Hi there,



This is my first post, and I'm assuming this is the appropriate area to post to. Apologies if it isn't.



Anyway I've been playing this over the last 3 days and whilst there's some fun to be had in the initial first few turns it's becomes a little monotonous at around the 25 turn mark, and by 50 the sense of urgency and excitement is gone and feel more like a grind than fun.



I can't exactly put my finger on it but it appears to be related to insufficient interesting decisions / choices being available in the first 50 turns. Not sure what might spice up the play, but for me having a lot more events (triggered based on research selection and upgrades to planet and the building of fleets, etc) would help improve the experience / fun-factor.

What settings are you using: map size, number of empires, difficulty? Have you contacted any of the enemy AI lately? If not you should at least continue till you meet all of them. It takes me about half an hour to play 25 turns, and the game starts getting much more interesting after the first hour.

I have to agree with the OP - the very very early game is a bit dull in comparison to other titles. Personally I think it has a lot to do with the delay between start and being able to make an interesting decision. As examples - the slow early tech growth, the time you have to wait to get the money to buy a hero, and the low initial productivity making any improvements 10+ turns unless you build the first industrial improvement right off the bat. Scouting is not overly important in comparison to other titles dues to a lack of "goodie huts", the long time before you are ready for another world and the rather steep price of an extra scout or colony ships.



Some possible changes that might improve this:

Starting off with a small treasury (like 10) so the hero comes much sooner.

Increasing the capitol's initial production and tech

Starting with an extra ship - another scout or a defensive vessel

increasing the homeworld's starting population



All of these would provide more to do in the very beginning of the game while you wait for things to spin up but really are not going to have a huge impact later in the game - at most an extra turn's worth of compounding acceleration on your empire's development if that.

Uhm.. it takes 2 turns to get the hero.. just saying. It takes 3 turns with the sophons to research a lvl 1 tech and on most locations 4 with everybody else (5 from the beginning but usually you can manage to shave off one turn of that) right from the start. In the first turns there is so much to do if you do it right (scouting, colonizing (even too much of that), managing the population of your planets,... )

I think there is plenty to do...

And if many of those events would be added they should definitely be optional because I don't like these luck based things when I try to get a good multiplayer game going

Is it possible you have left your system at its default tax rate? Then your system is not growing much and you see these "long build times". I highly recommend to take an hour and try the 30-turn challenge. If you wind up with 30 population, then you are doing everything right. If you wind up with 20 pop, as I did in my first try, then there are some improvements you might make in your early gameplay. Growing faster lets you get to interesting decisions more quickly.



/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/8097-30-turn-challenge-help-me-learn

Thanks for the advice, but I'm not fishing for tips. OP posted an opinion which I share. Basing design decisions off optimal situations like how fast the top tech race can research or how to best utilize the still unbalanced tax system doesn't solve underlying problems. As it stands right now the first thing the player should do is set the tax bar to 10% and pretty much never ever touch it again unless all their planets are full.



Each incremental new player shouldn't need to use an optimized build order and configurations to get things rolling.

@OthobRithol: That doesn't make sense (apart from not using something you think is broken and should be fixed.. that makes sense)

Even now players dont need to use "optimized" strategies and can still beat an AI set on hard.If you don't want to manage your colonies in the beginning to get the best result.. use a lower difficulty or press "End turn" quicker.

If the changes you propagate are made the better strategies would get even quicker and the game would get insanely easy.

Baseing design decision on "I want to do whatever I want at start and still get off quickly" doesn't seem right either

All I'm saying is that the game starts slow in the very beginning and a few minor tweaks could make the opening a lot more enjoyable to more players without crushing mid to late game balance. You're reading far too much into my comments and blowing it out of proportion. Suggesting an extra scout or 10 dust is going to ruin the game is pure theatrics. The fact that we both think the current game is too easy is actually totally irrelevant to this topic. That's a far more complex issue and nothing I have suggested here exacerbates that to any relevant level. Nothing on turn 30 or 60 is going to be tremendously thrown out of whack if each empire started with 2 scouts, enough dust to buy a hero and each colonial base had +4 Food, +4 Industry and +4 Science (currently +2 food and industry) - and that is the extreme example of what I suggested.

A little dust won't matter much .. you are right.. I thought you wanted all of these suggestions.

And if all of them are implemented.. then I disagree with you.. I think it would throw a lot of things out of wack.. not the ship, or the dust.. but the increase free production and science and the more in population. Because for example for the sophons: their +research (which is percentage based) would apply to all of this.

Furthermore Planet exploits only cost 40 production no matter the tech level and are researched very quickly in the beginning.

So the amount of people you have at start has a huge influence on production/food at start and due to the earlier administrator and the more in food and the percentage based buffs of some buildings or faction boni and the per colonist based boni of planetary exploits or system improvements...

Edit: all of this would lead to a faster colonyship, that leads to even more growth, production and science...

.. these little things add up and make a fast game even faster



In my opinion ES is one of the fastest 4X games I have every played. In the Civ series or the MoO series things develop a lot slower.



Edit2: You thought all of your changes would only speed up things a little. I started a game with the sophons, added 1 pop at start and 2 food and 2 production and did the math:

In the first turn I can produce ~25 research instead of 18 which will give me a first tier tech one round earlier.. this tech most likely will be soil xenobiology.. which add +2 to food production/pop via alien grafting and another 1 with the farms

I will have ~17 production instead of 12 which will give me alien grafting after 3 rounds instead of 4

and finally I could get a food surplus of ~18 instead of 11.. which leads to faster growth which will be really big factor in all of this.

So lets see after 3 rounds every of my little settlers will produce 7 food and 2 will be produced by the colonial base .. or if you want to increase this too 4 will be produced by my colonial base.

After 4 rounds my planet will grow the first time (instead of the 6 rounds as normal)..

So after 4 rounds I would have had 5 pops and a base production of

29 food surplus

10 production

10 research

20 dust

(there are no boni applied so far apart from the alien grafting).. and there would be a lot of those

instead of 3 pops with

17 food

6 prod

6 research

10 dust

(actually I was lucky and had dustwater on my planet which would've kicked in in round 5 ot 6 and would've speeded up everything even more)

Every change you make at start to speed things up will alter things a lot later