If you’re like me and you can’t get enough of real time strategy games, then there’s a good chance that you’ve heard of a company called Paradox Interactive. Founded in 1999, they’re based out of Stockholm Sweden and they are best known for their history-based grand strategy games. Grand strategy, as in a multi-century spanning project where you don’t just blob out and steamroll all of Europe and Asia, you are part-general, part-politician, and part-economist. With a healthy dose of dumb luck to boot.
But one thing that they aren’t as widely known for is the fact that Paradox Interactive has been cultivating a very welcoming and strong community over the years, especially the parts responsible for creating and distributing Mods. This is something that Paradox actively encourages even, releasing developer diaries and making them easily accessible with step-by-step instructions for both the seasoned veteran and the newly arrived. In fact Crusader Kings II, one of their releases from 2012 has a Game of Thrones simulator mod that has become so popular it is the second result that comes up in google. But let’s talk about Paradox’s most recent release, a game that’s not even three months old, Stellaris.
It’s a definite departure from the traditional formula for Paradox, ditching the whole ‘history based’ platform and launching you straight into the realm of outer space science fiction. Set 200 years into the future, mankind (or your own custom built species) has achieved faster-than-light travel and is ready to assume its rightful place as Galactic Overlords. But in a galaxy teeming with alien life, strange anomalies, comets, and precursor civilizations you might have your work cut out for you. Now as it is a brand new release the game isn’t up to its full potential, not just yet. They’re constantly tinkering and patching, in fact the most recent patch was less than a week ago and brought a whole host of improvements. But the Stellaris community has its own ideas in mind on what could be added to improve the game and is very eager to share. Without further ado here’s a few mods, in no particular order, that you might not have heard of yet that they’ve been popping up since release to make your experience more enjoyable.
Have you ever been waging an inter-stellar war that requires several densely populated and well-defended planets to be taken by your forces, but lack the manpower to properly storm it? Well say no more my friend and let me introduce you to the ‘Glassing the Planet‘ mod. After ruthlessly bombing a planet into submission from orbit with your mighty war fleets you now have the option to make it completely and totally uninhabitable. (Note: We at GameSinners do not endorse or advocate for any act of genocide or ethnic cleansing, no matter how fictional it may be.)
For those of you who want to even further diversify the number of aliens you can bomb from orbit, we would recommend the ‘Galactic Governance‘ mod that modifies a few of the pre-existing government types and adds in an entire trio of new ones. League of Planet-states, Democratic Confederacy, and Planetary Feudalism. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages but for those of you who want to flesh out their galaxy a bit more its a solid choice and doesn’t effect the overall flow of the game too much.
And to round off our tour, we will be taking a quick look at ‘ZBeautiful Battles‘ because who doesn’t want the best possible aesthetics? This mod makes the space battles (one of the primary features of the game is pitting your fleets of warships against the fleets of the other empires) a little more pleasing to the eye than they are right now. The ships aren’t so cluttered out and close together in one big dog pile but spread around, circling one another in their own little attack arcs.
All in all, there are some great mods out there, far too many to list. The number of species from various other science fiction settings that have been made available is overwhelming. In your own modded game your Krogan from Mass Effect can now rub shoulders with the Eldar from Warhammer 40k, allowing for truly unique and interesting games. If you haven’t got the game but are interested in it, why don’t you go and look at a few hours of gameplay from the developers showcasing their product? But if I were you I would hurry, because it’s 10% off on Steam right now. Don’t you just love the summer sales?
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