OwlRaider wrote:
No offense but do you actually know what 4x means? CK2 and EU4 aren't 4x games, far from it... Civ and Gal Civ obviously are though, but they support your argument. It's not like civ and gal civ have any better non militant game play than Endless Legend...







If you give us examples of what games actually fulfill your criteria and explain how they do it than we might actually understand your point. So far you've just thrown a bunch of other game names without explaining how they fulfill your criteria better than Endless Legend if they even do so.







Maybe if you explain specifically what you think they're missing and what you'd add to fill those voids than your constant whining might actually turn into something constructive. Until than you're just whining for the sake of whining without even giving reasonable arguments to support your whines, in other words a bad attempt at trolling or something.

Wow me accusing of trolling and whining is a bit harsh ^^



Well I must to say that EU4 and CK2 are sometimes considered as 4X in several reviews, sites, but well lets forget them for now because it seems not to be a good comparison example.



Also ye in Civ 5 you have a bunch of things to do even in peacetime : Choosing policies, doing Archeology, have your workers improve tiles, creating/upgrading religions, creating new arts with great people, denouncing some annoying people ... Well thats already much more than EL offer (Empire plans, a little diplomacy, unit workshop, quest, what else ?)



Well I already explained specically in a previous post but it seems you just came around and decided to insult for no reasons.



Just look at this :

You cant really manage your Empire : you cant pass laws, reforms or anything else interresting, you cant plot, you cant make politic at all. You cant make ecology, you cant really manage your population, you cant interact with the minor factions, you cant speak to your councillors/interact with them, you cant make archeology, you cant care about religions and believes...

Now calm down please and lets debate with courtesy

Yes, EL is focused on war to a large degree, and I'm fine with that. However, I'm not pleased how easy it is to steamroll and snowball once you get going. It's so easy to snatch up large tracts of land that it takes the challenge and fun out of conquest (especially in singleplayer against the AI, where you can often just leave freshly conquered cities completely empty).

I won't engage in the debate over EL being a wargame or not. I will only affirm that games like Civ 4/5, Alpha Centauri and GalCiv2/3 have indeed a little more depth in their peace time gameplay than ES or EL. How much of this depth translates to diplomacy, commerce, exploration or empire building will vary from game to game, but its definitely there.



Notice though that this don't necessarily means these games are better. I'm particularly enjoying EL much more than any Civ or GalCiv, even with its problems. Only Alpha Centauri remains unsurpassed for me.

Discovered that podcast with their feature on 4X this summer, they have great stuff. Really appreciate all the industry guests. /offtopic

Three Moves Ahead had a great episode on this topic last year...



https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/building-vs-battle

Kingsguard wrote:


Well I must to say that EU4 and CK2 are sometimes considered as 4X in several reviews, sites, but well lets forget them for now because it seems not to be a good comparison example.

And yet they are grand strategy, which is indeed a different genre than 4x. Amazing that gaming journalism has come so far to not even get the basics right. Guess gaming matured enough to have bulevard quality here too, or is it that journalism in general degenerated so much that we have these day boulevard journalism for everything? ;-)

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
You can bribe factions into warring against each other in Endless Legend. What you can't do is broker peace between them.

In that case, I must be blind to have not seen it! Whoops Regardless, my other points stand.

You can bribe factions into warring against each other in Endless Legend. What you can't do is broker peace between them.

I only play Civ 4, not Civ 5, but I certainly agree that the diplomacy is much, much more involved there than it is here in EL. I was surprised when I saw there was no option to bribe factions against each other in EL. That alone makes the diplomatic route rather uninteresting. Over the weekend I decided to try a diplo victory with the Drakken. After forcing everyone into an alliance with me there was quite literally nothing left to do but hit end turn for 180ish turns until I won. If someone dropped down to peace they were instantly forced back into my alliance. Sure I went through the motions and made a couple decently equipped stacks to roam about killing minor factions for something to do - but as far as the diplomacy side goes..... there was absolutely no depth to it.



I would have expected to be able to use my influence to make the world dance to my puppet strings. I should have been able to control wars, influence research, encourage avenues of spending - that kind of thing. The diplomacy side of things really needs to be fleshed out to make it more "fun".



