uriak wrote:

Lost a big post, then redid it. This is the spirit !

Yes, indeed many observations could be obsolete by the time the update 2 rolls in. Still a good share of my concerns was about the global direction rather than incomplete features, though they did feature in my opening post as well. 

I'm still feeling like doing a new suggestion dump, though. It will be updated/amended once we know about what's in store for us !

Predictability vs alea :

this one goes right through the ongoing debate between single and multi player. In essence, when playing fall from heaven, a factor that really enticed me to start new games over and over was how the mod created a setup to both try new strategies with the factions and witness as my campaign would run amock. This was because of the presence of many game altering « neutral » elements, that went beyond the expected interaction between my factions and the AI.

Barbarians were not only a huge threat early, they kept getting stronger, founding, or capturing cities that would become as difficult to take or raze as genuine faction's, up to a point in middle game. 

Neutral creatures would create dangerous zones that would be a huge hazard both for scouting, building cities or improvement. Once again, only by dedicating solid midgame units these areas could cleansed. At the same time, a range of units could allow to capture and use some powerful elite neutral creatures, if one really wanted to dedicate resources to this

By the time religion and good/evil councils are founded, this tended to create larger alliances of factions in the game. Depending of the player or Ai action, angels or demons could be introduced as new powerful faction with their own agenda and specific rules.

Finally, events caused by factions or the game could be altering cities and terrain, the demonic invasion being the big wrench in the cogs of a campaign... if there were enough evil factions. 

Now this is gonna be a kind of wedge between people who prefer their game fair and square and those who like this kind of « unfair » mechanics that really can drive a campaign into unexpected directions. This means, plans being foiled or delayed, opportunities to seize and yes, many lost games.

The catch is any kind of disrupting feature may be tied to check box or even a slider to let whoever hosts a game remove anything that may create an uneven field if what they want is a competitive experience.

Now what could this means in ES2 ? I think there are quite a few features ready to be expanded into this kind of emergent experience.

Minor factions just ask to be built into. Let them become more significant both as foes and friend, and build relationship in a more delayed manner. (cap influence gifts, required several quests or protect them against others). Their reaction would be along a range. From outward sending fleets to your systems, defending their space, tolerating your presence, budding commercial relaitionship, start of population immigration to finally full control.

« Dark sectors » could be places with other kind of neutral threats than minor factions. Things like the harmony quest gives a clue. Make those zones dangerous to navigate but yield some reward for those up to the challenge (beside obtaining new space for them)

The rôle of religion and moral/alignment could stem from politics with factions affinity/gripes coming from similar or opposite population politics AND laws. 

Finally galactic level events (in the same sens as stellaris' ) can shake things up when heading into the late game phase. At the lesser scale, system altering events can force player to scramble and adapt. There is plenty to draw from, from supernovae, to endless temples reactivating or any kind of device failing etc.

Combat : 

This is another thing that has been endlessly commented and begged for in the forums. While the updates are certainly changing things for the better, I still think some core elements will be an issue, as far as I can foresee. This is because, while the template system allows for an array of possibilities, the usages of the fleets are limited. You use your ships for exploring, colonization/capture, siege/invasion and fight, This last part is the one that lacks variety imho. Since when fighting you have the same rules for both fleets the outcome could be either having a single optimal fleet composition (with one ruling weapon : bad, or a variety thereof, better), or with significant module/hulls bonus for factions, a different optimal fleet for each one. Of course the best outcome would be to have different templates used to counter the threats coming from varied factions... but this means a tight balance between battle tactics, weapon and defense modules to happen. 

Now let's suppose the battle is not even between the fleets, because of the context. An warping in attacking fleet may need more time to fire at long range because they have yet to get a good target acquisition. A defense fleet orbiting a friendly system may have help from the sensors array and static defense grid of their world. A fleet given an harass order may fire some volleys before warping out and avoid most of the heat. In these scenario, different optimal templates would emerge and these wouldn't be based on a hunch but mostly on expected scenario of fleet usage. 

If you factor some elements not yet used in battle, such as morale (could affect weapon efficiency at close range, or likeliness a ship tries to warp out before exploding) or maybe evasion or speed of approach tied to engines, even possibly stealth as I suggested a while ago... and faction specific doctrines this would entice to use a wide array of fleet composition. 

Faction specificity :

This one has been often discussed before but it bears repeating : most of the faction traits are a bit passive in nature (population output) or allow for blunt actions without much immersion factor.

Cravers : their overexploitation mechanic could be put into the player hands (claws). Let's imagine for instance that they have « core/hive » worlds and « quarry » worlds. The main worlds are similar to other faction systems and are the dystopian forge where the craver warmachine is created, whereas the outer worlds are exploited and send most ot their output to the hives and see little to no population gain (or in case on non cravers, worse...)  This would make a craver invasion a bit more dramatic in scope.

In combat, expect high morale and fleets tailored to full on assault on defended system, without much concern for their own survivability (both ships and crews... will be recycled after all).

UE : the emperor may haste projects but the powerful propaganda machine will be helpful to boost varied aspect of system life... perhaps pushing the population to overdo itself and pay a price later... depending on influence balance, you won't be able to boost everything at once and may miss it in case of other events. 

The EU fleet is mostly classic but plentiful though rigid (costlier prototype ?). They could have the same focus on solid hulls as in ES1, and with influence boost their morale to defend the motherland... mothersystem. 

Vodyani : not thought much about them because they already have the most distinctive system mechanic. Now their relationship with other factions must be complicated (still better than craver's) but religion could be a way to attract lesser beings. 

Fight wise, influence could use to flag some specific opponents as heretics, but due to the few numbers, they will tend to have survivability in mind. Of they would defend Ark with zeal...

Sophons : these dude and dudettes are all about doing stuff for shit and giggles. Blue Skies is fun but perhaps achieving a tech in a higher era could boost their happiness until they reach the proper level. Events choices and system upgrades should propose riskier paths to the player, because why not ? Science won't advance on it's own. 

They are not too keen to fight, morale wise. Unless they have bigger and more up to date weapons (up to date, you mean tomorrow's) Of course prototypes and upgrading ships are a premium for them. And if they meet a more advanced fleet, that ought to hurt their morale a bit...

Lumeris : being a fishy player would require quite a few layers and system not yet present in the game to accordingly feature their lubricating anything with the good dust amount. Buying up outposts is not enough... let's showcase their ability to use other people, far sooner than regular corporation exchange. Their relationship with the more advanced minor factions could be a strong point, and scraping science, dust and influence by brokering with others ought to be a must.

They don't like to fight without a profit and make a big use of mercenary. Their debatable morale could be heightened with the help of bounties. But they are mostly quite adept at escaping and sometimes brokering their way out. Of course beforehand they could get more intel on what they be opposed with... and slow down and hampers enemy maneuvers. Everything has its price.

