Easiest race for beginners?

[lPherion]

(sorry for my bad english btw)

[Vensalir]

I would say that the United Empire and the Sophons are the two easier races to get into. They're not necessarily stronger than the other factions, but they play like most factions in other 4X games.

I'm a fan of the Vaulters myself, but their slow colonization speed might be challenging for new players.

[Bozobub]

Easiest? A custom race with normal colonization, but with Guardians, the Vaulters' teleportation portals (in other words, use the Vaulters portrait), and w/e other other stuff you want (you'll have to add some negative traits if you want more than a few, though, cuz portals and Guardians are both pretty expensive in trait points). For your main population type, select the one that gives 5 of every resource =).

The Guardians give happiness that completely (or at least almost) negates overcolonization penalties, and the portals are, quite simply, über tech. The super-productive colonists aren't actually necessay, but are damn nice, nonetheless.

I warn you, however: You'll probably need to play 1-2 levels higher, for a challenge ^^'. I generally play this combo, although I keep the Vaulters' colony ship.

[Mondtor]

I think the Vaulters are quite right to begin. They can build portals and the more slow colonization process (one single Arche!) is in a way help to jump fresh in the game...
As one mistake is to build too many colonies! To expand too quickly.

Also the backlground story is very entertaining i find.

My tactics was: At the beginning play very defensive (pay tribute to Human Empire and Yodyani) and then when my fleet got stronger...STRIKE BACK! Later I had a stable alliance with Human Empire and Unfallen. Succeeded in a conquer victory after 300 turns.

[patrick]

I‘d sa UE. Sophons have high science but low industry so a bew player who might invest in a few wrong things might find their growth to be too slow. UE has a simple questline and both buyout methods can help with problems the player gets hinself into. You can build industry early on, get endless parks + iter, get many colonies (buy heroes at the market to raise cap) and later on in the questline (when your industry is already high) switch over to a science focus via mezari. Stacking mezari, possibly a sophon collection bonus (make one or multiple AIs sophon) and iter gives you quite an edge on science.

UE play wide well and if you play a tall faction and make mistakes in your build order you might suffer a bit more as a result of your mistakes.

Having decent industry and influence as UE means that the AI will have a harder time grabbing minor civs or wonders before you get them, even if you make some mistakes.

[Potatoheed]

I would also recommend Empire as a first race (although the racial music is a little... heavy...)

As others have said, having such good industry gives you a huge boost to produce more industry and science buildings, so in effect you end up with better science, means better ships, which you can build quickly!

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

UE is definitely one of the easiest to get into, along with Sophons, mostly because they don't actually have some kind of really weird core mechanic like the Vodyani or Unfallen. They're pretty much strictly straight up normal 4x factions, with Sophons being basically the Psilons from Master of Orion or any stereotypical big headed science focused faction, and the Empire being the usual human vanilla faction that also focuses highly on industry but is the jack of all trades faction. The United Empire can even switch it's whole population bonus to either being military or research instead of influence, and is basically just all around capable of being good at anything. In fact I didn't win science vic with Sophons and won conquest instead, and won the science victory with Empire while playing an expansionistic assimilation/cultural dominance game.

[CutePanda]

I dunno if people are joking or trolling as I've read complains everywhere about "how to play this race" but I have found Vodyani to be the easiest to play so far.

At least in terms of their ability to snowball.

Its easy because the religious bonus of keeping all colonies at 50% (or 70% as a Fed) and to attack during Cold War makes it easy for beginner like me who don't have to worry about over colonization and I can just go in every turn to conquer the computer or a human player with no worries.

If you happen to land on a ecologist/scientist during the right turns, that's even better. If not, you can always change to a dictatorship and alternate between ecology and science till late game then change back to a military and religious democracy.

Population isn't an issue. I've not had over population issues or under population issues.

Basically senate/laws, pop and spreading like wild fire have been dealt with in one hit.

You just focus on building ships and industrial buildings conquering the enemy early on.

[Chungo Beepis]

Horatio, by far. I get creamed as other races, but Horatio consumes their genes so a single pop is basicaly the equivalent of 5-10 pops by mid game, makes mid-late game conquest _magical_.

[Mondtor]

Seems that ES2 is well balanced as there are many prefered races beeing considered the easiest / best. It is also a question of play style I think.

[Super Fegelein]

Go with UE. Because hey, who doesn't want to be a space fascist?

Oh, and they have the best music. Make Papa Zelevas proud!

[CursedPanther]

Originally posted by Flam34Fr33dom:

I dunno if people are joking or trolling as I've read complains everywhere about "how to play this race" but I have found Vodyani to be the easiest to play so far.

