Good observation. I think questing early can prove a valuable gameplay as well. At the same time one have to realize one of the x in 4x is eXpand and its at the core of the game. Yet while I cannot speak for the developers it is my impression they are trying to make several strategies viable in different situations. I think when we get more victory conditions tied to the planet auriga this will hopefully be the case. Keep in mind me who wrote this is an old civ4 veteran who used to play competitative so my mindset is on expansion quickly.

Propbuddha wrote:
Hello,



Thanks for posting this!



One question - a common thread across the faction strategy threads is "Focus on food (Dust for Broken Lords) and grow as fast as possible", which is generally the default strategy for 4X games. Is there any other viable early game strategies at this point?

The cities aren't the only "main" resource of th egame, the quests and thus heros are too.

But expanding is a matter of food... so...

Anyway the game isn't balanced at all right now, so we can't really answer.

Thanks for your reply,



Yes, the competitive angle is how I'm looking at this too. I'm really hoping that Endless Legend will be a 4X game that you can actually play in multiplayer. I prefer to play on smaller maps where there's a little room to grow but soon you'll be rubbing elbows with your neighbors. The map in the PANCZASU's video seemed enormous!



Early Expansion (a.k.a "the land grab") is always a good idea as space is not endless (pun intended). However, early city development (increasing production) in the regions you control may or not be the best choice if Science, military, economy or questing early will get you a jump on victory.



Another question - How good are the luxury resources? Are they worth fighting over or more "nice to have"?

Luxury resources will let you have "boosts" once you have enough of them. They are a nice addition. The real resources you'll fight for are Glassteel and Titanium.

Maybe the devs will change that later. Maybe not. They are focusing right now on other thing of the game.

Currently luxury resources can be huge. We are talking like 50% bonus in a city etc. The way it works is you expend resource on empire screen and it costs more the more cities you have. In late game i could pay more than 200 resources for a 10 turn food bonus of 50% in one pre alpha game. I am sure there will be more balancing to be done in the game if we give feedback on that to the developers. Btw nice to see you considering mp. Perhaps one day in the future we will have a match

Also (thanks again for answering my many questions)...



How does the score system work? What sort of things do you get points for?

Propbuddha wrote:
Also (thanks again for answering my many questions)...



How does the score system work? What sort of things do you get points for?

Don't honestly know.

Number of pop, cities, battles, maybe even how many main quest steps were done ? How many Dust/resources too ?

DID a check : you don't see the calculation, but there's 5 end-rankings : Global score, military, expansion, population, research. Remind me that quests should be in

Here are some tidbits from playing a few games of what seems to work. Keep in mind these are only my opinions and your own strategy might differ. If anyone else have any comments to add feel free.



General:

- You should think careful about every empire plan cycle of 20 turns. It might actually be worth it to delay expanding into a 2nd city until turn 20 to avoid a 100% increase in prestige cost for each bonus in empire plan you select for the next 20 turns. This goes against the "expand at all cost" theory but math will easily show this can be superior. For example your base city has 3 population doing 4 dust per turn and adding 3 dust per turn gives them 75% more dust per turn. Your 2nd city will in most scenarios not be able to catch up this advantage. I think I would be very careful to make a city on turn 19 for example.

- Forest are industry powerhouses, Rivers are in general very powerful for science and dust. A good balance of both can get your empire a long way towards glory and riches.

- For units two designs that can currently be considered is an all out boost to defense (rocks), and the other is a very high damage and initiative boost. (glass cannons.) These are just examples - feel free to make up an even more powerful design and use the minor faction units to the maximum of they're abilities. (They have unique abilities so definitively check them out.)

- Accessories are nothing to scoff of! There are some serious economical bonuses to them as well later in the game - they are not just for military show off!

- Buyout can be powerful - especially if you try to reduce the buyout cost - remember the cost goes up exponentially so try to buy out as late as possible for the best dust efficiency.

- Quests are powerful - without revealing the faction quest lines I can say they add a lot of bonuses to each faction so consider them carefully.



Wind walker:

- If you are playing wind walker it could be worth it to add the early industry bonus to boost a city - try to plan this ahead and level up your hero as a boost in industry early means a boost in everything since buildings can give you flat bonus to dust, science, food prestige and even more industry. Sometimes it is even worth it to cycle your hero from city to city after the 5 turn delay to boost each city quickly.



Vaulters:

- Starting with 3 army units (currently - might change) is powerful and you should quickly use this to your advantage as it may not last forever before other empires add more military. Good early uses are to get a village pacified early, take risks on quests since you have a better chance surviving (especially if you spawn monsters on quest) and finally even considering war if you have a neighbor.

- Since you get a lot of science early I would try to focus on forest with industry as well as you need industry to build all those new buildings and units you are going to research faster than your opponent in the beginning.

- If you see winter is coming now is the time to use the hero ability to add movement. This makes you able to roam around even in winter time as vaulters. Not a bad ability at all. Consider adding your settler to your army if you expand during winter to use the movement bonus of the hero to its full advantage and save a lot of turns on your settler expansion.



Necrophage:

- Your race has a lot of bonuses after combat, especially pacifying villages nets you a powerful food bonus that is sorely needed as you have a negative food terrain bonus. For this reason consider a military start with an unit or two to pacify a village and boost your starting city.



Broken Lords:

- Dust is your friend and that most of the time means rivers and waters. You live and breath dust so make sure you have a high income of this. Also you can do more early aggressiveness with your hero as you can heal with dust.

