Yea tbh you have to suck the massive pole so hard to even get one. Ik thats common for games companies but pdx is a triple A studio that hates admitting it.
Good on him I'd rather an honest review And if they are that sensitive then probably a good thing if they don't. You don't want your business attached to companies so willing to toss you to the side.
@@monarchtherapsidsinostran9125 the only time i have seen a content creator lose their ability to get a sponsorship from paradox was when they had access to something before release and broke the NDA
3:17 I hope that the Custodian Team will eventually create 2-4 alternatives to Minmar, variations over the Exploitative Corp theme, so that you can't know exactly what you're up against when you pick one of those Origins.
Honestly I would prefer it to be another fallen empire. The idea that internal strife within that empire actually resulted in the empire simply forgetting about you. That way at least it is an opponent that won't get rolled over before you get there.
@@jameshildebrand907 That could be one of the options; heck, bring in Corpo-Fallen Empire(s) in general, and allow for one of them to have a splinter faction that acts as the Minmar alternative. Could also see going with a Spiritual FE... but instead of however they exit, the race/faithful ascends (except for a few of the missionaries, who think interacting with your species and its rebellion is the reason THEY didn't ascend when everyone else did).
Yep, they could easily come up with more. A Barbaric Despolier Empire(would be a great opportunity to rework the civic), a fanatic materialist empire who came to your planet to experiment on your pops. A fanatic spiritualist who came to crusade and convert. Fanatic Purifiers, or Devouring Swarm, Driven Exterminators..
@@Sephiroth144 Corpo fallen empire. That could have some fun lore, imagine a corpo FE that fell because the failing trade of derivatives of derivatives of derivatives of futures in small flowering bulb plants on a primitive world caused economic collapse and made them have to write off all but their core worlds to balance the budgets and they're still sorting out the legal liabilities and financially restructuring 500 years later.
@@jameshildebrand907 this was the same thought I had. Pushes the conflict to late game. Would need to be a new mechanic though since fallen civs don't normally get access to the galactic council.
Thank you for your actual review. I appreciate you actually going into more detail than others. Not just reading off of the back of the box, which is something we can already do.
I like how MSI can get wrecked. Just, imagine it, the moment of realization that the force that ended up driving your species to unification is just another small fish in the pond, and the moment of realization where it sinks in that their transgressions put you in a position where you're never going to be taken advantage of again.
@@quadricslash The false-start can work as a narrative theme, but it has to be done well (obv in this example we're talking about it just arising naturally in the game but that aside). One of my favorite quotes is from Kreia from KOTOR 2: "Perhaps you were expecting some surprise, for me to reveal a secret that had eluded you, something that would change your perspective of events, shatter you to your core. There is no great revelation, no great secret. There is only you."
This definitely feels like the opening of a scifi comedy. "Behold, denizens of the galaxy! We have unified and we are HERE now, HERE to vanquish the old masters- the MSI shall have nowhere to hide!" "Uh... MSI? Bro, we knocked them out like 30 galactic standard years ago. But yeah, welcome to the Galactic Nexus Station! You're all harshed out my dude, ya need to mellow out! Want a brainslug and some nutrient paste? 35% off today only!"
Solution for MSI would be to give them something like the L cluster. Their own sectioned off area of space behind unique gateways that can only be unlocked by midgame techs, with some coding that stops them from colonizing outside their cluster. Could have them be megacorp that can reach nearly everywhere on the map, be contacted by everyone and very willing to trade resources, sell fleets, buy/sell populations.
If anything it makes sense that your oppressors would have gotten wrecked. In my own experience I have very rarely lost incorporated primatives to rebellion, and even when it happens, they're usually not difficult to put down. But if I just recently conquered some primatives relatively far away and a larger empire started invading my core worlds, well when the choice is reconquering a world that won't be much use for another decade and preserving the core of my empire, I'm preserving my core.
I think coming across you nemesis and finding them pathetic is a great emergent story telling outcome. You and your species had this bogeyman hiding out there, something feared and which everyone was preparing for... Then it's basically like the main character on a revenge quest in a series/movie finding an old weak man, terrified at their own shadow and already beaten by others who they had wronged. You don't want it to happen all the time, but it's a good possible outcome to increase the replayability of the origins.
Or they got consumed by a Devouring Swarm and you come to the grim realization that there is something far worse than them out there and your goal shifts from revenge on your oppressors, to becoming the galactic hero. Using what you had meant to be used for petty vengeance instead for the ultimate good.
@@Kjf365 You finally reach the borders of the boogeyman youre society has feared for centuries, only to watch in horror as you see their homeworld decimated by an encroaching hivemind
@@Lukashoffmann94 tbf a lot of stellaris runs on luck. get the right digsite/precursor/anomolies/starting location with all the good special planets nearby.
@@mbos14 Yes, but there was a good reason why they nerfed the size 25 Gaia event into basically nonexistence, or reduced Fen Habbanis to a relic world. And now we have a chance of getting a size 30 version with additional effects and free pops on top? It also completely undermines all home planet types other than ocean, because you want to able to use an eventual ocean paradise asap.
@@SeeAndDreamify well you have the benefit of beeing a bio empire but like a machine empire you can settle everywere and you dont have the growth debuffs of the liths
@@SeeAndDreamify at the start of the game it’s actually stronger because pop assembly is one of the biggest early weaknesses of machines and especially lithoids. You also get a bonus if you find the HomeWorld of one of your several species, which is actually super helpful if you explore early and fast.
Scanning otherwise inaccessible areas is gamechanging. So many runs I worry about missing a precursor system, or similar, and this frees me up to play in a less grabby style, which sounds so amazing (sucks I'm still at work and haven't got to play yet).
minamar industries should be something akin to a fallen empire. Powerful but dependant on other species to get resources. So they could try to coax other A.I. empires/primitives as tributaries. Well, I guess the modding scene will find something interesting to do to rework that :)
A buff against normal empires or debuff against their former subjects? In story it can be explained that the Payback/Broken Shackles empires are using MSI's own tech as their base. Montu makes a really good point, that perhaps the devs didn't think of, if you set up a big bad and they're destroyed off screen that's a pretty disappointing payoff.
@Abran Peralta Well depending on how it's done, it can actually be really flavorful. Imagine finding out they got swallowed by a growing devouring swarm or determined exterminators.
4:30 that's a story in of itself, isn't it? You spend years, decades, centuries even tracking down those who wronged you so that you can exact your revenge upon them. You build up the fantasy in your head of what the day will be like; of how good justice will feel. But when that day finally comes, what do you do find? A broken empire. A shadow of the thing that hurt you. The final battle that you promised yourself was had a long time ago, and you missed it. Your final victory never came, and now you must decide what kind of empire yours will be. Will you take what scraps of revenge you can get by wiping out the remnants of your oppressors and in doing so risk becoming as vicious as them, or will you instead try to build a better galaxy where such fates will never befall anyone ever again. Will you break the cycle of vengeance, or continue it.
Honestly, it kind of feels funny in a strange way if the payback target turns out to have had a reverse of fortune. In the roleplay aspect it also feels like a cosmic level of poetic justice. The proper way to stop this though, would be to guarantee through empire generation that Minmar is advanced and neighboring non advanced empires, or having the payback target an actual fallen empire. All things considered, this is something both the devs and mods can easily adjust.
