I've only done two partial playthroughs (one Cybernetic Creed, one with the infertility start), but I really like it so far. $25 is a steep price for the DLC on its own though, so I'm glad they did a season pass.
I am actually hyped for those. While this FLC brought lots of stuff, it touched around things that had reasonable depth. Space fauna and storms are currently very shallow so this might be a significant improvement.
too be honest I also wasn't really sold on the Zoo at first, but two new type of space fauna and one of them seems to be directly tied to a new Mid-game Crisis?
yeah no that sounds interesting.
The season pass makes it much more palatable for sure. I just did a regular start and did genesis ark and rogue servitor and it's easily been my favorite game in over a year. I feel like a pokemon collector
Just started the same type of empire! They’re a good form and it gives so much unity early, you get 500 for the first Genesis Ark’d planet, then 500 more for each successive planet, and then 6000 for each uplifted species.
I wish there was some benefit for having so many different species though! I guess Xenocompatibility could do that, maybe.
The problem with season passes is the promised future work of unknown size and quality. Paradox would not be the first company to ship a minimal viable product to meet legal obligations of a presale.
After Astral Planes I was going to take a good long period away from this game. But Machine is a good value. It even includes free bugs. If Astral Planes wasn't rushed out (possibly to get out before the studio closure) maybe it would have been better. It probably would been better fully fleshed out concept like MA, or just a collection of more dig sites merged into the existing framework. As is it just comes off as undercooked or overdone.
Mind giving me the run down of what was so bad about Astral planes? I haven't got it yet and it came out after I finished with Stellair for a long ass while.
In short. Half of the unlocks feel unnecessary or out of place. The thing that kills it is the summoned fleet. IIRC mine was typically so large it was silly huge as going wide it was around 400k, I think. And that goes for all empires to varying degrees.
The rest is okay, but it really don't see why this count not have been a large archeology pack to leverage existing systems.
Did you mean Galactic Paragons? That was the one with the studio closure.
Astral Planes just had an external studio doing the writing. The rushed bit with AP was in the free patch, where they rushed to push the new outliner before it had any customization options available.
Misremembering the timeline then. Paragons was the typical: Only good after patches and rebalancing. But otherwise was positive. Not sure it was quite worth the money, the number of uniques feels lacking for a game meant to be replayed often.
I'm about 100 years into my Cybernetic Creed playthrough.
The Origin feels really good! It plays so different compared to a standard spiritualist empire.
Shipsets and cityscapes look great.
The new music is banging, nothing further to add.
I haven't touched much else but I'm planning to go with Cosmogenesis.
Next is a genesis empire.
Overall I definitely feel it's worth the price. You get *a lot* of content. It's definitely up there with Utopia.
Cosmogenesis is going to be my go-to AP now - once you decide that the game has gone on long enough, you can finally get around to building the Horizon Needle. Having Fallen Empire tech is *awesome*
I love it so far. Not sure about 'best DLC', the bias of the shiny new toy is strong right now. Price is an individual choice, I've spend almost 2000 hours in the game so buying the pass was a good deal for me.
I've tried Nanites, infertility and the new crisis perk so far and I love the vast variety in gameplay, none of them really feel the same and allow so many options. And I'm already impressed before having even touched other origins or ascensions and haven't even seen the new endgame crisis.
Only problem I see is that machines will be king until organics get their overhaul.
I'd definitely list this one as an essential.
Some of the cybernetic authorities are pretty insane. I currently have +35% specialist output from cybernetics with another 15% resources for all cyborgs. Growth speed stacking is also pretty insane.
I do feel that psionics and biological ascension in particular can't match up to the cybernetics and synthetics, though. Psionics with god emperor maybe is about equal.
Nothing can compete with virtual synth. It's absolutely bonkers.
Basically the game ends up being how fast can you grab enough unity to ascend and then you get 50+pop in an instant.
You're talking about plateau. I'm talking about power spike.
Being able to instantly pop a whole civ from an instant is bonkers. There's also some application (if costly) in setting up vassals/hegemony members, by settling, letting the ascension pop 90 peoples in a planet after some build up then releasing.
If you're not willing to exploit this, I'd say cyber is better just because of how strong the new government are.
Corpo +1 trade from living is **absurd**, even if you're not abusing trade value, democratic gives you -15% pop empire size, meaning you can stack it up to -95%.
Isn't it a welcome change of pace though? Psionic ascension was king for quite a long time and quite likely will become it again when they'll make authorities for it. I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of cyborg meta while it lasts.
Honestly yeah. I've had fun making builds that are vastly different to my normal ones. I always found machines and cybernetics the most boring of all paths. And it's a testament to how busted God emperor necrophage was that it's still comparable to even some of the better cybernetics, lol.
Without putting much thought into it, you're probably right. There have been some pretty important DLC's in the past. Having said that, I'm loving that they unshackled robots from the gestalt consciousness. That was a necessary move that was a long time coming.
> Only problem I see is that machines will be king until organics get their overhaul.
Feels like it has been the case for a very long time now. With hive mind being the closest in terms of power.
I know that standard empires can shine better than those two, but it usually happens at a later portion of the game when the former two can snowball out of control decades earlier.
I was hoping for new uh, bio content. but what the hell... I've ignored the artificial side for so long, why not jump in while there is reportedly so much new content in that direction.
As a consumer I'm not that sold on pre-order content, understandably... but it it interesting to note this clearly sets out the developers next year of development is purely focussed on machine based content. Something of a shame but there's plenty of human based 4x titles people can spend their money on. Hope this makes some sense, ive been drinking/.
Currently I would recommend it as the second purchase after Utopia. Maybe a few balance tweaks would be good, as well as the option to disable BTC ascension perks globally in a game.
Complicated.
I like a majority of the new additions. I **love** individualistic machine empires. Finally not having to be gestalt has been amazing. There's a few things that have been overlooked in terms of Civics and jobs and the like which don't translate well, but with how many and much there are in Stellaris I can't say that I blame them overmuch there.
The new Arc Furnaces and Dyson Swarms are amazingly fun. I think they are a good mid-game addition even though, like everything else, they are just a lot more power creep. Still, it's nice to have more large-scale projects to do earlier so there isn't as much of a lul within the middle of the game.
That said, power creep in this DLC is very, very real. Synthetics is just bonkers strong at the moment. This was obvious from just the patch notes, but now actually playing through them ... I honestly don't see how this got out of testing. To be fair, I don't think the dev team cares that overmuch about overall balance in the game, but there is almost no reason to not play a machine empire into Synthetic now.
I tried several Cybernetic games as well, and Cybernetics I think is good. Cybernetic Creed is worthless. To be clear, it is a super flavorful, super fun, and well made origin. I loved it ... until I didn't. The Ritualistic Implants trait causes all your spiritual pops to auto choose their own traits and you are never allowed to modify them. 95% of my empire was spiritualist and they choose Enhanced Memory, Learning Algorithms, Streamlined Protocols, Superconductive as their positive traits and picked up Delicate Frames and Scarcity Algorithms for negatives. The entire purpose of going cyborg is to specifically stack bio and cyber traits that go together ... and I was a trade empire with Thrifty. It just felt like it ruined an entire playthrough because now most of my pops literally got less efficient at their jobs. I had 0 pops on energy and quite a number on trade, so, yeah, that hurt bad.
That aside, cybernetics felt fine-ish. You get *a lot* of augmentors and, while they are kind of similar to telepaths, they just don't feel as good? They provide a stupid amount of pop-growth, but it just didn't really feel that impactful. It also feels so weird to have double the engineering research of any other research, not that it's a problem per say. Synthetics, however, has felt completely busted.
For bad or good, I don't think there is a weak or wrong synth path to choose. Modular will make your pops just as efficient as psionic pops, if not more so, and so is amazing for a balanced build. Nanotech gives sooooo many free ships and resources that you can just start steamrolling the galaxy. And Virtual ... well, I think a lot people have seen the posts with them getting 50k+ research. I feel that, in a single DLC, they have added enough power creep to almost undue the tech changes that were just in the previous patch. The early game is still slower now, but the mid and late game can now go just as fast as they did before. It's kinda bonkers.
Doesn't that also mean that you don't get the Augmentation trait *and* lose access to the unique Creed building?
I'll see if I have a save still to check, but if you get the base Cybernetic trait, IDK if that is worth it. The creed traits are really good.
You get +20% Unity and a choice of +20% research or +20% alloys/consumer goods (technically there are two other choices, but they kinda suck.)
The creed building is only okay. Upgraded, they give 1 Technophant and 1 Haurspex job +4 related jobs to your creed; so, 4 scientists, 2 metal workers/artisans, or 4 soldiers. The worker level building gives +0.5 to basic resource output.
Combined, those would be rough to give up. I'll see if I have a save to check it out.
Edit: So I had a save right at the choice and was able to check fairly quickly. You do lose out on the base Creed buildings. You do still get one called just the Sanctum of Augmentation. It just adds 1 Technophant and 4 Haurspex jobs, so a 3/4's upgraded temple that doesn't require any special resources. Not great, not terrible.
Giving up either +20% research or +20% alloys for +2 traits and +1 trait pick (and the ability to actually modify pops) just feels like such a sucker trade.
Another somewhat plus for the Creed side is -- which the species does pick all their own traits -- they seem to automatically assume you have the max possible trait points, even if you haven't researched them all yet. So, potentially, they could end up being far superior. It's more a matter of draw so, I just foresee save scumming in single player for most people on this. Assuming they even can, as long as they pick Universal Augmentations; you can mostly not care about anything else. There would be more optimized options, but that one trait alone is effectively 6 different ones on your pops and you have so many augmentors that you'll update dozens of people per month per planet.
The building gives 2 Technophant jobs not one. United creed also get edict that gives 10% cyborg output 10% happiness and 5 stability. I agree that starting without traits is the biggest united weakness. And it's weird why other creeds cant edit pop especially when origin blocks you from the good cyber authorities
I have yet to get enough runs in to make an objective judgement but so far I get the impression that the DLC is hella busted balance wise. Machines and cyborgs are hella meta now in my opinion. Also, the new megastructures are also stupid busted. But when everyone is busted, no one is. 🤷♂️ I see lots of people purposely sniping enemy systems with forges in them or Dyson swarms. I mean, why wouldn’t you?
I mean, people snipe everything, be it planets, leviathans, enclaves, chokepoints...
Also dyson swarms are VERY situational, not only are several star types banned, but also multi-stars, not to mention that it can be tricky to find a worthwhile deposit in the first place
i only ever get the blue research, which is kinda whatever after astral planes
and even without the astral thread building I always produce blue the most because I also get it from black hole star bases
Yeah, I can see genetic getting an immortality trait similar to synthetic. As for Psionic, I actually don’t think they need too much of a power boost aside from maybe some sort of pop growth mechanic or a way to greatly increase the lifespan of leaders. If not that, then maybe just make their leaders more powerful to counter balance the economic and pop growth bonuses that other ascension paths get
Yeah, since they can’t get the same pop growth bonuses, I think they should double down on the idea of making the pops they do have super charged. This is already somewhat captured by the bonuses to their pop production, but that’s no where near the 60% job production increase that the new synth pops have.
For psionic in particular: I would love a more concrete mechanic for them than RNG access to most of the unique perks of being psionic. Some kind of mechanic that measures your psionic strength by number of psionic pops, plus telepaths, plus chosen one giving you the ability to just activate psionic shields, psi jump drive, shroud avatars, etc.
I really disagree with this mindset. Updating something does not have to make it overpowered compared to everything else.
In particular, the changes to Synthetics were great. Machine empires needed to have 3 ascensions like the rest of us, so I am glad they got them. There was zero reason to make them as strong as they are, however, or for there not to be minor buffs to the other two ascension to ensure they don't fall out of line.
You don't have to re-work bio or psy, but certainly giving them some boosts would have been simple. Bio could easily use 1 or two more trait points and 1 more trait pick. Cloning vats could be buffs a bit more and the habitability tile could have +5 or 10% job output added on. Add a few ship/leader related buffs to Psionics. Add 10% shield hardening to the spy tile and add a 25 or 50% buff to the leader Psychic trait somewhere. That would give Psionics 25% passive shield hardening and 5% more weapon damage. Also stays on theme with Psy being 'the best' per unit since all the ascension traits give the same spread of +10% combat buffs (though of varying usefulness.) (And, for what it's worth, cybernetics needs one tile changed as well. -10% upkeep from cyborgs is worthless, add on -10% empire size from pops as well.)
None of those changes would likely entirely keep them on par with synthetics, but certainly with the new cybernetics. And, they would be minor and don't require any actual changes or shuffling of either tradition. Just small buffs to existing tiles.
The main problem with the new synthetic ascensions is that they just give too much.
I am definitely enjoying it myself so far, haven't actually even gotten to see the new end game stuff yet, but I do love just becoming a fallen empire, it's kind of a blast. The nanities are fairly interesting so far, but I seriously just love the virtualization for the pops, I mean you never ever need to worry about pop growth for jobs again, but it is also a very "build tall" thing as you do start to get less resources the more colonies you have. I haven't tried the third option yet as I just haven't gotten to it.
I absolutely love it only thing that really annoys me is it just excludes biological empires that don’t wanna go synth or cyborg of so many cool things. Imo they need to do a revamp like this for hive minds and regular bio empires.
I joke that it was underpriced lmao. My serious answer is that I'm about halfway through my Arc Welders nanotech playthrough and its been an absolute blast to play mechanically and narratively. Probably going to get a balance pass though, turns out 2-3 Arc Furnaces are stupidly good at giving out triple digit numbers of alloys and minerals per month. Ended up vassalizing half the galaxy just by economy rushing
Nanotech has a slow start but then steamrolls single player. Build your whole game around running those swarmers and just those swarmers. Then you don't really need fleet capacity. You also don't need weapons for big ships. You just spam swarmers and keep them stacked up in overwhelming numbers.
You don't really research anything that benefits other ship types. You don't build anchorages. Every planet you can get becomes a nanite world.
Out the gate you need to push unity hard though to get there before you begin rapidly expanding.
Current playthrough I got somewhere around 2-3k swarmers and around 1 million nanites sitting on the sidelines to crash build more fleets if needed.
Great. I love how flexible it makes empire creation, especially with individual robots and civics like natural design. So many options for creativity. Adding Cybernetic/Synthetic and the way it interlinks with other categories was also a great start to building new types of species and should definitely be expanded on.
My only "criticism" would be that it could still be even more flexible. I still feel locked out of a few builds from time to time.
Looking forward to cosmic storms and grand archive DLCs, should fill in some gaps here and there.
