50 Fun Facts About Stellaris

Which Nordic country is home to Paradox Development Studio, the developer of the space strategy game Stellaris?

Sweden's Paradox Development Studio, founded in 1995, is also behind the Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron and Crusader Kings series.

Stellaris is a 4X strategy game, a label that stands for explore, expand, exploit and which fourth verb?

Exterminate rounds out the 4X formula, yet Stellaris is won on overall score, which counts economy and technology as well as fleets.

In Stellaris, ships normally cross between star systems along which fixed web of faster-than-light routes?

Hyperlanes force fleets through chokepoints worth fortifying, and every campaign opens on January 1, 2200, the day your empire discovers the network.

Stellaris's 2.1 update, released with Distant Stars, honours which author of the novel Ringworld?

Larry Niven's Ringworld won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and Stellaris players can build a ring-shaped megastructure of their own around a star.

Which Stellaris megastructure is built around a star to capture its energy output?

Dyson Sphere megastructures take their name from Freeman Dyson's 1960 paper, although novelist Olaf Stapledon had imagined the same star-wrapping shell back in 1937.

Which Stellaris endgame crisis is a ravenous swarm whose infestors turn habitable planets into infested worlds?

Prethoryn Scourge worlds can't be retaken by ground troops: an infested planet has to be bombarded until it turns into a barren rock.

What does Stellaris call a planet whose entire surface has been built over as a single city?

Ecumenopolis planets arrived with the game's 2018 expansion about corporate empires, and the idea has been taken seriously by real city planners too.

Which sci-fi franchise's 2023 Paradox strategy game, subtitled Infinite, was called extremely similar to Stellaris?

Star Trek: Infinite was built by Argentine studio Nimble Giant, and less than six months after its launch Paradox announced it would get no further updates.

Stellaris sold over 200,000 copies in a day, almost matching a Paradox record held by which city-building game?

Cities: Skylines kept its launch record, but Stellaris still became Paradox Development Studio's fastest-selling game and had passed three million sales by May 2020.

Which planet-killing ship class, added by the Stellaris expansion Apocalypse, can be armed with a World Cracker?

Colossus ships can't fight fleets at all, and simply owning one lets every other empire declare a total war to stop you.

Stellaris runs on which game engine, first used for Europa Universalis III in 2007?

Clausewitz takes its name from a Prussian general, and for Stellaris the ageing engine was upgraded with physically based rendering.

Director Henrik Fåhraeus called Stellaris one third Star Control 2, one third Europa Universalis IV and one third what?

Master of Orion 2, a 1996 turn-based game from Simtex, is still regarded as a defining benchmark of the space 4X genre.

Stellaris was first presented to the public in August 2015 at which annual video game trade fair?

Gamescom is held in Cologne, Germany, and Stellaris went on sale nine months after its showing there, in May 2016.

From version 3.3, Stellaris updates dropped science fiction writers' names in favour of what?

Constellations took over with update 3.3, called Libra, after earlier patches had honoured Lem, Banks, Bradbury and Heinlein.

Stellaris: Console Edition launched in February 2019 on Xbox One and which other home console?

PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners waited almost three years after the PC release, and a version tuned for Xbox Series X/S followed in March 2021.

Which was the first species pack released for Stellaris, arriving in August 2016?

Plantoids arrived three months after launch with plant-based aliens, and from version 3.1 the pack also included extra traits and civics.

Which 2017 Stellaris expansion introduced megastructures, hive mind empires and the first ascension perks?

Utopia also brought orbital habitats and three ways to evolve a species: biological, artificial or psionic.

Which 2021 Stellaris expansion lets a player's own empire become the crisis that threatens the galaxy?

Nemesis also added espionage and a fog of war, along with crisis ships such as the Star-Eater.

Which 2017 Stellaris story pack first let players lead an empire made up entirely of machines?

Synthetic Dawn also introduced synthetic uprisings, and a 2024 expansion later added individualistic machine empires.

The Contingency crisis in Stellaris opens with which eerie transmission that bounces across every empire?

Ghost Signal strength drops each time a Sterilization Hub is destroyed, and it only vanishes when the machine world behind the crisis is wiped out.

Which Stellaris resource, earned by supporting factions, is spent to unlock traditions?

Unity also pays for edicts, and the traditions it buys come in themed trees such as espionage, exploration, mercantilism and militarism.

Stellaris has eight ethics on four opposing axes; which ethic is the direct opposite of Spiritualist?

Materialist empires hold that the unknowns of the universe can be explained by science, and an empire may take the ethic in a moderate or a more extreme form.

Which Stellaris ethic, used by hive minds and machine empires, costs all three of an empire's ethic points?

Gestalt Consciousness is reserved for empires without individual agency, and its pops are not affected by happiness at all.

What name does Stellaris give the galaxy-wide conflict fought between two awakened Fallen Empires?

War in Heaven leaves younger empires a third option besides picking a side: a federation can rebrand itself as the League of Non-Aligned Powers and resist both.

Which machine Fallen Empire in Stellaris is guaranteed to awaken when the Contingency crisis begins?

Ancient Caretakers are a machine intelligence that maintains ringworlds as a refuge for organic beings fleeing some unknown menace.

