Transcription
The Senate will decide your fate. I am the Senate.
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There is more to Stellaris than just the military power at your disposal and the size of your fleets. Through the Galactic Community or the Galactic Empire, we have a tool to enforce our political will on the entire galaxy, and we can do so without firing a single shot. This is done by passing resolutions which fundamentally change something about the gameplay. In the game, you can completely ignore resolutions and be in breach of galactic law, but if you do so, there can be serious consequences.
In this video, I'm going to look at all of the resolutions, and I really do mean all of them. So, sit tight. It is going to be a very, very long tier list because, yes, I'm going to put them in a tier list so we can look at which resolutions are fantastic and which resolutions I think you should not only not propose but try to vote down if you ever see them. So, without any further ado, let's dive in and take a look at the Galactic Community resolutions in Stellaris.
Let's start, as usual, right at the very bottom with the F tier. Generally speaking, you don't want to propose anything in this tier, and you probably want to vote it down if it comes up as well. So, what do we have here? What do I think is absolute dog poo?
Defense Privatization is a new resolution that is all to do with the new mercenary enclave system. Basically, what this is going to do over the various levels is increase the mercenary enclave naval capacity a small amount. That means the size of the mercenary fleets will increase. It will also decrease the mercenary naval capacity usage because, straight up, a mercenary fleet only takes up 75 percent of the naval capacity of a regular fleet, and at the maximum level here, at level five for Defense Privatization, you're going to only be taking up 50 percent of the total naval capacity of a regular fleet. It'll also reduce the time between a mercenary dividend payout. Each level will improve trade value by five percent, and at levels one and four, you'll get plus one mercenary enclave capacity, allowing you to set up more mercenary enclaves.
Here come the really bad things, though. Mercenary fleet upkeep is going to go up. At the maximum level, it'll be at 50 percent. Now, the reason that is so awful is that mercenary fleets already have a higher upkeep than regular fleets. So, increasing that upkeep yet further really counteracts the benefits you're going to be getting, if any, from reducing the naval capacity usage of these mercenary fleets.
Following that, everyone's naval capacity is going to take a massive slap in the face, starting at a 10 hit and at the end at a minus 80 percent hit. That could mean that your fleets are five times more expensive, which is completely bonkers. You don't want anyone to pass anything, but possibly the first level of this resolution. Even then, I would recommend you only pass that if you are really desperate to just get one mercenary enclave out, as you could use a single mercenary enclave to give you a 15 naval capacity boost, which would give you a net of five percent here for the level one. So, level one isn't complete garbage all the time, but if you go anything past that, holy heck, it is awful. Never, ever allow anyone, especially the AI, to get away with passing level five, as you'll find it's basically impossible to have any fleet for any nations surviving a crisis with level five.
Corporate Peacekeeping is beyond insane. Next up, we have the Space Fauna resolutions. Basically, here you can either vote to have Tainki Pest Control, Tainki Conservation Act, or Space Amoeba Protection Act. All of these are basically just flavor, but even then, they're not really that much of an impact on the game. You're going to be spending influence and wasting Galactic Community time debating whether or not you should be harpooning space whales that give you barely any benefit at all. And if you pass the Conservation Act, you'll be slapping fines on anyone that attempts to do any space whaling. Minor as it is, you definitely want to watch out for the Galactic Community. I have always found whenever there is a crisis, they'll be busy debating this kind of thing, Tainki conservation or pest control, rather than actually trying to pass legislation to save the galaxy.
Now we have our first sanction: Administrative Sanctions. So, sanctions are resolutions that apply a negative modifier to any empire that is in breach of galactic law or has been denounced. Each sanction type has three levels: minor, moderate, and major. And as you go up the levels, the penalties you'll get will increase. Each also offers two changes for two things. The main thing that Administrative Sanctions will do now is increase the diplomatic influence cost by 25, 50, or 75 percent for anyone in breach and suffering this sanction. If you pass this, it's really only going to affect you as the player because the AI will simply keep within its influence limits in terms of diplomatic influence cost. It's not really a major effect here to change up those influence costs that much, and that's why I put it down here in the F tier because the AI will pretty much ignore it, and you'll find you're the only one actually suffering for it.
This next one is a rather delicate resolution, and there are a few arguments as to why it's actually very garbage. Basically, here you'll be either banning organic slave trade or banning sentient slave trade. Now, what is the difference between those? So, banning organic slave trade just means you can't trade biological pops, whereas sentient slave trade closes the loophole that allows you to also sell mechanical or robotic pops on the market. Now, why is this absolute garbage? Well, the sale of slaves is actually very, very profitable. I hate to say it, but now you can buy and sell slaves for a massive amount of energy credits, and it is a great way of increasing the pop count in your empire if you have spare energy credits to use. It's also really good for Egalitarian and Xenophile empires. Yes, if you are anti-slave, then banning organic slave trade or any slave trade is kind of negative, and I'm going to explain why. So, if you are Egalitarian or Xenophile, you can still buy slaves from the slave market. It will cost you twice as much because it is technically illegal from a local legal perspective, not on a Galactic Community level, but in your empire, it's very much frowned upon. However, once you've bought that slave, you're buying them into their own freedom, which from their point of view is absolutely fantastic. So, if we were to shut down the slave trade, we should actually be reducing the overall amount of freedom in the galaxy because this would not affect the internal laws of slaving empires. They'd still be able to have slaves, make slaves, grow slaves, and keep people in poverty, but you would be unable to do anything about it whatsoever. And actually, that's partly why it's bad. Also, the economic impact of it is really, really good, and you do want to focus on that too. But let's move swiftly on.
