Really informative video. Tip 9 was the most useful for me, however tip 2 (about toys for boys) is outdated. Toys for Boys now hits empire production rather than science and production is not boosted by happiness so there is a meaningful cost to enacting this law. I personally wait to use toys for boys until I start getting overcolonization penalties that need to be overcome.
Thanks! They keep updating/changing the game so good that you spotted it. I'll pin your comment as youtube decided to remove our ability to annotate videos :(. Cheers!
Also I believe the tip #5 has been patched: I am new to the game after buying it with the autumn sales last month. So also I got the acedemy quest at turn 16, but I already started with 2/5 of them explored.
Just a quick note on the ship battle tactics. You probably don't want to get rid of Turtle (unless you have no ballistic armor) as Pirates use ballistics, and you'll also see a lot of it from AI early on too. Turtle is a big help early in the game.
Regarding the battle range: The opposed flotillas both choose a range intention. The enemy gets the same option as you do! The battle is divided into three identical phases. If both flotillas have the same intention, they fight at that range for three phases. So if two flotillas are sent to short range, they will fight in short range for the whole battle, unless one of them is wiped out before the end. If the intentions do not match, the range will shift over time. So if one flotilla is sent to short range and its opponent intends to fight at long range, the first phase is fought at long the second at medium and the last at short. That's probably why your short range ships didn't get to short range. It only happens during the last third of the battle, when fighting long range flotillas. I think, if one wants to fight at medium range, medium range gets two phases, just speculation though.
His short range ships didn't fire because the other part of his fleet completely wiped out the enemy before third phase of battle happened. He must have had beam weapons on those ships which can be fired only at short range. If two fleets with only short-range beam weapons meet then they'll be able to fire simultaneously, presumably (? for all three combat rounds... but since the enemy played 'Power to Shields' which is a "I prefer to stay at maximum range" card the beam ships would not be in range of the enemy until round 3. It's the same system as Endless Space 1 where it progresses through Long then Medium then Short range; you can't just immediately strike at short range if the enemy is using missiles and trying to keep his distance. Basically, short-ranged ships will try to get closer and can't fire immediately and only if both ships have long-ranged weapons can both sides fire during the first combat round, else just one side will fire... but beams appear to be the only exclusively short-ranged weapon that can fire only at that range (torpedoes are opposite and can fire at longer ranges only, not melee). It must have been beam weapons on those ships because even with kinetics they'd have been able to fire beginning from the first round... though only at 80% accuracy. These were a lot of words, it's as simple as this: If I have a musket and you try to attack me with a spear I'll be able to shoot at you before you get in range of me... and the guy launching tomahawk missiles will be able to strike both of us before we can get close. ;-)
Thank you for helping to untangle the mechanics of this game. I don't know of any other channel that is putting out such content on ES2 so you've really become my one stop place for ES2 info. Also, I like that your not claiming to be a master at it and seem to be untangling the game with the rest of us and not telling people to follow a rigid guide on starting build orders and what not.
Great tips and well explained as always! I would really appreciate it if you did a guide explaining Mainpower. It's the one thing I really just don't get in Endless Space 2, so a video explaining how it works and especially how it relates to invading systems would be really helpful! (I somehow always get invading wrong, so that it takes my invasion forces ages to conquer a system, and also ages to replenish their troops!)
One quick tip for space combat: your ships won't be able to shot the enemy behind them. So prioritize filling flotilla 3 then 2 and last 1 (note that you need atleast one ship in flotilla 2). Because battles alwayse start from bottom and move upwards (from 3 to1).
It's not documented per se, but the user manual shows the battle screen from beta clearly has a more relistic indication for the battle: cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/392110/manuals/User%27s_Manual_-_Endless_Space_2.pdf#page=37 Don't know why they dumb down the advanced battle screen that it show less information than it does in beta. Also, 100 hours experience of the game proves my claim so far.
For me the Academy Quest for finding it is retroactive. It recognizes that I have already scanned X amount of atmospheric curiosities and applies to the quest.
I only for 20 hours so far and haven't thought about this, but what you say makes much more sense. It also feels "dirty" gaming the quest system, knowing the objectives beforehand.
I'm afraid that's not the case. Note that it is a competition quest and the 5 curiosities are the total number among ALL factions. e.g. if u explored only 2 you might win the quest with others only explored one.
Nice video! One small thing: I think you should put it in the description that at tip 10, the Riftborn need production and it's usually a good idea to colonize Lava or Ash planets with them (I know it's mentioned in the Riftborn introduction update video, but some people might not know that)
Love your work Waervyn. Heres a tip. Want to have a huge constant income of dust? Build the Trade Clearing Centre so that you get a portion of income from every transaction in the galaxy as tax. You can even set the rate up to 25%. Then use that money to invest in Trading companies to make even more dust. This helps to win the economic victory. Make sure to build it on your most productive system as soon as you can so that it will build quickly and before someone else builds it.
