Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
HiKaizer
Feb 2, 2012

Yes!
I finally understand everything there is to know about axes!
I don't know if people hate ES, certainly not in the way they might dislike SotS2 or Stardrive. But it was a much rougher project than Endless Legend. Amplitude obviously learned a lot from it and they tried to work on some of its flaws with the expansion.

It's okay to like ES. It has its flaws but if you enjoy it, then that is good. I personally adore Endless Legend's presentation, theme, soundtrack, lore and its diverse gameplay styles but it's also got serious balance issues and other flaws.

However I am eagerly awaiting ES2, as I am sure Amplitude will take what they have learned from both of their 4x strategy games so far. What mechanics I have seen have been interesting and I look forward to the game being in early access. Amplitude is a company I would currently trust with an EA purchase.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.
Frankly, I'm more hype about EL's new expansion. The seas are like the #1 gap to fill in that game.

Cynic Jester
Apr 11, 2009

Let's put a simile on that face
A dazzling simile
Twinkling like the night sky

HiKaizer posted:

I don't know if people hate ES, certainly not in the way they might dislike SotS2 or Stardrive. But it was a much rougher project than Endless Legend. Amplitude obviously learned a lot from it and they tried to work on some of its flaws with the expansion.

The reason why I rag on ES so hard is because everything except the gameplay was so loving good. Art, UI, non-fan-hosed content, it was all super slick. Which just made the disappointment all the more hard hitting that the core of the game wasn't up to snuff. If the rest of it was as bland and imbalanced as the core gameplay, I'd have played it for a couple of hours and dropped it like I do most 4x games. But the presentation hooked me enough that I dumped 50 some hours into it instead of dropping it and forgetting it.

Tanith
Jul 17, 2005


Alpha, Beta, Gamma cores
Use them, lose them, salvage more
Kick off the next AI war
In the Persean Sector

Lichtenstein posted:

Frankly, I'm more hype about EL's new expansion. The seas are like the #1 gap to fill in that game.

I definitely agree with your hype. The Nautilus Pirates were one of my favorites in Alpha Centauri and I can't wait to see what Amplitude does with the Auriga Yacht Club in EL.

e: Mokinokaro, rehost those three pictures in the OP that aren't on Imgur.

Tanith fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Sep 19, 2016

Keru
Aug 2, 2004

'n suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us 'n the sky was full of what looked like 'uge bats, all swooping 'n screeching 'n divin' around the ute.
Very quick (and very dirty).
http://crossfade.io/#!/w6pqxrdba4

But I am excited about new endless spacings.

Sandwich Anarchist
Sep 12, 2008

Lichtenstein posted:

Endless Legend got me to buy a music DLC and I'm not feeling a single bit of shame about it.

My wife didn't believe that the Broken Lords music was video game music when I was listening to it one day. She's a music teacher.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Lichtenstein posted:

Frankly, I'm more hype about EL's new expansion. The seas are like the #1 gap to fill in that game.

Yeah, water was just an obstacle before, you didn't even have rudimentary sea combat. This could be one of the most substantial updates yet.

Jimmy4400nav
Apr 1, 2011

Ambassador to Moonlandia
For which human faction will be *the* human faction for ES2, my money is on the Vaulters though Empire might be the next best bet too. Considering the canonical victory of EL is the Vaulters cheesing it off Auriga in their technomagic space ship it would make sense for them to pick back up in ES2. Empire would work well too though, they could be the main humans and all the other human factions appear via quests or random events.

:aaa: "Emperor! Our intellegenisa is unhappy and have formed a ragtag resistance!"

:doom: VERY WELL, OBLITER-

:aaa: "Emperor! A scrappy bunch of technomagic viking have appeared in our periphery!"

:doom: CURSES, SEND IN THE FLEET! CRUS-

:aaa: "Emperor! The Sheredyn have entered a full rebellion! They seek to overthrow you!"

:doom: FOOLS! I SHALL LAY WAST-

:aaa: "...Emperor"

:doom: OH FOR...WHAT?!?

:aaa: "You know that reclusive trillionare Horatio Horatioson? The one that vanished a few decades ago...He's back and he has a clone army of himself../"

:doom: ...GODDAMMIT!!!!

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!
Yeah, the humans are almost certainly gonna be the Vaulters, I think, just becaude they're the through line for the whole series. The survivors of the shipwreck that leads to Dungeon become the progenitors of the Vaulters in Legend, who leave Auriga and eventually survive to take part in Space. They're the biggest link being shared between the games, and I feel like they wouldn't go back on that.

