History VideoGame / EndlessLegend

* DropTheHammer: The favored weapons of the Delvers are massive warhammers, which they can swing in a SpinAttack, damaging everything around them and possibly stunning their target to boot. Various other factions' units, like the Urces or Silics, can also make use of them.

* BadassBaritone: The leader of the Broken Lords speaks with a deep, slightly echoing voice; the former is from being a knight, the latter is from being a suit of AnimatedArmor.

* EvilSoundsDeep: The Broken Lords' leader speaks with a deep BadassBaritone, and they are widely considered to be soulless monsters because they must [[LifeDrinker drain Dust from other creatures to survive]]. On the other hand, many of their leaders are working to cure them of this affliction.

** The AI also does not handle environmental hazards well either; ships will make no effort whatsoever to avoid ending their turns in the middle of [[HostileWeather Dust-empowered lightning storms]], and armies will gleefully traipse back and forth across lava flows until they burn themselves to death. Can be extremely irritating when it happens with enemies you need to [[UnwinnableByMistake personally kill to advance a quest]].

* ScienceFantasy: The game is set in the same universe as ''Videogame/EndlessSpace'', only instead of spacefaring empires, the focus is on primitive, medieval cultures developing on a world that once belonged to the {{Precursors}}.

** The Virtual Endless bombed Auriga so hard that the planet is doomed, [[AlwaysChaoticEvil probably created Morgawr]], and indirectly created the Cultists. Of course, they were at war with the Concrete Endless, who were using Auriga as a weapons creation facility at the time.
** It's most fair to say that the Endless ranged from BenevolentPrecursors to NeglectfulPrecursors, since their abuses were the result of the Dust Wars.
** The Endless also killed the Lost (a race of space-faring sentients from which Dust originated) and claim to have created it themselves. [[GeniusLoci Auriga]] is currently one of the few survivors, but her days are numbered.
* AIIsACrapshoot: The Cultists of the Eternal End are led by malfunctioning Endless robots who have dedicated themselves to wiping out the legacy of the Endless.

** The fate of the Queen of The Cultists of the Eternal End; still alive, still thinking, but unable to do anything but issue orders from the prison of her own body. This is also one of the reasons why she wants to destroy what's left of the Endless and anything associated with them. The exact nature of the Queen is deliberately ambiguous, but since her Cult is made up of fanatic broken robots, it's likely she's some kind of AI that [[ICannotSelfTerminate cannot self-terminate]].

* AndYourRewardIsClothes: Purchasing the deluxe version of ''Videogame/DungeonOfTheEndless'' gives you the Mezari, who are re-skinned Vaulters with a different leader screen and unit appearances. The blurb on the faction description makes it clear that the Mezari are supposed to be who the Vaulters were before they crash-landed on Auriga.
* AnimatedArmor: The Lords of the Amber Plains bound their souls into suits of armor to survive Auriga's collapsing climate, turning themselves into the Broken Lords. They no longer need to eat since they subsist on Dust harvested from the environment... or [[LifeDrinker sentient beings]].

* AutomaticCrossbows: The default weapon of the Vaulter Marines. These can also be equipped to other ranged units, like the Wild Walker Rangers.

* BowsVersusCrossbows: These are options for most ranged units and heroes, and are rather well balanced. Bows deal slightly more damage than their same-material crossbow counterparts, while also gaining Flying Slayer for bonus damage against flying enemies. However, crossbows can be used with a shield, improving the unit's defense, and gain Point-Blank Power, dealing more damage to foes on adjacent tiles. Further, there are three legendary Bows and two legendary Crossbows.

** With a few quick conversions, the Cultists can quickly build a large army of troops conscripted from the minor factions. They make a formidable ZergRush force, but these conscript armies typically lack synergy and use only the base equipment. Once the other factions have climbed in their tech trees and can pump out their stronger units, the Cultists' conscript armies will be left in the dust.

