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This is the character sheet for Endless Space and Endless Space 2. This list is organized by empire. Heroes will also be described in their respective empire. Minor factions will be described here as well.
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United Empire
The Empire is theoretically under the control of a central monarchy. However, the rate of expansion means that the society cannot be ruled that way effectively. In fact, the systems of the colonial diaspora are colonized by the designated Corporations who work hand-in-hand with the Ministry of Investment and Development. The Ministry of Security is involved as well, due to the need for native and/or alien pacification, security forces, defense or surveillance.With this somewhat decentralized setup, a certain level of regional autonomy is inevitable, and the various corporate system governors often cut corners when they can get away with it. That said, the central empire is far from powerless. Should a corporation stop paying its dues or become too obstinate, the Imperial fleets stand ready to remind the wayward company of its obligations.
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Horatio
Incredibly wealthy and only slightly less deranged, Horatio was an Imperial trillionaire who left to discover his own star cluster. Finding a planet sprinkled with labs of ancient cloning technology left by the Endless, the boredom soon drove Horatio to create a race of allies, servants, and slaves who were every bit as gorgeous as the most beautiful person in the universe — Horatio. Once the planet was repopulated, Horatio the First had only to look up, regard the stars and realize how much more beautiful they, too, would be if they were filled with.. Horatios. The rest, as they say, is history.
Over time the clockwork creations of the Reyans developed a simple society of their own and began exploiting the technologies left behind by their creators. All was well for the young civilization of machines until one day a large Endless ship crashed into the planet spreading the dust it was transporting all over the surface. The dust modified the machines, gave them enhanced abilities and over time even sentience. The deadly and toxic fuel that used to power the machines was also replaced, but strangely the new fuel became dust. In only a few weeks, the clockwork machines had evolved, become truly sentient, and gained new purpose in existence which was unheard of in even the most advanced AI’s created by the Endless. They came to call themselves, the Automatons and with the newly gained freedom of dust they began learning.. and advancing.
The Sanzu River is also a recurring locale in the series, from which Toby drew inspiration for Undertale's bullet hell battles. If the player attempts to the 'Sans,' the game responds with 'nope.' In Japanese phonetics, Sans's name is homophonous with the name of the, a boundary between death and the afterlife in Buddhist lore which, like Sans, judges all who cross it for their deeds.
The Automaton Civilization stayed on their planet, learning to live in a symbiotic relationship with nature as the planet healed over time. They used the knowledge of their creators and their new dust engines to produce massive floating ships on which they lived in order to protect the healing ecosystem on the planet from their involvement. Over the course of centuries the planet healed and the Automatons learned to live with and love nature while still developing immense industrial capacity and production within the hulls of their floating ships —which had also grown over time. But eventually the Automatons calculated that their dust supply would run out and their civilization would die, so they uncovered the old ruins of the crashed endless ship and began developing their own vehicles for space flight.
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The Vaulters
An ancient faction, the Vaulters have suffered a number of major setbacks in trying to establish a permanent home for themselves. Though characterized as restless wanderers, they are in fact a proud and adaptable race, seeking a system that they can finally call 'home.' Their centuries of travel and tinkering have made them skilled at both science and warfare, though their greatest military strength is in defense.
The Vaulters have an old tradition of appointing female leaders, and their trust in this tradition has been confirmed by the faction's uncanny ability to escape, survive, and live to fight another day. Once based on the planet Auriga, they left the planet when their predictions indicated potentially cataclysmic geo-atmospheric problems. Their attempts to colonize elsewhere have only had brief success, and the notion of a permanent base has gained an almost mythical status.
The Vaulters were originally introduced in Endless Legend, and were later added into Endless Space via an update, which also added in the setting of Endless Legend, Auriga, as the Wonder known as the Husk of Knowledge.
The Endless Space 2 FactionsThe Lumeris are a society that revolves around trade, economic deals, economic growth, and doing business. Expansion and acquisition are the bywords of their culture, and as an amphibious people they are prepared to make money in any environment. Their society is organized around a series of families that have traditionally run different parts of their economy, and the balance of power and negotiations between the families is what drives progress - or blocks it.
