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

[Zboj Lamignat]

Thanks for sharing. Fun and interesting indeed.

Also there's no need to use it anyway (fortunately), on final difficulty if you build and design your armies in a sensible manner then you'll be more than fine.

 

[Doktor Best]

I went with Endless Legend for now since im more in the mood for fantasy.

 

[lightbane]

Greetings fellow Codexers.
I believe I'll start playing this game soon. However, I would like to know about your expertise regarding something: Mods.
Should I bother installing the Community Balance Patch to begin with? IIRC it was mentioned here that the changes were not really good, but I was interested with said patch, if only because it lets you use mods without disabling steam achievements for some reason. Not that there are that many interesting mods as far as I know, with things such as new maps, some necessary game tweaks and the like.

 

[Eyestabber]

Pick vaulters and beat the game unmodded first. Then you can consider going down the rabbit hole of "community balance" patches. EL is a very good out of the box experience that you might otherwise miss.

 

[Citizen]

I think I found the recipe of good ES/EL playthrough: uncheck most DLCs in steam before playing. I love vanilla amplitude games, but the amount of unnecessary mechanics they add with each dlc quickly bloats the game with tons useless and unfun shit. I think it would be much better if the new mechanics were only applied to new factions, instead of being slapped on the older ones changing their gameplay.

In EL the DLC stuff is mostly just annoying and feels out of place. I mean do I REALLY need to drastically change my gameplay during winter to collect shitty pearls when I play as dune-inspired S&M desert people or forest-dwelling leaf lovers? This mechanic would be an okay addition if only the new faction (that is focused around winter season) would be doing it, but instead everyone is forced to scatter their troops around during the winter season and hoard pearls.

In ES2 tho, the DLC additions range from annoying (fucking hacking. For all factions except the Umbral Choir hacking is just busywork with no real payoffs, yet they are forced to stare at the hacking interface every 3 turns and manually place dozens of defensive programs on their planets for no reason) to absolutely game breaking.

Behemoths completely break the economy, they were designed for Hissho faction that can't build more than 3-4 star systems without hardcore penalties to production, so they need to harvest resources and boost their shitty production values with them. Then why did amplitude gave behemoth to other factions too? Riftborn can just mass produce economic behemoths on their high industry systems boosting the numbers to infinity: it's easy mode against AI.

Academy fleet is a fucking joke. The highest bidder gets a two carriers fleet by turn 40, allowing him to instantly end the game. Who tf though it was a good addition to the game?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I've been repeating this since the pearls dlc for EL and agree 100%. The only non retarded/pointless/annoying/boring/gamebreaking additions from EL/ES2 dlcs I can think of are the wonder districts and legendary deeds from the first (afair) dlc for EL. Not to mention that most of the dlc races aren't particularly interesting, either (there are some exceptions). The business model of releasing a good platform and then spamming it with tons of cashgrabbing content dlcs in lieu of developing, fixing and expanding base mechanics is killing many strategy games that have good potential. Because EL and ES2 sure as fuck did have lots of potential. Real shame.

 

[Silva]

There ever was a good strat game that got improved by expansions? Honest question.

- SMAC expansion is okay but don't really improve the original.
- EU4 pfffff let's not go there.
- Shogun 2 TW expansions are good but they're separated scenarios so don't count.

 

[MRY]

StarCraft was improved by Brood War.

 

[covr]

Civ 4, Civ 5

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

A good modern example is AoW3. It was a solid, but bland game on release and then expansions elevated it to one of the best modern strategies.

 

[Theodora]

- Shogun 2 TW expansions are good but they're separated scenarios so don't count.

Seems arbitrary...

 

[Citizen]

Homm3 expansions added new campaigns, artifacts, map locations and all sorts of cool stuff. They also added Conflux which is kinda OP and kinda low-quality compared to the rest of the towns, tho

 

[Silva]

StarCraft was improved by Brood War.

RTS are not strategy games.

