Playing as the United Empire. Force or by spending influence points to get in their good books before undertaking a quest for them. To say that Endless Space 2 is an incomplete game, but. Welcome to Endless Space 2! And welcome to your galactic empire. You are about to launch on an adventure across the stars and planets of an ancient galaxy – a galaxy that you will come to dominate through diplomacy, commerce, technology, and war.
- Endless Space 2 Tech Guide
- Endless Space 2 United Empire Questions And Answers
- Endless Space 2 Faction Guide
- Endless Space 2 Wiki
- Endless Space 2 Walkthrough
United Empire Race in Endless Space 2 Endless Space 2 Guide. Next Races Sophons Prev Races What race should I choose? United Empire is a very versatile race that can go through anything. Their strength is based on Influence points that can be used in many ways. Interface Summary Empire and Senat Economy.
Strategy for You
While starting each game you should definitely keep several things in mind, especially if this is your first encounter with this game.
- Endless Space® 2 - Digital Deluxe. United Empire quest has serious problems Chapter 2, part 2 requires me to get 4 Industrialist laws passed. But I only have 3.
- Endless Space 2 is a 4X game (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) with a lot of variety. Each mechanic and faction in Endless Space 2 can involve a lot of depth, leaving new players overwhelmed and confused.
1. Select the human faction (United Empire) for your first playthrough. This way, it will be much easier to manage your empire. They employ classic solutions, their ships have the ability to mount larger numbers of modules, and they use Influence (one of the basic resources in the game) for the purposes of speeding up production, research, etc. They can also colonise a greater amount of systems before reaching the approval penalty, which is connected to having too many systems under your control. Alternatively, you could pick the Sophons (bonuses to exploration and science) or the Horatio (greater population of systems, upgrades to your population but more expensive vessels).
2. In the game you will often encounter the concept of FIDSI. This is an abbreviation for the five basic resources in the game: Food, Industry, Dust, Science, Influence. Food, Science and Industry speak for themselves, but Dust is the primary currency when it comes to buying resources or accelerating production. On the other hand, Influence is used to expand the borders of your empire and is also used during negotiations and diplomatic talks.
3. Systems are the basic territorial unit (the equivalent of cities in Civilization, provinces in Europa Universalis or planets in Sterallis), and not the planets in the systems. However, the more planets in the system, the better. Such a system will accommodate more population, will provide better FIDSI income (basic resources) and will have better chances of anomalies or strategic and luxury resources. Each planet has a different set of bonuses to the relevant FIDSI branch and to the approval. In the system itself you may juggle population units at will, especially since almost all races have specific bonuses to production on certain types of planets.
4. Focus on colonising large nearby systems. At the beginning you should avoid systems with a large number of gas planets. Their high yield of one of the basic resources may be tempting, but it will be a long time before you acquire the necessary technologies that make these planets useful. Focus on planets with friendly environments, special resources or positive anomalies, and consequently …
5. … Begin with exploration! This will help you find out which planets may be even more valuable (or less). You can often find a lost population unit or a new module for your ships. Each exploration ship (with the magnifying glass icon) has several probes on board. They restock every few turns depending on the advancement of the module. You can send the probes to a planet with a curiosity or launch them out into the unknown (they will uncover terrain for several turns). At the beginning you will only be able to travel by using star lines between the systems, but given time you will unlock Free Movement for your ships, which will allow you to reach the most isolated systems. It is worth building several of these ships at the beginning of the game, and even creating a small exploration fleet in the process, which will make it possible for you to handle e.g. an unexpected pirate vessel.
5. In order to colonize you need a colony ship (usually). Most races use the classic colonization model: build a colony ship, send it to a given system, build an outpost, and help to develop this outpost until it becomes a legitimate colony. I wrote usually, because some of the factions have different methods of settling, but you will find out more about this in the descriptions of particular races. Unlike many other games, when you build a colony ship it does not drain a unit of population from the native planet! The outpost encourages migration or tries to “grow” its own population. Thanks to this, you can produce colonization units without fear of reducing your own population in your system. If you find that you have unnecessarily settled a given system – use the “evacuation” command. You will get a colony ship at the cost of the entire population and the improvements that you have already constructed.
6. Modules are the elements of each ship – armaments, armour or shields, additional equipment (engines, probes, etc.).You will gain more powerful ships not by unlocking a better unit, but by unlocking new, more advanced modules and installing them onto a ship. In a separate ship design menu you can decide on the quantity and quality of the invented modules. You can also discover new hull-classes of ships, which will often have more hit points and modules, as well as denser module slots (e.g. you can mount weapon modules in a given location, but they will count as double).
7. Another simple way to increase the power of the fleet is to increase the Command Points. Each fleet has a limited number, which affects the number of ships in the fleet. Only one fleet can face off against another fleet in a battle. Only after the skirmish comes to an end can another fleet join the fray. Therefore, even a small, but strong fleet can overcome several fleets of the enemy, one by one. Some technologies will allow you to develop this modifier, which will allow you to make up for the firepower by having a greater number of vessels in the fleet.
