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[AlStar]

I suspect that this has already been asked, but I'll admit to laziness when it comes to a 333-page topic - please bear with me.

Anyway, like (I assume) many other people, I recently got this game because it was the headliner for this month's Humble Monthly. I note that the older DLC (Plantoids and Leviathans) are currently on sale. My question is: are any of the DLC considered to be "must-haves"? Or can I do just fine with just the base game?

[Majestic7]

Leviathans adds space monsters and enclaves. The first are exactly what sounds like. The second are remnants of ancient civilizations you can buy services from or raid for your greedy purposes. Sort of Fallen Empire -lite, just less dicks. Leviathans is not a necessity, just a fun addition giving more stuff to do during middle game.

Utopia adds stuff that makes the game feel more whole, so that is a bigger thing to get. If you've read pages here discussing ascension perks, megastructures and species rights - those are all utopia stuff.

[IWishIWereSarah]

And Plantoids is just a cosmetic DLC.


About Leviathans, I'm not sure how much it brings to the game. I got it in a pack when I came back for the 1.4 version, and I think the space monsters don't change much, but Enclaves are cool. Not game changing, but cool.


About Utopia, I think it's nearly necessary to have interesting games. It improves the mid-late game with Ascension Perks that let you change your species along one of the 3 paths (becoming sentient robots, genetically mutants, or telepathic Psionics) or using giant structures : simple Habitats orbiting planets that let you have hand-made planets with specific buildings, or more complex mega structures (Ringworlds like the one the fallen Empires have, Dyson Spheres to get a great Energy income, or others).
There were mods that added some mega structures before, but of course, most will get abandoned, while better mods will use the DLC (and I would recommend using some to balance the existing mega structures).

[Retropunch]

The Enclaves in the Leviathan DLC were much more useful before the last update, as you tended to have huge stockpiles of minerals and/or energy, and the enclaves allowed you to do something with that rather than just buy more ships. It's a bit better balanced now in that regard, so they're less useful but still interesting.

IIRC, it also added the 'War in Heaven' feature, which allows fallen empires to go to war with each other - that's pretty fun, but depends how much you enjoy 'game changing events'.

I'd recommend it if it's on a very heavy sale, just because Stellaris needs all the additional mechanics it can get, but it's definitely not needed to enjoy.

[Cruxador]

IIRC, it also added the 'War in Heaven' feature, which allows fallen empires to go to war with each other - that's pretty fun, but depends how much you enjoy 'game changing events'.

It's also super rare though. Don't buy the DLC just for this.

[Retropunch]

IIRC, it also added the 'War in Heaven' feature, which allows fallen empires to go to war with each other - that's pretty fun, but depends how much you enjoy 'game changing events'.

It's also super rare though. Don't buy the DLC just for this.

Agreed, it sounds a lot cooler than it is as well.

[Paul]

Did something in the latest patch reduce AI aggressiveness?

I started a new game with it and nobody in the whole galaxy is fighting. Hard difficulty, high aggressiveness. No wars anywhere. Even the fanatical purifier who started right next to me never attacked me, despite us being rivals for years and him having a superior fleet for most of the early years. I started as a xenophobic fanatic pacifist for an early game unity and core systems boost (which worked pretty well, 75 years in and I have genetic resequencing, and 22 planets fully populated and well developed), but I was expecting at least some war from my neighbors.

Now the galaxy has just stagnated. No empires ever got wiped out, nothing has really happened - just a bunch of little empires expanded out to the limits of their borders and just sitting there with 6-10 colonies each.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Yep. That is exactly what happened. The 1.6.1 beta patch fixes that. So if you don't have it already then I would grab it or wait until it comes out officially in several days.

[Wiles]

I really wish megastructures and the crises came earlier in the game. The game feels incredibly tedious by the time those things come around.

[Cruxador]

To elaborate on Paul's issue, what's happening is that the nations are focusing on development at first, which means that they're at peace, which means that pacifist attraction grows. So they end up with such an influential pacifist faction that they won't go to war even when it would otherwise make sense to.

[Descan]

nah, that'd make sense.

no the issue was the AI didn't calculate superiority correctly, so *everything* was considered "too stronk," even if it were an objectively weaker empire, so they never went to war. That just increased pacifism attaction as a side effect. the pacifism faction and faction switching was more-or-less working correctly, though the devs did lower the strength anyway.

[Paul]

Yeah now that I got the beta update suddenly empires are falling left and right as the empires gobble each other up.

Those poor bird people are now being purged by the fanatic purifiers. Took like two days for them to declare war and about a month before they had conquered them, lol.

Will have to make a new game to get a real challenge since the empires all stagnated while I grew, but it's an interesting exercise in what would happen if you had a 75 year armistice at the beginning of the game lol...

I had to abandon that colony I had settled next to the FE. Their 90k fleet swooped in and rather than try to beat it with my 40k fleet and leave myself vulnerable to the fanatic purifiers next door I decided to just give into their demands, which was just to demolish the colony (and kill my ruler, who was like 105 anyway).

[Il Palazzo]

And here I thought, probably like most people who got Stellaris off the Humble Monthly, that I was too good for the game to handle.

[Ultimuh]

Apparently, there is a beta out for the next version. Which seem to focus on multiplayer.
Also, the beta seem to have a very peculiar arthropoid portrait.
I know exactly what sort of empire I shall make with it.

edit: Can't seem to get the image right (link too long). But its on the same page in the Paradox Forum link I posted.

[Cruxador]

My first reaction is "who cares?" Paradox games suck for multi-player anyway. I guess they're trying to change that, but the fundamental problem is more that they take ages and are played in real time so people have to be on for a long time at once. That can't be changed without making it a totally different kind of game, so why not be satisfied with single player gameplay?