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Demiurge4 posted:I'm pretty pumped for ES2. I really like the faction videos and I think they might be taking a few new paths with some faction quests. For example the narrator for the Sophon video seems to be this AI they created and despite the tone it strikes me as rather sinister and ominous. Yeah, the Sophons seem to be smarter Kerbals who stumbled into an AI and they've probably put it in charge because  and now the AI is going to be the adult in the room and run their society instead.
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Sep 15, 2016 17:48
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I remember getting more involved in following the development of ES and I was aghast at the idea of the community voting on what to put in the game, because if they started slavishly going down that road the game would be garbage. Having played the hell out of EL and DOTE I'm so happy they learned the right lesson: sure, let the community come up with things, but always vet it and always have the final say on everything. If they do come up with something cool, by all means use it.
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Sep 16, 2016 13:54
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Speedball posted:I've seen the intro movie for the Morgawr. It's not narrated by them, it's narrated by some guy in an old recording, talking about how he confined them to an undersea lab facility, and wondering how bad it would be for Auriga if they ever escaped. The animations show them, indeed, escaping. I like it. This sounds like it could be inspired by this story or something like it.
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Oct 6, 2016 20:17
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I've played one game to the end, an easy economic victory on Normal in a standard size galaxy with the Lumeris. It seems like a pretty good beginner faction to play on, the mechanics aren't too out there, you just focus on making a lot of Dust and you get a lot of parallel benefits from that so you can't do wrong. My only big issue right now is that the game starts slowing down significantly around turn 100. As in the performance takes a dive and the interface gets really laggy. Around turn 130 it was getting painful to keep playing just when I won. I can't even imagine what it'll be like in a big galaxy with 10+ AIs. I'm going to wait on Amplitude rolling out performance optimizations before I give a final verdict and start reccing the game to friends, but I have full faith in them doing it. I skipped the tutorial entirely but feel like I had and now have a pretty good handle on what's going on. If this is your first 4X game though, I feel bad for you, and even up to the end there were some symbols I didn't know the meaning of (though I was able to deduce them, like the icon for overcolonization disapproval, which is reduced by some leaders and techs).
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May 20, 2017 16:40
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Economic victory might be a little poorly tuned. I went full builder in my UE game and the Riftborn got an economic victory about 15-20 turns before I could've finished the wonder victory. I wasn't that far off from getting it myself either. I might disable it from now on.
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May 20, 2017 21:46
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Jastiger posted:I see and how abiut my chapter 4 quest for the ue. Is that just broken? The technology Emperor's Shadow has an improvement called Zelevas Incarnate in it. It's a monument to the Emperor. Maybe they forgot to update the quest objective text after changing the name of the improvement.
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May 21, 2017 08:13
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Comstar posted:Basic questions the game seems to assume I already know: Dust is in all the Endless games. It's basically a sort of nanotechnological fuel or paste that can be used to create all sorts of things, induce paranormal abilities, etc. Ever read Dune? It's kind of like Spice but it's also programmable matter. The Endless were the first sentient species in the galaxy who had super-advanced technology like Dust. Two factions arose in the Endless, the Virtuals who focused on uploading themselves into computers and the Concretes who wanted to master the physical world. They got into a big civil war and everything went to poo poo. The Academy is basically a Heroes' Guild that developed over time. I think this one's the most transparent lore stuff that's just created for the purpose of the gameplay conceit of being able to recruit characters across factions. It's not a faction in itself and you can't directly interact with it. There are events and quests related to it that also depend on whether you control the system the Academy is in.
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May 21, 2017 09:30
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Clarste posted:The Academy isn't just fluff, it's the main plot of the game (in the same sense that Winter is the main plot of EL, although less well integrated). The ultimate endgame mega-quest that you'll probably never see is to declare war on the Academy and its allies (ie: everyone else), and ultimately blow it up. It's meant to be mysterious until then. That's actually cool. I like that there's something like this in a 4X game.
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May 21, 2017 15:26
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Ramadu posted:Man, does this game run pretty poorly for other people? Lots of lag just adding buildings to the queue. Is there some kind of memory leak? How far into the game are you? I've noticed the UI getting laggy around turn 100 if there are more than 4-5 AIs in the game. I think it's because the AI is working on its poo poo in the background during your turn, when in most 4X games you have specific player downtime for the AI to do its thing.