@@Jose-xh5qb I could already see it, "this fallen empire is a megacorp that at some point bought ownership of the entire galaxy and reserved for itself the most lucrative worlds, but in an effort to expand business opportunities it allows lesser empires to rule the galaxy in their stead, for a price of course" and then you make them demand tribute a lot, however, if you expand into people that aren't paying them tribute they give you rewards
Thank you for not being a shill trying to get in on paradox's good side. it's clear you care about the fans and want to provide the actual pros and cons as well as a good conclusion why it is not worth it
As someone who plays on huge (2000+stars) galaxies with mods, this is actually a really big value add because theres a bug I've never been able to work around in the core game where having "too many empires" (which does not scale up with star count) introduces a massively annoying bug: the 'extra empires' will spawn on top of other empires, resulting in all sorts of weirdness, including insstantly losing because another empire spawned on top of you. With First Contact I can have just up to the limit in normal/adv start empires and let the pre-FTL species help fill out the galaxy over time. Also I already have ancient relics heh. One thing I do wish they would do is bring back split system control or allow for a 'gentler relocation' of pre-ftl species (heck, with high enough cloaking and a megastructure scale ship/mobile habitat, you could make the case of being allowed to stealthily just abduct them all and move them to another location - one of the star trek movies even had a plot entirely around this, except the federation was doing in secret from even their own populace because of their prime directive law), so that poorly located pre-ftl species reaching ftl doesn't just immediately steal my control of a strategically critical system. One of my favorite stories about a time this came up was when I used mods to force all the crises off at once at max strength, and I needed to take the ringworld at sanctuary because I could fortify the chokepoint it was located at very well from the encroaching contingency threat in that region. Unfortunately it had a pre-ftl species who was at the space age already. So I prepped up a bunch of shiny new habitats in a peripheral system, upgraded them, and then in the space of 2 in-game days, I simultaneously invaded every ringworld segment, relocated everyone to the habitats, and then released them as vassals (who were very happy and loyal). Much of the (surviving, due to all 3 crises) galaxy was like '-50 invaded pre-ftl world' but I chose to interpret it contextually as '-50 created a bunch of new vassal-puppets with inflated diplomatic weight from higher than fallen empire level tech in the galactic community to further entrench their dominance in the senate'
Very Star Trek Insurrection. Relocating a species from their birth world without their consent for personal gain is generally frowned upon. But to save some of them from an existential threat is less so.
Found a really rare pre-ftl where it started as a life-seeded pre-ftl with a gaia world in the Atomic era.... Which subsequently nuked their own country and then got the survivor origin. They still have the rare deposits of motes and stuff and i think there was around 11 unique districts including metal boneyards
This whole dlc excites me as someone who mostly plays single player for the narrative! I'm so hyped for all the hijinks and fun this whole dlc provides and I've been so ready for this! 🌜🤘🌛
I absolutely love that you dive into the "Should I buy this DLC" analysis is in the exact same way you would do a "should I build this megastructure," or "should I take this civic." Its fine to consider personal preferences / flavor but ultimate decisions and outcomes are most influenced by cost / benefit. Both within Stellaris and within the meta of buying expansion packs.
I feel like the subspace drive of eager explorers, and the reduced remote outpost cost of slingshot to the stars could be a very interesting combination
Forcing Minamar as the fixed antagonist for those two origins was a bit dumb. I'd rather have a random advanced start AI play that role, like in other origins.
Or an (RNG'd) option of Minmar being a subsidiary of an Advanced Start: Minmar? Yeah, they're *one* of out companies, and you backwater apes are messing with our profit margins...
I wonder how Fear of the Dark could be merged with Inward Perfection. It would be fun in that scenario to be the second group, instead of being the first one. Maybe something for mods to change in the future? One thing I do not understand about cloaking (or more precisely detection) is, can the detection range of one starbase span accross more than the sector it is built in? I mean, can I build a station on my border with weapons, with one station the sector behind and detection to spot cloaked ships trying to enter? If not and I must pick either one or the other, indeed, I do not want cloaking at all in my games. It should be a balance in your economy (number of star bases to cover your territory) vs either having only defenses vs having only detection and fleets.
Im eager for the privative interactions for RP story telling potential, so I'll see this as an absolute must have although I very much appreciate you're fair assessment that its not going to be to everyone's preference.
An interesting thing about Broken Shackles - I played with some friends and all 4 of us picked this origin, we all started with some of eachothers pops. Had we known we could have metagamed and collaborated when building our species and choosing ethics to be extra advantageous.
Interesting review, Monty! Question: Can ships use the Subspace drive automatically for pathing further than just a single jump? What's the cooldown on those? If they work exactly like Jump Drives, where jumping is all player-manual now, that Civic and promise of a "Players can choose to never use hyperdrives"-playstyle is DOA. What looks good is the pre-FTL rework to allow for a "First One" playthrough and then see actual normal Empires spawn with real origins to back them up. Good call on pointing out Ancient Relics, that one is a fantastic DLC, wich itsel synergizes with Leviathans and Utopia as well.
Payback origin is actually OP atm on commodore and lower. All you have to do is rush getting the battleship from the archeology site, build up to force limit and most any AI empire you meet will agree to be subjugated due to fleet power. Militaristic empires on commodore might have enough fleet power themselves to resist however.
influence needs a complete rework, more max, more ways to get it -- there's so many ways to spend it. I'd almost suggest splitting it up into "raw influence" and political (external), military, popular influence (internal), expansion influence, and other influence types you can increase and spend in different ways. Different factions and ethics could increase these and make certain operations more or less expensive
Dude you should look into the paranoid origin. Specifically the absolute busted strength of the first contact war option. My paranoid pals wanted me to immediately declare war on the first person I made contact with (they were neighbors and I had aggressive first contact protocols) The amazing thing is it’s total war so any system you capture is just yours, no claims no end of war full blown free systems. I doubled my size and colonies immediately. As well as a free cloaked fleet! Figured it’d make a good video :p
Definitely going to get it. I've always been a huge fan of uplift, first contact stories and that sort of thing, and this looks like Paradox really going in that direction to make that system more in-depth. I'll happily support such a move.
I figure $15 is the cost of a single order at MickyD's or a movie ticket. I'm good with it. And I think our energy credits are a vote for more Stellaris content in the future. If the cost is an issue think of it as splitting the cost between the Story Pack and a gratuity for the 3.7 update. I agree that the major DLC's should come before this pack but we need to support Paradox to keep Stellaris growing.
Hey Montu, I wanted to thank you for your honest opinion and candour in this and other reviews. I’m just getting into Stellaris, (just the base game.) Your videos have definitely helped me get up to speed and helped to enhance my experience. Thank you for all your efforts in content creation, and your delightful manner of presenting them.
if you want Minmar to be powerful start with a lot of pre-ftl empires and few if any normal or advanced ones, they blob out quite nicely then, I've been playing Fear the Dark with a forced empire with the payback origin and nothing else so the empires are just the ones connected to Minimar, myself and whatever pre-ftl empires claw there way out of the craddle, and with 5x worlds and pre-ftl civs it's a lot of fun so far
I still remember the old days with 3 different exploration types, and I still remember that all but hyperlanes were turned off 90% of the time all the time.
