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

[lightbane]

That quirkiness would have been tolerable if not for the absolutely atrocious combat system, easily the worst I have seen in a TBS. It is a serious mess, and I am usually quite tolerant when it comes to bad combat. What was the purpose of making it semi-real-time on the global map, so you have to close the pop-ups as fast as possible to escape from the AI? Why go for the odd semi-indirect command system in combat where you don't really know what silly nonsense your units will come up with? Why can't you speed up units on the global map?

That's a shame, I only played the tutorial after liking E. Space 1 so I didn't have the chance to play much yet. It seems the devs keep struggling with combat, since it seems to be always the weakest aspect of their games.
I saw some mods that modified combat plus a community patch but dunno how good they are.

It's especially sad because they had a couple of decent ideas like different equipment for units.

To be fair that's a thing in all Endless games, including the original E. Space 1 and the new sequel. On the plus side they have amazing music, especially starting from this one.

How easy to play is that Fall of Heaven 2? It seems like this mod has many metamods modifying the content.

 

[Humanophage]

How easy to play is that Fall of Heaven 2? It seems like this mod has many metamods modifying the content.

I'd recommend simply downloading the latest popular version. The one I liked the most was Ashes of Erebus: here is my description of it: [link]. It has a few oddities and you probably need a good PC to run the larger maps because it is resource-intensive. Admittedly, it does have a couple of highly obnoxious bugs - e.g., occasionally it spawns uber-NPCs who wipe out the entire map. It also has a couple of seriously unbalanced factions (like the slavers), so I'd stick to the established ones or the ones known as weak. It is by no means perfect and not that polished. However, the AI is fairly competent on Immortal, and just imagine the usual flavourful Civ4 games with a ton of highly diverse factions on top of it. I would especially recommend generating land-based maps rather than the usual Civ4 approach with large oceans.

 

[oldbonebrown]

I played a game with the Allayi, dust eclipses set to long and regular.
Playing on a large map with two skyfins doing most of the work I could sweep up every single refreshed ruin before the season ended. Later on in the game hoovering up resources became a bit of a chore, but gosh knows I needed it early on. Playing the Allayi is such a shitshow - it seems to me that it doesn't matter what you do, almost your entire empire will end up rebelling, and the AI will end up hating you because you borrowed some of the pearls that were just laying around in their territory.
Later on this matters less, expanding and killing enemies has been the path of least resistance in all of my games so far. If there is no way to effectively curb the rebellions you might as well just keep on expanding.

More than anything I think that its the boring AI and diplomacy that stops the game being really good. I get very little character out of the factions, it would be a lot more fun if you had more interactions and if the factions were more distinct in how they interracted. Peace is so hopeless in this game, there is nothing you can do to keep your friends happy other than constantly giving them gifts, and even then they will betray you over nothing eventually.
Large sections of my last game was spent with no diplomatic interraction with other empires at all, occasionally the roving clans would ban me from the market for no apparent reason, and sometimes someone pointlessly closed their borders. Some kind of expanded dialogue would make it feel less empty, less like things were just happening to keep the game interesting and more like empires squabbling.

The sisters of mercy hero is a qt.

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Rahdulan]

How did Endless Legend go from complete version to getting two new expansions? Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I'm just glad they're included with other expansions for cumulative discounts because it wouldn't surprise me if they were sold separately while demanding the base game still.

 

[what am i doing]

I like the setting and the development system, to an extent. The setting is fairly interesting, and they've done a really good job in making a fantasy setting that advances technologically keep the same atmosphere and feeling despite tech changes. I like the concept of high tech ruins and anomalies, but the dying planet aspect, as well as the fact that it's just one world in a larger sci-fi setting, does put a damper on things, making it feel a bit pointless. I'm also not a fan of the large number of non-human races, but that's a personal taste sort of thing and easily fixed at game setup. The development system is pretty good as well although I'm not a fan of the buyout mechanic. I'd prefer if all construction had to derive from some source of Industry, and perhaps the Stockpile mechanic was reworked a bit so you could just set a constant amount of dust per turn to apply on trade for industry, but you'd need trade routes for it and an industry source somewhere, either one of your own cities or a friendly neighbour's.

Speaking of which, maybe this is the nature of a 4X, but I find the AI pretty blobby and aggressive. Perhaps it's because the combat system is such dogshit but I try to steer clear from wars and focus on development. Despite this, even maintaining a reasonable defense budget the AI remains extremely hostile and aggressive if not constantly bribed. There are mechanics in place to reduce blobbing, but they don't really work very well since you can so easily convert cities to being happy with your rule, or just scrap and replace them. I get that it's not Timber Shortage Simulator 2013, but the blobbiness still bugs me. When one nation blobs across a continent that was already heavily settled and built up it should be facing constant rebellion, the more so because the conquered peoples often aren't even the same species and should be impossible to assimilate. But I get that it's probably just how 4X are as a genre, and not a thing I can really fault the game for.

