So I know Endless Legend had a diplomatic victory, getting all the diplo points, but in a game I just recently finished playing as the Unfallen, I think I might've accidentally won an unofficial "diplomatic" victory, which I suppose could happen in any game if you bee-lined for all the diplomatic and infulence tech--at least in singleplayer. I feel like in multiplayer this sort of thing couldn't ever really happen >.<  But anyways, what I did was I just created an alliance out of all the somewhat pacifistic empires in the game, Sophons, Riftborn, Lumeris, and of course me, the Unfallen, and what happened was I won a "conquest" victory because my alliance, the Super Peace Busters as I named ourselves, controlled a certain amount or percentage etc of all the systems in the galaxy. This felt very shocking to me as I was in the middle of playing and reaping the rewards of peace and trade when I just won out of the blue. Is this supposed to happen? Could this alliance or diplomatic victory be a viable way to win the game in the future, at least unofficialy? I personally don't think so, I think this was just a fluke XD Does anyone else have experience with this happening to them, or is it just me?

Well, with some house rules it might actually be doable in multiplayer as well?

I agree that it feels a bit abrupt and quick. We will look into making it harder to achieve when you are 3 or 4 in an alliance.  

Adding this to the known issues. Thanks for the heads-up!

The thing to fix first is that the tooltip on the victory screen saying how many systems you need for conquest (e.g. you have 10 of 49) doesn't account for your allies.  If the tooltip was expanded and listed the breakdown of systems owned in your alliance and then the total, that would be much better for starters.

Had the same happen to me during my first game ever last night. Won as the Lumeris by having an alliance with 3 other factions. Well, according to the victory screen we all won at the same time through the conquest victory. Definitely felt far too quick. Very happy it's being looked into! Thanks for being awesome devs.

Just registered to comment on this, so forgive me if I in any way disrupt the conversation.

I  am very happy that alliance victories are possible at all as this is a  feature that unfortunately lacks from many 4X games. While I agree that  it probably should be harder to achieve and the UI also should make  clear what's going on, the fact that alliance victories are possible at  all is great news!! 

A suggestion though: Maybe it should  be possible to turn alliance victory on/off in the same way it is  possible with the other victory conditions? (technically an alliance  victory is not a victory condition in itself, but it would somehow fit  the great flexibility we already have to fine-tune how we want to play  the game)

I know that it is  off-topic, but I nonetheless want to take the time to tell you, the  developers, how great, varied, and simply awesome playing Endless Space 2  feels! Great work! And now excuse me, I'm off to pump more science out  of my Sophon laboratories!

Kelor wrote:

A suggestion though: Maybe it should  be possible to turn alliance victory on/off in the same way it is  possible with the other victory conditions? (technically an alliance  victory is not a victory condition in itself, but it would somehow fit  the great flexibility we already have to fine-tune how we want to play  the game)

I think there are 2 separate issues here. The first is an alliance victory is very shaky to implement. While you can make the conditions harder for the human player to achieve, how do you balance it such that this isn't abused by the AI factions? Like AI faction 1 could think "look, the human is winning, do something quick!". AI faction 2 then thinks "ok, let's all ally together and win, woohoo!!!"

The second issue is an alliance victory, if indeed implemented, should be separate from a conquest victory. In Total War for example, you win a conquest victory when you either own the province or turn a newly captured one into a vassal state that also counts towards your winning land quota. Technically, the vassal acts as a de facto ally (even if somewhat involuntarily) but this is still counted as a conquest victory, not an alliance win.

I agree that alliance victory might be challenging to implement right. As for the AI not abusing the system, I would think there are ways to prevent that behavior or, maybe even better, to make it unlikely, so in some very specific instances the AIs might indeed form an alliance - for example if their relation is really good and an alliance between them does not lead to instantly winning the game. I am sure other and better criteria can be thought of.

As with the second issue, I somehow disagree. In my opinion an alliance is just the circumstance which leads to a victory. IMHO it would be very exciting if the player could forge an alliance in order to win a specific victory type (not only conquest). This could be especially interesting if the player decides in the middle of the game to change which victory he wants to work towards.

Vasallage is an interesting concept, but it would be a new mechanic - maybe it would be better to first clean up the alliance mechanic before implementing a completely new one.

The exact same thing happened to me. I was playing as hardcore pacifist Unfallen and stumbled my way into a Conquest victory by turn 100. This seems especially problematic, since I was able to just brute force bribe my way into the last two alliances by giving away some techs, so I pretty much won by spending a few thousand influence and hitting the suggest term button. Didn't even know it was going to happen until I got the victory screen. I'm still loving the game, but it was kind of a anticlimatic end to my first playthrough.

Thanks for the reports. Just so you know, we currently have a limit on alliances and a single alliance can't have more than half the total players in the game.

Also, I'd like to add that we have been fixing an issue in the Conquest Alliance Victory formula so it should now get harder the more people you have in your Alliance!

Well, this is a good time as any to mention I have an idea that is related to this topic. :D