Paradox: Patches two of three ftl modes out of the base game Also Paradox: Makes dlc with one of the removed ftl modes as a selling point four years later :P
Honestly, I think the way to fix that underwhelming sensation when MSi is defeated by someone else is basically giving MSI a buff that lasts up until the player makes contact with MSI, so that they will survive up until that point, and after that whatever happens, happens
Dude game prices have been all over the place recently, like when I brought Surviving Abyss for 15 I thought it was a glitch. I bought ixion for 40 and I would have gladly paid 60. Seems like every game now is either way cheap or way too expensive, no middle ground.
I'm pretty sure it will be modable so that other empires are less likely to attack Minima. Just give them a fat AI related modifier that makes other AI not willing to attack Minima as much.
@montu plays - I hope you get this. I was able to defeat the grey tempest by sneaking about 80 cloaked frigates to the control node and opening fire - vaporizing the rest of the threat. Wasn't exactly a legit play they by then since they kept sniping the salvager enclave but needless to say your wolfpacks can snipe leviathans through closed borders and get around actual mechanics of some crisis (snipe the Khan?) and I'll want to play with this some more.
I mean, I have everything and I was not going to miss this one, specially as it has some very interesting things from my perspective. I'm very interested in the origins and civics. Cloacking seems very interesting. And the primitive intereactions might make me not just conquer them.
Think the DLC price hike is due to the general price hike in games as of late. Its inflation related, but it is what it is. DLCs to other games see the same increases. Its unfortunate but considering that sunk costs for devs have gone up, I would consider it fairer than most inflation increases as of late.
I recommend the DLC, the new civics offer a very unique way to play the game that synergises interestingly with a lot of the other options in the game, and the primitive interactions add a bit of flavour that requires very little interaction (which is a good thing because there's already a lot of pop ups in the game that require your attention)
With the Payback origin, even if it's a little Meh at release: there's SO much that can be done with it in nods or official. -Freed Slavers -Spiritual (FE) who you didn't agree with their religion and got cast out. -Gestalt uplifting you for Food (Hive) with preset traits that you can't remove without Genetic Modification. -Mechanical empire uplift to Assimilate and you escaped. Same preset traits unremovable without research. It doesn't HAVE to be a Megacorp as your nemesis. You can eventually choose to re-merge with your Overlord and then take over, use Subterfuge whilst Vassal to assassinate the leaders and take control...there's idea potential here.
When I found MSI they were strong and threatening, but I like the idea of the burning desire for revenge to coming to naught because they're already wiped out - they inevitably upset the wrong species.
I think it would be interesting if MSI scaled with more payback or broken shackles empires. That way you're not just ganging up on them later in the game
Montu, I found an AMAZING combination. If you combine eager explorers civic with the new update to slingshot to the stars, it makes for the FASTEST expansion in existence. You can skip straight past unknown hyperlanes, claim choke points whilst not having nearby systems for extremely less cost, and secure your potential territory faster than any other empire. In my first few games testing this, I've secured areas as large as 50 stars within the first 10 years, on 400 star galaxies nonetheless. That's 1/8th of the galaxy claimed as my own within 10 years all thanks to this combination. I've also devised a challenge playthrough with this setup, where you ONLY use subspace drives until you get jump drives. You cannot research hyperdrives either or else your colony ships will end up using them.
Appreciate this. I mainly buy all the DLC's to keep supporting the project overall. I love paradox and all the content they put out, so I look at it as more of a support thing than anything else. TBH it does seem like a weaker DLC but, eh, i still really enjoy it. I just love stellaris anyway. ty for your time!
I'll just take this opportunity for my usual spiel: Do not preorder games. Any game. It is an anti-consumer practice which encourage the kind of day-1 monster patches we see from the soulless AAA giants. There is no stock limitation which would mean you will miss out by other people preordering. Wait a few days, let the reviews from a variety of sources you trust come in to see if it's a broken mess. If it is, wait a week until they either hotpatch it, or never buy the game because they never fix it. There is literally no reason to preorder games, and every reason to wait with cautious optimism. You'll get a finished product, they'll get your money. Everyone wins.
god same! I wondered if this DLC would be standard paradox "great concept, bad execution" for their DLCs but gave em the benefit of the doubt for the sake of new content. ah well, mods will fix
You actually made me sweat over my pre-order lmfao. I was sure I was safe after seeing all the pre-release content, but Daddy Montu knows best after all 🤣
Subspace drives have issues: There is a 180 days reload time between jumps. By itself it is not an issue, but you cannot set a final destination; you have to jump, then wait 180 days, come back to your ship, jump again etc... Tons of micromanagement, and travels will take much longer as you will rarely come back exactly 180 days after teh last jump, busy taking care of other stuff and forgetting about your ship. I don't understand why they didn't simply go withe a warpdrive style; replacing the 180 reload time with simply a very slow travel time.
Tbh im unsure of cloaking, if before i was able to bottleneck way stronger empires and have a chance to at least defend myself for a bit, now they will be able to just bypass all my defense and made a mess inside my empire. For me it reinforce the strenght of the already stronger empire, and hamper the weak empire to have a chance to fight back. Maybe it could be limited to smaller ships, or maybe if a ship it's equiped with the cloaking device it would be weaker, like a malus to shields, movement or tracking
MSI is my new favorite recurring character on the galactic stage, even if I don't have the appropriate origin I add a number of empires with either broken shackles or payback into the mix. MSI generally becomes a major power in the galaxy, their AI seems to like subjugating over annexing, and I think all of that is neat.
I wish they made a funny story mode where you get to be a Fallen empire going around space finding all those primitives and guiding them to the stars. The idea would be that there is an ancient threat slowly emerging and you are in your hubris not taking it seriously. The younger empires will try to warn you if you have been helping them but you at first dismiss their plea. Only when they are technologically far enough you are able to take them seriously and research the threat on your own. And if you haven't done that fast or well enough, it might already be to late. You shouldn't be able to declare war on them, and for events, for example sometimes a foolish younger empire declares war on you where you get a small fleet granted with a bored admiral and your objective is to not lose any ships or lose standing and guidance from your subjects and other ideas like that. If you done well, you get to awaken at a time before the great threat spawns and get to prepare, if not - the galaxy will get overrun.
Does an empire have to be in the same system to detect your cloak? (console) The AI is a bit too smart at not attacking your defensive starbase + fleet even if you have less overall fleet power which makes defending early game feel kinda bad. However if you can hide your fleet the AI would be more likely to attack your lone starbase letting you ambush them and have a proper fight. I suppose you can just park your fleet a system away to get the same result but that just kind of feels exploitative rather than strategic to me. Also would subspace snares on titans prevent a cloaked fleet from leaving the system? Feels like that would also equalize some annoying tech issues. Additionally it should probably work that having a lower detection rating should just increase the time required to detect the cloak. Like you can be terrible at detection but if you have enough subspace snares or FTL inhibitors around it wont matter since the cloaked ships cant leave and will eventually be revealed and destroyed.
