Should You Buy Stellaris Galactic Paragons?

oh he's done trust me the universe is Stellaris Galactic Paragons has just released in this video I'm going to review it and tell you whether or not I think it's worth your cold Hard Cash to jump straight to the point generally I think the answer is yes but there are a number of caveats and reasons why I definitely don't think this DLC could be for you so let's dive into it and find out what an Earth is going on let's start by breaking down all the new features you get with this DLC you're going to notice a theme here most of these features are heavily focused at regular biological Empires they aren't generally doing much for guest out Consciousness first off we have the new origin under one rule this lets you start with a powerful legendary leader you will gain access to Unique ruler traits based on your Empire's ethics you can strengthen your ruler's position to gain new traits and additional bonuses or instead build a strong State apparatus that might surpass the ruler's Legacy you also start with rather long-lived leaders by getting the perfected genes trait on all of your pops which gives you 25 liter lifespan but does reduce leader experience gain by 15 the kind of special traits that are only available to this legendary leader are rather crazy some of these are really broken to get especially right at the beginning of the game overall under one rule is a lot of fun there are a lot of twists and turns to this origin it is kind of story based but also very player driven in how you approach it if you've ever wanted to start the game as the god emperor of mankind who's just unified Earth as about to launch his great Crusade this is probably the origin for you you could also role play as other God Emperor figures like lito II from Dune or possibly Superman in the Injustice Universe however this one is entirely not available to guest out Consciousness Empires we're also getting 12 new Civics let's briefly go through those Crusade a spirit is a very role play friendly Civic all of your Admirals and Generals start with a special trait that basically means when they kill enemy ships or armies depending on how far away the other Empire is from your ethics you will generate lots and lots of unity you can only use Liberation Wars meaning you can't conquer other Empires but you can convert them to your ethic and then join a nice friendly Federation with them you'll get an increase to weapon damage and a reduced ship build cost along with a unique Council position the Lord Commander speaking of unique Council positions if you buy this DLC you'll also get a rework to all of your existing Civics because every Civic now comes with a unique Council position which is actually quite a fundamental balance change for example Merchant guilds now get a council position the director of trade which increases the base trade value from your clerks by plus 0.4 per skill level of that leader for every clerk in the Empire this can allow you to get your base output of Clerks if you include traits up to around 10 to 12 which is pretty much on par with a merchant that is really really strong we also have the heroic past Civic this gets you plus one leader starting traits meaning all of your leaders do more and you also get a reduction in the maximum number of negative leader traits this helps your leaders as they go through the game they won't become such a pain in your backside vaults of knowledge is probably the Civic most tied into this DLC this lets your leaders start at one level higher and all of your counselors will be slightly more effective with their bonuses you also get access to the vaults of knowledge however the vaults of knowledge is really not amazing you get five unity and one percent additional leader experience per level 8 leader or destiny trait you end up with in your Empire that's really not fantastic I really think this Vault of knowledge needs a rebalance it needs to be more powerful something along the lines of plus five experience would probably be much more impactful both Hive minds and and machine Empires get access to an allegedly equivalent version of vaults of knowledge however because and I'll get to this in a moment their leaders are simply not as good as regular biological leaders anymore I don't actually think this is as impactful if you've ever really just wanted a role play as the Imperium of mankind from Warhammer 40 000 oppressive autocracy is a new Civic for you you get access to the dystopian Society living standard you get plus one liter capacity minus 20 leader upkeep you cannot build Hollow theaters only rulers producer amenities every pop will produce one additional crime but you will only need to have amenities for your rulers and your enforcers taking a look at this living standard you'll see it is very very economical you get a much reduced upkeep on your Specialists and a massive political power boost to your rulers on top of that you actually don't suffer from any happiness or amenities problems even though the majority of the pops in your Empire are at zero percent happiness this is because all of the happiness and all of the political power will lie with your ruling Elite going down the Mercantile tradition tree and stacking up a whole bunch of merchant jobs is probably the way to go with this Civic to maximize the alleged effective happiness of your people of course Mega Corps also get access to the Vault of knowledge equivalent Civic but they also have some cool Civics of their own letters of Mark allows you to get extra trade protection reduce ship upkeep more mercenary Enclave capacity when we pair this with other Civics we already have I think we can now get up to about seven or eight mercenary Enclave capacity Empire wide which is wild it doesn't say it here but you also get a special trait on your Admirals and you unlock a unique War goal Farmer State radically changes the way that medical workers are viewed in the game now this is going to give you more amenities and some trade value from every medical worker in your Empire you'll also get a special Council position to boost pop growth speed and habitability T yet further but if what you really want to do is min max your Council Precision cogs is probably the way forward this gets you more leader capacity reduced leader upkeep better leaders because the maximum negative traits go down and happier more politically powerful specialists in your Empire other than vaults of knowledge machine and hives get one of the Civic that they both basically share this reduces the upkeep of your leaders by one Unity per level and instead replaces that with two energy credits or in the case of Hive two minerals or two food this can help out especially machine Empires that can struggle for Unity at the start of the game but as you'll notice the Lion's Share of impactful role play type Civics are going to biological Empires with this DLC Galactic Paragons also brings us two New Traditions the first tradition aptitude entirely focuses on our leaders and it can be relatively powerful if you play a the right time you start off by reducing leader upkeep thus increasing your Unity production then you can dive in to get more leader capacity leader pull size reduce negative traits increase lifespan increased experience gain and then champions of the Empire