I have to agree, the tech tree was arguably one of the most unique and compelling features of ES1, and personally this style of tech tree was something that really put me off from Endless Legend.

I would identify the problem as having more to do with, it makes it feel like a lot of the conflicts between you and your rivals are predetermined. In ES1, if you wanted good weapons, you had to commit to researching weapons. Wanted good production, you had to work for it. But in ES2, you can get anything in your era, regardless of what you've gotten previously; meaning you also have no way of gauging what your opponents are focusing on. You're both just picking techs blindly, in a blind order, and when you butt heads, one of you is going to have an advantage by pure chance. If you go for an early economy and they bump into you with early military, you lose. If you bump into each other a bit later, you win. It doesn't feel very satisfying.

Plus, it seems to conflict a lot with the philosophy of ES1. ES2 effectively prevents you from getting all of the techs, meaning choosing your techs is more about picking what you can get away with not having - i.e. which planets you don't need to colonize this game. That was never something you had to worry about in ES1, and it's a pretty jarring change. It also doesn't seem to fit the actual pace of the game; so far ES2 does seem to be more fast-paced than ES1, but not enough to where it feels natural to have to sacrifice techs like that.

I really hope there's a chance for them to bring back an ES1-style tech tree. But if they can't, they really need to do something to this system to reduce the arbitrary-ness of it. For example, also requiring you to get at least 1 tech from every field (perhaps 2 from the fields that have more options), or at least preventing you from researching later techs in those fields unless you've researched techs from them before (i.e. you'll need to have researched at least one Era 2 military tech before you can research any in Era 3). Just something to prevent someone from never researching a single military tech, and then getting all of them in Era 3 and suddenly having the most powerful military. At least all of the infrastructure buildings are cumulative, so there's actually a detriment to skipping them.

I was skeptical too about the era tech system, but it looks promising (there is room from improvement though...). The biggest thing that needs rethinking are the system improvement techs: it's ok that I can skip some in early eras and take the advanced version later, but I feel that if I took the previous version of it, I deserve some kind of "discount" on the advancement (I don't know if I expained myself well).

I also think that strategic resources need more uses, not only for ship improvements, but that is another topic...

I get what your saying there should be some kind of way that a longterm investment in an area benefits you and also the colony techs need to be rethought i feel making some almost necessary to skip it feels like the race with a lot of planets of say tropical near them has a huge advantage over someone who has more tundra or boreal planets since the getting the warp drive is way more important than 2 more movement points it just feels like a cheap edge someone gets

Having had a night's rest to think on it, I wanted to elaborate more on why I find this tech tree so problematic, and why the tech tree in ES1 worked so well in comparison.

It all stems from one observation: there is no reason to get military techs when you're not at war. Thanks to rising tech costs, it is actually, genuinely a waste to research a military tech you never use. If you get a weapons tech for safety, but then don't get into any wars until you have better tech, you are now at a disadvantage to everyone else - especially if they waited until Era 2 to grab their first military tech, meaning they now have an extra economy/infrastructure tech and better weapons than you.

In ES1, it was next to impossible to have an actual waste of a tech. Even if you never used a particular tech, most techs were requisites for other techs, and that tech would likely be helpful in some way. Plus, techs didn't rise in cost. Also, in ES1, the player who focuses on the military tech will have the advantage in any battle, but the other fleet-related techs were spread throughout the entire tree. The diplomatic race will have more command points, the expansionist will have bigger hulls, the industry guy is going to be better able to replace their ships. The military guy will still have the most cost-effective ships, but the other players will at least be able to mount some defense. And if they've gone into the lategame and completely ignored the military branch of the tree, they've made a critical strategic error, and the aggressive player is simply capitalizing on it.

There's no such system of checks and balances in ES2. The military upgrades exist solely in the military tree, and the better hulls are their own separate techs. And again, there's no reason to get them until you need them. Not only that, but there's no way of knowing when you'll need them. Both you and your opponents can get any tech at any time. Say you're at 9/10 techs to get to era 2, you have no military techs and you really want a planet colonization tech. If you get to era 2 without that colony tech, it's no longer worth the investment, because of the rising tech costs. If you're not under any immediate threat, the only logical choice is to get the colony tech, and then get an era 2 military tech. Except, you can suddenly be under immediate threat at any time. Your opponent can come out of nowhere with their own tech advantage and decimate you. There's no warning, no time to prepare. If you come under threat while choosing the colony tech, you're at a disadvantage. If you get the military tech but don't come under threat soon, you're now at an economic disadvantage. You didn't make a strategic choice, you didn't assess any risks; they were both risks, and you made a blind guess. And the game is now so fast-paced that decisions do have consequences that dire in that short a period of time. You succeed or fail based on arbitrary luck.

