Endless Legend, fantasyland trying to fix Endless Space's flaws

[Elim]

So, any opinions on the game?
How is it?

 

[Raghar]

Great, and unfinished. With somewhat lackluster combat.

 

[Elim]

I tried the game out.
Oh boy, the main menu made a great impression, I liked the music, too.
Then you see all these things you can research/build. And the great looking map. You build your city, you research, you do your stuff and you have fun.
Then it happens.

Combat.
It's like diving face first into a cesspit. Every good quality of this game gets tainted by the splash of that shitty combat part.
How can you fuck up something that is so vital to a game like this?
It's like it was added the last second or so.

 

[Angthoron]

I dunno, I was quite okay with combat, unless they changed something again. At worst you can autocombat it, in which case it more or less goes like a Civ battle I believe.

 

[sbb]

What exactly's so bad about the combat? I've been so pumped for this game

 

[General Maxson]

Yeah, pray tell, since I was looking forward to this - is combat that shitty? And is there any hope of them fixing it?

 

[GrainWetski]

It's pretty automatic. You pretty much just choose targets and watch it happen.

I've only played about half an hour, so maybe it changes.

 

[sbb]

It's pretty automatic. You pretty much just choose targets and watch it happen.

I've only played about half an hour, so maybe it changes.

Isn't that Civ's combat too?

 

[GrainWetski]

Well, yeah.

I don't have any real problems with it as long as the rest of the game holds up.

 

[sbb]

Mint.

 

[Raghar]

I tried the game out.
Oh boy, the main menu made a great impression, I liked the music, too.
Then you see all these things you can research/build. And the great looking map. You build your city, you research, you do your stuff and you have fun.
Then it happens.

Combat.
It's like diving face first into a cesspit. Every good quality of this game gets tainted by the splash of that shitty combat part.
How can you fuck up something that is so vital to a game like this?
It's like it was added the last second or so.

I warned you, it has lackluster combat.

Actually it's interesting. I never had a problem to make interesting or at least reasonable combat, but this and Fallen Enchantress shows there is something wrong with certain developers.

Didn't Conquest of Elysium have better combat?

 

[Zeriel]

I tried the game out.
Oh boy, the main menu made a great impression, I liked the music, too.
Then you see all these things you can research/build. And the great looking map. You build your city, you research, you do your stuff and you have fun.
Then it happens.

Combat.
It's like diving face first into a cesspit. Every good quality of this game gets tainted by the splash of that shitty combat part.
How can you fuck up something that is so vital to a game like this?
It's like it was added the last second or so.

I warned you, it has lackluster combat.

Actually it's interesting. I never had a problem to make interesting or at least reasonable combat, but this and Fallen Enchantress shows there is something wrong with certain developers.

Didn't Conquest of Elysium have better combat?

Yeah, it's really absurd, almost every MoM clone fails horribly at combat. Even Age of Wonders struggled with it insofar as I consider the combat of #1 infinitely better than that of #2 and #3.

 

[Raapys]

Endless faggotry.

 

[Blaine]

Amazing game except the combat sucks? Sounds like all the Codex legendary monocled cRPGs. This is obviously a day-one purchase.

I do vaguely recall enjoying Endless Space when I played a few scenarios, and I've also played a bit of Dungeon of the Endless early access. It too has been fairly enjoyable, if quirky, and the pixel graphics and animations are the tits.

 

[Zeriel]

Difference is strategy games are basically sandbox games with no story by design, so gameplay systems actually matter. If a big part of the gameplay sucks, there's really nothing else to fall back on as a consolation prize.

My experience with the game so far has been about identical to my experience with Endless Space: city/planet management is fun and okay, but combat sucks. So it can be entertaining to play through once to fiddle with the tech trees and larp a city administrator, but I've never finished a large game of Endless Space and I doubt I will ever in this game either, all interest falls off after a dozen hours or so. There's little depth to keep you playing, just some shinies to make the first few hours tolerable.

 

[mastroego]

Actually it's interesting. I never had a problem to make interesting or at least reasonable combat, but this and Fallen Enchantress shows there is something wrong with certain developers.

Ok, this convinced me to avoid.
I bought Endless Space and after the initial "oh nice" it proved to be an effort in vacuity. Fallen Enchantress did become decent eventually but glaring evidence of the initial, soulless design is still there.
I keep supporting Worlds of Magic, too bad this means MORE waiting!

 

[Angthoron]

Well, I'm certainly enjoying this more than Space. Combat is... Well, you might just want to look it up on Youtube or something and see if it's your cup of tea or not. As a design idea, it's actually pretty cool - basically what happens when two armies meet is, if you choose to manually control the battle, it zooms in on the region, and your and the enemy's armies fight over the actual terrain that you'd otherwise take a few turns to navigate on the normal map. So technically you can get a big advantage by using the ground positioning well. It's not just a "+50% defending" on one hex for your doom stack - although once in combat, each unit obviously gets a +/- based on where on the map they are in relation to the enemy. Having Obi-Wan's advantage is obviously the thing to go for here. If you have other units in the region nearby, you can use them to reinforce your main army as well. This includes town militias. Rather nice.

