Endless Space 2/4X General

How do they keep getting away with it?

He's a musical lich or some shit.

Also
daily reminder old Cravers aesthetics were better than nuCravers

Torrent is up.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:1693839AE864FA1128ED6F6E96F44F88CA76AA80&dn=codex-endless.space.2&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.opentrackr.org%3a1337%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3a6969%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3a6969%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2fp4p.arenabg.ch%3a1337%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.aletorrenty.pl%3a2710%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2feddie4.nl%3a6969%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.ilibr.org%3a80%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.ilibr.org%3a6969%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.zer0day.to%3a1337%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2fp4p.arenabg.com%3a1337%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.internetwarriors.net%3a1337%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2f9.rarbg.me%3a2790%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2f9.rarbg.to%3a2750%2fannounce

don't you just love it how there are no new 4x games the whole year, then 2 of them pop up in the same month?

Whats the other one user?
I know Galactic Civs 3 got new DLC but beyond that not much.

galciv3 got a major overhaul, not just dlc.
also, there's Dawn of Andromeda which I haven't even tried yet. that makes 3, I guess

thanks m8

Did they fix the retarded AI that would spam countless fleets of 1 ship or lots of recon ships

no thank you, schlomo

What a gay

Downloading right now, hopefully the progress they've made is the same leap from endless space 1 to endless legend.

Give me all Vodyani related music.

Any good reason not to buy this if I liked the first one?

Don't automatically buy another game just because you liked the first one. I mean really the next release could all go straight to shit and you wouldn't know it except for some red flags you might miss until release.

Yeah I guess I shouldn't have asked about the game before buying it to see if there are any red flags. I guess I should stop downloading the torrent right now to see if it's good or not. Man, what the fuck am I doing? It's not like the full release is out now or anything. Christ, I'm retarded. I mean, I don't think I'll ever be able to play it. They could update it at any time, just like that Bill Nye show on Netflix! Why even do anything in life? Guess I'll just kill myself.

What? I'm just talking in general, since you're already torrenting it if you like enough then buy it.

That's not normal, is it?

Yeah asking questions during my 4 hour wait is a dumb idea. Especially since the game has been in early access for a while and people might already own it. What was I thinking?

The new faction have a very unique playstyle, instead of qucik expansion and then fortify, you kinda snowball starting off slow but by midgame your grabbing huge swaths of territory.

not true, the un-fallen exel at war. you can choose to play them militarily by following the "fire" quest path, or pacifistsby following "light" path great fun so far.

its a law you can set as ecologist, you can colonize anywhere but dont get full fidsi output. only heratio starts with the law i think.

I sincerely hope they've drastically improved their launch polishing, I remember during EL's launch half the factions could barely function and multi-part quests failed frequently.

It was in early access for months. We know what it's like.

Am I doing something wrong?

You can beat pirates with your starter ships if you upgrade them a bit. They're not that hard but they are annoying.

you can upgrade your first scout ship with better weapons and sheilds, can handle most early gme battles.

I checked, and you're right, thanks for clearing that up, they tell you

In other news, is it me, or those animations are really bouncy?

They're animating a still image by inflating and rotating sections to it looks a bit weird.

shit, I meant to add they tell you the starting technology when you choose a faction, but it only tells you the name of it, and I didn't saw any mention of that law for horatio

Vodyani porn when?

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thicc dragon penis

Reminder that frogs gave us this.

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I know who you are fite me

Are the faction screens still those fucking ugly as sin high detail 2d portraits that are awkwardly animated? I wish they'd opt for high detail 3d ones like in Civ V/VI, those look great.

I'd only buy on day one if they offered a well priced season pass, other than that I will wait for a final edition to be released because I don't want to have to pay an extra $100 on piecemeal dlc.

no fighting, only dragon loving

Are you from Somalia?

Well, he is pirating it.

Holy hell this game is nice. RIP Auriga

It was just released in that screenshot. It wasn't being seeded.

I'm unsure about the game, in general it's much better then the first and that's because they just stuck in bits of endless legend but at the same time though they did not improve upon endless legend but what I still don't get is why the fuck did they leave in the retarded card game combat, the one thing which made endless space not as good as it could have been and they did little to change it

Are strikecraft in yet?

I've yet to see any so I think not

Fuck. At least they kept the awesome card system.

it's slightly different as in it's not totally out of your control as you can set which range groups, one thing I hate though is the fact that every hero unit has the same space ship style there's different ones but they're the same style, it's lazy as fuck

Imagine the battle if they were done on SoTS style.

Also what did you guys think of the (((lumeris))) comic?

the game would have to be utterly changed if it was like that but I'd like it alot more if so

it's a shame it's not the same artist and I disagree with how human everything is

Branching questline or branching research?

Well… at least we know what happened to Auriga now.

Been playing pirated with United Empire for a bit. Ironically my super militaristic empire is also the most diverse due to the absolute ludicrious amounts of influence they get that you can dump into minor factions, in addition to some events that dumped two extra factions on my home world.

That's ALL they have.

First game was boring as SHIT.

No it wasn't you dicknobbler.

So I'm about to install Master of Orion 2. Were there any mods I needed for it?

Also, any other decent retro space vidya worth getting while I'm at it?

Sorryfor late reply, just woke up.

but quest decisons provide branching tech you get, one of the paths really lets you push military.

Bretty cool. Are we getting more of these?

launch trailer was pretty cool. Space sim set in the Endless universe when?

Watching this trailer made me realise we need an fps or flight sim or rpg set in this universe. Damn they've made something special.

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Can someone explain my dumb ass why my logistics ship spawned in Craver-territory?

Could well be.

The game was garbage, i got to turn 40 and it already started to slow down. In those 40 turn nothing fucking happened, just select shit to build-wait-wait-wait-select shit to build and repeat. There's nothing to show the size of the galaxy, it's just lines and dots. It's also shallow like many 4X games that pretend to be 2deep4you but in reality it's the same shit just done differently. There's 50 pointless tabs with that horrible UI to display just a few numbers, they really did a fucked up job there for the sake of "muh artstyle", which by the way is shit. The races are complete trash, unintresting cliches at best, but i have to admit reading horatio's story was pretty funny. Also there's not enough of them, same recycled races from the endless universe. Technology is super fucking bland.

