ENDLESS™ Space 2 is turn-based 4X space-strategy that launches players into the space colonization age of different civilizations within the ENDLESS™ Universe. Your Vision. Their Future.
Another big difference I would like to make is with recovery options. In ES1, if you got into trouble with dust/happiness, you had a lot of options:
- Dismantle out-dated ships for dust + reduced fleet upkeep
- Scrap unnecessary system improvements for dust + reduced star system upkeep
- increase taxes to gain more dust at the cost of production to industry, food, and science
In ES2, the penalties are so severe that you do not recover. Here is why:
- if you had 6 decently developed star systems in ES1, you had about 50 -60 system improvements you can choose from, so those unnecessary Private/Public Partnerships and Cloudrippers were the first to go. Then you could rebuild them in a turn or two later on. In ES2, you may have a dozen system improvements empire-wide and the game was designed to make you only choose necessary tech to build.
- ES2 has no tax system and the current happiness is set in stone. There is nothing you can do to influence this unless you research more happiness tech. In ES1, you could win an entire game without ever needing more than 1 or 2 happiness techs if you knew how to budget dust and properly expand your empire. Even the infamous -20 happiness for 20 turns was doable in the hardest difficulties. ES2? You go bankrupt overnight.
- in ES1, unhappy was -15% Dust and Science. In ES2, unhappy is -50% Dust and Influence. Even if you can manage to recover from the dust problem by scrapping improvements and fleets, you will lose system after system from the hit to Influence. You can watch as your systems fall one by one to the Influence spamming AI. If you get to unhappy empire wide in ES2, it is game over. It may not happen right away, but you already lost the game.
You say that all game play styles should be equally viable? How can you force truce on my military expansionism but have absolutely no checks and balances on diplomatic influence spamming expansionism? Amplitude has turned ES2 into a 2x game. Explore and Exploit. Expansion = Unhappy = Death. Extermination = Unhappy = Death. I want to play 4x games, not 2x games.
It has changed by degrees. In ES1 there is an art to taxation/dust balancing. In ES2, you have a system where, if you drop below 30% empire approval rating, you get a 50% hit to dust. Never, in the 1200+ hours of ES1, was I put into a position where I had to scrap 75% of my armada to recover from a happiness reduction event. The event was this option:
Truce demanded by Vodyani.
Accept truce and lose 15 happiness on all systems from removal of 15 happiness per war militant law.
Decline truce and lose 20 happiness on all systems.
I am not sure how much it matters, but I play on Hard Difficulties with all resources, anomalies, curiosities, set to low. I also noticed the United Empire, the Stalinist Federation controlled by a corporate collective, is really bad with dust. Go figure. ES1, they had a bonus to dust income as a racial bonus. ES2, they are just bad with money for some reason.
The current system for disapproval is ridiculously unforgiving. -/+ 50% should be changed. Any event that reduces happiness system-wide can break your entire empire in one fell swoop. At least ES1 had a taxation system you could use to manipulate the happiness of your empire. In ES2, you just take a massive hit to science and dust. I just went from breaking even on dust to -322 dust per turn from one event. Endless Legend was -15%/-30% and +15%/+30%. That was a good place for bonuses and penalties.
ES2 currently feels like it is shoving happiness tech down my throat ... and dust tech.
That's an odd thing to say. With a taxation system, less taxes means less dust but more happiness, so you needed either happiness tech or dust tech to balance it out, ideally a little of both. How has the situation changed?
(It reminds me a bit of later civ games where they ditched tax sliders completely in favor of resources)
What was the event, by the way? Other than playing the cravers and finding myself absolutely stuck in a situation I couldn't get out of, I've had a pretty decent time managing the happiness of my civs.
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