Others in Endless Space 2A large city in the middle of space that appeared to have been already accustomed in its long history, the Academy is where all the heroes of all races come from and have been a beacon of all who are willing to learn the secrets of the Dust.
Index
FIDSI are the basic means needed to develop your empire. Many buildings provide bonuses to a certain branch, but only a few grant greater yields of all five resources (an example of an improvement in the bottom right corner).
The materials identified by the abbreviation FIDSI are the five basic resources needed for the development of your civilization. On every planet, your population contributes to the production of these resources. There is no distinction between farmers, miners or scientists. One unit of population produces a whole range of products. Their amount depends on the planet you colonized, e.g. lava planets provide greater amounts of Industry, while arctic world are better suited to the generation of Science points, but in both cases the yield of Food is marginal.
These modifiers may change if the planet contains anomalies, strategic or luxury resources, or when you place appropriate buildings that can improve the overall score. You can also assign populations that have special abilities (e.g. Sophons have a small +1 bonus and +3 in cold environments to the generation of Science points). Some structures (or events) can change the final yield by an extra/negative percentage value (e.g. + 10% Science for a system). Some specific structures increase the generation of several resources, e.g. Microwave Pipes (system improvement), adds 2 points to FIDSI, that is, to all 5 production areas, per one unit of population on the planet.
The FIDSI resources are:
Food - it is needed to feed the population in the system, to increase the population (in the system or in the colonies) and to replenish the manpower used by the army.
Industry - necessary for the purposes of construction of new buildings and ships. Over time, you will be able to 'produce' projects that will turn your Industry Points into another FIDSI resource.
Dust - the currency in the universe of Endless Space. It is necessary, because you will use Dust to pay for the upkeep of buildings and fleets. It also serves to buy resources, ships and heroes on the marketplace. You can also use it to speed up production in a given system.
Science - you will use it to discover new technologies that will ensure the development of your civilization.
Influence - the production of this resource contributes to expanding the sphere of influence around the system. The greater the value per turn, the quicker the borders will expand. It is also the specific currency you will use for the purposes of diplomacy and negotiations.
Every inhabitant of the planet produces a whole range of resources.
For example, a small forest planet produces per a unit of human (or alien) inhabitants - 8 units of Food, 6 units of Industry (normally 4, but the additional 2 comes from the presence of the Jadonyx luxury resource), 4 units of Dust, 3 units of Science and 0 units of Influence (see the picture above). Since there are 3 units of population on the planet, you receive three times the value of the basic FIDSI yields, namely 24 units of Food, 18 units of Industry, 12 units of Dust, 12 units of Science (the planet only has Sophon population on it; they have a +1 to Science bonus, so you receive 4 per unit of population, not 3) and 0 units of Influence. The more population, the greater the profit. The result from each planet is summed up and you will receive a total revenue per system. Only this value is then changed by other improvements that affect the system. Next, bonuses for race, type of planet or climate are added up. Then, you get bonuses that are given as a result of other values that are based on the entire system such as number of planets in a system, System Development level, do you have strategic/luxury resources or is there a trade route. After all of that this value is changed by upgrades that have influence on the total FIDSI profit, e.g. a percentage bonus to the overall income of a given resource or additional income if your citizens are happy.
Approval
Approval is a very important factor in the game. Colonizing a system with a single planet, which has a quite unfriendly environment, is usually a bad idea.
This is a very crucial modifier, that can be placed alongside FIDSI. Approval dictates how effectively your people will do their jobs. Many buildings and improvements will give you extra bonuses if the residents are happy or euphoric (more than 90% approval). On the other hand, low approval or the lack of it leads to many obstacles, including revolts and rebellions. If one or more systems maintain very low levels of approval, this can lead to the creation of a separatist faction, which you will have to fight and put back in its place.
Citizen approval has 5 stages:
Your empire also have an indicator that shows a global Approval. This number is the average of this value from all of your planets. Here, you can also get bonuses from population's Approval in the form of a percentage bonus +15% to Dust and Science across the empire and +30% if they are ecstatic. If the Approval lowers to similar percentage range you get penalty to Dust and Science production. As you can see keeping your population happy gives you only bonuses so it is worth to ensure your citizens' happiness.
