Stellaris COMPLETE Leader Trait Tier List

I've narrowed your choices down to five Unthinkable options each will cause Untold misery I pick number three you don't even want to read them first I was elected to lead not to read number three long have I waited in this video we are going to rank all of the leader traits in Stellaris there are going to be hundreds of icons on screen and it's going to take quite a while make sure you're sat down make sure you've got a snack and a drink and let's dive in this is going to be a marathon but don't worry we will take it one step at a time the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step what I have done is I have ranked each different type of leader trait in this tier list from the top to the bottom and we're going to go through each type one at a time until we get to the very end there are six different types or classes of trait we have Destiny traits split into councelor Destiny traits and regular Destiny traits we have veteran traits again split into counselor and regular and finally we have the basic traits split into counselor and regular for as I said a total of six different classes let's start right at the beginning at the bottom in the F tier with the destiny counselor traits Shadow broker is of course a counselor trait now let me briefly explain what that means if you put a leader with this trait on your Council their effects will be apply to your entire Empire this generally means that counselor traits are much more powerful than regular traits and that's why I have separated them out in the category so Shadow broker gives you 150% infiltration speed minus 25% operation cost and plus two available envoys the main reason this is down here in the F here is that operations and getting extra infiltration for operations is simply not powerful enough if operations get reworked by the custodians this could go up all the way to b or a tier but at the moment it's simply not good enough we'll jump up to the C tier now first off we have Master bureaucrat this is actually a generic trait that pretty much any of your leaders could be unfortunate enough to roll it gives you minus 5% leader upkeep for all leaders minus 5% Empire size effect and plus 7 5 edict fund if this scaled your edict fund by some level say plus 25 or plus 50% edict fund it would be much better but overall these benefits are minimal reducing Empire size effect rather than reducing Empire size directly means this does not stack with a lot of other bonuses we have available in the game so it really does not have very much impact even if you had four or five Leaders with this if you are focusing heavily on the galactic Community m Master Diplomat is of course slightly better for you it grants plus 20% diplomatic weight two envoys and 50 trust cap you can only get this if you have an official with the Ambassador veteran class these bonuses though are really not worth a destiny trait the official that you send to the galactic Community will already give you plus 10% diplomatic weight per level so an extra 20% here is like getting two free levels on that leader brilliant shipright gives you a 100% chance for voidcraft research options plus 33% voidcraft research speed and plus 33% ship build speed if you are attempting to rush down Mega engineering this is slightly better I'd probably push it up to the B tier but overall these bonuses are generally quite minimal the ship build speed you can get lots of that from other factors you don't need this trait this is one of the statistician scientist veteran class Destiny traits and honestly there are better traits you can and should pick if you have a statistician on the council driven educator is again a statistician class trait it grants plus 25% leader experience gain this is a good healthy bonus though often it comes far too late by the time you're getting lots of Destiny traits on your Council you've generally ascended you've generally got long leader lifespans and your leaders are basically almost at maximum level if that's not the case if you somehow managed to rush just one one leader I don't know how that's possible but if you have done that then this probably is closer to B tier though still there are good bonuses you're missing out on Peacekeeper gives you five stability Empire wide plus 35% piracy suppression minus 20 crime and unfortunately plus 40% pacifist ethics attraction now you can combat that pacifist ethics attraction by doubling down on governing attraction modifiers or if you are already pacifist this is not a problem whatsoever that plus five stability is quite nice to get across your Empire it's an additional 3% resources from jobs or 3% extra trade value on all of your planets the crime reduction as well is good that probably saves you needing one inforcer on all of your world so you're getting increased pop efficiency this is now the be tier we're starting to get to Destiny traits that are close to a Civic or an Ascension perk they're getting really really good Herald of the empire is basically a better version of Master Diplomat but it's only available if your leader follows the authoritarian ethic you'll get plus 20% diplomatic weight plus one monthly influence just straight up and plus one subjects exempt from divided patronage you can combine that bonus with other effects like that from the Ascension perk shared Destiny to get many many vessels without a loyalty penalty if you're not interested in the galactic community and you don't have any vassels though this of course is a garbage trait gray Eminence is the only advisor Destiny trait that you can find it grants - 10% Empire size effect not Empire size plus 50% governing ethics attraction and minus 5% happiness that happiness debuff is a little painful but it should kind of work itself out with the governing ethics attraction bonus so you have more Pops following your governing ethics and thus in your governing ethics factions overall increasing their happiness just a bit on average across the Empire gravitas just straight up gives you plus 40% diplomatic weight this makes it better in terms of getting Galactic Community votes through than Master Diplomat but maybe it's just the authoritarian in me but I prefer Herald of the Empire Mutual support is the other delegate Destiny trait that you can get other than gravitas it gives you plus one favor and plus five trust whenever a ported resolution passes with the proposing Empire this is pretty close to a tradition pick in terms of power and if you want to push your weight around in the galactic Community getting lots and lots of favors with lots and lots of Empires is an easier way to do it than just trying to have the most diplomatic weight architect of war is a commander strategist veteran class trait it grants you plus 15% sublight speed 30% military ship build speed 10% void voidcraft research speed and 25% more chance for voidcraft options that sublight speed bonus is nice but honestly I wouldn't recommend this over the other better Destiny traits you can get as a commander we're up in the a TI here now generally traits here are above if I get the option to take them I will take them of course we only get three different picks at our disposal so you're not always guaranteed to get great Destiny traits on your leaders perceptive mentor does not help you get better Destiny traits but it will help you with leveling up all of your leaders in your Empire this trait when placed on the council gives plus one additional leader trait options for all leaders this is also a generic Destiny trait that can be rolled by any leader getting this one on your Council first is probably best later on when you've already leveled up most of your leaders it becomes much less powerful but it's still very good for leader specialization military overseer gives you plus two maximum influence from power projection plus 25% military ship build speed and plus 500 ship starting experience getting two of these on the council or pairing it with other traits and bonuses for additional ship starting experience means you can start your ships at 1,000 experience putting them up basically to level three already giving you lots of fantastic bonuses on all of your ships the additional influence from from power projection is pretty nice as well esteemed quartermaster has a very simple effect plus two Naval capacity per Soldier and plus one defense Army per Soldier pairing this with the technology you can get eight Naval capacity out per Soldier base that is of course further Modified by any bonuses you have to Naval capacity this can allow you to field very large mid to late game fleets and be able to take on 10 and 25 times crisis Empires with a smaller economy grabbing this and unyielding is also good you're going to be getting more Unity output because each of those defensive armies will be granting some Unity great researcher is again a very simple trait you get a flat plus 10% to research speed this is in effect equivalent to an entire Ascension perk it is awesome if I see this I'm going to take it and put it on my Council and get more research at very very high Empire size and if you already have lots and lots of bonuses to research speed let's say you've got two or 3,000 Empire size Empire size reductions will of course be more effective than this bonus from great researcher but at lower Empire sizes and at lower Empire research speed bonuses let's say you're already at 60% and I don't know 400 Empire size this is much more effective we're now up to the S tier there's only one Des counselor trait that deserves to be here and that is genius armor hands down the best trait in the game what does it do for every genius armor on your counil every single ship you control will get plus 100 Shield hit points plus 100 armor hit points and plus 20% shield and armor hardening that will also stack so if you have three of these you're getting 300 shield and armor hit points and 60% sense shield and armor hardening on every ship this negates the effect of penetrating weapons like fightercraft missiles and bypass weapons like focused Arch emitters or disruptors it is awesome on top of that if you want to run some sort of Corvette swarm you can get lots and lots of additional shield and armor hit points on those ships one important thing to note here you do need to make sure you have at least one Shield module on all of your ships otherwise you won't get any Shield regen from this train if you don't put Shield modules on your ships once they lose their Shield hit points they will never regain them and if you're enjoying this video please lead that like button we're now going to go all the way back down to the F tier