[Stellaris] Robo Mommy Returns to Dom Meatbags [Machine Age DLC] - Page 18 (2024)

So decided to put my current bio empire on hold to give gestalts a try with the new leader setup. Ran a leader heavy rogue servitor, sorry but it's my favorite gestalt.

I'm comfortable saying the new DLC is very optional for them; especially, with dev confirmation that paragons aren't things that the AI can every get. So in a single player game, the only things that machines get out of the DLC is the gestalt civics, I want say that is two civics each for machine and hive. You also get the better leader leveling setup where they get a trait every level and I think there are a bunch of traits locked to the DLC.

Not sure they are getting screwed power wise. Yes, they don't get any of the new paragon leaders that are tied to traits and I'm not entirely clear on how it works with the legendary ones. Yes, non-gestalts get six instead of five for their ruling council thing and yes, three of those get a bonus based on civics. Also, yes, they don't get stuck essentially with a general leader that results in them having some army specific traits. Finally, yes, they might have an easier time creating a setup where they have more choices for traits on their ruling council and part of that is the destiny traits.

The thing is gestalt get all 5 of their rulers out the gate, the ruler and the four nodes. Non-gestalts have to unlock the next three council positions. Also worth noting that those council positions are based on civics, so once you unlock the entire council, you don't get to choose which civics are represented, unless your using a mode gives multiple you additional civics because each civic only gives you one type of councilor.

Gestalts also get an agenda that lets them purge negative traits on the nodal consciousness and you only lose 300 exp per negative trait purged. Don't know if that f*cks you out of a trait, I'll be running that agenda in my gestalt game either later tonight or during the weekend to see what happens, since the node associated with naval power picked up a negative trait. Your nodes are obviously immortal, so even if you can't get destiny traits, you do have a better shot at getting them all to max level regardless of how much you go in on leaders.

The nodes are essentially four leaders that do not count towards you cap. Yes, this is somewhat offset by the fact that council members can hold for lack of better words field positions (governing a planet, commanding a ship or leading an army), but on the other hand you don't get a dilemma where you have to pick and choose between improving a leader's ruling abilities or improving their field positions. This also means you can keep what is essentially your ruling admiral and general out of combat because they can't get into it and that also means no risk of losing them unless you lose the game and generals do seem to still die rather easily.

Finally, no only are gestalt rulers getting traits beyond just being immortal. They also get access to agendas, which they didn't get either because all they got was being immortal.

So it's really hard to say if they are shafted too badly power wise. I think it depends on whether it's feasible for normal empires to quickly unlock council positions. I can't remember if you have to use the agenda or if unity is an option, but it just gets cost prohibitive. Even if you can rush unlocking those, I'm not sure it really gives bio empires more power, given what gestalts have. Worse case, it's looking like the power is just mostly being you have more flexibility, which makes it easier to pivot in a different direction if something comes up that warrants a shift in macro tactics. You can for instance switch out scientists on the council to greatly boost naval ability at the expense of science and then switch back to having a scientist in each position that allows it to boost your research or swap in governors for bigger economic boosts. It's just you have to unlock those council positions and depending on a number of things those leaders might be dead before they get stacked enough. Also you have to pay an opportunity cost in slower level ups and agenda firing if you want to try this little trick.*

*I know the leader cap has been a divisive change; especially, with it being a general pool. Honestly, I was already in favor of the change. First, it's a soft cap and apparently the malus to exp caps out 50%, haven't looked to see where that caps for prepping agendas to fire. So there is nothing stopping people from having all the leaders, it just means they greatly reduce the odds of getting stacked ones by end game. I like this because it favors tall and gives tall an advantage in that they can get more leaders.

Second the smaller pool means that leader choices are going to be more meaningfully. You not just deciding what trade offs you will make in regards to economy, naval ability, research ability and whatever stuff generals are in charge of, but also how good your leaders will be overall. The issue I see with separate pools for each category, is that people will just fill those up to the soft cap because outside of the upfront cost and leader upkeep, there is not penalty and being able to hire leader is one of the easiest to solve things. You might struggle with unity gain to get the next tradition, planetary ascension or getting the ambition edicts on line, but you hit a point where hiring leaders becomes trivial. This then pouts gestalts at a disadvantage because they don't a way to restructure their ruling body, where non-gestalts could in theory raise up a bunch of scientists that go all in on councilor traits that boost research, governors that boost overall economy & ship building and admirals that boost naval capability. So go research heavy on your council to outpace your numbers, then swap out everyone you can for the fleet build up and then when you declare war, you shift in all the admirals. Sure you could still do it, but there is enough of an opportunity cost in slower agendas and leader level gains, that it's probably not worth doing. I suspect this is a huge reason why the devs were upfront about this being a better change because I'm big on finding exploits and if I can arrive at this conclusion, well every min/maxer that loves to math this sh*t out probably arrived at wanting to do the math for this the moment the idea of leader council were announced and every min/maxer beyond that was probably wondering if it would be worth it and the devs probably hated the whole concept of it.

Also I feel like the devs have hinted pretty hard that we probably get a warfare overhaul in the next update. Part of that is going to include changes that mean we field less ships, which means less incentive to have as many admirals. Honestly, of the big systems that leave much to be desired. It seems like warfare and internal politics are the only two left that are broken in detrimental ways. I'll not an internal politics rework could also lessen the incentive to go super wide and thus want more governors. So if both are in the works behind the scenes, then I can see that making the devs really not want to raise the leader soft cap anytime soon. Given how polarizing the change is right now, they don't want to raise it when they might implement changes that are going to impact on how much that number needs to stay the same or if it does need to go up, by how much.

Only other minor feature that needs reworking is espionage, but that isn't broken in the way that warfare and internal politics are. It's very much optional and when you do interact with it, it doesn't end up annoying you in the way that warfare and internal politics can. Mind you internal politics are pretty non-existent and the annoyance mostly comes from crime/deviancy and piracy. Espionage is mostly disappointing and underwhelming. On the other hand, it has avenues that could easily be leveraged to make it relevant in internal politics and warfare.

As for internal politics in general. I suspect it might be the last major system to get touch. Other than the annoyance of crime/deviancy and piracy mechanics, there really isn't much there. So it doesn't break things in the way that warfare and other systems have. Also it's probably going to generate controversy, so they likely want to to tackle the stuff first. So I disagree with the theory that they don't want to touch internal politics. I think it'[s they concluded that it was in the back on the existing system overhaul list and nonexistent enough, that they wanted to get other tropes in first. Also warfare, espionage, diplomacy, situations and leaders are all things that can play into an internal politics system, so it makes a decent bit of sense to get those polished first.

Like I would love to get both a warfare overhaul and an internal politics in the next major patch, but we probably only get one and if I had to choose. I'd probably say warfare because wars are pretty f*cking tedious in their current iteration.