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

[cvv]

Interesting decision to go with a futuristic UI in a fantasy 4x.
And by interesting i mean stupid, since it probably won't sit well with a lot of people.

It's a really good UI. Very clean, very slick, easy to understand what is what. Functionality above all else.

Sure, usability is king, but a slight styling would have done wonders imo. It doesn't mesh well with the rest of the game.
Anyway, it wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me if i was interested, but i can imagine it would to some.

It really turns me on when fantasy elements are mixed with a distinctly modern touch, like the UI and the tilt shift. It's a cool design choice that gives it an entirely different feel than a regular fantasy UI would, and sets it apart from a lot of other 4X, in my opinion, simply because it is so cool.

Fair enough. It seems i'm wrong in speculating that people don't like the UI. Maybe it's just me.

It's not.

Out of curiousity, because I quite liked ES, I checked the gameplay on YT and this thing made me ten seconds in.

It's like Endless Space's UI was full of wood, gilding, green leaves and Schwabach font. It's like a mayo icecream or chocolate chicken. Otherwise the gameplay looked excellent.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Clickable icons on endless legend's UI are too small.

I don't mind the fonts or decorations.

 

[KoolNoodles]

As with any game, you get used to it after a while, though initially the UI, small icons, and etc. were irritating to me. That might be one of the things I immediately compared to say, Civ5, and found EL to be weaker.

To me, this is much cleaner:

Spoiler

Than this:

Spoiler

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

CiV is literally the worst looking 4x game ever, thanks for the reminder.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

maybe cleaner, but it shows 1/4th of the stats.

 

[sser]

Damn. Take this game's strat screen and combine it with AoW3's battlemaps and I'd finally be happy with a 4x fantasy title. A shame I have to be such a Goldilocks with this genre.

 

[covr]

That font on the lower part of screen. You couldn't go any more amateurish than this. Good game, though.

EDIT:

This reminds me a bit of of Valve Steam interface. Which is not good.

 

[Gulnar]

This game is really, really awesome. Other than the AI (some factions are usually stupid and lose really fast, like ardent mages/drakens, while some are omg wtf gg wp like the wood elves or whatever they're called) and the imbalance (archers!) i'd honestly say this is the best game i played since sacrifice. Mechanics wise, it's awesome. Lore wise is even better.

 

[Eyeball]

Odd, people seem to have very different opinions on which factions are good when played by the AI. In my games, the Wild Walkers (elves) are almost always the top faction, probably due to the fact that they don't really have any Special Ability for the AI to plan around, so the AI can play them somewhat competently. The Cultists are almost always the first faction to get roflstomped and the AI clearly can't really work out how to play them properly, as they're a pretty strong faction in human hands.

AI vaulters also seem to underperform, which is odd considering that most people find them to be one of the strongest factions, and while the Roving Traders seem to do well due to their moneygrubbing abilities, they don't really seem to know how to abuse mercenary privateers to burn down other player's cities without ever declaring war like they should.

 

[Gulnar]

By "omg wtf gg wp" i meant that they stomped me pretty hard. Probably because they can only spam archers -> archers are op in this game -> tend to win early encounters -> snowball. Can't say nothing about cultist, i never encountered them in computer hand (while i won easily a game with them, their archer is good, the clawbearing leader too, and the automatically producing minion villages are a godsend).

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Vaulters are noob friendly and low on micro but not particularly strong.

Start on a medium difficulty level with vaulters as your first time. Their easy to use passive economy bonuses will let you explore the whole tech tree very quickly, while their intra empire teleports will let you mount a good defense if you get attacked. If you max out the difficulty or jump into multiplayer their weaknesses will start to drag you down more. Pathetic starting army, pathetic heroes, reliance on minor factions to pad their ranks. It all means they suck at the land grab race if they have serious competition from other players, which means less minor faction access, which makes their army problems even worse. And their economy bonuses don't look so impressive if they're short on cities.

Necrophages and roving clans seem to be the OP factions if you compare economies that are fully micromanaged and assume there's a real challenge fighting for early land grabs.