Thank you for another great video. About prioritizing food for the first colonized planet, though: in certain situations, esp. in the early game, the planet's default production can also lead to a very significant difference, as a planet with very low production will need, say, 60+ turns to build anything. The situations can be: no buyout tech researched yet (or no money to buy out production buildings), no production boost trait from the initial colonizing population, no level 2 system modernization available yet.
This is not really true; you get a respectable amount of production (25) from just the basic outpost itself. You'll always be able to build the basic buildings in around six turns. Dust and buyouts are not very powerful or necessary in ES2.
Very interesting videos thanks a lot making this video's ! one little question the forest world you now witch tech is for colonisation ? i dont se the tech i'm playing the horetios ! thanks
For tip #5 regarding exploring atmospheric curiosities, I believe they are retroactively added to your count so you don't necessarily need to wait until turn 16.
This didn't use to be the case, but I'll check it out thanks! Unfortunately UA-cam took away the annotation function, but I can add it to the description :)
Actually you may have been correct in the original video. I made my claim after having started a game in which I only explored two atmo curiosities after receiving the quest and still got first place. I tried another game having explored atmo curiosities only before receiving the quest and none after and didn't win. I guess I just didn't realize that the 5 curiosities is cumulative across all civilizations involved in the quest rather than retroactive on your own.
Ah yeah, it's the total of everyone together indeed. Which makes the fact that this game is not truly 'turn-based' a bit of a hassle. If an AI explores before you in the same turn just because it's faster, and by doing so completes the quest, you don't get anything!
Hey buddy, thanks for the vid. I think perhaps the reason your flotilla 1 did not "sneak up" on the enemy as planned was that they were obliterated before they were in range ;)
Great stuff! I've tried the toys for boys trick thinking I'd end up getting 5% extra science from the Empire happiness. I play Riftborn, however when I went to check the tech screen to see if I was getting the science Empire bonus. I wasn't getting any extra science just the penalty. Can you check this again?
Question: How can i get an overview to all the system + planets that are not colonized and the ones that are owned by minor/major-races? E.g. which system or planet should i colonize next, without clicking on each and every single one of them, comparing them by memory?
Regarding tip #10 (colonization and food) i think it's (not completely) true. What i found is that the system where you've created the colonization ship provides food for the colonization. You can see it as minus food prod in the details when you move your mouse over the food sign in system view (if colonization is in progress). Have to double check this when im at home. And thanks for these vids! Great to see what other ppl discover in this sophisticated game.
Systems indeed also provide food. You can set which system in the left part of the screen. That system will send ships with food. You can increase the amount of ships they send with the action that costs influence instead of gold. So basically, let's say a outpost is making 15 food per turn. It will then cost 20 turns to colonize. However, whenever a ship with food arrives, this number will suddenly go down by a lot.
Very nice video! Could you please explain how influence boosts the colonization? I see that dust reduces colonization time but I dont see how the bonus on migration does anything to speed up colonization
You don't see it because it generally doesn't work in the early game; it is a complete waste. It doubles the amount of food that gets shipped from the sending world (early game: homeworld) but because in the very early game homeworld doesn't produce enough food to be able to send twice the amount you actually end up paying influence and not getting anything for it. The influence option can be good *later* in the game if you settle a planet with almost no food production and you have a large agricultural system nearby. In this case, with the influence boost the sending world may send so much food (300+) that the Outpost immediately turns into a Colony once the first convoy arrives. In the early game the dust Outpost speeding option is generally much more powerful. This is also why the law that gives you a large amount of dust in return for losing a small amount of approval is extremely strong early game - you should use this and not the ''Toys for Boys' one increasing approval that Waervyn suggested. ;-)
These have been very helpful! Thank you for them. If only someone would tell me how exactly trade routes work. I mean, you're supposed to build the trade route and subsidiary as far away from each other as possible,, but how is the trade value of a system calculated? Does building the improvements for trade value on other systems than the ones with the trade company and subsidiary help? The ones that are still along the trade route, that is? And what else affects the value?
Anyone knows how many turns does it take to deconsruct a System after I took it from the enemy? I know I played very aggressive vs AI and then I had to demolish some systems cause of over-expansion, lol (but in some cases the deconstruct planet thing was grayed out and I was a bit confused why).
In Endless Legend you had to wait 10 turns before you could Salt The Earth (deconstruct) a captured enemy city. It's probably something similar here. Although in Endless Legend there was an empire attribute you could pick that instantly razed any captured enemy cities to the ground.