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May 21, 2017 15:53
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toasterwarrior posted:Also, Riftborn get to colonize the "lovely" planets right from the start, except these planets usually have massive bonuses to Industry/Dust/Science in exchange for Food, which they don't use. The -20 approval penalty is easily taken care of by the Toys for Boys law, which gives +20 approval in exchange for some Science, can be used by everyone, and has no Influence upkeep whatsoever. Riftborn pops also get a flat +5 I/D/S bonus per unit, which is stupidly good and better than building improvements nearly all the time. I just finished a Riftborn game winning Science on Hard (I would've won Economic too if I hadn't disabled it), they're pretty drat broken, especially once you get the quest bonuses going so that every pop also yields an extra 5 dust and building pops is 50% cheaper. I would've probably crushed it even harder but it took me 40+ turns to realize building more pops is nearly always superior to building improvements. You could probably swing a hammer at the pop production rates (maybe reduce them to 4 or even 3) and they'd still be fine. Lorewise they might be my favourite faction, too. They're just so stressed out by all these meatbags with their fluids sloshing around.
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May 23, 2017 18:12
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toasterwarrior posted:How to break Riftborns even harder: take the military tech that lets you convert pops into manpower. Riftborn pops will never get targeted by it since they have their own mechanic for generating manpower, so you can freely turn all your meatbags into soldiers and use their slots for efficient extradimensional robutts. That's hilarious. I just assumed that it would convert Riftborn pops as well. I was actually ailing for manpower early in the game but then I got a steady stream from a minor faction relations bonus. My very first meatbags were actually discovered through an anomaly, they landed on Vanguard and then starved to death because, oops, no food. "So, thanks for rescuing us and all, but it's been a week and we're getting really hungry. Where's the food?" <What is 'food?'>
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May 23, 2017 18:43
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Ramadu posted:did the beta patch fix the horrific slowdown post turn 100? because goddamn thats so frustrating Trip report: no. It's telling of how good the game is that I'm playing despite it.
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May 24, 2017 05:12
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Davincie posted:1.05 is out on steam, patchnotes are there too. i don't see anything directly about the slow down, but a few things that could help I finished my game last night with the beta 1.05 patch installed (admittedly after starting the game) and it didn't do anything to the end of game slowdown.
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May 24, 2017 19:22
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How do you send pops from one system to another? I can really break the game with riftborn if you can do that.
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May 25, 2017 06:19
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How have I played 20 hours without ever noticing that? Good god. Thank you to both of you. May the space pogroms begin. By the by, I jumped into my finished Riftborn game to look at it and the lag did seem reduced after applying the actual 1.05 patch. Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 06:52 on May 25, 2017 |
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May 25, 2017 06:50
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Fhqwhgads posted:Speaking of Riftborn, I think I way overexpanded on my Riftborn game. Whenever I see a new star with planets I just rush buy a colony ship and go colonize it. I'm now 60 turns in with like 13 stars and a ton of mutinous colonies. Oops. They're supposed to be the 'tall' race, right? Are you running toys for boys? I nearly hosed myself over this way but that law saved my rear end.
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May 26, 2017 13:59
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Given how slick and informative the UI is, it seems really weird that they wouldn't stack while - the UI gives you no warning or indication of it, and - the UI lets you add the same luxury good to more than one development stage.
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May 26, 2017 20:41
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I play super turtle-pacifist and the AI has let me so far, and I can comfortably beat the game on Hard and I'm working on Serious next. I'm not great at 4X but I think the difficulty levels are just misleadingly named and Hard is what I'd call normal difficulty.