Unfallen : we don't know much yet. Diplomats and plants, yadda yadda, let's wait and see.

Of course combat wise, they ought to be utterly defensive and able to repair fleets faster and harder. Attacking fleets in neutral or hostile space is not really their way of doing things...

Okay that's a lot to swallow and things are bound to evolve with the incoming updates. Still a bit of brainstorming doesn't hurt, doest-it ?

Agreed. Randomization - within limits - makes for an interesting singleplayer, and a frustrating multiplayer.

This is getting quite out of topic, to be honest. I haven't seen anything advocating rubberbanding or introducing meaningless choice expressed here. That said, I'm afraid that the elements that may give the game longevity on the multiplayer side are not the same as those that could give it long appeal on the single player scene. You are entitled to defend it, but it is my understanding fine tuning is not what is currently at stake, nor that 4X main appeal is their competitive side. This topics is born from my own feeling that the game would not hold interest for me without some improvements I'm advocating.

@Kweel_Nakashyn : I agree with your points. Avoinding gross overpowered element is never bad but allow less than optimal paths availables creates an array of possibilities. 

Let's go back on topic :

Really? Where have you been hearing this vile calumny?! 

OK - The original Endless Space, by SlowHands' own admission, could have done a better job of getting its backstory across. This is something that, in my humble opinion, worked out pretty well for Endless Legend though - and RPS agrees. We intend for Endless Space 2 to be more in line with Endless Legend in terms of the lore.

Well it is something I've seen written a few times when people comment about the endless serie. Especially about EL, since some people do feel a disconnect between what is the main critical reception of the game and their own observation. I do share some of those concerns, let me explain it more below.

I could divide the immersion issue into two broad categories : setting immersion and faction immersion. The first is about the believability of cross faction elements, and isn't really about player decisions or player agentivity. The second is opposite, and deals with the choices offered to the players. This is why I'm confident dealing with the first part is more a question of authoring and tweaking elements that don't deeply impact the balance, whereas the second part is more tricky. 

What is the issue with the setting ? One thing I've noticed about EL, is I had a real hard time feeling what I've had under my eyes wasn't too much of an abstraction. There were obviously deserts/forests/plains like any land based 4x but still I've felt a disconnect I didn't have in other games; The reasons were multiple : the art style which was pleasing, but combined with the UI leaned toward the simulation side, but more importantly the terrain effect. I've been used when playing fall from heaven (Civ 4) that any tile besides it's starting (and future) output yielded important fighting and travelling modificators. And that techs and factions were highly linked to terrain, thus fitting some - possibly cliché - atmosphere. I've often tried the Wild Walkers but never felt their "nature connexion" as well as elfes in the FFH. But they had forest fighting bonus and production bonus ! Well, still forest tile didn't have the same impact than in civ, where they would impat huge movement and attack penalties and FFH's elves had a nice array of specific units/improvements/rules regarding the forests. This resulted both when playing or facing them into a sizeable experience of a region centered around wilderness, powerful defensive units and neutral creatures that was quite different from the areas of more industrius factions filled with farms/cottages/mines. In the same way, this mod featured faction which had quite unique environment preference and options, from jungle lizardmen, steppe/artic barbarians/cults, desert dwellers or even deamons that turned the terrain into wastelands. 

Now, when playing ES2, my pet peeve is that main unit is the system, but they feel very abstract. They feature a cluster of planet of varying type, fitting with reality, so you can't really have the whole geographical continuity featured in land based 4x (with distinct but coherent climate zones) But our interactions with those planets are quite limited : we colonize them, see more pop and give them a possible exploitation type. Later on we can modify type and anomalies but still, the lion share of industry and military elements are system based. 

What could help is making us feel a bit more about these planets. There are 6 families of planets to pick from : temperate, humid, dry, hot, cold and giant. When finding one of them and deciding to settle, it's mostly a question of raw fidsi advantage, and possible happiness/anomaly bonus/penalty. 

My suggestion is to tie planet types with a cohesive set of elements : first anomalies ought to be tied to type (with some outliers allowed) giving both predictability and coherence to them. Scifi stuff like kessler syndrom, ruins, solar array can belong anywhere. But life forms, blizzard, etc and maybe some strategic or luxury ressources could be distributed with higher chance on some time. It's maybe already the case but then it's not really perceptible. Techs and planetary improvement are important too. there are some system upgrades that give more yiels on some planet types. I think some of the early upgrade are too specific for "broad" required techs as they are, but the idea itself is good. Ideally, picking some colonization technology and then others could be part of a comprehensive path taken by a player to make the most of a "family" of planets. 

Laws and social engineering can play a part too. When considering the planets colonized by our nation, there is a wide array of societies "hidden" behind the abstraction, from the eden like utopias on temperate/atolls planets to the cramped industrial installations making work possible on the most hostile ones. In the end, if technology allows to settle anywhere, it ought not to be end objective in all cases : choosing to have a civilization mostly thriving in the most liveable place (maybe with a religious/ecologist inclination) or trying to make the most of barren/lave/artic bases for a technocracy/robotic/dictatorship path instead could be viable but distinct alternative. I do mention this because the often critiqued tech tree has removed the element of choosing long term paths for the player. 

Another setting element that puzzles me is influence. Out of the 5 FIDSI, 3 are used on the go, food, science and industry. Dust is consumed by various upkeep but is stored and then used in bulk. Influence is the same. But that gives me the feeling of influence as "not dust but dust" system. It's more tied to system improvements than planet output, but still, it's something you get enough of then spend in bulk. I'm not sure what is supposed to represent. Politcal/commercial clout ? Propaganda ? Cultural domination ? Anyway, the way it's currently used doesn't really works toward conveying the subtle diplomacy or whatever at work. What I suggest is giving us way to spend influence with more continuous effect or even introducing notions of "influence upkeep". You want to make your people/friends to something for you in the long run ? Spend influence continuously and have to considering putting a stop to your laws/schemes when you can't afford them anymore.

I'll post later about the faction specific elements

SirBagel wrote:

Speaking of hand-crafted start locations, why not use something like the Civ series' start biases? It was a default game option that changed the weights that determined what type of tiles and luxuries spawned near a selected country's starting location. These tiles and resources usually facilitated that particular country's playstyle and strengths, hence giving some unique flavor in an otherwise procedurally-generated world. In Endless Space, this might translate to more Veldt/Cold planets near Sophons, Temperate and Hot planets for Raians, and more specialized curiosities and certain luxuries. 

That's a good thing to propose to devs and make an idea.

Got my +1 here, as long as this is an option, cause I understand some players (even myself in some galaxy settings) prefer playing without it.

uriak wrote:

  

My suggestion is to tie planet types with a cohesive set of elements : first anomalies ought to be tied to type (with some outliers allowed) giving both predictability and coherence to them. Scifi stuff like kessler syndrom, ruins, solar array can belong anywhere. But life forms, blizzard, etc and maybe some strategic or luxury ressources could be distributed with higher chance on some time. It's maybe already the case but then it's not really perceptible. 