8. Pirates come from neutral systems belonging to minor factions. They will appear from time to time and circulate around the system looking for a fight. Until you conquer or assimilate such a system, their fleets will be created every few turns. Their quantity will be limited and the size of the fleet depends on the size of the neutral settlement. The more minor factions, the more such groups will travel throughout the nearby area.
9. Make sure to have the adequate administrators and admirals (heroes). It is better to have specialists than universal agents (although one or two “fillers” will always be useful). Heroes have access to many development paths, so check out all of the options and pick one of the two paths, that I am suggesting. The Admiral is a character, who will develop only fleet related skills and will lead your best ships into battle. The Administrator is a hero, who will focus on increasing the profitability and productivity of your best systems or of the ones which have just been settled (in order to accelerate growth). You may, however, assign one or two skills from the opposite branch of the skill tree, in order to make the characters more useful in times of peace/war.
10.Cold War – the diplomatic status you have with every newly encountered civilization. You can attack enemy fleets outside of their sphere of influence and block/invade their systems if they are within the range of your influence. This will affect your relationship with the given race. Increased generation of Influence (purple star symbol) in a given system can expand your sphere of influence. Thanks to that, you will not only gain a reserve of diplomatic currency, but you will also be able to take over the enemy system in a peaceful manner (or in the already mentioned military manner). In addition, if an asteroid belt or a nebulon field is within the range of the influence of your system, you will receive its respective bonus.
11.In the later part of the game you can get the access to terraforming option. Thanks to it you can not only change planets so they become more pleasant but they also will have more space. However, this process changes your FIDSI profits – the more pleasant worlds such as oceanic or terran have a good Food production but the bonuses for other resources are much smaller. Repulsive worlds such as lava or arid have the biggest bonuses to Production and Science per capita. Sometimes, those planets can have anomalies that can make living on those planets easier for citizens or have luxury resources that can help in production or increase Approval. There may be situations in which you are forced to colonize a repulsive world to get a rare strategic resource.
12.Minor factions (marked by dark grey color) are small civilizations that inhabit single systems. They don’t create fleets, although they are full of pirates. On the other hand you can have diplomatic relationships with those small civilizations and create an alliance if you have the best relations with a given faction. By doing that you receive Dust, Science points, Manpower and you can even get luxury resources. With a full relationship bar you can also assimilate a faction which allows a system and its citizens to join you in a peaceful way. Of course, another option is to declare a war and invade such system if you can’t assimilate them in any other way because a different empire has already established the best possible relation.
13. The more representatives of a given faction you have, the better are the bonuses from Collection Status. Usually they appear when you have 12, 20 and 50 representatives of a population in the entire empire. The first one is a fixed bonus to ideology if a representative is in a system. The next bonuses are more diverse: a percentage bonuses to a FIDSI resource, bigger Approval, a unique law etc. The game usually rewards those players that have many representatives in a system. Some laws and upgrades offers you a bonus for each type of population in a system. On the other hand, it is hard to get more than one full bonus because of a population’s size.
14. Carefully select weapon modules and enhancements. In the beginning of a game you should simply invest in the best weapon module or have a similar amount of kinetic and laser weapons. Thanks to that even if your enemy has, e.g. a thick armor you can still hurt them with lasers. This also applies to additional modules. If you have a module that enhances energy weapons then you should only install this type of weapons on that ship because this allows you to maximize the firepower. Better modules require technologies that are based on strategic resources. They are easy to differentiate – a module’s color corresponds to a particular strategic resource. If the color is white then you don’t need additional resources. Notice, that bigger ships requires strategic resources to even create a ship’s hull so before that you should first seize a suitable system or buy resources from the Marketplace.
15. There are many ways that lead to victory. Some civilizations are better in winning peacefully, others can do great during wars. Bonuses given by representatives of main race’s population also have a big impact and can determine your play style. Remember that each civilization has a series of unique quests that offers bonuses that are impossible to get by other races. A new hero, a unique weapon module, System Development technology or a bonus for the entire empire. It is worth to complete all of those quests because they can greatly strengthen your civilization. From time to time you can get a random quest or you can get one from a minor faction that allows you to assimilate them faster. Sometimes you can also receive a quest with a time limit that is given to all civilizations, e.g. who gets the most Science points.
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Endless Space 2 has a classic structure: a tight, turn based, 4X strategy space game with both solo and multiplayer, broad selection of races to choose from, and the ability to customize your own within certain limits. On top of that solid foundation, they’ve added a deeply integrated quest system which adds an element of almost RPG-like interplay, a fine diversity of play styles between species, and a space combat system which focuses more on choosing the right tactic for the ships you have and the enemies you’re up against than directly micromanaging the details of each engagement.
Grounded gameplay combined with spectacular graphics and compelling narratives make ES2 a standout example that should do well with DLC. Like Endless Space, downloadable content has added factions, game changing mechanics, and even changes to the soundtrack.
