Hello Spacers!

I am not new to the 4X genre but not so good either to think of me as a seasoned player. I think I am between the noob and novice level. I have played around 19 hours of the game and I am still learning. But there are many areas I need to be good in. Right now I am kind of lost and need to regroup and analyze my mistakes. The Endless space 2 tutorial (pdf) is right in front of me but I feel like it does not answer my questions. So I have some questions I hope to get answer for here.

1. The technology tree feels very complicated and I just dont know what to research. What should I give top priority? Do I have to research everything or can I choose a specific direction (like Empire development only). 

2. How fast should I colonize? 

3. How should I develop planets? Like should there be the same buildings everywhere? 

mamarider wrote:

Hello there!

1. Like in real life, you wouldn't usually be able to develop in one direction only. There are some development patterns that you can follow:

- Early Colonization -> Go for Science And Exploration Techs for colonization technologies, but there are also few in other quadrants. So plan it according to planets you have around, but prioritize colonizing planets with temperate/fertile tags.

- Early Stabilization -> There are general buildings that are core in 90% of the games. Those being: Xeno-industrial Infrastracture, Public-Private Partnerships, Sustainable Farms and Intensive Cultivation Logisttics. That is usually all you need from first 2 eras to make your colonies work. 

- Expansion past colonization cap -> At first look into tier 3 Science And Exploration and Economy and Trade if you are not so sure in your science/production. It is usually good to backup your further expansion in advace with more powerful research/production buildings. The techs that can help almost always are Neural Robotics and Graviton Research. After you should look into Empire Development and Economy and Trade quadrants mostly. The first one is generally for technologies that increase colonization cap, but you can also grab here some approval/influence/military ones if you need them. This quadrant is really flexible. You develop here until you can research Cultural Invertics, which allows you to build Autonomous Administration, an improvement that allows you with a bit of work to expand infinately without penalty (on paper). But you can't do it without having level 4 systems, so you need to research in the right quadrant at the same time as well, to unlock system development upgrades.

- Going at war -> Science And Exploration Techs into Military Techs (to unlock better modules) with a slight backup of Economy and Trade techs to maintain upkeep.

- Obtaining Resources -> If you follow the previous steps you may notice that some buildings and especially system upgrades cost resources. You can reveal resource deposits by exploring curiosities. And those are revealed depending on your progress in Science and Exploration qudrant. So plan ahead and invest a bit here from time to time.

2. You should colonize as fast as possible, if a place is decent. BUT. Note that outposts drain food from your systems. So try to follow the rule '1 system - 1 outpost', unless you have some food bump early on, like a Tree Of Worlds anomaly. Then you might be able to 'feed' 2 outpost from 1 system. I will go into deeper mechanics now but sometimes or as some factions you can get 'separated' colonies - the ones in other constellations or just in outer space. The easiest example will be a Traitors Reach reward from the first UE quest. Those will not drain food from your systems unless you have Baryonic Shielding technology researched, because there will be no path for transport ships to follow. You can use this 'trick' to grow 2 outposts at once. Also try to build new colonization ships in advance to settle right on time when your other colonizations end. 

3. You should look for buildings that benefit from the planets' tag. AI Labor improvement benefits from hot and sterile planets, while Punctuated Evolution Foundation benefits from cold and fertile. You can plan on benefiting from anomalies too, if you have many - some improvemnts improve yields on anomalous planets.

Thank you a lot!