It depends on the situation. The Outpost needs 300 food to grow into a Colony, same as the Homeworld needs 300 food to grow a new population point... but while distributing food to an Outpost you actually only get HALF the food, because even though the amount of food specified gets subtracted from the Homeworld's food every SINGLE turn it only sends out a food convoy to the Outpost every SECOND turn. This means you could in fact grow two population points on the Homeworld with the food that creates only a single point on the Outpost. However, once the Outpost comes online it immediately produces a large amount of food and production and quickly makes up the difference initially lost. Expansion is generally very powerful in ES2 but you must expand slowly enough that you don't put excessive strain on the Homeworld. You can't immediately build four colonizers and grab four planets at once, that will crash the economy... but if you are playing a large map that allows for many planets before you run into the overcolonization penalty you generally want to rapidly expand. On a Tiny map that allows only two systems before the penalty you may want to build up the Homeworld a lot first and expand only when you find a very valuable system.
My issue with the atmospheric quest is that more than once I've saved up a ton of atmospheric curiosities, on turn 17 started exploring them all, on turn 18 won the quest but literally everyone else got the second place reward with a score of 0. I hope they change it to maybe giving everyone proportional rewards, for example you have 5 turns to explore as many as you can, with 6 you get 100% of the reward, and any % of 6 you get within the time limit or until someone wins, you get proportional rewards as well. Maybe even limit the rewards to the faster faction if there are ties so not everybody can be second if only one faction is even trying.
I've been trying to get into Riftborn and I don't know how to do it. Their early and mid game are very slow and I'm having trouble expanding. Is there a specific way to speed up the early game process for the Riftborn?
Riftborn are incredibly powerful. Since they don't need food you can ignore food production and focus purely on industry. Each riftborn on the same sytem costs more than the last to make. But this is highly exploitable. Make one system your "riftborn factory" and just continually ship most of the population to other system. As long as the population is not getting too high, you can keep building riftborn very cheaply on that one planet and expand extremely rapidly If it also wasn't obvious you should be running singularities constantly.
Whenever playing against the Normal AI I usually am finding myself being behind in points when I hover my mouse over the End Turn button. Is this normal? It seems that regardless of what I do ingame I can usually never surpass the AI's score during the initial 100 turns.
Hi, great work on these videos. I have a question, in tip 10 you say it's best to colonize the planet with the most food because it'll be colonized faster. However, once it's colonized you might have a colony with very low production output and buildings/ships will take forever. So which one is better for the long term, and why?
Can you make a video about minor factions and their collection bonuses? Who are valuable to meet and absorb and who to send into the endless trip to the full planet?
If there are multiple minor factions nearby and especially if you are playing a faction that already has or can easily get a militarist government with free war declarations it is a VERY powerful strategy to unlock the tier 1 manpower module, put it on a simple exploration ship (or two) and immediately invade all the minor factions. This will essentially give you 3,4 or more homeworlds while the AIs still only have their main one. Exploration is VERY powerful in Endless Space 2, a Scout ship should often be your first build because you not only get all sorts of exploration bonuses but may also discover nearby targets for invasion.
I wrote a long reply about trading companies above, have a look. Wormholes are very simple: Once you unlock the tech you see new wormhole connections on the map; they allow for instant travel between the linked points.
The game is giving you so many options, it´s absurd. I am pretty sure i´m missing a lot of points due to wrong decisions in almost every aspect. On the one hand i like the amount of options as it favours the most creative player (at least i hope so), on the other hand it seems almost impossible to me to ever realize what the best decisions will be on a larger scale. Love it and hate it. :-)
Oh man I bought this game some days ago and watched some videos already but there is SO much to take care of and to know about. I'm not new to complex strategy, I played Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Stellaris, and more, but somehow Endless Space 2 seems like a giant under giants. I don't really know if there are more features than in other games or if it just seems so because it's confusing as hell. Just look at the Star System Management... so many numbers and I have no idea of what they are doing.
From what I understand a flotilla will prefer to target their mirror flotilla. That means the top flotilla will try to attack the enemy top, middle will target middle, and bottom will target bottom. So in your video, your top flotilla will try to attack the enemy top flotilla at short range. If there isn't an enemy in the top flotilla then it will try to attack the middle. So depending on the tactics that you and the enemy pick, the starting ranges for each flotilla could be the same or different for the 3 phases in battle. Example 1: Both flotillas are set to long range. During phase 1,2,3 both sides will arrive and stay at long range. Example 2: Your side is set to long range and the enemy is set to medium range. During phase 1 both sides start at long range. Then during phase 2 and 3 will be at medium range. Example 3: Your side is set to long range and the enemy is set to short range. During phase 1 both sides start at long range. Then during phase 2 both sides are at medium range. Then at phase 3 both sides are now at short range. Example 4: Both flotillas are set to short range, then during phase 1,2,3 both sides will arrive and stay at short range. In summary, if two sides are at the same range, they will arrive and stay at that range. If the ranges are different, the range will start at the longest range set, then during each phase the distance will decrease until it is at the shortest range set. Finally, a flotilla that is targeting a flotilla that isn't their mirror (middle targeting top/bottom), then the range used for that is long.
