PC Gamer’s new preview of Paradox Interactive’s recently announced sci-fi strategy sim Stellaris has revealed plenty of new details about the game.
The game’s future setting gives Paradox the scope to offer something new and surprising with every playthrough.
“It’s a radical departure, but in some ways it’s still the same,” Paradox Development Studio director Henrik Fåhraeus commented.
Similarities with other Paradox games include the ability to pause it in real-time, and speed up or slow down the flow of time. It’s also been developed on the Clausewitz engine, the same tech which has been used for all of their games since Europa Universalis 3.
Dozens of portraits for alien races are available and the tools for building your own empire are “virtually limitless.” You can change how your faction looks, as well as determining its ethics, traits, technologies, and FTL travel capabilities. The AI will follow suit, meaning factions should be quite different with every game.
If you create a xenophobic empire, you’ll be able to capture and enslave aliens, while xenophilic empires will lack that ability. Scientists and planetary governors will also have their own personality skills and traits – like characters in Crusader Kings 2, but international diplomacy will be more akin to that of Europa Universalis 4.
A religious character which discovers an asteroid housing a hollowed-out temple to a human god could destroy it for its heresy, while other more secular-minded types may not be able to do so. Scientists can be assigned to research ships, or tasked with developing physics, society, or engineering. But Fåhraeus says there’s no traditional tech tree in the game (that being too predictable), instead it’s something like a deck of cards, with the technologies open to you varying by chance, your research scientist, and your empire’s traits.
Taking control of a planet (battles occur in real-time) doesn’t mean you own it, that will come as a result of a peace treaty you sign with your enemy in which you determine who gets what spoils. Some are super powerful ‘fallen empires’ which have no interest in advancing further or engaging with other factions but have lots of advanced technology which can be reversed engineered. Attacking them will be costly.
There are also pre-space flight planets which can be conquered, join your empire, or “aggressively” observed through Roswellian abductions and probings.
It’s not all war, though, with players having options to create non-aggression pacts, alliances, and Federations with other races to create a coalition of worlds. “The cool thing about that is that at regular intervals there is an election for the new Federation president,” Fåhraeus explained. “You basically rotate between the member states over who has leadership.”
Being president allows you to develop elite military ships using your the most advanced technologies of your Federation’s member states.
Even if you do emerge as a galactic superpower late in the game, victory isn’t assured with up to two galactic catastrophes occurring in each playthrough (there’s a chance you won’t encounter any). ‘Dangerous’ tech research on matters like AI or wormholes could have dire consequences for everyone and force you to work with other factions to save the galaxy.
There’s plenty more in PC Gamer’s preview about the game and the features Paradox are implementing.
