I really need some beginner tips.

[KingKickAss]

I love Civ and played tons of it, played quite a bit of Crusader Kings, and have played RTS games my whole life, but this game is giving me a lot of trouble and I really want to enjoy it. I've even watched a few beginner guide videos too.

But I find what's most useful for learning is like the raw/direct information from actual experienced players. What is it that I should be doing in this game? I'll think that I'm doing decently, and then I'll be getting repeatedly hacked, repeatedly pressured to hack, and any AI I run into has ships that are way stronger than me.

What's the gameplan and general strategy for progressing in this game? What should I look out for? Any info helps. I've only ever played as United Empire.

[rcuajunco]

Game strategy changes based on your galaxy shape, size, number of opponents.

In large maps with few opponents, your allowed too freely expand to 11 to 20 systems. The ai wont even communicated with you as long as you don't own a system within 2 systems of a controlled system or outpost. Which allows players too focus on industry and science.
In small maps with large number of opponents, you prioritize military first.

The general idea is how much greed can you get away with, before getting punished.

The ai in this game does two things, expand with reckless abandon until it borders a rival, churn out tons of cheap ships and attack any fleet plus or minus 5 - 10 command pts. If they are at war with someone and no rival fleets too fight they will invade with a death stack of 12 to 100 ships.

Exploits vs ai

Don't expand near them, tech up to 30 pt fleets and just watch ai suicide their fleets into you.

Wait for ai outpost too finish then swoop in with a 4 to 12 pt fleet the turn they finish.
Free systems are free.

General tips

Place all your economic behemoths at your homeworld cause their bonuses stack, get your home world to 1.2 food production a turn so you can ship 4 population a turn.

Have 2 explorer ships with movement modules early, and fully explore the galaxy, the earliar you get information the more useful it becomes.

Experiment and figure out which technologies you should prioritize based on the galaxy layout and why.

My United Empire Suggestion

Early game use influence too buy minor factions, mid game use influence too buy 6 to 10 buildings and all the planets on newly created colonies. Then ship population to new colony from 3 to 5 other systems. When i can't expand peacefully anymore use influence too buy technology.

[Maehlice]

I'm a beginner myself and only play UE. Here's what I found useful:

Start at vanilla. I bought all the expansions and DLCs, jumped right in, and was quickly overwhelmed. Vanilla has fewer complex mechanics and simpler factions. It was much easier to get a feel for the game when I wasn't starting from the deep end.

UE is super easy if you keep the Industrialists in political power and focus on Industry & Science.

(With more opponents and higher difficulty, going all-in on war and leaning heavily on the Spoils of War law and Take Trophies (& Science from Scrap) tactic is also a lot of fun.)

Exploration and investigating curiosities pays off in spades. Some (all?) of the best ship modules and Improvements are discovered from exploring curiosities. And, you'll rack up a good amount of luxury resources and random events along the way!

You can't initially see all possible curiosities. Your detection level starts at 2, but you can only send a probe to a level 1 curiosity. You have to research certain techs from "Science & Exploration" to see/explore the higher ones. If a planet has level 3 or 4 curiosity, you won't even know it until later after researching some more.

You will need to re-visit planets. Keeping exploration ships here and there throughout the galaxy is a good thing.

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System Specialization isn't really a thing like how city specialization is in Civ. In the beginning, yes. A system with a bunch of Cold planets is best focused on Science improvements while those with Hot planets are for Industry. But, by the end of the game when you can terraform everything into Temperatate/Fertile, literally any system can become a powerhouse for whatever.

That being said, the best systems to settle are the ones with the most population potential: more planets and bigger planets -- preferably those with tons of anomalies and resources.

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Click into the "Economy Screen" and look at the "System Development" panel ...

You can "level" a system with System Development, which is unlocked at tiers 3, 4, & 5 of the "Economy & Trade" research tree.

This upgrade offers customizable bonuses to FIDSI, Approval, Manpower, & Trade on that System.

Each stage is the same for every system in your empire. Whatever you choose as your "Level 2 Modernization" is going to be the same for every System and cannot be undone or altered later. (So choose wisely.)

Each level has to be built in order and doesn't erase or override the previous Level's bonuses (they stack).

Upgrading a system in this way costs luxury resources and one turn of production per Level. Each Level costs progressively more luxury resources than the previous Level, and each Level can use higher tier components.

Tier 1 components offer a lump sum bonus to the System. Tier 2 components offer per-population bonuses. Tier 3 components offer a powerful +% bonus to the system.

Every level 1 luxury is always available in every game, but Tier 2 & 3 luxuries are random. Again: exploration pays off in spades. The quicker you can explore the galaxy and unveil its curiosities, the quicker you can settle and capitalize on your favourite resources.

(There's nothing stopping you from using only Level 1 components in every level of modernization, but I wouldn't recommend it. I also recommend not using the same resource multiple times so you don't exhaust it and paint yourself into a corner later.)

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In the Senate Screen, click on "Population Details" ...

Every population type/species/faction offers a different on-planet bonus. For example, each working Imperial provides +1 Influence on that System in addition to whatever the planet normally provides per worker. Similary, each working Amoeba provides an extra +5 Food. Some provide bonuses when working on a planet of a specific type, such as Sophons, who yield extra Science when on a Cold planet.

