Slashman wrote:

I keep going back to AoW 3 with some of these victory conditions. The devs seem to be against encouraging people/AI to gang up on a player who is headed toward victory. However in AoW 3 this is exactly what is supposed to and does happen. I haven't found that it makes the game any less immersive, but the devs here seem to have the view that making the AI 'aware' of impending player victory ruins immersion. 

I persoanlly don't like the idea of any player hiding themselves away and casually strolling their way to a Wonder victory with no opposition. I don't like that idea for any passive victory type. I, as a human player, will bring swift military action against AIs who are winning. Why am I being spared from this treatment from the AI?

This is a great point in particular because ideally an A.I. should prepare you for playing against a person. If immersion is really an issue, all you need to do is to dress it up in some lore as to why the galaxy is suddenly uniting against you. Economic victory oncoming?  Something something Dust singularity.  Science victory? Something something emergent Endless tech.  In general if the A.I. ever makes you feel like it's intentionally pulling punches, that can drag you out of the experience too.

I keep going back to AoW 3 with some of these victory conditions. The devs seem to be against encouraging people/AI to gang up on a player who is headed toward victory. However in AoW 3 this is exactly what is supposed to and does happen. I haven't found that it makes the game any less immersive, but the devs here seem to have the view that making the AI 'aware' of impending player victory ruins immersion. 

I personally don't like the idea of any player hiding themselves away and casually strolling their way to a Wonder victory with no opposition. I don't like that idea for any passive victory type. I, as a human player, will bring swift military action against AIs who are winning. Why am I being spared from this treatment from the AI?

I'm pretty sure you can. This is one reason I love these games -- they give us a lot of tools to fine tune some of the game for multiplayer.  I wanna say the more I look into ES2, the more I think it might be the very thing I've been waiting for. Even the Cravers aren't ultimately locked into those victories thanks to both how much more fluid ES2's mid-late game is and the political party system.

EDIT: Want to point that I still have a LOT of basic 4X training to catch up on now, so I'm not ready for multiplayer myself yet. I just want a sense that the deeper I go in, the more possibilities will flower rather than wilt. With that in hand, I'm getting really excited to make ES2 my first serious 4X experience even though I habitually buy Amplitude games just to support incredible developers.

Yeah, I appreciate that it's difficult to the point of unreasonable to expect anyone to balance not just for 8 games at once, but 8 games that happen in different combinations concurrently against each other.  But then, Amplitude has repeatedly challenged my notions in the past of what a studio is capable of putting out in terms of art, lore/writing, production values, originality, the list goes on and on. It's really tricky in terms of talking about multiplayer in particular because no matter what, it won't ever be the same as playing with CPUs. What I'm kinda driving at is that in an ideal world, playing with humans should have more depth and mechanic possibilities than playing with brainless A.I. subroutines rather than less.  It just happens that humans are amazing at optimizing strategy and will go for whichever one will get them to victory most efficiently, with fewer risks, without wasting any time. If you're a developer, you should ideally be driving them towards most moving parts and systems so the players have the most fun even after your ESL-hungry players have boiled away most of the content you worked hard on. That would thus be the focus on military conquest as a 4X centerpiece, which is better than just a game that's fundamentally unplayable competitively. What I'm essentially asking for is Herculean a task for any developer and I appreciate that. But just imagine an ideal world where everyone can follow the play philosophy they want (science, economic, etc.) and have it work in an environment where everyone is intensely focused on winning by taking the path of least resistence.

I have to say though, Endless Space 2 seems like a huge leap forward in all that regard. Taking what they learned from Endless Legend and its almost RPG-like quality and finding ways of hyper-distilling it into a proper 4X.  I had high expectations and so far ES2 is in fact exceeding them.  (which is why I even registered for the forum the other day, because I can't almost can't believe ES2 is as good as it is -- when you get down to it, this topic is basically "am I getting too excited?")   It seems to be getting really close to what I'm asking for, thanks to strong defensive options and the strong flavors each faction has.

One game I'd like to mention in passing is Offworld Trading Company, which I was attempting and failing to get into prior to poking at my prior ES2 beta purchase and going "oh, huh, yeah, I have that". OTC is interesting in that it has close to zero direct combat options but still involves "conquering" your enemies. If Amplitude ever do something like the Roving Clans again, OTC might be worth studying.

As a quick introduction -- I'm someone who's always loved 4X but always sort of from the outside. They always seemed very complicated with a lot of "gotcha" potentially bad choices to make that could only be learned after losing four hour games. Endless Space 2 may be the first 4X I'd ever played that feels... friendly, helpful and informative. I'm really loving the usefulness of the dynamic tutorials and the UI is wonderfully designed in such a way that I have what information I need but it's not crowding me.

