With Apocalypse and the 2.0 Cherryh update around the corner, Stellaris is about to become a very different game.
On today's development diary, game director Martin Anward outlined the latest changes coming to the sci-fi 4X, in the form of alterations and inclusions to the game's civics and ascension perks.
Stellaris: Apocalypse Expansion Release Date Set For February
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Most Utopia DLC ascension perks have been rolled into the base game, and the free 2.0 update will change the following now vanilla effects:
- Interstellar Dominion: As border pushing is nwo gone, the Border Range modifier was exchanged for a -20% reduction on the Influence cost of both new Starbases and Claims.
- Mastery of Nature: A perk that was close to useless through multiple interations since inception, this now unlocks a planetary edict that allows you to permanently increase the size of a planet between 1 to 3 tiles. The amount set is based on planet size, and you can not exceed the 25 tile limit. Resources will be randomly generated.
- World Shaper: Changed from a buff to terraforming to a requirement to terraform Gaia Worlds (plus a Gaia World bonus to overall resource production).
The Biological Ascension path's special traits have also been made stronger and cheaper, while the plans to add more traits in general and give Robomodding a revamp have been postponed till after the Cherryh patch.
Aside from those changes, straight up new perks have been added in both the update and the Apocalypse DLC:
- Eternal Vigilance: (Cherryh) Increases Starbase and Defense Platform Hull Points, alongisde the Defense Platform Capacity of your Starbases.
- Executive Vigor: (Cherryh) +100% edict duration (works on both Influence and the new Unity-based edicts added in Apocalypse).
- Nihilistic Acquisition: (Apocalypse) Available to Gestalt Consciousnesses, Authoritarians and Xenophobes, the newest mostly useless ascension perk allows the use of the Raiding orbital bombardment stance, which will attempt to abduct pops and tranpose them to your planets instead of killing them. Weird that this one exists as an ascension perk, when they just spent so much effort making all the other useless situational perks actually useful.
- Enigmatic Engineering: (Apocalypse) Makes reverse-engineering of your tech impossible by stopping your ships from spawning debris after battle. Also gives a bonus to sensor range, to represent the empire's obsession with knowledge.
- Colossus Project: (Apocalypse) Unlocks the design and building of the Colossus super weapons.
Last but not least, there are new Civics being added in the Apocalypse expansion. Straight from the dev diary:
- Post-Apocalyptic: Your empire was born in the aftermath of a nuclear war that devastated your homeworld. You start on a Tomb World with sparse resources, but your species has the Survivor trait, granting +10 leader lifespan and +70% tomb world habitability.
- Life-Seeded: Your species evolved in a lush paradise possibly designed just for them. You start on a size 25 Gaia World, but with the Gaia World Preference trait that has 0% habitability on all non-'perfect' environments (Gaia Worlds, Habitats, Ringworlds).
- Barbaric Despoilers: This civic unlocks immediate use of the raiding stance and a special Despoilation casus belli that allows you to declare war on any neighbor to seize their pops and resources. It requires a combination of Militarist and either Xenophobe or Authoritarian, and is not available to Xenophiles. Empires with this civic cannot take the Nihilistic Acquisition perk (as it would do nothing for them) and also cannot form Defensive Pacts or join Federations. Similar to Inwards Perfection and Purifiers, they get the Adaptability tradition tree instead of Diplomacy. They also get mild to moderate opinion penalties with certain ethics, such as Pacifists.
Next week dev diary's is expected to be the last one concerning the Cherryh/Apocalypse updates, followed by the patch notes and launch dates in the following weeks. We'll keep you updated.