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May 27, 2017 07:33
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Switching to a Federation also gives you an increase to the amount of systems you can colonize without the overextension penalty. Though if you've already tanked your approval below 50, you can't change governments. I played another game to completion, this time a wonder victory with the Unfallen on Hard. The end-game lag has been reduced a little but it's still there, I think I'll finally put it down until they improve the performance through patches. At this point after three complete playthroughs over 25 hours I still think it's a very good 4X game that will be excellent with some more polish. It's also a little too easy to win by Economy even without trying, conversely it also gives the game an internal invisible clock where you are racing against time to win before one of the AIs (usually the Lumeris) stumbles into an Economy victory. Science also seems like a fairly easy victory to get. The triad of Science/Wonder/Economy are too synergistic with each other, it's easy to switch strategies from one to the next on the fly, and in my latest game I actually postponed a science victory on purpose just to get the achievement for a wonder victory. (To be fair I've played a ton of 4X and they might have purposefully tuned the difficulty for 4X newbies, but if anything the game seems specifically geared towards people who've played Amplitude's previous games as well.) I want to give Endless Legend another try (I bounced off after about 30 hours and before the DLC were released) but the combat in that one just didn't appeal to me at all. Maybe I'll just auto-resolve everything. I also enjoy the quicker pace, especially of expansion, in ES2 compared to EL. The best part of every game so far has been the first 2-3 hours when you're hunting for curiosities and colonizing, after that borders start freezing and you focus on going tall and clicking End Turn a lot. Stellaris has the same pacing problem. ES2 mitigates it somewhat through questlines, travel methods that open up once you progress in technology and curiosities that can only be found at a certain stage of the tech tree, but at least in this last game those end-game curiosities were just resources I never needed for anything because I'd almost won anyway. Going for end-game curiosities could be a nice high-risk comeback mechanism where if you find yourself unable to be on pace for a victory you could do some questlines or challenges through curiosity hunting to catch up. NB: I apparently got lucky and didn't run into a single show-stopper bug. Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 12:15 on May 27, 2017 |
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May 27, 2017 12:12
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Onean posted:Yeah, I was a little disappointed too that the higher tier curiosities were largely just more of the lower tier ones or better luxuries. That seems like a pretty simple system to improve later though, so here's hoping they do. I started a game with the Vaulters on Normal. I'm 90 turns in and I have only two cities and I've barely begun setting up a third. Everything feels like it's progressing incredibly slowly and I'm worried it's not the pacing but because I'm doing something terribly wrong and lagging behind the AI. Roaming neutral armies in particular are a loving nightmare, you have to build multiple units to have exploration/settler parties and units can take 10-20 turns to build. Is this just the way the game is supposed to be?
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May 27, 2017 18:05
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:He is talking about Endless Legend I figured it'd be clear from the post I quoted.  Seriously though, gently caress roaming armies. I just had another party wiped out because three separate stacks came together to attack my patrol as one.
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May 27, 2017 18:23
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I think I figured it out. I had all my workers on Food for 120 turns. I didn't remember you manually reassign people between the different letters of FIDSI in this game. I have a LOT of population now though!
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May 27, 2017 18:56
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:Also, you should go take care of villages one way or another. If you let them sit, they will just constantly spawn armies to ruin your life. Thanks, this also helped. Looks like the two key pieces of information were that villages spawn armies so if you don't have a plan to assimilate them soon just genocide them (you can always rebuild them later), and that you can and should customize FIDSI in cities. I'm now leading the AI slightly in the score on turn 58 as opposed to being 200 behind on turn 130.
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May 27, 2017 20:04
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Cease to Hope posted:UE are from Auriga, an Endless laboratory planet, and escaped by salvaging a wrecked Endless ship. Oh, so that's where the Vaulter storyline goes in EL! (no snark, just interested to find out, and I love how there's continuity between the games.)
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May 29, 2017 20:39
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Speedball posted:While I'm complimenting the game, can I say how neat it is that the "objective complete" sound is a sting from your faction's main theme? I like it. The art, sound and UX design of these games is absurdly good by 4X standards - in Stellaris only the music is on par - and they make me forgive a lot.
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May 30, 2017 08:54
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I think Lumeris and UE are both good starter factions. Lumeris are all about making loads of dust and dust has so many uses it's good to have a ton of it anyway. It's also piss easy to win an Economy victory with them. I would likewise argue against the Sophons because you get way more out of the ability if you know your way around the tech tree. I'd even recommend the Riftborn first; they have a weirder gimmick than UE or Lumeris but you need food for flesh sack pops anyway and as long as you understand that your pops are more powerful than improvements you'll do alright.