* DoomedByCanon: Inasmuch as the Endless series ''has'' [[BroadStrokes canon]], at least. But still, ''VideoGame/EndlessSpace2'' shows that the Vaulters beat everyone to the ''[[ColonyShip Argosy]]'' at the end of this game, only taking the Sisters of Mercy with them. Meaning that every other major and minor faction froze to death when Auriga turned into a ball of ice. [[spoilers:Though it's also revealed that the Vaulters left behind found another way to escape, so it's ''possible'' that others managed to as well.]]

** The fate of the Queen of The Cultists of the Eternal End; still alive, still thinking, but unable to do anything but issue orders from the prison of her own body. This is also one of the reasons why she wants to destroy what's left of the Endless and anything associated with them. The exact nature of the Queen is deliberately ambiguous, but since her Cult is made up of fanatic broken robots, it's likely she's some kind of AI that cannot self-terminate.

* AristocratsAreEvil: The Broken Lords storyline has Marquis Suluzzo who encourages his people to continue on draining Dust from other living beings, and part of the storyline quest involves taking him out.

* BigGuy: Some of the minor factions are races of these (like the Erycis and their hydras, or Silics with their Harmonites). Some of the main factions have them to support their infantry, like the Vaulters with their Titans or Wild Walkers and their ent-like Tenei Walkers. While they may have differing special abilities (if any), typically they are slow, soak damage well, and can hit hard. With the addition of the [[OlympusMons Guardian]] [[OneManArmy super units]] and the [[{{Kaiju}} Urkans]], this is taken to its ultimate conclusion.

* BowsVersusCrossbows: These are options for most ranged units and heroes, and are rather well balanced. Bows deal slightly more damage than their same-material crossbow counterparts, while also gaining Flying Slayer which provides bonus damage against flying enemies. However, crossbows can be used with a shield, improving the unit's defense, and gain Point-Blank Power, dealing more damage to foes on adjacent tiles. Further, there are three legendary Bows and two legendary Crossbows.

** ''The Broken Lords'': Economist faction with elite but expensive units; they make much more Dust in general from the terrain around their cities and do not require food. Only problem is, they ''eat'' money to increase population and heal units, so they need all the Dust they can get.

** ''The Forgotten'': Espionage/Political faction added in ''Shadows''. They are unable to perform research the normal way and either buy technology with Dust or steal it from other cites. Most of their units can be cloaked in some way for sneak attacks and they are able to spy better than other factions (and are the only faction that can steal technology through spying).

* DefeatEqualsFriendship: Minor factions don't hold it against you when you take them over by force.

* DiscOneNuke: Getting loot from Ruins is a combination of LuckBasedMission and RandomlyDrops. With a bit of luck, it is possible to get a legendary item very early in the game that can turn your hero into a OneManArmy dealing massive damage and/or gaining other tremendous stat boosts.

* DropTheHammer: The favored weapon of the Delvers are massive warhammers, which they can swing in a SpinAttack, damaging everything around them and possibly stunning their target to boot. Various other factions' units, like the Urces or Silics, can also make use of them.

* FantasyMetals: The one mundane metal in Endless Legend is Iron. After that new technology can make use of Auriga's more fantastic metallurgy. There's Titanium (yeah, this metal is found on Earth, but not like the blue geometrical deposits found on Auriga), Glassteel, Dust (automatically becomes a basic material if your technology levels are high enough), Adamantian, Palladian, Mithrite, and Hyperium. With ''Shifters'' enabled, you can also learn how to build equipment out of the Pearls introduced in the expansion.

* GaiasLament: The narrator ''is Auriga,'' mourning her dying state and the strife of the races that live on her.