I have all the DLCs except megacorp and i will get first contact because it's reaction interesting the primitives the origins the cloaking it makes for a good story and can be fun
We should never forget, that we pay the custodian team with those DLCs as well. Stellaris is the only paradox game i buy every DLC from and i will do as long as it lasts, because i want it to run forever.
@@epiccoolawesomegoblinguyre6520 You shouldn't feel like you have to buy anything, but the point is that continued development has to be funded somehow. Working on a single game as long as Paradox studios do is in no way the norm, especially with no microtransactions in sight. Seeing how awful the industry has become makes this model feel pretty reasonable. To be clear, I'm not sure if I'll be buying this yet either.
Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to spawn ‘inside’ (or right at the edge of) MSI’s territory in the Payback origin, similar to how when you put an observation post around a planet and they eventually ask if they can keep the planet/system as their own territory. This would help safeguard MSI so that they’re initially a bit stronger than you and you need to outgrow them to eventually build up enough strength to seek “payback”…
Honestly, I'd buy it right away, but since I'm quite a bit short on the economic side, I'm going to have to give it a pass, at least until I figure my stuff out or gets a discount during summer (whatever comes first)
This is one of my issues when it comes to paradox dlc, it's not a complete experience without the other dlc, and buying them all one by one is just too much. Paradox should release like a full version or atleast some sort of like a bundle parts for dlc.
There should be some sort of extra event chain when your payback/ broken chains empire is so much stronger than MSI when first encountering them that you can go "lol, serves you right". Something like that.
Honestly, thank you for the review. Both Stellaris and Europa Universalis IV are having big DLC come out roughly at the same time and I had to make the decision between the two.
There is another reason to get the DLC: It funds the continued development of the game, which includes the free content and the custodian content. When I pay for a Paradox DLC, in my head I include all the free features as well, because without the DLCs those features would almost certainly not happen. I am the sort of person who would rather buy an update for a game I know I love and play repeatedly, than buy a whole other game that I might play once and then never again, and Paradox are perfect at this.
A complaint made was that the big bad evil empire gets taken out, or is otherwise made inconsequential, before you can properly interact with them. This actually adds to the storytelling aspect of the game IMO. Going to confront someone who gave you a hard time years later only to find them a pathetic shadow of their former selves or dead? It is both realistic and a great subversion of expectations. Even better would be finding out that they were never that big or important in the first place. They just looked that way because they were bigger than you. In actuality, they were in almost as tenuous a position and were just trying to elevate themselves by punching down.
It really adds to the idea of how vast and dangerous the universe is in Stellaris. Your people get enslaved and fight tooth and nail to free themselves from a superior foe. And when you find them again, you realize they're only some bush league corporation.
@@WRanger87 "Someone training up to fight The Big Bad™ only to find out that the enemy is not a significant threat and then using their newfound powers to fight a legit threat/threats" is a staple wdym? This arch describes a significant portion of major literary characters who have antagonists.
I think this will be good. Lots of new events and general improvements and I like the stories. I but from Insta-gaming and its sold out temporarily. Any new Stellaris is good Stellaris. If I'm new though, I buy the big stuff first.
I'd like to see MSI treated specially when there are people with the proper origins in the galaxy. Maybe even as far as a flag saying "no war to/from AIs" until specific events have been triggered. I wouldn't even mind seeing them in a category of their own where [perhaps] they are treated as a "really advanced, but not fallen empire level" type of empire. I would imagine this would help a lot.
I buy every dlc because I'm a fan boy and will totally support this game. What may be lackluster now will most certainly be worked on and improved upon later by the custodians team.
So on my Payback playthrough MIS started LITERALLY on top of me. Like I was able to get 3 maybe 4 star systems before they gobbled up everything and left me completely isolated. So I went... aite. Built up a military and with their flagship proceeded to more or less ABSOLUTELY wreck their shit.
you are never getting a paradox sponsorship for this thumbnail
Montu against the establishment.
Yea tbh you have to suck the massive pole so hard to even get one. Ik thats common for games companies but pdx is a triple A studio that hates admitting it.
Good on him I'd rather an honest review
And if they are that sensitive then probably a good thing if they don't. You don't want your business attached to companies so willing to toss you to the side.
@@monarchtherapsidsinostran9125 the only time i have seen a content creator lose their ability to get a sponsorship from paradox was when they had access to something before release and broke the NDA
@@monarchtherapsidsinostran9125 No you don’t, look at ISP, he hated Stellaris but he still gets a bag to play it every once in a while
cloaking and the "better" primitive interactions are literally the only thing I got the DLC for
too little content for the price.
@@suddenimpulse030 to be fair cloaking mean that you probably need to rewrite a large chunk of AI, and they still will need to fix stuff
Yeah that’s literally what the pack was billed as, and new origins. I’m happy with it.
14.99 for that…
Same!
3:17 I hope that the Custodian Team will eventually create 2-4 alternatives to Minmar, variations over the Exploitative Corp theme, so that you can't know exactly what you're up against when you pick one of those Origins.
Honestly I would prefer it to be another fallen empire. The idea that internal strife within that empire actually resulted in the empire simply forgetting about you. That way at least it is an opponent that won't get rolled over before you get there.
@@jameshildebrand907 That could be one of the options; heck, bring in Corpo-Fallen Empire(s) in general, and allow for one of them to have a splinter faction that acts as the Minmar alternative.
Could also see going with a Spiritual FE... but instead of however they exit, the race/faithful ascends (except for a few of the missionaries, who think interacting with your species and its rebellion is the reason THEY didn't ascend when everyone else did).
Yep, they could easily come up with more. A Barbaric Despolier Empire(would be a great opportunity to rework the civic), a fanatic materialist empire who came to your planet to experiment on your pops. A fanatic spiritualist who came to crusade and convert. Fanatic Purifiers, or Devouring Swarm, Driven Exterminators..
@@Sephiroth144 Corpo fallen empire. That could have some fun lore, imagine a corpo FE that fell because the failing trade of derivatives of derivatives of derivatives of futures in small flowering bulb plants on a primitive world caused economic collapse and made them have to write off all but their core worlds to balance the budgets and they're still sorting out the legal liabilities and financially restructuring 500 years later.
@@jameshildebrand907 this was the same thought I had. Pushes the conflict to late game. Would need to be a new mechanic though since fallen civs don't normally get access to the galactic council.
Thank you for your actual review. I appreciate you actually going into more detail than others. Not just reading off of the back of the box, which is something we can already do.
I like how MSI can get wrecked. Just, imagine it, the moment of realization that the force that ended up driving your species to unification is just another small fish in the pond, and the moment of realization where it sinks in that their transgressions put you in a position where you're never going to be taken advantage of again.
@@quadricslash The false-start can work as a narrative theme, but it has to be done well (obv in this example we're talking about it just arising naturally in the game but that aside). One of my favorite quotes is from Kreia from KOTOR 2:
"Perhaps you were expecting some surprise, for me to reveal a secret that had eluded you, something that would change your perspective of events, shatter you to your core. There is no great revelation, no great secret. There is only you."
This definitely feels like the opening of a scifi comedy.
"Behold, denizens of the galaxy! We have unified and we are HERE now, HERE to vanquish the old masters- the MSI shall have nowhere to hide!"
