Stellaris has a lot of fun, challenging, annoying, and luck based achievements. To give you a few advantages, you will want to set up the game in your favor, most of the time by increasing planet habitibility, but I will go over the ideal set up for each achievement.

NOTE: YOU MUST BE IN IRON MAN MODE TO ACQUIRE ACHIEVEMENTS. CLOUD SAVING MUST BE TURNED ON AND THE TOGGLE FOR IRON MAN IN THE GAME CREATION MENU MUST BE TURNED ON.

UPDATE 2/2/22: Up to date!

Colonize a planet



Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

I hope you don't need a guide for this one.

Reference: A book set in a dystopian future by Aldous Huxely.

Store/have 1000 EC



Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Earned over the course of a game.

Survey one of each basic planet-class



Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Earned over the course of a game.

Research a Rare technology



Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Earned over the course of a game. Rare technology appears with a purple border around it.

Reference: Song by The Doors

Successfully negotiate a trade deal



Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

The easiest trade deal is simply giving another empire a stack of credits or minerals, they'll always accept.

Win a War against another Empire



Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

This can be any type of war (defensive, liberation, conquest), against any type of FTL empire. For an easy time, wait until a Pre-FTL race achieves FTL, then conquer them before they have a fleet.

Conquer another species homeworld



Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

See Supremacy Above.

Upgrade your capital to an Imperial Complex



Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Earned over the course of a game.

Build a fleet with a total fleet-size above 120



Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Earned over the course of a game. Build and upgrade a lot of spaceports.

Earn a total Mineral income each month above 250



Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Earned over the course of a game.

Store/have 5000 EC



Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Earned over the course of a game.

Build a Robot Pop



Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Earned over the course of a game. Robots will appear at the top of the build menu for planet tiles. Spiritualists have AI turned off by default, if you want this achievement as a spiritualist empire you'll need to promote and embrace the materialist faction to lose spiratulist as a government ethos.

Reference: Likely from the song Mr. Roboto by Styx

Research 15 Rare technologies in a single game



Difficulty: 2

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

This has a bit of a luck factor. It will be earned over the course of long games. Many rare techs are garbage, so make sure you are ahead of your enemies if you are trying for other achievements.

Reference: The other half from the song by The Doors.

Terraform a planet



Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Somewhat luck based. Terraforming can be a tricky tech to get, some games it will be the first or second option, other games it will take over a hundred years to pop up. Once it does, research it and terraform away.

1.8 update: Terraforming chance now increased substantially, so its much easier to get this one.


Reference: Likely from Alien franchise (Weyland corp phrase), could also be from a Marie Curie quote.

Genetically alter a species (not uplift)



Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Genetic engineering is down a specific tree. You'll need to research Genome Mapping > Vitality Boosters > Cloning > Gene Tailoring. At that point, just go into the Species menu, click on one you want to modify, click the planet where you want to modify them, and change whatever traits you want. Once you hit "Modify" it will create a new mission in your situation log.

1.8 update: Apparently modding Robots will also pop this achievement. Simply research robomodding in the engineering tree, the go to species and create a new template for your robots.

Reference: 6 million dollar man

Have 3 other Empires as vassals



Difficulty: 2

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

This can be done a variety of ways. As authoritarian/xenophobes, you can simply conquer enemies to vassalize them. As xenophiles/materialists/egalitarian, you can offer vassalization to weaker empires close to you (requiring a fair amount of trust and opinion), or technologically uplift pre-FTL races using observation posts. If using the latter method, they'll be uplifted as Protectorates. After a certain amount of time they'll reseaarch enough tech to become your vassal. This happens automatically.

Reference: Star Control 2

Establish a Federation



Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any (Easier with xenophile/pacifist)

You can make this achievement easier by creating custom empires with pacifist and xenophile and force spawning them into a small map. You'll need to research Federation (which is now a unity tech under "Diplomacy").

Uplift a species



Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Somewhat luck based. Firstly, you need to research Uplift. The tree is Genome Mapping > Xenology > Epigenic Triggers. Once done, you'll need to colonize a planet with pre sentients. This can be a little difficult, as pre sentients are effectively tile blockers. Send a colony ship out and colonize a world with pre sentients. Once its formed, open up your species menu, find the pre sentients (sort by pop to make it easier) then click uplift. You can modify their traits from here as well. Like genetic modification, uplifting creates a mission in the situation log.

Reference: Jurassic Park (1993 film) quote.

Earn a total Mineral income each month above 1000



Difficulty: 2

Map: 600+

Government/Ethics: Any

Somewhat difficult, but in general earned towards the end of a long game. You'll need to own dozens of planets and have them fully developed. Fallen Empire planets help quite a bit as they have a lot of very advanced mining stations.

Empire total fleet military power equals 100000



Difficulty: 1

Map: 600+

Government/Ethics: Any (militarist Ideal)

Fairly straightforward. Colonize a bunch and build a ton of spaceports. Admirals will raise fleetpower depending on their skill and traits. Militarist has passive damage bonus that increases fleet power by a small margin, and has government types (like Fanatic Purifier) that will raise the fleet cap to help you get there.

Destroy the portals employed by the invaders from another time and space



Difficulty: 4

Map: 600+

Government/Ethics: Any (your most comfortable combination)

Unbidden will spawn when an empire has researched Jump Drives or Psi Jump Drives, so if you want to force this, go spiritualist and choose a psionics scientist for society research late game. I got this achievement before they changed the mechanics of the Unbidden portals so I'm not sure if you need to last hit the portal or if just participating in the battle would be enough. To destroy the portal you must first destroy the Anchors that the Unbidden put up as they conquer. This is a late game fight so bring the best you got. Unbidden use energy weapons that are very effective against shields and armor, so don't bother going that far into defensives. They have amazing shields and capacitors and no armor, so laser weapons are effectively useless. Missiles would be ideal, but they are garbage so just stick with kinetic and you'll be fine.

This will be the first achievement to suggest this and definitely wont be the last: ENIGMATIC FORTRESS. Its incredibly OP. When you start a game, find the fortress ASAP (if its there) and destroy it as soon as you hit 20-30k Fleet power. Finish the qest line (described below under Unravelling Enigma) and start researching the Shields, Power Supply, Decoder, and Disruption Field. The Decoder in particular is useful against the Unbidden as they have 20% extra evasion.


UPDATE: The enigmatic fortress no longer grants every tech, but just a single one. Still worth grabbing though.

Find the home system of a precursor empire



Difficulty: 2

Map: 600+, lower empire density

Government/Ethics: Any

Somewhat luck based, but the RNG can be lessened by lowering the amount of empires on the map. Build a science vessal right off the bat and start surveying away. Dont waste time with anamolies, just keep hitting "Leave Alone" and keep your science ships surveying. Once you get a scientist to level 5, que up all the anamolies. The earlier you get more science ships out, the better chance you have of getting this, as other empires will survey worlds and lower your chance of getting the 6 required.

Since 1.4 Precursor artifacts will pop up randomly. Its currently bugged so make sure you hit the go to button in the top left of the pop up and que up the anamoly immediately, as it will sometimes not appear on the galaxy map.

Keep an eye out for your vassals and protectorates territory, due to some unknown factor, anamolies for precursor artifacts will pop up there with no notice whatsoever.

UPDATE 2.0: Random precursor events no longer pop up as anomolies but as special projects now, so its much easier to get this achievement.

Purchase a rare resource from the Traders



REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC
Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Not Fanatic Purifier/Determined Exterminators/Devouring Swarm

Explore the galaxy until you find a trade Enclave. Once you do, simply trade surplus energy/minerals until you have 50 opinion with them, then ask for their special resource for 1000 EC.

Recruit a scientist from the Curators



REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC
Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Not Fanatic Purifier/Devouring Swarm/Determined Exterminators

Explore the galaxy until you find the Curator Enclave. Buy star charts until you have 50 opinion then recruit their scientist for 2500 EC.

Receive a gift from a Fallen Empire



Difficulty: 2

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Somewhat luck based. Simply agree to any demands the Fallen Empires make of you. This is most often granted from Xenophile FEs. They have two events that grant substantial opinion: donating a pop to their "Reserve" for protection, and the dead race anamoly (See "Then Virgil, Now Beatrice"). Once you do both of those you'll have enough opinion from them to get a gift. There could be other triggers, I don't know for sure.

Machine empires can also get pretty easy gifts from the new Machine Fallen Empire. They will occasionally ask for a robot pop from you, similar to xenophile FEs for organic empires. This will improve relations and after some time they will offer you some minerals and energy. Not entirely sure if this gift will count for the achievement.

Support the Artisan Troupe for 10 years




REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC

Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Simply find an Artist Enclave and make sure you have an extra 25 EC/minerals per month for 10 years.

Have access to ten different strategic resources



Difficulty: 1

Map: 800+, no FE's

Government/Ethics: Any (xenophile/pacifist preferred)


Easier way is to simply play a game on a large map with a bunch of empires and trade everything until you have ten. Trade Enclaves count towards it. Harder way is to conquer your way into all resource territory. Most resources are in clusters around the map, with the exception of Zro and others.

