onyx135 wrote:
I haven't played much or with very much intensity but on default settings i'm stomping everything that's come across my path. My friend is playing on hard difficulty and say's he's still rolling the AI.

Can you post an "after action report", just a few paragraphs of what you did? It would really help the other players (including myself) who don't steamroll everything yet. How many systems do you colonize before doing a military buildup? Do you attack with destroyers, cruisers or wait for even bigger ships?

Military



I don't have any specific time-based goals in relation to this; as I mentioned earlier, I tend to build military only when absolutely needed. I find it important to keep moderately up to date on my military tech, though, in case I need to pump out decent ships in a hurry.



Until now, I've been favoring heavily-armored big ships (ideally dreadnoughts). The reason for this is that I hate losing ships, and I've found that a stack of dreads with good tech can withstand pretty much anything you throw at them.



I'm lazy, so I tend to keep all defense types equal so that I don't need to retrofit too often, and use beam weapons exclusively. Kinetics have high damage, but poor accuracy, and missiles are too slow/limited (firing once per phase, instead of the 4x per phase of beams and kinetics).



I like to put Intelligent Tools (10% repair per phase) and High Energy Couplings (+40% damage) on all my ships. My armor of choice is Reactive Hulls for the 2% HP increase beyond the fixed amount. HP/weight ratio, I've found these remain more efficient until you get fairly high up in the military tech branch. Note that the 10% repair and 2% HP is more efficient with dreads than with smaller hulls.



As a rule of thumb, I try to aim for ~1000 hp for cruisers (not a big fan of battleships) and ~1500-2000 hp for dreadnoughts. For destroyers or corvettes, I'll usually be around ~500-700 hp.



All of this has worked extremely well for me in Normal difficulty. In my Impossible Sophon game... not so much. I've done alright, but it's been a lot tougher, and I've lost more ships than I'm used to.



I've recently started reading (still not done; lots to digest) Vector78's excellent thread about "kamikaze Destroyers", and this is an approach I'll be trying next, as what he says makes a lot of sense. I invite you to give it a read if you haven't already. In a nutshell: "lots of cheap weapon-heavy unarmored ships > a few big, armored ones".



My big armored ones made me practically invincible in Normal mode, but not so much in Impossible, so this is something I'll definitely be looking into.



As far as battle cards go, I'm a big fan of Nano Repair (+20% hp/turn; again, this is more worth it with big ships with lots of HP), sometimes using a barrier for the first phase to limit damage taken--most foes I go up against (once I have some decent ships out) don't survive the first phase, so the remaining two are spent healing, which generally leaves my fleets with barely a scratch (if at all) after combat.



With the "tons of Destroyers loaded with just weapons" approach, I'd go more for damage-boosting cards (like Offense for a Kinetics boost early-game, and Tactics for a smaller boost to all weapon types later on; neither card requires a tech unlock).



Heroes



Not much to say about them, it depends on how you like to do things I guess. I strongly recommend checking out the wiki page on hero abilities, though, so you can plan ahead and know what you're getting into.



Two tips:



1. Focus on maxing veteran before you do anything else*, as this leads to Cyberskilled, which basically gives you a free ablity point. And while you're building up to that, you're increasing -every- skill a bit, which gives you a solid base and versatility.



2. Even for heroes which you intend, ultimately, to keep at home as system governors, it's worth sending them off to fight at first, as this will level them up -much- faster (pirates are great for this, early on).



*An exception to this, I'd say, is if you start the game with an Administrator available. The industry and food bonuses Administrators can get are a HUGE help to new colonies. +25 Industry and +20 Food is the difference between night and day early on, but it becomes more and more meaningless as the game progresses. When possible, always pick an Administrator as your first hero. Seriously, if you haven't tried this yet, you won't believe the difference it makes.



Final Thoughts



Never forget that there's no single right way to play a game like this. I've shared my personal strategy, but that doesn't mean it's right for you. Experiment, see what feels right for your own style of play.



