There’s a mid-tier science that opens up wormholes. You can vine along those.
Yes it is, however, I have grown vines outside of my constellation to several isolated systems.
No
Not currently.
When I capture the system, on that same turn it shows it as fully entangled. In the very next turn, the entanglement goes away. This has to be a bug. In my current game I am now boxed in with captured systems with no vines.
On the vines issue, this is what the developer had to say:
Frogsquadron [developer] May 30 @ 11:10am
This issue will be fixed next patch. See this post from our programmer who worked on it:
And also:
Yeah, this is just an edge case. From my link above:
As far as I can tell there is a couple of bugs at work here:
- When you invade a system as an Unfallen it is automatically entwined if possible (i.e. in range of your vine network) otherwise it is destroyed and you get nothing. There is a bug where if you invade a system that you previously owned, it becomes unentwined instead. Enchanteur I can tell from your save that’s what happened to you on Virgo and Adana.
- The “Implant Beacon” action cancels itself if done on star system that was once owned by another empire but has since been destroyed.
Both bugs will be fixed in the next patch.
They do not quite have it then. You invade a system you never owned, capture it, and it becomes un-entangled the very next turn. I suppose old games are hosed unless I can just normally entwine a system again.
Hopefully you (or someone else experiencing this) will post in that Steam thread and get them straightened out. It sounds like they are fixing only part of the issue and may not be aware of the rest. I saw very few posts in the thread and none that described exactly what you guys here have been talking about.
Well, I was able to vine Church systems after destroying the arks in them. Using the vines, I brought them into my empire as usual, then established my own colonies. But I guess that’s a bit different from traditoinal “conquest” of a planet. Let’s hope that issue is indeed fixed by the forthcoming patch.
Despite my military victories against the Church, my Unfallen fell to the Lumeris, who won an economic victory. I had researched one of the required techs and was about 1/4 way to an economic win. In retrospect, I wonder whether I’d have been better off pursuing an economic win.
It was a really fun game. The (Large) galaxy was shaped like a dumbell, and I dominated much of my “side” of the galaxy, but I never made it far into the other side – didn’t even manage to explore much of it. It was an interesting layout.
I’ve now played the Unfallen, the Sophons, the Humans, and the Riftborn. I’m leaning toward either Horatio or the Lumeris for my next game.
I’m kinda souring on this in my 3rd game. Not sure if it because I’m the Cravers. Part of it is what I mentioned earlier - I have all these options, but it seems like I need a pen and paper to keep track on things if I want to make an informed decision - how many hot planets do I have that would benefit from this tech, what mix of enemy ships have I seen so I can counter their equipment and choose the right tactics,etc… All 4X’s have these problems to some extent, but for some reason ES2 seems like it is more difficulty to keep the details in my head.
Also, I can’t load my game because I am endlessly trying to connect to their server (not sure for what). Damn, it even tries when starting Steam in offline mode.
My interest is this game is also waning. I have decided that diplomatic AI is just a random number generator with some small tweaks. For example any flavor text about an empire being peaceful is total bullshit. They have have the exact same personality and will go to war at the first opportunity.
Then there is one faction which declares war on me just after its truce expires, and then on the same exact turn, wants a truce again, only it wants me to pay 110,000 dust. Yeah, right…
Then there is the horatio guy, he wants a peace deal, which he proposes, and if I accept he immediately goes to distrustful status.
Really though, its the myriad of small bugs that is wearing me down. Why do I have to hit end-turn twice so often?
Why can’t I starve out a an outpost like the AI can? Why is selecting a fleet and telling it to move is sometimes glitchy? Etc…
This game needs another 6 months of bug fix passes.
Also I disable the economic victory. Getting the required dust is ridiculously easy compared to all the other win conditions. Just by building normal stuff, you will achieve this victory condition long before you get any of the others. By the mid to late game I am already generating like 20k a tick, and IIRC for a typical medium map, the goal is 690k which doesn’t take all that many turns to get to.
Now compare that to the science victory or any of the conquest victories. Even the wonder victory is harder because those resources simply are not available to build the wonders.
The incessant demands for money are annoying too. If I do that it’s automatic war, even with 100% pressure. It is kinda strange, though, because you’d think a reasonably simple rule-based or point-based system for diplomacy would be easy for anyone to design with no AI programming experience whatsoever. And yet nonsensical diplomacy is a frequent problem in these games.
I agree that the diplomacy is lacking, as it almost always is in these games. (Exception: maybe Crusader Kings 2.) In most 4X games, diplomacy is conducted along one dimension, in which relations sit along an x-axis running from alliance to war, and events move you one way or the other along that single axis. Real-world diplomacy has a couple more dimensions.
