The Endless Megathread - Congratulations Auriga, YOU"RE ADDICTED TO DUST!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The Endless Megathread - Congratulations Auriga, YOU"RE ADDICTED TO DUST!

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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.

BobTheJanitor posted:

Some info on the upcoming patch here. Getting some of the jank out of the diplomacy system, finally. So far they've talked about making it more clear what actually influences diplomatic pressure, changing up demands so that instead of refusals just being a war dec, you can actually impose economic sanctions on an empire that refuses you, and also getting some bonuses for controlling the majority of a constellation.

Still holding out hope for some changes to the alliance system, because it is currently a dumpster fire.

Oh good they're finally making pressure and demands make any sense at all. It was always really stupid that your options were "declare war" and "devote resources to increasing your political pressure so you can make a demand and immediately be refused resulting in war"

At least now there'll be some point to the demand system.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2017 06:34

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 00:24

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.

Clarste posted:

Okay, you can blame the early access people for that. Originally it worked exactly like EL's tech era system, but people complained that A) too many techs were mandatory for that to work well, and B) having tech eras in a sci-fi game felt weird and limiting. So they went for this hybrid system instead.

Personally I don't mind it at all, but I can definitely see how it's huge and meaningless for a new player. Also I hate the EL era system.

I thought the EL era system for tech was really good. It made it clear when someone was outracing you tech wise, unlocked progressively more difficult era challenges as the game went on, gave you a limited pool of techs to focus on at the start. It was really a big improvement over the Civ/ES style tech blob.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2017 08:09

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.

Mymla posted:

Well, that's depressing. http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Auriga

It would have been cool if the United Empire had the occasional drakken or broken lord, even just in artwork or story things. Just to show that the last ship off of Auriga (canonically vaulters) carried a few heroes or immigrant pops off-world and integrated them into the UE.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2017 08:58

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.

I have to say I kind of prefer the stellaris approach to exploration. Because in space you can definitely see where other stars are, even we pitiful earth bound humans can figure out where they are, but I guess in ES2 no one bothered to invent the telescope. Maybe all the stars in ES2 have advanced cloaking technology.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2017 08:27

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.

Rhjamiz posted:

I'm hoping that it gets the EL treatment and Amplitude slowly hammer out all the dumb poo poo.

ES2 seems ripe for some pretty sweet espionage potential, like if they made it so that you could influence other empire's legislatures, like boosting their pacifist party to make it harder for them to go to war on you. It would also serve to prevent the "always militarist" problem from building ships to fight pirates.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2017 19:33

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.

I started with the Cultists, and that's fantastic because you only have to worry about managing one city, so it's an excellent way to get your hands into the city management part of the game (How to place districts to maximize benefits, etc.) and at the same time, your military forces are insane because you just convert villages and then turn out units automatically forever, which you can sell for dust or use to shore up your forces.

They start out a little weak in the early game, but they're definitely one of the strongest races in the game.

Edit: Actually looking back on the last few posts in this thread, I think it says a lot about what is good about Endless Legend that everyone will post their favorite race and say "They are the strongest race in the game".

# ¿ Dec 27, 2017 06:41

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.

Serephina posted:

Cultists are generally regarded as quite fun, and once you understand their unique conversion mechanic, quite straightforward and gratifying to play. The most "OP" in the objective sense of multiplayer is universally agreed as the Vaulters. Someone who's played competitive could enlighten us, but I suspect it has something to do with teleporting armies. Amongst the other huge grab bag of solid bonuses.

Of the multiplayer games that I've won, I won with the Cultists by getting a level 3 industrial megapole, I won with the Forgotten by flipping the cultist's city with a spy, and I've won with the Roving Clans by generating enough money to wholesale buy out God for ownership of the universe about 2 turns before a giant Drakken army schlepped its way across the continent to destroy me.

