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Vodyani feel really broken, from what I've observed in experimenting with them for several hours. Ark ships are incredibly overpowered in early combat and it's trivial to make them even stronger with hero assignments, which you do anyway because the ark ships are effectively star systems. This is offset by the fact that the faction's economy seems to be absolutely horrid, on account of their abysmal population growth and rate of expansion. If you're not lucky with a minor faction spawning nearby, it can take you an agonising amount of time to get the essence for your second ark ship -- and then the cost for the third doubles, which becomes much harder to accumulate because that's the stage of the game wherein pirates, minor factions, and the AI players will start tearing away at your leacher ships. Currently it seems optimal to try and make leachers in your starting system until you get your second ark ship (which you optimise manually with weapons and anti-ballistic armour [the AI doesn't seem to use anything besides ballistics for at least the first fifty turns], because for some reason not all of its slots are filled in the baseline design), at which point you send it with an entourage of leachers in the direction of an AI and conquer it. You can also just send your starting ark ship straight into the void from turn 1 and kill the first AI you meet even faster (though your starting ark won't be as strong as the second which you design), hopefully accumulating essence in the meantime with your leacher over a minor faction's system, and then also hopefully finding a decently-placed empty system with valid inhabitable planets for you to briefly settle at so you can pop out your second ark. If you don't take advantage of ark ship military cheese, it seems you're pretty much doomed to fall behind economically. Getting decent essence income relies heavily on pumping out combat-inferior leachers and favourable map conditions, and even then the number of systems you colonise and their populations will be inferior to that of the AI.
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Oct 7, 2016 02:53
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That Guy Bob posted:Anyone try a Vodyani leecher Ark? That is the first ark you build has all those essence harvesting modules and you beeline for a homeworld with it. Would be pretty hard to dislodge with it's insanely high base HP and big guns. The four harvester modules you get on a leecher ark give it 50 essence harvest per turn, and while it's definitely hard to destroy, the +50 becomes a drop in the bucket once you reach a critical mass of modified protector(toisam)-class leecher ships. I've gotten a lot more value out of putting four +50% industry modules on the ark ship and plopping it down on the best system I find (preferably near an enemy empire) to spam out absurd numbers of leechers and combat fleets -- the limitation quickly becomes one of dust upkeep, at which point I customise the next ark for four +50% dust modules. Hiveminded fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Oct 7, 2016 |
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Oct 7, 2016 13:12
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AI Morgawr seem to be surprisingly crazy on Endless difficulty -- they've already taken over like 75% of the world's ocean (60% of the world is ocean) by the start of Era 4, and they've expanded better than expected. Their income in resources was more than two orders of magnitude above the rest of the Endless AI, and even after I kicked them off my continent, conquering all but one of their cities (on an island that I had no chance whatsoever of getting to) and taking a bunch of their sea fortresses in the peace deal, they're still hovering around third in score another era later. If they hadn't tied so much production into producing sea units, I wouldn't have been able to conquer them at all, I think; or, if they had a continent or archipelago to themselves, they would've just ran away with the game with their absurd income, as it would've been impossible to fight them with their overwhelming naval superiority.
Hiveminded fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Oct 15, 2016 |
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Oct 15, 2016 17:26
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Chocolate Chunk posted:So I just won a game as Sophons in ES2 and enjoyed it even though it was obviously missing a bunch of things. Maybe you guys know the answer to a couple questions? There will likely be at least 6 tech eras in the final game, if EL is anything to go by. Influence rings are definitely currently bugged, and will remain until a civilisation is completely wiped out. I haven't encountered the starvation issue, but that is also almost certainly a bug.
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Oct 16, 2016 20:19
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Cravers already gain a very significant FIDSI income boost for the presence of other aliens on their planets, more than enough to offset the depletion penalty. Clearly, the most optimal path for this race of murderously-hungry space locust cyborgs is as a multicultural utopia run by a pacifist senate.
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Oct 17, 2016 02:29
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uber_stoat posted:the official wiki lore dump describes Cravers as really nasty buggers and states that 2/3rds of them are basically nonsentient killing machines. their special trait enslaves and works to death any aliens unlucky enough to live on a Craver controlled planet. whenever an individual Craver is described as having interests beyond just feeding the Hive or killing poo poo, it's because it had its brain upgraded by Dust exposure. You're just misunderstanding their enlightened culture and fondness for aliens
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Oct 17, 2016 02:55
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Angrymantium posted:So again, having not played ES2, what are the win conditions? Because having wars just end is a huge penalty to the human player on higher difficulties when a timing push is often the best way to win when another player is starting to get close to a non-combat victory. If an AI just gets hit with a dust penalty before I can totally cripple them stopping AI tech victories (that existed in ES1) is going to be reeeeeeeally tough. There are only two victory conditions currently implemented (score and conquest), but from what I recall, the victory-progress screen showed that there will also be economic/dust, technological/science, industry/wonders, and quest victories. It's also quite possible that they'll add in diplomatic and territory victories like in previous games, or even new victories that align with the new game systems they've added.
