ryousei wrote:
only on endless is it hard, but even then its mostly just to race to one checkpoint (the ability to build 1 omnitank dread fleet), then you just have to mass click Autoresolve).

In 1.0.19 and before... yeah.

But since 1.0.25? No way!

The AI now makes relatively good ships (an endgame-fleet of them without hero will easily have 60k MP, where before it rarely was more than 25k) and they don't just forget about their ships waiting you to kill them. Even if they can't beat your hero-fleet(s) straight on (which they might not be able to without good fleet heros), they will spread out and invade all your systems at once.

Have yet to hear about someone who beat Endless since the Automaton-Patch.

If someone has, he might share his wisdom of how he did so.

Sorry my amoeba suggestion may have also been tailored towards multiplayer. It allows you to learn quiet easily.

I agree - Amoeba may be the most challenging since their traits revolve around diplomacy and that's actually a more complex beast.



I for one discourage Sowers because the whole "focus on industry and nothing else" approach only teaches you how to handle this particular race. Also the idea of focusing planets according to their type (i.e. food spamming) and creating population spawners is a lot different due to how food is aquired by sowers. As there are several more "human-like" races it will come natural to think "what reasearch i need now". If you rush with Sowers focusing only on industry tech you will fall flat on your face with everything else. My first sower game was a disaster as it turned out full industry worlds did not give me enough population growth to match the competition.

BlueTemplar wrote:
I completely disagree with you.

On the contrary, new players should specifically start with Cravers or Sowers because their traits are easy to understand and to exploit. On no case they should start with Amoeba because it requires more planning ("OMG, so many systems, what do I do???"), diplomacy and knowledge of the game to play them well.

I really agree with this. Sowers are awesome for simplicity for newbies imo.

I completely disagree with you.

On the contrary, new players should specifically start with Cravers or Sowers because their traits are easy to understand and to exploit. On no case they should start with Amoeba because it requires more planning ("OMG, so many systems, what do I do???"), diplomacy and knowledge of the game to play them well.



Here's a custom empire made to more easily learn the game for the first couple of times you play :Easy Industrialists.rar

New players should start using ameobas, the other default races pale in comparion unless you know how to hissho rush properly. Even then, with removal of bushido science, they just tech too slow. Of course an overpowered noob friendly custom ameoba is probably the best by far.

I would advise newbies to stay away from the Sowers as it requires more thinking to play with them & the Cravers early bonus is heavily negated later on so stay away from the Cravers. Also more resources = easier game, IMHO resource setting on a map does effect difficulty so more resources the better.

you right at this point the pirates become much stronger with time and they only stopp to spawn when you coloniezed every solarsystem(in my knowledge) but till they have beam weapons turn 100 must have been over.



@Ail

thats rights since the newest update the ai became much stronger

and I wasnt able to beat some of theier fleets with my default strategy so I had to take research more early on weapon techs

so I was I able to beat the enemys fleets

Ail wrote:
The AI now makes relatively good ships (an endgame-fleet of them without hero will easily have 60k MP, where before it rarely was more than 25k) and they don't just forget about their ships waiting you to kill them. Even if they can't beat your hero-fleet(s) straight on (which they might not be able to without good fleet heros), they will spread out and invade all your systems at once.

On my current game at serious difficulty, I have 2 hero fleets barely keeping up with the flood of invading 5-CP fleets from the Automatons. The invaders used star lanes, but also warp drives directly into my constellation to 3-4 target systems. I ended up splitting my fleets to use non-hero ones too, with the tech advantage I could still win without losses.



I know the feeling, being overrun by small fleets while your hero fleets remain unbeatable, your home system having an invasion starting, other main systems blockaded...





Also, don't pirates get better ships after a while? Equipped with beams instead of kinetics, yet still without any defense?

It's not that cheap because each scout will still cost you 2 Dust/Turn. I'd really prefer having a real fleet with a hero to level it on killing the pirates instead of preventing them completely.



Just make 50% Kinetic-Defense-Ships and you'll easily counter them.

