Change notes continued:


Origins:
The Quaggan no longer have "Imperial Fiefdom" as their origin, as this was spawning lots of empires that were unrelated to the theme of the mod. They are now from an ocean paradise (also planned for the largos when added)
The Tengu (Angchu) have lost the "Common Ground" origin, for the same reason as above, and gained "Galactic Doorstep" instead. Thematic reason here is a little weak, but it's mostly just there for coverage.
The Dwarves (Deldrimor) are no longer subteranean. Their stint underground, it seems to me, was not that long compared with the full duration of their society and they are not explicitly stone dwarves in the mod anyway. The mod also has far too many subteranean species in the first place which kinda messes with the planetary art. Two users I don't mind, that adds some interesting comraderie/tension - more than that, no. (The two users are dredge and skritt)
The Elemental Thralldome now has an origin, "Under One Rule" from the new Paragons Stellaris DLC.
The Sylvari (valiants) now have an origin, the "Fruitful Partnership" origin from the Platnoids DLC update
The Asura have swapped "Galactic Doorstep" for "Mechanist" which I now feel is more quintessentially representative of the Asura experience (their golems, rather than their gates)
The Stone Sunmmit have lost the "Mechanist" Origin (which was vaguely representing the iron forgeman before) since the Asura have it covered better.
The Destroyers are no longer "Subtereanean" and instead have "Calamitous Birth" which I feel is simply far more fitting for Terravores, wasn't being used, and again - many underground dwellers anyway.
The Black Lion Trading Company have gained "Shattered Ring" as an origin. The reason for this is firstly coverage, but secondly that they are an empire/species that doesn't have a very tight pairing with their previous world classification (continental, of which the pack has many) so it's ok for the origin to swap them to the ring. I would really like to do either the Jotun or Orrians as this origin also, but the Jotun are one of the few Tundra species that fit perfectly and the Orrians I think I'm more excited about bringing into the mod as they existed PRE catalcysm.
The Krait have gained the Origin "On the Shoulders of Giants". Now I've not actually played this one - and I'm not sure what it really means for a super story heavy origin too appear on an AI empire anyway - but it sounds kind of appropriate from what I've read online. Let's say that this story is connected to the Krait prophets? I think that's a fair head canon, and it hopefully gives their home system some more intruige when observed as a third party.
The Hylek have lost "Doomsday" because, as funny as it was, as they have more than enough going on now (see civic changes below) and doomsday is perfect for the upcoming ancient orrians empire.

Civics:
The Risen have lost "Strength of Legions" and gained the new "Cordyeptic" which fulfills the "zombie" fantasy much better, in my opinion (and wasnt used yet by the mod!)
The Feudal Grawl Tribes have lost "Pleasure Seekers" (Of which there were 3 empires all using it already) in favour of the new "Ascensionists" civic from utopia (which wasn't being used).
The Norn have lost "Environmentalist" (Of which there were FIVE using already!) and gained the new "Heroic Past" civic from Galactic Paragons which is such a perfect match it's almost impossible to believe. Their council position is "Storyteller" and everything.
The Kodan have lost "Environmentalist" also and gained the new "Crusader Spirit" civic from Galactic Paragons which is an extremely good match. "The lack of guidance creates weak minds - which easily succumb to corruption and plunge into decadence. This society has assumed the self-imposed mantle of bringing "enlightenment" to the masses through aggressive proselytizing."
The harpies have lost "Merchant Guilds". While I still like the idea of them selling their love potions, I think giving them the new "Mutagenic Spas" civic is just too perfect. "This civilization engages in ritualistic mutagenic bathing, with professional attendants overseeing the use of highly dangerous substances. This 'invigorating' process may appall uninitiated onlookers." The council position is "Warden of the Baths" too.
The consortium have lost "Ruthless Competition" which was always a little ill matched for them and gained the new and much more fun "Corporate Hedonism"
The quaggan have lost "Diplomatic Corps" (which the jotun also already have) and have gained "Anglers". Why did they not have this in the first place? Council position as "Minister of the seas" is very cool.
- Their name has updated from the fairly generic "Systems Alliance" to "Varanos Fisheries"
The elemental thralldom have lost "Police State" (which overlapped with the mursaat who fit it better) and gain the new and as yet unused "Oppressive Autocracy".
The Sylvari have lost "Environmentalist" (which was already also in sue by the avengers of the echovald) and gained the new first contact civic "Eagre Explorers" which wasn't in the mod before. This was a little tough, as "Environmentalist" does at first glance seem to fit the sylvari well. But why mostly? Just because they are plants and seek to protect tyria from the dragons? Their environmentalism doesn't actually define them particularly more than many elements of Gw2 lore, and certainly not to the fanatical extent of the wardens. But a thirst for exploration I think does define the sylvari very well.
Abaddons Chosen have lost "Free Haven". I'm not sure why they ever had it, really. Back when there were fewer civics to pick perhaps? They now have the new "Vaults of Knowledge" civic which wasn't represented by the mod before, is a fun one, and in terms of theme is perhaps losely connected with the lost temple of the six, the atrocity library, and all the purging of knowledge the gods did when they cast the margonites down.
The stone summit have lost "mining guilds". I know this feels like a big thematic hit, but I want to differentiate them from the deldrimor who are also mining guilds, and there are also the dredge using it too. In exchange the stone summit pick up "corvee system" which fits with their authoriatian, slaving ways. Let's think of it this way - they do appreciate mining, but they have their slaves do it for them, and want the right to specific precisely where. With this change, corvee system is now in the mod (it had been missing for a few patches).
The Veldrunner Alliance have lost "Philosopher King" (which is already in use by the Jotun) and have gained the new Lithoid civic from the DLC update "Selective Kinship", which wasn't used by the mod.