Thanks for your input! However, this doesn't fit with the bottom flotilla. With your theory (if I understand it correctly), the range should be set to long, however, they do start at medium range and stay there for turn two as well.
I'm guessing the bottom group was actually medium range but when they target the enemy middle group that is long range but it isn't displayed. The way the devs set up the screen it looks like it the range only accounts for mirror match-ups not for targeting other flotillas.
I always thought I understood it, but now I started looking into it and the math doesn't seem to add up. I contacted Amplitude and hope to get an answer soon :)
Nope, the militarist. If you're in an ecologist dictatorship, but you do a lot of military stuff, you'll get a lot of militarist representatives. However, these representatives will not be happy due to not being represented in the government (which is ecologist)
I'm seeing all these people playing without overpopulation penalties. On all of my planets, I have a red bar that gives me penalties with I exceed a certain population. How did you not have that at the start of the game?
Hello. I play in easy mode. When i reach turn 80, all my enemies have very strong ships and they all tru to attack me. I lose. Why is so hard even in easy mode?
Still sounds like a snore fest... On turn 80 people wont have good enough ships or manpower to actually be able to do something critical to your empire.
If things go that badly for you I suspect the problem may be the way you're colonizing. Make sure you colonize only planets that have a lot of food in the early game as Waervyn described. Colonizing a planet puts a huge drain on your homeworld in the early game so be careful about how you expand (unless you play Riftborn who don't ship food from homeworld). Make sure you prioritize weapon upgrades for your ships; the equipment you can build using Hyperium and Titanium is much more powerful than the basic gear and you'll get murdered if your opponent has it and you don't.
God so much micromanagement in this game and pirates. Useless 1 ship fleets constantant harrasing my exploration ships literally every turn. To turn them off I have to gain a minor faction. To do that I have to colonize a useless system ages away with multiple pirates spawning damn near every turn at every solar system along the way. I will have to fucking station a fleet at every solar system in between just so my colony ship doesn't get sniped. I can barely keep up and can't really intercept them. WTF!!
Really informative video. Tip 9 was the most useful for me, however tip 2 (about toys for boys) is outdated. Toys for Boys now hits empire production rather than science and production is not boosted by happiness so there is a meaningful cost to enacting this law. I personally wait to use toys for boys until I start getting overcolonization penalties that need to be overcome.
Thanks! They keep updating/changing the game so good that you spotted it. I'll pin your comment as youtube decided to remove our ability to annotate videos :(.
Cheers!
Also I believe the tip #5 has been patched: I am new to the game after buying it with the autumn sales last month. So also I got the acedemy quest at turn 16, but I already started with 2/5 of them explored.
Easily the best starter guide on youtube, even after 6 years. You said in 10 mins what other guides say in 3 hours!
Your videos are a gem.
Just a quick note on the ship battle tactics. You probably don't want to get rid of Turtle (unless you have no ballistic armor) as Pirates use ballistics, and you'll also see a lot of it from AI early on too. Turtle is a big help early in the game.
Excellent tips!
Good stuff! I always learn new things from these advanced tips video's of yours.
Regarding the battle range:
The opposed flotillas both choose a range intention. The enemy gets the same option as you do!
The battle is divided into three identical phases.
If both flotillas have the same intention, they fight at that range for three phases. So if two flotillas are sent to short range, they will fight in short range for the whole battle, unless one of them is wiped out before the end.
If the intentions do not match, the range will shift over time. So if one flotilla is sent to short range and its opponent intends to fight at long range, the first phase is fought at long the second at medium and the last at short. That's probably why your short range ships didn't get to short range. It only happens during the last third of the battle, when fighting long range flotillas.
I think, if one wants to fight at medium range, medium range gets two phases, just speculation though.
His short range ships didn't fire because the other part of his fleet completely wiped out the enemy before third phase of battle happened. He must have had beam weapons on those ships which can be fired only at short range. If two fleets with only short-range beam weapons meet then they'll be able to fire simultaneously, presumably (? for all three combat rounds... but since the enemy played 'Power to Shields' which is a "I prefer to stay at maximum range" card the beam ships would not be in range of the enemy until round 3. It's the same system as Endless Space 1 where it progresses through Long then Medium then Short range; you can't just immediately strike at short range if the enemy is using missiles and trying to keep his distance. Basically, short-ranged ships will try to get closer and can't fire immediately and only if both ships have long-ranged weapons can both sides fire during the first combat round, else just one side will fire... but beams appear to be the only exclusively short-ranged weapon that can fire only at that range (torpedoes are opposite and can fire at longer ranges only, not melee).
