After some completed games (in normal difficulty) to gauge the mechanisms featured in the early to mid game I’ve came upon the realization that the choices presented by the game are somewhat frustrating. It’s not only an issue of incomplete features but some design choices that are irking me. I’m gonna compare it to my recent favorite 4X, Civ4 with FFH mod. I’m not pleading for endless space to be similar, but I wanna try to explain how some design elements does seem to generate a deep experience in one case and not in the other.

There is a deep interaction between colonization and technology in both games, but the choices you end up doing are quite different in scope and ultimately gratification.

On the paper, the main ideas in the game are similar : you settle by creating systems/cities, you exploit planets/tiles with your population and improvements, unlocked and upgraded by technologies. This allow you to produce ressources to grow, build, get wealth and science. But the results are far from the same.

TL; DR : many system with few efficient choices. I don’t feel I’m allocating resources bur rather do what is the “only” way most of the time. Managing my systems is already boring past turn 60…

Colonization :

In FFH, you scout for appropriate locations by gauging the available tiles, those can be readily workable or after a while, some are too far to produce resources directly but allow you to get a strategic/luxury resources. Creating cities is limited by economy and happiness issue and the pressure from other AI makes you make tough choices. What resources do you think you need, are they used to help you grow fast or have a solid industry/economy. What is important is you can settle right away, even if most tiles are not really productive at the moments (but their value can dramatically increase with later upgrades) Same for luxury/strategic resources. They can give you specific benefits and increased basic production with the good techs.

In ES2 you have to consider systems with their planets as a complete package with all their planets. This is a design that is logical but limits already the freedom found in a land based 4X. On itself it’s not too bad BUT there are many planets types, most of all locked behind technology, most of them locked behind eras. That means you have at any time only a little handful of spots that can be considered. This could be interesting, since you’re rushing against the AI for your possible systems and getting the right technologies, but it isn’t.

It isn’t only because you have many planets types, most of them are locked behind era 2 onward, and what you end up doing is getting whatever you can. And since with or without tech in most cases you have only 1, 2 planets that are usable, your system output is almost defined for the early game. In FFH you can choose which tiles you’re gonna work first, some are raw mixed output types (forests) others can be quickly made specialized with builders. The important thing is you have the choice.

Technology :

This is my main beef. Others have already explained what’s wrong with the current system but it bears repeating. The era system is punishing. It’s main advantage is giving us a bunch of goodies for unlocking an era : namely modules. But the way it’s achieved doesn’t give us freedom, but a feeling of frustration. All techs unlock only 1-2 items. You NEED the planets types because there are so few spots available. You NEED the resource extractions. You NEED the hyperspace, etc. And each type you pick something more specific, you’re assured you’re leaving behind an important tech whose cost is getting higher. In the meantime you’re in a rush to unlock the new era because many “basic” things are hidden there.

FFH uses the classic tech tree formula. Each “step” has a fixed cost. That means you can go and take an “advanced” tech for your usage, without feeling punished when unlocking more basic progress later. Sure you have to tech intermediary steps to get advanced technologies, but this is way less punishing that having said advanced technologies locked into a new era. Beside, an “era” can still be defined by some thresholds into a tree. (said at least 3 techs of a given leve) if you want to trigger some global progress.

As I’ll explain further, another thing is how many options are very binary : no government tweaking, or all options unlocked for instance. Only 4CP on fleet right up to 8-9 in the course of one upgrade…

The current pool system can be further punishing because of the way you produce science…

Production :

FFH is a bit of an economy of scarcity (at least in early game). Your food is used to grow then maintain your cities. A city may have an über industrial/financial area but that won’t mean much if you can feed enough people. The happiness is another restriction in how it allows you to have only so much population in once city before being unproductive. Later on, you can add specialists that add specific production without working tiles (but still eat food !) and unlock great people who can add more prod or do some specific feats. While you unlock technology this allows you have more food production margin, thus freeing space for other outputs types.

