Endless Legend, fantasyland trying to fix Endless Space's flaws

[pakoito]

Great year so far for 4x, another release around the corner. From France's Amplitude, their nex big release is on Early Access now.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/289130/



Gameplayish video (WARNING IGN): http://uk.ign.com/videos/2014/04/18/endless-legend-video-preview

What content you will find in the Alpha Early Access:

• You can play any game with up to 6 players but only on continental maps. Boats will be added later
• 4 factions out of 8 are available for you to choose from
• 10 minor factions out of 15 to be incorporated to your Empire
• 4 eras and around 100 technologies to get from quests and research
• Military victory condition
• A few sample quests on top of the main faction quests
• A 200 turns time limit after which the best score will win
• A core AI that will simulate a bunch of leaders who probably skipped way too many courses to go brawling in their youth
• Therefore, with such leaders we went for a basic diplomacy
• A first pass at music and sound design, all soundtracks will be re-recorded later
• The core Battle System

What is Missing:

• 4 additional playable factions (8 in the final game) and 5 additional minor factions (15 in the final game)
• Multiplayer gameplay (8 players / simultaneous turns)
• Custom Factions and Modding
• Advanced AI for diplomacy, economy and warmongering
• Naval transportation and map generation with several continents
• Roads and trade routes
• 2 additional eras for a total of 6, with up to 40 extra technologies
• Fully functional diplomacy
• A tutorial campaign
• Additional victory conditions
• Additional battle options
• Varied unit abilities
• Finished battle system
• Lots of tuning and additions coming from players participating with us to GAMES2GETHER

GAMES2GETHER is a weighted vote system Amplitude has for releases, where they shape the games next features according to community's vote. You have access to their design documents and make the best choice. If you own their previous game, collaborate on their forums and stuff your vote weights more.

 

[pakoito]

Personally that IGN video has put me off the game.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

We'll finish it one day, I swear!!!

 

[pakoito]

We'll finish it one day, I swear!!!

This guys tend to do it, if you followed Endless Space they had the same model before Steam featured it.

 

[General Maxson]

Endless space was banal soulless shitty game. I don't know will this be any different...

 

[Monkeyfinger]

I never got endless space because I heard that the combat system involved playing cards with an enforced rock-paper-scissors mechanic built in. Will endless legend have that?

 

[pakoito]

I never got endless space because I heard that the combat system involved playing cards with an enforced rock-paper-scissors mechanic built in. Will endless legend have that?

Nope, it has ranged hex combat like Civ V. And is that stacks I'm seeing?

 

[anus_pounder]

D1P'd.

 

[Raghar]

It's wonderful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQGrSHFIIew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zNBww3oJuY
These are spoilerific however. Dissable audio as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_07atzemWg
This is unspoilerific to some extend, and he screwed up a lot, also he doesn't have microphone which means it's watchable even with sound.

Basically think fallen enchantress done right.

 

[Berekän]

Those screens on the store look great, and yeah, it looks like what Fallen Enchantress tried to acomplish, please don't suck.

 

[sser]

I didn't get to watch much, but is the combat like... auto? It seemed like he would position troops and then they'd auto fight with some basic directions.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Day -100 purchase for me as when I hear "4x" I bend over and lube up. One hour played first impressions: I'm going to need a bigger tube of lube.

I never got endless space because I heard that the combat system involved playing cards with an enforced rock-paper-scissors mechanic built in.

It's a literal rock-paper-scissors system: entirely chance based although the AI does tend towards some predicable choices. I never found a reason to play the combat on anything other than auto-resolve.

I didn't get to watch much, but is the combat like... auto? It seemed like he would position troops and then they'd auto fight with some basic directions.

Semi-auto from the couple of fights I've played. You can set up formation and choose targets and then they fight/move on their own until the next round. There's more control than Endless Space, but less control than AoW or Fallen Enchantress. It's not really like Civ 5 or Warlock either. There are stacks and there are hexes but combat appears to work on a region basis where all the units in a region get sucked into a combat. I really need to play some more to fully understand what's going on but I'm waiting on a graphics driver update to very slowly download.

 

[Destroid]

Actually plenty of times auto-resolve makes bad choices, but playing out the combats is incredibly tedious anyway, especially late game when you and the AI have so many maxed out fleets you have to play like 10 combats to take a planet, it's a real pain in the ass. Endless Space's only real strength was it's somewhat interesting system development ideas, everything else was pretty weak.

