Watching a youtube video of the open beta.
City Zone types at game start:
Government Zone Early Industry Zone Foundry Zone Factory Zone Research Zone Unity Zone Fortress Zone Trade Zone Amenities Zone
5228 starting pops (with Prosperous Unification)
Focuses come in 3 categories: Exploration, Conquest, and Development.
You progress through 10 tiers in each Focus by doing various tasks, which start very simple (ie "Hire a Scientist" is a tier 1 task). At any time you will have 6 tasks presented to you, the majority of which will be from the category you have selected as your empire focus. You can spend unity to change your empire's focus or reroll a task without completing it.
Focus Rewards seem to be entirely in the form of guaranteed research options, which are awarded whenever you finish a tier. Mega-Engineering, as mentioned in a previous blog, is the final Development Focus rewards. The Exploration Focus ends with Jump Drives, and the Conquest tree ends with "Existential Campaigns", which as far as I can tell is a new technology.
Technologies can still randomly roll before they've been unlocked as a guaranteed option.
When colonizing a new world you can select the planet designation and automation before it's even colonized, so if you don't want to micromanage a particular planet it's even faster than before.
Rare resource buildings are now: Gas Extraction Wells, Crystal Mines, and Mote Harvesting Traps. In the current build they are available at game start, but I suspect this will change.
Most buildings seem to upgrade the amount of resources produced in your zone. So for example a Holo-Theater will improve the amount of Amenities produced by your entertainment zones.
Lots of rough edges in the beta so far. For example you start with a massive Amenities Deficit, and while the job management system is in, it prioritizes things weirdly. In the video the game randomly decided that enforcers weren't needed, leading to a sudden massive outbreak of crime. Still, a lot of the core new features look good and things could improve as the builds roll in.
Some perceptive players scoured the code of the Open Beta and seemingly found the title of the next DLC: Infernals Species Pack
Edit: Actually the ID of that DLC is 38, Grand Archive is 34, so it might not be the next DLC but certainly part of Season 9.
Edited by Kiefen on Mar 12th 2025 at 8:54:28 PM
Chapter IV of Crusader Kings 3 is officially announced
, and the major expansion is going to add China to the game.
All I can say is, I'm excited! Hopefully my PC can handle it.
Just for fun, I'm going to try to predict what the next Stellaris DLC is going to be with entirely too much specificity. Below is purely my own musings and not based on any hard evidence.
Call of the Hive Focus on improving Hive Mind gameplay.
- 2 new game-defining Civics, Dominating Mind and Deity.
Dominating Mind is essentially the Driven Assimilator equivalent, can Assimilate non-Hive Mind pops from game start and use the Subsume Case Belle.
In Deity a non-gestalt species evolved on your homeworld and came to worship the Hive Mind as a god. You can chose to be a benevolent god that provides for all the needs of it's worshipers and asks for little in returnnote ...or a cruel god demanding blood sacrifices and backbreaking labor in exchange for appeasement. In addition to a new "worshiper" citizenship status, Deity Hive Minds may make use of Cattle Slavery and Battle-Thralls.
- Biological Ship designs. Available to Hive Minds by default, in terms of combat capabilities it's mostly a cosmetic difference. But they also have reduced upkeep any time they are in the same system as a habitable world not controlled by another player at the cost of increased upkeep otherwise.
- New Origins, Organic Singularity and Awakened Hive.
Organic Singularity is not entirely new as it's based on the existing event that can occur during Pre-FTL observations. In the Organic Singularity Origin, you play as the end result of such a Singularity occurring during the Early Space Age. This means you are in control of a civilization that didn't develop as a Hive Mind with all the troubles that entails. In addition remnants of the pre-Singularity species made it offworld in time and are none to pleased about what happened to their civilization.
Awakened Hive you are a Hive Mind that has slumbered for eons that has only recently stirred. This gives you unique insight into the Fallen Empires unlocking unique diplomatic options...and where to go digging for ancient and powerful technology.
In terms of difficulty, Organic Singularity is the more difficult of the two, but it's far from an official challenging origin.
