UPDATE! I seem to have found a solution that gets the Hall of Fame to work, and I didn't have to delete any of my save files! See the next post.

I’ve been playing Endless Space 2 from when it launched with 1.0 on 18^th May 2017, and since the Empire Chronicles/Hall of Fame was introduced with Galactic Statecraft patch 1.1.0 on 16^th November 2017, my Hall of Fame has always remained blank.

I realise threads have been made about this issue in the past, and people seem to think the issue is with save files from before November 2017, but I’m just trying to get a clear solution I can understand, where I have to delete as little as possible.

What I’m trying to achieve: I’d love it for all my previous finished games to suddenly appear in Empire Chronicles. But does the fix for this issue mean that I can only create new entries, not access the old ones?

I’ve kept save files of every ES2 game I’ve played. For each game I store three save files: one I make at the very beginning of the game (e.g. Sophons 1 (Start)); one that is my active file that I save over while progressing (e.g. Sophons 1a); and a final save from when I win the game, quit to the victory screen, then reload the last autosave and make a victory save (e.g. Sophons 1 (Victory)). All my saves are attached to the Steam Cloud.

I like being able to see all these saves stored in game when I click “Load Game”, so want to delete as few as possible to be able to get Empire Chronicles to work. (I realise though, now with patch 1.4.21, I can’t ever load these games.)

So people say I need to delete the save files from before November 2017 to get Empire Chronicles to work, but my confusion is about the other files stored in my computer attached to these in-game save files. There seems to be two relevant folders:

Documents>Endless Space 2>Save Files>Cloud

and

Documents>Endless Space 2>End Game Summaries

The files in “Save Files>Cloud” go all the way back to 18/5/2017, but I noticed something… Until July 2017, the save files are stored as zip folders, then after that they are stored as “.sav” files. I imagine this must be something to do with an issue with the game at that time where players couldn’t load their saves at all.

The files in “End Game Summaries” only go back as 18/8/2017, which is still from before Galactic Statecraft was released, but I’m guessing there’s no way to have any Hall of Fame entry from before this date.

So what do I need to delete? I’m guessing that in-game I have to delete all the files from before November 2017, and then those should also be automatically deleted from “Save Files>Cloud”. Do I also need to go and delete the files in “End Game Summaries” from before that date? Will that then make all my other end game summaries appear in Empire Chronicles? Or will it only mean that new entries will appear from now on?

Or do I instead have to delete ALL of my in-game saves? Or perhaps the entire “End Game Summaries” folder?

I’m sorry to write so much about such an issue. I’m just trying to clearly understand what’s going on, and find a solution that works for me.

Hallelujah! I've gotten the Hall of Fame to start working (apart from maybe a small display bug) and I didn't have to delete my save files!

Solution:

I looked at the temporary diagnostics files the game saves in the "Temporary Files" folder. There was a recent game session where I booted up the game, tried to look at Hall of Fame which failed to load, then when I quit the game it crashed and I had to restart my computer. When I looked at the corresponding diagnostics file, there was an error section that caught my eye:

"Can't deserialize element : element EndGameSummary_#20170818_@232434 was found instead of expected EndGameSnapshot."

I found that file with the same name in the "End Game Summaries" folder and deleted it. (It was in fact the oldest one the game had stored.) Now when I open the Hall of Fame it (slowly) loads all my end game summaries! Even ones from before November 2017!

I think what may have been causing the issue for me was that this oldest summary file that I had to delete was dated only about ten minutes before the next oldest, so perhaps the two were clashing. I can't remember, but maybe it was a game I completed with a victory condition, then continued playing and activated a second victory condition.

However, the Hall of Fame does have a small display bug when I look at an entry's details. I'll report this in the Bug Reports forum, but I wonder if it's maybe something everyone experiences and not just me.