(you)

I forgot to mention that the way they did solar systems was not only recycled trash from the first game on which they didn't even bother to expand upon, but also the worst way of portraying the base of your empire, give it meaning, and in the more functional way gamaplay wise make it at least useful. The way systems are now it's complete nonsense, how the fuck do you explain 6 planets not being able to build 2 different things at the same time. There may be a way to do so later on in the game but i didn't get that far, and still it's something that should be possible from turn 1.

it could be pretty neat that's for sure.

Well you could try SoTS 2 then goy.

Their is another one "coming soon" on the ES 2 wiki.

aren't logistics ships from events / exploring anomalies?

Usually see them transferring goods to developing outposts.

those are civillian ships I thought? logistic ships i've seen have been from anomalies, usually carrying new pops back to an already established system due to an event.

er, logistic ships seem to basically be cargo ships from events. i just got one carrying one hissho back to my home system after probing an anomaly.

They're both, they transport food to outposts and you can see them transporting pop around if you use the spaceport or find additional pop through exploration events

oh okay, i thought the ships being sent to an outpost were called something else. I was wrong then.

epic

Every fucking time Microsoft. Someone suggest me a image mounting program, I haven't used one in a few years and I'm out of the loop.

WinCDEmu

So how is the game after all can someone give me quick rundown?
meanwhile I'm playing sterallis

are you by any chance that one user ripping rondoduo stuff?

meanwhile, no fucking one tries to make a better civ alike 4x

found your problem there….

I just went a few turns forward and it seems that it was actually carrying Craver immigrants coming to my colony. O-okay…

No idea what caused it, though. Apparently even major factions in cold war with you can cause some sort of population bleeding?

It's comfy. Learning to understand some of the mechanics is gonna take a while. It isn't as much about just straight forward compensating your fidsi-output with the techs as it was in Legend. The UI can get a bit cluttered. The politics and laws seems to add a really nice new aspect to it. Dunno how it holds to 4x vets.

Amplitude games are comfy streamlined games with not much depth but still enjoyable due to its asthetics and gimmicks.
Thats how I always saw it anyways.

that's a good way to put it, though in EL the quests and lore really seems to add much more depth and roleplay to universe, I like it too

meanwhile still playing Stellaris, this is 4xg right?
mf its a nice neighbor too, how can I can avoid that without going nazi?

This certainly feels deeper than Legend. How would you define good kinda depth in this genre?

my fucking god, can't even save scum, basically lost the whole fucking hour of playing the game

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You could always declare war with the goal of making them a vassal or tributary, that's a feature i've really been enjoying so far.

Crashes on startup, just when I'm done loading and about to get to the menu, any ideas?

would google but steam is kill

is stellaris fun yet? or should i continue to stick to distant worlds

ew lad…

turned out to be my saviours, there was another planet where they were settling, and both of them were low habitability to me, and also wouldn't be part of my core systems, so either way not very good for me to settle
however having them settle there is annoying cause of the way border works in the game, so I would lose some already claimed systems with no planets on it

but mah federation?
it was kind of funny cause the neighbors turned out to be so similar to my made species,

didn't actually play DW so don't really know, but haven't played since release, this play through is pretty interesting

It's probably a good thing you did make those frontier outposts. In my current game I had two directions I could expand in with a excellent potential colony in either direction. I decided not to waste money on frontier outposts and both planets had other low habitatability worlds near them claimed. As far as I know I can't uncolonise a planet other than conquering it and finding some way to kill all the pops so my empire is boned.

"Cleanse Planet" is there for your needs user.
I feel kinda stupid though.
couple of hours ago, I declared war to cleanse 8 planets. War is done, every pop is exterminated, and… I got 8 planets really fucking far away that I can't colonize.
Oh and everyone has a -600 diplomatic status because I'm space hitler now.

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Nah, the way I see it, there were 8 planets covered in trash.
I cleansed them.
It's not my fault the rest of the galaxy doesn't appreciate community service.
They ain't gonna complain for much longer after I take out the trash.

That's only Xenophone though right? I couldn't seem to use it on my militarist/spiritual playthrough.

yeah outposts turned out to be pretty effective, hold out the planets until you can colonize them and then forward settle again
it helped that I had influence to spare and got the factions by my side

but to be honest "borders" in Stellaris are pretty dumb, who on the universe is gonna lay claim on some imaginary space line?
it would be fine to be system by system though, with outposts being cheaper but expensive the farther from a colonized planet it is

quicky bump,where are your space empires?

Anyone else dislike the voices? I hate the Craver ones, it just doesn't fit, they should make scary insect/robot/monster noises not speak english, also the Syphons, why the fuck are they british? Only Horation and UE should have english voices the rest should have their own thing

i couldn't care less about the voices yeah. They don't necessarily annoy me, but they feel a bit shit and i could do without.

Stellaris would be a good game but it becomes unplayable in late game, everything slows down and the FPS goes to shit, I can never get to enjoy being powerful as fuck and dominating the whole galaxy

Fuck me, when's that dlc coming?

I hate those Sophon voices, and their lines, and their personality, and their AI

Well they did already do Dungeon of the Endless (which was an awesome game btw). I'd like to see what they're able to do when making a true RPG and not just a level focused roguelike with some RPG elements.

But man, considering how the music for Dungeon of the Endless turned out, I can imagine how kickass the music for an RPG set in the Endless universe would turn out.

youtube.com/watch?v=Pbg8aIJWHpw&index=14&list=PLNGwkC79KZ5jpRLeAP5C4_tXgSGI90W8p#t=2m46s

The first Endless Space didn't look like a mobile game ported to PC. What happened?

You've suffered some heavy brain DDOS in the meantime.

it could be because that user's pic isn't an endless game at all

Pressing alt+enter generally switches a windowed app to fullscreen.

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I like them. The animations are kinda rough, though.