You can boost/favour a population type by gifting that faction luxury resources. Each faction has a preferred luxury. By giving them one luxury per population point (in your empire), their on-planet bonus is doubled (!!!), and they become "favoured" for population growth.

Boosting a population to double its bonus is bonkers good. Make sure you colonize planets with the right preferred luxury resources (or have a good enough economy to buy/trade for them). Keep the good factions boosted 24/7.

As your empire gains ("collects") each population type, additional System-wide (!!!) bonuses are granted to Systems with that population type on any of its planets. Again: bonkers good. For every population type you like and favour, it's worth collecting at last 20 of them for the Collection Bonus II. Depending on the size of your galaxy and empire, getting to Collection Bonus III may only happen for a couple/few species, so choose wisely.

If you like min-maxxing, breeding the right population types and sending them to the right systems is where it's at. I love this part of the game.

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Keep your ships up-to-date and most useful by editing and customizing them.

(There's an entire strategy to ship building and combat tactics. Check out the Guides and Reddit.)

If you edit a ship's design, there will be an option to "upgrade" that ship in the field for Dust & Resources. "Upgrade" doesn't always mean better. If you modify a ship to be entirely different or lesser for the sake of quick production, "upgrading" that ship in the field will result in a downgrade.

Bear in mind, also, that upgrades are only available to ships of the same design. I bring this up only to say that you should never delete a design unless you have zero ships of that design anywhere anymore. If you delete the design, you lose all ability to upgrade existing ships of that design anymore.

My simplest recommendation is to make Settler and Explorer builds with no armor or weapons for the early game. It doesn't waste production and gets to the point more quickly.

Make note, though, that building ships and initiating attacks will bring the Militarists to political power in a quick damn hurry. Defending with your fleets only just barely boosts the Pacifists, though.

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Science becomes progressively more expensive as you research more technologies, so don't just willy-nilly choose whatever. Science isn't hard to make, but it's still not worth wasting.

Unlocking the Marketplace and owning the Trade Clearing Union is always an early-game focus for me. Being able to purchase Heroes and tax the market are game-changers.

Don't ignore or disregard Heroes. Hire them early. High level heroes make fleets and systems exponentially better.

I like aligning with the Sophons. They tend to research good stuff worth trading for and seem to be the only faction that isn't absolutely narcissistic, murderous, psychotic, or clueless.

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Those are the highlights of the stuff I felt like were "aha" type moments when they clicked for me.

[Nobukado]

My grand strategy:

1) In order to win, I need to control as much territory as possible. To do this, I need a few powerful fleets controlling the key chokepoints at the border of the territory I want to eventually control.

2) To do this, I need enough Science to research at least Size 2 ship hulls and Tier 3 military research to unlock better ship modules. I also need enough Dust per turn to support having a moderate sized military.

3) To get both, I need to expand. Due to overcolonization limit causing cumulative -10 empire-wide Approval penalties on all systems for going over the limit, I need to expand as smartly and as efficiently as I can. In the early game, you cannot "see" Uncommon and Rare Luxury resources, so you begin by expanding to systems that have Titanium and Hyperium first, then you'll probably expand to 1-2 large systems that have 4 or 5 planets (preferably non-gas giants). The latter does not necessarily have precious resources, but it will provide a moderate amount of FIDSI which will increase your Science output.

4) Use the Science to research Science Techs to unlock Uncommon and Rare luxury resources. Then use your Explorer ships to probe these. Then strategically settle new colonies to exploit 3 different luxuries to use in your System Development upgrades. You can either afford to go over the overcolonization limit (-10. -20, or -30 Approval on all systems can be tolerable, for a while), or if desperate, you can consider evacuating your worst colony to lower your overcolonization penalty. System Development upgrades are a great way to increase your FIDSI output.

5) The final System Development upgrade will unlock a project that will increase your overcolonization limit. Each system that builds the project increases the limit by 1. This process allows you to colonize more and more systems with less and less penalties. There is no limit to how many systems you can then possess.

6) At some point in the early mid-game, when you have moderate Science and Dust and Industry, then focus on building a moderate military to control those chokepoints I mentioned above. You may have to fight some battles in order to take these chokepoints, which is why you should have moderate military tech by this point so that your fleet is moderately strong. Once you control your chokepoints, AI opponents will have a hard time colonizing systems in your territory, limiting their expansion, while providing at least some protection to your own territory, and giving you more systems to colonize, which leads to more FIDSI.

7) Once you have more territory, and more systems, and more FIDSI, you can use this FIDSI to achieve whatever victory you need.

8) At higher difficulties, turn off Economic Victory. The AI gets FIDSI bonuses at higher difficulty, and this can make them win an Economic Victory faster than you can achieve any other victory. This is not a problem at lower difficulties.

9) The Hissho are overpowered, and if you know how to exploit their Mining Probes, then you can basically win the game on any difficulty.

10) Endless Space 2 has one of the best Custom Faction systems in any 4X game I have ever played. This adds a huge amount of replayability. You can make up whatever faction you want, you can change their politics and homeworld even.

[hardy_conrad]

I absolutely agree about the great job with custom factions, that's one of the areas where the game really shines. Not gonna lie, I'm constantly losing on the higher difficulties but so what? I'm having fun, gradually figuring (some) stuff out and the experience is new each time. More than can be said for a lot of the other 4x games I've played over the years.