Sid Meier's Starships Guide: How to Pick the Right Leader

Selecting the right Leader to use in Sid Meier’s Starships is not always an easy process. They’ll shape how your fleet handles itself from the very start of your play-through to its inevitable (and hopefully victorious) end. Some of the eight available leaders provide you with a benefit right from the start while others assist the creation of your empire over time. The trick to a successful campaign often relies upon whether you took into account the special bonus given by your chosen leader and how you should play to properly use that unique boon.

So that’s why we are here. Sid Meier’s Starships may basically be 4X gameplay on a smaller scale but there’s still enough going on outside of the bombastic ship combat to warrant more than a simple click to kill mentality. You may not think winning the game simply through obtaining high levels of technology will ever work for you. Try it with a Leader specifically tuned to what you’ll need though and this soon becomes much more viable.

With each leader will be their in-game description, along with how this should be used and which victory they are going to be best able to achieve. Take note that it’s the Affinity which changes the basic design of your vessels, not who leads your fleet to its destiny.

Samatar Jama Barre

Samatar Jama Barre is a colonist of the highest order. His-25% to city cost means that cities will cost you less food, allowing your population to spike more quickly than that of other leaders. With Samatar, it’s always best to go flying out into the wilds with the express intention of settling as many cities as possible in order to boost your income and population percentage.

Playing as Samatar and using his bonus to give you greatest effect possible is a three step process. The first comes in flying around the map to constantly find new planets ripe for colonization. Since his passive boost means you’ll need as many cities as possible, make that there are Warp Gate improvements between every planet you’re colonizing, ensuring that you can get to them quickly should someone else encroach on your prospective planets. The third step requires that you place as many Aquifers as possible. These improvements will cost you metal but massively increase your food production, allowing even more cities to be built.

Without a doubt the victory type Samatar Jama Barre is most suited to in Sid Meier’s Starships is the Population victory. With the ease he has when creating new cities, it’s easy to catapult your population well ahead of your peers for a much lower cost and without the need for too much conflict.

Daoming Sochua

Daoming Sochua begins the game with two random tech upgrades. You’ve got no choice in what these are but you can be safe in the knowledge that they’ll boost the power of your fleet. There are nine different items of technology so if you select Daoming, be prepared to keep a close eye on which ones have been randomly given to you for easier crafting of your fleet.

Effectively using this boost can be done in one of two ways. You can either channel these upgrades to pull the technical capabilities of your fleet further into new heights, or keep them as a stepping stone towards high quantities of research. Supplementing these two tech upgrades is actually incredibly easy through the simple completion of missions. Many of them will offer you a free tech upgrade. Applying this to already research technologies can pull you leaps and bounds ahead of the opponent.

Daoming Sochua is well suited to Domination (or hostile takeover Population if you prefer) and Science victories. The first is obvious as the tech boosts mean that your fleet is better suited to combat. Achieving the second with this boost of two upgrades is made much easier. Research is expensive so getting two for free is a significant help to the future of this victory type. Help it along with plenty of Cryptolabs producing Science and you’ll be on your way to an easy victory in science.

Kavitha Thakur

Kavitha Thakur’s one extra city when beginning a new game isn’t exactly great to be honest. One city can easily be made right at the start of the game, probably upon the first planet you find and for less food than you actually start the game with. This means that she’s not so much a focused leader as she is one for anyone to use. She is the Jack of All Trades leader for Sid Meier’s Starships.

This extra city can however give players a boost whether they believe it or not. The additional production afforded by a city is never something to be sniffed at. It’ll grant you more resources no matter what line you and your fleet desire to pursue. It lends itself most to building a strong fleet early in the game, as your energy income is likely to be higher than opponents. Ratcheting this up with some additional Biofuel plants on your first planet is never a bad idea.

Chasing after any of the four victories is possible with Kavitha as she doesn’t really lend herself to any one in particular. Her population percentage is often slightly higher than most with an extra additional city, but that doesn’t mean its favorable to aim for this one rather than a Wonder victory or a Domination victory. As a quick tip should you be headed towards a win via Wonders, go with the Supremacy Affinity to really give yourself a boost in crossing the finish line as Kavitha.

Elodie

When your crew is looking a little low, Elodie is the one you turn to. Her +10% boost to Crew Morale allows fleets under Elodie’s command to engage in effective operations for longer than those of other Leaders. Keeping the morale high allows a fleet to engage in battles more effectively and do more per turn, giving Elodie an air of determination to her cause. She might not give any definitive benefit to players, but over the course of any game Elodie can show herself to be a worthwhile figure to have on your side.

With that being said though, her greatest asset can be almost completely replaced by a simple Wonder. As great as boosted morale for your crew is, the Naval Tradition Wonder almost completely nullifies the need for her boost. In order to properly use Elodie’s advantage over your foes, you have to make sure that your fleet is the key to any victory you are going to aim for. This increased morale is utterly fantastic for early-game influence gains as it means her fleets can spread across the galaxy easier than anyone else’s.

