I don’t think it is the same, but I think it does only offer limited tactical options - not a full tactical battle system like MOO.
I’ve had exactly one fight so far, so I can’t speak with any authority on combat, but my impression is that it’s quite similar to ES1. I had to decide among three battle plans – in this case, a short-range engagement, medium range, or long range. Each plan had a different maneuver plan, sort of like Xs and Os on a football play, but simpler. And each plan had strengths and weaknesses. I chose one, and then a one-minute (skippable) cinematic displayed the result, using the actual ship models. Very pretty! Fun to watch in this instance; probably will be skipped in routine cases.
Up to turn 39 of my Sophons game, and I’m getting a better feel for politics. I’m not sure if this is a spoiler, so skip this post if you don’t want to know more.
Building things affect the political standing of factions in your empire, which is quite cool. E.g., building certain infrastructure stuff tends to help Industrialists or maybe Pacificsts. Building military stuff encourages Militarists. Building scientific stuff helps Scientists. I haven’t built my scientific stuff, and I paid the price in my first election, at turn 20, I complacently assumed my Scientific party would win, as polls showed us ahead, so I didn’t invest much in the political campaign. Unexpectedly, the Pacificsts surged to victory, and they immediately scrapped a science-oriented law (allowing me to build Age II techs in Age I) and replaced it with a Pacificst law (reducing the cost of diplomacy with minor factions). I thought that was pretty cool!
Alas, I haven’t researched the Xenobiology tech that permits diplomacy yet. I’m working on it now. In the meantime, minor factions keep attacking my scouts, which is annoying, although I did design and build a new class of ship that has helped me withstand the attacks.
The quests and events keep coming, which is quite cool. I’ve failed one quest already. (I won’t detail it because I don’t want to spoil everything.) Were quests and events a thing in ES1? I don’t remember them. But I don’t think I played whatever expansions came along.
I am definitely not steamrolling the AI! I’m sure in a year everyone will be complaining that the game is too easy, but it isn’t for me right now. I’m not sure where I stand, but I know I’m not in the lead; there’ a list of scores that seems to indicate I’m in 2nd or 3rd place, but some unmet empires aren’t listed. One empire has already been defeated. The quest I failed is worrisome. I have a feeling I’m not spamming colony ships fast enough; I only just now got my second colony up and running. Instead I’ve been building infrastructure and new ships to escort new colony ships. And trying to research diplomacy so I can get some of these minor factions off my back. Pirates, though, apparently speak only the language of force.
Now I’ve had about a dozen combats, and I still think combat is pretty similar to ES1 – but I haven’t played ES1 in a while, so my memory may be faulty. I’ve won some and lost some. I’ve autoresolved the last couple, but I’m still enjoying the cinematics.
Pretty cool game! I think I’ll play this game to the turn limit and then think about how much time I want to invest in ES2 during early access. We’ll see. I certainly don’t regret the early (discounted) purchase.
Combat system lends well to multi player, unlike say moo2 or similar super detailed stuff. Simultaneous turns etc always gave endless the edge on Mp. It was easy to understand, only made slightly more confusing in disharmony dlc. in mp the simple card system makes for good dueling and trickery . On complexity endless always been slightly more complex sort due to the impressive planet engineering you can do.
Let’s just say making all planets Gaia will only net you a lot of food hehe
I suspect Qt3 as a community of gamers simply holds 4x and other strategy games to a higher standard than perhaps other communities. I personally think that’s awesome, though I do have to put up with a little “shitting” on some games I adore the hell out of. :)
So even with the parts missing, what’s the verdict so far?
I think it is going to be a great game, but that won’t be for another 4-6 months. The game is certainly playable now and gives you a really good grasp on what they have implemented so far. However, that is pretty limited.
I’m 104 turns into my third game, and I just had the Lumeria declare war on me (Sophons). With the help of one of my heroes, superior technology and home system repairs, I was able to drive the enemy fleet out of my system, hunt it down and destroy it as it tried to flee to one of it’s colonies. I continued onto the colony and commenced an invasion, which was a mistake, as I only had 20 infantry to take on the 40 defenders. The orbiting fleet only can help in a small amount with bombardment, so I tried Infiltration instead. After selecting my strategy, I hit Ready and nothing happened. The game says we’re waiting for the enemy to pick a strategy, but it won’t do it. It isn’t frozen, as I can minimize the Invasion screen and do other actions. I’ve tried hitting End Turn, but that only pops up the Invasion Screen again.
