With the release of Disharmony, there has been many changes to ES, and many things are difficult to understand. There are some other guides that you can find with a google search, but not made for the new mechanics in Disharmony. This guide is meant to help players develop better decision making skills in ES, but also to highlight and inform of the changes made in disharmony.



ES has many things that aren't explained, but are quite tractable once you understand what the game is doing.



So this is a guide meant to help new (and maybe old) players understand just what in the *bleep* is happening on their screen, what it means, and how they should react to get better results. More importantly, why you should do things so that you can apply that knowledge to other scenarios as the game progresses. This guide is meant to explain things so that you can improve your gameplay and optimize your decisions. Even if you think you know your way around ES fairly well, you still might find some nugget of knowledge that you didn't know that will help you make a stronger empire.



This guide assumes you already know the gist of how to play, and want to play better, so that you don't die to the first AI that comes to kill you. If you aren't to the point yet where you want to improve your gameplay, and just want to learn the basics of this crazy game, try this more basic beginner's guide. Keep in mind that this guide is outdated, and a number of things are different in Disharmony.

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/33-strategy-guides/thread/14067-tutorial-for-beginners



For those that don't know, there is an official ES manual, recently updated for Disharmony, but it appear some of the info is still out of date.

Manual link





Your faction:

To start off, most players will pick a default faction. Any of them work "fine" but some are certainly better than others. To learn the game, I recommend using the United Empire or the Sophon faction, since these have very few tricky mechanics and allow you to learn how the basics of the game work. Automatons and Pilgrims are also ok choices, but the bonuses they get are much harder to take advantage of. Avoid the Harmony and hissho factions while you are learning the game.



Once you have a grasp of the mechanics, you can make your own customized faction that will perform much better than any default faction ever could.





Growing your empire

Constant growth is essential to playing ES well. If you aren't growing, quickly, you're probably losing.

Proper growth means several things. It means taking new territory. It means making more babies and increasing total population, and most importantly FIDS (Food, Industry, Dust, Science).

It also means increasing all these things in a balanced way. If you are getting tons of industry and food, but are falling far behind in science, then you're industry will go to waste, since you have no new technologies to build!



9 times out of 10, you should make food your priority. Food gives you more population, and more population gives you more of everything. When you colonize a system, chances are the first thing you should build is the food exploit. If you aren't sure, do it anyway. Unless there is a very compelling reason not to (for example, a tree of worlds +20 food) the food exploit is most likely your best option. Administrators, even after being nerfed significantly in Disharmony, are still very strong for quickly bringing up the population of a system.



Know your food!

Food works like this: Each population consumes 2 food. Any food remaining counts as the food "surplus". This surplus is what makes your population grow. If you mouse over the little clock next to the system population, it will show you a growth rate, and number of turns until a new pop will be born. As systems increase in size, the amount of food surplus required increases. So a low pop system actually grows faster. Check out the wiki article: http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Food



Now, in Disharmony, there is a new mechanic where population growth STOPS when you are building a colony ship. Colony ships take a lot of industry in the early game, so when you start it, expect to wait 4 or more turns before you see any more growth. When you start building a colony ship, try to make sure you aren't stiffling growth the turn before the planet would populate. It's pretty bad to have to wait 5 turns to grow that extra pop when you could have just waited a turn before you started. Also, because of this growth stop, it is usually better to build colony ships on systems that are at or close to being full.



T1 planets (Terran, Jungles, Oceans) are not only easiest to colonize, but offer the largest food production. Also note they get the biggest bonus from the food exploit. So a T1 planet actually gets 3 more food per pop than a T2 planet (arid, tundra). That said, sometimes a T2 planet might actually give better FIDS due to an anomaly or a luxury resource (hydromial is really really good!!!)





A New Frontier



So you're a new race with a small population ready to explore, expand, exploit, and explode things. So how do you do that the quickest, most effective way? Unless you are the amoeba and have the map revealed, you will have to scout. Usually your starting scout more than enough if you move it intelligently, but in a larger galaxy a 2nd or 3rd can help if you have extra industry. Don't use the "explore galaxy" button. It is pretty bad and you can have a much more optimal scouting pattern by moving it manually.