Other:
Fixed a bug where the Choya were speaking like krait
Cleaned up the namelist selection list UI to be consistent with stellaris
The Ruling Warden is now "Tetra Earthcall" instead of the "Warden of Planets".
- The Ruler Title is now "Supreme" which will read in game as "Supreme Warden of the X", heirs are "Mighty"
- (I would love tht title to be "Warden of planets" but this would result in weirdness in game like the ruler being refered to as the "Warden of Planets Warden of Frost" or whatever.
- The government description has been updated to suite
The "Drenched" are now led by "The Kraken". They're no longer elder dragon themed at all. Soo-Won will lead the upcoming dragnvoid empire.
The Quaggan government ruler title is now "Markissios", the canonical title of the quaggan leader (before they were murdered prior to the events of gw2)
The Skritt now have a custom "Swarm Intelligence" government
The Sylvari ruler title is now "Luminary" not "First Born".

And that's it for now! Largos are next on my radar.

Updated for 3.9
Fixing bugs and cleaning up error log.
One change since Galactic Paragons - rulers are no longer a class of their own, but can be any other leader type. So this has meant for some fun new stuff in the mod to go through and define,
like that Lord Jadon of the Margonites is specifically an Admiral, while Arachnia of the Dryders is a General, and so on. There is a column detailing this on the spreadsheet. What is also possible now is to curate the exact starting traits rulers have, but I've not gone that far yet. It is likely that I'll be redoing again very soon as the Custodian team has already announced another rework to leader classes, but this was a fun update for me to do in the interim.


Namelists:
Once again Paradox changed the back-end for how namelists work and in order to fix an issue with leader names, I had to restructure the whole lot. While I was at it I've made a bunch of new namelist updates. FARR too many to list. But:
- Every name has been reviewed and all the namelists are bulkier (particularly so for the four main races: Charr, Asura, Norn and Sylvari. Charr for example have gone from 15 quick planet names to 70 carefully thought about ones).
- My name-lists used to be pretty stingy about only including things explicitly in guild wars lore, which left some empires feeling thin. So to fill out the namelists far more satisfactorily I've opened the door a little to include names/phrases that are simply on theme. Eg. the awakened whose names are all very ancient egyptian feeling, I've found ancient egyptian names IRL and transposed some fitting ones (and large language models have been useful for this!).
- I've changed the way some empires character names roll. I used to take recognisable first names (say, Crecia) and second names (say, Whetstone) and they would randomly match up - so you could end up with a "Crecia Whetstone". this has some novelty, but you were far more likely to find these random mixups than ever get a true "Crecia stoneglow" or "rox whetstone" in your empire. So now you can get randomly generated pairings AND also I've curated special lists of specific characters you might find. The real crecia is out there, you just have to get lucky and find her.
- Another good example of where this is useful is with a race like the destroyers. I can have the [destroyer of] [words/bone/sinew/souls/etc] setup for most hires, but some can still be just "Ignis" or "Pyroxis" or "Obsidian Destroyer" or whatever special thing.
- All empires have special names defined for gaia worlds
- Many planet names were very generic before. For example the awakened naming a place "Vabbi" because that's a location under their control in Gw2. But what if vabbi appears on another empire or is randomly generated as a star? So I wanted to be more specific. It'd now be "Awakened Vabbi" or refer to tarr or bones or egypt or whatever. Too many examples of this to list. The foefire empire won't just create an "Ascalon city" it will create a "HAUNTED ascalon" - you get the picture.
- Now that the Golem uprising is it's own empire, all the GOLEM sounding names for ships etc amongst the asura namelist have been swapped for other asuran devices instead.
- The heket (consortium) have lost their references to shopping/malls - they're a mafia, not a trading empire.
- In the continuing interest in making empires as distinct as possible, and to make space for a potential ancient orr empire, many of the orrian location names have been swapped for zombie/rot/death themed names in the risen list.


Spreadsheet changes:
I no longer list required DLCs for each empire to show up, as there is so much mix-and-matching going on it's very difficult to maintain. Sorry!
I'm moving over to using "Notes" for additional cell information rather than the "comments" system (which will continue to be used as a proper way for you guys to comment/suggest things about the mod!). Not a big deal, this just standardises my methodology with how I use sheets for other projects (stellaris mods and otherwise).
A new "Coverage" master sheet has been added, which tracks which vanilla civics and origins are covered and used by various empires in the mod.
The upcoming feature for species traits has changed a little and shrunk in scope. It will now be ONE unique positive trait and ONE negative. This is less to implement (woo!) means the traits can be more defining (woo!) and means less burdensome reading when actually in game (woo!).
The concept of various human empires (like canthan krytan etc) has been done away with. The idea was always a little boring to me at best (a bunch of human empires.. big deal) and let's face it I'm updating this mod irregularly enough that it'd be a long time before I made these, if ever. I've kept 2 ideas for now though of particular fun - ancient orrians and "utopians" (the latter of whom would be fairly fan fictiony I acknowledge).

