Stellaris The Machine Age Review | The Best Expansion Since Utopia 

It slaps so so hard

@@A_Spec It has some serious Cyberpunk vibes, and I'm all for that.

No shit, I will turn the music back on when I play now.

for the first few bars after the bass drop I thought it was literally the cyberpunk trailer music (the E3 one) but it's legally distinct, the best kind of distinct

They cooked so hard with the music

The flesh is weak brother

"Even in death I serve the Omnissiah"

Try as they might, those techno-fetishists will still depend on their addled gray matter.

@@Elyseonand if they weren’t so fearful of novelty, they might have solved that issue too. 🤦‍♂️

HERESY! It's already solved. We just need to find it.

Yeah, it's literally out of Cyberpunk 2077, and I'm all for it

I need to add it to my playlist so bad.

Not gonna lie, I subconsciously began to nod my head to that song once Aspec dropped it. I mean, I expected it to be good and around on par with Synthetic Dawn's music, but this easily surpassed it.

Just ... generic Cyberpunk themed music ala one million times already hearded.

@@RealCodreX Not everything has to be brand new never-before-seen content to still be good, my guy.

Im waiting for biology update for organic ships

Hopefully next major DLC. Machines or psionics are my two pics on stellaris.

Shockingly, Psionics has **several** Interactions with the new DLC, including a rather huge one with the new Crisis.

There is already a star wars mod, haha

imagine stellaris evolving into a 40K game. i mean, they already sort of went there.

Don't forget Astral Planes tho

@@silopante This time.

@@silopante I never bought that one. Probably won't until it just gets a pity sale of 75% or more. But it seems that, like Sega/CA with Total Warhammer and Shadows of Change, Paradox got a wake up call that you can't just put out 20€ DLC with ~5€ content in them.

​@@melfice999me and my friend just got the game and we've ben thinking about getting the colossus dlc I think you know why is it good to get or a scam?

@@l0rf Seen as they plan DLCs for the third and last quarter of 2024, I'm quite pessimistic about their economic model.

I would love if they went back and gave all the old portraits this organic-cyborg-syth set. I want my shadowy-mantis-morph to get robotized. Declaration: Meat To The Maw!

It sounds to me like combining Cyberpunk and Mass Effect together ... I like it, but it is strange in a same time.

Good luck

Red bull. Lots of Red bull.

Some of the recent DLCs were made by outside studios, or that local branch studio that PDX closed down, enabling their HQ designers (in Stockholm, I presume) to spend more time and effort on preparing a DLC like Machine Age.

The Paradox model of DLC is a great system for long term support of good games. The downside is that people then defend a lackluster/barebones opening release with "well, the DLC will fix it", which shouldn't be the case when the base/core game is still a full price product, and the first DLC is months away(and might not but enough "meat" in all the right places in one go anyway)

Do it, the game has been amazing the past couple years. And this DLC.... WOW 10/10

I have around 5k+ hours in it, didn't play it the last year. But this one can get me back for some hours, always liked the game. My problem is (i know myself) i want the 3 missing dlc's also(paragons, astral and?) from past year. But i also look (nowadays) if i play 50 hours for a €25,- dlc it only is 0,50 pro hour. Compare that to buying a beer in a pub. (But that is for me, if it goes of food i wouldn't do it)

Moin

I heard thing about the empire we ascend coming back in future game Don’t know if it is the case, but that would mean i can bring my paper clip machine in new game

@@galomir833 I dont think so, but i dont know.

@@David-bf2cgi dont think too I still hope I don’t remember where I even heard that

Completing the new Player Crisis path leaves your empire as a new FE when you "win". You do not play as this FE, you won. This FE does not appear in later games*. You can play as another empire after winning, including one of your vassals, or never complete the crisis and enjoy being a pesudo-FE for as long as you want. *5% of FEs have always been able to spawn as a pre existing empire on your empire list if their ethics match. This can be vanilla or player made empires set to spawn but not force spawn into the game. This is how super rare Human FEs can spawn.

Galactic Empire exists with Nemesis but its a bit plain without mods.

My thoughts exactly. It’s fabulous 😎

Blorg be like : You want to be my friend ? Me, a synthetic empire : NEIN

I'm back to the original rome total war myself for that very reason. There are so many features in stellaris that it obfuscates the game. I've tried again and again, but I'm failing to immerse myself and build any connection to my empire or the galaxy it lives in. On paper it should scratch my sci-fi and strategy itches, but in practice it just doesn't. Two of the most important failures of stellaris imo are that the AI empires do not behave like an entity like your own empire, but are rather static and rigid. Like dolls. The other is that basic information of 'how does my empire measure up?' is something you need to dig for, and not for any good reason. I see some numbers at the top of my screen. Are those numbers good? Are they bad? Where is the measuring stick in the game? I've bought most dlc up until the last year or so, where no matter the hype or how good a dlc is supposed to be, the core of the game just doesn't entice me anymore. And yes I liked the tile system a lot for how visual it was, and the naturally projecting borders even more. Though I can accept them doing away with those, it's the issues above that mean the game just isn't for me. And that's like 1k hours in lol

@@102728 they got rid of borders? But that was one of the best things about it. I typed a huge reply mate but youtube blocked it. Suffice to say they don’t make them like Master of Orion. If you’ve never played that classic, go and find it somewhere and marvel at how much information can be displayed with a few bar graphs. And how engaging and significant ship design can be. 4x sci-fi done right.

Cull the code. Cull the code. (Afaik, you get the bonuses but not the loss of pops as long as you have sacrafice jobs filled with virtual pops.)

Not that I know of

No only the new ones specifically made for that. Would be cool, but thats like 100 potraits to go back and retroactively basically remake, thats a lot of work.

The classic number is here

Yeah, i dont think anything is locked behind any origin. Go wild.

@@David-bf2cg I mean do I have to be a machine empire to be able to choose the nano tech tradition tree?

@@ifoundmemallet3394 Yes, that's a machine empire ascension. Just like you have to be a bio empire to take psionic.

@@David-bf2cg Mannnnnn that’s stupid. Pretty much all L cluster empires that use the nano tech aren’t machine empires or cybers/synths

@@ifoundmemallet3394 I mean normal empires can get nano tech and nanites. This is an ascension perk all around literally becoming a swarm of living metal nanites, which doesn't make sense for a bio empire. Anyways, bio empires already have 4 ascension paths. Machines needs some love too.