Transcription
No, no, I don't think I will.
Traditions in Stellaris are to Unity what technology is to research. As you accumulate unity, you can spend it on different traditions, up to seven of them, to unlock bonuses for your empire. In this video, we're going to go through every tradition available to you in Stellaris and rank them in a tier list from what I think are the worst all the way up to the very best. We'll start at the bottom at the F tier and work our way up.
It's important to remember that every single tradition in the game does give you bonuses. There are, however, only seven traditions that we can unlock, so each tradition comes with an opportunity cost. That means that whilst the traditions down here in the F tier do give you positive things, they're not as positive as other traditions further up.
Diplomacy is no longer required in order to create a Federation. They have thankfully moved the Federation ability away from this tradition and instead placed it with the Federation technology. That does mean though in a lot of ways they have hollowed out this tradition. It's going to give you some bonuses that will help you diplomatically if you're dealing with AI empires in either single or multiplayer, but they are mostly quite lackluster. If you're playing a very diplomatically focused game, you could benefit from the minus 50% diplomatic influence cost as an adoption effect here. and the diplomatic grants edict and additional envoys you'll get from this can be useful, but overall it's better finding other ways around these penalties. For example, building more ships so you're getting more influence from your power projection or boosting the maximum power projection you can get from ships rather than actually taking this tradition.
Domination's main benefit, to be quite honest with you, is the minus 10% empire size from POPS and the fact that it allows you to build a hegemony federation type. The bonuses to worker and slave output, the bonuses to edict fund, additional official starting level and capacity, they're all okay, but honestly, not that impactful. This tradition really needs some TLC in order to make it kind of viable.
Now, politics is going to make your empire better in the galactic community, boosting your diplomatic weight, and giving you some special abilities like getting a favor whenever a proposing empire's supported resolution passes. That means if you support a resolution another empire has proposed and it passes, yay, you get one whole favor. It also gives you access to the politics, traditions, resolutions, and they can be quite powerful. However, overall, there's pretty much nothing that you can get from this tradition tree that you couldn't otherwise get from having just more ships, more economy, or other bonuses in other parts of the game. It really does break my heart that I feel the need to put politics down here in the F tier, but that's where we are, ladies and gentlemen.
Aptitude is probably the absolute worst tradition in Stellaris. This is ironically the leader focused tradition and leaders are more powerful now than they have ever been at any other time in the game. Barring briefly after the release of Galactic Paragons, the bonuses you can get such as plus one leader starting traits, minus one leader maximum negative traits, minus 25% leader upkeep, minus 25% leader cost, and a finisher of plus one leader cap are all fine, but not worth an entire tradition. Honestly, you'd need to add an extra four or five tradition effects to this, I believe. So, basically doubling the number of effects you're getting from Aptitude in order to make it anywhere near viable. Not to mention the agenda leadership conditioning is now a complete joke when we compare it to statecrafts amongst peers. We'll look at that a little bit later.
We're now up to the C tier. Items in the C tier are admittedly better than F, but honestly, there isn't much margin in this. You'll notice this tier is mostly dominated by the gushed out versions of some of the normal traditions, as well as archavism that probably needs a bit more love, but is also very RNG dependent. We'll talk about that in a moment.
Versatility gives you some pleasant bonuses. You're getting minus 10% to replicator upkeep, meaning making new population units is a bit cheaper. You'll also get minus 10% pop amenities usage, a little bit of unity from your maintenance drones, some more trust with machine empires, a reduction to market fee, more upkeep for replicators. That's very upsetting. And then 10% more mechanical pop assembly speed. The bonuses are fine. There's just not enough here. I'd like to see possibly a doubling of all of these bonuses for it to be even close to viable.
Synchronicity is the gestalt version of harmony. This one has some similar bonuses to harmony, but in some regards it's really really missing out. The main things that it lacks is the ability to form the holy covenant federation and the inner stability agenda. The agenda node revision is is great. You're going to cull some nodes and get some new ones. That's lovely. But I'd rather plus 20 stability empirewide. You know, that does sound a lot better, doesn't it, ladies and gentlemen?
