Endless Space

[Shabbaman]

Okay, I bought a new game. Actually I bought a game that isn't even new yet... it's in alpha. However, it did seem to have potential and with all the versions of civ I figured I could endure another unfinished game.

I'm not going to bother talking about the game, I'll just refer to this article (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/04/orions-belter-endless-space/) and this one (http://scientificgamer.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/why-you-should-buy-endless-space/).

[Shabbaman]

To get more than 0 replies to my thread, how about a video with actual gameplay footage.

tykMKgEV0bg

Just to be clear, at the moment I am not endorsing this game. It has promise, but I've encountered some truely bothersome bugs. On the bright side: I've clocked 10 hours in this game in 3 days, so it can't be that bad.

[grahamiam]

This reminds me, I need to start playing my copy of Distant Worlds that I bought last xmas....

[ProPain]

I read a bit when I saw it pop up on Steam. Might buy it at a later point when no longer in alpha. For now it's just one day before Diablo III is released so I've reserved some time for that first :)

[Shabbaman]

This reminds me, I need to start playing my copy of Distant Worlds that I bought last xmas....

This is no RTS. Maybe you could best compare it to Master of Orion (just saying this to get someone enthused).

http://cdn.steampowered.com/v/gfx/apps/208140/ss_e5e0550897faa4e8de05e6017ae7c79a2bf1bd2d.1920x1 080.jpg?t=1336521013

[Matrix]

Seems like my type of game. I'll check it out later, but at the moment, I cannot and will not spend any penny. (I'm about to move country.)

[Darkness]

Seems like my type of game.

Same here. From the picture that Shabba posted I'm getting memories of Master of Orion and I really liked that...

[Shabbaman]

And all it took was an oversized picture ;)

I wouldn't recommend buying it now, especially if you're strapped for cash. It's not that the game is bad, but as a player you need more information than is presented to you. I've solved most of my "why can't I do this" problems, but now that I'm waging war I've found it to be very annoying that you get so little information on the strength of your opponents. It might very well be that there's some tech that gives insight in any of this, but the tech tree is extensive enough not to know what everything does. I'm putting the game away until after the next big upgrade. If the developers actually changed anything for the better in that upgrade... well, then there's three more months to come up with a polished product. As it stands now, it's a nice game costwise... until you realise that civ5 is actually cheaper now than the 20 euros you have to pay for this. If I come across new articles or relevant information I'll post it here.

[ProPain]

See, minecraft time. Only €19,95 and out of beta already!!!!!

[Shabbaman]

Last week the beta was released, so it's time to link you a new article (http://www.strategyprime.net/endless-space-preview/). The game is more than decent as it is now, I hope combat will get some tweaks though.

Oh, one more thing: this game already has working multiplayer.

[Beam]

Looks very promising!

[ProPain]

Oh, one more thing: this game already has working multiplayer.

So they beat Civ V to that :)

[Shabbaman]

That's why I mentioned it :D

Also, there's this preview (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/14/a-better-beta-infinite-joy-in-endless-space/), which reads more lik an advertorial.

[Shabbaman]

I have to revise my stance on this game: Endless Space is brilliant. And now I will tell you why, and you will like the answer:

Endless Space is not linear.

Okay, I might have read too much on game theory, but I will translate this in Civ-terms, because that's a language we all speak. Civ is very linear. You start your first city, you start building something from a list that is presented to you, you start researching something from a list that is presented to you. Basically, the game plays itself: because there is a limited number of options presented to you, it's very hard to make the wrong choice. At this point, we enter a debate on why there are so many wrong choices in civ, and how brilliant we are because we make the right choices and a lot of people struggle on warlord. Especially for you I will rephrase that critical sentence: because there is a limited number of options presented to you, it's very hard to make the wrong choice. What, I did it again? Okay, it might just be me, but I find it very difficult to do something wrong in Civ. Whatever you do, it's not wrong anyway, you'll just fall behind. In Civ, falling behind is lethal.

Now we get to the part where I tell you why Endless Space is such a great game. Endless Space doesn't have a linear tech tree. Civ's tech tree is very linear: to get further up the tree, you just have to research techs that come before it, and basically you just have to research (or tech whore) everything (give or take a few techs). Endless Space's tech tree is split into different branches. Take a look at this picture of Endless Space's tech tree:

http://1mplaying.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/2012-05-03_00003.jpg

That's beaucoup techs, right?

The best thing is that you can simply ignore whole branches. The tree is pretty lenient on prerequisite techs as well (you might research something without researching the techs leading to it, in some cases), so you might even ignore a large part of the branch you are researching. Because the tech tree allows for more freedom, it's easier to be different than your opponents as well. But it's also easier to screw up, and that's what makes the game difficult. Civ is "do everything right, get ahead, win", whereas Endless Space is "hmm let's see, what do I want to do now?". And because research is FAST, you get more options in a short time. This gives you the feeling you have a lot of freedom to do what you want: it's just a feeling though, especially in the beginning you're still limited. But with every new tech you get more choices: different buildings, colonization options, ship modifications, empire modifiers. And unlike Civ, you don't need to pick all options, you could just ignore them.

[ProPain]

You need to discover the crop picture tech :P

You got me tempted here. Gonna see of I can download a demo on steam

[ProPain]

Sadly no demo, still tempted.

Even more tempted to buy the Emperor Special Edition. Why, you ask? Because they'll put a picture of you on the wall in their Paris office.

I'd love to have my ugly face on some developers wall to haunt them till the end of time :)

[Shabbaman]

Heh, that's exactky why I got that version as well :D

Maybe there will be a demo when the game is released.

