Stellaris Overlord Post-Hotfix - Is It Worth It?

she can't do that shoot her or something stellaris overlord the new dlc for stellaris has been out just over a week and quite a lot has happened really in the first week we've had of this dlc's release there have been a host of bugs and balance issues identified the dlc has received some very mixed reviews on steam 52 positive 48 negative the game director himself has made a statement and an apology about the state of stellaris overlord and then we've also had a hotfix drop which has solved pretty much all of the exploits bugs and balance issues that we were getting in that first week or at least the most important ones in this video i'm going to talk about stellaris overlord and whether it is worth getting as a dlc for stellaris i'm also going to look at the new hotfix patch notes so we're going to go through those because they are very important as to the current state of this dlc and by the end of this video i'm going to reach a conclusion for you on what i think about this new expansion for stellaris so without any further ado let's dive in let's start by looking at the main features of this new dlc so basically there has been a massive change made to the vassal system and how vassal contracts work it is important to know though that almost all of those changes are in the base game they've released them with the free 3.4 cepheus update and i think that is something to really commend the stellaris team for doing the custodian team have done a fantastic job here and we've got a really cool new addition to the free base game but in the dlc you get a little bit more you get three specialist vassal types that's the prospectorium bulwark and scolarium economic military and science based battles that give you some interesting bonuses the main differences between a specialist vassal and a regular vassal is that specialist vassals level up they get xp like a federation and over time you get some really cool and unique bonuses mainly though this system is a nice addition to the base game and it is something of an icing on top of the new vassal contract system stellaris overlord also includes five new origins now an origin is kind of the backstory to your empire usually it's got some story based as well as mechanical changes for an empire which has a specific origin now of the five new origins we have imperial thief this one is the coolest from a role-playing perspective it allows you to play as the vassal of a mighty overlord empire at the height of its power and you're going to start the game already subjugated quantum catapult allows you to start with a ruined megastructure the new megastructure near your homeworld a quantum catapult we'll get into what that is in just a moment but basically yes you can upgrade the quantum catapult there's some extra gimmicks as well overall it's kind of okay not a very powerful origin though subterranean is an interesting origin if you want to role play as space dwarves or possibly space rap man or if you'd like to basically turtle up and make it so that no other empire can take your planet it's quite a nice origin for that effect there are some mining interesting things going on there but but overall i think the main component here is the minus 75 to bombardment damage teachers of the shroud is a fantastically powerful new origin that puts spiritualist empires on top basically you're going to start the game with an ascension perk already unlocked that's the mind over mata ascension perk which means you are halfway to completing psionic ascendance one of the three ascension paths that are in the game stellaris so yes this is a very very interesting origin that i've quite enjoyed so far and the fifth and final new origin is progenitor high progenitor hive is one of the only hive mind origins we've got or hive mind specific origins other than tree of life and this actually allows you to do quite a bit more with the stellaris overlord dlc as one of the key tenets of this origin is that you can release sectors as vassals something that hivemind empires cannot otherwise do if you are overwhelmingly interested in any of those five origins that i've mentioned then fantastic but i don't think any one of these five sell this dlc on their own merit there are three new enclaves in the game that are included with stellaris overlord now an enclave we've already got three bass enclave that is the research enclave the trading enclave and the artist enclave they're going to improve our research you can also trade specialist resources with a trading enclave and the artist enclave lets you boost your unity production along with some other things now it is very interesting to have some new enclaves in the game what they're going to do the first one is the teachers of the shroud basically the shroud walkers they are kind of like the bene jesuit and they're going to do a host of kind of weird and wonderful shroud related things but generally speaking my interactions with them have been very confusing at best though they do offer a couple of nice bonuses the salvages actually give you some much needed options in the game they allow you to scrap your ships with them you can basically give them your ships and they'll give you back some resources something you would otherwise need to do quite a bit of micro management to achieve and on top of that they can give you a whole host of other bonuses as well specifically technological lastly we have the mercenary enclave now this one is very very cool except as of yet it is still a little wonky now they are talking about some more changes to be made in a few weeks time but for now the military enclave i'm not entirely sure it is working in the best possible way basically what you need to do with one of these enclaves to get them you