Behemoths were introduced to make longer games more rewarding and to make tall defensive strategy with citadels a thing. At that time siege modules were insane and everyone used special sieging fleets instead of manpower supply modules. Supremacy was released alongside the balance patch that reworked ground battles and new preffered strat for taking huge protected systems became to raise manpower deployment level of your fleet with modules so that you can land thouthands of manpower in one killing blow. Citadels were meant as a counterplay to both sieging shenanigans with its unsiegable manpower and  to troop swarm shenanigans with free + 800mp and a lot more from extra techs. Also behemoths gave second wind to special nodes which you can mine resources from with the right modules. You can use them with +% fidsi modules to boost good systems or to build up new ones. You can use them for vision, but I prefer exploration ships for those purposes, if they have 3+ support modules. Stacking probe modules of 1 type increases total vision range, so having a scout as Horatio with 4 hyperium probes (or even 5 with the right tech from bottom tree) lets you see huge areas around those scout ships.

See, this is good stuff. This is understanding I wouldn't get from sifting through wikie and Youtube. I posit that human nteraction is an efficient way to convey data. :)

Manpower seems like a really muddled system that uses one term to cover multiple subsystems, and it seems like it's an area where the game would benefit from an in-game encyclopedia. Then again, I am really happy when strategy games include such concepts as a way to express practical limits in churning out units. LIke I said, the game suggests a lot of nuance, but taht is not serviced by a terse tooltip here and there.

Ons some of my leaders, I see skills that raise "deployment limit" and some that raise "capacity", and a skill that mentions both. I'm thinking the deployment iraise the potential amount that can be generated per turn (whatever limit that might be), and the capacity is the hard cap on how much can be generated. Whether these bonuses apply to systems for buildup purposes or on fleets to beef up invasion forces, I'm not so sure. 

Now, I'm sure how any of that relates to improving ground troops. I'm currently working under the supposition that I wasn't squinting enough to see a decimal point in one of the resources. I've actually given up on that now and have begun burning them on ship upgrades and improvements, it'll be a bit before I can try again. 

I'm also not sure how manpower ties into flee-size limits, if at all. 

Deployment limits are actual ground battle limits. You got maybe 1000 manpower on a fleet, but in one turn you can only deploy e.g. 400 of them and got 600 in reserve. Heros upgrading this limit can make ground battles faster by getting more men down.

The hard cap was right, but not for production. It can improve your empire hard cap on how much men you can "store".

If you improve your ground battle units it has a manpower cost symbolized by three white people next to each other.

Ships don t have to have full manpower, but they deal less dmg with less men and you need manpower to invade planets.

steveg700 wrote:

Manpower seems like a really muddled system that uses one term to cover multiple subsystems, and it seems like it's an area where the game would benefit from an in-game encyclopedia. Then again, I am really happy when strategy games include such concepts as a way to express practical limits in churning out units. LIke I said, the game suggests a lot of nuance, but taht is not serviced by a terse tooltip here and there.

Ons some of my leaders, I see skills that raise "deployment limit" and some that raise "capacity", and a skill that mentions both. I'm thinking the deployment iraise the potential amount that can be generated per turn (whatever limit that might be), and the capacity is the hard cap on how much can be generated. Whether that's on systems for recruitment purposes or for fleets to deploy in ground combat, I'm not so sure. 

Now, I'm sure how any of that relates to improving ground troops. I'm currently working under the supposition that I wasn't squinting enough to see a decimal point in one of the resources. I've actually given up on that now and have begun burning them on ship upgrades and improvements, it'll be a bit before I can try again. 

I'm also not sure how manpower ties into flee-size limits, if at all. 

Manpower in ES2 is used for forming system defenses (System Manpower), for forming ship crew (lets call it Ship Manpower ) and Empire Manpower stock or better say stored manpower -.

So this is your Empire Manpower stock. Manpower is generated mainly by this building which is a basic one for all new colonies:

So what it does is it converts 10% of your system growth into manpower, slightly crippling your food generation. When your Empire Manpower stock is full, you don't lose those 10% food. The rate of conversion can be further increased with several buildings. There are other ways of gaining manpower, but I won't go into details here.

All excessive manpower goes to your Empire Manpower stock. Manpower becomes excessive when your systems' defenses are full and all ships orbiting yours or allied systems are full. The first one you can check in the system screen like here:


You can check your fleet manpower here:

It is worth noting that every time your system defences suffer losses or you aquire new systems, those systems would automatically drain manpower from your Empire Manpower stock. There is no way of stopping that interaction. Refill rate can be increased by several means and is indicated like this -
Not to be confused with this one  which increases max cap of System Manpower for a given system.

