Stellaris: Galactic Paragons is the next expansion for my favourite space strategy game from Paradox Interactive and it's coming May 9th. This DLC will give deeper character and story progression allowing for more customisation of your leaders.
From the press release:
“There are endless stories to tell in the Stellaris universe. Breathing life into the stories of the leaders in the Galactic Council and your empires is a perfect showcase of the team’s commitment to expanding the ways our players can explore a vast and wondrous galaxy,” said Stephen Muray, Game Director for Stellaris. “Our players push us to bring Stellaris to new heights, and we'll be exploring the galaxy alongside them for years to come.”
Direct Link
Features:
- Unique Council Roles: Specialized roles and benefits are included in Galactic Paragons to expand upon the new Council Mechanics in Stellaris! Find dozens of unique council roles based on your civics and government types, and unlock additional positions as your empire evolves.
- New Dynamic Leaders: Recruit, improve, and follow the leaders of your empire through the ages! You may shape them by picking their traits, selecting their veteran class, and guide them towards their destiny, up until they retire - or perish!
- Meet Galactic Heroes: Attract paragons of renown to your council: unique leaders with their own art, events, and stories may join your empire and bring their own benefits to your government. Or, discover four Legendary Paragons with intricate event chains and unique mechanics!
- New Traditions, Civics, And More:
- A new “Under One Rule” Origin that tells the tale of the leader who founded your empire
- Eight new Civics focused on leadership, from immortalizing the personalities of leaders past in digital archives to heavily optimized council selection via corporate charter
- 12 new Veteran Classes
- Hundreds of new Leader Traits
- Two new Tradition Trees, giving players new edicts and improved leaders
- New ships, art, and story content
This will of course drop alongside the 3.8 update which I mentioned recently, that will include two co-op modes. You can get a lot more info on the co-op mode in their explainer forum post but essentially it comes down to these key points:
- Cooperative PvE allows players to join together as a single empire to take on enemy empires. This presents a great opportunity for players to teach their friends how to play the game or divide the responsibilities of empire management for a more relaxed gaming experience.
- Cooperative PvP allows groups of players to join opposing empires to fight against each other. Splitting up duties may reduce barriers to entry of competitive multiplayer by being less overwhelming. For more competitive players, empires can also be locked and require a password.
Stellaris is available from GOG, Humble Store and Steam.
This sounds pretty cool, I love the idea of picking leader traits. I've always felt like scientists, in particular, are in a weird place because they perform two completely separate functions (exploration and research), can get traits for both, yet those traits have zero overlap. So my best explorer scientist levels up and gets…Expertise: Fields, well whoop-de-doo, I'm not going to put her on research, but it's completely useless for exploration. Hopefully being able to pick traits and "Veteran class" will help stop that happening. And make leaders feel a bit more alive; the council mechanic reminds me a bit of Crusader Kings, though we'll see if we have to keep council members happy or not.
Hundreds of new leader traits and two entire new tradition trees also sound amazing. I'm glad to see traditions are finally getting to where they always should've been, more like EU IV's idea trees as additional ways to further reactively customize your empire during play. (I tried the Politics tree that was recently added for owners of the Federations DLC, and it is… *chef's kiss* for those who want to throw their weight around as soft power in the Galactic Council. Made my leader Galactic Empress for the first time. )
What is it at now? $300 or 1000 worth of DLC. I just can't justify the massive price of the complete package, I do have base game and a few dlc however (they were bundled)
The same as in every Paradox Game, so nobody can claim that this is a surprise. On the other hand: i bet you can still get much fun out of the base game and some few DLC. Till the next Bundle.
What is it at now? $300 or 1000 worth of DLC. I just can't justify the massive price of the complete package, I do have base game and a few dlc however (they were bundled)It's a la carte. Do most people go to a theatre to watch one movie, or buy a package to watch every movie that comes out? Very normal to just get what you want.
I'm most excited about the new co-op mode. It may sound simplistic, like the co-op mod for RimWorld, but it's still a good time. I can't imagine FIVE people managing the same empire, but 2 or maybe 3 should work well enough.
Not quite my sort of thing, but I'd love to watch a big organized event like that. I might be able to get my friend who hasn't played since before the FTL rework to ease back into it with the PvE version.
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