Vodyani maybe the easiest to play with after the player is familiar with all the bells and whistles in the game and has found the best way to min-maxing. But to those who are still figuring out how to install a missile turret onto a ship, UE is the best generalist faction to begin with.

There's a reason the tutorial faction uses UE by default.

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by Argonaut:

I think the Vaulters are quite right to begin. They can build portals and the more slow colonization process (one single Arche!) is in a way help to jump fresh in the game...
As one mistake is to build too many colonies! To expand too quickly.

That's ironic. As I explain here*, the Vaulters can be a pain in the butt to play. I would say the UE or a custom race with the 'Emperor's Will' trait and the Voydani 'look'. The influance buyout of systems right off the bat can be an easy 'quick start', and spam colony ships to get more influance real quick.

*Topic on why the Vaulters are underpowered here;
https://steamcommunity.com/app/392110/discussions/0/1750106661713012280/?tscn=1542048440

[Vensalir]

I think Vaulters would be difficult to play for a neophyte. While it is true that you can cherry-pick the best systems to colonize and still be able to support them all as long as you have fleets available, you have to be quite good at identifying which system upgrade to build and where, which a new player probably isn't. Assimilating minor civilizations helps a lot, but that's not always possible.

[CutePanda]

Originally posted by CursedPanther:

Vodyani maybe the easiest to play after the player is familiar with all the bells and whistles in the game and has found the best way to min-maxing. But to those who are still figuring out how to install a missile turret onto a ship, UE is the best generalist faction to begin with.

There's a reason the tutorial faction uses UE by default.

Oh okay.

Well I would say that the game is mostly well balanced and it depends on what you are better at learning and doing initially, etc. Like some people say Sophron is easy to play but I would say that it is conditional.

If you played straight on Endless difficulty with a lot of computers and/or multiplayer and don't know what you intend on researching, chances are you won't get no bonus and thus lose the Sophron biggest advantage...rushing tech.

I tend to rush Carriers technology as it seems to make the biggest impact to the game.

However, I've played a slow Sophron games before (where I focus on getting more science to leap even more ahead) and ran into problem when attacking computers early on because they somehow kept pace in the Military and Empire Quadrant and I struggled in a manpower fight with them even if I win the space battle. (It didn't help that I didn't know what Titanium A2S Slugs were at the time.)

So while it seems like a huge advantage to use science to research more science, a huge snowball, a well formed computer will beat you elsewhere causing you to rethink your strategy.

I'm more familiar with RTS games which tends to have a weird mechanism and have a strong focus on heroes thus perhaps why I'm okay with the Vodyani.

I've play as UE only once and that was multiplayer with a friend, it seemed easy enough but I ended up losing one of my bases from spreading too fast without a big enough military. (The computer basically waited till I finished with the base then took it right off me when my army left to attack them. The irony.)

At the time I didn't know thing like blockades and pressuring the computers colonies. It was still early game and we never ended up continuing that game but I wonder how I would have went.

The biggest down side to the Vodyani is multiplayer because they don't have a conquest option. As in they only raid and hunt. You need to make friends (who will proceed to steal conquests from you) and its much harder for them to spread because of that reason.

Hissho is very similar to Vodyani and I've actually enjoyed them the most so far though the game I won was only on Impossible difficulty.

I basically learnt to play the game with Hissho.

They take forever to grow fast but the motto for them is "never stop conquering" and you snowball just like that. Ecologist Hissho also help lots. They are basically the only race that can take over the whole map on any planet and still be on Ecstatic (100% Keii) for every city so you need not worry about rebellions at all.

I snowballed so good in that game that every turn or two I got a Hero from the academy.

I'll have to give UE another try now to see I go. I would actually probably agree with you to some extend. The only thing I don't like about them is that they seem mostly well rounded so while they might be easier to play in that regard but they also don't have something that makes them really standout. I'm not really good with nor like the whole "buyout snowball" thingy either so perhaps that is why.

[CutePanda]

Originally posted by Vensalir:

I think Vaulters would be difficult to play for a neophyte.

Also adding to this both the Vaulters and Hissho seem extremely OP for a new player like me and I wouldn't be surprised that they do this intentionally. A lot of the time expansion are there to attract new players while keeping the old satisfied and they do this by making certain mechanisms easier.

I haven't play them yet but Vaulters do seem a tad odd but OP nonetheless and also comes off "less cool" in general compared to the Hissho anyway. Sorry to Vaulter fans. :P

I'm just not sure how to exploit them exactly.