Rules of War is basically the pacifist version of military foreign policy. What this is, in essence, going to do is it will completely slow down your ability to wage war in the galaxy, and that's really annoying, especially in the mid to late game. As you increase in levels here, it will also dramatically reduce your diplomatic weight from fleet power. Now, in the mid to late game, I always find a majority of my diplomatic weight actually comes from my fleet power. So, this kind of reduction is something you definitely want to avoid if you're trying to maximize diplomatic weight. On top of that, as you go up through the levels, you're going to find that defense army morale increases, army upkeep goes up, there is a reduction in war exhaustion gain, meaning wars will last for longer. At the very highest levels, you're going to get more pacifist ethics attraction, which you probably don't want in your empire. At the top level, you get a massive slap in the face with a minus 25 naval capacity, which is eye-wateringly painful because that's going to dramatically increase your naval costs. And then from level three onwards, a whole bunch of world crackers are completely banned. Yes, that's right, your Colossi will be banned, and that means you'll have to slog through fortress worlds slowly and carefully and fight them man by man, army by army. On top of that, you'll find that indiscriminate bombardment stances, as well as Armageddon bombardment stance, are banned. That's going to slow down your advance as well. And at the final levels, even unrestricted war philosophy and militarized economic policy, a keystone of being able to actually defeat a crisis, is using militarized economic policy to get extra alloys. Yes. So, basically, Rules of War is going to cut the entire galaxy, leaving you a floundering and impotent and unable to defend yourselves or even wage war properly.
And if you're enjoying this video, please vote with that like button. You might be a little confused by this next item. We've just dealt with the pacifist resolutions. Now we're looking at the militarist resolutions, and they are also in the F tier. And now, why have I put them here? Okay, on the surface, it would seem that the Mutual Defense chain is rather nice. You get increased diplomatic weight from fleet power as it goes up, you also get increased naval capacity. But the increased naval capacity you're going to be getting is only an absolute number increase. So, you get plus 10 at level one and plus 50 at level five, and you can guess it only goes up by 10 at every level in between. On the other hand, the debuff you'll be getting is a five ship upkeep increase per level. That means if you are at level five, this is equivalent to being 25 over your naval capacity limit without actually being over your naval capacity limit, which is really, really bad. That increases all of the cost you've got on every ship by 25, meaning you can only have what's that, four-fifths the same fleet size you would normally have at the same cost, which, yeah, you really don't want to have this happen. It is just like the Defense Privatization, very bad to have increased ship upkeep, which is equivalent here to basically having a reduced naval capacity, even though it doesn't tell you that. The extra CBs you're going to be getting from this, the counter-attack enabling, castigation, denunciations, and the pre-emptive war CP are nice, but they don't offset that massive ship upkeep increase, which you really want to keep away from. Level one or two is kind of all right, but by the time you get to level five, yes, it's it's very painful. I would not recommend it.
There's also something I should mention here as well because there is another resolution that shares this symbol: the GalPol resolution, or Galactic Interpol. Basically, gives you minus 15 crime at the cost of two percent energy credits monthly. That is simply insane. As you'll see in the example I'm about to bring up, you really don't want to be committing two percent of your monthly energy credits gross for something so crap as minus 15 crime on every planet.
The Anti-Piracy Initiative is one of those resolutions you must have the Custodian active. That's right, you have to have nominated an empire as Custodian in order for them to be able to propose this one, and that means you'll have to have the Nemesis DLC. I won't go into exactly what Custodian does yet, we'll look at that later down the line, but as you might have noticed, it's not down here in the F tier, and that's because it's pretty good. So, what does Anti-Piracy Initiative do, though? It's going to give you plus five trade protection on every star system, which at this point in the game is basically negligible, and plus 20 damage to pirates and marauders, which by this point again, you're not really going to need. You've probably already knocked out the marauders or you've kept them around and you've decided that it's okay, I will deal with the Great Khan if the Great Khan spawns, but pirates should really not be an issue. Even if you're running a trade-heavy empire, you should have fleets quite able to deal with them at this point. All of this at the cost of three percent of your monthly energy credits, which is a ludicrously large number. That's not three percent of your net, that's three percent of your gross energy credits. So, let's say you have a Dyson Sphere producing 4,000 and you've got upkeeps of, let's say, 3900, so you'd be producing just 100 energy every month. Well, this three percent here, that would cost you 120 energy credits every month, completely wiping out any energy credit gain at basically no benefit. It's pointless. Don't run it. Don't pass it. Don't even look at it. Let's move on.
Founding the Imperial Legions is our first Imperial Institution. Now, a bit like the Galactic Custodian, you're going to need to have formed the Galactic Empire, which we will also get to a bit later. As you've probably guessed as well, that's not F tier either, that's got some great merits, but the Imperial Legions allows the Emperor to create up to 12 Imperial Legion armies. Why is this completely trash, though? Well, by the time you can actually enforce this, it's going to be quite late into the game, possibly the end game year has already started, maybe you're still at the end of the mid game, but you're going to be able to recruit armies that are almost as good as this. You might be able to get some war forms if you are a machine intelligence empire. If you're a regular biological empire and you're bio-ascended, maybe you've got some gene seed armies, but basically, you're probably not going to need these armies, these Imperial Legions, anywhere. You're not going to want to spend the 200 influence on proposing this and waste time in the Senate debating it. There are much better things we can worry about. And on top of that, there's also the question of, are armies even that relevant this late into the game? At this point, you've almost certainly got a Colossus. If you haven't, go out and get one. So, if a planet is too heavily fortified, you'll probably just want to blow it up instead.