Glint Starholds Removed:
For the first time I've actually gone and removed an empire. It's the exalted one. Their existence felt much more justified when the pack was revolving around the idea of six super-buffed elder dragon swarms taking over the galaxy, and the exalted were like the rogue servitor defenders of that. But with the actual Gw2 moving on from the elder dragons as the be-all-end all, and as this pack swells to include so much other rich stuff, no longer seeks to balance the EDs as super strong, suddenly the exalted stand out as a sore thumb. On a visual level, they have no good equivelant portrait within stellaris so have looked kind of buggy for ages. And when it comes to their lore I mean, really, there isn't enough. They are a bit of stray human lore (already in use), a bit of stray dwarf lore (already in use), and ultimately have like 2 city/locations to be inspired about. So while I was writing their namelist this go around, and I struggled to imagine various exalted ship types beyond the theme "gold", and their character names, and their planets, and so on, I just figured - the truth is these guys aren't that distinct. And they aren't the kind of empire that would make anyone say "oh wow amazing" in the first place. They're sort of emblematic of a lot half baked "new" societies since season 1 and beyond. So I've cut them. We can find a superior "rogue servitor" in the future.

Secrets of the obscure updates!
The forgotten empire is now led by the enigmatic "Vass" from the new story stuff. Josso Esher, their former leader, is available in their ruler pool instead.
The Government of "Bloodstone's Curtain" is no longer a "Relic Committee" but instead "The Wizard's Court".
Seers now have a proper name for their ruler, thanks to the new Secrets of the Obscure lore! - They're led by Isgarren, their ruler title is "Doyen" and Sidony and Foghos have joined their ranks of leaders. As explained in the namelist seciton above, many of their locations and ships have been updated also.
Their system is now "Amnytas" instead of "the Shining Blade" and their planet is now "The World Spire" instead of "Shadowstone".
Start screen lore and empire description updated, also.
- Additional to this, the Elemental Thralldone (Led by Verata) are no longer from the Wizards tower, but simply Kessex peak (system) and "Verata's Exile" instead of Garenhoff (planet). Their empire description etc has changed to no longer reference Isgarren or anything to do with the wizards tower.
- I would like to maybe make a bigger rework to them in the future whereby we have a dedicated earth elemental empire and second empire for verata's that is filled with undead/fleshreavers/minions, as the current paradigm doesn't make much sense anymore. We know Verata had nothing to do with the garenhoff elementals. In preparation for this the references to verata have been stripped out of the earth thralldoms namelist.

Minor update containing nothing but improvements to army names. I implemented these while transcribing mod details to the public spreadsheet, where all army names are now easily visible. If people have ideas for any of them just right click the cell and I'll make your change.

3.5 Support
Paradox created some annoying changes to army namelists, requiring a lot of maintenance to swap over. There were many hours of work to port this stuff to the new paradox system, but the up side is I am feeling more creative after a four month break and have implemented many missing armies while i'm at it (too many to list, but several army sets are fleshed out, literally hundreds of unique army names).
A huge focus was put on the defensive armies, because these are always visible on the planet screen and I want those to be as diverse and rich and flavourful as different.
Some other namelist oddities should be improved:
Oddities such as the "Seer seer corvette" are corrected
Many fleets now use roman numerals to list their numbers, just to mix things up. Usually it's the more ancient races (eg seers) doing this.
Older races have been updated to respect the inclusion of newer ones. For example, the sylvari empire had "Wardens" as their defence armies, which is cool and makes sense - until the wardens arrived as their own dedicated empire.
Added a special exception for the dryders so their undead armies will be named, as they start with dread encampments. Undead dryders are the "Skeletal Spiderlings"

Overlord integration:
The dredge, destroyers and dwarves have become subteranean! This is not only very fitting, but also means lots of fun new city art as well as origins for empires not using them before. The downside is that the destroyers are no longer terravors, but don't worry, once the titans are added to the pack they will fill that role. Asura have not been given this because I feel galactic doorstep (asura gates) is much more fitting.
The Kodan and the Mursaat have become teachers of the shroud! This again, will mean a much more diverse galaxy as well as two species additions to empires that lacked them. The mursaat suggestion was from calder on the spreadsheet, so thanks for that.
The Chak have gained the "Progenitor hive" origin. As the (currently) only non genocidal hive mind in the pack, they are the only chance to use this one.
The consortium have gained "Slingshot to the stars". I can't think of a more fitting place for this feature, it's nice to have on a megacorp I suppose.
The precious little opressable quaggan have gained the "imperial fiefdom" origin. Poor things, but one day they will be free.

Toxoid Integration:
The new "Relentless industrialists" civic is perfect for the charr! They have lost "cutthroat politics" which was only somewhat fitting before.
The new "Scavengers" civic is perfect for the skritt! They have lost meritocracy.
The Margonites have gained the "Knights of the toxic god" origin. I haven't actually played this one, but I always liked the idea of margonites being both ocean and tomb world, and I feel like this is a nice compromise as well as even more galaxy diversity and new content. If anyone has a better idea for this origin, let me know!
The toxoid shipset and cityscapes have been added to the charr and golem uprising. Later, the afflicted will get them too.
The dredge, who were previously represented by especially ugly static art, now have a decent portrait representative with full animations from toxoids! It's not quite a mole, I know, but the shape is there.
No idea on how to use toxic baths (civic), overtuned (origin) or any of the traits. I am open to ideas.

Other:
"On the shoulders of giants" was the last old origin not in the mod pack yet, I've given it to the krait - think of their prophets.

Default stellaris empires have returned! After my break, i've changed my mind and think it should be the mod users choice to remove other stuff, I don't think it's appropriate for this mod to include that decision. So go grab a seperate paradox prescripted empire removal mod if you want just tyrians!

New Empire: The Harpies!
(These guys are not 100% implemented yet, but are a good way there.)
First thing on your mind I'm sure, yes - the harpies have custom audio and they will scream "flock to me" at you, among other things.

