Having every planet in a system with a habitat or colony. With that in mind I think it's a step in the right direction for that kind of. You could try to beat the Fallen. A 25k bastion requires 0 minerals per month. While playing tall was pretty much building a lot of frontier outposts and having at most 3-4 planets. Yup. I'm crushing on tall on hardest on my current game, dominant by the 2300's, overwhelming by 2400. Open menu Open navigation Go to Reddit Home. How to play tall (yes again) Alright so I've been doing a little research and i know there is a bunch of threads about this already but hear me out. And in a game about choice the choice to play Tall or Wide should actually matter. 8 Archetype Play-stylespared to read, better leave. The current raiding playstyle (whether from civic or ascension perk) is worthless. Fast Breeders - This perk give +25% growth. Versus AI its possible to play tall but its harder than wide. Sprawl exists but can be managed at any size. Unless a lower setting is fine for the Tall. Then tried a mixed economy run aimed at going tall and setting up strong vassals but was stymied when I realized 3 planets in 28 systems was incredibly unlucky and having anamoly researchers was actually. Spreading all over the map is playing wide. Keeping a small easily defended area is playing tall. Playing tall will give you a hefty chunk of feeling like a plotter, a devious schemer who carefully plans his eventual ascension to near godhood. Stellaris has no such restrictions, in fact it’s the opposite; there are almost no consequences for conquering other empires early, you even have choices depending on your situation, and early conquests allow you to conquer even more mid to late game. It depends on your definition of tall. [deleted] • 5 yr. This gets into the debate about what people mean by "tall". I'm crushing on tall on hardest on my current game, dominant by the 2300's, overwhelming by 2400. Tall doesn't mean you can't expand. NB: this is system not planet. It’s the ignorant contrarians claiming that only playing tall should be a valid play style who are being told to screw off. Terraforming to be 100% habitable for your pops. . It is clear, that Stellaris tries it. 3 and my solutions for it. Playing tall means not taking very much territory but maximizing what the systems you do take can do. Playing tall is more viable now, there will be buildable habitats which are basically small planets and the new unity mechanic will also favour smaller empires. 130K views 5 years ago. . 2 or 1. In 5 hours I will play Stellaris with my friends. And size of empire directly influences size of your navy. Megacorp fits very neatly for tall empires, given trade's (somewhat) reduced reliance on planets and pops, and their penalty to empire size. Playing tall is naturally going to be somewhat more difficult in most cases, as you are essentially intentionally cutting your growth short. 6. This is your Definitive Guide for "How to Play Tall" in Stellaris Console Edition! If you want to learn in Stellaris How to Play Tall then this Stellaris Pla. It's not about having few planets - in fact you should still get as many ( properly developed!!Stellaris Real-time strategy Strategy video game Gaming. Tall play has been seriously buffed in this patch. When i play these it often ends. I've done a lot of spreadsheeting and playtesting on tech-focus builds, and I'm of the opinion that your ideal mid-game size is 20-30 planets, which no one. having the biggest, most. -1. Imo the best definition of play wide is a lot of systems. If you play as a non gestalt empire you can invest your influence into arcology projects for city planets. The bad news is that you start with one, and to. Playing tall helps with the overwhelming amount of micro that Stellaris sometimes requires. R5: I just love having vassals and building a hegemony over conquest. all needs a big overhaul. You can abandon colonies by resettling the last pop to another planet, but it costs 200 influence to do so. Warscore, the fleet manager, land warfare, etc. For how to: watch some of montuplays newest guides regarding playing tall. A place to share content, ask questions and/or talk about the 4X grand strategy game Stellaris by Paradox Development Studio. In Stellaris, some people play tall by only using a single planet, some go for a small number, like your starting 3, etc. 3 beta). That doesn't mean a low amount of colonies; in fact, often more. 48. 8 tall isn't as viable anymore, can anyone give me a fleshed out strategy/perspective?If you're playing wide that sprawl is very low. You stick to yourself, and they like it. With that being said, playing tall in Stellaris is a lot harder than you think! How, then, can you get started playing tall in this game? Keep reading to discover our comprehensive guide! Set Your Limits How to play tall? I thought the changes to unity, particularly the planetary ascension mechanic, would make it ideal for a corporate empire to play tall, so I gave it a shot. NB: this is system not planet. Any void dwellers build with militarist. You need to go wide to get more resources and fund a larger army. If you want to play a Machine Empire with a special starting world, you could pick the origin that starts you on a Machine world. 11 votes, 19 comments. 