniscule advantage in the enemy's fleet power if it contains some PD. Also, the reason why your war exhaustion suffered less than theirs was not due to strike craft being efficient. It was due to cruisers being more efficient at retreating than corvettes and destroyers. Disruptors and similar weapons, on the other hand, don't have any significant counterplay options and allow a fleet to punch well above it's apparent weigth class.

About raiding fleets: I've noticed that the AI is really bloody good at distributing their fleets. They have smaller raiding fleets at the perfect locations and their big 100k fleets where they are needed most (fallen empires). Have I noticed correctly that the Stellaris AI is quite advanced when it comes to combat?

Love the videos mate! I'm kind of new to Stellaris but whenever I play as a conqueror I don't know what to do AFTER I win the war with all the slaves and unhappy planets that I won during the war. I really think that would be a great idea for a video.

+1 for the Edwin Starr reference

I dont usually finish my games of stellaris but my most recent game I finally reached end game crisis (Scourge) and watched a galaxy go insane. As soon as the scourage spawned, the fallen empire next to me thought now was a good time to "wake up". And man did they wipe the floor with the Scourage. I've never feared Ai in a game like stellaris. After the scourage was gone I thought the galaxy would calm but everyone ganged up on the Awoken and now everything is on fire. I'm good tho they seem to like me. I think.

@3:10 The hangar bay swapover makes life super easy just hang back and swat the flies away lol Thank you

"Violence never solves anything!" -someone who has never studied history

Thank you for this video. I just bought all the DLCs and am loving this game but this was all news to me. I was thinking watching this video...'wait cruisers are better than destroyers' (95% of my fleet is just destroyers) I didn't realize this game had so much depth in naval combat.

Man, I just immediately build up my fleets as a genocidal empire with all the insane bonuses and quickly get everyone but marauders and fallen empires pathetic to me in the first 60 years.

Very helpful!

Hello Stefan, thank you for the video and the previous ones, i have to ask you why everyone is telling me that strikecraft are overpowered, because a default enemy fleet which have the half of your fleet power can beet a strikecraft fleet. is it because you dont lose the ships so you can attack them again ? or am i missing something and loosing against the half fleet ennemy power (me 10k, him 5K for example) ? thank you !

Won me over before 20 seconds in. Subbed

you must have some big nutshells over there

Espionage was actually important since it will easily turn the entire war we're you are outnumbered from hoping the enemy will mess up in order for you to win into a thinking game since if you had the info of their fleets position you can do stuff like divide and conquer or etc

Earned a sub when you said “war what is it good for?”

Subjugation Wars against 1 planet primitive upstart empires or rebels have become such a drag with Verne, once there are a few defensive pacts in place. Since currently you can't get the Homeworld anymore when you have taken it and dealt enough exhaustion via Status Quo. And full Victory takes an unrealistically amount of invasions for them to give in, while realistically a guaranteer would exit the war before having all of their planets invaded.

Starbases for Life! Have 4 annoying neighbors behind my star Fortesses that dont dare to enter my Space xD Now i shall take your advise and get more Carriers :p Thanks for this Series really helped me out.

Better voice volume hype.

Nice Temptations/Edwin Starr reference.

hey bud, any news on a video about fleet comp? or just spam cruisers/bs with hangars and pray?

Hey ! First of all, nice guides. It helped me a lot even if I have so many questions left... The main problem I had in my last game is this one : How to make enemies fight against our defensive spaceports ? I've built in all my chokepoints spaceports with hangar modules but when an enemy tried to invade my systems, he just traveled accross the spaceport-protected system, avoiding the fight (even if my own fleet was there) and just tried to take all my other (non-protected) systems...

Its generally best to just spam corvettes until they become pathetic then crush them and eliminate them from existence. Usually works for me.

Im still not sure how to bait the enemy properly into fighting at your own station. do you just have to wait for them to do the first strike and will this even happen if you are the one declaring war?

Can you make a guide about slave managenment? I still have no clue on how to manage slaves and how to deal with recently conquered planets.

Are strike craft still more powerful once you hit end game and get kinetic batteries and battleship weapons that pair well together?