It must have been beam weapons on those ships because even with kinetics they'd have been able to fire beginning from the first round... though only at 80% accuracy.
These were a lot of words, it's as simple as this: If I have a musket and you try to attack me with a spear I'll be able to shoot at you before you get in range of me... and the guy launching tomahawk missiles will be able to strike both of us before we can get close. ;-)
Just got this today. Great tips! I watched 2 vids so far and learned a lot. I plan to check out the rest! Thanks!!
As a new player, your clear and concise explanations have been incredibly helpful. Thanks mate!
I just stumbled on this channel last night. Really happy with the Endless Space 2 content! I'll watch em if you post em :-)
Glad you like the videos!
Thank you for helping to untangle the mechanics of this game. I don't know of any other channel that is putting out such content on ES2 so you've really become my one stop place for ES2 info. Also, I like that your not claiming to be a master at it and seem to be untangling the game with the rest of us and not telling people to follow a rigid guide on starting build orders and what not.
Thanks for the kind words! I'm definitely not a pro at all. I just really like figuring out the inner workings of games :)
So much quality content. So few subscribers. This game is great, and so is your channel, man.
I got this game in November an all your tips are very appreciated.
Ty for explaining that stuff
Well done man, I found these tips very useful
Outstanding, thank-you.
Great video! Thanks!
Great tips and well explained as always! I would really appreciate it if you did a guide explaining Mainpower. It's the one thing I really just don't get in Endless Space 2, so a video explaining how it works and especially how it relates to invading systems would be really helpful!
(I somehow always get invading wrong, so that it takes my invasion forces ages to conquer a system, and also ages to replenish their troops!)
As a new player playing in 2024 these tips are still very good. Thank you for this
Dope tips. Good job.
Nice and short,thanks for the guide.
Great tips. Thank you...
One quick tip for space combat: your ships won't be able to shot the enemy behind them. So prioritize filling flotilla 3 then 2 and last 1 (note that you need atleast one ship in flotilla 2). Because battles alwayse start from bottom and move upwards (from 3 to1).
Is this written somewhere or did you find it out through experience? I'll have to look into this! Thanks for sharing!
It's not documented per se, but the user manual shows the battle screen from beta clearly has a more relistic indication for the battle: cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/392110/manuals/User%27s_Manual_-_Endless_Space_2.pdf#page=37
Don't know why they dumb down the advanced battle screen that it show less information than it does in beta. Also, 100 hours experience of the game proves my claim so far.
For me the Academy Quest for finding it is retroactive. It recognizes that I have already scanned X amount of atmospheric curiosities and applies to the quest.
I only for 20 hours so far and haven't thought about this, but what you say makes much more sense. It also feels "dirty" gaming the quest system, knowing the objectives beforehand.
I'm afraid that's not the case. Note that it is a competition quest and the 5 curiosities are the total number among ALL factions. e.g. if u explored only 2 you might win the quest with others only explored one.
Thank you so much!
Nice video! One small thing: I think you should put it in the description that at tip 10, the Riftborn need production and it's usually a good idea to colonize Lava or Ash planets with them (I know it's mentioned in the Riftborn introduction update video, but some people might not know that)
Love your work Waervyn.
Heres a tip. Want to have a huge constant income of dust? Build the Trade Clearing Centre so that you get a portion of income from every transaction in the galaxy as tax. You can even set the rate up to 25%. Then use that money to invest in Trading companies to make even more dust. This helps to win the economic victory. Make sure to build it on your most productive system as soon as you can so that it will build quickly and before someone else builds it.
Good shit. Well done.
Very nice vid. Just bought the game and this helps a lot. Btw you sound Dutch?
Good stuff man
Thank you for another great video. About prioritizing food for the first colonized planet, though: in certain situations, esp. in the early game, the planet's default production can also lead to a very significant difference, as a planet with very low production will need, say, 60+ turns to build anything. The situations can be: no buyout tech researched yet (or no money to buy out production buildings), no production boost trait from the initial colonizing population, no level 2 system modernization available yet.
This is not really true; you get a respectable amount of production (25) from just the basic outpost itself. You'll always be able to build the basic buildings in around six turns.
Dust and buyouts are not very powerful or necessary in ES2.
"Ecologist dictatorship", the horror...
Singapore...
I like Horatio, it's a great mechaniscs that you can coloniza any non-gas planet right away.
I need to start playing ecologist cravers!
Waervyn's World, pacifist*
Once I got hacked and my government changed to ecologist dictatorship and lmao I was without planets and colonized them all
Very interesting videos thanks a lot making this video's ! one little question the forest world you now witch tech is for colonisation ? i dont se the tech i'm playing the horetios ! thanks
Great video! Also, what's your accent? German? I love it; you have a great voice for UA-cam!