Obviously you want to find the best system closest to your home world. Note that White suns have the best chances of having good, easily colonizeable planets. Followed by yellow and then blue stars. If you have a choice, check out these stars first to increase your chances.

http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Planet_probabilities



Try to scout all the planets adjacent or nearby your home system first. Don't let your scout get too far from home until you have explored all systems close by your home. There might be a really good jungle planet sitting right next to your home system that you missed if you don't explore it. Scout in a circular pattern around your home as much as possible.



Remember that the Arctic colonization tech also gives your ships +2 movement. This might mean your colony ships get to where they are going faster, even if you don't need the arctic colonization. You can also put an engine on your colony ship in the ship builder menu, but keep in mind this increases the industry cost by a good chunk, so it might not be worth it.



What techs do I get? There are so many!

The tech tree can be very daunting. Choosing a tech to research is a choice, but there is usually a correct, optimal choice, and an incorrect, sub-optimal choice. Don't worry if you make the wrong choice sometimes, that's unavoidable. The more you understand the other aspects of the game, the better you will become at picking what techs to research. Before you start research, ask yourself "Do I really need this?". That is also good advice when you are at a shopping mall.



"Is there something else I could spend my research on that is worth more?"

"Is the benefit of this thing I am researching greater or smaller than something else that I could be researching instead?"

It's opportunity cost.



The key is to research things that you need for your empire immediately. If there is a really nice tundra planet that you found, be sure you are getting tundra tech. If there isn't, don't waste time on it until you need it If you have idle systems, get a new system improvement. If you don't have very high industry, don't waste research on an upgrade you can't even build.



Some upgrades are just bad, and you probably don't need to research them until you want something past them. You probably don't need pev-scale accelerators. Why? What benefit does it give? It has an improved science exploit and a better engine. How many of your planets have a science exploit? how much more would they get if you researched this? Is that worth it? Do you really need a better engine? Are you even building any ships that would use it? how much is that extra 1 movement really worth?



This is just an example, but you can do this for any tech. Ask yourself how much benefit would you really get by researching this stupid thing. You might find more often than not that you really don't need that right now.



"Can I build this upgrade on many of my systems? "

"How many new FIDS will this give me?"

"Is there any part of my empire that is falling behind the others? Approval? Industry? Military?"

"What else could I research instead that will be more useful right now?"



Approval: It is better to be loved than feared.



A happy worker is a productive worker. And they won't kill you. That's a plus too.



Approval and disapproval come from many places. If you have enough, you get a bonus, if you don't have enough, you get a malus. Pretty simple stuff, right? There are however some important mechanics that you need to fully understand to work with the approval system well.



Refer to the wiki article: http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Approval



1) Happy, ecstatic, fervent. If you have enough approval, your system is happy! Being happy give a 10% boost to food and industry (note that in vanilla, this used to give 10% science too). If they are really happy, you get 20% more food and industry. Fervent refers to empire wide approval, found next to the tax bar. In vanilla, being fervent would give an additional 10% to food, industry, and science to all systems. But in Disharmony, fervent only boosts your science. This means that in vanilla, if all your systems were very happy, you would get a whopping 30% boost to FIS. That's a lot, but in Disharmony, it is only 20% FI and 10% S. This means that approval is actually much less important in Disharmony than in vanilla. Going in the red is also less painful, since you only get -50% FIS instead of -100% from being on strike. Yes, somehow citizens will still produce 50% food and industry when they are in a rebellious strike. Go figure. Point is, while it is not as important as in vanilla, it is still critical that you understand how it works and the bonuses it offers.

Here is a thread to illustrate the change: link



2) Tax rate. Increasing taxes makes people mad, but it also gives you more money. Duh. Having an optimal tax rate can be very critical to running your empire well. You should check your tax rate every turn or at least as often as you can. If you have nothing better to do, check it. Move it around. Can you raise it 5% without making anyone mad? If you can, that means more money! Perhaps lowering it 5% will make you go fervent. Is that 10% science boost worth losing 5% on taxes? Maybe, depending on the situation. Sometimes going fervent will only net you a couple science points, but you'll lose 10 dust per turn! Other times you won't care about the dust, but you'll get a nice chunk of science. Also pay attention to food and industry. Raising taxes might mean that a planet won't repopulate next turn, but lowering them might give them that little bit of extra food to populate 1 turn faster.

In disharmony, with the decreased bonuses, I have my taxes higher more often, since i'm not missing out on nearly as much FIS.







