Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 6

Author Topic: Endless Legend  (Read 19218 times)

Neonivek

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #15 on: September 19, 2014, 07:19:56 am »

Hence why I said... sort of... It mostly a huge aggravating disappointment for anyone who owns the first.

Also that is actually a pretty interesting backstory. I was just worried they were adding "endless" for no reason (afterall an "endless legend" is a legend that goes on forever) but apparently it connects directly to endless space.
Logged

Majestic7

  • Bay Watcher
  • Invokes Yog-Soggoth to bend time
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #16 on: September 19, 2014, 07:24:52 am »

Yeah, Legend of the Endless would be more accurate, since several of the factions are ignorant of the past, trying to find out what is going on by deciphering vague myths. Every faction has a specific chain of "faction quests", which are not necessary to follow. However, if you do follow them, you gain extra benefits and playing them to the end point is one way to win.

Faction quest chains are partially dynamic, I've seen different things pop up as the first quest for the same faction, for example. They all tell a story though, explaining more about the background. So I didn't tell everything to not spoil anything. The quests are pretty different - one faction wants to eat everybody, another is looking to build a multinational federation, a third is digging through the ruins for secrets, a fourth wants to destroy every trace of the endless having ever existed etc.

I don't know if AI heroes follow faction quests, but at least they seem to receive and do ordinary quests, based on my observations.

Edit: I thought Warlock I was boring, I found Warlock II a lot better...
« Last Edit: September 19, 2014, 07:28:11 am by Majestic7 »
Logged

amjh

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #17 on: September 19, 2014, 05:45:44 pm »

Spoiler: story spoiler (click to show/hide)
Logged
The truly amazing thing for me here is that a 6 page thread can be created of exceedingly high quality, simply because a group of manic depressive, schizophrenic midgets were able to milk a cow.
Argblarg 5 am not all tiles are done what the

i2amroy

  • Bay Watcher
  • Cats, ruling the world one dwarf at a time
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #18 on: September 19, 2014, 08:21:10 pm »

I've been playing this an it's been tons of fun, definitely worth the money in my opinion. There are still some problems, but so far they have been pretty good at fixing them, and the devs have encouraged thinking of this as more a "version gold" than a "final release", (the release time being more to allow them to get around the upcoming civ game than because the game is totally finished as I understand it).

And on that note the current temporal game progression story wise is Dungeon of the Endless -> Endless Legend -> Endless Space, and you even can see some carry overs between games (one of the heroes from DotE shows up again in EL, for example).

That said if you like the idea I highly suggest purchasing it and then hitting up the amplitude forums, since they have done a very good job of incorporating various suggestion and balance ideas from the playerbase.
Logged
Quote from: PTTG
It would be brutally difficult and probably won't work. In other words, it's absolutely dwarven!
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - A fun zombie survival rougelike that I'm dev-ing for.

Niveras

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #19 on: September 19, 2014, 09:16:19 pm »

I forget how ES worked, but if EL is more 4X than it is tactical, are you able to build a tall empire versus broad? Biggest problem I've had so far with the latest TBS-empire games (Warlock, Eador, AoWIII) is the fixed production queues. The builder style is my preferred way to go but with everything taking the same amount of turns regardless of how established your city is, it makes being efficient in this way impossible. (Well, AoWIII had a bit of production variability, and Eador was one-turn-for-everything-if-you-can-afford-it.)

Though I never did get used to ES. The AI would always manage to outbuild, outtech, and outexpand me, even on the lower difficulties. Not sure if that's because a builder strategy is dumb in ES, or if it was a legitimate problem with the AI. Anyway, I probably wouldn't fare any better in EL.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2014, 09:26:26 pm by Niveras »
Logged

Fikes

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #20 on: September 20, 2014, 03:09:48 am »

I forget how ES worked, but if EL is more 4X than it is tactical, are you able to build a tall empire versus broad? Biggest problem I've had so far with the latest TBS-empire games (Warlock, Eador, AoWIII) is the fixed production queues. The builder style is my preferred way to go but with everything taking the same amount of turns regardless of how established your city is, it makes being efficient in this way impossible. (Well, AoWIII had a bit of production variability, and Eador was one-turn-for-everything-if-you-can-afford-it.)

I don't think I understand. In every 4X game I have played, more established cities produce way faster. In most cases bigger cities have more people to work more tiles to produce more production. In ES, every citizen on a planet produced the base number of FIDS for that planet.

What bothered me about ES was that in most cases the bonuses to production were set, as in +5, rather than 5%. In that way the basic properties of a planet didn't have as much impact as you would think.

