YMMV / Endless Space 2

• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The AI isn't actually too bad... for the most part. However, there's at least one instance in which it fails miserably and makes you miserable in return: The final mission of the Academy quest line requires participants to send hero-led fleets to the Lodestones and leave them there for a number of turns, while at the same time making sure that no one else from the opposite team is doing the same. The problem is that the AI sometimes forgets that they have to have heroes leading those fleets, and just parks their ships there without them actually helping with the mission. It wouldn't be too bad by itself... except when this is done by an AI player that belongs to the opposite team and is also one of your allies, or part of a powerful alliance, or both. You can't simply let them take a couple systems and go for the majority of the others: the AI fleet(s) would just stay there, preventing the quest from ever getting finished. You will have to break alliances and/or wage war to half the galaxy just to circumvent the AI's stupidity.
  • The computer has problems effectively playing the Vodyani due to their unique system control mechanic. Especially on lower difficulties, this can result in stupid actions such as parking their Arks in another empire's controlled system and giving them the ship's FIDS boost. More annoying is their extreme aggression, especially in the early game. The AI counts their Arks as part of their military power, meaning they perceive all other factions as weaker early on, so they will make frequent demands for tribute even though their actual military strength isn't a match.
• Author's Saving Throw: 2024's "Reawakening" update was designed from the ground up to address the "Awakening" DLC's most contest aspects. Not only does it severely dial down the Academy's aggression and expansionism while also making diplomacy with it much simpler, it also grants the Nakalim an assortment of much needed buffs and reworks.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Torpedoes. They have the highest damage and the longest range in the game, which in theory should make them pretty awesome... except that they are countered by slug throwers, which act as point defense against them and can fire unimpeded at the same time. That's right: the mere fact that the enemy has slug weapons (especially if they belong to a higher tier than your rockets) can make your torpedoes useless.
• Awesome Ego: Horatio. The Horatio. It takes a real kind of egotistical bastard to want to conquer the universe and populate it with clones of yourself because you think it's the only way to improve things. Many people like the faction though, especially among fans of Rick and Morty who see something reminiscent of the Council of Ricks.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Hissho: Bird Aztec Samurai.
  • Lumeris: Fish mafia.
  • Riftborn: Timelords.
  • United Empire: Imperium of Man.
  • Vaulters: Space Knights/Space Vikings.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Superior military technology. Sure, your enemies may have better base hulls than you, but when you have higher-tier weaponry and defenses that are augmented by strategic resources, they might as well be shooting bananas.
  • After the Vaulters DLC, Boarding Pods. Put these on your ships and instead of destroying enemy vessels, you get to take them over — at which point you can add them to your own navy!
  • Behemoths in the Supremacy DLC are this by design, being ancient massive ships that can be used to perform a wide variety of things, such as reducing the research costs of an entire quadrant depending on the special node system they orbit, improving a system's FIDSI output by up to +100 and +25%, or just plain warfare, but there are a few specializations that make them uniquely effective.
    • The Juggernaut specialization turns the Behemoth into a complete weapon of war that can do a ton of damage to enemy ships. One of its special late-game abilities allows it to completely destroy every other fleet in the system, regardless of any other condition, even if the fleets were full of carriers, were other Behemoths or were even allied. This ability leaves it unable to do anything for 3 turns, however.
    • The Citadel specialization turns the Behemoth into a permanent system feature that provides percentage bonuses to outputs and huge bonuses to system defenses, it is an easy way to turn your precious high-value systems such as your capital into extremely tough fortresses, which can be further upgraded with more percentage bonuses to outputs, a stronger version of the barrage array that deals 2500 damage per phase to every single enemy ship if the space combat happens in that system, and more.
    • The Obliterator specialization leaves the Behemoth defenseless but allows it to launch a projectile to any visible system in the galaxy that will destroy literally everything in the system; everything from improvements to population to any fleets that might be there at the time will be gone once the projectile collides with the system, unless the system is shielded by either a Citadel or a System Shield, either of which will only reduce the devastation to 50% of everything. Only both combined can completely negate the attack, which will also burn out the System Shield and require it to be rebuilt.
  • With the Penumbra DLC comes the Umbral Choir faction, which has several key differences from other factions that make them outrageously overpowered:
    • From the start they have inherent advantages for hacking and gain enough bandwidth over time to rarely ever worry about hitting the limit, allowing them to leave backdoors everywhere with no consequence and make very aggressive hacks.
    • Their home system is invisible from the start of the game and is present in a special node that no one else can colonize, its cloaking level also depends on the system level.
    • Instead of making outposts using colony ships, they hack into other star systems to create new Sanctuaries on the planets outside of the home system, meaning that from the start of the game they can "colonize" up to two planets at a time thanks to their passive +1 to the amount of hacking operations available.
