Hullo!



So I've slowly been going through each of the races. It's hard to compare their relative merits seeing as I keep on raising the difficulty, so it's hard to know how much of the pain comes from tougher settings, or a tougher race to play with.



In any case, one conclusion I've come to is that my strategy doesn't really change that much. It almost always pays to be aggressive pretty early on. No amount of extra research / building compensates for the huge gains of taking over an empire. Even the issues with approval can be surmounted with enough systems. The times I've gone for a wonder or scientific victory, I've found myself requiring more systems and it turns into domination again.



This is a bit of a pity because it's fun to have totally different ways to play the game – like winning Civ with a culture victory, sitting on just three cities and making them awesome. That kind of thing doesn't seem particularly viable in Endless Space. So here's my suggestion.



A very important factor is approval – high approval means you can have higher tax, which means more dust for buildings etc. Well why not have species react to what you are doing by changing the approval accordingly? The amoebas kind of have this – they're happy when you make alliances, but not by very much. Shouldn't the sophons be delighted each time a new discovery is made, and dismissive of economic white elephants? Shouldn't the sowers be pleased with each well-built construction? And, obviously, the cravers should laugh in glee at each defeated foe (though as I said earlier, the game already benefits aggression).



Maybe that way you could achieve a scientific victory without dominating half the map – as it is, I can't generate enough science with the systems I have, so as the sophons I'll just research lots of military gear then attack, and once I have a degree of domination, I can sit back and go for the science victory, but what's the point? Now that I've got this awesome fleet with advanced weaponry, I might as well just continue attacking, right?



Well let me know what you think...

I highly agree the game would be more replayable if there were more racial diversity. There are some "knobs" to adjust this for modding. Here is an older post of mine with some ideas:



/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11946-suggestion-improving-replayability-with-better-racial-techs



I think there are three reasonable ways to win the game, based on victory types. Once you choose the victory type, you can choose one of several races with the best advantages for that style. Military victory (any race except amoeba), Diplomatic victory (amoeba or pilgrim), scientific victory (sophon). It is possible that scientific victory may be easier with amoeba/pilgrim to get science by trade; we may get interesting results from this thread:



/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9465-n-turn-challenge-fastest-science-win



I hope that the dev team will add enough hooks, that modders can take the ball the rest of the way and add the diversity needed to make playing each race feel really different.

Renamed the title.