I don't know that I'd say the Vaulters ever really factored into any of the games I've played. I'm not saying that they're bad, but they just don't seem as specialized as the other races, or capable of stopping them from doing what they do. They couldn't stop a well-placed cult from getting the megapole, they couldn't generate enough influence to take on the Drakken, and I'd say the Broken Lords could probably steamroll them in a fight unless they were completely denied access to desert or tundra biomes.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2017 08:32

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.

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

and just to be clear because the tutorial confused me a tiny bit with it:
A city automatically extracts the FIDS value from the six hexes surrounding it, plus the hex it is in (but modified from what the hex originally showed on the map);
By building a district, it will modify the income from the hex the district goes on, but extend the area the city automatically extracts from by three hexes, but also lowers city happiness by 10;
Having workers lets you assign them to a specific FIDS output, thus increasing that output. This happens regardless of the size of the city or the FIDS output of the hexes under its sovereignty.

Yeah, civilians are assigned to F/I/D/S/I production directly instead of extracting them from specific tiles of the city. There's also techs that give you better per-population generation rates, and ones that give you better per-tile generation rates, so you want to consider what works better for your race, whether you're wide with a lot of tiles or tall with a lot of population.

Also districts generate happiness once you upgrade them to level 2, which you do by surrounding them with at least four districts. So you want to factor that into your city building, build your city into triangles, like so:

code:


  X
 X X
X X X

To maximize your number of level 2 districts. (Note: The cultists can go to level 3, if you surround a district with 4 level 2 districts.)

Additionally, the size of your population affects how big you can build your city, you need 2 pops per district.

quote:

From the few guides I've read, and attempting it out in single player, Vaulters can get a really strong early game lead that can snowball out of control. They can jump to Second Age before turn 20 pretty easily (thanks to their starting science bonuses), which means that can get level 2 empire edicts (or whatever they're called, haven't played in a while), from there it really sets you up for the rest of the game.

EDIT: Also I didn't realise they released the Endless Legend artbook for free if you've got the game, love the artwork in this game

Actually one of my favorite things about the Cult is that they have so much influence and only one city you can just buy the whole chart every time policies come up.

Spanish Matlock fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Dec 27, 2017

# ¿ Dec 27, 2017 16:08

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.

[Quote is not edit]

# ¿ Dec 27, 2017 16:10

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.

Serephina posted:

Note that this isn't the only way. A slightly different way is in a line 2 hexes wide.
code:
X   X   X   X
  X   X   X
This sometimes isn't viable due to terrain/etc, but it's worth noting since each district placed results in an immedeate lvl2 upgrade. The 'line' will have 4 lvl1 districts at the endzones, compared to a completed triangle's 3 dead zones, but the triangle has huge downtime when expanding to a greater size of triangle compared to the line's method of smoothly getting teir2's. Also, possibly more importantly, it has a higher amount of exploited tiles // surface area

So that's true enough, but if you're playing Cult you want to to go triangle and turn it into an hourglass to get that sweet sweet level 3 district going on.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2017 12:19

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.

Rhjamiz posted:

It will tho? It will form a layer like 12321 more or less.

code:

 1 2 3 3 2 1 
1 2 3 3 3 2 1 = 13 tiles, 5 level 3, 4 level 2, 4 level 1

1 2 1
 3 3
2 3 2
 3 3
1 2 1 = 13 tiles, 5 level 3, 4 level 2, 4 level 1

Now why is method two superior? Well first of all, the first structure is 7x2, but the second structure is 5x3, so consider that. Also consider where in the process you're going to insert whatever legendary buildings you can research, because those also level up to level 3. Of course the level 3 thing only matters for the cult, and generally speaking if you're playing anyone else you're not going to be building 13 tile cities anyway.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2017 04:14

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.

HundredBears posted:

It's much worse for the Cultists and somewhat worse for the other factions (more by virtue of exploiting fewer hexes than the lower district levels). It does let the Ardent Mages get slightly more out of their pillars, but not only is it questionable whether that's enough of a benefit to justify the hourglass, they're also going to struggle hugely to get the population for a city with thirteen districts just as you said.