There are many ways to improve the approval in the system and in the empire. First of all, choose planets that have friendly environments and are good to live on, e.g. the following types: Forest, Boreal, Atoll, Jungle, Terra or Oceanic. Also note the anomalies that occur there.
The ruling party also has an impact on the approval of the population.
When talking about population, if the favourite ideological group of the population is a part of or is leading the government, then the system also gets a bonus to approval (e.g. most of the population are Pacifists, and the Pacifists are also the Ruling Party). This bonus is scaled to the amount of population and the support for the ideology. The last group of positive effects are the characteristics of races (the Lumeris have the Optimistic II trait, they gain +20 to Approval in all systems) or the impacts from random events or race specific events.
On the other hand, there are a lot of negative factors, that will not affect your population's approval positively. You can easily avoid this, if you are wise in your plans to build and develop your empire. Avoid settling all systems at the beginning (if you have such an opportunity), especially those, that have only nasty, barely habitable planets, such as gas giants, ice, lava or barren planets. Pay attention to what anomalies are present on the planets. Mixed anomalies can be fairly quickly neutralized, however, to get rid of the negative ones, some of the highest level technologies will be necessary.
Overpopulated planets also subtract approval points. In this case, you can only emigrate population units elsewhere (to another planet in the system or to another system), expand the planet to be able to house more population or introduce pacifist rights, which will negate this problem (but it is difficult to get, because the party must be elected very often, in order to unlock this right). Over-colonization is also not a favourable factor for the approval of your population. The more systems you have over your limit, the bigger the penalty that your systems will receive. You may discover appropriate technologies that will increase this limit or abandon systems that you consider least useful. In addition, some events or quests can lower the approval in your colony or in your entire empire. The population of a given system may also feel dissatisfaction when their party is not a member of the Leading Political Parties in the system. A truce refusal, also results in negative approval throughout the empire for some time.
Approval status - Mutinous. If you allow for a situation, where the approval of your subjects falls to 0-10%, they will start to rebel (1). Next to the state of approval you will see a time counter until the outbreak of the rebellion. You now have two additional buttons (2): suppress, that adds extra turns until the outbreak at the expense of population, or seduce, which will allow you to spend a certain amount of luxury resources to please the locals. In addition, you can counteract the situation in the following ways: build additional buildings, bring a hero (who improves approval) or reduce the population in the system. On the main screen you will also see a counter above the system name (3). Apart from the number of remaining turns, you will also see a circular red indicator, that will remind you of the remaining time until the unpleasant event.
If the time until rebellion is up, a fleet will appear in orbit and will attempt to conquer the planet (4). The fleet will start a blockade and then invade the planet. If they are successful, the system will become hostile to all factions, though no negotiations can be started with it (the bar with the planet's name will become light grey, where other neutral planets have a dark grey label). Only the military solution remains valid. You must now send the fleet and conquer the system to regain control. To avoid having to invade the planet, you should send a strong fleet over the planet in advance. It will deal with the rebels in space before they can attack your system.
