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There always were 3 storytellers so I dunno what you mean with the "new" AI honestly. And they don't really scale in a traditional sense of difficulty. Phoebe is more "sandbox" friendly for those who want to spend more time building their colony than dealing with conflicts as she triggers bad events less frequently, but the conflicts she does eventually give isn't necessarily less challenging. Cassandra provides the most balanced and consistent scaling in difficulty, but that more consistent pressure also means she's more difficult later on. She's a good choice if you care about the main scenario of getting off the planet, but perhaps not the best choice for a "forever colony". Meanwhile Randy is the chaotic and unpredictable storyteller, his difficulty is never consistent, he can throw you some real overspiced scenarios at times, but he also gives you a lot of good opportunities and minor challenges too. Only reason he appear more difficult than Cassandra is because he can chain nuke you with harder challenges right off the bat if you're unlucky.

What really determine the difficulty is the other difficulty options rather than the storytellers. If you want it easy you pick Peaceful or Community Builder, you then get smaller raids, better yields, and more loot regardless of the storyteller. What biome you chose to land in also affects difficulty, Jungle biome require you to deal with deceases a lot more frequently for example; the classic Rimworld experience is the arid biome which is one of the easier biomes imo. Also, be selective with the pawns you accept into your colony early on, most negative traits can be addressed in some way or another, but you don't have that luxury early on - accepting a bad pawn might as well result in more work for your colony if he go crazy half the time. Beyond that it's important that you keep scaling your defenses alongside your wealth creation and prepare ahead for any possible scenario.

If possible I'll probably lean towards a dominatrix-driven technology-haven with a healthy appreciation for bionics/archotech modifications. It's the general colony-setup I usually roleplay, but with a dedicated slave-system and other DLC features I seem to be able to amp that one up a notch. *evil chuckle* And unless I'm mistaken there's also room for polygamic relationships now? Can't wait to see what we can do overall, lol.

Well, we do know that the faction goodwill system have been reworked for 1.3 and based on one of the pictures in the news post the factions do indeed have their own ideologies in the DLC that may likely affect their natural goodwill towards you. Like how the empire have an "Archotechnic Fealtism" ideology. The question is whether the various faction ideologies are static in design or will have a degree of variation between each game, will be interesting to find out.

I wouldn't expect a complete diplomatic overhaul this time around though, but it seems to be a step forward at least. It's not something that should be rushed either way, just throwing a lot of tribute systems in there without rhyme and reason isn't going to be particularly fun in the long run.

I don't think the value cap should be removed. No doubt the static value cap is not taking into account higher value loot from mods and the rewards could be a bit more varied when the reward value goes beyond 60% filler, but there's no denying that the balance would be way more off without the cap. The better suggestion would probably be to make the cap a bit less static: that it scales slightly with the colony wealth on top of a base value, and that there's also a secondary cap on the number of non-filler items, which may or may not scale as well.

[Level 1 Psycasts:]

Oh yes, I'm a hardcore psycast user myself, lol. There's always room for improvements as they say, but I do think the Psycast system is pretty solid as it is and makes for a more fun and interesting game as it gives Rimworld a more tactical layer for solving various situations. Though if there is one thing then I have to say the last tier (level 6) of psycasts are pretty terrible considering the effort it takes to get to them. Personally I generally try to get as many psycast users developed as possible even if I keep most colonists at Yeoman rank; additional levels can be acquired if you pick neuroformer quest rewards or meditate at the Anima tree with tribal recruits. This is my general take on each psycast:

Level 1 Psycasts:
Burden: Very useful. Slow down attacking or fleeing raiders. Also good on revenge triggered animals which essentially makes hunting Thrumbos rather easy as you can have one pawn of average speed bait one while the rest fire at it.
Chunk Skip: Somewhat useful. Quick emergency cover for you, or remove/steal the enemies cover.
Painblock: Useful, but risky if you use it to prolong your melee units fighting time. Good for when you need a pawn to stay on their feet a bit longer, and/or get up sooner. Have saved me from failing a few emergency landing quests by getting unconscious pawns required for completing the quest back up on their feet and into their pickup shuttle within the limited time. Relieving pain related penalties to manipulation and movement is often good too.
Solar Pinhole: Not too useful. I use it a few times if I get it before I have full electric coverage to light up workstations and similar. It's too much micro to keep it going consistently though. Might have some use as an emergency heat source in colder biomes (but haven't tried this).
Stun: Useful, but Burden is better in most situations imo due to Stun being more expensive and having a shorter range. The complete stop also doesn't seem to make up for the shorter duration in my experience, but do have the useful effect of causing the affected target to block the path for anyone else in a single-path corridor for the duration. I find myself using it most often when I need someone escaping a melee engagement quickly and safely while my other colonists take out the offender.
Word of Trust: Very useful. Reduces the time needed to break a prisoners resistance from several weeks if not months down to a day or a few. Allows you to recruit prisoners much faster if you have no luck getting recruitment inspirations.