What's so bad about the Cravers' voices? The Bishop is meant be able to communicate between other species after all.

i think the issue with the animation is that most of the drawing is in 2d, but the head is 3d so it looks a bit off.

oh i will say the short colonization animation is pretty good tho

Dominions and Galactic Civ for example.

What's the link between Unfallen and the Eyder?

app for application….

ah! don't know if it was intentional but good one

Please go back to whatever shithole you came from.

so i've got 25 hours in ES2 and i like it a good bit, but it's pretty buggy. menu freezes, crashes, etc. at least it autosaves every turn I suppose.

so I bit of unrelated talk:
I've been watching the yogscast play one old StarTrek 4x game, that seems surprisingly good, with MoO tier graphics but 3d battles
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcHXCoaLlBY5gydfRZMiy5ReodervwWJg

and speaking of which, guys ever watched The Expanse,
was a pretty sweet sci-fi show, set when humanity conquered the solar system but not yet achieved interstellar travel

Seeing how Endless Legend got polished, I have no doubt ES2 will become fantastic, too.

I mean I dont condone releasing games early to pad them out with DLC looking at you destiny, but amplitude is a small studio that releases a kernal and builds up on it, both so they can actually fund the end product and keep the community invlolved. It's annoying, but they have a track record of making decent games on release, amazing over afew years with dlc, so one cant be to mad.

Is it me or are the Vodyani way too OP? They were my first pick when I saw them announced but playing them on the second hardest difficulty, I'm steamrolling and 8 AI game with the holy empire

Its turn 120 and I have fleets of 20+ leechers on enemy capitals and flotillas of around 80 ships each

so far I have realised the AI doesnt know how to counter each factions gimick and play to their own strengths.

For example the unfallen are able to expand the fastest of all the factions, yet the AI expands the same rate as any other does.

shame, it seems better than trashy CIV AI but shit in other ways. Also bugs galore kinda wish they didnt release early and ironed them out

they only released a day early technically. Their early access periods are usually no longer than 6 months and I believe that's about how long it's been, but I'm not entirely sure. i got the ea the day it came out and participated on the forums

The only thing they really should have pushed back release for is the fighter/bomber system they were planning on implementing.

i agree. and The Unfallen was added the day of launch if i remember right as it had been a few months since i last played. could've given a couple weeks to test them out.

So there isnt any point for the carrier upgrade yet except for more space for invasion troops and top tier fleet ship?

Actual art schools tough as hell to get in depending of the Culture ministry and not Education (meaning they can be as old school and elitist as they want).

Read the books nigga. There is no such thing as good sci fi that's not ink and paper.

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Only 2001 is science fiction but the movie support makes it far too weird and NO ONE (me included) actually understand what the fuck is happening just by watching it without a fucking book to explain it.

FYI Alien is more scifi than 2001.
You just revealed your pleb-levels by not knowing it.

Playing this game for a while made me realize that the only stuff holding it back is bugs and poor a.i. Other than that I think this is one of the best games amplitude has made and I hope these issues are ironed out soon. It could use some stuff like the fighters or espionage though, maybe improved ground battles or more complex battles in general. United Empire and Vodyani best factions

Oh and pirates are too annoying and pointless at the current stage in the game. Not enough interaction with them besides "kill"

Is it an actually good game unlike the first Endless Space? I primarily remember that game being a chore to attack in and production was OP as shit.

They've certainly learnt from endless legend how to and not do shit in 4x and I guess they figured they cant really do combat so cut it to the barest bones with only fleet customization and formation
try pirating it see how it compares

What is a good x4 game that is light on the hardware and with a Linux port?

I don't mind an absence of combat if I can customize a lot. Can I get autistic with planets and population management?
My biggest beef with GalCiv was that I couldn't xenocide every new conquest.

Civilization 4, complete edition from GoG, works perfectly over wine (easy to setup too), and arguibly one of the best 4x ever (my favorite still)
besides that, newer Civs works on linux natively, Stellaris and Ck2 if that's your cup, there is also one called Pandora which is pretty interesting not famous enough 4x game

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Unfortunately, AI is always an issue with their games. If you know what you are doing, you can basically strip away the challenge.

Did population composition even matter in that game? I really wish more games actually had race of your population matter.

well… AI in the genre is generally always the limiting factor, the matter is that 4x and similar involve multidepth short and long term decision making, and not only choose between A or B, but sandbox decision
so its far from trivial to just "make AI better", its incredibly hard to simulate a human player, and let alone multiple players who may act differently

fucking great

I know. I suck at the genre enough that I can have fun with it, but it is always disappointing to see AIs doing weird shit or things that are obviously done for simplicity.

I have the steam version, guess i will try to run wine through it.

with the cravers minor pops are slaves and you can turn them into food. there might be more stuff but i haven't really done a xenocidal playthrough yet so don't quote me. Each species/race/whatever have bonuses to them too, like industry production and other stuff, so they're a bit useful. On top of this when you improve a system's level you unlock a spaceport and you can send specific pop types to specific systems if you want to get their bonuses where it's more needed.

oh and with the vodyani you can drain other faction's pops. the vodyani are fuckfaces tbh, so far i think they're the space version of the Cultists from endless legend in their ability to bootyblast me.

So here is some fun shit in play Stellaris play through

First pic is my custom race, space elfs that are smart and happen to live forever… (yeah though of something like vulkans)
they really live forever (am yet to experience a single leader dying), but began as a syncretic evolution along with stronger race in a slaving dynasty, appropriately called 'enlightened monarchy'
their primary goal from going to star was the search of knowledge, as such the research tradition tree was the first one unlocked, making them a tech power house

As if not kino enough, the game spawns me very close to what has to be me cosmic brother, second pic, klingon look alike, also long living with syncretic evolution and talented,
they were the other race trying to forward settle me so annoyingly, but we happen to be best pals, and soon-ish we will begin the Federation of Interstellar Races

are you aiming for Civ4? if you want I can share my version with you
its not really pirating if you already brought the game (I think multiple times in my case)

Just got Endless Space 2.
By god, it's beautifull.
Still too early to judge the mechanics (there's a ton of diferent shit, I don't think even Stellaris has this much detail) but the presentation? Holy crap, do they deliver.

