Endless Legend

[Gandalf]

Has anyone played this? It's a 4X game (ie a bit like Civilization), seems highly recommended, and is 66% off on Steam for a week (£7.81).

I see Diagaro has played 23 hours. Anyone else played it, seen it, had review of it, interested in buying it?

[Gandalf]

Found this good review about it, from the angle of "what's different between it and Civilzation" - http://www.pcworld.com/article/2858656/ ... l-new.html

It reads a bit like "this is what Civilization: Beyond Earth could've/should've been".

[Gandalf]

I bought it & I think it's great. I've only played 35 turns or so (max 300 for a normal game). The UI does an incredible job of displaying an awful lot of data & explaining it all. There are many "problems" from the Civilization franchise that have been fixed in innovative ways (especially around how long it takes). Some of the innovations are really interesting. Eg "empire plan" is like the Budget we have in the UK, every turn you spend some influence points on it and it grants effects that last 20 turns, until the next budget. Every so often it becomes winter which makes a while bunch of things harder. These are design choices that are simultaneously realistic, and present interesting choices from a gameplay point of view.

Contrast this with, say, Civ 5's initial diplomacy model, which wouldn't give you a summary of how they felt about you (Angry, Pleased, Neutral etc) and instead you had to try and work it out from what they were saying. Whilst realistic, it made for poor gameplay as much of the time you had no idea what the AI really thought of you.I think this got changed in later releases of Civ V.

It's on 66% off sale for another day or two if anyone is interested.

[Andon]

Gee, THANKS Gandalf.

I bought this game and installed it. Haven't had a time to play with it, but it looks really good. It seems like it addresses my issues with Civ games.

[Gandalf]

I'm up to turn 100 (out of a max of 300). Just building stuff, playing it nice and slow, and getting used to the interface, the odd (but cool) tech tree etc. I have two nice neighbours and one scary one who appears to be led by a Goth, and likes insulting me all the time.

WyldKarde has been playing it recently too, I guess he bought it on the sale as well.

I read about civ 5 and decided I didn't want it. But if you did play civ 5, then this guide looks pretty good.

I'm playing as Roving Clans. They're traders and pretty alright. They take a cut of every deal done in the game's marketplace How every the winters affect them pretty badly. They can also move their cities (!!!) Wild Walkers are suggested by many for newbies. There are some weirder "out-there" factions too that have too many unique/specific things for a newbie.

[Andon]

I played for about five hours today. Got to turn 215ish in a game (That was going terribly-ish since about turn 50...). I have no idea how half of the things work, but I'm getting a hang of the other half.

So far, it's pretty great.

[Andon]

Played for a bit yesterday. I'm getting a hang of combat, but the economy is difficult. I'm noy in the dumps terribly, and was doing fine earlier, but man am I just scraping by.

I feel that ranged troops are a wee bit powerful, but that's probably owing to the fact that the only combat I've had with "real" enemies was waaaaay in my favor.

[Gandalf]

The goths invaded me; I managed to force a draw thanks to a couple of modern units and the fact that they didn't wait to bombard me properly - which meant all my troops had +130 extra health. They accepted a truce the very next turn. Top tip: if you're in forests, you take less damage (maybe it's just ranged damage?).

Economy-wise, things have improved a lot now I've built some age 3 buildings. Also, having a lot of resource bonuses active helps. Applying some old civ 4 logic works too - and that is to specialise your cities - make one concentrating on dust production, another on science etc. So for example, if a settlement has a lot of science on its tiles, build science buildings, have a hero who gives science bonuses be the governor, and put lots of workers into science. I'm making 400-600 dust a turn now (turn 160ish). Oh also I have a small army. If you garrison them inside cities than they have cheaper upkeep than if they are walking around.

[Andon]

My first game ended in an economy victory for one of the other guys. A few more turns and I would have had an Expansion victory - I owned 33 regions, the guy that won owned 10 (And I was literally at his doorstep in the process of rampaging through), and there was one other guy with 10. Conquest with the Vaulters is amazing because you can teleport armies between cities. I had almost no garrison troops since I could conquer a city, then the same turn teleport to the besieged city. It was super great.

My approval was in the dumps the whole time because people don't like super expansion, apparently.

Biggest boost came from when I conquered the Cultists. They only had one city (I think that's how they work?), but it was freaking gigantic. It became my powerhouse for doing pretty much everything.

Now on to a new game! Not going to use Vaulters this time. Going to go for something else...

[Andon]

I've played now as Wild Walkers and the Cultists.

Didn't care much for the Wild Walkers. Just not my style.

Cultists are neat. You only get one city, but you can convert villages from anywhere (And they benefit your main city!). It makes moving armies around incredibly difficult, and I wouldn't recommend them for a military-oriented strategy, especially because their starting units suck balls. BUT. Each village you convert (Note that conversion is different than pacifying) gives you a unit on conversion, and spawns units every so often. This is super great for your armies. Not to mention your wallet - I'd sell the second unit that spawned in any given village for 120ish dust each (Mid Era II), and never had to worry much about money. And since they're garrisoned at the villages, upkeep is minimal.

EDIT: Played with the Broken Lords for a bit. They're neat, but... Good god, do they require one hell of an economy. Very difficult to run, since EVERYTHING requires dust. Sooo much dust.