BlueTemplar wrote:
IMHO there's way too much room in exploiting the AI without fighting by using trades : you can easily trade away all the resources they need, and take all their money by selling them resources they don't.

Indeed, it still works, but has become better(in my opinion)!

BlueTemplar wrote:
Because this is a new player asking for help, so the discussion is about the most effective ways to win the game.

Not attacking a player when you would profit from it because you want to play "peacefully" and trying to play without expanding are certainly not the most effective ways to play any 4X game. (Though an experienced player might pull that off using very specific strategies.)



One City Challenge in Civ isn't a challenge game?

Well you said not expanding was a sure way to lose the game. It is not, especially in endless space. Not expanding allows you to focus much more on building your planets and you dont have to deal with excessive expansion disapproval. Using diplomacy and gaining trade and allies is a great way to win the game. Attacking people causes a needless drain on resources from my point of view.





(In civilization, I dont play the one city challenge. I just use one city cause its the best way to get a cultural victory. Takes around 300 turns. Similar deal in endless space. Small amount of colonies, focus on them, win in 150 turns)

Thanks again for all your varied advice - I'm currently trying it all and using the tips to finetune my transhuman-ish post-Singularity race The Farsight. So far, the jury is out; I'm still having issues staying ahead in the research games (I still lose my lead around turn 120 and never claw it back, no matter how careful I try to be with selecting my research goals and keeping the science level nice and high with low taxation, planet perks, etc.), and I still have issues with particular planets that never seem to develop healthy populations and remain miserable FOREVER, but I am doing better. Slowly. But it's baby steps, right?



As for the X for eXtermination, it's my least favorite one. I want to win through means I find morally-agreeable, and require more thought than building a bigger gun (or fleet) than the other guy. The military route bores me to tears, and has against AIs way back in Command and Conquer days - the biggest stick wins and there's no joy for me in it. There are three other Xs there that need more from me than masses of capital ships and a stellar converter on every one of them And in multiplayer I'm guessing that most people will go for the brute force win every damn time because it's simple and often successful and allows a victory dance over another human as opposed to a respectful chess handshake (you can guess my opinion of multiplayer is not filled with hope, can't you?)... I'd just rather match wits with a group of diplomats.

EmpressPinkemina wrote:
Thanks again for all your varied advice - I'm currently trying it all and using the tips to finetune my transhuman-ish post-Singularity race The Farsight. So far, the jury is out; I'm still having issues staying ahead in the research games (I still lose my lead around turn 120 and never claw it back, no matter how careful I try to be with selecting my research goals and keeping the science level nice and high with low taxation, planet perks, etc.), and I still have issues with particular planets that never seem to develop healthy populations and remain miserable FOREVER, but I am doing better. Slowly. But it's baby steps, right?



As for the X for eXtermination, it's my least favorite one. I want to win through means I find morally-agreeable, and require more thought than building a bigger gun (or fleet) than the other guy. The military route bores me to tears, and has against AIs way back in Command and Conquer days - the biggest stick wins and there's no joy for me in it. There are three other Xs there that need more from me than masses of capital ships and a stellar converter on every one of them And in multiplayer I'm guessing that most people will go for the brute force win every damn time because it's simple and often successful and allows a victory dance over another human as opposed to a respectful chess handshake (you can guess my opinion of multiplayer is not filled with hope, can't you?)... I'd just rather match wits with a group of diplomats.

I like you, you play similar to me D:

That and genocide leaves me with a scummy feeling I can't get off when I shower - even when it's not real.

EmpressPinkemina wrote:
That and genocide leaves me with a scummy feeling I can't get off when I shower - even when it's not real.

Luckily you didn't play Armada 2526 - there it is even worse, when you "overtake" an planet / kill the locals, etc.



I prefer a scientific/expanding victory

Having the biggest stick is the most stupid way to win a military victory, and is far from being the only one. Even with the simplistic Endless Space combat, if your enemy counters your weapons and defenses, you'll need a LOT more ships than him to win.



Combat can be a very refined and complex affair in 4X games, if you're not trying this way, you're missing a big part of the game.

