Game Systems Analysis: Creating a Competitive Pacifistic Build in Stellaris

With Covid-19 we are all spending a lot of time at home, and have taken up many hobbies. But it can’t all be fun and… never mind, sometimes your professional appetites leak in. To that end I’ve been trying to do a deep dive on a highly complex game Stellaris. If you haven’t played Stellaris, it is a 4X game about space based empire building. It’s a really wonderful game and one of the best offerings from Paradox (imho), however it certainly isn’t for everyone and that is largely because it has a ton of systems all intertwined and takes a long time to learn, and even longer to “get good” at.

One of the things that bugs me about playing Multiplayer in Stellaris is that the dominant builds are all tech rush war builds (and often xenophobic slavers). Honestly I don’t find war that interesting, especially in a multiplayer game where I want everyone to have fun. I also want to play closer to my personal preferences in terms of civics and ethics. To that end I have been trying to create an effective Pacifistic, Xenophilic, and Technophilic civilization that can compete against things like crazy Slaver Materialists and their ilk. It’s been largely an uphill battle with some builds performing ok, but most ending up at the bottom of the pack and getting exterminated by warmongering empires that (sometimes literally) want to eat my people. 

However I have had great success recently with a build I created that exemplifies all the traditions of openness, inclusion, and discovery I want, but also is highly competitive. I’d like to walk you through this build and why it is competitive in both multiplayer and against Grand Admiral AI. Please keep in mind that this empire model is effective in 2.7.1 (and 2.7.2 test) and if you are reading this later on it might be nerf’d. A note before reading further, this is not a beginners guide to Stellaris by any stretch. This blog assumes you have some experience with the game or at least are willing to read up on its systems. If you’ve never played Stellaris, I recommend you go play a bit, or watch some beginner tutorials before reading further.

The Build: Rogue Servitor Remnant Pacifistic Technologists

This is a machine empire build with an organic civilization that produces tons of unity for you. Only the civilization you will use is not strictly organic because early game you will only have one Bio-trophy civ to take care of and they should be Lithoids (rock eaters). 


The thinking: This build makes for a simplified and powerful economy that is easy to ramp up early game. You can take a long term lead in certain tech (which you can boost by clearing remnants on your homeworld), and can afford to ignore food focused technologies early game since you won’t need them. Your super awesome economy can just out perform everyone else, allowing you to play tall (even though everyone else has to play fairly wide in the current meta).

Let’s walk through the traits, government, and ethics:

First off you are a machine intelligence so straight out the gate you have no choice (Gestalt Consciousness and Machine Intelligence are the only ways you can go. But, you do have some choices when it comes to your Civics:

Rogue Servitor: This Civic is the backbone of this build. It gives you biotrophy pops you can spread across your civilization and as long as they are happy they create a bunch of unity for you. Your empire will have massive stability and if you embrace Lithoids as your starting bio trophies, you can just focus on a mineral and energy based economy with no need for food. Later in the game you can quickly ramp up food production as you open your borders to the scattered masses of organic pops that will be desperate for a new home after all your neighbors start going to war with each other. At that point you should be technologically dominant (or at least one of a few tech super powers) and it will be a simple matter for you to ramp up food production for those organics.

You have two choices now for a second Civic. I like Maintenance Protocol for its boost to early game unity, but another viable choice here is Rapid Replicator. Either choice will give you awesome pop growth and great unity, the only question is which one of those you want to maximize. Population growth is very dominant but getting through the Discovery and Expansion traditions super quickly will arguably give you just as much of an edge (and sometimes you just won’t be able to colonize quickly enough to make use of maximized pop growth early game). Again this is dealer’s choice, but you really need to go with one of these two civics. 

Next, let’s talk Traits: I’ve gone with Emotion Emulators, Mass Produced, and Superconductive. This is a pretty standard set of traits for this type of empire and I don’t want to deep dive all of these too much, but you do have a choice here. You could swap out Superconductive for Logic Engines. This will make the power of your economy less of a given (because you are sacrificing a big boost of energy credits) but it will definitely increase your ability to tech rush, and (again) early game you can ignore food and agricultural techs so a maximized tech rush can also be very targeted. Either way you should be able to get ahead of most, if not all, empires in terms of military tech and be able to defend yourself effectively through the use of suped up star bases and an advanced but fairly minimum defensive fleet.

As for the negative traits: High Bandwidth is pretty much a given especially with this build, since you will ideally play tall and empire sprawl is just not that big of an issue. The ROI is high as it gives you 2 points to use for positive traits. I’m happy with Repurposed Hardware, to free up the other point you need for this build, as a slow gain of leader levels isn’t that big of a deal. However robot upkeep is also going to have low impact on your civ so High Maintenance is also a good way to go. Personally, I feel like you have to think about it more, and this game gives you a lot to think about all the time already. So, if you aren’t the most experienced player in the world the leader leveling is very much a passive system and I recommend going that route.

Now for your Bio-trophy pops:

As I said you are going to want to go Lithoid to simplify and streamline your economy early game. Lithoids also can live pretty much anywhere so they are less of a problem to spread around your empire and get all your colony worlds producing tons of unity for you. After that Conservationist and Traditional are the best choices here. These are best because the first will allow you to really not worry about consumer goods (you can in fact sell your consumer goods early game), and the second will just boost your unity more. I have been running Natural Engineers as my final choice because Engineering technology is the most dominant in the game (given the current meta) and a slight boost to this early game can pay huge dividends late. However, it is a very slight boost, and it is perhap just as good to go with a two point trait here. Good choices include Intelligent (for the tech bonuses though I honestly wouldn’t spend the extra point as Natural Engineers will get you what you want without the extraneous fluff) but maybe a better choice is a Lithoid specific trait: Volatile Excretions. This trait will give you access to motes in the early game and allow you to clear remnant blockers on your homeworld earlier, those blockers will give you tech boosts in turn and the overall effect of that can be huge.

One note here, if you use a 2 point trait you will need to pick up another negative trait for your bio trophies. A good choice here is Deviants, though you could also scrap Decadent and go for Repugnant which gives you two points. I personally would just not add more negative traits because while their impact will be minimal they will counter some of the good choices you made earlier. That is why I opt for Natural Engineers, even though it means slower exploitation of my remnant world (but slow and steady ramp up wins the race). 

Some last notes. You really need to focus on alloys early game so you can expand (so build up alloy production before a research center on your home world). Unlike with most empires, go with Discovery over Expansion first in the traditions. The bonuses are better for a tall technophilic empire. Finally, all your star bases need strike craft so you don’t get pulled into the early wars. Your fleet power will be low otherwise and all those militaristic empires will start thinking of ways to carve you up. But, if you rush strike craft and star base technologies, you will be able to fight defensive wars effectively with a small peace keeping fleet (provided you secure your choke points).

That’s it for now. As the Vulcans say, “Peace, and long life.”

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