It seems that if you restart a game (go back to main menu, new game, same settings as before) with the same parameters you get the same neighbor every time. I was seeing a lot of posts about “I always start next to necrophage” and I thought it was just people having bad luck or confirmation bias to necro because they are a hard starting opponent due to the rush.

However, I just restarted my necrophage game 10 times and was put next to Lost Lords every time. I think I had noticed it with other games as well because I was trying to learn each faction and playing very aggressively to see how far I could push my advantages and frequently shitting the bed on Endless and wanting to practice openers from scratch. I’m not sure if it’s EVERY time or just something about my current settings, but it seems like an RNG issue? Unless it’s intentional that the AI slot they are assigned to determines close and far neighbors.

My favourite part about EL2 is paying close attention to district adjacency and min-maxxing positioning and yields... now in civ6 there is a very handy mod which allows to put pins down on the map and plan for every district positioning ahead of time, and somethig alike would be really great for EL2 in my opinion!

I think it's a fascinating idea, but only OoZ and Severed Claws are in game. Lot of interesting ideas for how the other factions unqieu mechanics could be twisted into Rogue-ish variants.

For pop growth, which is especially important to the Last Lords, is it worth removing protectorate status of one of your minor factions to give it to another? Afaik, every time a minor faction is offered protectorate status, you receive <number of villages> free pops, regardless of whether it has been protectorate before. You do pay for it with influence, sure, but this technically could accelerate growth by quite some. It shouldn't affect the lords estates and it shouldn't influence councilors.

We wanted to drop a quick fix for a couple of bugs that appeared after our previous update.

Mainly solving issues with previous old saves! But, we have identified that some users won't be able to keep playing their previous game, as it got really corrupted, we are really sorry 😔

If you encounter the following error 👇 it means the load file is corrupted and you will need to start a new game

📜 DETAILS HERE

Not sure if anyone else feels like this, but I have tried probably half a dozen to a dozen 4x games over the years and non of them have clicked. I would usually start a game, make it to about turn 50-100 and then quit. But not EL2. Just finished winning my 2nd or 3rd game in about 15 hours of actual play time, had some matches in there where I was trying the first 50 or so turns of a faction to see if I like them. Here are the reasons I really love this game.

1. The heroes and the questing: I really enjoy RTS and RPG games and having heroes that level up, get gear and have skill points to spend is really cool to see in a 4x game. Also having quests to do for your faction and the neutrals gives something to do in between selecting researches or starting new productions, you have less turns where you mindlessly hit "end turn" and wait to be able to have something engaging to do again.

2. The city building: I think this is probably in large part due to the districts leveling mechanics and the ways they interact with each other and the environment, but the city building aspects of this game also seem a lot better than in other games like civ 6. I enjoy being able to just hover over my districts and quickly tell what they synchronize with rather than having to try and figure that out through a bunch of menus.

3. Combat: Similar to point 1, the combat is really good. Having turn based tactics inside of my 4x game with actual combos between units is far better than "It's my turn, my guy right clicks your guy and I do some damage" having defense, active abilities, leveling/specializations is just all very good.

4. Democracy: Probably the biggest point for me is the simplicity of the democracy mechanics with other factions. One of the things I don't enjoy about most 4x games is how the interactions with other factions is handled and how big of a role it plays in the game. I like having it so if I want to be friends with someone I compliment them a couple times and then go no aggression pact (if I cant right away), for me 4x is fun for building huge cities making an army and then rolling over the AI armies. Kind of a side note to this but just the systems in general not being super complicated. Not having a civics tree or trade routes and golden ages as things you need to focus on aside from economy and fight.

5. Victory Conditions: I honestly kinda like the alternate win conditions being "weird", but also just kind of difficult to do. I think its just because they all kind of require you to go down multiple avenues in the game. You can't just focus on science and then win by researching everything or win by having x number of territories. I feel like it actually pushes you more towards a domination victory since they all would require you to be in a position where you could just slam face with an army and win.