For tip #5 regarding exploring atmospheric curiosities, I believe they are retroactively added to your count so you don't necessarily need to wait until turn 16.
This didn't use to be the case, but I'll check it out thanks! Unfortunately UA-cam took away the annotation function, but I can add it to the description :)
Actually you may have been correct in the original video. I made my claim after having started a game in which I only explored two atmo curiosities after receiving the quest and still got first place. I tried another game having explored atmo curiosities only before receiving the quest and none after and didn't win. I guess I just didn't realize that the 5 curiosities is cumulative across all civilizations involved in the quest rather than retroactive on your own.
Ah yeah, it's the total of everyone together indeed. Which makes the fact that this game is not truly 'turn-based' a bit of a hassle. If an AI explores before you in the same turn just because it's faster, and by doing so completes the quest, you don't get anything!
Hey buddy, thanks for the vid. I think perhaps the reason your flotilla 1 did not "sneak up" on the enemy as planned was that they were obliterated before they were in range ;)
Subbed to this
Great stuff! I've tried the toys for boys trick thinking I'd end up getting 5% extra science from the Empire happiness. I play Riftborn, however when I went to check the tech screen to see if I was getting the science Empire bonus. I wasn't getting any extra science just the penalty. Can you check this again?
Question: How can i get an overview to all the system + planets that are not colonized and the ones that are owned by minor/major-races? E.g. which system or planet should i colonize next, without clicking on each and every single one of them, comparing them by memory?
This is useful.
Were you able to finish a game around turn 120(+/-) because of the battle/wait bugs?
can you do a battle tutorial and explain all that there is to talk about for combat in the game next?
Regarding tip #10 (colonization and food) i think it's (not completely) true. What i found is that the system where you've created the colonization ship provides food for the colonization. You can see it as minus food prod in the details when you move your mouse over the food sign in system view (if colonization is in progress). Have to double check this when im at home.
And thanks for these vids! Great to see what other ppl discover in this sophisticated game.
Systems indeed also provide food. You can set which system in the left part of the screen. That system will send ships with food. You can increase the amount of ships they send with the action that costs influence instead of gold. So basically, let's say a outpost is making 15 food per turn. It will then cost 20 turns to colonize. However, whenever a ship with food arrives, this number will suddenly go down by a lot.
I just bought the game about to play, how much control do I have over battles, if any?
Very nice video! Could you please explain how influence boosts the colonization? I see that dust reduces colonization time but I dont see how the bonus on migration does anything to speed up colonization
You don't see it because it generally doesn't work in the early game; it is a complete waste. It doubles the amount of food that gets shipped from the sending world (early game: homeworld) but because in the very early game homeworld doesn't produce enough food to be able to send twice the amount you actually end up paying influence and not getting anything for it.
The influence option can be good *later* in the game if you settle a planet with almost no food production and you have a large agricultural system nearby. In this case, with the influence boost the sending world may send so much food (300+) that the Outpost immediately turns into a Colony once the first convoy arrives.
In the early game the dust Outpost speeding option is generally much more powerful. This is also why the law that gives you a large amount of dust in return for losing a small amount of approval is extremely strong early game - you should use this and not the ''Toys for Boys' one increasing approval that Waervyn suggested. ;-)
But toys for boys isn't only used for dust, it also boosts science if you are at 50 approval.
very good tips!
Re: tip #3, can the Vodyani use that Eco law to settle all planets in their system?
every planet of a type that falls under that law, yeah
if you play the riftborn, does it still cost food to colonize a new system? I thought they don't eat lol
You can know the amount of food needed for the outpost by putting your mouse over the progress bar.
Tigre de Poche didn't know that, thanks for sharing!
These have been very helpful! Thank you for them. If only someone would tell me how exactly trade routes work. I mean, you're supposed to build the trade route and subsidiary as far away from each other as possible,, but how is the trade value of a system calculated? Does building the improvements for trade value on other systems than the ones with the trade company and subsidiary help? The ones that are still along the trade route, that is? And what else affects the value?
I hope to be able to look at this and make a video next weekend. Currently traveling for work for a week unfortunately, so can't make new videos :(
Please how can I get the dust quickly in game? Can you share me your general option? This trouble me so much.
Anyone knows how many turns does it take to deconsruct a System after I took it from the enemy? I know I played very aggressive vs AI and then I had to demolish some systems cause of over-expansion, lol (but in some cases the deconstruct planet thing was grayed out and I was a bit confused why).
In Endless Legend you had to wait 10 turns before you could Salt The Earth (deconstruct) a captured enemy city. It's probably something similar here.
Although in Endless Legend there was an empire attribute you could pick that instantly razed any captured enemy cities to the ground.
Is there still a bug where empire approval bonuses don't apply?
Do you recommend colonizing early or waiting until your first system is well established before settling a new system?
