It's amazing how much more they've added to Stellaris with each expansion, compared to EU4.
wat
Fairly meaningful additions, but they are well within the category of "shit that obviously should be in any space setting". Also Habitats make the game unplayably slow even quicker.
A meter you build up points for to unlock bonuses. Virtually every EU4 expansion adds a new one of these.
wat. Name them? Surely you don't think being able to research automatic exploration is noteworthy? Or buying +1 ascension perks in an expansion that adds ascension perks?
Synthetic Dreams a new way to play (and new techs, policies, traditions etc)
Hardly new ways to play. It's a slightly different paradigm and a slightly different set of bonuses, but if anything it's still more akin to normal Stellaris play than, say, playing a Horde is to normal EU4 play.
and Apocalypse will bring with it the ability to destroy worlds
Destroy worlds... again, this is something you should have gotten for free. It's a fucking space game, every noteworthy space game ever has let you destroy worlds. A $60 on release game does not get points for holding back features that were in MoO1 for a $20 DLC 2 years later.
encounter marauder empires
"we'll spawn a monster with different graphics and give it event dialog, they'll eat it up"
Other features that MoO 1/2 had that Paradox may/will eventually sell as $20 DLC:
Player-creatable warp gates
Bombing planets to get rid of all population (yes technically possible now but you'll die of old age IRL first).
Biological weapons to target population.
Terraforming to create more space on a planet.
Upgradable planet shields that actually matter.
Ground combat that works
Space weapons/armor/ship selection that matter beyond spreadsheet calculations to find optimal DPS, with special effects, range, etc actually mattering.
Stealth ships, and other ship abilities like teleportation.
Ship boarding and capture.
Ship experience levels.
Actual race customization beyond +-10% random bullshit.
Race start customization.
Ships having some sort of range limitations rather than being able to jump straight to the enemy capital from day 1.
Having pop management not being a completely tedious shitshow that requires letting the AI take over all but 5 worlds to keep the game moving.
Espionage.
Traveling to alternate dimensions to fight big bad end game enemies.
Space-UN with diplomatic victory, and alternate victory options in general.
and so on.
Obviously Stellaris is a different game and doesn't need to duplicate MoO1 1:1, but acting like Stellaris was a fully featured game on release is ridiculous, while EU4 was actually a finished product. And it's still 2 years after release with late game still becoming unplayable because they can't optimize their game properly.
Not that EU4's expansions are worth $20, but neither are Stellaris's.