I really dig the ingame concept art, although it feels somewhat disjointed and almost seems to suggest a different setting. A lot of the artwork doesn't match any of the civilizations and feels like a different, unnamed human civilization. It's weird but that's the impression I get. Quality's great though.

Good game overall, nice setting and atmosphere. Gameplay leaves some to be desired but I'm reasonably happy with my purchase, though not happy with the absence of railroads.

 

[oldbonebrown]

Calling the combat dogshit is a bit much, it gets a little bit boring after a while but it mostly works decently.
I read somewhere that the developers intended the advanced combat settings to be default, the one that makes it so that you can only direct your forces every two rounds, but they changed this due to whining from players.
I haven't tried playing with this setting yet. Leaving more up to the shitty combat AI seems a bad idea, but maybe having less options would make the battles less boring. Struggling against the combat system to micromanage my units in large battles is one of the big problems that makes it boring.

I wish the game had nukes, or something like it. The things that you unlock by the end of the game are not very exciting in how they change the gameplay. When I'm crushing in a 4x it should allow me to waste resources on a fun doomsday weapon.


Edit: As half baked as parts of this game feels, it really doesn't matter much when they keep pumping out new expansions like this. 250 hours in and I still don't particularly care for any of the factions, but the new one seems like it could be one of the better ones.

 

[oldbonebrown]

The new faction is indeed one of the better ones.

Shame the expansion also makes the game freeze constantly. Probably the worst thing they have added since pearls.

 

[covr]

The freezing should be fixed by now. Dust eclipses caused massive memory leak, steam users confirmed that it should work right now, at least with latest beta branch.

I am more interested in this new hacking DLC for ES2, as it is sooo fucking good. The best big DLC they have released ever: new mechanics are deep, new race is interesting and different very from other. I am glad I've spent 80 potatoes on both expansions.

 

[oldbonebrown]

Good to hear. Pearls back to being the unrivaled champion of bad additions.

 

[oldbonebrown]

Gahhh
Everyone playing this online is either russian or not interested in talking. Why would you play this type of game online if you are not going to chat? How can they stay silent while I hurl racist slurs at their factions?

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to play Dust Lords?
I feel compelled to rush to get the archaeologist bonus and then get most of the era 1 techs early. I usually go Founder's Memorial while I spread out my starter units to pick up a couple of ruins, and then circle them back as I build another Stalwarts so that they can meet up and do the quest.
Are Bishops mostly garbage? Almost every support unit in the game seems like wasted space to me.

 

[what am i doing]

Bishops are very important because they let you heal your units in battle rather than having to spend dust healing them outside of it, owing to the lack of natural regen for Broken Lords. Once your dust economy hits the critical point where you're spamming buyouts it's not a big deal but early on you really want that dust for building pops so any source of in-combat healing helps. That said Caecators can also do the same job and may be accessible earlier depending on starting location.

Edit: also, as general advice for Broken Lords, don't go 100% dust economy at the start of the game; focus on building with industry and buying pops with dust. At the very least you want Prisoners, Slaves, and Volunteers tech before you shift over to a dust buyout economy.

Rivers are really good with Aquapulvistics; these stack nicely with Broken Lords governors as they have skills you can buy to boost rivers' dust output. If you can start your first city on a river in one turn, do so. This goes for most factions but it's more important for Broken Lords. You're also going to want to expand fairly rapidly; Broken Lords do well with a lot of smaller cities early on rather than a few heavily built up ones (as, say, Vaulters would) because they can push other cities' outputs towards main city buildup more easily due to pops being bought with dust rather than built, and because they transition to a Dust buyout economy much earlier than most factions. Basically you have a bunch of small satellite cities contributing to one huge main city which is where you want to build most of your pops and boroughs. This city is often your capital but it should really be wherever you plan to build your Dust Transmuter. So a region where most of the tiles have base Dust output. Usually you want to build your capital someplace like that to begin with but if not then you might build your Dust Transmuter elsewhere. Wherever that is, is the city you should build out wide with boroughs first.

If you don't mind playing custom factions, note that the Broken Lords by default are way under the point limit so you can easily take their base state and throw a couple bonus traits on to make them even stronger without having to take away their default traits. Even if you avoid gamey and lore-inappropriate stuff like Cellulose Mutation you can still just boost their dust output a bit to snowball faster.

 

[oldbonebrown]

If the bishops had a direct heal I could use them, but since their initiative is low and they only heal those that are standing around them when they attack they are too much of a headache to be worth it.
Careful planning is where the combat in this game gets frustrating and boring.

 

[what am i doing]

They also heal your troops up in autoresolve so you're less likely to lose units and your units will have high health after battle, when they might otherwise be more severely wounded. Injuries won't really add up between fights and you can spend small amounts of dust to top up if you want. I like to maintain a 1:3 Bishop:Stalwart ratio. If you do play manual combat then they are pretty tedious to use effectively, yeah.