Based on the thumb nail, I thought this was going to explain total wars.

is it good to run multiple type of same ship into one group or is it preferable to have same type of ship in a group? like cruiser carrier + cruiser medium as one group for example

I've found that torpedoes are very powerful with cruisers, should I still use medium slots or the hangar?

What the hell??? You make fleets with only cruisers? I always make fleets with at leadt 4 times more corvettes than cruisers. A ship type has always 2 times more number than the bigger type in the sequence. For example: 32 corvettes, 16 destroyers, 8 cruisers, and so on. That always works very well.

Stefan: I the end game stations don’t really matter. Me at the end game with 300k military power per station: Excuse me?

*With patch 2.7 claiming systems during war is not exactly working, so be sure to claim before the attack.* After you have reached status quo and got rid of their ability to reinforce, you can simply keep the war because you will be in an open border truce for 10 years after the war has finished. The occupied systems will continue to give you economic boosts. So if you have to fight on multiple fronts, having not to worry about one side is a big relief, especially if you don't have to worry that after 10 years, they just want to strike back if your fleet strength isn't up to par and at the other side of your empire. Another tip how to be done with wars faster is claim more systems than one, in the order of importance. That way you can guarantee that you will get the 1 or 2 systems that you actually want on a state of Status quo, and leave out the other 1 to 2 systems that you claimed later. That way you can easily rush wars even if the opponent has the bigger fleet, when they're busy elsewhere and before they can get back to you to mop the floor with you, the war is already over. Yet another tip: do not show the enemy your fleet strength on the border. If you put ships on your border, the other empires will put ships there as well. wait for war declaration until the very last moment as you move your ships into place and they're at the edge of the gravity well so they can immediately jump immediately and start attacking. It's funny, yet another game where ground combat is essentially useless :D

So what happened in this case? I launched a war against an opponent. My Cassus Beli was humiliation. I destroyed their stations in the territory but didn't know how to lay siege to planets yet so I started bombarding worlds and building armies to invade. Then the war ended. I won completely. I gained zero territory. What happened?

I wouldnt say that starbases are getting worthless in the endgame. I dont know if it is still doable but another KZfaqr pulled it of to have starbases( more like citadels) with over 800k fleetpower wich means he was untouchable for others. And the best Thing is that he did this for one Goal only: to contain the endgame Crisis (wich was the Scurdge(?)) on highest difficulty with Settings to make the game as hard as possible.

What is the change to the hangar bays on ships that are said to have been very potent? What is that change?

I am so glad I didn't give up on this game during the learning curve phase. 100hrs in and I am finally able to keep my empire fully sustainable and prosperous without issues. Next up: Conquests

How to win wars make sure your army is bigger than there’s

I liked for the pun and im not ashamed of it.

Problem I have is as soon as I get into a war suddenly I'm losing resources even though I was in the positive beforehand

Armies are the best lots of fortresses on planets with chokepoint and the ftl inhibitor used this exact tactic to either win or status quo unwinnable wars..

Nice reference at the begining

So are machines and devouring swarm just objectively better in wars? Because when you take the stations and planets of a particular system, you immediately have that system added to your territory without needing to spend any influence on claims or waiting until the war is over.

I still don't understand how to make a claim. In the claim window the button is not active.

He totally forgot to manage his empire will he was at war

what does happen if i do "white peace"?( i destroyed like 90%of anything of my enemy)

How to purge? There is no Button or something like that. I cant kill the enemies....

I played the game today from steam, and despite winning every battle and claiming all stations of the enemy, I can't peace them out (unless I surrender) because apparently my war exhaustion is very high. I won every fight and barely lost ships

I am trapped between two nations and I have an ally on one side, they started a war against one and as I’m in a defence pact got dragged into it. Don’t have my army tech built up yet (only clones and robots), destroyed the fleets but had to invade a planet three times lol. My ally lost too much territory and didn’t really do much. I can’t fight them for 10 years now. Sucks balls.

So I run into an issue often times when declaring war against an empire that's much weaker than me that their attrition goes up slower than mine, and sometimes they don't have ships for me to destroy. So even if I take half their systems and the war's one sided, losing a single ship could end up causing my war exhaustion to hit 100% first. Is there another way to force their attrition up higher than mine?