The major point, like many others have already said, is why go through the bother of mashing end turn repeatedly for an uninteresting victory condition when you can storm the map 100 turns earlier for one of the military victories.



What if in multiplayer a diplomatic player (Drakken) could influence everyone's wars - not just against himself, but against the other players. He could force everyone to gang up on the leader, he could protect the weakest player, he could prevent EVERYONE from going to war. An interesting dynamic then presents itself for the other players who need to adapt - and the answer is not necessarily military as the Drakken will (hopefully) always reserve enough influence to keep himself out of trouble. Those military players then need to shift focus, either into one of the other victory conditions or into a more influence orientated economy to resist the diplo player.



What if dust based diplo actions were introduced (in the form of bribes - everyone has their price). You could bribe other factions into/out of wars with enough dust or tech's. You could bribe another players scientists to research your tech of choice for the right price - locking them into that choice for X turns or until it's done. The Shadows expansion has started down this path to an extent - giving you the ability to slow their research for influence. More of these kind of things - not necessarily through spy actions is what is needed. Make some spy actions, some diplomatic actions, some market based transactions.



Essentially what I am saying is there needs to be more things to do with your influence income, dust income and science income in order to provide suitable fun alternatives to war mongering. You could then have many more possibilities for playing than you have now - like a Forgotten player spending influence to force someone to research a tech they want - that they can then steal once it is complete. A roving clan's player who can spend dust in bribes to slow down someones military production by 15%. A vaulter being able to sell a portion of their science/turn on the open market (at a better rate than moving population as they have more science+ modifiers than dust+ for example).

OwlRaider wrote:
I also don't understand how you can claim that Civilization has a deep and well developed diplomacy, it's basically the exact same as Endless Legend with tiny flavor differences that have 0 impact on the system as a whole.

No, just....no.



Diplomacy is not how many diplomatic options there are or what text shows up on the screen. You can have actual friends in Civ5 sp, you can´t on EL. You can actually make friends by having common enemies in Civ5, you can´t on EL. You can publicly denounce people in Civ5 and that will affect both theirs and your relation with other players. There are Warmonger Penalties and Bonuses which heavily affect the way the other players interact with you, which pressures Military gameplay and which even creates the possibility of empathy between warmongers. You can´t try to be friends with everyone in Civ5 without the military power to back you up, under the risk of two of your friends being enemies among themselves and eventually backstabbing you for being a phony. You can influence good diplomatic relations in Civ5 through Settling, Strategical Trade, Diplomatic Trade, Religion, Ideology, World Congress, Active Diplomacy, Archeology - el doesn´t have a parallel for any of these factors, and each one of them takes Civilization further and further from a simple war game.



No to mention happiness, which single handedly prevents a normal 6 people Civ mp from ever ending with a rush, no matter how well suited for it the Civilization is.



I won´t comment on how different social policies are from empire plans and how absurdly different the Population works, since they´re barely relevant for the "Civ x wargame" discussion, but they are very very different.

Guys, mods are the ones to assess one's trolling or insulting, just contact them if you have even a trail of issue with someone's style, haircut or punctuation habits. Let's stick to the subject. Aside from the match spambot, I believe we are all here with the idea of making Amplitude games better. Especially people like Jojo_Fr, Kingsguard, Proph, Masarog or natev, guys who have hundreds of posts, at least dozens of which are relevant I have seen no restriction that grumpy people cannot contribute to them :P



Well, I believe the issue with 4x games being so militaristic is that the nations don't share a common goal as humankind does. We live to...live! We play 4x games to win. Even though we have a Score Victory, there is no consensus among the players/EL or ES nations to just keep living and be "successful" (win) that way. You either need to barricade yourself with armies to pursue a peaceful victory or disable elimination & supremacy victories, wipe all factions and proceed with your goals whatever they are.