It depends on the situation. The Outpost needs 300 food to grow into a Colony, same as the Homeworld needs 300 food to grow a new population point... but while distributing food to an Outpost you actually only get HALF the food, because even though the amount of food specified gets subtracted from the Homeworld's food every SINGLE turn it only sends out a food convoy to the Outpost every SECOND turn. This means you could in fact grow two population points on the Homeworld with the food that creates only a single point on the Outpost. However, once the Outpost comes online it immediately produces a large amount of food and production and quickly makes up the difference initially lost.
Expansion is generally very powerful in ES2 but you must expand slowly enough that you don't put excessive strain on the Homeworld. You can't immediately build four colonizers and grab four planets at once, that will crash the economy... but if you are playing a large map that allows for many planets before you run into the overcolonization penalty you generally want to rapidly expand. On a Tiny map that allows only two systems before the penalty you may want to build up the Homeworld a lot first and expand only when you find a very valuable system.
My issue with the atmospheric quest is that more than once I've saved up a ton of atmospheric curiosities, on turn 17 started exploring them all, on turn 18 won the quest but literally everyone else got the second place reward with a score of 0. I hope they change it to maybe giving everyone proportional rewards, for example you have 5 turns to explore as many as you can, with 6 you get 100% of the reward, and any % of 6 you get within the time limit or until someone wins, you get proportional rewards as well. Maybe even limit the rewards to the faster faction if there are ties so not everybody can be second if only one faction is even trying.
I had a game today, where i got one atmospheric, and ended in a 5-way tie for the win. I got the biggest prize, and i assume everyone else did too
I've been trying to get into Riftborn and I don't know how to do it. Their early and mid game are very slow and I'm having trouble expanding. Is there a specific way to speed up the early game process for the Riftborn?
Riftborn are incredibly powerful. Since they don't need food you can ignore food production and focus purely on industry. Each riftborn on the same sytem costs more than the last to make. But this is highly exploitable. Make one system your "riftborn factory" and just continually ship most of the population to other system. As long as the population is not getting too high, you can keep building riftborn very cheaply on that one planet and expand extremely rapidly
If it also wasn't obvious you should be running singularities constantly.
Whenever playing against the Normal AI I usually am finding myself being behind in points when I hover my mouse over the End Turn button. Is this normal? It seems that regardless of what I do ingame I can usually never surpass the AI's score during the initial 100 turns.
git gut
Hi, great work on these videos.
I have a question, in tip 10 you say it's best to colonize the planet with the most food because it'll be colonized faster. However, once it's colonized you might have a colony with very low production output and buildings/ships will take forever. So which one is better for the long term, and why?
samerxb I generally aim for more for production with at least some food, and then transfer population from my more crowded systems
I never saw the quest with finding the academy, probably because I always found it already before turn 16....
A question mostly i play riftborn . Should i look for food on new colonys or industry?
Industry as riftborn don't need food.
Can you make a video about minor factions and their collection bonuses? Who are valuable to meet and absorb and who to send into the endless trip to the full planet?
I'll look into it!
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=935003097
Nice! Did you make it? If so, thanks! If not, still thanks for sharing :)
Why does flotilla 3 start at medium and the others have to start at long range and move?
each tactics "card" has a different preset, some have most start at long range, others at short range and so on.
what are your best tips to grow faster that the AI(computer) ?
If there are multiple minor factions nearby and especially if you are playing a faction that already has or can easily get a militarist government with free war declarations it is a VERY powerful strategy to unlock the tier 1 manpower module, put it on a simple exploration ship (or two) and immediately invade all the minor factions. This will essentially give you 3,4 or more homeworlds while the AIs still only have their main one. Exploration is VERY powerful in Endless Space 2, a Scout ship should often be your first build because you not only get all sorts of exploration bonuses but may also discover nearby targets for invasion.
thx for these tips, but how the AI still makes more points ( in the ranking) ? they invade /research/make more ships than me ?
Could you do a video explaining wormholes, trading companies, and other poorly explained mechanics?
I wrote a long reply about trading companies above, have a look.
Wormholes are very simple: Once you unlock the tech you see new wormhole connections on the map; they allow for instant travel between the linked points.
The game is giving you so many options, it´s absurd. I am pretty sure i´m missing a lot of points due to wrong decisions in almost every aspect. On the one hand i like the amount of options as it favours the most creative player (at least i hope so), on the other hand it seems almost impossible to me to ever realize what the best decisions will be on a larger scale. Love it and hate it. :-)
Merci pour cette vidéo, il y a plein de choses que je ne savais pas.
Hi I like your video about ES2 I suscribe.
Can you make a video about battle, it's really shaddy and I still doesn't understand every part.