That said, I did just finish an ES2 game in which diplomacy wasn’t annoying. The Unfallen can spread influence without building colonies, forestalling or even preventing conflict with neighbors. I fought only one war the entire game, against the church, and was at peace or allied with just about eveyone else. No frequent demands for money. Actually, the Lumeris occasionally gave me money. But my experience with factions other than the Unfallen has been more annoying.
I’ve been playing this since launch, but I have a tendency to restart as I figure out some system that I had failed to properly exploit. I finally finished a game last night as the Riftborn and was closing in on victory only to lose to the Lumeris on what I thought was a score victory, whatever that exactly means. Overall, I’m still loving the game, but I’m guessing that as I stop restarting and getting deeper into the games, I’ll start seeing more of the issues you guys are reporting. I was just jazzed that I lost the game. It was on Serious difficulty. After the MOO remake and Civ VI, that’s at least a step in the right direction.
I will admit that I’ve been conditioned by 4Xs to have little expectations for diplomacy, but I haven’t found the diplomacy to be too bad - certainly not the insanity of Civ VI. What I’ve seen is mostly reasonable (again, by modern 4x standards at least) - peace and trade early on, then some worsening of relations due to border tensions. Horatio is definitely odd though as has been mentioned and I did run into a bug where he bombarded me with dialogs about how he didn’t trust me over and over again. I had to advance the turn to make it stop. I also did see the issue you mentioned Miramon where as soon as I demanded something (it was a luxury good iirc), it was automatic war despite nearly 100% pressure. Something is clearly off with that mechanic.
I still don’t understand how to “spend influence” to extend my borders, so I feel like I’m missing something important there. I haven’t encountered many of the bugs mentioned here, but one thing that feels like one that’s been annoying is how leaders on ships never seem to level, whereas their system bound brethren advance at a steady clip. By the end of my last game, I had one leader on a system at level 30 and another I had gotten around the same time parked on a ship stuck at level 6. Towards the end I would simply put new leaders on a system, train them in all fleet skills, throw one of those distortion bubbles the Riftborn can build on the system and within 20 turns he’d be at level 10 or so and I’d move him to a fleet.
There’s that early ability in all of their trees that gives 4 and then 8 xp per turn on a fleet, but that doesn’t seem to work. I’ve been assuming that’s a bug, but maybe there’s a mechanic there I’m missing?
Man, it seems like Sega made a really bad decision by buying these guys and then forcing them to release a buggy product and piss away their brand. Don’t get me wrong, I can imagine how frustrating it must be for them to have to fund development that goes on past the supposed ship date, but they gotta take the long view here. If Amplitude’s reputation is ruined, that is really gonna cut down on ROI.
If it takes, say, a month to get their house in order, bug wise, then are the short term profits they’re gonna get going to be worth the negative impact on Amplitude’s trustworthyness as a company? Especially when you consider that the former are gonna be heavily affected by the inevitable negative steam reviews…
I really like how diplomacy and politics works in Star Ruler 2. That game does a great job of making it an actual above-board interactive system rather than a black box full of irrationally schizo AIs.
One of the Galactic Civilizations (II, I think?) did a cool thing with diplomacy by including a resource – it might have even been called influence – that you could spend on the other factions to get them to give you stuff and make favorable deals. Basically, it made diplomacy a type of economy. I’ve missed that in the subsequent GalCivs.
You don’t spend it! It happens automatically, like culture in Civ. Any system that accrues influence pushes its borders out every turn. The distance a border extends is based on the amount of influence generated. This means moving heroes around is a great way to direct influence and therefore border growth.
Whoa, I had no idea Amplitude was acquired. Sega’s hot for strategy game devs!
I’m not sure why you’re so down on Amplitude’s reputation, though. Is Endless Space 2 not doing well?
-Tom
Well, I know the game had a steam rating of Mixed for a while, but it looks like it is up to Mostly Positive now, so good for them!
I will say that all of the discussions I follow about the game are more or less constantly besieged by game killing bugs, but from the publisher’s perspective, if the game keeps selling and reviewing well, it’s hard to say they made the wrong decision…
ES2 sold 70k in early access, plus another 60k in the three weeks after release. Those should be pretty healthy launch sales for a PC strategy game, though not quite Firaxis or mainline Paradox numbers.
People rarely take the time to post about the things they like, but they will immediately post about the smallest annoyances they face. It can often make a molehill seem like a mountain.
This - influence would be a much more interesting resource if it could be spent to push a deal through.
There’s definitely some truth to that. If I’m really enjoying a game, I’m likely spending my free time playing more of the game as opposed to writing out all my complaints on a forum. It does often lead to a skewed perception of a game (not saying ES2 doesn’t have it’s problems, but I completed 3 games without any major issues/bugs before getting distracted by another game).
I think that if we like a game knowing how reviews skew especially on Steam we need to start being more conscientious about writing when we do like a game.
I wish steam would allow neutral reviews. Right now I my advice would be to wait 6 months for patches and a possible sale and then buy it. This is neither a thumbs up or thumbs down.