Endless Space 2 (2017)
PC
Let's Play
Vodyani Playthrough of the 4X strategy Endless Space 2, sequel to Endless Space! Endless Space 2 takes what made Endless Space and Endless Legend great and combined them into a genuine alternative to Civilization! Endless Space 2 was gifted for review, but my review is unbiased. ► Endless Space 2 Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhu1IU-H0hU0GUd3t34FM_D5qeWV2hG0h ► Help me do this full-time: http://www.patreon.com/yeti Endless Space 2 on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/392110/ Endless Space 2 website: http://www.amplitude-studios.com/endless-space-2 Endless Space 2 early access was made available 6 October 2016. Official release is uncertain at the time of this early access series. --- Want More? --- Help make this my job!: http://www.patreon.com/yeti Donate via PayPal and Google Wallet at: [email protected] Subscribe for more Endless Space 2 gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=closetyeti Endless Space 2 Vodyani Early Access Playthrough Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhu1IU-H0hU343sc4OCSPpWOVKUynLUZL --- Connections --- Livestream: http://gaming.youtube.com/closetyeti/live https://www.twitch.tv/krug_dudeski It'd be fun to livestream Endless Space 2, but my internet is seriously poop. Streaming Endless Space 2 and streams in general may be possible next year if I can move to an area with better internet! See Patreon! Steam Group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/yetifanclub Twitter: http://twitter.com/ClosetYeti --- About Endless Space 2 --- Endless Space 2 will put you in the fascinating role of a leader guiding a civilization in making its first steps into the cold depths of interstellar space. You will explore mysterious star systems, discover the secrets of ancient races, develop advanced technologies of unthinkable power, and, of course, encounter new life forms to understand, to court or to conquer. Your story unfolds in a galaxy that was first colonized by a people known as the Endless, who rose and fell eons ago. All that remains of them are mystical ruins, powerful artifacts, and a mysterious, near-magical substance known as Dust. EXPLORE THE ENDLESS UNIVERSE The new Galaxy Generator has been completely overhauled to provide unique star systems and curiosities to explore, different planet types to colonize, luxuries and strategic resources to exploit, the mysteries of the Dust and new lifeforms to master, and a host of strange cosmic anomalies to deal with. EXPAND BEYOND THE UNKNOWN Claim new systems by establishing outposts, and develop your planets into feared stellar fortresses or fabulous utopias full of wonders. Train your heroes to become fleet admirals, system governors or influential senators to guide your populations and make your galactic civilization thrive. EXPLOIT EVERY OPPORTUNITY Collect Dust, luxuries and strategic resources that are tradable on the marketplace*, discover amazing new technologies, and keep one step ahead of the competition through trade corporations and subtle diplomacy. EXTERMINATE ALL RESISTANCE Design your ships, build your fleets and carefully choose your battle plans to overcome up to seven opponents in online confrontations*. Watch epic real-time space battles unfold, and improve your strategy for your next confrontations. Disclaimer: multiplayer will be released during Early Access. EXPERIENCE A GALACTIC SAGA Discover each civilization’s story, from the Sophon’s AI gone berserk to the traditional Lumeris families facing an ambitious young upstart. Learn more about the origins of the lethal Endless creation called the Cravers. Find out more about the Heretic, a mysterious and powerful character hunted by the Vodyani… The galaxy will belong to the civilization that controls Dust and uncovers its secrets… but were the Endless alone in the galaxy? What is the true origin of Dust? Are the rumors around a mysterious organization called the Academy real? AMPLIFIED REALITY Press Space anytime to activate the Amplified Reality view and reveal in-depth contextual information about your systems, trade routes, diplomatic stances and even your ship stats during battle! GAMES2GETHER Follow the development of the game and get to know the talent behind the scene. Make your voice count by giving feedback on the Early Access, submitting ideas, and voting for Art and gameplay elements. Participate in contests and design content that will be created by the studio and added to the game! --- LEGAL --- Endless Space 2 was given to me for free by the developers or publisher for review, but this in no way affects my opinion of Endless Space 2. #Yeti Endless Space 2 Let's Plays By Yeti