and rank each of the non- counselor Destiny traits these are all still powerful but I'm going to be comparing them to each other and not to the counselor Destiny traits I hope that makes sense to everyone if you're un sure what I mean write a comment down below I or some other helpful commenter on YouTube will try and explain what I'm talking about first up in the F tier we have urbanist now this is a governor trait that will affect either the sector or the planet you on on the planet you're on it reduces Empire size from districts by 75% and reduces building and District upkeep by 50% this is of course hared for all other planets if you're on the sector capital and this bonus will go out to them at - 37.2% and- 25% a piece Empire size from districts is the lowest form of Empire size that you're going to get so reducing it is really inconsequential the main bonus here really is that building and District upkeep reducing the amount of strategic resources you need to spend on your higher level buildings zenom mediator is only available if you are a xenophile you'll get plus 2% happiness per species on the planet if you're governing that planet and plus 2% amenities per species on the planet again if you are governing it the sector bonuses are half what we previously mentioned this is really only good if you're playing a xenophile Empire with Xeno compatibility and you're trying to get as many species as you can on one single planet if you can get you know 10 20 30 species then it's all right getting a bonus to amenities and happiness at the maximum level can push your stability up to a total of plus 30 stability if you get to 100% happiness though it is quite easy to get to maximum happiness or maximum stability through other methods which generally makes this trait entirely useless if it were adding pop growth I think it would be an entirely different conversation we would be having Grand Taskmaster is a commissioner Destiny trait granting plus 500 Army starting experience and plus two energy minerals and food for all soldiers on the planet these bonuses are hared and rolled out to everything else in the sector as well getting meager amounts of energy minerals and food from your soldiers is honestly not worth it as is getting 500 Army starting experience this is nothing compared to genius armor chain breaker is only available to egalitarian focused leaders and grants plus 100% Army morale that's it yeah don't take it honored warm is a xenophile leader trait it gives you plus one soldier per 10 population and that also scales out at half the effect to every other planet in your sector getting just one additional Soldier per 10 pops is nice but it's not very many soldiers at all even at say 100 pops on a planet you're looking at 10 additional Soldier jobs I'd rather build an additional habitat and use the building slots there to get that many Soldier jobs than wasting an entire Destiny trait on this academic recruiter is quite a strange trait it's only available for materialists and it requires you are a commissioner Commander you'll get plus 10% engineering research from Jobs Plus One engineering research from soldiers plus four Naval capacity from researchers and plus one alloy upkeep from those same researchers however as a commander and as a commissioner at level 8 you're giving at least- 16% research output from jobs on this planet and if you're a higher level even bigger reductions you don't want Commissioners governing research world so I'm really confused by this trait vibrant Storyteller increases your anomaly research speed by 25% and grants 300 experience for all scientists in your Empire whenever you complete an anomaly the issue here is it takes you so long to get this it is a destiny trait that invariably you will already have researched all of the anomalies Available to You by the time you can take this making it entir worthless Zeno cataloger gives you 50% sublight speed 50% survey speed and 15% anomaly Discovery chance just like that previous trait we looked at though by the time you unlock this you'll have finished all of your surveying and all of your anomalies so it's kind of completely useless last up in the F tier we have Frontier Adventurer this grants plus one monthly minor artifacts plus 25% sublight speed plus 25% survey speed and and plus 15 chance to evade that monthly minor artifact income is dismal and why would you at this point need additional sublight and Survey speed on your science vessel when you've pretty much surveyed the whole galaxy already we're up now to the C tier items here are a bit more usable than those in the F first up we have Elite benefactor granting 50% ruler resource output and 15% ruler political power on the planet this leader is governing of course those are effects are hared and passed out to the sector as well the rule of political power is good that's going to give your factions more Unity income and probably boost your happiness and thus stability on your planets but the ruler resource output is basically trash that's generally just giving you a little bit of extra Unity galvanizer increases a planet's Happiness by 10% and increases Unity from employed pops by 0.5 that's not very much the happiness bonus is nice we're looking there at an addition 6% stability meaning about 3 and 1 half 4% resources from jobs it's good but it's only one planet every other planet in the sector gets half that bonus Supreme Warrior increases your army damage by 33% your morale damage by 66% and reduces your Collateral Damage by 33% the main reason this is up here in the C tier and not down below in the B tier is that by reducing Army collateral damage we will kill fewer pops when invading a planet and that means we're getting more bang for our buck when we conquer other worlds detail oriented reduces our archaeology excavation speed by 15% and gives you 15 monthly Society research and five monthly minor artifacts while this leader is Excavating archaeological sites this is somewhat more useful than the survey traits you could actually use this to get some decent artifacts and Society research but leaving some of your archaeological sites for a little later and finding new ones throughout the game up now in the B TI our first Port of Call is utopian idealists this grants plus 20% happiness 25% pop growth from immigration and 10% immigration pull those immigration bonuses if you aren't running an immigration Focus build probably don't mean anything to you but that 20% happiness will convert into basically around 7% additional resources from job of course if your planet is already at maximum happiness this is useless but most of the time it will be very very good resilient Commander grants 25% additional ship Hull points and 2% daily Hull regeneration that daily Hull regeneration in combat is so dismal you can kind of ignore it outside of combat it will be nice meaning that you don't really have to bring your fleets home though if you've got lots of armor yeah you'll still need to bring your fleets home there are very few ways of increasing your base ship Hull points so if you're suffering a lot from penetrating weapons this trait will help you gorilla tactician gives you two extra disengagement opportunities plus 10 evasion minus 50% time spent missing an action and unfortunately minus 25% Fleet command limit if you cloak with this you'll also get plus two cloaking strength The increased disengagement opportunities and the reduction to time spent missing an action can be very helpful for keeping one of your fleets in the fight for a little bit longer reducing the amount of new ships you have to build after each engagement and if you lose the engagement or you're attempting to attack and run away attack and run away the reduction to time spent missing an action will help planetary analyst is a scientist Destiny trait that I'm honestly not sure is still possible to get in the game though it does still actually exist in the code it grants you half a point of basic research for technicians Miners and Farmers once you filled up your planet with researchers you might also want to make use of the basic resource districts they have on them so this can help boost the planet's research yet further if you've done that up here in the a tier we basically only have Admiral Destiny traits they are very very potent though master gunner grants you plus 30% ships weapons range plus 30% tracking and plus 30% accuracy this basically means with other tracking bonuses you can stack a fleet filled with artillery type weapons will still be able to shred high evasion ships getting extra weapons range really does make this an artillery Commander wet dream Shield of the Empire is always useful no matter which Fleet you place it on you'll get 45% additional evasion in Friendly systems a massive 45% ship fire rate in Friendly systems and plus three 00 Shield hit points in all friendly systems this is particularly great if you're trying to boost your diplomatic weight in the galactic community and you've taken the supremacist policy this will bloat the military power of your ships and make them better at giving you diplomatic weight they also do shoot much much better if you're defending yourself Fortress cracker is weirdly speced into only General veteran leaders you'll get 30% additional ships weapon damage which which is awesome plus 50% damage versus Star bases which is a nice bonus to have and then plus 40% Army damage and 100% collateral Army damage the main reason I take this though is for that extra ships weapons damage and damage versus Star bases up now in the S tier most of these traits are going to help you massively with your economy shroud teacher gives you a whopping 25% additional resources from ptic Pops on the planet you are governing on any other planet in in the sector you'll get 12 1 12% resources from psionic Pops every 10 years a pop will also gain the latent psionic trade that's nice but the bonus to Resource output here is massive ruthless developer is only available to authoritarians you'll get 50% additional worker pop resource output and 50% additional slave pop resource output basically making this equivalent to all of the basic resource edicts you'll also reduce the pop upkeep by 35% on the planet you do suffer some reduced pop growth speed and happiness though but really I would take that in favor of the massive bonuses here you are getting to your workers and your slaves I'm pretty sure clar minda one of the Renown Paragons starts with this trait bot Lord is only available to materialist Empires you'll get 20% mechanical pop assembly speed 20% more robot output and minus 20% robotic pop amend usage that will stack with