3) Expansion disapproval and influence. This is the thing that prevents you from just taking every single system. The more systems you take, the more your expansion disapproval will hinder all your other systems.

See the wiki article for detailed numbers of expansion disapproval. Each system you take (after your first 2) generates more and more of this nastiness. One of the best changes IMO that happened with Disharmony was how expansion disapproval works with influence. Outside your influence, outposts now suffer from full expansion disapproval. Inside your influence this gets cut in half (note in vanilla it was the other way around, outposts had none, and your influence area took full expansion disapproval). Another important aspect of influence is that outside of your little colored circles, your outposts have their dust and science cut in half. So obviously, it is very advantageous to colonize within your influence if possible, since you get full science and dust, and less expansion disapproval on the system. (don't underestimate the satellite influence improvement, it might be very good for your home system.)



Keep these factors in mind when you are researching and upgrading your systems. Your new outpost can build Public-Private Partnerships (+1 Sci per pop) but be aware that this increase gets cut in half. that 4 science becomes a measly 2, and you have to pay 2 dust upkeep. Not so attractive anymore, is it? For 80 industry, you could produce 27 science by using the industry to sci conversion, and not have to pay that upkeep cost! This same logic applies to xenotourism. It says +8 dust, but that is cut in half to 4. it costs 2 upkeep, so you are actually only gaining 2 dust per turn. Again, that 80 industry could produce 27 dust instead. This means it takes 13 turns for this upgrade to pay for its opportunity cost of using the conversion. THIRTEEN TURNS That's a long time to wait to start making a profit. Don't be afraid of the conversions, analyze the situation, and weigh the opportunity cost of what you're building. If the system has a high enough industry to build the upgrade in a single turn, it's not that big a deal. But if it has low industry and it will take 4 or 5 turns to build, it might not be worth it.



Here's another example of an upgrade that's not worth it. If you have a fully populated terran planet in a system, and you move to colonize an arid planet in that same system. Should you build that sustainable upgrade? (+1 food per pop on T2 and T3 planets) No way. The terran planet is already producing probably 60 or 70 food with the exploit. sustainable will add a meager 1 or 2 food to that total. Remember how food and population growth works? the bigger the population, the more food it takes to grow. That 2 extra food will almost never help at all. You almost certainly won't gain an extra pop from it. It's not worth the industry, or the upkeep cost.

Combat changes in disharmony:



Here's the new formula for damage in Disharmony:



Damage dealt = Damage * (1 - [defense/(defense+hullweakness)])



The default hull weakness is set to 100, so with a single deflect mod, offering 100 defense against kinetics,



Damage dealt = damage * [1-(100/200)]



you prevent 50% damage with a single solitary defense mod

with 2 mods,

damage * [1-(200/300)] = 33% damage is taken.

3 mods:

damage * [1-(300/400)] = 25% damage taken.



Of course, the actual amount of damage dealt is also supposedly effected by evasion, accuracy, and other small bonuses that can be applied from defenses (like slightly modifying the hull weakness variable)



But the major point here is you prevent about 75% of damage with only 3 defense mods. Period. If they dish out 100 damage, your 3 mods prevent 75 damage.



If they dish out 10,000 damage, your same three mods prevent 7,500 damage.



If they dish out 1,000,000 damage, those same three dinky defense mods, still only costing 33 tons, prevent 750,000 damage[/I]



Whereas to dish out 1 million damage, you'd need a lot more weaponry. A lot.



In an equally silly situation, say you fill your Corvette with ONLY deflect mods. you could fit 9, for 900 defense.

damage * [1-(900/1000)] = 10% damage taken.



with a measly 2 mods, you take 33% damage. If you stack all the defense you can, you still take 10% damage. Be aware that the diminishing returns on defense is very steep. Don't put more than 4 or 5 of any type, even on cruisers and dreadnaughts. Even the fourth mods doesn't help much, preventing only 5% damage (whereas the first mod prevented 50%!!!)



There are 3 total tiers of tech levels for weaponry and defense, but this is really all you need to know for each level: only put 2 or 3 defense mods, but be absolutely sure you do put them on. Higher tech levels only offer more defense per tonnage, allowing for other stuff, but the same drastic diminishing returns still applies.



I won't make any direct judgments on the balance of this, since that's not what this thread is about.