Many poss about this. In this specific case, if you look around forums (don't remember which thread) devs said it will be fixed before release, and iirc in next update.

 Another setting element that puzzles me is influence. Out of the 5 FIDSI, 3 are used on the go, food, science and industry. Dust is consumed by various upkeep but is stored and then used in bulk. Influence is the same. But that gives me the feeling of influence as "not dust but dust" system. It's more tied to system improvements than planet output, but still, it's something you get enough of then spend in bulk. I'm not sure what is supposed to represent. Politcal/commercial clout ? Propaganda ? Cultural domination ? Anyway, the way it's currently used doesn't really works toward conveying the subtle diplomacy or whatever at work. What I suggest is giving us way to spend influence with more continuous effect or even introducing notions of "influence upkeep". You want to make your people/friends to something for you in the long run ? Spend influence continuously and have to considering putting a stop to your laws/schemes when you can't afford them anymore.

Not sure about that, but it seems to me that Amplitude did it to avoid "technology whoring" and other abuses of diplomacy that appeared in previous 4X. This someway limits what you can do, and you have to think who to propose a treaty, who declare war, and when, not only taking consideration in strategy, but also in this limitation that creates a cost to diplomacy. IMO this is a good improvement (look how CivBERT did something VERY similar).

I understand this may be a bit strange in a lore way, as nothing close to this has a physical form in real life, but take this as an abstract representation of a sum of factors that influence diplomacy: costs of sending embassies, reputations, propaganda, etc...

lo_fabre wrote:

I understand this may be a bit strange in a lore way, as nothing close to this has a physical form in real life, but take this as an abstract representation of a sum of factors that influence diplomacy: costs of sending embassies, reputations, propaganda, etc...

I wouldn't say that.
The irl world is changing a lot lately. If you consider what did Belgium, UK, USA or Russia (to name a few) lately, an inf attrition mecanism is a good system to represent the limited diplomatic possibilities of a country.

You can hear about country X enforcing their views on the international scene, but soon other country's opinions would just ally against them.

I still think half of inf could be given to the target of a faction, if the faction is enforced a view.

Like if a faction declare war on another one, soon all diplomatics relay of the target faction would awake and go red alert.

(@uriak: it's too late to reply too you ;))

lo_fabre wrote:

I understand this may be a bit strange in a lore way, as nothing close to this has a physical form in real life, but take this as an abstract representation of a sum of factors that influence diplomacy: costs of sending embassies, reputations, propaganda, etc...

In my opinion, the Influence system's biggest flaw is how it behaves just like Dust. Almost every application of Influence requires exorbitant amounts while having no spending limit, so stockpiling Influence for sudden and massive actions is the obvious way to go. In regards to ''realism'', it seems inconsistent, since people react ''non-linearly'' to suggestion; propaganda has, generally speaking, diminishing returns (looking at you, minor factions).

On the other hand, it's like Influence could be handled like Science. Sure, making it non-stockpilable could make it more interesting, but it would also mess up the current Influence spending scheme and I'm not particularly keen to overhauling it mechanics wise. The numbers may be broken but the overall dynamic is fine.

Maybe Influence should have a maximum capacity? Were Influence costs reduced, especially for actions with very high costs, one could imagine handling Influence a bit like Manpower. Influence-producing building could instead raise the max bar (or do both) so races like the UE would be capable of massive propaganda campaigns on multiples fronts while Influence-poor empires could still perform a small diplomatic or political action ever 2 or 3 turns.

I also think political actions should be available at any time, not just during elections. Most of them should also have spread out effect (Increases X ideology for Y turns) similar to random events. This increases player agency, and could also be an interesting opportunity to create more diverse actions. Why not make marketing campaigns aimed only at your starting population or only to the population of high-level systems?

uriak wrote: 

You can pick laws that do have for most of them a negative aspect, but it doesn't convey the same feeling than picking political/economical/social stances in say civ (4) or even alpha centauri. 

To be fair, I always thought that SMAC (not the thing the made with CivBE) had the best political system ever made in 4X, but this is a personal liking. I enjoyed this social engineering with its political/economic/values/future policies system, having each its pros and cons.

When I read first GGD I thought ES2 will have potential to do something at same or even better lvl, but actually I feel this system underused and very far from its potential.

Also it has some problems, to put one example: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/66-game-design/thread/21999-problem-when-unlocking-too-much-political-parties. You can find more aroud thesse forums.

Of course the whole political arena is touted as a more realistic system and influence itself avoids abuse, but well, the whole process leaves the player kinda passive.  I don't feel like I'm actually lauching propaganda projects... and I think it's something that would be nice to have EU specific, or at least the magnitude of it (I'm not advocating for too much single faction mechanic, but at least that some factions can go beyond the others when doing certain things.) 

Same feeling here. I have hope Amplitude will address this, cause as said before I see lots of potential in this system. About how to addressing, there are interesting ideas: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/134-multi-party-laws, but I think the key is making your decisions in the political arena have more impact in game, and also have some repercussions if you're continuously acting against your pop political preferences. Actually this seems a bit passive: I do ships, then my pop goes military. Lots of people said that this should work the opposite: pacifists pop should get angry when you build ships, while militarists should get happy. Of course you should have a way to influence your pop opinions, like what you say about UE: what emperor says is tru (or at least you can steam this with propaganda).

I'm sorry actually saying this, because normally I enjoy a lot Amplitude games, and have high expectations, but may be this high expectations are also the reason I feel this game potential under-exploited.

I'm not gonna dwelve more into faction and combat specific (too late) but yes it's entirely possible that a good share of my concern may be addressed in the next update. In the meantime I still felt like posting because as far as I'm concerned, ES2 has quickly fallen out of focus, at least in playtime, and I've already gone through this phase with EL, loving my first contact in EA, then getting "stuck" out of appreciating the released product. At the very least it's part of my "duties" in EA to write about it  And there are some recurrent elements in the serie that don't really appeal to me, and those I really want to talk about.

Never seen Amplitude offended by people explaining their worries. Just once closing ans incendiary thread, and that was far from your case, but still it remains to them.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:
 I wouldn't say that.
The irl world is changing a lot lately. If you consider what did Belgium, UK, USA or Russia (to name a few) lately, an inf attrition mecanism is a good system to represent the limited diplomatic possibilities of a country.

You can hear about country X enforcing their views on the international scene, but soon other country's opinions would just ally against them.

I still think half of inf could be given to the target of a faction, if the faction is enforced a view.

Like if a faction declare war on another one, soon all diplomatics relay of the target faction would awake and go red alert.