419K subscribers in the Stellaris community. Victoria 2 was released 12 years ago, and victoria 3 is set to be released this year. the new plant trait of "budding" is pretty good in this scenario as the total size of planet will increase assembly speed but that does mean you can't build machines. Hello my most pious followers. They now cost twice as much and are roughly half as effective as they used to be. With wide you need a ton of governors, and must be replace them constantly. I believe the large consensus among Stellaris players who pay attention to meta is that, in 2. r/Stellaris. The player "developed" these systems to the heights of their abilities, using Habitats and Ringworlds. Generally, there are 3 strategies you can mix and match. all right. Stellaris Real-time strategy Strategy video game Gaming comments sorted by Best Top New Controversial Q&A Add a Comment More posts you may likeMade it a research world to soak up all the Necrophage pops, and transferred some to buff up other worlds. You can have 1/3rd of the galaxy and only 20 colonies, or 15 sectors and 50 habitats. 1 rules, the best way to play Tall was to reduce the number of systems you controlled. Tall vs Wide is now about unity. Stellaris has an abstraction for Tall vs Wide in-game: the Empire Size mechanic. Highly stable, unified group thats close proximity keeps together. This mod creates a new trait that will allows both Human and AI to play “play tall”. . General. for civics, mechanist is pretty good, syncretic evolution is great too, technocracy is ideal. Your empire’s planet is going to explode. Stellaris "Tall" mainly means getting as much resources as possible out of a small(er) space. Often multiple playstyles apply and synergize. 0 ruleset that was revised in 3. Now, the Hives that eat people have it easier: Expand like the fckn spanish flu and produce food by eating people. 0, is quite annoying due to the new pop cap for large empires. Even if we never get a way to truly play tall, we still need to fix the current pop growth model (dominated by how many worlds contribute their base 3. All strategies assume you are trying to get maximum pops & maximum jobs on every planet. are vassals just a prerequisite of playing tall. Playing tall finally is viable and I don't feel forced to expand non-stop without trade-offs. But to really take advantage of that small empire size, you need to focus on research and unity. 8 no DLC. I'm a poor guy, can't afford the DLC. 0 changed that, claiming systems increases tech cost as well as planets, but now population doesn't increase tech cost. But it doesn't. It is great for high difficulties because you don’t have to attack the really powerful empires and can get them to pathetic by mid to late game. Conventional wisdom is that playing wide is easier than playing tall, but my experience has been the opposite. This is really very unplayable for me, i hate playing wide, and playing tall I just. Good tall player should get atleast 15 habitats in 2230,Synthetic Evolution before 2260. You can make the argument that 2. If I'm playing tall, I'm aiming to keep my empire size below 100. 4 planets that are high ascension level and low empire sprawl is tall, since in current Stellaris, each planet is basically the equivalent to an entire city in a game like Civilization. CK2 took around 8 years until the release of ck3. You can still play that way. In reality it would be just the same wide play, just with fewer systems. I would however definitely recommend getting Utopia as soon as you can though, the sheer volume of content across all game phases. The first 1000 people who click the link will get 2 free months of Skillshare Premium: Playing Tall has always been one of the more elu. Today I have the first new basic build in a while. It is a very rough start. Report. 20 comments. theBigTurnip385 Major. You will be slightly less ahead, as the AI here is much better at tech, but still a massive lead. stellaris is a dynamic game, and rebellions and other events always change up the galaxy. Stellaris is modelling a whole host of SciFi tropes while also being a 4X game (opposed to the previous two's grand strategy genre). That is, you stay small for some time so you can: - focus on science. Build lots of habitats and then ring worlds when you get. It's not strictly bad, but the research speed is better. There are a few common Playstyle types and each type will face similar issues regardless of how the galaxy was created. Megastructures will further boost tall play style. Right now it is not viable to play a small/tall empire. I can also use influence to grow taller by activating an edict, making my. 3. That's a 70% increase. It is how the terms have worked for the majority of games since I was paying by the minute to access the internet. ago. This reduces the number of different buildings you expect to build on each planet. They would be also wrong. By mid- and certainly in the late game you should have a resource extraction planets feeding production and research planets. Jump to latest Follow Reply. We have another 2. So does pop assembly, which comes from one-per-colony buildings. They are more diplomatic than a typical empire, as you'll want at least a couple friends to establish commercial pacts with and build branch offices on their places. walter. True you can make them larger, but then that's 2 ascension perks as opposed to one. Get a migration treaty