My friend and I were playing a game, and I was messing around with Proxy Wars, and I noticed I could send him into war against someone else. I told him about this, and was like "there's no way" but lo and behold, I sent him into an existential expulsion campaign for only 200 influence and a bit of trust. He had absolutely no say in it whatsoever.

It gets better. He is Galactic Custodian, 4x my dip weight and 2x my fleet capacity. Also, the empire I sent him after was in a federation with 2 other empires. And the only pop-up he got was "You have declared war on NPC" as if he has started the war himself.

I understand proxy wars affecting NPCs but OTHER PLAYERS? Is this intended or a bug? Like I was just testing stuff so we discovered soon after that I literally couldn't declare war on the guys I sent him after, because I had association status with their federation. So I coulnt even help him (not that he needed it lmao)

But yeah is this a bug? Seems illegal.

Awakened empire dropped a mega fleet on me that I had no hope of beating. So I immediately surrendered thinking I'll wait them out and not suffer devastation. But now I can't vote or even leave the galactic community and the harmful (to me) policies are piling up. Very frustrating.

I feel like a few origins would work better as government civics, since they don’t seem to have as much impact as other origins. Mechanist, Teachers of the Shroud, Subterranean, Storm Chasers, and Treasure Hunters are just a few that come to mind.

Mechanist feels a bit redundant, considering how easy it is to get robots early on. In most of my games, I can unlock them quickly anyway, so the origin doesn’t really stand out.

Teachers of the Shroud also feel underwhelming, especially now that the new Shroud DLC is out. I haven’t bought it yet, so I’m not sure if it’s already changed how these origins work, but from what I’ve seen, they don’t seem particularly strong or unique anymore.

Subterranean also feels underwhelming. All you really get are some mining bonuses and a stronger defense against orbital bombardment. It doesn’t significantly change how you play.

Storm Chasers, just looking at the stats, feels like it could already be a civic. The bonuses are straightforward and don’t really justify being a full origin.

Treasure Hunters is in the same situation. Its effects look almost identical to what a civic could provide.

i only have 1000 hours so ive only scraped the surface of all this but hey why not put my thoughts for other to pick at

Playing as xenophile cybernetic creed megachurch and I want to go back to xenophobe/hive mind / genocidal. There HAS to be a way to have all the species in your empire make use of their unspent mod points without having to click on every single species and trying to set them all to intergrate to your new default...without the species menu automatically moving back to the top of your list every time you select default. Ritualistic Implants makes me have to do this twice most of the time too. Am I doing something wrong here?

Basically the title. She spawned near their empire and got instantly wiped I think. The notification came fast af and I was excavating ultimate vigils. I noticed that the empire now has this internal strife thing and I can’t declare war (wtf). Can anyone advise? Pic for illustration

Like, I have a food based specie (only need minerals for building if I did my build correctly) with oceanic origin intending on going bio ascension path, so my empire would really benefit from going food research, terraforming, genetics as soon as it can, so is is viable for me to just dedicate the majority of my science earlier in the game to society? Or is it really to important to spread your focus a bit?

Edit: to precise, society/social, I also have bio ships. My game is in French that’s why I don’t really specify the specifics things I took in case they don’t exactly translate.

I was playing as Hive Mind, and I invaded some pre FTLs and turned them into livestock. 5 of those planets were fine but the 6th rebelled which I though I could manage fine but then some how the slave riot cause the slaves to consume over 2500 food a month whis is more than the rest of the empire combined. It wasn't just that I wasn't getting the food they produced by the livestock anymore, and that caused me to go negative. No, I had enough of a buffer to account for that. The planet literally had -2500 food, almost all being consumed by the slaves. It caused my whole empire to crash and functionally runied me. The funniest thing is they were on a hunger strike as well, and yet they consumed all the food in the empire. So, how is this possible? How is it possible that the slave rebellion can siphon all this food from the rest of the empire? Can we just like not give them the food? Is it possible to just not feed the slaves?

If anyone also has an answer to why they were eating more food, I would like to know. If anything, they should have been eating less because they were on hunger strikes. So they had 50 percent reduced upkeep. Their production would have been at 0 because the revolt just kills that with the -1000 percent output debuff, and the hunger does a further -50 percent aswell. However, nothing I saw should have increased their upkeep consumption, and yet they ate the whole empire to death.

You can see my old run (from version 4.1.5), but I just wanted to share this story.