As I see EL mentality now, one's power automatically translates into someone's threat level towards you. Someone has strong Diplomacy? Probably others are somehow reliant on them and in case I wage war against a Diplomat, they will retaliate with numerous ally War declarations, turning it into 1v[2..7]. Someone has blazing research speed? It's likely they can shift to mass production of elite troops if threatened and crush enemies with tech advantage manifested in unit quality (IF supported by Industry, that's not as straightforward as buyout). Economy monster can buyout resources and units when needed and where needed unless cities are in a turn's distance from the Closed Borders.

^ All those cases can be used not only as a response, but as one own's initiative as well.



What I meant by that paragraph is that it is difficult to pursue WW building just for the building, BL econ focus solely for more econ focus or Pillar/Vaulter research to speed the research even more. Auriga's/galaxy's ecostystem is too voracious IMO. And that's fine. We can become a second Mahatma Gandhi in the real world and strive not only for India's freedom, but for the inner freedom of the whole mankind - difficult when you have 8 different races and only one can win and the victory automatically imposes loss onto all others. Each nation is a potential (direct or delayed) threat.



Regarding other means. I actually like the ES diplomacy dynamic more than EL's. On Auriga as long as you have the means to balance the deal indicator you can befriend all nations at once besides pesky Necrophages - in ES an ally nation can oppose to make even a Cease Fire with other nation if that's against their AI-calculated business Which I found tremendous in ES. The plethora of diplomatic options in EL is a different kettle of fish. Spare me "oh it's comparing galaxy-wide spectrum of thinking and tribal, quasi-medieval Auriga world leaders" crap :P Because as soon as Vaulters devised magnets, they would shred Broken Lords to pieces, literally, either creating an impenetrable territory or annihilating the Start Bias



There is no real debat about "Is EL a military game or not ?" "Are you a fascist to play rude as you play ?" (sorry, didn't grip the citing yet) - I agree totally, Jojo_Fr



Is there anything interresting in the game to do if you make a peaceful gameplay ?

(...)huge NOPE - I totally agree, Kingsguard. Each time I play an econ, scientific, diplomatic or God forbid peaceful/M.Comforts expansion, somewhere during the playstyle I feel: do I really need to search for so much Mithrite to get Town Criers to speed up my last 80% of Dust? I could just focus military, gear up and conquer, i got more than enough means to do it. Why do I choose the longer and more boring route? There is no incentive or intuition in continuing it. Shift econ names with diplo and science stuff, and you still get a true sentence as a result.



Bold one is the key I believe. I have no problems with the ability to transition to warmongering from a peaceful gameplay. I find it natural and attractive that victory types are not isolated from each other. But we need a feeling of sense and benefit to pursue the peaceful playstyles for them to become viable and for us to really consider them as a core gamestyles other than sandbox/lore/newbie difficulty curiosities. Having a constant option of stronger, more dynamic and straightforward millitary victory all the time is very distracting and undermining perspective. Peaceful playstyles feel a bit artificial ATM.



Wow, that's some wall of text. I hope I brought some peace and relevance to fellow Amplituders and Devs I really adore your commitment and passion in discussing about the Endless universum For me it is a pleasure to even read all the crazy forum ideas and meticulous analyses (: pun intended). Let's remember that we are all one team here and drive all our efforts, be it arguments or consensuses, towards a common goal.



Hard difficulty player here, btw. No hardcore MP/SP maestro, "just" a guy passionate about the title and Amplitude's attitude towards players and their games.

Kingsguard wrote:
Also ye in Civ 5 you have a bunch of things to do even in peacetime : Choosing policies, doing Archeology, have your workers improve tiles, creating/upgrading religions, creating new arts with great people, denouncing some annoying people ... Well thats already much more than EL offer (Empire plans, a little diplomacy, unit workshop, quest, what else ?)

How is choosing a policy different from choosing an empire plan? Also is doing archaeology different from doing quests? Yes, I'll give you the workers, religions and great people but none of these things are worth anything in a vacuum. They aren't things to do when outside of war, they're things to do to prepare you for war or for a peaceful victory, just like in Endless Legend. Yes, the methods are slightly different, that's understandable since we're discussing 2 different games here, but saying that these things are "something to do during peace" is pitiful, it's like saying that you can set your cities' construction queues during peace. While it's true it's also meaningless. If you enjoy the grind of messing around with workers and whatnot than that's great, many people don't enjoy those aspects of the Civilization series and in any case these things are pretty minor and don't really impact the way you actually play the game. They only allow you to min-max various bonuses, which again you can also do in Endless Legend just with different mechanics.