Elodie is suited especially well to a victory by Domination or Population. By using your fleet to quickly expand and take out any opposition before they can properly react, you can achieve some of the quickest wins of Sid Meier’s Starships without breaking a sweat. Should you get bogged down in a long game though, Elodie’s benefits are slowly chipped away by the sheer gravity of your enemies.

Vadim Petrovich Kozlov

Vadim Petrovich Kozlov is a master of metal, giving players a+25% jump to Metals Production. This means that when a planet is producing 400 of the tasty resources for most Leaders, Vadim is racking in a cool 500. Now okay we’ll grant you that, it doesn’t sound like much. When you look at it in the mid to late game where turn by turn you can expect to be raking in somewhere in the region of 5000 metals normally, his boost will net you well over 1000 extra to put to use.

And put it to use you should. Vadim’s bonus doesn’t just help you in producing metals though. Since Improvements are built almost totally through the use of this resource, Vadim is actually capable of boosting his materials overall to much higher levels than anyone else. This means you can produce more food, more science, or even more energy than any other Leader. Energy is used to upgrade your ships, so it’s incredibly worthwhile when going for a military-based victory. What about if you were to use that Metal for its best possible return. Well then you’d be making Wonders.

Wonders cost Metal, lots and lots of Metal. By creating a vast swathe of Autoplant Improvements, Vadim can easily produce enough metal to buy one or even two wonders per turn at later levels. He is a fast track to creating Wonders, making him the best possible option for this Victory goal. Use him with Supremacy to really hammer home the early Wonder win.

Hutama

If the idea of taking over the galaxy with crushingly intense good looks is your idea of a fun way to play Sid Meier’s Starships, then you need look no further than Hutama. Whenever his fleet visits a world, they will gain a bonus equal to the first visit. This is always a quick way to get your popularity on any world up to one bar. That might not sound like much, but since you’ll often be arriving at worlds and completing a mission to grant you another point of Influence, you’ll be starting off with two right out of the door.

Now that isn’t any different to other leaders, true. Where Hutama differs though is that he can then return to a world after visiting it once to get that same additional “pip” of influence again. Where other Leaders may have to make a handful of visits and throw improvements or cities around like psychopaths to gain influence, Hutama needs only to visit to boost his popularity. This makes him a great contender for quickly amassing a large amount of planets  and a surefire way to collect the Population Victory.

Other Leaders can build cities all they want, but when Hutama rolls into town their hard work often falls into his hands. Supplement his already insane ability with a strong fleet capable of taking on any mission with ease and you’ve got a Leader who can extent his hand across the stars better than anyone else.

Rejinaldo Bolivar

Rejinaldo Bolivar will appeal to all of the warmongers out there. This master commander of fleets starts with three starships where other leaders usually start with two. That means you’ve got more tactical options during combat and a significant advantage over your foes early in the game. Yes when you think about it this is only saving you 1000 Energy. When you look at it another way though, that’s 1000 Energy which can be invested into upgrading each vessel with fighter groups or improved shields rather than having to buy a third ship.

While this isn’t a long-standing benefit like those of Hutama or Samatur Jama Barre, it is a short-term opportunity to exert your increased strength upon your enemies without having to pay through the nose. Bolivar’s fleets often grow to be larger than those of other Leaders. Surely you can see where this is going.

If you want to win through taking over your enemy’s home worlds, then Rejinalo Bolivar is a fantastic choice. He will allow you to quickly assault the central government of any other empire and quickly get them into your collective. Of course later in this game this one additional starship isn’t exactly much. The key to winning in Sid Meier’s Starships comes from applying pressure from the greatest source you have. In the case of Bolivar, that pressure comes from pulling the trigger on your enemies before they can fight back.

Suzanne Fielding

There’s not a whole lot of fluidity among the Leaders of Sid Meier’s Starships. Their special abilities and talents are often quite focused on a single important factor. Suzanne Fielding represents a different way. Her ability to gain an extra 50 credits per city she owns per turn. In the early game, this is almost totally useless. Your collection of cities is tiny so an extra handful of credits aren’t going to be of much help.

Further down the line though, Suzanne Fielding’s unique ability can help you buy anything you need via the Market. As long as you prioritize the production of cities, the amount of credits you roll in will be high enough to buy whatever resources you might need to further cement the power of your federation. Buying resources with it makes sense in the short term. When looking down through the ages though, this isn’t the best use of your credits.

Suzanne Fielding’s bonus in Sid Meier’s Starships lends itself almost perfectly to Population Victory via the purchasing of Influence. Credits can be used to buy this Influence on new worlds. To create a larger empire, this Influence is going to be important when populating the galaxy with your people.