With Endless Space, there is some issue with the numbers. Food is the main culprit : thought it allow for somewhat different rate of growth, most of it is used by outpost (which is nice) and manpower… meaning, that actually maintaining a large system is not that different than doing it for a smallish one. Moreso, all the early accessible planets type let you produce more than you use, pushing the possible issue of “sterile” planets fed by others in the far future.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have a shortage, but it’s mainly caused by the sudden burst of unhappiness. Ergo the only logical strategy is going for happiness right away and never bother with food whatsoever.

More generally, I have the feeling the fidsi output start blossoming all of a sudden, without much interference of my part. Since there are so few planets available, I have very little micro management of population across them, the first system upgrades are often quite specialized (come on, veld bonus -> sophon, forest -> cravers, etc ).

In the end my fidsi output sunddenly rise because most often of more pop/happiness/heroes abilities unlocking. For this guys, which are a bit in the center of narrative, their most efficient use by far is stay put as system governor, then taking all the relevant skills (as if I have a choice since I must take at least 5 to reach the level after) and forget about them. Soon you’ll find that your fidsi are flowing, after all this “hard work”.

In FFH I would have to often reach some tech to free some food, or tweak my civics. And all this specialists could lead to some specifics great people, but I’d have to use precious manpower for this. Not to forget about science : since it was mostly produced from income there was a balance to maintain between your resource allocation.

In ES2, most starting science upgrades are tied to cold planets. Good luck if you don’t happen to have some or if, with great sense of irony, are locked behind the era barrier (you ought to be more scientific, haha !) Of course if you’re a vodyani, you could do the module exploit or just use your seeker and stuck him in a planetary lab office position and forget about him.

Finally, by era 2 most of my systems had all their upgrades done and I was left with endless ship productions, or maybe if did use a precious tech slot, some dust.

Politics :

I know, this area is a very work in progress. On one hand it’s nice to cast us a s great puppeteer that does as they please. In FFH you unlock civics progressively and tweak your economy/social/labor aspects accordingly, with just a few turn penalty. It’s a bit easy, but still allows you to affect quite a lot some of your empire parameters AND is nice ice breaker when talking with the AI (“oh so you’re like into demon summoning too ? I totally dig ya”)

The issue is the current political system feels like a very new layer with yet few controls over it. You can’t decide which population is added, you can marginally affect election results, (and lose the base law of your chosen party if you miss the spot). Worse, since you may shape your empire political affinities with your actions you end up NOT doing stuff. You don’t want to be a militarist ? don’t do ships, but if you have to defend yourself, you will – realistic, I admit. The issue is the others actions you CAN do are quite limited. You can’t do that many financial/scientific/religious/Ecologist actions because for this you’d need more upgrades or more planets types available, and once again you end up constrained. So if you don’t want to threaten one chosen ideology, better abstain from doing stuff.

Or just forget about it and play along, pass the laws. I did the unlocks for changing government once, but the round penalty seemed to be quite frightening. Maybe I missed something, but it felt like such a big deal that I just forgot about it.

Combat :

There are already a zillion threads about it I’m gonna cut to the point. What is nice in land based combat is how the terrain and your actions shape the units you’re gonna using. In FFH you have infantry for massive combat rating and city capture, Ranged for defense, esp cities, Cavalry for harassment/pillage/mobility/plain dominance, recon for.. recon and difficult terrain fighting, siege for… sieging or attacking large formations, then all the support units of mystical/magical nature.

In ES2 we have the recon, siege and fight type. Since we are in space, the combat parameters are defined by your group size and the module types. They have RPS touch wich means it can devolve in either taking the most powerful combo (and tactics, sniper) or if you manage to make it balanced, random fighting in the absence of spying, and quick unit categorization (I can’t tell if they have artillery or shock infantry by looking at fleets).

I’ve not talked about experience: the perks you unlock in FF make your units very special. I didn’t even bother to check my ship experience in ES.

