Kordanor

How much emphasis is there on multiplayer in Stellaris?

Examples you might skip: I am not a traditional paradox player and coming from the Civ and other 4X games. To be able to play Civ5 in multiplayer however you need to have quite a lot of houserules to make it an ejoyable experience. This is also because lots of mechanics are catering towards the player, like the artifact or diplomacy system which in Civ5 does only work decent in SP (as the AI cant handle it and only one player "works" with it). An example from Galciv3: Game can hardly be described as balanced (sensorships) and basically destroys "competitive" gameplay with "freedom" to do overpowered things. In addition technology upgrades on ships, which make you revisit and refit your ship every couple of turns is something which doesn't work in MP at all.

So...will Stellaris "work" in MP out of the box? Is there something you can mention to brighten up my hopes?

Did you ever consider to go to kickstarter? With a minimal goal for the game like you would do it anyways and stretch goals in order to acquire new graphic and sound assets which you could then also use for future games. I am sure that lots of people would be happy to spend more money than normal if they could improve the game with it and get a little something out of it.

You mentioned in another answer that you intend to make games shorter. Do you consider the option to take over your heroes from one game to the next? Like you used to be able to in old RPGs like Eye of the Beholder, Ishar, Realms of Arkania, Wizardry...