Now we've made it to the C tier. Unlike the F tier, the C tier is a little better. There are merits for some of the policies, some of the resolutions here, but overall, I'm probably not going to recommend you actually try to enact them most of the time. There are better options, and there are still massive drawbacks.
Galactic Commerce is basically the first resolution in the list of resolutions. Why do I think this one deserves its place down here in the C tier? So, what it's going to do, it's going to increase your diplomatic weight from economy 20 per level. It's also going to increase your trade value at five per level, and on top of that, increase your bureaucrat upkeep by five for the first three levels and 25, a massive amount, actually, when you get to level four and five. From level two onwards, you're also going to get some trade protection added, plus 10 or plus 25. Now, plus 25 is a reasonable amount, but honestly, it's still not that much. As you can tell, if you're a Gassed Out Consciousness, you're almost certainly not going to be interested in this. It's just going to give you higher upkeep costs. And then when we get to level two onwards, we'll also be sacrificing naval capacity. Yes, that's right, this is another resolution that takes away our naval capacity. The reason it's not an F tier is that the naval cap it takes is only 10 or 15 percent, and at level five, you actually get some very nice bonuses: plus 10 resources from jobs, plus 50 ruler happiness, although unfortunately, a minus 25 happiness to all pops, only giving a 25 net to rulers, but that could be really quite nice and quite powerful. And extra trade value is pretty nice as well, though that naval capacity reduction is really unpleasant. I've also not mentioned it yet, but it does give you some benefit to observation posts above primitive planets. You're going to be generating some consumer goods from them, which is kind of nice, but it's neither here nor there. Overall, I would again not really recommend you pass this one, and if you do, definitely only pass level one. Don't let level two go ahead because that naval capacity reduction really sucks.
Ecological Protection is the environmentalist resolution. What this one's basically going to do is drastically reduce your diplomatic weight from economy at 20 per level. It will also give you a minor reduction in pop consumer goods upkeep, and then as the levels go up, it will actually increase the time taken to clear blockers. At the highest levels, yes, it does give you some extra habitability and 10 or 20 percent food output from jobs, as well as some bonus happiness, but this then all comes at the cost of a reduction to your alloy output, which you really definitely don't want, and a reduction to your minerals from jobs as well. Those two together are very unpleasant, and that's level four and five here, which you probably don't want to have. It will also ban terraforming at level four and five and give you massive increases to terraforming cost. I'd like to say that yes, you can technically terraform, but only into Gaia worlds. The benefit here to habitability and happiness is nice, but by the mid to late game, where you're actually getting these habitability bonuses, you've almost certainly been able to either terraform your worlds into the right type and stack some technologies to get extra habitability, or you've synthetically or biologically ascended. This one almost deserves a place all the way down there in the F tier, but I didn't quite want to put it there. I do think that the happiness bonuses and habitability bonuses, plus there is a nice growth speed modifier, could be useful, and they're not quite as painful as those massive costs you're also getting down below. Because whilst a minus 30 percent alloys from jobs or minus 50 percent minerals from jobs sounds pretty bad, that is an additive change, not multiplicative.
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Here we have two more sanctions: the Economic and Research Sanctions. The reason these sanctions are quite low down is that the actual benefits you're going to have in being able to implement them and actually affect other empires is quite a long and arduous process. It is generally better to pass actual resolutions that will have an actual impact on gameplay rather than these possible impacts that might come. The Economic gives you an increase to market fees, 10, 20, or 30 percent. That's unpleasant, and a big reduction to diplomatic weight from economy, 20, 40, or 60 percent. The Research is even nastier, giving a 5, 10, or 15 percent research speed debuff, but that's additive with your other research speed bonuses, so you might not even feel it. In the mid to late game, if you are in breach of any laws, and then you'll also get a reduction to diplomatic weight from technology at minus 20, 40, or 60 percent. If you can enact one of these sanctions, and if you can make sure to pass a galactic law that someone else who you hate is in breach of, then these are unpleasant, but they are not a showstopper for another empire. They're just quite annoying.
This next icon represents enabling the Council Veto Power. Now, unfortunately, I have to apologize here. I don't quite have the exact right icon, but I was trying to find it in the game files and I couldn't quite manage that. So, I'm going to hold my hands up here and say I'm sorry, but I think this one is close enough to demonstrate the point. Basically, enabling the Council Veto will mean council members can veto a proposed resolution once every five years for three times the influence cost of proposing that resolution. Why do I think that is not so great? Well, basically, you probably are not going to want other empires being able to veto your proposals. And whilst it can be quite nice to veto another empire's proposal, sure, you are not the only member of the Galactic Council. Now, if the council size is reduced to just one, and that is you, then fine, Council Veto at that point is basically really good. But if you're at that point, you're probably, and I would suspect it's going to be easier for you to actually become the Custodian, and the Custodian gets an inbuilt veto. And you really don't want to, as the Custodian, have a veto and then be dealing with a Galactic Council that also has their own veto as well. And for that reason, I think the veto is something you want to avoid.