Battles and trade-routes are things I'm also still a bit unsure about. Once I figure it out I'll definitely make a video :)
Oh man I bought this game some days ago and watched some videos already but there is SO much to take care of and to know about. I'm not new to complex strategy, I played Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Stellaris, and more, but somehow Endless Space 2 seems like a giant under giants. I don't really know if there are more features than in other games or if it just seems so because it's confusing as hell. Just look at the Star System Management... so many numbers and I have no idea of what they are doing.
if you want to check a confusing as hell game from paradox I recommend victoria 2
The top flotilla shooting at the middle flotilla wouldn't be short range which is why they didn't fire when they only had short range weapons
But the top flotilla actually says that they were at short range, that's why it's so confusing to me.
From what I understand a flotilla will prefer to target their mirror flotilla. That means the top flotilla will try to attack the enemy top, middle will target middle, and bottom will target bottom.
So in your video, your top flotilla will try to attack the enemy top flotilla at short range. If there isn't an enemy in the top flotilla then it will try to attack the middle.
So depending on the tactics that you and the enemy pick, the starting ranges for each flotilla could be the same or different for the 3 phases in battle.
Example 1: Both flotillas are set to long range. During phase 1,2,3 both sides will arrive and stay at long range.
Example 2: Your side is set to long range and the enemy is set to medium range. During phase 1 both sides start at long range. Then during phase 2 and 3 will be at medium range.
Example 3: Your side is set to long range and the enemy is set to short range. During phase 1 both sides start at long range. Then during phase 2 both sides are at medium range. Then at phase 3 both sides are now at short range.
Example 4: Both flotillas are set to short range, then during phase 1,2,3 both sides will arrive and stay at short range.
In summary, if two sides are at the same range, they will arrive and stay at that range. If the ranges are different, the range will start at the longest range set, then during each phase the distance will decrease until it is at the shortest range set.
Finally, a flotilla that is targeting a flotilla that isn't their mirror (middle targeting top/bottom), then the range used for that is long.
Thanks for your input!
However, this doesn't fit with the bottom flotilla. With your theory (if I understand it correctly), the range should be set to long, however, they do start at medium range and stay there for turn two as well.
I'm guessing the bottom group was actually medium range but when they target the enemy middle group that is long range but it isn't displayed. The way the devs set up the screen it looks like it the range only accounts for mirror match-ups not for targeting other flotillas.
I think there was something about the weapon facing or something, I could be remembering wrong though.
How come you never use hardly the construction policies in the game is that better?
Hey i just found this game, you should do a guide on the customization feature. Optimal custom trait builds for instance.
Should be called Endless Spreadsheets and paperwork
Can you a video on manpower. This one thing is killing me no matter who I play.
Sure thing. I'll try to have a look on Sunday :)
I always thought I understood it, but now I started looking into it and the math doesn't seem to add up. I contacted Amplitude and hope to get an answer soon :)
linked: grims.live/2017/05/18/endless-space-2-einfuehrungen-tutorials-guides/?preview_id=1072&preview_nonce=03b34dd36e ... good luck!
I think at around 11:40 you meant all these people that are ecologists?
Nope, the militarist. If you're in an ecologist dictatorship, but you do a lot of military stuff, you'll get a lot of militarist representatives. However, these representatives will not be happy due to not being represented in the government (which is ecologist)
Oh sry forgot it was an ecologist empire, the dictatorship in my mind goes hand to hand with militarist ;p Thanks for the clarification.
Horatio is a fascist cucumber
game.. why yo unot tell me about the battletactics....
I'm seeing all these people playing without overpopulation penalties. On all of my planets, I have a red bar that gives me penalties with I exceed a certain population. How did you not have that at the start of the game?
Hello. I play in easy mode. When i reach turn 80, all my enemies have very strong ships and they all tru to attack me. I lose. Why is so hard even in easy mode?
Still sounds like a snore fest... On turn 80 people wont have good enough ships or manpower to actually be able to do something critical to your empire.
If things go that badly for you I suspect the problem may be the way you're colonizing. Make sure you colonize only planets that have a lot of food in the early game as Waervyn described. Colonizing a planet puts a huge drain on your homeworld in the early game so be careful about how you expand (unless you play Riftborn who don't ship food from homeworld).
Make sure you prioritize weapon upgrades for your ships; the equipment you can build using Hyperium and Titanium is much more powerful than the basic gear and you'll get murdered if your opponent has it and you don't.
God so much micromanagement in this game and pirates. Useless 1 ship fleets constantant harrasing my exploration ships literally every turn. To turn them off I have to gain a minor faction. To do that I have to colonize a useless system ages away with multiple pirates spawning damn near every turn at every solar system along the way. I will have to fucking station a fleet at every solar system in between just so my colony ship doesn't get sniped. I can barely keep up and can't really intercept them. WTF!!
This game sucks it shouldn't be so complicated to play space monopoly.
From an admittedly ignorant player... this game looks absolutely drab.