Hm, fair enough, I am defeated. It's been a while since I've played, so I'll have to give the line method a shot the next time I get around to it, I still feel like it's going to be easier to get the city center and megapole into the level 3 zone in the pyramid somehow, but I'm willing to try new things.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2017 10:42

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.

Staltran posted:

Because I have too much time on my hands

Pink is exploitation, blue level 1 district, green level 2, and black level 3. So, to completely overthink things:

Lines with n districts have (for n>3) 4 level 1 districts and n-4 level 2 districts, for a total of 2n-4 district levels. For cultists, for n>7 lines have 4 level 1 districts, 4 level 2 districts, and n-8 level 3 districts, for a total of 3n-12 district levels. Lines have n+6 exploitations.
A complete triangle with n districts has 3 level 1 districts and n-3 level 2 districts, for a total of 2n-3 district levels. For cultists and n>=10, 3 level 1 districts, 6 level 2 districts, and n-9 level 3 districts, for a total of 3n-12 district levels. A complete triangle with m districts per side has 3m+3 exploitations. Such a city has sum_(i=1 to m)(i) districts, and I can't figure out a good way to express number of exploitations as a function of n. However, 6 districts has 12 exploitations (same as a line), 10 districts 15 (one less than a line), 15 districts 18 (3 less than a line), 21 districts 21 (6 less than a line) and so on. The difference between triangle and line grows by m-3 when going m->m+1. So bigger triangles become less efficient.

For non-cultists, triangles have one more district level than lines. However, they're a bit awkward to expand on and have less exploitation. I'd suggest not making triangles bigger than 10 districts. For cultists, lines get a second level 3 district a district sooner than triangles, and stay even with completed triangles after that. Lines seem to be strictly better. Getting wonders to level 3 quickly in a triangle depends on what point of adding a new layer the triangle is in. If the triangle is complete and the wonder is the first district of the next layer, It should take 5? more districts to get it to level 3. If it is the third, it only needs 2. If you left a hole for it and it's the fifth (or more), it will instantly get to level 3. For a line, you always need 4 districts more unless you left a hole for it.

The design Spanish Matlock suggested last page is also pictured. It doesn't really work, as pointed out earlier.

At 6 districts the triangle is strictly superior. At 7 districts the triangle doesn't get a level 2 district but increases the amount of exploitations by 2, so it stays a bit better. The 8th district only adds a level 2 and the amount of exploitations stays the same, so it's equivalent with a 8-line. The ninth district is the same, but additionally adds a level 3. It loses one exploitation compared to the line. The tenth district, of course, completes the triangle and adds two level 2s and an exploitation. It has one more district level and one less exploitation compared to the line, which seems a bit better. So the triangle design with <=10 districts is only inferior to the line with exactly 9 districts, and only by one exploitation at that. Triangles seem better for non-cultists unless you intend to make a huge city.

Expanding into a line from a 6-triangle seems equivalent to a strict line, and a 6-triangle is better than a 6-line so this nail-on-a-board (can't come up with a good name here) design seems better than an actual line.

You are strictly a treasure to the video gaming community.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2017 13:18

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.

Avasculous posted:

My earlier post sort of implied that Rivers and Sea were equally valuable. River tiles >>>> Sea tiles if you're not playing with Tempest, and even if you are, you probably only want Sea tiles for your starting city as the Morgawr.

Yeah, that's probably the biggest downside of playing Cult in my eyes, is you are well and truly hosed if your RNG starting location is poor enough.

There is a setting for anomaly frequency when you start games. I've heard that cranking it to the maximum is the best way to get the "Outscore Endless AIs x # of turns in" achievement.

The cult, and to a lesser extent, the Necrophage can get really screwed by RNG in another way, if you're stuck on a peninsula, with another civ on the mainland part of your continent, you're pretty much hosed. Both of those races live or die on minor faction villages. Necros are an incredibly powerful combat race, but they need to eat a lot to make that happen, and you're going to need to ransack a number of minor faction villages to pump your numbers up. Same for the Cultists. Even though you technically control only one city, you should consider any province in which you control the minor faction villages to be "owned" by you. If you have no room to expand by taking over villages, you're pretty much straight up screwed.