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Oct 17, 2016 05:42
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Vodyani with the can-colonise-any-planet policy from the ecologist party being in power are hilariously broken. The systems I acquired while the universal colonisation was in effect are always structure-capped and I have nothing to make in them but ships until a new tech pops, so I'm drowning three different enemies (one of which is a Craver empire with like a fifth of the galaxy under its control) in an endless tide of harvesters and mediocre attack frigates. Predictably enough, the religious and militarist parties quickly took control and I "only" managed to get five systems with full planet exploitation, but thankfully the planets stay colonised even after the ecologists and their broken-rear end policy lose power. The only other downside is how unhappy these systems can get, but they still produce far more than is reasonable, so it's not much of a problem as I chew through the colonisation techs and every alien in the galaxy. e: This is/was on Endless difficulty, but my start was admittedly simple and very decent; there was a very large amount of space between me and everyone else and some good five-planet systems nearby, which protected me from any potential early aggression and allowed me a better choice of systems than what I would probably get normally. Only one minor faction accessible and it was four or five lanes away, but that wasn't too much of an issue once the ecologists briefly got into power. I'm eager to see what can be done with Vodyani in MP. Hiveminded fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 10:00
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Tree Bucket posted:Ok, that makes sense. So the vaulters are descended from the Dungeon guys, who are mk 1 humans from Earth? And Endless Space 2 is another look at the same point on the timeline as ES1, rather than a direct sequel...? ES2 is a sort-of retcon of everything about ES, a retcon that may or may not be an actual thing that was done in-universe by a Virtual Endless conspiracy. Vaulters/Mezari may or may not be humans from a very distant Earth, ES2 is calling all humans "Mezari" and that all the humans/Mezari you see in-game originated from the original humans that crash-landed on Auriga.
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May 11, 2017 04:16
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The Unlife Aquatic posted:I'm still expecting them in an expansion, many larger ships very obviously have bays that could be used to scramble fighters and bombers. I can't wait for them to put the OST on Spotify, it's honestly just so full of good tracks. I think the Riftborn theme might be my favorite. https://soundcloud.com/flybyno/sets/endless-space-2-soundtrack The composer posts pretty much all his stuff on his soundcloud.
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May 18, 2017 21:29
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ZearothK posted:Man, the art direction of this game is amazing. Cease to Hope posted:vodyani are secretly the aggro faction. cravers can play peacefully for a surprisingly long time, but vodyani profit from neverending cold war and are ruthless killers in a hot war. To add to this, there are a few gimmicks players should take advantage of as Vodyani to give themselves a substantial advantage. Vodyani are the easiest faction to fall behind with, and falling behind with them means falling behind dramatically; they get out-colonised rapidly, their pops take a long while to grow, and they can't take advantage of being able to instantly exploit all the planets in the system until they get the relevant colonisation techs or political party. So to circumvent falling behind, what a player really wants to do is get the Ecologists in power. Ecologists are broken with Vodyani for obvious reasons, in that the party's enforced policy lets the Vodyani take advantage of 4- or 5-planet systems rather early on, which gives them a meaningful production advantage over their neighbours. You want to find a 4- or 5-planet system with many high-industry worlds, something that's not too uncommon depending on nearby star types, and colonise it as soon as your Ecologists take over, which means timing the arrival of an ark ship into the system in question (whether it's your starting one or the first one you produce is up to you, but doing the the former is generally very inefficient). It can be easy to get a new system that has somewhere between 200-300 industry just a few turns after colonisation with this method, which is important when your neighbours will generally have at best maybe half that on their home system. You take advantage of this system to spam out leechers and ark ships and any necessary military ships -- it's quite possible that your primary limiting factor, if all has gone well, will be dust at this point. From here, you should be the strongest faction in the game for a good while, and your only real weaknesses are potential dust shortage and the eventuality of the ecologists falling out of power. Try to colonise a few more supersystems before that happens. The biggest crux to this is getting the ecologists into power in the first place, which can be difficult and rather susceptible to the whims of the RNG. Focusing on ecologist techs, pursuing relations with only +ecologist minor factions, and spamming extra scout ships will all be to some extent necessary to get the ecologists strong enough to win your first election. You'll also need a bit of luck finding a suitable industry system, but chances are good you'll find something at least half-decent to your purposes.
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May 19, 2017 05:47
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