UPDATE 2.0: A fairly annoying change made to the game is that you now need control (or allies need to be in control, unsure yet) of a system with a specific resource to unlock the option to research it. Since many special resources are in clusters rather than evenly spread around the galaxy, this will make it pretty hard to trade for the resources you need. Small map no empires might be an easy way to get this one.

Have your ruler be of a different species class than your founding species



Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Ideally Not xenophobe

Since 1.5 any government can effectively use any species for ruler, but it is VERY difficult to do as xenophobe ethic or imperial authority, so for an easy time just go with a xenophile democracy and you should have one in no time.

Restore an ancient warship



REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC
Difficulty: 3

Map: Any (more stars, better chance)

Government/Ethics: Any

The Dreadnought leviathan is a massive ship that roams around one single system. Its roughly equivalent to about 20k fleet power (as an enemy). Ideally you'll want to challenge it as soon as you get around 25-30k fleet. As long as you arent at risk of being declared on, feel free to take this sucker on from anywhere on the map, as quickly as possible to deny other empires the chance. Have a construction ship ready to start the project once its down.

Defeat a horrifying invader




REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC

Difficulty: 3

Map: Any (more stars, better chance)

Government/Ethics: Any

The Transdemensional Horror is a leviathan that spawns around black holes, so go looking around there. As with all leviathans, it takes about 25-30k Fleet power to take down, but be careful of engagement ranges. Try jumping in to the system where the Horror is closest to, so your fleet doesnt get chewed up trying to trek across the system. Have a science ship ready to research (level 5 mission).

Win the game through any victory condition



Difficulty: 2

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Fairly self explainatory; simply win a game. If you are having trouble winning a game, try turning off advanced start AI, lowering # of AI, adding custom pacifist empires, turning off Fallen Empires, and increasing planet habitability.

Destroy a wraith




REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC
Difficulty: 2

Map: Any (more stars, better chance)

Government/Ethics: Any

Wraiths don't spawn in the beginning of the game like the other Leviathans. After an empire has surveyed a system with a Neutron Star, it will start a 40 year timer until the Wraith pops out. Wraiths will then maraud their way through the galaxy feeding on gas giants and stars. They take a debuff in certain systems based on their color (Red: Class M/red dwarves; Yellow: G class/Yellow dwarves; Blue: A or B class/blue stars), but it isn't necessary with a well developed 25-30k fleet.

As a humanoid species, infiltrate the homeworld of pre-FTL reptilians



Difficulty: 2

Map: 600+ with 1 AI

Government/Ethics: Any (choose humanoid species)

Somewhat luck based. Just make a big map with little AI and just explore/expand to your liking. Once you encounter pre-FTL reptillians (you can check their phenotype in their summary window while selecting them in the Contacts window, if you can't tell by the avatar), expand into their territory and build an observation post. Select covert infiltration and wait it out. Sometimes you wont have access to a reptillian civ thats advanced far enough to covertly infiltrate, you can wait until they progress into the industrial age. Make sure your native interference is set to "Unrestricted" (im fairly certain any empire can set it to unrestricted as of 1.5, albeit at some faction happiness costs). You also need to research "Gene Tailoring".

Uncover the secrets of an ancient fortress




REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC
Difficulty: 3

Map: Any (more stars better chance)

Government/Ethics: Any

The enigmatic fortress leviathan is quite possibly the most important one. Its difficult, yet has very little RNG and offers incredible rewards. Once you find the Enigmatic Fortress, take it out with a 25-30k fleet ASAP! You do not want another empire taking it out before you, regardless if you are trying for the achievement. Have a fleet of one transport ship with one army (you wont need more, and they are consumed) in an adjacent system ready to jump in when its down. Order is as follows:

1. Board the Fortress with an assault team.
2. Rearrange the metal tori on the poles.
3. Choose black hole research (needs level 5 scientists, recruit one from curators if you can, have it ready before you start since its timed)
3a. Choose home research if a blackhole isnt available.
4. Choose the middle of the construction of the Enigmatic Fortress.

And boom, access to tier VI shields and power supply, two awesome auxillery options, and an amazing AoE debuff medium module. The tech from the Enigmatic Fortress is enough to compete with Awakened Ascendencies, and I would recommend completing the event chain early and researching the tech before taking on tougher enemies.

UPDATE: As of 1.6 (Adams), the enigmatic fortress now only gives you 1 of its techs, rather than all of them. If you are in a comfortable position to take out the fortress with limited losses, still do it, its worth it even with the nerf.

Enlighten a bronze age civilization



Difficulty: 1

Map: 600+, limited empires

Government/Ethics: Not Fanatic Xenophobe

Similar to payback, except a little easier and more time consuming. Simply find a pre-FTL race in your territory in the bronze age, build an outpost, and turn on Technological Uplift. It will take a very long time, so sit in tight. Some government types will have Native Enlightenment turned off by default, only xenophobe pops will be negatively affected by it.

Successfully capture an extragalactic matriarch



Difficulty: 5

Map: 400-600 stars, 1 empire, no Fallen Empires, high habitability

Government/Ethics: Any (whatever you're more comfortable with)

Queening was the hardest achievement for me before the new ones were added. Its a bit buggy, risky, time consuming, and fun. Firstly, its important to only have one other empire. You want to play an Empire with good early game. Your plan is to defeat the other AI as quickly as possible, shouldn't be too difficult on normal. You'll get a victory screen if no other primitives have achieved FTL, but just keep playing, you'll still get achievements.

Next, you want to focus on actually getting the Scourge to spawn. AI rebellion crisis has a chance to spawn when an Empire(s) build Synth pops and they become unhappy. The Unbidden have a chance to spawn when an Empire(s) build Jump Drives or Psi-Jump drives. The Scourge spawn if neither crisis happens after a certain amount of time, so simply make sure you are the only surviving empire and don't research Synths or Jump Drives.

Build up your empire flagrantly, colonize as much as possible as quickly as possible. If there is an Enigmatic Fortress, take its tech (see Unravelling Enigma) and research the shields and power supply. The Scourge use lots of missiles and have no shields of their own, so go down the lasers > tachyon lance tree for maximum effectiveness. The Scourge tend to attack systems with habitable worlds closest to their territory one after another. You can use this strategy to your advantage by building a fortress flower star base in a system near the scourge and waiting with your fleet there. The scourge will eventually stop spawning, and at that point you just mop their worlds.

Be sure to leave at least one world infested and park a ship in orbit to prevent it spawning troops. The Queen may not appear if the Scourge event chain has ended, so be sure to not wipe them out entirely. The MTTH for the queen to appear is a whopping 820 months, so kick back, get some food, stick it on fastest, and wait it out. Keep in mind that if you did not wipe out every other empire, other empires will have a chance to steal the queen from you, and they are quick about it. This includes your vassals, so don't vassalize. The last thing you want is an empire researching the Queen ahead of you and you can't do anything about it during your ten year truce of dropping them as a vassal.

Reference: A move in Chess.

Open up a shielded world



Difficulty: 5

Map: Larger the better, 4 Fallen empires, limited AI

Government/Ethics: Any (ideally someone with unrestricted wars)

Shield Worlds are INCREDIBLY RARE. They are (almost) always found within Fallen Empire territory. Since Fallen Empires don't survey, you wont have to worry about other empires taking them from you unless they have opened borders to another empire and not you. Compensate for this risk by setting AI to 1 and just colonizing promiscuously. Once you survey a shield world it will give you a mission, simply complete it and you got it. It's a very easy achievement that requires a lot of patience to get.

Terraform a planet into a gaia world



Difficulty: 3

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

A fairly time consuming achievement. There are a few pre requisites for this achievement. The following techs:

Terrestrial Sculpting > Atmospheric Manipulation > Climate Restoration >Gaia Creation
Field Modulation > Global Energy Management >Quantum Energy States > Planetary Power Grid
Fusion Power > Cold Fusion Power > Antimatter Power > Zero-point Power

(1.5 increased energy capacity, so maxing it out and getting terraforming resources is no longer required for terraforming Gaia worlds)

Reference: Likely to the epic poem Pradise Lost by John Milton.

As a xenophilic empire, have migration treaties with at least 10 other empires



Difficulty: 2

Map: 400-600, 10+ custom AI with individualist/pacifist/xenophile

Government/Ethics: Xenophile

Fairly easy, just requires a bit of pre planning. Firstly, create 10+ custom AI that share ethos and planet type (to be very cheesy, create an empire, save, then randomize their name, save again, and repeat until you have 10), and force spawn them in with the exclusion of all others. Once you are in game, simply explore away and play as you normally would. Migration treaties should be easy enough to form with other empires nearby. With more distant empires, simply open up trade, donate a few minerals/month, stretch to 30 years and get it up to 99+ favorability. This will increase their opinion of you by that amount, and will, in most cases, overcome the distance malus on the migration treaty decision.

As an Authoritarian empire, have at least 200 enslaved pops in an empire of at least 500 pops


Difficulty: 3

Map: 400+

Government/Ethics: Authoritarian

Fairly straightforward achievement, can be earned without too much effort over the course of a long Authoritarian game.

Destroy an enclave



Difficulty: 2

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Not Pacifist

You'll need to have unrestricted wars turned on, I believe. Enclaves are just slightly weaker than Leviathans, so a 20k stack should do the trick. You get a sizable bonus from destroying enclaves, depending on their type, but its very small compared to the long term benefits of having one around, so I would do this one towards the end of a game.