The most special thing about the harpies is their use of the doomsday origin. This was pitched a while back on the spreadsheet and is an idea I really loved, considering AI empires often used to struggle dealing with this origin and would blow themselves up. 3.3, however, explicitly fixes some AI behaviour related to this origin so who knows? Perhaps the harpies will be your most intimidating galactic neighbour!

The story of these harpies is that they are desperate for love and pushing their harpy love pheremones on the galaxy. As such! These guys have become the representatives for the "Merchant Guilds" civic. The quaggan had it last patch, but it was a little unfitting (they were selling fish) so they have moved to "diplomatic corps" to emphasise their amenable nature.

A weird thing I'm trying is giving the harpies the Adjective of "Skree". Hopefully it comes across well in game and not too confusing, I'd be interested in anyone playing this letting me know on that.

There are several other elements to them, these guys are essentially a blend of guild wars 1 and guild wars 2 harpies at the same time. I don't really find them distinct enough between the two games to draw a big comparison.


Other Changes:
The centaurs mistakenly had "doomsday" last release, this is removed.
Several typo fixes in personality text.
The dredge personality has changed from referring to them as "communist" to "Grudge-holding". Communism should have been referred to in their government description, not their personality.
The ogre personality has changed from "Brutal Pet Tenders" to "Brutal Pet Fanatics". The word "Tenders" already appeared on a personality description for the Forgotten, and besides I think "Fanatics" is a more accurate comment on Ogre nature.
Krait home-world is now "The Larder" it was previously the "Unending Depths" but now that the mod-pack contains so many denizens of that environment it feels weird that the krait and krait alone get that homeworld name.
The Exalted home-world has become "Tarir", not "Kesho". From my recent PoF playtrhough it's clear to me how much smaller in scope kesho was (a nursery) than tarir (a city). So let's not get fancy.
The chak homeworld has become "The Great Ley-Line" which I think is more fitting than the boring "Chak Stronghold", even if that is technically a place of great chak activity in Gw2 to reference.
The Angchu homeworld and system name have swapped. I think I always want the coolest name on the planet, and the more generic name on the star. Just feels better to me when in game.
The Asura homeworld and system have likewise swapped. This makes both "Mecha Sum" of the golem uprising and "Rata Sum" of the Asura both Capital worlds, instead of mis matched.
The warden of planets is now female since out of 41 empires a really huge majority of them are male. Ideally I'd like to make some of them gender non-specified (such as the elder dragons, a few plant empires) but I'm hitting errors so I'll leave it.
The Charr now spend a little more on their military rather than their colonies.

Properly updated the mod to 3.2.2 game version to remove the yellow !.

The Angchu and the forgotten actually had identical civics. To pull them apart and use more game features, the tengu have lost "Parliamentary system" as the sociology side of it feel more fitting with the forgotten, the creators of the altar of glaust. Then the angchu have dropped materialism and picked up egalitarism, then gaining "beacon of liberty" which was not included in the pack before.
All these changes made the anchu a military commissariat, instead of an assembly of clans, so they have now gained a new custom government with special lore. "The Clans of the Four Winds", a male leader is the "Fire Hawk", the female is "Ice Hawk", and their heirs are first-sparrows and robins.

Added a unique room for the wardens, based on End of Dragons concepts, which I had forgotten to do on the previous patch.

New empire:
The Avengers of the Echovald Warden empire has arrived!
- They are democratic. There isn't much lore for the Wardens in Guild Wars so this is a wildcare slot, I've picked democratic because they are the least represented authority in the pack so far. Open to suggestions.
- They are fanatically xenophobe and militarist, which fits how they act in Guild Wars 1 very well and aren't over-represented ethics in the pack yet.
- Their civics are idyllic bloom (a feature from plantoids DLC not used yet) and environmentalist. Environmentalist probably fits the wardens above all other races in the pack, but the civic is already being used in lots of places. In accordance, several other empires have actually lost this civic and gained new options. Information on that below.
- Their species traits include sedentary (no one in the entire pack used this yet!), slow breeders (no one in the entire pack used this either!), phototropic (no one on this again! Though the sylvari also gain this this patch) and venerable, which they share with the ogres.
- These guys use explosive weaponry, which I quite like as a sort of odd-vibe from plant people. But also, any maybe more importantly, explosive empires are currently under-represented in the mod. So more is good!
- The Wardens also come with a custom empire, the Agrarian Conservatorship, ledge by a Hedge-Wizard or Hedge-Witch and it's heirs are known as Saplings (a little clue to the Sylvari here).
- Warden dialogue makes many references to their interesting naming schemes, with different Wardens representing different natural phenomenons chiming in where relevant. I was dreading writing this dialogue, but it came naturally after all!
- There is a known issue with the wardens, due to the way that the plantoids were coded, these guys will sound like Choya. Kinda sucks but without a lot of back-end gutting of a lot of stuff I'm just going to leave it. It's a single empire out of the whole pack with a slightly odd voice. I'm going to learn to live with that.


Updated to stellaris game version 3.3:
- I just updated the version number, as far as I know I don't need to make any custom changes to accomodate for any of the new features, as great as they up.
- There was a fantastic change this patch which means empires follow their preferred weapons in personality much better, though, so expect the various Tyrian factions to feel extra distinct! Good one paradox.

