Endless Space

[JWIV]

For me the fact Sins is real time makes it a completely different beast of game. As I get older I do find myself enjoying turn based games more and more...

That's fair. Looking at the changelog for Disharmony, it does seem to at least attempt to rework some of the  issues of vanilla.

[Lantyssa]

Any tech tree changes?

[Maledict]

The tech tree seems to have changes throughout. and buildings and techs have changed. The new race, the Harmony, seem to have a very different tech tree as well (at least on the left hand path).

They also seem to have tried to boost different planet styles - Soewers geta  unique building that adds +2 to food, Indutry, Science and Dust but only works on Tundra planets for example so that may make tundra better than other planet types for them.

EDIT: In fact even the base values of planets has substantially changed. Think I'm going to restart as a more normal race and try and get used to the system before trying out the Harmony, they seem a bit too weird for my tastes/

[koro]

One of my friends was griping that "they finally fixed the game, but did it with a $10 DLC." Is that accurate?

[Maledict]

No, they patched the game considerably since launch and it was perfectly playable pre-expansion.

If you want a game that required you to pay for an expansion to fix bugs, folks should look at Elemental. It's now onto its second expansion and at the rate they are going by the fourth it will be fixed!

[Tebonas]

Lets be fair, though. I have yet to pay for an Elemental expansion.

[Kail]

I played Endless Space for the first time yesterday (without the DLC) and found it kind of frustrating/boring.  Not HORRIBLE, but a lot of the convenient stuff that, say, Civ 5 has (hotlinked civilopedia, helpful tooltips, a non-"holy shit what concussed monkey wrote this goddamn abomination" tutorial, etc.) is missing, and it feels very non-intuitive.

I'll probably give it another shot tonight, I like the basic feel of the races and lore, and the look of the game, but not sure how long I'll stick with it.

[Tannhauser]

I've tried and tried to get into this game but after a few dozen turns I pull my face off the keyboard, rub my sleepy eyes and go to bed.

They took the most exciting part of a game like this (combat) and automated it. 

It's the brown in a box of crayons.  Perfectly serviceable, unexciting.

[Modern Angel]

Man, I dunno. Different strokes. Combat is always the least fun part for me. I love Endless Space and have since release. I'm digging the Harmony and the changes throughout.

[Maledict]

I just want some basic information on the big changes. The entire system of FIDS for planet types has changed and I have no idea what's ideal anymore. Seems like barren worlds give +13 to science without any addons which is *huge* and a massive change from the basic game. I no longer have any idea about what's viable and what isn't anymore.

[Modern Angel]

The wiki I guess? It seems like it's a work in progress but I got good info there today.

[Mithas]

Has anyone tried StarDrive? It looks interesting but most of the reviews I read were mediocre at best.

[Modern Angel]

I thought it was terribly mediocre. The real time/turn based hybrid felt weird and clunky, the UI notifications weren't robust enough, and it was just generally average.

[Simond]

If people are looking to scratch their space 4X itch, there's really only one answer.

[jakonovski]

I don't want to spoil my MoO1/2 nostalgia by playing them again.

[Maledict]

I've happily knock up a spreadsheet to figure out the new rules behind planets and the amounts they give. From what I can see the changes are really good and very rational.

In the original game, by the end of the game you basically wanted every world as either Terran / Jungle / Ocean as the size of these worlds and their overall bonuses gave you the best results. Gas Giants were still useful as specialised worlds but everything else should've terraformef upwards.

Under the new system, this is no longer the case. Whilst the end 3 worlds are still best for overall FIDs, the more dangerous planets are better for their specialisations. So if you want a system to just churn out ships, you would be better off making everything Tundra rather than Jungle. Jungle would give you more science / food / dust, but Tundra and Lava give you more industry. On medium class worlds, Jungle would give 48 industry and a total Output of 96, whilst Tundra would give 55 industry and a total Output of 85. Basically you can now trade off specialisation for overall production which is much better than the old system where you just wanted end game planets.

