I came to this from Galactic Civilizations 2. The transition for me was much like going from Morrowind (excessively complicated, ultimately clunky) to Skyrim (streamlined, not so tedious to start off).
Stellaris also has one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard... I bought the Nova Edition upgrade mainly for the OST, though the spider portraits were a nice bonus, and I had a good use for them. (More on that later...)
A few mods I use:
- That's Not Fair! - Give your empire a little (or big, your call) head start. Helpful if you like to run a lot of different games and the earlygame struggle is getting on your nerves.
- Fox Leader Mod - Makes leaders a little more useful.
- Extended Traits - A nice selection of new species & leader traits.
- Utopia Expanded - If you've got Utopia, consider this a must-have.
- Tiny Outliner (and folks' other Tiny UI mods) - Cut some cruft and make lists more compact.
I started a kingdom of space vikings. The first time I ran it, I didn't end up being very conquest-happy. After getting a better idea what I was doing (it was my first game altogether), I restarted at day 1. The most amusing thing I encountered was a race of weak, strangely charismatic fanatical purifier bugs who screamed at me across the stars that my homeworld would burn. With a hearty "u wot m8", I took their planets with ease, then immediately set about treating them nice. (I basically liberated their populace from an ultimately doomed campaign against the universe, so I figured I'd give them citizenship. Since they like desert worlds in contrast to the alpine worlds my vikings live in, it means more options for expansion.)
Longest-running game so far is the "psychic space sphinxes". I've gone quite a long time without open war, though I'm on the verge of starting a liberation war against some local bullies that don't consider me relevant to their interests. Problem is, they're somehow on good terms with the nearby spiritualists who are about the only neighbor of mine with a very good opinion. My other spiritualist neighbor is a holy guardians FE, whom I'm hoping won't mind if I wrap their protected planets in my own borders to keep anyone from trying to claim them. Where I left off, I'd jsut finished the Old Gods event chain, and I have to decide between keeping my stable oligarchic government, or taking the switch to Divine Empire and the huge Unity bonus that goes with it. (I might be able to do an immediate government reform to at least get some better civics again. I didn't want to go Militarist -> Authoritarian, but then again I haven't fought anyone yet.)
I started a Hive Mind with the intent to eat as many other species as possible. I force-spawned the UNE in this game, then soon discovered that I was only a few systems away from Sol. Humans were rather friendly and open-minded, up until I conquered their planets and made them into sandwich factories. I've since restarted that game from day 1, to see if I can fast-track to advanced genetic modding, and assimilate them instead. (Since 1.5 you can integrate a protectorate without having to go to vassal stage, so I might see if I can do this without war. At least for humanity.)
Through save editing and flagrant cheating, I started making a quasi-fallen empire of galactic protectors. Half my neighbors hate me because they despise both hive minds and synthetics. My cheatery presented an interesting outcome: Because I got the techs for AI, I have the AI policy, but didn't get the proper flags to actually change it. With the policy locked to disallowed, I basically banned my entire species out of existence. (Easy to fix once I knew what flag to look for.)
Through the magic of editing user_empire_designs, I made a cybernetic human empire using this portrait pack. I haven't started this one yet, since I'm still undecided on how aggressive I'd like them to be.
I also put together a race of fanatic spiritualist space spiders, with the goal of making them psyonic space spiders. (PRAISE THE GOD-EMPEROR.) In the words of DavidPH, "that's terror." On that note, I also made some fanatic xenophile space spiders. (Is that really any less terrifying?)
My last design of note is a fanatic pacifist/xenophile race. I used the fungoid design that looks rather tree-like. Time will tell whether I can manage a peaceful victory in a probably-hostile galaxy.