6. Faction Diversity: Really nice how every faction plays so differently. If I get bored of one playstyle I can go and effectively play a new game with a different faction.

Anyways, let me know what y'all think about the game, if there's anything you love that I missed, or things that I love that you don't.

Edit: added point 6

I began my Amplitude journey with Endless Space 2, and fell in love immediately. To this day, it remains my favourite of the series and I find myself returning to it, time and time again. The gameplay being a bit simpler with planets as movement nodes is one thing, but the world, the factions and how full of personality it all is, are the main reasons. The asymmetric design and how each has their own playstyle or gimmick to strategize around, the visual designs, the voices, it's sublime.

Endless Legend was my next, and I've definitely had some good fun with it. The roster of factions is fun, and while I'm not the biggest fan of some designs they are definitely a breath of fresh air among the fantasy settings which seem hesitant to commit to a "weirder" species appearance.

When EL2 got announced I was very excited and as the factions kept being revealed that feeling only strengthened, but once the first Necrophage gameplay got released I saw something that worried me. A Necrophage hero reached the level necessary to build a haven and gain a companion, and the same generic conversation as with the Kin played between two bugs that spawn from larvae grown in killed enemies. I heard that was supposed to be addressed, but as far as I've seen it has not happened yet. In EL, as I understood it, the main humanoid bug leader was a new occurrence, a guiding intelligence behind the instinct. Due to the mechanics and the main quest this swarm feels less alien. I keep thinking back to Star Craft 2 Heart of the Swarm and the Zerg characters there, specifically Abathur and Dehaka. Even if they use language to communicate, the way they use the words are different, Abathur leaves out everything not necessary to the functional content of the messages, and Dehaka struggles with words or is not used to speaking. That's missing.

Why can the intelligent leader necrophage converse with the living ram like it's on the same level as it? Isn't its function different? Both use their heads, but one is meant to smash it into enemies not have chats.

I haven't played enough to experience all of the factions yet, so my strongest grievances are mostly with Necrophages, but it seems that the others might be experiencing similar issues. Tahuks not being "lizard" enough and the triangular jaw leader missing some of the cool technology they have, with dialogue being mostly sass between the religious leader and our character. Sandshapers might be my favourite faction due to their terraforming capabilities and alien appearance, but their dialogue does not reflect that. The voice being sort of similar to a whisper/blowing wind is interesting but it sounds a bit too human. I keep thinking of windchimes or something like Bard from League of Legends, would have fit them more.

I doubt it will be changed now since so much is built on this new quest system look, and the amount of dialogue they've written, but in the current form it feels like it takes away the factions' personality rather than expanding on it.

What are your experiences? If you were to change the voices or dialogues what would you do?

Tldr:

I feel that dialogues and language use choices are too similar between factions making them less unique, which is especially visible with Necrophages (siege weapon bug having a chat with the leader), and Sandshapers (fractal sand sculptures sounding too human and also chatting like people).

I've been reading a lot of negative feedback, so I'm wondering if the game is actually enjoyable, and more importantly improving in meaningful ways with all the patches they've been releasing?

FYI I'm very inexperienced with these types of games, the most I ever played was Civ 1 in the 90s, and not even a full game of Civ 5. I am about turn 10 or so in my first run as the humans in EL2 and so far I like it a lot, but I've been hearing a lot of mixed reactions that only seems to have cropped up more recently.

Apart from the bugs (and the corrupt save file introduced with Patch 45), is it getting better in the "right ways", or at least trending toward that direction?

My last post was me playing a series with the Last Lords, and that was one slow game due to the early game economy and growth issues of the faction. Though mostly the game end turn was still the same so I guess the endgame of Last Lords is indeed stronger than others that I was able to recover well.

After that, I got to try out the Order of Zelevas faction, and they are actually so good. My only issue with them is that their first quest is actually way too difficult and takes too much time getting through, however once I started to snowball, the rest felt so easy. Here, I got my first ever sub-turn100 Worship Victory on Fast gamespeed that I achieved in 95 turns.