actually set them up yourselves as a player once you do that you have to give away a fleet of at least 50 naval capacity worth of ships and then an enclave will exist you can rent back your ships from that enclave when you do that it will eat up some of your own naval capacity though less than admittedly less than if you just had those ships by themselves they do still cost you quite a bit of energy upkeep and i'm not really sure it's entirely worth it over having your own fleet i think there are times where it could be worth it and there is definitely some fantastic role play perspective to be had here for instance when you set up some private naval contractors a mercenary enclave they can be hired out by other empires too and you will end up getting some benefits you'll end up getting a payout in the form of a dividend from this enclave personally i think these three new enclaves are quite nice and add some interesting variety but so far nothing here that is essential nothing actually in anything we've talked about that is completely essential and if you're enjoying this video please play test and review that like button now we're getting to the new mega structures we have included with stellaris overlord and i have to admit this is the point where it gets very interesting and entirely game changing the first one is the quantum catapult so the quantum catapult when you upgrade it fully basically it's going to allow you to yield your fleet somewhere else in the galaxy with some margin of error now the ui for this can be a little confusing expected 8 fantastic review video on it and yes it is a little confusing on top of that if you've got this through the origin by the time you've upgraded it and are starting to use it it's generally too late for it to be very useful later on in the game it can be quite a fun thing to do but it is somewhat of a gimmick or that's my opinion anyway i found the scattering nature of it unless you are dominant unless you're already going to be beating whichever empire going to war with it does add some hit and run potential but overall it is a tactical weapon not a strategic one so unless you're deeply in love with it i don't think this is a particularly good reason to go out and buy this dlc but so far nothing i said sounds massively positive unless you're really hyped for some of those features which don't get me wrong i was and i still am i'm quite enjoying quite a few of those features by themselves i don't really think anything we've heard so far massively sells the dlc however i feel that things are about to change we've got another new mega structure the orbital ring so an orbital ring can go around your planet and it does some interesting things you can only put it around a habitable planet and if you build one of these you can't build a habitat in its space you can't put an orbital ring around a habitat either it does have to go around a planet an orbital ring provides you with some slots that can be used for a variety of reasons you can't put naval shipyards in there you can also put defenses in that means you can have planets with space-based defenses space-based weapon systems these orbital rings can also have defensive platforms meaning you can arm a system to the teeth not just as a citadel in the center of a system has to be heavily armed you can also have if you have let's say three planets you're in the trappist system you could have three separate uh orbital rings each kitted out to the teeth with weapons and then a whole host of star bases in orbit with that or uh you know defense platforms i want to say and wowzers that gives some really interesting military potential and defensive potential to your systems but that's not all you can also put some cool new buildings on these orbital habitats that have a massive economic impact in the game and we're talking about getting a significant boost to your resource output like alloys something that is traditionally something we are always always looking for more of we can also put some interesting uh slots on these orbital rings to increase the number of districts available on the planet below yes they can be used for housing of the planet so orbital rings overall can be defensive and economic making them something of a powerhouse in my opinion in the mid game and having played with them i actually think they add quite a lot of extra depth to stellaris the final mega structure is the hyper relay now what a hyper relay does well it does seem a little complicated but it's quite simple i i promise so what a hyper relay does you build it at the edge of your system as long as there is another hyper relay in the next system when a fleet is at a hyper relay physically at that hyper relay they can start initiating a hyper travel to the next hyper relay without having to move across the system and move to the hyperlane jump points that means if you build a a road of these or a railroad of these whatever you want to call them i think they're more like roads rather than railroads but if you build uh connected systems with these in you can vastly reduce the time it takes to get from one edge of your empire to another and we're talking an order of magnitude here i think and to be honest i i think that hyper relays are the most fundamental change we're getting in this dlc from stellaris overlords hyper relays are changing up the way the mid game works in terms of your speed and in terms of what is actually possible because what used to seem very very far will now appear very very short for an empire which is on the defensive an offensive empire will not be benefiting as it attempts to conquer your space from these hyper relays but when you're reinforcing and when they're reinforcing to the front we are going to be able to use these increased bonuses to