More 4x gaming: Endless Space

[Gusington]

^Weird. Steam has been wonky anyway. Redownloading now. Thanks again!

[Barthheart]

So... I just finished my first game. I won a Wonder Victory playing as the Pilgrams.

Was very pissed when I saw this screen:  >:(



That's all you get for winning!!!! Then I hit quit game and got this:



This screen has various tabs so you can compare your empire to the others in various areas of interest: score, production, people, systems etc. Good but mo movie or anything.

Steam says I played for 23 hours. But that included a couple of false starts, so maybe 20 hours to win. Not too bad.
I was playing normal everything, except extra systems, on a 2 arm spiral. This will definately start you close to others. I found these pics in the files that shows how the galaxies are setup:



Also reading the manual it's possible to setup a game where it's very hard to interact with a neighbor until you discover free space travel methods.

Fun game. Will have to try a harder setup next.  8)

PS. Just noticed that my empire colour was blue, and notice where the blue section is in teh pic of the 2 arm galaxy...! That's where I started. I wonder if start location is locked for each colour on each map type....

[undercovergeek]

i know you say 20 hours - but how far into that 20 did you realise you were going to win - were you pushed for the victory?

[Barthheart]

Well... since it was my first game I really didn't know what kinds of victory were possible.

When I was reaching the end of one branch of the tech tree I saw the tech that let me build what was necessary to win. I'd sy that was bout 3 hours before I won. I then pushed hard for that type of win.

I'd had just finished a major boarder war with the next most powerful empire so, I wasn't fighting. It did seem a bit odd that all the AI's didn't jump me near the end as I approached victory. They seemed to be wrapped up in their own wars and machinations... although my neighbor was getting an increasingly hostile attitude towards me. I just won before he could mount an assault.

I was in second last place for about 1/2 of the game until a different neighbor attacked me and I decided to take him out completely. That got me a lot of terriory and left me with a large space force. I was in 2nd place then. I then pushed hard in teching up and that started the second border war.

So after all that rambling, no I don't think I was pushed to get teh victory but it didn't seem like a slow slog either 'cause it happend in the last 2 hours and there was lots to do still.

I will say however that I think there needs to be some work done on the planet develpoment side of things. I literally just built every possible improvement in every system. It didn't feel like there was much of a reason to pick and chose....

[Nefaro]

Yeah, you're often safe with building all the planetary improvements.  The problem there is that some of those planets won't be running efficiently and some improvements may be working against each other or the planet's situational strength.

I build to a planet's strengths and don't bother with the time & money to make improvements that lessen it.  Most planet types have more potential in certain production types and numerous improvements have penalties in addition to bonuses that are pretty specific. 

I found that the biggest curb to my expansion & size was population happiness (and thus a retardation of production & possible revolts) which required some social research (and that researches' improvements) to mitigate.  That was also something I had to prioritize, and ultimately the time it takes to build stuff was also a big part of the decision making on this part.

[tgb]

At the start of the game, until you have the research and the luxuries to help it, keeping the tax rate at about 10% will keep most of your systems ecstatic, and the faster population growth combined with expansion at a reasonable rate should keep you in the black financially.

[Nefaro]

At the start of the game, until you have the research and the luxuries to help it, keeping the tax rate at about 10% will keep most of your systems ecstatic, and the faster population growth combined with expansion at a reasonable rate should keep you in the black financially.

Yeah, using the tax rate slider helps you mitigate that for a good while. 

I know that they reduced the happiness bonuses for low taxes not too long ago, but I still think that tax slider's bonuses are negating the expansion penalties a bit too much.  It's still pretty powerful for the relatively small amounts of taxes lost.

[joram]

So... I just finished my first game. I won a Wonder Victory playing as the Pilgrams.

Was very pissed when I saw this screen:  >:(



That's all you get for winning!!!! Then I hit quit game and got this ...

I just recently completed a game too and was a bit annoyed about the victory screen.  But what was more annoying to me is that apparently there was a 300 turn timelimit I was not aware of.  I was literally 2 turns away from a diplomatic victory and even if somehow that hadn't worked, I was about 10 turns away from an Endless Empire victory. 

[LongBlade]

Hmmm. Have been tempted to take the plunge on this but I'm not hearing people just raving about how great it is.

[joram]

Too be honest, I really am enjoying the game otherwise.   It's not perfect, namely a somewhat uneven AI but it's still pretty fun and it captures my imagination at least.  I do think the victory screen was a bit of a let down but so be it.

[Barthheart]

Hmmm. Have been tempted to take the plunge on this but I'm not hearing people just raving about how great it is.

It is a fun game. It needs a bit of work but it interesting. The different factions do play differently. Yeah the AI needs a bit of work, the victory celebration could be a little more fun, but the rest of the game is very good.I actually like the card affected battle scenes. In a grand strategy game I'm not too worried that I can't directly control the battle. They are intersting to watch when the forces are large and evenly matched. Then your card choices can have a larger effect... especially whne you admirals gain some of the funky cards that cost money to use!

I've started my second serious game, this time as the Sophons. They are science oriented so I'll try and get the victory. Playing on normal difficulty, huge map with 33% more systems than normal, but with many constellations and few conections between constellations. This will reall hamper movement and exploration for the first 70 turns or so.

To me, this game is what I had hoped SotS I + expansions had been. But I found the RTS battles so frustrating and the colony development so bland that I gave up on the game.

@Joram - you can change the number of turn in the game, up or down, and I think you can turn that off completely.

[steve58]

The chatter here seems to have waned a bit.  Maybe the announcement of 3 free "add-ons" will liven things up some.

And an expansion coming as well...

Free add-on #1 (ETA: end of Sep 2012)

Features / Improvements:
- The Automatons Custom Faction
- Custom Faction Affinity, so you can differentiate the visual affinity [...]
- Diplomacy Improvement on alliances, to be aware of allies decisions
- Trade Routes Sum-up : special panel to summarize and sort trade routes
- AI : improved tax rate management
- Hero management improvement: navigation, selection, leveling and undo
- Empire Wide factors more readable in a special panel
- Multiplayer version consistency check

Balancing:
- Economic victory possible in Endless Victory (difficulty tuning)
- Academy, hero balancing, for more balanced game starts
- Bushido trait (Hissho) balancing
- Industry cost balancing for repair and tonnage modules

Modding:
- Ability to mod ship meshes and textures (that is a big one)

Looks more like a patch to me...

[Jarhead0331]

Looks more like a patch to me...

That's why its free...but still, some companies would definitely charge.

[Nefaro]

Looks more like a patch to me...

Yeah.

Although the addition of an extra faction could be considered something extra, I suppose, if it's a full faction and not just 1 extra bonus option in the Custom Faction choices.  Sounds kinda like the latter so not sure.

[steve58]

The first free add-on has been released...

http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2012/10/endless-space-add-on-rise-of-the-automatons-on-steam/

According to the publisher the most important features of this free add-on #1 are:
•  Addition of the new Automatons custom faction
•  GUI changes such as a new Trade Route panel and updated Empire Management screen
•  Upgraded and updated diplomacy and alliance options
•  Improved hero management
•  Improved AI
•  Fixes, amendments and changes

Apparently, your current game saves will not be compatible with this new version to come out today. So, make sure to stop Steam's auto-update feature if you plan to finish your current game :)