Romeo wrote:

lo_fabre wrote:

Romeo wrote:

Frogsquadron wrote:

Our purpose with Endless Space 2 is to make interaction with Minor Factions meaningful, without being overbearing or inducing too much micro. As such, our purpose is to make the initial steps of the relationship more intensive, but less demanding in the long run.

This thread has pretty good feedback so I'll pass it on to the rest of the team for review.

For what it's worth, don't be afraid of micro. It's a turn-based game, so it doesn't matter if we have 349756 individual things to manage, we have all the time in the world to do it. You won't find many players will be upset that they have more game to play and manage, and more choices to make; That was actually one of people's favourite things about the first game from what I've been seeing on these forums.

As I have not much time to play, I won't agree with you. Although probably MF needs some work, here I coincide with Amplitude vision.

Probably when I was in my teens or 20s and got all time to play I would agree with you, but not now, sorry I have to take max profit of my appreciate time.

Said that Amplitude should make games from everyone and sometimes can be difficult to please all players.

Nor do I! But that's the nice thing about turn-based games. Doesn't matter if it takes me two hours, or two weeks, I can play the game at my own pace without issue. If we were discussing a real-time strategy or some such thing, I'd be flying the same banner as yourself - not everything needs to be a six-hour slugfest like Supreme Commander or Sins of a Solar Empire, because not everyone has time for those. But I've played games in Age of Wonders and Civilization that have lasted months on their own. More game is a plus in turn-based, always.

Eh not really.

I already don't currently like population micro as it stands.  There's 0 reason to not do it right now, and it's something that always has an optimal answer, but I still have to shuffle pop around because there's not just a "solve the equation" button.  It feels like a waste of time when I'd rather be thinking about how to split my fleets up or what my tech path should be, or where I should spend my dust.

I assume it'll get more depth as the game gets patched, but micro like that isn't interesting.

Likewise with how the probe system currently is, I can see in a real game just spamming 3/4 probe ships and then spending every single turn having them fire a probe down a space lane so I always have vision of that route so I don't get ambushed by a fleet.  There's obvious tactical advantage, little to no investment or cost (especially past the early game), and yet it's the sort of mindless pointelss micro that isn't interesting or deep.  It's just something you do to min max, and yet if you don't you could lose because of it.

There's a difference between micro'ing optimization tasks and giving the player deep decisions.  The two are not the same.

I'm all for less mindless micro'ing - provided there are still interesting and meaningful decisions to make.

With respect to minor factions, there is no micro, but nor are there any interesting decisions in the current implementation.  As a reference point, the minor faction quests in Legend were far better and at least took a little planning to accomplish.  

This is a case where heroes could be put to better use in ES2.  You basically needed to use your heroes as diplomats for interacting with minors in EL, which was cool - and if nothing else posed you with a choice about keeping your hero back in a city or leading an army, versus pulling them off to deal with minors.  That was more interesting.  What we have in ES2 is.... very empty and trivial feeling.

The other point I'd bring up is that there is no real benefit to acquiring a minor faction besides getting a free colony-- migration means you can poach population from that faction anyway, and there's no other significant benefits that they bring. In EL each faction added an empire-wide bonus and a unique unit.

Longer quest chains that ended with unique rewards (like a ship design or a specific tech) depending on how you resolve them would be good.

atejas wrote:

The other point I'd bring up is that there is no real benefit to acquiring a minor faction besides getting a free colony-- migration means you can poach population from that faction anyway, and there's no other significant benefits that they bring. In EL each faction added an empire-wide bonus and a unique unit.

Longer quest chains that ended with unique rewards (like a ship design or a specific tech) depending on how you resolve them would be good.

IIRC you do get an empire wide bonus for assimilating each minor faction. 

MadMyke2010 wrote:

atejas wrote:

The other point I'd bring up is that there is no real benefit to acquiring a minor faction besides getting a free colony-- migration means you can poach population from that faction anyway, and there's no other significant benefits that they bring. In EL each faction added an empire-wide bonus and a unique unit.

Longer quest chains that ended with unique rewards (like a ship design or a specific tech) depending on how you resolve them would be good.

IIRC you do get an empire wide bonus for assimilating each minor faction. 

This is correct.  You can see the benefit to gaining each faction before you assimilate them (at the diplomacy window), but I don't think it's mentioned anywhere after you get them.

lo_fabre wrote:

Romeo wrote:

Frogsquadron wrote:

Our purpose with Endless Space 2 is to make interaction with Minor Factions meaningful, without being overbearing or inducing too much micro. As such, our purpose is to make the initial steps of the relationship more intensive, but less demanding in the long run.

This thread has pretty good feedback so I'll pass it on to the rest of the team for review.

For what it's worth, don't be afraid of micro. It's a turn-based game, so it doesn't matter if we have 349756 individual things to manage, we have all the time in the world to do it. You won't find many players will be upset that they have more game to play and manage, and more choices to make; That was actually one of people's favourite things about the first game from what I've been seeing on these forums.

As I have not much time to play, I won't agree with you. Although probably MF needs some work, here I coincide with Amplitude vision.

Probably when I was in my teens or 20s and got all time to play I would agree with you, but not now, sorry I have to take max profit of my appreciate time.

Said that Amplitude should make games from everyone and sometimes can be difficult to please all players.

Nor do I! But that's the nice thing about turn-based games. Doesn't matter if it takes me two hours, or two weeks, I can play the game at my own pace without issue. If we were discussing a real-time strategy or some such thing, I'd be flying the same banner as yourself - not everything needs to be a six-hour slugfest like Supreme Commander or Sins of a Solar Empire, because not everyone has time for those. But I've played games in Age of Wonders and Civilization that have lasted months on their own. More game is a plus in turn-based, always.

vahouth wrote:

3) Assimilation should be partially unlocked in stages. First a non aggression, then exchange embassies, migration rights, patronage or ally, and finaly a full assimilation.

I like this idea. There could also be bonuses/penalties related to each stage. Maybe get partial assimilation bonuses for being an ally, but it costs gold/influence each turn. Assimilation could take a bit of time. Simply going the conquest route could pull in their allies

Romeo wrote:

I'm not a fan of simply stealing from Endless Legend, but if they are going steal from it, at least do a good job of it. The biggest fault of minor races isn't balance; The biggest fault is irrelevance.

It's the same devs (and even same universe), hardly stealing :)

But thinking about EL, it is a much, much bigger choice which factions the player assimilates in that game. Part of that is the concrete limit of how many you can take in until you research more. If the assimilation process were drawn out, it would be very easy to limit the minor faction relation count, which might force the player to make harder decisions on which ones they are going for, based on position, ideology, etc

Trentius wrote:

How about this : Raising relationships cannot be accomplished more than once per turn (maybe have a check-box for auto-spending).  Minor civs also have War/Cold War/Peace/Alliance status (kinda), beggining in Cold War and enabling talks for a peace treaty around the 30 mark on the relationship bar (signing the treaty should be easy but not automatic, requiring a few gifts or fulfilling a request). Once peace is achieved, the Minor Race can offer a quest, or you can just build up relations the normal way until it tops 100, at which point you can ask for an alliance treaty. Again, it shouldn't be a huge bother given the ressources availables to your empire, but it could require a little bit of work. One important thing is that relations with minor races don't degrade in peace and increase slowly in alliance. Also, minor races will never lower their diplomatic status with you unless convinced to do so by another player. 

Reducing influence spam is a good idea, however, I'd rather do it like this: Spending more than once per turn rather reduces each following influence spending instead. (Like by 20%: 10 -> 8 -> 6.4 -> 5.12 and so on)

The idea to have a diplomatic status with minor factions like with major factions seems pretty nice.

I'm not sure we're willing to go for a diplomatic status for Minor Factions, but I quite like the idea of a decreasing addition of Influence. Visualized with each Influence gain being 80% of the previous, this is what it looks like, side-to-side with the current method:

Don't know if that's a solution we'd go for, but that's a direction to look in.

(I personally like the concept of thresholds to reach, etc. but I'm no designer)

"Thank you you protected us from these pirates, to thank you we will all mass suicide"

derp

Romeo wrote:

lo_fabre wrote:

Romeo wrote:

Frogsquadron wrote:

Our purpose with Endless Space 2 is to make interaction with Minor Factions meaningful, without being overbearing or inducing too much micro. As such, our purpose is to make the initial steps of the relationship more intensive, but less demanding in the long run.

