Traditions play a crucial role in making Empires unique in Stellaris. The traditions you choose will have a significant impact on your play style, which can be permanent. Deciding which tradition tree to use can be difficult, as each provides different bonuses using Unity, ranging from resource bonuses to free pops. Whatever your empire’s focus, there will be a tradition to match. Completing traditions is also the primary way to unlock ascension perks that enhance your empire’s potential, which pairs well with the chosen traditions.

The Best Traditions in Stellaris

Traditions represent an empire’s cultural advancement, making them more warlike or trade-friendly with their neighbors, among other things. Some traditions are ideal for certain empires, while others are generally great for any empire. Role-playing as an empire and selecting traditions that match your strong suit is a favored method by some players. There is no need to worry if the perfect choice isn’t made since no tradition has negative modifiers, and all of them come with benefits that never make an empire weaker.

The Must-Take Traditions

Each tradition in Stellaris has its merits, but four of them stand out: Expansion, Discovery, Prosperity, and Supremacy, which correspond with each of the game’s four pillars, Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate, respectively. Discovery is considered a de-facto first pick for many players as it offers impressive bonuses to early game exploration and research, whereas the Expansion tradition tree focuses on making expanding borders and colonizing easier, which provides more benefits to younger empires. The Prosperity tradition tree is all about maximizing resource potential in the game, keeping costs low while yields remain high. Lastly, the Supremacy tradition tree is a helpful tool that helps run fleets more easily and cheaply, providing bonuses to ground armies. If playing a Genocidal play-through, it is the ideal first pick.

Sub-Optimal Choices

While not necessarily bad, the Subterfuge, Politics, and Unyielding tradition trees are suboptimal choices for the average empire. Subterfuge buffs espionage capabilities while offering extra envoys, but the benefits are improbable in a single-player game. The Politics tradition tree focuses on maximizing the empire’s strength within the galactic community, with benefits that are only effective when taking down the end-game. The Unyielding tradition tree buffs the military strength of starbases and defense armies in-lieu of falling off soon after mid-game and least effective against monster fleets.