You are welcome ! Thanks for listening and read your community !

A bit worried about the AI selling all of its systems for free, it shouldn't happen, but I'm guessing you don't have the corresponding save anymore :3 ?

I will maybe able to find this save. I am 100%  sure i can find the save soon after me and my friend bought all the system to the IA. I am not sure i will be able to find the save before we scammed the IA. I just need to ask to my brother. He was the host and he kept the save until we continue the game. 

Ashbery76 wrote:

"Cravers IAs probably need some extra love. They most of the time declare the war against me very early in the game, but don't attack me."

I hate seeing this in games.The A.I should DOW when it has the forces to hurt not just because "we evil we DOW everybody"

In my last playthrough, I won a war and the game tried to Force Truce me, and it said I lost 0 happiness by rejecting it... so I did!  Jingoistic Paradise (or whatever it is) gives my Empire +15 happiness for being at war with someone, and evidently no lost happiness for anything, so... why not be at war all the time?  It makes your people happier!

Ashbery76 wrote:

"Cravers IAs probably need some extra love. They most of the time declare the war against me very early in the game, but don't attack me."

I hate seeing this in games.The A.I should DOW when it has the forces to hurt not just because "we evil we DOW everybody"

Yeh bu i must admit i am a bit afraid about the time cravers IA will be on line. Necrophage in Endless legend are always hard to deal with and mercyless. I am today enjoying the fact I can hit the bad guys without any consequences

"Cravers IAs probably need some extra love. They most of the time declare the war against me very early in the game, but don't attack me."

I hate seeing this in games.The A.I should DOW when it has the forces to hurt not just because "we evil we DOW everybody"

Continuing with feedback, I found  an interesting curiosity that revealed all other curiosities in the system (having tier 3 luxuries before turn 50). this plus the ones that give you pop, ships and special modules, makes the curiosity system more interesting.

Good job here.

luk7f wrote:

Yea, I know this is in diplo screen. What I meant was that I'm not sure if this is included into AI behaviour, cause when I propose peace everyone refuses, except if it comes with dust or resources (lots of them).

I've played 3 games since the patch, I got 4 peace declarations (with no dust or anything else than peace), and managed to win a game in alliance with sophons. All of that in hard

What happened is some AIs really started loving me once I beat up the warmongering united empire (in 2 of the games). Sophons sent me a lot of messages saying my science output was impressive, and (only once) horations did the same with my industry

Never looked at this this way. to add normally I'm the warmonger, so probably this is influencing other factions.

jhell wrote:

 

• Think you said you'll add the peace & alliance to AIs for release. I hope, as actually nobody seems to accept peace if this is not coming with lots of dust behind.

Peace is already in! If you haven't seen it yet maybe it's not visible enough, but the AI is able to propose Peace, interact with you during Peace and suggest agreements. You can also sign an Alliance, but the AI doesn't have an "alliance behaviour" yet.

Yea, I know this is in diplo screen. What I meant was that I'm not sure if this is included into AI behaviour, cause when I propose peace everyone refuses, except if it comes with dust or resources (lots of them). Once peace is accepted same happens with agreements, but AI seems less demanding.

Hello i played most of my games in serious. I played mostly RiftBorn and UE.

About bugs or not intended things :

• If you select random map in multiplayer game, each player play on the same map, but on a different graphic looking galaxy. So if you are not the host, you can play on a ring map on a 4shape picture, etc.
• You can stuck your production queue with Riftborns. You have to fill the queue with machine embodiment, and wait to an food-dependant population slot to appear. The last machine embodiment is not able to be completed because the system is full, but all machine embodiment are considered as impossible to complete. You can unstuck the queue if you cancel enough machine embodiment.
• You can also stuck your production queue with Rifborns if you try to construct more than 3 singularity at the same time. The impossible to complete singularity will block the queue for ever.  

About the map  : 

• The map generation looks like it improved a lot. I have played a lot of cool galaxy with weird path and cool places. The exception are the galaxy created with no density : You have to fly for too long distance without anything, not very fun. 
• The influence territory got balanced. This is now a great pleasure to play against IA because there is more than one way to deal with them. The diplomatic decision making is greatly improved !
• The option "few constellation" don't convince me. I am always 'stuck" in 1v1 on this constellation, into a very tiny place. I don't know if it's intended, but it's like play with 4 continents with 8 players. Intersting, but not extremly varied. 