The issue I've had with combat Templar is I've had no choice in it thus far - the only way I've been able to claw back any semblance of a victory (save in one game) is through battering other races into extinction. I do not want to do that - it's an entirely personal thing, but subjugating my way to victory seems a very hollow way of winning anything. If it's the only way I seem able to get anywhere, then this game evidently is too smart for me and I'd be better off spending my time elsewhere - I'll end up not enjoying myself.



Granted, as I've said already, I'm playing at a pretty low difficulty level, so combat is a bit of a walkover perhaps because of that. My questions here come mainly from my inability to win in any other way; if I develop my primary systems and don't expand, I lose to whichever empire expands the most; if I expand to hold a good half of the available galaxy, one of the smaller empires manages to outpace me via a higher FIDS score, taxation or scientific victory. It seems as though the balance required to win the game is so fine I'm missing it every time... I've just had yet another game force me into hammering a smaller empire just to hold them back. Whatever the case, I'm not enjoying myself very much because I can't see where my strategy is failing because changing it just has the same end result - coming third.



I could forgive it somewhat if the game at least told me I'd done my best... instead it just tells me I'm a massive failure. Unless I keep bombing people into the stone age. I'm thinking that I'm expecting too much from the game's diplomatic system, or I'm just monumentally stupid. Either way, I don't like the way this game is making me feel the more I play it.

EmpressPinkemina wrote:
... and a stellar converter ...

Is that a Battle Beyond The Stars reference?

IMHO there's way too much room in exploiting the AI without fighting by using trades : you can easily trade away all the resources they need, and take all their money by selling them resources they don't.

Because this is a new player asking for help, so the discussion is about the most effective ways to win the game.

Not attacking a player when you would profit from it because you want to play "peacefully" and trying to play without expanding are certainly not the most effective ways to play any 4X game. (Though an experienced player might pull that off using very specific strategies.)



One City Challenge in Civ isn't a challenge game?

Exploits are boring, why would you want to play like that :/

Actually, because it's the first game I try to do so much tech/res trading, and I'm trying to find how it all works. Consider it like mini-maxing not the economy, but your relations with the AI.

BlueTemplar wrote:
Actually, because it's the first game I try to do so much tech/res trading, and I'm trying to find how it all works. Consider it like mini-maxing not the economy, but your relations with the AI.

Ah i thought you were saying you use it as a regular strategy.

Strudo76 wrote:
Is that a Battle Beyond The Stars reference?

It was the first sci-fi movie I clearly remember seeing at a cinema, with my pops and I was a wee lil' scamp



The stellar converter also was the top of the offensive weapon tech tree in Masters of Orion II, but you never forget your first big gun.



I was initially thinking of having my signature quote as "I am Pinkemena of the Equestriori. I am in possession of a stellar party-cannon, the funnest weapon in the ponyverse. You cannot resist the urge to PARTY!" but it's a bit much, ain't it?

BlueTemplar wrote:
Actually, because it's the first game I try to do so much tech/res trading, and I'm trying to find how it all works. Consider it like mini-maxing not the economy, but your relations with the AI.

If you play the UE, there is a tech that doubles your quantity of strat resources. Before the patch, you could use that to keep an abundance of everything, and still be trading away a lot of units. Ended up earning around 4000-5000 dust per turn, per race. Haven't tried post patch cos it was a bit bland in the end. Also before the patch there was no notification of broken deals, so each turn you'd need to check your trades to see which were still running.

EmpressPinkemina wrote:
It was the first sci-fi movie I clearly remember seeing at a cinema, with my pops and I was a wee lil' scamp

I actually watched it about 2-3 weeks ago. Sadly, it didn't age well, so hang on to those memories and don't be tempted to watch it again. Still a good movie, just seems a bit corny in many places now.

Broken deals are still not shown if they were broken because the only item on one side is dust per turn and that player ran out of money. Btw it's annoying that if it isn't the only item in the list, the dust per turn just gets deactivated forever and the other player gets stuck with an unfair deal.

