Stellaris is an excellent grand strategy game, a pretty decent 4X game, and one of our favourite space games, but sneaking around and gathering intelligence on other space-faring races isn’t something it’s managed to really cover do well.
At the start of December, we got a glimpse at the basic mechanics of gathering intel. Today, the developers have gone more in depth into this area, especially how it relates to the new espionage mechanics they’re working on. Much like in another popular Paradox grand strategy game – Europa Universalis IV – Stellaris will let you use your diplomatic envoys within foreign polities to build up spy networks. These spy networks can feed into the intelligence reports you gather on other nations, but they can also be used for more more pro-active actions.