Shadow's Defines on Steam.
This, my first mod, is a great laundry list of changes made to Stellaris.
In general:
Leaders can be more numerous and have the potential to be younger when entering the leader pool.
Many drains on Influence have been alleviated, negated, or even turned into Influence generators, freeing up more Influence for Edicts and expansion.
Sectors are now strictly-optional facets of gameplay. Your space empire can directly control any arbitrary number of planets, because you are not in fact a Feudal King trying to manage a bunch of subjects who all want to kill you and take your throne for themselves.
Refusing peace offers costs you zero influence, to prevent the AI from simply declaring victory-by-default for having smashed a bunch of inconsequential space platforms then spamming peace offers.
You no longer have to have the relative power of Godzilla to an infant for your vassals to not agitate towards you, thus allowing early-game technological uplift-to-integration to be viable. You may also integrate up to three subjects at once, if you have the Influence to pay for it.
Anomalies are now much less risky to probe; scientist risk-reduction-for-level is greater, and risk-penalty-for-low-level is lessened. Additionally, the chances of a critical failure have been reduced from 1-in-5 to 1-in-20, so don't roll a natural one! There will also be far more anomalies surveyed, so you had better love exploration!
Research cost penalties for population and planets have been flattened to zero, and Tier 1 technologies now cost ever-so-slightly less than they did before. Beware! Tier 2 and Tier 3 technologies now cost a great deal more! This is to encourage easy plucking of low-hanging fruit, but erect steep barriers for small empires to glean the tech of larger ones, and incentivize small empires to attach themselves to larger ones. (Repeatable technology costs are unaffected.) Because of how research costs are file-defined, this will not affect the cost of research introduced by other mods. Also, the Tiers of the Strategic Resources have been reduced.
Research Treaties now reduce research cost by a gargantuan 75%, up from 25%.
The New Worlds Protocol is now significantly cheaper than it used to be, with the specific cost of 155. The cost of different planet colonization techs are now Tier 1 Cost 4, rather than Tier 2 Cost 1. Get out there fast, or some claim-jumper will grab all teh good spots.
New Empires now generate with 5 Ethic points instead of three, allowing you to be truly X-TREEM! Of course, you don't have to spend all of those points if you don't really WANT to.
Species also begin with 4 Trait points, up from 2, allowing for some more powerful traits to be picked without picking negative traits.
Outposts in particular recieved some loving: They cost twice as many Minerals to build and have an energy cost of 4, up from 2. However, generate half an Influence point per month, rather than costing 1, meaning that in terms of Influence, they will pay for themselves in 33 and 1/3rd years.
This, my first mod, is a great laundry list of changes made to Stellaris.
In general:
Leaders can be more numerous and have the potential to be younger when entering the leader pool.
Many drains on Influence have been alleviated, negated, or even turned into Influence generators, freeing up more Influence for Edicts and expansion.
Sectors are now strictly-optional facets of gameplay. Your space empire can directly control any arbitrary number of planets, because you are not in fact a Feudal King trying to manage a bunch of subjects who all want to kill you and take your throne for themselves.
Refusing peace offers costs you zero influence, to prevent the AI from simply declaring victory-by-default for having smashed a bunch of inconsequential space platforms then spamming peace offers.
You no longer have to have the relative power of Godzilla to an infant for your vassals to not agitate towards you, thus allowing early-game technological uplift-to-integration to be viable. You may also integrate up to three subjects at once, if you have the Influence to pay for it.
Anomalies are now much less risky to probe; scientist risk-reduction-for-level is greater, and risk-penalty-for-low-level is lessened. Additionally, the chances of a critical failure have been reduced from 1-in-5 to 1-in-20, so don't roll a natural one! There will also be far more anomalies surveyed, so you had better love exploration!
Research cost penalties for population and planets have been flattened to zero, and Tier 1 technologies now cost ever-so-slightly less than they did before. Beware! Tier 2 and Tier 3 technologies now cost a great deal more! This is to encourage easy plucking of low-hanging fruit, but erect steep barriers for small empires to glean the tech of larger ones, and incentivize small empires to attach themselves to larger ones. (Repeatable technology costs are unaffected.) Because of how research costs are file-defined, this will not affect the cost of research introduced by other mods. Also, the Tiers of the Strategic Resources have been reduced.
Research Treaties now reduce research cost by a gargantuan 75%, up from 25%.
The New Worlds Protocol is now significantly cheaper than it used to be, with the specific cost of 155. The cost of different planet colonization techs are now Tier 1 Cost 4, rather than Tier 2 Cost 1. Get out there fast, or some claim-jumper will grab all teh good spots.
New Empires now generate with 5 Ethic points instead of three, allowing you to be truly X-TREEM! Of course, you don't have to spend all of those points if you don't really WANT to.
Species also begin with 4 Trait points, up from 2, allowing for some more powerful traits to be picked without picking negative traits.
Outposts in particular recieved some loving: They cost twice as many Minerals to build and have an energy cost of 4, up from 2. However, generate half an Influence point per month, rather than costing 1, meaning that in terms of Influence, they will pay for themselves in 33 and 1/3rd years.