immediately so you can get access to other species. Thread starter Vampiresoap; Start date Apr 25, 2017; Jump to latest Follow Reply Menu We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. As a long time Crusader Kings 2. (Not super-tall though, as in one planet, but only 8 planets and about 16 systems at present. In some updates, it was a very effective strategy to get ahead technologically and get early ascensions - it's much less the case now. Megacorp is a way to be a massive galactic powerhouse as tall because with branches you aren't using pops for resources. General. Tall is more chill and easier. There is no tall game-play in Stellaris, in the sense of having a very few or small number of super planets vs. Since your research requirements go up per each planet you colonize I find for me personally that it is better to only colonize larger worlds (15 tiles or more minimum). That also doesn't fix a billion unnecessary pop ups per game, half of the anomalies requiring manual intervention that consisted of "click buttan. "Tall" no longer exists in versions after that change. The game itself doesn't lend itself to tall play, as the main way the empire can grow is to have as much minerals as possible. Trying to conquer whole empire's as soon as met them and have a stronger fleet. Think about it like this: A 25k fleet will cost around 15-20k minerals, and a 25k starbase will cost about the same, but a 25k fleet takes roughly 300 minerals per month in upkeep. To combat sprawl, if you have the overlord DLC, you can claim these systems but then release the sector as a vassal. I always run into economic defects, Overpopulation and being serounded by larger empire's. Playing tall is not only possible, it's insanely powerful and (on Insane), I am always the most powerful empire in the galaxy by 2400. ago A common misunderstanding is that playing tall means having a small number of systems. Originally posted by twistedmelon: Tall is still a strategy, but it is more grey. (So your space is tall; not your planets)The only tall builds that can be considered good right now are Void Dwellers (which is actually wide under your definition since it has lots of colonies) and the Nihilistic Acquisition raider which is a very aggressive build that is constantly a war to steal pops. If you don't have to fight anyone for that space, it's free space, take it. Pacifism also allows the player to pick an exceptionally powerful Civic, Inward Perfection. It takes years with a 200+ sized fleet to get literally a handful of pops. Add a Comment. 3 was plenty to tackle every unmodded challenge available. Even though there are many reasons why players might want to play tall, Stellaris indeed lacks functionalities that provide incentives for tall play (unless you count the negative incentive of planet & pop management). Finally, Part 3 contains a mix of tips and tricks for you to use to take your roleplaying to the next level. With the changes made in 3. Indentured Servitude is the best kind of slavery, as it has the fewest job restrictions. Tall vs Wide in Stellaris isn't a dichotomy, but rather a spectrum from one extreme to the other. Its more a general approach to stay small and go for quality or quantity. Stellaris Tall vs. Stellaris Real-time strategy Strategy video game Gaming comments sorted by Best Top New Controversial Q&A Hyndis • Additional comment actions. The problem is that it wasn't obvious because of. Outside of this there is no "Tall" concept in Stellaris as more. Set Galaxy to 4 Spiral Arm. In 5 hours I will play Stellaris with my friends. Playing Tall is a very special type of empire. Created by Robinicus. 273 upvotes · 38 comments. The bonus of it is you can probably defend your entire space with one fleet. Stellaris. Stellaris. OPS is an excruciatingly tall play-style, but I do promise you'll pick up interchangeable skills that'll enhance your tall play. This is really very unplayable for me, i hate playing wide, and playing tall I just. Less pops equals less resources. In Civ 5, taking tradition and limiting yourself to 4 cities for most of the game typically means your cities will grow much faster than if you play wide. As a result, my mineral and energy credit production is a bit stunted until later in the. In Civ 4, which is an actual 4x game unlike Stellaris, playing "tall" is viable. . Any void dwellers build with militarist. It is great for high difficulties because you don’t have to attack the really powerful empires and can get them to pathetic by mid to late game. Equilibrius Coastal Raider. The main point of this build is to play tall than. 17th century high fantasy setting and 9th to 12th century sword and sorcery setting that’s not 5e, pathfinder, dungeon world, or AGE, or DCC (i run that a lot and love it but looking for more structured skill system) that has support! 