Interesting point of view. Still this is not a quantifiable thing, but gives more sense to influence as resource.

To be honest never had a problem with this, as I saw it interesting in gameplay terms from start, and never bothered about it having lore sense or not since now. 

Trentius wrote:

In my opinion, the Influence system's biggest flaw is how it behaves just like Dust. Almost every application of Influence requires exorbitant amounts while having no spending limit, so stockpiling Influence for sudden and massive actions is the obvious way to go. In regards to ''realism'', it seems inconsistent, since people react ''non-linearly'' to suggestion; propaganda has, generally speaking, diminishing returns (looking at you, minor factions).

On the other hand, it's like Influence could be handled like Science. Sure, making it non-stockpilable could make it more interesting, but it would also mess up the current Influence spending scheme and I'm not particularly keen to overhauling it mechanics wise. The numbers may be broken but the overall dynamic is fine.

Not sure about that. As I see this as good idea, I'm doing same as everybody here. Changing it this way may change the game diplomatic and political scene in unexpected ways. As it actually have its flaws as everything, I think this is better to not change this.

Maybe Influence should have a maximum capacity? Were Influence costs reduced, especially for actions with very high costs, one could imagine handling Influence a bit like Manpower. Influence-producing building could instead raise the max bar (or do both) so races like the UE would be capable of massive propaganda campaigns on multiples fronts while Influence-poor empires could still perform a small diplomatic or political action ever 2 or 3 turns.

You're evil. This is a good one!

This will make things more interesting, as you can pool influence indefinitely, and will force you to use it more frequently, or otherwise this will be wasted.

Also will imply more specific timing of your diplomatic options to play with this influence pool.

I also think political actions should be available at any time, not just during elections. Most of them should also have spread out effect (Increases X ideology for Y turns) similar to random events. This increases player agency, and could also be an interesting opportunity to create more diverse actions. Why not make marketing campaigns aimed only at your starting population or only to the population of high-level systems?

Again a good one. Had same feeling. You should be able to spread propaganda to change your senate political composition to the parties that are more interesting to you, but of course at a cost and with repercussions. Something like having always available the cheating options.

If you make an idea about this and the previous one, remember me to get my vote. 

just gotta say that something like this  would be awesome: 

( Quote from TheTakenKing )

"Meanwhile, the Cravers (and every other faction in this scenario) would get unique bonuses for being at high approval. A Happy/Ecstatic Cravers empire could get a bonus to invasion strength, faster Craver immigration to newly-conquered worlds, and higher FIDS from Craver populations. "

now i am, not necessarily thinking that these mentioned bonuses are best or that every faction should have equally good and attractive bonuses from happines , but these kind of unique bonuses which result directly from your ability to play well, are awesome , combined with already present fixed ones that you get by simply plaing X faction.

Does not even need to come from high happines, there could be an entire new tab or mechanic to get your " i play good therefore i get these unique bonuses for my faction". 

there could even be more than 1 bonus for your faction if you for example have high happines , so you could choose which one you want to pursue 

Lost a big post, then redid it. This is the spirit !

Yes, indeed many observations could be obsolete by the time the update 2 rolls in. Still a good share of my concerns was about the global direction rather than incomplete features, though they did feature in my opening post as well. 

I'm still feeling like doing a new suggestion dump, though. It will be updated/amended once we know about what's in store for us !

Predictability vs alea :

this one goes right through the ongoing debate between single and multi player. In essence, when playing fall from heaven, a factor that really enticed me to start new games over and over was how the mod created a setup to both try new strategies with the factions and witness as my campaign would run amock. This was because of the presence of many game altering « neutral » elements, that went beyond the expected interaction between my factions and the AI.

Barbarians were not only a huge threat early, they kept getting stronger, founding, or capturing cities that would become as difficult to take or raze as genuine faction's, up to a point in middle game. 

Neutral creatures would create dangerous zones that would be a huge hazard both for scouting, building cities or improvement. Once again, only by dedicating solid midgame units these areas could cleansed. At the same time, a range of units could allow to capture and use some powerful elite neutral creatures, if one really wanted to dedicate resources to this

By the time religion and good/evil councils are founded, this tended to create larger alliances of factions in the game. Depending of the player or Ai action, angels or demons could be introduced as new powerful faction with their own agenda and specific rules.

Finally, events caused by factions or the game could be altering cities and terrain, the demonic invasion being the big wrench in the cogs of a campaign... if there were enough evil factions. 

Now this is gonna be a kind of wedge between people who prefer their game fair and square and those who like this kind of « unfair » mechanics that really can drive a campaign into unexpected directions. This means, plans being foiled or delayed, opportunities to seize and yes, many lost games.

The catch is any kind of disrupting feature may be tied to check box or even a slider to let whoever hosts a game remove anything that may create an uneven field if what they want is a competitive experience.

Now what could this means in ES2 ? I think there are quite a few features ready to be expanded into this kind of emergent experience.

Minor factions just ask to be built into. Let them become more significant both as foes and friend, and build relationship in a more delayed manner. (cap influence gifts, required several quests or protect them against others). Their reaction would be along a range. From outward sending fleets to your systems, defending their space, tolerating your presence, budding commercial relaitionship, start of population immigration to finally full control.

« Dark sectors » could be places with other kind of neutral threats than minor factions. Things like the harmony quest gives a clue. Make those zones dangerous to navigate but yield some reward for those up to the challenge (beside obtaining new space for them)

The rôle of religion and moral/alignment could stem from politics with factions affinity/gripes coming from similar or opposite population politics AND laws. 

Finally galactic level events (in the same sens as stellaris' ) can shake things up when heading into the late game phase. At the lesser scale, system altering events can force player to scramble and adapt. There is plenty to draw from, from supernovae, to endless temples reactivating or any kind of device failing etc.

Combat : 

This is another thing that has been endlessly commented and begged for in the forums. While the updates are certainly changing things for the better, I still think some core elements will be an issue, as far as I can foresee. This is because, while the template system allows for an array of possibilities, the usages of the fleets are limited. You use your ships for exploring, colonization/capture, siege/invasion and fight, This last part is the one that lacks variety imho. Since when fighting you have the same rules for both fleets the outcome could be either having a single optimal fleet composition (with one ruling weapon : bad, or a variety thereof, better), or with significant module/hulls bonus for factions, a different optimal fleet for each one. Of course the best outcome would be to have different templates used to counter the threats coming from varied factions... but this means a tight balance between battle tactics, weapon and defense modules to happen. 

Now let's suppose the battle is not even between the fleets, because of the context. An warping in attacking fleet may need more time to fire at long range because they have yet to get a good target acquisition. A defense fleet orbiting a friendly system may have help from the sensors array and static defense grid of their world. A fleet given an harass order may fire some volleys before warping out and avoid most of the heat. In these scenario, different optimal templates would emerge and these wouldn't be based on a hunch but mostly on expected scenario of fleet usage. 