I'd strongly suggest playing a thoroughly unchallenging game just so you can go through the tech tree, learn what's where, and what you like. Try a Huge map on Easy with just one adversary. Play around with terraforming: that's something I hardly touched the first few games I played, but now it's become a central part of my strategy. I personally love lava, desert, tundra and jungle, but that's because I like to go industry-heavy. See what works for you. If you like tech, for example, have a look at arctic, tundra and ocean.



Actually, on the topic:



Tundra is an absolutely excellent planet type. Barring the top-tier worlds (terran, jungle and ocean), it's the most versatile by far. It gives a little bit of everything (mostly science), and receives bonuses both to food and industry exploitation.



I realize I haven't touched on economy at all in all this (other than that tiny little mention lost above), but that's because, honestly, I've always found it to be such a non-issue. Just don't build infrastructure you don't need, and you should be fine. Soon enough, by mid-game or so, the cash will just be rolling in.

Haven't had any trouble yet, at least not on normal. All my wins to date have been purely accidental, honestly... I kind of stumbled into them. I mean, in all cases, I knew the game was pretty much over, but I kept going to experiment, learn the techs, etc. The actual methods of the wins, from a technical level, all came as a surprise, and all were different.



My present game is ongoing, and it's been the most difficult by far to date (no surprise), but I think I've reached a point where I'm just about to turn the tables. It's been kind of interesting...



I started right next to the Cravers (one system between us) with only 4 unexplored systems in our little wormhole pocket (including the one between us). I tried to take them out quickly, but that didn't work out. By the time I did get rid of them, the Hissho owned most of the map, with the Horatio on the far end (they presently have 1 system left) and the United Empire near me (they have 3 systems left). I have 10 systems or so. I think this one will be a win as well, but the jury's still out on this one...



Here are the games I've played so far, in a nutshell:

Faction - Galaxy - Size - Difficulty - Outcome



Sophon - 2 Arm - Medium - Normal - Expansion Victory

United Empire - Elliptical - Huge - Economic Victory

Hissho - Davea's 30 Turn Challenge - Military Victory (unsure of the settings; kept playing)

Craver - 8 Arm - Huge - Normal - Science Victory



Sophon - Ovoid - Small - Impossible - Ongoing

I played Sophon again because I thought I had tried out Horatio, but in putting together this little list and thinking back, I realized I haven't. Guess they're next. I'll probably try Serious difficulty next, and a Large Disc galaxy.



I haven't really sat down to concretely think up a specific strategy yet, but I can outline the basics I've learned; my playing style has been the same (small tweaks and adaptations due to learning aside) throughout and, honestly, I haven't found that the various races are different enough to make me change it.



I've already discussed my approach to colonizing & terraforming in this thread, so I won't go too much into that (in a nutshell, focus on food n' industry and infrastructure as a whole; the ultimate goal is to terraform every planet into jungles and use industry exploitation on them).



So...



Expansion



First things first: as has already been mentioned, early expansion is key. I don't rush it as much as others, though, maybe. To me, a solid infrastructure is a key element to my strategy, and this starts from the very beginning.



On my homeworld, I alternate between infrastructure and colony ships. On newly colonized systems, I focus purely on getting basic infrastructure up and running.



In terms of tech, I focus mostly on Exploration and Expansion (colonizing new planet types, especially) and Applied Sciences (boosts to industry and science), dipping a bit into Diplomacy and Trading (mostly just for Approval buildings) and Galactic Warfare (so I don't fall too far behind) as needed.



Now, I said that my general strategy is infrastructure-based, but this really means that it's a tech-centric approach, since you need the tech to be able to build the infrastructure. Look at it as a "specific type" of tech-based strategy, if you will (focusing more on expansion and industry, instead of military might, for example).



As far as building military ships is concerned, I try to avoid it for as long as possible, basically only starting to do so once I have an angry neighbor. I might build a few ships before that to handle pirates, but this is on a case-by-case basis: say I've scouted a system I want to colonize and I saw pirates there, I'll build ships at that point and not before.



