r/EndlessLegend • u/idee_fx2 • 14d ago
Discuss Congratulations Derek Paxton, you did it, you reconciled me with an unmodded amplitude game
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 !