Then there's the music, the artstyle, the EVERYTHING.
I still like Endless Space, but the second one is on a whole other plane of FUCKING GREAT so far.

Uh what happened to the Amoebas, the Automatons, the Pilgrims, the Hissho, the Sowers, Sheredyn (although I can assume they are now merged with United Empire,) aswell as the Harmony? Please tell me they will return.
Vaulters a shit, a SHIT and can stay gone

anyone got a magnet link for stellaris i want to try it out

Some of these are minor factions that you can assimilate into your own, and assimilation means something, planets will collect them as population markers and they will tend to vote different ways, they also provide production bonuses based on the amount you have in your empire overall and just as an population points.

I've only found the Amoeba minor faction of those listed though, I've also found a few new minor factions, they are quite a nice addition to the game itself, but I can see why they decided to go with the major factions though, I don't remember much of the differences in the first one other than the Cravers ruining planets but the factions remind me more of Endless Legend and have major differences, like so far one doesn't settle planets or systems and have a unique resource they have to steal from other factions,

so continuing on, I don't really know if I'll try to follow psionic or cyborg or genetic ascension, guess the one that comes easier to the race
but more importantly, don't know how to reform government for something less authoritarian, don't know if I even want that
however as it is current, my fucking leader doesn't ever die, seriously 150 years of life? and that's even avoiding more tech that increases it

second fleet is some crystal fleets on a system, nearby there is also a Gaia planet that I've been eyeing for some time
but already can tell its gonna be problem

there's a reform government button

If you're ironmanning at all, I'd suggest you'd steer away from psionic. Cyborg is just a half-ass synthetic ascension and genetic is pretty lame waiting for rare tech to research minigame, especially without mods that offer new interesting traits.

I bet you giggle at jiggling keys too, don't you?

You sound like a faggot.

*m'lady*

No, but I wouldn't mind being a juggling gigolo.

you can jiggle my keys anytime baby

Who is /horatio/ here?

I know, but I don't know if the reform will have ramifications and side effects

geez bit of a downer are you?

I haven't done a horatio game yet. Right now I'm /lumeris/. Buying outposts and selling them to build up tensions between other factions is pretty fun.

Enjoy

Neat. I wish there was a cities animation too. Like you could click on a planet and see what they look like after you've build them up a bit.

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poor lads…. they're friendly enough, but do we really have to live together?

I really want to play this, but Space so much denser than a regular 4x (including EL) I just can't seem to get into it. Honestly I can barely play a regular 4x for that matter.

It will lower the happiness and productivity of authoritarian pop, but doubt there will be any downsides if you encourage enough brainwashing.

If you're not ironmanning, go psionic because it comes attached with a RNG feature called "The Shroud." Get ready to savescum your balls off because you can only use "The Shroud" once every four years or something like that.

I've gone the entire game with warmongering Cravers up my ass with threats but doing nothing and what's the first war of the galaxy? Fucking pacifist Unfallen vs pacifist Unfallen. Goddamn it.

Any tips for early aggression in Stellaris? I'm thinking of swapping to lasers (since shields are a bit rare) and trying numbers.

Good old 4X AI.
> then we go to war
> never!
And the Meklars were never heard of again.

I'm no expert, but numbers, long range and avoiding space stations seem like good ideas.

No wait, I was thinking of the gnolams.
> lucky (((just a coincidence)))
oy vey

Spam corvettes.

oh boy if I told the amount of time I spent customizing ships in this game….
and btw second pic there
fucking spawned with lots and lots of strong mobs nearby me,
the mining drone ain't so bad (but still kick ass on the prime station)
but these fucking crystal entities, they spray you bottom top as if it was nothing, I have yet to find something that is efficient against them

You'll need deflectors for dealing with crystals, their weapons are lasers pretty much. Just ignore the system till later on because you already found a place can get the crystal plating tech for best option for your bigger ships in most cases.

crystal do shard damage (projectile) which I think has both bonus to shields and armor
I'm already last tier spaceport (battleships) and still can't face them with a full featured fleet
for weapons I was using a combination of shield defusers and armor piercing (energy siphon and mining laser), this of course is not very effective when fighting dudes with no shields

but right now I'm relying much more on railguns and torpedos, they don't seem to have much downsides
also the fleet composition is something to consider, specially when fighting those big entities, it can be better to go only with the big guns since they can take more of a beating
for battleships I went with carrier types (because its cool)

What are the big differences between psionic and synthetic empires in Stellaris? I'm planning to start a new game soon but can't decide if I want to go spiritualist or materialist. I kinda want to go full holy empire but the AI evolution stuff looks pretty neat.

Only with Psionics can you reach the true ending of Stellaris.

Right now AI revolt is crap and underwhelming, you'd have more fun going full cyborg and exterminating all organic life

Is Stellaris fun? Don't know whetehr to try it or stick with ES

Her body is covered in religious pictographs like they show in the prologue. Also, somehow they made the theme even better than in the demo.

I've had this game for months because practically everything Amplitude produces I know I'll enjoy. ES1 was probably their weakest game and the only one I didn't purchase.

The last time I played this, though, the politics system was fucking CHAOS. Buggy as shit, you could have a system or two who were totally enthralled with your leadership suddenly become complete anarchy in the span of a dozen turns, and it was far worse with one or two certain factions. That was months ago though, back in Feb or something. I should probably update it and see what they've done since then, I hope to god they ironed out the political party mechanics.

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Stellaris seems like it's great until you hit midgame and then it's a horrifically dull drag the entire rest of the way. I'm willing to bet that of all Stellaris games played, you're lucky if even 1% of them are ever actually finished. You have lots of fun setting your empire up, racing for the stars, conquering territories, maybe get in a war with a couple neighbors and make a few agreements with others…then once all that is done, which is by the time you hit early-mid game, your gameplay is railroaded into "build a shit ton of ships, declare war on someone you can beat, wreck them, have a period of peace where you rebuild your navy, rinse and repeat until end of game." It's horrible, it's like Paradox crushed all the ideas they had into the early game and completely ran out of steam, had no idea what to do next, and just made 75% of the lifespan of an average game nothing but the same shit over and over.

