Endless Space 2

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Freyland
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Freyland »

Coldsteel, how are the AI ships? I read a forum complaint that they don't upgrade them well (or at all?).
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ColdSteel
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by ColdSteel »

Freyland wrote:Coldsteel, how are the AI ships? I read a forum complaint that they don't upgrade them well (or at all?).
They certainly don't have any issues cranking out a lot of ships since I was fighting a horde of them. They also don't seem to have any issues researching and building the larger ship hull designs. I have battleships and I was hoping they didn't but nope, they have them and are building them in masses. What I'm not sure of is the tech level of their ships components because I can't see that anywhere (I wish I could). But it seems roughly equivalent to what I'm fielding. They seem to have upgraded engines at least based on their amount of movement per turn.

So, for the game I'm currently playing anyway, the AI seems to be upgrading ships just fine.
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Butterknife
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Butterknife »

I am really interested in this game, but there are several complaints about the game soft-locking on the AI turn once you get to turn 80 - 100 or so. How bad is this problem?
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tgb
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by tgb »

All of my games have gone past 100 turns and I've never had a problem.
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ColdSteel
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by ColdSteel »

Butterknife wrote:but there are several complaints about the game soft-locking on the AI turn once you get to turn 80 - 100 or so. How bad is this problem?
It's bad. There's no workaround. There are a lot of threads and posts about it on the forums. Apparently it's been reported since last November and the devs thought they had squashed it for good in the 1.0 release but it's popped back up again. They're working on a fix but I wouldn't buy if until it's fixed and confirmed fixed. I've set my game aside for now until after the patch.
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dbemont
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by dbemont »

Yup, I had a decent game going as the Sophons, and it is eternally pending on turn 85.
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ColdSteel
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by ColdSteel »

dbemont wrote:Yup, I had a decent game going as the Sophons, and it is eternally pending on turn 85.
They released a hotfix today which fixes this issue so you should be able to continue your stuck game now.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
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Paingod
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Paingod »

This is up for a free 3 day weekend of play and I've got it waiting for me when I get home.

If you're on the fence or looking for something to pass the time and don't have it, get it for a few days. It's also 50% off.
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GreenGoo
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by GreenGoo »

The first one was great, and the one common complaint, the rock/paper/scissors card based combat I thought was decent.
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Moliere
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Moliere »

Paingod wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 11:58 am This is up for a free 3 day weekend of play
I tried this yesterday, but couldn't get past the time commitment on the steep learning curve. It looks like fun if I had the time to learn how to play.
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tgb
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by tgb »

It's a lot deeper than the first, but well worth the effort, imo.
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Zarathud
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Zarathud »

The first edition was pretty fun too. Recommended.
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Buatha
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Buatha »

Moliere wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 4:56 pm
Paingod wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 11:58 am This is up for a free 3 day weekend of play
I tried this yesterday, but couldn't get past the time commitment on the steep learning curve. It looks like fun if I had the time to learn how to play.
I'll be the first to admit I suck at 4X games, but I still keep trying to play them.

I've found this video quite helpful in learning the core aspects of the game.
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tgb
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by tgb »

Bridger's tutorials are great. I thought I knew the game, but 20 minutes in and I've already picked up 3 or 4 things I didn't realize.
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Paingod
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Paingod »

I've put a while into this, and while I like the depth of most of the game, I'm wishing there was more tactical involvement in combat. It's somewhat annoying to sit and watch it play out after picking one of a handful of basic tactics.

I've run through a few attempts and scored middlingly-well in the overall scheme by just having a lot of 4x experience in other games and following tool tips that come up. I'm sure there's a lot more to learn after 8 hours of play, but I'm already moving on and didn't buy.

I have this on my wishlist, and own Endless Space 1, but will probably wait for a deep discount to pick it up.
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tgb
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by tgb »

Paingod wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 1:17 pm I've put a while into this, and while I like the depth of most of the game, I'm wishing there was more tactical involvement in combat. It's somewhat annoying to sit and watch it play out after picking one of a handful of basic tactics.

I've run through a few attempts and scored middlingly-well in the overall scheme by just having a lot of 4x experience in other games and following tool tips that come up. I'm sure there's a lot more to learn after 8 hours of play, but I'm already moving on and didn't buy.

