Anyone playing Endless Legend

[XavierMace]

I'm still playing it on a regular basis. I think the expansions were worth the money. The espionage added with Shadows was a much needed feature. If you like playing custom empires and want to spice things up a bit, I highly recommend the Auriga Expanded mod over on Nexus. You can create some really interesting combos with it.

I don't regret paying full price in the slightest.

 

[darkewaffle]

I've had this for a while but just started giving it a real try here over the holiday break. I've played a lot of Civ V so it's not a gametype I'm unfamiliar with - most of the concepts are analogous.

The tutorial does a good job introducing a lot of the basics on how to play the game but I felt it ended a little abruptly. I left it still not really knowing much of anything about war, diplomacy, victory conditions, trade routes and a few other things. So I'm still shaky on a few bits. But overall have the hang of it now, won a science victory on normal around turn 265.

I really enjoy the fantasy setting. I like what they've done with minor factions ('city states') and how their villages can help jumpstart new cities and provide useful buffs and units. I like the 'quest' victory condition and the world competitive/cooperative quests. I think these all really serve to encourage players to not "simcity" the game so much - which is something me and the people I play with are prone to do while we just race to a victory - and instead get out and explore and participate more. Unit customization is really neat to play with. Updating and customizing units as your tech progresses is very strong/rewarding. Heroes are a fun idea - I wish Civ's "Great Person"s were more than just glorified consumables - and I really like how they can greatly enhance both armies and cities and equipment/skills are available for both tracks as well.

I think you have to play it differently than Civ in terms of when/where to build cities and units and how to build/expand. A region that doesn't have great resources but has a really useful minor faction (I'm especially fond of the ones that grant +resource yield per village) could very well be better for your empire than a region with amazing resources. Plus I find that expansion in terms of 'approval' isn't nearly as difficult to maintain as happiness is in Civ. I did much better once I wasn't worried about my approval quite so much and just expanded knowing that I'd be able to make up for it later.

Shortcomings are definitely AI - at least in terms of diplomacy/war/trade. In one game the empire right next to mine initiated a closed borders policy and then not many turns later started repeatedly offering me open borders in exchange for huge, huge amounts of gold lol. Other times I've had war declared on me by AI halfway across the world and never once see an enemy unit until they decide they want peace. Combat AI seems adequate.

Also the interface sometimes could use some work. Like I love the city overview where I can see all of them at once, sort them by their various outputs, view what their current construction is, etc. But I don't find the Tech "tree" to be very useful or well organized, I don't think the "pie chart" sectioning is effective. And moving individual city workers around in a city, while very useful, is also annoying - I wish I could just type in the allocations rather than dragging around the little people icons. I wish the construction selection menu could expand further or included more information at a glance like production needed or turns needed. When selecting new pieces of gear to upgrade individual units I wish the gear itself had more at a glance information or could be sorted or just had more space instead of devoting so much room to the 3D character model. Mostly it's a bunch of little things that make certain important and useful tasks more annoying or more cramped than they could be.

Overall I'm quite pleased with it. With the way heroes and units and output works I feel like it's more micromanagey than Civ - which I don't mind but at the same time it does get tiresome constantly reassigning population to try to shave a turn off your next tech/production or to account for winter penalties. But as long as you don't mind that I think it certainly has some fun ideas and, this definitely should be mentioned, in a small sample size my friends and I have had much better luck saving/loading multiplayer games than we have in Civ (which almost never ever works with >3 people for us).

 

[XavierMace]

The trick is to learn how to build your race so you don't have to shuffle your population around.

 

[danu4u]

Not yet ! I keep myself busy with counter strike 1.6 But I will surely check out the game play on youtube.

 

[paperfist]

Anyone have any tips for this game?

Despite being a rabid Civ fan this game is a little confusing.

Like for governors how do you pick the right hero? I don't really see anything on the skill tree that would make them better governors than warriors. I'm playing as wind walker if that matters.

What about raising a district to level 2?

 

[TidusZ]

Anyone have any tips for this game?

Despite being a rabid Civ fan this game is a little confusing.

Like for governors how do you pick the right hero? I don't really see anything on the skill tree that would make them better governors than warriors. I'm playing as wind walker if that matters.

What about raising a district to level 2?

For governors there are two things that you need to consider:
1. The faction of the hero (each faction has their own skills on the right side of the skill tree, which is where governors will put most of their points)
2. dust/science/food/industry boost/efficiency. Each hero can have 0-2 of these so you'll want a hero with 2 boosts or efficiency, ideally for resources that will most benefit you. Boost gives an immediate flat buff (great for a new fledgling city) and a small % bonus, while efficiency adds +x per worker, so if you aren't putting workers on dust then dust efficiency wont do anything for you. A really ideal hero for putting on new cities will have 2 boosts, such as food/industry boost.

