Endless Space 2

The never-ending sequel to the never-ending space 4X.

It surprises me how little the 4X genre has changed in the last 30 years. Endless Space adds some interesting features, but it's fails to address the core gameplay issues that really make or break a 4X game.

When comparing Endless Space 2 to a classic like Masters of Orion, I am struck by how many of the new systems feel like they add complexity without depth. For example, consider space combat.

Space Combat

There are an amazing number of options for space combat. There are different hulls, half a dozen basic types of weapon, two defense systems, and dozens of optional modules. All of those can be further modified into a mind-boggling number of combinations. Using a hero adds a whole new dimension of specific fleet bonuses. Then, depending on the engagement, you can choose from a number of battle plans. That all sounds great, but in the end you are just playing rock-paper-scissors. If the AI is smart enough to counter a focused build, the best strategy is to use a balanced mix. 

To be fair, it's not quite that simple. When you research better scissors, the enemy has to build more rocks to counter. However, the complexity involved is largely unnecessary.

Heroes

Including heroes in this type of game is always a bit awkward. It's easy for them to be either meaningless or overpowered. The balance seems about right in Endless Space 2. My biggest complaint is the skills interface. For the most part, the skill choice is obvious depending if the hero leads a fleet or sits on a planet. However, the interface makes it difficult to distinguish between the two. Eventually I dreaded having to choose new skills. Also, sometimes it is unclear where a hero would be most effective. I really want a button to auto-assign the hero to where he will be most effective. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I really don't want to sit around doing math to figure out where to send my economy hero ever 10 turns.

Species

There are quite a few different species in the game. This is a great feature that's been popular since Masters of Orion. However, this implementation leaves something to be desired. 

The worst problem is the annoying micromanagement. I want a button to "optimize research" or something like that. Such a button exists, but it doesn't work. This is a constant problem because of population growth, planetary developments, terraforming, and population transfer.

There is a missing feature to destroy population. For this, there are some poor workarounds. You can convert population into generic military force (which is wasted during peacetime). That would be fine except it takes precious planetary build time. Also, I don't think you can select the specific species to convert, which defeats the purpose. Another solution is to send population to a full planet. They spend the rest of the game in orbit. That's fine, but it feels like cheating. It also requires a planet that you don't mind being constantly full and unable to change the species. The easy solution for this would be to get rid of the "send them away" loophole and then provide another mechanism to remove the population. Perhaps the military conversion is good enough, even though it is expensive.

Politics

Actually, this feels about right. There is a lot of complexity there, but I was able to largely ignore it and just suffer the consequences. It remains an area where I can get better at the game, and it doesn't seem overbearing. 

System Build Queues

Why is this so hard to get right? For every colony, I want to start with building-A, building-B, and building-C. I want a button to automatically filter out upgrades that use scarce resources. Some upgrades, I don't want to see unless my colony is sufficiently developed. The AI governors are terrible, and for me, this should be the fun part of the game. The interface is poor. There are only 20 or 30 total possible things to build -- why do I have to scroll so much, and why isn't there a brief summary of what each upgrade does? This should be a core features of the game, why is it worse than what we had 30 years ago?

Diplomacy

The diplomacy in these games is always pretty bad. This one seems better, but not great. Still, I'm happy to see these system improve.

Story / Random Events

This was kind of new to me and it was surprisingly satisfying. It injects a bit of flavor into a dry game and mixes things up a bit. I couldn't really tell how impactful the events are. I imagine it might drive diplomacy and alliances. It might give incentive to avoid a full peaceful or military strategy.

Research

My main complaint is the poor interface on the technology tree. It takes too long to figure out what each technology does. 

Conclusion

I got too bored to complete my first game. I was spending 90% of my time doing tasks which should have been automated or simplified. I don't know what the gold standard is today for a 4X space game, but I hope it isn't this.