* GlacialApocalypse: Auriga is a dying world doomed by a growing ice age. Every few months, it's plunged into abrupt winters that kill crops and production. As the game goes on, the winters become longer and longer until the world is plunged in an eternal ice age past turn 300. The major factions of Auriga are trying to [[HomeworldEvacuation get the hell off their world]] before that happens. In ''VideoGame/EndlessSpace'', a few centuries after the ending, Auriga is a lifeless ball of ice and rock; only two of the factions are confirmed to have survived, one of them only partially.

** Science Victory: Research five of the six top-tier techs and you know more about the Endless than anyone else. Researching just ONE will take a long time, however.

* OmnicidalManiac: The Cult of The Eternal End is an entire civilization of them. They're not responsible for what is happening to Auriga (at least not directly), but their primary goal is to extinguish the legacy of the Endless across the universe and kill everyone along the way, starting with the other factions of Auriga.

* SchizoTech: The Vaulters. Despite starting the game with medieval-era technology, they have giant robots and their weapon and armor designs incorporate several futuristic elements. It's not a surprise since they are the only ones who remember that their ancestors came from the stars.

* AlienBlood: [[spoiler:The pearls used by the Allayi are actually clumps of Primordial Dust (the original form of Dust the Endless based theirs in) that comes from Mother Auriga the Lost, who lives within and is fused to Auriga the planet.]]

** One reason why factions like the Vaulters and Wild Walkers are strong in the early game is that their heroes and base infantry use bows or crossbows which give them a huge range advantage over most enemies who use melee. Line them up along the far edge of the battle map and they'll get 1-2 turns where they can dish out damage without fear of melee counterattack. Depending on tech level and terrain, they can often hit hard enough to outright kill all but the toughest units.

** The base units of the Vaulters (Marines) and Wild Walkers (Rangers) are ranged units, as are their starting heroes. This gives them a tremendous early game advantage over the other factions, as well as most minor factions, whose base units are melee. They can dish out serious damage, and even outright kill depending on their tech level and terrain, to enemy armies before they can get into melee attack range. However, once those other factions climb higher in the tech tree, getting access to beefier infantry, cavalry, and ranged units of their own, this advantage goes away. A Vaulter/Wild Walker player who has become too reliant on their ranged units will be in for a big surprise in later battles if they haven't upgraded their own rosters.
** With a few quick conversions, the Cultists can quickly build a large army of troops conscripted from the minor factions. They make a formidable ZergRush force...but these armies typically lack synergy. Once the other factions have climbed in their tech trees and can pump out their stronger units, these Cultist armies will be left in the dust.

* DiscOneNuke: Getting loot from Ruins is a combination of LuckBasedMission and RandomlyDrops. With a bit of luck, it is possible to get a legendary item very early in the game which can turn your hero into a OneManArmy dealing massive damage and/or gaining other tremendous stat boosts.

** Despite being a BugWar faction, the Necrophages look a lot like the undead. They eat corpses to make more of themselves, they've got the word "Necro" in their name, their leader wears a sinister cloak and has a wavy dagger, they can perform a blood sacrifice for a temporary boost, their units all carry disease and one of their support units turns dead enemies directly into fresh new units for you.

* ExpansionPack: Six. ''Guardians'' adds unique, extremely powerful {{Hero Unit}}s, global events and quests, and national facilities. ''Shadows'' introduces an espionage system as well as The Forgotten, a major faction who excel at espionage. ''Shifters'' adds the Allayi playable faction, whose capabilities shift in summer and winter, along with a revamped season system and a new type of resource. ''Tempest'' adds yet another faction, the Morgawr, who are designed to take advantage of the new content and mechanics in the oceans. ''Inferno'' adds a fourth faction, the Kapaku, who can [[HostileTerraforming turn the terrain around them into a volcanic wasteland]] [[InvadingRefugees much like their original home.]] Finally, ''Symbiosis'' adds a fifth playable faction, the Mykara, who rely on subverting other factions to dominate, and also introduces the [[{{Kaiju}} Urkans]], another type of HeroUnit which players can gain control of either through feeding them certain resources or besting them in battle.