In Endless Space 1, you did make strategic choices. If you wanted an advantage, you had to commit to it, and you had to be right about it - you had to know if your opponent was using missiles and had no shields, for example. If you fall very far behind in an area, that's on you. But Endless Space 2 gives you far less information, while asking you to choose from many more options.

I'm sure that, given enough playtime and experience, you could suss out enough tactical intuition to know what techs to get and when. With enough investment, it probably isn't as arbitrary as I'm describing it. But I absolutely do not find this system compelling enough to warrant that amount of investment; at this point, the tech tree is actively making the game unenjoyable for me.

Fenrakk101 wrote:

Having had a night's rest to think on it, I wanted to elaborate more on why I find this tech tree so problematic, and why the tech tree in ES1 worked so well in comparison.

It all stems from one observation: there is no reason to get military techs when you're not at war. Thanks to rising tech costs, it is actually, genuinely a waste to research a military tech you never use. If you get a weapons tech for safety, but then don't get into any wars until you have better tech, you are now at a disadvantage to everyone else - especially if they waited until Era 2 to grab their first military tech, meaning they now have an extra economy/infrastructure tech and better weapons than you.

In ES1, it was next to impossible to have an actual waste of a tech. Even if you never used a particular tech, most techs were requisites for other techs, and that tech would likely be helpful in some way. Plus, techs didn't rise in cost. Also, in ES1, the player who focuses on the military tech will have the advantage in any battle, but the other fleet-related techs were spread throughout the entire tree. The diplomatic race will have more command points, the expansionist will have bigger hulls, the industry guy is going to be better able to replace their ships. The military guy will still have the most cost-effective ships, but the other players will at least be able to mount some defense. And if they've gone into the lategame and completely ignored the military branch of the tree, they've made a critical strategic error, and the aggressive player is simply capitalizing on it.

There's no such system of checks and balances in ES2. The military upgrades exist solely in the military tree, and the better hulls are their own separate techs. And again, there's no reason to get them until you need them. Not only that, but there's no way of knowing when you'll need them. Both you and your opponents can get any tech at any time. Say you're at 9/10 techs to get to era 2, you have no military techs and you really want a planet colonization tech. If you get to era 2 without that colony tech, it's no longer worth the investment, because of the rising tech costs. If you're not under any immediate threat, the only logical choice is to get the colony tech, and then get an era 2 military tech. Except, you can suddenly be under immediate threat at any time. Your opponent can come out of nowhere with their own tech advantage and decimate you. There's no warning, no time to prepare. If you come under threat while choosing the colony tech, you're at a disadvantage. If you get the military tech but don't come under threat soon, you're now at an economic disadvantage. You didn't make a strategic choice, you didn't assess any risks; they were both risks, and you made a blind guess. And the game is now so fast-paced that decisions do have consequences that dire in that short a period of time. You succeed or fail based on arbitrary luck.

In Endless Space 1, you did make strategic choices. If you wanted an advantage, you had to commit to it, and you had to be right about it - you had to know if your opponent was using missiles and had no shields, for example. If you fall very far behind in an area, that's on you. But Endless Space 2 gives you far less information, while asking you to choose from many more options.

I'm sure that, given enough playtime and experience, you could suss out enough tactical intuition to know what techs to get and when. With enough investment, it probably isn't as arbitrary as I'm describing it. But I absolutely do not find this system compelling enough to warrant that amount of investment; at this point, the tech tree is actively making the game unenjoyable for me.

Very well written, and I agree. Specifically I think the rising tech costs are a major reason behind the tech system being broken currently.

eobet wrote:

Finally, from a usability point of view, am I missing something or is seriously the only difference between a researched and non-researched tech the color of its name? How do color blind people feel about this, I wonder?

There's a colorblind option in the settings, so if there's an issue, it would have to be addressed with respect to that.

I very much agree with your other points, though. The whole thing is both mechanically and aesthetically displeasing.

While I didn't like the tech tree in Endless legend either, I do feel it functioned much better there. There was always a reason to keep your tech varied - the neutral enemies meant you couldn't ignore your military, after all. There was also much less of a punishment for skipping certain techs. But the tech tree in Endless Space 2 forces you to skip techs, while the design of the game pretends that didn't happen. The current tree is incompatible with the current state of the game.

The tech system as it currently is makes it impossible to change your strategy on the fly... if you don't research weapons and find yourself suddenly facing a bunch of crazed Cravers, there is no way that you can hold them off long enough to research even rudimentary military techs.If you neglect to research dust improvements in favor of colonization techs, you can find yourself with an economy that is spiraling out of control and no realistic way to stop it.  If you skip one aspect and find yourself lacking later, it suddenly puts the solution to your problems out of reach due the fact that even the "lowest" techs will scale in cost to the highest. This currently leads to what would normally be simply damaging mistakes or miscalculations in other games be sure-fire defeats here in ES2... which makes the game actually frustrating to play unless you get it perfect

yeah this is why despite my other failures so far both games I've played have ended in economic collapse as the AI sells off all my science and heros to put a dent in the deficit and i am left unable to boost the economy with new techs

Very good points about the tech tree. I'm wondering if it's too much to ask as this stage to have faction-specific flavour text for the technologies? For example, it's rather odd to read, as Cravers, that I can build a university or have adaptive bureaucracies. Cravers eat bureaucracies. It's okay to have the same FIDSI bonuses for generic upgrades, but can we call them differently depending on the faction's lore?

