i think pre-ftl machines would be really cool. maybe a determined exterminator mid-way through purging its creator?

I wish these new origins had versions for us to play if we wanted to play them as Machines or Hives. Imagine a gestalt consciousness getting worried about what's out there and deciding to split itself in two and hide the other part of itself on another planet. The two gestalt minds could then remain in contact but start to think differently based upon their different circumstances from that point onwards. I think it could work.

So my brain immediately went in two directions for being a warlike Dark Forest origin, 1. Force spawn every other empire to be Fanatic Purifier and have the Dark Forest be right. 2. Force spawn every other empire to be Fanatic Pacifist Xenophile and have the Dark Forest be hilariously wrong but refuse to admit it. "We bring you love" "It's bringing us love! Kill it!"

The Genocidal origin is basically what happened to the main alien bad guys in the Dark Forest trilogy which the Dark Forest hypothesis originates from. They tried to reach out to aliens and were almost wiped out and then became completely genocidal towards all aliens from that point on.

Primitive hives is such an interesting concept, can’t wait to see it ingame

Suffice it to say, the origins from this expansion are the coolest in terms of flavor we have received so far.

I wonder if they'll charge headlong at the starbase of a fallen empire

This DLC is shaping up to be one of the best ones yet IMO, the Pre-FTL ships just did it for me. Hope we can find Pre-FTL species that are aware the galaxy is bigger but still hadn't gotten their hands on FTL and you can still trade with them and do stuff, mostly treating them as children. As long as you aren't the Prikkiki-Ti that is...

Not being a fanatic purifier then switching to one is pretty OP. Since you can keep empires from deccing you for like 50 years build up and then stab them in the back.

With the devs introducing a way how hive minds can form, I really hope we get an origin/ascension, where our people also slowly join together in a hive mind. And you get the choice to fully embrace that, turning you into a complete one, or to preserve indiviuality, which then turns you into a Protoss kind of species, where their emotions and thoughts are still connected.

Narratively, this is awesome. I like the idea of your empire changing so radically over time. Would love it if you could do something similar with other unique empire types. A machine empire for example that slowly unlocks its full potential (DE) would be cool too.

Guess the lore I made up for my hive mind is a bit more on-target than I realized: The Moff species (butterfly profile) made the Mind Flower from Civ: Beyond Earth to end conflict among their species (Tree of Life origin) and now they want to spread their newfound sense of harmony. I wonder what happens if you're a hive mind observing a new hive mind forming. Maybe an option for taking it over so that they join you, giving Insights in the process. All will be one! I continue to be stoked for cloaking, and I'm eager to see how they might rework the Subterfuge tradition to benefit it. I really want new options for being sneaky. I think active recon will be nice for me, since it gives my science ships one more thing they can do later in the game. I liked having 100 intelligence on everyone in my first victorious run. Not into playing Fanatic Purifiers, but it's cool that now there's a route to picking it up, rather than starting out that way. Think it'd be neat if a lot of the "locked" civics got a similar treatment in future expansions. It's also fun seeing how a Ravenous Swarm gets started in this example. It has me wondering about interventions you can do with your observation stations and if we'll be able to influence civics as well as ethics for primitives.

I'm really interested on how the generation of pre-ftl civilizations changes with First Contact (and not just the slider setting, but how Broken Shackles and Payback change it).

I am kinda hoping we will see primitive Necrophages and/or clone armies.

Kinda wish there was a hive mind independence day like origin. For example, a hive mind where the "core" of the hive was kept hostage to allow the Megacorp to exploit their labour. Basically a broken chains origin but being able to start as a hive lol. I almost solely do hive minds 😆😅

First class video and also what looks to be a really first class DLC. Really excited about first contact :)

This is some really good content, both gamewise and game review wise.

Man, so happy for you, your channel has grown massively.. keep up the amazing deep work.

This Dlc is looking amazing, and I can't wait to see what modders do with this new set of tools. Just like with Ancient Relics adding archeological sites, I expect steam to have tons of event mods to fill the gaps left by Paradox.

After all the bird combine to destroy the monster from the prophecy they themselves become the beast of the dark forest, killing everything in sight trying to find the monster, but in the end only the birds remind in the black forest

This makes things like the pox relic actually useful as you can cloak and sneak up on a planet and destroy it before they can respond in full force.

12:52 It’s something to do for my huge fleet of Science Ships, once they’ve explored most of the galaxy. Better yet, it’s a way to get XP.

After primitive hives, I now feel I can hope for single-minded machine species... I really wanna create the Bender Crime Family.

Big thanks for gather this information in shorter videos :)

I finished the reading the Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy last week and im hyped!

It sounds like Fear of the Dark gives us the choice of the being hunter or not.

