Stellaris' free 3.5 Fornax update adds a new beginner-friendly difficulty setting today

rockpapershotgun.com:

Sci-fi strategy epic Stellaris sees the launch of its paid Toxoid species pack today, but there’s a substantial free update coming in the form of the 3.5 Fornax patch too. Paradox have added a new difficulty setting aimed at easing in new players aboard Stellaris’ long-running interstellar skiff, along with some new adjustments they’re hoping will challenge more experienced players. The update also rebalances relics, improves UI and AI, and brings back Culture Workers.

Paradox say they’ve had requests for a less challenging difficulty setting following a series of adjustments to the game's AI over the past few updates. The new Civilian difficulty setting is intended to address that, which gives players higher bonuses to resources from jobs and station, naval capacity, stability and trade value than if they play on Cadet (which is still the default difficulty setting), plus a bonus towards completing First Contact.

You might be thinking that’s a bit useless if you’re a Stellaris vet. Luckily, Paradox anticipated that, and they’re chucking in more options for scaling difficulty with the 3.5 Fornax update. There’s now three options for this: off, Mid-Game or Late-Game. Set it to Mid-Game and you’ll see AI bonuses scale from zero to the selected difficulty by the Mid-Game start year, natch. Late-Game functions the same as the game’s previous version of difficulty scaling. Paradox also added new settings to increase AI bonuses on higher difficulties as the game progresses, and an option to trigger every Crisis type sequentially with increasing strength.

Culture workers are also back by popular demand, after a period of absence from the game. They now have a base output of 4 Unity and upkeep costs of 3 Consumer Goods,