If you factor some elements not yet used in battle, such as morale (could affect weapon efficiency at close range, or likeliness a ship tries to warp out before exploding) or maybe evasion or speed of approach tied to engines, even possibly stealth as I suggested a while ago... and faction specific doctrines this would entice to use a wide array of fleet composition. 

Faction specificity :

This one has been often discussed before but it bears repeating : most of the faction traits are a bit passive in nature (population output) or allow for blunt actions without much immersion factor.

Cravers : their overexploitation mechanic could be put into the player hands (claws). Let's imagine for instance that they have « core/hive » worlds and « quarry » worlds. The main worlds are similar to other faction systems and are the dystopian forge where the craver warmachine is created, whereas the outer worlds are exploited and send most ot their output to the hives and see little to no population gain (or in case on non cravers, worse...)  This would make a craver invasion a bit more dramatic in scope.

In combat, expect high morale and fleets tailored to full on assault on defended system, without much concern for their own survivability (both ships and crews... will be recycled after all).

UE : the emperor may haste projects but the powerful propaganda machine will be helpful to boost varied aspect of system life... perhaps pushing the population to overdo itself and pay a price later... depending on influence balance, you won't be able to boost everything at once and may miss it in case of other events. 

The EU fleet is mostly classic but plentiful though rigid (costlier prototype ?). They could have the same focus on solid hulls as in ES1, and with influence boost their morale to defend the motherland... mothersystem. 

Vodyani : not thought much about them because they already have the most distinctive system mechanic. Now their relationship with other factions must be complicated (still better than craver's) but religion could be a way to attract lesser beings. 

Fight wise, influence could use to flag some specific opponents as heretics, but due to the few numbers, they will tend to have survivability in mind. Of they would defend Ark with zeal...

Sophons : these dude and dudettes are all about doing stuff for shit and giggles. Blue Skies is fun but perhaps achieving a tech in a higher era could boost their happiness until they reach the proper level. Events choices and system upgrades should propose riskier paths to the player, because why not ? Science won't advance on it's own. 

They are not too keen to fight, morale wise. Unless they have bigger and more up to date weapons (up to date, you mean tomorrow's) Of course prototypes and upgrading ships are a premium for them. And if they meet a more advanced fleet, that ought to hurt their morale a bit...

Lumeris : being a fishy player would require quite a few layers and system not yet present in the game to accordingly feature their lubricating anything with the good dust amount. Buying up outposts is not enough... let's showcase their ability to use other people, far sooner than regular corporation exchange. Their relationship with the more advanced minor factions could be a strong point, and scraping science, dust and influence by brokering with others ought to be a must.

They don't like to fight without a profit and make a big use of mercenary. Their debatable morale could be heightened with the help of bounties. But they are mostly quite adept at escaping and sometimes brokering their way out. Of course beforehand they could get more intel on what they be opposed with... and slow down and hampers enemy maneuvers. Everything has its price.

Unfallen : we don't know much yet. Diplomats and plants, yadda yadda, let's wait and see.

Of course combat wise, they ought to be utterly defensive and able to repair fleets faster and harder. Attacking fleets in neutral or hostile space is not really their way of doing things...

Okay that's a lot to swallow and things are bound to evolve with the incoming updates. Still a bit of brainstorming doesn't hurt, doest-it ?

Randomisation and way to react about it. Bad randomization would be "you earn this, or planet X is destroyed, or party Y goes up" ;) In cause of dark sectors minor factions attitude, one can choose to invest resources to secure things, or just buckle up and ignore element that could be a hindrance to others factions too. 

I felt like going on about what is for a bit of restrictive design in the way the systems work, but many things could change in the update, especially the science production balance. Currently, as the cost of each tech ramps up (less that at launch but still) whereas the upgrades they unlock have a fixed prize that means that as you crawl up into a technology era, you're likely to be able to build new things faster and faster, till you hit a point where there is nothing or pointless stuff to add in a system. This is bad because even with very few systems there is nothing that differenciate them much in the way you develop them, and you could end up producing raw science/industry/dust or ships to do something about them. It's fine if this was the objective to create a secondary settlement producting resources for your main ones, but the whole things seems geared for managing big empires, once again maybe lacking some "soul". 

At first glance they may be 5 different ways to make players create very different kinds of systems

"incitations"

- making upkeep so outrageous that frivolous uprades are out of the equations

- adding so many things to builds or so long to build that you can't actually end up in a "adding all in a system" situation besides maybe your homeworld

- making upgrades very combo friendly to the point it's best to specialize early rather than build a bit of everything

"restrictions"

- making some upgrade exclusionary (not as in unique to the empire, but not mutually buildable)

- linking some upgrades to planets types (and not only add a bonus) like giant planet extrator thingies on lava, holy molly holiest temple things in forest worlds etc) 

The latter two are way more abritrary but have the benefit of easier balancing. The former three require careful examination of possible impact on the game economy. 

Sure thing, this sounds like stuff you wouldn't want to do everywhere AND make sure you can support. 

I'd really like too some sophon stuff that are basically prone to create bad events from time to time ("oopsie") in exchange for "too good to be true" advantages.

One thing about food is how since the outpost mechanic has been added, it doesn't seem to be a resource only constrained to one system but transferrable. Opens up for quite specialized colonies. 

There are still my suggestion of refinery/military/commercial outposts with their own upkeeps.

I dunno if anybody agrees or not about my fighting analysis, though. We are waiting for update 2 - must confess I've not watched the stream, I dunno if there is digest of incoming things somewhere.

Well my take was mostly that fleet specialization without different kind of objectives could easily slip into "most efficient build" or "random guesses and counters" territory. 

Eh, I live near Paris so I could have been there, but I'm not a drinker so... :p

It's mostly that I didn't know about it till too late. 

So I've read the update2 digest, gonna give the beta a spin soon. I'm wondering about something : the middle game seems interesting, it's the early I've got a hard time liking, maybe ? I like my empires small and manageable ;)

It's hard to make the distinction between what is the stuff that is not done yet, and the stuff that is not supposed to be added, to be honest.

For instance, the main thing for me would be to know what is the scale the devs consider as their target for empire gestion. Are individual systems stuff people should nurture and spend time on, or is the midgame target rather a dozen systems in scope, in which case, total FIDSI ouputs throughout the empire are the most relevenat metric ? Thought it sounds like a simple difference of numbers, it could mean a lot in terms of "grounding" the gameplay into the story. Are the kind of colonized planets just elements of total fidsi output, ou do they bear more significance on the society we are administering ?

It's the same with the combat. They certainly have decided what are the basics of their systems and the numerous addition possible for it. I dunno what are their conclusions about the criticism of the first ES formula, though... seems giving more orders with more effects is the current direction. 

