Stellaris: Galactic Paragons expansion will give council leaders tons more personality on May 9th
Galactic councils are getting a big boost
Paradox have announced the next expansion for their grand spacefaring strategy game Stellaris. It's called Galactic Paragons, and it's coming on May 9th. Larger space regimes require more work, so this expansion is for fans of big government, focusing on Stellaris' collection of leaders, expanding the council system, and introducing deeper character progression. It’s also adding a new Origin delving into the leader who founded your galactic empire, which you can see teased in the very short, very non-descript trailer below.
That new Origin is called Under One Rule and it’s adding eight new civics focused on leadership, giving players more wartime strategies and opportunities to roleplay. The rest of the Origin has new ship art, story content, 12 new veteran classes, and two new tradition trees.
On top of extra job roles for your leaders, they’re also becoming more dynamic with the expansion, allowing you to recruit them, customise them with different traits and veteran classes, then watch until they move onto either retirement or the afterlife - whichever comes quicker. Paradox say you can attract new galactic heroes (or “paragons of renown”) to your council, each with their own stories, although the four Legendary Paragons sound even spicier.
Alongside this paid expansion, the Stellaris team have been working on free additions to the game, too, the most recent of which is the 3.8 Gemini update. This brings two multiplayer modes - co-op PvE and competitive PvP - to the game, and are now available in open beta.
Grand strategy can be a little intimidating to newcomers, so the PvE mode allows you to team up with four friends as a single empire, and split up the overwhelming responsibilities. PvP is the opposite, pitting players and their fleets against each other. You can read more about the modes on Paradox's forum post, and if you want to check out multiplayer right now, read the devs’ Steam blog on how to access it.
Otherwise, you can wishlist Stellaris' Galactic Paragons expansion now on Steam.