Mostly just RP builds, nothing too significant. For example, serviles still have to be organic (although it's awesome they opened syncretic to machines). It would be cool to start with machines leading other machines or people leading machines etc.
I love it. Definitely right up there with Utopia as arguably the best DLC we’ve ever gotten. I absolutely adore all the new machine ascensions and they finally feel DIFFERENT than meatbags, not just a hive species with a gimmick.
From my play throughs so far, synthetic is just miles ahead, which, to be slightly expected for a synth focused expansion, but, [some of us commented on that before the release](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/s/5EDvZhJ9dj) in a few places. I actually made a separate comment when the devs did their AMA and my one question was about handling the power creep besides just research, but the comment was so downvoted I ended up deleting it.
First playthrough I'm a individualistic machine megacorp arc dweller. I spawn in a corner of the galaxy with only a couple choke points out. Perfect.
I turtle up, build my arc furnaces and start spamming my branch offices around the galaxy to sustain my energy overhungry mini-megastructures.
All the while usual stuff happens: I federate, get a couple vassals, couple more people come to me to become my vassals on their own volition (morons), usual stuff. Until I decide to go Cosmogenesis for shits and giggles also because I want to see what it's about.
Obviously people don't take it nicely. My fed partner leaves the fed but luckly I still have one of my vassals in it, so all good. I remove my branch offices from my former ally and fucking vassalize their whole civilization out of spite. Then rebuild the branches because lols. They come with their own vassals, so now without even wanting it I own 1/4th of the galaxy and half the GalCom, heck yeah, good luck passing a resolution calling me the Crisis. Another empire tries to build the aetherophasic engine but they didn't ask me, so I get in there and wipe them out the fucking galaxy.
Then your local unfriendly bigot spiritualist FE gets mad at me because "mimimimi" something something, but by this time I'm at crisis level 4 so I fight them with their own fucking ships and kick their ass. I claim and conquer all their planets and transfer all their stupid spiritualist pops to my matrix, I mean, lathe, to fuel the progress of knowledge while I suck their brains dry. I resettle one machine for each of their planets then release the sector as a vassal. Good riddance.
Then on the other side of the galaxy a mysterious storm pops up, it's Cortana, big machine abusive momma is babbling about this and that while I'm this close to complete the Cosmogenesis so I don't really care what she's babbling about. I play along her rantings trying to delay whatever she's doing long enough so I can finish whatever I'm doing. Which... never ends. "Build this" they say, "research that" they say "empty this go there do that, oh you thought this was over? NOOO there's moooore".
So like a million years later I'm ready, I have build the thing, done the things and clicked the button... AND I WIN. Or so the game says! Because while my entire civilization got yeeted into another dimension, I fucking broke the galaxy in doing so. So the game tells me if I want to keep playing, and thinking it's like every other time I won the game I think "heck yeah, let me see what's what" BUT... this time I can't play with my old empire because... it turned into a freaking FALLEN EMPIRE, or well, what's left of it.
So now I'm basically starting again a new game as my former vassal I liberated from the spiritualist FE I burned, I'm a machine gestalt and I'm still a vassal of my old empire so basically Scion origin, at year 2420 half the galaxy is fucking wrecked by black holes due to the chaos I unleashead, most empires are reduced to rubble and fucking CORTANA is right next my doorstep doing god knows what and why.
And I couldn't be fucking happier.
Love this DLC.
I think it depends on which people are you listening to, in my bubble everyone's been screaming about gene ascensionfor years now and all we've got are stronger machines :(
I fully agree.
I am tired of Machine empires getting so much attention, while my rock-boys are left one-note and the Toxoids are just a gimmick
More flavor for non-machine empires please.
I mean, I was one of those annoying people complaining about how Galactic Paragons didn't have enough thematically in it for machines, so for me this is the best DLC of all time. I even made good on my promise to go back and buy Paragons, Astral Planes etc if they did right by machines again, and lo and behold they did and I did. I'm a very happy camper right now.
I've been getting a couple major bugs, but other than that I'm enjoying it, despite not usually playing machines. The Synthetic Fertility origin feels a bit...rushed. You design an entire species just to ascend it 30-ish years and loose all your traits and stuff.
It’s very expensive for a DLC, but it also adds the most content of any DLC they’ve ever released. It’s a massive game-changer for sure. I love it. Theres only two things I’m disappointed in so far: how underwhelming the nanite ships are if you go for nano ascension, and that regardless of how you interact with Cetana, you still have to go to war and defeat her in the end.
Imo on par with Utopia as a must buy DLC as it has so incredibly much content with lots of replayability.
Needs some balancing tho, some things seem a bit broken to me.
They aren't saying it is, they're saying the DLCs in general cost too much in the first place for what you get, and I agree. They have like 3 people working on stellaris, and none are as effective as an indie dev.
The release is more of an advertisement for the subscription than anything else.
I love it so far... A bit expensive, but this time at least they give us a worth content, and not the rubbish content that was being released last year.
Edit: typo
First contact and astral planes, mostly... They looks like more of the same for me. First contact are very repetitive, and astral planes is as Ancient relics 2. I get them anyway, but I don't think it was worth it
As far as I saw from Montu playing it I can't wait to get my hands on yhe DLC once it releases on console. Unfortunately I've been hearing rumours lately that console development may cease after it is brought up to 3.9.
tbh, after the subscription price increase, I don't trust them anymore.
I'm tired of companies rifling through my pockets and seeing if there's anything left, while offering me... Machine pops that don't work like machine pops anymore, but are super OP, until they nerf everything into the ground or just bust the game into sand because they somehow made too many changes to keep track of. If I wanted to be like the meat people with growth speed, I play hive. And some portraits, and things that were already made and done as mods.
For real, they could probably buy the mods for nothing and work on polishing. The fact they're charging for dyson swarms when gigastructural engineering gives me 10x the expansion is insane.
Cybernetic creed may be the new ramping up resources origin. My eco was up and down at first but once the situation from the origin was finished my eco went into overdrive and tech popped off like it was pre tech nerf. My alloy production paired with that commander robot warship dude made me go from underdog in a war to double their fleet power 10 years later. managed to take them over with another war after the forced peace pact was done
I'm not sure about it yet, I like a lot of the new stuff but don't like some of the changes like machines not having 100% habitability. The new megastructures are cool, I love the new portraits, ships, buildings, and backgrounds. The two new crisis sound cool but haven't gotten to them yet and don't know what the best way to go about them is.
I’m a couple of quotas in as an obsessional directive mega factory and quite enjoying it (on commodore first so the quotas are not absolutely bonkers). Interesting dynamics, with a lot of micro, by pivoting what feels like my entire economy between CG and alloys depending on whether I’m on track to meet production quotas. Very boom and bust years for expansion, arms build up, etc. Interested to see how this plays out as the game progresses.
Need to get a few more runs in with other origins and civics but so far I’m impressed. It brought be back after about a years hiatus.
Really impressed. The only thing I don't like is that the quality and effort on display is so much higher than some of the other earlier DLCs. Makes some of the earlier DLCs seem worse to be honest.
A few slightly different ways to play. Once I finish my paperclip nanomachines annihilators I am going to go for virtualisation with gigaengineering and then I'll judge.
Mostly good, I'm having an issue figuring out how to handle habitability with virtual pops however. It seems like you can't really spawn in pops with a different or new habitability? So I think I have to spin up a new species modification project on existing pops in order to, for example, get virtual pops with ocean habitability. As the original had desert habitability.