Jastiger
Oct 11, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
But who were they before they were vaulters? Obviously a well advanced space faring human civilization.

In dungeon of the endless

Mokinokaro
Sep 11, 2001

At the end of everything, hold onto anything



Fun Shoe
A spacefaring group called the Mezari. We don't know much about them.

Jastiger
Oct 11, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
So why wouldn't they then be the Mezari. They werent on Auriga that long were they?

Mokinokaro
Sep 11, 2001

At the end of everything, hold onto anything



Fun Shoe
They were on Auriga for enough generations to forget they were space travellers.

Onean
Feb 11, 2010

Maiden in white...
You are not one of us.
They were on Auriga long enough to forget who they were, so the may or may not be the Mezari if they're put in ES2.

Edit: Should have refreshed before posting, oops.

Jastiger
Oct 11, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
True but that doesnt mean the Mezari forgot they were the Mezari. The ones who didnt crash in Auriga, like the entire rest of the race. Remember it was just a prison ship.

Mokinokaro
Sep 11, 2001

At the end of everything, hold onto anything



Fun Shoe
IIRC it's been handwaved by Amplitude's lore guy that the Mezari were part of the United Empire in ES1, though ES1 is now not canon.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

Mokinokaro posted:

They were on Auriga for enough generations to forget they were space travellers.

Not only that, it's long enough for them to have forgotten the crash site that became their homeland, for the earth to have completely covered and buried the ship and surrounding dungeon, and for Opbot to have sustained memory damage through sheer age.

It's entirely possible for the origin of the Vaulters to have gotten lost relatively quickly, given that our sample of the original crash's survivors includes very few people who would tell the story. Far more telling of the probable age of the Vaulter civilization is how old the physicalities of it must be.

Microplastics
Jul 6, 2007

:discourse:
It's what's for dinner.

Mokinokaro posted:

Amplitude's lore guy

Is there a title for that job? I like to think it should be Loresmith.

E: No, Lorelord

mitochondritom
Oct 3, 2010

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

Is there a title for that job? I like to think it should be Loresmith.

E: No, Lorelord

Druid? I think Druidism is where the word "Lore" is derived from. No joke I met a person in a pub once who claimed to be some sort of pagan type and they were lamenting how the word LORE has entered the popular lexicon to refer to a bunch of cheesy game stories. I think it was raised when someone was talking about DC comics LORE.

At least Bethesda have a suitably appropriate dude as their LOREMASTER.

berenzen
Jan 23, 2012

Do we know if there's a necrophage-like race for ES2? I just wanna consume the galaxy in murderbugs.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

berenzen posted:

Do we know if there's a necrophage-like race for ES2? I just wanna consume the galaxy in murderbugs.

Cravers, same as in ES1.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Cythereal posted:

Cravers, same as in ES1.

How is their devouring gimmick this time around? In ES1 they would get bonus FIDS for a certain number of turns, but over time a planet would get devoured-out and they'd need to continue to exploit more.

Demiurge4
Aug 10, 2011

Speedball posted:

How is their devouring gimmick this time around? In ES1 they would get bonus FIDS for a certain number of turns, but over time a planet would get devoured-out and they'd need to continue to exploit more.

It's the same thing this time. Expect now races are represented as their own populations and Cravers will use them as slaves, giving you great production on systems with high alien populations but killing them over time (replacing them with less productive Craver pops).

Max
Nov 30, 2002

I plan on playing the Cravers like the Jem'Hadar if the Changelings had all died suddenly.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Demiurge4 posted:

It's the same thing this time. Expect now races are represented as their own populations and Cravers will use them as slaves, giving you great production on systems with high alien populations but killing them over time (replacing them with less productive Craver pops).

I wonder how that works if a non-Craver empire ends up controlling Craver populations - if you conquer Craver worlds, Cravers will start to enslave and devour your other pops ala the Harvesters from MOO3. If they do...

Demiurge4
Aug 10, 2011

Cythereal posted:

I wonder how that works if a non-Craver empire ends up controlling Craver populations - if you conquer Craver worlds, Cravers will start to enslave and devour your other pops ala the Harvesters from MOO3. If they do...