That and the tech systems means in era 2, that you won’t really use your new hulls without more CP, and the tactics are the same. The main thing that is introduced are the siege modules which are kinda a big deal because even a smallish outpost could regenerate their manpower each turn against 2 (!!) ARKS and a 4 ship flotilla. (those Sophons are a hardy bunch for nerds in suits)

What is depressing me is that the refinements proposed won’t really change the core issues imho. Even with more pre combat control, we’ll end up with a bit of optimum tactics.

Analysis :

I’ve left out other details, but on the whole while playing I’ve felt like I wasn’t making many choices that were about allocating resources but only because some things I couldn’t or would have been punished for it. The pool system especially, means a “weird” tech grab can be punishing. Do I want the bizarrely paired support modules with planet type X? if you don’t have X planets that’s a slot lost. Do I want to convert unused industry into dust ? Sure, but there are many thing you can’t do without techs, even just talking with the AI;

Speaking of them, I know the AI re a wip in every 4x game. What struck me is the whole experience is lifeless. You can’t negotiate at all before era 2. By the time, you’re probably into a rather aggressive neighboring relationship because systems. In FFH, those civs would often pester me about tributes/map trading/tech trading or simply commenting on my ways that fit them or not. I don’t think this kind of interactions should happened so late in the game.

Another example is the system upgrades : doing ONE template you can’t change and using it for all systems ? Seriously…

That meant that after 5 games, I’ve felt most of my decisions weren’t really relevant anyway. Currently the cravers suffer from a weird enslaved but not so enslaved population, and the Vodyani are extremely impacted by the presence of essence to be grabbed or not. In any case I don’t want to play further (even exploring era III) until some serious changes happen.

Suggestions:

I think the main issue lies with the technology granularity. In many situations I can’t do limited actions : I can’t do them at all. I understand the intent is to make you open more and more actions with technology progress, and do some difficult decisions.. but it doesn’t really feel that way.

Whatever is the new tech systems, REMOVE the 2 items limit. If you need to add more goodies with one tech for balance just do it.

If you want to keep the era system, make the tech ramp way less severe (or remove it and rebalance the technology costs). Possibly add synergies from one era to another, like the useless N way fusion into other military tech later.

I like the idea of outposts but it’ under exploited. Let us build COSTLY outpost how much we want. Limit them so we can’t take control of the system without the colonization tech, or 1 pop/limited strategic resources and most importantly sunken food/dust costs until they are self-sufficient.

Give us more control over happiness. If I colonize one planet that makes people unhappy, but there are currently nobody there should I get the malus ? Shouldn’t this bonus/malus apply PER population unit anyway ? Like ok the poor guys on the lava planet have it bad but there are like 10 time more bathing into the atolls…

Make food more relevant. Have the population unit consume more of it, and allow productive system to help the less abundant ones. This way I will actually bother with food tech in era II onward…

Give us more to build. In FFH there was always some very costly thing to produce in my settlements. Be it important upgrades, notional or global wonders. By era II I’ve felt a sharp lack of things to do.

Make those “specialized system upgrades” still specialized but with several iteration. Like the industry bonus should be +5 +5 temperate +5 forest maybe. Let us build upgrade of them in further eras : for instance this same industry upgrade could be rebuild to level 2 with higher cost and still specialized output.

For politics I’ve no real suggestion so far. Having a realistic approach toward population AND giving us control are a bit antithetic goals. If we have more stuff to do that may growth our population inclination toward a political sensibility would help.

The diplomacy options need to be available way earlier, and be expanded with technology progress. I don’t know what do you consider early/mid late game, but currently with the limit and with quick empire struggle, by reaching the mid era II, I’ve felt like in late game, just spawning fleets with stupid amount of FIDSI pouring in.

As for fighting here’s my main suggestion. Have weapons/module types tied to flotilla action. Those actions could be : attacking a system/defending while on orbit, blockading, hit and run. I think we need imbalance in the roles of the weapons to make picking them more than a game of guessing or choosing the most OP one. This means you would have designs made for keeping systems safe, hunting flotillas, blitzing defending systems… And of course you could make units tailored units to counter those designs.