 

[coldcrow]

Endless Space 2 is fine, just turn off or don't buy the last DLC (The Awakening).

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the last dlc is perfectly fine and shakes a lot of dust off the same old 4x fare. forget the nigga warlord, he's completely retarded and couldn't even understand its mechanics.

anyway, this is legend's thread.

 

[Citizen]

the last dlc is perfectly fine and shakes a lot of dust off the same old 4x fare.

Academy fleet is stupid and shouldn't be there. Why in the hell would you reward the best performing early game player (in a game where early game is mostly dictated by your faction choice and starting position RNG) with a nearly unstoppable fleet at turn 40 allowing him to wipe the slower scaling factions before they even get competitive? Also the Hissho DLC is retarded as well, behemoths (economy ones, not the battle versions) were clearly designed to help hissho circumvent their expansion penalties, but when used by other high production factions they are broken and dumb. As a riftborn or horatio you can just slap some ecenomy behemoths on your best performing systems and instagib the whole galaxy

Obliterator behemoths are super fun tho, I'll give you that

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the academy fleet stregth can be adjusted. resources distribution can be adjusted. behemoths cost upscales steeply, you build one in 3 turns the next one is going to take 15 in the very same system. and everyone can build them: if everyone is special, no one is special.

 

[Citizen]

and everyone can build them: if everyone is special, no one is special.

Would giving everyone planet obliterators on turn 1 be fun? It's not like someone would be a speshul snowflake, everyone would get one!

The fact that everyone has them doesn't make them less dumb, they are just encouraging vertical empire development. Sit on a rich system and spam as many economy behemoths as you can before they start requiring more resources than they produce. Economy behemoths should've been Hissho restricted, because they are the only faction that is designed around that kind of vertical expansion. As I said already, riftborn or properly min-maxed horatio with economy behemoths are just retarded

 

[Eisen]

StarCraft was improved by Brood War.

RTS are not strategy games.

But first, whats is a strategy game?

 

[Sranchammer]

But first, whats is a strategy game?

slave labor forms the foundation of every strategy game.

It's why racists and fascists love them

 

[Theodora]

But first, whats is a strategy game?

Gonna take a shot in the dark and say it's a game where the conflicts — or more generally, the problems — are to scale, as opposed managing a single agent. More pieces, more possible outcomes, ergo more need to think ahead — i.e. 'to strategise'.

/shrug

 

[Lacrymas]

So, I've been playing this a bit as the Drakken (I find them to be the blandest, so a great starting point) with all expansions and I noticed how the Urkan are super disruptive immediately. The winter pearls are somewhat weird too and they encourage splitting up armies to go hunt for them. Thankfully, you can disable the Urkan in the settings, but I'm not sure you can do that with pearls. Other than that, a pretty solid gaem.

 

[what am i doing]

So, I've been playing this a bit as the Drakken (I find them to be the blandest, so a great starting point) with all expansions and I noticed how the Urkan are super disruptive immediately. The winter pearls are somewhat weird too and they encourage splitting up armies to go hunt for them. Thankfully, you can disable the Urkan in the settings, but I'm not sure you can do that with pearls. Other than that, a pretty solid gaem.

I actually like the pearls; they give you something to do during the winter. But, I agree completely on the Urkan. They, and also those titan things, feel like they're the result of the developers mistakenly thinking if you just shove in bigger and more powerful units repeatedly, it somehow makes the game better. Not a fan of them.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It's exactly the same case as ES2: base game is very incline and has potential to be great, but most dlcs make it worse with tedious, pointless stuff and stillborn, broken mechanics while added factions aren't particularly interesting, either. With EL it's probably best to stick with the dlc that adds wonder districts and legendary deeds, with ES2 vaulters are cool and maybe the behemots/hissho, although many players hate the latter ones as well.

 

[vazha]

A good modern example is AoW3. It was a solid, but bland game on release and then expansions elevated it to one of the best modern strategies.

Its still super bland compared to AOW 2: Shadow Magic though.