the minus 50% they usually already have making their amenities usage near zero if you synthetically ascend this is crazy you should definitely try and get this on as many leaders as you can last but by no means least here we have truth Seekers this is basically a better version of shroud preacher but it is available to all ethics you do have to be an analyst scientist and then you'll get 20 5% additional resources from psionic Pops 20% more amenities from jobs and 50% extra spiritualist ethics attraction that wraps up all of the destiny traits we're now going to move on to veteran leader traits these are available from level five to level 10 of course excluding your destiny trait at level eight this first batch we're looking through is only the counselor veteran traits these are generally though more powerful than the basic veteran trait you can get for your leaders because they will affect your entire Empire first up in the F we have consult General this gives you 25% 50% and then at the maximum level 100% onvoy improve relation speed this basically means at the max level each of your envoys count as two envoys for improving relations yeah let's move on Frontier Spirit increases your Colony development speed and reduces your Colony ship build cost at the highest level you'll also get plus one population on every New Colony the main reason this isn't that great is getting to that high level comes quite a bit later in the game when you've mostly set up pretty much all of your colonies Xeno linguist increases your trust cap it doesn't give you trust faster and it doesn't allow you to build trust without packs it just maximizes the amount of trust you can have thus possibly increasing your maximum relation with another Empire cartographer increases your your terraforming speed by 10 25 and 33% don't waste a trait pick on this just turn on the Exotic gases terraforming edict that's just much better expeditionist increases your clear blocker speed so you'll be able to clear blockers just a little bit quicker Oh yay from the ranks increases your army experience gain and army morale and it is a trait that only strategists on the count can take there are much better traits for your Admirals on the council don't waste it on this recruiter increases your army build speed and reduces your army cost maybe you stack two or three of these and get minus 60% Army cost you're saving yourself you know a few extra minerals yeah I suppose I really struggle to find a purpose or or an economic reason for the Army Focus traits most of the time entrepreneur increases your commercial packed efficiency now this is basically going to be granting at the maximum level 25% additional commercial pack efficiency taking your commercial pack value from 10% of your trade value up to 12 and a half% that's such a minor increase that even if you are playing with a trade focused Empire don't bother with this go with a better trait I suppose you will have some solace in knowing that any leader with this trait com comes from the entrepreneurial region of France otherwise they'd just be a sparkling businessman expansionist is a weird trait that your scientists can get for the council reducing your Outpost cost by 5 7 and a half and finally 10% generally you're not really suffering from building lots and lots of outposts that's not a crippling cost your Empire faces regularly so pick a better trait the psionic expertise is now the worst expertise in the game you'll get a small amount of additional research speed for psionic Technologies and by the way there's basically no psionic Technologies and a massive increase in your chance of rolling psionics the only reason we would want this would be to roll the psionic theory technology but now the developers have changed the game and we can use an agenda to automatically unlock that technology this trait is very rarely needed and basically becomes dead weight the expertise Ario studies is also similarly dead weight you will get a reduction to your minor artifact cost on your ships but that's so minor if you're pardon the pun that it doesn't really allow you to splurge out on minor artifact components for all of your Navy the bonus you get to research speed here is also terrible when you compare it to the bonus you are probably already getting from the archol lab Improvement we're now up to the C tier for these veteran counselor traits first is overseer this grants you monthly loyalty in every every single subject at the maximum level you're going to get 0.5 additional monthly loyalty that's not very much but if you stack this two or three times across a couple of different leaders it can help you quite a bit it's almost equivalent to one Ascension perk Shady contact at first only increases your code breaking then encryption and at the maximum level both code breaking and encryption this is good if you want to do some intelligence operations and if you want to prevent other factions being able to do operations on you or being able to build up an Intel Network the actual operations as you might know from previous comments in this T list aren't that great but Intel can be very very useful all knowing increases your speed of Intel gain this means that as you research Technologies as you unlock new abilities to increase your base Intel level you will actually get faster into so you will be able to know what the enemy has where their ships are positioned what is on their ships faster than if you didn't have this trait opportunist gives you a monthly chance to gain a favor from improving relations at the maximum level you get 1% monthly chance to gain a favor from improving relations now this does stack with other modifiers that do the same thing for example the tradition so if you want to get lots and lots of favors and you have quite a few envoys this is a nice trait to pick you could improve relations in a lot of places of strategic importance for instance on the galactic Council and acquire many many favors this way charma reduces your diplomatic agreement influence upkeep at the highest level you're going to get minus 15% diplomatic agreement influence upkeep reduction stacking two or three of these together can give you quite a nice reduction if you're playing a very diplomatically focused game if you have lots of defensive packs lots of guarantees lots of research agreements or commercial packs this trait can be very very useful on the other hand if you don't have those things if you're not playing a diplomatic game definitely steer clear of the charmer trait Entourage increases your maximum available envoys at first by one then two and at level three you get three additional envoys envoys are useful for improving relations harming relations or building a spy network if you commit them to a lifestyle of espionage more envoys allows you to do more of this it's not amazing to have the extra because you do have lots and lots of different ways already of getting more envoys but if you're running a bit short grabbing this on one leader is all right Intimidator is a commander trait that can increase your influence gain you'll get increased maximum influence available from power projection this is nowhere near as good as a trait that just gives you straight up influence we'll be looking at that one a little bit bit later because you do have to jump through more Hoops in order to gain access to this influence it is not actual influence it is giving you it is just giving you the option of getting extra influence Border guard increases your Starbase platform build speed your Star based damage and your Starbase Hull points this is not as good as increasing your defense platform hold points or damage and if you're trying to build up fortified structures having many many defense platforms will be the way to go therefore it will be more important to increase the damage output and defensive capabilities of those platforms not the star base Guardian does basically what I just mentioned the previous trait should do you get defense platform damage and defense platform hold points but at the maximum level here you're only getting plus 20% of each if you're running a turtling strategy if you're building lots of Defense platforms this is definitely a tier but for most games it's quite comfortably down here in the C tier last up here we have four Society research expertises biology military Theory new worlds and statecraft all of these increase the chance of rolling whichever the specific named category is in your Society research and grants you additional research speed however because Society research is the weakest of the three research trees these expertises are not the best to put on your leaders we're now up to the B tier for these veteran counselor traits first in the B tier we have unified Focus this is going to Grant you additional Unity from Jobs Plus 25% extra at the maximum level you can get lots and lots of different bonuses to increase your Unity from jobs output so when we take all of those other bonuses you probably already have into account that 25% effectively is more like a a 10% increase overall in your Unity output from those Unity jobs it also doesn't affect any other sources of unity like factions or anything like that is only jobs that are being worked making it quite a bit weaker than other traits that increase your monthly Unity deep connections is just a better version of Intimidator you're going to get flat monthly influence from this trait at the maximum level plus one monthly influence you don't have to build ships you don't need power projection you'll just get influence for free well of course you do have to pick the trait and you'll be able to use that influence however you want blabber mouth increases your base Intel level by at the top level plus 20 that's quite a large increase to base Intel level if we could stack this with two other Leaders with the same trait you should be able to very very easily have a full read on all military positions and all military layouts all ship layouts of every single nation in the Galaxy that can be very very useful for planning your attack and defense fortifier increases your star base H points your defense platform H points and somewhat more importantly reduces your defense platform build cost and star base upgrade cost this means if you're going to play defensively you're going to be able to build lots and lots more platforms especially if you stack this trait and other similar bonuses for the same economic investment even if you're not rushing into platforms getting reductions in Starbase upgrade cost will help you save Alloys to spend on more important things like ships and mega structures military Pioneer