Hey, I used to play endless legend 1 and recall really enjoying it so was surprised and instantly interested when EL 2 news popped into my feed.
Tidefall especially seems like a great way to keep things about the environment/map being fresh and providing new opportunities throughout the game. Most 4x games usually have a pace where the map feels mostly discovered and locked in about mid-way through the game. Generally borders are largely determined and any further expansion necessitates conquest, Ruins are all taken, all AI factions are met etc. So hopefully tidefall can keep the exploration component of 4x interesting throughout.
However, some forseeable consequences do come to mind:

1. Are starting positions going to be naturally isolated by surrounding untraversable waters. If so, that seems like it would favour economy focussed factions and hinder conquest focussed factions. Economy factions get to build without threat, conquest factions have access to fewer... "resources" to capitalise on (thinking specifically necrophages who appear to be in EL2 and in EL1 amassed food stockpiles through unit kills). Conversely, If the conquest focussed factions have access to economy factions on small inescapable land masses, good luck I guess? Have these balancing concerns been considered and addressed?
2. Another balancing related consequence: If the waters are receding, presumably that means the starting positions, most likely the positions of the capitals of each faction, will all be on high ground later in the game. Every battle that will be fought trying to approach a factions capital later in the game when the land bridges to do so become available; will have to be fought uphill which I assume gives some kind of stat based combat advantage. If these assumptions are correct, won't any domination victory type put the pursuer at a natural disadvantage and favour factions that can turtle and build tall well?
3. Will there be any place for a naval component to the game? As in, many 4x games have ships to wage war with or in the case of EL1 Tempest engage with fortresses/sunken ruins. The naval component normally would have your capabilities and the utility increase with technology unlocks. Though if tidefall means ever diminishing oceans as the game proceeds, then surely the relevancy of anything naval would also decrease?
4. One of the main deviations to norm I thought might come out of tidefall is the introduction of uncontested land to settle later in the game, allowing for an alternative to the usual conquest. However, cities settled later in 4x games can often take a while to gain relevancy and be worth the investment as opposed to already developed conquered cities, especially if you're not boosting them through an empire wide resource like dust/stockpiles. Should earlier (tech wise) city infrastructure become cheaper to build the more progress down the tech tree a player has made? Should border expansion (if that's a thing) and city growth be boosted until the city reaches closer to a game stage average? Is it even an issue? I don't know. Like I stated before, usually expansion opportunities through settling your own cities late game is not really a thing. Most recent example I can think of was playing a civ6 game with a friend where the only late game city I settled was on a single land tile island in the middle of the ocean just because it had 3 oil resouces near it. It's purely done to gain access to strategic resources and the city itself couldn't ever amount to much. Will late game city settling in EL2 be similar or has this been addressed already?

I suppose there's no chance of getting any of these answered since that'd probably be spoilers / leaking information. Though maybe they are useful questions for devs or insiders to mull over if not doing/done so already. Perhaps fun for everyone else to speculate on and suggest other things tidefall might foreseeably impact or propose solutions to or present reasoning for why they are non-issues. For instance, for number 3, I thought it would be cool if at some point in the tech tree, your ocean based naval units could upgrade/transition to aeronautical airforce units or gain the ability to switch between those traversal methods. Air units / transport also potentially circumventing the hypothetical issues of terrain advantage raised in question 2. Seems to me factions living on a planet that became increasingly more mountainous, with their main strongholds atop mountain peaks would want to figure out some form of air travel pretty quickly. Also hyrdothemal vents becoming exposed possibly could translate to updafts for gliding style airships or balloons. It's a fantasy setting though, so could just as easily be large rideable sea creatures turn out to be able to or adapt to fly and technology unlocks harnesses or techniques enabling their stewardship and mounting. Maybe too late in development to add anything like that if it doesn't already happen to be a thing but who knows, dlc some year or 2 later? Anyway just wanted to share some thoughts when thinking about how tidefall could change things up.

Well, yes

​​The trailer showed UE and necrophages 2.0 approaching each other on the same island in the global map, so unless it was a situation deliberately constructed for the trailer, that does imply factions will be able to travel between islands before land bridges form. It wouldn't surprise me if conquest factions have access to ways to island hop more easily, letting them rush other factions. For example the Necrophage 2.0 could have a mechanic similar to the mykara's tunnel construction and just burrow to new islands bypassing any navies for all we know.

Fortresses have been mentioned by the devs in the reveal stream, however they are apparently don't appear until after the first tidefall. I'd assume since they have the same name, they work like the endless legends 1 fortresses so there will be a naval component, tho i guess they could just be a special type of ruin in the new lands? That said if they are the endless legend 1 type of fortresses; i wonder what happens when the sea region with a fortress in it becomes affected by the tidefall. Will you still own the region? Or will the fortresses effectively become ruins, unsettleable tiles that grant unique yields? Or will they function like the Kapaku's golem camps and effectively be isolated disctricts letting your cities in the region get a quick start?