As we discussed on my main forum, one element that creates the malaise is no fault of Amplitude themselves. By design, such a spatial 4X features only pockets of usable locations, and much "emptiness". Thus right from the start, you lose most of the complexity of exploration, "city planning" and tactical warfare of any land based games.  How can you make up for that is the open ended question. 

I ain't going to quite and address each point (Don't wish to clutter the page with two extremely long posts in a row), know that I agree with this assessment big time, especially the stuff towards the end regarding gameplay focus.

Someway agree. As I wrote in a previous thread, gameplay shold correspond to lore. This way Lumeris should be a ble to buy more things than build, while UE will be the opposite. And you should be able to win following differents paths for factions.

IMO there aslos should be some little punishement if you're playing with a faction aginst its "nature", as an example IMO the idea of Cravers depleting planets and forcing you to continuously conques and leave the depelted planets is a good one, but still ahven't tryied them and can't say if works as intended.

uriak wrote:

 

About the cravers, the issue isn't really about their current shortcomings, in part created by a still to be refined political and happiness system. They will be sorted out eventually. Rather than that, I hope that ultimately, the cravers will convey a different feeling : playing them shouldn't entail doing a sort of benevolent dictatorship with a military preference, but rather a giant system geared toward planetary invasion without concern about it's own population and assets (long terme develoement) . What I mean, is for at least some faction, the factors that would be a hindrance for most empires ought to be ignored in some ways. Stretching out their empire beyond reason as an ever advancing horde for instance, with a miserable population could have some appeal. Somehow, I'm a bit weirded out by the rather similar way they develop. Should each system be held for long and overcome the resource penalty ? Or could the player choose to suck dry some areas and don't bother holding them for long ? Think about the horde system in total war : these guys don't bother with their legacy, but rather fuel their ever advancing war machine. This is something I'd like to see possible in some ways.

Not Cravers fan. To be honest they are the faction I like the least, but understand why they're in this game and why some people love them.

Said taht, a +1 here. There's exactly that one would expect from them.

This should be also rethought to other factions. to say: Lumeris should be buying almost everything: more buying fleets and improvements than building them, buying techs through diplo, as they should be able to pay any needed dust, bribing minors (and not wasting time in other ways), hiring mercenary ships, and so on. Of course worried by happines, but fot them, again money should solve it.

think same for other factions, except Vodyani, who IMO now has a very different and special gamplay.

Also, the bigger the difference to other factions, the better. A science bonus to undiscovered techs for Sophons fits, but is not that game-changing, imho. On the other hand, UE in ES2 feels pretty good with spending influence on actually nearly anything. The emperor wants it, and he wants it now, so it gets done instantly. Feels good. On the other hand ES1's UE had also that nice feature where industry would go up the more taxes you collected. That made the UE differ very much from other factions and it felt very empire-ish.

Also, I wish there were far more faction-unique techs, even more than in ES1. I'd have no problem if all factions only shared 50-60% of all techs. The specific techs wouldn't need to differ that much, but would make one feel more like playing a certain faction than just a faction with a single special trait.

A faction that goes entirely without dust, like the Harmony of ES 1, would be another good example.

More faction traits like in ES1 would surely help, too.

mixerria wrote:
My thoughts on this subject: Having a more unique way to play this game for each faction seems like a real good idea. The Vodyani are a pretty good example, I think.

Also, the bigger the difference to other factions, the better. A science bonus to undiscovered techs for Sophons fits, but is not that game-changing, imho. On the other hand, UE in ES2 feels pretty good with spending influence on actually nearly anything. The emperor wants it, and he wants it now, so it gets done instantly. Feels good. On the other hand ES1's UE had also that nice feature where industry would go up the more taxes you collected. That made the UE differ very much from other factions and it felt very empire-ish.

Also, I wish there were far more faction-unique techs, even more than in ES1. I'd have no problem if all factions only shared 50-60% of all techs. The specific techs wouldn't need to differ that much, but would make one feel more like playing a certain faction than just a faction with a single special trait.

A faction that goes entirely without dust, like the Harmony of ES 1, would be another good example.

More faction traits like in ES1 would surely help, too.

Yes. All yes. I'm not crazy about Endless Legend, but they did a damn good job making the races feel unique in that. Hopefully "oddball" races like the Disharmony eventually make a show, because the truly unique races are usually the most interesting to use.

This thread is great for ideas on how to improve faction variability. Though we don't have access to all of the information yet (most pertinently full faction questlines, unique techs, battle changes, tech tree changes) that would be necessary to ensure unique gameplay, there's still a lot that can be done.

Perhaps by modifying the way that each faction approaches several core game mechanics we can hit the sweet spot of narrative and mechanical convergence.

Building on uriak's idea here:

uriak wrote:

... I hope that ultimately, the Cravers will convey a different feeling: playing them shouldn't entail doing a sort of benevolent dictatorship with a military preference, but rather a giant system geared toward planetary invasion without concern about it's own population and assets (long-term development) . What I mean, is for at least some factions, the factors that would be a hindrance for most empires ought to be ignored in some ways. Stretching out their empire beyond reason as an ever advancing horde for instance, with a miserable population could have some appeal. 

The variables that determine population Approval, as well as approval bonuses (or their opposite), can be different for each faction, thus rewarding and emphasizing more unique methods of gameplay.

Cravers, for example: The effects of overpopulation, overexpansion, planet type, events, and especially politics on approval should be muted. Instead, it is based on planetary depletion level, whether the empire is expanding fast enough, and bonuses for eating pop/conquering planets/being at war (though part of that can be solved politically). If the Craver's reason for existence is to fight, break opposition, and destroy worlds, then they should be happy when they are doing so, and conversely unhappy when they spend all of their time building up their systems but not fighting. This would represent something of an inversion of current mechanics, and would really influence Craver playstyle in a big and, I think, positive way.

Meanwhile, the Cravers (and every other faction in this scenario) would get unique bonuses for being at high approval. A Happy/Ecstatic Cravers empire could get a bonus to invasion strength, faster Craver immigration to newly-conquered worlds, and higher FIDS from Craver populations. 

I've got some ideas for the other factions, but probably shouldn't clutter up this post or this thread more than is necessary. 

Romeo wrote:

...the truly unique races are usually the most interesting to use.

+1 to that! I'd love for ES2 to have even greater faction variability than was in EL. Hopefully that'll be realized by the time the game is released.

I've been playing again a bit lately, but I don't feel compelled to return to the game, and I've thinking about what is missing that could give me such an incentive. Lately I've heard often a kind of complaint about the endless games as being "soulless" games. It sounds like a contrary opinion when Amplitude is mostly praised for their narrative driven design. This is my personal take into this apparent contradiction.

