Endless Space

Frankly, I had more influence all game than I ever knew what to do with. There didn't seem to be any kind of influence dump like the empire plans from EL.

I'd actually had the problem of not having enough influence in EL so if we're swimming in it in ES 2 I'm fine.

Having just started a new game as the Sophons, I think that was just a quirk of the Lumeris. They use money instead of influence to win over Minor Factions, so I found myself not spending any while I was saving up money.

Cravers are also swimming in influence, because they have no use for diplomacy. Also they have ridiculous happiness problems, both because they need to expand constantly and because under a Dictatorship government you get happiness penalties proportional to the amount of population you have that doesn't approve of your government type... which includes the slaves/cattle that you have on all your planets as Cravers. By the end of the game I was at -150 happiness on every planet, they were all starving, but I still won because I had amassed a huge fleet early on and was conquering new worlds faster than my people starved.

...Which is certainly very Craver-like, but I can't even use the slave-cattle as such if the Cravers themselves don't show up to replace them.

edited 7th Oct '16 5:01:06 AM by Clarste

I know, as the Sophons I was struggling to get enough influence to assimilate anyone. And then the nearby colony ate them up.

I started a new campaign as the Vodyani. Boy is this fun. Diplomacy? Who cares? Just send your leechers to every civilized world you find. You won't even have to worry about disparate pops because you don't assimilate others. You just eat them. I'm just figuring out how to ration enemies out so I don't destroy them until I'm ready to settle their worlds.

Vodyani is... weird. It really feels like you're playing a completely different game, which is sort of fun until you realize that you're falling way behind on every conceivable metric. I probably need to figure out what I'm doing with them at some point. I'd say they're the weirdest faction in any of the games so far, weirder than Cultists.

edited 7th Oct '16 8:15:20 AM by Clarste

Vodyani: Build leecher ships early and often. Find and harvest other races. Build more Motherships. Colonize other systems. If you do the leechers right, you could even stem or destroy other nations' growth rates. I've had leecher fleets destabilize and wipe out colonies before. Personally I just sustainably harvest those worlds instead of wiping them out.

Gameplay wise they are Broken Lords. Story wise they are Ardent Mages.

I found that leecher ships were too weak and were getting killed, but maybe I just didn't have enough of them. And, uh, storywise they're clearly the Broken Lords, but gameplay-wise the dust conversion ratio isn't nearly good enough to do anything but rely on leeching.

Motherships are also incredibly vulnerable to invasion while anchored, since low food means low soldier growth, so I just felt really vulnerable at all times. You can always just de-anchor and be a powerful ship, but I find that the AI is really good at slipping ships past you and invading before you can react (something that's always annoyed me about the "everyone moves at once" thing).

edited 7th Oct '16 8:35:01 AM by Clarste

The trick is not to have to react. Keep ships anchored, and you get shitloads of money. Grab the economy tech that allows Dust buyouts and use them to up your warfleets. Use those fleets to defend systems and lock enemies down. Have different systems work on different ships. Have several leecher systems, and several more military systems.

My campaign's going differently than that because I never went for the Dust Buyout option yet. Something I'm remedying soon, really. I've got tens of thousands of dust, so I should be able to build up my fleet.

I tend to have a huge fleet and no money, actually. Probably because of ship maintenance.

Anyway, basically you're saying "have lots of dust and you can buy everything you need", but it's not actually clear to me what about the Vodyani makes them any better at getting dust than the other factions. Actually, it sounds sort of like I was trying to play them too oddly, moving the Ark ships around and whatnot, when I should have been playing them more like an ordinary faction and just expanded in an ordinary way. And therefore succeeded in an ordinary way.

edited 7th Oct '16 10:07:04 AM by Clarste

Yeah, you fucked yourself over by doing that. The Arks can be used as combat ships, but they're meant to park and stay put. Two big boosts for them: Any planet that can be colonized by you will be immediately exploited by the Ark as soon as you anchor. And the Arks themselves have access to special modules that boost your resource production by 50%. Different modules for different resources. Combine all that with leeching being fast for population growth once you get later into the game, and you're looking at a monstrous resource gain. I have eight Arks in eight different systems, three of them are pulling in Essence while the rest are just busy building things, and I'm making hundreds of Dust per turn.

Hundreds of dust isn't really that much. If you're not making hundreds by the midgame then you're essentially broke. When I was playing Lumeris I was making over 10k per turn, possibly more since I stopped paying attention. Heck, even when I was playing Cravers with negative population growth I was making hundreds of dust.

edited 7th Oct '16 11:06:04 AM by Clarste

How many systems did the Cravers have at that time? I don't know exactly how much I'm making because other than knowing I have more than enough for repairs and upgrades, I'm barely paying any attention to my Dust amounts. For me it's the Essence that matters, plain and simple.

ESSENCE.

Is that a direct word reference to the game or a sideways reference to You Require More Vespene Gas?

The Zerg collect essence to keep evolving.

Right. It's been a long time since I've read or played any of that series.

ETA: Did some math. Right now I have seven worlds (with an eighth ark headed to an isolated planet in the reaches of space) and with three of my major worlds producing essence I'm getting 779 Dust per turn. I took them off of Alms for Essence and I make in the 1.6k range per turn.

edited 8th Oct '16 4:43:25 AM by Journeyman

Just played a Sophon game. I didn't realize that the Science starting law lets them research tier 2 techs right from the beginning. It is amazingly good to have early access to midgame mechanics like development plans. The Ecologist starting law is also amazingly good: they can colonize any planet type immediately. Well, I guess "starting law" is a misnomer. I think it comes from having a majority in the Senate?

Anyway, I snowballed hard. I was getting 500+ dust a turn with only 2 and a half systems, and more influence than you can shake a stick at, which I used to buy out every single minor faction. However, there was a little hump in the midgame when I over-expanded and ran into happiness penalties. I feel like that's much more of a risk than it's been in previous game. But I pulled back up and by the end I was making 10k dust and researching a new tech every turn.

The "starting" laws come from elections. Whichever party is in power has a default law they push into play, and the other party's law gets removed.

It's not just being in power. If you have a diverse empire it's possible that none of the parties get their law. That's why I think it requires a majority.

Hm, maybe. We'll just have to do more testing and see.

Sowers confirmed probably.

edited 10th Oct '16 7:34:16 PM by Clarste

Sweet! I liked both robotic races in 1. And we already have the Hissho as a minor race. Not sure I like them being downgraded, but their replacements will probably still be great. Might even be the Vodyani.

Nevermind.

edited 10th Oct '16 9:31:10 PM by Clarste