 

[Zeriel]

Just customize Vaulters to have the necrophage district bonus and they're beast. Don't agree that their starting armies are "pathetic"--pretty much all unit power in the game comes from their gear (which is independent of unit) and the type, and ranged is by far the most powerful type, which is the first tier unit for Vaulters. Their only real glaring weakness is the heroes, which are very weak in combat, but all the other perks make up for that.

That said, roving clans merc bonus is probably unbeatable in the hands of a smart player at certain stages in the game, and the drakken diplomacy forcing is absurd. They're about as broken as vaulters, just not in the same way.

 

[Irenaeus]

Finished a game with Elves. Loved the beginning of the game and a tight fight with bugs which hindered me in mid-game. Archers may be awesome, but bugs have flying poisonous beetles, which more than make up for that. Then Ardent Sorcewhore (who had already rolfstomped the dragon faction) came and destroyed the bugs for me and I quickly spent everything to ally with her, leading to an easy win with Wonder building. She didn't care I was going to win with a Wonder... Odd. I thought she would declare war. All in all a great game, though the writting didn't impress me as much by late game compared to early game. I'll try other factions, but I think game must really shine in multiplayer!

Also, the developers announced a free add-on, with lots of new stuff. Check their steam page.

 

[sser]

Multiplayer seems alright, but the game crashed on me when we tried to load up an old save. The game needs a bit of work, but the foundations are definitely there, aesthetically and gameplay-wise. It's a shame the combat system is so clunky and generally shit. AOW3 just came out and it's got the best combat system so far of the newer 4X-fantasy games, but it's strategy map is sorely lacking. Ah well.

By the way, does anyone else get a strong Settlers of Catan vibe from the hexes? The way their materials show up and the general color palette remind me of the board game.

 

[Gulnar]

As far as i saw, many factions need native troops - for example, broken lords mages are too weak early, and you need some kind of archer. And cultist don't have any kind of infantry (but well, you can spam archers).

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

RELEASE NOTES [1.0.7]

CHANGES AND ADDITIONS

• Added the Italian version of Endless Legend.
• Reduced the arrival of roaming faction armies in Newbie and Easy difficulties.
• Updated the strategic resources costs on city improvements.
• Reduced Subterranean Gardens Food bonus in Winter from 15 to 10 (per exploitation tile).
• Changed "Scientific Envoy" strategic cost from 20 Glassteel to 20 Titanium (since that improvement gives more science on trade routes and Science improvements require Titanium, not Glassteel like Dust improvements)
• Changed "Army Manual" strategic cost from 5 Mithrite to 5 Hyperium (XP bonuses are linked to Hyperium)
• Changed XP gains:
  • Doubled Hero XP gains for Search, Bribe, Conversion, Siege and when defending against a Siege.
  • Slightly increased Hero XP gain as governor when an element in the city construction queue is built/recruited.
  • Removed Hero XP gain when colonizing.
• Rework the Broken Lord formula: now the cost increases way slower depending on the empire scale.
• Lowered effect of regeneration: 5 /10 / 15 => 2 /4 / 6 per level
• Removed additional +1 vision on city center gained in Roving Clans' "Tower defense" improvement
• Tweaked the values and prerequisites of two Necrophages quest city improvements.
• Tweaked prerequisite of side quests asking to reach 40 of science or industry during 10 turns.
• Tweaked Conversion trait to make sure additional cities pay 5 times less than the main city per converted village within the empire.
• Changed the whole formula for the military power AI evaluation: the AI makes a better evaluation before attacking an army.
• Reduced the heuristic for weapon technologies: the more the AI has weapon/armor technologies, the less it wants more of them.
• Allowed multiple attacks for AI empires.
• Improved the opportunistic AI behavior when near a ruin.
• Increased the diversity of units used by the AI empires.
• Added a new influence trend rule: the influence points gained per turn from an alliance now increase in time.
• Removed invalid term when a contract is counter proposed.