About IAs  : 

• I have met a freakin tons of Horatios, for some reasons. I have noticed each Horatio has his own personality. I was between an agressive and mad Horatio, and a cool and chill Horation who always complimented me. This is great !
• Cravers IAs probably need some extra love. They most of the time declare the war against me very early in the game, but don't attack me. 10 or 20 turns later they ask for truce and conced the victory to me. Poors little eveil creatures. They only wanted consume everything on universe ;(
• Another weird thing : Several times, a Horatio IA contest to me an outpost just before it turn into a colony. He didn't decolonized the system. So i won a free planet on the system, and he lost his settler also for free. 
• Some IAs don't have a coherent comportement during cold war. They play agressivly : steal pop, siege outposts, etc. If you defend yourself, they consided your moove as a gression. It would seems logic for me that they don't consider retaliation as direct agression. Also, i love the fact they sometime just act peacefully during cold war and don't consider other players expansion as a threat !
•  Maybe IA are able to assimilate minor factions a little bit too fast. Sometime you just cannot compete even if you all-in your ressources into minor faction relations.

About other things like gameplay or cookies  : 

• I absolutly love the independant politics, wich allow to custom even more your strategy and your empire !
• Early game is very intense and deep. The rest of the game looks a little flat compared to the early game. I am not sure i played enough to confirm that comment is relevant. What do you think about this ?
• Heroes who lead a fleet don't get many experience compared to heroes int systems. I don't know if it's intended. But it'es a little bit furstrating. 
• New supports modules are awesome, but i feel those that give science or dust every CP kill are very weak. They don't give any bonus in fight, but the reward is cheap as hell. In early game, you don't destroy so much ships and CP, so the module are not really worth. In late game, they simply don't give enough science or dust to be worth.
• Riftbornds looks super strong, like really. What do you think ?

Every thing else i didnt talk about is awesome. I love this patch. I think i spend 100% of my free time on it and i am not done at all !  

Just want to say a big thank you to you guys, all of this is valuable feedback and is greatly appreciated :).

• With a friend we found a big issue with IAs when they consider they are weaker than you. They accept everytrade for any cost. In the end, they even accept to give to another player all of their systems for free.

A bit worried about the AI selling all of its systems for free, it shouldn't happen, but I'm guessing you don't have the corresponding save anymore :3 ?

• Think you said you'll add the peace & alliance to AIs for release. I hope, as actually nobody seems to accept peace if this is not coming with lots of dust behind.

Peace is already in! If you haven't seen it yet maybe it's not visible enough, but the AI is able to propose Peace, interact with you during Peace and suggest agreements. You can also sign an Alliance, but the AI doesn't have an "alliance behaviour" yet.

Greedis wrote:

In my first update 3 game, I played Riftborn at Serious difficulty against all other factions, and my score was always nearly double of the faction in 2nd place. I won the game easyly without problems.

I played other games, with different factions and I noticed that:

1) IA Riftborn was always 1st place in score and the only faction being able to effectively challenge my empire;

2) IA Vodyani was always last place in score, and the first faction to be annihilated (own only 1 ark for the entire game, in 3 games);

3) IA Craves was just ahead of the Vodyani in score, never declares war on anyone, and is just happy to stay in their constellation consuming itself.

Sadly that pattern seems to repeat in every game (at least, in every game I don't play those races myself). It seems that either their are really not balanced, or that the IA is really good at Riftborn and really bad at Vodyani end Cravers.

P.S. When IA Riftborn and another faction have outposts on the same system, Riftborn seems to activate and then immediatly deactivate time bubbles on it every turn.

I've never been really successful with the Vodyani, bu I know some people have; they either need a buff or (more likely) they have a very unusual play-style.  I regularly kick much tail with Cravers, and I suspect it has to do with making choices that play very differently from usual.

