Stellaris Scenarios

[S. Grundleplith MD]

I've always loved games like Stellaris, but after awhile, the open sandbox seems kind of samey. I've had this problem with the Civilization series too, which brings me to what Stellaris is currently lacking & what used to be my favorite part of the Civilization series: scenarios.
For historical reference the Eastern Front Civ II mod/scenario was about my favorite part of that game. In Civ III it was the Age of Imperialism mod/scenario. In Civ IV it was Pie's Ancient Europe mod/Diadochi War scenario.

Instead of every game building up your empire following basically the same path, and watching the AI empires follow basically the same patterns, scenarios allow for specific challenges to be faced. For example you could play as an established empire in the middle of a holy war of conquest against a peaceful coalition of empires opposing you. Or a total conversion scenario where you are a nomad fleet, forced to harvest resources as you go through other empire's space and deal with the negotiations/war that would involve.
Even in other Paradox games, the different historical start points are essentially scenarios. For example, you can only play the Latin Empire & its fallout in CK2 at that start point -- it would never develop exclusively due to AI actions otherwise.
Bring scenarios to Stellaris!

 

[safe-keeper]

Along these lines, I have been thinking that a "Dwarf Fortress start" could work well for Stellaris. Basically a galaxy is rendered like normal, but every species is AI and they play the game for a set number of years in the background. Then after, say, 50 or 100 years, the galaxy is presented to the player and he or she gets to pick a species and start playing.

Scenarios would be nice to have, too, though, especially if they had good lore and perhaps also species- or faction-specific objectives . I did enjoy the scenarios in that one Civ III expansion.