I'd also generally avoid combat as much as possible until I have Dust Bishops as it places too high a drain on your economy. For minor factions Bribing is generally better than fighting and Parley/Quest is best.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

I just got to play this for the first time. Why is the AI so completly worthless? They didn't even try to put a fight in Normal.

 

[lightbane]

I dunno, I haven't played it yet fully, but there's a community patch that should improve it, along with mods. It has bitching aesthetics and a soundtrack at least.

 

[newtmonkey]

I've got a weird thing with the Endless games. The interface puts me to sleep. I really have no idea why, the UI just seems so cheap looking compared to how great the rest of the game look, that I can't get into any of them at all. I mean, I prefer to look at something like Dominions or Eador or even Stellaris or GalCiv (ONE even) over the Endless games.

I've tried time and time again to get into this series of games, and I wish I could because I like how unique the factions appear to be, but I just can't get into them at all.

I've never before had a game I couldn't get into due solely to the interface, so this is really perplexing haha.

 

[oldbonebrown]

I just got to play this for the first time. Why is the AI so completly worthless? They didn't even try to put a fight in Normal.

AI on Endless difficulty pulling out the 4d chess strats in my most recent game

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

it's going to colonize you to death.

 

[Doktor Best]

So this vs Endless Space 2, which one to get?

And which DLCs are worthwhile?

 

[ArchAngel]

Endless Space 2 does not have tactical combat so I would get this one instead.

 

[Citizen]

AI on Endless difficulty pulling out the 4d chess strats in my most recent game

LOL! Is it with community patch?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

So this vs Endless Space 2, which one to get?

And which DLCs are worthwhile?

They're the same thing, really. Legend is a civ-like 4X with a landmass(es) and Space is MOO-like. But the core stuff of factions with impactful strategic differences, assimilating minor nations, faction quest chains with decent writing, fids economy, research divided into unlockable tiers and categories etc. is the same. They're both worth it imo, but for the strategy layer only. Legend has something that resembles tactical combat, but it's so shit that you're better off autoresolving anyway. Space has de-facto autocombat on default, you just have cards that influence it and can watch pretty pew pew lazors.

Dlc for both games range from meh at best to shit at worst. Just look at the factions they bring in and think if it sounds cool to you, but you'll be more than fine with the ones from base games, really. The biggest problem with dlc is that they tend to bring mechanics that are rarely interesting or satisfying, but often just add irritating bloat. Hacking from ES and pearls from EL would be two good examples. If I had to recommend one dlc for each then it would be deeds+wonders one for EL and vaulters for ES.

 

[Citizen]

They're the same thing, really. Legend is a civ-like 4X with a landmass(es) and Space is MOO-like. But the core stuff of factions with impactful strategic differences, assimilating minor nations, faction quest chains with decent writing, fids economy, research divided into unlockable tiers and categories etc. is the same. They're both worth it imo, but for the strategy layer only. Legend has something that resembles tactical combat, but it's so shit that you're better off autoresolving anyway. Space has de-facto autocombat on default, you just have cards that influence it and can watch pretty pew pew lazors.

I prefer ES2, I just wish it wasn't that buggy. The devs kinda abandoned it after milking enough $$$ with DLCs, but they promised to release the mega sooper ultra bugfix patch this summer. They promised...

Edited: to elaborate a bit, EL is completely cluttelered with annoying DLC mechanics that they added to justify their prices, has pretty annoying combat system and most of DLC factions aren't as cool as the OG ones. ES2 has much more interesting factions, no tactical combat and less DLC bullshit (hacking is actually a good mechanics, doesn't feel annoying and shoehorned in. Academy is kinda shit tho)

 

[ArchAngel]

So this vs Endless Space 2, which one to get?

And which DLCs are worthwhile?

They're the same thing, really. Legend is a civ-like 4X with a landmass(es) and Space is MOO-like. But the core stuff of factions with impactful strategic differences, assimilating minor nations, faction quest chains with decent writing, fids economy, research divided into unlockable tiers and categories etc. is the same. They're both worth it imo, but for the strategy layer only. Legend has something that resembles tactical combat, but it's so shit that you're better off autoresolving anyway. Space has de-facto autocombat on default, you just have cards that influence it and can watch pretty pew pew lazors.

Dlc for both games range from meh at best to shit at worst. Just look at the factions they bring in and think if it sounds cool to you, but you'll be more than fine with the ones from base games, really. The biggest problem with dlc is that they tend to bring mechanics that are rarely interesting or satisfying, but often just add irritating bloat. Hacking from ES and pearls from EL would be two good examples. If I had to recommend one dlc for each then it would be deeds+wonders one for EL and vaulters for ES.

I think everyone that bashes EL combat is just bad at it. I found it fun and interesting. Once you learn how to play well.