    • The Sanctuaries are invisible to any player that hasn't detected them and their cloaking level depends on how many Sanctuaries there are in the system, meaning that 3 Sanctuaries (the limit of level 3 cloaking) won't be detectable until mid-late game. Pops on Sanctuaries can be sacrificed to instantly turn a pop in the system into a Sleeper, allowing enough of them to either leech resources from their owner faction over time or be captured later to be turned into a stronger version of the regular pop. They also provide their outputs to the home system, and can allow ships built in the home system to appear on them, allowing the Umbral Choir to build invisible military fleets right on top of their enemies' systems.
    • Perhaps the most powerful advantage the Umbral Choir has is that most improvements that would otherwise provide a bonus for every planet instead provide a bonus for every Sanctuary, allowing the home system to become a hyper-tall capital that automatically wins most "have the most X in a system" quests and manages to build most wonders (except the Trade Clearing Bureau, as it will reveal the home system to every other player).
    • Counselor heroes in an Umbral Choir empire have a different variation of the final Counselor skill; instead of setting the system to Ecstatic (which is extremely powerful for the single-system Umbral Choir) it receives a flat Approval bonus for every Sanctuary, which can overcome the Approval penalty from over-expanding and has essentially the same effect.
• Genius Bonus: The animal depicted for the Hostile Fauna anomaly looks like a giant hippopotamus with crocodile limbs — which are among the most dangerous (and visually imposing) animals on Earth.
• Goddamned Bats: The Space Pirates, when activated, are this trope. Their ships are not particularly powerful, even by early game standards, but they are way better than your exploring ships (and will attack those on sight), forcing you to research military techs and to invest in military ships just to wipe them out.
  • A later update made it possible to bribe the pirates to leave you alone and even attack other empires, making them something of an asset... but their strongholds still count as hostile systems, meaning that even if they're technically allies they can strangle your economy by blockading trade routes.
• Heartwarming Moments: For the Vaulters, once you retrieve OpBot from the Academy during the questline the entire Vaulter population welcomes him back with celebrations and just general happiness, like a returning and thought lost brother. Given OpBot's long and often enough tragic history, he finally gets all the hugs he needs. Also, the final mission of the Vaulter questline leads to the finding of Auriga 2.0, a planet which consisted of survivors from Auriga that left the planet after the Argosy did. One choice in the questline sees Ilona reunites with Judit, her daughter who, according to the official comic, was last seen holding the line against a Necrophage onslaught in what appeared to be the last stand. The fact that they are reunited after centuries of separation against all odds is one heck of a Earn Your Happy Ending moment.
• Rooting for the Empire: Similiar to Endless Space, the United Empire has its own fanbase thanks to their authoritarian stylings appealing and imperialist theme to them.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Academy as an A.I Exclusive Faction, enabled in the Awakening DLC, due to the excessive unfairness with the mechanic. With the DLC, The Academy is upgraded from a mechanic to a fully fledged faction the AI commands. The issues emerge immediately however, in that they compete with all the other factions for land, but unlike the usual A.I Exclusive Factions, he is extremely aggressive and territorial. Diplomacy is possible, but it's almost a complete waste of time to engage in it with them, since the game regularly resets relations with The Academy to "Neutral" (read: aggressive), and fighting them is nearly suicidal considering the incredibly powerful ships they have at the beginning of the game. They'll constantly butt in on your territory and raid you, and if you dare attack them back the game will consider this an act of aggression, and smack you with penalties in addition to Isyander demanding reparations in the form of Dust. Oh, and if you want to use the old Academy contribution mechanic to gain heroes (which are vital at all stages of the game for political decision making), tough shit, since any faction they're at war with, including those they invade without provocation, are banned from making any donations to the Academy. All of this adds up to a faction that is both too aggressive to not do something about and yet punishes you extremely hard for any aggression against them, including justified self defense. To the point where the Awakening expansion pack has extremely poor reviews on Steam purely because dealing with The Academy is an unbelievable pain in the ass.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While the first game wasn't hated, many felt its gameplay got repetitive and shallow, with not enough difference between the factions, and space battles always going the same way. This game not only greatly expands the lore and factions, with each faction having their own distinct features and mechanics, but also gives each faction its own distinct story. The space battles are also greatly expanded with damage modeling, and more detailed, interesting looking ships.
• That One Sidequest: The Eco choice in the Lumeris questline eventually ends up with an objective to capture 3 minor/major faction's home systems. The Lumeris isn't exactly built to win wars, and waiting to buyout systems using influence could take a very long time, and the objective might be outright impossible if you're playing a small map with not a lot of minor factions, and of course, you risk ruining relation with the major faction you bought the system from which could lead to war.