Namelist Lore Changes:
Fixed an error in the destroyer regnal names
Destroyer planets have been reworked, now instead of just listing a place destroyers could be found in Guild Wars games they are given fiery names to suggest what a planet overrun by destroyers would really be like. Also added ragefire class corvettes
Many new much cooler drenched planet names have been added

Empire Personality changes:
I've taken the time to review and re-type absolutely every single value related to AI behaviour this patch. Every empires trade willingness, aggression, combat bravery, hull / shield / armour ratios, commercial pact acceptance, border friction... and so much more. As a result of this I've ironed out a completely ridiculous amount of numbers that never got a pass and introduced a lot of fun new stuff. For example the asura will be really gung-ho for research pacts now, where they weren't before. Joko and the awakened will cut deals like non aggression pacts more than before. The norn are bravery and open to defense pacts. Also, perhaps significantly, I fixed some of the hull ratios that were way too skewed in my opinion. It was WAY too much to document all the changes, so just have a look at the new page on the spreadsheet to see the results!

AI behaviour changes:
I took a close look at all the custom personality behaviours this patch too, which had been also been glossed over on first pass. I now understand the tools much better. One thing newly defined for every empire is "attack neutrals" which, before doing this manually, it was difficult to tell which behaviour the ai was adopting.


The changes are too many to type here (again), but just as an example the Kodan alone received:
Kodan will now liberate vassalised empires.
Kodan will no longer uplift primitives, attack those already at war, nor give rights to robots (robots are unnatural and thus out of balance!).
Some changes were really important for lore, such as the dredge who before would not use robots for labour. Given their collaboration with the inquest and their tanks, etc, this felt very wrong. Ghosts will no longer enslave, this never really happened in guild wars lore for the ascalonians pre or post foefire. The Mursaat will no longer fight the end game crisis, just like how they fled from the elder dragons in Gw2 lore! Everything has been meticulously checked. Check the spreadsheet for full details and to give me feedback and improve it if you want.

Personality name changes:
Some personalities previously lacked a characterising adjective and weren't completely fitting. So they have all gained one now:
Exalted Dragon Defence Forces > Paranoid Dragon Resistors
Centaur Slaving Horse-Lords > Territorial Horse-Lords
Hylek Sun Worshipping Toads > Pious Sun Worshippers
Deldrimor Dwarvern Crafters > Stout-Hearted Craftsmen

Other Changes:
I believe that as of this patch every single standard empire and hive-mind civic now exists in the mod! If you play a galaxy with all Tyrian empires at once you'll see everything stellaris has to offer on the civic front. Only some megacorp civics and robot empire civics are missing, but I don't want to spam the pack with these empire varieties anyway.

Fixed a bug in the localisation for the dredge heir title (comissar)
The choya have lost "communal", gained "budding" and "deviants".
The choya have gained the "post apocalyptic" origin. This makes their radiotrophic trait more meaningful, removes one of the over-represented tropical worlds, and creates some tension between them and the other tomb world empire, arachnias dryders, who they could now compete for land with. And besides, who doesn't love the fantasy of post apocalyptic cactus people? It's almost better than sentient cockroaches from a nuked earth!
The sylvari traits have changed. They have gained "Phototropic" and lost "Resilient" which was heavily over-represented and didn't match the sylvari much in the first place. They have also gained "Talented" trait which stellaris describes as "BORN with a natural aptitude", sounds like a perfect match to the sylvari dream to me. They have also lost solitary, because they no longer need a negative trait and this was ill fitting anyway.
The Grawl now favour explosives, not kinetics, to add more balance to weapon varieities in the mod pack.
The hylek have lost "trading posts" because it was moving them away from the preferred government "Megachurch". They gain corporate Hedonism instead.
The quaggan have lost environmentalist (over-represented) and gained merchant guilds (did not exist in the pack until now)
The Mursaat have traded "inward perfection" for "pompous purists". The flavour text for these civics pretty much explains why:
"This calm and pacifist society has little use for strangers who do not understand their way of life. More than anything, they would prefer to be left alone." - inward perfection
OR "A society so utterly convinced of their own superiority, that any attempt at diplomacy not initated by themselves will be utterly ignored." - Pompous purists
The awakened have lost police state and gained imperial cult. Police state works for them, but is on three other empires already. Imperial cult, however, wasn't in the pack yet and has a perfect description - this empire worships their leader as a living god!
There are 1 or 2 more changes this patch, but I've ran out of space to describe them in these change notes. I'll just add those last notes to the next release, 0.94, even though they're already in!

Custom governments have arrived!
- Functionally these new Governments have next to no differing impact on game mechanics so will not affect anything except lore and flavour
- Custom governments allow me to assign specific male / female ruler and heir titles, give a custom government name and description.
- This fixes various incongruences in previous versions of the mod. For example, in the last patch I had given the Deldrimor dwarves the perfect authority, ethics and civics for their empire, but that caused them to be assigned a government by the game that wasn't appropriate. In game, when you met the Deldrimor, you would find "Archprophet Jalis Stonehammer", instead of a king. In another example, leader of the Charr would be an emperor, which is fine - but what I really want is something more custom, them to be a Khan-Ur with their heirs as Imperators/Imperatrixes. In a third example, the leader of the Asura is now properly a high councillor (as in High Councillor Flax) with their heirs as professors.
- This patch adds roughly 12 new custom Tyrian governments to not just correct these issues, but actually go heavier on the lore! Adelbern is a Ghost-King now, the female heir to the deldrimor throne is a depths-princess, The Seer leader is a Bloodstone-Arbiter from a relic committee, and so on. Check the spreadsheet for full details and to make your own suggestions.
- These governments are tailor made for the specific tyrian empires, and won't appear or contaminate player or randomly generated empires.