The devs said they wanted each tidefall to introduce new mechanics and resources, so i assume the late game strategic/luxury resources are only found in the deeper regions uncovered by the tidefalls. Could mean that only those who settle the lands revealed by tidefalls in the late game will have access to mithrite and hyperium and that weapon technologies will be time gated to an extent. So your Civ 6 oil example might be similar to what we see, a sort of gold/oil rush to expand for the late game resources.

The devs also mentioned in the reveal stream that the second tidefall causes "Doom-wraiths" to appear. Perssumably the doomwraiths exist to mirror the minor faction villages becoming hostile in the second winter back in endless legend 1, since someone else on here speculated that minor factions wouldn't be hostile in game 2 since the devs were suprised by the minor factions being hostile when they streamed endless legends 1 after the reveal of game 2. Either way, the areas revealed by the tidefalls might not be as uncontested in the late game as we think.

Here's the link to the reveal stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLr5mSN7Rts , the fortress and doomwraith stuff is mentioned in the first 5 mins.

Cannot yet share a lot of details. But we will have a dedicated blog to talk a bit more about Tidefalls 
I saved the thread to see if we could give you some answers directly in the blog (no promises).

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Daarkarrow wrote:

Cannot yet share a lot of details. But we will have a dedicated blog to talk a bit more about Tidefalls 
I saved the thread to see if we could give you some answers directly in the blog (no promises).

When can we expect more news?? It's been a month since the reveal

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Chathu77 wrote:

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Daarkarrow wrote:

Cannot yet share a lot of details. But we will have a dedicated blog to talk a bit more about Tidefalls 
I saved the thread to see if we could give you some answers directly in the blog (no promises).

When can we expect more news?? It's been a month since the reveal

Sorry for the long wait; we needed to shift our initial plans. If not next week the following one

Just copying over some stuff from discord:

5. Does the presence or lack thereof of water effect the severity and type of weather events (assuming there are weather events in the game)? Dust storms / blizzards taking the place of cyclones / monsoons as the ocean recedes. Is the expected dessertification that comes with a lack of water a mechanic?

6. Will there be such a thing as variable earth fertility, such that, as grass lands or lets say hypothetical farming tile improvements loose proximity to water; will their food output also dwindle. This could be an interesting mechanic if there is a shift in the terrain to being more industry focussed, either better production, gold, science or influence, as a trade-off for lost food output (assuming classic fidsi). Assuming EL2 draws from human kind and has an outpost type sytem enabling food to be sent back to the cities, it would incentivise settling new land to maintain and grow the population of increasingly industrious large central cities. However, it would also necessitate some level of water control as mentioned earlier in the thread so that if the availability of water becomes increasingly scarce starting around mid-game; the tools are made available to rejuvinate/rehydrate the initial cities (bore pumps, moisture nets, dams/resevoirs, magical water conjuration rain dances etc). The capacity to move cities, roving clans style, was another option presented for combating negative effects of water removal / dessertification.

7. If we are able to build harbors, or water mills or any number of infrastructure that would typically benefit from or require water nearby, will these buildings become obsolete as the water drains away. How would something like a dust filtration city improvement from EL1 work?

8. Are their other systems which might initially benefit from the presene of water (like trade in civ 6) that become less potent as the water dissapears, are there techs / upgrades allowing them to retain or improve on what the water enabled, or is the player expected to adapt and shift their dependancies else where.

Side notes on stuff to do with the terrain manipulation/adaptation idea for hypothetical expansion content:
Cliffs acting as aditional surfaces to improve could enable things like moisture net improvements supported by cliff walls to provide water (growth bonus maybe, or actual water source if dessertification is or is made to be a real mechanic). Vines grown on cliffs or vertical farms providing an additional food source. Extra housing embedded in cliff sides allowing faster pop growth. Example of military type research for terrain adaptation is glider equipment for units, allowing them to launch off a cliff and get extra movement or 0 terrain penalty to movement until reaching lower elevation. Ie something like "grants ability to move 4 tiles per turn with 0 terrain penalty consuming 1 level of elevation per turn". Could be useful for deploying to frontlines if main cities are going to be on relatively high ground compared to other terrain. Climbing claw or absailing equipment to go directly up and down cliffs comes to mind aswell. Cable cars as a point to point unit or population transport system that could potentially additionally act as trade amplifiers in the absence of shipping later in the game.
If caves end up being a thing. It wouldn't be impossible that late game, the entrance to a vast underground reservoir becomes accessible which kicks off another opportunity for naval exploration in an underground ocean where the ability to unlock unique late game tech, units, minor factions etc becomes possible. Possibly even a win condition down there by controlling key points with settled underwater cities or some such. Idea originally proposed as a joke referencing Sunless Sea, but if the goal was to make exploration last the entire game... seems like a unique and interesting way to do the "future era" in later expansions.