There is a definitively a chasm between the lore of the game and how it's apparent in the gameplay itself. The factions and universe have an interesting lore, completed by quests and other tidbits of infos, but the mechanics of the game itself don't lend them very well to add immersion. in my opinion. The Vodyani are perhaps the best example of what could be, whereas the other four have let me quite indifferent.

Fortunately, a big part of this malaise steams from what are teething issues in the EA process: things can could work fine with the required tinkering, and balancing, but the way I see it some other core design elements will be an obstacle no matter what without deep alterations. Let's review what I call the inadequacy between gameplay and lore:

Ideally, given the basic lore of a factions, the game would gently shape the player decisions into analyzing things and acting in a way fitting each factions (or perhaps in a variety of ways compatible with one) Think about the way it works in the recent Total War : Warhammer game : when playing the dwarfs or a chaotic horde faction, your basic strength, units, and campaign mechanics really do generate a specific, immersive experience : you may have to defend and tech up into remote mountains while turtling both in campaign and battle, or have to slip between the forces of developed nations, raiding and ambushing vulnerable targets, while you're slowly tainting and rotting the lands from the core when playing dwarfs or beastmen respectively. Those elements are not quest nor lore, they are game mechanics and decision offered to the player. This is what I feel is missing from the ES2 in it's current state, and may still be missing on release.

If we consider Sophons, UE, Lumeris and Cravers, their current traits are mainly bonus into varied aspect of their production and acquisition process: you get more science, dust, influence, or a bit and everything and military power. But while it encourages to focus on a given production, the current choices we are presented with as a player are still basically the same, both in terms of empire development and warfare. The only exception are the Vodyani, whose core Ark mechanic is so different that it deeply impacts the way you consider expansion, the suitable locations, and your attitude towards other factions (minors and majors)

Now as I said before, a big part of this steams from a lack of options or at least coherent options. Many techs still unlocks underwhelming system upgrades, such as the "get a +5 bonus unless you have a very specific planetary type" if you don't happen to have a swamp/forest/veld available, they don't offer much bang for you buck. Instead, the logical steps is mostly to get an larger/happier population, which is achieved in the same way for most of the factions. There have been many threads about the current tech pools (some by myself) and it's no use beating a dead horse. But still, a narrow path common to most factions doesn't lend itself for much immersive and "fun" gameplay. The two worst offending elements are, as far as I'm concerned the colonization/planet outputs and "basics" locked behind techs : you can't really skip many "core technologies" and while in theory you'd want to settle on very specific systems to get nice planets, we are in a kind of "beggars can't be choosers" situation in early game. If you happen to find planets that can be colonized by era I, there is no real reason to skip them. and... you can't do anything at all about all the other types 'till it's time.

If we simply take science, for instance, if you want more of it (and who doesn't) well, besides using the planetary exploitation and a couple basic improvements, that's it. I you happen to find nice cold planets, go for it too of course. (BTW, the whole science as planetary output, even if it's a mechanic existing since ES1 is weird when you think about it : cold planets are just sciencing things up ! anomalies I could understand, but well...)

In any case, in most of runs, I've hit a "production wall" whereas all the stuff that was relevant to a system was quickly done. Maybe because of some dust/influence buy up that sped things, up, but mostly because unless you start pumping ships there isn't much to do after the unique/wonder upgrades are done. Thus most systems ends up with similar makeup, with only planetary exploitation varying. And no, playing different races didn't alter profoundly my experience. A big part of your output is purely passive : (egg you native population does stuff ) It's entirely possible that by era III onwards it gets more varied and big decisions emerges, but I kinda like setting myself some direction in the early game too, before most systems are owned.

Now the core element that for me breaks the most the believability of the game is warfare. I doesn't need to be the core of the game of course, but whereas all factions have neatly distinctive spaceships, the way they are using them is essentially the same, in opposition of what exists in many scifi settings. This is partly an issue of EA current state, with each ship having similar stats and bonus, but even when this won't be the case anymore, I'm afraid, the core tenet of fighting in ES2 won't lend itself to something really fun and asymmetric. It's of course easier and kinda logical to have everyone use similar hull designs and weaponry and a convergence state of efficiency (think about modern weaponry ) but even if all factions have access to the same stuff, ought not to mean that they have to use them in the same way.

What are the two main warship designs? ships designed to kill other fleets, and ships design to support invasion. The former may be diverse, and you could in theory craft long range vessels, assault cruiser and support ships but realistically, one is going to a powerful fleet mix with a unique design objective: winning encounters that don't have real external parameters. Two fleet meet in neutral space ? One fleet ends up in a blockade? one fleet tries to raid a system ? This is currently treated in the same exact way. Now if you think about turn based 4X in a land settings, you'd have powerful defensive units, units designed to assault cities, other designed to thrive in forest/mountains, artillery, and other disruptive units. and when picking technologies and producing them you, the players, would clearly prepare for different scenarios of usage : deterrent, defensive, conquest, raiding... and... Different factions would clearly offer you incentive to adopt some of these strategies because of their different doctrines. We come full circle. In ES2, whatever faction you play, you'll end up using your army in the same way, with power tied to numbers and tech level.

In a ideal world, you'd have Cravers swarming blindly, ignoring losses that would be ultimately recycled to get their new lebensraum, fanatic/coerced UE masses fighting a war of attrition, reluctant Lumeris using guile and many many third party assets to prevail, Sophons gleefully sending/testing dangerous prototypes against their opposition (and not too keen to fight a losing battle)... but that would require currently non existing fight parameters. I may be proved wrong, but my theory is whatever you do about weapon/defense types and ship modular design, it won't settle to really distinctive playstyle if the fight context itself unique and neutral. Because even with different ship roles, the fleet usage on itself will stay the same. If we consider our real life navies, you'd hardly consider flattops, AA destroyers, attack/strategic submarines and cruise missile lobbers to be designed to perform the same strategic duties. This is possibly what is missing and could give use more flavor with different factions, because they would be more or less adepts at doing different things (and not let's say just having better beam/missiles/armor)

A very possible outcome could be of a balanced 4X game lending itself to interesting multiplayer for instance, but this is not the kind of experience everyone expect. Every part of the game is a kind of abstraction of course, but it can mean more... let's take the simple example of minor factions: technically you spend a cash load of influence to make them your buddies and part of the empire in one single turn. It is balanced maybe (after all you have to store that influence) but it hardly conveys the feeling behind said "influence".... this is what is meant when calling a game "soulless"

This may sound quite like a rant, because it ultimately is. There are many others elements that acts like little obstacles to a more immersive experience imho. such as anomalies/resources tied to planetary type (and that would drive decision making beyond just adapting fidsi output), a different way to cope with happiness/morale : influence is supposed to be part indoctrination in the UE case, but still you have to make them happy with the same levers as anyone else, and don't start me about the current state of Cravers... There is quite a lot of work behind making a usable and enjoyable game and I don't want to minimize this, but still this complaint has been coming back for the endless games so far, and I've tried to explain how there is some truth to it. The way it works, I feel adding quest and heroes content is a bit like the extra steps for the narration, but the gameplay itself and especially the decisions offered to the player are the core element that can make or break it.