 

[whatevername]

Endless Crap was so retarded that once you get a hero with +gold for destroyed enemy ships you insta-win. You just buy ships and use them to buy even more ships and GRIND GRIND GRIND. Even worse than GalCiv 2 and FELH.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

AI is near non-existent in the current alpha build. I had a three turn war against a Necrophage opponent. Turn 1 it suicidally attacks my five unit hero led army with a single scout. Turn 2 I walk into it's nearest, completely undefended, city. Turn 3 I walk into its final, defended by one lonely unit, city.

The semi-auto sort-of-tactical combat is an improvement over Endless Space's watching paint dry card thing. Faint praise though. One interesting feature is that the local map terrain becomes the combat arena in battle so the direction combat is initiated in is quite important. Grabbing the high ground or attacking from a mountain pass makes a huge difference, not least because the tactical AI isn't any more capable than the strategic AI at this point.

Factions are more interesting and varied, although there are only four out of eight available at the moment. Necrophages are fun. Heroes are still boring. Quests don't add anything really and have some annoying preconditions that don't necessarily gel well my current strategy, e.g. "must be explored with hero of type x and level y", "must be explored with hero of type x, 2 units of type y, and four units of type z", or they're stuff I'm just going to do over the natural course of play anyway, e.g. "build two luxury extractors". They make Fallen Encantress' quests look like Planescape: Torment.

 

[circ]

AI sounds straight out of Civ V then.

 

[kris]

Tried this yeaterday evening.

Good.
- Terrain is done well with interesting resources and different elevation.
- Factions seems quite different
- It has personality.
- Isn't like every other fantasy 4x
- Minor factions is interesting addition.

Neither
- there is one city per region.

Bad
- Combat isn't very interesting or challenging.
- implementation of minor factions is pretty underwhelming. Especially as it makes no difference which faction you are.
- There isn't much to do apart from running around with your hero doing quests.

 

[JohnTheRevelator]

My impressions are: this is very much unfinished. AI is brain dead, hell bent on declaring war on you, then sending in troops to be slaughtered one wave after another but then I don't expect AI to be competent when many features seem to be still missing, like trading. Higher tier equipment seems too powerful, I'd rather have it improve by like 10% between tiers. Hero or hydra with Tier 3 stuff will annihilate whole AI armies without breaking sweat. Combat is... weird. Your units are supposed to be kinda autonomous and every other turn you get to adjust their orders. In practice it can be infuriating. I suppose it's supposed to give AI fighting chance, not a bad idea considering that's where cheese usually can be had in these games but they could work a bit on implementation, yeah it's boring. Where is magic?

Otherwise it seems to be promising IF they add significant amount of content (searching ruins (not fan of implementation too) and killing stuff is complete list of (boring) things to do as of now), improve AI. One city pre region is nice idea (not a fan of city building itself though, too gimmicky and you end up with Elemental like snakes more often than not), art direction is very nice, factions are nice and actually fairly different from each other.

 

[Konjad]

Endless shit. Will it ever end?

 

[Kem0sabe]

Endless space was endlessly boring. I expect this one to be much the same.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Big update to beta today: http://steamcommunity.com/games/289130/announcements/detail/190591332827609809

• Two new playable major factions: the Ardent Mages and the Roving Clans

• Multiplayer mode with up to six players out of eight in the final game

• Enhanced Battle system (Battle Pace / City Militia / Moral Boost / Upgraded Deployment)

• Ships and Harbours: you can now go explore and colonize the world beyond the ocean!

• Addition of Roads and Trade Routes

• Improved Diplomacy: new Diplomatic Treaties, AI diplomatic behaviour, Counter Proposal option

• Addition of Privateers: mercenaries bought in the marketplace who can attack anyone without revealing exactly whose side they are on…

 

[hoverdog]

Endless space was endlessly boring. I expect this one to be much the same.

It's even worse right now, I'm afraid.

Endless Space was mediocre for me, it got boring quite fast but had a number of interesting concepts and mechanics (NOT including combat). Apart from quests, Legends doesn't seem have any of those, and the combat is atrocious even when compared with ES's one.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Development plods on. Huge maps are available now.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/289130/announcements/detail/179334869872587640

