Whether you're willing to spare the brain cells for grand strategy or not, it's hard not to respect Paradox. Its forums have hosted busy back-and-forth with fans since the first Europa Universalis went live in 2000, the team handling cock-ups with alarming honesty and assimilating feedback into their games. I like the community atmosphere that teasing information through their own message boards maintains, and they've gone to town for upcoming procedural 4X/strategy/space opera Stellaris: we're now on the twelfth entry in a series of Stellaris dev diaries and the phrase 'orbital bombardment' caught my eye.

Policies and Edicts details the legal framework of your galactic empire (or lone, defeated solar system, as may be the case). For players of Paradox Development Studio's historical strategy sims, policies and edicts correspond to laws and decisions. Policies are empire-wide, dictating your race's stance on migration, voting rights and obliterating enemy forces from space, while edicts are more focused, potentially affecting your empire but zoning in on single planets too. In exchange for resources such as Energy Credits, you'll gain temporary effects to bolster the likes of propaganda campaigns. Knowing Paradox, of course, you could well end up with a choice between two terrible options—would you rather your colonists be digested by sarlacc pits or sandworms?

It's not the raw maths of the system that has me excited, but the stories the new sci-fi setting enables. I've never been able to choose my stance on xeno abduction in a Paradox game before, and even though that likely translates into a '5% abduction bonus' I'm willing not only to suspend by disbelief but launch it into a galaxy far, far away.

You can read the whole dev diary and more besides here, and if you have even a passing interest in strategy then it's worth checking back from time to time.

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Paradox Interactive stopped by last week to give us a brief look at Stellaris, and while the galactic grand strategy game looked cool as a whole, I came away most excited by its multiplayer. And not even the multiplayer gameplay itself, exactly, but the possibilities of what its scope allows. Stellaris largest map size generates a four-armed spiral galaxy with 1000 inhabitable stars spread across it—each with a solar system and planets of its own—which leaves enough room for a whopping 32 players or AI factions to fight for supremacy. That s going to make for some amazing stories.

Game Director Henrik F hraeus told me that although Stellaris early game plays out similarly to other 4X games, its mid and late games are more like Crusader Kings 2, with a focus on politics and land grabs. Simply purging the galaxy of other species isn t always the best option, and welcoming other races into your empire can benefit both of you. You can even form a Galactic Federation with other species, giving control of all political decisions to a rotating leader and sharing a victory if you can achieve it. That s an interesting feature in single-player, but bring that system into a large-scale multiplayer setting and it sounds phenomenal.

Like Paradox s previous games, Stellaris isn t turn-based—instead ticking away days at a game speed only the host can adjust—which makes the multiplayer more appealing to me. How quickly you make decisions and (to a certain extent) your ability to micro become real factors of success. F hraeus said they worked hard to reduce the amount of things you need to closely micro-manage—you have no direct control over units in combat, for example—so it won't end up feeling like StarCraft, but it will reward skilled players for thinking faster than their opponents.

And, of course, you don t have to play against 31 people—a small galaxy with a 1v1 match could be just as interesting—but it s the potential for giant wars that excites me. I m glad Paradox made multiplayer a priority, because I want to hear the crazy stories that will inevitably emerge about rival Federations locked in 100+ hour games. And if Crusader Kings 2 is any indication of things to come, I can t wait to see what the modders do to this one.

Stellaris doesn't currently have a release date, but it's coming next year.

[Update: Reworded a phrase in the third paragraph which made it sound like Paradox's previous games were turn-based. They aren't.]

Paradox only started its series of Stellaris dev diaries a few weeks ago, and already it's on number 9. This one expands on the galaxy generation explanation from the third diary, getting down to the level of individual planets and their makeup.

First up, each habitable planet is made up of tiles. You can clear blocked tiles of mountains to create more space, and work a tile by placing a Pop (population unit). You'll want to use some of these tiles to place buildings, and take advantage of adjacency bonuses to maximise efficiency.

Planets are differentiated by modifiers which add flavour and stat bonuses. A planet can have "particularly large lifeforms", or "Titanic Life", which adds a bonus to society research.

Another way to differentiate planets is their resources, which are generated as deposits and spawn on planets depending on their type and modifiers. You obviously have to travel to more than one planet to collect all of the resources you'll need, and some are more likely to be found in certain parts of the galaxy (e.g. inside a nebula).

You can still find resources on uninhabitable planets via their orbital resource slot that allows you to place a Mining Station or Research station in orbit around the planet. The devs promise to tell us more about rare resources (and the Spaceport) in the next diary.

Stellaris' game director Henrik Doomdark F hreus has started a series of developer diaries for Stellaris on Paradox' forums. In the first entry, "The Vision", he reveals' the studio's grand plan to "eventually cover the entire "human timeline" with our games... including the future."

Exploration, the "most neglected" X, will be important. Stellaris' randomisation features are designed to keep this phase as replayable as possible, to evoke a sense that each galaxy is "ancient and full of wonders".

Factions and important individuals like planetary governors and scientists will possess a wide range of traits. Technology is also randomised to a degree, distributed according to chance and the traits of your scientists. Traits remix the wants, needs and capabilities of each race, generating a varied galaxy and lots of potential for conflict. In theory, at least. Similar systems worked very well in F hreus last game, Crusader Kings 2.

"The galaxy should always be unknown and surprising. That is why there are no "major races" in the game, and such a great variety of discoveries you can make. In the same vein, there is no fixed technology tree."

F hreus hopes that the focus on expanding and scouting new races in the early game create a smoother experience for players put off by Paradox' dense historical strategies. He also points out that this is the first Paradox game to feature symmetrical starts for factions. When a game begins, every race is trying to expand and survive, just like you. That means powerful races you meet will have thrived int he same conditions as you, in a crucible of competing AIs. It's an exciting thought.

Check out our in-depth Stellaris preview for more details. According to the Steam page, a release date is "coming soon!".

Ta, RPS.