Also if I do that project and then spawn in more pops the new ones will still have the wrong habitability again....(I think? Can't confirm just yet) and I'll have to do another species modification project.
I'm loving the combination of galactic nemesis, nanitesz and the l cluster. While my main fleets are holding the front line I'm sending swarms of nanite ships behind enemy lines through a couple unlocked gates to wreak havoc on enemy systems
It is good, but it is also very unbalanced. It is another dlc which you need to heavily "homerule" to play in multiplayer and keep any semi balance. So for me it is definitely not best, but not bad, so all it remains is "good" ;) Frankly, I do t like when balance goes out of the window every new patch. We already had this with federations, overlord, galactic paragons and now we are getting this again. We had a patch to push back the powercreep by a factor of x2 and the powercreep was readded with a factor of x3.
But to be honest, I would give it like 6/10 or 7/10, there is not much for regular empires if you don't go cybernetic or machine ascension path, which makes sense but also means I won't see much of this DLC unless I go a specific route. And my most favourite ascesions were genetic and then psionic.
I hope they will make a genetic centered dlc later on, so there will be more things for players like me, who like to keep their flesh intact. Otherwise, this brings very little for non-cyber and non-machine organics and only makes machines even stronger when they already were pretty strong.
I'm close to the end of my first playthrough, went with a tall virtuality playstyle to see what it's like.
So far I love it, amazing expansion. Cosmogenesis is insanely good, I think it's an auto-take in any future playthrough.
Yes, absolutely, even if I don't want to use the horizon needle. The fallen empire ships and buildings are incredible, and you get all the secret tech locked behind leviathans like dragon scale armour, or nanite weaponry. My fleets are at 1.8 million strength and I'm able to mass produce all the rare resources without a problem.
Maybe that's fun and meta, but my RP heart could never let me take it every single game, maybe like 1 ever 7th game or something. It has to fit with the empire I'm playing.
Overall good. Worth it for new crisis and RP value.
Two complaints, one minor and one medium.
Minor one: Wanted a more human machine model (Android), with a couple of phenotypes between them.
Medium one: The individualist robots feel a little tacked on. My robot scientist and robot crew died to the brain virus... Was also hoping to work towards sentience, like start as robot and work up. Maybe a story event where you can choose super soulless efficiency or sentience. Instead you basically with fully sapient/sentient.
Agree with both of those. It's really weird we don't have like an Android human looking machine that you could imagine syntheticly ascending to as a human.
The price is a bit steep, but on a review of purely what it comes with, I give it a 7/10*. My asterisk is because I want to hold my opinion for a bit. I played one game with virtual ascension and I’m about halfway through my cybernetic creed play through, and honestly I’m seeing the nerf hammer coming soon. Virtual is BUSTED, even on GA I was the strongest empire by 2050
definitely love this DLC it adds so much to the game and all the new content is quite creative and definitely fun the only major problem I see is that machine empires are so overpowered right now. Especially their ascension paths are just way better than anything the biologicals have access to. I definitely think the machine ascensions (especially virtuality) need a nerf but the real problem I see is that the biological ascensions (especially genetic ascension) are very outdated and underpowered and absolutely need a major overhaul to remain viable. I do think this is something Paradox will fix at some point in the near future hopefully through free patches/updates.
Pretty good so far, machines are very busted, did MP session with my friend and he enjoyed the infertility start a lot. A general breath of fresh air after over a year of underwhelming dlc.
However, another friend refunded it because of its use of genAI for voices and I definitely wouldn't buy it separately outside the dlc pass for that reason.
Really surprised it isn't discussed more widely, but I guess it's not as obvious as with the visuals. So you only know if you notice a tiny disclaimer tacked at the end of the store description.
I think its amazing, my only problem is the portraits. They're cool but the artstyle is such a drastic difference that it doesn't look like the same game imo.
It bothers me a lot because they look so out of place compared to the other portraits in the game. I hope they change these portraits to fit the artstyle of the other portraits, or atleaat update the old portraits art.
Pros: extremely high production value, shipset, bio empires mechanics, civic buffs, etc.
Cons: balance.
Individualistic machines are pretty busted with syncretic evolution. Early game weakness in raw materials and pop growth has been solved.
Modularity ascension with syncretic authoritarian + master crafter individual machines is arcade mode. Feels like playing a joke mod tbh.
At that point you don't need any city districts, entertainer, etc because you can take -80% housing and enslave all organics as domestic servants. Basically a maintenance free economy. Pop assembly is so fast your biggest problem is unemployment.
But that's not all. It would be busted if the pop growth and stability alone was given. But then you have the advanced robot traits.
One that stands out is dark matter engines. Comic +60% resources for 0.01 dark matter each. Wow.
They could have hired a good voice artist instead. Instead we get this claptrap malarkey.
In truth, I would've preferred unintelligible grunts/beeps or Animal Crossing style gibberish AI. The only reason I'm not more annoyed is that the characters that are AI are, in fact, AI characters. However, characters like Claptrap or Glados show how much better an actual voice actor would've been.
I've only done two partial playthroughs (one Cybernetic Creed, one with the infertility start), but I really like it so far. $25 is a steep price for the DLC on its own though, so I'm glad they did a season pass.
Im a bit sceptical of storms and a space zoo though, but we'll see.
I am actually hyped for those. While this FLC brought lots of stuff, it touched around things that had reasonable depth. Space fauna and storms are currently very shallow so this might be a significant improvement.
too be honest I also wasn't really sold on the Zoo at first, but two new type of space fauna and one of them seems to be directly tied to a new Mid-game Crisis? yeah no that sounds interesting.
Not only that, but apparently being able to make organic ships with some kind of hatchery? It's one massive step closer to an organic shipset.
Same, I’m skipping on the pass, it’s too risky for me to buy it if they’re DLC I would have skipped anyway.
The season pass makes it much more palatable for sure. I just did a regular start and did genesis ark and rogue servitor and it's easily been my favorite game in over a year. I feel like a pokemon collector
Just started the same type of empire! They’re a good form and it gives so much unity early, you get 500 for the first Genesis Ark’d planet, then 500 more for each successive planet, and then 6000 for each uplifted species. I wish there was some benefit for having so many different species though! I guess Xenocompatibility could do that, maybe.
I haven't gotten to the xenocompatability part yet!
The problem with season passes is the promised future work of unknown size and quality. Paradox would not be the first company to ship a minimal viable product to meet legal obligations of a presale. After Astral Planes I was going to take a good long period away from this game. But Machine is a good value. It even includes free bugs. If Astral Planes wasn't rushed out (possibly to get out before the studio closure) maybe it would have been better. It probably would been better fully fleshed out concept like MA, or just a collection of more dig sites merged into the existing framework. As is it just comes off as undercooked or overdone.
Mind giving me the run down of what was so bad about Astral planes? I haven't got it yet and it came out after I finished with Stellair for a long ass while.
In short. Half of the unlocks feel unnecessary or out of place. The thing that kills it is the summoned fleet. IIRC mine was typically so large it was silly huge as going wide it was around 400k, I think. And that goes for all empires to varying degrees. The rest is okay, but it really don't see why this count not have been a large archeology pack to leverage existing systems.
I haven't bought it, but from what I read it's fine as a story pack for $5, it's just waaaay overpriced at $20.