What you're describing (player rankings, "ELO", and god forbid, the notion of pro gamer) are way out of scope here. We're designing and balancing (somewhat) around an immersive, compelling experience. League of Legends & CS:GO certainly aren't.

wilbefast wrote:

The comparison is not entirely fair given the TW:Warhammer has level-design and ES2 doesn't. You'd be surprised how much a hand-crafted start-location, with choke-points to defend or wide open expanses to escape across, contributes to the feel of a faction.

I believe they were more referring to the fact that every one of the core races in that game plays very distinct from one another. The undead are all about tanking in a spot and spreading corruption when invading (And also about fearing the Dwarves because you have zero ranged options). The Orks need to constantly spread out and fight - if you stop to rest, they'll destroy themselves. The Dwarves are kings of the slow, tanky advancement, and might need to fight someone they didn't want to in order to appease their grudges.  Chaos cannot ever build a city, they're forced to constantly "wing it", while being forced to fight to build their armies and tech. The Empire is boring.

In that manner, they're all extremely unique. While I positively adore the first Endless Space, many races could be played very similar; Trying that in TW:Warhammer is a one-way ticket to defeat.

We want ES2 to work as a competitive game, so it needs to be more or less fair. If we abandoned this rationale entirely there would be less need to balance the factions against each-other, so we'd be more free to push their asymmetry. Our player-base is not a monolith though: different people play for different reasons, and while we can't always please everyone we do need to make sure that nobody feels utterly abandoned by our design decisions.

Again, I suspect their point is that your singleplayer community will always want asymmetry, and your multiplayer community will want symmetry. They (And many more of us) are simply asking for singleplayer to be all it can be, as I'd bet the overwhelming majority of your playerbase never even touches a multiplayer match. Ashes of the Singularity had been pushing for months to show how good of a multiplayer game they are. As of December, 3% of the playerbase had even bothered to hit the multiplayer button (http://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/480685). That's for an RTS, which typically has more of a multiplayer community than 4X.

Long lead-up, but my point would be not to let yourself become beholden to multiplayer considerations - they're typically a small fraction of your community. If the choice comes between something unique and balance, the majority of us will be fine with balance being a little off.

Frogsquadron wrote:

What you're describing (player rankings, "ELO", and god forbid, the notion of pro gamer) are way out of scope here. We're designing and balancing (somewhat) around an immersive, compelling experience. League of Legends & CS:GO certainly aren't.

Thank god for that. Helps keep out the insufferable "l33t gamers" that accompany such a thing.

Mathyas wrote:
I disagree that the game should be balanced for noobs.  Being a noob is temporary, and the game should be balanced for when everyone is playing it well.  ... ... ...

My opinion is that that's a dangerous path to take. For starters, it shouldn't even be mutually exclusive. There's a once-popular game that took this philosophy to heart called Starcraft 2 (lower your pitchforks!). It was as hardcore and competitive as you could get for a strategy game, with a massive skill ceiling and steep learning curve that most (casual) players never breached. I remembered that in its early days, when the playerbase was much bigger, there was a lot more complaints and grief over the prevalence of cheesy strategies (cannon-rushes, timing all-ins, stealth/air rushes, proxy barracks, 6-pool etc.). These strategies were for the most part easily shut down by experienced/elite players because they knew what to look for, had the correct build orders and had the reaction speeds (the almighty APM!) to counter. 

But for the vast majority of players, especially casuals and newcomers, it made the game grossly unenjoyable. Every time they lose in a humiliating way, they feel cheated and demoralized, and it usually remained that way over multiple loss streaks until they dedicated a bit of time to reading up on basic strategies and build orders. As the game was designed from the ground-up to cater to pro-gaming, these concerns were never sufficiently addressed, and it showed from the declines in player and viewer interest, and ultimately resulting in smaller prize pools, pro-teams disbanding and popular streamers/youtube personalities ending their involvement. In short, the game got less popular.

Now as is custom, I have to present my Starcraft achievements to have any credence (or risk getting a barrage of "git gud scrub") so I say this as someone who made it to low Platinum in 1v1 and Diamond in all team categories playing as 'Random'.

Elite players will always be a minority, and catering to them exclusively can have costs. I don't personally believe that balance has to suffer when the game is designed to be user-friendly to newbs as long as it's done smartly. As such, I wholeheartedly support the current approach. Endless Space 1 was already a not-too-accessible game given the amount of knowledge needed to get started (I remember seeing all those big text-boxes during the tutorial and thinking that it was like reading a book).

Regarding if balance for noobs or elite players, just let me add: I always thought that difficulty levels are for this when playing single.

Look at Civ games: they have 7 (iirc) difficulty lvls at least, on the contrary if you look at same company XCOM reboot it has 4 difficulty lvls that to get worst are not well scaling: tow for I'm completely a noob, and two for "after 1000+ hours of play I finished my first campaign". This second has been repeatedly blamed for this. And players like (I consider myself and average player, not noob, but not capable of competing with pro-gamers) had to found lots of mods to tune difficulty in a lvl that is not boring or frustrating. To Amplitude: avoid the second case.

And about multiplayer, can't say nothing. I always play single since first days of o-game, travian and tactics arena. I'm sure balance is important here, but you always can suppress or limit some things when multiplayer button is clicked. And of course not sure how many people play in multiplayer, so as Kweel_Nakashyn said they should take some statistics on this and prioritise what majority of players do. to be honest I've never seen 4X as a good genre to multiplayer, but nothing against people that does.

Just chiming in to the Pro vs Noob balance discussion: You know why Evolve, as well as Evolve: Stage 2 failed? They tried to balance it towards the best players. It was extremely frustrating for everyone else and guess what: Both times they lost the majority of the playerbase since it was not enjoyable for them.

Though I guess that should not be a real problem for a turn-based space 4X. I dunno, but this game will not really have a competitive or even a strong MP scene at all. So they should focus on making a fun game that is not grossly unbalanced.

On another note: Overwatch did it pretty well: It's fun to play just for fun as well as it has an extremely big competitive scene. Even though they balance it rather for the professionals.

Speaking of hand-crafted start locations, why not use something like the Civ series' start biases? It was a default game option that changed the weights that determined what type of tiles and luxuries spawned near a selected country's starting location. These tiles and resources usually facilitated that particular country's playstyle and strengths, hence giving some unique flavor in an otherwise procedurally-generated world. In Endless Space, this might translate to more Veldt/Cold planets near Sophons, Temperate and Hot planets for Raians, and more specialized curiosities and certain luxuries.