Well I already explained specically in a previous post but it seems you just came around and decided to insult for no reasons.



Just look at this :



Now calm down please and lets debate with courtesy

Oh I did see that statement, it's just that you're either wrong or clinging at such minor mechanics that don't actually impact the way you play the game. You can manage your population, in the exact same way as Civilization other than the specialists. Not sure what you mean by passing laws, do you want to play a Democracy 3 style game or something? Or do you just want more bonuses to choose from in the same way policies/empire plans already work? Ecology, most games don't deal with it, barring the Anno series and a handful of others. You can interact with minor factions, kill them and rebuild if you want or parley with them, it's much more than you can do with barbarians in Civilization. If you mean city states than it's simply a bad comparison as minor factions aren't city states. There are no councilors to speak with, but again, why would you even want to do it in Civilization? It's pointless and the advice they give you is awfully basic and sometimes goes against your chosen strategy so you just ignore them.



Basically you want Endless Legend to be Civilization, so why not just stick to playing Civilization? None of these features you mentioned from Civilization actually changes the game play, it just gives you more bonuses to choose from to min-max your way to your chosen victory condition. It's not all that different from choosing which faction to play with which is a much more meaningful decision than choosing a nation in Civilization as it's not just 1 special unit and 1 special building/ability. It's not all that different from choosing which techs to get and which to ignore, in Civilization eventually you need them all so it's not really a choice just a timing question. I also don't understand how you can claim that Civilization has a deep and well developed diplomacy, it's basically the exact same as Endless Legend with tiny flavor differences that have 0 impact on the system as a whole.

OwlRaider wrote:
No offense but do you actually know what 4x means? CK2 and EU4 aren't 4x games, far from it... Civ and Gal Civ obviously are though, but they support your argument. It's not like civ and gal civ have any better non militant game play than Endless Legend...

I can only speak for Galactic Civilization 2, and not Civ.



I will have to disagree with you there. Don't get me wrong, overall I love Endless Legend more than Gal Civ 2, but the latter had better non-military gameplay by quite a bit. While it is true that EL has quantitatively more victory conditions, qualitatively Gal Civ 2 handled it better imo.



It had influence victory, where you would spread your zone of influence throughout the galaxy. This you could achieve completely peacefully, and it lends itself well with certain bonuses provided by alignment (evil alignment especially, with instant defection creating a nice domino effect). It provided for a fun way to play the game, that was quite different.



Its diplomacy was much better, firstly because it had more options like brokering peace between empires, selling space stations and weapons even to minor factions (indirect form of warfare, where you only produce weapons but never use them), war profiteering, and tech manipulation (by virtue of how the tech tree there is very different from EL. In Gal Civ 2, you can manipulate factions into specific branches of tech and then use it against them).

Secondly, because the AI was better at it. It was reactive, dynamic, forming coalitions against powerful aggressors, being deterred by alliances, having different attitudes and playstyles depending on faction, actively bribing to make factions fight each other. And there was the united planet council that created a new way to strengthen yourself and / or weaken enemies. This makes diplomatic victory in Gal Civ 2 more fun than accumulating DP in EL.



Even tech victory was more interesting, because the way the tech tree is designed. One could try to rush tech victory, but they would have to sacrifice research on everything else, hurting their economy and military. Whereas in EL, by virtue of the era progression, one couldn't really specialize nearly as much. In Gal Civ 2, it created this nice situation where you had to keep yourself under everyone radar while secretly rushing tech victory.



In addition to all of that, it had the ship design feature which was a fun way to spend your time.



I've played many many Gal Civ 2 games, and most of them were mostly or fully peaceful (it also must be said that military gameplay in Gal Civ 2 was meh, and was only fun with designing ships).



