Paradox has released a video detailing everything that Stellaris players can expect from next week's Megacorp expansion, including a new world type and a set of "interstellar door-to-door" salesmen called Caravaneers.
In the expansion, due on December 6 (Thursday), you'll be able to control a megacorporation, and get access to new civics. You'll be able to build branch offices on another empire's planet, and then expand those offices with other buildings that will benefit both you and the empire whose planet you're building on, Paradox explains in the video (above).
The new Caravaneers are what most appeal to me: they're three new fleets of traders that will roam around the world wheeling and dealing. Some of the deals they'll offer you as they float past will be randomised, some will be preset. You'll also be able to visit a new home base of the traders where you can spend energy credits gambling for powerful items in "games of chance" or loot boxes.
Megacorp also adds a new planet type called an Ecumenopolis, described as "city planets" that can support huge populations. It will also add new mining, military and art megastructures as well as a galactic slave market that lets you buy human labour from slaver empires. You can set those slaves free and integrate them into your society, if you want.
The expansion will release alongside the free Le Guin update, which overhauls the way the game's economy works, adjusts trade routes and reworks the pirate system so that you'll have to better protect trading corridors. A new galactic market will let you buy and sell resources, with prices responding to supply and demand, and the planetary tile system will vanish, to be replace by a system of districts, buildings and jobs. Creating districts and buildings will create jobs, and they'll in turn generate resources.
You can find out more about all the features in the video at the top of this post. Megacorp will cost $20/£15.50, and the Steam page is here.