I don't know if I've ever been that excited for a DLC. PS: Thank you for your videos. I've learned a lot about Stellaris in the last week.

Can’t wait for First Contact!

This story is actually really intense! I also love the massive depressing irony of it, because it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Your species starts off fearing a giant evil monster in the galaxy. It then feels prooven right, and becomes so fearful and vengeful that it BECOMES the evil monster yourself! Your species becomes so scared of "the evil wolf", but then BECOMES the wolf!

I can't wait to try out some armor only cloaked fleets. Costly in terms of alloys, but if caught they would have fairly robust armor.

This is probably gonna be one of my favourite origins it might even displace knights of the toxic god as my no 1

During the "Radical Elements' section, there's a situation present that I don't recall seeing before, called 'Organic Singularity'. What is that? Do we already have it? Edit: That's actually answered, sorry!

I hope that active recon really helps you get to the better stuff of espionage quicker

A pre ftl devouring swarm could be fun. Something like a hive mind that was discovered by spacefaring explorers and the hive mind learns of space travel and more importantly other food sources by devouring/assimilating them kinda like the flood. Have it heavily incentivize aggressive expansion with having penalties to your own research and development but in return receive larger rewards for examining wreckage, taking planets and other aggressive acts. Maybe even a unique purge type to process them for research rather than food to counter the penalties, requiring you to keep expanding or risk falling behind.

2:29 You can do all sorts of thingsto compensate for the -1 Research Alternative. Even overcompensate. Will there be one or more ways to pay high opportunity cost to compensate for the Leader Pool penalty?

Given that Earth has been brodcasting the existance of life at the speed of light for billions of years, and that with our tech we are on the verge of imaging the atmospheres and surfaces of exoplanets, the "Dark Forest" theory pretty much fails at tge first hurtle. The reality is more like a giant flat plain were we are belatedly learning that we were nearsighted...

We really shoud have access to these tugnstein Rod,as a new unique colossus,Just like the Toxic god is unique to the Knights Origins

25:50, Absorbed- not eaten. They became one with the Organic Computer and both became far more than they were.

This update is gonna be my favorite dlc since Ancient Relics. Sci Fi flavor is my favorite part of Stellaris and this is just 100% that!

Cloaked science ships doing reconnaissance on neighboring empires to gain intelligence is an awesome mechanic.

I think (and hope) that when a Devouring Swarm emerges we should be able to send down ships to rescue people, adding a few pops to our Empire. Like, maybe a Xenophile EMpire panics and saves them - maybe it's even an option locked to them?

what i find interesting is the idea of taking -100 first contact research speed... this seems like the perfect civilization to engage in pre contact wars. Essentially your guaranteeing extra time to wage a war against someone who wont even know who you are.

I wonder how this origin will handle as a AI? Will a friend suddenly turn into a fanatic purifier? Will our starbases start exploding out of nowhere?

would be cool after wtaching this video if the new civics where pre ftl civics where you start off as a pre ftl empire in the space age and even able to make gernaration ships that act like science colonly ship hyrbids

I wonder if there is any chance the new fanatic purifier civil will stack if you already have a fanatic purifier civic...

Really the most fun I have with genocidal Empires is either as a Clone Army Fanatic Purifier cause Fire rate goes brrr especially if you go Crisis. Or Determined Exterminator since you can still enter diplomacy with other machine empires. Hive Mind's is a struggle for me though since the armor and hull regen really only comes into play if you double down on it and if you get lucky to get and destroy the Scavenger Bot for Nanite regen.

This is like a book I read before the three body problem or something like that

This looks fun! I admit, though, I'm disappointed in that I'd hoped for at least one origin wherein the first contact situation is benevolent/peaceful. An option for those of us who don't tend to play on the warpath.

this one looks like it might become my new favorite origin out of the three

I like the fact that the scientists didn't even comment on the fact that they just obliterated a primitive civilization and created a devouring swarm.

The organic singularity is somewhat like the Tines from Vernor Vinge's 'A Fire Upon the Deep', they are a hive mind made up of the minds of multiple individuals in close proximity, the minds communicating by sounds. Maybe Stellaris devs cand make a future expansion in which they add the concepts of 'Thought Zones' from that book (series) and also crises based on the 'supra intelligences' from that book, like the Blight, taking over entire planets and fleets and converting them. Also, am I missing something or why aren't there any options to take over enemy ships or fleets with either Telepathy for organics and some sort of computer virus infection for Cybernetics ... ? Can't we have a Battlestar Galactica-style Cylons that can infect enemy computer systems ? Or the brain slugs from Futurama ? Or some zerg-like 'giant telepath brain' add-ons for ships that can to telepathic things: sense other minds, including cloaked ships, take over weak minds in enemy fleets or , at least confuse them etc ... You can build the Blight-like entity for a crisis event based on one (or both!) of these concepts.

