Would you want to see a more advanced economy (such as in Vic3 or EU5) in Stellaris?
I'm curious to see what the community here thinks about Stellaris eventually getting a more complicated economic system. Now obviously, this is almost definitely not coming to Stellaris, and if it even did it would likely have to be a 5.0 or 6.0 type of update. However, I am curious to see what people here think about the idea.
So what I mean by a more advanced economy is an economy with actual supply and demand as well as production chains. Buildings employ pops (like they already do), buildings consume products and produce others (like they already do), and those products are then used by pops, other buildings, the military, or the government. However, instead of the products simply automatically moving from one building to another, they enter an internal market (maybe for Stellaris, each planet would have their own market connected to your empire's market). From this market, other buildings spend money to buy these resources to make a product of higher value. Demand drives prices up, while supply drives them down.
Another aspect of this economy could potentially be more complex production chains. Imagine instead of producing alloys, you produced neutronium, plasteel, and durasteel. Instead of simple minerals, we had a few different raw resources to start from. This would incentivize the player to seek out new sources of raw materials in the later game with new technologies, either through conquest or trade deals.
To be clear, this is all purely hypothetical and about the gameplay. With EU5, paradox is seemingly trying to expand the Victoria style economic system to new games (though in a much simpler form appropriate for a game like EU5). It also seems like with the recent player survey, they are considering something similar for CK3.
For the purpose of discussion, just assume that performance is not going to be impacted. Think of this like something they would be for a full Stellaris sequel and would be properly optimized (even if unrealistic). I just want to focus on the actual gameplay ramifications.
Posted Oct 2, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC