INTRO:
For better or worse, Paradox’s space 4X title was affected by the unpleasant waves of political correctness and counter-movement in the wake of GamerGate, as was evident in a certain debacle regarding a fan-made mod that filtered the human phenotype animated portraits to just Caucasian humans. Then there was the Twitter argument about the refugee policy between the director of the game’s development and a certain follower who claimed that the wording for the policy was “left-wing extremist”.
Perhaps such incidents have left a mark on the hearts and minds of the developers – deep enough to have them include amusingly nasty things in an otherwise wistfully titled expansion.
SOME OTHER CHANGES OCCURRING IN PARALLEL:
Not long after the aforementioned incidents, some gameplay elements have been further refined, namely the policies that drew the ire of followers of the game who think that the game is carrying political messages. The Refugee policy, in particular, has been added with the option to only receive refugees of species that have full citizenship status in a civilization; this is, of course, a reference to certain European countries who, close to this time of writing, had been rather selective of the people that they accept as refugees.
These are changes with small impact to the gameplay experience compared to the content in this expansion though.
ADDITIONAL PURGING OPTIONS:
Some followers of the game have complained that the default purging options are not particularly useful – specifically there were little to be gained from removing undesirable species/sub-species. Utopia introduces other options – all of which are nasty, but profitable.
Firstly, the civilization can choose to neuter undesirables. This does not destroy their productivity, but it guarantees that their population units will die out within 75% of their natural lifespan. Secondly, the undesirables can be set to forced labour, in which they can do little but churn out food and minerals until they die. Thirdly, the undesirables can be sent to “processing”: they are simply rendered down into food.
However, these other options take much, much longer to enact. There is always a chance that something goes wrong and unrest spikes greatly, leading to rebellions that cause the aggressor to lose control of the planet on which the atrocities are taking place.
ADDITIONAL SLAVERY OPTIONS:
Utopia introduces several different types of indenturing and slavery, each with their own benefits and setbacks. There is “Livestock” status, which is as nasty as it sounds. Another example is Battle Thralls, which are practically serf armies raised from birth to fight and die. The least bad of these additional slavery options is Domestic Servitude. The slaves are still unhappy of course, but their owners are happier.
Incidentally, many of these slavery options can be combined with some of the additional options for genetic modification that Utopia introduces for more effective slave species/sub-species.
However, these other options can curtail their productivity even more. Returning to the example of Livestock, these slaves only provide a flat output of Food and will not work any tile.
GESTALT CONSCIOUSNESS:
There had been players who complained about having to juggle the factions within their civilizations just for the sake of managing happiness and gaining Influence. Thus, there had been demands for civilizations that do not have such complexities.
To streamline and justify the designs for civilizations without any faction system whatsoever, Paradox’s developers have introduced an additional Government Ethic, if it can even be called one: the Gestalt Consciousness.
Gestalt Consciousness tosses out many of the systems that concern internal politics and strife in regular civilizations. The first major difference is the lack of any faction system, as mentioned already. Furthermore, there is no happiness factor whatsoever – all of the populations are practically drones.
This Government Ethic is in turn used for two additional authority types, one of which is introduced in this expansion. These authority types also come with special civics that are exclusive to them, and the only ones that are available to them. Incidentally, all these determine how a civilization with Gestalt Consciousness gains Influence.
Civilizations with Gestalt Consciousness cannot co-exist at all with species that have their own free will. The populations of any other species that are caught on planets ruled by these civilizations are immediately designated as non-citizens (or worse), such is the aversion that the Gestalt Consciousness has about them. This also results in a diplomatic hurdle between such civilizations and the others, i.e. a mutually applied negative Opinion modifier.
Gestalt Consciousness as a Governing Ethic cannot be changed at all. The civilization has this permanently throughout a playthrough.
IMMORTAL RULER:
The Ruler of a Gestalt Consciousness civilization is the embodiment of the intelligence behind the entirety of the civilization. It is unfathomable and enduring; gameplay-wise, the Ruler is practically immortal. This also means that the traits and quirks of the Ruler are applied to the civilization forevermore.
OTHER BENEFITS:
Gestalt Consciousness civilizations gain some advantages from the get-go. They have much reduced piracy risk, due to far lesser occurrences of misfits and miscreants among them. They also have the limits on their Core Systems increased by 2, just like the Pacifists, but without penalties to their performance in war. Speaking of which, they suffer War Exhaustion more slowly. They also gain one point of monthly Influence income, just like the Fanatic Authoritarian (indeed, they are technically not too far different from the latter).
UNREST FROM THE UN-UNITED:
If the Gestalt Consciousness is the kind that does tolerate co-existence with those of fractious “free” minds, there can be population units of species with happiness ratings on the planets that it controls. These population units can generate unrest (and they likely will). The civilization would have to come up with means to deal with the unrest, lest the civilization becomes the target of liberation wars (if it is not the kind that attracts Total War already; more on this later).
HIVE MIND:
Utopia introduces an additional authority type, if it can be called one. This is the “Hive Mind”, the first expression of the Gestalt Consciousness “civilization”. In addition to any penalties and bonuses that they get from Gestalt Consciousness, Hive Minds get faster population growth and greatly reduced resettlement costs (and since they do not need to please progressive factions, they can always resettle any population unit at any time).
Since their population units are technically all drones and their techs suggest that they use organic equivalents of high technology, they have no need for machines whatsoever. Any machine population units that the Hive Minds come across are immediately considered undesirables and are subjected to purging.
Hive Minds have their own set of civics too, and can only ever have a mix of these. The Civics that do not greatly affect gameplay will be described first.
The lesser civics are practically counterparts of Civics for regular civilizations, or Civic-versions of species traits, albeit in mixes that avoid giving benefits to happiness or influence income. For example, there is Ascetic, which has a Hive Mind having Spartan lifestyles for its drones (not that they mind); this is amore potent form of the Environmentalist civic. There is Divided Attention, which essentially adds two points to the soft cap on Core Systems; this is practically Efficient Bureaucracy.
One of the Civics, the Devouring Swarm, is particularly significant, and will be described later. This one is part of the genocidal gameplay that is introduced in Utopia.
It should be mentioned here that species that are Hive-Minded can still be given most Species traits, except those that make them lean towards other Ethics (for obvious reasons).
Where the regular civilizations have some edicts that consume Energy credits to be issued, the Hive Mind has counterparts that consume Food instead, but for similar benefits. One of the different benefits is improved damage output for armies, which further makes a Hive Mind potent in invasions.
DIFFERENT TRADITIONS & TEXTS FOR HIVE MINDS:
For Hive Minds, many traditions have to be renamed to fit their theme. Even the flavour texts have to be changed. Most of the gameplay effects of the traditions remain the same. For example, the Colonization Fever tradition is renamed to “One Mind”, but still grants the same benefit of Unity incomes from administration centres.
However, there are gameplay-based differences in Traditions for Hive Minds too. In the case of Hive Minds, or rather, Gestalt Consciousness, the Harmony category is replaced with Synchronicity. The Traditions in this replacement are almost completely different. In particular, there is one Tradition that gives a Gestalt Consciousness civilization better ability at managing unrest arising from population units of species that do not share their minds.
Interestingly though, Hive Minds that are not Devouring Swarms can still form Federations with others. Indeed, this is more often than not a goal of Hive Minds with a diplomatic bent, despite not having the Diplomacy category of traditions.
DEATH FROM SEPARATION:
Generally, population units of Hive-Minded species will die if they are not on planets controlled by Hive Mind civilizations. To simulate this, such species are automatically tagged as “undesirables” and immediately subjected to extermination. This is a work-around for their eventual death due to separation from their Hive Mind, but apparently also counts as their conquerors perpetrating deliberate atrocities on them. Progressive factions do not mind this (they are coded to ignore the deaths of Hive-Minded species), and even the Enigmatic Observers Fallen Empire does not give a hoot if they are mistreated.
However, non-Hive Mind civilizations that have obtained the Evolutionary Mastery ascension perk can remove the Hive-Minded trait, if they so choose, through the system of assimilation, which will be described later.
NO ESCAPE FOR THOSE WITHOUT FREE WILL:
Unfortunately, the setback of being a hive-minded species is that population units of this species will never become refugees. They will be together with their own kind, until the bitter end.
The same setback is also applied to species/sub-species with the Nerve-Stapled trait, which is a trait that can applied with one of the options made available through the Evolutionary Mastery ascension perk, which will be described later.
The galaxy has no pity for those who lack minds of their own.
That said, there is a lost opportunity for a special event chain in which drones of a Hive Mind gain minds of their own.
ASSIMILATION - ADDITIONAL SPECIES RIGHTS:
Utopia introduces an additional species right: assimilation. This specifically caters to the matter of absorbing population units of species that are initially incompatible with a non-regular civilization.
Any species that has been tagged with assimilation is forced to undergo transformations. Gameplay-wise, this means the addition or removal of traits that are associated with Gestalt Consciousness. In the case of species that are associated with – or disassociated from – Hive Minds, the Hive-Minded trait is added to population units of non-Hive-Minded species that have been conquered by Hive Minds (if they bother to assimilate them in the first place). If a population unit of Hive-Minded species is conquered by another civilization, the Hive-Minded trait is removed from them instead.
However, to do either, the civilization must have attained the Evolutionary Mastery ascension perk.
A formerly regular civilization that has gone down the machine-based transhumanist path can also assimilate other species – by forcing cybernetics or synthetic conversion on them. This may seem a reference to the Borg of Star Trek, but the assimilated species still retain their free will. (The Synthetic Dawn DLC introduces civilizations that are very much the Borg.) Psionic civilizations can also assimilate other species too, simply by forcing their psychic potential to the fore. Neither option is pleasant.
ADDITIONAL CIVICS:
Utopia introduces some new Civics for civilizations that do not have Gestalt Consciousness, i.e. the ones that have been around since the debut of the game. These greatly change the early-game segments and forever colour the civilization: they cannot be removed in any way.
Mechanists already start with robotic technologies, giving them an advantage in developing planets early on. These are short-term advantages, so to give them something for the rest of a playthrough, their upkeep costs for machine population units are slightly lower. (Incidentally, they are much more vulnerable to a certain nasty event that is introduced in the Synthetic Dawn expansion.)
Most civilizations start with their primary species only, Mechanists notwithstanding. Civilizations with Syncretic Evolution have a sub-species; this sub-species is intellectually gimped, due to the “positive” Servile trait, which is only ever associated with the Civic. Since it is a positive trait, it cannot be removed unless the Evolutionary Mastery perk has been obtained. Servile species have a permanent happiness buff, are very attracted to Governing Ethics and are talented at menial labour (i.e. Mineral and Food production); they are just bad at everything else.
One of these additional Civics is the Fanatical Purifier, which like Devouring Swarm, will be described later together with genocidal gameplay.
GENOCIDAL GAMEPLAY:
To emphasize that Paradox has no qualms about developing a 4X title that lets the player be an absolutely awful fictitious monster, there are the Fanatical Purifier and Devouring Swarm “civics”, which introduce the concept of genocidal gameplay in Stellaris.
The Fanatic Xenophobe ethic allows the adoption of the Fanatical Purifier civic, which turns a civilization into a destructive force that intends to make sure that its own species is the only one left standing. The Fanatical Purifier also gains the “Armageddon” bombardment stance, which can turn a world into a Tomb World if the bombardment goes far enough. Of course, players who have had experience with the canon of Warhammer 40K would recognize these characteristics all too well.
If there is any other civilization that could be friends with them, it would have to be another Fanatical Purifier of the same species.
If there is any other civilization that could be friends with them, it would have to be another civilization of the same species. Chances are that this would not happen in a playthrough because this other civilization would need to have been a rebellious splinter or a created vassal, something that only human players would think of doing. If they are a rebellious splinter, it is not likely that relations would improve.
Hive-Minded civilizations already spook the others; Devouring Swarms are outright nightmarish. Fans of the game have equated them with the Zerg from Starcraft, which is perhaps apt. Other civilizations, including other Devouring Swarms (even those that are somehow of the same species), are only ever prey to them.
All of the nuances about diplomacy, trade and other forms of communication or interaction with other civilizations are thrown out the window. The only things that this civilization can do is to declare war or throw insults. Also, it has bad relations with others right from the start. Besides, everything that it can do horrifies the others, because anything that it can do is horrible by default.
The civilization’s experience will be that of a kill-or-be-killed one; the other civilizations will certainly be out for its blood too. In return, a genocidal civilization gains macabre bonuses for having vanquished others; if it can maintain its momentum, its “purification” or “consumption” of the galaxy might just be unstoppable.
Being genocidal, these civilizations will eventually have to war against others. For this purpose, they have substantial buffs to the damage output of their armies and navies, and can raise armies and navies more efficiently too.
Unfortunately, one of its major advantages is also its greatest weakness. This will be described later, together with the concept of Total War.
DIFFERENT TRADITIONS FOR GENOCIDAL CIVILIZATIONS:
In the base game, some traditions had to be changed to fit the Inward Perfectionist civilizations. The Diplomacy category is replaced with Adaptability, because they are terrible at maintaining relations, and Domination is replaced with Purity, because they do not believe even in any kind of coexistence. Genocidal civilizations have Adaptability and Purity too, which is just as well.
The Supremacy category has to have some Traditions changed for genocidal civilizations too, mainly become they are not interested in lording over the conquered. Right of Conquest (or Armed Deterrence for Pacifistic civilizations) has been replaced with Natural Preeminence for Fanatical Purifiers and Domestication Sweep for Devouring Swarms. Either helps the management of unrest as the population units of other species are purged.
That this Supremacy tradition is a prerequisite for two others means that the two others are replaced too. One of these two other traditions is The Great Game and its differently named equivalents, all geared towards increasing the benefits to Unity income from having rivals; since genocidal civilizations do not care for political hostilities, it is replaced with a Tradition that grants a straight bonus to Unity income instead.
There are also differences between Fanatical Purifiers and Devouring Swarms with regard to the Purity category; these differences also affect gameplay. For example, there is a tradition that espouses species supremacy for Fanatical Purifiers (and their introverted cousins, the Inward Perfectionists); this grants Happiness bonuses. Since the Devouring Swarm does not need Happiness, it gets a Tradition that gives it more bonuses from purging other species instead. Indeed, most of these differences appear to be long-term pervasive benefits for Fanatical Purifiers and repeatable short-term gains for Devouring Swarms.
PURGING WITH MY KIN:
In my review article for the base game, I have mentioned that wholesale purging of entire species is very difficult, since it makes everyone else angry. In the case of genocidal civilizations, whom everyone else is already angry at, they gain short-term benefits from purging other species – which they have to, since this is the name of their game.
In the case of Fanatic Purifiers, they always gain Unity from successfully purging population units of other species. This helps them adopt Traditions more quickly, which they will need to do if they want to survive against the understandably hostile galaxy.
In the case of the Devouring Swarms, they automatically apply the Processing purge option on the population units of other species. They gain Society science points for each successfully consumed population unit, which represents the knowledge that they gained from their prey. This might seem overpowered, because the Devouring Swarm can use the Society points to accelerate their Society research. However, Devouring Swarms will need this so that they can genetically modify their species and sub-species, because they cannot use other species to live on worlds that are not suitable for their own.