Monthar wrote:
The easiest/cheapest way to deal with this is strip your scouts to just the engines and scouting module then build enough of them to keep all the systems in your constellation inside their sight ring. That will prevent the pirates from even spawning on your side of the wormhole.

if that is working, that has to be fixed as it is a rly cheap exploit in game mechanics.



but i agree that the pirates can be rly dangerous in the early game, and in my experience you cannot just ignore them, because they will start to invade your systems eventually.

Greetings fellow programs!



Not trying to be dramatic... but I can't win. Yes, it's hard to admit. I've played 3 easy games to completion (total map clears just so I can learn the tech tree and battle system) and I can't win. Someone always beats me to the punch on the scientific front. Or the population front.



I can't even get through turn 30-40 on normal without pirates simply overrunning my systems. They're bringing in (4) 196+ attack and I'm usually just getting my first protectors (~70/~70) out the gate. Or I'm in three systems and the local Horatio is somewhere around 8 systems and expanding 2 systems a turn.



I'm getting blown away by the culture rings (FIDS output?) of other races. I normally have to build all three expansion improvements (satellite broadcast, beaming, etc.) to get back even.



My last easy game, I'm playing a custom race with +2 command points, so I can bring in (6) Yukka (sp?) just so I can hang with the big boys with 8000+ missile carriers. I've conquered 5 of the 8 races and my ally goes on to win a scientific victory. (BTW, it told me in the pop up that I had won!)



So my observations / suggestions so far after about 25 hours of gameplay:

• Newbie, Easy, Normal should be renamed Normal, Hard and 'Stop Hitting Yourself'
• It's unclear how fleet attack and defense work. Game seems to favor loading one attack / guess at one defense (Usually missile). Not intuitive to any other game that simply has shields / armor.
• Enjoying the battle card system, wish I knew what the increased effects were.
• Ship ranges need to be shown on the map (it's super annoying when they can get to you and you can't get to them).
• If a tech makes all the difference in gameplay, then it should be a common connection point (wormhole and warp travel, happiness improvements).
• Heroes need a visible tech tree (stop making me guess).
• Any plans for starbases / planetary missile bases, etc. (I miss MoO2)?
  
  

Just a short list. I've read all the pointers, but I'm feeling really dumb at the moment. Looking forward to multiplayer so I can get some real time advice from more seasoned folks.

melancholy wrote:


I can't even get through turn 30-40 on normal without pirates simply overrunning my systems. They're bringing in (4) 196+ attack and I'm usually just getting my first protectors (~70/~70) out the gate. Or I'm in three systems and the local Horatio is somewhere around 8 systems and expanding 2 systems a turn.

The easiest/cheapest way to deal with this is strip your scouts to just the engines and scouting module then build enough of them to keep all the systems in your constellation inside their sight ring. That will prevent the pirates from even spawning on your side of the wormhole.

There is a beginners first 100 or so turns guide in the strategy guide. If you follow it you will atleast learn how to win even if you dont win the first time you play.

Normal is a cakewalk. If it isn't, then you're doing something wrong. For instance, do you adjust your approval at the start of the game? Otherwise, without you posting your save games, we can't really help you if we have to guess...

Here's some stuff that might help.



1. Use a fully customized race. DO NOT pick sowers/cravers for affinity (not yet anyways). Better learn the ropes on your standard picks.

Make sure to stack negative traits:



- more expensive healing for heroes (since that never really happens)

- more expensive hero skills in combat (since you rarely use that)

- less trading routes (since those are fairly bad anyway)

- OPTIONAL: offense first (since combat is in most cases overkill anyway)



Then you can go wild on positive traits:



- +20 more happiness per system (that thing is pretty much mandatory)

- higer population on planets (1st bonus seems sufficient to make smaller planets viable)

- reduced cost of weapon modules (since later on with 15 colonies 10 of em will be making ships non-stop etc.)