Level 2 Psycasts:
Blinding Pulse: Somewhat useful. Reduces the accuracy of those affected which is particularly good against single-shot precision weapon users. Using a smokepop utility is generally better however if you need to reduce the accuracy of several hostiles.
Neural Heat Dump: Somewhat useful. Tend to use it more often as an early time out on units that remain conscious despite having taken severe bleeding wounds and are moving like a snail to the hospital. Might be useful for spamming psycasts more safely if you only have a few dedicated psycasters, but as I generally raise psycasts for all my colonists I'm able to spam psycasts safely across multiple casters.
Waterskip: Useful. Puts out fires, but also prevents fires from starting in the water puddles they leave behind; water puddles also take priority over chemfuel puddles. The water puddles will unfortunately not prevent colonists from catching on fire when facing incendary launchers, but the flame won't grow in intensity while they are over the puddles and fizzle out relatively quickly; often this means the pawn won't even move from their spot. Thus it's a good idea to use waterskip preemptively whenever your pawns are in a situation where they could get caught on fire.
Word of Joy: Useful, but expensive. Improves mood for several days. Can be used on prisoners to increase the success chance when recruiting.

Level 3 Psycasts:
Beckon: Very useful. Get hostiles shooting from behind corners to come out. Bait hostile melee units away from undesired targets (reasonable if one of your melee units have this psycast). Call fleeing raiders back to be executed properly instead of running after them.
Chaos Skip: Useful, but a bit risky. Get melee hostiles or mad animals disengaged from a target quickly. Get that mechanoid centipede temporarily out of the way just in time before it fires at you. Get hostiles hiding behind corners repositioned. Get a colonist out of harms way. If you use it on anything that would be better off popping up behind you (worst-case) than being where it is right now then you can't go wrong with this psycast.
Vertigo Pulse: Very useful. Can make a whole group of raiders go around puking up your place instead of shooting back at you. Great way to intercept sapper teams trying to breach your walls. Also efficient against Mechanoids despite their lack of vomit protocols as this is pretty much AOE Stun with prolonged duration.
Word of Love: Somewhat useful if you want to manipulate who hooks up with who. Can be a bit of a micro before you get the desired outcome though. Alternatively its useful for preventing a pawn from breaking up or divorcing their partner that happened to be the one who killed their precious, but hostile, family member.

Level 4 Psycasts:
Focus: Useful. Use before trading/recruiting/operating and similar to improve rates and chances for success. Use on snipers to improve their shots. Use on anyone to make them speedier and more accurate.
Skip: Very useful. Basically a more expensive version of Chaos Skip that lets you determine the transfer location. If the transfer location isn't that important though use Chaos Skip instead.
Smokepop: Useful if you want the pawn to use some other utility than a smokepop belt. Outside of reducing the accuracy of anyone firing at the pawns within the smoke screen it also makes turrets unable to detect you and thus unable to shot at you.
Wallraise: Somewhat useful. Creates hard cover when needed. Personally I've also designed my killbox so that I can plug it using this psycast if I need to cut an attack wave off for a bit.
Word of Serenity: Somewhat useful, but expensive. Ends a mental break on a pawn. Doesn't have any risk of diplomatic consequences and as such is the best way to end mental breaks for pawns tied to a quest. It claims to work on animals too, but that unfortunately seems to not be the case in practice (e.g. don't work on revenge, manhunter, or mental breaks (like daze) caused by the death of a bonded pawn).

Level 5 Psycasts:
Berserk: Useful. Especially effective on hostile melee units and inside single-path corridors as other hostiles cannot advance past the berserking unit. Often a waste when used on ranged units though, unless they have a one-shot weapon like a triple rocket launcher or Doomsday launcher, as Vertigo Pulse is often a better alternative. Otherwise you can use it to have a nearby wild animal join the fight, bigger animals like elephants or bears is strong enough to potentially take down several hostiles for the duration and shouldn't be underestimated.
Farskip: Very useful. As Canute mentioned you can send your attack squad using this skill after having sent a scout, preferably alongside your pack animals, ahead beforehand. This ensure you keep most people working and defending your colony for the duration of the travel. It's an expensive psycast though (70% psyfocus) and it's hard to meditate efficiently in the wild so personally I send backups using the transport pods and use farskip to transport people back when they are done with the attack (this also ensure the psycaster retain enough psyfocus for the battle as well).
Flashstorm: Not too useful. Only slightly more useful than a mortar versus mortar shootout against sieges, where both solutions destroy loot indiscriminately and are inferior to a single sniper provoking the siege into attacking. Neither is this psycast effective against mechanoid clusters at all. As such I've unfortunately found less uses for this one than Solar Pinhole.
Invisibility: Somewhat useful. Primarily used to avoid aggro and escape hairy situations. I often use it for hit and run attacks with grenadiers to take out mechanoid turrets or shields whenever smokepop isn't an option.
Word of Inspiration: Very useful. Especially if it triggers creative inspirations which are the only source of legendary works. Combine such an inspiration with Word of Joy and Focus and you're almost guaranteed a legendary.