TOTAL WAR:
In the base game, regular civilizations need justifications to go to war against each other. Genocidal civilizations throw all that geopolitical scheming out the window in favour of purer Total War.
Total War is practically the kind of wars seen in other 4X games and grand strategy games: there are no holds barred and winner takes all. Any systems that have been defeated in a Total War are automatically turned over to the victorious side. Furthermore, a Status Quo resolution in Total War can only be achieved if both sides have reached 100% exhaustion.
Unfortunately for the genocidal civilizations, this arrangement works both ways. The other civilizations do not need much of any justification other than their own survival in declaring war against genocidal civilizations.
Claims are processed in Total Wars too, at least for the civilizations that are not genocidal civilizations and are participating in the wars. The main difference is that they are processed immediately after a system with a claim or more on it has been captured. If there is only one claimant, the system’s ownership is immediately transferred over to the claimant. If there are multiple claims, the claim made with the highest Influence is enforced. Either case can result in fleets getting kicked out if the claimant has closed border policies.
There are only two ways for Total Wars to end: one side is completely overwhelmed, or both sides reach 100% war exhaustion. In the latter case, even genocidal civilizations can become weary, even though they do not give a squat about peace.
EXPLOITING GENOCIDAL CIVILIZATIONS:
As a rule of thumb, if genocidal civilizations do not start in an isolated part of the galaxy, they are doomed.
Due to the rules on resolving Total Wars, these wars can last a long, long time, which makes either side vulnerable to the predation of others. This is much more so for the genocidal civilizations, whom everyone else automatically hates (including most other genocidal civilizations). Their lack of any ability to form Federations means that they are at a disadvantage against Federations too.
The immediate exchange of ownerships also means that other civilizations would scheme against each other if they are fighting together against a genocidal civilization. The player should inspect claims regularly, lest he/she be undercut when his/her fleets and armies conquered the systems of their enemy.
Fanatic Purifiers are particularly vulnerable, because they still have a system of factions that can work against them during both wars and peace-time. Since their species do not have Gestalt Consciousness, they can be subverted after they are conquered too.
NATIVE INDOCTRINATION:
Proto-civilizations present considerable opportunities, either as sources of Society research, or creation of a servile civilization for the purpose of ancillary support or ego-stroking (i.e. Influence incomes). However, the emergent civilizations might not have the same Ethics, which can lead to some friction and a potential weak spot in their lord’s territories.
Utopia introduces a different option for using the proto-civilization as a source of research. This is Indoctrination, which eventually causes the proto-civilization to gain the indoctrinating civilization’s Ethics. Afterwards, the proto-civilization can be enlightened, becoming a perfect servant – unless it is Xenophobic.
Interestingly, this option is not available for Gestalt Consciousness civilizations. It is also definitely not there for genocidal civilizations.
THE GOOD NICE STUFF:
Having described the mostly nasty and/or entertainingly disturbing things that Utopia brings to Stellaris, this article now moves on to the good stuff.
The main good thing is an additional tier of choices above the system of Traditions. These are the Ascension perks, which will be described in their own sections. Suffice to say for now that these can greatly change the experience of a playthrough, allowing for plenty of role-playing.
Having to live on worlds can be stifling, so there has been clamouring from fans for artificially created celestial bodies. These include Habitats and Ringworlds, which will be described in their own sections too.
Finally, there are Megastructures, which are immensely megalithic structures that were conceived in the minds of those who dream perhaps a bit too much about what technology can do. Peculiarly, despite their substantial benefits, they come with a lot of opportunity costs that are mostly nuanced (and if they are not, they are not immediately clear to the player).
ASCENSION:
As a civilization develops its culture, certain ideas arise and become noticeable; this includes aspirations and ambitions that can be considered as radical. In the real world, there are such things, such as transhumanism.
This is expressed in Stellaris too, through the Ascension system, which is layered on top of the Tradition system. When a Tradition category is completely adopted, the Civilization gains an Ascension point, which can be spent on an Ascension perk. The choice is not to be done lightly: once selected, a perk cannot be changed (at least not without mods).
Any civilization can have only up to eight perks by default (with all expansions thus far included); there are mods that increase the number, for better or worse. Since there are seven Tradition categories, seven Perks can be obtained through the Tradition system; the eighth has to be unlocked through research, and even then, this is only doable in the Apocalypse expansion.
NO-BRAINER PERKS:
There are some perks that simply increase statistics that are very difficult to increase through other means. This makes them inherently lucrative to any player with almost any playstyle – hence the “no-brainer” phrase. It is difficult to make a mistake by picking them.
One of these is Technological Ascendancy, which grants a straight 10% buff to research efforts. It would be difficult for any player not to take this. Next, there is Executive Vigor, which increases the duration of Edicts, thus allowing the player to save precious Influence points for later use. For non-genocidal civilizations, there is Interstellar Dominion, which reduces Influence costs for claims and expansions, which again lead to Influence savings. There is also Transcendent Learning, which allows Leaders to reach levels that they could not reach otherwise (at least without mods).
A player could choose to load up with all of these no-brainer perks, but they do take up slots that can prevent the player from going down very specific and entertainingly different paths.
