Stellaris: Great Mosaic, Path of the Self & Ideological Paragons

The latest Stellaris developer diary, #439, continues the team's look at the new Ideologies system. It covers a society with room for more opinions, a civic about self-improvement and leaders with very little interest in compromise.

If you're planning your next empire, these details show how much the upcoming systems change your options. We break down each piece below, based on the official Dev Diary #439.

Great Mosaic Origin

Great Mosaic is the third and final Origin for Willpower, and the most straightforward. It puts you in charge of an ethically diverse society and gives you an additional Civic from the start of the game. Bringing everyone's hearts and minds into alignment is a little harder, but you get more tools to shape your empire.

With Galactic Administration, you can hold four Civics at once. Like Prosperous Unification, Great Mosaic is a mechanics-focused Origin, so there's no dedicated narrative or follow-up event chain. The top bar of the Factions panel also shows recent gains and losses in Pop Ethics, so you can see which beliefs are gaining ground.

Path of the Self Civic

Path of the Self is a new Fanatic Spiritualist Civic. It lets your empire pursue spiritual perfection through repeated cultivation, and you choose the type and magnitude.

• Spirit Cultivation: This Situation begins at game start and repeats. Each cycle requires more progress than the last, and you choose a bonus at the end of each.
• Mind: Improves Unity, Happiness and Stability.
• Body: Improves your leaders.
• Nerve Stapling: Can do both.

You can speed up Mind or Body cultivation through Meditation, a dynamic Planetary Decision. Be careful which colonies you pick, because it doubles the Amenity or Housing usage of all meditating Pops. Meditation also increases Ethics Attraction and Ideological Reach for empires with an Ideology.

Most Cultivation bonuses stack, though some have a maximum. The bonus to Effective Councilor Skill level can only be selected once. Several spiritual Civics also unlock special Cultivation options, such as improving the effectiveness of a Death Cult's sacrifices.

Ideological Paragons

Once you've built your Galactic Hall and adopted an Absolute Ethic, Ideological Paragons may offer their services. These leaders embody the most extreme ethical alignments, and adopting any degree of their opposing Ethic makes them leave. Even regular Materialism is enough to send the Spiritualist Paragon packing. There's one Paragon for each Ethic.

Empires with both Death Cult and Imperial Cult get two special Tenets to choose from. Because the Ideology is Spiritualist, it's called a Religion, but it uses the same mechanics as other Ideologies.

Next week's diary shows the Inquisitor shipset, followed by the Ambition. In the meantime, read our look at the Ideologies system from Dev Diary #436 and our Stellaris DLC tier list.