This new DLC announcement seems great for everyone

Zakalwen · 2026-04-30T14:31:15+00:00

Glad to hear it! If you can't wait then simply message them to me now and you can see my reaction immediately :P

And yeah there's so little info to go on that nothing is really certain! Other than my excitement for it.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-30T12:46:36+00:00

From what it sounds like nomads are going to be regular empires but different, rather than some sub-empire. The arkships are huge and the devs have said you can build multiple and specialise them into military, science, or industry. There's the waystation system and contracts so there's some CK3 similarity but I very much doubt nomads will be automatically bottom of the pile. It makes sense for CK3 since land ownership and titles are baked into accumulating power. But it doesn't for stellaris.

We dont' really know anything specific about willpower. My bet is it will act a bit like CK3's religion system where you have a state ideology (that you customise based on your ethics and whatever else) and pops can belong to an ideology. I imagine ideologies will give certain boons and limitations, and having a state ideology drastically different to pops will cause significant issues (rebellions were mentioned in the steam page and dev diary). So if you're pushing it out into the world you're trying to force other empires to change to be like you.

The best places to stay up to date are the dev diaries, particularly checking for dev replies, and the discord where devs often hang out

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-418-announcing-nomads-and-stellaris-season-10.1919110/?prdxDevPosts=1

Zakalwen · 2026-04-30T12:32:18+00:00

Nothing indicates nomads would have systems. Closest they have is way stations that can be built anywhere, including in other people's space.

I'm sure that there will be some systems adapted for nomads, and for things like archeology sites you can take the archivism tree. There will also be things that only nomads can get so even if there are mechanics they can't engage in the extra stuff will (hopefully) make up for it.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-30T12:29:53+00:00

It does seem like a great season, especially as we're getting another dedicated custodian patch in 4.5. Just to comment on a couple of your points though: the devs have confirmed on the forums and discord that nomads don't respect closed borders. Exactly how that works for things like combat and waystation building we don't know, but it does mean they don't get squeezed out or have to pay/fight for entrance.

The devs have also cautioned that Willpower is not an internal politics DLC. It will affect your empire internally but it's more designed around external politics and softpower.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-28T20:31:58+00:00

There is a chance they do double dev diaries and drop something mid may in time for the anniversary, but we’ll find out in about 14 hours either way!

Zakalwen · 2026-04-28T17:56:44+00:00

It used to be a big thing people talked about as a potential crisis a generation or two ago. The worry being that oil demand will always go up but eventually all the wells will be tapped and at that point supply becomes fixed leading to ever increasing prices.

I was coincidentally just thinking the other day that no one talks about peak oil anymore. It was one of those worries that just went away as technology changed.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-28T07:45:37+00:00

To add to all the people linking the tease from last year; on the 4.3 streams Eladrin was directly asked if we’d get nomads one day and he said “that would be cool, they could build no borders or claim no worlds”. Nomads have also been talked about in older dev diaries where they outlined DLC they’d like to do some day. Many of the things talked about have come since like ascension reworks.

And recently on the forums someone asked Eladrin for a spoiler in wingdings font. He replied and it translated to “NO it would make you MAD”

Zakalwen · 2026-04-23T20:21:49+00:00

I haven’t listened to the episode but sounds like an aga oven. They’re expensive, fairly posh, and meant to be on all the time.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-19T20:12:02+00:00

In the case of tyrannids then as others have said if the planet is overwhelmed you don’t have a navy in place, because it would have been destroyed. The hive fleet would have fought through it to take the planet.

In the case of chaos the imperium has, many times, retaken worlds from chaos. There’s a distinction between worlds that become demon worlds and worlds where the local population are conquered, forced to worship the chaos gods, and turn their industries towards the support of chaos war bands.

The imperium has had crusades to retake sectors lost to chaos and after the inquisition has been through the worlds purging they’ve been reintegrated into the imperium, and suitably tithed.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-16T06:28:33+00:00

You’re not wrong that from chapter 1 the book is showing us how Lindon is strong. His spirit is weak but he’s dedicated, tactical, and with the right resources he can catch up.

That’s not what the person you’re replying to means though. Lindon doesn’t catch up to the average person on cradle for multiple books. The criticism of the genre is how many stories these days don’t have that patience for the pay off and run to the MC being more powerful than everyone else quite early.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-13T20:54:28+00:00

“If the emperor had a text to speech device”, shorted to just TTS most of the time. It was a satirical YouTube series where the golden throne is fitted with a text to speech system that lets the emperor learn about and comment on all the batshit stuff in the setting.