The Endless series has a sort of "bog standard" gameplay model that generally works: use industry to build science to develop better industry, and then make sure you have enough money and food to keep growing, and then build some military once in a while and if an enemy is weak, attack.  I don't know the exact algorithm here, but it's something like that.  But there are better ways to play and alternate strategies, and Endless Space 2 has excellent asymmetry, which means certain factions play very differently.  I noticed in my last Vodyani play something that I've seen others refer to, which is how quickly they can play.  If you can find a way to control a population and drain them like mad, you can start spamming population and arks, and you can build your arks as warships that nobody else can really handle until late game. Being willing to discard colonies to crush an opponent isn't really a standard way to play (and the game also had me as one of the lowest rated players, but I won every war I initiated and was technologically competitive with everyone.  With Cravers, I often win either by going for high levels of religion, or by being willing to relinquish drained colonies and racing after the enemy with laws like Spoils of War to give me the tech and dust I need to keep my engines of war going (I'd be curious to see what the Cravers would play like if I gave every ship those science scanners so every battle earned them science!).  Neither of these fit the bog-standard gameplay model well at all, and so it's no surprise to me that the AI sucks at it.

It might be that the Riftborn simply work very well with this bog standard model, so the "dumb" AI works very well with them, but poorly with other factions.

That said, the Riftborn have +5 Dust, Science and Industry per pop, which seems balanced against the Vodyani +4 FIDS, but I'm not sure it's as balanced as they think.  The Vodyani cap out at three in early game and you can be really crippled for growth if there's nobody to grab (and this is made even worse by the way pirates pop up.  I had a major fleet sitting on an allied minor faction, and they were spawning a huge fleet every turn.  I was slowly losing ships in that fleet form sheer attrition, and it wasn't worth the effort just to gather an extra 10 or 20 life force a turn, so I ended up purging them and draining the Sophons who didn't spawn enemies nearly as quickly).  When you pair this with the ability to focus all of your improvements exclusively on industry rather than "wasting" time on food, plus the ability to double up your turns, and you've got a recipe for a very fast-growth faction, who gets an exponential set of improvements (Vodyahi do too, but it never seems to really pan out).  I like the idea, it just might need some tuning.  I don't mind that they're powerful, I just want to make sure that other factions remain more-or-less equally viable.

In my first update 3 game, I played Riftborn at Serious difficulty against all other factions, and my score was always nearly double of the faction in 2nd place. I won the game easyly without problems.

I played other games, with different factions and I noticed that:

1) IA Riftborn was always 1st place in score and the only faction being able to effectively challenge my empire;

2) IA Vodyani was always last place in score, and the first faction to be annihilated (own only 1 ark for the entire game, in 3 games);

3) IA Craves was just ahead of the Vodyani in score, never declares war on anyone, and is just happy to stay in their constellation consuming itself.

Sadly that pattern seems to repeat in every game (at least, in every game I don't play those races myself). It seems that either their are really not balanced, or that the IA is really good at Riftborn and really bad at Vodyani end Cravers.

P.S. When IA Riftborn and another faction have outposts on the same system, Riftborn seems to activate and then immediatly deactivate time bubbles on it every turn.

stl0369 wrote:

Just to mention it, I don't think the Riftborn should be rebalanced yet.

I think we still have some more analyzing to do.  I have yet to play a game where they're not the top AI faction, but what's not clear to me is why.  Is it their time-shifting mechanics?  In that case, is the problem that I tend to play on Slow?  Will they look so great if I play on quick?  Is it how their pops work?  In that case, players should also report their being too powerful (though they might not, if they love having an OP faction in hand)?  Is it some combination of both?  I don't know yet.

I will note that AI is often imbalanced.  It seems to me that the Cravers rarely hit very high point totals and rarely measure up as a threat.  The Sophons and the Lumeris often do very well (the Sophons are especially bad if you don't hit them early game).  The Riftborn are the only ones that I've seen start strong and only get stronger and regularly dominate the game.  So none of the factions are really balanced, at least not from an AI perspective, but the Riftborn seem particularly egregious.

It's really hard for me to know if riftborn are OP or something, but they look very strong. I played only them and the United empire (i like other factions, but not as much as industrial empires). I played around a bunch of UE serious factions, and i am pretty sure the influence is one of the main weakness of rift born. Also, to manage an invasion very costly for them compared to others, because you have to use production or population slot to create manpower. It take a lot of time and ressources. I was forced to set up several agressive campains against UE influence bubbles, i think I used 10 turns of full production on 12 systems just for manpower to be able to fight. Apart from that, they don't look to have any weakness (the ship moove speed lack is easy to counter with science law).

