It’ll be a while before I find the motivation to fire up Europa Universalis again. Great game, but I’m more than tired of it at the moment after the endgame slog of the World Conquest.

So let’s try something different:

Stellaris is a 4X game, which means this time we’re going to conquer the galaxy! Or not. We’ll see. Unlike with EU4, here I just want to have fun without the pressure. This is my first playthrough (I played maybe an hour of it before just to get a feel for the control and UI, but that’s it.)

The setup is simple: this is the base game, plus the Utopia and Leviathans expansion. I’ll be playing at Ensign level (the default difficulty) in a medium-sized galaxy. It’s Ironman too, just for kick.

So… let’s get started!

First, we need to pick a species.

Now, we could pick a pre-determined species, but where’s the fun in that? I’m here to explore options!

So I fiddle along in the species creator, and end up with this glorious, glorious society.

Lots of traits, ethics, etc. Let’s not get bogged down into specifics, but these litlle birdies are fast-breeding, fast-learning, and built to expand quickly, but somewhat peacefully.

How I hope this build works:

The Fleeting trait means my leaders will live shorter lives. I hope that Fast Learner will counteract that, letting me have better leaders faster and for a larger proportion of time overall. No idea if that’s how it’ll work out, or if more experienced leaders are worth that cost, but we’ll see.

The Weak trait means my ground troops are not as good (and I have a penalty to collecting minerals). Since I’m not shooting for an overwhelming-the-galaxy game, I think this is an okay drawback to pay for other traits.

Rapid Breeders means I will have more Pops to work the tiles of worlds I colonize, so I hope this’ll be enough to counteract the Minerals penalty of Weak (and give me more besides.) And Adaptive means we’ll be able to settle more worlds, as we’re okay with imperfect countries. So the idea is that I’ll be able to make good use of all the worlds I colonize.

As to our government Civics, we build efficiently (to make use of that increased population) and we’re good at bureaucracy (letting us have more Core Worlds.)

Finally, our Ethics give us minor bonuses that work well with the planned playstyle.

Next, we’ll start out on our journey.