"Uh... MSI? Bro, we knocked them out like 30 galactic standard years ago. But yeah, welcome to the Galactic Nexus Station! You're all harshed out my dude, ya need to mellow out! Want a brainslug and some nutrient paste? 35% off today only!"
Solution for MSI would be to give them something like the L cluster. Their own sectioned off area of space behind unique gateways that can only be unlocked by midgame techs, with some coding that stops them from colonizing outside their cluster. Could have them be megacorp that can reach nearly everywhere on the map, be contacted by everyone and very willing to trade resources, sell fleets, buy/sell populations.
If anything it makes sense that your oppressors would have gotten wrecked. In my own experience I have very rarely lost incorporated primatives to rebellion, and even when it happens, they're usually not difficult to put down. But if I just recently conquered some primatives relatively far away and a larger empire started invading my core worlds, well when the choice is reconquering a world that won't be much use for another decade and preserving the core of my empire, I'm preserving my core.
Average ss13 player
I think coming across you nemesis and finding them pathetic is a great emergent story telling outcome. You and your species had this bogeyman hiding out there, something feared and which everyone was preparing for...
Then it's basically like the main character on a revenge quest in a series/movie finding an old weak man, terrified at their own shadow and already beaten by others who they had wronged.
You don't want it to happen all the time, but it's a good possible outcome to increase the replayability of the origins.
Or they got consumed by a Devouring Swarm and you come to the grim realization that there is something far worse than them out there and your goal shifts from revenge on your oppressors, to becoming the galactic hero. Using what you had meant to be used for petty vengeance instead for the ultimate good.
@@Kjf365
Yeah, interesting idea, though it's gotta be well executed
@@Kjf365 You finally reach the borders of the boogeyman youre society has feared for centuries, only to watch in horror as you see their homeworld decimated by an encroaching hivemind
just the fact, that primitives are now able to spawn an extra shattered ring is insane, not to mention size 30 planets and other stuff
Which pretty much breaks all mp balance. Getting a free top tier planet by luck is just stupid.
@@Lukashoffmann94 tbf a lot of stellaris runs on luck. get the right digsite/precursor/anomolies/starting location with all the good special planets nearby.
@@mbos14 Yes, but there was a good reason why they nerfed the size 25 Gaia event into basically nonexistence, or reduced Fen Habbanis to a relic world.
And now we have a chance of getting a size 30 version with additional effects and free pops on top?
It also completely undermines all home planet types other than ocean, because you want to able to use an eventual ocean paradise asap.
@@Lukashoffmann94 personall, i think, these kinds of events and/or luck based features should have an enable/disable button for multiplayer
@@Lukashoffmann94 this is a silly take, the random elements are what mske the game entertaining. They should go full Gal-Civ2 with it.
The Slave start is pretty good given that you can colonize nearly any planet you will encounter
How does it compare to machines or lithoids?
@@SeeAndDreamify well you have the benefit of beeing a bio empire but like a machine empire you can settle everywere and you dont have the growth debuffs of the liths
@@SeeAndDreamify at the start of the game it’s actually stronger because pop assembly is one of the biggest early weaknesses of machines and especially lithoids. You also get a bonus if you find the HomeWorld of one of your several species, which is actually super helpful if you explore early and fast.
@@damonedrington3453 yeah but having diverse pops has been proven to increase the amount of lag you will experience late game
Appreciate this thoughtful, honest review. Nicely done Montu.
Glad you liked it!
@@MontuPlays Seconded! Being honest is always a good sell point as Paradox RUclipsr ;)
I wish paradox would give us some dlc for more interactions with fallen empires or even becoming one
Mods...
There are mods for that...for free...
It is an absolute CRIME that fallen empires don’t recognize Remnants origin empires, who were once a great power…
@@mistermaster4495 I know there are mods for that but imo it's always different when developers give their spin on ideas such as these
@@mistermaster4495 not if your on console. So that pack op mentioned would be pretty fun - I'd pay
@@WRanger87 Agreed. Some special interactions would be very interesting just for some story bits
Love that you used Planet 51 in the opening. Such a great movie
Scanning otherwise inaccessible areas is gamechanging. So many runs I worry about missing a precursor system, or similar, and this frees me up to play in a less grabby style, which sounds so amazing (sucks I'm still at work and haven't got to play yet).
I'm at work and can't play it yet too
minamar industries should be something akin to a fallen empire. Powerful but dependant on other species to get resources. So they could try to coax other A.I. empires/primitives as tributaries.
Well, I guess the modding scene will find something interesting to do to rework that :)
Have it so MSI gets a bonus for every Payback or Shackels origin, so that they can be potentially strong enough to fight everyone.
A buff against normal empires or debuff against their former subjects? In story it can be explained that the Payback/Broken Shackles empires are using MSI's own tech as their base. Montu makes a really good point, that perhaps the devs didn't think of, if you set up a big bad and they're destroyed off screen that's a pretty disappointing payoff.
@Abran Peralta Well depending on how it's done, it can actually be really flavorful. Imagine finding out they got swallowed by a growing devouring swarm or determined exterminators.
That was the weirdest bug I've ever seen. 10 replies???
I feel like maybe MSI should have either been a weaker Fallen Empire or be made up of a bunch mini empires like the marauders.
4:30 that's a story in of itself, isn't it? You spend years, decades, centuries even tracking down those who wronged you so that you can exact your revenge upon them. You build up the fantasy in your head of what the day will be like; of how good justice will feel. But when that day finally comes, what do you do find? A broken empire. A shadow of the thing that hurt you. The final battle that you promised yourself was had a long time ago, and you missed it. Your final victory never came, and now you must decide what kind of empire yours will be. Will you take what scraps of revenge you can get by wiping out the remnants of your oppressors and in doing so risk becoming as vicious as them, or will you instead try to build a better galaxy where such fates will never befall anyone ever again. Will you break the cycle of vengeance, or continue it.
Honestly, it kind of feels funny in a strange way if the payback target turns out to have had a reverse of fortune.
In the roleplay aspect it also feels like a cosmic level of poetic justice. The proper way to stop this though, would be to guarantee through empire generation that Minmar is advanced and neighboring non advanced empires, or having the payback target an actual fallen empire.
All things considered, this is something both the devs and mods can easily adjust.
I think it's about time they added a megacorp fallen empire or something.
@@Jose-xh5qb I could already see it, "this fallen empire is a megacorp that at some point bought ownership of the entire galaxy and reserved for itself the most lucrative worlds, but in an effort to expand business opportunities it allows lesser empires to rule the galaxy in their stead, for a price of course" and then you make them demand tribute a lot, however, if you expand into people that aren't paying them tribute they give you rewards
Thank you for not being a shill trying to get in on paradox's good side. it's clear you care about the fans and want to provide the actual pros and cons as well as a good conclusion why it is not worth it
As someone who plays on huge (2000+stars) galaxies with mods, this is actually a really big value add because theres a bug I've never been able to work around in the core game where having "too many empires" (which does not scale up with star count) introduces a massively annoying bug: the 'extra empires' will spawn on top of other empires, resulting in all sorts of weirdness, including insstantly losing because another empire spawned on top of you. With First Contact I can have just up to the limit in normal/adv start empires and let the pre-FTL species help fill out the galaxy over time. Also I already have ancient relics heh.
