I have been away from ES2 for a few months but have just cranked it back up again after new update.

The first thing I did was to join a MP game to check out MP, then started a regular SP game.

In both games I selected Horatio but basically stopped playing walking away scratching my head when it appeared to me that the game was totally...."bugged".

Unless a basic game concept has changed, from turn one, I had planets that are not normally colonizable without research at the start of the game appear colonizable:  Planets like Lava in the MP game, and Savanah, Arctic, Barren, Ash and Arid in the SP were all colonizable despite none of the corresponding colonization tech in the tech tree begin unresesarched.  Strangely the Lava planets in the SP game were not colonizable however.

Can someone please explain what is going on?

FWIW, in my Steam games list, Endless Space 2 i slisted as Endless Space 2 [update2.preview].

Regards

T

The base ecologist law is that you can colonize all non gas planets, but at a reduced FIDS until you research the tech for the planet type. Horatio now start as ecologists, so you can expand pretty quickly with food now. I'm not sure why the lava planets wouldn't be colonizable, that one is probably a bug.

'Hardship Ready' is the basic law for the Ecologist political faction. If they gain power, that law is likely to be enacted (didn't happen for me once, though, oddly enough). So if you want to be able to colonize more planets early, encourage the Ecologist faction.

I can't exactly recall if lava planets were available for colonization as Horatio when I tried them out, but they were able to colonize normally unavailable planets, as per the law. But there was another bug associated with them: spliced populations didn't add their genetic distinctiveness to the Horatio population. That was just one game, though, and is likely a rare bug.

More ecologist related stuff: when playing as the Riftborn, my government went to Ecologist after the T20 elections and set up the law that allows for telluric colonization. Unfortunately, it didn't function. I'm not sure if it's just a generic bug or is connected to the Riftborn's population mechanics - has this happened to anyone else?

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the perk Ecologists. It makes the game a bit too easy. Nickinvaders, when you say that you can colonize the planet at reduced FIDS, I assume you mean that the planet in question produces less FIDS? Just want to clear that up. 

Gowpen wrote:

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the perk Ecologists. It makes the game a bit too easy. Nickinvaders, when you say that you can colonize the planet at reduced FIDS, I assume you mean that the planet in question produces less FIDS? Just want to clear that up. 

Aye, it's reduced FIDS output from the planets.

When I first found out that Horatio were starting ecologists I was delighted. All those planets to colonise right from the start! Everything would be so beautiful!

Alas, it's really not as much of a boon as you might think. The industry costs of colonising are pretty steep early on, especially the later tech worlds, and given the reduced FIDS output, it's not clear the investment is worth it. You only really want to be colonising planets that aren't going to hit your happiness super hard, or have some luxury that offsets the difference. In terms of advantage, that only leaves a small set of planets that you would colonise before you would end up getting the colonisation tech for that planet anyway. After getting a wee bit stomped in my first two playthroughs as Horatio in this patch (on serious), on the third playthrough I was having to think a lot more carefully about where my industry was going - and the answer was rarely 'colonising another planet'.

It's tempting to think that you should colonise lots, get the per-planet FIDS bonus buildings, and you'll be rolling in it. The reality is you end up with a weak military, a struggling economy, and some serious unhappiness. The AI is much more vicious this patch (which is a good thing) and won't hesitate to capitalise on your weaknesses. Horatio already have issues building ships, and struggle a little in the early game. Going colonisation heavy seriously compounds those weaknesses. You're not Sowers (RIP).

On top of all that, the new ecologist laws are not as strong as they were in the previous patch, where they were arguably some of the best laws in the game. That award goes to militarists and industrialists now (because both allow for improvement of ships). When they fix the bug with Hardship Ready, I feel like I'll be switching out of ecologists fairly early, then switching back again when I'm ready for some more colonisation. If you're not playing Horatio, it would have to be a super situational choice to actually switch into ecologists. Is it really worth it when I could just use some industrialism or militarism to build some more ships and take some planets of someone else?

The real advantage of Hardship Ready is in saving a bit of food when your planets are full, sometimes grabbing some important strategics and luxuries, and maybe grabbing a strategically important but otherwise uncolonisable system. Those factors alone don't make things too easy. To use some terminology from a very good 4X player, they are consistently mediocre, and situationally strong.