Stellaris recently released its Shadows of the Shroud DLC, alongside the free “Lyra” update, introduces several new civics that can be used to customize your empire. Most of these civics are themed around the Shroud, psionics, and mental abilities. Some of them are only worth playing for the roleplaying element, while others might become staples. So as your people awaken to their true psychic potential, how should you channel their abilities?

Chosen

The Chosen civic is the most directly connected to the Shroud, that realm where beings of fathomless power reside and work to influence the material world. This civic grants you contact and attunement with one of four patrons at game start (though others exist): The Eater of Worlds, Composer of Strands, Cradle of Souls, and Instrument of Desire. Each of them rewards a different set of playthroughs. The Shroud can be accessed without this civic, and this civic doesn’t allow you to delve into the shroud early. But it does give you some unique bonuses in addition to the patron boons. The Cradle of Souls has the weakest effect of a 25 trust cap and one additional envoy. The Eater of Worlds grants +10% alloy production. The Composer of Strands offers +10% habitability, and the Instrument of Desire offers 1 additional max district. I anticipate this civic to become a staple, on account of its flexibility granted by those patrons and how strong some of their bonuses are if you have them at game start. This civic also gives you great unity production, additionally.

Entropy Drinkers

In Entropy Drinkers, your leaders—scientists, politicians, and governors gain power by siphoning energy from your population. You can increase both the benefits the leaders gain and the population growth reduction, and make your leaders either immortal, faster enactors of law, or more effectively skilled. The penalties for the optional edicts are incredibly harsh, and should not really be used in the early game. I would go so far as to suggest never activating Sanguine Council or Convergence of Will, except under a few circumstances. Energy Drinkers paired with a leader-focused strategy such as the Under One Rule Origin, where maintaining your luminary’s immortality is absolutely worth the penalties. Alternatively, with an origin like Clone Army where your population is capped, you can safely activate all the edicts. Lastly, if you have the Xeno-compatibility ascension perk, this civic might help you prevent your game from crashing.

Experimental Sentencing

The Experimental Sentencing civic lets you fulfill your Portal and SCP Foundation fantasies of running a cruel, clinical laboratory that sacrifices your population for science! Your Experimentation Chambers building grants two tiers of jobs that output research. You also get access to a situation where you can kill a certain number of test subjects in exchange for some insight on a technology. Unfortunately, the percent progress on a given technology is negligible compared to the population you lose. Much like Entropy Drinkers, the population cost is hard to justify, except when you have a capped population or ridiculous pop growth. Unlike Entropy Drinkers, however, nobody said your own population has to be test subjects. Maybe conquer some worlds in the name of science!

Secret Societies

Secret Societies is the ultimate espionage civic, which would be great if espionage was useful. It also grants you earlier access to Proxy Wars, which you can use to make an empire that you’ve infiltrated or allied with attack another one. Secret Societies, much like the existing Cybernetic Creed origin, also provides an alternative slate of factions. These synergize with diplomacy, the galactic community, or clandestine operations. The biggest issue with the Secret Societies civic has to do with the strategies it benefits. Diplomatic weight, which the Masquerade faction benefits, scales intrinsically better by investing in your economy, military, or developing more technology. Those are useful beyond the galactic community, however. And operations, aside from starting a proxy war, are a mere annoyance for the victim, while they are risky and costly for the empire initiating it. Furthermore, the actual benefits of the factions are far less valuable than the unity output of normal factions. The Trust Growth granted by The Grand Dance faction is nice, but rarely matters. The Curtain has the greatest benefit of the increased operation speed, but without consequential operations, it’s not very useful.

Superstitious Beliefs

With the Superstitious Beliefs civic, your civilization believes that the galaxy operates on thirteen year cycles. During these, certain actions are favorable to undertake and others are inadvisable. Of the cycles I’ve gotten early game, the cycle of growth has been the nicest for expansion given its reduction of outpost build costs. The cycle of conflict is rather harsh to get as a starting cycle, given its unity and stability reduction. Most cycles are more positive than negative, and a decently skilled Chief Medium can negate most of the drawbacks. Even so, I don’t think this civic is strong enough to take beyond thematic reasons.

Tankbound

The Tankbound Civic grants you a unique form of starting automation, where your rural districts, and thus your basic resource output is fully automated. This comes with some heavy downsides—your tankbound population has some increased amenities needs and reduced population growth. That, combined with your low starting population, means you need to be strategic about where you use your population. But since your basic resource needs ignore population, this drawback doesn’t hurt so badly. I think Overturned is the best origin for this, as you can safely negate the growth penalty, and further improve your species’ ability as specialists through automodding.

Conclusion

I hope you have a better understanding of the new civics released in Shadows of the Shroud. Even though not every civic will be a meta, must-pick for multiplayer, this release has a nice mix of thematically and mechanically unique abilities to choose from, and I will be playing with them more extensively in the future.

What about you? Do you agree or disagree with my impressions of these civics? Is one of them secretly overpowered in a specific niche? Let us know in the comments below or go over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

Featured Image: Paradox Interactive

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