Agreed with everyone. One of the issues making Endless techs so lucrative is that they're not really an opportunity cost, on the contrary researching them provides instant empire wide bonuses. Compare that to most regular last tier techs that require you to spend time and resources (other than science) in order to be able to utilize them at all, for example new system improvements and ship modules. Because of that, even the slightly increased research cost of Endless techs in comparison to normal techs doesn't really alleviate the issue.

I also like the idea of one additional tech tier for each quadrant, with nothing but the victory techs in them. That way regular last tier techs would see more use, and it would probably also result in overall longer matches, because at least from my experience with the current balance is that Science victory is the fastest non-militaristic victory to achieve, even if you're not playing a Science focused faction.

Aitarus wrote:

There's no need to even extend the tech gui for it, you can just make the Endless techs exist in a hidden Era 6 by having them require four Era 5 techs per quadrant to unlock. This is exactly what I will be doing when I upload my latest update for Later Victories, I just need to test the cost.

Didn't tried your mod, butas yoiu propose this techs can be left were they're and remain greyed out until you research enough T5 techs.

I think the problem is that the AI doesn't go for science / economy / wonder victory, or if you don't have the sophons as a competitor then you already know you can go for a science victory in the late game assuming you survive militarily. The reason why theres difficulty levels is precisely because the AI can't think like humans. FOr me strategy games has always been about conquest, and most strategy games are focused on building your military first and then negotiate. The better the military, better chance of wining in any other victory conditions. Science / economy / wonder are just a late game race to save humiliation from defeat by conquest or supremacy victory. 

yeah this is definitely a problem. it was already a problem in EL, and I expected it to be better now, but in ES2 it's even worse.

economic victory is similarly too easy compared to the other kinds of victory.

the non-military victories should be comparatively difficult to the military ones, if not even harder since they can be completed at peace time. conquest and supremacy are no small task, and may be completely unobtainable to a weaker empire. the same should be true of the non-military victories. but instead, not even necessarily intending to focus on economics or science you will work your way there without even trying.

I like the idea that the endless techs should be in a 6th era. they should also be something like 2-4x as expensive, or maybe split apart into 2 or 3 weaker ones per quadrant, with each having the same price as the current ones, (so that you aren't getting nothing for your effort during all that time). but the idea should be that you have to divert a lot of science into the victory, and that if you weren't planning to go for science victory, you might not want to divert your science to it.

and then for economic victory, the same way you have to choose whether to divert science to the science victory, or production to the wonder victory, you should have to choose whether to divert dust to the economic victory. if you choose to try to win an economic victory, then you should have to spend/invest mega-amounts of dust into something. not just generate as much money as you can, which is what any empire already does, but actively divert money into the victory.

and then... that reminds me of a related problem, which is that as far as I know, (I suppose this is just a guess) the AI does not actively attempt to win the game. the AI *plays* the game, but is (I think) ignorant of the victories and does not actually make any decisions towards pursuing one over the other. (they do not attempt to research the endless techs in order to win the game, for example, they just may or may not happen to research them.) so, if that is the case, I'm not sure how that would factor in to having an economic victory that you had to actively pursue.

Glad to hear that Aitarus, looking forward to it.

It seems like Science is the new Economic victory. It used to be that you'd stumble into an Economic victory by accident due to ridiculous Trade Company scaling, especially since there wasn't (and really still isn't) an opportunity cost to spending Dust elsewhere than on more Freighters. Now with Trade Routes greatly weakened, it's Science victory because once again, there's no real opportunity cost as each Victory tech is there for the taking anyway. 

Science victory assumes only Science players will reach the outer ring, yet many strategies assume non-Science players will do so too- case in point, if Military is in one quadrant, and Tier 4 system development is in the end of a second quadrant, and Autonomous Administration is in the fourth layer of a third quadrant, and you need to dig into the fourth quadrant to get the Science necessary to complete those other three, then aren't Military empires clearly expected to be about as scientifically savvy as the Science empires? Economic victory is supposed to require international trade, but Alliances and the best Trade Route techs are in opposite quadrants. Etc. etc.

There's no need to even extend the tech gui for it, you can just make the Endless techs exist in a hidden Era 6 by having them require four Era 5 techs per quadrant to unlock. This is exactly what I will be doing when I upload my latest update for Later Victories, I just need to test the cost.

So I was wondering, the games I play usually end up not really utilizing much of the outer ring technologies. Once I have the science boom up and running, I often just don't need anymore of the rest, and just research the 4 victory techs. 

In my last game I even refrained from doing it, just because I didn't want the game to end so cheaply, when there was still like more than half of the outer circle tech available for research.

Is it just my playstyle, or could the science techs need some kind of gating mechanic to make the last-stage tech more mandatory to research? Or at least some more of it.

As everyone has said, the Endless tech does feel out of place with the other tech there. Most of my victories has been through tech, even for factions like Vodyani and Unfallen that doesn't specialize in it, it just feels too easy and there doesn't seem much point researching the others in that stage. It doesn't help the Endless tech had the turns it takes to research them nerfed sometime ago if I recall, which I think was unnecessary.

I like the idea of adding a 6th stage, even if that's the Endless tech only, more than buffing how many turns it takes to research them. It reminds me more of Endless Legend where the last techs were clumped together at the very end. That way researching stage 5 tech feels more impactful and you'll have to research them for the Endless tech which makes it more fun. I barely remember what the 5th stage tech are but I do remember some are quite interesting and I would love to try out without disabling science victory.

That's something a had noticed as well. I like the idea of gating the Endless Techs. I guess if we were required to first research a number of the T5 techs in an according quadrant before the Endless Tech is unlocked and researchable, there would be much more incentive to get those. And even a Science Victory rush would not result in completely ignoring the final ring (kind of).

Similar feelings here.

IMO winning techs should be moved to its own 6th stage, granted for free once you completa a whole quadrant (making you research almost everything to win a science victory) or some other way that makes interesting not to rush them for a sci victory once you reach stage 5 in sci quadrant and get the victory tech that reduces a lot your research costs to quickly get the other 3.

Actually I'm not much of researching stage 5 techs if I'm going for a sci victory.

I've noticed this in my run as well. I was going for a conquest victory and had to deliberately avoid the last Endless tech to prevent a science victory. Maybe adding a 6th tier consisting of only the Endless tech for each tree and making it unlockable through researching a couple of Tier 5 techs would make it better.

If I'm winning comfortably, I often grab a few techs off the final ring anyway, like the food to industry one, or planet killers, then I build up a massive fleet and take my revenge on whatever faction has been annoying me throughout the game, while I'm researching the Endless techs.
Or sometimes, I'm going for a specific victory type like economy or conquest and deliberately avoid the Endless techs, but get the things off the top ring related to that. 

I imagine they have more uses if science victory isn't enabled. But yeah, they seem more hypothetical in their use as opposed to practical.

I have this experience as well.  Late tech scaling in ES2 seems... not good.  Perhaps even bad.  There's a massive amount of waste in that outer ring since you don't really have any excuse not to just grab a tech victory unless you're hyper siloed into one tree or something.  Even then though I haven't found almost any of them useful since researching and using them kinda takes you further away from victory.  The one I most recently tried to employ was the planet cracker tech, which was not only prohibitive to research, but turned out to be useless in practice as well.