The point is, understand just how effective defenses are. You need them. If you don't have them, and your opponents do, you will do 50-75% less damage than they do. Ouch. If there is one thing that this change does successfully, it makes those missile suicide fleets significantly less effective, since not having any defense is just a very poor ship design.



As for the evade, accuracy, shots fired, and all those other stats, you can pretty much ignore them. They don't have a drastic effect on the outcome of battles (in vanilla they did, but in Disharmony not so much), and there is not much you can do to change them even if you wanted to.



As for the fact that you can choose which range your weaponry is, for now I suggest just sticking to the original range of the weaponry: Melee (M) Kinetics, Medium Range (MR) beams, and Long Range (LR) missiles. As the game stands now, there is not enough incentive to take the other ranges. For example, MR kinetics takes 11 tonnage compared to 7 tonnage on the M kinetics. M kinetics will do more damage per tonnage. Be aware that, by default, all weapon types are set to long range, so you might want to change kinetics and beams before you put them on your ships.



Fighters, Bombers, and invasions



What about all these fancy a$$ new military tech mods? Well, as it stands, the balancing of them is pretty abysmal. But they certainly show promise for better gameplay.



Should I fight with fighters?



Firstly, note that in the ship builder you can select between "invasion", "battle" and "balanced" versions of fighters and bombers.

So some types of bombers are suited for fleet battles, others for long term sieges. Alright.

With the update, bombers do at least some noticeable damage. They kind of act like a 4th weapon type, with fighters being the defense to them.



Siege modules can be used to siege a well defended system. You can stack siege pretty easily, building a siege-only fleet. However, no matter how much siege you have, it takes a minimum of 10 turns to invade a system. Not to mention you HAVE to make siege ships, you can't use your 30k MP fleet to take even the wimpiest of outposts. Invasion % per turn is calculated as (siege power / defense power) to a maxmimum of 10% per turn (it used to be 25% in vanilla), hence at least 10 turns are needed. So if you have 10x the siege as they do defense, you will invade in 10 turns. Food for thought: you could have 999,999,999,999,999 C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER siege power and it will still take 10 turns to take a 20 defense outpost. Yuck. Especially early game, there is literally no way you could feesibly take any outposts, much less their home system.



Invasion bombers are at least slightly more useful than battle bombers. They can help you in a long siege against a heavily fortified, highly populated system. They can destroy infrastructure and pop that makes it easier to take. However...in my experience, if the enemy has enough defense on the system to make bombers worth building, they also will have anti-aircraft upgrades, making those bombers useless again.



Drop troops have the ability to take over a system instantly like, this turn. Not next turn, this one. They are very powerful, and only a couple are needed to snatch up undefended enemy outposts. This might be a good thing, since it can be used to punish players who greedily take outposts, but I highly doubt it would in practice, since the first drop troopers are 3,000 (unless you're Sheredyn, they get it for 510 . Sheredyn are approximately as overpowered as the queen is in chess, with the other factions being pawns and bishops, but that's for another thread. Cravers might be a rook.)



Drops require a population to build them, similar to colony ships, so they aren't cheap. Be sure to put elite troops on your ships. They don't take much more tonnage or industry, and are more effective. A drop can of course fail, if the enemy system has enough defense to defend themselves. (although I believe this is bugged, since many times it tells me that I have a 100% invasion chance, and I still fail miserably. Also, the invasion report doesn't always pop up when you fail.)



I'm not quite sure how invasion chance is calulated, but more troops are obviously more effective, and system defense directly counters it. (How does the same defense work against planetary seige machines and a ground force? Whatever.)



So, the bottom line is dropships are your best option if you can build enough of them. They take over poorly defended systems very well. Only resort to siege against well defended systems. (10 turns???? really? yeesh.)



Military summary: Put 2 or 3 defense mods on your ships if you can fit them. 1 of each is alright on low tonnage ships. At least one, 50% damage!!!!! Only use the traditional range of weapons. Bombers are basically a fourth weapon type. Don't siege unless you absolutely have to. Abuse drop troops to conquer weaker systems.



It might sound like i'm whining in some of this, but I'm not. I've been reporting facts as much as I can, only giving my opinion in a few cases. If it comes across as a *wahhh* tone, then that's probably because there is something wrong with how the new mechanic works in practice. I believe these new features can make for a more interesting game, with more variety. But as they currently stand, they actually limit variety, since so few things are actually viable, and the viable things are really really strong.