I suggest you torrent Stellaris and run a few games if you're really interested, though like all Paradox games it takes a good hour or two to really get a grasp of it. I do not suggest you spend money on it though, I don't think it's worth it.

pic related for Victory!!!
indeed going full on mining laser worked better, the mixed damage there is only due to different class of destroyers,
next I'm add some cruiser ships torpedoes, gonna wreck them

that's a really good question, I still haven't decided, I wanted to go psychic (since vulkans) but I started off as materialist (the search for knowledge)
and considering my species lives to nearly forever, psionic powers would be pretty be neat

burt as it stands now I'm between cybernetics and genetics evolution, already researched sentient AI though

Got pic related in higher res?

Paradox has a habit of having great ideas, then removing them, maybe adding them back as DLC only to break them with either shitty patches or shitty DLC that screw up the original mechanics that worked and were interesting. Happened to CK2 and EU4 with the shattered retreat and coalitions as-well as other shit I never noticed, I don't really care about anything new from Paradox seeing what direction it always takes.Least there's still the older less jewed games

And not cropped

rule 34 when?

I was never a paradox fan but I did notice they became more jewish and PC with time. They're limp wristed faggots now who struggle to make anything as great as they used to.
In regards to Stellaris though, I torrented that very very early on and it was okay but had the problems I described. Looked around on steam and saw lots of complaints about the same thing. Maybe a few months ago I yohohoed it one more time, thinking there was a good chance they improved it, but nope. A couple small extra bells and whistles with races or events and stuff, but they still had that gaping hole of mid to late game there.

Daily reminder Koradji's version of the Unfallen was superior and you all personally are responsible for his failure by not voting for it.

...

there was a vote?

Yes

Seems like another mediocre space 4x game, with the only difference from the others being it's from Paradox. Expect shit to be overwritten with before-mentioned shitty DLC and patches that break the few good things the game has going for it.

Thanks, found the guy's name either way. Thomas du Crest.

You think Games2gether community might appreciate them?

It's more realistic but kinda formless. I think the current design is more recognizeable.

Well, to get a bit autistic, I don't think I'd call Stellaris a 4X. I think it's just a Grand Strat In Space, albeit pretty watered down compared to their grand strats of yore. You could try comparing ES2 and Stellaris in general terms, I guess, as an example, but it would be like comparing Fallout 1 to fucking FO3 or something. They're similar, but different genres with different mechanics.

always user

Woah user didn't know Stellaris was that bad

So continuing on, indeed my strategy of going full on mining laser + torpedoes on cruisers work very well
its really beautiful watching a full on row of torpedoes blowing on them enemies
nearly confident that I can take on those 5k strength crystalline entities

meanwhile this was a big new thing, my neighbor empire, the klingons from previous pics, somehow lost all their capital to their syncretic species… even their leader and government changed
on my end happened the opposite, syncretic species just freaking love migrating, so much that home planets ended up completely deprived of them (which is pretty bad because they were pretty good farmers and miners)

let me suggest a better comparison there
where as on one you get boardy game strats, the other one is much more of a comfy 'play it as you want' type of game
both CK2 and Stellaris, you don't play to win, but make your own objectives while you enjoy the ride
its sometime even funnier if you're not stuck on "be best" mode, like when you get a retarded gay leader in CK2
even if you end loosing wars, you can become vassal or something and continue playing, final event is a very good example and really good RP end
its only the extremely autistic min/max folks that want to "paint the map their color" that mostly complain the game is broken, but that is just because they don't know how to enjoy it for what it is, and even then they already spent hundreds of hours with it

Nice dubs! Hmm, now it seems intriguing. Might just watch a few more gameplay videos to see whether I wanna play the game or not bother with it at all.

You can get more enjoyment out of it if you RP, sure, but the core issue is the complete dearth of possible things to do once you hit midgame. Early game is fun, because there's so much to do and work on and different things you need to juggle. Once you have everything set up, you're just passing your turns with very little accomplishment happening unless you're just trying to wage war constantly, and even that gets dull.

Paradox doesn't really have this issue with their other grand strat games, it's mainly just a void in stellaris. I don't think you're correct about the complaints only coming from minmaxing autists who want to dominate everything, it's a problem I've seen complained about in the community by all sorts of players. It's probably the single largest complaint about the game anywhere people discuss it.

got your problem right there, just in case you didn't notice there aren't turns in stellaris…
anyway, the midgame boredom is something that affects every single strategy game I'd ever played, from CK2, to Civ, even Alpha Centauri and beloved Civ4
might I add boredom in newer Civ is much more pronounced due to horrible AI and having to micro everything, even wars are a drag to fight and take hundreds of turns to get it on with
on Paradox games the bad AI is not so pronounced because of the style of the game, its stratified and thus doesn't need to be "good", in lots of ways though it happens to be way better than management

on my playthrough I'm nearing that midgame boredom, just about to finally finish off the aggressive mobs within my system and after that will be to relax a little (tbh this game was quite overwhelming)
but still I have objectives in mind, that is to finally bring my neighbors empire into a federation and to fight back against the xenophobe purifier
>>12609476
my advice to both of you is to stop fucking watching youtube and play the game properly, AND ONLY THEN start talking shit about your opinion, because right now, you have no opinion…

Mate I don't want to waste time playing something that becomes boring half-way through or faster so of course I'm going to watch gameplay to see if I like it. I've played EU3 and CK2 so I have some sense of what I would be getting into.

I've already played the game and have uninstalled it both times, the first time right after release and the last time a few months ago, as I mentioned earlier. Claiming I have no opinion is you being salty because it's not the same opinion you hold. Much like talking about "playing properly" comes across in translation as "play how I think you should." My recommendation to anyone considering Stellaris is to torrent it and play a couple games at the minimum and only then consider purchasing it, because I know that if I had paid for it I would not be a happy camper.

Players had speculated early on that paradox would fill the gigantic gap in their gameplay with DLC, since they generally make tons of DLC as a company, but they didn't. It's a three legged chair and people expected they would have built the fourth leg, they didn't and so I warn people to play the game first. Some people are fine with the state of the game as it has been like you, and others aren't.