Level 6 Psycasts:
Berserk Pulse: Somewhat useful. Berserk on several targets, but sadly with a shorter duration of effect and a rather small area of effect. Results may also vary as berserked targets are also likely to attack one another which doesn't trigger other attackers into aggroing like it would have if a non-berserk attacker is attacked. Can be pretty effective against larger waves of melee tribals though despite mentioned shortcomings.
Manhunter Pulse: Useful. If you want many animals to go berserk you'll rather use this than Berserk Pulse. A meaningful effect duration and big area of effect means you can get a good pack going. Manhunting animals do not attack other animals including colony animals, which means this psycast do not have any of the issues Berserk Pulse have. Just take precautions in case you end up needing to fight them off yourself.
Mass Chaos Skip: Somewhat useful. Chaos Skip on a large scale. Good whenever you need to displace a larger group of enemies from an advantageous position, but you probably won't find yourself needing this too often.
Neuroquake: Not too useful. Penalties and casting time make it very difficult to find a practical situation where it is also cost effective to use it: a large scale attack that is too big for your killbox to handle that will sit around waiting for three hours. If you are willing to burn goodwill and are in a tight spot you may want to call a few of your allies to send you backup instantly instead.
Skipshield: Not too useful. Target can't shot in or out. Mostly used for neutralizing hostile targets temporarily, including turrets, but the short duration and high neural heat cost makes it tricky to find situations it's cost-effective to use.

Tips for getting psycast levels with titles:
Getting all colonists to Yeoman for the first psycast level have no downsides in regards to requirements and is something I personally do and recommend. Beyond that up to Preator is reasonable for many of the colonists too if you don't mind having a big throneroom with multiple thrones, those among them that need armors can use prestige armors. Preators have access to several useful permits in addition to the most useful psycasts in case you don't get the opportunity to level their psylink much further. I generally only max out two colonists (out of about 20) to Count/Countess as they demand lavish meals (and I generally prefer keeping most colonists on fine).

For an optimal source of psylink neuroformers from rewards I recommend turning off acceptance for goodwill after acquiring an alliance with any faction, and also getting an alliance with the empire faction early. I also unselect acceptance for honor once I got the first few colonists to yeoman. Honor doesn't scale well with the other rewards anyway so its better to trade prisoners and gold for honor the further into the game you get. With three item reward choices for every quest you're more likely to get the option to pick valuable and rare quest rewards including neuroformers which you can use to upgrade the psycast level for non-tribal colonists you don't want to take beyond the yeoman/preator title.

Btw. the most psycast you can get with tribe's. On a playthrough with a tribe i got 5-6 lvl 6 psycast.

You don't actually need to start as a tribe for this to be true, as long as a pawn has a tribal background they can meditate and link with an Anima Tree (have Natural meditation enabled), thus just aim to keep an eye for good pawns to recruit from any tribal raiders. Use Shock Lance or Ressurector Mech Serum to secure a pawn outside of just the random luck of downing them. Shock Lance is for that reason one of the first things I try to get my hands on early.

Since you didn't start as tribal you won't have an anima tree on your map.

You might have a mod that disables that for non-tribals then. I always have an Anima Tree on my map and I prefer to not play as tribals, on the larger experimental maps there's even two of them. I generally also play vanilla, so I know that it's not the reverse (e.g. a mod that enables it for non-tribals).

Mortar tech is relatively fast to research though, put two or more pawns at high research priority (you can have multiple research tables) and just get it done.

It happens at times, especially if the size of your colony remains small, but I generally don't find it too problematic. Usually able to overwhelm the enemy outpost fast enough that even if an attack were to happen I would be able to get back to intervene, transport travel time is negligible after all. If you're too dependent on supporting a frontline defense system to get through a raid then you need to consider internal defense measures anyway.

What makes you think they are working on rimworld content?

