Overview
A guide on building an empire focused on federation building and making the AI fight your battles for you. Very useful on insane difficulty, because of the massive AI’s bonuses
Introduction
This guide is based on my experience with the game. It didnt take too many games on insane to realise i wouldnt be able to outgrow the AI, so the ‘expand -> grow -> conquer’ strategy i used in lower levels wouldnt work here. This motivated me to try a different strategy: making a big alliance, converting my enemies via liberation and merging them into the federation
i didnt manage to finish a game with this strategy yet, but i learned a lot of things about the diplomacy in stellaris that might be useful to someone trying something similar. This motivated me to make this guide
You can’t please everybody
diplomacy in stellaris is not complicated – not in paradox standards, at least -. If you create your empire properly it shouldnt be hard to NAP most of your neighbors and sign a defensive pact with at least 1. But when it comes to federations there is 1 thing that divides empires into 2 groups: war philosophy
depending on empire’s ethics they will have unrestricted or liberation wars policy. And if your war philosophy doesnt match the other empires’ he gets -50 towards joining your federation. This modifier is very difficult to overcome, so you will have to decide if you want to form a federation with the unrestricted wars empires or with the liberation ones
as long as you dont pick pacifist ethos you can meet your neighbors before making this decision, because you are able to change your policy. But you want to make sure the people you liberate also have your war philosophy, so they will join you
one way to do it is giving the liberation war goals to one of your allies, so the new empire will have the same ethos as they, and then choose the same policy. The problem is that this way you wont get the opinion bonus and they might not accept your federation invitation. Thankfully if you choose your ethics right there is a way to make sure you can liberate empires with the philosophy you want. This is the topic of the next section:
Empire build
TRAITS
There are 2 species traits relevants to diplomacy in the game: repugnant, which give other empires -25 opinion, and charismatic, which give +25. Needless to say, you should pick the later
the rest of the traits dont affect diplomacy, so whatever you pick is fine. I like industrious, rapid breeders, sedentary and fleeting
GOVERNMENT & ETHICS
This is the important bit. First of all, democracy your best authority choice. I personaly think its overpowered with its +250 influence mandates, but the important thing here is pleasing democratic crusaders. They get a +25 opinion modifier towards democracies, -50 towards oligharchies and -100 otherwise. No other empire cares about your politics, so its an easy choice
now, ethics. First of all, you want xenophile for the opinion modifier and dont want pacifist because of war policy. The third thing you have to consider is AI’s war policy. Here is the table of personalities:
[link]you should choose an ethic combination in which, by embracing one of the factions you have, your AI personality will change in such a way that its prefered war policy changes. The best way i found to do it is starting xenophile + egalitarian + militarist. This will give me a democratic crusader personality, with unrestricted wars. And if needed i can embrace the egalitarian to become xenophile + fanatic egalitarian and become a federation builder, which likes liberation wars
civics dont impact this strategy, you can choose whichever you like. Just dont pick anything that requires militarist, because you might lose it
The game
i usually NAP, DP and sign research agreements and migration treaties with every neighbor i can while i beeline for the tradition to form federations, so i can build trust with everybody. Then i choose who i wanna make the federation with. You should note that once you join the federation you lose your defensive pacts. This is good, because it means you can attack them later and you dont get an opinion hit from canceling it
sometimes its worth guaranteeing some empires so they cease being wary and become cordial or something similar. You usually dont need to do it, and if you do you should be careful, because you will get an opinion hit when you stop the guarantee. This might turn them unfriendly(or similar) if you do it with low trust
if the empire is almost accepting a NAP or DP, but you cant get those last few points that would change its opinion you should consider sending them a gift. A few minerals or energy credits might be sufficient to change their minds
if you can form a big federation youre safe and can focus on colinization. Those few extra planets will help you a lot in a few decades. But if your federation is small or there are fanatic purifiers(or similars) neighboring its wiser to focus on the fleet. Whatever the case your start is way more solid now you have friends to protect you, and soon you and your friends fleets will be able to convince the rest of the galaxy to join your federation