which gives some Hit or Miss bonuses ad rules and Generals get increased Naval capacity but plus two which isn't that amazing Governors reduce Empire size by two percent and scientists get you an extra two percent leader experience gain and then finally completing this tradition gives you an extra starting trait on your leaders the other tradition is called statecraft this is entirely focused on the new Council mechanics and generally it is a little bit underwhelming however when you finally complete statecraft one great bonus you'll have is that no matter what point you are at in the game you will get the galactic administration technology giving you plus one Civic slots this can be very very powerful if you complete that tradition around year 20 allowing you you to reform your government and get an extra Civic before any other Empire in the game would be able to do so generally though the rest of the perks in this one are slightly less impactful than aptitude as they don't really affect much more than your agendas now what are agendas I hear you ask well this is a new mechanic that gives your Empire some bonus you have a host that you can select from every tradition in the game now gives you one extra agenda when you take it and these two things ranging from reducing your ship build cost by 20 which is pretty big to straight up giving all of your leaders an extra skill level or increasing resource output from jobs in your capital and all specialist pops Empire wide some of these are pretty darn broken but it's definitely a lot of fun to go through and use them looking at this screen you'll see that we've had some massive changes to leaders if you buy Galactic Paragons DLC you'll also get access to a host more traits and specialist veteran classes for all your leaders when your leaders get to level 4 you get to pick one of three veteran classes depending on what type of leader they are and once you pick a veteran class that influences the kind of perks you can pick up later on these include things like increased mechanical pop assembly speed a 35 increase to Alloys and more wild things and then when your regular biological leaders reach level 8 you'll be able to pick a powerful Destiny trait Destiny traits aren't really really good some of them do things like increasing worker pop resource output by 50 on a planet increasing growth speed massively just improving your ships or just giving you some basic upfront research leveling up your leaders and playing with them now is a lot of fun in Stellaris Galactic Paragons it's exciting every time you get to a new level you get to pick one new trait from a smaller pool of options and this means that every playthrough will be very different every leader will be quite different you will not get to pick all of the traits you might want to pick and if you're enjoying this video please Renegade that like button but then we need to look at Guest out Empires guest out Empires do not get special Destiny traits guest out Empires don't get access to the regular Council mechanics instead their immortal leader levels up over time and they get these four growth notes Now growth nodes are Immortal they'll always keep leveling up skill wise and you still get to use agendas however each growth node basically represents a different leader type Admirals Governors scientists and Generals but unlike regular bioempires you have to have one of each of these types with their Associated skill trees on the council this means you cannot for example stack the council with veteran leader traits that reduce ship build cost or stack the council with veteran leader traits that increase increase research speed as a biological Empire you could push your focus towards science exclusively or towards the military exclusively or towards the economy exclusively whereas Hive Minds have to take a much more balanced approach which overall makes them less powerful and less impactful in my opinion I don't think this is much of a problem in single player but in multiplayer I think this might be quite a bit of an issue you'll also notice that our hive mind leaders here do not get access to Destiny traits and apart from our ruler we also don't get access to any counselor traits in our regular leaders when we reach a veteran level instead of having three options the counselor leader option is not there generally I think this makes Hive minds and machines slightly less interesting and slightly less powerful because the council mechanics are not really there for you to play around with overall I think this DLC is a lot of fun but what do you think of Galactic Paragons please let me know down in the comments below and then there's one more system that we really need to talk about and that is the new renowned and legendary Paragons these are leaders that are only available to regular biological Empires there are two renowned Paragons for every ethic in the game and four special legendary leaders you can find out there in the galaxy these come with some interesting stories and in the case of renowned leaders very powerful Destiny traits that you get access to from a very early point in the game however these are entirely unavailable to machine and hive mind type Empires overall leveling up your leaders doing all of these things the DLC pushes you into doing is a lot of fun for regular biological Empires there is an overwhelming amount of new content and new mechanics in this DLC that are going to have an impact on every playthrough you do going forwards for that reason if you like playing regular biological empires in the game I think this is pretty much an auto purchase and I'd just like to say that I'm not saying this from the point of view of a person that has a financial relationship with Paradox I am entirely separate they are not sponsoring any of my content at all I have honestly just had a fantastic time playing this DLC and I think at the price point it is at it is going to be one of the necessary DLC uni for Stellaris going forwards to get a full and complete experience along the same lines as utopia and some of those other earlier DLC that are in the game now but on the other hand if you generally play with guest out Consciousness Empires that is Hive minds and machines I'd probably give this DLC a Miss you're going to find that you get half the number of traits on your leaders which is a shame but otherwise you're not really going to be missing out on any new content personally I hope we get some reworks from possibly the custodian team or a unique DLC coming soon in the future focused primarily on the hive mind and machine Consciousness Empires they have not received much love for a little while in Stellaris but those points aside I do think this is a great DLC a great piece of work by the Paradox Arctic studio and I think it's such a shame we won't be getting future work from them anymore because this DLC really shows off their talent and their ideas we're getting almost 700 leader traits now in the game if you've enjoyed this video about Stellaris Galactic paragons and you'd like to see me be playing some Stellaris Galactic Paragons click the video on screen now

Channel: Montu Plays

Views: 84,365

Keywords: Stellaris, stellaris gameplay, montu plays, montu plays stellaris

Id: PLPFb1Wirv0

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023