speed which is somewhat like the industrialization and mechanization of warfare in the early 20th century if you imagine that and what that did what railroads did for warfare i'm thinking of the great war the first world war around that time hyper relays do something similar for stellaris so as you might have guessed this and the orbital rings i think are the two biggest and most important features in this new dlc putting aside our thoughts and feelings about stellaris overlord for a minute there is a sale on all of the stellaris dlc right now on humble bundle until the 24th of may so if you'd like to get any of the dlc if there's anything you're missing and you'd also like to support this channel you can do so by following the link down in the description and buying any of the dlc on sale from the humble bundle store now i think we do need to address the reviews on steam because there are a whole host of negative reviews that i believe had quite a bit of merit now what these reviews mainly say is that the game has a bug or something is not quite working or there's you know something needs fixing now so when these reviews were written i think they were completely valid it was entirely true however only a week later the world has moved on so i no longer think we can actually base um everything on a lot of what is said in here because as i'm about to cover a lot of the issues we have seen and i'll just talk about a couple of them in the reviews we can see here if you go to the steam page so there are some issues for instance about basically they're saying it is very difficult you land troops on one of the planets you've conquered you build some forts and then you just lose like six systems without a fight anyway i'm confused now yes to be fair the system was a little opaque the new situation it didn't really make sense that one but we're gonna look in a moment why it might have changed another bug another very very problematic one a hive mind had a minus one on consumer goods a resource they couldn't even produce and basically didn't have that meant they got a default situation happen to them so the entirety or 50 of their fleet was lost and they got a 50 resource penalty for 10 years for something they didn't even have which is a little bizarre if you ask me and definitely immersion and game breaking more issues included problems with the vassal contract system vassals were apparently basically saying no to everything and uh and then get lost and then you'd reconquer their territory oh and and yeah the whole thing turned out to be a little confusing you know there were issues where you could go to war with yourself if the vassal had a defensive pact with someone else yada yada um yeah very very strange but what do you think about the new stellaris overlord dlc let me know down in the comments below so let's dive into the hotfix patch notes now some of these i'm going to point out with some glee because i either found and or pointed out the specific bug that got fixed here and yeah that's that's super cool honestly i'm i'm still finding this experience of having a channel totally surreal you know i only started this about 18 months ago and i am so grateful to all of you lovely people that are willing to spend your time and listen to me talk and listen to me play the game and do that sort of thing and i i find it even more mind-boggling that you all enjoy that but but fair enough i mean i quite enjoy making the videos i can't stand listening to my own voice ironically um but but that's an aside so basically what i'm trying to say is it does still feel quite amazing to me when i make a video on something and then it gets changed in the game so first up revolt and planet stability remember we talked about that bug a moment ago well there are a whole host of issues here and yeah they basically fixed most of it they've also improved void dwellers and i'm a little uh in find this one a little interesting i know some people are a bit miffed by this but they've replaced the one politician job from habitat administration buildings with two colonist jobs which will very much help with the overall stability in the early game and fix amenities issues that's something i want to point out from this on top of that they've now set things like when a planet revolts you won't get a 10-year truce you can automatically fight them i think that's fantastic revolt situations no longer cause escalating stability malices which would could make it impossible to stop a revolt they now give a flat -10 stability that's very useful they've also changed it so the revolting planet counts as the aggressor and if if they join another empire that empire counts as the aggressor which is really helpful from a player perspective if i have defensive pacts that means my defensive allies are going to come in and help me put down a rebellion and i think thematically that's that's very cool let's say you've uh you've conquered a planet and then you make a defensive pact with i don't know the federation as the klingons and then one of your planet of slaves revolts you can make the federation come in and put down one of your slave rebellions and i honestly i think that's hilarious but very necessary because as dj likes to tell me the federation are the bad guys they've also fixed some deficit fixes kind of thing and related changes there so now to help you deal with unexpected deficits like the consumer goods shortage for hivemind empires we just talked about empires can now purchase basic or advanced resources specifically food or consumer goods from the internal market if they have expenses of that type even if they do not produce any themselves they fixed never-ending deficits for instance if you go into a deficit of a resource you do not produce at all and then stop spending