Quote

Though I never did get used to ES. The AI would always manage to outbuild, outtech, and outexpand me, even on the lower difficulties. Not sure if that's because a builder strategy is dumb in ES, or if it was a legitimate problem with the AI. Anyway, I probably wouldn't fare any better in EL.

I had this problem too, or so I thought. I was always 3rd or last on FIDS (out of 4) and it always seemed like the AI was beating me to the middle area and good planets.

Then I went to war with them the first time and crushed them. What I learned was that you don't need to get every technology and that FIDS don't mean as much as you think. If it is going to take you 1 turn to research it you are just wasting a bunch of research, since it doesn't carry over. Research something harder and trade for the techs you don't have.

i2amroy

  • Bay Watcher
  • Cats, ruling the world one dwarf at a time
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #21 on: September 20, 2014, 04:54:48 am »

Depending on the factions wide and tall can both be viable strategies (though the best ultra end-game one is obviously going wide+tall :P). For example the wild walkers work rather well doing mass expansions, since they can easily put together rather large industry boosts on their own, which are then supplemented by the terrain. Other factions such as the necrophages prefer to walk a middle ground, due to their ability to quickly turn lower level cities into higher ones (due to their reduced population limits on expansion), and one faction even has the limit that it only is able to build one (very tall, it actually has a trait to bypass some of the limits) city in the entire game and instead forcibly converts the neutral villages into automated unit makers for it's armies.

As for the +X vs the +X per population thing, I find Endless Legend does a bit better job about that than ES did, where city location matters through the early and mid game, but later on after stacking enough hero and building bonuses on a city it's fully possible to make a viable city. Personally I like it, because it means that if you need to you can still build a useful city in that arctic wasteland (though it might take longer to get rolling) which is very nice when the 1 city per region mechanic starts to really limit the amount of space available.
Logged
Quote from: PTTG
It would be brutally difficult and probably won't work. In other words, it's absolutely dwarven!
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - A fun zombie survival rougelike that I'm dev-ing for.

thegoatgod_pan

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #22 on: September 26, 2014, 02:33:23 pm »

I've been thinking of getting this, but what you all have to say is giving me pause.

It seems like the only innovative mechanic is the winter creep and that is blatantly ripped off from Fall from Heaven. Not even FFH2 but the first one, the mini mod that came with Beyond the Sword, where the God of Winter kept freezing more of the landscape until you killed him (FFH2 let you *become* the god of winter ;)

Also, I hear magic is just artillery in disguise, meaning that none of the crazy redefinitions of terrain and battle mechanics I expect from magical strategy, and that even FFH2 offered years ago, are viable
Logged
More ridiculous than reindeer?  Where you think you supercool and is you things the girls where I honestly like I is then why are humans on their as my people or what would you?

sebcool

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #23 on: September 26, 2014, 03:48:17 pm »

I've been thinking of getting this, but what you all have to say is giving me pause.

It seems like the only innovative mechanic is the winter creep and that is blatantly ripped off from Fall from Heaven. Not even FFH2 but the first one, the mini mod that came with Beyond the Sword, where the God of Winter kept freezing more of the landscape until you killed him (FFH2 let you *become* the god of winter ;)

Also, I hear magic is just artillery in disguise, meaning that none of the crazy redefinitions of terrain and battle mechanics I expect from magical strategy, and that even FFH2 offered years ago, are viable

I wouldn't say it was ripped off from FFH, unless you would call every game with a winter-mechanic a rip-off. The way it works is that you start at summer for roughly 40 turns, and then it turns to winter for a few turns. In the beginning, winter cuts your food production in half, cuts your armies vision and movement in half, and provides various other penalties to FIDS. It also shuts down a lot of powerful economic buildings, which improve your tile production. Over time, the summers get shorter and the winters longer, while constantly stacking more and more penalties during winter, until you're stuck in Endless winter. This creates an interesting balance, where it's very easy to expand early game, but the longer the game goes on, the harder it is to grow. A lot of the factions are also balanced around this, where powerful builder- and economy factions like the Roving Clans and the Wild Walkers have an unstoppable economy early game, and then they rapidly lose momentum later on as they respectively get huge penalties to their economy or lose most of their bonuses. The ultimate late-game faction on the other hand, the Vaulters, are built around winter: With buildings that reduce winter penalties; focus on the only FIDS not affected by winter (Science); the ability to buff their economy with a strategic resource and doubling the production of it during winter (and giving a combat bonus to units using that resource); and even the ability to teleport between their cities, negating the movement penalty of winter entirely.