- I favor "sniper" perk - as i tend to go with kinetic barrages and that greatly improves the dps

- I also like "rebellion". It feels it takes too long to fully occupy a conquered planet.



2. Expansion the right way:



Most cases my home planet becomes a spawning pool - i.e some basic food improvements and industry improvements, food exploit and constant spawning of colony ships. Once you get some colonies going keep increasing their pop to like 5 then move on to populating the next etc. In time you will find some single-planet system with nice environment, which will serve as a second spawning pool or will take that burden of your home system, which you can then proceed with populating. Once you have colonized about 4 planets in 4 different systems you should focus the 2nd world you've populated on producing some fairly basic ships against pirates.

NOTE: you don't really have to fight pirates. They will hang around your system but other than that it's not really an issue. The problem is they may be guarding a system you wish to colonize.



3. Moneyz.

Money is power in this game. Or actually not having any is the right way. With that in mind you will end up looking for arid planets, setting up dust exploits there so you can keep your taxes low, as it pretty much boosts FIDS across all sectors. More food = more ppl = more industry and sci = more...just MORE. You can and will sometimes use "industry to dust" but that's only a stop gap measure really. Your industry planets should be pomping out ships.



4. Scouting.

It's not really well implemented. But later on you need the information. So you can have some backwater planet spawn some scouts with engine and scouting modules and send them on suicide missions across all unknown systems. They will be stopped most likely on first hostile/blocked systems but still. Later on you can travel without strings so you CAN scout some fairly distant worlds.

Then you have to choose which enemies are worth taking down a notch but be aware if you bleed yourself out on the first opponent you can be vulnerable to a counter attack by his rival.

Keep an eye on your CP number and total fleet power rank - it shows if you can actually pick a fight. Being the last means you need to focus on ship building real fast.

melancholy wrote:
I'm not looking for an explanation of the cards, just the increased effect of winning the round. If I counter sabotage with engineering, what is my healing bonus now?

Cards generally show

A% something (X% blocked)

If your card is blocked (displays red cross) you get nothing at all

If your card is played (green tick) you get the standard card benefit A%

If you counter the opposing card (yellow plus) (as I understand it) you get the 'blocked' benefit X% on top of the standard benefit A%



It's not greatly intuitive with the wording on the cards. The X% blocked benefit is paid if YOU block the opposing card. Even after I found that out, I though the X% would only replace the A%, but I read somewhere that you get both in that case.



EDIT: As Beefhater said above, the effects only last for one battle phase

Well just saying I haven't played single since since 2 patches ago.

But as an experienced 4x game player, from my second game on I found the AI in this game before serious difficulty a joke. (Serious is a little challenging but not much, only on endless is it hard, but even then its mostly just to race to one checkpoint (the ability to build 1 omnitank dread fleet), then you just have to mass click Autoresolve).



The thing I think many newer players don't get is this is actually a very down to basics 4x game. You have to explore so you can expand as fast as possible, willing is not possible if you expand slow. Once you've expanded everywhere so you can exploit every possible resource that you can get without war. If you are now the biggest, you can sit back and get ready to defend. Or if you are not the biggest, you need to either quickly gang the biggest or if ganging is not a possibility, feed on someone smaller.

/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11347-expansion-pack

Here is the thread about the expansion pack



/#/endless-space/forum/34-faq/thread/14490-hero-abilities-chart

...and here is the fan-made hero flowchart.

It took long to find it so sorry for being rude

I can remember that I read somewhere from the expansion pack which should be releade nest year

One of the features that will be come with this update/addon are starbase

I look for the thread so you can read it on your own



There are already some fan made hero tech trees

If you had come to use the forumshearch you would already know this



I noticed that my ships mostly attack the enemys ships with the lowest denfence.



Cards just effect your ships while battle, no longer.



My tip to improve your play-style is

as follownig

-try to specifice on food improvments to get higher population

-just colonize other planets in you starsystems when your pop reached the max

-build many colony ships to colonize as much solarstystems as you can

-colonize only the planets with high food output

- after you pop reached the max exploi on industry