Logistics is the gested out version of Merkantile. This has got some okayish bonuses, but honestly, logistics drones kind of suck. They they suck really really badly. The minus 10% ships logistics upkeep here is probably one of the best bonuses. However, don't forget whilst your ships are at dock, whilst they're at home at port, they have absolutely zero logistics upkeep. So that bonus is only really useful when you are on campaign on the aggressive. Otherwise, it's missing some of the key features that make merkantile so good. On the plus side here, you do get access to trade league, which is one of the better federations. That's probably the only saving grace of logistics. And for that reason, I almost considered pushing it up to the B tier, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do that because logistic drones just really are that crap.
Domination for Gestalt Empires is a little bit better than for regular Empires. The opener here is giving you minus 15% amenities usage. That is still a very good modifier. The minus 10% empire size from Pops is also very helpful as well. It is important to note now that amenities are easier to come by than in previous editions, and having high amenities usage is not as problematic as it once was. This is good, just not as good as it used to be. And if you're enjoying this video, please dominate that like button.
Archavism boosts the power of the specimens you host in your grand archive. It also grants you the neat ability of allowing you to excavate archaeological dig sites in unknown systems. You'll also get a random specimen from each specimen category and a little bit of diplo weight depending on the number of specimens you are exhibiting. Overall, this is pretty mediocre, but if you get really good specimens, this can be really quite powerful. If you're doubling down going for something like treasure hunters and the archavism civic, then yeah, you probably want to take this to maximize the bonuses you're already getting. Otherwise, I think it's comfortably Ctier.
Welcome to the B tier. We're now halfway through the tier list. We're at the middle of our lovely Gaussian curve. And honestly, I didn't intend it to be this way, but if you turn the tier list on its side, you'll see a beautiful little Gaussian we're forming. Let's dive in and see what I think deserves to go right in the middle of the pack.
Adaptability gives a lot of basic bonuses that you can get elsewhere. Plus 10% habitability, plus one maximum districts on non-artificial planets, some reduction to orbital bombardment damage, and a reduction to building and district strategic resource cost. and upkeep. Were these the only bonuses present? It would probably be in the C tier. However, when you complete adaptability, you get bonus resource output for different planet specialization types, and this can be scaled further by planetary ascension. You'll get plus 5% to capital designation jobs, plus 10% for the basic resource districts for their associated jobs, and 5% for specialist designations. That could be 5% additional research or alloys. If you get up to level 10 ascension, you're then looking at plus 17 12% additional resource output. This is now multiplicative with job efficiency. So, it's a really, really useful bonus if we can get our hands on it.
Harmony is pretty much the same as the gested out version that we covered earlier, synchronicity. The greater good is one of the new tradition bits that gives you a reduction in crime and an increase to governing ethics attraction, which is honestly kind of better than instinctive synchronization depending on how many logistic drones you've got. The main benefit here though is that you can create holy covenant federations when you complete harmony. That is honestly the best federation type in the game when it comes to unity production. And on top of that, you get access to the inner stability agenda. That agenda granting you plus 20 stability on every single planet in your empire. Wow. That easily puts harmony one tier above synchronicity. Otherwise, the plus five edict fund, the plus 10 years of leader lifespan, and the minus 10% empire size from pops are all very nice, very solid bonuses alongside the plus 25% planetary ascension effect as well. That stacks really nicely with adaptability.