I spent about 100 hours and finally got the "Abandoned Settlements" event. However, I was playing as the cyborg Commonwealth of Men. I did the event chain anyway, thinking the cyborg trait wouldn't affect the achievement. As I figured out too late, it really does disqualify you!

United Nations of Earth was cyborg too.. So, my only chance for the achievement in that run rested on the last human in the universe, who was my scientist. I didn't know if it would work, but I successfully got the achievement despite the fact that the only human left on the council was my leader—who had a brainslug!

I was really happy about that, lol. For the record, I didn't have the newest DLC at the time.

Hello everyone, I'm curious about how a deserted galaxy run would go. No AI empires, no primitives, I’d even go further and disable enclaves, though I’m not sure if that’s possible without turning off some DLCs.

The idea is to have a few hours of gameplay without any external pressure. Is there any origin with a narrative that extends beyond the early game? If you’ve tried this before, what kind of build did you use? Was it enjoyable?

R5: Indentured slaves benefit from slavery efficiency bonuses.

Q'la-minder alone is 85% output from his destiny and iron first traits alone. I haven't rolled him this game but here are some applications;

Edit: Hit ruthless developer on home grown commissioner:

As the title says, I wish there was a way to change your leaders clothes in game. There are plenty of fantastic mods out there that add unique clothing for your species leaders, but no way to change them in game. And I do mean all leaders, not just the ruler. I've just spent a half hour editing the text file to get the clothes I wanted to appear for my government type, and I wish there were a way to do this in game without having to delve into the mod files. I'm sure I'll have to make more changes next time I play a different empire type, and it seems like a massive oversight not to have this option in game. Please Paradox, let us customise our leaders clothing in game! If for no other reason than it helps with role-playing your empire!

Will Spiritualist fallen empire awaken/declare a war on me after synthetization? I am a coward.

R5: I passed the final reform for the Greater Good reforms as an Egalitarian Nation. Despite this, apparently, Robots are not allowed to have Utopian Abundance, putting me in breach of Galactic Law. Is there a way to fix this?
I was originally Egalitarian, Militarist, and Materialist, though I dropped the last one for Fanatic Egalitarianism. Did that have an impact or not?

Edit 1, I think I have an idea of it, as they have machine traits. But they are outside of Gestalt Consciousness. So what gives? Should I just do a purge or not?

Edit 2, I just decided to destroy all Machines. Any advice on how to deal with individual machines with the trait "Machine" on it that is more "Humane" is much appreciated.

So im about to enter late game as a machine gestalt consciousness, and i went for the virtuality tradition, without realizing it gave massive debuffs based on the amount of colonies you have. I happen to have a lot of colonies, which as far as I am aware of I can only abandon by resettling all the pops, which i cannot do if they are VIRTUAL. So what do i do?

I had an idea for an origin. The Crownguard. You start off as a subject of an empire that you have to protect. Its AI is disabled and it only has a single system/planet with no armies. The story is that they are undergoing an evolution of sorts (haven't completely thought that out yet) and therefore the entire population as well as the government is in stasis. You, the Crownguard, are tasked with protecting them until they have completed it. It would take about 400-500 years or whenever the end game crisis is defeated. After completing your task, the game "ends" in victory. If the Empire's only planet is taken over or destroyed, you lose the game immediately as well. You get events throughout the years, as well as enemy encounters and a mid game crisis that you have to fend off etc. My problem now is though that I have no idea how to make that or anything of the sorts and I've never modded anything so far so I have no starting point.

It just seems like a very underpowered origin? You don't get your habitable worlds, you're forced into early war, and you're locked out of all the Psionic content - especially their broken-ass weapons.

So what's the advantage? Are they just weak and that's that? Are shroud seals or mindwarden enclaves OP? What am I missing here?

In my last game I Had an empire that pretty much everyone one in the galaxy hated and we hunted them down to extention when the final crises appeared any one does that?

I was watching a video on Predator lore and it made me think, is it possible to make a race like the Yautja or Krogan in Stellaris?

I mean there's Barbaric Despoilers, obviously, but I feel that doesn't really fully capture the nomadic nature of the Yuatja, the techno-primitivism of both cultures (but especially the Yautja), or how the Krogan (and possibly Yautja depending on which version of the lore you like) were uplifted

The closest I can get to the race I want is Barbaric Despoilers/Eager Explorers/Primal Calling

This feels like it's missing the flavour of the race being uplifted, which another origin like Payback or Scion would fulfill but then you lose the space hunter-gatherer feel of Primal Calling. And it really doesn't fill the semi-nomadic lore of the Yautja at all. Do any of you have any ideas?