Have a puppy

Great work, thank you!!!



Influence has become much better than before, i played a game with Horatio this weekend and it was stunning how big AND usefull the "bubbles" of them were...

People need to know the differences bewteen the races beyond just traits..I found the below link useful...the guy finishes the list in part two

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/entry.php?490-Disharmony-new-unique-faction-technologies-and-other-changes-%28part-1%29

Thanks for the great guide! I'm a newbie and it helps a lot.

Nice guide

Really Nice guide sticky please!

As a caveat I think you are being unfair to the defense scaling. Defense does scale as you've described, but it is better illustrated in terms of Effective Hit Points.

In Effective Hit Points (EHP) each defense increases your Effective Hit Points by your Base Hit Points (BHP).



(The following assumes each defense modules adds 100 defense and your hull weakness is fixed at 100. This is untrue, but is a close enough approximation for the example).



So if you have 500 BHP and 0 defenses, you have 500 EHP.

With 500 BHP and 1 defense modules, you have 1000 EHP (per the 50% reduction or 50% effective damage per the above).

With 500 BHP and 2 defense modules, you have 1500 EHP (per the 66% reduction or 33% effective damage per the above).

With 500 BHP and 3 defense modules, you have 2000 EHP (per the 75% reduction or 25% effective damage per the above).

and so forth.

Alternatively, you can also think about damage in turns of "How many ships will it take to kill my ship."

Assume you have a setup where 1 of their ships is just enough to kill your ship.

If you add 1 defense module, they would need 2 ships to kill your ship.

If you add 2 defense modules, they would need 3 ships to kill your ship.

If you add 3 defense modules, they would need 4 ships to kill your ship.



Now as a counter point to all of this, you generally don't care about how long it takes your ship to die. What you want is:

Your ships kill their ships in a cost effective manner.



You could design a ship that could kill 20 of his ships. That's great. However, if in the same time it took you to build that 1 ship, he was able to build 30 ships. This means (generally) that you are losing.



Defense is more expensive that offense. On a module by module basis, defenses cost more (after level 1). Defenses are more effective with larger ships and larger base hit points. However, they never really overpower offense (which is good, because otherwise combat would be ships sitting around for years shooting at each other without anything happening).

Most of the time when you lose battles it is because they had more strength (more ships, better ships, or a mismatch in weapons/defense, card play, other bonuses).



With this as your main goal, and with defenses being less cost effective than offense, weapons, lots of weapons on your cheapest and biggest hull is generally the best route in ship design.



Bonus Note: If you need to slow down an AI fleet. Create a fleet of unarmed destroyer hulls, park them at the planet the AI fleet is at, separate them into their own fleets, and turn on blockade with each ship. Now, don't voluntarily start any fights there. Laugh at the inability of the AI to deal with your shenanigans.

Thx for great guides guys.



I wonder if it is made, or if anyone have plans to make, a guide specifically on the new Harmony faction? I`m on my first play through and my first impression is that they plays out pretty different from all other factions, hence questions keeps popping up

@thuvian



You're right, I can admit I'm a bit unfair towards the defenses. As a matter of my opinion, I liked the old combat system better. In the old system, if you didn't have a lot of defense mods of the correct type, your ships wouldn't last long. Retrofitting and constantly redesigning your ships was a must. I liked that. With this new system, I've found very little need or incentive to redesign ships unless I get better tech. (which isn't very often, since there are only 3 tiers of weaponry now...) The result is almost never making a new ship design.



The EHP thing is certainly a good argument, but the problem I see comes in from the 3 different weapon types. Yes having 3 defense mods gives you 2x the EHP, but you can't have 3 of every defense mod without sacrificing a lot of weaponry (unless you're a sexy dreadnaught). Having 1 or 2 of each is so much more practical for destroyers. But you already seem to understand this :P

Your ships kill their ships in a cost effective manner.

Assuming your opponent is using more than one weapon type in their fleets (most players, even AIs, will do this), the best way to do this is evenly distributed defenses.

Great guide

Thanks for the great guide.



You are right about the Sheredyn. The buyout discount is nice, the no retreat for opponents is overpowering.



When playing another faction the constant blockades of planets, followed by retreats with minimal losses is incredibly annoying, and greatly prolongs the conflicts.

Cool, just got the game with Disharmony and have been reading outdated info (it's for Classic). This is concise and up to date.