WARNING: Wraiths will roam around from system to system, and will often destroy Enclaves as their aggro range is massive. If theres wraith in your game and you want this achievement, kill either one before its too late.

Reference: Likely the Bible.

Birth a new universe




REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC
Difficulty: 5

Map: 1000, no FEs

Government/Ethics: quick learners, talented, direct democracy government. (for quicker level 5 leaders

So the infinity machine spawns in a specific black hole called "Gargantua". Since the start of the game leaves the entire galaxy under the fog of war, you'll have to travel to each black hole to find it. However, you can que up an order to "go to" a black hole, even undiscovered, and the task list under the unit on the bottom left will actually display the systems real name. So send a frigate to Black Hole #312, and at the bottom of the unit window it will say "Moving to Gargantua system". Do this to every black hole to find gargantua to begin the event. If gargantua isnt on your map, re roll. Build two science ships quickly(as back ups) and survey the crap out of the surrounding area. Build another one when your scientist approaches level 5 and send it to gargantua. When he hits 5, switch him to the empty science vessel in gargantua for a quick research.

UPDATE (2/15/17): So I tested the time frames for the researches and saving. Understanding Infinity takes 5 years to complete, and the roll for success or failure is determined when its completed, so if you start the special project any time after day 1 of the month, you can scum save to get a success. However, to get the achievement, you must succeed, AND THEN get the super rare reward at the end when the orb reaches the black hole and unlocks the tiny universe. Unfortunately, the roll for this reward is also determined when Understanding infinity finishes, and since it takes 37 days for the Orb to reach the black hole after a success, the new auto save effectively does nothing to change your chance at the achievement. So basically, start Understanding Infinity after day 2 of the month, when it finishes, scum save until you get a success, then wait for the Orb to reach the black hole. If its just an ordinary reward, time to reroll.

1.8 Update: Ironman saves are now every 3 months, instead of every month, which is enough time for the orb to reach the black hole. Therefore you can scum save this and get it every game, as long as you dont have an autosave during the journey.


Thanks to lorddarkwraith for helping me with the specifics on this one as well as the tip on undiscovered systems.


UPDATE 2.0: I've been pretty lazy with updating this achievement, as many have pointed out there are ways to check the save file and scum save. I've tried to write this guide in the confines of what the devs would find acceptable for getting these achievements, so I've been reluctant to add anything more than just simple iron man scum saving, which doesn't go a long way. As a few people have pointed out in the comments, there is a flag for the achievement result in the save file you can check before starting the research so you don't waste your time.

Close the loop, or don't



Difficulty: 3

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

This is mostly luck based, but a fairly long and straightforward event chain that can lead to your entire race being converted physically and ethically. Its triggered by a science ship with a leader entering any black hole system (1% chance). You'll have to sacrifice leaders, research the rare techs that show up, do NOT choose to end the path, build the empire unique buildings, and finally the worm will appear. You can accept the Worms gift or destroy it, IIRC either option will get you that achievement.

UPDATE: as of 1.5, you can no longer que ships in and out of the same black hole to trigger the event, although they did double its chance rate to 1%. Given that even the largest map has only a dozen or so black holes, each game has roughly a 10% chance of getting the event, so feel free to simply send a science ship around to every black hole right at the start to see if you get it.

Have a ringworld section as your capital


Difficulty: 4

Map: 600+, 4 fallen empires, 1 AI

Government/Ethics: Any


There are a few ways to get this one. The easiest method, but luckiest, is finding Santcuary, taking it over, and making it your capital. The next easiest is finding a broken ringworld (requires Utopia DLC), repairing it (requires megastructures engineering tech), colonizing it, and making it your capital. The last two methods are basically a tossup between where you are in tech or fleet power. You can either find the Materialist or Machine Fallen Empires and take them over before they awaken, and then make it your capital, or you can research mega engineering, take voidborne and ring of life ascendance perks, build your own ringworld for an absurd amount of time and minerals, then make it your capital.


If you do not have Utopia, your only option is find Santuary or a materialist fallen empire.

Return a long-dead species to life



Difficulty: 3

Map: 600+, 4 Fallen Empires

Government/Ethics: Not Hivemind or Machine Empire

"In Limbo" is a fairly uncommon anamoly that will appear. Once researched, an event will pop up in the situation log. IIRC, it takes a level 5 scientist. Once its done you'll get an option to "Let dead aliens lie" or to "Download their Nueral Patterns". Choose the latter and you'll be holding on to that data. After a while, as long as you've encountered the xenophile FE, they will contact you and ask to use the data you acquired to ressurect the species. Simply accept and boom, achievement done.

As a note, if you have sensor data on their systems, you can see the old species pop on the FE's planet called "The Preserve".

EDIT (2/20/17): Finally figured out the requirements (or rather, the lackthereof) for getting the "Download their Neural Patterns anyway" response than many find elusive. This achievement has a few interesting blurbs about the neural patterns depending on what your progress into robotics is. If you have robots, it will say "Too risky" to upload their neural patters. If you have droids or synths, no other option even appears. Point being, the only requirement for getting the download option is to simply never research robots or anything higher.

EDIT (4/18/17): Seems I was correct! Its been confirmed that if you choose to keep the data and upload their consciousnesses into droids or synths, they create their own pops and wish to cede from your empire to create their own. This creates an entirely new empire, and you still get the achievement.

Reference: Dante's Inferno

As an egalitarian empire, own a planet with at least 10 different species on it



Difficulty: 3

Map: 600+, 0 Fallen Empires, 25+ AI

Government/Ethics: egalitarian, xenophile, pacifist


Okay so there are two ways to actually do this achievement. There is the much much much harder way that I did before I realized I was an idiot, and the much much much easier way involving a fallen empire.

The harder way involves migration. Since Individualist empires cannot resettle, you have to rely solely on migration, which is almost entirely out of your control. This makes it a bit challenging. Basically, you set up a map with a ton of different empires, mostly pacifists and xenophiles, and set up as many migration treaties as you can. DO NOT force spawn empires that have nomadic or sedentary as a trait, and if you find an empire with either, do not do a migration treaty. Now Ideally what you want to do is get a big huge empire going and work your way towards Gaia World Creation. Save a 25 tile planet in your territory for it. Get more than 10 different species in your empire or through migration treaties. Once there is a roughly even amount of species (no one species dominating in # of planets) terraform and colonize the 25 tile Gaia planet. Turn on Land of Opportunity edict and wait for the pops to fill in. The reason you dont want a species with nomadic is they will fill up the Gaia world before anyone else has a shot at getting in, they migrate so fast. The reason you don't want one species dominating so much in planets is because when the colony is set up, pretty much every single world that is in a migration treaty with it will start sending a pop over. This means that if you have a treaty with Mr. Massprocreationfungus that has 35 worlds with 100+ pops, chances are over half of those Gaia world tiles are going to be fungus. There is some micro play involved as well. When you have about 7-9 species on the planet, all the slots will pretty much be filled with copied species and each of the species growing one new pop. Essentially, as they all migrate in, they are taking at least two squares. This means that if you are close to 10 but not quite there, you may have no space available for new pops to migrate to. In this case, you simply deactivate all farms and starve the planet. All growing pops will slowly start dying and since everyone is so unhappy, copied pops might migrate away, on top of slowing down unwanting migration. Once the squares are free then you simply turn the farms back on, but only enough to get to EXACTLY -1 food, this is where pops do not grow but the planet is not starving. Now being a Gaia world, pops are going to want to migrate anyway, so what you do is find your planets that have pops migrating to the Gaia planet with species you already have there, and turn on Land of Opportunity on that planet. This will stop their migration and let other pops from species you dont have to migrate there before they do. Soon enough, after alternating between increasing migration attraction on already full planets and starving your new 25 tile Gaia world, you'll have 10 different species on your planet.


OR YOU CAN NOT BE AN IDIOT LIKE ME AND JUST TAKE OVER THE XENOPHILE FE SINCE ONE OF THEIR WORLDS ALREADY HAS 10 DIFFERENT SPECIES.

I gotta leave this wall of text here as a testament to my stupidity. I'll just update this for 1.5 by saying you can turn ON forced resettlement as egalitarian (formerly individualist) now, meaning its now just a matter of getting 10 species in your empire and simply resettling them all on to one world. I would suggest waiting until you have 10 species before allowing resettlement, as your pops will be unhappy and may make it hard for you to make migration treaties or lure pops in from them.

As a pacifistic empire, have all other independent empires be pacifistic as well



Difficulty: 0

Map: 150, 1 empire, no fallen empires

Government/Ethics: Pacifist

Probably the easiest achievement in the entire game. Simply create two pacifist empires, force spawn in one, play the other, and start a game with no FEs and only 1 other empire.

Unpause and boom, literally five second achievement.

As a xenophobic empire, purge all other sentient species in the galaxy



Difficulty: 2

Map: 150, 1 other empire, no FEs

Government/Ethics: Xenophobe

Fairly easy, just start up a game with one other empire and take it over. Purge everything.