It must be emphasized again though that in general, I prefer Endless Legend. And I recognize that some of Gal Civ 2's advantages are drawn from different mechanics that would be hard to draw from. So what I would suggest when it comes to EL is to improve diplomacy (more options), refine the AI in diplomacy and its decision making in general (which they are doing), and add espionage options that affect the economy more directly to add some spice to economic victory.

Jojo_Fr wrote:
Your global attitude is not courtly...



The problem it's :



- You ask for features which, either already exist (EL have some peace feature and micro management tasks to do contrary of the affirmative sentances you make), either cannot exist because the game is no more a beta and will have being transformed into something other.



- You give impression to take pleasure by complaining everywhere, whatever it's possible, without constructive and possible proposed features (at contrary, I complain too but I focus on precise balance changes which rely on very few coding, not new features).



- Globally you look like to being disappointed by the game, but you ask for another game. It's a waste of energy to do that, and your attitude is negative. I think you would do better to propose precise and easy to code features, or just wait Endless Legend 2.





And don't say me I "flamme". Saying what we thing it's not flamming, it's just a direct way of expression.

I didnt ask for anything... What the hell have you against me guys, stop insulting/flaming me, just keep on the debate and propose other ideas. If you have nothing to add, no point in answering this.

Your global attitude is not courtly...



The problem it's :



- You ask for features which, either already exist (EL have some peace feature and micro management tasks to do contrary of the affirmative sentances you make), either cannot exist because the game is no more a beta and will have being transformed into something other.



- You give impression to take pleasure by complaining everywhere, whatever it's possible, without constructive and possible proposed features (at contrary, I complain too but I focus on precise balance changes which rely on very few coding, not new features).



- Globally you look like to being disappointed by the game, but you ask for another game. It's a waste of energy to do that, and your attitude is negative. I think you would do better to propose precise and easy to code features, or just wait Endless Legend 2.





And don't say me I "flamme". Saying what we thing it's not flamming, it's just a direct way of expression.

I realized: for so long, I've just taken it for granted that Endless Legend is a military game, a war game. But I've seen a lot of posts from people that suggest that they don't play it that way.



Here are the reasons I've just assumed it's a war game:

• Majority of mechanics are combat related
• Simple diplomacy mechanics that seem focused on limiting political play
• Absence of complex mechanics to interact with other empires, outside of war

This is fine with me-- most games that people call 4Xs boil down to war games. When I used to play Civ V, it boiled down to endgame military action (unless somebody was so behind that you didn't even need to kill them). Same with any of the similar strategy games in my library: CKII, Rise of Nations, Sengoku, Solium Infernum, Creative Assembly's Total War games, Warlock, GalCiv, Sins of a Solar Empire. And EL seems more focused on war than most of these-- Solium Infernum and Paradox games focus more on political play, for instance, and EL's focus seems similar to Creative Assembly games, Rise of Nations, or SoaSE, pretty widely accepted as focused on war.



But like I said, I get the feeling that other people must not play these kinds of games the same way that I do, and especially on these forums, a feeling that playing EL like a war game is somehow doing it wrong.



Anyhow, curious about different perspectives on this.

Kingsguard wrote:
Which ? Well I would say CK2, EU4, Civ V, Galactic Civ II/III. Well thats already alot so your argument is invalid.

Also, I didnt say that EL would need ALL the mentioned possibilities to be enjoyable in peace time, just gave example of what could have been added.

No offense but do you actually know what 4x means? CK2 and EU4 aren't 4x games, far from it... Civ and Gal Civ obviously are though, but they support your argument. It's not like civ and gal civ have any better non militant game play than Endless Legend...

Thats your (curious) opinion about games and political party, sadly I dont share it and im unsure of what you meant when saying this.

If you give us examples of what games actually fulfill your criteria and explain how they do it than we might actually understand your point. So far you've just thrown a bunch of other game names without explaining how they fulfill your criteria better than Endless Legend if they even do so.

Endless Legend has so much of a unique world and lore and factions, sadly its not very well used by the devs. I just cant wait for EL2 if they learn from their huge misstakes on this game....



But it need more than refining certain elements to be unjoyable in time of Winter/War...

