I haven’t played it in a while, but I’m pretty sure you can tell the unit where to move and then to attack. I don’t think it is obvious though, like you have to hold down the control key or something. I wish I had better memory.
As for city placement, I guess that just boils down to opinion there. I think a lot of us like it because it is different. Sometimes it’s nice to have to make a choice so we can’t always have it all (regarding city placement).
It’s the control key, yea.
I couldn’t agree more, Gus, and I’m surprised this isn’t a point of contention for more people.
Did you play Endless Space? I would have much rather had something like that game’s combat (i.e. your “no control” choice, but with a nifty card-based tactical directive issued for each of the battle’s three rounds). Instead, it looks like they tried to compromise between Endless Space and the usual hands-on grid-based tactical combat. So what we get is the worst of both worlds. I think you eventually just have to accept that Endless Legend is a game where you’re spectating the tactical combat.
However, I would encourage you to stick with Endless Legend long enough to sample some of the distinct factions. That’s its strongest claim to greatness. The developers did a wonderful job coming up with different mechanics for different factions. I think you’d definitely appreciate that element of it.
-Tom
What’s great about the province-based city development is that it does an end-run around city spam. I don’t mind the hard choice among the different spots for a city. In fact, I like being forced to make hard choices. And when it’s in service of avoiding the usual city spam, all the better.
-Tom
I agree with Gus and Tom on combat, and Tom on city expansion. I mostly find the game sort of slow-paced. Maybe I’m used to doing something almost every turn in games like AoW3, but it feels like great stretches of time where I’m moving one or two hexes with my only army to get to a thing, whereas in something like AoW3 I’m managing several stacks of units even very early on, defending cities and resource points, and clearing out mob-spawning locations like rogue dens or dungeon-exploration. I do like Endless Legend though, and plan to return to it on and off as the mood strikes.
I have to disagree about the combat. If you set the troops to Hold Position, or some such command prior to battle, and if you are very particular to giving them all precise orders every round, I very rarely had them do something unseemly. At worst, they’ll do nothing after the target you assigned to them was killed by another unit that acted earlier.
You have full control over combat. You right click to move a unit to a square (they can be blocked by other units so you have to be careful) then you control RMB to attack a unit. In an even combat I generally do micomanage at the start and then when victory is assured use the auto resolve to save time.
City placement has lot subtle, that involve your current tech, your race, and your needs. You if it bothers you you can play the roving clans which for a one turn+ delay can move cities.
It is a better game, I didn’t immediately love it but it grew on my rapidly. I will say the end game is as boring as most of the genre (at least at the hard level) so I generally declare victory and quit around turn 200.
You are hereby known as The Bumble when it comes to your view of games you don’t enjoy.
How apropos given the season!
So I picked this up during the Steam Holiday Sale. I played through the tutorial, and started a normal game as Vaulters. Man is this game pretty, and way different than so many other 4x games. It’s also somewhat difficult to understand, and the learning curve is already getting to me. Is there a good “Let’s Play” or other resource somewhere for how to start out building your empire? The tutorial was OK, but it had you starting with good resources and ideal conditions, not really preparing you for what you would need to do to actually get your civilization to that point in a real game.
For example, I see a Glassteel tile, and one of my minors actually wants me to go get some Glassteel for them. I remember from the tutorial that you can build extractors on these tiles, but I cannot figure out in my UI how to do this. I thought maybe I needed to research it, but it doesn’t seem to show up in my research tree for Tier 1 or Tier 2 at all.
I also feel like, 20 turns in, I am not doing anything. I still have an army that consists of two units and a hero, I still have one city that is building it’s first expansion district. I’ve researched a ton of stuff, and built a few buildings and improvements, and my units have gone around and discovered map tiles, minor factions and the Dragon guys, but it feels like I’m just hitting End Turn a lot waiting for things to finish building or be researched, meanwhile creeping along at +4 food production, +18 Industry and +33 research every turn. I get the feeling I should be more active somehow (though I lack the resources), and that I’m going to get my butt stomped any minute by an AI faction that has been far busier than me.
That baffled me as well for a bit. I had problems with this in tutorial because it was not at all obvious what I was supposed to be doing. Essentially, at the time you put the “build extractor” into the city queue, you then click on the un-developed resource site to indicate where you’re building it. If you don’t know what the resource site looks like (I didn’t in the tutorial), you’re stuck trying to click on stuff and the game telling you “you can’t build that here.” This is also how re-building conquered neutral villages works.
I’m pretty sure building the strategic resource extractors is a tier-1 technology, but it’s named something unintuitive.
That’s the impression I had when I was 100+ turns in, which is why I eventually put it aside as too boring for me. For a while I was moving a small army around, exploring the map, until I encountered an AI army in one of the neutral areas. Since you start at “cold war” with everyone, this meant they immediately attacked, since they can do that in neutral provinces during Cold War. It went badly for them, but it still cost me a couple of units, and I felt the rewards for wandering around weren’t worth the risk anymore.
I honestly don’t know if I was being competitive, because I never really saw any enemy empires. I did see some enemy troops, and I had more stuff than they did, so I guess I was doing something right.
