A reliable Stellaris opening
The first 30 years of a Stellaris game decide the next 200. Here is the opening build order, survey priorities and early-war rules I use to snowball instead of stalling.
Stellaris is decided embarrassingly early. Not by a battle — by whether you claimed the right three systems in the first thirty years. Here is the opening I run on almost every empire.
§Year 1: what to do in the first minute
- 1Set your science ship to survey, manually, starting with your home system and then the nearest hyperlane neighbours.
- 2Queue your second Science Ship immediately. Two survey ships is not optional, it is the whole early game.
- 3Queue a Construction Ship after that.
- 4Set your Construction Ship's first job: a Mining Station on the best mineral deposit in home system.
- 5Put your Corvettes on the closest chokepoint so you actually see what is coming.
§Build order at home
- Mining Stations on everything with 3+ minerals.
- Research Stations only after minerals, unless the deposit is huge.
- Two more Science Ships by year 10.
- Outposts on chokepoints and on systems with a colonisable planet, in that order.
§Claim chokepoints, not pretty systems
The most common newbie mistake is grabbing the nice habitable world four jumps away and leaving the two-lane junction next door open. Chokepoints let you defend a whole region with one starbase. Look at the hyperlane map, find the systems where three or more lanes meet, and outpost those first even if they are empty rocks.
- One Starbase with defence platforms at a chokepoint beats twice the fleet spread thin.
- Claim outward along a single direction. A blobby, connected empire is defensible; a spotty one is a buffet.
§Traditions and tech priorities
Traditions I open with, in order:
- 1Discovery — cheaper survey and research, snowballs everything.
- 2Expansion — cheaper outposts and colony ships, exactly what you need in years 20 to 50.
- 3Domination or Prosperity depending on whether the neighbours look hungry.
Early tech I always grab:
- Mineral and energy production boosts before anything shiny.
- Corvette / Destroyer hulls only when a neighbour's fleet power passes yours.
- Administrative capacity techs, because sprawl penalties sneak up hard.
§The early war rule
Only start a war you can finish in one push:
- Your fleet power is 1.5x theirs or better.
- You share a border, so you can actually reach their planets.
- You have alloy income to replace losses, not just a nice fleet.
Otherwise, sit behind your chokepoint, keep surveying, and let the AI empires bleed each other. Second place in a two-way war is a fantastic place to be.
§Crisis prep starting from year 50
- Keep a standing fleet you can actually afford. Bankrupt strength is not strength.
- Upgrade starbases at your chokepoints to Citadels before you build a second fleet.
- Bank alloys. Every mid-game crisis is solved by having alloys ready when it arrives.
§Mistakes I made for 900 hours
- I surveyed with one science ship because building a second felt expensive. It is the cheapest thing in the game.
- I claimed a beautiful ringworld system with no route to it. Free real estate for my neighbour.
- I went wide and disconnected. My empire looked like confetti and defended like it too.
- I ignored sprawl and wondered why research crawled.