PERKS WITH BIGGER OPPORTUNITY COSTS:
Then, there are perks with opportunity costs. If the player could not obtain the circumstances to profit from them, then they are wasted outright. If the player is not aware of their hidden costs, they may cause more problems than they solve.
One of these is Mastery of Nature, which allows more tiles to be revealed on planets. Obviously, this becomes useless after the player has obtained the 25-tile colonies that he/she wants and no longer wants any more. Another is Imperial Prerogative, which increases the number of core systems that a civilization can maintain, but having more planets is not always a good thing, due to cost inflations in research projects and traditions. The same can also be said about the Voidborne perk, which allows the civilization to build Habitats, which count as planets.
HIGHER TIER PERKS:
Some perks are only available after the player has made some choices. These higher-tier perks have even more caveats and opportunity costs, despite their seemingly positive descriptions.
There is Eternal Vigilance, which greatly enhances starbases. However, starbases would not help much if the hyperlanes of the galaxy are not conducive to defensive strategies. There is Galactic Force Projection, which increases fleet command limits and naval capacity greatly, but having more ships means greater maintenance costs.
The player should be very careful with these choices. Matching them with the player’s playstyle is a must, and matching them with the circumstances of the playthrough is another must.
IMPLEMENTATION IN THE BASE GAME:
Incidentally, many of the perks that have been mentioned had since been implemented in the base game, together with the Ascension system. However, there are a number of perks that are only available if the playthrough has the content of this expansion, and the later ones, included. This is because they have considerable impacts on gameplay. Some of these will be described shortly.
ASCENSION PATHS:
In the content of Utopia, the choices that grant the most role-playing opportunities and the greatest changes to the experience of a playthrough are the perks that lead up (or down, depending on one’s perspectives) the Ascension paths.
There are three Ascension paths: biological mastery, synthetic realization and psionic transcendence – in increasing order of benefits, severity and risk too.
The game does not make it immediately clear to the player that there are three paths. Instead, there are the prerequisites and restrictions that are described for the perks of each path. Observant players might notice that there are perks that can be categorized into three branches; these are of course the Ascension paths.
BIOLOGICAL MASTERY:
This path starts with the Gene Tailoring tech, followed by the Engineered Evolution perk. This grants more points for the genetic modification of organic populations. It ends with Evolutionary Mastery, which grants even more points for modification. They also gain additional traits that cannot be obtained through other ways. Furthermore, the civilization can now remove traits and add them willy-nilly to commit all kinds of crimes against the natural order – not that the natural order matters anymore.
Most importantly, Hive-Mindedness is no longer an impediment to biological masters. It can be removed or implemented, through the previously mentioned assimilation mechanism.
There is generally no risk in going down this path. In fact, it might be worthwhile in the long run, especially after a civilization has run out of good things to research in the Society field and can then busy itself with perfecting its populations.
On the other hand, the other civilizations could always just swoop in and acquire the optimized population units for themselves, either through conquest or worse means.
SYNTHETIC REALIZATION:
Ascension involving genetic modification is crazy enough, but supposedly the ramifications would be subtle; flesh can be moulded, but it is still flesh. Transhumanism with machine-based enhancements – or rather, replacements – are something else entirely.
A civilization may go down the path where they find that The Flesh Is Weak, especially if they have seen that the synthetics that it has made are superior in many things. Taking the perk of the same name as this epiphany starts the cybernetics revolution, in which the populations of the entire civilization converts themselves to cyborgs, thus taking on the Cybernetic trait. The changes are mostly positive to them, but other civilizations, especially Spiritualist ones, would be quite aghast. (This also alleviates any risk of machine uprisings in the Synthetic Dawn DLC – the machines have no reason to rebel now.)
Finally, taking the Synthetic Evolution perk starts the complete conversion of all populations to Synthetic existence. After this, the civilization is practically an empire of sentient individual machines – but not to the level of Gestalt Consciousness, it should be pointed out. Regardless, almost every other civilization except the Materialistic ones and the ones that are already machine-dominated would be quite perturbed.
PSIONIC TRANSCENDENCE - PREREQUISITES:
This Ascension path has the nastiest end, if the player so chooses. However, there are many, many prerequisites to meet.
This Ascension path is generally closed to Materialistic civilizations. They can have the opportunity to take it, but they require a scientist with expertise in Psionics. Such Scientists can only be had if the Psionic Theory rare tech has been obtained, and even so, this tech will not come up without there being such a Scientist in the Materialistic civilization’s employ in the first place. Having such a Scientist would require incredible luck.
This path is also completely closed off to civilizations with Gestalt Consciousness, because Psionic Theory will never come up for them. Having evolved to have their mental capacity spread across drones and platforms, their specialization closes this path to them.
For other civilizations, Psionic Theory can come up as a research option. This is more likely to happen for civilizations that are Spiritualistic, for they believe that there is something more to their faith. Once taken, this enables the picking of the Mind Over Matter perk, which starts the civilization down the possibly ruinous path.
The Psionic Theory techs and some of the techs that follow it have been there in the base game, but they were mainly there to give non-Materialistic civilizations a chance against those that are. With Utopia, these give more advantages – and consequences.