As a council member, you'll also have the power to propose a Denouncement resolution for another empire. Denounced empires will get a minus 25 percent diplomatic weight modifier for 10 years, and if it is a member of the Galactic Community, it will be affected by all sanction resolutions, even if it didn't breach galactic law. A denouncement resolution can only be proposed against empires who you are rivals with or have negative relations. Why is it down here? Well, unless you've got lots and lots of the different sanctions passed, which you probably won't have, I don't expect you're going to find that this denouncement is pretty useless. Yes, you can set one empire off and give them a minus 25 diplomatic weight, which could be useful if you're trying to get into the Custodianship or you're having difficulty passing something, but generally speaking, there are better ways and you will waste less of your time with other methods than actually trying to go down the denouncement route. It's not something I actually ever tend to do in any of my games.
The Intergalactic Directives resolution chain are the set of resolutions that are basically the pro-vassal resolutions. These help out vassals more than anyone else. Yes, as an overlord, you're going to benefit from some increased monthly loyalty change from 0.02 at the very bottom all the way up to plus 1.5 at the third level. But the penalties for this are quite severe: plus 25 empire sprawl size from systems and plus 15 empire size from planets at the top level. As well as giving some extra bonuses to the specialist vassal types. Overall, I wouldn't really say that this is worth the extra loyalty for all of that extra size from systems you're getting, unless you're playing for a very, very tall build and you have basically no empire size to begin with.
Introducing Galactic Standard is another custodian reform. This basically means that you will set a specific language as the means of communication in the galaxy. In order to pass this, you'll need a custodian to propose it, and it's going to cost them some influence. What does this actually do? Well, at a cost of two percent monthly energy credits, which, as you know, is actually quite a bit, you're going to get plus one monthly influence. Yes, that's right, at only two percent monthly energy credits, plus one monthly influence, which I don't think is worth it. Overall, if you're really, really struggling for influence, yes, I could see you passing this, but there are other faster ways of getting influence that don't give you such an extra monthly energy credit reduction, which at the higher levels of the mid to late game when you enact this, is going to be hundreds, if not possibly up to the thousands of energy credits.
The Imperial Security Directorate is another imperial institution. This one gives you minus 20 crime, plus two code breaking, plus four encryption, and 80 base intel on every member of the Galactic Imperium. That should mean that you're able to get up to 100 intel by doing absolutely nothing and just having some of the basic technologies in the game that increase base intel. The extra code breaking and encryption is all right, but at the moment, espionage is one of the weaker systems in the game, and you're probably not going to need it. On top of that, the minus 20 crime is completely negligible, and the 80 base intel, whilst on the surface does sound good, as the Emperor, you're already going to have a 65 base intel on every empire anyway, so this is actually only plus 15. Even without this, you should comfortably be able to get to the 100 base intel on every member of the Galactic Imperium. All of this comes at the cost of a three percent of your monthly energy credits, and I really don't think it's worth it. If you're running some sort of build that heavily relies on spying or you want the thematics, fine, and go for it, but otherwise, I wouldn't enact an Imperial Security Directorate.
We've now made it to the B tier. We are quite a bit of the way through. We've actually dealt with quite a lot of the resolutions in the Galactic Community already, and they're down in the C and F tiers below us now. The B tier basically means there are good perks here, or good resolutions, I should say, that you probably want to enact, though there may be some drawbacks to them. And in a lot of situations, they're not going to be great, but for specific builds, they are absolutely amazing and very easy to optimize.
The Greater Good is something of a weird resolution. If you have specific ethics, those being Egalitarian or Xenophile, you're going to find this quite a great resolution chain and you're going to get a lot of benefit from it. On the other hand, if you're a Xenophobe, Slaver, or Authoritarian, you're going to find this really quite unpleasant and very, very, very bad for your empire stability. What does this do? Well, it's going to increase the diplomatic weight from pops, which is good for every empire of every type. It's also going to increase the worker happiness, and additionally, at higher levels, it will give you a 10 bonus to worker and menial drone resource output for agri-worlds, generator, and mining planet designations. At level three, you're going to be able to use the "Greater Than Ourselves" edict, which will make automatic resettlement so, so easy and so, so quick. You'll no longer have to worry about any unemployment or any microing of resettling pops because they'll basically do it for you.
What are the drawbacks for certain empire types? Well, the drawbacks are that you're going to get some bonus political power for your workers. At the Egalitarian end of this, if you've got something like Utopian Abundance or even Social Welfare, that will not be a problem at all because your workers are probably very, very happy. On the other hand, if you're running something like Stratified Economy, you're going to find that your workers are getting extra political power, which reduces the overall happiness of your planet and thus gives you negative stability modifiers. As opposed to if this weren't being run. At levels three, four, and five, you're also going to find that lots of different policies, different species rights start to get banned. Basic Subsistence, Stratified Economy, Shattered Slavery, Livestock Slavery, Grid Amalgamation, they're all banned. At level three, we also throw Academic Privilege into the banned mode, which is a very good type for Materialist empires. And then at level five, basically only Egalitarian empires or Rogue Servitor empires can actually fulfill the requirements here in terms of the species rights because you cannot have Social Welfare, you can't have Decadent Lifestyle, even Decent Conditions is banned right at the top, and every type of slavery is also banned. So, as you can tell, for a slaving empire or even an Authoritarian empire, you definitely don't want this to get past level two at all. It will completely destroy your empire's economy. At the top level, you're also getting some extra bonuses. That's empire size from pops, reduced housing usage, extra stability, and those are all quite nice. But then we get this minus 10,000 resource storage capacity modifier. Now, this used to be really, really bad. It's no longer as bad because each of our resource silos on our star bases now add plus 10,000 resource storage capacity. So, it isn't actually that difficult to offset that anymore, but it's still not fantastic. Basically, if you're a Rogue Servitor or any flavor of Egalitarian, you want to pass every resolution in this chain, and if you're not, you probably want to get it up to level two, possibly level three if you're not a slaver, and from there, keep it stuck at that point because "Greater Than Ourselves" is quite a nice edict, and the bonuses to worker happiness as well as diplomatic weight from pops is pretty cool to have too.
