Stellaris Review and DLC Critique

Stellaris is one of the best science fiction strategy games I have ever played. With the ability to create your own alien race complete with a moving portrait and then the potential murderous or shadowy government that you ostensibly control. I say ostensibly because you do not play any particular character in the empire but instead are the gamified overlord. So until the entire empire and all its populace die you are in(direct) control. The game focuses on breathtaking distances and small rewards that add up as you play. The map is a randomly generated group of stars and other stellar phenomena surrounded by planets and asteroids. Each thing is fairly dull but you can scan and further research in order to unlock the secrets of the universe or prepare a world to be colonized by your illustrious empire. The promise and thrill of the setting, the grand scale of the empire management, and the strategic/tactical choices to make with your fleets comes together to create a largely immersive grand strategy science fiction game. However, I would not rate this game 10/10.

It is still a massive experience I am in awe of. It is packed with content and can become downright bloated with options and additional subsystems of play that are added through the various DLCs and the incredibly active modding community. This cornucopia is appreciated but it is not easy to understand what is going on. In any product this size there are bound to be bugs and the occasional concept that forms the foundation for a lackluster menu but what gets me is that it happens over and over again. This clutter is annoying and it has even caused me to drop the game on multiple occasions but the core of it and the promise it makes to its players is truly fascinating and is certainly part of why I return to it over and over again. This does not stop me from offering an explanation of why the game is like this.

One of the first things to note is that it has been in a constant state of metamorphosis since release. Leaders, planet economies, and even how your empire moves at Faster than Light (FTL) has been completely reworked. On one side this means you know the Paradox team is hard at work on their game and intends to continue supporting it for online multiplayer but on the other hand it means that every time you sit down to play a new game you are forced to relearn key concepts and strategies and the knock on effects those changes have on the meta and the viable species and empire builds.

The most radical change I observed was from tile based planet management to a Jobs based economy. In the original release resources on a planet would be tied to a specific square and planets had a number of touching squares depending on the size of the planet. Your alien workers could be placed on tiles on these planets to get the listed resource or work the building that was built there. These buildings would sometimes even give adjacency bonuses and so placement mattered and you were largely in control of said placement.

In future updates they dropped the tiled planets for a different beast altogether. Planets now had a score of potential levers to pull on and new mistakes you could make. Each planet has a designation that you can change which shifts its specialization potentially giving more resources or making certain buildings and Districts cheaper. Every planet has a max total number of districts and max districts of its type (Agricultural, Industrial, Energy, Commercial etc). Now buildings and districts combine to provide jobs. There are generally three tiers of job depending on the empire type you play and you can prioritize jobs or max out how many people can perform a job but you never control what species or political alignment works that job. This system allows for greater complexity but it also highlights one of my primary gripes with the game. 

Increasing complexity while also taking some player agency away from the players does not automatically translate into a more fun experience. On the other hand, a lot of people felt weirded out by the boardgame like nature of some of the earliest releases and appreciated how they did not have to drag and drop the physical portraits of the aliens to control their vast economy. However, the new system is even more prone to fiddly micromanaging because they took away the tactility and intuitive nature of the first planet system causing players to waste their time trying to shuffle aliens in such a way as to trick the automatic job assignment programming.

The reason this shift occurred in so many systems and my second gripe with the game I believe is due to how Paradox designs, packages, and sells their games. Under their belt they currently have several mainline strategy titles: Hearts of Iron IV, Europa Universalis IV, Stellaris, Crusader Kings 2 and 3, and Age of Wonders Planetfall to name just a few. This is not a comprehensive list but I mentioned them in particular because they continue to be popular and the sheer amount of DLC that is released for these games is absurd. The base cost for most of these games is around 40-50 dollars and they break down their DLC into A, B, and C costs (this is for ease of understanding not some official thing I am referencing).
A. 15 to 20 dollars – supposed to add entire new subsystems to a game and often whole new factions or at least government types

B. 9 to 15 dollars – adds new mission types, map assets, and can release a new faction all on its own without any attached system changes not related to the faction

C. 2 to 8 dollars – these are music tracks, purely visual alternates to existing units, and other side goodies that the majority of the fanbase ignores but that a diehard fan eats up.

The beauty of this structure is that it has something for everyone and as long as you can maintain your fanbase you can continue to rake in the money which Paradox does reliably until they have the next number or version of a particular game then they slowly transition like they did between Crusader Kings 2 and 3 where 2 went free to play but you still had to buy the DLCs if you wanted the “complete” experience and then 3 had no DLCs to begin with and it was more expensive than CK2. Many people switched voluntarily because CK3 was more visually appealing and much of the gameplay had been reworked for understanding and readability. The problem with raking in the money this way is that it can lead to you, the reader, personally wasting your money.

Even if you bought only the A level DLCs that people believe make the game truly shine and none of the cheaper more optional stuff the base price for Stellaris is nearly $160. If you buy the whole thing at 50% off it is still gonna be a whopping $80. I am not strictly saying that such practices are a rip off or are predatory but when a game is shipped and so many features are only added later this leads me to question whether the game was really “done” or not. It’s another question entirely if you care about that in specific but I personally feel a little ripped off when I see that. I further feel inclined to look at this official practice by Paradox with some trepidation because the core of the systems they are building DLC for also get added into the base functioning of the game albeit with heavily limited options. This means you’re really just paying for the wall between you and already fully implemented content to let you through and it’s not like you’re buying the disc with the DLC on it to install that content on to your computer. But, that is the theme of the modern internet era where unless you can physically hold it you don’t really own it and subscription services are becoming the norm where shows come and go off their selection like candy. It is regular practice for cable services to offer the chance to purchase a movie or tv show from them to watch whenever you like but if their service stops carrying the film or series then you individually lose access despite the fact that you often paid market rate for it as if you had paid for a DVD.

What could Paradox do to still make money and not use this DLC structure that I seem to hate so much? I really do not know. The fact is this model is profitable and it is not known for directly screwing its users over or have any viruses so overall it is a good product where you at least should know what kind of trouble you are getting yourself into when you buy one of their games. Instead of asking for everything to change then I would ask this, don’t change the base systems of the game after release. I do not care how much better you think the rework is going to be don’t pull the rug out from underneath your players by changing a core function of the game. The DLCs that added new faction, government, and event types were the best and mods that bring in new end game crises and custom artifacts are great because you get new tools in a familiar sandbox. Still, it’s not that I want Paradox to stop making new systems I just would much rather they make a new game instead of fiddling with an established one.