Sorry, not sure if this belongs in the Tech Support forum or not.  

I've read a few other reports of an issue with overheating when playing Endless Space 2 / Endless Legend, but haven't found many solutions.  Notably, playing other games such as Witcher 3, Just Cause 3, heavily modded Skyrim, Metal Gear Solid V, etc. do not cause any overheating problems.

However, sometimes merely letting Endless Space 2 wait at the title screen, with all other programs closed will cause overheating while I check my phone.  This is CPU temps in the high 80s degrees F, spiking into the mid 90s frequently, with GPU temps in low 80s F.  I usually play the game with the graphics set to "Beautiful," not the higher "Fantastic."

So far I have tried disabling Vsync and setting the FPS rate at 45 instead of 60, and it seems like it may have reduced the overheating somewhat, but only by a few degrees, if anything.

System specs:  

• MSI GE72VR Apache laptop  

• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card

• Windows 10  64bit

• CPU: Intel i7-6700HQ  

• Memory: 16GB 

UPDATE:
After coming across this old post about overheating specifically at the main menu in Endless Legend, I have checked and noticed that my heating issues do indeed get smaller when I am actually in the middle of a game.  As counterintuitive as it sounds, being in game when it's calculating for the AI etc. has noticeably cooler temps than just idling at the startup main menu with no game loaded, which really seems to indicate some kind of bug / optimization problem as mentioned in that linked post.

Yeah it definitely puts a strain on it!  Interestingly, it looks like some other users also had this exact issue with the main menu causing overheating in Endless Legend.

UPDATE:
After considering that thread about Endless Legend more, I have checked and noticed that my heating issues do indeed get smaller when I am actually in the middle of a game.  As counterintuitive as it sounds, being in game when it's calculating for the AI etc. has noticeably cooler temps than just idling at the startup main menu with no game loaded, which really seems to indicate some kind of bug / optimization problem as mentioned in that linked post.

Ah, thanks for the heads-up!  Yes, I have forgotten about drivers the past few months, since for some of my other games they will break unless I use an older driver, so I will have to check if there is a happ balance driver that is not so new it breaks the other games, but not so old it causes problems in Endless Space 2 :P  For the moment, the heating does not seem quite as bad as long as I avoid staying on the main menu / in the custom faction editor.