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This guide will cover the ins and outs of the Cravers, both for beginners and players looking to increase the difficulty level up to Endless. Faction OverviewCravers, like all the factions in ES2, have several defining features that will heavily affect their game play, so we'll cover these first just so you know what you're getting into. Quick note: I will refer to stages of the game as 'early', 'mid', and 'late' game. This roughly corresponds to the following turn intervals respectively on normal speed: 0-40 turns, 40-90 turns, 90-150+. Super late game happens after this, when tech trees are starting to get finished, but honestly, as Cravers, you shouldn't be reaching this point. Population: Craver population are politically militarist, and generate 150% FIDSI from non-depleted planets (see next). This means that Cravers can get off to a blinding start compared to other factions, and you should expect to be top of the score board for most of the early game due to this population bonus alone. Depletion: Cravers will deplete planets per Craver population on planets. The rate of depletion depends on the size of the planet, the number of Cravers on it, and the game speed, which can make faster game speeds a bit of a struggle if you get a bad start. Once depleted, a planet will only produce 50% FIDSI. This is a serious problem if your planets deplete too soon. Slaver Drivers: This is your faction affinity, and it means that all non-Craver populations on planets with Cravers will produce 50% extra FIDSI, at the cost of 5 approval. To be clear, a planet with 1 Craver, and 10 non-Cravers will cause a -50 approval malus. If you move the Craver, the malus no longer takes effect, but nor do the FIDSI bonuses. Autocracy: Cravers get their own government type - Autocracy. This gives you two starting law slots, as well as the force law, making it as good as democracy in early game. The law slots will never increase however, and you cannot change government. Importantly, systems will never rebel under autocracy, even with huge minus approval. Eternal War: Cravers can almost never be at peace. There are two exceptions - 1: Pacifists in your senate (which means you voted them in) or 2: Forming an alliance if someone requests one (which is a little bizarre and may change). Unless you are roleplaying with pacifists, the chances of a peace are minimal in your games, and you almost always want to reject alliances as ultimately they will hinder you. With these factors in mind, we can already get a picture of how Cravers work - it's going to be about population management, approval management, and warfare. Early - Mid Game Population ManagementCravers as a population have double the growth of any non-Craver population. In effect this means that in a system with Cravers and one other population you will end up with a 2:1 ratio of Cravers to the other population. For most of the game, this is something you want to avoid. More Cravers = more depletion, and if most of your planets deplete before you are ready (more on this later), your empire will begin to fall apart. So the priority early game to be to get hold of at least two other (not including your starting Haroshems) population types and distribute them as fast as possible on all your systems. With 3 minor pop types (2+starting Haroshems) this will ensure that your other populations grow faster than your Cravers at a 2:3 ratio. Find minor factions fast, and if you pick the better quest line (the one that gives you the ship) you'll be able to easily invade. Invest a little in troop upgrades to ensure quick victories, and don't bother sieging. It wastes time at this stage, and this isn't something you have the luxury of. Even this won't be enough early on to stop rapid depletion, so we'll have to use other ways to keep our Craver pop relatively low. There are two ways of doing this. The first is converting the Craver population to manpower. You can ensure that it is the Craver pop that gets converted by checking what population will grow next in the system screen. The conversion will always be the population that is growing (see the left of your in-system screen). The second is designating a subpar system and dumping excess population there, and converting it to manpower. You'll probably need to employ both of these tactics. As a general rule of thumb, 2-3 Cravers per undepleted planet is a reasonable number. At this point we should note the focus of the early game - find minor factions to declare war on, invade at least two to get the population types, and secure the first system upgrade both in terms of tech (2 tier 2 economy techs) and luxury income, to allow you to move population between systems. If all goes to plan, you should be sitting on four - six systems, with at least 3 minor faction pops on each, and ready to expand further by turn 30-50. Don't slack on this trend as you expand and conquer. Make sure there are always at least three minor faction types in your systems, and move population as necessary. Early-Mid Game Approval ManagementWith those minor pops, and slave drivers, your approval will plummet if you don't manage it well. Approval buildings don't give you a whole lot, and you'll be running against expansion approval as well, as you shouldn't dawdle in conquest. The ways to manage approval shift throughout the game: Early game, minor faction war: Declaring war on minor factions with Jingoist Joy (miltarist force law) will give you +15 approval per minor faction you are at war with. Other than the two minors you'll want to conquer early, the others should be located, war declared on them, and then left alone. Minor factions tend to be concentrated towards the centre of the galaxy, so if you are struggling in your constellation to find them, send probes to the centre, make first contact and declare war. This will boost your approval to ecstatic for a fair amount of time, compounding your already early advantages. This won't last forever, as other