I'm very new to the game myself, and my first game I won on a military victory because the new Automoton race apparently thought it was fun to conquer more than half the galaxy and then declare war on my Sophon allies (I declared war also to maintain an alliance.... YAY! I'm a good guy for clubbering somebody over the head! ), however I kept going at it until I owned something like 95% of the systems in the galaxie... now thinking about going back to the last save and seeing how those Sophon ships look in combat when they meet my 50K+ MP capital ship fleets >_>.... anyway... I had a point there somewhere... oh, right! I had so many systems by the end of the game, and I had already won, that I went and put them all on AI controls to initially pruduce research at a faster rate, and later to Dust once I had researched everything.



I know I'm still a complete noob, but maybe changing some colonies to AI control to see what they do once they are told to reach a higher research output? You still have to make the right choices on what you research, however at that point you can at least let the AI build and teraform to get the optimal output of research.



I don't think the AI is perfect, however they seemed to select the right things to produce by late-game, with a few exceptions being extremely constly upgrades that primarily served the funtion of winning the game (which I had already won anyway).



One thing is that the Automotons I faced were extremely expantionist, and had no trouble bringing huge Dread fleets into my systems at around the time I only had Destroyers researched, of course followed by curb-stomping ME into the ground. They even went so far as to DEMAND a system I managed to snag on their side of the wormhole (for free, of course), which ultimately lead to their demise because it had a HUGE population and great production and research values.... basically pumping-out missile Dreads every turn once I had the needed tech, which easily fought back and dominated their side of the system with the aid of my main Hero (which somehow managed to fight back with suicide missile Destroyer fleets long enough to get behind the wheel of a Dread).



Oh, the other point in the above story is that the Automotons managed to get about 75% of the way to an economic victory before I started aggressively pushing back and taking their planets... and the fact that I had no idea how system upgrades worked (I somehow thought you could only build one per system... and later I thought they had a one-time cost <_<).



So the summary is: Try AI control of your systems and focus on the most viable research path. If that does not work, then try something else! \^_^/



EDIT: I just realized I necroed this thread >_>... damn, I have to get used to the font color and placement of post dates on this forum. Sowy.

EmpressPinkemina wrote:
The stellar converter also was the top of the offensive weapon tech tree in Masters of Orion II, but you never forget your first big gun.

it was also in moo1

Planets do make a difference. It's the difference between 8 and 10 systems without approval problems. But you've got to be aware :



Over-expansion is a thing. dun dun dahhh!

The more you expand, the trickier it gets to keep everyone happy. As Nosferatiel said, expansion disapproval only hits full colonies, 30 turns after being settled. You might realize too late that you over-expanded, and you get stuck with unhappiness as a result. There's a limit to how much you can compensate with lower tax rates without going bankrupt.

You then have to research (and build) new approval system improvements as soon as possible, and research expansion disapproval mitigation techs, and stop colonizing new systems until you stabilize, and stop colonizing new planets in-system unless the system itself is in good shape approval-wise. It might also help to fix bad anomalies, but the industry cost is rather high and system improvements are faster to set up.



The danger with expansion disapproval is that 1 new system can lower the approval of ALL your systems by a significant amount, 4% at easy and up to 7% at endless (according to the wiki). The problem isn't localized and fixed with a hero giving approval, it is widespread and requires big investments. Better see the problem before it hits. Try to colonize new systems over many turns instead of all at the same time, that way you can better see the transition from happy to strike.





Also, I do believe that expansion disapproval depends on the number of systems you control, not the number of full colonies you have. When you colonize a new system, it is a simple outpost, yet you can see right away the drop in approval on your older colonies.







Keep enjoying the game!

It's a short response for a long post, but :

- Yes, faction alignment is just for the lore, and have no impact in the game (as far as I saw until now)

- Yes, the AI is quiet rough, and expansionist. You have a need to expand your empire if you want to win, and it will still be tough, even for victories without war (more system = more research, or more trade...)

- You can win otherwise than with violence, did you try to deactivate the adequate victories conditions, did it modify the AI comportment ?



Personally, I had to make myself humble, despite a good experience in 4x games, and I had to lower my ambitions. :s

Population is key to the game. For all planets in a system until nearly full set the exploitation to food. As for building improvements, food improvements are okay provided you have the planets which can use that particular improvement.



