Should You Buy Stellaris: The Machine Age? 

I have accepted pirating as my personnel form of tax avoidance

From the moment I understood the gap in my dlc list *crrrrrrrrshenk* It disgusted me.

@@dacedrusscongrats who cares

Yes! But unlike taxation. We actually get stuff. Now my digital society can exist! Religious machines! Muwhahaha! All will praise the source code!

​@@matthmatthmatth 26 people, they are greedy and we avoid it

Just wait till the next one

@@alternateending4841 ya the storm one will suck lmao

Do you know how "its so over" it must have been in order to be this "we are so back"

I mean they probably did considering he did like 2 pre-release review videos for Paradox

it disgusted me

I craved the strength and certainty of steel

I aspire to the purity of the blesses machine.

Your kind cling to your flesh as if it will not decay and fail you

One day the crude biomass you call a temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you.

There's a first time for everything!

beeeep

Shodan?

PRAISE THE MOMMYSIAH!

The goat dystopian movie

Funny enough that's the name of the first empire I made in Stellaris, though it has nothing to do with that movie.

I was thinking the same! Such a great movie.

there is also now "Mechanical leviathan traits" such as defeating the scavenger bot leviathan gets you "+50% Mechanical pop assembly speed".. unfortunately it costs 3 trait points. the others are listed on the official wiki.

and main menu image

I miss the days when biological ascension could copy the cybernetic and psionic traits if their species received it in another empire.

@@jameshildebrand907 yeah I miss those days as well

I hope it will add biological ships

Im good if it is either something related to psionic or hives.

@@user-vv6df8uk9s yeah biological hive minds need a real expansion since they feel bare bones compared to machines now some biological ships even would go a long way

given the price, yeah I'd expect at least this much content

Super excited/hopeful for the genetic version of this…improved terraforming, ecology, habitation rework, planet strengths, etc.

It’s like Utopia, we are so back

​@@sigmamaleaffirmationhypnob7340 it's not even just the amount of content but also the quality of it.

I've seen someone said exactly that when astral planes came out. So I wouldn't extrapolate those things like releasing a good DLC or a poor one straight away

Anticlickbait

Synths is possible to get *relatively* early, but you really have to chase it. The problem is that while the tech might be available, it has a much lower chance to appear in your selection than the other ascension techs. To mitigate this issue, you should choose the Roboticist origin (it might not be called that, it's been a while, but it's the one with robots) and have an industrialist researching engineering tech. Both of these things will increase the draw chance of the synthetic tech. Giving Robots the best rights available (I think full rights with Cyborgs) might also help. Of course, you'll also need a way to generate a lot of Unity to obtain 3 Ascension Perks as well.

While I generally agree with you, what would that actually look like? You can change your empire's ethics or civics, is there something that would encourage you to do so? Could a change to how Factions work achieve this? Do you think the origins and civics from First Contact are better for roleplay? What about Toxoids? One problem is that forcing players to play around narrative events would be a drastic departure from Stellaris's current sandbox nature. I am a huge fan of Frostpunk because it manages to meld gameplay and roleplay, but as the devs themselves put it, it results in "player disempowerment". Also, the relatively fixed nature of Frostpunk's narrative limits its replayability. How many times would you be willing to read through roleplay events that you've already seen before you start skipping them?

Facts bro also no end game lag🧍‍♂️

@@valdonchev7296 I think the biggest thing that would help with it would be improvements to the games AI. If AI empires felt unique, actually engaged in trade, and had different goals and ship designs based on some themes, it would already be a huge improvement to the game feel. Story driven events like pops revolting or being swayed due to good relations with another empire to push for an ethics shift with the ability to use espionage to create these events for another empire. Maybe that megacorp primitive species finds a strategic deposit and sells you the rights. Maybe they stumble upon some ancient knowledge and sell you their findings. Maybe that religious civilization sends missionaries that actively proselytize converting some of your materialist pops, now you have the birth of churches dedicated to the machines. Or maybe spiritualist primitives view you as their God paying tribute and asking for your aid and blessings. Maybe even after they are uplifted to space faring they decide to become knights of you. Maybe that race of artisans who use their molten world as a massive forge decides to offer their services constructing megastructures despite seemingly being primitives. Maybe the fallen empires intervene in our conflicts in ways dependent on their ethics. Maybe the leviathans are actually living in symbiosis with an empire. The options are endless, and you don't need every single one on every single game, don't even need a game to have any of them. But the more of these interesting and thematic interactions we can get on the game the better

@@IDIlIIhow though

Couldn't care less*

Machines+trade value+trade federations is amazing!

Meh ones with the mastery of flesh need more

Astral Planes focused on Psionics. Toxoids has a lot of content for Biological.

@@zacharysilver911 I don't have Astral Planes so I can't discuss it, but Toxoids had only one biological origin that give you bunch of traits with side effect of lower lifespan. It isn't complete remake like with machine age. It is one origin that let you have more resources at a price of leaders dying more often. Machine age, on the other hand, open multiple avenues of ascension for all machine empires, not even considering all the rest of stuff, it isn't origin-specific. Honestly, I think that each ascension should have its own theme: Psionic being high-risk high-reward, except it isn't, only end-of-the-cycle event is powerful enough to matter in this case. Biological uniqueness; like traits that make pops produce some resources all the time without proper jobs for them, like on example scilinating skin, that give your pops unique properties (each pop of species allowed military service will produce defense army no matter where it works, species consuming more food instead of consumer goods, species with in-built chemical behavioral alteration that result in them being unable to not being model citizens of your empire no criminal activity or non compliant ethics from them or exact opposite making species members as independent as possible for more egalitarian empires and many, many more) Cybernetic multi-role and synergy, (idk if it is how it works in machine age now) Synthetic about raw efficiency and specialisation that it does very well as of now.

Hive mind dlc could be super cool.

@@FantasticKruH Yeah, I feel like there is a lot of possibilities, since hive mind DLC would neatly fit into both psionics and genetics. Hive minds are psionic by the lore after all. I feel like genetic ascension theme should be uniquety (passive generation of resources like scilinating skin, each pop allowed military service generating defensive army no matter where it works, pop being able to support more than one assault army, pops being completely compliant to empire ethics, unable to rebel or generate criminal activity, etc etc) instead of raw efficiency, uniqueness. And psionics, well, high-risk high-reward that it really isn't now, even with side effects of deities, safe for End of the Cycle. I feel like using more meaningful modifiers instead of flat increases and decreases, unless very big ones, would improve it, like instead of +10% from pop jobs, +10% monthly resources for empire at large.

Yeah pricing should be considered in that direction as well.

you guys should ask Steam to add you to the Latam regional pricing

Problem is it'll be dirt cheap in some countries UNLESS they make it a fixed price no mtter what but yet again can cause problems iirc​@ChaoticNeutralMatt

@@Gizz101 they already did

Only machines can go for nanite ascension. Anyone can go for cosmogensis (the fallen empire powers). Anyone can research and build the arc furnace and Dyson swarm. Hope that clarification helps!

@@MontuPlays Ah ok. Kinda ruins the purpose of the tradition tree if you have to be a machine empire considering if you encounter an empire from the L cluster that uses nano tech they aren’t ever machines or synthetis