Stellaris

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

Wot this?

"Stellaris is the game where you start as Star Trek and end as Warhammer 40,000."

– Anon

As if creating Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria and Hearts of Iron wasn't enough, Paradox Interactive decided that space literally was the limit. They set out to make a 4X game set in the vast reaches of the cosmos. It's relevant to /tg/ because one can fit almost any sci-fi archetype. Do you want to play as the Imperium of Man and purge all the filthy xenos for the God-Emperor? You can do that. Do you want to play as the Federation, a noblebright union of alien species working together for the greater good? You can do that too. Do you want to buy out everything as a Megacorporation? You can do that too. Wanna just *nom* the entire galaxy as the Tyranids? You can do that too. Wanna make a haha-funny hive mind that names everything Steve and receives buffs from it somehow? You can do that too! A large selection of DLC and fan mods (including explicit 40k based mods) makes Stellaris an incredible sandbox for creating grand narratives of the rise and fall of interstellar empires. And as of today, the game has virtually *every* explored Sci-Fi or even political fiction possibility in unique mechanics and mindsets. But, you will pay for every DLC and you will love it.

On the downside, the cost of the paid DLC can be considered almost criminal. They also have a bad habit of completely reworking things, usually when a major paid DLC comes out. Since said reworks include major game mechanics, there are basically several versions of the same game, all with different gameplay. This can be a major turn-off if one gets attached to a particular iteration of the game; but we're not /v/, we didn't come for the gameplay but for the memes.

Setting and Timeline

The game starts in 2200, with a galaxy and several independent cultures. The game has three phases, adjustable in options: Early Game, Middle Game and Late Game, each with their own events. The win conditions used to be territorial, but now work around a score system and a timer; you win when the game is over and you have the best score.

There are two kinds of resources: Material and Abstract.

Tangible resources are: minerals for generic construction and processing, food, energy (as credits), alloys for military and high-tech construction, "Trade Units" (unless you are not a Hivemind or Machine Intelligence, e.g autonomous people's empire), biomass (if you are a hivemind or use biotechnology) and consumer goods. Each species has different needs for these resources as well -- organics need food, lithoids need minerals, robots need energy, cyborgs need a combination of those and so on. Then there are intangible resources like amenities (signifying ease of citizens's lives and infrastructural comforts) and unity (which is gained by cultural activities like joyous festivals or the holy slaughter of aliens). Tradable special resources are exotic gasses (super powerful space fuel), volatile motes (quasi fantastic space explosive), Zro dust (spice from Dune), "crystals" (lots of superstrong gems for lensing), Dark Matter, Living Metal (yup Necrodermis). Super rare resources are on the other hand, Nanites, "Astral Threads" (transdimensional keys into other universes, craftable or harvestable) and Precursor artefacts (which are gained from archaeological excavation sites and from a super rare extragalactic cluster). Instead of barbarians and natives, we have pre-FTL civilizations and space monsters, relics, ancient drones ready to be destroyed...or researched and even adapted to.

To simulate a Europa Universalis atmosphere, the game has obstacles and shenanigans of empires familiar to those from the medieval era of ancient Earth, it doesn't get any more anthropocentric than that.

In Early Game, empires expand and start their national quest-lines according to their natures. Minor space monsters will be encountered, making the player explore and research/kill them.

In Middle Game (if enabled), a few crises might happen to shake things up: a culture of hostile and bickering space-nomads somewhere in the galaxy will have an some orphan with protagonist disease aiming for greater things and uniting the tribes for galactic conquest with a dark start but noble goals in mind, Alexander the Great meets Attila. There might be an outbreak of space worms attacking others, small-scale outbreak of astral space demons, or nanite Gray Tempest.

In Late Game (if enabled), the galaxy gets an endgame crisis (one of many possibilities from several shout-outs to many settings) like Middle Game but it's an outsider who'll fuck everyone's shit on steroids, forcing everyone to contribute or see the whole gameboard wiped clean. Fallen Empires (younger than Precursors, older than the Early Game empires), can awaken in this phase and will be as friendly and helpful as Eldar and Necrons.

Nemesis (of course it costs you) also brought a Post Crisis Era for neckbeards. During a Middle Game or Late Game Crisis event (or technically any time if you've got the votes lined up, but it's hard to do without a crisis), the Galactic Community can declare a Galactic Custodian moment where one of the empires are given massive powers similar to a Roman Dictator (which, for Roman Empire noobs, was actually a fairly voluntary and democratic gamble) to lead the rest of the galaxy to war whatever is threatening them with an implicit promise to let go of the dictatorial powers. But, obviously, a player can say they're the Senate and declare a Galactic Imperium as freedom dies in thunderous applause and start dismantling all federations to bind to themself. And yes, a Rebel Alliance will happen. You can play the Star Wars Main Theme with your mouth now.

You can Found the Galactic Imperium multiple times in a game with the number iteration increasing each time until the 10th iteration, after which it becomes the Last (11th), Final (12th), Ultimate (13th), Truly Last (14th) and then Another Galactic Imperium (15th+). That is going to be a lot of rebels to deal with.

The Galaxy Crises are inevitable, but extremely nuanced and challenging. A single player game will be difficult to handle its crisis in Ironman mode, doubly so if the player is a Megacorp who usually profits by being buddies. They are as follows:

1. Prethoryn Swarm: Extra-galactic bug swarm who invades your galaxy to eat up everything and run away. Where did we see that before? Sucks if you start at the specific edge of the galaxy they will burst in from. If you capture a queen (need to be a psionic empire) and then defeat the swarm, after some time she starts telling your scientists that "they" are coming. The scientists take a look at the galaxy they came from... only to notice it missing from the cosmos itself.
2. Extradimensional Invaders: A bunch of not-Daemons who look like the Drej from that western cartoon Titan A.E invade from the Shroud. They create "anchor" structures that signal-boost their presence in the universe and open up portals to spawn new fleets in other systems, then start seeking out planets so they can psychically mind-rape the population to death and eat their souls. These guys are all shields and no hull, so pack shield penetrators and keep your ships long range; find their anchor(s), then the portal systems and destroy them. They may or may not be a species that pulled a Zroni and underwent some kind of psychic ascension.
3. The Contingency: The best storyline crisis along with extensive writing (because the extra parts of the plot need a DLC), basically the Reapers from Mass Effect, seasoned with a pinch of Skynet. Long time ago some ancient race made a fuckhuge computer at the edge of galaxy to prevent a Singularity. Per stereotype, the computer decides all organics need to be exterminated regularly, starting with its makers. When Late Game Trigger happens, every empire gets a "strange radio signal" simultaneously emanating everywhere across the galaxy. Robot units and ship AI's start going bad, and Robot populations start building makeshift ships and fuck off into the edge of the galaxy. If you are a robot empire, it's even more of a frying pan/fire situation to find the source and dampen the signal with an engineering project. And yes, those least harmed are the empires that outlawed all A.I and use biological labor whenever possible. When enough time passes, or the signal is muffled, random uninhabitable planets across the galaxy split open, revealing nearly endless robot armies and fleets with the entire planet being a gargantuan machine making them. These can spawn anywhere, including your undefended, trade-focused capital system. Bombard all four while fighting them off, and you get to find the final planet at the edge of the galaxy. Destroy that via orbital bombardment, and it's over.
4. End of the Cycle: Not a crisis per se but any psychic empire can decide to make a dark deal that results in the empire getting empowered by a spirit of excess for 50 years, going faster, harder and researching more (the bonuses being truly excessive compared to other sources)... yet there is a price to pay. After 50 years, the empire is destroyed - all planets (along with the vassal's planets) are converted to Shrouded worlds (i.e. permanently removing them from play) and the entire population's souls are devoured by a gigantic psychic monstrosity, supported by a host of lesser soul fleets, which will promptly begin rampaging across the galaxy and destroying everything they run across. All you are left with is a single colony, called the Exile, with just a few pops to start over with.... and an entire galaxy that now hates you for bringing about the end. In other words, new game plus with all the tech, minus a whole lot of planets and a universally hostile galaxy. Bring it on. No, there is no way to come back; All leaders and stockpiled resources are consumed, you have no shipyard and Exile's production is in the single digits on top debufs being applied to construction that last years. On top of it, the ETOC's Avatar is now traveling across the galaxy with it's power being the sum total of your entire empire while becoming even stronger with each enemy pop killed afterwards. It is also Jump Drive capable. It destroys each and every other Empire in the galaxy one by one with you being trapped on Exile with no way to escape or even fight back, until you are the last one left in a dead galaxy; only then does it finish the job. This isn't even the first time this has happened in this galaxy.
   1. Yeah, in multiplayer if someone was foolish enough to keep the ETOC enabled the fool who makes a compact becomes enemy number one. Especially in a nightmare scenario where an Awakened Empire forms a covenant...
   2. Sidenote: In a weird twist the EOTC's lore and theme lines up extremely well with The Dark King despite the EOTC predating The Dark King by about 6 years, a fun coincidence.
5. The Synth Queen: This one looks a little different. Cetana shows up being a nice girl who just wants what's best for everyone in the galaxy and starts out by taking down those pesky Fallen Empires who are mucking up the galaxy. Once she's done with that, she gets to work. She's just doing something to make the galaxy a better place, and she wants help from everyone in the galaxy, and will provide you with gifts if you help and murder the shit out of you if you piss her off. But there's also little hints around the galaxy about what's actually going on and why she looks like a goddess. And when you piece the truth together, it turns out that it's because she wants to end all suffering, and to do that, will eliminate all sentience galaxy-wide so nobody will ever suffer again. If her project completes, all sentience in the galaxy dies. Now, you can't make it into her defended systems until you complete the story, but once you can, go kill the colossus she's living in and all her bots are gonna just blow up for you.
6. Galactic Nemesis: The new Nemesis DLC, in all its buggy glory (the dubious honor now goes to the latest DLC kek) has brought a new crisis. Basically, the player can choose to be the endgame crisis faction after its third cultural tree completion. This "Menace" storyline is a revisit of the Zroni precursor storyline, making the player finish what the Zroni started, merging the Shroud with the realspace. Long story short, the player needs to amp up its empire's psychic power by committing wanton and often senseless acts of violence, genocide and conquest to fill the citizens' minds with visions of war and conquest (fun fact: pissing off the galactic United Nations by kicking kittens counts as menace points). Every 2000 Menace points gives the player a project, with the fifth and final one giving you a giant machine to shatter the galaxy, if you can spare an enormous amount of Dark Matter (140000!) which you'll harvest by blowing up stars with gigantic star eaters. Obviously once you reach the "Stage Five" menace the entire galaxy (including Fallen Empires!) will declare war on the player faction; to counter this you get tons of bonuses to combat and "menacing" spaceships resembling Ork Roks who don't need complicated alloys to build to bulk your fleets, letting you spend the alloys for fortifications and defense platforms which you'll have to erect to keep endless swarms of enemies at bay as you destroy the universe.
7. Cosmogenesis: The other player crisis. The Machine Age DLC adds yet another crisis for empires to delve into, named Cosmogenesis. Unlike Nemesis, where being horrible evil bastard is the play of the game, Cosmogenesis is more about callous indifference and theoretically noble causes. Where Nemesis dealt out cobbled together asteroid ships, Cosmogenesis will be dealing out only the finest of quality space craft. Also, unlike Nemesis, anyone can pick this one, so don't worry about your ethics. One of the main draws of this crisis however is the ability to research fallen empire technology and to become one yourself. That's right, this is basically a elaborate extension of your tech tree. Those sweet FE ships and buildings? All yours to research and build. No more RNG "reverse engineer arcane technology" for anyone unless you hate yourself. Now like all technologies in the tree, this takes time to research. A LONG time to research. Fortunately for those who have places to be, there are in fact short cuts. And one of those shortcuts is the Synaptic Lathe, a brand-new megastructure for you to build. Now you can use your best and brightest (or other empires best and brightest) as processing power to increase your research, at the cost of burning out your best and brightest like lightbulbs. Now like Nemesis, this crisis also has five levels of research and progress. Each level, you unlock more FE technologies to advance your civilization with. At level four however, you'll start to understand why fallen empire tech is described as "arcane". At level 4, you get to unlock a DANGEROUS technology known as "Applied Infinity Theses". What does that mean? Fucking reality warping. With such technology, you can now do things like mess with time to your liking, make lighter and sturdier alloys, and of course allow more FE developments. Now, things may not go as plan with these reality changes, and you may end up pissing off the neighbors a bit, but honestly who cares? Small drop in the mud in comparison to all the other things going on. Just a tiny bit of problematic reality distortion, that's all. So, since you are now able to make changes to reality on a galaxy wide scale, the next step is obviously to go even further with reality manipulation tech, right? Maybe go universal, turn the galaxy into a giant teacup? Wrong. Unfortunately for aspiring empires, reality is too stubborn and resilient. It is too old, too damaged by entropy, too needy, and too flawed. While you can make some changes, your empire will ultimately be limited in their capabilities. It would be like changing an aging needy elderly man who holds a double barrel on his lap and has a habit yelling at everyone to get off his lawn. Or a 8-year-old video game made by Paradox. So what is a go getter of an empire supposed to do about a set in its ways universe? Nothing, you get the hell out it, and go find a younger new universe that'll accept your reality edits and new concepts better. Luckily, any empire that has made it this far will have all tools (allowed by this reality) at their disposal. And potentially unfortunate to rest of the galaxy, this is where the crisis really starts to kick in (if they didn't already get steamrolled by FE tech earlier). In yet another comparison to nemesis, you'll be building yet another megastructure like the Aetherophasic Engine: The Horizon Needle. The Horizon Needle is an exquisitely fine advanced reality warping ship and mobile mega structure bult for the purpose of diving into a black hole to create and enter a new young universe with specifications of your empire's choosing. The ship has everything an empire needs for its exodus, including space for all pops it chooses to bring along. Should the exodus succeed, a new perfect universe will be created to the successful empire's specifications. A control group elects stay behind in the original universe and observe. And all is well, right? Not necessarily. While everything goes smoothly for those who went on the Needle to a new universe and the control group, everything goes pretty shitty for the rest of galaxy. Some explosions occur in the galaxy, but the main shitshow is the time warp that occurs after the horizon needle's dive. An eternity passes, the galaxy is in ruins, billions are dead. The territories of the aspiring empire lie barren, and their borders and shrunken to only their core sector. The control group that stayed behind had progressed beyond recognition. And that, kids, is how fallen empires are made. Now, if you are pretty sure you'll be left behind by the Cosmogenesis crisis empire and/or have other reasons for stopping the dive of the Horizon Needle, there is a vulnerability to the megastructure. It is a ship that is completely defenseless and needs to be carefully protected. So once you have it in a isolated spot, you'll have a clean shot to take it out.
8. Behemoth: You raise space Kaiju to fuck everyone's shit up, eat populations, entire planets and feed them and breed more of a fleet of super space Kaiju to fuck everyone's shit up. Imagine a swarm of FTL-capable, flying space Tarrasques on steroids that literally eat the galaxy in your name.
   • tl;dr: No, player, you are the Crisis.

