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.