
It’s possible to start developing a society of machines from day one, and with other civics, small but important boosts to research make it clear to everyone in the galaxy: these lab coats ain’t just for show. In Utopia, there are considerably more ways to make my eggheads stand out. Sure, I could invest in more research facilities and eventually make a breakthrough that allowed me to build automatons, but any species can do that.

I’ve got a penchant for making techy, nerdy aliens with a hard-on for robots, but until Utopia, a lot of that had to be just in my head. The latter is a meaty list from which you can choose two civics, running the gamut from shadow council, conferring a 50 percent bonus to influencing elections, to mechanist, which gives you droids to play with right from the get go. Your picks then inform what type of governments your newly-spawned civilisation can construct by selecting an authority, like democratic or imperial, and then civics. Ethics aren’t entirely new, but there are a couple of replacements – egalitarianism and authoritarianism – that change the statistical bonuses found within the concentric circles that help define your society. The moment you enter your species-creating laboratory, things should immediately look pretty different.Ĭrafting a government now involves picking components from three distinct lists: ethics, authority and civics. You don’t need to get very far into Stellaris to see the impact of Utopia and its accompanying free patch, titled Banks.

That’s nice, I guess, but what if your idea of perfection is building a civilization on the backs of robotic slaves? And what about a monstrous hive of ravenous beasties that won’t rest until all matter in the universe has been consumed? What would its utopia look like? I’ve been experimenting with a galaxy-sized petri dish to find out.

It’s a term that normally conjures up images of a perfect society, all green and chill and maybe a little like Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets. Utopia is the first major expansion for Stellaris, Paradox Development Studio’s 4X, grand strategy space hydra.