Every ship has its max manpower which is determined by its design (manpower modules increase this amount), unlocked technologies and hull size:

Ships regenerate manpower from your Empire Manpower stock when they orbit allied or your own systems. It is also inevitable. Refill rate can be increased by some perks and traits.

Manpower Deployment Limit or MDL determines how much troops can participate in a single round of invasion. MDL can be increased with technologies and by using manpower modules on your ships and is used when conquering systems by force.

So if you invade a system while having four O2G Delivery Modules on your ships orbiting that system, you would use 100 more troops in a single round.


 MDL (DEF) increases it only if your system is being invaded.

I think I've covered the basics. Feel free to ask if you still have questions.

mamarider wrote:

Manpower in ES2 is used for forming system defenses (System Manpower), for forming ship crew (lets call it Ship Manpower ) and Empire Manpower stock or better say stored manpower -.

I think I've covered the basics. Feel free to ask if you still have questions.

Wow! IMHO - this should be released in to separated guide. This is the best explanation with essential visuals for the term "Manpower" in ES2 I ever met. 

Edit: 

I suppose the only thing missing here is "enrollment rate" term. which can be helpfull to know choosing some system development upgrades that can accelerate this value.

Evgenopolis wrote:

I suppose the only thing missing here is "enrollment rate" term. which can be helpfull to know choosing some system development upgrades that can accelerate this value.

I am not sure what that means myself. I heard it increases the amount of conscription you can get with Draft ground battle tactic. Never tested it myself though.

mamarider wrote:

Evgenopolis wrote:

I suppose the only thing missing here is "enrollment rate" term. which can be helpfull to know choosing some system development upgrades that can accelerate this value.

Let me echo the sentiment that you provided a great explanation

I am not sure what that means myself. I heard it increases the amount of conscription you can get with Draft ground battle tactic. Never tested it myself though.

Let me second the sentiment that the mini-guide was pretty awesome. It was very helpful to actually see where the indicators reside. Many guides speak at conceptual level, leaving the reader to determine how to put theory into practice. 

As for "enrollment", at https://endless-space-2.fandosm.com/wiki/Luxury_Resource  it says this regarding the Dark Glitter enrollment property:

"Enrollment Rate" is a strange and unique mechanic that got introduced in a later balance patch to make Dark Glitter more compelling. At the time of this writing, it exists on nothing else in the game. What it appears to do is to generate additional manpower "out of thin air" if your system is invaded - the closest thing this is similar to is the "Draft" defense strategy which converts a pop unit into manpower (this also stacks with "Enrollment Rate")."

I realize I'm late to the party and I sincerely apologize for it but I'd love to offer some help if I can, starting with your first posted questions:

1) Most basic thing: I know the game has tutorials, but even after all these years, there's no official reference akin to a Civopedia as far as I can tell. Not even a legend to look up all the tiny little symbols. Luxuries are represented by uniersally-wite little icons, and often there's not even a mouseover (like on the Population screen that's buried in the Senate Screen).[/quote] 

Regarding the luxuries and what they do, the easiest place to get that information that I've found is in the game located in the Economy window (F3 shortcut by default), which has a small section on the top right:

This will update as you discover new luxuries in the game and you can hover over each one to see its effect on system development. 

2) Enemy fleets seem to pop in and out of line of sight at will. I'm in a war with the Riftborn, and they had a fleet that I can't keep track of. They don't even have a star lane connecting to my empire, and I'm blockading their nearest system, but somehow they were able to get a fleet of ships on systems that would take me 20+ turns to get to if I were just relying of laneless free travel.

Travel without a starlane can occur quickly with two things: wormholes which will appear as swirly white lines between systems but only AFTER you research the relevent technology which is Autonomous Materials, located in the third tier of the Science and Exploration quadrant (lower quadrant); the other option is through use of a Seeker hero ( ) which has a skill located here which increases "free movement" which is movement off of a star lane, which makes traveling between systems without wormholes or a starlane much faster.

Travel between systems without a wormhole or starlane is accomplished by unlocking the Baryonic Shielding technology in the second tier of Science and Exploration. 

