So far I'm thinking 5 PM UTC on thursday or fridays; which is the most convenient time for me atm.

 

Well, that'll depend on me getting up at 6am. We'll see.

 

I call you forth @Palindrome , @Jon , BioPlague , @Innomine , Aekiel , Anarchy , @Tutorial Boss , @Oment , and probably many more that I've forgotten.

With the upcoming release of Utopia, I've decided to organize a multiplayer game with emphasis on roleplaying. I thought some of you guys might be interested. I've made a little google sheet with all the relevant information, feel free to sign up if you'd like. I'm opening the game to a lot of people and not only DLP; I could use some people who I know and can trust to not act like total dicks

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eFrw4vuhb3ZE0Ro1KBxqxzrl7CGB070w3Z5FPj-4lVU/edit?usp=sharing

 

How does DLC work with Stellaris? Is it just one person needs it and the entire group has it? I'd be down to play with but I'm not sure if I'm getting the new DLC right when it comes out.

Also, I'd probably be playing a Hive Mind if I did play but how does that work if you don't have the DLC?

 

As long as the host has the DLC, you're good. So you don't have to pay for anything.

 

Definitely interested.

 

This does look very interesting. I think I might be up for this.

Wait, that's 7am on a Monday. Don't think that's going to work actually.

 

Ouch!
/10 char

 

Ok, am now officially looking forward to this expansion and thinking it'll be an insta-buy for me, unless they price it ridiculously high.

They released the patch notes for it today, and they're mighty tasty looking.

 

It's 20 bucks.

 

So you can preorder Utopia from paradox's own store now.

Or, if you're into twitter stuff, you can try following https://twitter.com/dmoregard <-- this Stellaris dev and try to snag one of the 30% off coupons he's giving out.

I haven't had much luck with it myself.

 

First impressions of Utopia:

The new faction system is leaps and bounds better than the old one.
Hive-mind is pretty interesting to play as.
Being able to spawn with either 4 robot pops on your starting planet(Mechanist civic), or 4 'alien' pops is also pretty neat(Syncretic Evolution).
Pops seem to grow a lot slower now that food is empire-wide. At least until you start using edicts and such.

 

Been trying out stuff. Long story short: huge improvement over the base game, probably worth your money.

Just gonna list some bullet point impressions

Government Changes

• Hive Mind seems kind of dumbed down. Some people may enjoy the simplified gameplay though.
• Liking the Authoritarian changes.
• Syncretic Evolution is the bees knees.
• The free Robot pops one is pretty strong early game, but still runs into the issue of Synth pops being a bitch to manage late game and also kind of slow to expand/grow.
• Tall seems actually viable with Habs and Ring Worlds

Traditions

• Go Expansion first every game.

Perks

• If you're going for a high Habitability early (whether through genes or Robots) then going for the Tile Blocker Perk is insanely good. You can colonize anything and it saves an incredible amount of Society research.
• Voidborn OP.

Ascensions

• Bio Path seems both strong and fun
• Robo Path feels very micromanagement heavy
• Haven't tried Psionic.

Habs

• They suck balls for Minerals
• They are pretty good for Food
• They are pretty good for Unity
• They are amazing for Energy
• They are amazing for Research

Mega Structures

• Dyson Sphere takes for fucking ever, costs way too much and produces way too little
• Ditto for Research Station. Both of these can be outperformed by Habs. Wouldn't recommend building either unless your growth is terrible or you have literally nothing else to build.
• Ringworld and Sensor Array have their uses. Build 'em if you have Minerals out the ass.

 

So it's worth getting? Haven't really touched the game since release because it was so shallow then. Is it good now and do I need the Leviathan dlc?

 

I would definitely say it's worth getting. The game feels so much more substantial than on release. The Leviathans DLC isn't essential but I do think it's decent value for money (especially as it's on sale at the moment).

The one area of the game that still feels like it's really missing something is war. Doomstacking is still pretty much the only viable strategy (which the AI doesn't seem to have figured out) and it still requires an annoying level of micromanaging as soon as you have a decent size empire. It needs both increased strategic depth and quality of life improvements. I hope the next DLC is war-focused.

For the DLC after that, I'd like to see further work on economy, both in terms of the depth of your internal economy and in terms of trade between empires. Less civilisation-style trade between states and more EU4 style trade-network going on in the background. The game really has an opening for there to be a lot of expansion into the idea of the private sector. I want to see interstellar corporations, trade routes, more specific resources, etc. A "private sector" DLC would also enhance the migration system.

For the DLC after that, I think they should revisit diplomacy. They did a lot of work on diplomacy in the first update to the game relatively soon after release, which successfully made it feel less barebones, but it's still quite shallow. In particular there's a frustrating lack of detailed information about other empires to compare yourself to them. There's also less information than I would like about the factors driving AI behaviour e.g. particular systems they have marked as of interest, etc. Perhaps this could be tied in with an espionage update, so that you don't have detailed information by default like in the EU4 ledger, but rather have to find it out.

After that I feel like the game would be "complete". There would still be room for plenty more updates adding further flavour, storypacks, etc, but that would be enough I think for the game to pretty much be the perfect space strategy 4X.

 

So playing as a Fanatical Purifier is amazingly fun.

Hive Mind is a bit bland feeling currently, since you basically end up using only your own race, no factions, etc.
It also ends up hurting for influence a bit towards mid/late game because of the no factions to give bonus influence.

Xenophobe/Pacifist/Other can be incredibly OP if you go with Agrarian Idyll and Inwards Focus civics for mass unity generation. (You can pop your first Ascension perk within like, 4~ years? Maybe sooner.)

 

Just finished our first session of a 19 players multiplayer roleplaying game. It was a lot of fun. So far, the galaxy seems to be filled with pacifists though We'll be running this for 4 more weeks, and after that, depending on how it goes, we might drop and start a new game with 25 players or so. If you guys are interested to join at that point, drop me a PM.

 

So apparently 1.6 update is going to be a bugfix/QoL focused patch.