What makes you think I assume they are? The example used in the first part of my post does not restrict the answer of the second part.

With that said, there is still a demand and an appetite for more official Rimworld content, but expanding their portfolio is important if Ludeon is to grow as a company, though there's no guarantee a new project will be a hit - so from a business perspective the most sensible thing would be to work on both a new Rimworld DLC as well as a new game. Keeping Rimworld relevant will ensure they have something to fall back on if any new game flops.

Wasn't there a similar calm before the storm period before they revealed the Royalty expansion tho? They probably just not ready to talk about what they are working on yet.

Yeah, more faction mechanics, genetics, and vehicles are all things I would like to see too.

But I would also like to see the colony community features expanded further, particularly an official take on prison labor and slave pawns. Alongside that maybe also an education/apprentice system, kinda like a system where someone with intellectual 10 and plant 10 or higher could teach another pawn with less experience in plant up to that skill level in plant; while the student(s) gain experience in plant the teacher would gain experience in intellectual as a trade-off for their time. Maybe have course sessions by allocating a teach/study routine to the time table. Could be a nice way of getting new pawns up to speed, especially after having lost a few essential ones...

Something archaeology related could be cool too where maybe unique "dungeon" locations (ruined labs etc.) could be found that generated unique challenging map locations. Archaeological findings could maybe include unidentified objects you could study at the research bench, which when identified could result in an artifact, an utility tool, something valuable, secret technology, or perhaps something outright sinister?

The new refugee event allows us to accept or decline a pawn that wants to join us; thus the older events should ideally been updated to apply the same logic of mutual consent, lol.

Honestly, random joins for both pawn and animal should be replaced. For example instead of a random local animal decides to join you, a better event would have a local animal grow friendlier and easier to tame, making it possible to tame them in one attempt. Similarly instead of "a flock of sheep that is used to human contact randomly joins your colony" event there should instead be "a flock of sheep that is used to human contact have entered your area, it seems they could be easily tamed" event. Yeah, it means the player have to work slightly more for it if they have to do one taming attempt per animals they actually want, but it should be an overall improved experience I think. It's a reason why I enjoy the wild human event more than the random wanderer joins event.

I also wish Ludeon made a Psychology update/DLC for Rimworld, if we could have colonists change/lose/gain traits through psychology treatments it would be easier to accept some people even if the outcome of such treatments couldn't be controlled. As long as the outcome was random and took time and skill, then it should be plenty balanced. Yeah, I know Tynan wants negative traits to spice up a colony, but the reality is that a pawn will need rarely high passions if they aren't to be dismissed, sold, or killed by most players when they have poor traits/backgrounds. If the traits wasn't a permanent deal then people would be more willing to deal with those traits for some time, that way some players might actually learn to appreciate or work around some of the poorer traits. But that's just my opinion, lol.

You may want to report that in the bug forum, the desired result is that A) the animal pulser isn't consumed if it can't affect anything, and B) it should force any sleeping animals awake. If it's going to be a reliably useful item comparable to its rarity and price then it should do that much imo.

In addition to tuning the difficulty, it would be nice if there was an alternative, less punishing option than abandoning base if a direct assault is infeasible. Maybe an opportunity to pay ransom to the hive cluster to go away and bug someone else, or have them give up the siege automatically after enduring a few seasons.

I agree, the other factions give us quests to draw mechanoids away from them so it would be consistent with the game if we could pay a price comparable to the cluster difficulty to have another faction similarly signal the cluster to beam up and target them instead. It shouldn't be an entirely reliable solution however as other factions could decline, and hostile factions could maybe see it as an opportunity to raid you while you're in a bind - which could be beneficial if they "coincidentally" attacked from the general direction that cluster is in, heh. As long as the solution is somewhat unpredictable like that then I'm all for additional alternative solutions.

No, the exploit haven't been fixed, you may want to report it properly in the bug forum as it can potentially get overlooked here, and the bug forum should also cover reporting exploits.

A simple and direct solution would be that all colonists lose all honor and titles if the Fallen Empire turned hostile, but this wouldn't resolve the profitability of doing something like this if you're more interested in the psylinks than the title perks. A more universal solution is better anyway when considering mods and future content. Such an universal solution could be to introduce the concept of blood money: if a neutral or allied faction becomes hostile due to player hostility then they would act as a permahostile faction (e.g. can't improve relations) until blood money equal to the most valuable pawn in the group that got betrayed is paid (otherwise you could kill/arrest a less valuable pawn first and then stun/arrest the valuable pawn). And just so the developers are aware, the worst solution would be to increase cost to diplomatic relations, don't do that, those kinda nerfs are too cheap, lol.