That hero has science boost 2 and army initiative boost 2, so he's a split between general/governor which is generally not ideal, but this would be a powerful governor for a pure science focus. He's also equipped with an item to give additional science per worker (titansteel accessory)

Generally speaking, cultist heroes make really good governors as their skill tree buffs everything.
Drakken heroes are focused on food and influence.
Wild walkers - industry
Roving clans - trade routes
Broken lords - dust and strategic resources
Ardent mage - science.
Vaulter - science/city defense
Necrophage - food/unit production
Forgotten - spying.

A third thing to take into account is sometimes you'll get an item from your faction quest that is only equippable by heroes of your own faction, i.e. broken lords get a +7 food/dust/industry item but only for their own heroes.

A district will level up to 2 when it is touching 4 other districts.

You usually want to build with shape b or c depending on the shape of the region you're in and where the anomalies/river are.

Trade routes are strong

 

[paperfist]

For governors there are two things that you need to consider:
1. The faction of the hero (each faction has their own skills on the right side of the skill tree, which is where governors will put most of their points)
2. dust/science/food/industry boost/efficiency. Each hero can have 0-2 of these so you'll want a hero with 2 boosts or efficiency, ideally for resources that will most benefit you. Boost gives an immediate flat buff (great for a new fledgling city) and a small % bonus, while efficiency adds +x per worker, so if you aren't putting workers on dust then dust efficiency wont do anything for you. A really ideal hero for putting on new cities will have 2 boosts, such as food/industry boost.

That hero has science boost 2 and army initiative boost 2, so he's a split between general/governor which is generally not ideal, but this would be a powerful governor for a pure science focus. He's also equipped with an item to give additional science per worker (titansteel accessory)

Generally speaking, cultist heroes make really good governors as their skill tree buffs everything.
Drakken heroes are focused on food and influence.
Wild walkers - industry
Roving clans - trade routes
Broken lords - dust and strategic resources
Ardent mage - science.
Vaulter - science/city defense
Necrophage - food/unit production
Forgotten - spying.

A third thing to take into account is sometimes you'll get an item from your faction quest that is only equippable by heroes of your own faction, i.e. broken lords get a +7 food/dust/industry item but only for their own heroes.

A district will level up to 2 when it is touching 4 other districts.

You usually want to build with shape b or c depending on the shape of the region you're in and where the anomalies/river are.

Trade routes are strong

Thanks a lot Tidus, that was very helpful

 

[cbrunny]

Governors in cities can be extremely powerful, particulary when they have the winter resistance perk. I tend to play as the broken lords, so dust aplenty, governors in every city with winter resistance perk ubiquitous. Depending on who you play against this is totally reasonable. I play mostly against AI and with my wife though so my tactics don't need to be particularly complex. I imagine it isn't quite as easy against competitive opponents.

 

[paperfist]

Governors in cities can be extremely powerful, particulary when they have the winter resistance perk. I tend to play as the broken lords, so dust aplenty, governors in every city with winter resistance perk ubiquitous. Depending on who you play against this is totally reasonable. I play mostly against AI and with my wife though so my tactics don't need to be particularly complex. I imagine it isn't quite as easy against competitive opponents.

Yeah I saw that stat last night while trying to implement what Tidus said above in his post.

I was wondering how the hell you conduct war in the winter time when I saw another hero stat that allows for 4 movement points in the winter. I'm at something like turn 250 and winter now lasts forever it seems

One other thing I haven't figured out yet is getting spies out of your city. This one civ is constantly knocking down my population. I even do the round up thing and never catch anyone. My security is just at 50%, being my first game I think I skipped around on a few techs that might have helped me in that department.

 

[cbrunny]

Yeah at a certain point winter lasts forever. Most of the time, the game is over by that point though. If you get that far, you're not taking full advantage of winning strategies, most likely.

I really don't fully udnerstand the spies part either yet. I've only played a few games with them though - most of my playtime was before that expansion released. As I understand it, good players "attack" with their spies, then move them immediately to a different city. This is because you know which city was attacked as the recipient of the attack, so naturally you know you "should" immeditaely round-up. I think.

 

[shortylickens]

Its OK, but not as much fun as other TBS's.

I like Age of Wonders III much better.

 

[paperfist]

Yeah at a certain point winter lasts forever. Most of the time, the game is over by that point though. If you get that far, you're not taking full advantage of winning strategies, most likely.

I really don't fully udnerstand the spies part either yet. I've only played a few games with them though - most of my playtime was before that expansion released. As I understand it, good players "attack" with their spies, then move them immediately to a different city. This is because you know which city was attacked as the recipient of the attack, so naturally you know you "should" immeditaely round-up. I think.