I have this on my wishlist, and own Endless Space 1, but will probably wait for a deep discount to pick it up.
Did you like ES1? Because the combat isn't that different.
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Paingod
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Paingod »

Honestly, no. I was reminded why as I played ES2.

I liked the rest of ES1 well enough to log a few dozen hours in total, though.

It's funny. A lot of it seems to just be my interpretation of the presentation. I'm fine with rock-paper-scissors in things like Galactic Civilizations or limited tactical involvement when I see a row of troops vs. a row of troops... but you put me in an overview of a nicely rendered 3d real-time space fight and tell me all I can do is watch, then I get annoyed. If they stripped out the space combat and just had a row of ships vs. ships as numeric representations with the same limited card system, I'd say "That's fine" and get over it.

It's like I'm forced to watch someone eat my favorite food vs. being aware that my favorite food is in another room. If I'm sitting next to it, I'd prefer to be involved in the eating... :wink:
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Buatha
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Buatha »

I imagine Samuel L. Jackson saying: "Manpower motherf#$%er! Do you speak it?"

I didn't and found the following link.
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ColdSteel
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by ColdSteel »

I've been struggling trying to decide what to get during the summer steam sale and I noticed today that all the DLC for this is 50% off.

I didn't have any of it so I decided to grab it all for about 8 bucks. $5 of that is the Vaulter DLC so I assume that's the biggest DLC content-wise. There was also a ton of free DLC I hadn't installed so I grabbed all of that too.

I guess I'm going to have to get back into playing this now. Has anyone played as the Vaulters? How is the game these days? They've surely put a ton of work into it since release. I see one of the free DLC adds carriers/fighters which sounds like fun.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Fretmute »

I loved the first one, and I double loved Endless Legend, but this one never really gelled with me. Perhaps I ought to give it another shot myself.
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ColdSteel
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by ColdSteel »

I think this game is a lot of fun. I guess the issues that they had at launch that took a while for them to fix really did cost them in gamer mind share. I know I sure put it aside because of those issues and am just now coming back to it. I think it's well worth it to do so if you bought it and haven't played it since launch like me.

They've kept adding to and polishing the game and it shows. It's probably the best presentation of a space game I've ever seen. I'm currently playing as the Vaulters and they are such fun to play. They get Stargates for one thing.

If you've ever scratched your head over the tech tree menu and struggled with understanding it, I HIGHLY recommend watching this video. It's excellent. He also has some more videos on Endless Space 2 and they're all very good. The two he has that cover combat are particularly helpful.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Pyperkub »

OO effect got me, though I enjoyed the time I spent with the first. Got about 25 turns in today, and there appears to have been a significant amount of progress and polish from the first. Only playing the human tutorial first, the quests are fun as well as the exploration upgrades. No real combat yet, though a scout did killed by pirates - hopefully pirates aren't as rough early as they were in Sins.
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ColdSteel
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by ColdSteel »

So, how do people generally deal with dust inflation in this game? Is there any way to stop it or slow it down?
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
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ColdSteel
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by ColdSteel »

I've found that the answer to my question above is "trading companies".

I posted the below Vaulters impressions on another site and thought I'd cross-post it here for those that might have just picked up that DLC on the Steam sale like I did:

I’m still playing my first game as Vaulters (turn 56). They seem to be crazy strong. I still don’t know how to play them optimally and I’m still leading all the other empires in score by a goodly amount.

The starting vaulter hero is really good and comes with a lot a good skills to get your starting system up and going fast (don’t stick her on a fleet except to gain a few levels exploring anomalies initially). But, the real game changer seems to be Portals. You can build one fairly cheaply in every system where you own a colony and they act like star gates in the MOO games. You can funnel your ships immediately between your colonies no matter the distances in between, even the ones in other constellations. This allows you to a) choose good systems to colonize no matter how far away they are and b) defend them all with one fleet. It’s an awesome advantage.

The portals have a nice synergy with the Argosy colony ship which is the reusable (and only) colony ship you get as the Vaulters. It has a timer on it that limits how often you can use it to colonize but it’s tremendously fast and, with a later tech upgrade, it can itself act as a portal. My lord.

