Stellaris: Nova Edition

If you are coming over from EU 4 then this game is a little bit different, but they still go hand in hand. Stellaris starts you off in a solar system and from there it is your job to expand outward. Technology is different, but in a good way, you have three sections physics, bio, Engineering and each has three options to chose from with different techs that later can be upgraded to four and even more as the game progresses. You also are able to choose the people who lead your country so your scientist, planet leaders, and military leaders each with special bonuses that if used right can sky rocket you a head but they cost influence points and you only get so many but they replenish slowly over time (before Techs upgrades) they also let you build frontier outpost that allow you to expand your empire. It is a fun game that has a lot of potential in the mod section. I mean someone is going to mod in star wars and star trek that is only a matter of months. Who wouldn't want to have a custom star destroy battle or fight the Klingons have a death star as an outpost.

Stellaris does a lot of things right for a 4X game. The game is easy to pick up and I found myself doing the whole "one more turn" thing just a tad too many times on many occasions. There is also a large amount of customization built into the game before you even looks at mods, which is nice. It looks great and the UI is pretty well done. It's easy to find the information popping up and to take advantage of it. My biggest complaint overall is just the "Sector" system. It needs a little more power to it. As it is you pretty much have to finish building out your planets before putting them into a sector which slows things down quite a bit. Other than that There could be some fine tuning on the AI which I am sure will happen over time anyway so I am not really going to complain about it.

Stellaris is a space strategy game from Paradox that ends up being much easier to learn and to get into than their other well known games, thought still more difficult than Civilization, with the caveat that options are a bit more limited than what you might be used to from a Paradox game. Gameplay is not turn based, like Paradox's other strategy games the game will run with you having the options to pause, decrease, or increase the speed of the game. Creating a new game allows you to choose from one of eight pre created races or to design your own. Choosing to design your own allows you to edit the look and type of your people (they can be mammals, birdlike, reptiles, fungus, insects, mollusks), you can choose different positive and negative traits, what kind of planet they are used to living on, flag design, their government and ethics type, ship design and starting weapon type, and you can choose between three different methods of FTL travel. When you start a game you are given options to choose between a galaxy size of 150, 400, 600, 800, and 1000 stars, four different types of galaxy shapes, can set up to 40 other empires, choose if any of the other empires start out being more advanced, choose between three difficulties, can limit FTL travel to only one method, and can turn on iron man mode where you get only one save. The game fully supports player made mods at launch. Characters have to be recruited to become your scientists, admirals, generals, governors, and the leader of your people, they will have traits that give certain bonuses or penalties, an experience level between 1-5, and depending on your species traits and technology will have an age and lifespan. Tech research is more randomized instead of using the usual tech trees, you have physics, society, and engineering researchers and each one will get three different options to choose from, once one of the three is selected and completed three new options will become available. Some of the research options you will allows see early on in the game, such as the one that allows you to create colonies, while others are going to be more difficult to get. You are going to be manging three different resources, energy which is used for certain activities but more often to maintain structures, armies, etc, minerals which are your main source of production, and influence which is how you recruit leaders, handle diplomatic matters, and to propose empire or planetary wide edicts. How quickly you gain these resources can be increased by creating buildings that specialize in their production, mining planets/moons/asteroids, upgrading your capitals, becoming rivals with aliens, etc. Individual worlds will also generate food to maintain and to grow the population of a planet, population along with size and space availability will determine how many buildings you can construct on each planet. When your science ship is out surveying systems they can run into anomalies that can be researched which can gain you something or cause different events to happen. In game music is often fittingly epic and enjoyable to listen to. Early game is all about expansion and surveying planets that can be useful to you, while the late game is going to focus more on looking at the entire galaxy instead of individual sectors and will have you managing alliances with aliens. Diplomacy doesn't have as many options as some other games but will allow you the usual non aggression pacts, military alliances, boarder access, and trade requests. Battles are carried out without much player involvement, you will create ships, put them in fleets, recruit an admiral with different trait bonuses, and send them out to battle enemy fleets. There is no micromanaging, the fight will be done automatically, you will get information which can give you an idea of what you should do with your ship design to better combat that enemy, your admirals can also be killed during battles if their ship is destroyed. You might not be able to directly give orders during combat but the game has some nice ship designs and it is enjoyable to watch the combat play out. The options menu is very limited with you being able to do little more than change the volume, resolution, turn on cloud saving, and change tutorial settings. There are moments where things can get slow and a bit uninteresting, mostly during the middle, but for the most part Paradox has designed a very enjoyable and accessible game with Stellaris with some great end game events and modding support that should only give you more options over time. The only real reason to buy the Nova Edition of Stellaris is if you want the game's soundtrack, which is good, and want to support the developer. The forum icon is not likely to be something most people will use and, while the cosmetic alien look is cool, you already have a lot of other options and with the game's support of player made mods you will likely be able to get a lot more for free.