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Stabbatical posted:Actually, what would you say good economic play in this game is? What range of dust should one be able to get near the start of the game? I quite like 4x games but I've never gotten the grips of things like those really quick min-max victories that people seem to be able to pull off in them. My games always last ages. With the caveat that it's been a while since I've played and the Cultist-specific advice might be especially fuzzy since most of my Cultist games were a result of a discussion years ago in the last thread: Dust income will be low for most factions in the very early game, possibly even negative as a result of splitting your starting units for exploration purposes. Exploration will often net you enough dust to buy a few things in the first 10-20 turns. That dust should usually be spent as soon as possible (high-value improvements tend to be best, particularly for the Cultists, but some factions and situations call for a hero or upgrades to buy a movement trinket on a settler). After you've built the Founder's Monument, Cultists want to prioritize getting their Public Library (always a good choice for their first tech) and Mill Foundry up. A lot of the min-maxing in the game revolves around empire plans. Not only do you need to pick the right ones, but also minimize their influence cost and engage in a good bit of ruthless optimization to be able to unlock them in time and have the influence to use them. That sort of approach is less important for the Cultists than the other factions, but deciding whether to go for the -33% building cost in the first empire plan is still a very important part of their early game. You can't always pull it off, but it's very powerful when you can. A few of the things most important for the Cultists are: Worker allocation. You can't focus on industry as heavily as most factions want to in the first twenty turns, but you'll still want to spend a significant amount of time on it. Switching to influence for an early village conversion is strong, and you may even need to run science at some point since you have more trouble with it in the early game than the factions that can build cities. Your choice of governor. I'll typically bring the starting hero back to govern as soon as he hits level 2 since the increased influence is too good to pass up, but it's not a bad idea to replace him with a better governor eventually and turn him into a general. Village choice. Sometimes you don't have any good options, but just as with the other factions, not over-expanding or under-expanding and getting good FIDS yields are very important. For the first village, I care about yields almost infinitely more than position, resources or minor faction type. Anomalies are excellent, being on the border of a region is bad, a bias toward food or dust is iffy. The upshot of knowing all the tricks is being able to field that Nameless army sometime between turn 30 and 50 on normal speed. Turn 30 is the sort of deadline that you can only achieve with a ridiculous start and a focus on getting the army out ahead of anything else, but turn 50 is (if I'm remembering everything right) achievable even with a below-average start that picks up a non-military tech or two in Era II. If you don't have any Era II techs by turn 60 on normal speed (or even the next-slowest, which I think is a 1.5x multiplier for most things), there's a lot that you can do to get faster. Just a super-early Public Library and thinking about what else you can do to directly invest in science will help.
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Jan 16, 2019 23:59
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Eschatos posted:So what's the deal with successfully sieging planets? Just started a new coop game after not touching this game since early access. I attacked an AI neighbor and start invading the system. Starts off with equal manpower on both sides and I'm taking higher losses. Not a big deal though, I can send empty ships back to my territory for more troops, and just work on wearing them down over time. That continues for about 10 turns until it gets to the point where I'm sending the max 900 manpower against 100 or less of theirs. Every turn they conscript back up to a decent manpower level, then fall back down to 10 or so after the fight. This continues for another 5 or 10 turns until they send a large enough fleet to chase me off. If you orbit the system without invading their manpower will slowly drop. It's generally a good idea to siege them down for a while so you have favorable numbers. There is a tier 2 military tech ship module called a2g titanium slugs that makes sieging a lot faster, I usually make a specialized hull just to load up with this module and kill the planet. If you start a ground invasion when they are on zero manpower (regardless of pop) you will auto-win the invasion. EDIT: You should also ensure that you upgrade your ground forces on the military screen. If your enemy is fielding 100% infantry it's a good idea to switch your ground composition to 100% tanks. If you are being killed rapidly in ground battles it may be that they have upgraded their troops ahead of yours. Also as a poster explained above the "pre-emptive bombing" tactic counters "draft". Amethyst fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 00:46
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Penumbra for ES2 *and* a new expansion for Endless Legend, Symbiosis, coming next week!
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Jan 17, 2019 18:35
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Any further details on what's on them? More EL expansions is loving awesome.
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Jan 17, 2019 18:44
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Sorry, should have included the link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/988450/Endless_Legend__Symbiosis/ This one is Amplitude made, but I thought the last one was great even though it was made by an outside company.
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Jan 17, 2019 18:45
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Oh thanks mate, I'll order that when I get in. Little fungus boys look sweet as do space ghosts. I quite liked the little lava lads as well. Wasn't very good at playing them, mind. Wish they had a printed artbook, I'd just throw money at it. loving gorgeous and great games. Flipswitch fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 18:59
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Hell yes more Endless Legend, living up to its name
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Jan 17, 2019 19:06
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Helion posted:Sorry, should have included the link: They would do better to show this on the Steam news page of these games. I've been buying their DLC, but this is the first I've heard of these DLC (there's also an ES2 DLC dropping at the same time). I wouldn't have known in advance to take advantage of the 20% off since I just check the main page of the game and not the specific DLC page.
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Jan 17, 2019 19:06
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Flipswitch posted:Oh thanks mate, I'll order that when I get in. Little fungus boys look sweet as do space ghosts. I quite liked the little lava lads as well. Wasn't very good at playing them, mind. I feel exactly the same way, I love their artwork, especially in EL
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Jan 17, 2019 19:35
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I kind of want to see a great 4X board game but with EL art, minis and tokens and the like, it would look awesome.
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Jan 17, 2019 19:40
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Flipswitch posted:Oh thanks mate, I'll order that when I get in. Little fungus boys look sweet as do space ghosts. I quite liked the little lava lads as well. Wasn't very good at playing them, mind. 100% agreed. The endless games have absolutesly amzing style and music (  FlyByNo). I feel like even if I didn't enjoy the gameplay, I would still play these games just because the design is so lush and imaginative.
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Jan 17, 2019 20:39
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I'll buy penumbra day 1 because i'm so invested in the game, but i am kind of skeptical of espionage mechanics in general. Has any game actually made them work well?
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Jan 18, 2019 00:15
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Man the new faction sounds weird. They're completely invisible? Not sure how fun that will be to play against. Hacking: "In the new scan view, players can now initiate hacking operation from a system they own to a target system. While the hack progresses, the player and their target will be able to set up offensive and defensive programs to influence its progression. If the hack succeeds, the attacker will be able to choose among several potentially crippling outcomes..." So it's a whole new layer to manage...
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Jan 18, 2019 00:54
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Mizaq posted:They would do better to show this on the Steam news page of these games. I've been buying their DLC, but this is the first I've heard of these DLC (there's also an ES2 DLC dropping at the same time). I wouldn't have known in advance to take advantage of the 20% off since I just check the main page of the game and not the specific DLC page. They really do a bad job of letting people know what's going on, since I had no idea either were coming anytime soon and I check the news feed on the steam page for them every so often
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Jan 18, 2019 00:59
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Amethyst posted:Man the new faction sounds weird. They're completely invisible? Not sure how fun that will be to play against.
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Jan 18, 2019 02:41
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I don't know why they always feel the need to make espionage a whole complex subsystem instead of, like, stealth scout units and nothing else.
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Jan 18, 2019 02:49
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Amethyst posted:Man the new faction sounds weird. They're completely invisible? Not sure how fun that will be to play against. That sounds... bad. Maybe it will secretly be very good but I have doubts.
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Jan 18, 2019 02:57
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Rhjamiz posted:That sounds... bad. Maybe it will secretly be very good but I have doubts. The only details about this seem to be on crappy dev streams. Amplitude are really bad at this! If anyone has watched the dev streams and knows more, please post.
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Jan 18, 2019 02:59
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSnSFYteKG0
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Jan 18, 2019 04:27
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There's a video buried here in the Amplitude forums. Hacking looks to be very... spatial... https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forums/65-general/threads/32297-hacking-first-impressions?page=1
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Jan 18, 2019 04:31
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It just occurred to me that you could have a game of EL with the Allayi, Forgotten, Morgawr, Kapaku and the new fellows and have no original factions. That's pretty cool, and I think it'll be the first thing I try.
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Jan 18, 2019 04:59
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Amethyst posted:The only details about this seem to be on crappy dev streams. Amplitude are really bad at this! I have watched the dev streams. Basically you press space to go to scan mode and then press the "hack" button to start a hack. Then you choose an origin system and a destination system. It takes more time to hack a more distant system, calculated exactly like moving a ship, ie: it goes faster through warp lanes but can also take shortcuts across empty space if it's faster. You can only have 2 hacks going on at once (at least for the new spy faction, maybe they have more than others), and each ongoing attempt takes a certain amount of "bandwidth" which is like a new command limit thingy for espionage. If you're not hacking anything at the end of a turn, it gives you a little warning, the same as if you're not researching something or not building. In the stream you could hack uninhabited systems so you always had something to do with it, but it's not clear if that was just the spy factions special trait. Once you hack a system you get a number of choices like "steal tech" or "install backdoor" (which makes the enemy system count as yours for the purpose of starting new hacks). Other options include overthrowing the current political party (causing anarchy), disrupting fleet communications (enemy ships can't move), or sending fake orders (enemy armies ignore what their owner wants and does what the hacker wants instead, ie: turn off the Draft command when invading). The different options had different difficulty levels, but they didn't make it clear what that means exactly. Defensively, the only example shown was a pirate base which started with anti-hacking tech. Basically as soon as the hack reached the pirate base, it started a tracing program that went backwards along the hacking route to find out where it originated. Supposedly this would also destroy any backdoors it found. They said this was a way for other factions to find the spy faction and root them out. They didn't show this, but they implied that the player gets a warning when someone tries to hack them and then has to choose a response. You don't know who's hacking unless you successfully trace them. As for the spy faction's unique features, they start in what others see as a planet-less system, like a black hole or an asteroid field. However, from their point of view they have their own "planets" in the sense of artificial habitats they build in deep space. They can "colonize up to 5 of these habitats in their own system, and make them larger through "terraforming" (which is just upgrading the habitats). They can't colonize other systems directly, but they can set up "Sanctuaries" on any system they hack with colonizable planets, including both uninhabited ones and ones currently owned by an enemy. Sanctuaries produce resources that are added to the capital system and also act as backdoors for hacking. The sanctuaries don't have any of their own population growth, but any extra pop growth in the home system is automatically allocated to the Sanctuaries. Spreading hacking nodes out kinda reminds me of the tree people spreading their vines everywhere. Clarste fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jan 18, 2019 |
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Jan 18, 2019 05:01
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Clarste posted:I have watched the dev streams. Thank you for typing this up, I really appreciate it. Some of these options sound pretty interesting, though I still feel like I'm getting a hand on behemoths so I don't think I'll enable it right away.
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Jan 18, 2019 05:08
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that actually sounds neat as hell in multiple ways. it's like a weird alternate version of the cultists from endless legend, refitted to work with this new setting.
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Jan 18, 2019 05:11
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I forgot to note that every active Backdoor in an enemy system takes bandwidth, so you probably can't just dump them everywhere. The Umbral Choir hero had a skill to increase the available bandwidth though, and presumably you'll also get it from new technologies and whatnot. They didn't actually show this, but I can imagine that Defensive programs might also take bandwidth. Oh yeah, and they're also adding a general stealth system for ships that's available to all factions (except the Umbral Choir starts with it without having to research it). There doesn't seem to be anything fancy here, just your ships are invisible and they need anti-stealth technology to see through it. They also mentioned a new kind of probe that you could put on a planet long-term and it would see any ship passing through that system.
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Jan 18, 2019 05:24
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Ok whew that's not as bad as it sounds from that tiny blurb.
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Jan 18, 2019 05:34
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It sounds ok but I really wish It weren't a whole new layer. It means yet another thing to check every turn, when they could have extended the existing layers instead.
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Jan 18, 2019 05:45
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I think hacking occurs on the Strategic view, the same one that displays trade routes.
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Jan 18, 2019 06:18
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Amethyst posted:It sounds ok but I really wish It weren't a whole new layer. It means yet another thing to check every turn, when they could have extended the existing layers instead. It doesn't sound like the kind of thing you need to check at all, honestly. It's more like research. It just gives you notifications whenever something you need to do pops ups, and then you ignore it again until something finishes.
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Jan 18, 2019 06:36
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Clarste posted:It doesn't sound like the kind of thing you need to check at all, honestly. It's more like research. It just gives you notifications whenever something you need to do pops ups, and then you ignore it again until something finishes. lol if you aren't constantly second guessing your research choices and futzing about with your queue every turn.
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Jan 18, 2019 06:44
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OK I finally watched the dev stream. Looks pretty neat actually. Lots of potential. They've taken a lot of inspiration from games like Uplink, which is cool
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Jan 18, 2019 10:34
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Amethyst posted:OK I finally watched the dev stream. Looks pretty neat actually. Lots of potential. They've taken a lot of inspiration from games like Uplink, which is cool Yeah, I like that it is built around the links between planets. It helps counter the big weakness of space 4X games, that their spatial element is rarely as compelling or instantly graspable as a map with forests and mountains and wiggly rivers.
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Jan 18, 2019 11:02
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Midnightghoul posted:They really do a bad job of letting people know what's going on, since I had no idea either were coming anytime soon and I check the news feed on the steam page for them every so often You should be on their forums (the games2gether site) if you really want to follow and track what's going on.
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Jan 18, 2019 16:46
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Amplitude posted:We’ve teamed up once again with the brilliant minds at NGD Studios in Argentina to bring you Symbiosis, which will be Endless Legend’s final expansion. Symbiosis introduces new faction the Mykara as well as giant, tame-able beasts known as the Urkan. Oh.
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Jan 19, 2019 02:08
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Clarste posted:Oh. Wasn't Tempest also meant to be EL's final expansion? Until EL2 is announced I won't count out continued support.
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Jan 19, 2019 02:13
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Blooming Brilliant posted:Wasn't Tempest also meant to be EL's final expansion? Until EL2 is announced I won't count out continued support. They never gave a hard "We're done" after Tempest, iirc.
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Jan 19, 2019 02:19
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Sad to hear that, but at the same time, I really really really want to see what EL2 will look like and what they learned from it so if this hastens EL2, I'm fine with this last hurrah. Edit: also the plant people look great, I'm excited to play it again.
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Jan 19, 2019 02:23
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I really like this extended EL support.
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Jan 19, 2019 02:55
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The important question is: will there be more FlyByNo tracks in the DLCs?
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Jan 19, 2019 11:04
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We hope so. Amplitude and Supergiant Games are basically rulers of the OST land.
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Jan 19, 2019 16:56
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