* FantasyMetals: The one mundane metal in Endless Legend is Iron. After that new technology can make use of Auriga's more fantastic metallurgy. There's Titanium (yeah, this metal is found on Earth, but not like the geometrical deposits found on Auriga), Glassteel, Dust (automatically becomes a basic material if your technology levels are high enough), Adamantian, Palladian, Mithrite, and Hyperium. With ''Shifters'' enabled, you can also learn how to build equipment out of the Pearls introduced in the expansion.

* GeniusLoci: Due to the Lost merged with the planet, Auriga is a fully sentient and intelligent world. The only beings who can hear her are the Guardians and the Allayi, the original sentient natives of the planet. Unfortunately for her, the damage she suffered in the Dust Wars that claimed most of her race is slowly killing her. [[spoiler:The Allayi believe Auriga isn't exactly dying, but slipping into a long recovery slumber from which she will eventually recover.]]

* GreaterScopeVillain: In ''Endless Legend: Inferno'', [[VideoGame/EndlessSpace the Sowers]] serve as this to [[AlienInvasion the Kapaku]], who are only attempting to [[HostileTerraforming terraform Auriga into a volcanic hellscape]] because their native volcano world was itself transformed by the Sowers into a lush green "paradise" [[InvadingRefugees that the Kapaku could not survive on.]]

* ImportedAlienPhlebotinum: Dust is a creation of the [[{{Precursors}} Precursor]] Endless. It is both valuable, used as currency on Auriga in fact, and versatile, with uses ranging from computing to linking structures to granting sentience to races like the Silics to outright keeping races like the Broken Lords ''alive''.

* LuckBasedMission: Finding loot and getting side quests from ruins. What you get is entirely dependent on luck. Further, some of the quests given require you to have certain resources or units available, which is heavily dependent on luck on a separate level. A prime example is "Within a Rock and a Hard Place", which requires you to search a specific ruin with a Delvers unit in your army, which requires either assimilate the Delvers (which requires you having them spawn in a region you can take control of) or get one from the mercenary market (which changes every turn depending on luck).

** The Broken Lords have a very poor early game due to their dependence on Dust for population gain and for healing their soldiers, but as the game goes on and Dust production skyrockets, an aggressive Lords player can crush entire armies faster than any other player, as they can instantly heal their armies after every battle with Dust while other empires must wait for them to regenerate. Their ability to instantly buy more population allows them to build ''extremely'' high population cities in the late game, when they can buy multiple citizens in a city per turn.

** The Forgotten have a weak start until they can start preying on other factions. They most likely have to purchase technology with Dust that they cannot steal (and if they're at technological parity with other nations, stealing's no good for them), plus it may take them a while to actually find other nations they can spy upon. It takes a while for them to get good at what they do, but eventually, if your heroes are properly trained-up to have extra spying proficiency or have been sitting in enemy cities long enough to have high-level Espionage actions unlocked, you can devastate enemy cities. A high-ranking espionage action can reduce an enemy city's fortification bonus to nothing, letting you blast your way through the defending soldiers, or make all enemy soldiers of that faction weaker by default.

** The Broken Lords do not utilize food, do not have population growth, and do not have RegeneratingHealth. Instead, they must utilize Dust to mend [[AnimatedArmor their bodies]] and literally build new citizens. As a result, they have an extremely weak early game, but once they build up their economy they turn into a nigh-unstoppable juggernaut as they can ''instantly'' heal their units outside of battle, and within battles all their units have some form of LifeDrain attack.

* MercenaryUnits: The Mercenary Market technology allows you to hire units from minor factions, including from those that you haven't assimilated into your empire. Mercenaries hired by the Roving Clans are stronger than average, which is good for them since their regular military units are a little on the weak side. A later technology lets you use bands of mercenaries to pull off False Flag Operations. You can also hire mercenary heroes as well.
* {{Mooks}}: The Minor Factions. Their villages and roaming armies make good early game fodder for leveling up your heroes and armies. They only have one basic unit available to them, making them quite predictable. When their villages are taken over/rebuilt, they'll add to your city population, and when assimilated, you'll be able to create their unique units to supplement your main forces.