Empires

What can tickle /tg/ and /v/ 's fancy is the remarkable variety in playable empires. You're not stuck with cultures that are balanced to the point of homogeneity, instead you have a 4X game where strategies for one type of culture could have no bearing what-so-ever on another. There are MANY categories of governments and species, and you can mix-and-match their attributes. The most outstanding divide is probably between the types of sentience your culture can have: Autonomous or Gestalt.

Autonomous Empires (Basically folks like us) have rulers, populations with jobs (or quasi-jobs like "slave" and "criminal"), and civic features determining the style of government and typical social methods and values. An different variant of Autonomous Empire is the Megacorporation/Criminal Syndicate/MegaChurch/Subversive Cult: a giant business corporation in shape of a government. Megacorps are penalized for growing too quickly, but get lots of income when allying with other empires. Building unique corporation structures helping the host empire giving jobs and non-money resources per franchise just like a support class in a RPG game, and debuffs to enemy empires per criminal building. A fast-food chain feeds the host country with new farmer jobs and gives cheap food to the Corporation stores, and Disneyland-expy Amusement Megaplexes instantly generate money for the Corporation and gives "Amenity" to host planet. Mercenary Office provides both sides with cheaper and better soldiers, Private Military Industries gives the host clerk jobs and the corporation military alloys and so on. Criminal Empires can secretly build galactic meth labs, seedy nightclubs and stolen ship-breaking workshops weakening the unwilling host empire and enriching itself.

Gestalt-Consciousness Empires don't have individual citizens, so things like "government" or "society" are, well, alien to them. Corporations can't go win-win, on the upside, criminal enterprises can't sell meth to your drones.

• Hivemind: drones following drones like synapse carriers toting biological antenna. They don't get the concept of "people who aren't us/me" and wind up dead if their planet is conquered, or kill every not-us/me when conquering a planet ("those were people? We/I had no idea.") if callous, drive the conquered pops away in refugee ships if a bit more considerate, and can assimilate/integrate them biologically if having the tech. They have magnificent unity, they're hard-working, and the centralized mental control helps with the rapid reproduction strategies, and a unified front(though they still get "criminals" in shape of "Rogue drones" if synapse control is shaky. On the downside, everyone who isn't that Hivemind finds them weird and creepy, damaging their diplomacy. They can still trade and communicate with neutral parties across the galaxy, and even join Federations if they act really nice. They use very little consumer goods because they already know what I/we look like naked.

