Paradox games of all types are very much learn on your own, at a steep curve.

There is a tutorial bot little ai helper that you can set to max to help you with things, and I personally do find Stellaris to be the easiest paradox game out there to learn.

Learned? Sure.

Played optimally? Not likely.

I figured out stuff myself without youtube. It just took some googling and a few hours but yeah, you can figure stuff out. Just focus on a few mechanics at a time. First playthough, follow the tutorial's advice. Then slowly start with other things like Edicts, automation, planet specialization, etc.

The reward in Stellaris is learning the systems and then using them as an extension of your own creativity.

What about Stellaris is confusing/overwhelming you?

i just got the game like 3 weeks ago

I felt this exact way

I sat down and played with my friends

Over time I learned. There's still so much for me to learn. Hell, I didn't figure out about the Edict system until like 2-3 days ago.

Im currently, I thought 80, but 90+ hours into Stellaris.

I've done a handful of playthroughs, some bad endings, no good endings yet (because we restart all the time).

The fun is in making unique species, civs, and builds. Then using that to wage war.

Diplomacy is big.

Research is big.

Ship design is big.

Eco is big.

Planet Stability/Crime is biggish.

Designating planets to specific type of job is big.

That's all you really need to look into!

I would just watch a top 10 beginners mistakes video that's short and jump into it. Give it an hour. If you absolutely feel overwhelmed, just quit. No harm. You tried it and didn't like it.

FYI, this all pays off when you make your first world cracker hehe death star away!!!

The tutorial/AI bot is actually pretty comprehensive in terms of basic mechanics. However, actually thriving in the game requires a lot more understanding than the basics. I would expect to have put in about 20 hours of play before you really start to feel like you've mastered the difficulty level you begin at

Yes and no. You can get into the game and play without too much stress. Will you win immediately? Not likely. But you'll learn something, you'll probably see some cool sci fi stories and events. You might get vassalize and work under an overlord, maybe rebel with the help of a nice empire.

If you enjoy the rogue-like aspect where you can learn the mechanics over a series of different playthroughs, ending them when you're tired of it or defeated, then I think you'll enjoy it. I suggest looking at it as a story generator akin to Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress, where obviously you want to succeed but what that looks like can be different each time you play.

I've got more than a thousand hours into it and I think I've only technically "won" a handful of times. Sometimes an evil genocidal machine empire kills all my people, sometimes I work with my neighbors, establish truth and justice in the Galactic Community... Then start a new game because peace was boring and my pacifists really shouldn't start wars.

The gameplay is NOT difficult, but there are A LOT of them.

It definitely has a learning curve. Something that I like to do is play along with a tutorial just until I feel like I understand the general idea. Then I play until failure or I'm struggling with some aspect of the game, and check the tutorial video. It's probably not a game you can just jump right into with no help at all though.

If you're purchasing via steam, it'll let you return any game with less than 2 hours playtime, so you could check it out. Alternatively, you could watch a playthrough before buying it to see what it's like to play, with the added bonus of learning bits and pieces.

That being said, no game is for everyone and especially not paradox games. They're strategy games through and through and it's ok if you don't like it.

you dont need videos to learn stellaris at all. I'm totally self taught (LOL). I guess it depends on how much of your gaming experience is about mastering the learning curve. I love that sort of thing so i was happy to spend a hundred or so hours getting into it.

Its actually pretty easy if you just start on lower difficulty to learn where everything is and how it works go to higher difficulty to test yourself and if you play like me its gonna be a long game mine lags before I beat it to the point a month in game takes like 3 minutes at full speed at least

I just picked it up over the last 2 months. The learning curve is steep for the first few days, and there's also the problem of the game being very different before version 4 so older tutorials are often worthless or confusing.

Now I'm just slowly advancing further and further into the game with each time I start a new game. E.g. I just learned espionage a week ago. I still haven't fought the fallen empires or done a crisis.

Frankly Stellaris is imo the easiest pardox game to get into, since the early game is about exploring the unknown.

You can definetly learn it without any youtube tutorial (probaly disable all dlc at the start then though), though honestly I still recomend watching some for the basics.

As someone who came from civ 5 before playing my first paradox game, I can assure you its worth it. Also the added bonus is that ever paradox game you understand will make the next one easier to get, since there are some basic similarities.

I am old, rubbish at games, and I have never watched a tutorial but I still have more than 3600 hours in Stellaris and absolutely love it.

I just started on easy to teach myself how things work then ramp stuff up over time.

Strategy games might not be for you and that is fine. Different strokes for different folks.

I think Stellaris is very unique to the 4x Genre in the sense that Stellaris is not a game where even a season player knows everything. There are constant updates and adjustments, balance patches, new seasons of DLC, etc. There is too much to keep up with.

That being said, that keeps this game feeling super fresh, and also at least for me, makes it much easier to just slow down and learn the way I want to play. Lately I have been feeling a lot into the robots and Gestalt consciousness, so I started learning that and its like playing a completely different game to the default democratic start for example, and expands to be even more different in game.