An infrastructure-based strategy is an industry-driven one. My over-arching goal is to get my systems "civilized" as quickly and efficiently as possible (the exact definition of "civilized" depends on what point in the game I'm at). Ideally, once a system's doing decently, it gets a fair amount of down-time, production-wise, between new tech discoveries and new infrastructure to build. At this point, I go into "industry to dust conversion mode".



I tend to be cash-strapped early on, but rolling in it by mid-game or so. Cash is used for hurrying production of basic (and thus cheap) infrastructure on newly-colonized worlds and to retrofit ships in time of need. Cash, after a certain point, accumulates pretty quickly, but it can easily go out just as fast if you're not careful.



To give you an idea of my rough goals, from mid-game on, I consider a build time (ship or infrastructure) of 4-5 turns to be "long", 2-3 turns to be "decent", 1 turn to be "good" and multiple items per turn to be "excellent". Anything over 5 turns is "too long" but, unfortunately, I have to deal with "too long" more often than I'd like. Extreme exceptions aside, I don't even look at anything 10+ turns.



Here is how I look at build and research times:



- Excellent: multiple items in 1 turn

- Good: 1 turn

- Decent: 2-3 turns

- Long: 4-5 turns

- Too long: 6-9 turns

- Unacceptable: 10+ turns



Extreme exceptions aside, I never touch 10+ turns, and 6-9 turns is only if I really must. Especially for tech, I'll almost never research anything that will take longer than 5 turns to finish, instead choosing to "catch up" on secondary things I kind of want but have been ignoring for better things. I do my best to stay in the "3 turns or less" range for anything I do, when possible.



Tech



I started writing a list of pivotal/benchmark techs I consider to be of particular importance per game phase, but then I stopped, realizing that would be too much work and this post is getting too big already... I'll save that for another time.



In a nutshell, though, things I focus on:



- Industry boosts

- Science boosts

- Approval boosts

- Resources (luxury and strategic)

- Colonization and Terraforming unlocks



As far as approval goes, I try to keep it as high across the board as possible, but this takes second place to my primary goals (being tech and infrastructure); if new colonies take a few more turns to do what they do so that more important things can get done sooner, then so be it. Let them be unhappy. Don't underestimate the positive effect of a happy population, though. And definitely don't underestimate the detrimental effects of an unhappy one.



My rule of thumb is unhappy new/small systems = fine, unhappy old/big systems = uh oh. You can have a great system with lots of good infrastructure, nice planets with good bonuses and lots of population, but if that population is terribly unhappy, that system will be functioning at a fraction of its full potential. With new/small worlds, this matters less because that "full potential" is meager even under the best of circumstances.



As I mentioned before, I don't like researching anything that takes longer than 5 turns at a time. As a result of this, my path through the tech tree tends to be relatively balanced and gradual. At any given time, though, of course, there will be things I'm more or less interested in. And, sometimes, I'll go out of my way to research something that takes "too long" if I feel it will offer me an immediate advantage.



Examples of this would be rushing offense/defense tech if I smell a war coming (or one surprises me), researching approval techs if I find my empire too unhappy overall, needing/wanting specific strategic or luxury resources, and hunting down certain terraform unlocks.



(cont.)

Been playing the game pretty intensively the past week and I have already completed an After Action Report on a game with the Horatios facing down the galaxy on impossible difficulty. I havent posted it yet, it's with loads of pictures and the uploads to Steam are failing me, I'll give it a go later.



Anyhow, beating the game on normal difficulty is pretty easy. The main thing, and this goes for all races, is expand you populaltion right away, if the expansion stops, you're losing. Keep the empire happy (or prefereably ectatic) and this will give you good growth, just make sure you don't spend too much money on improvements, the main improvement on a colony is more people! The first colony in a system should be your food-planet, when you colonise the other planets in the system, you can allow them different priorities according to their stats. Keep that food-planet pumping out food until the entire system is full and settled, then you may convert that food-priority to other things.