This is a subjective analysis of course. The lack of AI challenge weight into it. But the early game is the one things that makes me smile in 4X and in ES2, it makes me frown, because I don’t feel I’m planning rather than banging my head against locked doors every time. There is a delicate balance between giving extreme control or dealing with the given hand in 4X. The latter is the best narrative tool that is, provided it’s not too extreme. There is a difference between : “my folks chose

Some other considerations : I agree both with the points raised in this topic  and this one. We have a bad case of seemingly lack of direction, and it does result into a very rigid game.

My main suggestion would be to tell us what is the intend behind the design, aka how they envision the player actions. Then we can tell them whether the current mechanics do indeed lead to the intended result or not.

About the topic of colonization, the question is : should we organically expand on our neighboring systems (like in ES1) or do we to pick a few systems that may be further away, perhaps resulting into interlocking of empires ? 

In the first case, how do we avoid the repetitive nature of a standard start, in the second, (which is a bit how it works today) how can we offer more possibilities than picking the « manageable » systems and nothing else ?

The most stringent issue is how we have a LOT of planets type and LOT of techs. A good solution would be to avoid the binary can/cannot colonize but rather let us have a more inefficient/efficient approach. Some technology would allow perfect colonization of a planet type and imperfect of neighboring types. 

The second most important topic is fidsi production and usage. It's mostly an issue of tweaking the number but beforehand we need to known what is the aim. Should we be able to build most of things in any systems ? Should unique upgrades cost us 10-20 turns for completion ? Should be food something that is mainly used for manpower and never in shortage ?

The 3 things that need scrutiny are food (how happiness change it, how it is consumed, why upgrading food prod in later game )

Dust : is it difficult to keep payment balance ? If not should we being dunking huge dust sums into repairs/upgrades/bribes often ?

Influence : what to do of it when it start raining ? Only costly government laws/regime change ? Could it be spent to temporarily boost other outputs like doing propaganda/PSA on systems ? 

With the senate : is the aim to replicate the lack of control of modern politics, or let us tweaks quite a bit ? The current laws have often a positive and negative side, which is nice, because otherwise it would be a no brainer to enact them since the leading parties are already not so much into our hands. 

One interesting possibility about the government changes would be to have them helped/hindered by the current dominating ideologies. And maybe make them less severe the first time? 

The science aspect is the more irritating I think. The goal is obviously to nudge us into carefully selecting which technology to pursue, but the penalty is too high and some basic techs too unavoidable for this to be really comfortable. 

The old ES1 tech tree had its issues, mainly because you couldn't pursue some things without delving deep into each branch. This meant you didn't really “select” a direction. That doesn't mean the tree system itself is flawed. The current systems is punishing for technologies that make other obsolete, creating a conundrum (modules essentially)

My suggestions would be

No more ramp on a given era (or weak one) / let us build next era techs with a penalty and/or let some techs give a bonus/allow the dev of corresponding next era technologies. The Sophon/science law would remove the penalties for achieving next era techs and maybe give a happiness boost for finishing one ? 

For instance take N fusion systems : it would allow to search maybe invasion modules right away (with a science penalty cost without blue skies enacted)

Don't restrict yourselves to 2 items unlocked by each tech. This will allow more leeway to add improvements.

Add some icons on upgrades/hulls that require a specific strategic resource

One thing that could be emulated is the Eurêka system. Have some systemic factors that boost research in a given field. Rather than a flat bonus which could be gamed, make it so that if the good requirements are met you add XX% for each science output into a research. 

There is a lot that could be suggested, but the most important point is expressing the intent in terms of gameplay. My own take on the subject is we player feel better when choices are about picking an efficient and specific strategy rather than avoiding shortfalls, filling required tasks. A good example is heroes : when you want to pick Tier 2 skills you basically just fill all the checkboxes in the Tier 1 for your hero usage (which mean you take the 2 racial/2class/1 generic skills for instance) 

And of course there is no need to be overtly dramatic. I think you put a lot of systems into our faces at once, on purpose. Now it's important to make a few of them very solid rather than expanding all of them in parallel I think. There will be intereference but it feels more manageable.

