I figure I'd join the trend of threads. I've never played Endless Space, but have played a lot of Civilization and much less of a few other 4x games, so my thoughts are biased a little by them.



Game Length



I think 200 turns is too short a limit for the default game. Don't know if this will be customizable or not in completed version. Out of curiosity, I played out the full chain of Wild Walkers faction quests even after beating all the enemy AI. I wasn't able to complete the whole thing until around turn 250 (the quest to increase city center and one borough really caused it to drag on for me), right as permanent winter hit. But I also never felt like the game was dragging, even though I kept myself confined to four cities. Once the AI is improved or against other players, I wonder if the additional pressure of real opponents might make it even less likely to complete the faction quest chain before turn 200. I would make it 300 turns. And I would point out that I didn't hit Tier IV science until well after 200 as well, but I wasn't really focusing on it anyway. Vaulters might have a different experience there.



City management is confusing



Handling construction and units is okay (mostly -- garrisoning units from the map is awkward). But even grasping some components of city growth is a problem. I had no idea that cities and boroughs had levels and even the instructions didn't explain it. This needs to be represented in the UI somehow and definitely described better in both the manual and hopefully in the tutorial. The benefits and penalties for growing cities are probably fairly understood by regular 4X players, but I think the way it plays out here is going to be really confusing to anybody without a lot of experience. Even with my Civilization experience, I didn't realize for a long time I was losing approval based on the number of cities. I thought I was only losing approval due to expansions on each city.



The factions



Wild Walkers: Easy to play and understand how special faction traits work. Not terribly complex compared to the other factions, but that's actually fine. You need a good, straightforward faction. I'd use them as the player's faction for the tutorial or maybe find a way to suggest them to newcomers to the genre. The only thing I found a little strange about them is that their nature motif makes you think they're a food-focused tribe, when it's actually production. But that's a minor thing.



Vaulters: Mostly easy to grasp as well. Their affinity needs better explanation. I went through a whole game of them not being able to figure out how to use it. It's hard to determine the value of teleportation on the current maps and with the current AI. Perhaps more useful in continent or island-based maps.



Broken Lords: I really like the idea behind these guys, but they currently seem far too powerful. That you have to pay to heal them and pay for city growth is not the weakness it should be, compared to the huge benefit of having one less resource to even think about when settling or assigning population to. I don't know if smarter AI and player pressure in multi would be enough to actually force them to have to spend enough dust to be balanced. Play them in a desert climate and they just seem to go crazy in growth potential.



Necrophages: I didn't play these guys as much, but their food weakness felt like an actual weakness, unlike the Broken Lords. Their unique affinity does a great job forcing them to play aggressively if they want their cities to grow. Well done with them. Their theme actually influences the gameplay to a degree higher than the other factions right now.



Edited in:



City Defenses: It doesn't seem like these are implemented yet, maybe? Even though the techs are there. Cities feel extremely vulnerable and easy to take over, given the amount of time it takes to build units. I'm assuming this is why the enemy AI is using sieges right now instead or else players would have to have a full garrison in each city at all times. The vulnerability of cities right now makes movement speed the most important trait on an army.

I agree fully with the city management comments. Very difficult to know what has been leveled up or even how to do it.

200 turns is almost certainly not going to be the default time limit. Other posters have said that based upon Endless Space and what they're seeing in research times, 300 turns will probably be the default. To me that still feels pretty short with the way the game plays at the moment, but then I'm also used to modded Civ4/5 with 500+ turn games. I'm not sure that the devs have made any official comment, but much like with the Civ series, it seems likely that game speed/turn limits may be customizable at game setup.



I've said it before and I'll say it again, that right now the way city and borough growth works right now isn't at all intuitive for the player. The tool-tips don't make it clear at all when you're losing or gaining Approval, and beyond the first graphics changes when a district hits level 2, there's no quick or straightforward way to tell what level any of your districts are at. As it is, trying to grow or expand in any serious way seems impossible without your cities getting screwed over from disapproval for the rest of the game after the first 25-75 turns. It definitely needs to be tweaked.



As far as city defenses go, no, none of it is in a good state right now. Defensive buildings don't seem to do anything, sieges don't really seem to function in any meaningful way, and leaving a city open with no defending units means that any unit can instantly capture it. That can be fun in the early game when you use your scouting army to rush enemy cities, but it's really annoying 150 turns in when the AI just sends a cavalry stack to play tug-of-war with one of your core cities. =<

Larcent wrote:
I figure I'd join the trend of threads. I've never played Endless Space, but have played a lot of Civilization and much less of a few other 4x games, so my thoughts are biased a little by them.



Game Length



I think 200 turns is too short a limit for the default game. Don't know if this will be customizable or not in completed version. Out of curiosity, I played out the full chain of Wild Walkers faction quests even after beating all the enemy AI. I wasn't able to complete the whole thing until around turn 250 (the quest to increase city center and one borough really caused it to drag on for me), right as permanent winter hit. But I also never felt like the game was dragging, even though I kept myself confined to four cities. Once the AI is improved or against other players, I wonder if the additional pressure of real opponents might make it even less likely to complete the faction quest chain before turn 200. I would make it 300 turns. And I would point out that I didn't hit Tier IV science until well after 200 as well, but I wasn't really focusing on it anyway. Vaulters might have a different experience there.



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From what I've seen/read/heard, it sounds like there won't be a turn limit based on the various ways of winning that have been discussed. I know that they've definitely said that the 200-turn limit is definitely not final.