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[RoguelikeRazuka]

Hello, which DLCs for Stellaris do you think are worth checking out and buying on steam summer sale? I haven't played the base game yet, but I will pretend I'm indeed planning to do so in near future.

[Radsoc]

Hello, which DLCs for Stellaris do you think are worth checking out and buying on steam summer sale? I haven't played the base game yet, but I will pretend I'm indeed planning to do so in near future.

The game is supposedly "2.0+", and playable by all means, but feels like an early access game that needs more content. For that reason I would say all DLCs are helping, but prices are kind of steep. 50% off is the best it gets nowadays it seems, but sometimes you can buy them in steam bundle/pack constellations to get a higher discount. However, some are of course just cosmetics, but the most important feature DLCs IMHO are:

- Utopia
- Synthetic Dawn

I would say they are essential for a first playthrough.

For a second+ playthrough Distant Stars, Apocalypse.

Trader Enclaves added by the Leviathan DLC are quite useful if you run surplus in one resource and a deficit in another, but I'm no big fan of it because prices are not based on galactic supply/demand, but pegged buy sale 2:1.

[ZeroGravitas]

I don't think Utopia is all that important, especially now that Ascension Perks are free. Synthetic Dawn covers almost all the same stuff and has more. But we've had this discussion before.

Having spent some time with Distant Stars, I think it's actually pretty important because it fills out the gameworld. More anomalies, more leviathans, more unique star systems, etc.

[Chiefwaffles]

Distant Stars and Leviathans are the most important, in my opinion. Both are the cheaper type of game pack and they just add more content so you won't be sitting twiddling your thumbs.

Synthetic Dawn is pretty easy to decide on personally. Do you want to play as a proper robot civ? If you answered "yes", get Synthetic Dawn.

Utopia and Apocalypse are both very end-game. Utopia adds end-game structures and Apocalypse adds end-game ships.


I don't really think we've gotten any packs that add actual mechanics. They do most/pretty much all of the mechanical changes in the free updates. I'd be willing to bet that the next DLC will be a big one focused around diplomacy/trading, but that's just a possibility in the future.
Here's my list of DLC priority:
Distant Stars > Leviathans > Utopia > Apocalypse
(with Synthetic Dawn being its own thing)

[Telgin]

I would say that Utopia was the most important for me, specifically so I could build space habitats.  The other megastructures are cool, but arguably not worth the resource and time investment in most cases.

Other than that, I only have Leviathans, which I got specifically for the trader enclaves, although I have to agree that they're a surprisingly shallow concept.  Gave me something to do with the +200 food surplus I kept running at least.  Maybe that will be improved in the diplomacy DLC whenever that comes around.

The only feature of Synthetic Dawn I really care about is the ability to have species specific portraits for robots, since in my portrait mod I had to go the route of creating new types of robots to use custom portraits, which has the consequence of AI empires potentially building them too, which would be weird.

I'll probably get Apocalypse eventually, although based on my reading the titans it unlocks are not really worth building in many cases.  Colossi are cool as a concept, but I think they're kind of in the megastructure camp of cool but kind of impractical.  I think Apocalypse also unlocks some kind of new edicts you can use when you're out of traditions to unlock, which would give you a reason to build unity structures in the end game.

I was planning on skipping Distant Stars, since it didn't look that interesting to me at the time, but now I'm curious and may get it soon.

I seriously wish they would bundle the older DLCs together in some cheap package deal.  I kind of don't want to pay for this game twice over just to get all of the features unlocked...

[Kanil]

I think it depends on what you're interested in, really.

I don't care much about robots, so I doubt I've ever used a single feature of Synthetic Dawn ever. Conversely, I quite like ringworlds even if they're of dubious value, so Utopia ends up being more relevant to me.

If you like robots, and can't justify building ringworlds, then you'd probably have the opposite opinion on the relevant value of Synthetic Dawn/Utopia.

[ZeroGravitas]

I seriously wish they would bundle the older DLCs together in some cheap package deal.  I kind of don't want to pay for this game twice over just to get all of the features unlocked...

welcome to paradox

[Telgin]

A random thought occurred to me earlier, but is it common or smart to try to maintain equal research output between the different fields?  I've always done that, but I realized that in general I probably shouldn't focus quite as much on society research, especially end game.  When it comes to repeatable tech, for example, the naval capacity and fleet size techs are kind of useful, but the others are mostly for convenience.  Physics has 3 repeatables I really care about (shields, energy weapon fire rate and damage), 4 if I dip into the power bonus tech, but engineering has at least 5 that are useful (kinetic weapon damage and fire rate, armor hit points, missile damage and mineral output).  Therefore, it seems pretty clear that I should probably have more engineering facilities than any other kind...