I think most players that know a lot or are playing meta builds, are just doing so because of how many things they have tried and just what they have found that has worked. Even now we are in the midst of one of the biggest changes to the game which completely reworked fleet size, planets, QOL for things like federations, etc.(4.0) and are about to experience the biggest optimization patch (4.3-4.4).

With Stellaris just take the game as it is, learn as you go, and learn what you want, and you will have an amazing time. It also helps to kill a lot of the fomo with dlc. Really only like 3 are needed, and the rest are flavor and just for adding stuff. IF you want to learn everything in this game you will be overwhelmed, but its also nice to know that there are so many different ways to play the game that you can play 1000 games and have everyone feel a bit different.

The wiki has a great starter guide that breaks down most concepts, but I would also recommend watching a 100 year start on yt on like 2x speed just to get the first set of actions down in a new game as it can be a little overwhelming if you are not familiar with your origin and such the very first time.

Use pause when you are overwhelmed, its what its there for.

It takes 100 hours just to understand the UI, and by the time you do that, the new version will have changed everything. That said, I have 12,000 hours in it and I've never watched a youtube guide.

Stellaris is one of the few Paradox games where playing suboptimally is the playstyle both at the start of the learning curve, and at the end, so learning the game and RPing/LARPing might actually be fun enough that you won't get into optimal playstyle ever.

I will say this, though, as someone who've had to teach a few friends to play the game - it'd be difficult to learn, in significant part due to counter-intuitive UI and mechanics.

Its a wingabme game being fr, just keep going and when a problem comes like a shortage or need for more ships make more or produce more, eventually it all balances out and happy days

You can get the very basics after a couple hours. You probably won't be able to learn the game until you're 20 or 30 hours in.

The biggest thing I would say coming to this as a former civ 5 player is that this game is way more about role-playing. Civ 5 is like a board game with clear end goals. There are tons of different ways to beat stellaris, but beating it isn't the point for many people. I rarely even finish games.

Also, just thought I'd mention, I basically had to force myself to learn this. Like you, I played a lot of civ 5, and this was too complicated. It wasn't until I really sat down and made myself learn this that I liked it.

Just keep the small robot tutorial thing on and don't turn it off when you get the prompt. I feel like Stellaris has a pretty solid tutorial guy to help you out from the get go. I have never watched a single video about Stellaris and just played the first game with that drone and with console commands. HOI4 required me to watch full on tutorials just for the combat part lmao.

Learning curve my ass (to some commenters here), if you aren't planning on doing some multiplayer or god level achievement run then it's not overly complex thing to learn. It has snowballing mechanics so once you figured out how to balance early game economy, later game economy means nothing because you'll snowball to obscene production numbers anyway. Stellaris's tough part is actually fighting really OP crisises.

Civ5 was one of the worst gaming experiences I ever had, Stellaris has been one of the best. So, to each their own.

You can certainly learn, master, and beat the game on every difficulty without watching hour long video guides. But if you're not having fun and don't want to, why continue? The best way to get into the game is to pick an origin that suits the theme of what you want to play, some civics that lean into that, and just throw yourself into the game to role-play your inner monologue and then try to min/max from there.

Things like a victory year and scoring system were all added very late in the game's development, and the game is best enjoyed while ignoring them. Stellaris isn't about win conditions or civilization focuses, you just do the best you can with what RNG gives you and hope for the best. After awhile, you learn the systems so well that grand admiral AIs and max difficulty crisis becomes silly, and then you've beat the game. This doesn't agree with all players that feel like they need to constantly be working towards one set goal, and that is okay.

Suggestion - play a few times on a lower difficulty and dont overtime the planet system, or factions, just check through your tabs occasionally, keep an eye on resources and focus on your navy.

I've been playing for about a year and I didn't get into YouTube videos until I got the lay of the land. There are a ton of systems but it will be overwhelming if you start with trying to learn everything imo

you can. Just turn on the annoying droid that gives you hints and do not skip the dialogues, dont try to rush it. On easy difficulty you should get a fun experience without too many challenges

I have 600 hours and am still learning so much. Each run is unique and there are so many builds I haven’t tried yet. That’s what makes it great.

Once you’ve played one game you know enough to not be completely shiet.

For me learning complex games is enjoyable.

I personally also had my problems with HoI. Ballancing all the different kinds of equipment, production for military vs building up more industry, the massive focus trees. Just not for me.

While I think Stellaris is more complex overall each system feels, at least to me, simpler. The tech tree is just as convoluted, but you only get a hand full of options at a time for example. While there are more resources, they are far more universal. Instead of planes and tanks it’s just Alloys. Production queues tend to be just as massive overall, but instead of one global one each planet and shipyard has its own. Making it a lot more manageable.

The randomness helps a lot. There are builds but each build is far simpler than a nation in HoI tends to be. No history, no predetermined situations, no forced hands. Your nation becomes more complex but since you build that it’s easier to keep on top of it and have an overview.