One thing I do wish they would do is bring back split system control or allow for a 'gentler relocation' of pre-ftl species (heck, with high enough cloaking and a megastructure scale ship/mobile habitat, you could make the case of being allowed to stealthily just abduct them all and move them to another location - one of the star trek movies even had a plot entirely around this, except the federation was doing in secret from even their own populace because of their prime directive law), so that poorly located pre-ftl species reaching ftl doesn't just immediately steal my control of a strategically critical system.
One of my favorite stories about a time this came up was when I used mods to force all the crises off at once at max strength, and I needed to take the ringworld at sanctuary because I could fortify the chokepoint it was located at very well from the encroaching contingency threat in that region. Unfortunately it had a pre-ftl species who was at the space age already. So I prepped up a bunch of shiny new habitats in a peripheral system, upgraded them, and then in the space of 2 in-game days, I simultaneously invaded every ringworld segment, relocated everyone to the habitats, and then released them as vassals (who were very happy and loyal). Much of the (surviving, due to all 3 crises) galaxy was like '-50 invaded pre-ftl world' but I chose to interpret it contextually as '-50 created a bunch of new vassal-puppets with inflated diplomatic weight from higher than fallen empire level tech in the galactic community to further entrench their dominance in the senate'
What cpu do you need to do that?
@@sigmachad96 he works at NASA
Very Star Trek Insurrection. Relocating a species from their birth world without their consent for personal gain is generally frowned upon. But to save some of them from an existential threat is less so.
Found a really rare pre-ftl where it started as a life-seeded pre-ftl with a gaia world in the Atomic era.... Which subsequently nuked their own country and then got the survivor origin. They still have the rare deposits of motes and stuff and i think there was around 11 unique districts including metal boneyards
This whole dlc excites me as someone who mostly plays single player for the narrative! I'm so hyped for all the hijinks and fun this whole dlc provides and I've been so ready for this! 🌜🤘🌛
I absolutely love that you dive into the "Should I buy this DLC" analysis is in the exact same way you would do a "should I build this megastructure," or "should I take this civic." Its fine to consider personal preferences / flavor but ultimate decisions and outcomes are most influenced by cost / benefit. Both within Stellaris and within the meta of buying expansion packs.
Waiting for the DLC that puts all those driven exterminators far far away from my empire when I play grand admiral.
I feel like the subspace drive of eager explorers, and the reduced remote outpost cost of slingshot to the stars could be a very interesting combination
especially since they massively buffed the fleet yeeter start
Forcing Minamar as the fixed antagonist for those two origins was a bit dumb. I'd rather have a random advanced start AI play that role, like in other origins.
Or an (RNG'd) option of Minmar being a subsidiary of an Advanced Start: Minmar? Yeah, they're *one* of out companies, and you backwater apes are messing with our profit margins...
that would require the developers to actually think things through.
I like two origins being tied, but part of stellaris’s appeal is each play through is unique. I hope mods can add some randomness back
What about playing as Minamar? That would make me buy the DLC just for their design
@@MrVictor1227 don’t think you can. Maybe you can design an empire just like them but not play as them in that role im the origin
I wonder how Fear of the Dark could be merged with Inward Perfection. It would be fun in that scenario to be the second group, instead of being the first one. Maybe something for mods to change in the future?
One thing I do not understand about cloaking (or more precisely detection) is, can the detection range of one starbase span accross more than the sector it is built in? I mean, can I build a station on my border with weapons, with one station the sector behind and detection to spot cloaked ships trying to enter?
If not and I must pick either one or the other, indeed, I do not want cloaking at all in my games. It should be a balance in your economy (number of star bases to cover your territory) vs either having only defenses vs having only detection and fleets.
I'm pretty sure based on the dev diaries that they do.
It is sadly incompatible
A detection starbase reveals everything within its sensor range, so with the right tech you can have one that covers your entire empire
Im eager for the privative interactions for RP story telling potential, so I'll see this as an absolute must have although I very much appreciate you're fair assessment that its not going to be to everyone's preference.
An interesting thing about Broken Shackles - I played with some friends and all 4 of us picked this origin, we all started with some of eachothers pops. Had we known we could have metagamed and collaborated when building our species and choosing ethics to be extra advantageous.
Interesting review, Monty!
Question: Can ships use the Subspace drive automatically for pathing further than just a single jump? What's the cooldown on those?
If they work exactly like Jump Drives, where jumping is all player-manual now, that Civic and promise of a "Players can choose to never use hyperdrives"-playstyle is DOA.
What looks good is the pre-FTL rework to allow for a "First One" playthrough and then see actual normal Empires spawn with real origins to back them up.
Good call on pointing out Ancient Relics, that one is a fantastic DLC, wich itsel synergizes with Leviathans and Utopia as well.
Thats The First Thing i Will do when i get Home,First one Playtrough
What promise? They just added a "you lack.hyperlane tech" origin as an option
Not "you never use them".
Payback origin is actually OP atm on commodore and lower. All you have to do is rush getting the battleship from the archeology site, build up to force limit and most any AI empire you meet will agree to be subjugated due to fleet power. Militaristic empires on commodore might have enough fleet power themselves to resist however.
influence needs a complete rework, more max, more ways to get it -- there's so many ways to spend it. I'd almost suggest splitting it up into "raw influence" and political (external), military, popular influence (internal), expansion influence, and other influence types you can increase and spend in different ways. Different factions and ethics could increase these and make certain operations more or less expensive
Dude you should look into the paranoid origin. Specifically the absolute busted strength of the first contact war option.
My paranoid pals wanted me to immediately declare war on the first person I made contact with (they were neighbors and I had aggressive first contact protocols)
The amazing thing is it’s total war so any system you capture is just yours, no claims no end of war full blown free systems. I doubled my size and colonies immediately.
As well as a free cloaked fleet!
Figured it’d make a good video :p
Definitely going to get it. I've always been a huge fan of uplift, first contact stories and that sort of thing, and this looks like Paradox really going in that direction to make that system more in-depth. I'll happily support such a move.
Well, looks like this DLC is for me. I was looking forward to the primitive part the most.
Me too. I have actually really been enjoying it!
I figure $15 is the cost of a single order at MickyD's or a movie ticket. I'm good with it. And I think our energy credits are a vote for more Stellaris content in the future. If the cost is an issue think of it as splitting the cost between the Story Pack and a gratuity for the 3.7 update. I agree that the major DLC's should come before this pack but we need to support Paradox to keep Stellaris growing.
This man is in the pocket of the big P
$15 for an order? What kinda gourmet McDonald's you been ordering?
I got Ancient Relics like 2 days ago and then I learn that Archaeotechs are a part of it now? This is great!
Hey Montu, I wanted to thank you for your honest opinion and candour in this and other reviews.
I’m just getting into Stellaris, (just the base game.) Your videos have definitely helped me get up to speed and helped to enhance my experience.
Thank you for all your efforts in content creation, and your delightful manner of presenting them.
Glad I could help!
I enjoy the concept of an advanced Megacorp being the baddy. It's like a "game-start crisis."
