Endless Space 4x-All

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There has been a lot of interest in this on the Space Sims/Strategy thread, enough that I think it needs its own thread.

Endless Space Features

Endless Space released on July 4th. It is fun.

I almost pulled the trigger on it this weekend, but I've been so slammed I didn't get around to it. The game itself looks really great. I'll try and find time to go read the other thread and get people's impressions, but from the outside, it looks kinda like Civ in Spaaaace...which; Whee!

This is an evil game where even on the Newbie AI, the pirates show up to kick your arse almost immediately.

Tagging in as I'm very interested in impressions. I too almost grabbed it but decided to wait since D3 is so close and my pile is massive. SotS2 is supposed to go gold later this month too so maybe my investment will finally pay off.

I am intrigued by this as well, but I am turned off by the reports that it is super hard.

Wembley wrote:

I am intrigued by this as well, but I am turned off by the reports that it is super hard.

It's in alpha, so I suspect there's a lot of fine tuning to be done on the difficulty front. What is very comforting is that it's very very stable, it's seeded with a lot of great content, the mechanics are solid (though can use further fine tuning). Given the state of the game from what I've seen and heard - they'll be able to spend the majority of the time focusing on nailing down the balance and addressing gameplay issues as opposed to hunting system bugs.

Coldstream wrote:

This is an evil game where even on the Newbie AI, the pirates show up to kick your arse almost immediately.

I call that sexy.

Wembley wrote:

I am intrigued by this as well, but I am turned off by the reports that it is super hard.

Don't sweat it. I don't think the difficulty levels have been set up yet. It's so stable and good looking that it's easy to think of this as a late beta, but as an alpha it's nothing but awesome.

I put about 15 hours into this over the weekend, here are my thoughts.

1. A lot of fun and quite polished so far. The only bug I have seen thus far is one Quintin(?) mentioned in the Space thread, where the manual/automatic battle styles thing does not respond. It is definitely feels the most similar to Gal Civ 2 among all the games I have played, with the exception of lacking Spaceports and goodies to be picked up by space survey. The other big difference is that instead of moving everywhere freely you are confined to systems and star lines.
2. On blockades: You do have the ability to attack ships moving through your system, just like the AI does. The problem is that you have to be fast. The enemy fleets will pause shortly (like 2 seconds tops) on your systems before moving on. During that time you can click the fleet combat button to intercept them. I have succeeded several times, and failed several times. You have to know that the fleet is in the area, there is no notice or anything. Most of my failures come from being surprised that a ship shows up somewhere, or once when a ship showed up at a system with multiple fleets and I was unable to choose which fleet attacked before it moved on. Hopefully some sort of panel (that pauses the game) will show up shortly. Note that each of your fleets can only have one fight a turn, so if several smaller fleets are sent past you will only be able to intercept one.
3. I have a lot of confusion about the battle cards. For example one of them is something like "+40% deflection chance(block +20%); -20% beam damage (block +20)" is that -20% beam damage for my beams or the enemies beams? Is that block telling me that +40% deflection is equal to a 20% increased block rate, and the same for beam damage, or is it telling me that if the card is blocked by the enemy by deflection bonus is lowered from 40 to 20? Does that mean that the beam damage penalty turns into a bonus when it is blocked?
4. Over all I still love the fighting, you can help a bit, which is nice, but mostly I see them like Gal Civ 2 battles that you simply watch, and they are way prettier than them.
5. As far as the difficulty goes, I am playing on normal, and it seems fairly balanced right now. As far as the pirates go, the "Defender" combat ship you start out with is more than a match for a single pirate ship, and your second generation ships should be significantly superior, so I can't say I had much trouble with them. Early on I was blockaded regularly, as I only had a couple pairs of ships flying around patrolling during my weaker times, but it didn't hamper my growth much.
6. Another important thing to note is that you can't trust the score screen. Towards the beginning of the game I really thought that I was in trouble because my score was around a third of two of my four competitors, I thought that I was significantly behind. Getting into the middle of the game the top power declared war on me, and he did indeed crush my first fleet, but those were really just my second generation of pirate hunters. When I geared up to build a more war-ready fleet (with some quick research first to build ships targeted against his designs) I was able to repel the advances. This power was at the time in a three way war, so at the time I thought it was possible that I was just getting some fraction of his attention, which may have been true. When the second power (currently friendly to me) arrived with a large fleet in the area I was actually able to pick up the foes most recent, weak outpost, and the larger fleet of my ally grabbed the next acquisition, which actually served as a nice buffer between me and the foe. That gave me a nice period of rest, I just sent in a fleet to the ally's system every now and then to help him clear out the invaders. Eventually the proximity of my largish fleets caused my ally to lose patience with me, he declared war and I snatched up that system too.