Is Novus Aeterno still going?

Technically yes, but it's effectively pulling a Star Citizen at this point. Except I think even SC has more to show for it. Other than that I don't know.

That's unfortunate, considering the interesting lore and promising mechanics. Thought observing a battle from the bridge of your flagship was a nice bell & whistle, also liked the psionic trees.

I'm shit at these games, how do I start? I ran out of dust in 20 turns.

That's hideous and I votes specifically against it.

Always remember: When in doubt kill it with fire.

Is it okay if the fire I'm using is white and sticky? Those Unfallen sketches literally look like vagoos.

I'm not that dumb, i'm currently just playing a torrent of it. I've heard the complaint about mid game but haven't reached it yet as i'm strugging to get through early game since I keep deciding to restart with a different empire. I get the feeling it's going to be best played as a game to RP in as you make your custom empire and see how it turns out, I can already start to see how it might get boring in late game. Probably going to try and settle on a Empire and get going with it a couple more times before giving it a rest.

I haven't played ES2 yet but the Vodyani have the best aesthetics by far for me, they look so neat.

My main problem with Stellaris is that there wasn't any real economy or trade system. I didn't want civ-style diplomatic trading in it. I wanted something more like in Distant Worlds. On top of this, there's STILL only three victory conditions and it still boils down to conquest. No diplomatic victory, no economic victory, etc. Most Paradox games don't even really have victory conditions, but instead a score system with the ability to do whatever, so why they decided to go the condition route and on top of it gimp it in comparison to other games I don't know.

You should really try Distant Worlds. It still blows Stellaris out of the water. Better shipbuilding, better trading, two economies (civilian and military) that react to each other, multiple victory conditions including racial wons, ability to play as a pirate faction, different starts from pre-warp to already established, the list truly goes on. And it has decent automation if you prefer certain aspects whether it be military, ship-building, economy, colonization, or you can turn off the automation altogether and get comfy.

I tried it once. I really liked it. it really makes you feel like you're controlling an empire
on my first play through, my ships were just going around in circles. I think it was a fuel type issue or something I fucked up. at that point I realized I don't have time to rtfm, but I liked the game anyways

no, get the fuck out of here
my biggest gripe right now is the ground wars are better than the clusterfuck stellaris has, paradox should let generals manage over an entire transport and not rape my influence to give generals to each and every army.

man if you need a streamlined game that's stupidly simple i'm not going to fault you. play what dumbed down trash you want to play famalam.

I wonder what they looked like before donning the cloak, maybe vodyanois

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Yep, freaky little toads. They even took the form of the virtuals to worship them, the absolute madmen

I play these DEVS games for the artwork alone. One of the best.

Stellaris is lame as fuck, as any other paradox game. No substance. No depth.

Distant worlds is the best.

He did it again. The absolute madman, he did it again.

Talking of soundtracks.

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Is there any way to influence the types of actions you get on minor factions? I'm want to quickly convert a minor civ next door to my capital quickly with brainwash as Vodyani but have no option to

they might not be the originals since any species can be turned into a vodyani. Might just be showing the evolution of a a brainwashed species

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I know the word has become a meme of sorts, but there is no other word for it. French sci-fi is aesthetic. (yes I am aware that Giménez is an Argentine, but Jodo is Parisian)

FUCK VIDEOGAMES

are you still struggling Dubs Man, or did you figure it out? It's been a while since I played but if you let me know the faction you're using I can boot it up and go through it and come back with advice.

Worst case scenario you can use the lizard people, IIRC they're basically traders who are extremely dust focused. I think you even colonize new systems by buying them rather than constructing colony ships.

right, I kinda of agree with you, at least you tried the game, I don't know about you but until that midgame boredom hits, its like 20 hours already passed, fuck I've been playing since last week and still passed the majority of my weekend playing it
and obviously, the faggot post above you doesn't "waste" time actually playing the game but has no problem watching youtube plays of it, the problem I have is with faggots thinking he has a valid opinion and spewing out shit to others
and don't know, I'm positive Paradox will keep on jewing out the game for a fuck long time, and as result majorly improve it one way or another, at least they learned to not jew as much dlc as in CK2

checked out DW and will sure try it, but fuck if people were thinking Stellaris has convoluted interface, don't get close to this one
but the game really seems pretty interesting , the private commerce stuff, the automation too, will have to give it a try

Question for Stellaris players: Any of you wind up fighting a Reckoning from another species?

Jodo is Chilean you dingus, you're thinking of Mobius

Yeah you guys are gayer than Parisians and I'm French so I know.

Not him but I'm interested in playing the Riftborn myself. Still struggling to get the basics though.

This is it boyzos…..
time to pick between evolution paths
for one, I'm already researching synthetics, not only because I'm currently shit in credits, but also because my prole race basically left all my planets, and there is a bunch of low habitability which the synths could colonize
because of that I'm highly thinking of going cyborg, you get bonus to droids and something else that could help

meanwhile, still haven't been able to get the federation on track, turns out getting a federation of tyrant type planets is not that easy
there is a one purging empire and with the threat getting ever so great its more likely they joinn alliances
already got protective treats with the two guys I was aiming to

problem I see some bugs/issues where diplomacy and new feature stuff fails, things you can obviously see were not intended but are still no ironed out

Nice!
I'd go with "The Flesh is Weak", even though the Synthetic ascendancy path is kinda underwhelming compared to the dramatic Psi, but cooler than the boring Genetics ascendancy.

Nah I'm not having trouble going bankrupt anymore, pirates are giving me trouble though. I think it's pretty stupid that the only thing you have early game to fight with is a scout class ship, and if you're building those to deal with pirates eating civ ships on the way to your outpost you're cucking yourself out of building up infrastructure on your homeworld.

Basically I don't have a beginning-game flowchart down yet. I've never been too good at strategy games. I've been playing the United Empire since it seems like it would be a good stepping stone.

The thing is, Synth makes pretty much everybody hate your ass while holding seances to communicate with the totally not Chaos gods or turning large swaths of your subject populations into mind-numbed labours is totally consequence free.