Stack the fanatic purifier civic with no retreat policy and become the crisis ascension perk. Monster in the making.

27:17 Wish we could start as primitives, slowly researching all the tier 0 techs, and building up our star system before we finally expand out.

Would that mean that Empire would then have five civics? On the stream they had the option to take this before researching that third civic which has me thinking about how strong that could be haha

i just realized if you get the world of static portal event with the fear of the dark origin, you'd get 3 worlds in your capital system!

Stellaris and Distant Worlds 2 getting updates around the same time! I love it.

Are Devouring Swarms the only possible outcome of a developing Hivemind, or can we get some less genocidey ones as well?

Surgical?!?!? No no no my dear little lizzard, Its gonna be a massive awe inspiring overwhelming first strike!

Sounds fun.

I wonder how to break these mechanics. I mean, you could just land ground forces on the isolationist haven. Would that unify your species and give you any bonuses to offset the starting maluses? Also, how about shielding or cracking their world with a colossus? I really wanna mess with them to see the game break.

-"I dont know what will happend with xenos in your empire if you become Fanatic Purifier". Oh lol, im know for sure what will happend.

wait, does that mean want I think means? with this origin and getting the divine sovereign early you could possibly achieve 5 civic slots?

What happens if you show compassion to the hunters? I could see that causing a civil war with the sister planet considering how much they hate them

Dark Forrest here I goooooo!

I wonder what happens to any vassals when switching to fanatic purifier.

Montu: Hunters. Me: You have my attention.

You had my hopes up for a second I thought you could be Emperor and fanatic purifier.

will we get primitive synthetics? AI could take over before FTL tech so it could make sense

organic singularity? Wonder if the devs have read Children of Time? Now I wanna see an ingame primitive event chain on a Kern's World analog, featuring the ant-Portiid war, with the possebility of the Portiids loosing.

"Slap and Conquer would like to join your leader pool" :D

wonder if you can go to war with your brother planet if you do the fear of the dark origin? that'd be fun.

You know, I was really hoping for an organic Rohie Servitor the way things were going.

I love the new pre-ftl stuff. I was watching a cute bird atomic age and I saved them from an asteroid and saved some of my scientists a crash landing there but I watched them bomb themselves back to the stone age and then I allowed a singularity to engulf the planet and it became a bird hive mind. Very fun to watch develop

The hive event reminds me of the love death robots episode "when the yogurt took over" lol

reminded me of that one game when my empire went through the redemption arc and stopped being fanatic purifiers (it still took a civic slot tho)

Pre FTL hiveminds? MorningLightMountain RP confirmed.

How +0.25 and +0.50 envoy work? Envoys aren't a resource which increases over time. Also, why they don't want to have primitive hive minds spawn from the start?

Rogue Servitor Hive-mind when

I do hope we get normal hive mind primitives and maybe super rare machine intelligence primitives one day instead of just ones gotten through events. This is a great first step though

What's with editing in the word "Tinkerbell" into all the vids lately?

Yes! another use for science ships!

"Presumably the left half" idk if all .5 envoy techs are gonna just give us the left half then we won't have enough to make a whole!

Yea! We can total war the first empire we see! Wait, why was that star base we destroyed 50k fleet power…..

Technically you can now become Fanatic purifier and then abolish it, if you do everything correctly.

I think they should also have a machine empire equivalent where it literally is the paper lip AI

awesome

I kinda wish they'd gone just a bit further with the playing as primitives thing. like allowed us to start off as a properly primative (no space travel at all) empire and build up from scratch

Pre FTL hivenind. Kenshi Hivers confirmed.

Take a shot everytime Montu says Dark Forest

Nice

I’m guessing that primitive hive minds is essentially of ants became bigger.

With a primitive construction ship, it could be like watching them build mining and research stations until an event is triggered that gives them A) an actual shipyard and they become a new empire or B) if you already own the system they finally become aware of your presence and initiate communications. It's a bit more progressive than how it currently is.

Interesting, I wonder what happens if try to get rid of the other planet?

As a Hivemind Fanatic, I would love to play as a hivemind that _just_ became aware.

I like the bio-computer hive event. But I'd still like to see hive minded primitives with a more typical genesis as well.

the primitive hivemind one reminds me of Trapper keeper episode from southpark lol

I'm still confused about half an envoy, what...how...why...

An interesting take on the dark forest hypothesis from this DLC. It seems to be pretty disparaging of it! That the fate of dark forest civ adopters is for them to completely gut their own solar system of resources, trapping themselves there and potentially dooming them to annihalation from a pissed off alien civ they failed to exterminate.

What Stellaris devs think this Origin will be like : Nice story. What it will really be : Look a planet in my system with pops -> declare war.

I thought they said they weren't going to do that. Or was that just a ruse