Hello everyone,



I dicovered Endless Legend two weeks ago and I have had a lot of fun playing the game.

I really liked the concepts of the research tier, where choices actually matters, as well as the fantasy universe.

The music also is great.



I would like to share some thoughts about the game, and share the strategy I used to defeat endless difficulty on my very first attempt against it (but after a good 60 hours of play on other difficulty modes).



I played with a customized version of the cultists.



Those are the traits I used :



Positive traits :

- Conversion : Without this you are no true Cultist. For those who are not familiar, this is how conversion works : This is an action that can only be performed on village by faction units (so no neutral units you get from those village).

The village needs to be either pacified or destroyed. You spend influence to convert the village.

The amount of influence needed is 20 * (number of villages already converted + 1).

There is a 50% extra cost if the village is inside another player's territory.

There is a 100% extra cost if the village is destroyed unstead of pacified.

The converted village yelds the resources on its tile and the 6 tiles surrounding it. In this way it works like a district. If some of the tiles are on a different region, you gain no benefit from them. Hence villages on the border or corner of region suck. Note however that tiles improvements built in the city won't have any effect on those tiles. However traits like industry efficient or landscapist will work.

Additionally, the converted village will produce a unit every few turn, which can be sold on the market for a very decent amount of dust.

The village will also yeld strategic and luxury resources, for 10% of the corresponding resources in the region, but you need to have researched the technology to build extractors.

And last but not least, the villages will add one worker in your city.

Also, note that each village will cost you 10 dust every turn on every city you own. This explains why cultists must never have several cities.



- Weapons of the enemy : There is actually a good reason to have this trait. If you don't have it, cultists cannot raze cities at all, which is I believe an unintended behaviour. And if you keep more than one city you will quickly bankrupt because cost of village will be doubled, which may or may not be intended. You must then have this trait, but what do stockpiles do for you ?

A stockpile can be used to give you 25 industry. Yes, 25 ! It is completely useless, and all the more as you only have one city. With the Tier 2 technology you can get an additional stockpile for 25 science. I haven't figured out the interest to stockpile science yet... However, wait. The stockpiles can be sold to the market place, for around 400 dust for an industry supply and 200 for a science supply.

If you raze a level 5 city, you will therefore get something like 3k gold !

If people of the developement team are reading this, I think stockpile yield could be increased by a factor of 5 and the dust price on the market could be divided by 5, to reach some kind of balance.

But for now, weapons of the enemy will be one of your main source of dust, and will also to boost every available luxury forever.



- Landscapist : It seems to be a must for every custom build. No matter whether you have it or not, you will want to build your city close to a large number of anomalies, even if you need to account for some other factors. Hence, landscapist with yield a good amount of extra science and gold at no cost.



- Arcana of matter is also very strong, especially at the start of the game.It allows for a straight trade of 40 dust for 2 x 4 x 10 = 80 science, which is at this point such a good bargain. Every 10 turn you can do it again, and the yield become better as you may use 5 or even 6 tiles of the pillar. Also paying 105 for a second pillar is generally worth it, as long as you can afford it. Third pillar is only useful when you have a lot of extra dust you cannot spend otherwise.

Little tip about those pillars : as the cost increases with the number of pillars, if you want to use several of those, let's say 2, you have to use them on the same turn. Otherwise, you will need to pay 105 every time you want to refresh one of them.



- Keys to the market : In higher difficulty, as the AI will ban you for no reason and it will be extremely hard to negotiate with them. And you need the market.



Negative traits : Negative traits are well balanced as they have a tremendous cost and need to be chosen wisely. If I did not so desesperately need those positives traits, I would not pick any negative traits.



- Brace yourself : For 5 points, this won't cost you very much. City upkeep is very tiny compared to other costs (for example villages).



- Anarchists : This hurts very much, but you don't need to fight before Tier 2 and armies of 5 or 7 units can win you the game. The limiting factor in your armies will always be the strategic resources, as with Cultists they are very hard to get.



Cultist pros and cons :

- Boosters : Being a one city faction means that you will be able to use boosters for only 10 resources. As soon as you can trade luxury on the market, you are likely to be able to perma boost every luxury until the end of the game or until the market runs out of thoses luxuries.

- Influence : You will need tremendous amount of influences to convert village, and your heroes, including the one you get at the start, will make it easy for you to get this influence. A direct consequence of this is that by round 80 you will get every level 4 empire plan for only 1600 influence.

- Growth : Cultists will have the biggest city in the game, because of the villages which give you extra tiles for free. Best case scenario, a new district will give you 3 extra tiles, while a village will give you up to 7. If you are lucky you can get your first village by round 7. If you are even more lucky it can have one or even two anomaly around.

- Regeneration : As soon as you have the first quest reward trinket, your unit will start regenerating 10 * their level every round during fights. It means that your units basically become immortal even if you do every fight in auto.



What I did during this game was very simple. I converted 5-6 villages nearby and avoided any fights until I was able to build an army of 5 units (3 fanatics and some support) and then I roamed while razing cities. I used every available booster on the market and bought some strategic resources when costs were very low. The more I think about it, the more I believe you should stick to glassteel and titanium as those are pretty inexpensive.

It becomes very tense when one of the AI finished researching the +100% life / +100% damage, and I started losing units in every fight. Nevertheles, I was able to snipe the last capital city in the game, which had not less than 1400 fortification, just before the AI finished his last research.