All the other things you do when managing the empire is just for flavor really, all paths lead to victory, one way or the other. This is what makes Endless space a really good game.



I'll be slogging it out with my uploads to get that AAR up, it needs those pictures, otherwise there is a longish edit to replace all those meaningful illustrations with words, creating a wall of text, which won't be that funny. The game ended in failure and I got my ass handed to me. But that is a good thing, it makes for an interesting read and leaves a lot of room for comments and suggestions.

Just finished my first game on normal difficutly.

AI wasn't playing too bad, although it felt kinda easy.

Main difference between AI and me I saw was expansion rate - at the time the AI had around 15 systems i was at 28 :-/

Only thing that felt wierd was between round 100 to 150, when your production hits 900 and more in several systems and your able to build 7 dreadnoughts with highest tech equipment in 10 rounds.

Was far more fun trying to win early game, late game felt kinda like simply stomping the AI at every corner.



Gotta try the next difficulty

I like the FAQ, just finished my first game, lost through economic victory but overall I thought the UE played just fine.

I added a FAQ; if you have any comments or suggestions please let me know:

/#/endless-space/forum/34-faq/thread/14116-davea-s-player-faq

I have started a new game and focused on food and happiness. 30 turns in I was in **much** better shape than before. Here are my stats (normal difficulty, Hissho, small map, 4 players):



Population: 26

Production: 226

Science: 165

Systems: 5, all ecstatic

Planets: 8



Let's see if this cures my problem altogether. It is quite astonishing how much difference happiness makes. If you change the tax slider back and forth you can easily see the huge improvements in pop growth, and all the other stats.



Thanks for the help!

1.Find systems that have one planet with a high food production and others with high industry. (preferably with bonuses and luxury resources)

2.Colonize the food planet and optimize food production. Use this planet to populate the rest of the systems industry planets.

3.What planets i colonize, system upgrades, and planet exploits i get depend on what optimizes the systems output.

-Be careful about colonizing planets with big penalties to approval rating as this can ruin the entire system.

-As some of the people here have said, get hero's asap

-I've found that as long as you have high industry you can float both your science and dust production by converting production to one of the two.



Hope this helped.

Thanks, these are good tips. I will round it up into a FAQ later today.

You forgot to say that you should lower taxes as soon as you recruited all your system-improving heroes. Having a fervent empire with ecstatic planets helps a lot in the early growth. You might also forget about dust completely (until way later in the game when your systems are fully developed and well defended) and concentrate on food & industry (then science). Remember that there's no drawback (besides not being able to revive heroes) in going into negative dust, and you can always jump-start new systems using an appropriately leveled-up hero without needing dust to rush build improvements.

davea wrote:
Well, I've done all that stuff. Maybe I am focusing too much on industry and not enough on food. Do you usually build food improvements first until you reach the pop cap? Or do you focus on industry? How important is the planetary happiness? Do you try to reach "ecstatic" on everything or is "unhappy" enough?

I try for ecstatic. food or industry... It depends. If industry is below about 10, I'll usually go industry. If it's above 10... I might go a food exploit first, then industry. Early on you just want industry to build the food stuff quickly... Once you've got every food exploit/improvement (maybe 20 turns or about 4-5 pop) it's industry all the way, followed by Dust and science and ships.

Well, I've done all that stuff. Maybe I am focusing too much on industry and not enough on food. Do you usually build food improvements first until you reach the pop cap? Or do you focus on industry? How important is the planetary happiness? Do you try to reach "ecstatic" on everything or is "unhappy" enough?

davea wrote:
How do you evaluate a start? Are there setups which you have abandoned on the first turn? In the first few turns? I have abandoned setups with no Titanium-70 nearby but you can't tell that for a while. Do you find one of the races easier, or do you find it easy to win with every one?

