4X Endless Space 2

[Fedora Master]

Good game, terrible community.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Vaulters are nice, the other two races don't seem too interesting to me. Hacking is typical EL-like addition, kinda intrusive and not too interesting. Behemots are ok, but many people find them kinda gamebreaking. I think you're good with buying only vaulters.

 

[tindrli]

So is this game good or not? Didn't read the previous 16 pages lol

so so .. its playable. nothing spectacular but its not bad either. for me its worth a money. at least a base game.

 

[Belegarsson]

 

[rusty_shackleford]

75% off on Steam

 

[lightbane]

*Checks new trailer* So, the new faction will be about... *Takes breath* Space Egyptian black fem-mummies with telekinetic powers and floating robotic limbs?

I'm not sure if that's the mandatory diversity quota, or the devs are using a random word generator for inspiration. Might be worth a look either way.

Is the last expansion, the one with the ghost hackers, worth it? According to steam reviews it is not, but I would like to hear the Kodex's Kritical Konsensus.

 

[Arnust]

I really liked Penumbra/the Umbral Choir myself. Reviews are probably from brainless who don't know how hacking works (fairer at release, not anymore) nor that you can actually use it with any faction, it's just the UC are way better at it but also need it to expand. I'm not sure how interesting they're to fight *against*, but eh. Their story's pretty neat and dicking with people in Multiplayer was really fun, even if you can sometimes feel like a glorified spectator if you don't manage to seed enemy empires early-ish with your sleeper agents.

 

[lightbane]

Soo, has anyone tried the latest Awakening expansion? According to Steam reviews, it may be still a little rough around the edges, especially with the newest faction, since they depend on another Empire to progress, but the mechanics are not truly there, as well as depending on random finds in order to get Science points to research, which sounds like a terrible idea even if they start with a massive tech advantage.

 

[Pope Amole II]

It's the worst expansion so far. Nakalim are the crippled lovechild of cravers & unfallen, not really being unique or good at anything. Academy is lolzbroken. And there's not much else.

 

[lightbane]

Academy is broken how? Too powerful? Thanks for the synopsis.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Academy is able to give you 20 command point fleet with 3 carriers included at turn 25-30 fastest speed. That fleet also has 2000 troopers inside. And you're also able to hire another carrier as an additional vessel. At this point in the game, even 1 carrier is enough to wreck everything, so 3 is just murder.

Yeah, that fleet spawns at your capital and you can't attach heroes to it (you can to that second vessel, though), so that somewhat limits your reach, but even through that it's way too easy to crush the biggest fleet of nearest neighbour and cripple them until the end of the game. It's especially good in the hands of any nations that are able to speed its boost (vodyani, as if they weren't op enough already).

Funnily enough, other 3 academy options (you choose one out of four boons) are trash.

 

[Silva]

I really liked Penumbra/the Umbral Choir myself. Reviews are probably from brainless who don't know how hacking works (fairer at release, not anymore) nor that you can actually use it with any faction, it's just the UC are way better at it but also need it to expand. I'm not sure how interesting they're to fight *against*, but eh. Their story's pretty neat and dicking with people in Multiplayer was really fun, even if you can sometimes feel like a glorified spectator if you don't manage to seed enemy empires early-ish with your sleeper agents.

Sounds cool. Like a more developed Data Angels from SMAC. Thanks for bringing it up, I'll take a look.

 

[Arrowgrab]

Since there's some activity in this thread, let me piggyback it with two gameplay questions:

So, Umbral Choir. If and when I want to increase the population of one of my sanctuaries, I need to go to the system management view of my home system, click on the appropriate button no the left, and pick the target sanctuary from the list. Next time my population increases, the new pop unit will appear in the sanctuary, not the home system.

So far, so good. Here are my questions:

I - Suppose I want to increase the population of a sanctuary now. Not when my home system's population next increases, NOW. Is there a way to take one of my already existing pop units from my home system and send it to a sanctuary; and if yes, then how do I exactly do I do that? One of the tutorial messages is phrased in a way to suggest it's possible, but doesn't say how.

II - Same thing in reverse. There's a pop unit in a sanctuary; I want it to come home to the main system. Is there a way of doing it, and how? (Not including "wait for other faction to colonize the planet, turn pop into Sleeper, wage war on other faction, scoop up Sleepers and send them home as Umbral Shadows.")

 

[lightbane]

Yeah, that fleet spawns at your capital and you can't attach heroes to it (you can to that second vessel, though), so that somewhat limits your reach, but even through that it's way too easy to crush the biggest fleet of nearest neighbour and cripple them until the end of the game. It's especially good in the hands of any nations that are able to speed its boost (vodyani, as if they weren't op enough already).

Sounds like it needs balancing yep. What about the Academy as an enemy faction? Are they strong? The Vod guys especially have a reason to fight them story-wise.

In any case it seems I should wait for discount and patching. Also, find time to finish E. Legend first.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Well, they have the same 20-strong carrier fleets that they're giving to you from the get-go so yeah, you can't bum rush them. They're very passive, though, so later on it should be no problem.

 

[Arnust]

Since there's some activity in this thread, let me piggyback it with two gameplay questions:

So, Umbral Choir. If and when I want to increase the population of one of my sanctuaries, I need to go to the system management view of my home system, click on the appropriate button no the left, and pick the target sanctuary from the list. Next time my population increases, the new pop unit will appear in the sanctuary, not the home system.

So far, so good. Here are my questions:

I - Suppose I want to increase the population of a sanctuary now. Not when my home system's population next increases, NOW. Is there a way to take one of my already existing pop units from my home system and send it to a sanctuary; and if yes, then how do I exactly do I do that? One of the tutorial messages is phrased in a way to suggest it's possible, but doesn't say how.

II - Same thing in reverse. There's a pop unit in a sanctuary; I want it to come home to the main system. Is there a way of doing it, and how? (Not including "wait for other faction to colonize the planet, turn pop into Sleeper, wage war on other faction, scoop up Sleepers and send them home as Umbral Shadows.")

I - I think you can ship them like you do with any normal empire via using the spaceport you get from the System Level improvement. That said I'm pretty sure you want to be topped off at the Nexus.
II - I don't think you can. But again I'm not sure there's much of a point to it.
The thing is, the UC can actually grow any number of population per turn, they're not locked to one even if they had 999999 Food like the rest. So while it's kinda annoying you can't micro pops as much you just want to spread them aaall over, especially as of the ability to transform them into sleepers and their + bandwith. Most of the pop micro comes from trying to put the most Umbral Shadows at your core system you can. Remember you can expand the planets there via the Terraform menu, they can eventually become a full wheel big.

 

[Citizen]

 

[hello friend]

So what are the good mods?

 

[TemplarGR]

I recently started to play this. I changed my opinion about space 4X, i think this is far better than Stellaris and Galactic Civ III. And i am not talking just about the presentation. It does have some downsides, like all 4X games do, but the overall package is the best all-around offering if you want a pure space map 4X in my opinion. Stellaris had potential at launch but Paradox instead of improving it, they destroyed it, and Gal Civ III needs all the DLC to become a reskinned Gal Civ II, a great game a decade ago but archaic today.

I think Endless Space 2 is my go-to now.

 

[kreight]

This is objectively better than Stellaris for RPG nerds.