PSIONIC TRANSCENDENCE – ROAD TO THE ZENITH:
The civilization that is going down the Psionic path would find things like the Zro strategic resource, which greatly enhances its ability to move ships across hyperlanes; this is in the base game. There are also more things: population units of the primary species gain the beneficial Latent Psionic trait, leaders gain the Psychic trait (also beneficial) and such others.
Finally, taking the Transcendence perk turns the primary species into full-blown Psionics. All leaders become Psychic too. The civilization also gains the ability to awaken the psionic potential of other species – whether they like it or not.
At this point, the civilization produces so much Energy and has so high research output, there are few things that can stop its momentum. One of these few things is their hubris, and the player’s own malicious amusement.
THE SHROUD:
Soon after, the civilization becomes aware of the Shroud – an otherworldly realm of psychic energy. Sci-fi followers would recognize this as a facsimile of the Warp in Warhammer 40K, whereas fantasy followers would recognize it as the myriad representations of the “Veil”.
The Shroud becomes a special Contact, one with its own user interface. Contacting it costs Energy, which should not be a problem for a Psionic civilization. However, contacts can only be made once every few years (the duration varies); reaching into the Shroud is exhausting – and bewildering.
Entities in the Shroud respond to the reach-out by offering boons (buffs) or curses (de-buffs) of different kinds and different potencies. These are practically civilization-wide modifiers that last several years. It is in the player’s interest to select boons only, but the Shroud sometimes only gives crap. Taking its offers is a prerequisite to getting more options from the Shroud.
The Shroud is the only way to get some special ships and armies. These are Psionic Avatars, of which there are two flavours: the army version and the ship one. They are very powerful things, and can be devastating if the player has managed to get them early in a playthrough.
Eventually, more options appear. Unfortunately, these options come with great risks; their outcomes appear to be decided with RNG rolls. Their coding even uses words like “gamble”.
For example, there is an option to reach into the minds of the leaders of a Fallen Empire, who are apparently aware of the lesser civilizations’ rise. The player can risk an attempt to steal knowledge from them, but there is a chance that they might discover this – upon which the Fallen Empire might well awaken and will be very cross at the player’s civilization.
The civilization may also suffer Shroud Incursions; these are overt warnings that bad things can come from the Shroud. Corrupted and berserk versions of the ship-form Avatar appears at the homeworld system. Its ire is clearly directed at the civilization.
The penultimate option is the anointing of the Chosen One from among the psychic leaders of the civilization. The Chosen One is practically immortal and has far greater bonuses than mere Psychics. However, the anointment can go awry. The candidate might outright die, or he/she dies and a Shroud incursion happens. Again, this is a warning of bad things to come.
RUINATION:
After anointing the Chosen One, the powers behind the Shroud reveal themselves and make their offers. A covenant with any of them pushes out the others. They grant massive bonuses, but also cause a lot of problems that can be unmanageable. For example, the Eater of Worlds, true to its name, gobbles up population units and colonies at random.
Very unlucky – or lucky, if they are aware of this and see it that way – players may be contacted by the End of the Cycle. If its name does not suggest so already, the game even includes a fourth-wall-breaking warning that this is a bad idea. Going forward anyway seals the fate of the playthrough in 50 years. Within that 50 years, the Psionic civilization is practically top-dog in the galaxy, if it is not already.
When the time is up, the Psionic civilization crumbles in one fell swoop, leaving behind only one colony in some forgotten backwater and one leader who saw the End coming. Whatever planets that the civilization has are tossed into psychic perdition, and all of its space assets are destroyed.
An immense star-sized psychic entity appears, and goes on to ravage the galaxy, adding to its strength with each life-bearing planet scoured. Any planets that it destroys is rendered permanently uninhabitable, so there is no coming back from its “visitations” either.
Ironically, if the entity succeeds in thrashing the galaxy, the remnant of the Psionic civilization “wins” the playthrough because it is the only one left – if it manages to survive retribution from the other civilizations, who are well aware of the doom that it has unleashed.
The Shroud, of course, is still there, granting its fickle blessings if the Psionic civilization still wants them.
HABITATS:
One of the Ascension perks is Voidborne, which grants the ability to build Habitats. Habitats are practically massive space stations the size of moons, but apparently cannot be armed in any way due to their design.
However, Habitats cannot be built willy-nilly. Firstly, a Habitat must be built around an uninhabitable planet that does not already have mining stations around it. The Habitat will automatically absorb the resources that the planet has. If the planet has any satellite bodies, such as moons and large asteroids, and these have resources of their own, the habitat also absorbs them.
Habitats use the same user interface as planets; they are represented with tiles, which house population units and buildings. The similarities end there, however.
Firstly, Habitats, as their name suggests, have perfect Habitability; they can accommodate any species, including those that evolved on Gaia worlds.
Secondly, a Habitat does not have tiles with inherent resources by default. Rather, any resources that a Habitat has absorbed during its construction are present as tile resources. Strategic resources are even absorbed, and have to be made available by building an Energy-generator on their tiles.
Speaking of which, thirdly, Habitats have their own set of buildings. There is the Habitat Administration, which acts like a high-level administration right from the start. There is the Laboratory Complex, which produces two points of each science point by default, which makes it better than most planet-based labs thanks to better control over gravity. Next, there is the Solar Power Processor, which takes advantage of the Habitat’s location to soak power from the system’s star directly. Then, there is the Leisure District, a Unity-generating building that also boosts happiness.