The Craver's trait about eternal war is a joke, actually that trait is a joke. The racial backgrounds are meaningless, its not like races play any differently than another.





Still, to win.



1) First turn, set tax rate so you are in the green. Try to maintain that all throughout the game.

2) Exploit is food until system is nearly full

3) N-Way fusion plants is first tech to research and provides first item you build in a system

4) Many get Soil Xenobiology then research towards Applied Casmir Effect (which path there you take depends on planets your stuck with (Arid/Tundra/etc)

5) Nonbaryonic Particles for Magnetic Field Generators





When expanding consider a planet's true Morale shift before settling it or skipping. As in, check the anomaly, planet type, and special resources, to determine which planets are best to colonize first in any system. Planets with bluecap mold are always nice.

Well, there is a difference about alignment, though it is only a subtle one.

"Evil" races have a diplomatic modifier favoring diplomatic relations to races with huge military, while "good" races like races with no or weak military.



So if you always had blazing military, the cravers are less likely to declare war on you, as would be the united empire. On the other hand, Sophons or Pilgrims will likely declare war on the warmonger.



For the other problems I can only advise you to rely on Shivetya's #1-point: Keep the taxes as high as possible while having an exalted empire.

Also, of course, don't settle other planets in systems until the already colonized planets in that system are full or nearly full.

Thank you for the responses guys - I'll try and take some of this advice on board and see if I can survive a little longer.



The odd thing is I tend to concentrate on building my military forces pretty late in the game. Both times the Pilgrims started giving me grief I had little more than a couple of explorations vessels and a handful of colony ships. I assumed it might have had something to do with trying an expansion regime in order to keep pace with the explosion of colonisation I have seen in the other races.



The planet advise is something I should work on - I seem to have no luck with planets and end up stuck with masses of Arids, Tundras or Arctics, which make colonists extremely unhappy and slow me down further, though there's little I can do about that (save tweak the ratio of more Earthlike worlds).



One other question - what difference doe the game speed make? Is a slow game a little more relaxing in pace, giving me chance to find my feet?

Yes, slow game should be more relaxing. Because income is generated slower, also AI makes ships at a slower pace.



Be glad if you have Arids, they are the next best thing to a full blown Terran or Jungle world. Try to reach some of approval increasing techs. For that there is also a bonus you can get if you make a custom race. Helps aton, aswell as the +2 pop on tiny/small planets one.

Maybe this will help.





Population is life, and life is hope.

You need food for your systems to grow properly, the sooner the better. Use admin heroes with industry and food bonuses to kickstart new systems. With fast enough system colonization and good system populations, you can easily stay ahead of AIs on the FIDS count in lower difficulties.



Not all planets are equal.

Tundra and Arid planets only get -5 approval and give decent food. Tundra have a nice Industry Exploitation bonus, while Arid gives high base Dust income. Both are generally good to colonize early.

Still, planet worth is highly dependant on anomalies and resources. You will want +approval bonuses, as well as food and industry if possible. Anomalies with -approval are the worst and those planets probably can wait.

Start a system with food exploitations for higher growth, bigger populations, more life, more hope.



Approval dictates your growth and income.

Empire approval has 3 states : Rebellion, Content and Fervent. You want to aim for Fervent, meaning over 80% empire approval (mean of all system approvals). This requires efforts, but the reward is +10% food, industry and science in ALL systems. Higher growth...

System approval is of less importance, but staying at Ecstatic or Happy in your main systems is nice. Try and stay clear of Unhappy, it is way too penalizing.



Play with taxes.

To keep your approval high, you need to lower taxes. 10-20% tax rate is common, but you don't want to go in negative Dust supply. Occasional Industry to Dust conversion helps a lot, since it isn't affected by taxes.

What is affected by tax rates includes system improvement bonuses, but NOT system improvement upkeep. Know when to not build a dust system improvement.

The number modifying Dust isn't tax rate %, but the tax modifyer. You can see it in the empire factors view, it will show as 1.0 at 50% tax rate...



Adjust your research agenda constantly.

