lilyophelia wrote:

Lemonwizard wrote:

I haven't played Endless Legend...

*begins to hyperventilate* Oh, no, you must play Endless Legend sometime soon! It is my one, great love! ES2 is just cute, young and pretty!

Well, ES2 is actually pretty amazing, and I worry that EL might not hold up after a lot of time with ES2, but EL is an amazing game that has gone through lots of maturation (with all the DLC). It has aspects to it that are different (being a world instead of a galaxy), and there are so many amazing things that I love about it.

When I take a break from ES2, I plan to go back to EL.

Try it when you get the chance. Please!

P.S. I'm hoping beyond hope that we see EL2 a few years from now, after many great ES2 expansions.

There's a very solid chance that Endless Legend will be my christmas present to myself this year!

Dah! https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/193949/star-trek-ascendancy

I haven't! Is it a boardgame?

It's a bit of a drift from the OP but as you two both seem avid or fans of boardgames...

have either of you tried Star Trek Ascendancy? I had to talk myself out of impulsively buying it. But it looks so good.

Friends! I have news! Endless Space 2 is one of the listings in Strategy for http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2017/12/01/vote-for-your-2017-games-of-the-year.aspx Game Informer's pool/voting. :)

4X is indeed like digital boardgames, but since they can handle a lot of background calculations they manage to have a lot of complex mechanics.

Imagine playing a tabletop boardgame of Endless Space 2 and having to calculate, at the start of your turn, all the FIDSI you´ve got from ALL your systems. And calculate the pressure of all other empires. And calculating the approval of each system, etc etc. It could be done, but it would be 5 times longer than RISK. With digital you have all the maths on the background, and you manage to see it easily to make the strategic decisions...

Wow, we've really drifted into an interesting conversation, haven't we?

For my part, I find that most strategy games fall apart right now if you push too hard into the game's design. The biggest problem is that there is usually one best path (depending on your desired victory), and the game's AI will always be inferior to a human opponent; the more complicated the game's rules, the more this will show.

For a long time now, I've come to enjoy the strategy and decision-making mixed with a sort of sandboxed story that I tell myself to make these games really fun.

I no longer see the other empires as something to play against (because I've never played a 4x game that could make that really work). Instead, the other empires just exist purely for my benefit. I need someone to bully, or to invade, or to trade with.

I still think the best thing you can do is to see 4x games as very pretty, digital boardgames. It's like playing Risk, except we can make it extra pretty or introduce some really neat rules and mechanics, because we have supercomputers to track everything for us these days.

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I think Amplitude wins based purely on interest of design and aesthetics. A lot like what you wrote @BadBecauseMad.

Now, now. 

Civilization doesn't suck. It's simply different.

(I know you mean well by the way, just trying to encourage some nuance :p)

I just know that I like 4x and I've had a really positive experience with Amplitude so far, so the game was on my radar. I may not have time to really dig into it much this week, but I think I'm going to get it while it's on sale.

That's what I'm saying. I almost bought a second copy just in case I had a friend I wanted to give the key to someday. That's how much I think of the game.

Oh snap!

Sorry y'all didn't even get a nomination for STRATEGY award.

I AM SO CONFUSED BY THE NOMINEES

Beyond Earth has got civ syndrome pretty hard - it's massively better with its expansion to the degree vanilla feels incomplete. I think if it had been popular enough for a second expansion, it could have been really great... but lots of its problems just go unsolved. Affinity isn't a choice you make as the player, but a choice that largely gets made for you depending on which affinity's resources are abundant near your start - tying it to specific strategic resources basically means that one choice is the best for you and you don't have much say about it. The tech web is more restrictive than liberating, you pretty much have to follow the path which unlocks affinity points for the affinity your start has decreed you must take, with very little deviation. It's supposed to be a big choice that provides diversity for gameplay, but it feels like the game forces a linear path on you to succeed even though the UI suggests so many tantalizing branches. Aliens were much cooler than barbarians, and had some fun unique effects, but the harmony path of being friendly with aliens should have been more viable. Eventually they stop attacking you, but they never provide you any help or benefit, alien nexts on xenomass provide fewer yields than clearing them to build a xenomass well, and worst of all they are constantly blocking paths you want to move units through - it'd be a whole lot more convenient to just kill that bug like a purity or supremacy player would.

