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Endless Space: The game: The thread.
Just consolidating any endless space discussion into this thread, rather than jamming up any other threads with various natters. Questions, comments, screenshots, fluff, bugs, etc, etc etc.
Post edited by Churba on
Comments
The first setup phase for the game is a little confusing. There are a lot of toggles. Relative value of racials isn't totally clear at that point. I set the difficulty to "newbie" and otherwise only examined the features.
Once I was in-game the tutorial windows were a little incredibly tedious, but I worked through them over time. Obviously a video overview would be slightly preferable to just dropping a bunch of text on you. I saw that one of the recommended guides for the game is a literal save file you load and then play-through to win. I think the game at release would benefit immensely from copying that and having a tutorial mode with voice that just walks you through an entire game start to finish in a predictable way.
As I mentioned in the other thread, the game was actually broken for me initially. Right clicking to move fleets did not function. After restarting my computer (might have been fixed with just the game) that fixed the issue and I could do the same exact things I was trying to do before-hand that did not work.
I managed to handle all the other parts (build queue, colonize first system, research queue, couldn't afford to hire a leader yet). I probably screwed this up majorly at first, but I at least took the actions. I also screwed around with my taxes for more productivity, and I'm not sure if that was a good or bad idea.
My scout explored most of the map while I was busy trying to get my first colony ship off the ground. I sent it to a "nice" system that was local to me. Pirates killed my colony ship. On the newbie setting. Well, if that's what it takes... I'll build a couple of the light defender ships to patrol systems. I also hired my first leader and had him help my main system.
I researched the thing that unlocks the mushrooms bonus, then arctics/ice-world colonization. I took a system with four cold worlds. It looked like a good system (ancient artifacts, other random bonuses). To make a long story short, I colonized all four worlds and they stayed at 4 total population forever because they hated living on an ice world and they couldn't make enough food. I fixed this, around turn 100, when I finally moved my leader to the new system. He gave enough morale and food bonuses to save that system... but it was already too late.
Losing my first colony ship slowed me down quite a bit. I had to produce a lot of fleets to deal with constant pirates. I managed to take most of the nearby systems, and my only neighbor was peaceful, but bigger than me. I proceeded to dick around down the tech tree and try to salvage my game as much as possible. Eventually a player was eliminated.
The AI was annoying. They were clearly ahead of me, but they absolutely would-not attack. They just wanted to blockade my systems at random. I'm sure they had a bajillion techs at this point as well, as I was failing miserably to try to keep up with essentially just my two home-worlds till much later in the game.
It'll be interesting to try again. I know one of my biggest problems was that my economy was just fucked. Apparently playing as the terrans, I needed to actually focus differently. And I need to realize how rediculously important those leaders are (30% bonuses to a thing are massive obviously, but in MOO2 I was used to it just being a boon, not a deciding factor in my ability to move forward with the game).
My first experience with the game was with the "YOU CANNOT MAKE PEACE WITH ANYONE EVER FOR ANY REASON BECAUSE YOU ARE AN OVERSIZED, UGLY HIVEMIND WITH VERY FEW INDIVIDUALS ALLOWED TO THINK"-Cravers, and even that experience was insanely better than what you describe. Got 100 turns in before update and haven't bothered to move the save files.
As for landing on systems with +food, that would have been great but that system with the ancient artifacts specifically had all cold planets. And I didn't know how to get my food production up at that point.
Pirates only sent 2 ships at a time, but I had to keep ~3 ships in each system to keep killing them off without taking too much damage.
Also, the one time I actually tried to control the battle I couldn't figure out how to select any of my combat options. Could have been a bug or incompetence, either way I switched to just auto-battling which gave me more predictable results.
I know that game.
To explain how combat works: PRESS GREY QUESTION MARK BUTTON, PRESS COMBAT CARD OF CHOICE, ???, PROFIT! Or anal rape if you get out-picked. But at least you still got some lube in that case compared to picking nothing at all.
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_II/Some_effective_race_designs#Production_versus_research_races
That's not necessarily perfect, but it's much better than the Game FAQs guides that favor research strategies.
On the settings I'm running right now (8 players, Cluster, Average, Post-Warp, Impossible), my best race seems to be something like Repulsive/Unification/Subterranean/+100% Population Growth/-10 Ground Combat. I focus on getting 3-5 good systems, hopefully a couple rich worlds, and go for research labs on every planet as my only research. First techs cloning center or soil enrichment (start researching cloning, switch if it looks like I need more base farming), then get MIRV merculite missiles, then focus on getting the next couple steps towards auto-labs. If I live long enough to research auto-labs or build emissions guidance destroyer missile-boats to kill the guardian or take all the good nearby monster-planets, I've won. But it often goes against me since it's easy to get unlucky.
