I did not experience any End-game fun, the endgame just did not show up. I had saved some hours, yes, but yikes, playing Stellaris this way was absolutely no fun. And when I finally reached the “Victory year” 2300, all I saw was the alert above (screenshot)… some other empire had won solely by score. With some family breaks, the game took me about 6, 7 hours still. My experiences with Stellaris on fast settings It goes without saying that a 1000-star galaxy will take much longer to explore than a 400-star galaxy. Possibilities here range from a minimum of 400 stars with a maximum of 12 AI opponents up to playing in a huge galaxy with 1000 stars and 30 opposing AI empires. To have a chance to rub elbows with other empires at all, I reduced the galaxy size to its bare minimum of 400 stars.

Not very likely though with only 100 years to go.ġ00 game-years is not much time to build my empire and battle my rivals. The game would end after 100 years or if one player conquered 40% of the galaxy or extinguished all opponents. If I played on 3x the whole time and deactivate auto-pause, the game would be finished in 3.3 hrs. 100 in-game years or 10 hours on 1x speed. So from the onset the game would last max. “Galaxy Size” set to “Small (400 Stars)”.In order to speed up the game, I played with the settings and reduced the game duration years to the absolute minimum: Stellaris fast game settings “Galaxy Size” is set to “Medium (600 Stars)”.On the screenshot above, you can see the Stellaris 3.0 vanilla game settings. Since Stellaris comes with many setting options for you to choose from, you actually do have some influence on the game and its duration. Today I tried to play a much quicker game to find out. So is it possible to have some quick fun with Stellaris? Between writing for this website and living my life, I want to have some fun in the few hours I have right now. Stellaris Quick Game Settingsīut I do not always have a few days for a game. So the winner was the player with the then highest score – which wasn’t me :(. In this case the Victory year was reached, no one had eliminated the other players nor conquered more than 40% of the galaxy. Or if none of these conditions are met on “Victory year, the player with the highest score wins and Stellaris shows a matter-of-fact alert. The game finds its winner once a (AI-)player owns over 40% of the galaxy or exterminates all rivals, then the game declares the winner. Also, if only one of the Multiplayer has issues with 3xing the time, all players are forced to stay on 1x speed, by that making the game take much longer. This is the case because now there is not only one human player who pauses the game to micro-manage his/her empire, but two or more. Multiplayer games will take significantly longer than single-player games. How long does a Stellaris Multiplayer game last? Since you can save the game anytime and continue from where you left later, many games last real-world days or even a week, like a good game of chess.īut also: If you dominate the galaxy and eliminate all competition quickly, a Stellaris game can end long before the game reaches its Victory year. So games on default settings last about 15 hrs, if you do not pause the game a lot, i.e. Especially in the beginning, it makes sense to speed up the game time 3x (1 real second = 3 Stellaris days). It ends faster if one player exterminates all rivals or controls 40+ % of the galaxy before that. With a game as complex as Stellaris this naturally depends on your settings and play style, but :Ī Stellaris game on default settings lasts 300 in-game years (about 30 hours real-time on normal speed). I mean, who has time to play for 3 days on end. One of the questions I had before buying the game was how long a typical game in Stellaris lasts. And its studio Paradox Interactive is known for its complex products.

Stellaris is a beautiful but pretty complex 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) game and a mixture of real-time and turn based strategy game.

How to play stellaris correctly