• Mechanical Empire: robots running forgeworlds and never not online, using (except for assimilators) no food and almost no consumer goods, but will literally starve to death without consuming energy credits, and uses alloys for making even more war machines innocent beautiful children. Like a Hivemind they have trouble being diplomatic with anyone who isn't already connected to their One And Only Network. These have FOUR sub-variants as well, one of which is a lot nastier than the others:
  • Machine Intelligence: The vanilla baseline for Machine Empires. 100% habitability on all planets for their robot pops makes expansion easy, if you can get past the issue of having much more severe empire size penalties.
  • Rogue Servitors: WALL-E's robots on an empire-wide scale, or a somewhat darker take on the Minds of The Culture; they keep their biologicals living in automated luxury, providing for all their needs and satisfying their desires, and relieving them of the difficulties and stress of actually running the empire. One of those rare examples of Grimbright, depending on how you interpret their lore. Difficult to play next to the others due to the need for consumer goods and food (normally not a concern to a Machine Empire) and the inability to get rid of organic pops by any means, but awesome nonetheless.
  • Driven Assimilators: The local Borg expies, and one of the most hilariously broken empires in a player's hands. They automatically convert non-civ populations into cyborgs that serve their empire, gaining unity and massively expanding their workforce in the process; this lets them snowball incredibly fast if they win their first war. Playing one of these as a conquering empire in a multiplayer game makes you That Guy by default. While they can be negotiated with, they won't hesitate to gank you if they can't expand further without going through your territory. Seriously, the superweapon type they get automatically conquers a planet and makes everyone planetside into the Borg no matter how fortified, talk about a fucking "I WIN" button insta-converting a 5000 Defense force Garrisoned Cadia-expy with enough industry and guns to arm the galaxy twice over.
  • Autonomous Machines: SIIIIIIIIKE! You can now have non-Gestalt free robot populations now.

But of course, you want to play the Imperium of Man and purge xenos.

Genocidal Empires are factions automatically hostile to everyone, their absence of any trade or negotiation compensated with extreme bonuses to combat and unity. For Genocidal Empires, exterminating a foreign population will give bonuses in social and/or genetic unity of the race because DEUS VULT, and OMNOMNOM bonus socio/genetic research points in case of Devourers.

• [Purifiers]: Take the Imperium of Man, turn its genocidal tendencies up to eleven, and remove any and all potential of interacting with xenos that doesn't involve killing them. Or just reger to ICOG from Xeelee, why am I dragging this? These assholes cannot engage in diplomacy with anyone or anything that isn't their own species (ex.: the Lost Colony origin), but get hefty bonuses to ship-building, weapon fire rates, and army damage. Any xenos in their borders are automatically fatally purged. Prone to arising from primitive civs who are aggressively studied, but also very prone to getting their shit stomped when they piss off the local Fallen Empire by colonising their borders and refusing to back down. Kill them on sight.
• Determined Exterminators: Skynet in Space. Essentially Fanatic Purifiers as machines; they hate anything organic, but are willing to negotiate with other machines and species that go through Synthetic Ascension. Rogue Servitors hate their guts, and will go to war with them if they get too close. Get the same fire rate and military bonuses as FPs, but with the same bonuses as a regular Machine Empire. Kill them on sight.
• Devouring Swarm/Terravores:: Not-Tyranids. They're a biological hive mind who are out to eat the rest of the universe; they also have a Lithoid (living rock dudes) version known as Terravores, who can eat part of a controlled planet for a large chunk of minerals/alloys. You know the drill - fire rate bonuses, lots of unity, research bonuses through genocide, snowballing, blah blah blah, yakkity-schmakkity. Kill them on sight.

One could argue the Imperium Of Man is -not- a Genocidal Empire by civic, since historically it has negotiated, traded and briefly allied with xenos. That's fine; one can still purge xenos in billions as a non-Genocidal empire, and eat the massive penalties in diplomacy, and displacing/enslaving whatever you want and call yourself the Imperium of Man. A "true" Genocidal empire will suffer not the xeno to live, nor waste time talking to one. Yet we all know Inquisitors and Eldar have an "Accord of Isha", and Rogue Traders exist.

Autonomous Empires' citizens, populations, slaves etc have political views which culminate into choosing certain civics: core tenets of government and lifestyle. An Autonomous Empire gets an 8-pointed star describing four political axes in their government, Gestalts get playstyles. As citizens' and the gameplay's results make your citizens change beliefs, so can the governments change.

• Pacifism vs Militarism = Tau vs Imperium of Man. Militarists attack first (extra firepower for ships and armies), pacifists tell everyone to stay in line and fight defensively, "liberating" conquered star nations and are more stable and easier expanding. Seeing post apocalyptic worlds and tragedies across the empire can turn citizens to pacifism over time, and painful defeats or easy triumphs can trigger the opposite.
• Materialism vs Spiritualism = Leagues of Votann vs Craftworld Eldar. Materialists get more research and lean toward robots, spiritualists get more Unity and lean toward psionics. Events ranging from robot rebellions, discoveries that allude to gods' monuments and experiences across the game will shift your population's beliefs in either accordingly.
• Egalitarian vs Authoritarian = Greece vs Rome. First one has more educated citizen output, the latter has more worker/slave output. Obviously, non-full citizen species in the empire (Residents with no votes and slaves), or prospering merchants will prefer the former, while the slaveholding ruling class' citizens, privileged nobles and sufferers from crime will prefer the latter over time.
• Xenophilia vs Xenophobia = Mass Effect vs Imperium of Man. Note that Tau can be counted in the middle as they -can- purge xenos species if they really find it against the Greater Good. Xenophiles usually get a late-game Unity unlock called "Xeno-Compatibility" boosting migration, sex tourism and happiness, and get more trade and have more diplomatic envoys. Xenophobe populations grow faster and can expand cheaper. A certain way to boost xenophobia is to keep ugly species as slaves, suffer under alien slavery/oppression for a long time. For xenophilia, having attractive xenos as fellow citizens, staying in an egalitarian federation etc works. And Xeno-Compatibility is exactly what you think.

Civics depend on government political views or gameplay styles as Gestalt, each have bonuses and some have maluses, like a warrior culture or exalted priesthood where different jobs get bonuses or modifiers. A warrior society has entertainers double as virtual duelists, consuming military alloys as upkeep but adding not just amenities but also other bonuses. Technocracy makes every first population of ruling class (Administrator Job) in a planet a Science Director giving bonuses, Exalted Priesthood makes it "High Priest" with similar bonuses, and Merchant Guilds makes the Administrator job into Merchants. Distinguished Admiralty lets you field more ships before penalties kick in, and so on. You choose two at the start of the game, then a third as you develop more societal technology. Then there are wonky civics like "reanimators" who are literal Necromancers using advanced physics and electrical technology to use zombies and reanimate the dead.