This thread has pretty good feedback so I'll pass it on to the rest of the team for review.

For what it's worth, don't be afraid of micro. It's a turn-based game, so it doesn't matter if we have 349756 individual things to manage, we have all the time in the world to do it. You won't find many players will be upset that they have more game to play and manage, and more choices to make; That was actually one of people's favourite things about the first game from what I've been seeing on these forums.

As I have not much time to play, I won't agree with you. Although probably MF needs some work, here I coincide with Amplitude vision.

Probably when I was in my teens or 20s and got all time to play I would agree with you, but not now, sorry I have to take max profit of my appreciate time.

Said that Amplitude should make games from everyone and sometimes can be difficult to please all players.

Nor do I! But that's the nice thing about turn-based games. Doesn't matter if it takes me two hours, or two weeks, I can play the game at my own pace without issue. If we were discussing a real-time strategy or some such thing, I'd be flying the same banner as yourself - not everything needs to be a six-hour slugfest like Supreme Commander or Sins of a Solar Empire, because not everyone has time for those. But I've played games in Age of Wonders and Civilization that have lasted months on their own. More game is a plus in turn-based, always.

A personal taste. Can't agree with you, but can understand what you're saying.

lo_fabre wrote:

Romeo wrote:

Nor do I! But that's the nice thing about turn-based games. Doesn't matter if it takes me two hours, or two weeks, I can play the game at my own pace without issue. If we were discussing a real-time strategy or some such thing, I'd be flying the same banner as yourself - not everything needs to be a six-hour slugfest like Supreme Commander or Sins of a Solar Empire, because not everyone has time for those. But I've played games in Age of Wonders and Civilization that have lasted months on their own. More game is a plus in turn-based, always.

A personal taste. Can't agree with you, but can understand what you're saying.

Fair enough!

Pejman wrote:
One thing i may add is i find doing suests for minor civ as voydani really funny.

"Thank you you protected us from these pirates, to thank you we will all mass suicide"

derp

That, and the quest where you have to search through Endless ruins to find the minor faction leader's lost child.

"So it turns out that a Vodyani stole my child and ate his soul in an Endless Temple? Okay, thanks Vodyani, that sounds like a really good idea actually, let's all just line up in front of your essence extractor, and here's some (minor faction assimilation bonus) for the trouble!"

It's a simple drag &drop.

Only works within a solar system ATM.

vahouth wrote:

What I think is needed to fix this problem:

1) Assist (quest) missions should chain events that would take time and make you work for it. Maybe 3-4 missions. Not a single mission.

2) Influence required to interact with minor factions should be dependant on their disposition towards you. For example if you are industrialist and they are the opposite (ecologists), you'll be having harder time getting on their good side.

3) Assimilation should be partially unlocked in stages. First a non aggression, then exchange embassies, migration rights, patronage or ally, and finaly a full assimilation.

Agreed with basically all of this. Dunno how much is planned, but being able to have some or all minor factions have a unique bonus you get from allowing them to exist, but also being on your good side could be interesting.  Something like a trade route with the econoimic ones, access to ships from the military, and so on.

I was thinking about this same thing myself.  

Acquiring minors is too easy, as each race has a fast way to do it (dust acquisition, warfare, bribe/praise, etc.) - and if all else fails the quests are trivial to accomplish.   

Once acquired, minors are basically irrelevant to the game play - I hardly notice their influence in the game.  Compare this to Endless Legend, where you had limited slots for integrating minors, and more importantly, minors gave you a unique unit and special empire/regional bonuses that expanded your capacities in interesting ways.  Since you were limited in how many minors you could retain, it forced you to make some sort of choice about which minors your assimilated.

In ES2, you just trivially acquire all of them - because doing so is pretty much always a good thing to do.  There is no decision because there are no tradeoffs.

mezmorki wrote:

I was thinking about this same thing myself.  

Acquiring minors is too easy, as each race has a fast way to do it (dust acquisition, warfare, bribe/praise, etc.) - and if all else fails the quests are trivial to accomplish.   