I think there's going to be quite a few angry comments about my placement of discovery. I've placed it here in the B tier, and honestly, I think it possibly could go lower at this point all the way down to the C tier. What does it do? Well, the finisher gives you 10% additional research speed and allows you to build research cooperatives, which granted are pretty okay if you're trying to focus on research. Though, arguably a bigger economy lets you get more research, so maybe a trade fed is just better there. Anyway, you're also getting a research alternative that can be very, very useful early in the game. Sometimes I would take discovery and science division and then leave this for quite a while. And on top of that, you're getting a reduction to researcher upkeep, some leader pool size, some experience gain, some scientist starting level, plus 20% research station output and research from star-based buildings, and then the research subsidies edict, which is all right. Quite expensive for what it does usually in terms of unity cost and energy cost, but these bonuses are fine. That's why it's in the B tier. Research speed is now easier to get than ever before. If you need more research speed, generally it's much better to get some medium level leaders in your council, three or four scientists with the researcher focus, the researcher skill path, and then you're going to be stacking plenty of additional research speed bonuses onto your research. Plus 10% is simply not as good as it used to be.
The expansion tradition is all about getting a foothold in the galaxy slightly faster than your neighbors. For that reason, you probably want to take this tradition as your first pick if you're going to pick it at all. Second, absolutely latest, and after that, I probably wouldn't bother picking it up. The main benefits here really are the plus 10% pop growth or assembly speed depending on whether or not you're a robot and plus one max districts on nonartificial planets. Outside of that, unless you're a void dweller, and we'll get to void dwellers later, I probably wouldn't really care for any of the other bonuses. Minus 25% empire size from systems isn't worth the pixels it's printed on. minus 25% empire size from planets is nice, but even with 10 planets, you're only then looking at 25 less empire size. That's 2,500 pops worth of empire size, which uh yeah, not that much empire size at all. For this to be an auto pick in every run, it needs to give you faster growth, have some sort of longerlasting, more important economic impact, or just all around be more versatile. At the moment, you're getting a bit of a boost at the start, and then most of these bonuses are kind of useless after you've done your initial expansion.
Enmity is all about having rivals. For each rival you have, you're going to get better and better bonuses from this tradition. You'll also get some additional damage to rivals. And not only that, if you can rival some more powerful empires around you that are either superior or overwhelming in economic, fleet level, or technology, you'll get some hefty bonuses there, too. The Second Strike Agenda is also really good in both multiplayer and singleplayer games because it gives you massive strategic flexibility. You can in essence ignore a truce and attack someone almost immediately following a previous war, allowing you to do a one-two punch and knock out your neighbor. The problems with this tradition are twofold. First off, the bonuses I don't think are good enough for the number of rivals you'll need to get good numbers here. And if you rival all of your neighbors, well, you're going to be in a real sticky situation trying to fight off the rest of the galaxy. And then on the other side of the coin, if you're very successful in actually fighting off your neighbors and the rest of the galaxy, you'll end up being so powerful that you won't even be able to really have many rivals and most of the bonuses here will then be pretty much useless to you.
We've just hit the 15minute mark in this video and it's been a long time since I've done one of these. So, I'm going to do a little bit of a secret call out. If you've been watching, if you haven't skipped ahead and you've actually watched through this bit, let me know down in the comments below. Try and use the word emn. The word is emniti. It's spelled e n m i t y. I pronounce it emnity. Don't shoot me.
Domestication is all about buffing your space fauna. If you go all in on space fauna, this is probably S tier. If you are only dabbling with space fauna, if you've just got a few of them, it can be quite good. the bonuses here too. Space spawner damage, sublight speed, cloning speed. You're also getting some pop growth or assembly speed as well. That's very nice. And yeah, and some other bonuses thrown in too. They're good, but they usually don't justify the inclusion of domestication. And then we have to be precient of the fact that going all in on space fauna will give us massive power early in the game, but later on the ships tend to level out and be massive fleet power bloat. They're not as powerful as the game tells you they are. Don't try and use them against the crisis. Don't try and use them against the fallen empire. It will not go well. That was your warning.
Welcome to the A tier. This is premium primera tradition stuff. These traditions are not auto picks in every single run that you will do. But these traditions will not hurt your run through if you pick them.