If your finances seem hopeless, you probably need the next approval system improvement, so you can compensate for the Expansion Disapproval penalty, which goes up with your number of systems.

Otherwise, aim mainly for the juicy techs that give good FIDS improvements. Some low-cost techs are not even worth their low cost, better get that upgraded industry planet exploitation first.





Do note that trade isn't affected by taxes, and Sophons have higher science bonus when you lower the taxes.

Also, with a Science faction, you don't have to put all your planets on science. If you play the expansion game like any other race, you will keep up with them on that front AND get higher science from your bonuses.

Thanks Marthnn



I think I'm pretty comfortable with some of these ideas already. One thing I find that is obviously holding my colony worlds back is that they are pretty miserable until I get to the 180 turn mark when all my planets become very happy. Prior to this they're often being stuck between Unhappy and Strike for large segments of the game, and by the time they're happy enough to really get up to speed, the damage is done and I have no room to expand due to the other planet-vampires out there.



Planet type seems to make no difference either; I've had a Jungle world with a Garden of Eden benefit full of sulky people. Having looked at the stats for the root cause of all this population grief, it seems to largely come down to expansion disapproval. Is there some way to measure this so you know when your population is more sensitive to opening more colonies?

Expansion disapproval depends on the number of fullfledged colonies you have. For 30 turns after colonisation, a system is classified as "outpost" and then becomes a "colony" which suffers from and causes expansion disapproval.



To remedy this, you can do three things:

Lower your taxrate (You're already doing this and that is good!)

Build pink buildings for happiness. (Infinite supermarkets + colony rights!)

Research expansion disapproval mitigation techs in the lower techtree.

I've been a gamer for a long time now, and I cut my teeth playing old-school space strategy like Ascendancy and Masters of Orion. I picked up ES thinking it'd be a trip back to the good old days. Thing is, I'm ending up with more questions than answers. I'm now hoping to God the community can tell me where the hell I'm going wrong, because things are stopping being fun very quickly...



Now I've tried out several races so far (Ameoba, Cravers, Automaton, Sophons and Sowers, and a couple of races I had a go at creating myself). This has thrown me up against pretty much every species out there. Firstly, what difference does the described allignment of each race make? For instance, I've played a game where the dreaded Cravers were content to leave me alone in a state of cold war for well over 160 turns, and I was expecting to be hit over the head with the Borg stick very fast. In direct comparison, on two seperate games now the apparently "good" Pilgrims almost immediately began blockading my systems and attacking my ships. I appreciate that it takes time to get enough political clout to start brokering deals between empires, but for good guys, the Pilgrims were uninterested in anything but war for an exceedingly long time, forcing me into genocidal tactics. I was aiming for being a good guy myself, and ended up being forced into making a race extinct. It was a little disheartening. So, firstly - does the allignment make the slightest difference?



Another thing I've wondered about is are all the races such violent expansionists? I've had to deal with Ameoba and Automaton pruning me out of the galaxy in very short periods of time. So if I'm not being robbed of expansion space, I'm being raided by my neighbours, and more or less railroaded into war.



Also, I've tried winning the game from a diplomatic perspective (forging peace deals between races and making alliances, deals, trading technology, materials, etc.) - I know this is dependent on researching various technology in the science tree to improve inter-species communication, but I'm yet to make any headway. Is there some secret I'm missing, or does playing nice with the other kids just fail all the time?



Now in more or less every game I've been defeated economically by rivals. No matter what I do though, nothing seems to increase my resources to a significant enough degree. I've observed the relationship between the stats, and can apply the technology to worlds to improve their productivity, but I never break out of third place ever - the AI is evidently better than me. If the tax rate is cranked too high, I end up with systems going on strike. What's the key to this, or is this one of those situations where the game AI has a massive advantage because it can essentially bend the rules in its favour (and will never make a single mistake with its micromanaging)?



In my games with Sophons (or a similarly tech-oriented race I made myself) I lose the science lead around the 100 turns mark never to recover it. I'm making sure my research is steady, going for the items with shortest research times over longer ones, and managing from my perspective at least to make a lot of discoveries. Somehow though, everyone else manages to get in front. I've increased the science points across my systems, turned industry to science, and it does nothing. I can't figure out where I'm going wrong - any advice for making a science victory?