(I also love the general feel, sound and look of the UI too which makes it almost feel like all the elements of it are in-universe)

Anyways, all that aside, I was curious -- is non-military victories going to be viable in competitive ES2?  Usually one thing that kinda drives me from wanting to get into 4X is that they tend to come down to big fights when all other players are humans actively trying to win through elimination.  This isn't any player's fault -- military victories just happen to be overwhelmingly viable because they're the one victory type where progression in them necessarily means damaging or even eliminating your rivals.  A player's "role" in a competitive multiplayer game is to win and take the best possible path to winning. I don't begrudge them that.

Still, when you get down to it, most 4X games when played by multiple people become essentially a stripped-down wargame version of their usual selves. Not that this "alternate version" of each game can't be fun in its own way, but it does mean that playing against people doesn't have the same core engagements as playing by yourself or with a simulation mindset. Feeling discouraged by that reality is a major reason I never got in deep with many of these games because I'm someone who loves the simulation aspects.

I'm curious if ES2 so far has been countering this, because I'm seeing signs that could very well be the case. The whole thing with "manpower" intrigues me in particular as an attrition mechanic and the Unfallen at a glance look strikingly powerful despite being war-averse. But see opening paragraph: I'm both not very good at 4X and I'm not particularly experienced with ES2 yet despite having purchased it during beta.  (more out of a desire to support Amplitude whose work, vision and dedication frankly inspire me)

How much, in your opinion, does Endless Space 2 support the viability of non-military victories in a competitive multiplayer environment?

Thanks for reading all that! :)

Vorell wrote:

I think each way to when needs a way to tweak those on game setup.  Because depending on your group and if you use custom factions etc, you will want to make certain ones harder or easier.  For instance the economic victory is really easy to complete for certain factions and so we always turn it off.  We don't think score is interesting so again we turn it off.  If we could change the length of turns for score then it may be interesting again.

Understood, but what then becomes of those factions whose main draw is to win by Economic means or Science means when you disable their primary advatage? I'm assuming you don't turn off Supremecy or Conquest victory and you don't disallow factions who are exceptionally good at warfare. Does that truly make the game fair or balanced? Well maybe score victory I could see being left off without real repercussion. 

By the way, I'm not against more options for multiplayer. I was just looking at what their implications might work out to in reality. If they are easy to implement, then there's no harm in having them.

Slashman wrote:

Getting back to the original topic though, humans are going to be humans and our organic brains will not usually lend themselves to choosing the harder path when the reward is the same in the end. We will adjust to balance changes by altering our strategies to again find the path of least resistance. For that reason, I really don't find 4x games in multiplayer to be my cup of tea. Because true balance really means each faction becomes homogenous and gives up the individuality that works so well in single play. 

This, this is absolutely right.

And the Amplitude guys have since the beginning answered : "Challenge Accepted!".

I would say they are doing quite well on that topic, with some limitations here or there and lot of rooms for improvment of course, but quite well I would say and better than others for sure.

for example wonder victories, imo they should take much longer to reach (cos a very good player can do it fairly fast)  and when a player starts building a wonder, it should fire an event where it would reveal in which system the wonder is being built. perhaps even having a timer , to see exactly when it will be built and other stuff. 

when a warmonger sees that (and most other players i guess) everyone would rush that player whos building the wonder (i know i would) , but then imagine someone else in the meantime starts building his own wonder/s. it would be a nice backstabbing show

also it would be good to implement some sort of quests ,after building the wonder (if they are not in already). for example, if you build Y wonder, you'd have to do something with it , to reach the victory. ofcourse those 'quests' should put you into conflict with other players. not necesarilly militarily. they should make the galaxy interact with you, not just text and event screen

I totally get that making an asymmetrical competitive game is unbelievably hard to balance for, but it would be really awesome to play a 4X where each faction might as well be a totally different game.  Before the shine fell off Endless Legend for me, I was really hoping for instance that the Roving Clans could win in a competitive multiplayer environment by effectively playing Settlers of Catan while every other elimination-minded player was focused on the war meta.

I understand that might still be a high-minded ideal and I have this hunch if anyone someday makes it happen it'll be the minds behind Amplitude. They're pretty good at leaving everyone else in the dust... or, y'know, pushing ahead into vast amounts of Dust.

EDIT: I also want to communicate I know that it's a fine balance to walk because nobody enjoys being told the game is about to be over due to unforeseen circumstances (i.e. the non-military victories) and not feeling like you have any kind of ability to influence it or salvage the game.  And I do think ideally someday the non-military victories could be reached in more organic ways than just reaching some arbitrary goalpost.  Or monitored in some way besides just charts and numbers. (right now those mostly being your primary way of keeping an opponent's upcoming victory from coming as a surprise announcement in most 4X games)

All part of evolution I suppose. I do appreciate that ES2 does seem to be shifting more in the direction I'd enjoy.  :D

I will let the multiplayer experts answer, but from what I have seen in my +100hrs play time on release : nothing new on that front (alas), competitive multiplayer games seems a wargame version of the game.

I would add that the Man Power concept is really good, but it does not seem punitive enough (for now the only down side to not have full MP is -20% firepower during space battle AFAIK) to really change how multiplayer games are played. But I am not an expert in competitive multiplayer on ES2, it is just my feeling.