Hopefully, military (and even some utility techs) get spread out more evenly, because this can very quickly lead to a single dominant strategy in competitive settings. Anyone who gets military tech because of pirates or a close neighbor will be obliged to use it to avoid "wasting" it, and they'll trample others to the point that the meta becomes "military first" always. The situation reminds me a bit of Stellaris (another 4X game undergoing continuous development), where the best strategy in multiplayer is to rush others with fleets above the empire's "limit" and loot the spoils of empire development from others.

I think ES1's tech system was definitely a lot better than EL's, for a lot of reasons. Part of it I think is it's more lore-friendly - a tech tree "feels" like progression in your capabilities as a space-faring empire more than it would in a more traditional 4X like EL. There are also frustrating minimaxing issues with EL-type - as someone mentioned here, it's actually detrimental to research military techs before you need them as it results in more than just "lost time", since it increases the cost of every other tech when you might have been able to just skip over the military techs for higher-level ones if you had just waited a bit longer. This is weird. (EL had an additional military tech problem where I almost never researched most faction-specific units because I had minor factions available to fill most of those roles without techs, but I don't think this at least is an issue in ES2).

The idea of "skipping" techs in general is weird. For things like new buildings it's fine (for instance, skipping one dust-producing building for a later era's dust-producing building that's generally better, but in a different way). But things like increasing your expedition levels, if there's multiple techs in different eras, should just be "+1 level" etc. rather than "Set level to X." When the cost of each new tech is influenced by the total number of techs you've researched, you probably shouldn't be able to get a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 tech that doesn't similarly increase your future costs the respective 2 or 3 times.

Also mentioned in here that I found frustrating - picking colonization techs before you've had a chance to see the sorts of planets that are actually around you. This makes the eXpand part more luck-based than it really needs to be, both because you might have to wait 4-6 turns longer than anyone else to drop your first outpost, but you also might have picked a planet type that doesn't even exist between your edge of space and the Cravers. In a tree system, this means lost time you could have spent researching the techs you need (or better: no lost time if there's a preliminary tech everyone needs before any specific colonization ones, letting you explore first). In ES2's system, it means lost time plus a permanent increase in every future tech that you do need, or possibly having to skip techs entirely as you have to move on to future eras.

I can understand the arguments for this kind of system - forcing a player to make these sorts of tradeoffs is a legitimate gameplay design - but too often it has made my setbacks feel beyond my control and generally more frustrating. Moreso (so far) in ES2 than it ever did in EL.

Another minor point - each colonization tech has a different bonus attached to it. Meaning that depending on what planets are around you, you don't just pick a different research tech, you also are lucked into a bonus that's more or less helpful than what your opponents have.

Further unusual balance questions relating to this system: If Sophons are surrounded by a planet type most other factions don't have near them, they have an advantage. If the planet types near them are also near other players, their game is more difficult. This is such an arbitrary and random dilemma.

The more I think about it, the less I feel I understand the developers' intentions/philosophy with this system. They've introduced more planet types and techs to colonize them, but also completely streamlined the military techs. They've made the happiness/income systems much more punishing, but also narrowed down the amount of options you have for dealing with them. There are some techs (weapon techs) where later techs are simply better, but other techs like hull techs where later techs build upon previous ones.

If I could at least see where they were going with this, it would be much easier to analyze what went wrong, and also be able to suggest how to build upon it. But their intentions are indiscernible, to the point where I'm not even confident the developers themselves really knew what they wanted out of the research tree.

#PutTheTreeBackInTechTree

As I have had a bit of time now I have looked back on some of the dev diaries and i now realise a glaring missing diary that of a research one we haven't had a specific one talking about how they plan to implement technology, hopefully soon someone will tell us what their plans are for this core system as I'm sure we would all like to see ES2 be the best game it can be.

I think more specifically the cost increases per tech acquired are slightly too high and the jump in cost between eras isn't high enough.

I think the 'skipping an early tech' should be penalized especially in military as those are linear upgrades, whether that penalty is a discount to future techs in that tree or something else.

#PutTheTreeBackInTechTree

Just a thought - what if to progress in, say, Military branch in Era 2, you need to have at least 2 (pick a number) techs from Military branch researched in Era 1? The overall, 10/10 technologies to unlock everything in the next Era is not very convincing. Of course, there is a benefit of sideways research (a lot of advances in civilian tech came originally from military research), but there has to be a more direct link as well.