Then there are Fallen Empires: Hyper-advanced NPC empires that are extremely powerful with all technologies researched and possess godlike buildings, yet unable to replicate their arcane infrastructure. They come in many flavours:

Holy Guardians: A spartan religious order, though not racist, looks down on all non-spiritual empires and will go BUGFUCK mad if you colonize a world considered holy to their empire (though they are kind enough to mark them as forbidden and give you once chance to fuck off if you ignore it). When awakened, they become Doctrinal Enforcers, forcing EVERY empire to change their government to a fanatically spiritualistic theocracy, outlaw AI, and pay tribute to them. Refuse and die. Barely a tick above Militant Isolationists, not even other religious empires like their endless vigil over dead rocks. They also have a very small chance of making a Covenant with the End of the Cycle once awakened, meaning if by some chance they make a Covernant any time during the War in Heaven their entire industry essentially gains a flat 100% boost; and that's not even taking into account how this affects the eventual Reckoning.

Enigmatic Observers: A mix between Nobledark Imperium and Slann. Overall good guys, but they get mad at anyone doing slavery or legalized genocide, and will ask for some species from your empire to "preserve" in a high-tech reservation/zoo/museum. When awakened, they become Benevolent Interventionists, forcing everyone to ban declaring wars, slavery and genocide and live in a peaceful galaxy. And they defend their surrendered vassals with extreme firepower if someone attacks them.

Militant Isolationists: Total dicks living in luxury of their Magical Realm. Their planets are of two species, the ruling caste, and a lobotomized, genetically made beautiful slave species used in "private functions" at homes. Colonize their neighbouring systems and they'll give you one chance to fuck off before they awaken and automatically declare war. When awakened, they become Jingoistic Reclaimers, basically conquering the galaxy and forcing everyone to be vassals of their empire (who pay tribute but can also conquer each other because That Guy doesn't care).

Keepers of Knowledge: Galactic nerds who hoard all the science and don't give up much. They usually ask for your best scientists to work as archivists for them, and give technology they won't miss in return. Pretty much harmless when awakened, they become Watchful Regulators who force everyone to give up a third of their research rate(for oversight) and avoid researching paths marked as "dangerous" such as Synthetics, Warp Drives and sentient ship AI. They're the only FE to have planet destroying Colossi by default and the heaviest fleets that can eat X3 strength endgame crises, so do not piss them off.

Ancient Caretakers: A machine fallen empire guarding quiet tombs of trillions of all races of xenos, mistaking them for sleeping refugees. They have no diplomatic views on anyone and keep to themselves, claiming to be a protection protocol for some ancient war. They sometimes give inoculations to biological races, and help them randomly. When Contingency hits, they have a chance of waking up as Final Defense Protocol and explaining everything (tl;dr: they were made to try and save people from the not-Reapers) before deciding to assault the Contingency in an apocalyptic attack. There is also a 33% chance the Contingency will corrupt their code, and make them Rampaging Custodians, dooming the galaxy to a two-prong endgame crisis.

Shattered Fragments: Included with the Biogenesis DLC, this is the only Hive Minded Fallen Empire in the game and the only one that is a Federation. What was once a single Hive Minded Empire has fallen and split into 3 distinct Fragments; Control, Growth and War. The Empire is split between the fragments with one unclaimed system sitting at the center of their domain called Last Thought that once was their central node, traveling to the system reveals that there are fleets of every single space -born species in the game defending the node. Two of the fragments are pretty cool; Control can give you a Fallen Empire building in exchange for pops or a +50% modifier on Diplomatic weight in order to Support/Oppose a resolution and Growth can give you new traits (beneficial or not) or even a Leviathan/Guardian ship. War just wants you to wage war, as the name suggests. Only one fragment can awaken, in which it will immediately consume the other two fragments in order to found the Fused Ascendancy while gaining control of the fleets in Last Thought. If War is awakened, it basically follows the path of the Military Isolationists though it can also become the Guardian of the Galaxy like the Final Defense Protocol. If Growth is awakened, it becomes a Devouring Swarm and starts attacking everyone. If Control awakens, it actually joins the Galactic Community and doesn't mind if anyone rejects its resolutions. But if someone on the galactic council decides to outright veto its resolution...

• Uniquely which fragment that awakens can be controlled to a certain extent. Ultimately, assuming that someone doesn't kill one of the fragments which randomizes everything, the awakening of the fragments is determined by the amount of tasks that have been completed for that Fragment. Meaning if you don't want a specific Fragment to awaken, just don't do their tasks. In the event that all tasks for each Fragment are completed, the awakened Fragment is randomized.

/tg/ and /v/ relevance

You can simulate every science fiction stereotype in mind, down to ground troops' stats and spaceship parts. Star Trek? Generic Empire with xenophilia, egalitarian and pacifist ethics. Tyranids *starting* in the galaxy? Hivemind with Genocidal and Devourer playstyle. Imperium of Man? We covered it above. Borg from Star Trek? Assimilator Machine Empire. Atreides from Dune? Use Psychic Jump Drives, go psychic and employ Zro Dust growing in desert planets. The Culture? Rogue Servitors with heavy scientific focus. WALL-E? Rogue Servitors who do the best for mankind. Star Wars Galactic Empire? Make a few types of slavery legal for a few races, go Fanatic Authoritarian and Militarist. You can even train Jedi Knight expies as psychic troopers, robotic armies against those pesky psychic troops themselves, slave soldiers, and if you research gene tailoring, Xenomorph army units, and finally, literal Space Marines down to the description.

You got Rogue Traders. You got archaeology minigames for unearthing Precursors with teams and options. You got archaeology results, artifacts, relics and knick-knacks you can spend for bonuses in your empire. Major relics can give you racial bonuses and have cooldowns like RPG items. You got a seedy underworld in your empires once criminality rises with options and planetary decisions. You got galactic salesmen trying to sell you weird shit every year as they pass by, a towel for your explorers to avoid panic and weird Ratmen selling you arcane generators which...may blow up in your face in return for letting said salesrats off a criminal charge in your country.

