This is the seventh in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Stellaris. See the previous reviews here:
Stellaris: Paradox Among the Stars
Leviathans: There Be Dragons Here!
Utopia: No Place Among the Stars
Synthetic Dawn: Synthetic Intelligence
Apocalypse: Colossal Expansion
Distant Stars: Distant Expansion
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After a minor pack, Stellaris had a third major expansion as its next release. At the same time, patch 2.2 saw more major reworks of the game, and the introduction of a new system that had been part of the original vision of the game. MegaCorp was announced October 24, 2018, and released alongside patch 2.2 on December 6.
Economy
The core rework to the game at this point was its economic system, and everything else rests on the work here. Part of it is invisible to the user, as it dealt with a lot of places where costs were hard-coded into the game. This was changed out so that modders could change anything they needed to, and Paradox itself gained a lot of flexibility in how the game worked.
The types of costs could be changed completely, new resources added, and situational modifiers could be wide-ranging. For the base (unmodded) game, the three primary resources (energy, minerals, and food) stayed the same.
Added to them were two advanced resources: Minerals are turned into alloys and consumer goods. Consumer goods are part of the upkeep for most jobs and better standards of living (generally, pops require 0.25/0.5/1 goods per month depending on the “level” of job they’re in (this sort of graduated needs echoes the much more complex systems from the Victoria series). Alloys are consumed to construct ships and space stations (instead of minerals for most everything else). So, if needing to do an extensive military buildup (or replace lost fleets…), alloys will be the limiting factor (along with shipyards).
Strategic resources were reworked (but were the same three). Instead of the Civilization-like model of having it or not, they are something that you generate an amount of each month. They are not needed for any basic item, but advanced buildings and ships will require them to build and for upkeep. They can be exploited from naturally occurring deposits—each type has its own technology to allow this. There is a separate technology for you fabricate the resources. So, as the game advances, you will be involved with making sure you build facilities to keep enough of these resources coming in for your increasing dependence on them.
Finally, there are four rare resources. These generally cannot be fabricated, and are dependent on finding and exploiting sources of them in the galaxy. (Also, strategic resources can be found on uninhabitable planets and inhabitable planet deposits, while rare ones will only be on uninhabitable ones.) Once you have them, it is still a struggle to find a use for them….
Beyond the increased customization allowed, this was a big improvement. I’ve always considered the have it or not resource model to be horrible, and I was very glad to see Stellaris get away from it. Inserting advanced resources into the mix has also been a long-term benefit to the game, as it keeps the economy from being purely a “get big numbers” exercise, in you have to keep various demands balanced. There have been much later tweaks, but this has been the basic model ever since.
Districts
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The most dramatic rework of the patch was to inhabited planets. Before, they used a tile system such as that seen in the Galactic Civilizations series (and described in my initial review). As of this patch, Stellaris moved to an all-new district system that the game has used ever since.
In very broad outline, it does resemble the old tile system. Planets have a size which sets how many districts a planet can have. Each district is kind of like a building that provides basic resources if there’s population manning it. (Originally, this was fairly explicit, with four types of districts, one for each basic resource, plus city districts for extra housing; in patch 3.0 industrial districts were added which turn minerals into both alloys and consumer goods, and then patch 4.0 de-emphasized districts and got rid of the industrial ones.)
You can always build a city district with available space, but the other types depend on planetary features, which allow certain numbers of them. These are things like a “great river” which allows two agriculture districts. All of these are totaled, and allow 1-3 districts of the appropriate type each, so a planet with plenty of features can easily build any combination of districts needed, but a feature-poor planet will mostly only have city districts (or industrial ones, in 3.x).
There are also special features, perhaps dealing with various events. The most common ones generate strategic resources. These used to allow special buildings to extract them, but now (patch 3.14) they’re just added to the minerals of mining districts. (I prefer the old method, which doesn’t require making every place with a special feature a de facto mining planet.)
Blockers are retained, but instead of blocking a tile they consume districts, and may “block” access to a feature. If there’s only one feature that gives mining districts, and it is blocked, you can’t build any mining districts on the planet, even if the feature allows three, and the blocker is only reducing available districts by one.