very similarly to fortifier reduces your star base upgrade cost which is very very useful it also increases your ship build speed that's fine it's not a negative thing to have that but it is generally pretty mediocre you can get lots of other ship build speed bonuses without needing this tra archist increases your scientist experience gain and increases your archaeological skill of all leaders in the Empire this is at the top level plus 25% additional scientist experience gain which is equivalent to an entire Ascension perk next we have two expertise traits that boost your engineering research resarch materials and also propulsion these are some of the weaker engineering research options Honestly though they can be useful early on in the game if you want to rush down some economic paths or push your ship speed up really really high last here we have two expertise from the physics research tree physics is generally the second most powerful of the three research trees Computing and field manipulation are good there are lots of good research options in this category however some of the best research options disruptors some of the Weaponry Tech is locked behind a different type particles and this this is not particles we're now up to the AER for counselor veteran traits first up here we have investor that increases your trade value on every single planet in your Empire first by 10 then 15 and finally at level three 25% getting three or four of these in your Empire will grant you 75 or 100% additional trade value on every planet if you're running a trade focused Empire this is amazing but even if you are not it's still very very good architectural sense reduces your building and District cost your building and District upkeep at the maximum level and your planetary build speed these are of course empire-wide bonuses and stack with with other similar reductions to building and District cost and increases to planetary build speed building your buildings and districts cheaper and faster will allow your economy to grow quicker and at a lower cost reformer is basically a better version of unified Focus you're going to get five 10 and then at the maximum level 15% monthly Unity that is going to be better than Unity from jobs because it not only affects your Unity from jobs it also affects Unity from other sources as well and this is a modifier that affects your Unity output after you've calculated all of those resource output bonuses so it is a multiplicative modifier in some sense though it will stack additively with other monthly Unity output bonuses if that wasn't enough you'll also get a massive increase to your governing ethics attraction which means that if you can get more Pops in your governing factions you should be able to make them happier and get higher happiness and higher Unity output Empire wide spiteful is a bit of an interesting one it's going to increase your damage to Rivals and you'll also gain some base Unity output per rivalry combining this with enity is honestly hilarious and if you can get two or three of these things on your Council you'll basically be able to get around you know 25 30% additional damage output against every single rival that is really quite a good bonus research exchange boosts your research sharing from agreements this means if you are in a research agreement and you are researching a technology that the other person in the research agreement already has you will get more than just a 25% boost to your research output at the maximum level here you'll get plus 25% additional research sharing meaning that instead of 25% as a research speed bonus you will go up to 32.25 that's really quite a nice bonus last here in the a here we have the three expertise traits that we haven't looked at so far industry voidcraft and particles or particles if you want to call it that industry is great that's going to give you lots of technologies that are going to boost your alloy production and mineral production voidcraft is very important for getting bigger ships and also unlocking Mega structures and part parles is very good for not just getting better weapons most of the physics weapons are in particles but also for getting improved hyperdrives you're looking at jump drives gateways all of those good good things at reactors are locked behind particles we're now all the way at the top in the S ti4 veteran counselor traits Gil speed is the first trait we're looking at here then so this is going to increase your sublight speed at the maximum level by 15% this not only gives you a tack iCal but a strategic advantage in Stellaris Armada logistician reduces your docked ship upkeep by at the maximum level 10% and increases your Naval capacity by 7 and 1 half% stacking a couple of these and making sure to get a crew Quarters on your star docks can reduce your Naval upkeep while docked by 50 60 even 70% when we take other modifiers into account furthermore increasing that Naval capacity will let you field more ships with a smaller economy Navy instructor gives you a boost to Naval capacity 20 30 and then at the top level 60 and some increased ship starting experience at the maximum level here you'll get 200 additional ship starting experience which means your sips will start at at least level one combining this with other bonuses we can probably relatively comfortably reach 1,000 ship starting experience meaning they will start at a very tasty level two higher level ships have increased to damage output increased H points they're just overall better on the surface hom guard might not seem very useful when you get the level one trait level one just gives you plus one planetary defense armies but as you level this bad boy up it offers you something rather tantalizing at the maximum level you get minus 20% orbital bombardment damage and plus two planetary defense armies on every single planet in your Empire stacking together this trait a shield generator and either the unyielding or adaptable Traditions along with the Fortress planetary designation and you can max out the orbital bombardment damage reductions you have in your Empire at that sweet 98% meaning your planets will last absolutely the longest compared to anyone else's in the Galaxy when you are defending hyperfocus increases your research speed by 3 6 and 9% a secret additional bonus it has that it doesn't really tell you about is that it increases your chance for rare research options you should definitely grab this trait on every single statistician researcher you put on your Council the research speed is great and the increased chance for rare Tech is even better last up here we have Inquisitor this one honestly you don't really need to grab Beyond level one level one gives you plus 1% research speed and plus one research Alternatives the main bonus here is that plus one research Alternatives allowing you to pick the technology you want with greater efficiency at higher levels that research speed bonus increases to two and then 4% but honestly it's better to go with hyperfocus level three and just grab Inquisitor level one we're now going to rank the last of the counselor traits with the basic counselor traits these are available from level one to level three these are the traits you get yet before you specialize Your Leader with a veteran class Army veteran increases your army build speed and increases your defense Army damage which is not terrible it also reduces your army cost by 25% while these modifiers are all right honestly there are just such better modifiers you can place on your officials in this basic category that I would really not recommend picking a leader with the Army veteran trait unless you can help it ship increas es your ship build speed and that's it yeah it doesn't do anything else 5% at level 1 10% at level two whoopy do spycraft is the basic trait version of Shadow broker you're going to get increased infiltration speed and reduced operations cost from this if you have it on the council it does have the same issues as spycraft of course and that is the fact that operations are generally pretty crappy mining Rush grants you a very very small bonus to your mineral output Empire wide you will get at the maximum level plus 7 1 half% minerals from jobs and at level one just 2 and a half% this bonus is all right right at the start of the game but very quickly becomes entirely irrelevant as you stack up three 20% bonuses from Technologies bonuses from stability bonuses from other sources that 72% gets squeezed out until eventually it's really only worth 2 and 1/2 to 5% of the overall increase defense minister increases your defense platform damage by 15% and defense platform H points by 10% it's right here next to those other veteran class traits that basically do the exact same thing if you want to play a super Turtle strategy this is definitely a tier you could stack it with the other traits we've looked at previously but most of the time I would not recommend doing that static defenses are generally more expensive and less powerful than a mobile Fleet especially if you want to use that Fleet to attack something if for talent is a relatively simple trait that pretty much all leaders can pick up you'll get 5% empire-wide leader experience gain at level one and 10% at level two this is a nice bonus to have I wouldn't not take it but there are some better options available you can get more leader experience gain in other ways for example if you take the statecraft tradition every time you finish one of your agendas you'll get a massive XP boost for all leaders on the council we're up now to the a tier for these basic counselor traits first up in the a tier we have retired Fleet officer now it's no longer giving you massive reductions to ship build cost instead you will get plus 200 ship starting experience at the maximum level and plus 20% ship build speed if we can stack enough of these bonuses to get to to 1,000 ship starting experience All Ships In Your Empire will have an additional 20% damage output and 10% hold points before any other modifiers are taken into account that is an awesome bonus to grab even just one of these at level one will give you level one ships Empire wide giving you an extra 10% ships weapons damage for every ship in your Fleet upon building principled boosts your stability by a small amount by itself this is that impressive plus two stability at level one plus four stability at level two however if you can stack two or three of these on the council and get them to level two you're looking at an additional 12 stability output which is very very nice that's 7.2% additional output from jobs Empire wide Charisma is most useful early on in the game