** Quest Victory: Similar to the Wonder Victory, this requires that you go through your faction questline, only instead of completing a wonder, you can complete a second, shorter questline to repair a crashed starship and [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere leave Auriga for good]]. For some factions, like the Mezari and Vaulters, this renders the Wonder victory somewhat superfluous, since you will achieve your Quest victory by the same steps as the Wonder and do it quicker. The primary difference is that it requires running around to various sites and gathering rare resources rather than spending time building a wonder.

* NobodyPoops: Averted with the Sewer System improvement available to cities. Building it adds to happiness thanks to a reduction in squalor.
* OmnicidalManiac: The Cultists of The Eternal End is an entire civilization of them. They're not responsible for what is happening in Auriga (at least not directly), but their primary goal is to extinguish the legacy of the Endless across the universe and kill everyone along the way, starting with the other factions of Auriga.

* OurGiantsAreBigger: There are already many larger than human-sized units in the game, such as the hydras and Tenei Walkers. But the addition of the ''Guardians'' add-on gives you unique super-units that tower over everything else in the game. ''Symbiosis'' also adds the Urkans, which are around the same size.

** Even moreso to ''VideoGame/EndlessSpace2'', with the Vaulters' Quest leading directly into their state in that game.

** The Wild Walkers ''Sharing'' is quite similar to Skinchangers ability to Warg into other animals with the danger of losing in to the beast's mind.

* ThemeMusicPowerUp: Whenever you research enough technologies to reach a new era, a fanfare plays followed by your faction's {{Leitmotif}}. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] when you reach Era VI, the final technology era, where the somber [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtBTTU6aoSw Last Era]] plays instead, driving home how Auriga's climate is nearing total collapse.

** The Virtual Endless bombed Auriga so hard that the planet is doomed, [[AlwaysChaoticEvil probably caused the Morgawr]], and indirectly created the Cultists. Of course, they were at war with the Concrete Endless, who were using Auriga as a weapons creation facility at the time.

** The Morgawr remember being imprisoned for centuries. Their entire quest line revolves around becoming strong enough that they can never be imprisoned again.

** ''The Morgawr'': A Naval/Subversive faction added in ''Tempest''. Strong on water tiles but weak on land, they get extra resources from river and ocean tiles and can build unique ships. They can curse enemy empires with the Black Spot; killing a cursed empire's units generates Dust, incentivizing other empires to target the Morgawr's rival. They can also de-pacify villages and take control of roving Minor Faction units to create havoc among enemy empires.

** ''The Cultists of the Eternal End'': Spammer/Espionage stuck in a one-city challenge; they get free soldiers from brainwashed villages but are bad at expansion, so they work best at quick military victories using hordes of disposable conscript soldiers. Their city's districts can level up twice from adjacency, eventually granting them massive happiness bonuses.

* CrutchCharacter: The base units of the Vaulters (Marines) and Wild Walkers (Rangers) are ranged units, as are their starting heroes. This gives them a tremendous early game advantage over the other factions, as well as most minor factions, whose base units are melee. They can dish out serious damage, and even outright kill depending on their tech level and terrain, to enemy armies before they can get into melee attack range. However, once those other factions climb higher in the tech tree, getting access to beefier infantry, cavalry, and ranged units of their own, this advantage goes away. A Vaulter/Wild Walker player who has become too reliant on their ranged units will be in for a big surprise in later battles if they haven't upgraded their own rosters.
* DamageOverTime: Necrophage units don't have much in the way of raw damage, but they all carry disease that poisons enemies over time. This makes them challenging to invade, as your armies will weaken with each battle even if the Necrophages only inflicted direct ScratchDamage. On the flip side, they generally have a hard time fighting minor faction units that are immune to disease.