It is in the same playlist as always. This Order of Zelevas playthrough is a 4-part series, going from Ep.31 to Ep. 35. One episode in the middle is me getting tilted after being tired playing a start with Tahuks that I have now restarted again, and that I will post once its finished too.

So, I started playing the Order of Zelevas, and one of my first faction quests had me defeat a rebel army with a power of around 542.

Meanwhile, my own army had a power of about 280.

I thought, okay, maybe I'm supposed to somehow win this through tactics or something?

Well, I tried, and I got absolutely fucked, I won but only my hero survived with little hp (no I did not do auto battle)

But then I noticed something even worse. Apparently, I wasn't supposed to defeat just ONE of these rebel armies. There were TWO of them.

How the hell is that reasonable for the FIRST faction quest?

Am I missing some mechanic here? Am I supposed to ignore my faction quest for a bunch of turns until I've built up a much stronger army? Or is there some way to deal with these armies early on that I'm completely overlooking?

Because right now, it feels ridiculous to be given a starting quest where the enemies have almost double my army power, and then discover I have to beat two of them.

I beat my first quest way way into the game while my friend has already beaten like 5 of his.

Genuinely asking, what am I supposed to be doing differently here?

First of all, as you can see in these photos, it simply isn’t working consistently. For the turn shown here, not a single of these forests was planted!

Secondly and no less importantly, please make planting less micro-intensive. Separating armies is already a chore; separating them and ordering them to plant individual hexes, turn after turn, is mind-numbing.

I recommend either:
1. An auto-plant option similar to auto-explore
2. Increasing the cost and making the action apply to multiple hexes

So i am playing as Last Lords in this game and to my surprise i see the kin setting up camp without even clearing the fortress. Is the fortress mechanic specific only to the player or do the Kin have some special mechanic? Can sm1 explain i'm hella confused!

What is this now? I can't play a game?

Late in my first game as Kin I start to notice more and cases when placing a district decreases (at least according to tooltip) some random stat. Sometimes it happens with approval, which could be understandable as some kind of semi-hidden growth limiting mechanic, but other times production, food and even fortification can decrease.

Is this a bug or Im missing something?

In addition to the issue mentioned in the title, I now no longer even have an option to create a hive in some newly uncovered regions. None of the previous updates had caused issues in my playthroughs that were underway at the time, but this one seems to have removed basic features of my current playthrough. Has anyone else experienced this, and was there any fix you were able to find? I'd really rather not just start a new playthrough, I put a lot of time and effort into getting this one to a reasonable place and want to play it through to my first Severed Claws victory.

I know that Amplitude games are quite infamous for the amount of bugs and I appreciate that they are releasing fixes quite often, but it really ends up being quite frustrating, especially since it's not EA anymore.

After 80 hours:

Troops completely cut off in battle by cliffs - multiple times

Event effects not applying - like "Fast"

LL's "Gifts of the fallen" not triggering on stellar heroes/ their original troops

Roads passing through natural wonders and being useless

Construction turns counter off by 1 turn

Not bugs per se but:

Other faction's quest armies blocking key tiles

Quest locations blocking key tiles even after completing the quests

Not being able to move/raze my own camps considering how expansionist the AI is

And these are the ones I remember

I'm trying to buy the red hex foundation next to the bridge, but it's not available for sale.

The hex is connected to my city by the bridge, which is a permanent bridge and counts as a district.

Hathel and Imex are connected territories.

Can someone explain what went wrong? I'm feeling the 'Keystones' bridge tech is pretty useless right now.

We have a new round of fixes across topics like AI, Major Factions, and more.

Have a nice day!