So, I think the Vaulters are actually ideal for a new player to play in their first game. It’s hard to lose playing this race because they come with so many innate advantages.

In my current game, I have colonies in 3 different constellations. I control the starting constellation which gives me a 15% tech boost. I have a single colony in two others and one of them is home to the Empire race. They got their panties in a bunch because I own a system in their constellation so they immediately declared war on me. They have the second highest score, not too bar behind mine so this could get interesting.

The Horatio have 2 systems in my constellation and are stuck in a dead end at the very end of it. I have them bottle-necked and they aren’t happy about it. We’re on a cold war footing currently but I’m going to have to do something about them before I deal with the Empire. Their score is half mine so I’m hoping they’ll be easy to take out.

I have to say, I do enjoy this game much more than Stellaris. It has a lot of the same kinds of events and exploration that I like about Stellaris but without all the other issues. War actually seems to make sense and I like the tech tree implementation a lot. Plus, I guess I just like turn based better for these kinds of games.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
Freyland
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Re: Endless Space 2

Post by Freyland »

I finally got around to playing this a couple weeks ago. Very heavy investment in the learning curve, and I know there are still things I don't completely grasp (some Senate stuff, a bit of the combat, certain tech benefits). Lots of moving parts, lots of polish, despite some small flaws introduced by the latest expansion. But I find myself very much in the "one more turn" mode, which is encouraging. Last night was actually rather exciting. I'm playing as the Lumeris, the economic juggernauts of the game. One of their traits is that they simply buy colony outposts they find attractive, rather than send a colony ship. Having been somewhat penned into my corner of the galaxy by the Sophons, the United Empire and Horatio, I ended up purchasing several systems outside my cluster. Two of these systems turned out to be deep in Craver Territory. Cravers are the all-consuming, slave-driving, militant-minded assholes of the game. Nallin, a system with 4 (eventually) viable planets, was in a particularly vulnerable location, so I focused on building all the Defensive structures I could, as well as a moderate defensive fleet in system. Naturally, the Cravers have been making demands and saying mean things to me for quite some time. However, they never actually followed through. Actually, I was getting anxious that the AI was basically a bust, although every once in awhile I would see through the FOW and notice one of the other empires being mean to another.

Um, then they showed up. In force.

They easily swept aside my defense fleet at Nallin. Barely touched their ships. As they settled into sieging my worlds in that system, more ships arrived. They clearly understood that it was going to take a lot of effort to wear down my troops and bunkers on that system. I sent two more fleets against them as rapid response teams, and they fared only a bit better than the original defense force. I think I destroyed a few, damaged a few others. To make matters worse, I cannot rebuild my fleets with the latest and greatest tech I have because I'm short on several strategic resources. The other AI want both my arms and a leg to trade it to me, and the marketplace just doesn't have that much. But with impeccable timing, the long-range exploration fleet that I had sent out to the unexplored portion of the galaxy many turns ago discovered several technologies that were at least comparable to the ones I had already researched, but did not require resources to build! I'm desperately trying to retool and rebuild my fleet when the Cravers finally committed to a ground invasion. It doesn't look good. They brought *a lot* of troops, and had spent many turns sieging my defences. ES2 models ground combat over several turns for large engagement, but it was clear I would eventually be overwhelmed.

As I organized my ships at a Staging point out of their LOS, some of their fleet actually left. And why not? They have already dropped off their ground forces, and the remaining fleet was at least as strong as anything I had fought so far. They sent some towards another race they were at war with, and a damaged fleet went back towards a populated world of theirs. Amazingly, over several engagements, my new fleets were able to overwhelm the Cravers, but not without losses. All the while, the ground battle continued, getting closer and closer to the inevitable loss and slavery of my people. In an unexpected but yet very cool game mechanic, my fleets, which now controlled space above my worlds, dropped off their own troops to supplement the beleaguered Defenders! I didn't bring troop ships, but they still brought enough reinforcements to carry the coming days of battle. The Cravers even attempted to retake the skies, but by now I was the one entrenched.

So here we are. I have a potent fleet and a battle-scarred hero orbiting my system of four worlds, with almost no troops to defend them until the Manpower trickles in. Should be interesting to see what happens next.
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