Other Changes:

The dredge empire name has had it's typo corrected in the word "Moletariate"

Custom start screen text has arrived for the awakened and the dredge. A new page is open on the spreadsheet for people to submit their ideas. I'd love all of the empires to have one in the end, even if it's just a very short sentence.

Several empires have new ship graphics for even more variety! The shipset is the imperial set, from the nemesis expansion. While this is a cool change that makes the mod even more varied and cool as you'll see different starbases and vessels around, it will mean that if you don't own the nemesis DLC these empires will now be unplayable. Ultimately it has always been my method to cross polinate and use as much DLC content as possible, so I'm happy to do this. The empires with new imperial graphics are:
- Summit slaving pens (to further differentiate them from the deldrimor dwarves)
- The skies above the sky (to differentiate them from the united angchu flocks)
- The Consortium Space (this feels like a flavour appropriate match)
- And the unseen space(mursaat) (this also feels like a flavourful match)
- Additionally, one of the new empires (the harpies) next patch will use this ship graphical culture.

The seers have gained the "remnants" origin, which previously wasn't represented by the pack and feels very fitting.

The Heket namelist was previously incomplete without my realising it, all their ruler/leader as well as planet names were using the sensali skies above the sky (tengu) names. They now have complete leader names that are based on Gw1 heket, and Gw2 itzel lore. I also was feeling super inspired about their planet namelists, which have a gained a bunch of frog, itzel, heket and shopping references all over.

Some corrections made inside the icebrood namelist to certain military stations as well as regnal names in case the icebrood somehow become a monarchistic government form.

All awakened regnal ruler second names will now be of the Ossa or Joko line. They also may now have Junundu class battleships, and "Ancient Junundu" class Collosi. Lastly, their fleet names are now the "Wurm Corps" which is something I wanted to add from PoF lore for a while now and one of their corvette classes have become mummys.

The summit slaving pens government has been corrected to a despotic hegemony, as was originally intended with their authority ethics and civics. This stops them overlapping with arachnias terrorweb, who are the real despotic empire and makes their initial ruler "Overlord Dagnar Stonepate".


In addition to the ruler titles and government changes above, many initial ruler names have been changed:
Molenin, the starting ruler of the dredge has become Shukov
"Vekk" has become "Flax" considering that so much of the Asura in this modpack are Guild Wars 2 influenced, this feels fitting. Vekk is still in the namelist, and may become leader or a scientist or military general - so you won't miss out on his flavour. Added gadd, taimi, blish, phlunt and gorrik to the namelist too, they were missing and can now be playable characters in your empire.
"Luminate" has become "Herta". Luminate remains in the mod, now as a proper title for the ruler rather than awkwardly baked into the name.
MOX to M.O.X
Mallyx to Mallyx the Unyielding
Jonkor of the Ogres to Otyugh
Bonfaaz burntfur to Bangar ruinbringer (to make space for a full flamelegion empire later, bonfaaz will be in their namelist)
"Dagnar Stonepate" of the Deldrimor Master Crafters (WOOPS!) has correctly become Jalis Ironhammer
The generic "Seer" ruler has become known as the slightly less generic "Seer Supreme"
"The Avatar" has become "Trahearne" (In game this would previously read as "co-ordinator the avatar" which made no sense as a ruler title. Trahearne I've picked because I have no plans for a "Pact" faction in the mod, and of all the firstborn he feels somehow the most appropriate. I also considered scarlet but it feels a little ill lore fitting)
The "Toxic Prophet" Krait leader has changed to "Ensolyss of the Endless Torment"
"Mister E" from the consortium has changed to "Kaana Miatli". I just didn't like my previous idea in practice. There aren't exactly any great heket names to pick in lore, so I've gone with Kaana, who is the leader of Jaka Itzel in heart of thorns.
"Xshhh Shhh" the has become "Hanasha Coralfin", one of the only named naga in lore. This one is particularly tricky because we have so few naga names, and yet their government title is "Chairman" which really fits best with a proper noun. His gender is swapped too (So she is Chairwoman)
The "Gerent" has become the "Chak Gerent"


The Chak empire has been renamed to "Hive of the Crown" this touches on some lore suggestions that the "crowns" of the chak are the actual leaders, and also removes "chak" species name from the empire name, which is a plus to me.

(9.0 Changenotes continued, ran out of space in previous block. Read the lower update notes first! It's all the same patch)

The choya and quaggan portraits have been been shrunk as they were ridiculously oversized.
The dredge flag icon has changed to that iconic one with the sickle.
The golem empire flag icon has changed to a better technical looking one which I originally wanted but couldn't figure out how to do.
The drenched flag icon has changed to a really amazing one which I also wanted but couldn't figure out how to do in the domination category.
The grawl personality is now "idolizing simians", and the grawl portrait has been cleaned up somewhat (lots of white pixels removed)
The consortium empire has new colours, the old ones were the same as another empire and not bespoke.
The margonites now have new more appropriate colours and a better flag background.
The Asura portrait has returned. The quality on this one isn't too bad, and I didn't like that using the animated portrait was calling them "aquatic".
The Krait now have a unique room, depicting the unending ocean, the obelisks and their general wooden rigging.
All the custom rooms are now available at empire creation, if players want to use them. I hadn't updated this aspect of the mod in a LONG time so it's like 30 new rooms available.
Two ugly kodan portraits were removed.
Some over sized skritt portraits were shrunk.
The ogre empire has been renamed to the "beastheart kraaldom". Mostly becuase I don't like the redundancy of always having the species name in the country name, if people have better ideas please submit them!
One of the sylvari portraits (now being used as the default leader, based on some classic sylvari concept art) has been resized and had white spots removed.

