got it... thanks Gog

In fairness to Paradox, they always couple the DLC with major post-launch updates for everyone. It's literally their business model. EA/Actiblizz just spams content for the most part, PDX spams both content and game mechanics.

Whether greater entertainment value can be derived from one big game with lots of updates or several smaller standalone games is an interesting philosophical discussion.

I tend to agree, especially for niche games, and I offer Harebrained as my example. Shadowrun followed the multiple standalone games model, and we got three interesting stories and three progressively better but incompatible sets of game mechanics. I would very much enjoy playing through the Dead Man's Switch plot, or a variation of it, with the greatly improved features of SR:HK, but that is not possible out of the box. Dragonfall was IMO the most engaging of the three, but it too has been relegated to the old-and-busted bin since HK is the latest and 'best' Shadowrun experience.

Battletech, which was developed with heavy PDX influence prior to the buyout, takes the one game with updates+DLC approach. People who played it at launch will remember that there were far fewer mechs, a campaign that plays more like an extended tutorial, and not a lot of incidental content. Since then a whole lot of things have been added to the base game, and it all plays together nicely as a complete package. Flashpoints added a ton of replayability and Heavy Metal, controversial as it was among sourcebook purists, offered something for those who found the 3015 setting too limited. I will offer no excuse for Urban Warfare except to say that if you don't want EW you don't have to pay for EW, and you still get to have the version 1.6 features like more star systems and greatly improved combat missions for free.

The base game is sold for 10€. This alone can provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment.
The medium expansions can be bought for 5€, the big ones for 10€.

To me, this does not qualify as either "abusive prices" nor "greedy business model".

Sure, a lot of studios are abusing the DLC model. But I would not include Paradox in them, at least not from my experience with Stellaris. (I do not know their other games)

So going away from all the bitching about Paradox, and their business model, how is the actual DLC itself?. Worth it?. Does it break anything significant?. Improvements?.

Difficult to say something conclusive right now. I had some time to test drive it this weekend, but not enough to dip more than a few toes in.

The economy and population growth got a deserved rework. Building slots are not opened by population threshold anymore but by administrative building level, number of housing districts and some other factors. There are less building slots but consumer goods and alloys are produced in districts now (with a planet unique specialization/buff building).

Pop growth has been changed a bit and will need some time getting used to. You probably will need to unlearn some old tactics here. Previously you tried to squeeze as much as possible out of each planet, now you will probably have some very heavily populated planets and some planets with a bit of resource gathering and not much beyond that. Growth follows an S-curve (a bit slow at first and when the planet begins to fill up, higher while somewhere in the middle). Unemployed non-slave pops *finally* migrate to other suitable planets with jobs. Will need more experience with that.

First contact is much more interesting now and keeps some mystery for longer, you have an archaeology-like encounter instead of just spending some society research, some of which can branch a bit. Also, you no longer know everything about other empires right from the start and need a spy network or more diplomatic relations until this is known.

There is a ton of patch notes on the official forum, both 3.0 and 3.0.1 hit on release.

the diplomacy system is where you get your spy network which gives them something to do in the early game