Now, obviously, the problem is, since this is a 4X and not a MoM/HoMM/Disciples-like game, the game doesn't focus too much attention on the army combat element, so while it's pretty varied on paper, in reality you'll either autocombat the heck out of it (and end up with basic Civ combat, which's like, what's the problem with that?), or you'll just end up picking up one grind tactic that works and fuck everything up with your Fuck You I'm A Human advantage. Oh, and you also get to customize your units, both with tech stuff you learn and with some artifacts you can find. And hire heroes to lead armies/cities. So, can't really say the model is bad by any means, from what I've seen it's just as serviceable (or slightly better even, since you can do manual combat) as Civ fights. I guess I just expected this to be a better version of Civ rather than a modern version of MoM, so, no disappointment here.

Then again, I don't flip out and lose my shit over Torment combat, so take this with a grain of salt I guess.

 

[Renegen]

Combat isn't too bad, I don't see the big fuss. Your units are dumb but there is just the right amount of strategy to still be interesting.

Does anyone know how to inspect units though? It's driving me nuts I can't read on what their stuff do, or upgrade their equipment.

 

[Zeriel]

Combat isn't too bad, I don't see the big fuss. Your units are dumb but there is just the right amount of strategy to still be interesting.

Does anyone know how to inspect units though? It's driving me nuts I can't read on what their stuff do, or upgrade their equipment.

Click military tab, then inspect units from there.

You can inspect units in market place too, but as far as I know there is no universal "unit codex" to consult, so if you don't have the unit/it isn't on the marketplace, get wrecked.

 

[Renegen]

Well I won my first game, Domination naturally. Everything about the game is pretty good, the worse being unit upgrading. There is not enough variety between units, because you can give bonus stats through equipment to everyone, a unit's worth is dependent on their stat distribution and their few special abilities. A "support" unit might do 30% less damage than an infantry unit but in return you get to cast poison immunity which is useless in 90% of cases, weee. It also requires you to know which unit is the best in terms of stat distribution, it's not a very intuitive combat system (eg. oh hey a tank does more damage than a horse). And when you go to the marketplace, you have to stat hunt very carefully to see if they have the upgrades you need, in fact you better stat hunt during combat too. The unit/equipment system is basically Fallen Enchantress's system, not a good comparison to have. I feel like they got lazy and instead of adding 5 tiers of units for each faction, they just added equipment upgrades, the combat system loses a lot of visibility as a result.

Another problem is the way that towns develop, you automatically gather all resources around it and the extra population gets sent in the 5 main resources to generate "extra", sort of like Endless Space I think. The problem with this is that you just end up dumping all your population in the same resource because there's always 1 thing that you want more. In Civ, each town felt unique because each square yield was unique. What's worse is that I played a faction that buys its population, so I'd just end up buying wherever the extra generation was highest. And with a lack of wonders, towns all become pretty samey. Heroes help differentiate the towns, but just a bit. Diplomacy is also pretty shit.

And that is another problem of Endless Legends, late game micromanagement hell. There is a pseudo expansion limit early because you can only have 1 city per region, but very quickly that means nothing. You'll find yourself with dozens of towns and heroes you just don't care about. Higher difficulties will probably boil down to how well you micro against a cheating AI.

Overall, it's hard to screw up the Civilization 5 formula, that one is a great game and the more they copy the better Endless Legends ends up being. It really feels like fantasy Civ, well mostly. Civilization 5 is this brilliant game where even if you play on the highest difficulty, the micromanagement isn't any higher than any other difficulty, you beat the AI by outsmarting them. There's so many things that you learn to appreciate about Civ5 after you play Endless Legends, I can see this one turning into a soulless experience like Endless Space.

 

[pakoito]

Civilization 5 is this brilliant game where even if you play on the highest difficulty, the micromanagement isn't any higher than any other difficulty, you beat the AI by outsmarting them.

 

[Raghar]

Civilization 5 is this brilliant game where even if you play on the highest difficulty, the micromanagement isn't any higher than any other difficulty, you beat the AI by outsmarting them.

Yup that's today's codex.

Tomorrow they would release Dragon Age II, and then you'd see things.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

the biggest problem with combat is the walking animations which are way too slow

 

[Zeriel]

the biggest problem with combat is the walking animations which are way too slow

It's an option when making games to switch it to up to 4X. Should be an option at any time, but still, it's there.

 

[Renegen]

Civilization 5 is this brilliant game where even if you play on the highest difficulty, the micromanagement isn't any higher than any other difficulty, you beat the AI by outsmarting them.

Yup that's today's codex.

Tomorrow they would release Dragon Age II, and then you'd see things.

What? Civ5 consists of mostly playing tall no matter the difficulty. And the AI will always outproduce you on higher difficulties, you have to outsmart it.