- Strongly consider buyout bonus for empire plan.



Some things that also is nice to know:

- Drag the empire plan option is the way to set your empire plan.

- When you get quest items you do not get the item itself, you get the ability to build this type of item.

- Be careful when clicking FIDS overlay or Grid overlay or you might just hit end turn Also note the wheel of time..ehm wheel of legends also shows you when winter is coming and estimate turns for this so you can plan ahead.



Finally I have one tip: Enjoy the game! Marvel at the great art and lore - and those strange region names you are considering conquering or settling down peacefully. Go on a quest and get that powerful sword and make sure every hero has a copy of it And do keep in mind this is not yet a finished game so hopefully we the fans can give our opinion to make a game we gamers together can be happy about.

Eysteinh wrote:
I can add I have so far tried my best to offer feedback to make EL a viable mp game. Stuff like a good scoring system. Quick but interesting turns and while random balanced enough. Finally stuff like making the game fun even if your not nr 1. Again I cannot speak for the developers but my impression is they really care. The combat system is already tweaked and I am sure Alpha will allow the developers to tweak it more.

Yep. I confirm that Eysteinh tried a lot to render the game more MP friendly. His advices were always very interesting and thoughtful. I'm sure that, thanks to him and others VIPs that really want the game to be MP viable, the game will really be interesting in MP.

Moreover I spoke with the devs about modding, and "custom" winning conditions. It "may" be in the editor later. that would let us create victory based not on a score but on conditions like in Twilight Imperium 3 (the boardgame).

Eysteinh wrote:
Currently luxury resources can be huge. We are talking like 50% bonus in a city etc...

I'm seeing a lot of "production bonus" type perks. Is there anything that gives unique effects? The production boosts are great but can be a bit dull when there are a lot of other ways to boost food production...

Eysteinh wrote:
I can add I have so far tried my best to offer feedback to make EL a viable mp game. Stuff like a good scoring system. Quick but interesting turns and while random balanced enough. Finally stuff like making the game fun even if your not nr 1. Again I cannot speak for the developers but my impression is they really care. The combat system is already tweaked and I am sure Alpha will allow the developers to tweak it more.

Amplitude did a good job with Endless Space and it looks better here. The only issues (IMHO) with Endless Space Multiplayer were game length and mid-game pacing. Unless you had buddies willing to invest a lot of time in a multiplayer game it's difficult to finish a game. The game got a little bogged down mid-game (after the land grab) where it felt like I was either at war or tediously researching random things and building stuff.

Yeah as viux show we vips all try to pull in same direction and are varied personalities trying to give feedback on many aspects of the game. We got some good modder minded people as well. With that said we are a limited set of people so I look forward to more people giving feedback as well. For me it is a heavy responsability since I feel this game can become a true gem and the Amplitude guys are really awesome so I did stuff like hours and hours of video feedback to comment and so has many of the other vips as well. With all that said game is fun and playable but it is definitivly not done so needs more feedback from all of us gamers to help amplitude make it THE game in fantasy 4x.

Propbuddha wrote:
I'm seeing a lot of "production bonus" type perks. Is there anything that gives unique effects? The production boosts are great but can be a bit dull when there are a lot of other ways to boost food production...



Amplitude did a good job with Endless Space and it looks better here. The only issues (IMHO) with Endless Space Multiplayer were game length and mid-game pacing. Unless you had buddies willing to invest a lot of time in a multiplayer game it's difficult to finish a game. The game got a little bogged down mid-game (after the land grab) where it felt like I was either at war or tediously researching random things and building stuff.

When I learned about the "boosts" at the Beer2Gether I had the same reaction as you "What, even more "+% this or +% that ?". I hope they will let us create interesting effects (like shortening the dark season)

About MP pacing and finishing games : I think the real solution to this ois to follow boardgames and have winning conditions (like 10 ways to get 1 VP, and the one with the most at the end of 100 turns win). Hopefully the editor should let us create such thing.

VieuxChat wrote:
Moreover I spoke with the devs about modding, and "custom" winning conditions. It "may" be in the editor later. that would let us create victory based not on a score but on conditions like in Twilight Imperium 3 (the boardgame).

If you Like TI, you owe it to yourself to try Eclipse: A New Dawn for the Galaxy. It's a tight design that covers all of the Xes that is playable in 4 hours or less. There is a 9 turn limit that forces you to interact and focus on gathering victory points, rather than building up for a late game showdown. The iOS version has some AI and Multiplayer issues but the board game is superb...

There are not only base production bonuses yes. As have been mentioned glassteel and other resources tie into building items. But yeah I agree more cool ways to make players both use and fight over regional resources and not just cities would be great and something the VIPS gave feedback on as well. Anyhow I think the internal discussions of vips should stay internal but I can with my heart say we sure gave them a lot of things to consider. Now soon the next phase will let even more of us vouche in our oppinions as gamers so I am personally really happy about that.

Propbuddha wrote:
If you Like TI, you owe it to yourself to try Eclipse: A New Dawn for the Galaxy. It's a tight design that covers all of the Xes that is playable in 4 hours or less. There is a 9 turn limit that forces you to interact and focus on gathering victory points, rather than building up for a late game showdown. The iOS version has some AI and Multiplayer issues but the board game is superb...

Yep, I have it As with Clash of Culture. I also like Age of Renaissance and Civilization (the really ancient one).