it i.e you end up with expenses and income of zero the deficit should now resolve itself in a few months and no longer be an issue all resources provided for deficit bailouts now scale with the game year instead of just those for the situation that completed yes some rap scallion figured out that um bankruptcy could be turned to your advantage subject and agreements got hit with the fixing stick and yes a lot of the issues we were seeing before like subject signing defensive packs that would drag you into wars with yourself they're now gone um they've added base acceptance for subsidiaries they've also tweaked some things you can now get prospectoriums importantly they've reduced the minimum advanced resources tax for prospectorium to 15 from 30 that is pretty useful and important and look yeah there's a whole bunch of other changes you can see them on your screen now overall it's made it closer to what we were hoping for and i really do mean leaps and bounds when we saw this dlc before release and i think it's made a lot more fun to play as well most importantly from my point of view they have rebalanced the trade weights for specialist subject leaders as far as i know i think it's now an order of magnitude less so a factor of 10 less in the diplomatic weight there and that means you can no longer abuse your ai overlords if you're a specialist by throwing one leader at them getting their entire economy sad times i know those of you that were complaining about getting some really bad crashing uh problems a whole host of these have now been fixed they fixed crash connected with resettling the last pop of a species a rare crash in the situation's interface crash with modded chipsets a crash that would happen when generating very large galaxies with high hyperlink density and a crash related to federation laws all good news there are some ship related fixes and changes so the important ones here though are that they have fixed the ship build and upgrade cost modifiers not being applied correctly when retrofitting ships and as you might know that led to some hilarious results and it's actually been an issue that's been in stellaris for at least uh since 3.3 if not a bit earlier though it was completely overwhelmingly broken when it came to the specialist scolarium type because you had this plus up to 50 percent extra ship cost which allowed players to get into some weird looping interactions where they could end up basically getting millions of alloys from upgrading and downgrading ships other fixes include returning the legacy human portraits they are back a lot of people are very upset that they replaced them with the new humans and don't worry ladies and gentlemen you've got your old human portraits back but after that yes there's a whole bunch of other things most of the minor and quite a few to do with achievement that have now been solved so overall i feel that a vast majority of the negative reviews and issues with stellaris overlord dlc that were present at release have now for the most part been either solved or become so minor a problem that i don't really feel it changes your overall game experience but now comes the question do i recommend you get stellaris overlord now they're going to be quite a few caveats to my answer here which i'll i'll say in just a moment but first of all start with yes yes i do think stellaris overlord is basically the best dlc we've had since utopia it is at least the biggest in terms of new features and content and it's also i think got some really interesting and unique new features that you're going to be using in every play through not just some certain playthroughs you know around some esoteric things possibly at the end of the game or in the mid game that aren't that relevant to every run and i'm mainly talking about those two new mega structures the orbital ring and the hyper relays those are going to have reusability in every single playthrough or at least they have had in mind so far and i'm finding them a lot of fun to play with on top of that we've got all of those new origins the new enclaves and the vassal specialist system as well as there's that extra mega structure which which i didn't even mention really so far either the quantum catapult so it is jam-packed with extra new features and content do i think this dlc is essential to play stellaris no you know we were playing stellaris long before it arrived and we'll continue to play this game long after it's gone but now after one week uh one week post release when we've had this hotfix i do think i can give this uh my my very conditional seal of approval so if after watching this video you've decided that you must get your hands on the new stellaris overlord dlc don't worry i have you covered if you'd like to buy it and support this channel as well there is a link to the humble bundle page for stellaris overlord and down in the description if you follow that link and purchase the stellaris overlord dlc through humble bundle you'll also be supporting the montu plays channel as well so thank you very very much and if you don't want to buy it if you've listened to what i have to say and you think no that is not for me then have a fantastic time and continue to enjoy stellaris if you'd like to know the ins and outs of the base game of stellaris and what every single menu and pretty much icon on your screen is going to mean in under 30 minutes if you'd like a complete beginner's guide click 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Channel: Montu Plays

Views: 71,063

Keywords: Stellaris, stellaris gameplay, montu plays, montu plays stellaris, stellaris overlord review, stellaris review, stellaris overlord hotfix, stellaris overlord patch notes

Id: aPJGq8y3fgI

Length: 23min 5sec (1385 seconds)

Published: Sat May 21 2022