-Synths count as xenos
-pre-FTL races count as xenos
-stone age primitives do not count as xenos
-pre sentient races do not count as xenos
-genetically modified primary species pops do not count
-species from other empires that share your name, portrait, and traits do not count.

Reference: Warhammer 40k universe

Lead the non-aligned powers to victory against an awakened empire




REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC
Difficulty: 5

Map: 600+, 3 Fallen Empires, turn off crisis, 1 other AI, 500% habitability

Government/Ethics: Hivemind, Fan militarist/authoritarian + Distinguished admiralty (or what ever works best for you)


UPDATE 2/2/22: I'm going to keep all this information here for posterity but much of it is out of date. The war in heaven is much much easier to trigger now and can be any two ethos. Have fun with this one!


What an achievement. Before I start, here are the mechanics behind the "Awakening" of Fallen Empires. At least 100 years must have passed and the Fallen Empire must be above 40k fleet power. At that point, the MTTH starts at 50 years, and is reduced by the following events:

• Player empire at 40k/50k/60k fleet power (normal, hard, insane) MTTH is halved.
  
• MTTH is multiplied by the number of Fallen Empires
  
• If any Fallen Empire planet has been taken in war by a default empire (can be AI) then MTTH is reduced by 10 years.
  
• Within 5-10 years of an endgame crisis starting, the Xenophile or Materialist Fallen Empires may Awaken as a "Guardian of the Galaxy". (NOTE: a Fallen Empire awakening in this manner will NOT trigger an "Ancient Rival" event and therefore will not trigger War in Heaven. For this reason, DO NOT turn on endgame crisis to get this achievement)

First, the mechanics. The War in Heaven is a very finnicky event. In order for it to occur, there needs to be two Fallen Empires of opposing ethos, one of those Fallen Empires Awakening (NOT due to end game crisis), declaring the other Fallen Empire an Ancient Rival, then the second Fallen Empire Awakening, then a pop up happens for War in Heaven. The pop up will have 3 options, side with Empire A, side with Empire B, or don't side with either. The War in Heaven has a chance not to occur at all. If one fallen empire awakes and its counterpart does not awaken in the next 10 years, then it will not happen at all. Fallen Empires will awake when another player empire has matched them in Fleet power, a different Fallen Empire has lost planets through war, or in response to end game crisis. War in Heaven will ONLY trigger in the first two situations, not the third.

Second, preparation. I chose a large map of 800+ for an extra chance at the enigmatic fortress, which i must say is almost entirely necessary. I set only one other empire to exist so I wouldn't have to worry about anything other than expansion and research. This is important because you do not want to deal with enemies while this is happening OR be forced to increase your fleet power to match the Fallen Empires before you are prepared for the War in Heaven. Okay government: A lot has changed in 1.5 and I might change this section as I explore more and more, but so far I am impressed with hivemind. Especially in a galaxy with one other AI, hiveminds excel when the only concern is expansion. My other choice would be Fanatic Militarist/Authoritarian + distinguished admiralty (and which ever other civic you'd like). You dont necessarily need to start with it, but distinguished admiralty is really quite amazing. Giving you an 8% fire rate boost translates nearly to 4% bump in fleet power. While that may not seem like much, its a bump in fleet power you don't need extra steps to get, like building more ships with extra minerals, energy, or fleet cap civics.

Third, the play book. For traditions grab planetary survey corps in discovery RIGHT AWAY. After which you'll need to make a choice depending on your circumstance. If you have really good planets near you with lots of tile blockers, finish discovery and grab mastery of nature. If not, start down another tree, also depending on your circumstance. If you spawned next to the other AI and want to knock him out early, go down supremacy. Otherwise, I would grab expansion up to Colonization Fever, Prosperity up to The Pursuit of Profit, and Harmony up to Paradise dome. On every colony your first priority should be Unity procucing buildings. Basically you want to expand and conquer early game to get ahead. Find and destroy the other empire that spawned in. Invade primitives until you get colonization access to all 3 climate types, then stick the rest of the primitives in observation posts for covert infiltration. DO NOT take protectorates or vassals, you should be the ONLY empire other than the FE's until the War in Heaven breaks out. Keep expanding and only build a 25-30k fleet to take out any Leviathans you need (particularly the Enigmatic Fortress), but do not build any more. Once you have all EF tech done, focus on expanding as wide as possible. The goal here is to get an ungodly amount of spaceports. While you are doing this, your mineral economy should be very strong. Have one spaceport qued for battleships. This will be your mineral bank. Que up hundred of them. Dump all excess minerals you arent using into this spaceport in the form of battleships. When one battleship is about to be built, right click it to cancel the order and build another one.

And now for show. Once you have around 300-400 battleships qued, thats when you strike. Pause the game, cancel a few battleships to put you at mineral cap, then start spamming every space station you got to start making corvettes and cruisers (I normally dont build a lot of battleships or destroyers, but I throw a few in there). Rinse and repeat until you've dumped all the minerals you had for the battleships in one space station, into hundreds of cruisers and corvettes que'd up across dozens of worlds. The point behind this is to raise a fleet WELL past the trigger for a Fallen Empire awakening so you don't have to scramble to build a fleet able to challenge them. Once the war breaks out, choose neither side. Then, open up your Demographics screen (a tab under government) and select "create vassal". Once you have some random planet as a vassal, release them as a regular empire. Almost immediately you will get a pop up to create the League of Non-aligned powers (you do not need federation to be researched, it will actually give you the tech for this). Say yes and then invite them to Federation.

Now its game time. At this point, all the work is really behind you. If you've planned accordingly, it should be no different than any other war you've fought against a Fallen Empire or Awakened Ascendency. Catch their transports out of position, liberate the worlds they conquer, build fortress stars to catch them, catch their reinforcements and research the debris, bait fleets with smaller onces to accomplish other objectives, etc. Defeating the first Awakened Ascendency will end the War in Heaven, but you will still be at war with the remaining AA. Defeat the second and BOOM, you've got it.


UPDATE: As of 1.6 (Adams), enigmatic fortress no longer gives access to all its tech, only one random. These techs are still incredibly useful, so even with the nerf, consider the enigmatic fortress a midgame priority and its system should be of strategic importance before the WiH breaks out.


Reference: Abraham Lincoln

Hatch the egg




REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC
Difficulty: 3

Map: 600+, 1 empire, no FEs

Government/Ethics: Any

Fairly straightforward but time consuming achievement. Simply find the Ether Drake and start expanding your territory towards it. Once its system is in your territory, then you want to kill it. Survey the system and build a mining station on the planet called "Dragons Hoard". After a few years you'll get a pop up for two different things: the option to grind down some dragon scales they found for minerals or research tier VI armor; the option to incubate the dragon egg they find on the planet. Both events occur at separate times and in no particular order, so just hang in there until it appears.

EDIT (2/21/17): Possible issues with putting the dragons hoard system in a sector, play it safe and keep the system in core.

As a materialist empire, have at least 75% of the pops in your empire be robotic in an empire with at least 200 pops


Difficulty: 4

Map: 150 stars, 1 other empire, no FEs

Government/Ethics: Materialist, thrifty trait


You dont really need to conquer the other empire for this one, as long as they don't get in the way of your Plan for Obsolesence. The discription pretty much says it all for this achievement.
Having less empires means less threat, meaning less fleet needed, meaning less energy maintanence, meaning more robots.

EDIT: WIth Utopia DLC this achievement becomes a lot easier, as you can simply choose the synthetic evolution ascension path and turn all your pops into synths. While these synths will not be the same as the synths you normally create, they still count towards the achievement.

As a spiritualistic empire, own 4 holy worlds



Difficulty: 4

Map: 1000, 4 FEs, 1 other empire, 500% habitability

Government/Ethics: any

Also a pretty straightforward one. This one relies heavily on the game set up. There is a very low chance of finding a map with 4 holy worlds unless you are playing with 1000 stars at 500% habitability. I normally add authoritarian for early game cheesing, and militarist for late game FE fighting. DO NOT colonize any holy worlds until you are prepared for the fight with the FE, or better yet, simply get them in your territory and colonize all 4 at the same time to avoid the fight altogether.

Reference: Crusader battle cry.

Take a trophy from a stellar being




REQUIRES LEVIATHAN DLC
Difficulty: 3

Map: Any (more stars, better chance)

Government/Ethics: Militarist/xenophobe

The Stellarite devourer is a rare Leviathan that feeds on stars. Like all of them, it requires about 25-30k fleet power to take on.

All you really need to do is make sure you are playing a xenophobe or militarist empire, as the trophy option only appears for those ethos.

Invade pre-FTL Earth while it is in the midst of a world war



Difficulty: 9,540,615

Map: 150 stars, ring galaxy, 1 empire, no FE's

Government/Ethics: Any


Literally the most RNG achievement ever. Fairly straightforward, just invade pre-FTL earth. Make sure you are playing an empire with unrestricted wars and native interference.

Finally Achieved (02/13/17). Updated suggested map type. I spammed about 5 games of 150 star maps on ring galaxies. Humans will NOT enter a world war on their own, you must survey and discover Sol III with machine age humans during a world war. If they are not, they will progress through the machine age ordinarily. The 5 games I got all had Sol, smaller maps may have a higher chance of spawning Sol, or I just got really lucky. The fifth time they were fighting WWII. Save up influnce and invade away.