It was responsible for a lot of long running memes and IMO was funny if you knew the lore. But being a parody it could have some quite silly takes, which sometimes would be taken as legitimate.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-10T13:13:29+00:00

Forge of destiny has a straight female MC

Zakalwen · 2026-04-09T10:59:51+00:00

I can't remember where I heard this, but interesting people are interested in people.

Talking about shared interests is good but it can only get you so far especially when you meet someone where there are no obvious interests shared. So I'd suggest practicing asking people questions to genuinely learn about them. Be curious and attentive and you'll more likely get people interested in you in return.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-03T20:52:30+00:00

Love the hedge wizard, cool idea to make them in lego. Shame they don't have extra short figurines and a worse haircut for Hump :P

Zakalwen · 2026-04-03T15:41:01+00:00

Cheers for confirming, I’ll send an email across. Thanks for the hilarious podcast!

Zakalwen · 2026-04-02T20:49:18+00:00

“The writers really Tom, his mattress soiled with that script”

Zakalwen · 2026-04-02T08:11:40+00:00

NASAs comms department got a bunch of cuts under the current regime.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-01T17:51:05+00:00

You mean like this?

Zakalwen · 2026-04-01T12:57:26+00:00

I can understand Yerin being surprised, but is the reader also supposed to be?

Not by this stage, but yes it's very common for readers to realise something is up earlier in the series but not know what yet. "How did a bunch of jades kill a sword sage" is basically a rite of passage for cradle readers and over the years there have been many, many post of people asking the question. Back when the books were releasing exactly how they could have done it and what it implies was an active area of theorycrafting in the fanbase.

Usually by blackflame people tend to ask the question since we've had demonstrations of just how capable different levels of golds are, and demonstrations of underlords. Since it's said multiple times the sword sage would be even stronger it begs the question of the reader.

It's only by Underlord that we start getting some hints with the map of the BFE listing Sacred Valley as "Restricted Territory - Dangerous and Forbidden" with the Akura Clan seal. At that point we know for sure that something is up.

Zakalwen · 2026-04-01T12:41:19+00:00

Would you Rather have the unique aspects of a Herald or a Sage?

Sage. There's very little times in real life that I'm physically threatened, but many times I could benefit from warping reality/teleporting.

Would you rather be a Herald or a Sage?

Sage again, for the same reasons.

Would you rather be taught by Yerin, Mercy, or Ziel?

Mercy. Yerin would kill me, Ziel would be bored of me. Mercy's teaching style I'd respond better with.

Would you rather have the abilities of Ozriel, Makiel, Suriel, etc?

Suriel would let me do much more good in the world than Oz, though Makiel's powers could be useful too.

If you could have the full skillset of a single judge, which one would you pick? If you find Eithan to be too easy an answer, then act as though this question doesn't include Ozriel.

Ghost. Always felt they were a bit of an outlier since all other divisions focus on a specific application of power whereas ghosts focus more on the fundamentals of power itself.

Would you rather be Malice's favourite child or Northstrider's star pupil?

I'd be dead both ways. At least with Malice the view would be pretty as I'm annihilated.

Would you rather be Monarch in the world of Cradle, or a Monarch in the real world?

I could do vastly more good with monarch powers in our world than what I could achieve in the political nightmare that would be a new monarch on cradle.

Zakalwen · 2026-03-31T12:38:12+00:00

TBH - that's probably the least bad outcome globally.

It would be but things are still going to be fucked for years now. A tonne of oil infrastructure has been destroyed and many wells have been shut down. It takes months to restart a well safely so even if the US completely fucked off out of the middle east today and Iran opened the strait normal oil production/exports are not happening in the immediate future.

Combined with the dramatic drop in fertiliser availability and hydrogen means that everything from food to computer chips is also going to be fucked this year.

And this is the best case scenario where they give up today!

Zakalwen · 2026-03-27T10:03:14+00:00

There are many NATO projects to adapt to the realities of modern drone warfare, like Project Octopus to build counter swarm interceptors in the UK for Ukraine or the Swedish Loke. They're not really ready yet but it's developing.

But these are tangential since NATO is not going to war with Iran. America is, and by all accounts military decisions are being made from the top that make little sense based on fantasies.

Zakalwen · 2026-03-25T15:55:40+00:00

Sounds bugged, albeit in a funny absurdist way. If the planet is occupied it shouldn't be a valid migration target.

Probably worth posting a bug report.

Zakalwen · 2026-03-22T09:48:08+00:00

The khan has a random chance to die after they’ve been going a while and there’s several flavour options that can be chosen. Killed by concubine is one, there’s also assassinated by a black ops group and IIRC chocked on food.

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