The Astro-mining Bay produces minerals, presumably from asteroid-mining, and the Agricultural Zone produces food, but neither can match planet-side buildings. Habitats generally make poor sources of Food and Minerals.
SERIOUS OPPORTUNITY COSTS WITH HABITATS:
The disincentives to build Habitats may outweigh their benefits. The main disincentive is that they count as colonized planets, which means that they contribute to cost inflations for research and traditions. The disincentive grows even stronger when one considers that they come at only 12 tiles by default, and can only grow to 15 tiles in size.
Perhaps Habitats could have smaller contributions to cost inflations, but as of now, balancing their setbacks and benefits is a thorny issue that could not reach any consensus among the followers of the game.
MEGA-STRUCTURES:
In the base game, there were ruined Gateways that can be rebuilt and reactivated at great costs, in return for conveniences that might be worth their costs if the circumstances are right (though Wormhole travel is still more reliable, if less securable). Utopia introduces more of such projects.
However, to be able to obtain them, a civilization needs to have the Mega-Engineering tech, which has considerable prerequisites. This tech can appear as an option if the civilization has found a ruined Mega-Structure an obtained the system that has it. Otherwise, the tech is very difficult to appear as a research option, and may have to be obtained through other means such as the Master Builders perk.
After that, the civilization has to repair the Mega-structure, if it is a ruined one. If there is not any and the civilization still wants a big structure to stroke its ego, the civilization has to obtain the Galactic Wonders ascension perk in order to build Mega-structures – from scratch.
The Mega-structures grant tremendous bonuses when they are built, but they are implemented in-game like the Gateway and any space station is. This means that they can be taken away by other civilizations, simply by having the system that they are in taken and claimed. Obviously, the civilization has to invest in defences, or limit access to them – either of which is easier said than done when they are huge prizes to the other civilizations.
Generally, a civilization can only have one of each type of Mega-structure as a gameplay-balancing measure.
COSTS OF MEGA-STRUCTURES:
Mega-structures take a long time and a lot of resources to build, if this is not obvious already. Even repairs of the ruined ancient ones take a long time and still quite a lot of resources, despite these skipping the construction phases.
However, the problem here is that the in-game information on the cost of mega-structures and other things such as the Habitats are not told to the player until their associated techs and Ascension Perks have been taken; this problem had been in the base game too, specifically with Gateways. Learning this the hard way is unpleasant, so players are better off searching the wiki of the game for details on the prices of mega-structures, albeit at the cost of immersion.
Even if the player knows about their costs beforehand, the building and/or repairs of mega-structures are still things that the player has to plan for, because of their staggering opportunity costs in addition to the material ones. All those Minerals and Energy could have gone into other things, like warships and – if the playthrough has them – payments for the buffs provided by Enclaves (from Leviathans content).
Then there are the costs of securing them, which can be considerable if they are not located at defensible locations. This is especially so for ruined Mega-structures, which are almost always located at inconvenient places.
PROOF OF GRANDEUR:
In practice, Mega-structures are just there as proof that a civilization has moved up to the big leagues. By the time that they are obtained, their benefits are at best just complementary to whatever assets that a civilization has obtained, especially if the civilization has been and still is the top dog. They might be important if every civilization has moved into the late-game stages, but that is a playthrough that has gone on for too long.
For example, the Sentry Array would be handy in knowing what everyone is up to, but a cunning player that has invested in diplomacy can obtain similar advantages by buying the Active Sensor Links of every other civilization. That alternative would be far cheaper and easier to obtain, albeit it is not as thorough as the Sentry Array’s galaxy-wide observation.
Of course, if the player could somehow get the Mega-Engineering tech early on and scrape together the resources to obtain a Mega-Structure, it would be a major asset down the line. However, considering the resources that they demand, focusing on them in the early- or mid-game comes with severe opportunity costs.
On the other hand, it is difficult to accuse the Mega-structures of being overpowered. They may bring great rewards, but they require great effort and sacrifice in the first place.
DYSON SPHERES SNUFFING OUT STARS:
It would not take long for a person with a functional sense of logic to realize that as awesome as science-fictional Dyson Spheres seem, they deny the life-giving energies of stars to the rest of space. This does happen in the game; any planets that are orbiting the star that the Dyson Sphere has enclosed automatically have their climes changed to colder ones (though at this time of writing, this is not an issue that affects populations – more on this later). Any Habitats within the same system also could no longer build their solar-harvesting plants and any that they already have becomes permanently deactivated.
RING-WORLD:
Ring-worlds are the mega-structures that a player might want the most, especially if the player is a hopelessly incorrigible min-maxing one.
A ruined ring-world often appears in a system where there are conspicuously no planets. Constructing a ring-world from scratch would reveal why this is the case: the project practically displaces all of the celestial bodies in the system. Presumably, they were broken down wholesale and incorporated into the mega-structures.
The ring-worlds are habitable for everyone. Like planets, the ring-worlds have tiles too, and these tiles happen to have the resources from the celestial bodies that they have absorbed. However, new resources are generated for the tiles too (presumably revealed from cracking the celestial bodies open), so it can sometimes be hard to tell if they retained any of the resources from the celestial bodies that they have absorbed.