Around now I had expanded as much as I could. I found that I lucked into being the only power that started on this spiral arm (two spiral arm system) and there was only one link to the next arm, the buffer system I had just taken from the old ally. I had every system in this arm, fully half the map. The other two powers (the third had been eliminated) had to share the second arm. I was still nervous about this proposition, because I had only slightly more than half the score of either of my opponents. However, while Green (the top power) may have had a slight advantage at first (he took the buffer system a couple times, and the next system once) I was able to repel him each time. What's more I was fairly sure through fighting him and looking at the planets I took from him that his tech lead was only marginal, and almost certainly only in two of the four tech branches. He didn't really seem to have a production edge either (which you would expect from someone without a large tech lead and with less territory). In fact, my difficulty with him was almost certainly entirely due to the fact that he at this point had a very skilled Admiral, and my fleets weren't being led.

Sure enough, as I finished industrializing my arm of the galaxy and turned towards more war production I began outproducing my foe. I also made some tech improvements and started using a combat hero I had been grooming to lead my largest fleet. I was able to easily forestall his advances, and just made my first step into his spiral arm, taking his (very nice) buffer system. Looking at my score at this point (modest gains elsewhere, the addition of one nice system to my current 15 or so) I saw that I was now in first place, and had more than tripled my score from before this fighting.

Given that increase, and how my opponent scores didn't appear to truly be indicative of their strength, I believe that a very large portion of the score actually comes from military victories. During the gain of that one system (and the defense of my own) I fought off dozens of their fleets (and lost almost that many) I think that that fighting, more than anything else, spiked my victory score. I also think that before this last push by me the other two races had a score that was so high because they have probably been squabbling like that all game. No real gain, no increase in power, but an ever-growing score nonetheless.

So yeah, don't think that you are getting creamed just because you have a much lower score, wait until you see how the actual fighting goes.

Definitely interested. Keep those impressions coming.

tl;dr Colleen can't know this exists for at least another two weeks if she wants to keep her job.

Color me interested!

PAR

I always find it interesting that space combat is often portrayed in the same way the British and French navies would have fought in the 1600's. So we're able to travel at light speed but to engage my enemies we must turn broadside and let lose the space cannons!

Bear wrote:

I always find it interesting that space combat is often portrayed in the same way the British and French navies would have fought in the 1600's. So we're able to travel at light speed but to engage my enemies we must turn broadside and let lose the space cannons!

Star Trek is the only series of game/tv/movie I can think of off the top of my head where ships fight at warp/light/ludicrous-speed.

Coldstream wrote:

This is an evil game where even on the Newbie AI, the pirates show up to kick your arse almost immediately.

Yeah, that seemed kinda harsh. :/

I too have had the "can't pick manual or automatic fight resolution", and even worse, I had all but 2 of my saves disappear (plus the 4 or 5 "Autosaves" were still there); that last one also caused the game to CTD.

I've just started a new game on Easy and No Pirates, with 4 (5 incl. me) factions. We'll see if I can figure out an "optimal" research/build strategy. In both Master of Magic and MOO2 (2 games that I used to play on "Impossible") I had fairly basic starting builds on any new town/colony (maybe for the first 5 structures or so).

My last game (was getting beat down on the regular by 1 foe, and an expanding (at peace) neighbor on the other side), I built my 1st "missile corvettes"... damn those things would hit HARD. I did find out that they really needed to have a few launchers plus some serious defensive add-ons to survive any fight though. Travel-time on the torpedoes is a pain. I'd annihilate the opposing fleet, but only after most of mine was destroyed. My empire didn't last long enough to alter that fleet-doctrine.

I haven't really figured out the "area of control" (?) the ever-expanding coloured rings around (always my opponents') systems. I've never even had 2 neighboring systems' circles touch .

I loved both MoM and MOO2, and am eating up Endless Space with glee. (seewhatididthere )

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

I haven't really figured out the "area of control" (?) the ever-expanding coloured rings around (always my opponents') systems. I've never even had 2 neighboring systems' circles touch .

There are techs on the left tree which affect the area of influence. The first one is fairly low, and lets you build a system improvement called "camouflage" something which increases the range. There is also a later stealth tech that increases the range by a percentage, but its improvement requires a rare resource.

I found that the game is not hard in itself the problem is you can get an unbalanced start. If your located to some nice planets early on its a major boon. It sort of like civilization where starting in the wrong location can kill you a hundred turns down the row. Obviously needs a bit of balance. Pirates were never a problem, in fact I generally ignored them completely. They don't seem to attack planets and I only had ships when war was on, by then they always got crushed.

master0 wrote:

I found that the game is not hard in itself the problem is you can get an unbalanced start. If your located to some nice planets early on its a major boon. It sort of like civilization where starting in the wrong location can kill you a hundred turns down the row. Obviously needs a bit of balance. Pirates were never a problem, in fact I generally ignored them completely. They don't seem to attack planets and I only had ships when war was on, by then they always got crushed.