empires assimilate those factions. Early Game, Toys for Boys: If you are still struggling with finding minors, use Toys for Boys law, but only as a last resort. Players tend to use this law a little too much, but the 10% industry loss is not to be sniffed at. If you can even maintain content, then don't use this law, it slows system development down for you too much. Early Game, Full on War: You should be looking for your first target ASAP, and as soon as you have a fleet ready, barrel towards their capital and declare war. It's only +15, but it's still good. Try to cripple your enemies, rather than outright destroying them, so you can stay at war for the approval. The most important thing is to take their capitals and any of their decent systems, leave the rest, and avoid truces for as long as you can. With a mix of these, approval early game shouldn't really be a problem for you. If you need it shoring up, feel free to drop approval buildings down. Mid Game, Us or Them: This is, without a doubt, your most important law that you need to be running. You get it in the third election, and it gives you a huge +20 per homeworld owned. This makes home systems of other players even bigger prime targets. The influence cost is high for this stage of the game, so you will need the influence wonder, and influence improvements to run it. With this law enabled, you can run an ecstatic to content empire all the way to the late game. Mid Game, Shifting pop: If it gets really nasty on a few systems, shift the pop around so your Cravers are on one/two planets, and everyone else is elsewhere. You'll lose bonuses, and deplete faster, so it's at this point you'll need to think about making the late game shift (see section). Things not to do - Do not use Feeding Pits at this point. You will grow too fast, deplete even faster. Late game - We'll talk about this later. This gives us our further focus on the early-mid game. Early game - scout lots, declare war on minor factions. Mid game - get up influence, attack your neighbours, run Us or Them. Focus on getting homeworlds. If you can take 2 home systems by turn 60-80 on normal, you're doing well. WarfareCravers have excellent ships, only really rivalled by the Riftborn and to a lesser extent, UE. They have excellent troops, only outclassed by Vodyani, and they have the biggest fleets in the game. Big fleets is really where the magic lies, although the bonus wanes as the game goes on. It gives you +2 command points on fleet, which is huge early on. Fleets should be built almost as soon as your first system has all the basic food, science and industry buildings. Your starting hero should also be used as a fleet hero for the entirety of the game, first as another scout, then as a full on commander. Craver heroes get bonuses to projectile damage. Unfortunately projectiles are nigh on useless right now - flak is too strong vs missiles, and short range slugs never get close enough to be decent. Have a single ship type (usually a support) for flak, one ship for fleet speed, and all the rest decked out with energy weapons. If you quested right, you also have the awesome infinity shield. Put this on every defence slot. Once you have this first fleet, head out to take a player capital. When you get another hero, pick a decent fleet hero (seeker/guardian), make them a fleet, stick them on it, go for the next. Upgrade and add ships to these fleets as you go along. This might divide opinion, but fleets without heroes attached are rarely worth it. You can play the game quite happily with 3-5 decent hero fleets. You should be stocked to the rafters with manpower if you were managing your population right. If you conquer a system, you can disband a fleet to the hangar to refill it's manpower even if you are not in your influence zone. Just be careful not to get your lone hero ambushed during the refill. Never stop taking good systems, and always focus the homeworlds as previously stated. This will stave off approval loss from expansion for a considerable amount of time. It's at this point you may need to start thinking about using Toy for Boys to ward off that approval loss. Make sure to stay on top of troop upgrades, and whenever you have enough to build in your systems, grab more military tech to upgrade and add to your fleets. And remember - newly conquered systems need those three pop types too. Other Mid Game StuffMost important techs for you in the mid game other than the influence and military techs:
Don't worry about dust too much. The population bonuses will give you a lot of it, and you can sell on the market to stay afloat if needs be. Trade routes used to be the only way to go, but they are pretty lacklustre nowadays. You should still get them, but they are not super high priority. You will probably win before they get up to ridiculous levels. Everything else is unnecessary/secondary. You don't build worlds, you conquer them. If you have places with nothing to build, make fleets in preparation for your next hero, or put infinite production on dust. The Late Game ShiftYou have a big empire, closing on conquest or supremacy victory, but approval is now starting to sting, and your probably losing population on your planets due to depletion food loss. Getting your systems up to lvl 4 and building the approval offset building will take too long. This is where we hit the kill