While we're at the factions, they're awesome. Every faction is fleshed out with their own gimmicks, lore, unique units, and traits tailored to their play-style. The factions manage to be so unbalanced, that they swing right around and become balanced again. The Roving Clans, for example, are a pacifistic nomadic desert people, who practically worship dust; this allows them to move their cities at will, gives them so many trade bonuses that no other faction could win an economy victory against them, and allows them to use mercenaries to attack other factions without declaring war. But they also have the most severe penalties during winter of all the factions and can't declare war, which pretty much means they have to win a victory early or risk falling behind. This is just one of the factions.

I could go on, but to put it short, Endless Legend is a very good game. The empire building mechanics are completely unique and very fun, the winter mechanic is well implemented and creates a unique balance between factions and adds nicely to the empire building, the combat is decent, the units are fun and unique, the factions are all awesome and unique, the lore is great, and the art style and music is beautiful. This is one of the few 4x games, I actually finished. The only gripes I have with the game is that the AI is dumb as bricks, and the end game can get a little boring.

And to answer your concerns about magic, it is non-existent from what I know. There are no spells. The only faction that deals with magic, is mostly about building temporary improvements, that provide buffs. I don't think they even mentioned adding a full magic system in the game, and the game is more like a fantasy Civ 5, with tactical combat and additional features, than an AoW-like. If you were interested in the game for that, then don't buy it, I guess.
Logged
Derailing doesn't exist, derailed is the natural state of every thread.

thegoatgod_pan

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #24 on: September 27, 2014, 12:54:56 pm »

*stuff*

Thanks for the great reply. I actually probably will get it now. The winter mechanic does sound more interesting than I imagined and the fact that the civs are substantially different is also a strong selling point.
Logged
More ridiculous than reindeer?  Where you think you supercool and is you things the girls where I honestly like I is then why are humans on their as my people or what would you?

Criptfeind

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #25 on: September 30, 2014, 08:45:03 pm »

So I recently got this, and I've been having a lot of fun even though I've only played fully though a single game so far (my first game in fact, as the broken lords on normal difficulty, more like dust lords amirite?). Although now that I am trying to play a game on the next difficulty step up as a faction other then the broken lords, and I've ran into a issue. Specifically with the cultists. I'm just sorta wondering how one is suppose to play these guys, since the AI will ruthlessly hunt down and exterminate every single minor faction village that there is, both in their own territory and in unaligned territories. The only village that they seem to leave are the villages (or village rather) in my own territory. Even villages I already have converted are not spared from the minor faction cleansing, and the game doesn't even have the decency to require them to declare war on me to destroy them. Is there anyway to play the cultists other then going to permanent war against the other factions to protect the villages?
Logged

i2amroy

  • Bay Watcher
  • Cats, ruling the world one dwarf at a time
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #26 on: September 30, 2014, 11:27:25 pm »

Cultists suffer a bit against the AI because the AI isn't that good at rebuilding pacified villages. I believe the people at amplitude are working on solving some of the problems that surround them, but at the moment there aren't any good solutions that I know of.
Logged
Quote from: PTTG
It would be brutally difficult and probably won't work. In other words, it's absolutely dwarven!
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - A fun zombie survival rougelike that I'm dev-ing for.

Majestic7

  • Bay Watcher
  • Invokes Yog-Soggoth to bend time
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #27 on: October 01, 2014, 03:16:12 am »

The game really needs some winning benefits. I mean, even just a screen with text on what happens after your victory. Now the game just...kind of ends and that's it.
Logged

Sartain

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #28 on: October 01, 2014, 03:25:01 am »

I've been playing this multiplayer for the last couple of days and have come to two conclusions:

1) The game is only good played against other human players because the AI is bad.

2) Multiplayer seems kinda broken because the factions are massively unbalanced.

Edit: Also, in multiplayer at least, initiative and ranged weaponry are pretty much king which makes factions like the Broken Lords (who have no ranged units other than their support unit) very bad for fighting other players.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2014, 03:36:11 am by Sartain »
Logged

PanH

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Endless Legend
« Reply #29 on: October 01, 2014, 12:17:21 pm »

Cultists suffer a bit against the AI because the AI isn't that good at rebuilding pacified villages. I believe the people at amplitude are working on solving some of the problems that surround them, but at the moment there aren't any good solutions that I know of.
You don't need the villages to be rebuilt to convert them. You can convert all pacified villages, which includes destroyed ones.
Logged
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 6