As far as the tutorials go, depends on how resistant to failure you are. You can figure it out on you own. It’s a bunch of modifiers that do exactly what it looks like and production and consumption are rather simple and intuitive. Watching tutorials on YouTube will massively ease this process. What builds are sane, which are garbage and which are busted, how to build economy, what traditions to pick or what traits are great can easily be learned that way. Interestingly though with a basic understanding tier lists become massively useful. If + 25% specialist production is a god tier tradition the +20% specialist production trait is going to be awesome too if it doesn’t come with massive downsides.

Early learning curve is a lot of “what is more important to produce, a or b?” “What techs should I be looking for?” “How fast should I expand?” “What is Tall vs Wide?” and so on. None of these are difficult individually, but figuring it out by trial and error can involve a lot of it. But once you know the basics every build becomes a remix. Some more extreme than others but they all build from the same foundation. You use good instead of minerals for your alloys? I guess food is no longer completely worthless and actually worth overproducing to allow for rapid alloy production expansion. You live on giant space stations instead of planets? I guess alloys have just become far more vital and expansion is now done independently of planets and instead dependent on the resources in space and the number of celestial bodies.

Feel free to ask stuff. I have played HoI for about 10 hours and it wasn’t for me. But I have over 2000 hours in Stellaris and have been playing since day 1. So not liking one doesn’t mean you dislike the other. I didn’t like how restrictive the nations were. HoI is always centered around WW2, which makes sense, and you’re forced into your role. I missed the freedom of just having a build and messing around. Be it overpowered or a meme.

The Blorg are the best example. They are a pre build empire that can best be described by “Resistance is futile, you will be friends or else…”. I think their AI behavior is “Militant friendship seekers” with fanatic xenophile and militarist as ethics. They essentially conquer you to force you to become friends. Loyal to their vassals and allies and highly aggressive they are exactly the kind of stupid fun build that I love. Fighting and loosing or outright submitting to them is actually quite the decent strategy. They treat their vassals fairly and tend to be rather potent military wise. So being their vassal essentially gives you space to breathe while being protected by a military power without needing any significant military of your own. And with a competent players research and industry supporting them they can actually be quite the viable threat that will never turn crisis or hostile to its friends. Plus for some ungodly reason being a scholarium vassal is completely busted.

It's what I hated about paradox games and strategy games in general. High floor, but luckily a high ceiling too. It's hard to get into, but you can always get better at the game. There's a lot to do.

I needed way more than an hour to like the game. It took several hours to actually understand it to any level to be able to play 'well'

Yes, you can learn it, there are multiple difficulty levels AND you can create your own species, you can make a very dangerous galaxy if you want, or a very safe one, you can make yourself OP, or make AIs OP, you can exclude mid and endgame crisis, nerf them, or buffing, you don't need to know what you're doing to survive in this game.

Worst case scenario pick the scions origin and you'll have a fallen empire babysitting you.

But yes, the AI is quite terrible, the UI dynamic mod helps with that and it's achievement compatible (some submods aren't) but it won't make a miracle, it's EU5 levels of bad UI.

Civ isn't anything like the Paradox games. You could say the Civ games are a sort of "dumbed-down" or "childish" version of it all. Paradox games are notorious for being very complex, deep, and needing a lot of time to learn properly.

On the other hand... most of the time you can wing it. You might not succeed, but you'll learn. You don't have to build the best, greatest most beautiful empire on your first try.

Oh, and don't watch videos, that's just a waste of time. Google. Use the wiki.

I've bene playing for years and I'm still learning little bits.

I went in blind and played ok, then I looked at a few reddit posts etc and learnt a few tips and got better, worked more stuff out & got better

I got the game a few years ago. Opened it a few times. Was overwhelmed by complexity and gave up. Went back to Civ5. Finally got bored of Civ5 over Christmas.

It clicked and Oh my goodness.

I started playing for a few minutes, and looked up and it was Tuesday.

Give it a try. But make sure you have some time

Legit just play singleplayer, take your time, and use console cheats

Thats how i got 70% grasp of basics

Lol stellaris is has a WAY steeper learning curve than hoi I think - you don't have focuses, no "historical", etc. But if you approach the game knowing at least something (and yeah, an hour long tutorial is a time save as you will spend much less time trying to figure out what everything does ingame), it is significantly easier

The best tutorial video for Stellaris, now out of date after the v4.x changes, is 1 hour 59 minutes long, and it doesn't cover all the basics. To do so, it'd have to be about 20 minutes longer.

So you're correct. Stellaris isn't for you.

If hoi4 was too confusing then probably no. Especially if you got confused and dropped it immediately.

Basically every paradox game is much more complicated than civ and requires at least some looking up how mechanics work on your own.

Maybe i have too much strategy experience but i dont find stellaris that much harder than civ games. I even day that civ6 city building can be more demanding. So i recommend you to try. There is nothing insanely complex in this game.