5. the tech tree ends at some point and the. It’s not a case of habitats being bad for robots, it’s more that their 100% habitability on all planets goes against the tall playstyle. I felt like I wasn't playing Stellaris, I felt like I was playing high elo StarCraft match. After a while, re-change your pops so that those on habitats get great specialist traits and those on planets get good worker traits. Get a migration treaty immediately so you can get access to other species. The goal is to get an edge in tech and fill out systems. In Stellaris you can't colonize a planet or build a habitat without claiming a system. Enjoy your stratified society. You could pursue a line of having wide and tall have non-comparible benefits - the problem is that stellaris fundamentally only has one positive end state - total galatic domination (i. It is what gives you access to resources, it is what you use to claim territory. . Stellaris. Flag was a pyramid symbol with yellow and black (split down the middle) yellow as the primary I think. 2. This mod makes all the special systems in stellaris have a 100% chance of spawning. It is how the terms have worked for the majority of games since I was paying by the minute to access the internet. I think the whole tall vs wide dichotomy is dumb. But you're right. It was not fun. Essentially, tall and wide shouldn’t be wildly different as far as pop count goes. The game directly rewards wide play while offering very little incentive to stay tall. 2. ago. 7. . In a perfect run you would just grow large nough to start the vassalisation chain and then even shrink yourself a bit if over 100. Thanks. Keep rerolling every 5 years, ensure your councillor leaders have starting councillor traits. I'm playing xenophile/pacifist, with the idea of growing tall and defend the galaxy against the endgame crisis. playing tall or wide doesnt matter if you play in singleplayer BUT playing tall in. But if you want to play tall how can we make the most out of y. Shipsets were reptilian. A place to share content, ask questions and/or talk about the 4X grand strategy game Stellaris by Paradox Development Studio. Also a way to request/provide economic assistance and ships when you are attacked would be really good. Despite all the negative feedback from players who got used to 3. 2;. But it’s basicaly giving yourself a handicap for little to no reason. It's basically how you use your influence. Tall is restricting yourself to playing with fewer colonies and avoiding outward expansion. The ultimate wide starting origin which is void dwellers gets called tall showing how much the community have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. This is going to be my updated take on the basic builds. The S Tier only features the best of the best Origin available in Stellaris. By Obsidian Shadow. If you rely on the bastion for defense for the latter half of the. In practice this means you build Habitats, Ring-Worlds, Dyson Sphere and Science Nexus. At the very beginning of the game you can get some pretty good growth by putting your homeworld into capacity bonus territory, but as your empire-wide population grows the pop growth penalty just gets bigger and bigger. Pick Aptitude as your first tradition to get +1 trait. A Void Dweller run will play completely differently from a Nihilistic Acquisition raider run, which will play completely differently from a one-planet-challenge run. To be fair, Tall was more of a fun gimmick run than a serious strategy even before this update. Wide and Tall isn’t a stellaris definition, it’s used in many strategy games. 16 Badges. Introduced with the title's Utopia expansion, habitats act as a tool that enables playing tall. #9. . Even before 2. If you stick to 10 systems and spam a bunch of habitats you are playing tall. While habitats are good, it’s probably better to be funding colony ships. 1. I’ve mentioned that playing tall empires gets boring late game. Here's what I personally like to do, and it works for me playing tall. Given that EUIV’s features aren’t currently available in Stellaris, the. This is because it's more efficient to have one production-boosting building affect 10 buildings than 2. Start playing on easy mode in an empire that you don't like to play, then set up a goal like geting the worm to terraform your planets and then try to play as robotic ascencion, something stupid or boringly difficult. That's what 2. Playing Stellaris and EU4 Links updated for new forum March 31, 2015 Download the Fix-it-Yourself Pack for HoI 1. Another thing is the deep space stuff, and the auto-resettle building. Intro Stellaris Tall Guide Montu Plays 130K subscribers Subscribe Subscribed 3. ago. Yeah, I actually agree I don't think Stellaris really has 'tall' playstyles because of the way pops and economics work, I don't think you so much as play tall, but as varying levels of efficient. The challenge can come in the form of story play elements or taking an origin that is plain bad. Small. The game design of Stellaris will always favor wide over tall. Sure, a 1000-pop tall empire with 25 planets/habitats isn’t big by Stellaris standards, but that’s still 500 billion people. Most people talk about Tall vs Wide like this: Wide involves getting a lot of territory, getting a lot of pops, and dominating the galaxy with overwhelming numbers; contrasted with playing Tall, which is about leaving a small galactic footprint but focusing your economy to keep up. Having lots of systems is not a wide play-style, having. Best. It would mimick a wide play power curve, but with a tall looking empire. !remindme 1 day. That's not surprising, since the whole goal of the game is to expand as much and as quickly as possible, but it also means you're basically free to do whatever you want!. You can play tall empires by taking tributaries and vassals, its fully possible to only have a few planets while "owning" half the galaxy through your subjects. #9. With voidborne, you can build multiple habitats in a. Every game I'm like "okay in gonna find the nearest choke points and play tall" and never actually do unless I get boxed in. Breeding them takes to long. 2 and before) because a wide and a "tall" empires will grow at the same rate, to about the same cap, with only some minor buffs for "tall" like mastery of nature that don't even come into play until later. There are a few common Playstyle types and each type will face similar issues regardless of how the galaxy was created. With shattered ring, you get 3 big ring sections in your starting system, great for tall play. Empire Size currently provides a rubber band on big empires being better than small empires. 