Your empire in Stellaris doesn’t want to stretch their resources and control too many star systems in the galaxies. If you control too many, your empire sprawl becomes too large, and it’ll take longer to research technologies, adopting new traditions, and edicts become more expensive. Expansion is important, but you need to increase your empire sprawl value if you want control more territory in a limited galaxy.

How to increase empire sprawl

There are several ways to increase and decrease the overall empire sprawl of your empire in Stellaris. When you begin the game, you normally begin with 50 empire sprawl. The number of districts, systems, colonies, and population number within your empire increases your overall sprawl. You lower the overall number by learning certain technologies, issuing policies, or picking certain traits for your species.

These are all of the ways you affect your empire sprawl.

  • Construction Templates technology: -25% from branch officesCourier Network: -25% from systems and coloniesDocile Species trait: -10% from populationsExtensible Software: -25% from systems and colonies Fanatic Pacifist ethic: -30% from populationsFinishing the Harmony tradition: -10% from populationsFinishing the Synchronicity tradition: -10% from populationsFortify the Border edict: +10 from systemsFranchising civic: -25% from branch officesGoverner skill level: -2% from populationsHigh bandwidth species trait: +10 from populationsLimited Autonomy: -25% from systems and coloniesModular Deposits tradition: -25% from districtsNutritional Plenitude edict: +10 from populationsOTA Updates civic: -20% from populationsPacifist ethic: -15% from populationsPrivate Prospectors civic: -33% from systemsPsionic Theory Technology: -10% from populationsStellar Culture Shock: -50% from populationsStreamlined Protocols species trait: -10% from populationsSubsumed Will civic: -20% from populationsThe Greater Good resolution: -10% from populationsUnruly species trait: +10 from populations

You can control your empire sprawl by playing with the jobs on your planets. You’ll want to focus on increasing the amount of scientist and researcher jobs on a planet to offset the negatives of having a higher empire sprawl. The same goes for administration jobs. Playing around with these jobs for your populations on the worlds you control and have colonized is important. During the earlier part of your Stellaris game, you want to focus on having more researchers, increasing the rate of the technology your empire is learning.