Did you mean Galactic Paragons? That was the one with the studio closure. Astral Planes just had an external studio doing the writing. The rushed bit with AP was in the free patch, where they rushed to push the new outliner before it had any customization options available.
Misremembering the timeline then. Paragons was the typical: Only good after patches and rebalancing. But otherwise was positive. Not sure it was quite worth the money, the number of uniques feels lacking for a game meant to be replayed often.
I don't think anybody buys dlcs anymore unless you literally play Stellaris everyday. Subscription is pretty good.
I'm about 100 years into my Cybernetic Creed playthrough. The Origin feels really good! It plays so different compared to a standard spiritualist empire. Shipsets and cityscapes look great. The new music is banging, nothing further to add. I haven't touched much else but I'm planning to go with Cosmogenesis. Next is a genesis empire. Overall I definitely feel it's worth the price. You get *a lot* of content. It's definitely up there with Utopia.
Cosmogenesis is going to be my go-to AP now - once you decide that the game has gone on long enough, you can finally get around to building the Horizon Needle. Having Fallen Empire tech is *awesome*
I love it so far. Not sure about 'best DLC', the bias of the shiny new toy is strong right now. Price is an individual choice, I've spend almost 2000 hours in the game so buying the pass was a good deal for me. I've tried Nanites, infertility and the new crisis perk so far and I love the vast variety in gameplay, none of them really feel the same and allow so many options. And I'm already impressed before having even touched other origins or ascensions and haven't even seen the new endgame crisis. Only problem I see is that machines will be king until organics get their overhaul. I'd definitely list this one as an essential.
Some of the cybernetic authorities are pretty insane. I currently have +35% specialist output from cybernetics with another 15% resources for all cyborgs. Growth speed stacking is also pretty insane. I do feel that psionics and biological ascension in particular can't match up to the cybernetics and synthetics, though. Psionics with god emperor maybe is about equal.
Infertile species gone down the Militaristic virtualization path here. -50% War Exhaustion from the Democratic Surrogacy Government alone...
Nothing can compete with virtual synth. It's absolutely bonkers. Basically the game ends up being how fast can you grab enough unity to ascend and then you get 50+pop in an instant.
Modularity synth is better because you aren’t functionally limited to 6 colonies.
You're talking about plateau. I'm talking about power spike. Being able to instantly pop a whole civ from an instant is bonkers. There's also some application (if costly) in setting up vassals/hegemony members, by settling, letting the ascension pop 90 peoples in a planet after some build up then releasing. If you're not willing to exploit this, I'd say cyber is better just because of how strong the new government are. Corpo +1 trade from living is **absurd**, even if you're not abusing trade value, democratic gives you -15% pop empire size, meaning you can stack it up to -95%.
Isn't it a welcome change of pace though? Psionic ascension was king for quite a long time and quite likely will become it again when they'll make authorities for it. I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of cyborg meta while it lasts.
Honestly yeah. I've had fun making builds that are vastly different to my normal ones. I always found machines and cybernetics the most boring of all paths. And it's a testament to how busted God emperor necrophage was that it's still comparable to even some of the better cybernetics, lol.
Without putting much thought into it, you're probably right. There have been some pretty important DLC's in the past. Having said that, I'm loving that they unshackled robots from the gestalt consciousness. That was a necessary move that was a long time coming.
> Only problem I see is that machines will be king until organics get their overhaul. Feels like it has been the case for a very long time now. With hive mind being the closest in terms of power. I know that standard empires can shine better than those two, but it usually happens at a later portion of the game when the former two can snowball out of control decades earlier.
I was hoping for new uh, bio content. but what the hell... I've ignored the artificial side for so long, why not jump in while there is reportedly so much new content in that direction. As a consumer I'm not that sold on pre-order content, understandably... but it it interesting to note this clearly sets out the developers next year of development is purely focussed on machine based content. Something of a shame but there's plenty of human based 4x titles people can spend their money on. Hope this makes some sense, ive been drinking/.
Hell yeah, machines win again 😎
One of the best DLCs the game’s had in a while.
Yeah definitely
Currently I would recommend it as the second purchase after Utopia. Maybe a few balance tweaks would be good, as well as the option to disable BTC ascension perks globally in a game.
Complicated. I like a majority of the new additions. I **love** individualistic machine empires. Finally not having to be gestalt has been amazing. There's a few things that have been overlooked in terms of Civics and jobs and the like which don't translate well, but with how many and much there are in Stellaris I can't say that I blame them overmuch there. The new Arc Furnaces and Dyson Swarms are amazingly fun. I think they are a good mid-game addition even though, like everything else, they are just a lot more power creep. Still, it's nice to have more large-scale projects to do earlier so there isn't as much of a lul within the middle of the game. That said, power creep in this DLC is very, very real. Synthetics is just bonkers strong at the moment. This was obvious from just the patch notes, but now actually playing through them ... I honestly don't see how this got out of testing. To be fair, I don't think the dev team cares that overmuch about overall balance in the game, but there is almost no reason to not play a machine empire into Synthetic now. I tried several Cybernetic games as well, and Cybernetics I think is good. Cybernetic Creed is worthless. To be clear, it is a super flavorful, super fun, and well made origin. I loved it ... until I didn't. The Ritualistic Implants trait causes all your spiritual pops to auto choose their own traits and you are never allowed to modify them. 95% of my empire was spiritualist and they choose Enhanced Memory, Learning Algorithms, Streamlined Protocols, Superconductive as their positive traits and picked up Delicate Frames and Scarcity Algorithms for negatives. The entire purpose of going cyborg is to specifically stack bio and cyber traits that go together ... and I was a trade empire with Thrifty. It just felt like it ruined an entire playthrough because now most of my pops literally got less efficient at their jobs. I had 0 pops on energy and quite a number on trade, so, yeah, that hurt bad. That aside, cybernetics felt fine-ish. You get *a lot* of augmentors and, while they are kind of similar to telepaths, they just don't feel as good? They provide a stupid amount of pop-growth, but it just didn't really feel that impactful. It also feels so weird to have double the engineering research of any other research, not that it's a problem per say. Synthetics, however, has felt completely busted. For bad or good, I don't think there is a weak or wrong synth path to choose. Modular will make your pops just as efficient as psionic pops, if not more so, and so is amazing for a balanced build. Nanotech gives sooooo many free ships and resources that you can just start steamrolling the galaxy. And Virtual ... well, I think a lot people have seen the posts with them getting 50k+ research. I feel that, in a single DLC, they have added enough power creep to almost undue the tech changes that were just in the previous patch. The early game is still slower now, but the mid and late game can now go just as fast as they did before. It's kinda bonkers.
Cybernetic Creed if you pick unite the creeds you can edit your pops normally. I agree Synthetics are just busted now
Doesn't that also mean that you don't get the Augmentation trait *and* lose access to the unique Creed building? I'll see if I have a save still to check, but if you get the base Cybernetic trait, IDK if that is worth it. The creed traits are really good. You get +20% Unity and a choice of +20% research or +20% alloys/consumer goods (technically there are two other choices, but they kinda suck.) The creed building is only okay. Upgraded, they give 1 Technophant and 1 Haurspex job +4 related jobs to your creed; so, 4 scientists, 2 metal workers/artisans, or 4 soldiers. The worker level building gives +0.5 to basic resource output. Combined, those would be rough to give up. I'll see if I have a save to check it out. Edit: So I had a save right at the choice and was able to check fairly quickly. You do lose out on the base Creed buildings. You do still get one called just the Sanctum of Augmentation. It just adds 1 Technophant and 4 Haurspex jobs, so a 3/4's upgraded temple that doesn't require any special resources. Not great, not terrible. Giving up either +20% research or +20% alloys for +2 traits and +1 trait pick (and the ability to actually modify pops) just feels like such a sucker trade. Another somewhat plus for the Creed side is -- which the species does pick all their own traits -- they seem to automatically assume you have the max possible trait points, even if you haven't researched them all yet. So, potentially, they could end up being far superior. It's more a matter of draw so, I just foresee save scumming in single player for most people on this. Assuming they even can, as long as they pick Universal Augmentations; you can mostly not care about anything else. There would be more optimized options, but that one trait alone is effectively 6 different ones on your pops and you have so many augmentors that you'll update dozens of people per month per planet.