especially right at the start though that reduction to edict upkeep can be good if you can stack enough of these similar bonuses you get 10% reduction to edict upkeep and plus 35 edict fund at level two this means you can run obviously more edicts as your Empire size increases though you'll find that edict fund bonus is very useless however the edict upkeep reduction is always useful no matter which point you are at in the game logistic understanding lovingly referred to as the Box trait by the PVP Community reduces your dock ship upkeep by 10% and your army upkeep by 15% at the maximum level again this is only docked ship so if you are not docked at a star base you will not be getting this bonus however it will allow you to have a larger Fleet in being and that means you will have greater military power of course you can't fight for too long if you're relying on many of these logistic understanding traits to supply and equip your ship in terms of energy and Alloys but it is still a really good bonus to have hostility gives you a more bonus to your ships weapons damage honestly level one here is the best bang for your buck you'll get 5% additional ships weapons damage and some more army damage then at level two you only get 7 and a half% ships weapons damage and like 15% Army damage but honestly who cares that jump up from level one to two it's probably not worth the 2 and a half% for an entire trait pick I'd probably just go with hostility level one when I get the choice up in the S now for basic counselor traits and there are a whole host of traits that are absolutely fantastic to get across your Empire first amongst those we have politician granting 5% and then at level two 10% additional Council agenda speed this is awesome stacking a couple of these grabbing statecraft can mean you can level up your counselors so much faster than regular leaders in your Empire and if that wasn't enough the bonuses you get from Council agendas are awesome you want to be running as as many of those as you can champion of the people increases your happiness by 3% and then at the top level 7 and 1 12% Empire wide this is an awesome awesome bonus a couple of these on the council and you're looking at an extra 15% happiness which is basically equivalent to about 10% additional stability so 6% more resources from jobs Empire wide honestly this is just awesome fertility preacher increases your pop growth speed by three and then 5% it also increases your food output from jobs if your Empire uses food but we we don't need to worry about that the main bonus here is you're getting an awesome bonus to your pop growth speed this is good for guest out Empires as well as it grants mechanical pop assembly if your main species is machine or robotic very very cool the reason this is so good is that pops are the backbone of your economic base in Stellaris the more Pops you have the bigger an economy you can have meaning the larger your fleets the more research the more of everything you can do skirmisher is kind of a better version of hostility you will get 2 and a half% and then 5% ships weapons damage at the maximum level and also a massive 10% followed by 15% increase to your sublight speed at the highest level this trait is equivalent to Gil speed but it also gives you 5% more weapons damage simply simply wow wow feedback loop is only available for Gest out Consciousness Empires but you really want to get two three even four of these on your Gest out Council if you can honestly I forget the name of what it's called but what does it do well at the top level you're going to get two stability and more importantly three amenities on every planet for every one of these traits so if you have three of these traits that's n additional amenities which is the equivalent of two maintenance drones this massively increases the pop efficiency of gashed out Empires you should always take as many of these as you possibly can over pretty much any other trait Fleet organizer is very very simple it grants a percentage increase to your Naval capacity 5% at level one 15% at level two that is almost equivalent to parts of the supremacy tradition that Grant 20% Naval capacity and you can stack this multiple times on your Council last but by absolutely no means least up here in the S tier we have spark of Genius this gives you 3% and then 6% additional research speed for your Empire on top of that it has a hidden bonus that it increases the chance for rare research options increasing your research speed is great if you're going to grab a scientist for the council make sure you recruit a scientist which already has this spark of Genius trait we finished up up in the S tier it's time to jump back down again to the F tier we're now going to be looking at veteran traits that have not got counselor abilities these traits will not affect your entire Empire just the leader and whichever Planet they might be governing whichever Fleet they might be commanding or whichever science vessel they are on first up down in the F here we have adventurous spirit this is going to reduce your leader upkeep only if this leader is not on the council at the top level you'll get minus 25% leader upkeep and a plus 10% leader experience game that is a very small increase in your total amount of unity at level 10 you're looking here at getting five entire Unity from three trait points here we have all of the various different Focus traits for the galactic Community these apply to different categories for example the Divinity of Life category or the mutual defense category you'll get get additional voting strength whenever voting on resolutions focused into that one category and if that category passes you get an increased chance of gaining a favor with the proposing Empire however for this trait to take effect the leader must be a delegate and not only be a delegate but be on the galactic Council there's a whole host of these honestly they kind of suck you only can get a couple of them specialized and you'll get a minor bonus to your voting strength in the specialized chains if there's something you're not able to put through you're very unlikely to actually roll the correct trait to push that one through if you're trying to do for example the greater good which often the galactic Community does not want to pass I think this entire selection do need something of a rework camaraderie increases your monthly Federation experience at the top level at level three you'll get plus one additional experience if this leader is sent out to your Federation that means at the maximum level this three-pointer trait can shave off a very small amount of time in getting to the highest level of your Federation but overall it's just not very good the archotech focus allows one of your Admirals to get at the maximum level plus 35% additional archotech weapon damage and 35% more archotech weapon fire rate the big problem here with the archotech weapons is that generally speaking you can never produce enough minor artifacts to equip your entire fleet with them and thus specializing into a weapon that most ships won't have is not going to be very beneficial you'd much rather have plus 25% weapons damage to a specific weapons category like with the guidance system Focus for explosive weapons dreaded increases your General's Army morale damage by at the top level plus 50% this is all right but uh it's really not that great you don't need to increase your army morale damage often you want to kill the enemy demoralizing them can be good unless they have absolutely no morale because they are for example robotic heavy hitter is going to be boosting your army damage at the top level by plus 30% when generals are employed in armies they have very high chances actually of dying so putting your generals on armies or putting your commanders on armies is a good way to get them killed 30% Army damage will kill the enemy faster but you still have a high chance of losing that leader martinet is going to reduce crime on lots of planets not by very much though you can only really get this on your commissioner Focus Commander but honestly the crime reduction is is is kind of okay yeah oh Warden will increase the planetary defense armies for that planet and if you're a sector Governor other planets out there in the same sector this can give you a small boost to Unity and make your planets slightly more defensive iple but overall the number of armies you're going to get is very very small conscription agent increases your army build speed by 20% at the maximum level and gives you plus 100 Army starting experience again at that maximum level these are not bonuses you really need to concern yourselves with or even try and attain Observer is a trait that I can't tell is just a weird Legacy trait that we cannot access anymore or actually if we can still roll it I've not managed to roll it but let's just check out what it does momentarily planed Governors will get plus three sensor range plus 4 ship hyperlane detection range and minus 25% hyper jump charge time that hyper jump charge time of planets seems really confusing uh though getting a tiny bit of extra sensor range on one planet is definitely not worth three points of a trait absolutely not evasiveness increases your scientist's disengagement opportunities by two you get a 100% combat disengagement chance and 100% more ship Hull points you should not be letting your scientists especially your very valuable scientists be sent off into the Frontiers to explore unknown systems and die at the hands of leviathans this trait is not necessary don't take it tuna again is going to benefit your scientist's science ship you'll get at the top level plus 50% additional sublight speed while this could in theory help with surveying you generally don't need lots of additional sublight speed on a single science ship I wouldn't recommend taking this we're now up to the C tier some of these traits can be reasonable though mostly you probably don't want them naturalist is going to give you at the maximum level plus six Unity from naturally occurring tile blockers most of the time you do want to clear these tile blockers in order to get additional districts so this is going to give you a small amount of unity early on and later on quite a lot less it also only affects the planet and or sector that this official is governing distri distribution manager at the top level is going to reduce your metallurgist and Artisan upkeep by 20% though it also has this effect scaling at half the values for other planets in the sector whilst it's nice to reduce these upkeeps by ascending your ACC humanopolis World wherever you've got your metallurgist output you