how to play stellaris determined exterminators

Stacking organics like this will make them last long and give you energy for longer. Go straight for the home world and depopulate it if you know you will have a hard time holding the territory, or establish it as your primary world for deporting organics to for processing.

When you are ready, you can quickly build up a navy and army and attack a neighbor before they are allied with anyone, or simply pick on whichever neighbor is most isolated diplomatically.

Just allow the space beyond your choke points to go unclaimed and serve as a buffer between you and other hostile species. I try to focus on establishing as few choke points in as tight a cluster as I can, and hold there. You are a total war empire, developing systems on your own is actually less efficient than taking them from someone in a war. I find one of the biggest mistakes with DEs is expanding too much in the beginning. Also that way you don't have to pay for the infrastructure you take over later anyways. If you stay relatively small in the beginning you have more time before other empires declare on you. So don't be too greedy for useless space. If you expand too far in the early stages it just means your borders touch other empires sooner. If you get dow'd use your fortified starbase to defeat incoming fleets with minimal losses and go on the offensive once the enemy is weakened. Build up your fleet to prepare your first campaign. Once you got the planets, focus on increasing your alloy output while keeping energy afloat (that was my only problem at the start of the game). Find and fortify your bottlenecks as fast as possible. Don't waste your alloys expanding into systems without useful ressources if they aren't on the way to more planets. The earlier you get things running, the better. Use the market aggressively to increase your alloys during the initial expansion.

Quickly scout and get all the planets near your start.

How to play stellaris determined exterminators