I read that in early development of BE, alien aggression was worldwide. Aliens couldn't tell different players apart - to them the human colonists were all just "humans", and if one person attacked aliens it would cause them to be more hostile to all players on the map. This would provide a very real source of tension between harmony players and "kill the bugs" civs, and I sort of wish they hadn't abandoned the concept. BE had a lot of potential but it really needed more work to be the game I wanted it to be.

SuperMarloWorld wrote:

I think endless legend is better than civ5 (and i love civ5 a lot), but civ6 was actually a disappointement for me.

I bought civ 6 and ES2 at the same time, thinking "oooh yeah 4x". I've always wanted a great outer space 4x, I thought Civ Beyond Earth was fun but flawed... and even aside from its flaws, the game is still about just one planet and not exploring the whole galaxy. I had played Endless Space 1 and had fun with it, but I thought it had lots of solid concepts that could have used more polish. I was fully expecting Civ 6 to pull me in for weeks and ES2 was an afterthought I'd get to later. I tried ES2 after a few games of civ 6.... and it's exactly the interstellar turn based strategy I always wanted. I play it more than any other game right now.

I haven't played Endless Legend, but ES2 is a real gem! The love and care that Amplitude puts into their work is really apparent, too. I get responses from devs to forum posts, they produce regular free updates that add real depth to the game, and just generally make us the players feel extremely valued. I remember all the way back to Civ 5 vanilla, players were saying "hey the AI can tell us not to settle near them, why can't we tell them the same thing?", and the complaints about the lack of diplomacy options persisted through two expansions and a sequel - 7 years later the diplomacy is as bare bones as ever. People have the same complaint in ES2, and Amplitude just fixes it. The diplomacy system gets overhauled a few months after release, in a free patch and not an expansion, and the game is that much better for it. I wish every game developer cared about their community this much.

No no it's me. Even nominees didnt have been revealed if i am not wrong (this stuff is a bot obscure for me). I googled it, ended up on the 2016 page without seeing it... I had the fasle souvenir that civ 6 was released early 2017... So i rly tought we were taling about the nominees of this year.

In another end... It mean you still have a chance to get a nomination, or even an award ! I really hope so !

Oooh my bad! I haven't seen the results of the Steam Awards

Hm for some reasons i tought people were talking about steam awards, that have notalready ended if i am not wrong. It dont chnage what i said. Just think i am coming from another dimension. I am perfectly in the subject, but from another time and space. 

Your kind words mean a lot. Thanks to you, players, for helping us make awesome games (or try, at least)!

The fact that the Mario Kingdom World game got the win kinda confirms to me the suspicion that it was going to be a hit tactical game when I saw the first gameplay footage. Alas, I have no Switch, so haven't been able to try it out!

SuperMarloWorld wrote:

I think endless legend is better than civ5 (and i love civ5 a lot), but civ6 was actually a disappointement for me.

I liked Civ 5 quite a bit, esp with the Vox Populi mod. The Amplitude games just have such amazing aesthetics. I think that's what I mean when I get all silly and misty-eyed. Amplitude has mad style!

I never even tried Civ 6. I tend to wait for a little bit to get games on sale, and the art for Civ 6 really turned me off. It was too comical for my tastes.

With that said, I've totally changed my attitude on Amplitude games/expansions. I almost never buy things at release unless I have to. I was a little worried about what ES2 was going to look like, and I waited on it. But now, I am completely converted, and I plan to preorder all the expansion and future games that Amplitude puts out. It's basically moved way up in my list of priority luxuries!

The Amplitude team deserves so much wonderful love and praise! The games all have this wonderful, living, evolving soul to them.

While I wish them so much success, this just means that we get to enjoy them on a more intimate level for a little bit longer.

I feel like ES2 is one of the biggest, unseen gems of the year (or past several years), and I know they are just going to keep growing and getting more and more attention as they continue to develop. I'm excited to see it happen!