First off in the A tier, we have expansion, but only if you've taken the void dweller origin. If you're a void dweller, expansion is going to give you minus 20% habitat capital and district alloy upkeep. that is very very strong right at the start of the game. It's going to allow you to build more habitats faster and more ships faster and keep the things you've got costing less for longer. This is massively going to boost your economic growth in the early phase of the game, allowing you to get out and do the important things you want to do in Stellaris. Again though, you probably want to pick this first or second. And if you've gone past that point, probably not.
Prosperity has always been good. These days, it's probably at the bottom of the A tier, if I'm being honest with myself here. But it's still a strong economic tradition that you could take second, third, or fourth, or possibly even later in the game, and always see benefit from it. You're going to be getting plus 5% resources from jobs, minus 5% upkeep from jobs, a reduction to planetary infrastructure cost, and an increase to the speed at which you can build infrastructure, more housing, which also technically means more growth. And then, you know, some mining station output as well, and some more resources from orbital stations. It's good filler. It's not exciting. It's not wild. Favorite Society is nice to run as an agenda. I like getting the bonuses from that one. It's very tasty, but you know, it's nothing fancy. This is Obi-Wan Kenobi levels of flying. This is a little stronger than adaptability if you take it early. If you're later into the game, adaptability is probably going to be a better pick for you, though. And that might leave you a little confused as to why adaptability isn't higher than prosperity. Well, early game bonuses compound much more greatly than late game bonuses. So, getting a bonus early on is going to allow you to snowball much more quickly than a bonus later. So, a power early is always stronger than a power later.
Unyielding does a couple of great things for you. First off, it's actually going to give you a bunch of flat unity output. Why is that? Well, resistance is frugal. grants you plus 0.5 unity per defense army. And your capitals actually produce defense armies. Yes, we can also get more through soldiers. You'll probably get that later in the game, but this is just a flat boost to unity when you pick it up. You're also increasing your star base capacity. You're getting more defensive output in terms of damage and health from your star bases and defensive platforms and massively reducing star base upgrade cost. The minus 25% war exhaustion gain is wonderful. That will keep you in the fight a lot longer. Getting a 25% reduction to orbital bombardment damage and increasing hostile claim influence cost by 25% are all really, really good. Bulwark of Harmony giving you more ship fire rate within your borders. Also really, really good. And then on top of that, granting right at the end of this, plus 50% defense platform cap, minus 20% starbase upkeep, and the ability to form Marshall Alliance Federations. That isn't all, though. If that was all, I'd probably put this in B tier. Unyielding also allows you to take the eternal vigilance ascension perk, removing it from the technology lock. This allows you to take unyielding first and eternal vigilance as your first ascension perk. If you spawn next to something like a fanatic purifier or just a nasty, nasty alien that is hellbent on attacking you, eternal vigilance will literally save your life and your game.
Subtifuge has gone from strength to strength. Did you know that subtifuge is actually mainly a military and diplomatic tradition? Yes, it masquerades as having something to do with espionage and counter espionage, but you have to cut through all of that bull crap to actually see it for what it truly is. Yes, you're going to get a bit of code breaking, which will give you more military intelligence on your neighbors. That's great. But mainly here, we're going to be getting plus five evasion on all of our ships and plus 10 tracking. That additional bonus will stack with other tracking bonuses to make our longrange artillery type weapons actually able to fire at godamn corvettes. That is amazing. On top of that, this now unlocks the ability to start proxy wars, allowing you to do diplomatic shenanigans with your neighbors. Against players, this is a little bit less useful, granted, but against AI empires, you can pit them at war with one another and then swoop in to pick up the pieces. I absolutely love Subtifuge at the moment, and I generally take it in all of my playthroughs because it's just fun to sit from the shadows and like Machaveli, move the pieces and pawns at your will. If you're enjoying this video and you want to pick up Stellaris, any of the DLC, or any other game or DLC from Paradox Interactive, you can do so using our link to the Paradox Interactive Store to get your hands on the Steam keys and also help to support this channel. Or at the Paradox Interactive Store checkout, use our code Montto plays.