Which Stellaris guardian, found orbiting the black hole Gargantua, is not hostile to passing fleets?

Infinity Machine can be helped into the black hole it orbits, and in one outcome the hole shrinks and is renamed Pantagruel.

In Stellaris, the nomadic Marauders can unite into a conquering Horde under which leader?

The Great Khan can be bought off with obedience: an empire may submit as a Satrapy and simply wait for the leader to die.

Psionic empires in Stellaris can commune with powerful beings in which realm of pure psionic energy?

The Shroud can offer a pact with the End of the Cycle, which doubles an empire's output for 50 years and then depopulates every planet it owns.

Which civilian vessel in Stellaris surveys planets and stars, uncovering resource deposits and anomalies?

Science ship crews do more than map: a vessel parked over a planet boosts its research, and battle debris can be studied for new technology.

In Stellaris, which governing body lets member empires vote on laws that affect every other member?

Galactic Community votes are weighted by diplomatic weight, earned from fleet power, economy, technology and population, so large empires speak loudest.

Which Stellaris civic makes an empire purge every other species and bars it from diplomatic pacts with aliens?

Fanatic Purifiers trade diplomacy for firepower, gaining a third more fire rate and naval capacity, and they are locked out of the galactic market too.

Which machine empire civic in Stellaris keeps organic beings as pampered Bio-Trophies in sanctuaries?

Rogue Servitor empires descend from a planet-spanning servant system that outlasted the decadent civilisation it was created to serve.

Which Stellaris origin starts an empire on a homeworld that will explode within decades of the game beginning?

Doomsday gives an empire 35 to 45 years before its planet shatters, with a warning one year ahead and no guaranteed habitable worlds nearby.

Which Stellaris origin starts a species living on orbital habitats rather than on the surface of a planet?

Void Dwellers know how to build more stations from the first day, and their species prefers habitats to any natural world.

Which Stellaris origin makes a young empire the favoured protégé of a Fallen Empire that sends it gifts?

Scion empires start with a wormhole leading straight to their overlord's capital and receive a more powerful gift every few decades.

In Stellaris, a pre-FTL civilisation that destroys itself in nuclear war leaves behind which class of planet?

Tomb World surfaces still draw settlers, and colonising one is very likely to set off a unique event within a few years.

Which strategic resource in Stellaris is the signature deposit of celestial bodies inside the hidden L-Cluster?

Nanites hint at what waits behind the L-Gates: the most common result of opening one is an invasion from the cluster by the Gray Tempest.

Which Stellaris enclave is dedicated to safeguarding lost knowledge and sells research aid to passing empires?

Curator Order scholars also sell advice on the galaxy's guardians: paying to learn how to defeat one gives a permanent 25% damage bonus against it.

Which huge Stellaris ship, added with Federations, is a mobile shipyard that builds two vessels at once?

Juggernaut hulls repair and upgrade themselves in the field, yet they can't be repaired or upgraded at an ordinary starbase.

Which preset human empire in Stellaris was founded by ark ship colonists lost through a wormhole?

Commonwealth of Man settlers came from one of six great ark ships, and the empire gets its own short event chain, The Hunt for the Hyacinth.

Research in Stellaris is divided into three areas: physics, engineering and which third field?

Society completes the trio, and none of the three shows a fixed tech tree: each new project is picked from a shuffled hand of cards.

What is the basic currency of Stellaris, said to be accepted by all space-faring races?

Energy credits can be harvested straight from space, since mining stations that collect them cost no upkeep at all.

Which Stellaris megastructure lets a fleet travel instantly to any other structure of the same kind?

Gateway networks are older than the player empires: abandoned ones lie scattered across the galaxy, and repairing the first switches on another at random.

Stellaris's 2.2 update, which reworked planets, is named after which author of the Earthsea books?

Ursula K. Le Guin, also known for the science fiction of her Hainish universe, gave her name to the patch that shipped with the 2018 expansion about corporate empires.

Which spaceborne creatures in Stellaris are known as Space Whales and stay peaceful unless they are attacked?

Tiyanki herds are made up of cows, bulls, calves and hatchlings, and only the eldest of the species, the Matriarch, attacks on sight.

Which preset Stellaris empire of lonely aliens went out into the stars simply in search of friends?

Blorg Commonality lore says the species took their very names from alien radio broadcasts of movies and music, and hope to find the senders and party together.

In Stellaris, the invading Unbidden can be joined by rival factions called the Aberrant and the what?

Vehement ships arrive through a third portal, and all three factions are as hostile to one another as they are to the galaxy's living empires.

Which mobile Stellaris guardian emerges from a pulsar in the mid-game and comes in red, yellow or blue?

Spectral Wraith colours matter in battle: fighting it in a system whose star matches its colour halves its armour and evasion.

Which Stellaris relic, an extremely rare reliquary prize, doubles its owner's diplomatic weight?

The Galatron is so coveted that rival empires get a dedicated war goal for seizing it from whoever holds it.

Stellaris named an update after Czech writer Karel Čapek, whose 1920 play R.U.R. introduced which word?

Robot entered the world's languages through Čapek's play Rossum's Universal Robots, a fitting namesake for a game full of machine uprisings.