Maybe if you explain specifically what you think they're missing and what you'd add to fill those voids than your constant whining might actually turn into something constructive. Until than you're just whining for the sake of whining without even giving reasonable arguments to support your whines, in other words a bad attempt at trolling or something.

Jojo_Fr wrote:
Kingsguard you often complain about Endless Legend.

Thats low...



But indeed I do and I have good reasons for doing so at the moment. You're talking like if my others 861 post were other complains... I always supported Amplitude, until Shadows came...

Endless Legend is not Europa Universalis or a game like that, closer to a gestion solo game than to this new hybrid RTS/Turn by turn game which is Endless Legend.

I was just demonstrating that the issue of Endless Legend is that you have no ways to play peacefully, there are not much to do when you're not at war else than building all the things you researched a few turns ago or using the (under exploited) units workshop...

Which other 4X give you what you want ?

Which ? Well I would say CK2, EU4, Civ V, Galactic Civ II/III. Well thats already alot so your argument is invalid.

Also, I didnt say that EL would need ALL the mentioned possibilities to be enjoyable in peace time, just gave example of what could have been added.

Games are like political party : you don't vote for the least, you vote for the less worst, for your taste.

Thats your (curious) opinion about games and political party, sadly I dont share it and im unsure of what you meant when saying this.

Endless Legend's flaws with regards to non-violent ways to play are a norm within the 4x genre, and not something unique to it. If anything, Endless Legend has the potential to do something great with non-violence, considering its asymmetry between factions. It just needs to refine certain elements, in particular diplomacy by making it more dynamic, reactive, and interesting.

Endless Legend has so much of a unique world and lore and factions, sadly its not very well used by the devs. I just cant wait for EL2 if they learn from their huge misstakes on this game....



But it need more than refining certain elements to be unjoyable in time of Winter/War...

Europa Universalis and other paradox games of the same type are also wargames. It gives you the illusion of being complex by having all these mechanics, but at the end of the day the most rewarding, easiest, and most cost effective way to play is by being an aggressive militaristic arsehole. Everything else, from economy to diplomacy, are portrayed as means to build a military and fight wars, as opposed to being intrinsically valuable. I don't think they are a good example to follow, and as Jojo said, Endless Legend is not trying to be like them (all the better for me, I find it more enjoyable).



Endless Legend's flaws with regards to non-violent ways to play are a norm within the 4x genre, and not something unique to it. If anything, Endless Legend has the potential to do something great with non-violence, considering its asymmetry between factions. It just needs to refine certain elements, in particular diplomacy by making it more dynamic, reactive, and interesting.

- Endless Legend is not Europa Universalis or a game like that, closer to a gestion solo game than to this new hybrid RTS/Turn by turn game which is Endless Legend.



- Kingsguard you often complain about Endless Legend. Which other 4X give you what you want ? Games are like political party : you don't vote for the least, you vote for the less worst, for your taste.



- Moreover, I think that EL give some non militaritic strategy. We even have the luck to have two civilizations mainly focused (in theory) on this : drakkens, and roving clans. There is too excellent tech for installting peace : peace treaty. You nede influence to break these treaty. In civ you don't need that.



You can too use market ban to, force truce. You can ally vs others humans or A.I vs a warmonger. You can exchange tech and compet versus a leading aggressive player.



- The defensive ways are still too weak compared to the assault. The retreat especially, make it too easy to risk an army in an assault, then leave fast to your frontier city. But there is the fortificaton bonus and the moral bonus.



- There is too the possibility to use spying to prevent attack, and doing interesting covert actions.

Jojo_Fr wrote:
Natev,



The problem it's you, or I, and several others, play as competitive aggressive players, although some casual players play as they play in solo, peacefully. It's the civilization clash.



There is no real debat about "Is EL a military game or not ?" "Are you a fascist to play rude as you play ?"

I disagree, Natev is not the issue.



The real problem is : Have you any real choice to gain power beside expanding and being an ass with your neighboors ? Is there anything interresting in the game to do if you make a peaceful gameplay ?



My personal answer is a huge NOPE. You cant really manage your Empire : you cant pass laws, reforms or anything else interresting, you cant plot, you cant make politic at all. You cant make ecology, you cant really manage your population, you cant interact with the minor factions, you cant speak to your councillors/interact with them, you cant make archeology, you cant care about religions and believes...



