Stellaris has been one of the most popular global strategy games on Steam. Now a popular YouTuber has taken it upon himself to bring the entire universe to a standstill with his playstyle – successfully!
Which YouTuber is it and what is his plan? “The Spiffing Brit” is a YouTuber who has published over 720 videos on his channel and attracted more than 4.3 million subscribers. His videos mostly focus on subverting well-known games through exploits or glitches.
Exactly that is what the Brit has done multiple times on a small scale in Stellaris. His latest project was intended to build upon all these experiences and become his “opus magnum.” How? By exploiting the existing game mechanics so that the system of Stellaris ultimately comes to a standstill – and that at the highest difficulty level of the game.
Robots instead of Elves? Robot Elves!
How did the YouTuber achieve his goal? One pillar of his strategy relies on the “Robotic Workers,” which immediately supply the player with the building “Robot Assembly Plants.” In this way, one essentially replaces the gradually dying population with working robots that do not have to fear death.
A nice side effect of the new way the game scales the population since one of the recent updates is that the building “Identity Repository” quickly houses thousands of identities, which in turn leads to a substantial increase in job efficiency (plus 3,658 percent).
This provides a huge boost to the entire economy, as well as areas like science. For example, technologies that should actually take 18 months at this point are completed in just 2 months.
The high number of workers does lead to a substantial increase in mineral consumption, but the bonus for job efficiency improves the performance of the so-called Roboticists. In other words: the production of new robots runs like clockwork. The acquisition of certain raw materials could therefore not be better this early in a game.
Already after 2.5 years, “The Spiffing Brit” is able to complete two traditions (Discovery and Mercantile) with all their improvements. This allows him to tackle the Synthetic tradition in year 3, which transforms the founding people into a mechanical species and grants various bonuses for the mechanical population. By the fourth year, this goal is also achieved.
From now on, “The Spiffing Brit” has access to mechanical elf workers, which he can produce in masses due to the enormous job efficiency (which now has a bonus of 5,126 percent). Nice: The new robots can be further improved through mods.
You can check out the full video on YouTube or watch it below:
What have the developers not considered? Some of the events that can occur during a round now also scale wildly because the corresponding rewards depend on the science points earned per month. Suddenly, one can be greeted with over 16,000 additional science points – that’s practically a new research for free.
Already after 5 years, the game reaches a state where “The Spiffing Brit” produces so much of everything that it cannot all be stored and consumed.
The project goes even more off the rails when the YouTuber gains access to the “Faculty of Archaeostudies.” This supplies players with biologists and minor artifacts, where the number of artifacts depends on the number of biologists. In this case, this meant from the start a supply of 3,000 minor artifacts per month.
Fast forward: In year 12, the capital of the robot civilization consists of a population of 41,000 workers who generate 34,000 research points per month and have practically unlimited access to all necessary raw materials. Even the cheating AI at the highest difficulty level cannot keep up.
How does the end of Stellaris come about? The escalation spiral continues to turn from now on, as not only does the population and job efficiency continue to rise, but also more and more buildings, technologies, and upgrades are added. This leads to:
- that all AI species have not the slightest chance in military conflict
- that “The Spiffing Brit” can simply outvote all other species in votes within the Galactic Community due to his diplomatic strength
- the civilization of “The Spiffing Brit” ranks first with a significant lead
Next, the player activated the “Galactic Nemesis” perk, through which one earns points for evil deeds, allowing further crisis levels to be unlocked. At this point, the actual endgame of Stellaris has not really begun yet.
The YouTuber then followed this path to build a massive fleet, subjugate other civilizations, annihilate stars, and ultimately complete the “Aetherophasic Engine,” which can destroy all stars in the galaxy as well as all life with a detonation.
Exactly that is what “The Spiffing Brit” does to win the game with a score of 3,008,440. His comment under the video: “This recording process cost 1 year of my CPU’s lifespan. I hope it was worth it.”
How does the community react to the project? With over 24,200 thumbs up and more than 915 comments.
- jacler04 draws a fitting comparison under the video on YouTube: “Spiff plays Stellaris just as a side note as the Necrons from Warhammer 40K.”
- creativehorse7907 comments under the video: “Only in death does your service end… unless Spiff has found a way to essentially implement a form of necromancy in Stellaris and break it.”
Note that “The Spiffing Brit” played Stellaris for the video in version 4.0.4. In the latest version, some issues have been fixed.
Even though Stellaris is a celebrated strategy game, there have been occasional troubles – most recently during the big birthday celebration, where there was a new update and a DLC. You can read the details here: One of the most popular strategy games on Steam is experiencing serious trouble, and the developers should have seen it coming