Arachnia's Terrorweb, the Despotic empire has arrived
- The terrorweb are the first and only empire in the pack to feature the post apocalyptic origin
- I can see the case for making these guys genocidal, but with the elder dragons and ghosts of ascalon I feel the galaxy has enough already.
- That said, these guys aren't exactly friendly! They will go wide, fast, and make slaves of their neighbours.
- Fanatic xenophobe (only third empire out of nearly fourty to have this characteristic!)
- Reanimators (no one else has this, I like it for the dread encampments of spiders which calls back to the "terror" and fear in the dryder names. Also the idea of Arachnia raising leviathans to fight for her is cool. In a world where grenth/dhuum get their own empires I can see the civic going to them, but they aren't planned. The awakened have another flavour of necroid gameplay already.)
- Aristocratic elite (no one else has this, and I like the idea of decadent spiders living in noble estates)

- The dryder namelist is an interesting one. What little arachnia and dryder lore exists is minimal. And much of arachnias stuff ends up like realm of torment stuff, already covered by the margonites. So I went with the idea of making custom spider stuff, mixed with as much dryder gw2 information as possible. To this end I found an old non-updated workshop mod that included a spider namelist from launch, updated it, culled a lot of it away, mixed with my ideas, and voila there is a pretty special and cool namelist to these guys that feels more detailed than many of the other empires in the pack! Many thanks to thegreyprophet in 2018 whose base I used (they also wrote a centipede namelist).

- The terrorweb favour strike-craft. I mean, come on, they are a swarm. Little spider ships everywhere is just too awesome.
- By the way, the official game beta for 3.3 includes some AI improvements that makes this weapon preference even more meaningful by having it affect their tech tree choices! Super cool.
- Like the "ancient empires", these guys have a higher advanced start chance.
- The custom room for this empire is my favorite in the whole set! It fits both stellaris and the spiders perfectly. I actually got it from a very cool web-looking realm of torment concept art and rotating it on its side, cropping it after that.


The Centaurs have arrived!
- I was feeling super uninspired about bringing these guys to the galaxy at first. I knew I wanted them as they are a big part of tyria and a cool fantasy touchstone to bring to space, but what to do? Thanks to the people on the spreadsheet for some basic ideas to run with.
- The centaurs are an elective monarchy, not previously represented in the pack.
- In the end I found a really cool idea, to use these guys as the representative for the origin "Hegemon", which was not previously in the mod.
- The various centaurs have united as a hegemon and this is their big identity.
- Similar to with the spiders, I'm using a baseline from a "horse" namelist on the workshop and making it Tyrian (adding losaru, harathi, etc names). Many thanks to 37717 four years ago for putting their horse namelist on steam that I could adjust!! I didn't know much about real life horse breeds and stuff so this helped there.
- Their custom room art is quite fun. I managed to get the bottom half of a centaur on there while the actual stellaris species portrait covers the top half, so it's pretty believable they are full on centaurs!
- I learned a bit better how to pick flag gfx for these guys, so they have a background that I wasnt using elsewhere in the pack (as it wasn't on the wiki guide, pretty out of date)
- Their personality is much like Arachnias, as these are both slaving empires. These guys however have a lower advanced start change, favour different weapons (kinetic), prefer armour to shields and are generally less threatening/more diplomatic.
- Genuinely loathed writing their dialogue. I think most of it is really boring. If people have ideas, let me know.

More typo fixes (eg lornars gate)
The major feature for this patch is custom audio greetings for the Tyrians!
- This means you now get two types of dialogue on the diplomacy panel (the written and the audio queue)
- The kodan for example will say things like "Life is a trial, koda the judge and kodan the jury." and then in writing they'll talk to you about how they feel about you.
- In total there are about 120 new voice lines I'm adding to the mod pack. Some races have as high as 11 variations of the things they say! (Such as the centaurs and quaggan)

- This update caused me a LOT of messing about with the backend, things kept just unraveling as I added more and more stuff. In the end I scrapped everything and went with a much more elegant and simple implementation that involves swapping some vanilla files. The downside is that these will be a couple tiny of overwrites on certain portrait audio but I figure it's fine based on the way I imagine people using this mod.
- A couple of empires do NOT have custom audio because nothing appropriate exists in voice acting in the original guild wars.
- I did as best I could with appropriate/fun dialogue but sometimes the choice is very limited and time consuming. For example the seers only have one tiny moment with voice acting in the entire franchise, to hunt it down you have to play a fairly long mission etc.
- It should all sound fine but please let me know if there are any weird audio moments. I'm having to manually record these, edit them into neat chunks then render them. Some voices, like the ghosts of ascalon (who use adelbern dialogue from the ascalon catacombs cinematic) took a tricky balance to get right. Let me know if you hear anything that sounds weird!
- Many empires in the pack have four to five seperate randomly playing voice queues, not just one, which matches the variety in vanilla. I find it comes across much better though because these the tyrian characters actually speak so it's much easier to differentiate between the seperate four dialogue lines than just slightly different sounding grunts.
- Stellaris let's you adjust on gender lines, too. In general I haven't bothered with this as it would double the work from something like 120 voice lines to 240, but in some cases (such as dwarves) if you have a female representative speaking they will fall back to the vanilla stellaris files instead of the guild wars male dwarf who talks about the great dwarf etc instead.
- The biggest pain are the plantoids, to prevent too much crazy overwriting the way I'm handling this for now is the FIRST leader of these empires are using custom portraits and voices, but the regular members of the species will not.