Not sure why I didn't add this but its future me again. Playing on a small ring galaxy makes Sol system super obvious, as all normal stars spawn a set distance away depending on the size of the galaxy, whereas Sol ALWAYS spawns at a fixed distance, regardless of size, so Sol is almost always ridiculously far away from the other stars making it very obvious where it is right away.

Reference: Iain Banks on sci fi tropes.

Develop the means to prevent nefarious infiltration



Difficulty: 3

Map: Any, no FE's

Government/Ethics: Any

During The Contingency end game crisis, regular organic empires will start getting infiltrators sabatoging their systems after the 4th machine world spawns. After some time, you will get the option to research a way to detect these infiltrators, similar to the old AI rebellion crisis pre 1.8. Once finished, you get the achievement and no more sabatoge.

Have 5 different species as livestock in your empire.



REQUIRES UTOPIA DLC

Difficulty: 3

Map: Ring, 400 stars, 5 AI, no FE

Government/Ethics: Authoritarian (milatirist helps)

This achievement requires a bit of special planning if you want it done quick and easy. Simply create 5 poorly made empires and force spawn them in. Once in the game, declare war as soon as you have an edge and cede one planet. Quick and painless. Rinse and repeat to every empire until you have five different slave races and change all their slavery types to "Livestock".

1.8 Update: You can now increase the chance of primitives in galaxy set up. A much easier strategy would be to crank primitives up to 5x and just invade literally every primitive you can see.

Construct a Dyson sphere.



REQUIRES UTOPIA DLC


Difficulty: 6 (really 2, but +4 for boredom)

Map: Tiny, ring, 1 other empire

Government/Ethics: Pacifist, materialist, agrarian idyll

So for this entry I'm basically going to cover the general strategy for constructing the 4 largest megastructures, and I'll add potential differences between them for the other entries. Firstly, the requirements:

Deep Space installations (engineering tech)
Battleships (engineering tech)
Zero Point Power (physics tech)
Voidborne (Ascension perk, not needed for dyson sphere)
3 other used Ascension slots
Mega-Engineering (society tech...lol jk engineering tech)
4 other used Ascension slots
Galactic Wonders (Ascension perk)
Circle of Life (ascension perk, needed for Ring Worlds)

Mega-Engineering can be tricky to get. You need Fortresses, battleships, and tier V power for the chance of it to spawn. Chance goes up by having mega structures in your territory, curator scientist, voidcraft scientist, or having the Master Builders ascension perk. Once you get it, research it and grab that last Ascension perk you need for the Mega Structure you are building.

Now to start construction. Mega structures take an UNGODLY amount of resources, but if you are already done with tier V power, battle ships, and 4 tradition trees down, you are likely rolling in minerals so its no big deal. The biggest challenge really is staying awake during construction. Each mega structure takes varying amounts of time to build, but at a very minimum its two decades. It takes so long to make and takes so long to even get there, I would HIGHLY recommend doing one game to build all 4. Each project is 5 stages, the primary staging area built by the construction ship, and 4 more stages that gradually increase the structures effectiveness until its fully complete. Dyson Spheres can only be built around stars, no black holes, nuetron stars (or their pulsar variants), or planets with habitable planets in the system.

Construct the Science Nexus.



REQUIRES UTOPIA DLC


Difficulty: 6

Map: See Captive Star

Government/Ethics: Any

See Captive Star.

Science Nexus needs to be built around planetary bodies.

Construct the Sensor Array.



REQUIRES UTOPIA DLC


Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

See Captive Star.

Sensor Array can only be built around stars, can only build one.

Construct a Ringworld.



REQUIRES UTOPIA DLC


Difficulty: 0

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

See Captive Star.

Ringworlds can only be built around stars, no blackholes, neutron stars (or their pulsar variants). You can build more than one.

Have ten different species living under Utopian living conditions in your empire.



REQUIRES UTOPIA DLC


Difficulty: 2

Map: Any 10+ empires

Government/Ethics: Any, xenophile/egalitarian suggested

Fairly easy and similar to "Tourist Trap". Its mostly just a matter of getting ten different species in your empire. I would recommend getting droids and colonizing other planet types to set up migration treaties, getting visitor center and paradise dome (from the Diplomacy and Harmony tradition trees, respectively), and hoping for the best. Migration chance has been lowered in 1.5 so you might find it a bit difficult to get them to come your way. I would also suggest changing each species living conditions to Utopian before they even migrate in, as the extra *potential* happiness will help them migrate.

Construct a habitat around a black hole.



REQUIRES UTOPIA DLC


Difficulty: 2

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

Habitats are fairly easy to get, you simply need Fortresses, Battleships, and Tier V power techs, and 2 other ascension perk slots used, to unlock the Voidborne Ascension perk. Habitats cost 5000 minerals and 100 influence, and can be built around any planetary body. Its likely that the black hole system you wish to build a habitat in does not have a habitable planet, so by colonizing the habitat there, you will add to your core systems. Yep, habitats in non core systems count towards the cap, so watch out!

Reference: Swedish metal band

Evolve into perfect, immortal machines.



REQUIRES UTOPIA DLC


Difficulty: 2

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Materialist + mechanist

Can be a pretty boring playthrough, but its not too difficult. Firstly, mechanist civic helps out quite a bit here, giving you access to powered armor and robots right off the bat. From there, continue the game as you normally would, researching droids, AI, synths, and synthetic personality matrix as you normally would. For ascension perks, choose Flesh is Weak, which will give you a special project to convert all your pops into cyborgs (extra lifespan and other cool goodies). The next ascension perk (if you have synths and synth leaders researched) should be Synthetic evolution, which will give you a long special project to complete to convert all your pops into synths.

Reference: Bladerunner

Genetically alter a species to contain traits worth 7 points.



REQUIRES UTOPIA DLC


Difficulty: 2

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any

The Biological ascension path is probably the easiest, quickest, and biggest pay off of the three. The first step, Engineered Evolution, requires the Gene Tailoring technology and grants a major reduction to the cost and time required to genetically modify species, it's giving you +2 Trait Points, and also unlocks the ability to research the Tech Gene Seed Purification technology which is otherwise unavailable.
The next step, Evolutionary Mastery requires the Targeted Gene Expressions technology. It grants an additional +3 Trait Points, a further reduction in time and cost of genemodding, and unlocks the ability to research the Genetic Resequencing technology, which once researched unlocks Advanced Genemodding.

At this point, you should have 8 points to actually work with on any given species (if you got the free one from society as well). Just make a species with maxed out points and boom, you're done. Advanced gene tailoring reduces the time to finish by quite a bit, so converting only one planet would only take a couple months.

Breach the Shroud.



REQUIRES UTOPIA DLC


Difficulty: 2

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Spiritualist

Fairly straightforward and you don't have to go through quite so many hoops as the other two Ascension Paths. Firstly, you'll need to be spiratulist to get the Psionic Theory tech. Once you've researched that, pick the Mind over Matter Ascension path, which unlocks the Telepath research option. After telepath, wait until you have 3 other ascension perks to unlock Transcendance. From there, its a straight shot to the shroud.

After unlocking the ascension perk "Transendance", you should get a special project to breach the shroud. Currently as of 1.5.1 there is bug that prevents people from getting the project when the choose the perk, so you may have to reroll if it doesn't come up for you.

As a Determined Exterminator, conquer or eliminate all biological Empires in the galaxy.



REQUIRES SYNTHETIC DAWN DLC


Difficulty: 2

Map: 400 stars, no FE's, 1 empire

Government/Ethics: Machine empire, Determined exterminator civic



Fairly straightforward achievement. Like many of the achievements, this one is best done on a smaller map with very few (ideally 1) other empires. I prefer ring galaxies at maximum habitability, and entirely ignoring research and traditions, focusing instead on expansion and fleet building. Simply find the other empire as quickly as possible (clustered start helps) and wipe them out. Luckily you do not need to wait for the purge to finish, only need to conquer them. Enclaves, primitives, and other machine empires are totally okay. I have not tested whether or not you get the achievement if you force spawn another machine empire in, as you do with the Pacifist achievement. (10/4/17 update) Confirmed that you can get this super easily by force spawning in one other regular machine empire for an instant pop.

As a Driven Assimilator, own cyborg Pops of at least 5 different species.



REQUIRES SYNTHETIC DAWN DLC


Difficulty: 1

Map: 400 stars, 5x habit., 5x primitives, 1 other empire

Government/Ethics: Machine empire, Driven Assimilator civic


This one was pretty easy, but fairly time consuming. Driven Assimilators are entirely capable of invading primitives, so all you really need to do is simply find five different primitives, invade, and boom you have the achievement. The only thing you need to work for is influence, as you spend quite a bit now on establishing colonies (which invading primitives costs). You might find yourself waiting a few minutes on fastest just to get the influence required.

Finding primitives can be a bit tricky. Split your fleet into 3 different corvettes, que up several paths through nearby territory. Primitive planets will always have a name that does NOT match the star name (Budding Star, Hopes Tendrils, etc). You can view planet names in any system you've been to, regardless if you have a ship there. You can also view the planets in systems within your sensor range, but you cannot view it after its lost in sensor range. Once you find one, survey > invade it quickly.