The problem is, there are other advanced AI starts, and MSI’s build will lose to any randomly rolled good aggressive build.
if you want Minmar to be powerful start with a lot of pre-ftl empires and few if any normal or advanced ones, they blob out quite nicely then, I've been playing Fear the Dark with a forced empire with the payback origin and nothing else so the empires are just the ones connected to Minimar, myself and whatever pre-ftl empires claw there way out of the craddle, and with 5x worlds and pre-ftl civs it's a lot of fun so far
and this is why im glad the console version has dlc passes for getting dlc in sets at a decent cost
Thanks for not being a shill.
This proves your love for the game is a genaune
I still remember the old days with 3 different exploration types, and I still remember that all but hyperlanes were turned off 90% of the time all the time.
Paradox: Patches two of three ftl modes out of the base game
Also Paradox: Makes dlc with one of the removed ftl modes as a selling point four years later :P
bro you have the exact accent and inflections as josh strife hayes
Honestly, I think the way to fix that underwhelming sensation when MSi is defeated by someone else is basically giving MSI a buff that lasts up until the player makes contact with MSI, so that they will survive up until that point, and after that whatever happens, happens
"Yes, but I'm very certain mods will fix that."
Thank you for saving me from having to buy this DLC.
It would nice to have some customization on these story packs. Like changing who the villains are or maybe the races you find
Man where I live $15 is like a mcdonalds meal now >.
Dude game prices have been all over the place recently, like when I brought Surviving Abyss for 15 I thought it was a glitch. I bought ixion for 40 and I would have gladly paid 60. Seems like every game now is either way cheap or way too expensive, no middle ground.
I'm pretty sure it will be modable so that other empires are less likely to attack Minima.
Just give them a fat AI related modifier that makes other AI not willing to attack Minima as much.
@montu plays - I hope you get this. I was able to defeat the grey tempest by sneaking about 80 cloaked frigates to the control node and opening fire - vaporizing the rest of the threat. Wasn't exactly a legit play they by then since they kept sniping the salvager enclave but needless to say your wolfpacks can snipe leviathans through closed borders and get around actual mechanics of some crisis (snipe the Khan?) and I'll want to play with this some more.
“You can choose to never research hyperdrive”… does that mean there’s an alternative prerequisite for Jump Drives and Gateway Construction?
I mean, I have everything and I was not going to miss this one, specially as it has some very interesting things from my perspective. I'm very interested in the origins and civics. Cloacking seems very interesting. And the primitive intereactions might make me not just conquer them.
I per-ordered it and I'm super happy with it :)
For me it is a very very easy YES. I mean, where I live I can get one beer at a bar for that price. But the game lasts me way longer than one beer.
Now there's a real world comparison I can get behind
I was mildly curious to know how cloaking turned out, and it's sad but nice to know it seems like a win more mechanic so far.
Think the DLC price hike is due to the general price hike in games as of late. Its inflation related, but it is what it is. DLCs to other games see the same increases. Its unfortunate but considering that sunk costs for devs have gone up, I would consider it fairer than most inflation increases as of late.
I recommend the DLC, the new civics offer a very unique way to play the game that synergises interestingly with a lot of the other options in the game, and the primitive interactions add a bit of flavour that requires very little interaction (which is a good thing because there's already a lot of pop ups in the game that require your attention)
With the Payback origin, even if it's a little Meh at release: there's SO much that can be done with it in nods or official.
-Freed Slavers
-Spiritual (FE) who you didn't agree with their religion and got cast out.
-Gestalt uplifting you for Food (Hive) with preset traits that you can't remove without Genetic Modification.
-Mechanical empire uplift to Assimilate and you escaped. Same preset traits unremovable without research.
It doesn't HAVE to be a Megacorp as your nemesis. You can eventually choose to re-merge with your Overlord and then take over, use Subterfuge whilst Vassal to assassinate the leaders and take control...there's idea potential here.
I haven't seen the event so I'm not 100% sure, but the many tentacled one sounds like a reference to Futurama. Could be wrong here though.
When I found MSI they were strong and threatening, but I like the idea of the burning desire for revenge to coming to naught because they're already wiped out - they inevitably upset the wrong species.
I feel that the influence cost of spy operations should scale based on the primitives level of development.
I think it would be interesting if MSI scaled with more payback or broken shackles empires. That way you're not just ganging up on them later in the game
Montu, I found an AMAZING combination. If you combine eager explorers civic with the new update to slingshot to the stars, it makes for the FASTEST expansion in existence. You can skip straight past unknown hyperlanes, claim choke points whilst not having nearby systems for extremely less cost, and secure your potential territory faster than any other empire. In my first few games testing this, I've secured areas as large as 50 stars within the first 10 years, on 400 star galaxies nonetheless. That's 1/8th of the galaxy claimed as my own within 10 years all thanks to this combination. I've also devised a challenge playthrough with this setup, where you ONLY use subspace drives until you get jump drives. You cannot research hyperdrives either or else your colony ships will end up using them.
I already bought every other one! IM IN TOO DEEP I CAN'T QUIT NOW IT'S GOT A HOLD ON ME!!!
FTL inhibitors not being affected by cloaking makes sense to me.
Appreciate this. I mainly buy all the DLC's to keep supporting the project overall. I love paradox and all the content they put out, so I look at it as more of a support thing than anything else. TBH it does seem like a weaker DLC but, eh, i still really enjoy it. I just love stellaris anyway. ty for your time!
I respect the honest review, dude.
Me who preordered and have been waiting to play: NOOOO
I actually bought it because he promoted a link to buy it
I'll just take this opportunity for my usual spiel:
Do not preorder games. Any game. It is an anti-consumer practice which encourage the kind of day-1 monster patches we see from the soulless AAA giants. There is no stock limitation which would mean you will miss out by other people preordering. Wait a few days, let the reviews from a variety of sources you trust come in to see if it's a broken mess. If it is, wait a week until they either hotpatch it, or never buy the game because they never fix it.
There is literally no reason to preorder games, and every reason to wait with cautious optimism. You'll get a finished product, they'll get your money. Everyone wins.
god same! I wondered if this DLC would be standard paradox "great concept, bad execution" for their DLCs but gave em the benefit of the doubt for the sake of new content. ah well, mods will fix
You actually made me sweat over my pre-order lmfao.
I was sure I was safe after seeing all the pre-release content, but Daddy Montu knows best after all 🤣
Subspace drives have issues:
There is a 180 days reload time between jumps. By itself it is not an issue, but you cannot set a final destination; you have to jump, then wait 180 days, come back to your ship, jump again etc...
Tons of micromanagement, and travels will take much longer as you will rarely come back exactly 180 days after teh last jump, busy taking care of other stuff and forgetting about your ship.
I don't understand why they didn't simply go withe a warpdrive style; replacing the 180 reload time with simply a very slow travel time.
Thank you for a great in-depth review. They really help me decide which expansions and DLCs to get when I continue to purchase the add-ons.
Tbh im unsure of cloaking, if before i was able to bottleneck way stronger empires and have a chance to at least defend myself for a bit, now they will be able to just bypass all my defense and made a mess inside my empire.
For me it reinforce the strenght of the already stronger empire, and hamper the weak empire to have a chance to fight back.