Spoiler

CHANGES AND ADDITIONS

• Enabled Tiny and Huge maps.
• Enabled 7th and 8th Player slots.
• Added Gauran and Hurnas minor factions.
• Added new diplomatic terms: commercial and research agreement.
• Heavy modifications of the tech tree: some technologies can unlock several constructibles or bonus empire. Text and icons are still WIP.
• Increased the requirements of the next Era (10 unlocked technologies instead of 8), but to unlock a new area, you now have to research 10 technologies of any previous era (and not the last era anymore).
• Added the Roving Clans scene in the outgame view.
• District and City Centre levels are capped to 2. Their level is now displayed in their tooltip.
• In Game Chat:
  • Ensure we'll show all messages received, even without opening the chat window first. Also clearing the backlog when starting a new game (or loading a save).
  • When the chat panel is not visible, incoming messages are discreet (the panel doesn't pop-up anymore).
  • Fixed the fading out of the chat, when in "discreet" mode (+no scrollbar, no mouse grab).
• Added a new Unit capacity: “Revive” (for Ardent Mages' Eneqa Wing)
  • If the phoenix is killed, it is transform into an egg with 50% of its max health.
  • An egg can't attack but can still be targeted.
  • All the eggs still alive at the end of a battle are killed if they don't have friendly units with them.
• Added a new Unit capacity: “Parasite” (for Necrophages' Proliferator)
  • The proliferator uses Parasite by attacking. A unit with a parasite that dies in a battle gives a Forager unit to its enemy.
  • Disease immunity protects from parasite.
• Added new world generation options.
• Added a new option to scale the speed of battles (animation, FX, movement...).
• Added an in-game stats panel in the Empire screen.
• Added Steam Cloud support.
• Added a Retreat button for attacked armies: retreating deals 50% of the max health to all units retreating and requires 1 Army Action Point.
• Added the display of the Diplomatic abilities to the Diplomacy/Negotiation screens.
• Added the display of the trade routes in the strategic world view.
• Improved the feedback (effects and icons) of the Unit and Hero capacities.
• Updated the native capacities of all of the units.
• Updated the capacities on weapons.
• Removed the army action cost for the Search, Bribe and Parley army actions.
• Now flying have their own default attack which can be countered if the terrain allows it.
• Reworked the critical formula: now deals damages equal to attack instead of critical.
• Added the display of the upkeep cost in the Unit tooltip.
• Added the display of the remaining action points in the army panel.
• Units' level are limited to 9 instead of 20.
• Increased the experience needed to level up. Updated the experience reward per era to fit with the new levelling threshold.
• Decreased price of heroes, increased their sensibility to inflation.
• Increased winter maluses (-2Food/Dust on Food/Dust tiles, -1 Industry on Exploitation Area). Several buildings don't work in winter.
• Necrophages' Sacrifice resets the growth timer.
• Added more information concerning the players' status on the MP loading screen.
• Improved the desync detection tool.

 

[Mortmal]

My impressions are: this is very much unfinished. AI is brain dead, hell bent on declaring war on you, then sending in troops to be slaughtered one wave after another but then I don't expect AI to be competent when many features seem to be still missing, like trading. Higher tier equipment seems too powerful, I'd rather have it improve by like 10% between tiers. Hero or hydra with Tier 3 stuff will annihilate whole AI armies without breaking sweat. Combat is... weird. Your units are supposed to be kinda autonomous and every other turn you get to adjust their orders. In practice it can be infuriating. I suppose it's supposed to give AI fighting chance, not a bad idea considering that's where cheese usually can be had in these games but they could work a bit on implementation, yeah it's boring. Where is magic?

Otherwise it seems to be promising IF they add significant amount of content (searching ruins (not fan of implementation too) and killing stuff is complete list of (boring) things to do as of now), improve AI. One city pre region is nice idea (not a fan of city building itself though, too gimmicky and you end up with Elemental like snakes more often than not), art direction is very nice, factions are nice and actually fairly different from each other.

I played some hours a few day ago and its still as john depicted it . The very strong points are the visual, the art is gorgeous , the factions are very different from necrophage to nomads building towns on giant scarabs... But the Ai is still braindead and it even dies to minor factions by turn 150 . Of course its still early access but i am starting to worry when its supposed to be only a few weeks from release.

Sad to say but fallen enchantress has much better AI right now , and its not stellar either .The customization of units in endless legends is limited to the bare minimum too, only equipping an hero with gear, whle in FE you had real unit creation and reall tactical combat with them.<i dont see a reason to not auto resum fights in endless legends.
If only we could get the best of both worlds.

Oh , and dungeon of the endless is a great fun game.

 

[Raghar]

Current version is 0.5.4 so it's still long way to go until it would be finished version. There is no point in complaining about unfinished early access versions.

 

[titus]

[1.0.0] Release Notes

18 SEPTEMBER
Hey everyone,


We are very glad to announce that Endless Legend is now out of Early Access and officially released on Steam! Check out the release notes below and our trailer!

If anyone is interested.