The Ultimate Stellaris Influence Guide

We expect nothing less than massive and expansive strategy games from Paradox Interactive. In Stellaris, influence is essential for your empire. However, it’s not easy to increase your influence in the game, especially since a few factors can cost you a lot of influence if you ignore them. In our Stellaris Influence guide, we’ll show you the best ways to get influence and give you some helpful tips and tricks.

1) Influence in Stellaris: Interesting facts at a glance

• Influence is a resource that allows you to accomplish many things in Stellaris. Its importance is accordingly high. You need it to recruit researchers, maintain outposts, initiate the construction of buildings, explore new planets, and enable diplomatic specialties.
• The overview bar at the top of the screen displays your empire’s influence and all other essential resources and information about it.
• The limit for influence per empire is 1,000, which cannot be increased.
• Every month you receive 2 base points of influence. The amount is also influenced by various factors. For example, outposts cost you influence, while rivalries with other races give you a plus on influence in Stellaris.
• This resource is crucial to your empire because you need it for many things in the game. For example, to exert diplomatic influence, to make claims, or to run outposts as mentioned above.
• If you don’t have enough influence, you will lose important possibilities in the game. For example, it will be difficult to manage your empire, expand it, or influence other nations. If you have alliance partners, there is also the threat of problems due to a lack of influence.

Note: Your influence gain rate will remain relatively constant throughout the game. However, some factors can increase it.

💡 Tip: Also check out our Stellaris Beginner’s Guide!

2) How to increase your influence in Stellaris

Improve buildings

To increase your monthly base value of influence, you should focus on the planetary capital. Here you can help grow this resource by upgrading buildings. However, the influence you received from building upgrades was removed with the Utopia update. Instead, there are now permanent factions.

Technology research

As part of technology research, you can provide a +1 bonus to Stellaris influence with various research.

Mark targets as rivals

For about 2 to 3 more influence, you can choose 3 rivals in space. If you mark them as such, you’ll receive the mentioned bonus monthly to your base value.

Wars and humiliating opponents

You also gain influence in wars. There, you have the option to humiliate your opponent. In addition to an influence gain of 100, the inhabitants of the opposing empire become unhappy, which reduces the increase in influence of the attacked empire by about one-third.

Mandate fulfillment after elections

Every four years, you have the option to gain up to 200 influence by fulfilling a mandate, as elections in a democratic empire take place periodically. The winner of these elections will declare the mandate.

Protectorates: Protecting empires

Protectorates are another option. If you have more than 50% technological advantage over the part-sovereign territory, you get +0.25 monthly influence added.

Anomalies and events

As you explore space, you will encounter anomalies and other events. These can give you a decent influence boost.

Cutthroat policy

Since the introduction of the cutthroat policy, you have not only been able to reduce the cost of maintaining edicts by one-fifth. You also get a +1 to your monthly influence. You can either choose the cutthroat policy at the beginning or add it as a 3rd option during research.

Non-aggression pacts

If you enter into non-aggression pacts in Stellaris, the game mechanics grant you a small bonus to influence. It’s important to note that this doesn’t apply to defense pacts. For those you have to spend influence.

Factions

A further increase in influence in Stellaris is possible if a permanent faction has a parliamentary system with democracy, which makes the inhabitants of a faction happy in the context of politics. This increases the faction’s influence by 50%.

Leaders

Apart from the already mentioned options, some leaders give you a +1 influence bonus each month.

Important: The limit of 1,000 influence is currently permanent. There is no way to increase your Stellaris influence above this in the regular game.

💡 Tip: Learn all about the Stellaris Research Tree in our guide!

3) How to save influence

Since influence in Stellaris is not only an essential resource for your civilization, it’s often very limited. While other resources like minerals can be produced or mined, this is impossible with influence. However, since you depend on influence for your administration and expansion into other star systems, you should save it wherever possible.

Outposts cost influence

One option to expand your sphere of influence and grow your species into a powerful civilization is to expand quickly. This is where outposts help you. Also, if you’ve found interesting or particularly resource-rich systems and want to “secure” them for later colonization, outposts will help you. The catch, however, is that they cost influence.

If your empire grows and you are busy with diplomacy, research, war, or even the influence of other powers, you may lose sight of the outposts. This circumstance can cost a lot of influence! Therefore, it is important to always keep an eye on the outposts and dismantle those no longer needed.

This also applies to those set up to expand, meaning outposts that only serve to reach distant planets and colonize them.

Mutual assistance pacts and other treaties

From a diplomatic point of view, however, some factors cost you influence. If a faction is guaranteed independence, you’ll have to stand by that civilization in a military conflict. This declaration will cause you to lose 0.5 influence. The same applies to joining a federation or inviting someone to join your federation.

It gets interesting with the agreements. Some agreements cost you up to 0.25 influence. This includes any research agreement, trade agreement, or migration agreement. For a defense pact you even lose 1 influence.

4) Stellaris Influence Guide: More important tips

As mentioned above, keeping an eye on your Stellaris influence, especially its “spending” is important. Details can easily get lost because the game is so deep and extensive. However, you can find comprehensive information in the information boxes displayed in the game. This will help you track what you are spending your influence on and where you are losing much of it.

What to consider regarding outposts and species

We have already gone into some detail about outposts. They constantly consume influence, and if you’re not careful, you’ll quickly end up with excessive influence expenditures. To minimize this, you can start with the outposts. The more of them you have, the harder it is to increase your Stellaris influence. After all, each one costs a monthly upkeep of the resource.

So, if an outpost is no longer needed, you should tear it down. You can also think about colonizing planets in the star system instead of permanently operating an outpost.

Overall, these are not meant to be long-term solutions. They serve mainly as a short-term “reservation” of systems so that the competition does not settle there. Nevertheless, the expansion “tradition” should be unlocked to use some permanently. This way the maintenance costs of influence for the outposts can be halved.

Caution: Uncontrolled outpost building, especially in the beginning of Stellaris, can quickly lead to a hopeless situation for your empire.

Choose the right species

Stellaris offers a huge variety and countless challenges. This is not only true for megastructures such as ring worlds, habitat stations, and more, but also for defining the species you choose to play with. You define unique starting elements as well as the form of diplomacy. It’s precisely there that problems can arise about influence.

Spiritual races offer a relatively easy start. It can also be worthwhile to start as a slave nation and negotiate a migration agreement with another civilization. Less helpful in terms of influence are purely military empires. To keep them happy, you have to expand quickly, build more outposts, and wage war.

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Happy Gaming!