Finally, I don't know how rough the AI is supposed to be, but out of all my games, I've only won once. And that was set on Easy. Every other game, I've opted to continue past being bluntly told how much of a failure I was (man, those defeat messages pull no punches - nice to feel like a total loser!), and I've managed to salvage a little more dignity in the longer game, though only through all-out war. In other games I've been more or less forced into dominating through violence. As much as I like to win, doing it through imitating Genghis Khan wasn't what I thought I'd be doing. Is war an essential part of the game, or can you win through solely on diplomacy?



Ok, that's pretty much it. I'm hoping against hope the community is able to be of help, because ES is becoming less fun as the days pass. I do realise the multiplayer game will be quite different, but as a casual gamer nowadays due to the time constraints of shift work I'm pretty limited to pitting my wits against the AI. As things stand though, the consistent feeling of just banging my head against a wall because I don't really want to play the genocide game unless I absolutely have to is removing the enjoyment and thrill I got when I initially picked up the title. Too much difficulty, not enough options - or so it seems.



So, halp plx folks - I'd prefer not to put this game down before I'm given it a fair shot, but the difficulties I'm having are slowly taking the wind from my sails.

At the beggining, only your homeworld will suffer expansion disapproval.



As each outposts becomes a colony, expansion disapproval will also suddenly affect it. So you need to be prepared for that when each outpost is about to become a colony and prebuild the colonial rights and infinite supermarkets.

ryousei wrote:
At the beggining, only your homeworld will suffer expansion disapproval.



As each outposts becomes a colony, expansion disapproval will also suddenly affect it. So you need to be prepared for that when each outpost is about to become a colony and prebuild the colonial rights and infinite supermarkets.

So outposts cause disapproval but aren't affected by it, and colonies both cause and are affected by disapproval?

Also like life if you have a big fleet that is also a deterent which in return gets i.e. Pilgrims to play nice and want peace



Another point is if you make your own race I find that makes the game easier to taylor the game to how you want to play



Oh I also don't lower tax until I get my first Hero



All of the above posters are good at the game and should give helpful and worthy advice

All systems in your territory are affected by expansion disapproval, but usually outposts won't be inside it.



This is a 4X game, playing nice and not expanding is the surest way to lose the game. (But because of the approval hits, colonizing at the right place and the right time is very important.)

BlueTemplar wrote:
This is a 4X game, playing nice and not expanding is the surest way to lose the game. (But because of the approval hits, colonizing at the right place and the right time is very important.)

There is more than one way to win most 4x games. I dont expand much or use military in any of them if i can win that way. In civ I win on deity with just one city. In endless space I win on endless with just my constellation. (havent finished my first game since the patch yet, but it seems to be going fine)



Playing nice is a perfectly valid strategy. You can win games in endless space without ever building a military vessel.

chromodynamics wrote:
You can win games in endless space without ever building a military vessel.

That is because of the current and imho quite flawed diplomacy-system. The AI will never attack you as long as you keep your relation to them above -100. And as long as you are not having a broad border with them or have a lot more score, it is pretty easy to realize that.

I've been experimenting with different ways of decision-making about when to let the AI go to war or not. And in some of them this would definitely be impossible.

However, I need Amplitude to implement some more hooks to be able to mod the exact behavior I want the AI to have with that.

There is more than one way to win most 4x games. I dont expand much or use military in any of them if i can win that way. In civ I win on deity with just one city. In endless space I win on endless with just my constellation. (havent finished my first game since the patch yet, but it seems to be going fine)



Playing nice is a perfectly valid strategy. You can win games in endless space without ever building a military vessel.

Those are usually special challenge games, which are often won using various exploits. You would never win like that in a competitive environment like MP.

BlueTemplar wrote:
Those are usually special challenge games, which are often won using various exploits. You would never win like that in a competitive environment like MP.

Where did multiplayer come out of We were clearly talking about AI. None of them are challenge games or exploits, thats just how I play. I dont like military and fighting, its boring. I like min-maxing economy / tech.