As a Rogue Servitor, own at least 10 Pops from Fallen Empires.



REQUIRES SYNTHETIC DAWN DLC


Difficulty: 3

Map: 400 stars, 1 FE, 1 other empire, 5x habit.

Government/Ethics: Machine empire, Rogue Servitor Civic


This one is straightforward but somewhat difficult. Simply build up your empire large enough to take on a Fallen empire. Cede all of their worlds and boom, you got your achievement.

Terraform a planet into a Machine World.



REQUIRES SYNTHETIC DAWN DLC


Difficulty: 1

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Machine empire


Fairly easy achievement. You need to access the ascendancy perk "Machine Worlds", which you can only access after research Climate Transformation, which is available after Atmospheric Manipulation (the Terraforming ascendance perk gives this one for free). It takes a crazy amount of energy to terraform to Machine World, but it shouldn't be a problem since machines take minerals instead of energy now.

Shut down the Contingency.





Difficulty: 5

Map: Any (Ideally not ring) .25x crisis strength

Government/Ethics: Any


The Contingency is a multipart crisis event that is pretty difficult (good job PDX!). It has a chance to happen after a regular empire has researched and used Sentient AI combat computers (I believe, otherwise you just need synthetic activity in the galaxy). When it starts, The Ghost Signal is broadcasted, reducing the effectiveness of all your machines, and recucing (instead of increasing) the fire rate of all ships equipped with Sentient AI combat computers, drastically reducing fleet power. After some time, you get a special project under The Contingency event to research a way to block the ghost signal. It costs a decent amount of engineering research, and the faster it finishes the better, so definitely turn on engineering research edict to finish it quick.


Over the course of a year or so, The Contingency will spawn 4 Machine Worlds around the galaxy. These Machine Worlds are not the same ones that you can terraform, they are entirely uninhabitable worlds that must be bombarded down to 0. Once destroyed they give living metal. At .25x crisis strength, The Contingency will spawn 70k fleets to guard their machine worlds while spawning several 30k fleets to invade surrounding territory. The Defender of the Galaxy perk currently (as of 1.8.0) does not apply to The Contingency ships, so its better used for something else until thats fixed.


Firstly, you'll want to counter their invading 30k fleets as they come in so you dont lose important territory. You can recolonize territory back from The Contingency as soon as you finish an invasion. Once they are all taken care of near you, focus on the nearest Machine World. Send in one tiny fleet first and move it to the outer edge of the gravity well. Once the 70k guarding fleet moves toward it, jump in with your fleet right on top of them. The majority of damage that they do is from Focused Arc Emitters, which have a ridiculous range. Jumping on top of them reduces their overall damage potential quite a bit. Once the 70k fleet is gone, attack the Machine World. They have a 30k fortress sitting on top of it which is kind of annoying to deal with it, especially at the same time as their fleets.

Once all 4 Machine Worlds are gone, The Contingency Nexus will spawn randomly. This will spawn a much larger fleet guarding it with 4 of its 30k fortresses. You'll need A LOT of fleet power to take this thing on. Once its destroyed, you'll get the achievement.


Fleet set up: The Contingency fleets have Lances, Plasma cannons, Lasers, and Energy Torpedos. This is a GREAT mix of anti shields and anti armor, so building defenses is incredibly difficult. The Arc Emitters are the largest threat; with high damage, 100% shield and armor penetration, they can absolutely chew through ships. Their ONLY downside is lower fire rate. This means corvettes. In almost every engagement I had with The Contingency, I lost every single battleship and cruiser, while only losing a handful or destroyers and corvettes. Focus on building them. They have some point defense, but not a lot, so missiles aren't terrible, but not nearly as effective as other builds. If you do decide to use missiles, spam them hard. Missiles are only effective as an all or nothing, and they are entirely worthless against a lot of PD. Destroyers and corvettes with energy torpedos, plasma cannons, and kinetics will do well against The Contingency fleets, but the most important thing is to simply have a gargantuan fleet power advantage and baiting their fleets into point blank engagements (neutralizing their range advantage).

Own a Citadel with 40k fleet power.




Difficulty: 2

Map: Any

Government/Ethics: Any


Not terribly difficult to get, once you get to endgame simply focus on the defense platform repeatables and keep a fully equipped Citadel around. Make sure to build the buildings that buff the Citadels damage.

Defeat a Fallen Empire's Titan with a Titan of your own.



REQUIRES APACOLYPSE DLC


Difficulty: 4

Map: Small, no empires, no primitives, maximum planets, 1 FE, no crisis or marauders

Government/Ethics: Whatever is easier for you (not pacifist)


This can be a fairly difficult achievement. For this one I set up a small map with just me and an FE. After colonizing the galaxy, take it easy and focus on building up and researching repeatables. Once you pass the date you set for late game, release some uplifted primitives as vassals, some FE's wont awaken with only the player empire on the field. Once they awaken, declare war and let them take a few worlds. Watch their fleets for a Titan, they will sometimes only build them during war. Once you see it, send your fleets in and take it out. It will likely escape a few times before going down, but stay strong.

Destroy another Empire's Colossus while it is in the process of firing on a planet.



REQUIRES APACOLYPSE DLC


Difficulty: 5

Map: Small, no empires, no primitives, maximum planets, 1 FE, no crisis or marauders

Government/Ethics: Whatever is easier for you (not pacifist)

See the above achievement (Clash of the Titans) for set up information, this one will play out a very similar way. While regular empires have a chance to build a colossus, waiting for an FE to build one after awakening is a more surefire way. Once they build it, declare war. When they go on the offensive, the AI doesnt seem to have its act together (a shocker, I know). The colossus will follow the FE's primary fleet with a contingent of armies, nonsensically charging the weapon on worlds that they are currently invading. When the worlds are successfully invaded, the will all move on. The trick is to have the FE attack one of your fully fortified planets so it can withstand bombardment and invasion until the colossus has finished its charging phase and started its firing phase.


To do it right, youll want a fleet with a titan ready to jump in on the system they are attacking so it can aggro right away and interrupt the colossus' firing time. To my great relief, combat with the colossus interrupts the firing countdown, so all you need to do is just engage it right after it finishes the charging phase and you are good. The Titans are there for the really long range.

Kill the Great Khan in Battle.



REQUIRES APACOLYPSE DLC


Difficulty: 4

Map: Small, no empires, no primitives, maximum planets, no FE's, 3 maurader empires

Government/Ethics: Whatever is easier for you

This can be a difficult achievement, and I would recommend setting the midgame start point later and increasing unity/research gains to give you an edge.

Regardless of the midgame start time, you need to be at around 100k fleet power when it starts. When it does, each individual marauder empire will open themselves up to target sales, sending you diplomacy windows. After a few short years when all their services are for sale, a Great Khan will rise and unite them all. A ~70k fleet will spawn for them, the Great Khan will be leading them as an admiral in that fleet (check their Diplomacy, their text box will mention the Great Khans name, it will not be "Great Khan" as an admiral).

You need to fight this fleet twice before the Great Khan dies for good. Time is crucial, the Horde will fall apart quickly and he will die to disease if you dont act quick enough.

Use a Global Pacifier to shield a planet belonging to Fanatic Purifiers, Ravenous Swarms, or Determined Exterminators


Difficulty: 2


Map: Any, average AI


Government: Any



Pretty straightforward achievement, simply get to late game with a colossus and use it on a FP, RS, or DE world with the Global pacifier.


The Global Pacifier is an upgrade to the colossus that you get AFTER getting the ascension perk, its under the physics tree. You can change the template of your colossus and upgrade it to switch its weapons at any time.

Use a World Cracker to destroy another Empire's capital planet.



Difficulty: 2


Map: Any, average AI


Government: Any

Pretty Straightforward acheivement, see above.

Recruit a scientist from the Curators.

Difficulty: 1


Map: Any, average AI


Government: Any

Pretty Straightforward acheivement, takes some time to get their opinion up, use the yearly research assistance.

Unseal the path to the L-Cluster.

Difficulty: 2


Map: Any, average AI


Government: Any

You'll need collect L-gate insight from around the map through various means like anomalies and enemies. There is a repeatable tech that you can get to get more if you need the 7 required. Once you have seven, you can research L-Gate Activation, only if your empire HAS an L-Gate in its borders, so look for those.

Befriend a space Amoeba.

Difficulty: 1


Map: Any, average AI


Government: not purifiers/swarm

You'll need to look for the specific anomaly "Movement in the Clouds" from surveying gas giants. Once finished, choose the option "Very well..."

There are several subsequent events after, but only recruiting it is necessary for the Achievement.

Slaughter the Voidspawn.


Difficulty: 3


Map: Any, max planets


Government: Any, Dry climate makes it easier.


The voidspawn is a Guardian that spawns from specific planets. You'll need to colonize a Desert, Savannah, or Arid world of at least 20 size, orbiting a G-class star. Within a year you'll get a chain of events about the planet "pulsing", adding devestation to the planet. There is a chance for the planet to then be destroyed as the Voidspawn ... spawns... from it and becomes hostile shortly afterwards. Takes about 20-30k fleet to take it out.