Although maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on repeatable tech.  I like to overemphasize research speed so I can outtech everyone and then see how high I can go by the end of the game, but Shield Harmonics XIV is arguably not that useful for the research investment...

Edit:

Speaking of ludicrously high repeatables, I think something may be screwy with research agreements with them.  I keep getting +25% research speed bonuses from these agreements despite the other empires all being inferior to me in tech.  I'm almost positive none of them have researched 15 levels of shield harmonics, so I'm not sure why I'm getting the bonus.

[Shadowlord]

I try to keep my research balanced, but I've also never gotten through a crisis and usually stop playing before one even starts, so I've never reached the end of the tech tree.

I've also never really thought about whether it would be a good idea to prioritize one kind of research.

[umiman]

I think the only real research that actually matters is fleet size stuff. Ship size itself is not a big deal, but the tech for ship sizes also increases fleet sizes and that's more important.

When you fight wars, it doesn't really matter if the enemy has like... better missiles or whatever. What makes a massive difference is if they have more ships than you.

In the end game it's kinda the same deal honestly. Everything else can be overcome by just... expanding.

[Nelia Hawk]

one "easy" way to experience the endgame crisis if your games never last 200 years but more around 100 is to play a bit accelerated game:

tech/tradition cost on 0.5
midgame crisis on 2250
endgame crisis on 2300
and maybe turning crisis strength down by 0.25 from whatever it is from galaxy size.

that probably will turn into a game where not the whole galaxy is taken by empires but still spots unclaimed... but probably will work well on medium-ish galaxys

[pisskop]

Soo, is this 'good'?  Would I like this as opposed to ckii or hoi?  Is the ai competent enough?  is it a timesink to learn?

[Mephansteras]

I'd say it is pretty good. It satisfies a different 'itch' for me than ckII does, though in many ways it still has the emergent story aspect to it.

Overall I'd say it is broad but shallow. AI is...ok, but not great. Kind of the level of the Civ series in many ways, though better in some ways. You feel more like you're doing diplomacy with a faction that cares about existing than 'winning the game' than many other game AIs. It's still not very good at the game without cheating, but I find that it puts up enough of a fight to be interesting anyway. And there are usually some empires that do well enough with or against the others in their neighborhood to be a decent challenge by the time you get to them. Plus the Fallen Empires and Crisis events that can be a big challenge regardless.

It is a paradox game, so I'd suggest getting it on sale. If you look back a bit you'll see plenty of conversations in this thread on what DLC is best depending on what you're interested in.

[Telgin]

I really like it, despite its flaws.  To get the worst out of the way first:

1. Lots of DLC, and without it the game does feel bare.  I recommend getting at least Leviathans and Utopia, but everyone has their opinion on this.
2. The AI is... hit and miss.  Supposedly the update to 2.0 broke some of the AI's understanding of warfare, and there are known problems that haven't been fixed.  It tends to fall behind economically as well, but you can increase the difficulty and its artificial crutch to help with that if you care.
3. If you get very far ahead of the AI, the game can get boring since it's not suicidal and won't usually attack if it doesn't think it can win.  I have yet to have the AI declare war on me in about 175 hours of gameplay, and since I RP as pacifists I don't declare war in turn...

Overall, I think "broad but shallow" isn't a bad description.  There are planned improvements (read: new DLCs...) that will add more depth to the economy and diplomacy, but we'll have to wait to see how they turn out.

Still, I do greatly enjoy the game.  Maybe I have simple tastes, since I can still enjoy the micro of expanding a space empire peacefully and checking off new technologies that are researched.  The game does spice it up some in the "end game crisis" though, which was a lot of fun for me the first time it happened.  I'd thoroughly beaten the rest of the galaxy through economics and technology alone, but when that rolled around I thought I was going to lose.  Prior to the crisis, I had a long and tense relationship with my neighbors, who hated my guts because they were self-proclaimed democratic crusaders and I was playing as authoritarians.  The game does have an emergent story feel to it, but you do have to fill in gaps yourself.

For me, one of the more appealing features, after I got it to work anyway, was the ability to do portrait mods so I could play as whatever I wanted.  I've played through a few times as authoritarian, pacifist and materialist sapient horse-deer-things, and am now playing through as authoritarian, militarist and materialist space dragons by lifting some recolored Spyro character portraits.  My brother said that was a very noobish thing to do, but I don't care, I've got space dragons now.

Worth mentioning that there are also tons and tons of mods for the game, if you like that, but you can't get achievements if you use them.

[ZeroGravitas]

Soo, is this 'good'?  Would I like this as opposed to ckii or hoi?  Is the ai competent enough?  is it a timesink to learn?

1. meh (edit: note: this is a major improvement over a year ago, when the answer was "no")
2. probably not, if you didn't like ck2/hoi. it's generally similar to the style of play you find in those two games.
3. no
4. moderate