* DiscOneNuke: Getting loot from Unspoiled Ruins is a combination of LuckBasedMission and RandomlyDrops. With a bit of luck, it is possible to get a legendary item very early in the game which can turn your hero into a OneManArmy dealing massive damage and/or gaining other tremendous stat boosts.

* ACommanderIsYou: Most of the sides have distinct styles (though the 4X nature of the game lets you tweak a lot of these to your taste)
** ''The Wild Walkers'': Ranger-style units (lots of ranged attacks) and Industrial command style (they get huge industry bonuses for forests).
** ''The Ardent Mages'': Offensive Research faction with a lot of triggerable field abilities to increase FIDS yields or improve troop abilities. Highly offensive-focused units that do more damage the more wounded they are.
** ''The Vaulters'': A defensive Research-focused faction that can learn how to shield itself from the deadly winters and has multiple ways to boost strategic resource income. They can use a bunch of a single type of strategic resource as a "booster", much like luxury resources. Their units gain double the effect of their weapons and armor items if they are made from the currently-selected "holy resource" booster, and they can teleport units between cities quickly in case one gets attacked.
** ''The Broken Lords'': Economist faction with elite but expensive units; they make much more Dust in general from the terrain around their cities and do not require food. Only problem is, they ''eat'' money to increase population and heal units, so they need all the Dust they can get.
** ''The Roving Clans'': TechnicalPacifist Economist faction that can't declare war but make a lot of money through peaceful trade with their neighbors; their cities are [[BaseOnWheels mobile]], and they start with all marketplace options open. Mercenary units they hire are tougher and faster than regular units, making them ideal for bolstering their military or engaging in {{False Flag Operation}}s. All told, Roving Clans players have more ways to spend money than normal.
** ''The Drakken'': A generalist-style faction with loads of benefits to diplomacy, influence for social policies, and the ability to outright force people to get along with them. Their Empire Plan opens up faster than everyone else, and they unlock techs which grant slots for assimilating minor factions one Era earlier, making them politically more flexible than other factions. Their units all gain XP faster than other factions and have a high health pool.
** ''The Necrophages'': Spammer/Population Growth; stuck in constant war, but can turn their enemies into food or sacrifice excess population for a morale boost. (They get less food from the terrain than other factions, so they ''need'' to eat their enemies). Their cities can also expand physically more quickly than other races, resulting in sprawling hives covering their lands. Their units tend to [[PoisonousPerson spread plague]] to their enemies.
** ''The Cultists of the Eternal End'': Spammer/Espionage stuck in a one-city challenge; they get free soldiers from brainwashed villages but are bad at expansion, so they work best at quick military victories using hordes of disposable conscript soldiers. Their city's districts can level up twice from adjacency, eventually granting them massive happiness bonuses.
** ''The Forgotten'': Espionage/Political faction added in ''Shadows''. They are unable to perform research the normal way and either buy technology with Dust or steal it from other cites. Most of their units can be cloaked in some way for sneak attacks and they are able to spy better than other factions (and are the only faction that can steal technology through spying).
** ''The Allayi'': Ranger/Economist/Gimmick faction added in ''Shifters'' that prefers city quality to city quantity. While they get more than double expansion disapproval, their unique city districts give out massive FIDSI boosts. Allayi units travel far, their heroes let armies ignore terrain movement penalties, their flying unit harvests resources from other territories, and they are vastly superior at scavenging Pearls, the new resource added in the ''Shifters'' expansion. Winter only pisses them off, transforming their units from durable defensive units into powerful offensive units.
** ''The Morgawr'': A Naval/Subversive faction added in ''Tempest''. Strong on water tiles but weak on land, they get extra resources from river and ocean tiles and can build unique ships. They can curse enemy empires with the Black Spot; killing a cursed empire's units generates Dust, incentivizing other empires to target the Morgawr's rival. They can also de-pacify villages and take control of roving Minor Faction units to create havoc among enemy empires.
** ''The Kapaku'': A Gimmick faction added in ''Inferno''. Their units and cities all do very well on the volcanic terrain introduced in the expansion (they ignore penalties from volcanic terrain and can safely walk through lava rivers), but as they are native to a volcanic world, they cannot produce Food in normal terrain. If they want to colonize a non-volcanic region, they will have to convert the region to volcanic terrain by use of volcanoformers that they can build with strategic resources. Additionally, they can accurately predict and benefit more from the Dust Eclipses that periodically sweep Auriga (also introduced in ''Inferno'').
** ''The Mykara'': A strange Technical faction added in ''Symbiosis''. They can only found one city, but unlike the Cult, they can take over enemy cities and cover them in fungus, gaining a unique factional bonus once it's fully overgrown. Their resource intake is halved, but they can grow "fungal blooms" over resource deposits anywhere, and turn abandoned Endless Ruins into teleporters, letting them move their forces around the map.

