The realm rejoices as Paradox Interactive announces the launch of Crusader Kings III, the latest entry in the publisher’s grand strategy role-playing game franchise. Advisors may now jockey for positions of influence and adversaries should save their schemes for another day, because on this day Crusader Kings III can be purchased on Steam, the Paradox Store, and other major online retailers.
That sort of isolationism would be mainly apparent from diplomatic policy, which from the screenshots is visible even with no intel (as with 10 intel and diplomatic visibility at "none" you still see it). So they are telling people "we don't care about you, stay away". Personally I'm very glad that ethics and civics are hidden, as it means taking a civic that specializes in more "evil" stuff (say, criminal heritage or barbaric despoilers) isn't immediately apparent.I hope government category (ethics and civics) aren't hard to discover as the screenshots suggest... because it would make less sense: even the isolationist would want other xenos to know that they are in fact, isolationists.
One thing that would be kinda cool to add building on this concept is the ability for some shadier empires to artificially boost their diplomatic power using intel (and the obviously coming espionage) by creating a sort of futuristic ghost (dummy) army like in WW2 (and hoi4). This would make them look way more powerful, but maybe could be revealed by another empire who finds out their secret. In order to not make it too powerful though only certain governments like crime syndicates should be able to do it, since they are by nature don't have as bureaucratic governments as most empires so they could get away with pretending they have some secret private navy hidden in the depths of a galactic nebula and intimidate other empires with this non-existent navy for a while.Information that you do not have details on may be obfuscated to varying degrees.
There are some things that you may be able to infer before being able to prove it - for example, if you find a pop with Gaia World Habitability, well... You've probably figured out what their origin is.
It wouldn't surprise me if the main focus of the paid expansion is Shadow Councils getting expanded the same way Megacorporations were during the economy rework.With Intel, the civics "Shadow Council" and "Cutthroat Politics" can get more flavor.
Interstellar dominion >>> technological ascendancy. I don't think it's even close; if you're doing a military rush the claim cost is amazing, and if you aren't you want to expand as much as possible peacefully, so the outpost cost is amazing.I see intel and the first contact rework being great excuses to rework the following
-Enigmatic Engineering. Probably could turn this into the perk that lets people make it harder for other empires to established first contact with them and gather fresh intel on them as well. Depending on how it's worked, this could make it a good viable niche gameplay perk. The best thing, is that it further erodes technology ascendancy's hold on be perk number one (I'd have to go look at meta stuff, but I do know voidborne will bump it to slot two in some void dweller setups).
Sounds good to me. This might also be represented by the eternal struggle of Cloaking vs Sensors.-Depending on what they do with starbase stuff, this could create a scenario where you might want to invest in some early starbase defenses to keep garbage empires from abducting your citizens and dissecting them.
Can the priorities of intel be changed via policies? I really like the idea of playing an empire that shrouds its homeworld from potential enemies, (as seen in many a sci-fi) but if homeworld location is so low, that's basically impossible. I'd ideally like to have policies that would let me set how much I care keeping certain intel about me secure.Low Government Intel (Intel: 10) would reveal basic things like empire name, authority, ethics, capital location.
I don't think the number of envoys needs a major change. I like the idea that these are a very limited resource and you need to make tough choices about where to focus your diplomatic power.I really like these changes, but I have two main concerns:
If envoys are becoming more important for intel and such, what is going to be done to potentially increase the ways of getting more envoys? I know giving too many envoys is a lot, but right now you kind of already have an envoy "tax" in that you get penalized for not having an envoy in your federation and you need one in the galactic community if you want to do anything there, plus an additional one if you want to do any diplomatic actions with anyone not already buddy-buddy with you. Needing more for intel purposes too might require re-evaluating the amount of envoys you get an when, and where you explicitly need them.