Games

I've played a little bit of Stellaris but not used any mods, what are these communist mods you used?

Only 40 mods?

Stellaris with 40 mods, isn't that just Stellaris + DLCs?

I can do pretty well as a fanatic egalitarian materialist empire with mechanist and shared burdens and some helpful pop traits to speed up engineering tech progress. That said, I mostly play on Capitain so idk if it works on higher difficulty. I usually build my planets tall, rush federation, and try to explore and expand as much as possible to get research bonuses and relics.

Which mods do you need to make commie builds viable?

2 ways of playing "good guys":

America Strategy: Make sure your warfare policy is set to Liberation Wars. Whenever you meet a neighbor that has differing ethics, beat their ass with that wargoal and it'll create a new empire with ethics that match yours! (If you occupy/invade everything it's 100% conversion, if you white peace you'll take occupied systems/planets you've invaded). The new empire will take a bit to stretch their legs and enjoy their newfound autonomy, and soon after you should be able to vassalize them into your fold. Note that AI empires created this way regularly have issues staying flipped so you might have to deal with rebellions, weird huh?

Star Trek Strategy: Rush Federation, Gain Control of Federation through passing Laws. Either join a neighbors federation or create your own (it's tech locked in 4.2 so you don't have to take the diplo tradition, idk how it is in 4.1). Politic and war your way through the galaxy inviting everyone you can to it, then pass laws to eventually consolidate power allowing you, the president of the federation, to dictate who they go to war with and when.

Feel free to combine the 2 strategies as they work well together.

Other smaller ones: Protecting/Uplifting primitives/pre-sapients. Gene-editing out negatives/in positives. Creating garden worlds for your pops to prosper on (Idyllic Bloom hivemind or Rogue Servitors are fun for this, as is World Shaper AP). Protect the galaxy from hostile elements: spacefauna, marauders, le crisis etc.

Patch 4.3 is in open beta right now, which means it's just around the corner, and it will bring massive changes (mostly positive, it seems). So if you want to get into the game right now, maybe wait a little longer until 4.3 is final. Then dive in.

I'm a rookie in this game (like better than newbie but not really intermediate yet) and I play only with non-gameplay-changing mods. My mod list is something like: UI Overhaul Dynamic + Extended Topbar + Tiny Outlier, Tech Tiers Revealed, Immersive Galaxy and Skybox, and a couple of music packs.