Next, we have the Formation of the Galactic Council. You can only form the Galactic Council once the Galactic Community has already existed for 20 years. Now, even though actually forming the Galactic Council does very little, there will be an election, and the three largest empires by diplomatic weight will all get a seat on the council, and then they'll get even more diplomatic weight. It's a little bit of a rigged system, if you asked me. But basically, behind this Galactic Council, we get a whole bunch of different policies that we might want to enact, like becoming the Custodian for all of the great rights and benefits we'll get there. So, the Galactic Council resolution is, in essence, a gateway to bigger, better, and more powerful things, and that's why it's up here in the B tier.
Military Sanctions is the last of the sanctions to be placed in this tier list, and you may be a bit surprised in what I said about the previous sanctions that it is all the way up here in the C tier. Now, the reason for that is it's so darn powerful. At the highest level, it gives a minus 30 percent naval capacity to anyone in breach of galactic law, and that is eye-wateringly painful, especially in the mid to late game. This one is the only sanction you're probably ever going to want to have passed, and if you pass this one and then denounce another empire with it, that can be very much economically breaking for them and pretty much force them, if they're a player, to want to rage quit. On top of that, their diplomatic weight from fleet will also be massively reduced too, and as this is one of the largest diplomatic weight modifiers in the mid to late game, it is very good for putting an empire down to size if you have a nasty rival that is competing with you in the Galactic Community.
Bureaucratic Surveillance is the inverse to the Intergalactic Directives resolution chain we talked about before. Basically, this one is the pro-overlord version of it. What it is going to do is increase the maximum number of holdings that you're able to have as an overlord. This means that no matter what happens, your subjects will be forced to have, at the top level, at least two holdings of yours on their worlds. It will also increase the overlord's fanatic ethic attraction if you have a fanatic ethic by 25 per level. All of this does come at a cost, however, and that is the fact that you're going to get a small reduction to your monthly loyalty, exactly mirroring the increases from the pro-vassal resolution chain we talked about previously. This one is kind of nice to use. I wouldn't necessarily recommend you always go for it, but I do think it is somewhat better because by aligning the overlord's ethic with the vassal's ethic, you actually get an increase in loyalty from that vassal, which is very useful for renegotiating your contracts.
Divinity of Life is, as you might expect from the picture, basically the anti-robot or pro-spiritualist resolution chain. This one will be reducing the diplomatic weight from technology, and that can be rather annoying if you have quite a lead technologically. It's also going to be boosting spiritualist ethics attraction. As a Materialist or any non-spiritualist empire, that can also be quite annoying because spiritualist pops can be very tenacious if they don't have something of a small minority or majority over 25 percent represented in the empire's factions. You're also going to be getting some bonus unity from jobs, plus five percent per level, and you'll also get some reduced unemployment happiness penalty, which is quite helpful if you ever happen to have some unemployed pops. Now, where this is annoying, if you have any robots, you're a machine intelligence, or a materialist building robot, you're going to get some increases to the pop assembler job upkeep and increases to robot upkeep. You'll also get reductions to pop assembly speed, and later on, organic pops will get priority in jobs. At level four and five, synthetic evolution ascension is completely banned. Non-servitor machine intelligences are completely banned, and you must not have citizen rights for your artificial intelligence policy. Overall, this is completely crippling to Materialist empires that are going for any type of machine ascension, which you probably want to do as a Materialist empire, and very unpleasant for robotic empires as well. Even though Rogue Servitors are the best type of machine intelligence you can have at the moment, if you don't have a Rogue Servitor type, yes, it will be very, very annoying. You will, at the final end, get some extra organic pop happiness too, which I haven't even mentioned yet. So, as you can see, as a spiritualist empire, there are pretty much zero downsides to this and only upsides. So, you'll want to push this through the Senate if you get the chance.
The Galactic Trade Organization is another galactic institution, the Custodian confound. This one, however, is a really nice one if and only if you're actually using trade value in a useful way. This will give a flat 10 trade value bonus on every world, but at the cost of an increased three percent pop consumer goods upkeep. As a Gestalt or Machine Intelligence empire, you can completely ignore this one, as it won't affect you in any way, shape, or form, and that's actually really nice. If you're a trade-based empire, this is really good, especially if you have a trade policy that's actually generating consumer goods that will completely offset any additional costs you might be facing here. If you don't have that, yes, it's not great. Though extra trade value is good all around, as even if you're not focusing on trade value, it can be rather nice, and in the late game, I tend to find that I've got a glut of consumer goods anyway, so it really doesn't end up being that much of a problem.