switch for Cravers and end the game. Endless Space 2 PopulationBefore doing so, make sure you have enough fleets to feasibly defend and attack, the invasion techs in the economy tree (top right), and if you can, enough influence to run the final militarist law (although not entirely necessary). Once you're ready - queue multiple Feeding Pits on all your systems that aren't producing fleets, never stop making it, and lay waste to all your remaining undepleted planets by shifting the Craver population over.Why? All about the 50 population bonus Cravers get - 1% dmg and 1% troop dmg per depleted planet. Feeding pits will rapidly increase your food, while killing off minor population. This means your worlds will deplete extremely quickly, giving you even more of a bonus. Furthermore, the approval means you can drop Us and Them, for Deadly Intent law. By this point you are probably sitting on 40-60 planets. Depleting even 3/4's of them makes your fleets and troops truly monstrous. Do all just before you are going to head out to those final systems to conquer, and keep going while you are warring. Declare war on any other player that won't get in the way of your final push, even if you don't plan to attack them. This will bump that approval even further such that everywhere will be ecstatic no matter what. Enemy systems don't need to be sieged, with your bonuses and techs you will wipe them in 2-3 turns (even the Unfallen). Enemy fleets, even if they are of equal size, stand little chance. This is the final push that lets you secure a solid win. It's also extremely fun to do. It should be mentioned that this move is effectively committing suicide if it doesn't work, so all the payoff is in the planning. That said, if you don't do this, you're empire will eat itself anyway, but you won't have the planned power spike that prevents other players from catching up. The whole point of this move is to swiftly end the game before depletion and approval become too difficult to manage, such that your science and industry begins to slump and others surpass you in military tech and fleet size negating all your advantages. In many ways this is Cravers in a nutshell - you're on a time limit, so every advantage needs to be pressed fast and to the fullest extent to keep your head above water. QuestThe questline deserves a brief mention both in terms of how good it is in some ways, and bad in others. There is pretty much only one way to go with the questline that makes sense if you want to win at higher levels
So the bonuses are great, shame there isn't a bit more flexibility in the choices, but the other awards and bonuses really don't compare. That said, if you want to play around with the other parts of the questline, by all means enjoy! Just bear in mind that you might be losing a big advantage, but if things are going well anyway, then why not? SummaryLots of the focuses for various parts of the Craver play style roll together such that one will happen anyway if you focus on another. For example, managing Craver population properly leads to more manpower, which supplies your fleets, allowing for more invasions, all of which you should be doing anyway. However, as a summary of things to focus on: Early Game:
Mid Game:
Late Game:
4X strategy game Endless Space 2 is out now, and we had planned to have a full review for you today, but there's been a slight delay. A supergiant day zero patch has upended our plans, potentially fixing issues, and so we've decided to give our reviewer, Chris Thursten, a little more time to investigate what's changed.
We know you may want an idea of what we're thinking now, though, so here's the short version, in Chris' words:
Three and a half campaigns in, there's much to like about Endless Space 2. Amplitude are still ahead of the curve when it comes to art, music, writing and presentation in general—the game does a lot to sell the fantasy of being a galaxy-spanning space empire, and each of its factions are meaningfully different and well-realised. The combat stands out too: I've enjoyed investing time into figuring out optimal strategies and redesigning my fleets on the fly.
My first impressions of the game weren't quite so positive, however. The UI is beautiful but can be confusing, and it seems inevitable that your first campaign will involve a lot of frustrating trial and error as you learn the ropes—mine certainly did.
However, my more serious concern was the number of bugs and rough edges I came across, from missing art to over-zealous popups to, in the most serious case, UI issues that stopped a campaign in its tracks. However, this morning Amplitude updated the review build with a 2.1GB update that seems to have resolved some of these issues. Given that we don't want to finalize our review based on a build that no one will ever play, so we're going to spend a bit more time with Endless Space 2 to assess how many issues have been solved in this latest update.
Here are the patch notes for the release version, also published below. As you can see, it's no dwarf star, but a galaxy of bullet points. We'll have a complete review for you on Friday. Until then, I'll temporarily give Endless Space 2 three out of four Xes. Should've had more eXterminate.
GENERAL
CONTENT
TECHNICAL
AI
IMPROVEMENTS
BALANCE
FIXES
SOUND DESIGN
KNOWN ISSUES
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