Additionally, there are buildings, which are separate from the districts. At this point, the number of building slots was purely tied to the population of the planet (+1 per 5 population), but in patch 3.0 this changed so that city districts and capital upgrades are the main way to get new slots. This part is similar to both Europa Universalis IV (where total development—and other modifiers—allows more buildings) and Hearts of Iron IV (based on a static category type, but the more populated areas have more building slots).
Other things that need managing now are housing, crime, and amenities. Generally speaking, each population requires one housing; production districts provide two housing and create two jobs, except for the cities which have five housing (to help staff buildings) and one job. Amenities are an abstraction of city services and other infrastructure, and are generated by city clerk jobs, and special buildings, and are needed to keep the population happy. Crime is generated by pops (more crime the less happy they are), and can cause all sorts of bad events/modifiers to happen if it gets out of control.
Some people disliked that this was a more complicated system than the tiles, but I have never been a fan of the tile system in any space 4X game they’ve appeared in (I like the theory of them, but I’ve yet to see them live up to it in practice). And this added a lot of flexibility, as districts can be redefined: Habitats, hive minds (from Utopia), and machine empires (Synthetic Dawn) have their own district types. Overall I find it a much better system than the tiles, and still keeps micromanagement of planets down to periodic sweeps to see if any place is outgrowing its current facilities.
Additionally, the expansion includes the ability to create an ecumenopolis (planet covered by one large city, i.e, Trantor and Coruscant), which have their own types of districts. It takes a decision to create one, and it removes all features from the planet, and the district types change to arcologies, which provide 10-15 housing (instead of 2-5), and the bulk of districts will be geared towards alloy and consumer good production (they all provide more housing than jobs, but also provide more jobs than a standard district).
Trader to the Stars
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The new system added by the patch is trade. Generally, every pop on a planet will generate some trade value, and some buildings explicitly generate more. Occasionally, planetary deposits also generate trade, representing places or items that people will seek out.
Any improved station will collect the trade in its own system, and route it to the capital, and starbases can have a trade module to collect from neighboring systems (with the range going up with more modules—the initial home system starbase already has one). Once in the capital, the trade value turns into energy, which means all versions of Stellaris from 2.2 on have an easier time with that resource. But, if you’re really rolling in the money, you can automatically turn part of it into consumer goods or unity with a new policy.
Piracy was something that randomly happened at the fringes of your empire when there were too many unoccupied systems adjacent to you. Now it randomly happens along the route from your starbases to the capital. Starbases suppress piracy near them by an amount (and distance) determined by their military capabilities. When trade moving through the area goes above that amount, piracy becomes possible. There’s a new map mode where you can manage trade routes, and see where piracy is becoming a problem.
Along with abstracted low-level trade, the ability to buy and sell particular resources was added. There’s no “barter”, either you sell it for energy (money) or buy it with energy. Big one-time purchases are the bulk of the interface, but you can also do continuing sales. There are standard target numbers for the value of everything, and large purchases will change the price, which will then drift back to the start price. There’s an internal market for this, and a galactic market which forms in an event after a good chunk of the empires in the galaxy are in touch with each other. The galactic market has cheaper prices, and you can nominate a trade-heavy planet to host the market, which will drive your prices even lower.
Overall, the trade system is merely okay. I certainly understand the desire to include it, and the trade flow is generally good. Piracy however remains a minor irritant instead of something to really deal with. Ships will also reduce piracy, and it was intended for players to set up piracy patrols to keep a handle on things, but it’s a lot of trouble for the return, and intelligent starbase placement is much more effective. The main trouble is that outside of internal trade, everything is abstracted, so you never have trade routes running between empires or other international complications.
Corporations
The expansion adds the new corporate authority type to the game. Unlike the previous expansion additions, it is not tied to a particular ethic type. It is basically the same as the authoritarian authority, including the restrictions on it, and symbol background color, but instead of the authoritarian boost to councilor skill, they have a host of effects, including a higher penalty for going over the current allowed empire size, and the ability to open branch offices.
These last are the first type of a new category called holdings, which are major extra-governmental holdings on a planet. (Other holdings are from a later patch, and deal with what a government can build on its vassal’s planets.)