3 never actualy encouraged tall play in the slightest, the ability to create administrative capacity only encouraged a wide playstyle and the inneffective linear maluses of the current static "empire size" modifier is laughable. The problems with Stellaris, tall empires, 3. I've had several starts go right down the drain immediately because none of my surrounding stars have a single mineral in any of them, while neighboring empires have stars with 6-8+ minerals per. Give me the most broken empire you have. Ring world is really really strong for tech rush and tall builds, as well as merchant builds, which is not what DE is meant for. OP, there currently is no such thing as a tall build for this game. Building slots don’t expand from population anymore and city districts do not expand them; so, every habitat will be a few slots big until end game. Twenty systems is the breakpoint where number of systems owned raises your starbase cap, which is why it is sometimes given as a guide point. For example the governors, and the space station. Report. Edit: I also think that playing pacifists is definitely the go-to way to try playing a tall empire, since you're kinda forced into it, as you can't conquer other empires territory. The faster you can fill up your planets the better, as you're going to be going wide VERY fast and grabbing every planet you can see. That depends on what you mean by playing tall. 1" patch out on the 14th shouldn't really change habitat. There are a couple of problems with playing tall. The 0,1 penalty is the +10% penalty per system other than the first one. There is also the older mechanics such as increased tech cost per planet and ethics divergence by distance which will favour building tall. Playing "Tall" in Stellaris: a criminally misunderstood term I love Stellaris and this community! Sometimes I see people in the comments talking about how a player is trying. Tall is not efficient, it only gets you what you need and often pertains slaving. This is the truth. z0rbakpants • 2 yr. A scenario or playstyle that couldn't be improved by more expansion is not possible. 273 upvotes · 38 comments. As quill is trying to get 200 years of peace achievement. Advice Wanted. But I think there's another, even more key reason why Stellaris should enable tall play, ideally without diminishing other playstyles in the process: Stellaris has a goal to accommodate a variety of story experiences, and to let the player enact a variety of classic sci-fi tropes. Method 1: Find a local AI, preferably one that is considerably more powerful, and between you and the baddies. . Playing tall refers to the strategy of empowering a small realm. . r/Stellaris • Tall vs Wide is really an issue with a Unity not being competetive with Science. You need about 100 complex drones on a single planet (IE ring worlds or Ecumenopoli) for each bio trophy to be equal to a single robot and that is the RS's biggest issue. . Early on, the universe is filled. 3 comments. Imo the best definition of play wide is a lot of systems. Planets are capped in tiles, jobs and housing. Ideally you would want to begin a period of rapid expansion towards the end of filling out this tree. Generally, if you can have a large number of planets, there is little reason not to do so, since they will all develop more or less at the same pace. Both can do it well as planets are not the bottleneck any more for science generation. I would like to clarify playing tall is not exactly overpowered however everyone has been saying it is weak and you cannot win while playing tall. The pop growth bonus in particular is also augmented by the bonuses of xenophobe, for a possible 30% base pop growth. I believe this is OPS's most valuable asset. ChronicallyDepressed. Toggle signature “The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. Wide dichotomy (or at least attempts to). He plays stellaris and stands above 6’5 Reply Modo44 •. 