I love to play them so much. They have such a deep gameplay. I tryed only one strategy : don't build a lot of riftborn pop (ony enough to get pop bonus)  and let the minor factions grow, and earn many of them bonus. It's complicated but once it's online it's very smooth and fun. I will try another strategy soon : don't give a fuck about minor factions (only use it to get manpower) and build an OP population of Riftborns.

I am continuing the list about what i have found :

About IAs (serious difficulty)   :

• IAs make a very bad transition from little ships to medium ships. You can crush them with medium ships even if you build them late in the game. Little ships are usefull in early game in order to defend systems against pirats, and later to support other ships with modules or DPS. Still, the medium ships are way more cost-effective, strong, and multipurpose. So, the first military thing you want to do when you have enough little ships to defend yourself against pirats, is make the transition to medium ships. If you build a lot of little ships, it's a lot of time and ressources wasted in a weak fleet. This is exaclty what IAs do. So they have during a very long time in the game very bad fleets, and build medium ships way too late. About carrier i don't even know. I never seen a carrier owned by IA in 170 turns games in serious. That globally make serious difficulty games very easy if you play a bit military (especially with constellations because early game is "free") .
• With a friend we found a big issue with IAs when they consider they are weaker than you. They accept everytrade for any cost. In the end, they even accept to give to another player all of their systems for free.

About influence (yeh i know i like to annoy devs with influence)   :

•  IA's territory growth and influence production got balanced. This is actually super cool. Solo games are smooth and borders competition is no longer the the first and main problem agaisnt IA ! You can deal with neigbours by many ways. It's almost perfect   !
•  About influence in general, i think it demands some little tweaks ! A too big production of influence create maybe create some one-sided situations too fast. In MP, i had a human player near of me that i wanted to ally (mostly for trade and fun). I had an empire with very good influence, and i was about to pacificly convert some of his systems. He felt forced to declare a war we didnt wanted to do. In a solo game, during late game, i created a system with 1700 influence by turn. I was able to convert half of the galaxy very fast. I think I would have convert the rest if i didnt won soon after that. I am actually ok with those two situations, of course. But i have the feeling they did happen very fast for a pretty low cost. Also, more your bubble is big, more space it impacts each turn, because its perimeter also increase, and this is crazy. I see two things to deal with those facts : 1) Players learn that play influence is not a good way to make friends, and it's truely an offensive weapon. 2) Bigger the bubble is, less the influence of its sytem increase the radius of the bubble. Results : situations i talked about happen, but later in the game, and for a greater investment, also young systems are able to deal with olders system's influence better. Maybe i said some great dumb ideas, but i talked a lot about that with my friend, and my cat approves me again (even if he thinks i would better get him more kibbles instead of spend all this time on ES2).
•  I feel that  there is not a single good way to increase influence in early game, exept eden incense system level boost. But this boost is crazily big and almost free. The only thing you need is luck and find eden incense ! The other way to increase influence in early game is SPIN project, and exept if you have already a big pop, it gives nothing compared to colony with eden essence.

Thanks for your work ! Sorry for bad english ! I hope i was ckear enough !

Just to mention it, I don't think the Riftborn should be rebalanced yet.  Depending on the map options chosen, the Riftborn start with great strategic resources on every planet in their home system or none at all.  Such easy access for a faction that needs these resources can skew AI progress.  After this error (I'm assuming) is patched away, it'll completely change their start.

• Riftborn seems overpowered to me, still only one game in normal, so can't confirm.

This is my experience two.  I've played three games on Normal.  In the first (UE) the Riftborn had nearly twice as many points as anyone else, and they proceeded to steamroll me (mind you, I started in a weak position).  In the second game, I kicked much tail as the Lumeris, and the only faction close to me was... the Riftborn.  Finally, I'm playing the Vodyani and the Riftborn hit 100 dust per turn on a single system by turn 23.

I'm not saying that there's necessarily overpowered; it might be that whatever shortcuts the AI takes to make the game challenging might interact in an overpowered way with the Riftborn, I'm not sure.  But I've been adding them to every game as non-player factions to see how they stack up against other non-player factions.  They always top out.