.

I don't have time to reply to all of this, but i have had 0 issues with the ERA system on normal difficulty.  

I will generally only get the planet researches if i see planet, that i want now, of that tech, and will otherwise ignore them unless i'm doing a heavy military start (in which case i care more about the passives and not wasting time on research for things that i'll just ignore since my system development is spent on ships).

The only "Must haves" in my eyes are:

ERA 1:

The strategic resource harvesters, but I have had games where i've skipped the hyperium one due to a lack of sources on my planets (the titanium one being a flat boost i usually get as it's good for getting new colonies off the ground).  These are all on a "as needed" basis though so I never rush them unless i just feel i need the industry (usually because no viable colonies).

The approval and dust tech- you'll need them eventually so they can be worth grabbing, but again I never really rush them.

Everything else is basically either "well i have to research something" or "this game i need this right now".  I often skip the era 1 weapons tech unless i just feel the need, and I ALWAYS skip warp drive unless i have a planet to colonize that shares the tech (seriously there's so few cases where warp drive matters, and then i just go back and pick it up once i need it).

ERA 2:

System improvements is so vital i think it should just be a passive upgrade like era 2 ship modules rather than a tech, and sharing a slot with a good production improvement doesn't make it any less vital. I cannot see a reason to ever not get this, although it's not always the first thing i get.

Expansion passive help- again I see nothing yet giving me any reason to think I should go tall rather than wide. This flat out increases the max number of colonies you can have, so it needs to be gotten (again it depends when).

Maybe trade routes.  There's no question these are super super good, but i do wonder if you'll want it for a craver/voydani warlike playthrough.  That said if not one of those or in that sort of playthrough, yeah it's probably necessary.

Maybe the hull/cp upgrades

Again everything else strikes me as "how am i playing this game/what's my situation" stuff.

Planets are again as you need them.  there's no need to get all the planet tech if you can't even colonize the planets you're going to be able to inhabit due to production or approval chokepoints.  I usually get one or two of these, but rarely all of them.  Again i usually care more about the improvement past a point.

ERA 3:

i'm 99% certain this is not how era 3 will end up, since yes right now it's lots of must haves, but it's also the end of the tech tree so whatever.

The trade route improvements are really good, the resource harvesters will probably be necessary, the approval passive is really good, etc.

Anyways my only major complaint right now is neural robotics in era 2 because you just cannot pass system improvements up, it's way way way too vital to the game.  Everything else I see as stuff that will only get better as the tech trees are fleshed out (for example right now there are 0 support modules past era 1, and we know that's not going to stay, and all the diplomatic tech is vastly worse than it should be).

I just did a game on serious, with cravers. And I gave up on turn 60 something, not because I was losing, but because there was nothing interesting to do.

To summarize : I did indeed skip half the colonization techs. I did all the science output related tech... 2 of them. I maximized my hero industry production and then... Well, let's just say I have done 9 researchs, skipped the hyperium because there wasn't any in sight, built all the science stuff and still stuck with  10 turns or so on the last 3 techs. I did not go for titanium modules because I wanted to see if I could just use the era II ones. The answer is maybe, after 70-80 turns perhaps ? I've built all the stuff in my systems, most of the planets are era 2 or 4+, so I'm just stuck pumping up fleets. While I know there is little chance to invade with them prior to the relevant tech since the defenders replenish so quickly. The sophons, of course have taken the rare cold planets so my science output has been stalling for half the game, even with the buildings, I have no seeker hero. 