There would be much to do to make this game even playable without war...

Natev,



The problem it's you, or I, and several others, play as competitive aggressive players, although some casual players play as they play in solo, peacefully. It's the civilization clash.



There is no real debat about "Is EL a military game or not ?" "Are you a fascist to play rude as you play ?"

Endless Legend is probably the best game design for skirmishes I´ve played since early warcraft 3 and its tower rushes. If there was only auto, every single game between good players would be extremely fast and pleasant. I don´t think there´s any comparison between EL´s speed and any other turn-based strategy game I´ve played.



It is a war game, it doesn´t penalize people for going to war in the slightest. It´s just not a better war game because it´s not fair by design - I never really know, in the games I´ve beaten good players, if I´ve done so because I played better or because the game gave me much more things than it gave my competitors.



Perhaps this lack of fairness helps the wrong perception that you´re supposed to build an economy first in EL (like you are supposed to in Civ or Total War). Since some people come into the game with their economy ready, because they have like two anomalies, those who don´t get a good start feel like they can´t fight early in the same terms (because they can´t). So it´s entirely up to the lucky player to decide to turn this into a military rush, and he just won´t certainly win if he doesn´t choose to do so.



As good a game as it is, EL´s inconsistencies are quite tiring. It´s much more a total war than any game in the Total War series, yet it doesn´t provide every player with the same opportunities of mobilizing resources towards war. Starting without an anomaly when your competitor has one, in term of Civ5, is like starting on a blank plains when your competitor has wheat and stones around him. It doesn´t happen in Civ5.

Even in single player, while non-military victories are possible, it still feels like one is deliberately picking the harder, or at least longer, path to win. In addition, at least on higher difficulties (serious and above), one had no choice but to invest *heavily* in the military, because the AI will declare war even if it has no reason to. In other (rare) games, one could afford keeping military investments at a minimum because a lot of options on how to handle potential aggression were present.



The game is not optimized to make these other victory conditions as fun as they could be, imo. Diplomatic victory is perhaps the biggest example, as diplomacy in general lacks the dynamism and basic AI competence to make it fun.

I think this thread needs a major distinction between single player and multiplayer. In single player in most if not all 4x games(many of the games mentioned by natev aren't 4x) there are peaceful ways to win. Usually there's a cultural victory or an equivalent(though oddly enough Endless Legend doesn't), a scientific victory(of various sorts, some like Civilization also requires production of spaceship parts others just require a certain amount of techs), a diplomatic victory or an equivalent and of course the fallback of a score based victory if the timer runs out. Endless Legend doesn't have the cultural victory archetype but it has economic, wonder and quest instead. Due to the limitations of the AI, it's always possible to optimize a player's strategy towards any of these victory conditions while minimizing military conflict to the bare minimum while pursuing your peaceful goal.



Multiplayer on the other hand is an entirely different beast. In multiplayer you have no AI to exploit(pun intended) and your actions become quasi real time as opposed to turn based(army movements, combat, etc, depending on the specific game). Thus it's impossible to minimize military confrontations as other players can look at score charts and know to go after the leader(s) before they run away with the game. Therefore military action must be prepared for, and since you're already preparing for it might as well use it yourself if nobody uses it against you. Thus multiplayer games tend to be significantly more militaristic in nature than single player games. Thus going after peaceful victories in multiplayer is significantly harder and only possible with extremely specialized strategies such as Wild Walker wonder victory in Endless Legend thanks to their gross building production reduction bonuses that can surpass 100% which in turn makes the wonder building itself minimal(just 1 turn).

I completely agree, the AI's decision making really needs to be worked on when it comes to war declarations (and everything else really). As it stand's now the only way to stay out of war is to not meet the AI. In my current game I met the Drakken on turn 1 (obviously) and then promptly ignored them. Around turn 50 or 60 I had finished exploring my continent, found out I was completely alone and promptly got declared on by the Drakken. I didn't see their first unit until about turn 110. In other words, they had NO reason to declare on me - no shared borders (not even on the same continent), I had not even bothered looking for them so it wasn't like I was walking around in their territory pillaging anything. It was quite literally a case of, well - we know you, so we are declaring war.

