Well its been almost a month and overall I am starting to like the new patch even if I have had to basically relearn the game almost fro the ground up.
Anyway the main problem I have is the game is semi awful/rough for the casual players. If you know what you are doing the differences are like night and day. For example if you are playing a Spiritualist empire that has not focused on population growth or uses AI your growth rate is anaemic compared with say a mechanistic empire or a spiritualist empire with inward perfection.
Its also not that clear how good/powerful a few of the civics are and even something like a megacorp can kind of punish you if you don't know what you are doing. I have experimented with all sorts of things but am leaning heavily towards the following.
Space Communism.
Be some sort of fanatic egalitarian empire.
Inward Perfection
This civic while being boring is very powerful. One of the few I would take as a Spiritualist that doesn't resort to using bots.
Mechanist.
Start with droids. This lets you avoid having to randomly find the robot tech which if RNG bites you in the ass can take decades. Also starts the game with a robot factory.
Technocracy
Science+ unity civic. Lets you rip through techs and have a reasonable unity rate.
Exalted Priesthood.
For the unity build, can be combined with things like inward perfection.
Aristocratic elite is also really good but more for your 3rd idea it not as good at game start.
The game also heavily rewards growth rate and anything that gives you more influence, reduces influence cost. Food is great because of edicts. There is also to much engineering techs in the game that are semi key and missing some early game ones due to RNG until the 2270's and 2290's sucks. This could be things like lvl 2 armor/weapons or the ones required to create rare resources. In general the following traits are very good.
Agrarian- sell food and spend food on decisions and policies that ramp up growth rates.
Intelligent/Engineering
Rapid Breeders
For perks my MVP early on is Executive Vigor due to how good various edicts are and now they last even longer. Technological Ascendency is also really good in Technocrat type builds.
Of the 3 ascension paths Psionic seems the weakest. This is because you kind of need Zro and your growth rate is a lot slower than the other two paths. If you get Psionics via religious you have to make the choice between meh growth rates or resorting to droids and getting less influence. A Psionic Mechanicst build might be very good but its that much harder to find the required trait and even then competing with a Fertile/Xeno compatibility bio engineer or a synch ascension synth empire might be difficult. As I said growth rate is really important and I would have to test a Xenophile/Relgious/Inward Perfection game to see if I could get population growth out of the trash can for a spiritualist empire that doesn't resort to bots.
Basically if you know the "kwl" optins the game is great. If you don't I can see how people will struggle with the game as they destroy their economy. The relative easy to play hard to master earlier Stellaris is now a bit more like Galactic Civilization II (maybe III IDK) with a fairly steep learning curve.
A sub optimal RP build could still be fun in the old Stellaris (an agrarian farmer build), now the game basically seems to actively punish you for not choosing the "right" ideas. And an RNG start is even worse than old Stellaris as it was easier to fight off CE or Hegemonic Imperialist/whatever in the old than the new due to the choke point of alloys combined with anaemic growth rate if you pick wrong.
Anyway the main problem I have is the game is semi awful/rough for the casual players. If you know what you are doing the differences are like night and day. For example if you are playing a Spiritualist empire that has not focused on population growth or uses AI your growth rate is anaemic compared with say a mechanistic empire or a spiritualist empire with inward perfection.
Its also not that clear how good/powerful a few of the civics are and even something like a megacorp can kind of punish you if you don't know what you are doing. I have experimented with all sorts of things but am leaning heavily towards the following.
Space Communism.
Be some sort of fanatic egalitarian empire.
Inward Perfection
This civic while being boring is very powerful. One of the few I would take as a Spiritualist that doesn't resort to using bots.
Mechanist.
Start with droids. This lets you avoid having to randomly find the robot tech which if RNG bites you in the ass can take decades. Also starts the game with a robot factory.
Technocracy
Science+ unity civic. Lets you rip through techs and have a reasonable unity rate.
Exalted Priesthood.
For the unity build, can be combined with things like inward perfection.
Aristocratic elite is also really good but more for your 3rd idea it not as good at game start.
The game also heavily rewards growth rate and anything that gives you more influence, reduces influence cost. Food is great because of edicts. There is also to much engineering techs in the game that are semi key and missing some early game ones due to RNG until the 2270's and 2290's sucks. This could be things like lvl 2 armor/weapons or the ones required to create rare resources. In general the following traits are very good.
Agrarian- sell food and spend food on decisions and policies that ramp up growth rates.
Intelligent/Engineering
Rapid Breeders
For perks my MVP early on is Executive Vigor due to how good various edicts are and now they last even longer. Technological Ascendency is also really good in Technocrat type builds.
Of the 3 ascension paths Psionic seems the weakest. This is because you kind of need Zro and your growth rate is a lot slower than the other two paths. If you get Psionics via religious you have to make the choice between meh growth rates or resorting to droids and getting less influence. A Psionic Mechanicst build might be very good but its that much harder to find the required trait and even then competing with a Fertile/Xeno compatibility bio engineer or a synch ascension synth empire might be difficult. As I said growth rate is really important and I would have to test a Xenophile/Relgious/Inward Perfection game to see if I could get population growth out of the trash can for a spiritualist empire that doesn't resort to bots.
Basically if you know the "kwl" optins the game is great. If you don't I can see how people will struggle with the game as they destroy their economy. The relative easy to play hard to master earlier Stellaris is now a bit more like Galactic Civilization II (maybe III IDK) with a fairly steep learning curve.
A sub optimal RP build could still be fun in the old Stellaris (an agrarian farmer build), now the game basically seems to actively punish you for not choosing the "right" ideas. And an RNG start is even worse than old Stellaris as it was easier to fight off CE or Hegemonic Imperialist/whatever in the old than the new due to the choke point of alloys combined with anaemic growth rate if you pick wrong.