I never abandon a game because it feels like a cheap thing to do when you can usually turn things around after a mediocre start because the AI is bad at war.



If it helps here is my basic startup strategy:



Turn 1: Send scout and colony ship to seperate nearby systems. Set starting planet to exploit for food. Set reasearch to one of the two first options in the economy/government tree (the left one).



Until 22 dust is available: Keep scouting, settle on the first available system with the colony ship (unless its complete crap). Once the first research is completed research either colonizing arid or tundra planets (one or the other may be available already due to your race). Set your second colony to exploit for food aswell. Once your first system is done doing that build a colony ship.



When 22 dust is available: Buy any hero with governor skills. Put him on your primary system.



Until colony ship is done: Keep scouting, build a few simple combat ships on your second system as soon as its finished putting up the food exploitation. You will use these to escort your colony ship. Meanwhile research the tech that lets you uncover Titanium-70. Missiles aren't a necessity but its unfortunate if you get locked out of building cruisers. At this point you should have already found an attractive system for your third colony. Attractive systems have: A large number of hospitable planets, a good selection of strategic/luxury goods, positive anomalies or a combination of these. As soon as you have 22 dust buy a second hero, again a governor, and put him on your second colony.



Once you've settled your third colony you can start specializing in the direction you want to, just make sure to buy your third hero as soon as possible and always cycle your governors out to your systems with the highest population. You generally don't need a massive fleet at the start but keep a few simple warhsips around to avoid literally being caught with your pants down.



This probably isn't ideal and should not be considered a guide, but it works very well for me and should easily see you quickly being ahead of all your enemies in terms of points.



Also a general tip: carefully consider any system improvements you want to build. Starting out you might often feel tempted to just plop down whatever you unlock. This is a very bad practice as some improvements will not help some systems at all, while others while still somewhat beneficial, are not worth getting. Build cheap warships when you cannot build anything genuinely useful, or convert your industrial capacity to dust or research.

How do you evaluate a start? Are there setups which you have abandoned on the first turn? In the first few turns? I have abandoned setups with no Titanium-70 nearby but you can't tell that for a while. Do you find one of the races easier, or do you find it easy to win with every one?

The two most important things in my opinion are getting a good start and doing what you can as opposed to what you want to. A six planet system full of arctic planets and asteroids is never going to be a production powerhouse so don't waste your time and resources trying to transform it into one.

Here is the quote from the rockpapershotguncom review which caused me to run out and purchase the alpha:

It’s a space-based 4X game and although I need to spend more time with it before I say too many more words, it’s already caused me to miss one night’s sleep and that just doesn’t happen enough anymore.

I want to love this game. I loved MOO2. I love the first glance of the galaxy maps and tech tree. Maybe this game just needs balancing; but after 6-8 games I can't even come close to winning on default settings (small map, united empire, four opponents). By turn 100 I am ranked last in score and almost every statistic, and when I fight, my ships are always out-teched. Or at any rate, I lose most all battles. I have been able to start sieging enemy colonies once or twice, but it takes forever and the enemy is always able to bring up enough fleets to chip away and eventually destroy my fleet.



I've looked around in the forums and found one post on basic economy buildup. Can't find it again. But as a pretty good MOO2 and Civ IV player, I didn't learn anything from it.



Is there a more detailed guide, or do most people agree balance is the problem?

davea wrote:
Could you write up a strat guide like the one I have started with Hissho?

/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/8393-davea-s-hissho-strategy-thread

I've been posted some quick tidbits in various threads, I might collate them into something more. An ideal strat depends SO MUCH on your start, that it's hard to nail things down too much.

I haven't played much or with very much intensity but on default settings i'm stomping everything that's come across my path. My friend is playing on hard difficulty and say's he's still rolling the AI.

I've beaten "default" settings as Cravers and are half-way thru a sophon game I should win. You just gotta boom your economy, it's extremely important. Especially industry.

It was the default game start the game came with, so normal difficulty IIRC...