Yeah, normal pops will probably stop reproducing and only reduce under Craver leadership but it's unclear how it works the other way around and if Craver pops can participate in politics. Maybe they do just get exterminated.

Here's a fun art piece of life under Cravers.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Max posted:

I plan on playing the Cravers like the Jem'Hadar if the Changelings had all died suddenly.

That's basically the experience I had that hooked me on ES1. Finally figured out wormhole technology and jump through to the galactic core, OH poo poo the entire galaxy is overrun by Cravers and the wormhole back to my region just became the most important fortification in the galaxy.

Flipswitch
Mar 30, 2010


The new Cravers design and aesthetic looks awesome too.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

I think they were always supposed to be cyborg insectoids but it's a bit clearer now.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Defiance Industries posted:

That's basically the experience I had that hooked me on ES1. Finally figured out wormhole technology and jump through to the galactic core, OH poo poo the entire galaxy is overrun by Cravers and the wormhole back to my region just became the most important fortification in the galaxy.

The Harmony are just as bad. They're only hostile to Dust and are in fact normally a very chill, if very alien-thinking race. But God help you if you let them snowball, the Harmony play strikingly different from every other race in ES1 and go from very weak early on to terrifying if they can get the territory and momentum.

Mokinokaro
Sep 11, 2001

At the end of everything, hold onto anything



Fun Shoe
Actually wouldn't be surprised to see Harmony back

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Mokinokaro posted:

Actually wouldn't be surprised to see Harmony back

I kinda hope they are back, just balanced slightly differently so their early game is less of a slog.

EDIT: I never noticed, in that Craver picture, he's pulling one person out of the pit with one arm while two other arms are holding an assault rifle and pointing it at them. Nice.

Speedball fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Sep 21, 2016

Flipswitch
Mar 30, 2010


Speedball posted:

I think they were always supposed to be cyborg insectoids but it's a bit clearer now.
Yeah, they definitely look more machine and I think it's a very cool design.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Mokinokaro posted:

Actually wouldn't be surprised to see Harmony back

They'd make an interesting gameplay counter to the mafia frogs, and the Harmony were in Endless Legend, too, albeit as a minor race.

Somewhat disappointed that the religious-focused race so far is painted as a bunch of fanatical crusading assholes, though. They're pretty clearly a sci-fi version of the Broken Lords, but I hope the Vodyani are more sympathetic in the full game. I like their aesthetic and I'm usually a fan of religion-focused races/factions in concept, but most games like portraying them as super aggressive fanatics (spiritual races can get away with being peaceful, but not religious.)

If I had to guess I'd say the other four factions (barring any totally new race - wouldn't be surprised to see a plant or fungus race) are the Horatio (they're REALLY popular on the official forums), the Harmony, the Vaulters, and the Automatons.

I'm wondering if the Sowers will return as a minor race. The Epistis minor race sure sound like the Sowers, just with the Endless origin replaced by a nameless minor race. Pilgrims, Amoeba, and Sheredyn would all fit in pretty well as minors, and the Horatio if they're not a major race.

Jastiger
Oct 11, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

Cythereal posted:

They'd make an interesting gameplay counter to the mafia frogs, and the Harmony were in Endless Legend, too, albeit as a minor race.

Somewhat disappointed that the religious-focused race so far is painted as a bunch of fanatical crusading assholes, though. They're pretty clearly a sci-fi version of the Broken Lords, but I hope the Vodyani are more sympathetic in the full game. I like their aesthetic and I'm usually a fan of religion-focused races/factions in concept, but most games like portraying them as super aggressive fanatics (spiritual races can get away with being peaceful, but not religious.)

If I had to guess I'd say the other four factions (barring any totally new race - wouldn't be surprised to see a plant or fungus race) are the Horatio (they're REALLY popular on the official forums), the Harmony, the Vaulters, and the Automatons.

I'm wondering if the Sowers will return as a minor race. The Epistis minor race sure sound like the Sowers, just with the Endless origin replaced by a nameless minor race. Pilgrims, Amoeba, and Sheredyn would all fit in pretty well as minors, and the Horatio if they're not a major race.

It makes sense based on the analogues in earth. The technocrats are aloof and unattached. The capitalists are all about money. The workers boast high production but may suffer in culture output. And the more religious you are, the more fanatical and dangerouw they are.

Plus its not just different cultures, its different species. How could one factioms religious devotion NOT step on other toes with divine mandates?