Anyway, each ring-world has 25 tiles, and there can be four of them in the system. Each ring-world is made (or repaired) one after the other. The player has some time to shuffle population units over and develop it before the next one is activated. After all, each ring-world counts as a planet, thus contributing to the cost inflation of research and Unity usage.
Having four 25-tile perfect-habitability colonies in the same system can make it a high-value target, but all four colonies have to be defeated and occupied for the capture of the system to be successful. It should be apparent that ring-worlds have value that is great enough to offset their considerable costs and “all eggs in one basket” vulnerability.
CANNOT BUILD RING-WORLDS AND DYSON SPHERES IN CERTAIN SYSTEMS:
At this time of writing – and the Niven build of Stellaris – Dyson Spheres and Ring-worlds cannot be built in any system with binary or trinary stars. It cannot be built in systems with habitable planets either. There had been no clear explanation on the part of the developers of why this is so, though there have been (perhaps lazy) suppositions that the system of gravitational pulls and radiation of multiple stars would prevent them from being viable. There is no acceptable explanation about the restriction concerning habitable planets.
However, fan-made mods that forcibly removed the restrictions revealed that attempting to do so resulted in bugs such as silly model placements – if they are not just causing crashes outright, or coding conflicts elsewhere. Hence, the cause for the restrictions may well be limitations in the coding of the game.
MEGA-STRUCTURE CONSTRUCTION EVENTS:
The construction of some mega-structures does not always go along uneventfully, or smoothly, for that matter. Events can occur, and depending on how the player handles them, there can be setbacks that delay the projects or accelerate them.
The most amusing of these events are the “concerns” raised by CPU-controlled civilizations. For example, a Spiritualistic civilization might object to the construction of a Dyson Sphere, because the star that it would envelop is sacred to them. In another example, a nearby civilization might raise concerns that the construction of a ring-world is cover for the fabrication of a weapon of mass destruction.
The restoration of ruined mega-structures skips most of the events, but the ones that happen close to their activation or afterwards can happen to these.
IMPLEMENTATION OF RUINED MEGA-STRUCTURES IN BASE-GAME:
Interestingly, even without Utopia content enabled, ruined mega-structures can still appear in playthroughs that are run using only base-game content. This is juicy bait to encourage players to consider having Utopia-enabled content. However, this will require a civilization to have the Mega-Engineering tech obtained the hard, long way, instead of the shortcut provided by some Ascension Perks (specifically Voidborne and Galactic Wonders).
YET MORE REFERENCES:
There is just no stopping the train of references in Stellaris. Utopia stacks more of them on top of the ones already in the game. Some references might be too raw though. For example, “Livestock is pops!” has been noted by fans as a reference to the final utterance in Soylent Green, but if it is so, this is lazy word-substitution.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
The Civics and Authority type for Hive Mind civilizations have icons in yellow backdrops and white symbols, which results in low contrast compared to the green and black icons that have been around.
There is some recycling of visual assets from the base game. In one example, the Hive Synapse building of Hive Minds uses the same artwork as the obelisk on the Gaia world of Zanaam. (The same obelisk was used for the Art Monument made by Artisan Enclaves in Leviathans too, so this is a worse expression of laziness.)
The artwork for the Indoctrination option for proto-civilizations is particularly notable, because it appears like a prophetic vision. This might be a reference to some work of science fiction too.
When a Habitat or Ring-world is built, the project visibly removes the satellites around a planet, representing their absorption into the main body of the structure. The disappearances are abrupt though.
Like Leviathans, Utopia increases the number of loading screens. Typically, many of these involve the mega-structures. The impressions that Paradox’s artists have about sci-fi/theoretical future tech are quite impressive, though of course, highly debatable in the matter of believability.
The Psionic Avatars that come with the Psionic Transcendence path are yet more expressions of Paradox’s modellers’ love for bright swirly gaseous things; indeed, the Avatars are exactly these.
SOUND DESIGNS:
Utopia adds some music tracks to the game. As befitting its name, most of these tracks are the wonderment-invoking kind.
Most of the sound effects that Utopia introduces are associated with the mega-structures, many of which make noises when they are operational and the camera is zoomed into them.
Otherwise, there is very little else that can be heard or seen in this expansion.
CONCLUSION:
One would think that the Stellaris’s development has gone off the deep end, packaging content that is wondrous and epic on one side while stuffing things that would turn off sensitive people on the other side.
Nevertheless, fun as they seem to be at first, these additional gameplay elements also come with additional issues and problems. The biggest of these is that genocidal civilizations either gain the power to crush everyone if they are cunning and lucky, or they are destroyed rather early on, no thanks to other civilizations that can easily declare war on them; they have very few friends, if any at all. There is also very simplistic handling of population units with traits that are associated with Gestalt Consciousness.
Yet, this expansion has greatly increased the versatility of the gameplay, and expanded the possibilities for role-playing and all kinds of closet-monster fantasies that players might have.
Then, of course, there are the Mega-structures. True to typical Paradox Interactive’s design policies, they do not destabilize gameplay thanks to gameplay-balancing measures, but they do provide the gratification that they promise.