Not exactly my problem, but are total conversion mods as stable as the base game in WINE? Just curious.

DW's UI is functional, but it is a bit ugly yeah. But, like any other games, once you know where to find information it's not that hard to wrap your mind around. I don't really think there was anything unintuitive about DW's ui when I first started playing. Information was where I expected to find it and that's the most important aspect of a UI to me, along with its usability on a keyboard/mouse if it's a console port.

Does the endless space 2 story build on the one of the first or can one safely skip the first? Also is there a way to get the stellaris 1.6.1 hotfix?

I don't really about the story stuff. I think the Endless lore is interesting, but I don't really play for it for that so I'm not sure. I think you can just go straight into ES2 and not worry about it.

Pirates shouldn't be a serious deal early game. You shouldn't have a problem with them as long as you're moving along with your ship production at a reasonable pace; if pirates keep appearing and attacking at an unreasonable spped/numbers, then it's shitty RNG. 2 or 3 bottom-class military fighters should be enough to keep you safe and that shouldn't take more than a dozen turns to churn out.
In regards to dust, there's a couple things you should know: every time a hero levels up, its upkeep increases, and having more ships in a fleet increases that fleet's upkeep; most of your upkeep per turn is going to be ship costs, then a battle between hero/planet development costs. Fleets can have MORE than the maximum cap of ship in their fleets, but it shoots your upkeep through the roof.

Also keep in mind that every single fleet you have has a baseline upkeep cost plus that of the ship. If you have two fighters in one fleet, it will cost you less per turn than if you had one fighter in two different fleets, on their own. Try not to have something like 5 fleets with 1 or 2 ships, your upkeep costs will skyrocket.

UE is the basic good all-around faction, most things should be pretty intuitive with them. To make sure you don't have any political bullshit start messing up your empire, make sure you're focusing on industry production and military. You should be building things related to that. The one exception is manpower, which requires a lot of food. Mechanics for how manpower works can be found here steamcommunity.com/app/392110/discussions/0/135507780429630473/

godfbid.blogspot.com......../

wut?

yeah, make more sense, specially since I'm already going for synths, but everybody is gonna hate my ass though, so I can kiss the federation goodbye

yeah, they all work perfectly, Revolutions, that Colonization one and the Alpha Centauri clone

You can skip the first one
There's no real story in the first like there is in 2 or EL and ES2 is superior to ES1

Thanks I was hoping for that answer

The real question is whether ES2 with all expansions will be better than EL.

Well every expansion of EL has added a new mechanic and a faction that specializes in that mechanic (except Guardians), and it is probably safe to say that there will be at least 3 such expansions.

As long as they're not all along the crappiness of Tempest possibly. I don't play EL with the Tempest expansion. Just wasn't that good tbh.

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That's actually from a 2nd tier military improvement that causes 750 damage to all invading forces in the system

My fault for never watching the battles, I guess.

Manpower was pretty confusing until I saw that thread. The tutorial did jack all to explain that mechanic. I don't think it even went into how to upgrade your armies or adjust your infantry/tank/plane ratio.

I blame Steve Jobs

Microsoft is to blame for not doing their own thing for years now.
Executables will never die.

What's the confusion? One is dealing with the younger versions of 40K's Dark Gods, the other is Nerve-stapling from Alpha Centauri.

wew the vodyani make me salty when playing against them.

I've had problems against them everytime I've played against them

The Arks can steamroll early game. It's best to avoid combat until you've built up an early-midgame force, and try to colonize where you can without it being at the expense of other tech developments. If you're randomly placed near the Vod at game start, things can get a lot more annoying, especially if you also are unlucky enough to get pirate ganks.

I've played a number of factions (usually I go Cravers, but their traits made them extremely difficult to prevent collapse in systems due to the buggy and imbalanced nature of the politics system months ago; I need to play another round with them) but I recently tried the Riftborn. Aesthetically they seem pretty cool but mechanically they come across as tedious. A lot of the colonization techs are out of wack for this specific race, in the tech tree, and I need to build my population rather than have it grow automatically via food. That's a setback on the production line to me, and I STILL need food to keep them fed, so it seems like a quirk with no positive tradeoff. I haven't messed with the singularities yet, haven't gotten that far.

Riftborn don't need food. What you need food for is non-riftborn population, of which you always start with one Remnant pop. Riftborn are pretty crazy later in the game, since you can totally ignore food and build up to max pop at 1 per turn, and each riftborn pop has +5 I/D/S baseline.

I like to rush the tech for titanium mining, then keep an acceleration singularity on my main world(s) for pretty much the whole game. That's another +25% FIDS, and +100% hero XP as well.

Also, I'm playing a riftborn game and accidentally hit economic victory.

How do i replenish manpower after invasions? muh fleets are stuck at 0%

Manpower grows from your food production
To replenish fleets after an invasion, have them in orbit around one of your owned systems

Are you absolutely sure about that? Because when I started a new Riftborn game, my homeworld was producing AND consuming 6 food. I only had 3 riftborn and 1 remnant population. It's been a while since I played ES2 but I'm pretty sure populations do not consume 6 food apiece, that's way too pricey, I think it's supposed to be two or something. Why would my homeworld be consuming 6 food with only a single remnant population if riftborn don't use food?

Also, if they don't use food, how the fuck do you get manpower? Manpower is generally 10% of food production that goes into it, so how does that work for them?

see the thread mentioned in this post

Alright boyzos, this was it…. I think I'm done with this play through of Stellaris
unfortunately not achieving those goals I setup to:
I was kind there though, first that finally was able to form federation, but with the democratic freaks instead of my twin neighbors
turns out autocratic governments are incredibly hard to ally with, the others got association status though
with the federation going I was able to declare war to the xenos and start fighting back, even got a federation fleet going on and about to liberate some planets
however combat is incredible frustrating in this game, because the fighting power alone has no actual indication of how they will fare in battle, it looks like bigger ships are worth way more than smaller ones no matter what (survivability) even though they are relatively balanced in terms of size/cost/firepower
also got it going forwards synth evolution, got cyborgs and researched synths, but could barely make work of that, because fucking planet management is so fucking overwhelming late game here
I had even a situation where a sector governor went to produce only farms on a planet because of a deficit, and after that even though it was +50 food, he didn't change those damns farms to something better, I was even at a energy deficit

So yeah… mid~late game is still pretty overwhelming in Stellaris, but far from boring, and to be honest was pretty challenging all the way through to keep up with the AI empires
I'm actually interested if anyone can give me the quick rundown on the last version (and how it broke) since I was playing on 1.5
Feeling now that I'm gonna tackle on DW to give me a little break from all the micro

You get manpower by using the "endless reinforcements" production conversion, converts either 25% or 50% of production to manpower. Once you are established, you can get 300-1000 manpower per turn per planet, so you don't need to use it that much.