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Jastiger posted:

How could one factioms religious devotion NOT step on other toes with divine mandates?

A religion that condemns violence? Religion doesn't have to be violent, I could easily see a religious faction based around culture, or diplomacy, or simply making their own people really happy and content. Or a religion that is explicitly okay with the existence of other faiths, or emphasizes how you should be examples and let others see your example and follow you.

That would have been vastly more interesting to me than the really, really blatant Battlestar Galactica homage the Vodyani are currently - if they're amazing at handling approval and will happily live anywhere and put up with the worst conditions because of the peace and solace faith brings them, or perhaps overlapped with an industrial or agricultural focus. Would be doubly interesting if they then had an active, passive, or combination of both mechanic that converted other pops to Vodyani, representing them spreading their faith (potentially by force, but ideally peacefully as well) and converting the galaxy to their faith and way of life.

That could make for an extremely interesting dynamic for non-Vodyani players. Vodyani evangelism makes for happy and perhaps highly productive pops, but at the cost of potentially subverting your own empire out from under you.

That does admittedly call to mind other unfortunate stereotypes about religion.

frajaq
Jan 30, 2009

#acolyte GM of 2014


So any pointers at how to play as Cultists in Endless Legend? I like the idea behind them a lot, but the Only One City thing makes them weird to play, also not starting with actual soldier units...

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

frajaq posted:

So any pointers at how to play as Cultists in Endless Legend? I like the idea behind them a lot, but the Only One City thing makes them weird to play, also not starting with actual soldier units...

Cultists are not much of a "sit back and wait" faction. They work best if you're aggressive.

Cultists have one major way to overcome the weaknesses of having one city: lots of brainwashing. Convert as many Minor Faction villages as humanly possible (you'll need to generate a lot of influence to do so) and you'll soon be rolling in resources.

Those brainwashed villages will produce lots of free conscripts that you can't equip or upgrade, so the best use for them is to either research the Mercenary Market to sell them off for cash, or to use as many of them as possible as a huge fuckoff swarm army to annihilate your foes. Cultists are pretty good at momentum conquest this way.

Cultist heroes have a lot of racial abilities that are very good for both their combat style and their city management. Their "everyone attacks harder in my army" or "everyone has more health" abilities go a way to upgrading all the un-up-gradeable troops, and all their other racial skills are really really good at maximizing the FIDS output of a high-population city. Cultist heroes are also all pretty tough in combat so even though you only start off with two preacher support units, you can have your hero do most of the fighting during the battles.

Research the techs that let you assimilate up to three Minor Factions (any village you've converted works) and you will be able to build lots of upgradeable units as well as reap the benefits of having five or six villages of a single minor faction, which boosts whatever bonus they provide through the roof.

Since you only have one city, the influence cost of the Empire Plan will be relatively low, so you can max it out. Some of the policies you unlock give you big bonuses to attack and movement speed of your armies, all of which will help improve the output of your brainwashed conscripts.

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


Eliminating another faction early on can be a crucial part of playing Cultists. For saying you're on one city, you need a surprising amount of space to take advantage of the "Gain FIDS from converted villages" thing. If you're hemmed in, your capital won't be as productive as you hope. The more villages you can keep up, the more powerful you get, and the fewer neighbors you have the more villages you can keep up.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Spanish Matlock
Sep 6, 2004

If you want to play the I-didn't-know-this-was-a-hippo-bar game with me, that's fine.

Tulip posted:

Eliminating another faction early on can be a crucial part of playing Cultists. For saying you're on one city, you need a surprising amount of space to take advantage of the "Gain FIDS from converted villages" thing. If you're hemmed in, your capital won't be as productive as you hope. The more villages you can keep up, the more powerful you get, and the fewer neighbors you have the more villages you can keep up.

Yeah, one of the key things people miss about EL is how much non-conquered space a game needs. This isn't like CIV where every inch of every continent needs to be someone's territory. Back in one of the closed betas I remember one of the dudes playing always set the map size to one size smaller than the number of players we had. He thought he was encouraging conflict, but what he was actually doing was completely neutering the Cultists, who couldn't farm any villages without immediately starting wars, the Necrophage, who had no roaming armies to eat, and the Clans, whose ability to spread out early and farm ruins was virtually meaningless with close neighbors on all sides.

It was great for Wild Walkers and Broken Lords, but almost all of the races in some way need unincorporated territory to play around in at various points in the game.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply