I played a few hundred hours of EL back in the day and since then have played a lot of Humankind (still one of my favorite games). Looking forward to EL2 :)

Few notes in no particular order after one game with Wild Walkers and one with the Cultists

1. World/art still looks beautiful

2. I like the competitive deeds each era, in particular the range of them

3. The game would benefit a lot from the outposts/merging cities from Humankind (I assume they will do this?) to cut down on city management

4. The diplomacy options are great, but the AI's evaluation of a fair trade seems pretty off, in particular for tech trades. 

5. The combat is great in principle, but seeing your soldier just wander off randomly is frustrating. I also enjoy the Humankind combat with full control. 

6. There's too many quests of the 'stand around in a region for 5 turns' type - also needs a way to search the map for region names

7. Picking up pearls in the same location every winter is a really un-fun mechanic (similar problem as the leverage spawns in Humankind).  

8. I like the way that all of the strategic resources are valuable through the whole game and how you are always limited by their availability - can't just spam troops with strategic equipment

9. There are probably too many unit upgrade options - in particular hero trinkets. Could be addressed with a filter or similar

10. Some of the victory conditions (economic/diplomatic) seem a bit hard to get compared to others.

11. I like the way that any particular tech can just be completely ignored, but lock out certain functions (like the market) so you need to choose your priorities. 

12. The number of heroes and their abilities feels about right - more might become a bit tedious

13. Just acquiring cities from war is a bit too powerful, I wonder if the intention is to implement something like Humankind's grievance and war resolution mechanic? 

I've also returned to EL1 and, aside from a few quality-of-life features (search function like you mentioned, maybe AoW4-like battle retry system, the like) it has everything I want from a 4X in 2025. Maybe the only think I'd change is give more faction-specific system dedicated interface, to avoid i.e. Vaulters-based faction not being able to have Volcanoforming because both interact with Strategic Resources. I feel ES2 did it well, so I have faith this will carry over, but I still want to point it out.
And maybe some things could benefit from better balancing, for all the fun I get from blowing everything on sea to kingdom come with max-range high-initiative Juggernauts a stack of them should not be the only viable navy template.

I played a game last year (too busy these days) and I finished it with almost all the factions by now. Agree with the points except for 7 and 9. I like collecting pearls, but if the location is known, I feel like the AI should give me more competition for them. The upgrades I mostly don't care about, but probably getting rid of them will make a huge player base upset that are into min/maxing. 

The one thing that is similar to EL and ES2, is that at the highest difficulties it's too difficult at the beginning, but if you make it somehow, using all your skills and maybe luck, you really run away with it by the end of the game no matter what. Too easy to snowball out of control and the AI can't catch up. Still, maybe it's the appeal of games like this. Also losing a war at the highest difficulties at the beginning means it's game over, but that's probably right. There is just not way to lose a war and have the game still be fun to play.

I'd need to play it again, and mostly fix my mods (broken due to game-update), but never got the time and courage to work again on those complicated mods. Sigh!

​

blatnoi wrote:

I played a game last year (too busy these days) and I finished it with almost all the factions by now. Agree with the points except for 7 and 9. I like collecting pearls, but if the location is known, I feel like the AI should give me more competition for them. The upgrades I mostly don't care about, but probably getting rid of them will make a huge player base upset that are into min/maxing. 

The one thing that is similar to EL and ES2, is that at the highest difficulties it's too difficult at the beginning, but if you make it somehow, using all your skills and maybe luck, you really run away with it by the end of the game no matter what. Too easy to snowball out of control and the AI can't catch up. Still, maybe it's the appeal of games like this. Also losing a war at the highest difficulties at the beginning means it's game over, but that's probably right. There is just not way to lose a war and have the game still be fun to play.

I don't know if my own mod about that still work. But I did "Progressive Difficulty" to counter the snowball effect. 
I did a similar mod for humankind... and maybe will have to do it in EL2. LOL!! Amplitude should just take the concept and make it a basic.