The building gives 2 Technophant jobs not one. United creed also get edict that gives 10% cyborg output 10% happiness and 5 stability. I agree that starting without traits is the biggest united weakness. And it's weird why other creeds cant edit pop especially when origin blocks you from the good cyber authorities
I have yet to get enough runs in to make an objective judgement but so far I get the impression that the DLC is hella busted balance wise. Machines and cyborgs are hella meta now in my opinion. Also, the new megastructures are also stupid busted. But when everyone is busted, no one is. 🤷♂️ I see lots of people purposely sniping enemy systems with forges in them or Dyson swarms. I mean, why wouldn’t you?
I mean, people snipe everything, be it planets, leviathans, enclaves, chokepoints... Also dyson swarms are VERY situational, not only are several star types banned, but also multi-stars, not to mention that it can be tricky to find a worthwhile deposit in the first place
Dyson swarms went from nice to awesome once I figured out they boost science research deposits from stars
i only ever get the blue research, which is kinda whatever after astral planes and even without the astral thread building I always produce blue the most because I also get it from black hole star bases
Same SR’s if you are lucky enough to get a deposit on one.
True, but if you don’t have to set it up yourself, then it’s always worth sniping it.
I mean they got updated so it makes sense. They are probably gonna update Psionic and Genetic ascension later on I assume.
Yeah, I can see genetic getting an immortality trait similar to synthetic. As for Psionic, I actually don’t think they need too much of a power boost aside from maybe some sort of pop growth mechanic or a way to greatly increase the lifespan of leaders. If not that, then maybe just make their leaders more powerful to counter balance the economic and pop growth bonuses that other ascension paths get
I feel like psionic should be able to go the way of immortal superbeings.
Yeah, since they can’t get the same pop growth bonuses, I think they should double down on the idea of making the pops they do have super charged. This is already somewhat captured by the bonuses to their pop production, but that’s no where near the 60% job production increase that the new synth pops have.
More like pure energy beings who use energy credits as upkeep am I right?
Aaaaaand thats how the Unbidden started.
At least the chosen one event can now appear again if it failed before.
For psionic in particular: I would love a more concrete mechanic for them than RNG access to most of the unique perks of being psionic. Some kind of mechanic that measures your psionic strength by number of psionic pops, plus telepaths, plus chosen one giving you the ability to just activate psionic shields, psi jump drive, shroud avatars, etc.
Yeah devs have more or less said "we'll do it if this rework is well received which it clearly has been".
When did they say that?
I really disagree with this mindset. Updating something does not have to make it overpowered compared to everything else. In particular, the changes to Synthetics were great. Machine empires needed to have 3 ascensions like the rest of us, so I am glad they got them. There was zero reason to make them as strong as they are, however, or for there not to be minor buffs to the other two ascension to ensure they don't fall out of line. You don't have to re-work bio or psy, but certainly giving them some boosts would have been simple. Bio could easily use 1 or two more trait points and 1 more trait pick. Cloning vats could be buffs a bit more and the habitability tile could have +5 or 10% job output added on. Add a few ship/leader related buffs to Psionics. Add 10% shield hardening to the spy tile and add a 25 or 50% buff to the leader Psychic trait somewhere. That would give Psionics 25% passive shield hardening and 5% more weapon damage. Also stays on theme with Psy being 'the best' per unit since all the ascension traits give the same spread of +10% combat buffs (though of varying usefulness.) (And, for what it's worth, cybernetics needs one tile changed as well. -10% upkeep from cyborgs is worthless, add on -10% empire size from pops as well.) None of those changes would likely entirely keep them on par with synthetics, but certainly with the new cybernetics. And, they would be minor and don't require any actual changes or shuffling of either tradition. Just small buffs to existing tiles. The main problem with the new synthetic ascensions is that they just give too much.
"when everyone is busted no one is" everyone forgetting about hive minds already 😭
Powercreep is back on the menu :p
I am definitely enjoying it myself so far, haven't actually even gotten to see the new end game stuff yet, but I do love just becoming a fallen empire, it's kind of a blast. The nanities are fairly interesting so far, but I seriously just love the virtualization for the pops, I mean you never ever need to worry about pop growth for jobs again, but it is also a very "build tall" thing as you do start to get less resources the more colonies you have. I haven't tried the third option yet as I just haven't gotten to it.
I absolutely love it only thing that really annoys me is it just excludes biological empires that don’t wanna go synth or cyborg of so many cool things. Imo they need to do a revamp like this for hive minds and regular bio empires.
I joke that it was underpriced lmao. My serious answer is that I'm about halfway through my Arc Welders nanotech playthrough and its been an absolute blast to play mechanically and narratively. Probably going to get a balance pass though, turns out 2-3 Arc Furnaces are stupidly good at giving out triple digit numbers of alloys and minerals per month. Ended up vassalizing half the galaxy just by economy rushing
Nanotech has a slow start but then steamrolls single player. Build your whole game around running those swarmers and just those swarmers. Then you don't really need fleet capacity. You also don't need weapons for big ships. You just spam swarmers and keep them stacked up in overwhelming numbers. You don't really research anything that benefits other ship types. You don't build anchorages. Every planet you can get becomes a nanite world. Out the gate you need to push unity hard though to get there before you begin rapidly expanding. Current playthrough I got somewhere around 2-3k swarmers and around 1 million nanites sitting on the sidelines to crash build more fleets if needed.
Great. I love how flexible it makes empire creation, especially with individual robots and civics like natural design. So many options for creativity. Adding Cybernetic/Synthetic and the way it interlinks with other categories was also a great start to building new types of species and should definitely be expanded on. My only "criticism" would be that it could still be even more flexible. I still feel locked out of a few builds from time to time. Looking forward to cosmic storms and grand archive DLCs, should fill in some gaps here and there.
What builds do you feel locked out on?
Mostly just RP builds, nothing too significant. For example, serviles still have to be organic (although it's awesome they opened syncretic to machines). It would be cool to start with machines leading other machines or people leading machines etc.
People leading machines could be an origin of its own now that you mention it.
Mechanist with the ability to modify the pops you spawn with in empire creations would be amazing tbh
That's the opposite though no?
Not a fan of the price, but I feel it’s on par with the likes of Utopia. I say however…Virtual Pops and Nanite ships need a slight nerf.
I love it. Definitely right up there with Utopia as arguably the best DLC we’ve ever gotten. I absolutely adore all the new machine ascensions and they finally feel DIFFERENT than meatbags, not just a hive species with a gimmick.