3) A battle pops up and the colors seem balanced. Fleets are the same size. The color wheel is about 50/50. Battles over, my fleet has been wiped out summarily. If they had vastly superior tech, seems like the color wheel wouldn't not given me those odds.

 The combat system in ES2 takes a lot to figure out and can be difficult to really piece together. Just trying to explain this answer alone could take an entire guide. To be as succinct as I can while hopefully still answering your question: There are a large number of variables that go into combat: weapon types and ranges, defense types, tactics chosen by each party, flotilla set up (the three 'lanes' in each combat) and how all of those interact together. The best advice I can offer to newer players is to always check the "advanced" window option at the bottom to bring up a more detailed overview of how the fight will look, choose a tactics card that emphasizes your weapon of choice (some good basics are 'turtle' if you're using projectiles, 'power to shields' for missiles and beams and 'take trophies' for lasers. This sets each weapon type at its 'optimal' range. I would be happy to go into much more detail about the combat system with you over a Discord conversation if you want. 

4) Okay, this one really blows my mind and I definitely don't get how this is fun. Once a fleet jumps into a star lane, it's commited, If a stronger fleet pops up at the desitnation, then you're on a cattle chute to death. If an enemy pops up behind you, you can't reverse. This isn't a problem itself, but it takes multiple turns to travel a lane, and of course it's a problem when incoming enemies are jsut popping in and out of detection. Slow rate of movement and sudden appearance/disappearance of enemies makes for no ability to react, much less plan. If there are techs to mitigate either speed or detection ranges, I've managed to miss them.

The vision range of your fleets is mostly affected by hero skills (the Seeker is again best at this with the same skill that increases your free movement, it also increases your 'vision range) as well as through probes. More advanced probes (those made from Hyperium (cream colored) and Titanium (blue colored) strategic resources have larger vision ranges which increases the detection range of your ships. 

Faster movement is largely accomplished through hero skills and which engines you put on your ships. There are a few sentate laws (mostly in the Scientists policies) that also affect movement. 

5) There seems to be no bread-and-butter means of producing influence. And by "breat-and-butter" I mean something that can replicated and scaled, not relying on happenstance like recruiting heroes with certain skills or getting a boost from exploration. I eventually unlocked the National Museum, but that's a levle 3 tech and that requires happy citizens. The closest thing I've found is specializing planets in influence.

Influence is largely generated by unique planets (planets with a white ring outside the normal white dot icon on the star map), hero skills (which as you said can be a matter of getting the right heroes) and some technologies which are located in the 'Empire Development' tree (left quadrant) in the lower half of that tree. Other options involve using some luxury resources in your system development (Eden Incense which looks like a lotus flower icon). Influence is hard to generate by design because it is arguably the most powerful resource in the game. 

6) I signed a research agreement, which apparently siphons influence from the empire and converts into some amount of science. I guess it's per citizen, so my 150 pops basically wound up sucking me dry in a couple turns. I realize the agreement is insanely impossible to sustain, so i want to cancel, but to do that I have to actually have influence to spend. Wha....?

Yeah...about that. Generally speaking any kind of trade or science agreement is going to bleed you dry. They will automatically cancel when you can't sustain them anymore but my best advice is to simply avoid them except in very specific scenarios where you can afford to sustain them. 

7) Population units die off without providing information as to why they're dying, other than "affinity". If I'm able to colonize a planet, I tend to think it's actually possible to habitate it. If a species has an affinity for a specific climate, that's fine, but there's no explanation of what the favored climes are. Pretty annoying when you get a minor race that I would like to see propigate.

The most common reason for population death is a lack of food in that system. This can occur because you're taking a new colony and this system is feeding the new colony (this will be denoted  in two places, the first is in the system you're building a colony in (picture on the left), while the second is in the system that is feeding the colony (picture on the right):

The food icon with the arrow in the right picure tells you that this colony is feeding another colony. This actually takes a SUBSTANTIAL amount of food from your colony and can quickly lead to population death if you don't watch it. 

The 'affinity' you're seeing is actually a set of bonuses you get for having a certain amount of each type of population in your Empire which is found on the Senate screen (F2 Shortcut by default) in the lower right corner. If you select the 'population details' button at the bottom, it'll bring up a window showing you what bonuses you get for having certain numbers of each race in your empire, usual benchmarks are 10, 20 and 50 (this is found in the upper right of that window). 

I realize this is A LOT of information to take in, I tried to be concise, sorry. I'd be happy to help further if I can. 

Good luck and welcome to the community!