And yes, 100% sure riftborn pop will never decay on its own. I lose the remnant in about 3 turns, but otherwise it's smooth sailing all game.

Oh, I already know how to deal with the Vodyani. I got early access the day it was released pls no bully. Still find them annoying to deal with either way however.

Anyway, won that game. Gonna put it to the side for now. Gwent's open beta came out so time to climb the ladders and see what rewards I got from closed beta and open kegs.

Is it true that they turned United Empire into diplomats in ES2 as opposed to industrialists from ES1?

No, as far as I can tell they're still industrialists.

Who's the diplomats then? Not-ents?

I guess, but they seem more like pacifists. Probably the Riftborn or the Lumeris, but the lumeris are fish-jews and the Riftborn are geometric time robots from the clean room dimension.

Riftborn are hyper-industrialists. Empire are "balanced".

Empire's questline, depending on what you chose, can change you into Mezari or Sheredyn.

There really aren't any. UE is a faction of industrial militarists. The closest you get to a "diplomatic faction" is the Lumeris, whose playstyle revolves around the accumulation of dust. As such, trade is a big part of them (though not necessary), and along with trade, diplomacy.

Just like Endless Legend, if you know what you're doing with trade routes, you can make an absurdly inconceivable amount of money (and science, I believe) per turn.

The Unfallen revolve around peace and alliances. They are almost certainly going to be the best choice for a diplomatic victory, which is based on being at peace with everyone. "Pacifist" and "Diplomat" are pretty much the same thing in this game. The only downside is they don't (by default) have anything to help generate Influence to spend on those alliances.

And yes on the trade routes, I'm earning something like 50k per turn on those (total), and economic victory is only supposed to be around 760k earned.

Starpoint Gemini Warlord just released as well

Funny thing about trade routes is they actually earn even more money via luxury resources. I actually reached a point where, with only 5 freighers per route, I get 999 cap on multiple luxury resources every other turn, which I sell for hundreds of thousands of dust per stack. Of course every time I sell inflation goes up a ton. Fortunately I own the market so I don't have to worry about giving someone else 15% of that.

The AI is a bit lacking in anything that doesn't involve the military. You won't see trade wars or peace treaties between two of your enemies, and suddenly think "well i was going to attack X but now they're with Y i can't really do that." They could do some really interesting things with the galaxy market but I don't think they will.

Unfortunately the lack of clever AI is usually Amplitude's biggest weakness in their games.

I'm not so worried about what they would do with the market, as what they would do with 50k dust per turn from me selling my excess resources there. Honestly I don't even know what the AI does with Dust at all but that would be like three or four times their normal income.

Anyway, Riftborn are super fucking easy if you start with some good volcanic worlds close enough to colonize. Everyone else wants this perfect balance of food/dust/industry to get started and all Riftborn have to look for is pure industry. They are kind of like the Broken Lords from EL, but even more broken.

functional? it uses goddamn Windows window toolkit….
not to mention its all basically 2d and like a work station program
but the game seems pretty interesting, and holy fuck that soundtrack…

Question, which Endless Space is better?

I have the first one and would have to steal the other.

es2 is better than es1

Is it? Even factoring the DLC and patches?

there was only one dlc for es1, Disharmony. Endless Legend was the one with all the expansions. outside of that ES2 still has some bugs to hammer out but yes it's better.

There are some concerns right now; I have a feeling that some things like debris/asteroids in battlefields will be added later as DLC, but the base game is definitely better.

...

Something is slowing my framerate to a crawl lategame. This is a worse case of FPS death than dwarf fortress.

lol

How'd you get your fleet movement so high? Did you slap a bunch of those +fleet movement modules onto a support ship and just have it tag along?

2 support ships, yes. And a hero. The carriers have +troops instead of engines.

I'll back him up.

I basically shoved all my aliens into manpower and just filled everything with Riftborn, ignoring food. They're literally robots, it's like the Broken Lords from Endless Legend somewhat except you use industry rather than gold.

Anyone else still getting endless turn pending even with the latest update?

Holy shit, I've never played another Endless game on release is this the standard? and it's still a shame that that wierd Mario Kart 8 like framerate bug still exists in Endless Legend.

Apart from bugs it's definitely better.

I hate this about every single 4x game.

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Shouldn't this be flavored as some sort of "fuck work go shopping" thing if its converting industry into shekels? Who am I kidding, why would something make sense when you can make a quick jab at the easiest target on the planet for good boy points?

DO NOT BELIEVE THE TREE JUDEN FOR THEY WILL SUBVERT YOUR SYSTEMS WITH THEIR (((PEACE)))

Seriously, they took two of my systems already with their dumb peacful conversion shit, how do I stop their annoying celestial vine spread? Do I have to go full saruman on their tree asses?

It really activates my almonds that I need to research alien culture to unlock those techs despite my policy of immediately transporting all non-humans to the nearest open barren world where they will all sit in transports for eternity.

...

...

PowerISO there'll be a torrent out there

I still think Riftborn are the most overpowered faction out there. Doubly so in an Old galaxy. They colonize Lava worlds as if they were terran, use the production as if it were food, then ignore food and acquire maximum production.

It's funny when you are playing on Endless speed and creating one population per turn up to max is growing too slow. I managed to create the victory wonder in 3 turns on some of my planets, on endless.

farewell thread, its been nice meeting you…

The political system is pretty dumb. The industrialist laws don't benefit industry, you need pacifist or scientist laws to maximize that.