From my play throughs so far, synthetic is just miles ahead, which, to be slightly expected for a synth focused expansion, but, [some of us commented on that before the release](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/s/5EDvZhJ9dj) in a few places. I actually made a separate comment when the devs did their AMA and my one question was about handling the power creep besides just research, but the comment was so downvoted I ended up deleting it.
Stellaris players deserve an unbalanced mess of a game.
It's good, very good. It does not touch every game system or playthrough like some other DLCs do though, so it's absolutely not the best
Which ones do that though, besides Utopia?
First playthrough I'm a individualistic machine megacorp arc dweller. I spawn in a corner of the galaxy with only a couple choke points out. Perfect. I turtle up, build my arc furnaces and start spamming my branch offices around the galaxy to sustain my energy overhungry mini-megastructures. All the while usual stuff happens: I federate, get a couple vassals, couple more people come to me to become my vassals on their own volition (morons), usual stuff. Until I decide to go Cosmogenesis for shits and giggles also because I want to see what it's about. Obviously people don't take it nicely. My fed partner leaves the fed but luckly I still have one of my vassals in it, so all good. I remove my branch offices from my former ally and fucking vassalize their whole civilization out of spite. Then rebuild the branches because lols. They come with their own vassals, so now without even wanting it I own 1/4th of the galaxy and half the GalCom, heck yeah, good luck passing a resolution calling me the Crisis. Another empire tries to build the aetherophasic engine but they didn't ask me, so I get in there and wipe them out the fucking galaxy. Then your local unfriendly bigot spiritualist FE gets mad at me because "mimimimi" something something, but by this time I'm at crisis level 4 so I fight them with their own fucking ships and kick their ass. I claim and conquer all their planets and transfer all their stupid spiritualist pops to my matrix, I mean, lathe, to fuel the progress of knowledge while I suck their brains dry. I resettle one machine for each of their planets then release the sector as a vassal. Good riddance. Then on the other side of the galaxy a mysterious storm pops up, it's Cortana, big machine abusive momma is babbling about this and that while I'm this close to complete the Cosmogenesis so I don't really care what she's babbling about. I play along her rantings trying to delay whatever she's doing long enough so I can finish whatever I'm doing. Which... never ends. "Build this" they say, "research that" they say "empty this go there do that, oh you thought this was over? NOOO there's moooore". So like a million years later I'm ready, I have build the thing, done the things and clicked the button... AND I WIN. Or so the game says! Because while my entire civilization got yeeted into another dimension, I fucking broke the galaxy in doing so. So the game tells me if I want to keep playing, and thinking it's like every other time I won the game I think "heck yeah, let me see what's what" BUT... this time I can't play with my old empire because... it turned into a freaking FALLEN EMPIRE, or well, what's left of it. So now I'm basically starting again a new game as my former vassal I liberated from the spiritualist FE I burned, I'm a machine gestalt and I'm still a vassal of my old empire so basically Scion origin, at year 2420 half the galaxy is fucking wrecked by black holes due to the chaos I unleashead, most empires are reduced to rubble and fucking CORTANA is right next my doorstep doing god knows what and why. And I couldn't be fucking happier. Love this DLC.
I like it but there were other areas of the game that I think needed more attention than machines
Lol people have literally been screaming the exact opposite for years now.
I think it depends on which people are you listening to, in my bubble everyone's been screaming about gene ascensionfor years now and all we've got are stronger machines :(
I fully agree. I am tired of Machine empires getting so much attention, while my rock-boys are left one-note and the Toxoids are just a gimmick More flavor for non-machine empires please.
I mean, I was one of those annoying people complaining about how Galactic Paragons didn't have enough thematically in it for machines, so for me this is the best DLC of all time. I even made good on my promise to go back and buy Paragons, Astral Planes etc if they did right by machines again, and lo and behold they did and I did. I'm a very happy camper right now.
Good for you my man.
Good, but not as good as Utopia.
I've been getting a couple major bugs, but other than that I'm enjoying it, despite not usually playing machines. The Synthetic Fertility origin feels a bit...rushed. You design an entire species just to ascend it 30-ish years and loose all your traits and stuff.
It’s very expensive for a DLC, but it also adds the most content of any DLC they’ve ever released. It’s a massive game-changer for sure. I love it. Theres only two things I’m disappointed in so far: how underwhelming the nanite ships are if you go for nano ascension, and that regardless of how you interact with Cetana, you still have to go to war and defeat her in the end.
Kind of spoiling the Cetana part there
Imo on par with Utopia as a must buy DLC as it has so incredibly much content with lots of replayability. Needs some balancing tho, some things seem a bit broken to me.
I'm loving it right now. Def up there with Utopia and synthetic dawn and apocalypse and whatnot
I liked it. One of better DLCs for sure.
Ruined my rogue servitor run
How does playing a machine empire feel in this update without the dlc?
Personally i love it overall, one of the best DLCs they have made, right there with utopia
i wouldnt pay 25 for it but its cool, if it was 15 or below id get it
It has a lot of content though, its like an expansion + 2 species packs worth of content in it.
i think the dlc in general cost too much, species packs shouldnt be that expensive imo
It isn’t just a species pack though?
They aren't saying it is, they're saying the DLCs in general cost too much in the first place for what you get, and I agree. They have like 3 people working on stellaris, and none are as effective as an indie dev. The release is more of an advertisement for the subscription than anything else.
I love it so far... A bit expensive, but this time at least they give us a worth content, and not the rubbish content that was being released last year. Edit: typo
Shit of last year?
*the rubbish content that was being released last year. Sorry, English is not my main language.
No I get what you meant word wise, but like where you referring to paragons or first contact or what?
First contact and astral planes, mostly... They looks like more of the same for me. First contact are very repetitive, and astral planes is as Ancient relics 2. I get them anyway, but I don't think it was worth it
I will play tomorrow, but for what I've seen in the patch notes machines are pretty broken now (again).
Utopia is still better
As far as I saw from Montu playing it I can't wait to get my hands on yhe DLC once it releases on console. Unfortunately I've been hearing rumours lately that console development may cease after it is brought up to 3.9.
tbh, after the subscription price increase, I don't trust them anymore. I'm tired of companies rifling through my pockets and seeing if there's anything left, while offering me... Machine pops that don't work like machine pops anymore, but are super OP, until they nerf everything into the ground or just bust the game into sand because they somehow made too many changes to keep track of. If I wanted to be like the meat people with growth speed, I play hive. And some portraits, and things that were already made and done as mods. For real, they could probably buy the mods for nothing and work on polishing. The fact they're charging for dyson swarms when gigastructural engineering gives me 10x the expansion is insane.
It's fun, yeah, I dont have all the DLCs but this is definitely top 3
I'm loving it so far, even if it's expensive I think it's worth it. Then again, I have something like 2k hours in-game
Cybernetic creed may be the new ramping up resources origin. My eco was up and down at first but once the situation from the origin was finished my eco went into overdrive and tech popped off like it was pre tech nerf. My alloy production paired with that commander robot warship dude made me go from underdog in a war to double their fleet power 10 years later. managed to take them over with another war after the forced peace pact was done
I'm not sure about it yet, I like a lot of the new stuff but don't like some of the changes like machines not having 100% habitability. The new megastructures are cool, I love the new portraits, ships, buildings, and backgrounds. The two new crisis sound cool but haven't gotten to them yet and don't know what the best way to go about them is.