Hunt the Tiyanki Matriarch.


Difficulty: 3


Map: Max planets, large

Government: Any

The matriarch will only spawn in a system with a Gaia world. Like most Guardians, takes 20-30k to take it out.

Destroy the Scrapper Bot.

Difficulty: 3


Map: Any

Government: Any


The Scavenger bot will spawn in a random system with debris. Nothing is really necessary for it to spawn, so for the biggest chance to get it, largest map.

As a Corporate empire, have a branch office on 5 different empires capitals.


Difficulty: 1


Map: Any, egalitarian/xenophile AI


Government: Megacorp


Large map with plenty of friendly races (non megacorps so they dont fill those slots for you).

Build a Matter Decompresser.


Difficulty: 3


Map: Any


Government: Any (engineering trait helps)


This is for all the subsequent megastructure acheivements:

Megacorp added several new megastructures. To knock them all out, its best to do it in one game. I used a materialist race with engineering trait (simply because there are far more engineering special projects and techs, a bit of imbalance in the game). For a boring but quick time, set up an empty small galaxy and expand to your hearts content. The Interstellar Assembly, Strategic Coordination Center, Mega-Art Installation, and Matter Decompressor all require mega-engineering research. As soon as you finish it, they will all unlock in their specific research trees, usually immediately since you'll more than likely be on repeatables. Once finished, simply start building them. Matter Decomp needs to be around a black hole.

Have at least 4 fully operational Megastructures within your borders(habitats, ringworlds, and gateways do not count.


Difficulty: 4


Map: Any


Government: Any (materialist engineering trait)

See Black Hole mining for details.

Build a Mega-Art Installation in a Nebula system.


Difficulty: 3


Map: Any


Government: Any

See Black Hole mining for details, but remember to build the Art Inst. in a nebula system, as that is not a requirement to actually build it, but is for the Achievement.

Build a Strategic Coordination Center



Difficulty: 3


Map: Any


Government: Any

See Black Hole Mining.

Build an Interstellar Assembly.



Difficulty: 3


Map: Any


Government: Any

See Black Hole mining.

I won the Galatron and all I got was this lousy achievement.



Difficulty: 5


Map: Any, several low aggression hostile empires (non devourers/purifiers)


Government: Any


♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, this achievement. Stellaris has a reputation for putting in a really ridiculously hard and/or RNG based achievement every other expansion, and this is THE most RNG achievement. It took me about 40 hours to do it, and considering it consisted 99% just save scumming, it was a really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying 40 hours.

The Galatron is a relic that can be won by buying reliquaries from the caravaneers, so remember to turn them on when starting the game. You can buy 5 reliquaries per game, and each reliquary has a .5% chance of containing the Galatron, which comes out to.... ♥♥♥♥ THAT.

There is only one other achievement I recommend save scumming for (Infinite Creation), and its for the exact same reasons; you have to invest far too much work into the game for it to not be a 100% chance.

So here it goes, once you have found the Caravaneers, don't ask for reliquaries until you are capable of defeating any and all of the other empires in the game. Then simply go up to the caravaneers, request a reliquary, and promptly alt + f4 until you get the galatron. Its incredibly boring.

Capture the Galatron from another Empire.


Difficulty: 5


Map: Any


Government: Any

See the previous achievement. You want to get these on the same game because the only thing worse than needing to get the galatron is either getting it twice or waiting for an AI to get it. Simply declare war on anyone as soon as you get the galatron, surrender immediately and the galatron will go to them. Wait through the ceasefire and then declare on them to take it back. The hardest part is getting the galatron, but once you have it this achievement is really easy.

Successfully investigate an archaeological site.


Difficulty: 2


Map: Any, average AI


Government: Any

Once you have ancient relics, you wont be able to get away from these things. Unlike anomalies, Archaeology sites need to be in your borders.

Study Minor Artifacts and discover a random technology.


Difficulty: 2


Map: Any,


Government: Any

Once you've downed a few of those sites, youll have a ton of these minor artifacts. Right away, you can only use them for planet edicts. Eventually you'll get a rare tech to break them down for a boost to a specific tech. Once you have it, simply break them down until you do.

Have 100 Minor Artifacts



Difficulty: 2


Map: Any,


Government: Any


Play on a large map and this will come easily. Pair this with one of the new precursor chains below and it will come with it.

Complete the Zroni precursor chain.



Difficulty: 3


Map: Any


Government: Any (mayeb spiritualist?)


I'm not sure if spiritualist is necessary or increases your chances, but the Zroni precursor chain works really well with spiritualists regardless. Unlike the vanilla precursor chains, these two new ones take place through a series of archaeology sites on various planets. This particular one starts on a habitable planet, so to avoid getting a vanilla one or one of the other new ones, specifically ONLY survey habitable worlds early on. Surveying entire systems will drastically increase the chance that youll get one of the other ones.

Complete the Baol Precursor Chain.



Difficulty: 2


Map: Any


Government: Any


The Baol chain is the easier one to get out of the two new ones. Simply survey around until you get the appropriate archaeology site.

In one game, find 5 relics from anciet relics story pack.


Difficulty: 2


Map: small or larger

Government: Any


If you spawn in 0 enemies, you can get this with enough patience in a single game.

Level Up your Federation.



Difficulty: 2


Map: Any, average AI


Government: Not xenophobe


Once you are in a federation, you'll need to follow the modifiers and add a ambassador to it to slowly level it up. It takes a while.

Have a diplomatic weight of over 9000


Difficulty: 2


Map: Any, average AI


Government: Any, no purifiers


You get diplomatic weight through virtually everything. With enough time, you'll eventually get this one. Avoid passing laws in the diplomatic community that decreases diplomatic weight of any kind.

Be the leader of a max level Federation



Difficulty: 3


Map: Any


Government: Any, not purifiers


This can take A LOT of time, but basically just follow the modifiers and keep assigning ambassadors to the federation.

Have all eight ethics represented within your federation.



Difficulty: 4


Map: small +


Government: See below


This can be a pretty difficult one. The easiest way to do it is to simply copy a handful of different empires of all the same species (you can do this in the empire creator by saving an empire, changing the name of the empire and its homeworld, and saving again), but change each ones ethics. I tried this originally with 7 different fanatic xenophiles but it was a nightmare to get them all together (they will start forming their own federations and at that point they'll never leave them).

I ended up just making 3 empires of all 8 ethos (just make sure to keep militarist, xenophobe, and authoritarian all separate), and paying the other two off until they wanted to be my friend. It takes work, and a little luck, but you can get it done.

Humiliate an Empire that is in the Supremacy Diplomatic stance, forcing them out of it.



Difficulty: 5


Map: small, no empires, 1 fallen empire, x5 habitable / tech


Government: Militarist recommended, DO NOT do materialist or an AI hivemind


This is an intriguingly difficult RNG achievement that is incredibly annoying. Here is the dilemma; normal empires, at any difficult/aggression, will almost never switch to Supremacy (i sat around for hours waiting for all kinds, and nothing). Fallen empires, on the other hand, immediately switch to Supremacy upon awakening. Easy achievement right? Already had to knock out a few A.E.s for a bunch of other achievements, here we go again.

Not so fast. When an Fallen Empire awakens, "Containment" becomes the sole option for war goal, meaning humiliation is now impossible.

Luckily, thanks to reddit user u/PraiseTheLamb, there is a way to arguably exploit this achievement.

Spawn in one fallen empire, make sure its a spiritualist fallen empire (play a small map so you don't waste time trying to find a fallen empire thats probably not spiritualist). Spend an hour or so building a massive empire/military. Build your megastructures etc, basically just get ready for a showdown with an awakened empire (look to be around 500k plus in fleet power). Once you're there, construct a planet cracker collossus (not sure if the other two types work, but this one for sure does). Once you are all set, destroy one of the Holy Worlds the Fallen empire has protected using it. You'll get a message from them saying you're basically screwed, and shortly afterwards they awaken and declare war. Between the notice of them awakening and them declaring war (use autopause), there is a window to declare them a rival, make sure you are.

Once the war starts, you'll see that there is now a humiliating war goal along side the standard Containment war goal. Choose it, and then defeat the awakened empire. It does take much, strangely, and once they give up the achievement pops.

Construct a complete Mega-Shipyard



Difficulty: 3


Map: Any, average AI


Government: Any


Possibly one of the most useful megastructures. Simply research it after megaengineering and build it in your capital system.

Build a Juggernaut.




Difficulty: 2


Map: Any, average AI


Government: Any


You'll need the appropriate tech and assembly yards (like the colossi) but the megashipyard can construct one without the assembly yards.

Denounce an Empire that is not actually in breach of galactic law while all major sanctions have been passed.



Difficulty: 2


Map: small, several empires


Government: not purifiers



This one is just a long grind. You'll first need to get to a point, militarily/economically/technologically, far superior to everyone else in the galaxy combined, and stay that way. Simply form the galactic community, vote on every single minor, then major sanctions, and (not sure if its necessary) a law to break. Then pass a resolution denouncing someone who isn't actually breaking that law (when hovering over their name in the galactic community, you'll see what laws, if any, they are in violation of). It just takes so long.