📜 CHANGELOG HERE

Edit:

Hey, wanted to let you know that we identified a couple of issues that appeared after the update, and we are investigating them in order to fix them asap

• The Severed Claws can't build burrows and used them in old games
• Some old saves can't be loaded

Follow up:
Important Message from the team regarding the issues

We have created a beta branch on Steam called "rollback-update-44" where you can play 1.0.180 if needed. Restart Steam to be able to see it.

Saves made on update 45 (1.0.189) won't be available on this branch

We will have a fix by tomorrow for both issues (army actions not working on old save (probably a fix by tonight) and saves crashing)

So, a friend and I have been playing Endless Legend 1 for quite a while. I was never particularly good at it, and he was definitely the better player, but at least it sometimes felt like I had a fighting chance. I usually lost, but I could at least understand what was happening.

Now we've started playing Endless Legend 2, and holy shit, I feel like I'm playing a completely different game from him.

Here's basically how our games go:

We start a new game. I settle my first city, queue up some research and construction, and send my hero and starting units out to explore. Pretty standard stuff, I would assume.

Then, just a few turns in, I notice he's taking forever to finish his turns.

Me: "Dude, what are you even doing? Do you have that much stuff to manage already?"

Him: "Yeah, I'm in a battle right now. I've also got like four armies running around, finished a bunch of quests, assimilated some minor factions..."

And I'm just sitting there thinking, HOW THE FUCK?

Meanwhile, my starting army can barely clear the objectives I'm supposed to be doing. I try fighting something, get my ass kicked, and then have to spend several turns recovering. By the time I'm ready to do anything again, he's already accomplished what feels like 20 turns' worth of progress.

And don't even get me started on the global deeds (or whatever they're called). You know, those objectives like pacifying a certain number of villages or eliminating a certain number of units.

I'll be minding my own business, barely getting started, when suddenly a notification pops up that someone has completed one of them.

Me: "Wait, was that you?"

Him: "Yeah."

Me: "HOW? You've already killed 30 units?!"

Meanwhile, I've been in maybe TWO battles and killed a grand total of FOUR units. I'm genuinely lost for words at that point.

And the score difference is ridiculous. He's consistently ahead of me AND all the AIs, sometimes by a massive margin.

The thing is, he's not being a dick about it or anything. He's a great guy, doesn't gloat, and is genuinely just really good at these kinds of games.

But I genuinely cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Every new game, I try to optimize a little more. I try different factions, including the supposedly beginner-friendly ones. I try to make better decisions about research, construction, exploration, etc. But it doesn't seem to matter. He just keeps snowballing while I'm struggling to get anything done.

The part that confuses me most is how much value he's getting out of every single turn.

There are turns where I genuinely feel like there's nothing productive left for me to do. I've moved my armies, explored what I can, queued my research and construction, and now I'm just waiting for the next turn.

Meanwhile, he's apparently fighting battles, completing quests, assimilating factions, expanding, claiming global deeds, and doing God knows what else.

So I guess my questions are:

- What should I actually be prioritizing during the first 10–20 turns?

- How are people getting enough military strength early on to clear objectives and assimilate minor factions without constantly getting destroyed?

- What are some common early-game mistakes that might not be obvious to a relatively inexperienced player?

- How are experienced players completing global deeds so ridiculously fast?

- And most importantly, what are good players doing every turn that average players like me aren't even thinking about?

I'm not expecting to suddenly become better than my friend. I just want to understand what I'm missing, because right now it feels like he's playing a completely different game.

Any advice would be massively appreciated.

Hey,

so as u can see in the screen, i was shocked at how fast the AI, especially Aspects, snowballs into a win. I would understand it on Endless difficulty but how the fuck am I supposed to be even remotely near that capacity... I am just starting to snowball as Last Lords after a very hard early game. I easily crush the other factions in combat. I have 4 cities and things are starting to get rolling. Suddenly I get the message that aspects started the final countdown. This is the third time this is happening... They are on the opposite of the map, can't really stop it military wise. I am not an expert player but even with perfect gameplay I wouldn't be near era 5 tech or even remotely as much pops.

https://imgur.com/a/K3j6FMx

It's Hero difficulty, so how is this supposed to go on the next two?