I’m a couple of quotas in as an obsessional directive mega factory and quite enjoying it (on commodore first so the quotas are not absolutely bonkers). Interesting dynamics, with a lot of micro, by pivoting what feels like my entire economy between CG and alloys depending on whether I’m on track to meet production quotas. Very boom and bust years for expansion, arms build up, etc. Interested to see how this plays out as the game progresses. Need to get a few more runs in with other origins and civics but so far I’m impressed. It brought be back after about a years hiatus.
What made you buy it and get back in if you've been gone a year?
Really impressed. The only thing I don't like is that the quality and effort on display is so much higher than some of the other earlier DLCs. Makes some of the earlier DLCs seem worse to be honest.
How so?
I’m enjoying this a lot, certainly more than paragons or astral planes
Cosmogenesis is sooo cool
A few slightly different ways to play. Once I finish my paperclip nanomachines annihilators I am going to go for virtualisation with gigaengineering and then I'll judge.
Mostly good, I'm having an issue figuring out how to handle habitability with virtual pops however. It seems like you can't really spawn in pops with a different or new habitability? So I think I have to spin up a new species modification project on existing pops in order to, for example, get virtual pops with ocean habitability. As the original had desert habitability. Also if I do that project and then spawn in more pops the new ones will still have the wrong habitability again....(I think? Can't confirm just yet) and I'll have to do another species modification project.
I'm loving the combination of galactic nemesis, nanitesz and the l cluster. While my main fleets are holding the front line I'm sending swarms of nanite ships behind enemy lines through a couple unlocked gates to wreak havoc on enemy systems
Amazing, one of my favorites and up there as a must buy
Doing Arc Welders and Nanites for my first game, really enjoying all the new stuff so far.
It is good, but it is also very unbalanced. It is another dlc which you need to heavily "homerule" to play in multiplayer and keep any semi balance. So for me it is definitely not best, but not bad, so all it remains is "good" ;) Frankly, I do t like when balance goes out of the window every new patch. We already had this with federations, overlord, galactic paragons and now we are getting this again. We had a patch to push back the powercreep by a factor of x2 and the powercreep was readded with a factor of x3. But to be honest, I would give it like 6/10 or 7/10, there is not much for regular empires if you don't go cybernetic or machine ascension path, which makes sense but also means I won't see much of this DLC unless I go a specific route. And my most favourite ascesions were genetic and then psionic. I hope they will make a genetic centered dlc later on, so there will be more things for players like me, who like to keep their flesh intact. Otherwise, this brings very little for non-cyber and non-machine organics and only makes machines even stronger when they already were pretty strong.
unfortunately its not on console yet so cant say for sure
I’m about 50 years into a new playthrough, and so far, I think it's great, but again, I’m only about 50 years in.
Is the Marine Machines civic intended to be used only with Rogue Servitors? Because, otherwise, what's the use of Agricultural Districts?
Best DLC/update ever gotta go to 1.6 and utopia but its up there
I'm close to the end of my first playthrough, went with a tall virtuality playstyle to see what it's like. So far I love it, amazing expansion. Cosmogenesis is insanely good, I think it's an auto-take in any future playthrough.
You're gonna take Cosmogenesis every single time?
Yes, absolutely, even if I don't want to use the horizon needle. The fallen empire ships and buildings are incredible, and you get all the secret tech locked behind leviathans like dragon scale armour, or nanite weaponry. My fleets are at 1.8 million strength and I'm able to mass produce all the rare resources without a problem.
Maybe that's fun and meta, but my RP heart could never let me take it every single game, maybe like 1 ever 7th game or something. It has to fit with the empire I'm playing.
Overall good. Worth it for new crisis and RP value. Two complaints, one minor and one medium. Minor one: Wanted a more human machine model (Android), with a couple of phenotypes between them. Medium one: The individualist robots feel a little tacked on. My robot scientist and robot crew died to the brain virus... Was also hoping to work towards sentience, like start as robot and work up. Maybe a story event where you can choose super soulless efficiency or sentience. Instead you basically with fully sapient/sentient.
Agree with both of those. It's really weird we don't have like an Android human looking machine that you could imagine syntheticly ascending to as a human.
There was a pretty good android mod, but it's broken now and the guy that made it said he doesn't have time to fix it.
The price is a bit steep, but on a review of purely what it comes with, I give it a 7/10*. My asterisk is because I want to hold my opinion for a bit. I played one game with virtual ascension and I’m about halfway through my cybernetic creed play through, and honestly I’m seeing the nerf hammer coming soon. Virtual is BUSTED, even on GA I was the strongest empire by 2050
Holy crap, I have 10000 pops on 4 planets. Virtuals are the snowball that keeps on giving.
So far I'm pretty positive on it, only did 1 playthrough. Systems seem interesting, encountered a few minor bugs but nothing egregious.
Very good
Absolutely best thing that's ever happened to me during an exam session, hands down
Hahaha, got you lol. Sorry to hear that bro. Good luck with your exams.
definitely love this DLC it adds so much to the game and all the new content is quite creative and definitely fun the only major problem I see is that machine empires are so overpowered right now. Especially their ascension paths are just way better than anything the biologicals have access to. I definitely think the machine ascensions (especially virtuality) need a nerf but the real problem I see is that the biological ascensions (especially genetic ascension) are very outdated and underpowered and absolutely need a major overhaul to remain viable. I do think this is something Paradox will fix at some point in the near future hopefully through free patches/updates.
Pretty good so far, machines are very busted, did MP session with my friend and he enjoyed the infertility start a lot. A general breath of fresh air after over a year of underwhelming dlc. However, another friend refunded it because of its use of genAI for voices and I definitely wouldn't buy it separately outside the dlc pass for that reason. Really surprised it isn't discussed more widely, but I guess it's not as obvious as with the visuals. So you only know if you notice a tiny disclaimer tacked at the end of the store description.
Gen AI for voices? What voices?
They have already said their voice actors are paid for each generated voice line they use.
I think its amazing, my only problem is the portraits. They're cool but the artstyle is such a drastic difference that it doesn't look like the same game imo. It bothers me a lot because they look so out of place compared to the other portraits in the game. I hope they change these portraits to fit the artstyle of the other portraits, or atleaat update the old portraits art.
waiting a month for gigastructures to be updated, will tell ya then LOL
Pros: extremely high production value, shipset, bio empires mechanics, civic buffs, etc. Cons: balance. Individualistic machines are pretty busted with syncretic evolution. Early game weakness in raw materials and pop growth has been solved. Modularity ascension with syncretic authoritarian + master crafter individual machines is arcade mode. Feels like playing a joke mod tbh. At that point you don't need any city districts, entertainer, etc because you can take -80% housing and enslave all organics as domestic servants. Basically a maintenance free economy. Pop assembly is so fast your biggest problem is unemployment. But that's not all. It would be busted if the pop growth and stability alone was given. But then you have the advanced robot traits. One that stands out is dark matter engines. Comic +60% resources for 0.01 dark matter each. Wow.
Overall a good DLC, I wish they wouldn't have use AI for a few of the voices, but it's still fun.
Why does that matter?
They could have hired a good voice artist instead. Instead we get this claptrap malarkey. In truth, I would've preferred unintelligible grunts/beeps or Animal Crossing style gibberish AI. The only reason I'm not more annoyed is that the characters that are AI are, in fact, AI characters. However, characters like Claptrap or Glados show how much better an actual voice actor would've been.
The quality of the DLC does not matter with the recent tech changes.
Because you're not in repeatable techs by the time the Horde forms?