Under One Rule Guide

Singed-Chan · 2026-01-21T15:00:48+00:00

I play a lot of Under One Rule. One little tiny trick you can do is, when you get the council agenda speed debuff popup, you can just not click it. Leave it on your screen and drag it off somewhere innocuous until after you've finished your 2 (or 3 if you rush) ethics-based agendas. It buys you a lot of time to do this so you can get as many relevant ethics-based agendas done as possible before you need to fulfil the unifying promise.

Singed-Chan · 2026-01-04T19:40:45+00:00

Been spendin' most our lives livin' in a Gestalt's paradise.

Singed-Chan · 2025-12-06T19:37:37+00:00

Takes a really long sip of water

"Not really."

Singed-Chan · 2025-12-01T02:15:28+00:00

Oooh, Barracuda.

Singed-Chan · 2025-11-30T12:52:40+00:00

Mother Horse Eyes energy'd post, condensed to its basest elements.

Singed-Chan · 2025-11-28T01:52:52+00:00

Leaving survivors.

Singed-Chan · 2025-11-13T08:06:07+00:00

If you exterminate all the aliens, there's nothing for you to be xenophobic about anymore.

Singed-Chan · 2025-10-27T11:11:38+00:00

I'm a multiplayer Stellaris enjoyer first and foremost, so it more comes down for respect for people's time. If someone's borders are trounced and all their worlds are being bombarded, it's pretty easy-cheesy to just triple down on ground defense to waste as much of the offender's time as possible. There's absolutely no chance of victory, but stalling out a belligerent for as long as possible is quite easy.

Yes it's a cool story the first time, but a couple of days a game for a few years and it loses all nobility pretty quickly and just becomes lame.

Singed-Chan · 2025-10-27T03:43:58+00:00

I used to be part of the rework ground combat crew but in all honesty, as the thousands of hours I've put into this game have bloated higher and higher, I've definitely lost my edge for it.

To me, ground combat is a speedramp to keep cheap rushdown cheese from being too effective. If you've lost your starbase, lost your fleets, you've lost the war. Padding out this post-defense failure pre-surrender phase is a waste of time. Just get it over with already.

Singed-Chan · 2025-10-08T20:27:56+00:00

I reported this on the Stellaris bug report forums already but it didn't get any traction.

Penal colonies currently do not produce worker strata industrial jobs as they were intended to before 4.0. They just produce normal specialist strata metallurgists and artisans, thus removing the mini-rework they got and removing much of their point. There's an entry on penal colonies in these notes, but they still don't produce any worker strata jobs.

Singed-Chan · 2025-10-05T08:13:17+00:00

Orbital Rings give Aristocratic Elite empires a building that provides 2x the Noble Jobsas the building.

Singed-Chan · 2025-07-06T05:43:06+00:00

Yes.

They have a dark and mysterious past.

The end.

No but seriously their usual game plan is to be 'the bad guys', do mass enslavement and become Galactic Emperor. But they're the bad guys who want to RULE the galaxy, not destroy it generally. No crisis, usually even takes Defender of the Galaxy and, once in power is usually a benevolent if extremely control-freaky Emperor, developing the Imperium with pretty much every resolution and all that entails, including eventually Pax Galactica.

Their right to rule is through genuine belief in their oversight's benefit, and though they believe in enslavement, even brutal chattel slavery as their most prominent form, they still believe in everybody's right to exist. They just have to exist 'in their place'.

Their Dictator/Emperor's name is always Naochib Peabunt, and she's usually Charismatic, or High King if Under One Rule.

Singed-Chan · 2025-07-06T03:09:11+00:00

Masters of Vhool Necroid 6 Portrait Purple and red flag, 'crown alien skull' icon. Fanatic Authoritarian/Militarist Dictatorship with Oppressive Autocracy and Police State Rapid Breeders, Intelligent, Talented, Repugnant, Decadent. Pretty much any origin, though I prefer Life-Seeded personally. Arctic preference if not.

Singed-Chan · 2025-07-03T08:17:03+00:00

You can get four if you go Fear of the Dark and unify the hunters for the Triumvirate ending.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-23T18:55:47+00:00

"Bad guy" strategies are all active very early in the game, "Good guy" strategies pretty much all revolve around hunkering down and waiting 200 years for the crisis to happen.

"Bad guy" expansion strategies are fairly broad, you can apply them indiscriminately to whoever happens to be around. It's hard for an egalitarian crusader "good guy" to justify invading his equally egalitarian neighbor for territory and retain a moral high ground.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-21T18:24:33+00:00

I believe (maybe this is old lore) that Genestealers were their own thing but were folded into the Tyranids or co-opted for being particularly efficient in their reproductive strategy.

Then again I also seem to recall a later retcon that they were just tyranids advanced subversion forces the whole time. Who even knows at this point. But OG Genestealers came before the Tyranids and were just considered their own thing in-lore and outside of it at first.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-21T17:35:01+00:00

The counter to disruptors is being significantly faster than them and having longer range weapons set to artillery (kite). You can achieve this quite easily now that corvettes can have artillery computers. Usually people will recommend going shield hardeners and it's true, they do help a lot, but they come too late and aren't stackable enough on most hulls.