One of the biggest things the multi-player community worked on fixing was the random map generator. A lot of people find it's too random, you can get boxed in with worse systems, or someone can get a free (no guardian monster) ultra-rich system... at which point the game swings on the map. I think the general consensus is that if you take the outliers off the table unless guarded (ultra-rich and gaia) and make all stars generate as orange ones do, then it works out a little better.
Also everyone hates the Orion guardian giving such advanced tech for free, especially when everyone's figured out that emissions guidance + MIRV + Merculite Missiles pretty much slaughter it... supposing you can throw the 12-14 destroyers it takes. Then bam, massive tech advantage over all other players...
Also, if you play creative, you don't get as much of an advantage off spying... which is fairly important.
You could power-level your war techs before the other races (save the Psilons, who were inclined towards an alliance anyway) and then use trans-dimensional travel to get a fleet to other systems lightning fast and commit genocide before other races were barely off the ground. You'd always know the location and status of the other empires (and obstacles) due to omniscience, and you could just cut a path around Space Monsters and empires you wanted to stay friendly with.
I started playing MoO2 a lot later than everyone else (punk kid, didn't grow up with hardcore peecee gaemen), but I played a lot of it when I got it a few years back, and I only ever beat the game with the Trilarians or a Trilarian-based custom build.
http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2005/03/master-of-orion-ii-strategy-guide.html
I have the same problem as I do in lots of RTS games. I spend everything on research, production, and expansion, and nothing on ships. Even with lots of production it takes like, a zillion turns to make one ship! In that time I could build all these buildings and research all this stuff, and then make a better ship in half the time. I end up not wanting to build ships until I have every tech there is and the planet building the ships is fully upgraded. How do you decide when to stop upgrading and build ships?
Also, how do you know how to design ships? Is a merculite missile better than a proton torpedo? I have no clue! If I look at the numbers I can figure it out and build the best possible ship at my current tech level. Great. How do I know if that is sufficient to beat a space monster? If the other guy is sending 5 battleships to attack me, how do I know how many ships with what equipment are necessary to beat that? I like how in Eclipse this kind of thing is abstracted, and is not hidden information, so you can easily tell what you are getting into with combat.
Wish there was a 4X vidja game with same rules as Eclipse.
Gonna buy this game now for sure.
I should explain the combat/shipbuilding a little beyond the cards. When ship-building, you have exactly what you expect - Different frames, upon which you place weapons, defenses and the like, with some frames having unique abilities, like longer range sensors on scout ships and planet-seeders on colony ships. You have default weapons and defenses, which are improved by going up the right tech tree.
It gets a little more complex once you do, though - you have three basic weapon types - Kinetic(big guns, essentially), Lasers, and Missiles. Each have their own sub-tree in the weapons tree. You also have three defense types, Hull plating, Shields and Flak. Different weapons have different advantages - one might have GREAT damage, but lower accuracy, and they require a particular resource like Hexaferrum or Titanium-70, which you can only find on some planets. You also have accessories that produce various effects, like increasing weapon power, increasing shield/hull effectiveness, and increasing invasion power - since your ability to invade/blockade systems and take over planets isn't governed by your ship or fleet military power alone. You also have to balance all this against tonnage, too, as expected.
Now, your enemy tends to field particular types of weapons, and you tend to find it out quickly upon encountering them in combat, and adapt for it - but so do they. You can retrofit and rebuild fleets that are near your systems. There are - at this moment - no space monsters other than the pirates, who you can adapt to like any other enemy force, and whom adapt to you. You can guess roughly by their fleet size and the ships they tend to field in fleets, especially if you've faced them in combat before.
Ideally, you want to balance it appropriately for who you're facing off with. Sure, you're not getting QUITE as much info as eclipse, but you're getting no more or less than anyone else.
You get a reading of military power and fleet composition right before you go into combat, and coming very soon will be the ability to retreat from combat - at the moment, you're locked in till death or victory, which is a little annoying. They still have at least one more race to announce, too.
Also I apparently suck at managing my planets, but so does the ai you can turn on... mine just kept converting planets from arctic to desert and back...
Also the AI doesn't seem that interested in trading techs... which I guess is a good thing... but they were totally fine giving me any resource it seemed.