Welcome to the S tier. If you didn't skip straight ahead to the end, congratulations. You're a good person. Otherwise, you're probably a good person, too. But, but you had no patience. It's a virtue. Anyway, this is now the best of the tier list. I recommend you take each of these traditions in all of your games. There is a case to be made not to take Merkantile, granted, but we'll get to that.
First off, speak of the devil, and they shall appear. Merkantile's main bonuses here are the adaptive economic policies allowing you to get consumer benefits or marketplace of ideas trade policies. Either of these, especially the marketplace of ideas trade policy, can massively boost your early economy, allowing you to either get more consumer goods and thus have more researchers, or just straight up get more unity and rush through traditions faster to quickly get to your ascension. Speaking of ascensions, you might have noticed I haven't ranked the ascension traditions here. That's because they'd all be S tier. They have to be ranked relative to one another. You can only pick one ascension path in the game and only get one ascension tradition. I am going to cover each of the ascension paths in a future video, so watch out for that. Jumping back to Merkantile though, we're also getting more trade from jobs, more monthly trade. Those two are multiplicative by the way. It's excellent. and a reduction to market fee, a reduction to trader upkeep, bonuses here to amenities output and trade from civilians, bonuses for traders, reduction in upkeep for traders, that's all fine, but what's really strong here is the trade league federation and those two economic policies. If you're not using trade for a unity rush or if you're not using trade to get consumer goods or if you just hate yourself, I suppose you might not want to take mercantile in one of your playthroughs. Otherwise, this is definitely for you.
Supremacy allows you to project force out into the galaxy. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived. In all seriousness though, supremacy basically does everything for you from a military perspective. This tradition buffs your ship's fire rate, reduces their upkeep, allows you to field more of them with more naval capacity, increases your command limit, so you can have more ships in a single fleet. You'll also get better commanders. You'll get the war doctrines policies allowing you to get again better fleets. You'll deal more damage to star bases. And you'll unlock the supremacist diplomatic stance, which is pretty much the best diplomatic stance in the game. As long as you've built up a big navy, and why wouldn't you? Because force, my friends, is violence, the supreme authority. Even if you are a pacifist and you want to walk softly, you still need to carry a big stick. Supremacy enbigens your stick.
Okay, we're now on to statecraft. And this is single-handedly the best tradition in the game. Now, unless you're a gashed out empire, if you're a gashed out empire, statecraft has technically exactly the same effects, but it's missing one key component. And I don't mean the secret ingredient of crime. I mean, destiny traits. Non-gestout leaders at level eight unlock destiny traits. Some of those destiny traits are so wildly powerful that you really shouldn't be going without them. Why is this important for statecraft? Well, statecraft has the amongst peers tradition that grants you plus 150 counselor experience per skill level when launching an agenda, meaning a counselor at level four gains 600 experience. You'll also get plus 25% council agenda speed, so you can burn through the agendas faster. You're basically going to be a monkey spamming agendas until you get your counselors up to level eight, which you can hopefully do in the first 45 to 50 years of the game if you push hard enough. This can be very, very powerful if you've got things like statisticians, advisory officials on your council, but it's also really powerful if you put commanders with the admiral trait on, get them up to level eight, and then take some of the juicy admiral destiny traits that can make your ships ridiculously powerful. And I I really do mean ridiculously here. You can end up beating two to three times the apparent naval power of your fleet because you've just got such strong fire rate, such strong tracking, such strong accuracy, it it just gets silly.
That wraps up the tier list, though. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. Every time you complete a tradition, you get access to an ascension perk. If you enjoyed this video and you'd like to find out more about all of the different ascension perks you can get in Stellaris and see them ranked into a tier list, you'll want to click the video on screen Now.