It’s hard to do something wrong, either - the AI doesn’t really get how to play the game. My experience with Gus’s is a mirror, sounds like - just not a lot going on. End turn, queue up more stuff in the city that will take 12 turns to build, end turn and wait. Oh, goodie, now it’s winter so these next 10 turns will be a big fat loss. More waiting. I think AoW3 spoiled me - a “long” time to build in that game is something that takes 4 turns - you can pump out a wide variety of military units from turn one, and you often start with a decent stack for exploring - also exploration is not only rewarded it’s required to stay competitive. In EL exploration doesn’t feel required, as even the long-quest rewards don’t feel very rewarding (though they are at least something to do).
I like EL but it’s a bit slow and minimalist for me, I think.
Honestly, I think the lack of activity is at least as much a result of the model that discourages expansion as the build times. Even if the Civ series didn’t have goody huts, you’d be exploring to plot out your expansion, particularly since you want to grab prime territory before your neighbors do. With no one doing any apparent expansion, and rewards for exploring ruins seeming minimal, there’s not a lot to do other than invest and wait.
I will never understand the praise for Endless Legend. It’s yet another 4X in which the AI isn’t able to play the game at all and some unique ways to how the different factions work don’t really compensate for that. Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t expect too much from AI’s (I’m a programmer myself :p) but time after time games like Endless Space or now Endless Legend don’t even have the courtesy to get the basics right.
I’m also not sure why Endless Space and Endless Legend get so much praise for their UI. I mean it is very clean in it’s design and mostly also functional but does lack a certain character (it certainly doesn’t add to the immersion) and is in some areas really not all that clear and gives the player too few options/infos. So I guess it must be the smartphone interface aesthetic?
There are of course some interesting ideas in the game like the region system but it doesn’t really go anywhere. It might prevent the classic city spam but it just forces players to rush colonization before regions are claimed. I honestly don’t even know why the bothered with settlers at all. The whole region system cries for a different approach.
I also agree that it’s never a good sign for your game if it has too many turns with pretty much nothing to do. I don’t mind that for a game like EUIV or CKII because those games offer a narrative outside of your own empire but EL simply doesn’t have that.
There are the quests to win over minors and faction quests to give the player something to do (if you research the tech).
If you guys don’t want the spoils of exploring ruins then send them over this way and I’ll rush build ;)
luckily, you don’t need to.
I had the same thing happen, then I noticed that in the research screen is a search box! Just put in glasssteel(or even glass or steel) in the search box and it pops up any of the research items in the game that have that word in their description. So cool, love the UI in this game!
-Avtar
I played EL close to release, so I’m not sure what changes have been made for better or for worse. I agree that EL wasn’t very challenging. I don’t remember the details, but I think I played 1 game with each faction. I started at normal difficulty and upped it one harder after 3 games or so. I won each game except for 1, and that one I only lost by 1 (or not many more) turns. I was hoping some updates would improve the game on that front.
The reason I enjoyed it during that time was because it wasn’t the same as every other 4X out there. There were new mechanics to learn and considerations to make. It made it feel fresh. I never really got the feeling of there not being anything to do. I was either exploring and collecting goodies, scouting out other factions, building up my area and cities, etc. If I remember correctly, turn times were pretty quick so if I had to press End Turn without doing a lot it probably wouldn’t have bothered me.
That said, if I played a 2nd or 3rd game with each faction, maybe the poor AI would have wore on me more. I never claimed EL would be a classic that I would want to play for years. I did think the 50-75 hours I played were worthwhile.
I agree with the above comment that the Endless Space UI was overrated. There were many times I couldn’t get the information I wanted in a straightforward manner to make a decision. I remember having to take the info presented in the UI and doing some manual calculations in my head when they could have just presented the info in a more useful manner.
I started playing and couldn’t get it at first as well. This was a video I used which greatly helped me understand what was going on, what to prioritize first, and how to prioritize city locations -> Endless Legends - Vaulters He’s a little annoying, but it did help a lot. I only watched his first video, and it was enough.
I also started a game with 1 less AI so I had less pressure in the early game, which helped me fumble around a bit more till I got the hang of some of the controls.
I agree with rob on most accounts.
And I actually enjoy being on the other side of the fence for a change, when I feel hardly anybody understands that Civ5 just doesn’t click with me.
CiV’s a solid enough title with the expansions now, but somehow, it completely fails to suck me in in the way previous Civs did.
And EL managed to do that to me.
Is it a timeless classic?
Truth to be told, hardly any game that comes out these days can claim that title from me - maybe it has to do with the fact that I just don’t have as much gaming time as I used to (and a much larger back-catalogue of potential candidates to return to).
But I’d much rather return to EL in 5 years time than I would return to Civ5.
rezaf
At first, that was exactly my reaction. Neat setup for a game, but WAY too easy. However, I find that the game is vastly improved now, and I find that on “hard” it is plenty of a challenge, at least when I play my two favorites Vaulters and Wild Walkers. (I’ve hardly tried the others.)
The AI fills in the provinces quite aggressively, and they also upgrade weapons and armor effectively. (The minors provide very little threat, but that appears to be by design.) In most games, one or two of the AIs start to dominate the other AIs, threatening to become unstoppable forces. The result is a sense of continuing pressure throughout the game – get going, or lose.
I can almost always get enough of a lead at “normal” difficulty to make the game boring, but at “hard” I think you’d have to be a pretty sharp gamer to not have some competition… and if that is the case, there are three higher difficulty levels to choose from.