Ahhhhh. This one is difficult. I wish I could just sorta kinda maybe recommend it. The new leaders are fun! The new stories are fun! But if you play a 1000 star galaxy, you will find half your empire is empty by the mid to late game. They have a new hard cap on leaders, if you go over 10 (with many traditions and civics taken to even get that far), then you start losing exp. By 12, you may as well kiss any usefulness of leaders good by.

What does this look like? A handful on the council. One or two admirals for your 5 fleets. Maybe three governors for your 20 planets. Three scientists... and a general. Billions under your rule and care, but a dozen people are all that can lead it. From a roleplaying perspective, it sucks. And there are so many empty portraits everywhere, it's like the game is constantly taunting me and reminding me of the people that used to fill those slots before this DLC.

On the forums, devs have admitted they do not balance for larger galaxy sizes and so the cap will always feel bad and not scale with our empires there. So if you like to play a sandbox in a larger galaxy, going to have to give this a Not Recommend. However, you may enjoy it if you play on smaller galaxies with faster end times as you won't hit the cap nearly as hard or fast with what you need to run your empire.