[grahamiam]

1

[Shabbaman]

This review (http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/07/06/endless-space-review) sums up nicely what I think of this game. Rest assured that this game has a massive "one more turn" factor. It's a better investment than G&K (for 30 euros), but it's not better than civ5 on a discount.

Don't expect fancy graphics though, those battles are more like static cutscenes. Still better than civ combat animations.

[Shabbaman]

Two days ago I finished my first game. This was the fourth game I started, but the first one that wasn't aborted by a patch (that sounds worse than it is, but alpha saves weren't compatible with beta, and beta saves weren't compatible with the released game). The first game I simply lost because I wasn't building enough ships. Or lost... I just gave up after I declared war on my neighbor and I saw the number of fleets... The other alpha game and the beta game were nearing the endgame, but I don't know how I would've won those games.

And that's exactly what the problem is with Endless Space. Apparently there are seven ways to win, but I have figured out only three of them: scientific (just research the whole science tree), wonder (build five buildings that are on the end of the exploration tree), and expansion (own enough of the galaxy). Of these three, I only found information on the expansion victory progress. The fourth victory condition is domination, so that's probably easy to grasp what that is. Finding the homeworlds of other civs is rather difficult though, they're not all kind enough to let you into their territory. So domination and expansion seem to have some overlap. These military victories didn't seem so appealing, because wars are pretty slow: invading a system takes several turns. Generally speaking, if a civ dedicates to researching military techs, they will research faster than your fleets can get to them. So unless you research military techs yourself and retrofit your fleets just before you invade, you are going to be in a world of pain.

Unless...

Well, combat is rock-paper-scissors (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/), with the minor tweak that different weapons are better in different phases of combat. You start out with mass drivers (short distance), and you can research lasers (medium) and missiles (long range). Armor blocks mass, shields block lasers, flak (OT: I think it's awesome that the word in english for flak is an abbrevation of a german word) blocks missiles. Anyone who has ever played Galactic Civilizations (and you should: that game is miles better than any single-player game of any version of Civilization will ever be... but it doesn't have MP) will know that this can lead to an embarrassing situation. Strangely enough, the techs for offense and defense for the same weapon are linked to different research paths.

http://images.wikia.com/endlessspace/images/2/21/Galactic_warfare_technologies.png

For example, the path that researches mass is the same path that researches flak. So you can build a fleet with good mass drivers and good flak, and if you encounter someone who has been researching missiles and shields (instead of lasers and armor) than your opponent has a problem. The major difference with GalCiv is that you can't find out anything about your opponent's fleets (at least I haven't figured out how in the 50+ hours I've played the game), so you can't build a "golden gun" (or glass canon, whatever tickles your fancy). So in my last game I was at war with two civs, one with better missiles than my flak, and one with, well, I don't know, a lot of ships but I doubt they grasped the concept of "weapon" (yet their fleets appeared strong: ship modules have their strength depicted with a fist symbol, and the total number of fists is presented to you as the strength of that fleet. But in the rock-paper-scissors world that doesn't mean a lot.) Strangely enough, I had a negative diplomacy modifier with that civ because my military was weak...

Anyway, as the science tree had a lot of goodies in it, I decided to win this by science victory.

http://images.wikia.com/endlessspace/images/d/d5/Applied_Sciences_technology_tree.png

By the time I had figured that out, it seemed inevitable that I would win. The AI figured this out as well I guess, as they were hostile towards me. The endgame was tedious, but with the constant fighting it was prolonged even further. I would've liked to win by diplomacy, but from the start the AI's clearly didn't like me. If I had figured out how to change this, I would try again to win by diplo. As it is now, I'll just play a different game.

Would I still recommend this game? The basic mechanics of the game are good, and you get to make a lot of decisions that influence what you can do next. Basically this means that you have a lot of options, and most of the time there's no obvious correct choice. This is unlike Civ, that is comparatively a more linear game. Perhaps the other victory conditions prevent the tedious endgame: I got to do very little with the diplomatic and economic interactions with the AI, simply because they didn't like me (they didn't like each other either, btw, so it wasn't something personal ;) ). If only the game would give some more feedback on how you are doing and what the effect is of something you are about to do, then the game would be a lot better. Or maybe this information is available, but me with my meagre experience with the TBS-genre is too inexperienced to find that info. The lack of information doesn't make it a bad game: the mechanics are still the same, with or without information. However, in the example above about the RPS combat system, if you don't know what you're fighting, and you happen to find the right combination of weapons despite the lack of information... is that wisdom, or is that luck? Some people here use spreadsheets to calculate where to put their workers, other people use governors for their cities. If you want to explore the galaxy and see where you end up, there's nothing wrong with luck. If you are analysing the histograph every turn, then you don't want to play Endless Space.

I hope you like this tiny review. I know this game interests a lot of people, so I figured I'd give some first hand experience. 30 euros is not a lot of money for a game. However, more expensive games are usually on a discount most of the time, sometimes even right after the release. I think you could get civ5 for 40 euros at the time of the release, and you could buy it now for 5 euros if you're lucky. Compared to that, Endless Space is too expensive. On the other hand, I've put 50+ hours in this game, so I feel it was worth my money.

[ProPain]

Thanks for the review, still gonna wait for a discount to buy it.

And nice copy pasting action to assemble those tech trees :)

[grahamiam]

Thanks for the review, still gonna wait for a discount to buy it.
Me too

[Shabbaman]

Endless Space is free to play this weekend. Try it!

[Furiey]

Been playing all evening...

[grahamiam]

roger roger

[Shabbaman]

Endless Spaceis now on a 66% discount, only 10.19 euro.