could already get to very high numbers of upkeep reduction this additional small percentage is generally not worth it I'd much rather take traits that are going to boost my metallurgist output rather than reduce its upkeep grea reduces your Federation cohesion malice on joining by up the top level minus 15% this effect only works if the delegate is actually representing you in your Federation getting a reduction to cohesion loss can be quite useful if you're expanding your Federation rapidly for example if you have a hegemony or you bring in lots of new subjects as you conquer them that will reduce the amount of possible experience you're losing and allow you to get your Federation leveled up quicker quicker in fact normally than camaraderie and this of course though is only if you're doing lots of federation expansion Peacemaker is quite similar to greeta though this one will reduce your cohesion ethics penalty meaning you don't need to stack as many leader levels into your Federation to maintain maximum cohesion given that we can get up to plus 10 cohesion per leader that is in the Federation based on their level I generally don't struggle with getting cohesion maintained at the maximum level so this is all right but not great Annihilator is going to Grant you additional orbital bombardment damage at the top level you'll get 175% additional orbital bombardment damage and also an extra sneaky 5% ship's weapons damage normally you don't need these additional orbital bombardment damage bonuses and they don't stack with the orbital bombardment damage reduction that any Planet will have if they have the maximum 98% you're still going to struggle even with this plus 175% what you need then is ground armies for an invasion Demolisher simply increases your damage versus Star bases if you're finding star bases tricky to handle I have concerns if you really really need this I guess to crack one star base it might be worth it to grab it once but it has to go on a general class Commander meaning you can't get other bonuses to ship's weapons damage for other things it's basically locking you into just a bit of extra damage against the star base Scout is a fun little trait that a veteran Admiral can pick up you'll get some additional sublight speed up to 25% plus four ship highlane detection range and it will reduce your time spent missing an action by up to 25% the sublight speed is the nicest bonus here but sometimes it can actually be quite a hindrance if one of your fleets is significantly faster than the other fleets you may find that they get ahead and end up killing themselves on the enemy fleets because they will engage so much earlier speaking of scouting I Scout a secret call out in the sea tier well done for watching this video it's been a monster so far all the way through to this point you've made it to the secret call out I'd love to hear from you down in the comments below let me know that you've heard this also try to use the word scout in your reply let's just have a bit of fun with this interrogator grants you at the top level plus 30 Intel on enemy Empires per Invasion that you win this means if you invade three planets you'll go up to basically the maximum Intel on another Empire that can be very useful though generally you want the Intel before you start the fight rather than in the middle of the war you might be noticing something of a theme here with the commander General traits they're all really low down in this tier list hardiness is granting you at the top level plus 45% additional Army Health this is probably one of the best army traits you can grab it means your armies will stick around longer and you will need fewer armies in order to invade a planet though overall it's still not that great I'd rather set my commander to be an admiral and massively buff one of my fleets than buff an army you generally have to win the space battle before you can even start a ground Invasion excavator increases the archaeological skill of a leader by at the top level plus three this allows you to complete dig site slightly faster you might not want to pair this though with the other bonuses you can get that give you more for example minor artifacts whilst the dig site is ongoing it can be good it can be bad it's generally one of the least valuable scholar traits in my opinion and that's mainly because dig sites can never be failed you're only as I mentioned going to complete them a bit faster welcome now to the B tier 4 non-council of Veteran traits Refinery focused can be very useful if you need to boost your strategic resource output however as you are limited by the number of building slots on your planets when it comes to the number of strategic resource jobs you can have this isn't a very efficient role to take at the maximum level you'll get 35% additional chemist gas refiner and transluc output but you cannot take this and also take Forge focused or industrial focused very much limiting what this Governor is capable of doing geology expert is available if you have a governor focused veteran class like industrialist it grants at the maximum level Plus one minerals from minor jobs on the planet this Governor is based and half that rate to other planets in the area this is definitely very useful if you want to boost your mineral output it's basically the best trait for doing that as any other modifiers you have for example that from your leader level will add on to this one additional minerals so for example if you're getting plus 50% output to minerals this one mineral is really 1.5 per minor joint exercise will increase your Federation Naval capacity contribution this is only ever useful at low Naval capacities if you have a very high Naval capacity you'll already be contributing more Naval capacity from your Empire than possibly the Federation can take at the maximum as federations can only have 200 400 or 600 Naval capacity which is based on the Federation law gunship focus is an admiral trait taking this precludes the option of having artillery Focus carrier Focus or guidance system Focus this will boost at the top level your small slot weapons damage in fire rate by 25% and your medium slot weapons damage and fire rate by 15% this is really good if you have a disruptor equipped Fleet that will always be full of medium and small slot weapons though as artillery does become more prevalent in the late game in terms of its Effectiveness the power of gunship Focus really does level out later on surgical bombardment is an excellent trait if you want to take over a planet and leave the population intact you will get at the top level plus 50% orbital bombardment damage and a massive minus 75% orbital bombardment pop damage meaning your strategic space bombardment will not be targeting the population as much and you will keep many more Pops alive after you win the invasion of course by forcing them to surrender rather than putting boots on the ground Crusader will provide you with a small amount of unity per enemy ship killed or if this lead is a general a Unity per enemy Army kill at the top level you actually get some very nice bonuses as well with this plus 15% Fleet damage to Rivals plus 10% Army damage and plus 25% Army morale that additional Fleet damage to Rivals can be very very useful reinforcer reduces the orbital bombardment damage that you take on your planet and also increases its defense Army damage the best part of this is at level two and three this leader will also if they are a governor add an FTL inhibitor to the planet they are stationed on this basically provides you with a mobile FTL inhibitor that also comes with some pre-baked orbital damage reduction very very good if you need to defend a system quickly if you've kind of been caught with your pants down agriculture focus is only available to Commissioners that is a type of Commander that is best at governing planets and it will grant you at the top level plus 45% additional food from jobs on that planet planet and to other planets in the sector plus 222% if this leader is the sector governor and those other planets of course don't have any Governors unless you're running something like catalytic processing food is pretty useless this trait can help you to minimize the number of farmers you need or if you are running catalytic processing allow you to support a larger alloy economy antiquarian gives you an increased chance to discover minor artifacts when you complete an archaeological site if you are looking to stop up on minor artifacts getting this trait on the scientists you will use for Archaeology is very very important though generally you know you're only getting at the top end here plus 15% so if you don't have it it's not that big a deal though it is a good bonus to have we're now up to the age here for those veteran non- counselor traits first up we have settler this one is very very good in terms of your pop amenities efficiency it grants the lowest level plus 10 amenities on the planet your govern is based and plus four housing that's pretty much equivalent to two luxury housing districts so grabbing this at level five can be very very useful at the top end you'll get plus 20 amenities and plus 10 housing which is basically equivalent to a city district and a couple of Entertainer pops very very nice industrial focused is simply going to boost your consumer goods from jobs by 35% put this on a consumer goods focused eumops and basically laugh as you make more consumer goods than you'll ever need commanding presence is kind of a weird one what you're going to get from this is increased Fleet command limit on the fleet this Admiral is placed with now at the top level you'll get plus 80 Fleet command limit allowing you to field a much bigger Fleet and thus give many more bonuses that this admiral has to more ships however by taking this you won't be able to spend two or three points depending on how far you Speck into it on additional traits so this Admiral is slightly weaker than other Admirals that don't have it it's very much a fian bargain Ship Breaker is going to allow you to field bigger fleets why is that well this trait gives you plus three then plus eight Alloys as you level it up per enemy ship you destroy so if you destroy 100 enemy ships you can build a nice shiny n cruiser with all of the bells and whistles search out enemy Corvette swarms for maximum effect additionally at level three this trait also grants you plus 15% armor hardening which is very very good that's going to stop enemy bypass weapons crippling your Fleet carrier focus is mutually exclusive with artillery Focus guidance system focus and gunship focus at the top level you'll get 25% additional