They also equalled out the endgame planets food wise - Terran / ocean / jungle all give the same amount of food now.

They also made a lot of the planetary improvements make a lot more rational sense - they no longer boost a planet that is weak in one area above a planet that is strong in that area. You no longer have to do calculations in your head or refer to spreadsheets - all the planetary improvements keep those same planet listings, so Terran / Ocean/ Jungle are always best for food. Barren / Arctic / Ocean  always best for science, Lava / Tundra / Jungle always best for industry, Desert / Arid / Terran always best for dust.

There's still a slight anomaly in that for Science the tier 2 world  (Arctic) is better than the Tier 3 world (Barren) for science and gives a greater overall output so there's still no reason to ever use Barren if you can change out of them. Suspect it will be tweaked slightly so that they mirror the other world classes - would only take a very minor change. Give the very first science tech, Public-Private partnerships, an extra +1 science on barren worlds and its fixed.

[Maledict]

Oh, and to clarify they rationalised what planets are good at.  In the base game desert worlds were industry (but then changed to dust when upgraded to arid) and tundra were science worlds. Now the classification goes:

Science : Arctic --> Barren --> Ocean

Dust : Desert --> Arid --> Terran

Industry : Lava --> Tundra --> Jungle

Note the slight bug in the science worlds mentioned in the previous post. This is a much more rational and straight forward planet classification system.

[Lantyssa]

Really it should be Barren -> Arctic -> Ocean.

[Maledict]

Exactly, that's the mistake. All it takes is another +1 to science for Barren to make them better at science than Arctic so it won't change much. There's a science improvement in the mid-game tha gives +2 science to both arctic and barren - just lower arctic to +1 and its fixed.

Also worth noting that the unique civ techs seem to change planet classifications. Sowers get a tech that gives tundra worlds +2 to FIDS, which makes Tundra their best world in total FIDS instead of Terran / ocean / jungle, so at least one species will now specialise in a non- tier 1 planet. Haven't checked most of the other trees - Sophon get something which gives massive approval boosts on asteroids / barren / arctic which seems pretty crappy as I never have approval problems in this game beyond the start of the game.

[Ingmar]

Hearing that combat is automated makes me more interested in trying this, 4x combat is usually terrible when you have to control it.

[Megrim]

It played more like a board game than anything else, last time I tried it. Only problem was that the weapons tech choices looked largely to be a rock/paper/scissors type of affair with pretty binary "is your laser armour number higher than his laser weapons number?" things.

[Maledict]

Previous combat was more complicated than it looks, but unfortunately that just made beam weapons the best in the game. The new combat is, to be honest with you, too complicated for me to understand right now... Not getting the different weapon distances or how invasions work at all.

But yeah, board game is probably exactly right with how it plays.

[Strazos]

So I have this, even bought the expansion, but have never loaded it up - how is it? Are people still liking it? Does the gameplay make more sense now, in light of the preceding thread?

I'm generally not a 4x wiz, but do OK in stuff like GalCiv2.

[Mortriden]

So I have this, even bought the expansion, but have never loaded it up - how is it? Are people still liking it? Does the gameplay make more sense now, in light of the preceding thread?

I'm generally not a 4x wiz, but do OK in stuff like GalCiv2.

I like it.  It plays very similar to MOO2... but, combat is nothing like MOO2.  The combat is very simplified, there are three phases of combat, Long, Medium, Short (Melee).  Missiles are best at Long, Beam at Medium, Kinetics at Melee.  Generally, combat is all about the opening salvo.  If you can blast out enough of the enemy in the first phase then the remaining phases are much easier.  Until that is changed and balanced somehow, then you can really own your enemies by creating specialized ships (Missile boats).

For your first couple of games turn down the difficulty to "newbie".  The computer cheats like a mofo and while you are learning it's good to feel like you can compete.  =D