A branch office can be started on any inhabited world where the corporation has a commercial pact. They deliver energy equal to half the world’s trade value to the corporation, but cost energy and influence to set up depending on distance from the corporation’s borders. It also can have its own buildings depending on the population/capital level of the planet. These buildings generally generate extra jobs which will produce resources for the planet as normal, but also generate extra materials for the corporation (e.g., the “fast food chain” generates a farmer job for the planet—producing food there—but also generates 10 extra food for the owning corporation).
Naturally, corporations have a separate set of civics that replaces the normal ones for them. There are twelve standard ones, plus more with various other expansions (including four from the previous expansions, notably Utopia, Humanoids, and Plantoids).
A thirteenth special civic is criminal heritage. This is a permanent civic that indicates the corporation was actually a crime syndicate that has taken over, and modifies how a corporation can act. Notably, they can never have a commercial pact with another power, but can establish a branch office on any planet held by someone else. They get a unique set of buildings for the offices that all have a side-effect of increasing crime on that planet. Having a successful criminal empire anywhere else in the galaxy is likely to cause you to pay far more attention to crime and the crime-reduction buildings.
I haven’t done much directly with corporations. On one level, they don’t feel different enough to be interesting. On another level, the penalties to empire size make playing as one more difficult if you habitually conquer and colonize everything in sight. At the least, they do make the galaxy a more interesting place.
Caravaneers
The expansion includes another small enclave-like type of empire: the caravaneers. They generally control a single system (putting them between the marauders of Apocalypse and the stations of Leviathan), and have a fleet randomly wandering around the galaxy.
Whenever this fleet enters your territory, they’ll offer you a deal. These range from minerals to special technologies, or leaders, and can have a number of different costs. In essence, these are nomads, roaming the galaxy, and occasionally returning to their home base.
They’re an interesting idea, but I find I don’t do much with them, and most of their offers aren’t tempting to me.
Extras
Along with a whole new set of corporate civics, MegaCorp includes three new regular civics. Byzantine bureaucracy grants extra unity from the higher-level jobs, and stability from bureaucrats (which natively produce unity). Merchant guilds replace some politician jobs (from planetary capitals) with merchants, effectively replacing unity with trade value. And shared burdens is available to fanatic egalitarian governments, increasing stability and allows more housing. There is also astro-mining drones, a new machine empire civic that increases the number of starbases that can be built, and station output, but decreases energy and minerals from planet-bound jobs.
There is also a new ascension perk for corporations: universal transactions. This makes commercial pacts easier (no need for an embassy first, and they don’t cost influence), gives them a +20% bonus, and makes branch offices cheaper to start.
Finally, the expansion adds three new megastructures (available to any government—if you have Utopia, though you can find ruined ones to repair). These all act like the science nexus or sentry array from Utopia; they’re built in a series of steps that provide increasing benefits starting once the second step is complete. The mega-art installation provides unity and a bonus to amenities, the strategic coordination center provides starbase and naval capacity (and a boost to sublight travel), the interstellar assembly (added slightly later) increases foreign empire opinions and diplomatic weight, and the matter decompressor generates a massive number of minerals—if you have a black hole to build it at.
Conclusion
The patch was the third major change to the game. Like any such, there are people who prefer the old version, but I definitely prefer the district system, and the common/advanced/rare resource split it introduced. I really prefer the move away from have it or not resource mechanics, which I’ve never cared for. The continuing strength of Stellaris sales and playing say most people agree with me.
The expansion is merely nice. I almost never play as a corporation, not finding them all that fun, but I do like having them in the galaxy. The caravaneers are fairly ho-hum for me. I also haven’t done much with ecumenopolises; I just haven’t needed to convert a planet to that level of population and manufacturing, though it’s occasionally tempting for my capital. That leaves the new megastructures and other actions as the main attractions for me.
So, if you’re like me, this is mostly a completist expansion. However, if you like the idea of running a giant corporation as your empire in a space 4X game, this will do a good job with the idea.
My copy of this book is enhanced by an interesting preface, where Brian Sanderson talks about the particular challenges of writing this book. Apparently, he’d been writing various books for a while, finishing them, moving on to the next book. The Final Empire had a very definite hook to a sequel. But it was also the first book that he sold, and got published. Otherwise, apparently, he would have moved on to a new project. Now, he had to write a sequel, which was a new challenge for him, even though writing a novel was something he was already practiced at.