Lastly, in the B tier, we have the Imperial Charter. Now, only the Emperor can propose this imperial institution. Basically, what it will do, as long as the empire is not a corporate empire, the Imperium is not a corporate sovereign, they can pick another megacorp in the galaxy and they will gain this Imperial Charter, allowing them to build branch offices on the planets of every member of the Galactic Imperium, which can be very, very powerful. They'll also get access to the Imperial Concession Port, which for every two grants plus 10 monthly energy for the Emperor, for a maximum of just 100 energy, which is kind of okay. The main benefit here is that you are empowering a megacorp in the galaxy. Now, that can either be a positive thing or a negative thing. You don't want the megacorp to get more powerful than you. If they are something like a vassal and they're already paying you a tithe, then you're actually going to get access through it that way, and that is so very powerful. You definitely want to put an Imperial Charter on a megacorp that is your vassal. Don't even think about it, just do it. Assuming they are paying you a resource tie, the resource subsidy of, let's say, I don't know, 45 percent of their basic resources, then you'll get access to some of that sweet, sweet cash. But otherwise, if they're not your vassal, it can be something of a double-edged sword, as they will get very powerful from this ability.
But what do you think about the Galactic Community and all of these political resolutions? You might have completely different opinions on where they rank in a tier list. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below.
We're now in the A tier. Everything in the A tier is something you almost certainly want to pass. There could be a few niche reasons for why you might not want to enact it, but generally speaking, it's going to be a benefit to you, and you're probably going to want to do it because it's going to make you more powerful.
Getting a permanent council seat is, in my opinion, a very, very powerful move, especially if the Custodian has not been created yet. You see, by having a permanent council seat, it will not matter if, let's say, one of your fleets or all of your fleets are destroyed right at a crucial Galactic Council election, because you'll no longer have to worry about minor fluctuations in your diplomatic weight to remain on the council. And you do have to be on the council in order to either nominate yourself a Custodian or have someone else nominate you as Custodian. On top of that, if anything like a veto has been passed or the council have the denouncement power, you definitely don't want to give that up, and you definitely don't want to be sliding out of this position of power. For that reason, you almost certainly want to make sure that you are the permanent council member.
I'm also going to briefly talk about the change in council size. Now, that is something I've not really included in the tier list. I would rate that around here in the A tier if you're reducing it down to size one, and you've already passed the permanent council seat. Otherwise, generally, it's pretty negligible. You don't really care that much if it goes up to four or five, as long as things like the veto haven't been passed. And if they have, you probably don't want that to happen.
Next up, we have the various term limit resolutions. Now, as the Custodian, you only actually get a 30-year custodial term, after which point you are forced to step down. Basically, what this means is that you can either extend your custodianship for another 30 years, or more importantly and more powerfully, remove the custodian ship term limit. By removing the term limit, you'll actually open up the window as the perpetual Custodian to enact yourself as the Galactic Emperor instead of just being the Custodian, which in some ways is more powerful. But even if you don't actually do that, remaining Custodian in perpetuity is really, really good. I don't want to understate this. The Custodian is very, very, very powerful.
And that leads us on quite nicely to the Galactic Imperium. In order to form this, you will of course need the Nemesis DLC. But what is this going to do for you? Well, it will do some things which can be good, can be bad, it depends on your empire. First off, it will shift the ethics towards Fanatic Authoritarian, and your government type will become Imperial. You'll also be renamed to the Imperial Corps and get a brand new flag. On top of that, you'll gain the Galactic Sovereign civic. Yes, that is an extra civic that gives you a whopping bonus to your influence of plus six monthly influence, as well as plus one available envoys and plus 40 diplomatic weight. This is all mainly a carryover from being the Custodian before. As a corporate Galactic Emperor, yes, as a megacorp, you can become Galactic Imperator. You will also then get access to all regular and corporate civics, making this really, really powerful for megacorp empires, as suddenly they get access to normal civics in the game, which is truly mind-blowing. You'll also get all of the custodian perks you had before, they'll remain active, and the Galactic Emperor can no longer be attacked by Galactic Imperium members. You also get 65 base intel on every member in the Galactic Community. Empires can also not leave the Galactic Imperium, unlike the previous Galactic Community that predated it. The council will be reformed into the Imperial Council, and the Emperor maintains a permanent seat there.
Now, the next thing is both a drawback and a benefit, depending on the political situation in the galaxy. All of the different federations will be disbanded. Yes, that's right, they'll all go away, meaning you'll lose any bonuses you are getting as a specific federation type. But the benefit here is that every other federation is also disbanded. So, if there are multiple federations out there in the galaxy, all of them will go away, and they will lose all of the bonuses they were getting too, along with their federation fleets, as well, which could be quite a shift in the balance of power if you time it correctly. On top of all of that, you get access to a whole bunch of new imperial institutions, and some of those are very, very nice and beneficial, and a couple of imperial reforms, as well as some foreign relations changes, which we're going to cover very soon. Overall, I wouldn't necessarily recommend you always form the Imperium, as there are drawbacks to it, but generally speaking, if you're not in a federation, it's a no-brainer. If you are in a federation, only form this if there are at least two other competing federations in the galaxy.
The Imperial Navigation Agency, or the Interstellar Navigation Agency, gives you a 15 community space sublight speed bonus. Now, there are actually very few ways of increasing your sublight speed, so to get a bonus like this at the cost of two monthly energy credits, whilst yes, that is a relatively high cost in the mid to late game, I think this is very, very much worth it. This could be the difference between victory and defeat from a tactical perspective, as you'll be able to get your fleets into positions faster and react quicker to enemy threats.