Maybe it could be limited to smaller ships, or maybe if a ship it's equiped with the cloaking device it would be weaker, like a malus to shields, movement or tracking
I love do a roleplaying in stellaris even in first contact, cuz this is sandbox game where you do anything.
I love how it's been less than an hour and he's already on it
MSI is my new favorite recurring character on the galactic stage, even if I don't have the appropriate origin I add a number of empires with either broken shackles or payback into the mix. MSI generally becomes a major power in the galaxy, their AI seems to like subjugating over annexing, and I think all of that is neat.
I wish they made a funny story mode where you get to be a Fallen empire going around space finding all those primitives and guiding them to the stars. The idea would be that there is an ancient threat slowly emerging and you are in your hubris not taking it seriously. The younger empires will try to warn you if you have been helping them but you at first dismiss their plea. Only when they are technologically far enough you are able to take them seriously and research the threat on your own. And if you haven't done that fast or well enough, it might already be to late.
You shouldn't be able to declare war on them, and for events, for example sometimes a foolish younger empire declares war on you where you get a small fleet granted with a bored admiral and your objective is to not lose any ships or lose standing and guidance from your subjects and other ideas like that. If you done well, you get to awaken at a time before the great threat spawns and get to prepare, if not - the galaxy will get overrun.
Does an empire have to be in the same system to detect your cloak? (console) The AI is a bit too smart at not attacking your defensive starbase + fleet even if you have less overall fleet power which makes defending early game feel kinda bad. However if you can hide your fleet the AI would be more likely to attack your lone starbase letting you ambush them and have a proper fight. I suppose you can just park your fleet a system away to get the same result but that just kind of feels exploitative rather than strategic to me.
Also would subspace snares on titans prevent a cloaked fleet from leaving the system? Feels like that would also equalize some annoying tech issues. Additionally it should probably work that having a lower detection rating should just increase the time required to detect the cloak. Like you can be terrible at detection but if you have enough subspace snares or FTL inhibitors around it wont matter since the cloaked ships cant leave and will eventually be revealed and destroyed.
I have all the DLCs except megacorp and i will get first contact because it's reaction interesting the primitives the origins the cloaking it makes for a good story and can be fun
Megacorp was so good
We should never forget, that we pay the custodian team with those DLCs as well.
Stellaris is the only paradox game i buy every DLC from and i will do as long as it lasts, because i want it to
run forever.
We shouldn’t have to buy every overpriced dlc for the custodian team to get payed
@@epiccoolawesomegoblinguyre6520 You shouldn't feel like you have to buy anything, but the point is that continued development has to be funded somehow. Working on a single game as long as Paradox studios do is in no way the norm, especially with no microtransactions in sight. Seeing how awful the industry has become makes this model feel pretty reasonable.
To be clear, I'm not sure if I'll be buying this yet either.
@@epiccoolawesomegoblinguyre6520 so they should just create money out of thin air or?
@@RavenDaybreaker they should lower the price or make the dlc worth it and paradox isn’t some indie dev company begging for scraps
They’re going to make their content as overpriced as the consumer allows them to. You have to push back at some point.
Holy fucking shit you had me at playing as Minmatar
Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to spawn ‘inside’ (or right at the edge of) MSI’s territory in the Payback origin, similar to how when you put an observation post around a planet and they eventually ask if they can keep the planet/system as their own territory. This would help safeguard MSI so that they’re initially a bit stronger than you and you need to outgrow them to eventually build up enough strength to seek “payback”…
Can you cloak construction ships to backcap systems behind closed borders?
Could the tentacle one be a Futurama reference??
That will be revealed in the "Zoidberg" patch. =^[.]~=
Honestly, I'd buy it right away, but since I'm quite a bit short on the economic side, I'm going to have to give it a pass, at least until I figure my stuff out or gets a discount during summer (whatever comes first)
This is one of my issues when it comes to paradox dlc, it's not a complete experience without the other dlc, and buying them all one by one is just too much. Paradox should release like a full version or atleast some sort of like a bundle parts for dlc.
There should be some sort of extra event chain when your payback/ broken chains empire is so much stronger than MSI when first encountering them that you can go "lol, serves you right". Something like that.
I need to wait until all the mods I use get updated so i think I'll wait for a sale.
12:42 ? Only pop culture reference I know involving tentacles is Futurama lol can’t wait to find out for myself what you’re talking about!
Honestly, thank you for the review. Both Stellaris and Europa Universalis IV are having big DLC come out roughly at the same time and I had to make the decision between the two.
There is another reason to get the DLC: It funds the continued development of the game, which includes the free content and the custodian content. When I pay for a Paradox DLC, in my head I include all the free features as well, because without the DLCs those features would almost certainly not happen. I am the sort of person who would rather buy an update for a game I know I love and play repeatedly, than buy a whole other game that I might play once and then never again, and Paradox are perfect at this.
A complaint made was that the big bad evil empire gets taken out, or is otherwise made inconsequential, before you can properly interact with them. This actually adds to the storytelling aspect of the game IMO.
Going to confront someone who gave you a hard time years later only to find them a pathetic shadow of their former selves or dead? It is both realistic and a great subversion of expectations.
Even better would be finding out that they were never that big or important in the first place. They just looked that way because they were bigger than you. In actuality, they were in almost as tenuous a position and were just trying to elevate themselves by punching down.
Yah, subverting the expectation that you get to have an important narrative role, and a story arch.
It really adds to the idea of how vast and dangerous the universe is in Stellaris. Your people get enslaved and fight tooth and nail to free themselves from a superior foe. And when you find them again, you realize they're only some bush league corporation.
@@WRanger87 "Someone training up to fight The Big Bad™ only to find out that the enemy is not a significant threat and then using their newfound powers to fight a legit threat/threats" is a staple wdym? This arch describes a significant portion of major literary characters who have antagonists.
I think this will be good. Lots of new events and general improvements and I like the stories. I but from Insta-gaming and its sold out temporarily. Any new Stellaris is good Stellaris. If I'm new though, I buy the big stuff first.
I believe the many tentacled one is a reference to the "love the tenticle" episode of futurama .....
Montu, Please suggest a "meta" (as in meta for meta for meme fun time) for Quantum Catapult + Explorer
I'd like to see MSI treated specially when there are people with the proper origins in the galaxy. Maybe even as far as a flag saying "no war to/from AIs" until specific events have been triggered. I wouldn't even mind seeing them in a category of their own where [perhaps] they are treated as a "really advanced, but not fallen empire level" type of empire. I would imagine this would help a lot.
Thank you for your analysis of the DLC :)
Got Overlord instead and I'm now doing a artifact and vassal centered megacorp playthrough.
Im pretty sure the tentacled one is a reference to Lovecraft/Cthulu
Now sharing sensors with a player is more important since they can make use of your stealth detection
I buy every dlc because I'm a fan boy and will totally support this game. What may be lackluster now will most certainly be worked on and improved upon later by the custodians team.
So on my Payback playthrough MIS started LITERALLY on top of me. Like I was able to get 3 maybe 4 star systems before they gobbled up everything and left me completely isolated.
So I went... aite. Built up a military and with their flagship proceeded to more or less ABSOLUTELY wreck their shit.