Edit: The opposite is also true, if you start in a province with good anomolies and three villages of Kazanji (the giant fire demons) you've pretty much already won the game.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2017 06:28

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.

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

I built the Highways in a city and it still has 0/2 routes. I can see the roads branching out to the other cities I have adjacent. I've tried clicking around but this kinda thing is the typical Endless game stuff with an unhelpful UI and zero explanation.

To trade you need:

1) a city.
2) another city in an adjacent province.
3) The highway tech and the building in the city.
4) For the other guy to have the highway tech and the building in that city.
-or-
1) A port.
2) Another port somewhere.

Edit: If you're playing single player you could always trade the highway tech to the dude you want to set up routes with.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2018 03:07

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.

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

Oh, so I cant have trade routes within my own empire? Thats great, because the AI near me wont sign Peace deals even if I offer them 1000 dust, the ten technologies I own that they dont, and all of my commodity and strategic resources.

Yeah sorry I didn't mean to imply that you couldn't, "Other dude" in my explanation can in fact also be you, but the other city needs the same improvement, as per normal. Roving Clans get (I'm pretty sure) an ability that lets them trade through cold war or actual war. They're the main trading race. Of course there's nothing you can really do if your enemies/friends just won't build the trading building in their city. With the release of Tempest there's also more focus on harbors and seafaring, so you're more likely to be able to secure sea routes as well.

As for the battlefield thing, it's a very important tactic for wars in general. If you're doing the attacking, choosing the square to attack from lets you determine the battlefield terrain, so you can set it up to give the enemy fewer places to hide, or include a big cliff you can launch ranged attacks from, for example.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2018 05:28

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.

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

Started a new game as the Cult to give it a try...

Also, gently caress ruins

I assume those are some good anomalies, in which case congratulations on winning the game. As a side note, I'd recommend reconvening your army asap. Those preachers aren't going to be able to do poo poo on their own. If you can try to pacify that starting village through the quest or bribery so they can start popping out soldiers for you asap.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2018 08:29

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.

I usually keep them together, because hero and priests can take most minors. Once you have a couple villages you split them off to lead armies of converts so they can bring further villages into the fold.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2018 10:15

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.

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

I just bought the game when they had done an update a few months ago and apparently the Pirates got overtuned and are way too powerful. You can thankfully turn the Pirate difficulty down in the options somewhere without affecting the game's difficulty setting. I set them to low and I felt that it made them manageable/appropriate.

Yeah they're pretty great, and I love river hexes too so it will be nice that I can grow that way once I start to get a bunch of river-boosting techs. I split up the army to explore then brought them back and garrisoned them in the city to save dust, then simply went and bribed the two nearby villages as soon as I had the dust. Can I blow the villages up then rebuild them once I would rather spend city production power rather than dust, or should I just focus on dust so I can run around and bribe all of 'em?

You can't rebuild villages outside of your region. You can convert destroyed villages but it costs 2x as much influence. You just want to pacify->convert by any means necessary. The quest is usually the most effective way since that'll pacify every village in the region. So if it's 1 village, just buy it, if it's 3 villages definitely quest, if it's 2 villages then see if the quest sucks and if it does just buy it.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2018 03:24

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.

Krinkle posted:

I was looking for EL strategies for Cultists and https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessLegend/comments/6327rh/advanced_cultist_tips/ is the most recent thing I can find but he wants a start with 18 food and 19 industry, and I'm thinking as hard as I can, I've literally never seen two FIDS above 12 before.

Is he quitting and restarting a thousand times to get seven anomalies in a perfect bullseye? I'm really struggling to get to Tech 2 by turn 20.

I mean, are you making converting villages your main priority? You get the FIDS surrounding those villages. If you have a neighbor province with 3 kazanji with an easy quest you can easily convert them, integrate them, get a huge influence boost, infinite fire demons with upgraded weapons/armor once you get the megapole up, and all the hexes around their villages dumping FIDS directly into your city.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2018 05:41

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.