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Jun 2, 2017 21:05
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Baronjutter posted:I got a wonder victory and all I got was a little thing telling me I won, nothing else You only get it if you go to the score window. If you choose to keep playing you don't get it.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:29
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It can't be working as intended but whenever a civ asks me for tribute I just give them like 10 dust and they're happy for at least 5 turns. Feels like cheating.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:03
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Surprise Giraffe posted:Latest for my game is making peace with lumeris makes them reapeat thecsame message every few seconds forever, even into the next turnn/save load You are the caviar of the galaxy!
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Jun 7, 2017 06:02
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A lava planet with the ocean lifeforms anomaly on it actually showed a blue ocean in the otherwise red planet graphic. Very cool.
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Jun 7, 2017 10:59
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Blisster posted:I think I might go back to Endless Legend until ES2 gets an expansion or two. It's a nice game, but combat is extremely boring so the bulk of the game is just upgrading your planets which gets old pretty fast. I haven't had any issues stomping the ai so far so I just get bored after the exploration/settling part of the game. I have been trying harder difficulty settings and different factions and yeah, I just can't get into warfare or combat.
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Jun 9, 2017 05:45
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Generic Octopus posted:You unlock the wonder structure after reaching the last tier of the Empire Development science quadrant. Then build 3 of them to win. Four in a bigger galaxy. The structures also require all of the strategic resources at copious quantities so if you're planning for that, colonize accordingly. Honestly if you have the infrastructure to do it, you have the infrastructure to do science or economical and it'll take less time.
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Jun 14, 2017 22:30
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ES2 is also smoother and quicker to play. I recommend getting ES2 now and keeping an eye on how Stellaris keeps developing.
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Jun 25, 2017 08:19
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Node posted:I'm going to snag Endless Space 2, but the talk about Endless Legend has got me interested too. If I consider Civilization 4 to be the perfect 4X, am I going to hate EL, or appreciate the differences, or are the two games not comparable? Did you play the Civ4 mod Fall from Heaven? Endless Legend is a lot like FFH in terms of setting, style and tone.
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Jun 27, 2017 07:44
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Node posted:Okay, EL sounds like it might be a good purchase. One question that is important to me at least: how good is the music? Good music can really make a game special. It's FlyByNo, as always with Amplitude, so the answer is "really drat good": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkSzXAnmAGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDhJ5J9DzQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auwyGnkjK0E Best part is always when winter finally ends and something like A Kora Tale kicks in.
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Jun 27, 2017 08:54
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Flawless Theory is great and I love how it's become a series staple. It was originally in ES1, but now it's in EL and ES2 too. 
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Jun 27, 2017 20:40
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Surprise Giraffe posted:Reckon Cygnus is the best track from this ones ost, just fab It's weird, EL has the better faction tracks but ES2 has the better "neutral" tracks.
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Jun 30, 2017 07:58
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Node posted:In EL, where can I find a good guide on how to pace myself in terms of research and expansion? Or a rule of thumb? I have no idea how well I am doing compared to the AI - is there a way to check my empire's stats versus them? Hover your cursor over the "end turn" button in the lower right. It'll give you a popup with your and the AIs scores. You should be at least somewhere close to the AI in score after the first 20-50 turns. I was able to use that to diagnose that I was actually mismanaging my population by not assigning it to production but leaving it on food by default, because I couldn't figure out why I should lag the AI behind in score by over 30%.
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Jun 30, 2017 08:14
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Strategic Tea posted:*lights cigar, space mafia theme plays* The Riftborn theme is by far the best, but on the non-faction side you have Axial Tilt Zero, Singularity, Cygnus, The Edge of the Sky, Geodesic, Dyson Sphere, Calabi-Yau Spaces, Three Quarks in a Row and they are all great.
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Jun 30, 2017 10:12
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I tried playing ES2 more after a long break and the fact that the AI is more aggressive on declaring war and isn't satisfied by giving it dust has made the game worse for me because fighting wars is a chore. I played for a few hours as UE and when the Lumeris declared war out of the blue and had ships a tier above mine, I just quit because I didn't want to go through the effort. EL and other 4X games have had that impact on me too, sometimes the AI declares war and I take one look at what a bore fighting the war will be and I quit and go play something else. It's exarcebated by the fact that in ES2 and EL it's genuinely fun to blob and build infrastructure, it's not like fighting wars is the only proper "gameplay" you have (cf. Paradox's Clausewitz engine games).
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Aug 20, 2017 07:55
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