To add to
Yskonyn's comments (fascinating, I hadn't heard that bit about the Clausewitz engine before), Fredrick Wester made a couple interesting statements in this video from a few days ago:
While he and Alex both dropped several bits of info relevant to Paradox fans (a big one is that the price of DLC's are probably going to increase
), one thing that especially stuck out for me was that at one point, Wester says they're not going to stop supporting a game just because it's been out for a while. (He cites HoI4 as a particular example, noting how it actually has more players now than it did at release.) Similarly, he hinted that they're not necessarily going to put out a sequel just because a game is "due" for one -- if the current entry in a series is doing well, and players are happy with it, then why would they start working on a new game?
It's a somewhat rhetorical question, of course -- at some point, a new/updated version will needed and/or warranted. But Fred's comments do make me wonder if it might be significantly longer before we see Stellaris 2, to the point that I'm beginning to doubt my predictions of a 2026 release date, if only a little.
I still think we'll see a sequel sometime in the next five years. But I'll admit I'm no longer as certain of that as I was a week ago.