strike craft damage strikecraft fire rate and ship engagement range that engagement range means your strike craft will deploy earlier and therefore start shooting at the enemy ships earlier somewhat tempering any artillery dominance but it's still probably not as good as going for dedicated artillery ships jewelry riger is a very odd trait it's mutually exclusive with the record trait which you might see in a moment it grants you additional ship HP restored to one of your ships per enemy ship destroyed at maximum level you'll get 25% HP restored on one random ship in your Fleet for every enemy ship you destroy it also reduces the chance of spawning debris to absolutely nothing and at the maximum level gives you 10% additional ship hold points if you can manage to get an admiral with this trait on a leviathan that is sometimes possible sometimes not depending on which patch we're in in the game then you're going to find that Leviathan can pretty much never die as long as you don't take on large ships mine focused and Generator focused are two commissioner traits that is a commander trait that will grant you an additional at the top level plus 45% energy from jobs and plus 45% minerals from jobs these are excellent traits to put on your leaders if you're trying to put a commissioner down to stimulate worker resource output you can get some really silly numbers by combining these bonuses with the other bonuses a commissioner has and edicts and Technologies prospector increases the chance to increase a resource deposit size when you finish a survey this of course is only useful if there are still systems out there in the galaxy that you have not surveyed yet that can be a challenge though if you're playing on very large Galaxy sizes with smaller numbers of Empires you should still be able to manage it by the time you can take this trait if you can use it it is fantastic especially with that new fangled kilo structure we're going to be getting very soon The Arc furnace salvager is only available to scholar class scientists it will give you quite interesting bonuses so you'll get some additional sublight speed on the scientist which is Honestly by the buy however at the top level you will get a 30% chance to Sal ships when finishing debris projects this means you don't need to take these Salvage of Civic or change your policy in order to get both research and new ships Rift Walker simply increases your astral Rift skill why is this better though than excavator well astral Rifts unlike archaeology sites can be failed you should have as high a level as possible in order to get the outcomes that you want so increasing your astral Rift skills for scholar scientists that are going out there and doing the astral Rifts for you is imperative last up but by no means least in this tier we have Society Focus this focus is of course mutually exclusive with the other focuses that focus on the other research categories try saying that 10 times faster it will grant you at the top level plus 15% Society research from jobs sector-wide and 30% on the planet you are governing that sector-wide bonus of course as ever only applies if you are governing the sector capital and there are no other Governors on those other planets because Society research is generally the weakest of the Three Trees this is slightly weaker than the other two focuses you might be unsurprised to see up here in the S tier we've got Forge Focus that one grants you a whopping 35% additional Alloys from jobs on the planet you are governing if you have an ACC humanopolis world you must have a governor with this trait to maximize your alloy output there it is really really important in order to get those silly late game numbers assembler can only be taken by your officials and it will grant you at the top level plus 40% mechanical pop assembly speed every month that is crazy if you're a hive mind this switches out to being plus 40% biological assembly speed so that's also really really good efficient staffer again is only available to officials this one at the maximum level grants you 15% worker resource output 10% specialist resource output and 5% ruler pop resource output that 10% specialist resource output is probably the best part of this and it's very very helpful there are very few ways of raising your specialist resource pop output in the game so grabbing this trait can be useful it's going to help your scientists your metallurgists your consumer goods production your Unity production everything will be helped by this trait every single leader in the game that has a governor focused veteran class can roll the manufacturer trait this will grant you and I'm I'm terrified to say how much this is at the top level plus 40 amenities on the planet you are governing that is equivalent to four entertainers you're going to be getting an extra four pops worth of efficiency in terms of amenities output on your planets four extra pops for one trait is awesome this also pushes out to the other planets in the sector at plus 20 amenities which is two additional pops worth of amenities on every single World wow reer is going to increase your ship's weapons damage starting at a 10% bonus and by level three granting 25% additional ship's weapons damage it does reduce your debris spawn chance but only by 50% so you'll still get some debris spawning but just at half the rate as previously that 25% additional ship's weapons damage though is almost certainly worth it artillerist is very very useful if you have artillery weapons on your ships that have very low tracking like for example kinetic artillery you'll get 15% ship's weapons damage at the maximum level and an additional 10% tracking and 7% more accuracy this means you are more likely to hit and your opponent's evasion will be more effectively countered this is awesome material Liberator grants you some energy credits per enemy ship destroyed and if you can get this bad boy up to level three you'll also reduce the ship upkeep of the entire fleet by 20% if you have five Admirals with this trait you can field an additional Fleet for free artillery Focus like the other focuses is mutually exclusive with carrier guidance system and gunship at the top level you'll get a whopping 35% additional artillery weapon damage and possibly more importantly 35% more ship's weapons range that weapons range means you'll start firing before the enemy hopefully you can get one two maybe even three salvos in before they are even in range and able to fire back against crisis factions especially large multiplicative crisis factions with a 10 or 25 times bonus this is essential for keeping your ships alive and neutralizing the enemy fleets guidance Focus increases your explosive weapons damage and your explosives weapons fire rate of course as ever this is mutually exclusive with artillery carrier and gunship Focus this is a great way to increase the damage output of your ships especially if you're running only missiles there are quite a few builds that are very very powerful and only use missile Weaponry on your ships so this can be a very very effective focus last up here we have basically all of the traits available to analyst veteran classes yes other than Society Focus which is arguably still s tier if Society research were better any pick that is specific to the analyst veteran class is amazing collaborator first off grants you 10% additional research from all jobs at level three there are very few ways of boosting your research output from jobs now in Stellaris so if you can get your hands on these traits you really should engineering focus and physics Focus both provide 30% additional physics and Engineering output from your jobs this is going to help you with both researching physics and engine enging technology as you can probably imagine it's a massive bonus to get as well though don't forget these focuses are mutually exclusive with all of the others we've now come to the last set of traits that need to be ranked welcome to the F tier for basic non- counselor common leader traits these are traits that all of your leaders will be starting off with these are the kind of traits you will get when you're recruiting level one two and three leaders first up here you'll notice my crusade against Farmers is never ending no matter how good catalytic gets agrarian upbringing at level two will grant you 10% additional food from jobs 20% on the planet you are governing that's really not usually worth two points even if you have catalytic processing you probably should spend these picks on other better traits you can get at these early levels enlist is only available to commanders it will grant you plus 10% Army build speed and minus 10% Army cost and plus one soldier jobs for the entire sector these effects are of course doubled for the planet Your Leader is governing though it's still not that great a bonus Homesteader is basically a better version of agrarian upbringing it grants you slightly fewer food from Farmers Only plus 10% but you also get plus4 farmer jobs on your home planet that is very very useful if you actually want to boost your food production because those jobs do not take any building or District slots righteous reduces the crime on your planets at the sector Capital at level one you're going to get- 25 and at level two minus 50 this can reduce the number of enforces you need in your Empire and if you are having a slight crime problem so around year 10 to 20 when you might start needing one enforcer on your Capital getting one extra pop working can be quite useful because of course they will no longer need to work that enforcer J you're getting their crime reduction from your leader instead environmental engineer reduces your clear blocker cost and increases your clear blocker speed at max level you'll get 30% reduction in cost and 30% increase in speed generally you only need one leader with this at level two to get the best bonuses possible move that leader to whichever Planet you want to clear the blockers On Queue up the clear blockers that will be paying the cost then and then move the leader somewhere else this way you can minimize your clear blocker cost and still get the bonuses you want on the worlds you want intuition is a scientist trait that at max level grants plus 25% anomaly research speed you can never fail anomalies anymore so it's probably better to get more anomalies with something like perfectionist we'll cover that a bit later than increasing the speed at which you complete your anomalies I would recommend waiting for your leaders to level up and also waiting for your science production to increase before you actually start completing those early game anomalies