The Pax Galactica, or Galactic Peace, basically means that all Imperium members, and this can only be passed if you have the Galactic Imperium and 180 Imperial Authority, which is only 20 away from the max, don't forget, so that is a very high Imperial Authority. It then means Galactic Imperium members cannot use any Casus Belli on each other except the Trial of Advancement. That means they can't go to war and actually take any territory from one another, which as the Emperor will be very good because it limits the ability for any other empire or collection of empires through some targeted wars to grow as powerful or possibly more powerful than you as the Emperor. By enforcing peace, you actually are unable to enforce a status quo galaxy-wide, and as no empire can leave the Galactic Imperium, that will lock them all into place in quite a convenient way.
In the S tier, we now have resolutions that are either so good you want to always put them through the Galactic Community first because the benefits are fantastic pretty much for every empire type, or they have some crazy and bananas actual effects that you, if you can, want to get your hands on.
The Industrial Development chain is probably the very first resolution chain that I always propose if I have the chance in the Galactic Community. At the lowest levels, it is basically beneficial for every empire, and pretty much no matter the empire type, they are going to be supporting this resolution, so it is a very easy one to get past right out of the gate. It is going to give you a bonus to diplomatic weight from economy, 20 per level. You'll also get some worker pop resource output, plus two and a half percent per level. There will be some downsides, and those downsides are that you get reduced habitability on your planets. However, as the chain goes on, as you increase the level of your Industrial Development resolution, you'll probably find that your habitability modifiers from technologies or other sources are going up at least as quickly as the habitability of this resolution chain is going down, if not even more quickly, and therefore I think you can basically ignore this habitability modifier. You'll also be getting some a bonus to your alloy output from jobs and your mineral output as well. Planetary build speed will be increased, and at the higher levels, metallurgist upkeep is decreased. Level four and five also bring a further metallurgist output increase on all alloy designation planets, as well as an increased bonus to artisan output on consumer good designation worlds. Then there is, weirdly, a refiner output. Gas refiners go up five percent on all refinery designation worlds. That one's a little strange, not as useful, but still pretty nice to have. At level five, you also unlock the Cornucopia decision. Now, this decision, if enacted, will give you a planetary feature that gives you plus four maximum mining districts and plus five percent mineral output on that planet, at the cost of twenty percent habitability. That is a fantastic decision to take.
mid to late game if you're running out of worlds and space to get extra mining output and you don't yet have the megastructure giving you extra minerals. so basically i would say that overall this resolution chain industrial development is a complete no-brainer. it is almost always a benefit to every empire in the galaxy and that means you should always try to propose it and support it if you ever see it.
okay, we're now over 45 minutes through this tier list. it really has become monumental. if you've made it this far, thank you very much and congratulations. this is the secret call out. let me know down in the comments below if you've got to this point. but anyway, let's keep going. i think we're going to end up at like 57 minutes or something wild. but as long as you're enjoying it, i think that's all that matters.
unchanged knowledge is the pro science resolution chain. what this is going to do is increase your diplomatic weight from technology and at every level give you an increase to research station output. there is a drawback here and that is your star base upkeep will go up five percent per level. other than that, the only other negative is if you are a spiritualist empire that doesn't produce any machines, you will find that you are no longer allowed to outlaw artificial intelligence. oh no.
there are materialists. so one, basically what it's also going to do as well is increase the solar panel effects by 100, which is very, very good for guest out consciousness empires. it will increase the planet sensor range as well. you're going to get increased bonuses from your black hole observatories. your observation posts will produce more society research. at levels four and five, you're going to get 10 and 20 percent extra research output as well, though that does come with some increased researcher upkeep. and at those higher levels, workers and slaves will get slightly reduced happiness. but overall, the benefits you're going to be getting here for technology and all of that kind of stuff is really, really good.
be careful though, at level five, the minimum mean time for crisis years will be reduced by 50. so if you go all the way up to the extra dimensional experimentation, be warned. an unbidden crisis may arrive a little bit earlier than you think. but don't worry, at that great level five, you get access to the extra dimensional experimentation decision that will, at the cost of one zero upkeep, give you plus one dimensional portal researchers on any world you like, which is really, really good.
the only reason i can really see for not taking this is if you are dramatically behind another empire in technology level and therefore your diplomatic weight is much lower than them and they're threatening to overtake you in the galactic community in terms of their power. other than that, it's generally a great bonus for your empire to have to get these extra bonuses to your output for research and other things. so i think it's again, quite a no-brainer.
being nominated the custodian, as long as you are nominating yourself as custodian, is in my opinion the most powerful resolution available in stellaris in the galactic community. this unlocks a whole host of other resolutions and gives you so much additional power. you're going to get plus five monthly influence and plus 30 diplomatic weight in addition to the 20 modifier for being on the galactic council, making you a real force to be reckoned with in senate debates. you'll also get a 50 emergency measure cooldown reduction and a 50 veto cost and cooldown reduction as well.
along with that, if you don't have a veto yet on the galactic council, you as custodian will get your own personal veto. you get a de facto permanent seat on that same galactic council, again, really powerful. you get open borders and a base of 45 intel on every member of the galactic community. you can end any session after half of its time has passed at the cost of 190 influence. you can change the galactic focus without requiring a resolution at the cost of only 100 influence. and you can freeze any resolution at the cost of 200 influence, preventing it from being moved to the floor for four years. the empire with a frozen resolution can also still withdraw it to propose another one.
the custodian does only have an initial term of 30 years, but as we've already mentioned, you can all get rid of that term limit if you really want to. on top of that, you've got a whole load of extra policies. some of them we haven't actually covered yet and we're about to go into, so i will go into them in a moment and i won't cover them just now. but let's say basically all of those extra things, the custodian reforms and galactic institutions are phenomenally powerful and very, very great. you really want to have access to them if you can. they are some of the best resolutions of the game and as i said, they're locked behind this custodian nomination.
forming the galactic market is actually a galactic priority. this will cost 100 influence to propose and once you achieve this resolution, what you're going to get is the birth of the galactic market event chain that will culminate in a planet being chosen to be the base of operations for the galactic market, and then we all get access to the galactic market. why is that really good? well, the galactic market now means that you have a galaxy-wide pool of resources, or not necessarily a pool of resources, but when you buy and sell things from the market, that will be affected less than if you're buying or selling from just your own internal market. and that means prices can be maintained more easily. though in some cases, you're going to find that there are interesting things happen. prices will go up and down based on what the ai or other player empires are buying and selling. it is really quite fun and very useful to be able to rebalance your economy based on the whims of this market.
it can also all come crashing down. don't let me tell you that isn't the case. you can be pinning your hopes on selling food on the galactic community market because it has quite a high value, and then suddenly three or four other empires are doing the same and the price of food crashes. that could result in your empire facing great economic hardship. but that's just simply uh, what you're going to get if you're betting on a galactic market.
you'll also get plus 10,000 resource storage capacity, which in the early game is pretty darn good. on top of that, you will also get access to a host of rare resources that you may not have already got access to in your internal market, and now you can buy them from the galactic market instead. and that is really, really useful if you just haven't rolled a specific technology in the mid-game because it will mean that you're no longer locked out of some of the really good specific technologies that need you to have access to rare resources.
crisis declaration is a crazy ability or a crazy resolution. and what this basically does is it means members of the galactic council, including the custodian or the emperor, can pretty much randomly decide that another empire is a crisis and then the community will declare them a crisis. this starts a war between the galactic community or the imperium and the target using the crisis war goal. during that war, member empires gain 20 ship build speed and a minus 10 ship upkeep. but the war will end prematurely if the resolution is repealed. this basically means you get a massive hammer to slam down on anyone in the galaxy if you get a high enough diplomatic weight to push this through. it is completely bonkers as you'll be able to make every single empire in the community go to war with whoever you like, all at the same time, and they should be able to smash up pretty much anyone. if you've played any europa universalis for, this is basically an hre vassal swarm.
a united front does require there to be a crisis occurring in order to be able to pass this. it is another custodian reform, so you must have the custodian around. and what this does is it gives you plus 20 damage to end game crisis factions at the cost of three percent monthly energy credits. is that worth it? i think absolutely yes it is. any damage bonuses to end game crisis are worth gold dust in my opinion. i would almost certainly be taking the ascension perk for 50 extra damage towards endgame crisis, especially if you're trying to defeat something like a 25 times crisis. and that's why i think united front fits in here comfortably in the s tier. if ever a crisis pokes its ugly head up.
the galactic defense force or imperial armada is probably the most powerful single resolution you can get your hands on in the game. there are two tiers to this, there's the first tier and then there is the expansion. what this will do is it will reduce your monthly alloys by five, which sounds terrible, but then you get access to a 400 naval capacity fleet that can be designed and built and is upkeep free. and these are ships for the galactic custodian or galactic emperor to take command of. don't forget they're upkeep free. they also have a reduced alloy cost or reduced ship cost when you build the darn things, which is really powerful. and on top of that, you get access to every technology that every member of the galactic community or galactic imperium has in order to build these ships. so they are cheap, they are free, and then you can build massive fleets of them. you can get up to 800 in naval capacity if you enact both of these resolutions.
and once you get the galactic custodian, i would always recommend trying to pass the galactic defense force first, as this defense force also counts towards your diplomatic weight as the custodian, which is just mind-bogglingly powerful. it means you'll get all of these extra ships which are kitted out to the nines, and then on top of that, they're going to give you more diplomatic power to push through more resolutions and the military muscle to get pretty much anything you want done in the galaxy, especially in the mid to late game.
the galactic mobilization custodian reform is one of the nicest custodian reforms you'll see around. it gives a whopping plus 150 flat naval capacity to every empire, which is really, really good because that will be further modified by other bonuses and modifiers you've accumulated throughout the game. it comes at the cost of five percent trade value or plus two empire size from pops if you're a gesture consciousness. but if you're a regular empire, that trade value increase is completely negligible. for hive minds, yes, it is something of an annoyance getting extra empire size, but it's not game breaking. i wouldn't worry too much about that. this 150 naval capacity though, especially in the late game, is going to be so, so useful.
the very last thing in this tier list, the very last resolution is the imperial crusade. basically, what this will do is all galactic imperium members declare war on the target empire with the force into imperium war goal. you'll need to have 140 imperial authority be able to do this as the emperor. and you cannot target fallen or awakened empires or target an empire that is already a member of the galactic imperium. but apart from that, this is an excellent war goal to bring other empires into the imperium if they are trying to resist your rule and then force all of the imperial laws and edicts on them, which i think is very fun and very nice. this isn't specifically the most powerful thing in the s tier. i think it's just such a nice extra caveat to have at the cost of only 100 influence, and you get to do some cool things with it. whilst there are basically no downsides to using this.
this tier list has focused quite a lot on diplomatic power, but there is another type of power in the game which is generally speaking much more fundamental, and that is military power. if you'd like to know how to maximize the military power you have for the resources you've got and you want to know how good the various weapons and defenses are, click the video on screen now.