Darkscis wrote:
The only one I disagree with on your list is CKII. The others I would definitely agree are all war games, incl EL. The thing I have noticed that many people seem to believe is that if you are choosing to pursue a different kind of victory - science, economy, culture (Civ series), diplomacy etc - then you shouldn't need an army and should be able to focus 100% on that victory. That, in my opinion, is just plain wrong. Why should you choosing to focus on a different victory condition automatically protect you from 2 of the other victory conditions, namely Supremacy and Elimination. Just like a war monger needs science for upgraded troops and dust to fund them, so too does a science victory pursuer require a standing army to protect it. They don't need to be aggressive with it, but by no means should they be allowed to just ignore it.

I agree that completely ignoring military factors should not be a viable option. The problem is however that "military factors" are extremely narrow in most of these games, including EL, with them often translating to simply having an army and a large mass of it (I am not convinced that the AI in El takes technological gaps seriously in its calculations. It seems to value numbers a lot more).



In Galactic Civilization 2 however, while having a basic fleet was recommended (potentially circumventable by using a building that created illusionary ships), being part of an alliance was an actual effective deterrent, and the AI understood the balance of power enough to have coalitions form against expansionist and aggressive powers. Furthermore, diplomatic options were much more advanced, allowing a peaceful player to manipulate the geo-strategic realities using diplomacy (brokering peace there, provoking wars there...etc). Finally, one could sell weapons and tech to minor factions (and other factions) to apply pressure on major empires.



All this made a peaceful run with a very small military possible even on the highest of difficulties.



Now EL has potential non-military means of thwarting enemies, for instance through a much better espionage system than most 4x games I've played. Nonetheless, I am not even sure these acts even impact the AI's decision (one would think having morale reduced for 10 turns should figure in the AI's decision to declare war or not). In addition, diplomacy and the AI are still too simple to actually be deterred in ways more sophisticated than number of troops.

The only one I disagree with on your list is CKII. The others I would definitely agree are all war games, incl EL. The thing I have noticed that many people seem to believe is that if you are choosing to pursue a different kind of victory - science, economy, culture (Civ series), diplomacy etc - then you shouldn't need an army and should be able to focus 100% on that victory. That, in my opinion, is just plain wrong. Why should you choosing to focus on a different victory condition automatically protect you from 2 of the other victory conditions, namely Supremacy and Elimination. Just like a war monger needs science for upgraded troops and dust to fund them, so too does a science victory pursuer require a standing army to protect it. They don't need to be aggressive with it, but by no means should they be allowed to just ignore it.



The only thing I don't like about EL's war conditions is the giant snowball you can get going. Once you crush an enemies army once it is game over for them, you can take all of their cities pretty much at your leisure. In games like CKII you had attrition to slow you down, in the total war series you had to either siege - slowing you down A LOT or you had to risk assaulting and the heavy casualties that incurred. In Civ you had slavery and all other manner of ways to scrape together a defensive army after losing your stack. In EL there is just nothing at the moment to slow you down, you don't need to siege because once you have crushed the army the militia don't stand a chance even with the fortification bonus. Obviously, if they have completely neglected their own army then this should happen, but if you are relatively on-par but get a good fight and manage to defeat them - it shouldn't mean game over for them.

Yes, the easiest way to win (by far) is to capture all the capitals.



Yes, diplomacy is ridiculously simple.



But research, exploring, and expansion are all important.

Yes, EL is primarily a wargame as are most 4x games (though I would say that Gal Civ 2 actually had a lot of advanced non-violent means to win, that were not only possible, but feasible. The amount of ways one could play that game were significant).



That doesn't mean that fans are not allowed to promote the addition or enhancement of non-military means, especially when the lore and factions themselves strive to be as diverse as to create alternate means than just warfare, at least in theory. EL will always remain a wargame first and foremost, but it is my opinion that it will become a better 4x game and a better game in general, if non-military methods are refined and expanded upon (especially diplomacy).