I finally finished a game of Endless Space 2 (Lumeris, 8-opponent large spiral galaxy, Economic win at Turn 140). Here's what I thought:

I honestly expected the endgame to last until Turn 250 or so, but the income I got from my trade ships quickly became utterly ridiculous. Not only was I raking in 50k+ dust every turn from trade alone, but I was also earning hundreds of luxury resources per turn. It was maxing out at 999 every turn, and I was promptly selling them on the Marketplace for 100k Dust (thanks to the 20x Dust inflation).

I finished the game after only getting one level-5 tech and before finishing the Academy finale. I didn't even harvest or use the top-tier strategic resources. I had a score of 1600 compared to the next highest score of 1200, I readily won all the battles I got into, and I was building everything and anything because I had so much Industry to burn. It got rather boring after Turn 100, where I colonized my 2nd constellation and basically took the entire center of the galaxy for myself. I'll second the opinon the midgame needs some tweaking to prevent explosive resource growth from sucking all the fun out of the game.

I also stumbled upon 2 potential bugs. Has anyone else encountered these?

1. If you're in an Alliance and going for an Economic Win, you won't win even if you exceed the listed amount. You have to leave the Alliance to win.
   
2. Terraforming planets apparently doesn't change their Sterile/Fertile state, even if you terraform it from Sterile to Fertile. I found that quite disappointing since half my races got better bonuses on Fertile.
   

Play a game with the galaxy settings set to low for Resources/Anomalies/Curiosities. Also set the Node Connectivity to low. I find that this really helps with the Trade spam, in addition to generally just making the game more fun. You might have one or two sources of Titanium in your empire, and you have to work for them.

As for the other issues:

1) When in an Alliance the values change, you can see this in the tooltip on the Score/Victory screen in the Empire tab. For instance, when in an Alliance the number of techs required for a Science victory can go to 6 or 8, and the amount of money you need will more than double. This is all in the tooltips, but not documented anywhere.

2) When you terraform planets there is a small chance for the fertility to change depending on what you're terraforming to. There's a thread from yesterday on the /r/endlessspace subreddit discussing the chances, and what planet types are most prone to losing their fertility status.

Kornstalx wrote:

As for the other issues:

1) When in an Alliance the values change, you can see this in the tooltip on the Score/Victory screen in the Empire tab. For instance, when in an Alliance the number of techs required for a Science victory can go to 6 or 8, and the amount of money you need will more than double. This is all in the tooltips, but not documented anywhere.

2) When you terraform planets there is a small chance for the fertility to change depending on what you're terraforming to. There's a thread from yesterday on the /r/endlessspace subreddit discussing the chances, and what planet types are most prone to losing their fertility status.

1. The listed Dust value for economic victory on the Victory screen was wrong, then.
   
2. That seems utterly stupid. I mistook it for a bug, and then believed the fertility wouldn't change period. Changing a planet's fertility was 90% of the reason I was terraforming them in the first place. I would rather spend more industry for a guaranteed fertility change.
   

The potential fertility switch actually makes some sense if you think about it. Tampering with nature can lead to unforeseen consequences one way or the other. It may seem like a unilateral "good" for instance to terraform a fertile arid planet, but think about it for a moment: what happens in real life when you do things like introduce alien species or non-native plants? Do living things tend to often respond well to the air they're breathing changing overnight or even the levels of humidity?  In fact, terraforming potentially becoming a deadly weapon was central to the whole plot of the second Star Trek movie.  (obligatory "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!" here)

Incidentally -- if another player is dramatically flooding the market with luxury resources, that's your cue to buy them up and mass-upgrade all your colonies. But otherwise, yeah, from the sound of things the economy in this game might need another look-in.

i found the insane dust amounts in the late game not that impressive the moment i mass bought out system improvements. dust inflation is a thing at some point. this was especially noticable in my ue game, because there is no influence inflation and i tended to buy much more thing with influence (although i heavily specialized in influence generation).

overall the economy seems very out of whack in late game. with the single most important point being mass access to the rarest strategic resources.

tesb wrote:

overall the economy seems very out of whack in late game. with the single most important point being mass access to the rarest strategic resources.

Play on Low Resources/Anomalies/Curiosities and Low Node Connectivity. Don't worry about the curiosities, there will still be tons to explore. Just more payouts (lodes) and less permanent resources.

The game is much less forgiving when your empire only has one source of Anti-matter, and much, much more fun.

I guess raising game difficulty could help, too !

:P

MidnightTea wrote:

The potential fertility switch actually makes some sense if you think about it. Tampering with nature can lead to unforeseen consequences one way or the other. It may seem like a unilateral "good" for instance to terraform a fertile arid planet, but think about it for a moment: what happens in real life when you do things like introduce alien species or non-native plants? Do living things tend to often respond well to the air they're breathing changing overnight or even the levels of humidity?  In fact, terraforming potentially becoming a deadly weapon was central to the whole plot of the second Star Trek movie.  (obligatory "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!" here)

Incidentally -- if another player is dramatically flooding the market with luxury resources, that's your cue to buy them up and mass-upgrade all your colonies. But otherwise, yeah, from the sound of things the economy in this game might need another look-in.

If you want random terraforming events, then they should be random events after a terraforming, rather than an unexplained random occurance that has you questioning whether it's a bug or not.

And yeah, I'd say the economy, or at least the amount of extra resources you can get from trade routes, needs another look. Take a look at my endgame trade routes:

I am making over 999 Redsang a turn off my trade routes alone, while my base Redsang production is about 30 per turn. Even factoring in other empires' resource deposits, that's a good +800% increase.