Interesting. I lost my scout to a pirate 10 turns into my game, and they were systematically eliminating my planets with fleets of four or more beam-equipped destroyers by turn 100. I managed to get my fleet to a point that I could stave them off from the two remaining planets, but then multiple fleets began arriving at both planets. I can only assume that there was some sort of pirate-ship generation bug, because I probably took out fifty pirate ships attacking my planets within the first 200 turns, and more and more were showing up.

Picked up the pre-order Emperor. Have no time to play it, it's going to sit on the pile, here's hoping I'm wrong.

Coldstream wrote:
master0 wrote:

I found that the game is not hard in itself the problem is you can get an unbalanced start. If your located to some nice planets early on its a major boon. It sort of like civilization where starting in the wrong location can kill you a hundred turns down the row. Obviously needs a bit of balance. Pirates were never a problem, in fact I generally ignored them completely. They don't seem to attack planets and I only had ships when war was on, by then they always got crushed.

Interesting. I lost my scout to a pirate 10 turns into my game, and they were systematically eliminating my planets with fleets of four or more beam-equipped destroyers by turn 100. I managed to get my fleet to a point that I could stave them off from the two remaining planets, but then multiple fleets began arriving at both planets. I can only assume that there was some sort of pirate-ship generation bug, because I probably took out fifty pirate ships attacking my planets within the first 200 turns, and more and more were showing up.

Oh that's way more then I ever saw, only ever attacked in 1s or 2s at most. They owned a planet once so maybe you got real unlucky and they spawned on a really good planet and were just churning out ships. You can also set pirate difficulty in the options. Also it seems like you can only play one race in the alpha or am I just blind.

master0 wrote:

Also it seems like you can only play one race in the alpha or am I just blind.

Click on the portrait on the game start screen to choose a race.

BadKen wrote:
master0 wrote:

Also it seems like you can only play one race in the alpha or am I just blind.

Click on the portrait on the game start screen to choose a race.

Yup missed that. I really do like the interface but it does the whole hide as much information from plain site as possible that games do these day. Sure it makes it look nice but for a 4x game it's a bit of a pain. That being said I really like some of the fluff in the game, particularly the clone race.

I like that it hides a lot of the stuff you seldom use. It is a little painful when there's no manual or other way to figure out what's where, but once you learn where stuff is, the UI remains uncluttered.

Yeah it's definitely not bad, just a few more general tweaks would be nice. Particular in the research screen, I'd like to tell the various categories apart at a glance (empire, item, ship , etc). Say with a color background or border. But yeah a manual would solve most my issues. What I really like about the research screen is that it's possible to skip technologies. Particularly in the weapons tech, if you go up one branch then horizontal to another you don't have to research quite a few things.

Very cool looking. How long about do you think a standard game would be? Similar to a Civ/GalCiv/SotS type thing, or is it a step down from that?

It would be great to have such type of game.

The game is amazing. Got it on Saturday and have played it about 20 hours or so.

The game can be hard until you realise what is going on, then it's possible to stomp the AI pretty effectively.

There are a few Alpha annoyances, but the game is in a better state now then most games are at release.

Starting locations can be very random, but it is possible to overcome them by using governors and expanding quickly. It's also possible to solve the fleet interception by setting up chokepoints at wormhole locations (which automatically consume all a fleet's movement).

Pirates don't spawn where you have vision.

Governors get different bonuses depending on their traits. Go +Labour for the first skill on an administrator to get access to a perk that gives +25 production. You can then move that governor to any new colony to fast-track production there.

For every new colony go food focus on the first planet, then then +10 production system improvement.

I picked this up as well. As soon as I saw it was turned based, I got excited. Then, once I started playing, I realized that this game is just Civ 5 in space... And I got even more excited. I'm about 50 turns into a game, and am loving it so far.

Caddrel wrote:

It's also possible to solve the fleet interception by setting up chokepoints at wormhole locations (which automatically consume all a fleet's movement).

Some of the research items give your Empire yellow movement (instead of blue). I suspect that that is actually Wormhole movement, so it's possible that later in the game a Wormhole won't be a guaranteed stopping point. I'll confirm this when I can.

Governors get different bonuses depending on their traits. Go +Labour for the first skill on an administrator to get access to a perk that gives +25 production. You can then move that governor to any new colony to fast-track production there.

This was my strategy as well. Note that that perk only seems to be accessible for Heroes that have the Labor/Food category as one of their two traits.

Yonder wrote:
Caddrel wrote:

It's also possible to solve the fleet interception by setting up chokepoints at wormhole locations (which automatically consume all a fleet's movement).

Some of the research items give your Empire yellow movement (instead of blue). I suspect that that is actually Wormhole movement, so it's possible that later in the game a Wormhole won't be a guaranteed stopping point. I'll confirm this when I can.

Later tech allows your ships to avoid starlanes completely, but wormholes are still a useful chokepoint in the early and mid game. If you can prevent the AI scouting beyond the wormhole, they'll also no have choice but to follow that route; they won't be able to see any of your other systems.

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