[previewyoutube=n1bU_6Qy6Mo;full][trailer][/previewyoutube] Galactic Paragons is available now! You can check out the full list of patch notes from Galactic Paragons and 3.8 Gemini here. (Patch notes are in English only.) The galactic council is vast and full of personality! Galactic Paragons expands the Council mechanic, allows leaders you command to amplify your empire's vision, adds additional civics, and much more. An empire is only as strong as its weakest link, so invest and strengthen your leaders to guide the future in ways the galaxy has never seen before. There are endless stories to tell in the Stellaris universe. Breathing life into the stories of the leaders in the Galactic Council and your empires is a perfect showcase of the teams commitment to expanding the ways our players can explore a vast and wondrous galaxy. -Stephen Muray, Game Director for Stellaris. Features of Galactic Paragons include*:

• Unique Council Roles: Specialized roles and benefits are included in Galactic Paragons to expand upon the new Council Mechanics in Stellaris! Find dozens of unique council roles based on your civics and government types, and unlock additional positions as your empire evolves.
• New Dynamic Leaders: Recruit, improve, and follow the leaders of your empire through the ages! You may shape them by picking their traits, selecting their veteran class, and guide them towards their destiny, up until they retire - or perish!
• Meet Galactic Heroes: Attract paragons of renown to your council: unique leaders with their own art, events, and stories may join your empire and bring their own benefits to your government. Or, discover four Legendary Paragons with intricate event chains and unique mechanics!
• New Traditions, Civics, And More:
  • A new Under One Rule Origin that tells the tale of the leader who founded your empire
  • Eight new Civics focused on leadership, from immortalizing the personalities of leaders past in digital archives to heavily optimized council selection via corporate charter
  • 12 new Veteran Classes
  • Hundreds of new Leader Traits
  • Two new Tradition Trees, giving players new edicts and improved leaders
  • New ships, art, and story content

Get Galactic Paragons now!

3.8 Gemini Update

Launching alongside Galactic Paragons is the 3.8 Gemini update! Loaded with new Features, Quality of Life Improvements (including a Sector Editor!), story events, bug fixes, and more!

Cooperative Multiplayer (Beta)

The Custodian team has been hard at work, making it possible for several players to play the same empire in Stellaris! We look forward to see what you all will do with this new functionality, from PVP multiplayer games on fastest, to teaching a friend how to play Stellaris for the first time, Coop has been a long time coming, and were extremely excited for you to all to have shared experiences with your friends! You can currently access coop multiplayer one of two ways:

• Click Multiplayer -> Tick Allow Coop - This will allow you to have multiple cooperative empires in one game, or have a mix of cooperative and non-cooperative empires.
• Click Cooperative - This will have up to 5 players join the hosts empire. It is not possible to have multiple cooperative empires (or a mix) in this game mode.

Cooperative multiplayer is currently still in beta, we will be doing some polish, bug, and desync fixes during post launch support. If you have issues with cooperative multiplayer, you can report bugs and desyncs here!

Empire Council

Ruling a Galactic Empire is hard work, and your council of trusty leaders is there to help you. Base-game Stellaris now includes a ruling council, where up to three leaders will assist you in ruling your empire - your Ruler, your Head of Research, and your Defense Minister. Each leader gives bonuses to their area of expertise, which grow increasingly more powerful as they level up over time. Gestalts will have a collection of immortal nodes, that will level up and gain new traits over time, which we feel better suits them thematically.

Ruler Creator

Gone are the days when you were forced to reroll your empire a dozen times, looking for that one specific trait to complete your roleplay. In 3.8 Gemini, weve introduced a Ruler creator where you can choose your rulers appearance and starting trait.