I'm playing my first game so I continued after defeat to see what else I could learn.

I sent a spy to the civ spying on me, he's been there 20 turns undetected. So seems like it's easier to plant a spy then detect one.

EDIT: I see the middle 'common' skill tree on heros has some anti-spying choices.

 

[XavierMace]

Has your spy actually done anything for those 20 turns? It's taking action that gets the caught.

But yeah, if you're playing Broken Lords, heroes with Dust Efficiency are your friend. My record so far is 280k Dust per turn end game. It could have been higher, but honestly it doesn't matter at that point.

 

[XavierMace]

Its OK, but not as much fun as other TBS's.

I like Age of Wonders III much better.

I like the actual combat of AoW better, but I'd take the Civ building of Endless any day of the week.

 

[XavierMace]

Anyone looking forward to today's expansion? I'm excited for it. Brings some interesting diversity to winter. New race could be interesting. Pearls could result in an interesting change in tactics during winter.

 

[cbrunny]

ohh.. didn't catch word of a new expansion. I will google now.

 

[paperfist]

Anyone looking forward to today's expansion? I'm excited for it. Brings some interesting diversity to winter. New race could be interesting. Pearls could result in an interesting change in tactics during winter.

I'll have to check it out. It's my one complaint with the game in that winter basically shuts you down.

 

[JeffNY35]

hum, the classic to emperor edition upgrade is only 3.73 on Steam which looks like gives you all the expansions/DLC. Even though I already have Guardians, still looks worth it for the other DLC.

 

[cbrunny]

hum, the classic to emperor edition upgrade is only 3.73 on Steam which looks like gives you all the expansions/DLC. Even though I already have Guardians, still looks worth it for the other DLC.

no it doesn't. It isn't a season's pass. it just gives you a few bonus things but not the big DLCs.

 

[XavierMace]

The new race is intriguing. Right now though I feel pearls are too rare for them to really shine. Even running them as a custom race with movement traits it still seems too low.

Era 1 and I've got 9 moves in summer and 12 in winter and I still can't seem to find pearls fast enough. That eliminates building their Era 1 support unit and the starting cavalry just doesn't have enough punch to carry you though early game battles. Their ability to dick with winter effects would be awesome if you had enough pearls to actually do that. Did I mention their districts use pearls too? Their pearl usage is simply too high and so far I haven't seen a way to reliably increase it. It feels like pearls were developed with the existing races in mind. Yeah, the new race's hero skill tree has an "upgrade" for pearl "harvesting". It ends up being basically 0.

I'm a big fan of their hero's though and some of the new traits available for custom races.

I'll have to check it out. It's my one complaint with the game in that winter basically shuts you down.

That means you need more practice.

If you're running a min/max custom race, it gets to the point where you don't really care if it's winter or not. Or if you're built for it, you prefer it being winter. That's looking to be the new races biggest potential right now is an all out winter build.

 

[cbrunny]

Yeah late in the game winter is a good thing because bad players and bad ai don't know how to cope with it, while for good players it's at worst neutral.

 

[Denithor]

Endless Legend Collection on sale this weekend for $20.39, includes all DLC except the new Shifters expansion.

Shifters is on sale 25% off.

Hmm...

 

[zinfamous]

After my second attempt to get into this, and finally surpassing the learning curve/"forcing myself to sit back down to a 4x" wall, I'm totally into this game now.

I haven't even played a full game (think one crappy play to 100 turns), and I'm already starting over every game to try and get max efficiency in first 20 turns, noodling around with influence dump and food dump timings for empire planning/settler efficiency and all of that.

Something is wrong with me.

 

[paperfist]

After my second attempt to get into this, and finally surpassing the learning curve/"forcing myself to sit back down to a 4x" wall, I'm totally into this game now.

I haven't even played a full game (think one crappy play to 100 turns), and I'm already starting over every game to try and get max efficiency in first 20 turns, noodling around with influence dump and food dump timings for empire planning/settler efficiency and all of that.

Something is wrong with me.

You must really be into numbers

I bought all the expansions and played a half dozen times. I can't get hooked. I either get completely steam rolled or highly annoyed with I'll be your friend 1 turn and next turn I want to invade you.

 

[zinfamous]

You must really be into numbers

I bought all the expansions and played a half dozen times. I can't get hooked. I either get completely steam rolled or highly annoyed with I'll be your friend 1 turn and next turn I want to invade you.

lol, that's pretty much how I always played civ: stack my armies at the border, negotiate open borders to get a free ~2-turn pass to then blitz my way into their cities on the next go.