IMPORTANT FIXES

• Added more information to the logs provided by the World Generator.
• Changed the way the World Generator is compiled in order to fix issues with some configurations.
• Fixed an issue where a NullReferenceException assert is displayed when teleport is used on sieged city with battle.
• Fixed an issue where the Besieger tag on an army are not properly removed.
• Fixed an issue where AI garrison does not keep more than one unit.
• Fixed an issue where Auto battle takes place instead of Manual battle if there is an fleet nearby that could come as reinforcements.
• Fixed an issue where Trade Routes cause a desync.

OTHER FIXES

• Fixed an issue with the AI when the pacified village are too far.
• Fixed an issue where AI conversion does not work when the village is pacified.
• Fixed an issue where AI does not convert enemy villages.
• Fixed an issue where AI does not complete quests.
• Fixed an issue where a level up notification is displayed even if the unit has reached the max level.
• Fixed an issue with side quests asking to build an "Only One Per Empire" city improvement in a specific city.
• Fixed an issue with the prerequisite of the "Master of Luxury" quest.
• Fixed an issue where the Ardent Mages Era 6 "Sacrificial amplifiers" technology is counted for Scientific Victory.
• Fixed an issue with the Cultists Faction color.
• Fixed an issue where building a settler for the Broken Lords cost 2 populations.
• Fixed an issue where the "Food efficient" and "Agriculturally Challenged" traits can be added to the same custom faction.
• Fixed an issue where Villages pacified by force do not grant vision when converted by the cultists major faction.
• Fixed an issue where the bonus displayed for Necrophages "Roadside picnic" and "Iron constitution" skills was wrong.
• Fixed an issue where a city is created without settler.
• Fixed an issue where units cannot be transferred onto city tiles.
• Fixed an issue where the army names are not properly displayed for some languages.
• Fixed an issue where the retrofit cost does not take care of speed and empire bonuses.
• Fixed an issue where shared vision treaties grant vision to allies from Privateer armies.
• Fixed an issue where the Diplomatic relation state chaos now doesn't applied at the beginning of the game and at the first encounter.
• Fixed an issue where it is not possible to change the technology selection state of a previously canceled technology after a save/load process.
• Fixed an issue where the movement path changes color when drawn across hostile armies hidden in fog of war.
• Fixed several localization issues with the Polish version.

 

[oscar]

Damn this sounds cool as hell. Nice aesthetic, deeply unique factions and a cool setting.

I can't stand passive AIs however. Even Civ V is much too peaceful for me.

 

[bonescraper]

It's Endless Legend, not Legends. It's Wasteland, not Wastelands. It's Dragon Age Awakening, not Awakenings. What the fuck is wrong with you people?

 

[sser]

It's Endless Legend, not Legends. It's Wasteland, not Wastelands. It's Dragon Age: Awakening, not Awakenings. What the fuck is wrong with you peoples?

:mrfussy:

 

[Metro]

Thought this was still in Early Access. Is it really in 'release' state, though?

 

[Zeriel]

Thought this was still in Early Access. Is it really in 'release' state, though?

yes

 

[KoolNoodles]

Though honestly, the AI is still in early access.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

[1.0.8] RELEASE NOTES

Important fixes

• Fixed an issue where an IndexOutOfRangeException is displayed (AILayer_Encounter.UpdateSpellScoringGrid)
• Fixed an issue where a KeyNotFoundException is displayed (AIBehaviorTreeNode_Decorator_SelectTarget.Execute)
• Fixed an issue where the Roving Clans Setseke is unable to colonise a region
• Fixed an issue where the AI empires have a malus on Slow and Endless speed

 

[LusciousPear]

Honestly, this is the best 4x game I've played since Alpah Centauri. Great flavor setting, I love the UI, the combat is novel, and quests are fun.

Civ 5 was such utterbanalshitboring that I forgot how much I love this genre.

I too wish there was better depth in my military units, but mixing and matching with other races is fun. AI is only moderately competent, the Elves also tend to always be the biggest.

I'm going to skip Beyond Earth for now.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

The combat is novel but way too rough around the edges. I greatly prefer the conservative but well-polished turn based combat of Civ5 or AoW3.