* AStormIsComing: Auriga switches between Summer and Winter seasons. Winter applies a range of penalties to all units and cities, AND each winter comes quicker, lasts longer, and carries more penalties than the previous one. Some technologies help mitigate the effects, as do high level heroes. Further, you can also build the Altar of Auriga using Pearls that appear during Winter. By spending more Pearls, you can unlock improvements and equipment that help mitigate the effects of Winter, or even grant bonuses.

* MagicFromTechnology: Dust is so advanced it may as well be magic, and there's a bit of Dust in EVERYTHING on Auriga.

* MercenaryUnits: The Mercenary Market technology allows you to hire units from minor factions, including from those that you haven't assimilated into your empire. Mercenaries hired by the Roving Clans are stronger than average, which is good for them since their regular military units are a little on the weak side. A later technology lets you use bands of mercenaries to pull off False Flag Operations.
* {{Mooks}}: Essentially what the minor factions are. They can't do anything except give bonuses to a major faction and pump out troops. Once you take over a minor faction, their unique units are available for you to build to bulk out your main forces.

* OneManArmy: Sort of. Certain units (mostly Guardians, but also the Allayi Skyfin) have the Solitary capacity, making them unable to join an army formation or even garrison within a city. Fortunately the game has a "reinforcements" system, letting nearby units engage in battle too, so a Guardian can help out in a battle started by a normal army. And most Guardians (except the Support-class Dust Guardian) are indeed capable of laying waste to many enemies.

* {{Prequel}}: To ''VideoGame/EndlessSpace''. Auriga can be rediscovered in a barren, lifeless state, and certain characters reference back to ''Endless Legend'' (such as Opbot and a Broken Lords hero). For the Vaulters, the whole stint on Auriga is more of a case of LostColony, as they were a high-tech race once and aim to reclaim that status.

* ProudMerchantRace: The Roving Clans.

* VideoGameDelegationPenalty: The "auto explore" feature for armies. The AI is extremely inefficient with their pathing at best and, at worst, will "explore" areas such as moving back and forth along the same section of coastline or ''directly around your home base''. Since it only takes a split second to set a new path for an exploring army, you'll get much more desirable results moving them yourself.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfRaces: Not even counting the 13 playable races (with all expansions), there are 18 races making up the "Minor Factions", as well several others present in the backstory.
Loads and loads of ''races;'' the backstory reveals that Auriga was a giant Endless biology laboratory full of samples from around the galaxy, explaining the number of sapient beings with wildly divergent biologies.

* HumansAreDivided: Five human factions are fighting for control of Auriga.

%%* ImportedAlienPhlebotinum: Dust.
* InformedEquipment: Armor and trinkets are not visible on units, only weapons (and shields, if the unit's wearing one).

