what am i doing wrong ...?

[¥‎€‎‎$]

so i played about 24h of this game and its starting to piss me off... even on easy im getting destroyed by the AI ...

the last game (easy) i tried to win with sience... picked race with sience boni... focused on sience improvements... at the end of the game i have 1k points in sience, one AI has 2k and an other as 2.5k

in all other statistics in the end screen the AI is so insanely far ahead that its not even funny anymore...

mid game somewhen i saw the 2 AIs making 4k and 2.5k dust per turn and i've had under 500 ...


also i noticed the AI did never attack in any of my games.... never.... im thinking of just not building any ships or defences next game ... bet i will get attacked in that case .... -_-

or am i picking the wrong techs ? how do you move around in the tech tree ? [/complain]

[Warlord Zhugrim]

You have to focus on 3 tree's to really develop quickly. The military tree isn't as important for growth and development unless your next to a hostile faction( with a few exceptions).

Basics of each tree.
The left tech tree is primarily economic/diplomatic. This tree can set up trade routes that can bring in a sizable ammount of dust and science everyturn later in game. This tree also helps keep your people happy with a number of number of boosts to system happiness. It also is the tree that helps with your food production. Food production= more people which leads to more resources and faster expansion. Happiness and the food production is by far the better side of this tree, because trade is entirely optional and in some situations impossible. If you focus purely on this tree your faction wont be able to expand very well and will suffer greatly on improving and exploiting. the few systems it can reach.

The bottom tree is the exploration tree. It'll allow you to travel to and eventually terraform(transform) your planets. It will increase your ship movements, help lower expansion disaproval and has a few hidden gems that are really nice. Not to far down the tree theres a system boost that increases all Fids with very little cost. A pure focus on this tree leads to slow population growth, and poor exploitation of resources.

The right tree. This is primarily industry and science based. This tree allows you to improve your sceience and industry exploiters and has a number of upgrades that directly increase your systems output in these two stats. It also adds new engines and battle commands. The engines can help speed up your exploration quite a bit because they increase your ships movement. There is a fleet movement boost with each ship as well and it does stack.

Best results.
It'll take some time and experimenting, but you need to mix those 3 trees to create a strong and healthy system as quickly as possible.

A fewbits of advice.

Dont wait more than 4 or 5 turns for any one given tech. Usually if your waiting this long theres a tech in another tree that could help you that you might of missed.

Population growth and expansion should be your primary goal earlier in game. The more systems you reach before turn 50 the better. A system turns into a colony 30 turns after you inhabit it. This directly effects the dust your recieve from it. These jumps can be pretty surprising.

Try to play with someone who knows about the game and make a peace offer quickly. If you explain your new they migh help you out. Explaining to you in game about different techs and even trade you ones for free just to help you out.

Pop me a friend invite, I'm not an expert but I know enough about the game to help.

[Tochimo]

If you're playing against A.I., consider expanding quickly. If you can get the tech to use wormholes before your opponents, expand into places that will inhibit their expansion (on 8-arm disk map for example, box them into their arm). While it drastically curbs their ability to expand and weakens them, it will eventually result in them turning more and more hostile to you. It also means you'll never really face an opponent that's much of a challenge, but it's a fun way to explore the game and get a feel for it.

[just Axiom]

I'm just now being able to win against Easy AI, the biggest things that have helped me are...

#1 not focusing on the top tree much, I get missles and reactive armor
#2 expanding quickly, usually I exploit my starting planet then begin creating a colony ship
#3 lockdown your area, colonize the outlying areas to inhibit enemy movement into your area
#4 make sure you link your colonies, and be aware that expansion can cause your citizens to be unhappy. This can be limited by the bottom tree.
#5 custom faction. I created a custom one and I use the Horatio affinity, the cloning is pretty amazing and helps to populate my planets with excellent governors.

I'm not sure if anything is better than Horatio, the Sophon (I think it is that one anyway) has a bonus that gives extra science which I'm guessing is probably one of the better bonuses.

[Haldurson]

At the start of the game, at least one of the leaders that you can choose from will have a potential labor bonus (I think this is a given since recent updates). When you have over 20 dust, recruit him/her/it and assign him to one of your colonies -- in the beginning, the colony choice is less crucial, but I generally place him on the most recently colonized planet.

As soon as that leader is assigned, lower your taxes to the minimum point at which you still have an income, and keep an eye on that going forward. Early game, you want your approval to be maximized for having a non-negative income. Later if your economy is under control, you can decide to go for an economic victory which is self-explanatory. But you want to maximize happiness for fast expansion and development.

You do not have to (nor should you) build every improvement on every system. But the early ones with a maintenance cost of only 1 or 2, that improve food, income, trade, science, and/or production are nearly always worthwhile.

If you do REALLY well and manage to expand quickly, you CAN become a victim of your own success. Unhappiness from expansion, if not dealt with, can cause serious problems and slide you from success into failure. The techs on the left tree with the pink, and some of the techs on the lower tree that give the 22% bonus vs. Unhappiness, as well as those on the right tree that give you access to exploit luxury items, should become a high priority at that point. Also good are the ones that fix negative anomalies.

IF you are playing the Cravers, or if you get cut off in your expansion, you should consider taking a more agressive route, but only after you are either forced into war, and/or have a stable enough economy to maintain warships. You still don't want to concentrate too much on the top tree, because your economy is as important during wartime as it is during peace. This should be balanced based on which faction you are playing (Sowers should nearly never go to war, for example ,unless forced into it).

[Matthypaspist]

Early on I say get the N-way fusion plants as soon as possible or have as a faction trait. The +15 industry improvement always seems to help. And if you're going for science try researching the +30 science improvement as soon as you can. (Dont go for it straight out of the game). Dont research military techs unless you're at war or if the research time is more than 1 turn. And try to get as many of the good systems you find as you can(just dont overexpand).

[Undergrowler]

Endless Space is one of those 4X games where only two things really matter, expand as fast as possible in the beginning to get as many systems/territory as you can and use that to get a comfortable technology lead. After that conquer one of your enemies at a time while keeping a technology lead no matter what. It helps to keep peace with the factions until you're ready to start a war. try to only fight one faction at a time.

It is really that simple. With better technology than your opponents it's much easier to win both the resource and military parts.
So never ever under no circumstances trade technology. The AI isn't much of a researcher even though they trade technologies so if you play a race with good research, custom made or Sophons it shouldn't be too hard to keep a good lead in technology against the AI if you're not used to 4X games.

This is how I usually play 4X games and it usually gets me a win.

[Undergrowler]

Postat inițial de Farsight:

Postat inițial de Tarm:

... So never ever under no circumstances trade technology...

Really... That's just... Bah!

Try playing a game on normal+ difficulty, trading tech is almost mandatory to claim victory especially in the early game.

What tend to happen if you trade technology is that every faction including yours stay at about the same level. That way you're crippling yourself.
Though I admit that the early part where keeping important and costly technology from the AI a bit longer isn't very important trading is usefull.

[Undergrowler]

That Conan quote is always fun. :)

Actually weapon technology isn't the most important technology to keep from the AI. It's in fact the least important. The worst to give it is expansion and exploitation technologies. ;)

Well when I finally go to war against a faction I usually only have to buy a couple improvements until the system can quickly get up to speed with the rest of my empire. Granted your way is more fun. :)

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thanks for the responses =)