So basically, I've got a huge industry ouput, and basic other fidsi incomes, and I'm stuck doing blockading fleets. The era I feels extremely loong, when you consider all the critical things it keeps access from. I could have maybe grabbed a system or two before, had I found them in time. Of course the cravers are a special bunch with a very focused objective, but still I've felt once again quite limited with the actions I could take and this is my peeve about this game at the moment. Even when skipping some techs, you're still trying to reach the end of era, and you can't change mucn what planets/pop/hero type you have at this stage. 

uriak wrote:

Double post ;) Thank your for your lenghty rebuttal, we can at least agree about our disagreements ^^

Whoops, didn't notice. I was trying to add a quote from another post and it somehow turned into another full reply.

uriak wrote:

-I'm comparing apples and oranges : yeah indeed. The idea is not to say the ES2 cannot work because it doesn't deal with the rule of land based 4X, but rather explains why I consider that some rules lead to interesting gameplay and others not so much. I've played ES1 and while I grew bored with it, it wasn't exactly for the same reasons. For me it was mostly of issue of "sameness" when I played factions that were - on paper- radically different. 

I can see where you're coming from with regards to factions - few had enough significant differences from one another in ES, something that was greatly improved in EL. As for how far will that go in ES2, we shall see.

There is one problem in trying to make factions as asymmetrical as in, say, Starcraft: the scale of the game. For every race with truly distinct gameplay, you have to consider how is it balanced against both itself and every other playstyle. How can they meaningfully interact outside combat, since it's not the only feature of a 4X empire-building strategy. Harmony in ES were possibly the first indication of how varied factions will be in EL, and I suspect we will see factions like Space Broken Lords or Space Forgotten, or maybe something else brand new.

uriak wrote:

-Colonisation and tech explains most of these issue, and we do indeed have choices to do. Yes, I can skip some "core" technologies, just by judging what are my surroundings in terms of systems/minor and major factions. It's a bit subjective, though, but the current system makes me feel my decisions are highly constrained too, and most importantly, don't lead to a specific playstyle. 

I agree about the current tech system being constraining. A whole lot of must-haves all the time and little in the way of going down a specific path, like I liked to do in ES...

uriak wrote:

I'm not so pessimistic as to believe the game will feel as unbalanced in the future. But I'm afraid it will still lack the careful mix of constraints and freedom that made me restart so many FFH games. If I wanted to settle for a few powerful cities or an agressive horizontal expansion it was up to me and making a judicous use of the resources. Would I taylor my army for direct city aggression, pure city defense or a powerful outdoor force of recon units was up to me and my technology choices. The way ES2 is shaping up doesn't lead me to believe it will be the same eventually. The way you colonize, spread and go warmongering are likely to be the samish across the factions, with the little quirk of initial system acquisition (colony, buyout, ARK) That could mean it will be just about leveraging a specific fidsi/pop advantage and nothing more.

In terms of shaping up the army for a specific task, I have a fair bit of faith in the system that's inherited from Endless Legend. I might have not taken much advantage of it myself, but the amount of accessories and their bonuses was quite impressive and provided a very wide variety of how you could profile just a single unit, at the same time binding you to what resources you could supply at a given time. I think we can expect roughly the same from the module system in ES2.

Okay done a quick assesment of the new tech tree yesterday. I think some elements are going in the right direction, but I'll try to play it asap to get a real feeling of the changes. But just looking at the stated changes and available tech I'd say

- lower penalty between techs in the same era is a good thing that I suggested

- pairing colonization/science/fleet tech unlocks together is too a great steap in the right direction, but won't fixes issues with content locked behind the era curtain

- I dont' like that system upgrades with a +5 + 10 for ONE planet type is still there

- UE doesn't seem to have any singular mechanic, it's not the good topic to talk about this but so I don't think the way the game is design we are feeling like we are playing one specific faction, because they still mainly develop and fight the same way (only the expansion mechanic is quite different)

So basically now I've yet to see how fast the choices are presenting themselves, and how do we interact with rivals powers.

I've only had time to take a glance (as the game runs much worse for me now than it used to), but I'm not particularly happy that we got yet another must-have tech in the Era I, making it even harder to complete one of the Sophon quests.

Yay.