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Loads and loads of ''races;'' the backstory reveals that Auriga was a giant Endless biology laboratory full of samples from around the galaxy, explaining the number of sapient beings with wildly divergent biologies.

* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: The Sewer System city improvement. Technically, this averts NobodyPoops.
* AbusivePrecursors: The Endless. Sure, the Concrete Endless uplifted the Drakken and seeded Auriga with Dust, but they did so after "pacifying" the native Guardians and Allayi, reshaping the planet, and creating [[HordeOfAlienLocusts the Necrophages]] as a living weapon against the Virtual's [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Cravers]].

* {{Ambadassador}}: Drakken heroes aren't too shabby in combat, learn tricks that keep Minor Faction armies from attacking them, and the faction as a whole can burn influence to FORCE peace treaties or alliances.

* ApocalypseHow: Auriga is dying, for reasons unknown. By the time of ''Videogame/EndlessSpace'', Auriga is a lifeless, Dust-filled husk.
* ArtificialStupidity: The AI isn't terribly intelligent. It's bad at dealing with invading human players and ''especially'' bad at dealing with Roving Clan-directed {{False Flag Attack}}s, as the AI cannot draw conclusions as to who is controlling the mercenaries.

* AStormIsComing: Auriga switches between Summer and Winter seasons. Winter applies a range of penalties to all units and cities, AND each winter comes quicker, lasts longer, and carries more penalties than the previous one. Some technologies help mitigate the effects, as do high level heroes.
** You can also build the Altar of Auriga using Pearls that appear during Winter. By spending more Pearls, you can unlock improvements and equipment that help mitigate the effects of Winter, or even grant bonuses.

* BigGuy: Some of the minor factions are races of these (like the Erycis and their hydras, or Silics with their Harmonites). Some of the main factions have them to support their infantry, like the Vaulters with their Titans or Wild Walkers and their ent-like Tenei Walkers. While they may have differing special abilities (if any), typically they are slow, soak damage well, and can usually hit hard. With the addition of the [[OlympusMons Guardian]] [[OneManArmy super units]] and the [[{{Kaiju}} Urkans]], this is taken to its ultimate conclusion.

* CrutchCharacter: The base units of the Vaulters (Marines) and Wild Walkers (Rangers) are ranged units, as are their starting heroes. This gives them a tremendous early game advantage over the other factions, as well as most minor factions, whose base units are melee. They can dish out serious damage, and even outright kill depending on their tech level and terrain, to enemy armies before they can get into melee attack range. However, once those other factions climb higher in the tech tree, getting access to beefier infantry, cavalry, and ranged units of their own, this advantage goes away. A Vaulter/Wild Walker player who has become too reliant on their ranged units will be in for a big surprise in the next battle if they haven't upgraded their own rosters.
* DamageOverTime: Necrophage units don't have much in the way of raw damage, but they all carry disease that poisons enemies over time. They generally have a hard time fighting minor faction units that are immune to disease.

* FetchQuest: Quite a number of the quests are about gathering a certain number of resources or gaining a minor faction as ally.

* AnnoyingArrows: Averted; one reason why factions like the Vaulters and Wild Walkers have a strong starting game is that their heroes and base infantry use bows or crossbows. They give you a huge range advantage over most of your enemies who use melee; depending on your tech and terrain, they can often hit hard enough to outright kill all but the toughest units.

* MagikarpPower: The Broken Lords have a very poor early game due to their dependence on Dust for population gain and for healing their soldiers, but as the game goes on and Dust production skyrockets, an aggressive Lords player can crush entire armies faster than any other player, as they can instantly heal their armies after every battle with Dust while other empires must wait for them to regenerate. Their ability to instantly buy more population allows them to build ''extremely'' high population cities in the late game, when they can buy multiple citizens in a city per turn.

* GradualGrinder: Necrophage units don't have much in the way of raw damage, but they all carry disease that poisons enemies over time. They generally have a hard time fighting minor faction units that are immune to disease.