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

Broken Lords are super fun, am I supposed to just be pumping out a ludicrous amount of cities and units and rushing all my constructions with my insane dust income or will this bite me in the rear end

Remember, militarily your key strength is that your units are super durable. They heal with dust and have high defense, so they're more likely to stay alive and accrue levels. Take advantage of that so that by the lategame you're running your same army from the beginning with a bunch of super high level units in it.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2018 11:02

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.

Serephina posted:

Before anyone runs off to play Stellaris because they've finished with ES2, I might cation them that the game is a 4x in sales pitch alone, combat/conquest in that game is so utterly borked that your first interaction with taking land from your aggressor will result in despairing cries of 'Why oh god why would they make it like this?!'.

Go reinstall a clunky title from 20 years ago before playing Stellaris and expecting a 4x, is what I'm saying.

Counterpoint stellaris is dope, wars make sense, and you take the things you said you were going to take when you started the war.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2019 16:20

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.

Clarste posted:

I mean they're clearly a dev and fan favorite, but personally I don't find them very interesting and honestly they don't add anything to the setting of the series imo. They're just dudes who happened to be present for some stuff.

They're the Jubilee of the Endless series.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2019 21:34

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.

Eimi posted:

I want Mass Effect but in the Endless universe.

gently caress, throw in an Endless Legend Dragon Age while you're at it.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2020 15:44

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.

Agreed that Humankind's biggest failing is that no matter what combination of civs you picked it just felt boring and samey. There was no sense that you were playing a unique combination culture, you're just whatever you picked last, I think.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2023 15:32

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.

ilitarist posted:

Do these guys have Roman combat bonus? I dunno!

Actually yeah, that's a huge one too. You can easily get an idea of what it's like in Civ to fight the English or the Russians or whatever, but gently caress knows what this guy next to me does or is.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2023 17:00

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.

ilitarist posted:

They all become a blur like a randomly generated empire from Stellaris or something.

In all honesty I've never had a problem looking at a Stellaris empire and knowing what they are. Humankind is weirdly way worse at that.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2023 07:53

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.

Regarding Humankind, one of Amplitude's core strengths in ES1+2 and EL was designing absolutely amazing worlds filled with crazy things. An empire made out of a guy, armor possessed by money ghosts, etc. Then from those things grew interesting game mechanics with divergent win conditions like dragons who could declare that you were at peace and win that way or roving merchants who could move their cities around. So of course it only made sense that they would produce a game with absolutely none of the things they're good at.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2024 04:25

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 00:24

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.

ilitarist posted:

It is absolutely possible to do imaginative and varied historical games. With abstracted mechanics they could do all of this and more using historical cultures, they just chose not to. Look at Old World - compared to Humankind it's a game very limited in scope. It's just about Mediterranean Antiquity, and it manages to allow for very unique playstyles and very customizeable factions. It even does some of the Humankind-style culture-switching by tying it to a ruler and allowing for massive changes in playstyle depending on a current ruler. E.g. unless you have a ruler with Diplomat specific personality you basically can't initiate an alliance, the Commander can hurry the production of units (hurrying production is not available in general), Scholars can reliably get techs they want (normally you're given the limited choice out of available technologies).

Like look at a technology tree. There's nothing historical about copying a mechanic from Civilization 1, it makes no more sense than what they did in EL/ES2, but they did it for some reason. Let's not pretend the historical setting is to blame.

Is it to blame? I don't know, who can say. I'm just saying that if you had to choose a project that played to exactly zero of Amplitude's strengths, Humankind would be it. Neither EL or ES have groundbreaking combat systems or anything. Is it possible to make a really cool historic 4x game? Sure. Is Amplitude the studio that I would have chosen to do it? Not in a million years.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2024 05:56

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The Endless Megathread - Congratulations Auriga, YOU"RE ADDICTED TO DUST!

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