- 2 new Ascension Paths for Hive Minds. Psionic Hive and Enlightened Hive
Psionic Hive lets you access Psionics as a Hive Mind. Mostly this is the existing Psionic Path with giving you access to Psionic traits and pacts. However you will make a pact with an entirely new set of Shroud Entities (End of the Cycle is the only shard patron) that offer the sort of power a Hive Mind would want. Want to use the Shroud to compel citizens of other empires to migrate to you and join your hive? There may be a being who can give you that power...for a price.
Enlightened Hive is about enhancing the capabilities of the central hive mind itself. This lets you do council agendas much faster and to greater effect, unlocks new planetary decisions...and gives you a one time ability to adopt or remove a civic that are usually locked in at game start. So a Devouring Swarm can be halted...or unleashed.
So that's just what I could come up with off the cuff. I realize I neglected to have anything whatsoever for non-Hive Minds, which an actual expansion probably should include, but I'm too tired to come up with something right now.
Edited by Falrinn on Mar 13th 2025 at 6:58:52 AM
Might get a Stellaris DLC announcement next week. It was strongly hinted at in today's dev live stream.
4.0 open beta is still pretty rough, but in the upcoming build they were showing off on stream they at least fixed the obvious sources of economic death spirals that made meaningful testing almost impossible.
To give an example of how rough it was when it started, in the first open beta build assembling robots on a planet would result in the entire organic population being slowly killed off.
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While the Voidborn origin may be how Paradox intended to represent space nomads, they may decide to create a fully nomadic civ and expand the existing caravans in a future DLC. One thing about Stellaris is that it's apparently Paradox's most successful game and it sounds like there are no plans for a Stellaris 2 but instead plans for more DLCs.
Nomandic empires would represent a pretty significant change to the game's fundamentals.
So much of it is built on territory control, and it would be hard to do proper nomads without rejiggering a lot of things. Not saying it's not possible, but I can't begin to speculate on how it would work in practice.
In gameplay news, in my current game I gained more diplomatic weight then every other member of the Galactic Community put together, allowing me to pass whatever resolutions I feel like regardless of opposition. ...well I should say more diplomatic weight than every other member of the Galactic Imperium...
Double Posting to post Stellaris Season 9 announcement
Full announcement on Paradox forums
Summary:
Biogenisis expansion launches May 5th. Revamped Biological Ascention Path, Bioships, new origins, new civics, Deep Space Citadel Megastructure, new Hive Mind Fallen Empire, and new crisis path called "Behemoth Fury".
Shadows of the Shroud expansion launches Q3. Lots of changes to Psonics asention path, new patrons, revamped End of the Cycle, "Psionic Auras" that let you reshape star systems, new civics, origins, etc.
Infernals Species pack launches Q4: New Species, New Origins, Volcanic Worlds (Called it!), and a new Crisis Path where you "Burn the galaxy to ashes as your empire thrives in destruction."
Edited by Falrinn on Mar 24th 2025 at 7:32:55 AM
OMG I am so hyped, browsing through the paradox forum and steam pages already reveals so much new archetypes:
- A new Genestealer Origin
- A crisis path were you breed your own Kaiju
- A Shroud forged machines Origin that lets you be psionic-Machines
- A crisis path were you burn the galaxy
- Cloning, Purity and Mutation branches for the new Organic Ascencion.
I kind of wonder if the revamped End of the Cycle will effectively be treated as a Player Crisis.
So maybe it's something like, you can offer pops and worlds to the End of the Cylce in exchange for more power and pushing back the date of the reckoning. At first you can do it internally with some self-sacrifice, but inevitably the demands will increase over time until you need to be in a state of constant total war in order to sate the End's demands. Eventually you'll get an automatic crisis declaration against you. And if you manage to survive even that, eventually you'll run out of planets in the galaxy.
Stellaris Dev Diary #377 - MEAT SHIPS MEAT SHIPS MEAT SHIPS
Wow they really went beyond just doing ships with Food Upkeep/Cost, this is an entirely different ship meta!
And Bio ships have a Weaver class of ships that is entirely dedicated to support duties like buffing / in-combat repairing and debuffing enemies.
One nice Qo L for everybody is that chip classes can now be collapsed in the shipyard menu for better visibility.
Edited by Kiefen on Mar 27th 2025 at 2:56:14 PM

Unfortunately the current build is effectively unplayable, too much stuff is broken to be worth bothering.