that you find anyway Roma increases your survey speed by at level two plus 20% this means you will be able to survey slightly quicker though you know you can get other bonuses that do pretty much the same thing and don't cost you two trait picks custom AI assistant is basically a mix of intuition and roma though at a lower rate that's why it sat here in exactly the same tier as the other two resilience is the first TR we're going to look at here in the B tier for basic non- counselor traits and it's very very simple at level one you'll get 10 years of additional leader lifespan and at level two you'll get 20 years of additional leader lifespan this is very very good if you have a leader that you want to keep around for a long time it can keep those leaders in the game just about long enough to get the extra traits Traditions or ascensions you need to keep them from dying however you are missing out on two trait picks for other things that could have spent those points on so your leader that lives longer will be slightly worse adaptionist boost your leader experience game 10% at level 1 20% at level two this means the leader will level up faster and allow you to unlock veteran classes sooner making them kind of more powerful though of course just like resilience you're missing out on other powerful picks at this stage that would help boost the leader energy Mogul and private mines are the energy and mineral equivalents of homesteaders you'll get bonuses to energy output and mineral output and on the leader home World new jobs those jobs are going to be helpful if you don't want to build more districts or can't build more districts but do want to increase your output on some planets engineer is a commander trait that grants you a very meager daily Hull and armor regeneration bonus on the fleet you put this on this bonus is so small that it definitely will never help you in combat though it does mean you won't need to go home to repair simply wait 200 days and your Fleet will be at full health butcher increases your army damage and somewhat scarily Army collateral damage this trait is useful if you want to basically kill off another Empire simply through invading and you're not really planning on winning the war use this on an army which is invading a highly populated world to really thin the herd archaeologist is a trait available only to scientists and it increases their archaeology excavation speed you don't want to pair this with the Ascension perk that grants you free minor artifacts while an archaeology site is ongoing though it is really really good if you want to finish your archaeology sites quicker for example if you're trying to rush the Clone Army origin archaeology site to get to clone ascended or clone descended just a little bit quicker anyone can grab the architectural interest trait it's going to give you at level two plus 20% to building and District build speed and minus 20% to building and District upkeep cost this can be very useful for getting a world up and running just that much faster planer theorist is only available to scientists and it has kind of two different functions if you put this on a regular leader and then not on the council you'll get plus 20% astral Rift exploration speed if they are on the council you'll get a very tidy plus 20% particles research speed otherwise known as particles for those without a Greek education we're now up into the age here we've only got this tier and the S tier left and ladies and gentlemen we have completed the leader tier list I am terrified right let's start off gifted this grants you plus one additional leader tradeit options and at level two plus two additional leader trade options probably level one is enough though both are very good by the time you get to your veteran class for unlocking the best possible traits it of course has no effect on your destiny trait unlock but it is still very good for those level four and higher trait picks entrepreneur will boost your consumer goods output from Artisans by 10% at the max level and give you two more Artisan jobs on your home planet this can be very very useful if you want to get a few more Artisan jobs up but you don't want to specialize a planet in it or waste time on Industrial districts or The Artisan building celebrity at level two gives you a flat plus six amenities that's basically a luxury residence for free you'll also get plus two culture worker jobs on your home Planet culture workers are very good at producing not just Unity but the other bonuses that are associated with your ethics Trader is a trait available to officials that at level two gives 25% additional trade value on your planet even if you aren't trade focused this can be a nice boost in terms of additional energy credits carefulness is probably the best basic trait available to your generals it gives you plus 15% Army disengagement chance and minus 35% Army collateral damage meaning you will kill fewer pops and Destroy fewer buildings during an invasion if you put this on a fleet you'll also get minus 15% orbital bombardment pop damage meaning you kill fewer pops while bombarding a planet that Army disengagement chance bonus allows you to cheese planets a little more easily you can invade again and again while keeping a fleet in orbit and keep retreating as you lose just a couple of armies and most of them have disengaged from the combat whilst your opponent consistently is losing almost everything Iron Fists gives you a planetary bonus of plus 20% slave pop resource output it only exists if you allow slavery and it can only be taken by commanders but 20% extra resources from slaves is very very nice ladies and gentlemen welcome to the S tier for basic non-count traits if you have stuck with me through this marathon of a video I salute you if you've jump Jump Ahead to the end naughty naughty do yourself in right now so the commissar can come and give you a word let's check out what is up here at the very end of this long long tier list first up we have eagerness this at level two grants minus 50% leader cost so the leader is much cheaper to recruit minus 10% leader upkeep and plus 10% leader experience gain at either level one or level two this does not use any leader capacity until your leader hits level four so this allows you to get an additional leader in your Empire and put them out possibly as a governor which level up quite slowly to get some bonuses and not use up any additional leader capacity if you are at your maximum capacity Scrapper gives you two metallurgists on this Leader's home planet and a nice 10% Alloys for metallurgist jobs pair this with the industrialist leader type that has the forge focus and you'll be getting a minimum at let's say level seven of plus 49 % additional alloy output on the world that leader is employed actually when we factor in the specialist bonus there we're looking at 59% additional alloy output unifier is one of the only traits at least at low level that grants additional Unity from jobs at level two you'll get 5% additional Unity from jobs per level that this leader is it is very good to put this on your Governors or find Governors with this trait in order to boost the unity output of every planet in that sector aggressiveness is the basic Admiral trait you should look for when trying to recruit a commander Admiral you'll get at level 2 5% additional ship fire rate and 5% additional ship weapons damage it's really really nice though it is mutually exclusive with Prudence speak of the devil Prudence gives you 15% ships weapons range at level one and 20% additional ships weapons range at level two you'll also get more combat disengagement chance keeping this Fleet alive for slightly longer over protracted engagements that additional weapons range is very good for artillery ships but actually it's good for every single ship class you will be firing and getting an additional strike in basically before the enemy unyielding gives you quite a nice bonus to ship Hull Points Plus 20% at level two though it does reduce your combat disengagement chance reducing it by minus 20% the level two perk actually has a lower combat disengagement chance than the level one so if you take this make sure to upgrade it to level two trickster is basically the inverse of unyielding at level two you'll get plus 40% combat disengagement chance minus 20% emergency FTL damage risk meaning if you hit that emergency FTL button fewer ships will die and plus one cloaking strength the additional combat disengagement chance should enable your fleets to survive longer through multiple engagements it is very very good the last trait we'll look at in this tier list is the perfectionist trait this is available only to scientists and it grants you increased anomaly Discovery chance a level two plus 15% anomaly Discovery chance meaning you'll get more anomalies and thus more bonuses such as science and other things than other Empires this is the best trait to put early in the game on your science ships that are going out and surveying this isn't great to put on your scientists that are going to be on the council but if a scientist will not be on the council give them perfectionist or try and find one that has perfectionist I'd like to take a moment to thank my wonderful editor for putting up with me throughout this process you have been amazing I'd also like to thank the wonderful audience members that have actually stuck around and watched this gargantuan video I know many people have been asking for a leader tier list for a long time I got very close uh actually once I got about 70% of the way through the recording and editing portion of it but we ended up scrapping the video in its entirety when all of the leader traits changed I think there was 3.9 to 3.10 I have been assured that in 3.12 most of the traits I'm covering here are not undergoing major changes so this leader tier list should be good for at least another patch or two your leaders traits have a massive impact on your empire particularly the counselor traits but which Council positions should we pair up our leaders with if you'd like to find out more about councelor positions and hear me rank them in a tier list click the video on screen now

Channel: Montu Plays

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Keywords: Stellaris, stellaris gameplay, montu plays, montu plays stellaris, stellaris leader traits tier list, stellaris tier list, stellaris leaders, stellaris leader traits, stellaris best leader traits, montu tier list, montu leaders, montu plays leaders, montu plays stellaris tier list

Id: ZfFL6IL7jbI

Length: 91min 25sec (5485 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2024