Disavow all knowledge of an Asset during an Operation



Difficulty: 1


Map: any

Government: not purifiers



Pretty simple achievement, comes up as an event while conducting espionage operations while assigning an asset.

Start a full-fledged first contact war before communications have been fully established



Difficulty: 2

Map type: high AI quantity, low agressiveness

Government: Not xenophile/egalitarian

Can be a little difficult to obtain but you have to set your first contact protocol to aggressive and attack unknown entities before completing the first contact operation. Can be done against the non empire enemies like the autominers and tyanki for an easy get.

As Galactic Custodian, defeat the end-game Crisis and then end the title rather than finishing your term


Difficulty: 2

Map type: Any, +2 ai, crisis on

Government: Not purifiers


Pretty straightforward, but there wont be a direct option after the crisis is over, you'll have to manually end custodianship through the galactic community after the crisis is over.

Complete at least ten distinct operations during a game

Difficulty: 2

Map type: Any, crisis on, at least one AI

Government: Not purifiers

This one is deceptively simple. There are 9 distinct operations available to you at any given time. Once you get high enough infiltration, you can complete any of them. You do not have to do distinct operations against different empires, they can all be against the same empire. Once you do the 9 base operations, you'll need to complete at least one more. There are several other operations only available under 3 different circumstances: If you are the galactic core (imperium), if you are part of the galactic imperium (not core), or if there is currently a midgame or endgame crisis occuring. Its much easier to do a midgame crisis since it appears early and are almost guarunteed. Once a crisis has appeared, you have access to a new operation called "crisis beacon" attracting the crisis to that target. Once you complete it along with the base 9 operations, the acheivement will pop.

Become the Galactic Emperor



Difficulty: 2

Map type: Any, 2+ AI

Government: Not purifiers


Pretty straightforward. To declare the imperium you have to follow a chain of galactic community resolutions. Form the galactic community with the minimum number of empires and make sure you have more than 50% of the available diplomatic weight (higher the better). The path is as follows:

-Form Community
-After 20 years, Form Galactic Council
-Nominate "Your Empire" As Galactic Custodian
-Remove Custodian Term Limits (can extend term limits but is not required)
-Proclaim Galactic Imperium

Its very easy to do when you dominate diplomatic weight, and once you do it its going to make the last achievement for this expansion incredibly frustrating....

Destroy the Galaxy



Difficulty: 3

Map type: Any, larger the better. Some AI

Government type: Fanatic purifiers for easy, otherwise any militarists.


This can be a bit tricky, especially if you get to the end without a lot of wiggle room. The Become the Crisis ascension perk gives you a lot of awesome perks at the cost of diplomatic standing. You need other AI empires around and ready to be conquered for enough menace to advance through the stages. Once you get to the last stage, you have access to the Aetherophasic Engine and star eaters. The Engine needs an absolute ton of dark matter to complete, more than you could reasonably acquire from black hole mining, so you will need to use the star eaters to blow up stars and get it in bulk. It seems you get more dark matter from stars in smaller galaxies but you are still better off with larger types. Once the Engine is completed, end the galaxy!

Lead a rebellion that successfully deposes the Galactic Emperor



Difficulty: I literally want to die.

Map type: debatable

Government type: you've got options. ideally not hivemind

Okay so this is basically Last Best Hope Part 2: electric boogaloo but its even more ridiculous. Luckily, it seems theyve changed some triggers around to make War in Heaven's more likely which makes that achievement easier to get, and hopefully down the line they make the AI a lot smarter and make this achievement easier to do (some promising news on that front from the Custodial team). Now this achievement is particularly painful because, you guessed it, the AI is brain dead. The hardest part of this achievement is getting the Imperium to appear without you leading it, and to that end there are multiple strategies you can try out to see what works. It took me several tries and about 20 hours of gameplay to eventually get it, but I'm sure you can get it a lot quicker than that.

Natural Imperium Strat:

This strategy is a little involved and this is the strategy that I used and eventually got it in the year 2700. To set this up, you'll need to create 30 unique fanatic authoritarian empires. Their secondary ethos can be either militarist, pacifist, or materialist. Militarist makes these empires vote on POSITIVE diplomatic weight modifiers that makes late game much easier for this achievement. Pacifist makes authoritarians less likely to wage war and therefore wipe eachother out before the community starts voting on the necessary measures, BUT causes them to vote on NEGATIVE diplomatic modifiers making it more difficult to force through resolutions. Materialist is a nice neutral ground but they might turn robot which is kind of bad. There's basically no reason to make any of them spiritualist or xenophile/phobe. We choose fanatic authoritarian because its almost impossible for them to change to egalitarian and that is very bad for this run.

For the galaxy set up, you have a few options. Huge galaxy with 30 empires gets you the most amount of GC resolutions available, increasing the likelihood that the ones you want will be passed. However, it makes many other things more difficult especially later on in the game. I did this on a large map with about 18 empires and it seemed to work out well after trying with 30 empires multiple times. For Crisis set it to 1.5-1.75 strength. We want the Crisis to be a significant threat to the AI, but not strong enough to wipe them out immediately. For tech/tradition cost, choose around 2x, this will make it much easier for you to catapult ahead of the AI and will make it harder for the AI to wipe out the crisis quickly. Ideally, you want the crisis and the AI to be locked in combat without your intervention for as long as needed. Its a difficult balance to strike, but I found it with 1.5x crisis strength and 2x tech speed. You can fiddle with these as necessary. Set Fallen Empires to 2. Everything else is optional or preference based, however you like your hyperlanes or whatever.

Now for the gameplay itself. We need to get the imperium going. Declaring the imperium is 20x more likely if the custodian is authoritarian, thats why we have nothing but authoritarians. To declare the imperium, we need the custodian to pass the resolution "Remove Custodian Term Limit". This is incredibly more likely to be submitted and to be passed if there is currently a crisis happening. That can be endgame, midgame, or War in Heaven. Given the nature of the 3 way conflict, I found that War in Heavens were the easiest to push this through. To get the custodian term limit removal an option, we need an AI to be a custodian, which is basically the most difficult part of this achievement. Council members are far more likely to nominate themselves custodians if there is a crisis ongoing (just like the term limit removal). During a long war in heaven, its possible to have a council member pass both Custodianship and Term Limit removal. During this process, make sure you have enough diplomatic weight to force anything through or veto anything. Be careful not to veto the custodians measures, there is a bug that sometimes blocks the AI from suggesting new things when their resolution is vetoed. If the custodian isn't suggesting term limit removal, force through and pass whatever they are suggesting. Hive minds are not idea for this process since they do not get 20% extra diplomatic weight from tech that non hive minds do. You also want to choose diplomacy traditions for more diplomatic weight, envoys, and the ability to gain favors passively from everyone else.

Its a delicate process, you need to keep the custodian alive through the War in Heaven/crisis, you also need to make sure they aren't strong enough to wipe them out on their own because once its over the AI modifiers on voting FOR the custodianship or term limit removal disappears and you're screwed. In addition, there is a 0x modifier for declaring the imperium while there is a war in heave ongoing, meaning it will never happen. I managed to get a council member to nominate themselves, extend term limits (not necessary) and remove term limits all during the war in heaven, then intervened to destroy both fallen empires and end the war in heaven. Once the war in heaven is over, all thats left is to have the AI declare the imperium. Of the times that I saw it, it seemed that no other AI was willing to vote yes on it, regardless of opinion modifiers or anything else. So you have to make sure that yours and the custodians diplomatic weight outweigh the combined diplomatic weight of everyone else. Use favors if you have to.

Once the imperium is declared, congratulations, the hard part is over. You now need to assign a spymaster to the imperium and launch the operation "Reduce Imperial Authority" until its down below 50. Once below 50 you can launch the rebellion operation. Its a long operation with 5 stages, so buckle up and get ready. Much like a force vassal/tribute war, you need to conquer effectively EVERY system and planet of the empire and its allies to force demands which will dissolve the imperium. It can be particularly tricky and theres a lot of things that can potentially go wrong. For example, during my rebellion the idiot Imperium built an outpost next to a dormant xenophobe fallen empire, which caused them to declare war, conquer a handful of systems before i could, and prevent me from enforcing my demands and ending the war. To keep enough diplomatic power to pass the imperium, i had my war stance set to defensive to avoid breaching galactic law (pacifists really are dumb), thus preventing me from declaring on them and finishing of the war. I waited over an hour for their war exhaustion to end the war and let me finish my stupid rebellion. God i hated this achievement.


Machine uprising strat:

So this one is a bit more straightforward but can be complicated by several things. This strat involves removing the stupidness of the AI and forming the Imperium yourself. Its astronomically easier to do so and you can do it basically every game if you really wanted to. Once you are the emperor, you remove your rights from your robots and instigate a rebellion. As the war starts, choose to play as the machine empire and white peace the war. Now this can be difficult since white peace typically wont be available right away and your former empire will likely be very powerful since you had to force your way through diplomatic weight. Once over, you need to wait a certain period to join the imperium as your new robot empire. Then start the espionage operations to lead to rebellion. This can also be difficult since its possible (but unlikely since the AI is really dumb) that another Empire might instigate a rebellion before you, given the head start they have.