As a bonus, 0.9 brings with it two custom tyrian campaign maps
- You can now battle on galaxy maps shaped like Tyrian locations!
- I consider these maps to be super alpha and I would love to iron them out further but at this point I just can't justify spending all this time on them. So they are somewhat hidden to play and will never be updated unless someone specifically using the mod talks to me about them and gives feedback etc.
- To play on these maps first select "Tiny" Galaxy size, then you'll notice "Tyrian" is available as a galaxy shape. Returning to "Size" from here you'll see Cantha or Orr
- I have no idea how many empires these maps can support, but they are roughly 600 and 900 stars in size, so they are not any larger or more performance hungry than anything in vanilla (which goes up to 1,000).

The Ruined Continent of Orr,
- based on Gw2 raised orr (not the shattered peninsulas of 250 years prior), the scavengers causeway, and the fort trinity area of mons maelstrom.
- each explorable area (including sirens landing and arah story mode) is dilineated as a galactic region
- Areas not playable in Guild wars are more sparse, with less systems and longer hyper-lanes
- Each galactic region containts a variety of random systems and space creatures
- There are four holy worlds spread around the orrian mainlands
- The center of arah, where giganticus lupicus spawns, has more enemies
- This map is super clustered and close together. I'm not happy with that, but changing it would likely involve re-making the whole thing again.

Cantha
- Based on Gw1, the jade sea, shing jea, kaineng, echovald, and surrounding mountains / islands that aren't playable in guild wars
- Kaineng center has the highest density of systems
- The Jade sea has very few systems but long hyperlanes for travel
- It is difficult to travel directly between the sea and the forest.
- Cantha is more spread out than orr. It also has custom system names marked with asterisks that line up exactly with the Guild Wars 1 explorable regions and outposts/missions/towns! So for example you will actually find "Bejunkan Pier" at the correct place in the city.


- Both maps seem to throw errors when spawning random empires, sometimes you'll instantly find aliens on your doorstep.
- I have no idea how the L-cluster works on these, if it appears at all.
- I made this with the galaxy gen tool from the mod discord, thank you so much to the dev for this! It's lots of fun, basically what I'm hoping is that someone will be inspired by this and want to make other maps or improve these two. If you're interested, message me and I'll make a video guide - it's very simple and fun to do I just don't have the time. My dream was to have a core-tyria region including all the major Gw2 locations one day, and possibly elona too. But it will never happen unless someone wants to do it, as I'm not working on this aspect of the mod any further. Consider these two additions as something like a hidden easter egg.


The clone armies from humanoids has arrived! The Skritt have lost "Mechanist" origin in favour of "Clone armies" which I felt was a much cooler and more exciting combo for the skritt.
The stone summit, who never had an origin, have gained "Mechanist". This is to represent their construction of the iron forge-man in guild wars 1. Mechanist can obviously be justified in lots of places, namely the asura and some ancient empires, but I think Asura having galactic doorstep is just much cooler and the constructs from the ancient civs aren't very "robot like", while the iron forgeman is. I also really wanted the stone summit to have a super distinct identity as they are a duplicate dwarvern faction. To make space for mechanist, the stone summit have lost their "fanatic" xenophobia and gained basic materialism. This also opens them up for more standard diplomacy, which hopefully means for richer gameplay. Wins all around.

The quaggan portrait has returned from being the swole dolphin. This was mostly a consequence of setting up their audio on the backend, I still want better art super badly!
Some quaggan portrait art has been resized.
The valiants of the wyld hunt have gained idyllic bloom, which didn't exist when they were first implemented, and wasn't being used yet by the pack!
The dredge have reverted to their previous portrait. Tough decision, as I really don't like the portrait art I have. But the platypus from Stellaris really didn't fit.
The tengu aliance have gained the common ground origin.
Black lion trading snakes have become the "company" again.
Fixed some nebula names, the post-searing regent valley has become the "regent wastes"
New primitive/presapients have arrived: Wendigo, Vermin, bouncing and adrenal mushrooms.
Charr, norn, sylvari all have lower advanced start chance (was too high)
Many, many other empires had wonky advanced start chances ironed out. The mod now works as folllows: 10 weighting for all empires except the ancients (and this patches new empire, listed below) which have 75 weighting. My aim is that anyone could appear in that slot but most likely it'll be a fitting one!
Added new loc information for the naga and heket empire personalities.
Continued in next update notes block above.

Main aspect of this patch is the continuation of the star name work from 0.8 full.

Don't miss the new image on the mod image gallery showing off how it looks!

I added over 2,000 system names here.That's more system names and variety than Vanilla stellaris itself offers. Every single outpost, mission, explorable area, region name, and appropriate point of interest/jumping puzzle/skill point across both Guild Wars games has been added.

I might do heart of thorns, path of fire and end of dragons at a later date, but this is more than enough.

Thanks to the wiki contributors which made this an easier job.
My fingers hurt.

Other Changes:
Hyenasaur (concept art monster names)
Rotting Oakhearts (Melandru's Sorrow)
Cave Aloe's
Fungal Blooms
Bitterfrost Mushrooms
Jade Scarabs
Pinipal
Murrelow
Rock dogs
Blessed Mantas
and Rock-Eater Scarabs
have all been added as primitive/presapients in various categories.

Kveldulf had it's spelling corrected.

"The" Has been dropped from "The Chak Hive" empire name because it would look weird in some circumstances (with double "the"). Also as was pointed out in the spreadsheet - it has this cool air about it that other hives might be around!
- Likewise "The Consortium" Has become known as "Consortium Space".