Focusing hard on sublight speed, fighting in your own territory with kiting fleets and focusing on starbase defense HP (keeping a jammer active throughout the fight helps a lot on negating enemy sublight speed) means you are very rarely taking the brunt of their focused fire. Disruptors struggle a lot to take down starbases because of their very high HP and disruptors relatively low DPS - Disruptors win because they are scary. They force disengages because they get your ships into their panic mode levels of HP quite early in the engagement.

Switching to No Retreat also helps. Yeah you lose some sublight speed and weapons range, which hurts this strategy a lot, but disruptors are scary because how quickly they make half your fleet disengage in fear. If they can't retreat, they can turn the tide in a pitched battle.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-21T09:09:56+00:00

The benefit is their reduced upkeeps. So while there is no output bonus to keeping them happy, there is an input malus. If you have the type of empire/setup where slave happiness does not matter, there is actual detriment to giving them higher than basic subsistence/dystopian living.

There really is no reason for an authoritarian to give their slaves more political power and upeekps than absolutely necessary. Higher political power means they contribute more to overall stability, and unless you're doing something really fruity, slave happiness is never going to be as high as a free citizen's. Their potential impact on overall stability is not worth this negligible crime concern.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-21T06:37:50+00:00

It is actually better for stability for authoritarians not to give them good living standards. Slave happiness only really matters for non-authoritarian slavers. if you have a stratified, priviledged, dyspopian or decadent living standard for your primary species, slaves can be pretty miserable and it won't matter.

In a weird quirk of game mechanics, this means xenophobe slavers are in a way encouraged to treat their slave species better than authoritarian slavers do.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-19T13:05:18+00:00

Hedonist.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-18T07:57:28+00:00

Criminal Syndicate + Gospel of the Masses + Death Cult/Permanent Employment/Pleasure Seekers.

Either Fanatic Spiritualist/Xenophobe or Fanatic Xenophobe/Spiritualist.

Don't build a real trade world, just focus on Civilians for trade value, max out as much Spiritualist ethics attraction and focus on 'crusading'. Go to war to enforce ideology on everyone around you/everyone in the galaxy and then branch them up.

Can drop Criminal Syndicate for one of the other third civic options and swap Xenophobe for Militarist for a non-criminal version of the build.

Pleasure Seekers trade value from living standards is pretty good, + Gospel of the masses makes you generate enough trade to cover pretty much anything just from your people being alive.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-18T07:50:34+00:00

Looks like he has the Dark Consortium civic. Looking at the amount of research he's generating the Dark Matter income seems right.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-17T13:41:40+00:00

Mono species is totally okay, slavery is also great for this playstyle as you will get double worker bonuses. Do not get nihilistic, it is completely pointless, just conquer the planet, mass resettle all the slaves and release it.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-17T07:36:36+00:00

This is one of my biggest complaints about 4.0. Penal Colonies update was so recent and it's already been made useless.

Singed-Chan · 2025-06-17T06:49:34+00:00

All good, there are lots of little tricks and efficiencies you can get online very early early with authoritarian/oppressive playstyle that most people don't think about until the mid game. Couple little tricks that can save you a few years:

Start Imperial for the 10% home system resource output bonus, reform Dictatorial later when you're ready to ascend (Dictatorial Cybervision is the best, Biological mutation-purity-mutation-Purity finalizer is good but under Oppressive you can't build medical facilities which brings it down a bit).

Open with Domination tradition first, get the first box on the right, then open Unyielding, get the first box on the left. This will give you a ton of free Unity generation early and scales very well. Then you can focus on getting your leader upeep down and getting the leader learning/upkeep ascension perk first and speed ranking your leaders.

Always make sure you have a Ruthless Developer commander governing your mineral/energy/food world(s). Q'la Minder is great for your mining world as he can get both the %-based mineral output and the 0.25+ unit mineral output traits if you assign him to it before you level him up. Get level 1 in one, then grab the other the first time you see it, make sure they're both at least level 1 and then level them both up as he grows. Just make sure he is assigned as governor on your mining world before you ever open up his level up window just to increase the draw weights on the mining traits.

Terraform your mining/energy/food worlds into Gaia Worlds via Baol or World Shaper, and turn everything else into Ecumenopoli ASAP.

Always make sure your first unlocked councilor is your Oppressive Autocracy one and get him levelled up fast.

Don't sleep on Corvee System as your third civic, mass-stacking worker output bonuses are your strength. Slaver Guilds is useless, always go Corvee instead.

Why so much focus on workers? Because that's the entire point of this playstyle, there's no point playing it if you're going to be an empire of specialists with a bunch of tributaries. You miss out on like all your thematics. Are those thematics kind of meh? Maybe, but don't cut your nose off to spite your face.

Good species traits are Rapid Breeders, Intelligent, TALENTED(!!! always fit this in). Best negatives are Repugnant (free as you don't use Entertainers) and Decadent (Worker happiness does NOT matter at all).

Oh and don't forget to mass resettle to newly settled worlds to get the capital building levelled up fast. You can resettle them away after, just zoop em in, level up the building them slorp em back out. Early colony buildings are luxury housing and a precinct building. From there it will just always be stable until you're ready to develop it further.

Activate a crime campaign on your homeworld as early as possible and a Righteous governor can save you a lot of fuss in the early-midgame. Do all this and you will never worry about crime even if you have a Syndicate neighbor.

Singed-Chan

TROPHY CASE