2.2 New Player Tips

Here are some general tips for new players to Stellaris. For more detailed focus on economic tips, see Babby's Intro to Eco (https://pastebin.com/hwaqpW2U).

1) Ignore empire size: Yes you get penalties for building districts and grabbing star systems. Ignore the penalties, since they are heavily outweigh by the potential benefits.

2) Don't worry about habitability: Planets with low habitability will have an increase in the amount of amenities and consumer goods its pops use. This penalty is really not that bad and can be ignored, especially as you will have techs to increase habitability or change a pops preferred planet type as you progress.

3) Focus on pop growth: Pops are the most important resource you have. Pops work jobs that produce science, unity, and alloy which you need to murder your enemies. As such, stack every bonus you can to pop growth. You can increase pop growth with an edict (costs energy, available after edict tech), a planetary decision (start with, consumes food), gene clinic (building, from research, also makes amenities), cloning vats (building, from Engineered Evolution perk), techs (e.g. cloning vats), and a tradition (A New Life in Expansion tree). Avoid traits like slow breeder and sedentary since they decrease pop growth.

4) Go Expansion first: The Expansion tree is the best starting tree for 2.2 since it helps you do early game expansion and increases pop growth. Recommend you go Reach for the Stars, Colonization Fever, A New Life, Courier Network, then Galactic Ambition. For your first ascension perk I would recommend either Technological Ascendancy or Interstellar Dominion. Tech ascendancy increases your research rate, but dominion can allow you to grow even faster. I've found a personal preference to dominion in 2.2, but many players prefer tech. You do you bro. I like Discovery as my second tradition tree, but if you got a lot of neighbors and need to fuck them up go Supremacy.

5) Don't fear negative income: Many players freak out when they see their income is in the red, but it is rarely warranted. Early game, you will have negative income at some point. You should only be concerned if you have low stockpiles of that resource and of other resources. It is very easy to just use the internal (and later, galactic) market to just buy more of something. The most common example is consumer goods, which will probably dip into the negatives as you expand. If you got -6 per month and a stockpile of 2000, why care? Just make another civilian factory at some point in the next 300 months and you will be fine.

6) Trade: Trade with your neighbors, especially early game. Sometimes you might have to bribe them to get them friendly enough to trade with you, but it can be worth it. Early game other empires want food really badly, and will often trade large sums of energy or even alloys for it. Abuse this.

7) Grab chokepoints: Like it says, grab strategic chokepoints to limit the expansion of other empires. Only once you've locked off a section of territory should you expand into it. Denying your rivals resources is just as important as increasing your own.

8) Make Science Ships: I start my game off with building another science ship and selling some consumer goods to crew it. I like to have around 4-5 science ships in the early game so I know where my neighbors are and what chokepoints I need to grab to prevent their expansion. I also activate Map the Stars so that my ships survey faster and find more anomalies, which give you nice bonuses.

9) Tech priorities: My priority list for tech goes: more research options > increased research points/speed > faster growth tech > lasers/guns until plasma/autocannons appear > bigger ships > increased resource generation. For more detailed look at ship design, see Basic Combat, Ship Design, and War (https://pastebin.com/D0PpSiHQ).