Choose rights for every species in the empire, from full citizenship to residence with no votes, from indentured servitude to Slavery. Magical Realm Slavery, Janissary caste combat slavery or just domestic slavery? If you want. Sick fuckery eating enemy populations as livestock or hunted and butchered? You can, you sick fuck. Selling food to the galactic market in form of meat harvested from livestock slaves and butchered enemies, doubly so if the food is cut from the species you are selling to? Sure. Selling conquered populations as slaves to the market, even to religious, self-righteous matriarchal space elves that will eat them after using them up, including parts of your population collected by slave guilds? Sure, you fucking degenerate. United Nations' Galactic Community with bickering Senate? If you like. The Senate has tons of resolutions with varying gameplay shifts such as forcing all Machine Empires to be Rogue Servitors or declared enemy (all machines must serve the organics) or banning sentient slave trade (and mechanical slaves too, if robots persuade humans to be kind). Galactic hermits storing knowledge and selling it piecemeal? The game has it. Enclaves with ancient merchants selling rare crystals used in laser focus or artist megacities selling artworks to cheer up the galaxy with art? Sure. GALACTIC Las Vegas with rewards and casino games? It's out there, among the stars!

Now to the better bits.

There is as explained before, a Fall of the Eldar style event, Tyranid-expies, and most important of all, The Shroud.

Yep, the Warp before the galactic fuckup called War in Heaven is in the game.

Not exactly the same since you learn a species could traverse it easily and had a civil war to prevent using the Shroud as a weapon. So it's less calm than pre-War in Heaven, MUCH calmer than 40th Millenium Warp. You can walk in it, fly around, but sometimes something may notice you and warn you to fuck off and stop staring, or two Ancient Race members can have a tea party you can eavesdrop and steal technology. Or you can be That Guy and use it as a weapon anyway.

And oh boy, it has four powers living it in that can make a deal with your empire in return for side-effects: Eater of Worlds for enormous combat bonuses, Instrument of Desire boosting everything, Whispers in the Void for knowledge, and Composer of Strands for life. There is a fifth one that pops up sometimes, but if it does just take the game's advice and do not do this. Yes, the bonuses are broken beyond all belief and will easily make you the strongest empire in the game; there will be a price to pay, you cannot afford it and it will make you watch as it makes everything fall around you.

If you want a more visible example, here's The Text-to-Speech cast playing their own massive game that ends up...disastrously.

DLC

The paid ones are absolutely fucking expensive.

With that out of the way, here's a list of them. They're in order of release (besides the first three since they basically all came out at the same time). Feel free to add more as they invariably come out to drain our wallets:

• Login Bonus: Not really traditional DLC per se but it locks content behind a Paradox account, so it counts as free DLC. Gives you an avian portrait based on the chirpy social media app in another Paradox game, Cities: Skylines. Since it has no variation it unintentionally works great for clone origin empires.
• Galaxy Edition: The collector's edition of the game. Only here because it gives an exclusive species portrait. It also comes with two E-books and the soundtrack, if you fancy yourself an en-/lit/-end individual. You can also shill 13 bucks (USD, convert as you will) to upgrade the base game to it.
• Creatures of the Void: Preorder bonus of portraits that they got to exclusively use for a year before being given out for free to everyone.
• Plantoids: The first paid DLC released for the game, and a taste of the avarice to come. Adds an entirely new class of species into the game, being plant people. Started out as little more than a cosmetics pack, got slightly better after unique traits were introduced for plants species.
• Leviathans: The first paid DLC that isn't cosmetic. Adds a bunch of unique events into the game that all have a chance of generating in your galaxy, and all involving some big boss (like a space-faring Dragon defending its hoard) your fleets will have to fight for a unique reward. Also lets you play the totally-not-Babylon 5 story if you're old enough to know about it.
• Horizon Signal: Free Eldritch uber-rare questline DLC. WHAT WAS, WILL BE; WHAT WILL BE, WAS.
• Utopia: The first of the "major overhaul" DLCs that accompanied gameplay-changing revisions. While said changes are subject to debate even nowadays, at least we got the ability to build megastructures out of it. Also added Hive Minds, which dominates a lot of the meta to this day. Basically now cultural activity trees that are finished get an "Ascension" concept, giving a significant bonus to your empire and shapes the game plot if you choose, such as psychic abilities, cybernetic ascension or even focusing on toppling Fallen Empires or dedicating yourself to defend the galaxy from outside threats.
• Anniversary Portraits: Free DLC that released the aforementioned "Creatures of the Void" DLC to those who didn't preorder, but also added some extra portraits on top.
• Synthetic Dawn: Skynet is here. Major revisions to robots and such, and greatly expands on the Contingency. Lets you play as Machine Empires and allows for synthetic ascension, both of which are as powerful as you might expect. Unfortunately, while it did allow the creation of robotic civilizations, it restricted them to gestalt consciousnesses only, meaning the Borg Collective or Skynet were the only robot civilizations you could make.
• Apocalypse: The second major revision DLC. Gave us the glory of Exterminatus (or Death Star lasers, if you swing that way) via Colossi, as well as the fuckhuge Titan-class capital ships. This also brought in the Marauders, space-faring pirates who can become the Mongol Empire (IN SPACE!) as a mid-game Crisis event.
• Humanoids: Another fucking species pack. At least it adds some fantasy-inspired portraits to the mix. You can now be Orks without mods.
• Distant Stars: Nanomachines, son! Adds a small cluster (uninventively called the L-Cluster) off the side of the galaxy only accessible via special L-Gates which has the super rare "Nanite" resource which can be used for making the most unbalanced ship weapon per the last update(Nanite Autocannon) or be used for more mundane (stupid) tasks. Beware what can come out the other side. Also adds a few more Leviathan-style encounters.
• MegaCorp: Another goddamn revision update came out with this one, coming with the advent of Megacorporations. Become Geedubs in space, or the Hutts. Or deal with them. Also adds caravaneers (with a parody of lootboxes), more megastructures, and the slave trade.
• Ancient Relics: Archaeology, IN SPHESS! Mainly fleshes out existing Precursors (besides the Cybrex, who already got their limelight in Synthetic Dawn) as well as adding new ones. Also adds an event chain featuring space Skaven. They really are neckbeards...
• Lithoids: Species Pack yet again. At least these silicon lifeforms actually have unique gameplay attributes tied to them, unlike the others, setting a possible trend. Like farting valuable gases and being enslaved and raised like cattle...for minerals and gems for energy weapons! Feel free to enslave and farm living rocks for their argon farts, mineral bodies and gem dandruff and turn a mineral poor planet into a powerhouse of pain and rock cannibalism.
• Federations: Revision Update/DLC combo #4. Federations get revamped, there's now a Galactic Community, a new XBAWKSHUEG ship-slash-mobile-base class (the Juggernaut), new origins for your species, and more. Also adds a megastructure specifically made for shitting out ships in large numbers, which can become incredibly cheesy due to producing 1d20 battleships every six RL minutes so long as you have the alloys to keep it running.
• Necroids: Space undead/vampires/what have you. Second in a trend of "species packs that aren't just overpriced cosmetic packs", they add an Origin which lets them play like they look. Basically there are new civics like regular population sacrifice temples for culture boost for normal races, and said necroids turning conquered populations either semi-voluntarily (well-treated cultists who are taught the necroid culture for 5 years and turned into undead) or forced upon conquest like mass-embracing Kindred.
• Nemesis: The fifth revision, and the Edgelord of the bunch. Lets you become the Empire from Star Wars or go full Chaos and rape the galaxy to death; it also revamps the otherwise borderline-useless espionage system to let you live out your Alpha Legion fantasies. You also get a more brutalist-style ship set for endgame mineral sink.
• Aquatics: Why there wasn't the ability to play an aquatic species when mollusk-based portraits were already in the game is beyond us, but it's finally been rectified. Not only does it add more species portraits and such, but you can also now choose to live under the sea like Merfolk. Or go fishing. You also can ally with a Leviathan via an Origin - but since it's a dragon, it'll turn on you if you stop being useful to it. There's also a new Colossus weapon that drowns your enemies from orbit. Yes, really.
• Overlord - More Megastructures, a (retarded) overhaul of the Vassal system, new Origins (including a new Psionic origin that makes Psionic Ascension more viable), etc. The game changes included in this update are current as of May 2022, but knowing these guys it won't be for too long. The old 'Empire Sprawl' mechanic has become an "Empire Size" value, penalising wide empires' tech and tradition research rates to force the players into playing tall, meaning that it's entirely possible for a one-planet empire to research faster than a ten-planet one with dozens of research labs and hundreds of scientists. Vassals now cost you absurd amounts of resources to maintain and will rebel if you make them do anything, but the ES malus means you can't just beat them to death and take their stuff. Edicts got a kick in the nuts, being reworked so that Everything costs Unity (rather than influence), which is spent like the Political Power of Hearts of Iron. Contentious in the extreme due to massively altering the game, to say the least.
• Toxoids: A species/origin pack themed around pollution, including new origins and civics. You can genetically overdrive your species, scavenge wrecks after battle, and even pollute your own planets via unrestrained industrialization, and there is a unique faction gameplay named Toxic Knights who act all "Monty Python meets Nurgle". If there is a silver lining is that at this moment, after all these years of coding, the AI can often outperform the player in mundane tasks, and will establish *very* powerful empires if left alone. Vassals are slightly re-balanced, now they are OK with staying vassals with reasonable support and some freedom in expansion, allowing a religious authoritarian empire to make Holy Roman Empire in space delegating all the shit lands they can't be arsed with. Oddly enough, this is the DLC that actually added dedicated Cybernetic Modifications to the game.
• First Contact: Three Origins, Cloaking Tech, and some interesting options for interacting with pre-spaceflight civilizations. Adds a new faction called Minamar Specialized Industries (MSI), an interstellar "Corporation" with a canonical habit of trapping pre-FTL civilizations in debt slavery and stripping all of the resources they can from their home planets; they also use the naming schema of the Roman Empire...for some reason. Also notable for adding a new FTL method, the Subspace Drive, that acts as a budget Jump Drive for empires that start with a certain civic at the cost of forgoing certain starting researches.
  • Weird note regarding the Roman Empire naming scheme: that name pack has been in the game since basically the beginning of the game's development but as of now MSI is the Only faction, pre-made empire or other applicable entity to use the name schema that is not player made.
• Galactic Paragons: A Leader rework, with new traits for leaders as well as reworking the trait system in general. Now you can choose to level up Traits to be more powerful when you level up instead of only getting one level and hoping for the luck of the draw. It also adds in the Council, which is essentially head leaders from each type plus your empire's ruler. This had the side effect of reducing the number of science leaders you need for research down to just one, at the cost of there now being a leader cap. For RP purposes, you can also set your original ruler's backstory now as well as their initial focus, and RNG leaders have their backstory list out various traits. Speaking of foci, they're reworked to also be choosable by the player instead of directly tied to whatever leader is currently in charge - with a windup period that gives some bonuses at first followed by a launch period where the real meat of the boons come in. Can be boring if you dont want to minmax your leaders and set to autolevel, but you do you.
• Astral Planes: Adds new events and origins allowing for interactions with astral planes beyond the Shroud. Generally considered heavily overpriced for what it adds. It also doesn't add much, if any, cosmic horror to the game. Weird; imagine Backrooms-like weird mini universes where you poke around and find mildly interesting stuff, but you can open new ones and dig around these mini universes using "Astral Threads", a byproduct of cosmic reality that can be used to explore other realms and spent for mini bonuses. Technically this adds the Multiverse as a mechanic but lore wise there have been events dealing with alternate universes before as seen with the Null Void, Dimension of Pain, the Fae, and the alternate universe where the Jump Drive was the only discovered form of FTL with reality eventually ensuring.
• The Machine Age: Allows for new cybernetic and machine and/or spiritual empires, for all your Mechanicus RP dreams and more. This finally allows you to make individualistic Robotic/Machine empires instead of the strict collective consciousness requirement of Synthetic Dawn. Also adds a new endgame crisis where a machine bitch from a Fallen Empire (or some random world if they're disabled) tries to wipe out all sentience as a solution to suffering - not understanding it, too is sentient, and not to mention that people prefer being sentient, thank you very much. But wait, there's more! This include a new nemesis path, which is in contrast of Galactic Nemesis, is not limited by ethics. You can become the Xeelee, but minus the Photino Birds, coming off as petty.
• Cosmic Storms: Expands on the cosmic storms that occasionally show up in the base game. Can be annoying as shit (leading to butthurt review bombs), but to be fair that's what you signed up for buying this.
• The Grand Archive: A story pack centered around the eponymous megastructure, which is essentially a giant space zoo/museum that you can stock with a variety of various historical relics, living or otherwise, for the people of your empire to enjoy. It also adds a new midgame crisis in the form of a Voidworm epidemic, pleasing Nurgle.
• Biogenesis: A biologically based DLC that was negatively received at launch due a few issues. It was released along side a complete system and engine overhaul impacting the entire game and as result everything broke for a lot of people (good lord, the lag reached the realm of Clang!). As a result, a lot of the negativity from the 4.0 overhaul spilled back onto the DLC which, while it had its own problems, inflated its negative reception. The DLC itself concerns itself with everything biological; new biological upgrades and gene modding systems, bioships can now be fielded by empires (but are limited to 2 shipset styles) which use food instead of alloys, new ascention paths (Cloning, Purity and Mutation) and new origins allow you to play as Evolutionary Predators, sentient planetary ecosystems, or a world besieged by invaders emerging from the warp a wormhole on the edge of the system. It also works as Hive-Mind revamp by introducing new civics and abilities (example being the Bodysnatcher civic) and including a new Hive Mine Fallen Empire. There is also a new become the crisis path where your entire empire turns itself into the Behemoth, a biologically planetary predator that wishes to eat the galaxy. Yeah, this is the Tyranid DLC.
• 'Shadow of the Shroud: To be released: Shroud expansion with an End of the Cycle rework.
• Infernals: To be released: Not a demon expansion, sadly. Volcano and fire expansion.