Once acquired, minors are basically irrelevant to the game play - I hardly notice their influence in the game.  Compare this to Endless Legend, where you had limited slots for integrating minors, and more importantly, minors gave you a unique unit and special empire/regional bonuses that expanded your capacities in interesting ways.  Since you were limited in how many minors you could retain, it forced you to make some sort of choice about which minors your assimilated.

In ES2, you just trivially acquire all of them - because doing so is pretty much always a good thing to do.  There is no decision because there are no tradeoffs.

Agreed. I'm not a fan of simply stealing from Endless Legend, but if they are going steal from it, at least do a good job of it. The biggest fault of minor races isn't balance; The biggest fault is irrelevance.

Agree with most of this thread. I hope they get improved in upcoming updates.

mezmorki wrote:

I was thinking about this same thing myself.  

Acquiring minors is too easy, as each race has a fast way to do it (dust acquisition, warfare, bribe/praise, etc.) - and if all else fails the quests are trivial to accomplish.   

Once acquired, minors are basically irrelevant to the game play - I hardly notice their influence in the game.  Compare this to Endless Legend, where you had limited slots for integrating minors, and more importantly, minors gave you a unique unit and special empire/regional bonuses that expanded your capacities in interesting ways.  Since you were limited in how many minors you could retain, it forced you to make some sort of choice about which minors your assimilated.

In ES2, you just trivially acquire all of them - because doing so is pretty much always a good thing to do.  There is no decision because there are no tradeoffs.

I will say that their population (and the system by extension) is interesting.  Or at least has interesting potential.  Right now its the occasional min maxing of shuffling pop between planets to get extra bonuses + some of the "X bonus per type of pop on planet" stuff, but I do like what I see already from that.  I just hope it gets deeper since right now it's rare that it matters (need the proper type of planet in the system for it to matter at all) and then it's sorta annoying and obvious micro (of course i want all my UE guys on the temperate planet kind of thing).

Eji1700 wrote:

mezmorki wrote:

I was thinking about this same thing myself.  

Acquiring minors is too easy, as each race has a fast way to do it (dust acquisition, warfare, bribe/praise, etc.) - and if all else fails the quests are trivial to accomplish.   

Once acquired, minors are basically irrelevant to the game play - I hardly notice their influence in the game.  Compare this to Endless Legend, where you had limited slots for integrating minors, and more importantly, minors gave you a unique unit and special empire/regional bonuses that expanded your capacities in interesting ways.  Since you were limited in how many minors you could retain, it forced you to make some sort of choice about which minors your assimilated.

In ES2, you just trivially acquire all of them - because doing so is pretty much always a good thing to do.  There is no decision because there are no tradeoffs.

I will say that their population (and the system by extension) is interesting.  Or at least has interesting potential.  Right now its the occasional min maxing of shuffling pop between planets to get extra bonuses + some of the "X bonus per type of pop on planet" stuff, but I do like what I see already from that.  I just hope it gets deeper since right now it's rare that it matters (need the proper type of planet in the system for it to matter at all) and then it's sorta annoying and obvious micro (of course i want all my UE guys on the temperate planet kind of thing).

How are you able to shuffle population around from planet to planet? I've been wanting to do that in order to maximize racial bonuses, but thought that it wasn't yet possible.

Minor Faction populations are definitely interesting to have, and the population mechanic as a whole is very neat (and new for Endless games). I like the diversity they bring to my empire. It would be good to be able to send them where they fit most.

I agree with this thread that it is currently too easy to assimilate minor factions, but I'd rather not staple on an additional technology to the assimilation process. Techs are limited enough as it is, you have very little room to deviate if you want to succeed and I'm guessing it's the same at higher difficulties. Until the tech system is fixed, please don't make even more of them required.

Let me add few more ideas:

• Make bonus related to population you got from this minor. More pop = better bonus.
• Only earn bonus in systems you got pop from this minor (if applicable, I know some can't only work empire-wide). gives more importance to pop and migration together with previous one.
• Minors assimilated can give you specific hulls, modules, techs, system improvements, etc...

Of course all proposed here are good ideas to consider, and as I share most of them, won't repeat here.

lo_fabre wrote:

Let me add few more ideas:

• Make bonus related to population you got from this minor. More pop = better bonus.
• Only earn bonus in systems you got pop from this minor (if applicable, I know some can't only work empire-wide). gives more importance to pop and migration together with previous one.
• Minors assimilated can give you specific hulls, modules, techs, system improvements, etc...

Of course all proposed here are good ideas to consider, and as I share most of them, won't repeat here.

I agree with points 1 and 3.  I would also like it if they were to allow players to choose which pops Ground Troops and Vehicles get recruited from. I find it ironic that playing as Cravers I have an army almost exclusively made out of Amoebas and Sophons. You would think little gray men and jellyfish were physically inferior to genetically enhanced killing machines, but nope, the game doesn't think so.

UndeadPuppy wrote:

lo_fabre wrote:

Let me add few more ideas:

• Make bonus related to population you got from this minor. More pop = better bonus.
• Only earn bonus in systems you got pop from this minor (if applicable, I know some can't only work empire-wide). gives more importance to pop and migration together with previous one.
• Minors assimilated can give you specific hulls, modules, techs, system improvements, etc...

Of course all proposed here are good ideas to consider, and as I share most of them, won't repeat here.

I agree with points 1 and 3.  I would also like it if they were to allow players to choose which pops Ground Troops and Vehicles get recruited from. I find it ironic that playing as Cravers I have an army almost exclusively made out of Amoebas and Sophons. You would think little gray men and jellyfish were physically inferior to genetically enhanced killing machines, but nope, the game doesn't think so.

I think this is actually a potentially interesting strategy choice handled right.  I don't think a ship built on a planet with no hissho for example (since cravers are weird) should have hissho pop on it, even  if I wanted it to.  This means certain planets start to matter more for military production, not just because of industry, but because they have a good invasion pop.  Shades of Dune with Arrakis and Salusa.

vahouth wrote:

It's a simple drag &drop.

Only works within a solar system ATM.

Thanks! Can't believe I missed it. Very nice to be able to do that, though being able to do it freely/without restriction is a little immersion-breaking.

Eji1700 wrote:

I think this is actually a potentially interesting strategy choice handled right.  I don't think a ship built on a planet with no hissho for example (since cravers are weird) should have hissho pop on it, even  if I wanted it to.  This means certain planets start to matter more for military production, not just because of industry, but because they have a good invasion pop.  Shades of Dune with Arrakis and Salusa.

It would certainly be nice to choose which populations get conscripted for manpower. In my games I've seen that minor faction populations have a higher chance of getting conscripted, but I'm not sure if it's intentional or not.

Do you mean that populations and their combat effectiveness should transfer over into manpower on an individual scale? So, as a faction with an invasion bonus, by recruiting Sophon troops you are foregoing that bonus or even replacing it with the Sophon's combat penalty? It would certainly make sustaining populations that produce quality troops more important. The imagery that you bring up is cool... that would be neat to see in-game, having the planet a unit of manpower is from influence its combat effectiveness.

Our purpose with Endless Space 2 is to make interaction with Minor Factions meaningful, without being overbearing or inducing too much micro. As such, our purpose is to make the initial steps of the relationship more intensive, but less demanding in the long run.

This thread has pretty good feedback so I'll pass it on to the rest of the team for review.

Once assimilated you should get a few quests that would be the path to "integration" (after all when a new population joins a country/empire it will take time for them to get used to it and for others to get used to them).

An integration quest line for each minor faction (whatever the way you got them) could be interesting (and would lead to different minor faction bonuses for each choices in the quests i guess)

In the current game the assimilated just get into rebelion from ownership and i think it's a bit silly (i mean they sometimes join my empire without me asking because of border influence, and then they get into rebellion, make your mind damit ^^) 

Frogsquadron wrote:

Our purpose with Endless Space 2 is to make interaction with Minor Factions meaningful, without being overbearing or inducing too much micro. As such, our purpose is to make the initial steps of the relationship more intensive, but less demanding in the long run.

This thread has pretty good feedback so I'll pass it on to the rest of the team for review.

For what it's worth, don't be afraid of micro. It's a turn-based game, so it doesn't matter if we have 349756 individual things to manage, we have all the time in the world to do it. You won't find many players will be upset that they have more game to play and manage, and more choices to make; That was actually one of people's favourite things about the first game from what I've been seeing on these forums.