Last Played 6/12/16

[MrJade]

I really enjoyed this game's promise. How much has changed as far as free updates goes since that time? I stopped playing, because like most Paradox games, they age well. I'm thinking about jumping back in with Utopia (I have a birthday coming up and might get Leviathans+Utopia), but I'm not sure what has happened.

The story-line elements felt a bit underwhelming, combat was very much single optimal build, and the mid-late game got a bit stagnant, as the End of the Universe (or whatever they are called) events didn't do that much.

 

[Dunaedine]

Utopia, with all the changes, seems to be a good idea for fresh restart.

 

[MrJade]

Utopia, with all the changes, seems to be a good idea for fresh restart.

What if anything, has the free updates added? And is combat still so single answer?

 

[Ramiel]

Combat and warfare still need work (doomstacks and useless military stations are common complaints) and will be addressed in more detail later, but update 1.3 (accompanying Leviathans, last October) did a major overhaul and rebalance of ship designs and components so it's not just 'Tachyon Lances on everything'. It's hard to remember what all happened when, but there's been a small happiness and habitability rework, sector improvements, lots of balancing tweaks and bugfixes, etc. Probably a lot of little things I've completely forgotten about and now just take for granted.
1.5 Banks is going to be a pretty huge update, even for just the free aspect. You can check all the dev diaries for details, but the big focus is internal empire mechanics. Completely reworked faction system to make factions an actual thing; POP ethos and ethics drift reworked; more fine-tuned control over the rights and status of different species (slavery and purging are on a per-species basis now, not per-POP); new resource Unity representing the social unity and stability of your empire, used to unlock traditions in seven different tradition trees (think culture and policy trees from Civ V); and just today the dev diary talked about reworked Governments giving more options and control over government forms. Everything I just mentioned is part of the free patch, the Utopia expansion includes some awesome content beyond all this.

 

[MrJade]

Sounds pretty nice. I think that I will most likely give this one another swing.