Endless Legend - Fantasy 4X TBS from Endless Space devs

I have this weird relationship with 4X games (Dominions being the exception) in that I play them once and then lose interest, never to play them again. Same thing happened to me with this game.

I couldn’t get into this one either, I loved the world at first but then quickly grew bored.

The devs haven’t quite figured out how to nail the combat portion of their games. That was the big problem with Endless Space. I think the attempt to abstract it in ES was a good one, but it just wasn’t interesting. In Endless Legend it just slows the game down too much and it a bit basic to really be interesting. I hate how there isn’t any real zone of control and enemies can get to the back line even if you try and protect them. I also don’t like how sometimes it sucks in units that are a bit further away when combat is initiated.

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/content.php?601-AMPLITUDE-Upcoming-Updates

Update, DLC, Nov 19

Oh, some free stuff, some paid stuff, and better modability and Steam Workshop integration. Nifty.

Going to fire up a new campaign myself and see if I can see any AI improvement, hope springs eternal…

Going to fire up a new campaign myself and see if I can see any AI improvement, hope springs eternal…

Let us know!

As much as I love Endless Legend there’s been so much great new stuff to play this year I never had the urge to go back to it. The DLC that’s been dropping has gotten barely a notice.

I just got this one thanks to people’s recommendations (and a Let’s Play from Arumba), and it’s absolutely great. (I didn’t get any expansions, just the base game.)

I played one game as the Vaulters, on normal, and it was pretty easy but a lot of fun to learn stuff and play through the quest victory. I played one as the Broken Lords on hard, and loved the switch to dust as the growth/healing resource (and from primarily ranged and cavalry units to slower and tougher units). I was trailing the vaulters on my continent for a while but a couple wars and I took care of them, and then it was smooth sailing to the supremacy victory. The third game was the Cultists because I felt like a OCC for some reason, and again it was great to have a complete switch-up, though I must say that having a support for the first-tier unit is… tough. (I also played it on the next difficulty up–serious?) The score was not quite reliable as I only ever had one city, of course, but it took a series of back and forth wars with the necrophages and the broken lords to come out on top. (I don’t think I was ever seriously threatened–just my outlying converted cities.) The conversion mechanic was tons of fun and I really liked getting a super-city. I basically finished the wonder and got a supremacy victory at the same time (but went with the wonder because it was new).

One slight worry that I have is that the AI has yet to really pose a military challenge. I did have to pull out a bunch more stops against the necrophages in my last game as the cultists, though–the disease was pretty brutal over the course of a campaign, and for the first two wars their units were sometimes better than mine. Maybe the next level up in difficulty will be better, or maybe I’m just lucky.

Still, totally awesome game, and they really did the faction differentiation well, at least as far as I can tell.

It seemed to me that the military challenges didn’t really show up for me until… Serious difficulty, I think it’s called? It was a notch above Hard. Hopefully I’m not getting the terms mixed up with another game.

I wish more games had an aggressive and competitive AI without getting tons of resource bonuses (i.e. cheats). It must be a hard problem to solve, since so few games can do it. The only one that I can think of that has an aggressive AI on the no cheat setting is the GalCiv series, but I find those game boring.

I’ve had this for a while but man it’s finally got it’s hooks in me. This game is so damn good. The best 4x in a long time.

Baby steps for me. For months I’ve been thinking I want to play again. I played about 70 hours at release. I bought the DLC and am installing it again. That’s the first step, right? Getting it on the computer?

I think buying the DLC is the first step, installing it the second. At this point you’re well on your way to hell, my friend.

I picked this up during the Fall sale ($21 for the game + all DLC? Nice). So far, I’m enjoying it. It’s quite a bit different than a standard 4x, which is making for a bit of a learning curve. I’ve restarted quite a few times after having an “ah ha!” moment that made a game play clear.

The races play SO much different from eachother, it’s like a different game for each race. That’s some amazing design.

Stop it. All of you. Yes, I bought the DLC during the T-day sale, but my backlog is too big. Stop posting excited things about this game until I finish up FO4, Bloodborne: The Old Hunters, Renowned Explorers, etc., etc., etc.

How’s the autoresolve? My latest attempt to get into EL had me bouncing off the (IMO) repetitive and often annoying combat.

Auto-resolve, from my limited use of it, works well. Seems to play out in the background as an AI-vs-AI with you getting the results at the end.

If you make the mistake of only playing games that you’ll ‘finish’ you’ll never get to games that are more open ended. I try to mixed it up as it is way too easy to pick a game because I think I can finish it.