Renowned & Legendary Leaders

Paragon leaders are not just for owners of Galactic Paragons! The Custodian team has been hard at work updating existing content in Stellaris. You will now be able to find six* existing leaders that have been updated to the new leader system introduced in Galactic Paragons, including new traits, new and/or updated events and in some cases, updated artwork. * Finding some of these leaders may require other DLC

Ground Combat

Ground Combat has had some love from the Custodian team as well. First off, Devastation has been rebalanced. Planetary Devastation is now more impactful to planetary production, and orbital bombardment now causes more damage and has an increased chance of killing pops, buildings, districts and defensive armies based on bombardment stance and planet size, with more aggressive bombardment stances doing more damage. Bombardment damage will now scale based on planet size, with larger planets taking less damage than smaller planets, since the bombardment is spread over a larger surface area. Additionally, Planetary Capital buildings will now spawn 0/4/8/16 defensive armies for free based on the tier of the building. Planets that have been bombarded to the point where they have no defensive armies will now have a chance to surrender without being invaded. The first time you bombard a planet, you will get an event that asks if you want to accept planetary surrender. You can change this decision later in the Government -> Policy screen. Planets will never surrender if their pops would be purged after doing so. And lastly, starbases now have the ability to construct offensive armies! Clicking on a starbase and going to the Army Builder tab will allow you to queue armies across all the planets in that sector, or hold control and click to queue five armies at a time! Each army also now has a Rally Troops option that will order constructed armies to automatically travel to their location (provided they can find a path to do so) and merge with the selected army. To summarize the Design Philosophy of all the changes to ground combat and bombardment: Ground Combat and orbital bombardment will now be a bigger part of the game since big planets will automatically have some defenses. Building armies and using them to invade planets will be much easier by using the Army Builder and Rally Troops functionality. Small planets with 1-25 pops will be prime candidates to be taken by orbital bombardment alone, removing the need to have to manually invade the smaller planets or habitats.

Sector Editor

The Sector Editor has returned! It is now possible to (again) edit Sectors in the Planets and Sectors screen. Planetary capitals are still limited to be at least four jumps away from one another, however this should make it easier to resolve your sector gore, and make your sectors more visually appealing.

Capital Designations

3.8 Gemini has also brought with it four new Capital Designations for non-Gestalt empires. Choose Factory Capital, Forge Capital, Trade or Extraction Capital to boost your economies even further!

Fleet & Ship Designer

The Custodian team has also done some updating on the Fleet and Ship designer. The first thing youll notice is that the two tabs are now on the same screen, allowing you to easily swap between them when designing ships and fleets. The Fleet Editor itself has also had some usability improvements, including a longer list of fleets, a new button to Copy a Fleet Template to a new fleet and an Overwrite Fleet Template button, which will update the fleets template to the current contents of that fleet. Additionally, pressing Delete + Enter on a fleet will now delete that fleet.

Science Ship Automation

In 3.8 Gemini - when you click Science Ship Automation - we have added the ability to enable or disable the modules. The new Science Ship Automation modules are:

• Explore Systems - will explore the galaxy by entering systems and discover any planets and hyperlanes in there
• Survey Systems - will survey new systems the science ship enters
• Investigate Anomalies - will automatically research anomalies
• Excavate Archaeology Sites - will automatically excavate Archaeology sites
• Research Special Projects - will automatically research special projects

The default settings are Explore Systems and Survey Systems, which is the same functionality as before 3.8. For Science Ships that are already automated you can see which modules they have enabled by reading the automation tooltip.

(Almost) Rebindable Hotkeys

The Custodian team has also taken a look at the left-side menu. We know a lot of you have wanted to be able to rebind which hotkeys open these menus for a while, and while adding rebindable hotkeys to Stellaris would require rewriting most of the code for the UI, weve done the next best thing: In 3.8 Gemini, it is possible to rearrange the list of options in the left side menu, by pressing the new Cog icon at the top. This will also correspondingly change the hotkeys to open these menus, allowing you to rebind these menu items to whichever F1-F10 key you prefer to have them on.

Message Notifications

The onslaught of notifications while playing Stellaris is something that has been bothering us as much as its been bothering you. Weve added a new type of message called a Toast that will drop down from the top right of your screen, and convey low priority information (such as a leader gaining a level). Additionally, weve gone through all the in-game messages and added the ability to turn them on or off, as well as change the pausing behavior of each message. Notification messages you no longer wish to see can be disabled by Control + Clicking on them and unticking them in the message settings. Toast notifications can be enabled or disabled by clicking the cogwheel. Thats it for today folks! Thanks for playing Stellaris, and dont forget to pick up Galactic Paragons today!