I reloaded the autosave and can choose either Blitz or Bombardment and the battle proceeds. So, it seems only Infiltration is bugged. I wonder if that it always the case, or just in this situation?
So, my first game (also playing the Sophons), I was overran by the Cravers pretty early. Medium is currently the largest map allowed, and the Cravers were only a few systems away from me. I didn’t have the fleet, or the industrial capacity to build one quick enough to resist them. As the Sophons, you really need fleets, because your ground forces are terrible. Once you get Armor, and Air, it will hopefully be somewhat ameliorated.
I played my second game as a Random, and I only was playing against a single AI. Unfortunately, my random draw came up Craver and a sparsely populated galaxy doesn’t exactly play to their strengths. Not too mention, I don’t know how to play them, and that brings up one of ES2’s strongest points. The starting four races are pretty distinct. Sophons are science, and aren’t all the novel, the Lumeris are traders and again not too unusual for 4X. However, the Cravers are seen less often, as they can very rapidly deplete their planets, but get bonuses until doing so. The Vodyani are entirely Ark-based, and don’t colonize planets, but I haven’t played them, so I don’t know what that really entails. I can attest that their Arks are formidable. It was going to take multiple fleets to take one down.
TLDR - I predict a great game in 6 months. Current game is better than some competitors final product, but the bar is too low.
This happened to me once too, but I managed to break out of the jam somehow. I think I resorted to clicking the event markers on the lower-right-hand of the screen. It definitely is a bug. I suppose I should join the official forums to report it?
Belouski has it right: it’s going to be awesome, and it’s already better than many games on the market, but much of it remains unavailable right now. For me, I’ve already gotten 15 hours of fun out of it, at a discounted price, so I certainly don’t regret my Early Access purchase.
Spock is right saying that combat is very similar to ES1, but I kind of miss the tactics cards you could research and that heroes would acquire. Like the previous game, different weapons have different strengths at the different distances (Long, Medium and Short). However, in ES2, you can decide whether you’ll engage the enemy at Long, Medium or Short range. Each of the distances chosen will give a different bonus depending on certain factors I don’t understand yet. Without a hero, my fleet would get some damage bonus when I chose Short range. With the hero, it gave a 25% experience bonus.
Also, if you choose a certain distance and the enemy another, you gain some other advantage that I don’t understand yet. I think it is sort of RPS, and Long beats Short, which beats Medium, etc. However, since all the fleets in my games have been strong at Short, all I’ve seen is Short v Short. I am also unsure if you choose Long and the enemy chooses Short, if you then can avoid Short range entirely, or if just decreases the time at Short range. When both choose Short, it seems like the battle is roughly 33% Long, 33% Medium, 33% Short. However, I may be wrong about that. They have added a Skip to Action button, so when you press it the battle timer jumps ahead to when the first weapons come within range. With medium ranged weapons, it seemed to jump about a third of the way through the timer. With long, it just jumps a little ways into the timer, skipping the fleet entrance animations.The game is currently lacking the detailed AAR for battles, so I’m just guessing what is happening by the Skip Action jumps and when different weapons fire during the battle.
Finally, despite missing the cards, I think there will still be some interesting choices to be made about armaments and tactics. I actually watched quite a few of the closer fights in ES1 just to enjoy the space porn, and it is even better this time around. You also kind of need to watch the battles in EA as well, because I didn’t see anyway to determine the enemies armaments other than during the battle. So, once again, I think I’m really going to like yet another facet of this game, but it isn’t all there yet in EA.
Hey kids! The first major update for Endless Space 2 is out tomorrow, per Amplitude’s Twitter account.
From their roadmap, here’s what we might expect:
Ohhhh, sounds great!
Fortunately with the current sale and then the Hanukkah sales next month, I can hold out until release (unless it goes on sale as well).
New faction intro!
Isn’t united empire kind of redundant? I mean, once an empire divides, wouldn’t it technically be two empires?
-Tom
They probably wanted something that sounds like “United States” without thinking about why the phrase ‘united states’ makes sense in the first place.
I suppose they could have “The United Empires”.
Tell that to ancient rome!
That’s exactly what I was thinking of. Once Rome split into east and west, no one called it a united empire.
-Tom
The Byzantines, the Goths, and later the Germans all pretended they were the one and only :)
You mean the one and holy…
You aren’t displaying a healthy amount of patriotism for our United Empire, citizen! I have alerted the Ministry of Love, and they will be along shortly to educate you in the glorious ways of our United Empire.