Stellaris Dev Diary #246 - Announcing Overlord

[Pocket Nerd]

Absolutely rocking it with the last few developer diaries. Thank you!

 

[GnoSIS]

Interesting premise. Too little details to say much now.


The only/most relevant question I have at this time is- is vassal-integration gone entirely?


If it's not, it'd be hard to justify forcing other empires into non-integration forms, though offering it would make sense. If it is gone entirely, that's a considerable (but generally welcome) change, since vassal-integration is the most effective form of wide-conquest for most builds. It'd give claim-wars a greater boon, but claim wars also tend to wait a good deal into the game (due to early expansion eating claim influence), meaning less snowballing early. It'd also extend the diplomatic play dynamics such as 'support independence' when the window of relevance isn't just one short decade before integration. Further, since defeated empires get claims on the sysems they lost, is supports revaunchist wars- or rather, you can support revaunchist wars against an enemy by making common cause with their defeated vassal, rather than facing them and thier vassal.

Frankly I'm more worried that they will nerf/rework total war.

The counter to integration, which will stay the same, will be more penalties for empire sprawl. I can see it coming.

 

[MathyM]

Holy Terran Empire to be finally more than a complete meme?

 

[RabbaDooDabba]

Judging by the screenshots, subjects can take on dedicated roles in the larger empire like how in the First League precursor one species was the military arm of the league, one was wholly dedicated to R&D and another one was the league's diplomats.

I love it if that is how it is going to work - I kind of wish there is also going to be a subject that could excel at espionage and could provide counter-intelligence (obligatory 'espionage needs a massive buff') for the whole empire.

 

[Ovan]

Awesome, vassals needed a fresh update but...


Where internal politics update?

 

[SrVain]

The main issue is that the AI loses it's bonuses when it becomes a vassal of a human player (if I recall correctly). Is this being adressed? Becouse currently it's absolutely worthless to vassalize non human players unless you plan on integrating them ASAP.

 

[GnoSIS]

Awesome, vassals needed a fresh update but...


Where internal politics update?

Theoretically, that rework is part of the custodian team effort, and part of how you rebel agains your overlord.
Remeber, starting as a vassal will be viable.

 

[Liquid Ghost]

Hey, that' looks like the Orbital Arcology from Gigastructures.

What does it do? Add extra building slots?

 

[Serenity84]

Sounds good, but this probably means we'll *never* get internal politics.

 

[LystAP]

What does it do? Add extra building slots?

The gigastructures version adds extra districts.

 

[HFY]

1 - Tasty premise.

2 - Pretty planet ring, do want now.

3 - No concrete details but given the direction of the vague brushstrokes I'm interested.

 

[Tennou No Kamikaze]

That's great!

 

[Andrzej2]

Another useless DLC. This game needs internal politics, factions and civil wars. All these years nothing was done about that.

 

[Ffc]

What do you guys think those Megastucture do?
Maybe the planet ring adds some districts to the planet?

 

[C.N.]

*looks at the progress Stellaris makes* *looks at the progress the rest of Paradox makes*

So, Overlord is based on the true story how the Stellaris team took control over PDX and made everyone work for it?

 

[Uburian]

Well, this is definitely not what i was expecting. Not that i don't necessarily like the concept of the expansion, but i fell like one centered around internal politics and soft power projection would have been way more interesting.

 

[Ovan]

Theoretically, that rework is part of the custodian team effort, and part of how you rebel agains your overlord.
Remeber, starting as a vassal will be viable.

Great, but rebels and some new way of doing situations like they showed in the last dev diary is not really on par with what I'm getting at.

Where's organic factions/institutions that have more wants or needs, leaders that can succumb to the whims of corruption, actual governing bodies that need to be appeased and depending on your government type might vote against certain things you want your empire to have, and sets of laws that might lead to more or less control with the government depending on what gets passed or denied?

Right now everything internally is just a number or some kind of percentage. There's little to no actual organic growth or development for your Empire, as everything just leads to more numbies. Factions exist to just be a checklist of items you need to remember to do or not to do depending on how much influence you need.

There's no intent from any arm of your civilization, factions don't try to force issues at you, colonies don't build their own militia forces that you have no control over in order to protect their own space, leaders don't siphon money or make secret deals with other empires through espiomage, nothing in your empire does anything.

To be frank, it's boring and stale. It doesn't feel like a living state.

 

[Dlin369]

I hope internal politics gets some love with this dlc - it’d be cool to have a continuum of some sort between a subject vs annexing their territory directly

 

[AlphaAsh]

<insert Fry waving wad of cash here>

 

[zZander56]

Nice. I just hope Megacorp subjects don't get left out of the rework. I've always enjoyed the subjugation style of play, hopefully it becomes more viable.

Also, will this patch come with any changes to the way branches work between subject and overlord? Would be neat if they got more building slots or something, a representation of the parent corp taking a greater cut of property.

Will Hegemonies be able to take advantage of some of these contract mechanics between president and members?