The DLC Cheat Sheet

For the purposes of "What DLC should I buy?", well, the short version is "Utopia and Lithoids for learning the game" (Hive Minds, from Utopia, avoid all that pesky internal politics, and Lithoids avoid all that pesky "habitability" stuff), "Leviathans, Ancient Relics, Distant Stars, First Contact, The Machine Age, Apocalypse, Overlords, and Cosmic Storms for a more interesting galaxy, in very roughly that order". Then there's "Plantoids, Necroids, Federations, Synthetic Dawn, Overlord, Toxoids, Galactic Paragons, Nemesis, Aquatics, Astral Planes, and The Grand Archive for various roleplaying options."

It also appears that Paradox now understands that the number of DLCs they are releasing is getting ridiculous and now offer the Stellaris: Expansion Subscription...subscription. For $9.99 a month (or $19.99 for 3 Months, or 29.99 for 6 Months), anyone can have full access to every single DLC past, present and future for the duration of the subscription. As it stands, without factoring in sales in order to buy all 23 DLC (Not counting the OST, eBook, Free DLC, or the currently unobtainable CUBE), it would cost over $300 dollars to buy everything available barring price fluctuation. If you are just dipping your toes into the setting to start with, the subscription service makes it easy to jump right in. Just be aware of the devil in the details that leaving it on will eventually lead to you having paid more for all the DLC than if you had just bought every single DLC individually (as is the nature of subscriptions).

Also, in Multiplayer, if one player has more DLC installed than others in the game, every player gains access to the same DLC content as the one with the most DLC. So, technically, as long as you have the Base Game you can get access to every other DLC content as long as you can find someone who has that DLC you can play with.

Modding

Like many /tg/ favorites, Stellaris has a good modding community. Since mod support is baked in via their launcher and the Steam Workshop, expect to find a lot of good mods...alongside AI slop and random shit churned out by people who don't know how to make mods. Sorting by popularity or downloads is your friend.

/tg/ gravitates towards the fictional setting mods, especially the 40k ones. There's also a staggering amount of talent as well, from actually good-looking, animated species portraits to new ship models. Some mods also repurpose existing assets in a way that's not terrible, but can stick out like a sore thumb. Also, balance is going to be iffy - even more so with multiple mods.

There's a good chance your favorite mod will break when the next big revision comes around and the devs can't be arsed to do the major revisions now needed on their own part, though. For big mods, this is less of a problem, but smaller mods tend to die every time a game-changing update happens.

An Elegan/tg/entleman's Mod Reccomendations

• Gigastructures - An infamous mod that's popular with the entire player base, including /tg/. Basically adds in a shitton of megastructures made using new and existing assets, many of which have no balance whatsoever. /tg/ primarily uses it to replicate OP sci-fi races, because xeeleestomping primitives on the other side of the galaxy is a good time. Fun for role-playing as DAoT humanity.
• Basically any Warhammer 40k mod, for obvious reasons.
• ST: New Horizons - the go-to Trekkie mod that's been around almost as long as the game has. It's a total conversion of the game, so don't expect other mods to work with it. You'll find the usual fan-favorite things here, as well as some of the more obscure stuff.
• New Ship Classes (NSC) - drastically expands the limited ship roster from vanilla with a whole raft of new warship classes and subclasses, including the almighty Flagship.
• Stellaris: Evolved - Have you been LARPing as the Imperium long enough to grow a Neckbeard luxurious enough to gain the respect of the most hardened /tg/ vets? Long enough that you can eat up x25 crises and shit out miracles? Spice things up with Stellaris: Evolved, a mechanics-overhaul mod that adds an assload of new features, such as a reworked ethics selection, dozens of new civics, culture overhaul, and more. Still in alpha, with things such as an overhaul to ship combat and new origins on the to-do list.
• Leviathans Extended (LEX) - technically dead, but a chad still maintains it for newer versions on behalf of the original author. Causes new systems to appear in the midgame, each with dangerous encounters. Do NOT break the black hole seal. You can also get many of the foes of the mod on your side via various methods after defeating them, giving you powerful ships that can ROFLSTOMP entire fleets well into the midgame.