3 is a bad idea. A "tall" empire's colonies aren't going to be much stronger or more populated than a wide empire's colonies. Hello, since the Galactic Comunity came out with Federations, I been trying to get towards the frists empires that have the most Diplomatic Weight, however, my playstle are mostly playing tall, with few sectors and planets on it, and with a 1000 Star and 25 empires, it seemed that wide empires tend to have more diplomatic weight because they. They have a 100 pop max capacity and 35% bonus on specialist/ruler output. More systems=more stuff. Introduction Stellaris - How To Play Tall (2. In Stellaris tall is an RP/aesthetic/laziness based preference, not a strategy for optimizing a win, for all the reasons people have posted. Stellaris is a game I fall in and out of love with every few months and one of this games biggest flaws and probably what stops me from playing it regularly is having to micromanage 50+ planets every few minutes to build homes and create jobs. GameStop Moderna Pfizer Johnson & Johnson AstraZeneca Walgreens Best Buy Novavax SpaceX Tesla. You use the early bonuses to advantage early-mid game expansion and transitioning into a wide. Stellaris How To Start well in Grand Admiral New and Experienced Player Guide / Tutorial: The Starting Routine I use to get a good start in Grand Admiral gam. I usually play "tall" by keeping my empire rather small, and instead subjugating as. It is inspired by EUIV’s province development feature, which allows countries with a few provinces to be able to match or even be better than countries with more but less lucrative provinces. The problem with that is the ai manages resources terribly so you’ll need to play on a higher difficulty in order to have an even fight. 400 stars is a good balance between the extreme crowding of tiny where you are guaranteed 100% constant war, and medium where. ago. Tall in stellaris is weird, since planets just exist nothing really stops you from conquering some big planets, and building ecumenopolis or ringworlds. Over the course of time, that planet will grow and become very valuable and the energy cost to setup a branch office will pay for itself, many times over. We will use these. It doesn't mean it must be. This would be opposed to expanding further into space through star bases or. Been playing stellaris for a little bit now let’s say a couple of months and I was wondering if playing tall is worth it I’ve heard mixed opinions on the topic but if it is worth it could you all give me some tips!Well there is a method of playing 'tall'. 48. Your ability to make long term decisions is tied to Influence. 0 has a severe unity bug) - when it comes to both unity and research, more planets is always better. After spending 82 let’s play episodes on insane difficulty (watch it here: ) testing the viability of a tall. And my understanding of it (as of everything else) shifts a bit all the time, so. #56. The core mechanics of Stellaris are absolutely compatible with Tall vs Wide, it is just that wide has had repeated postive improvements over the course of the games development, frequently at the expense of tall play. 3 comments. In Stellaris the game naturally flows for you to be playing Wide and the only way to play tall is by stacking habitats and/or ringworlds in your territory to make up for the lack of actual habitable planets you may find yourself with. I have been getting back into this game for the past few weeks and i am still unsure how some things work. In Stellaris, it would be really nice if there was a way to convert to tall play after the game starts, because sometimes your start location just doesn't prevent peaceful expansion. Since then I have won a few more times using a Megacorp. Stack research until you burst, playing tall without Megacorp or Inward Perfection is tricky, and the problem is that going wide will almost always work out better for you, even with DLC. The benefits of playing tall are as follows: Smaller empires are easier to manage. Internal struggles. . The game actually requires a heavy amount of micromanagement, sectors or not. You can still be strong with this build if you manage to survive the early game. Base habitat, with the size modifier, will have maybe half population growth from size penalties. but I don't know how to get any resources any other way. also if you're mass vassalizing that's not really tall play, that's just playing wide with extra steps. Stellaris has no such restrictions, in fact it’s the opposite; there are almost no consequences for conquering other empires early, you even have choices depending on your situation, and early conquests allow you to conquer even more mid to late game. demotronics • 5 yr. Build a world cracker or pacifier, declare war, and proceed to destroy all their habitable planets to wipe out the other empires and win a conquest victory. Stellaris. Yes, and this is not Civ 5, this Stellaris. As I understand, the point is to focus on research and traditions and less so on economy, but I'm trying a tall run now and it feels like everything's sorta slow since my research speed is at 10, 7. Void Dwelling Megacorp is strong but unless you can balance the Influence (Not as bad now but still tight) and alloys early game. First things first; your ethics should be materialist-authoritarian-militarist or fanatic materialist-militarist. Low empire size penalties. Ethics, Civics, Traditions and other choices strongly support or hinder certain Playstyles. How to play tall in stellaris: Switch your game version in the steam launcher to something from 30 years ago before admin cap jobs were added. The other main reason is that pure machine empires only rely on energy for unity and research production, which makes playing tall weaker than wide since you won’t have as many planets to turn into pure energy worlds, meaning less specialization meaning less production-per-pop. Wide strategies focus on having lots of cities and territory, often with each city having minimal upgrades. .