Like look at the disparity, it was like that in almost every hero game they were in. I don't wanne be forced to all-in them with military every game and it really takes the fun away if you cannot play for economic dominance. it's turn 140 on normal speed.

Happens to me every second game, as there is a perfect space for a city, and after I have set up a camp it becomes blocked by this spawned horror units quest which just stay there, never move and bot never clears them. The same applies to fortresses bot quests, and less often to quest locations like rusted towers, archives, etc. For some reason, this did not feel that bad before the release. At least I wish amplitudes would make them move.

I will also take this opportunity to whine about why one of the aspects quests that gives a modifier that spawns spores in place of actually usefull doomwraith anomalies when defeating the later. This spores also block good city spots on neutral territories and district tiles on owned territories. Thank good it is an optional quest, and there is no incentive doing it, although then what is the point of such quests?

This is on Ps5 by the way. I assume maybe it has something to do with a recent update or something I’m not sure. It’s not the end of the world but it is annoying considering how many hours I’d invested into that game run.

Does anyone know why that happens?

It's not a quest location.

So i have been playing amplitude games for 14 years now, since the very first endless space release in 2012 and i have a complicated relationship with them : having played all of them bare endless dungeon, I thought i was done with them 5 years ago after a bad time with the awakening DLC and the release of humankind that i tested on game pass.

Endless legend, endless space 2, humankind, i had always the same issue : great early game, interesting ideas, good presentation but completly fucked up economy and pacing. Production was not only king but dwarfed everything else : there was little point of doing something else than beelining the next production tech, building the corresponding tier production building to trigger as early as possible a ridiculously strong production snowball that made everything else, science, economy, military, influence irrelevant. You could catch up with all the latter in a matter of turns once your production has started skyrocketting.

On top of that, endless space 2 and endless legend had broken economy with dust and tech inflation, quest bonus that were either too good or completly irrelevant (+100 Science reward when i am making tens of thousands a turn).

The result was boredom from mid to late game where i was spending time queuing an endless serie of infrastructures and trying to beeline the quickest way of victory to end the game as soon as possible, usually through military conquest around turn 100 or 120 in normal speed. Humankind has a different kind of issues baked in its fame and district game design that i won't get into here.

Thankfully, modders stepped in with the EL and ES community patches as well as humankind Vanilla Improvement Project but for me, i had decided that i was done with buying unmodded Amplitude games : i felt that if amplitude game designers weren't willing to put into the effort of balancing their game and its pacing, it wasn't worth my time and i would rather play Civilization VI, Old world or other 4x games (not that many good ones sadly).

So i didn't care much about EL2 being announced until i started seeing people the early access was very promising over there on r/4xgaming or r/games.

So i gave it a shot and after two games with the Kin, one getting necrophage'd and the other with an awakening victory, what a pleasant surprise !

• Production is at a pretty good place : it feels like something i need to invest in to keep up with producing what i actually need rather than a goal itself. The production bonus are mostly flat with the ramping up in production happening only really in the end game as it should.
• The tech tree is interesting with a very clever mix of immediate passive bonus and others that required building stuff
• The pacing felt good too : i won by turn 175 after a game that felt compelling although i need to increase the difficulty.
• The hero tech tree are so much better than previous amplitude games.
• The tidefall is great
• The asymetric factions look very interesting although i have only tried Kin and necrophages.

...and too many to list. I lost track the number of times where i told myself "oh, that's a clever way of adressing this common 4x problem" or "Great they fixed that issue from Endless Legend/Space"

It is not perfect but it is by far the best designed amplitude game i have played (with dungeon of the endless second and endless legend 1 third).

And even better, we are just one month in the 1.0 ! I can't wait to see how good it is going to become with the future expansion and patches.

Anyway, if you have read that much so far, thank you again and congratulations to you and everyone else in the team !