The best way to tackle what’s available is to split it up between that which you will pay for and that which you can have for free. For the most part, factions and mechanics are found in pay DLC and story and graphical updates are found in free DLC.
Premium Expansions
What can you get for your hard earned dollars in deep space?
Vaulters
All of Amplitude’s Endless games are in the same universe and timeline. One of the most popular factions from Legend (and the driver of Dungeon) are the Vaulters, the seeds of whom crash landed on the dying planet Auriga and fought their way back into space. Their personal narrative is all about finding where they came from and looking for a place to actually settle down. Also in this DLC are the Sisters of Mercy, who might have a band but definitely are a minor faction now who could be swayed to your side.
Mechanically, Vaulters add the ability for any faction to engage in diplomacy with the pirates, letting you support them, use diplomatic leverage to disrupt them, or most amusingly – hire them to go after one of your enemies. Nothing says love like paying someone to kill for you.
Worth It?
Absolutely. The Vaulters have an interesting storyline, their defensively focused ships both look cool and play well, and they provide a solid choice for those players who want a human faction to back who aren’t some kind of crazy violent empire. The pirate mechanics are really just gravy.
Lost Symphony
If you were looking for more music by the same composer to play in-game, Lost Symphony is the first DLC for ES2 to deliver that. Seven new tracks are nothing to sneeze at and the game music is evocative, but if you mute the soundtrack and play your own music instead, that might not be the big selling point here.
For me, the interesting part is that they’ve added a new minor faction which used to be a major faction in ES1, intergalactic travelers who give you a bonus to resource harvesting if you manage to sway them to your side. In their original incarnation, they sought to destroy Dust (the magic nanotech which is the MacGuffin of the setting) and it’s interesting to see them return in this less apocalyptic form.
Worth It?
Probably not. It’s extremely cheap but unless you are really into the soundtrack or have an emotional connection to the original Endless Space, it’s not for you.
Untold Tales
Here ES2 DLC heads off in a unique direction. Untold Tales focuses on the minor factions and heroes of the game, adding 21 minor faction quests, four minor factions (including the original Sowers, out of control autonomous sentient terraforming robots), and heroes from each of the new minor factions.
Worth It?
Yes, surprisingly. While one of the cheaper DLCs for the game, UT adds a lot of depth by expanding on the quest narrative portion of gameplay, which really breaks up what can be of very sort of rote 'most efficient' style of play. Balancing the pursuit of answers and resources to reach the end of these stories, fighting the pressure of everything else going on pushes play in new ways. Four new heroes is just a plus.
Supremacy
There’s always one DLC which generates the controversy in the player community, and for ES2, Supremacy is it. It’s not because of the introduction of the genre-mandated fanatical warrior race, the Hissho – they’re actually rather cool and interesting. Their unique mechanical quirk is that they have a social resource which can only be replenished through combat in order to activate their special abilities, and their population doesn’t have Happiness but instead Obedience. Nor does the controversy come from the minor faction which was introduced, obsessive survival of the fittest machines.
Endless Space 2 Tech Guide
The controversy comes from the introduction of Behemoths, massive spaceships with the ability to upgrade and specialize, one such specialization effectively allowing you to destroy planets from multiple star systems away. Some decided that was simply too powerful.
From a game design perspective, it’s easy to understand why Behemoths were added. They provide late game pressure for pushing toward resolution. Eventually, someone will begin developing Behemoths, and it’s in your best interest to either be the first to do so or make sure you control the resources to prevent someone else from doing so. Once someone begins developing Behemoths, it gives other factions a good reason to cooperate and work against them.
Worth It?
Oh yes. The Hissho are an interesting implementation of a warrior race within the framework of the Endless Universe, and for that alone this would be worth the price, but Behemoths provide another source of pressure on gameplay which helps drive that sense of late game urgency and pull things away from feeling like it’s just going to be a grind to one of the victory conditions.
Harmonic Memories
Endless Space 2 United Empire Questions And Answers
Another of the soundtrack expansions, Harmonic Memories brings nine tracks which are re-arrangements of songs from the original ES with new instruments and musicians by the original composer. Cool if you’re into the original soundtrack, but probably not a big hook for most people. The game-mechanical bit is the addition of a new hero from the Harmony minor faction, which is solid but only if you care about heroes and their stories.
Worth It?
Nope. If the price is right and you enjoy the work Amplitude is doing, there’s no reason not to buy it to show support but that's about it. The tracks are nice enough but not really sufficient to make me feel that this is something you need in your life. Think of it as a purely voluntary contribution and it is alright.
Celestial Worlds
The quest lines and narrative really make ES2 stand out from the crowd, and Celestial Worlds puts them front and center. The core is a sprawling, multi-chapter quest which centers on the story of the hero Academy and its disintegration or security as characters start pursuing their own interests and you have to decide who to help or who to hinder along the way. There’s also several new heroes, two more unique planets, six weapon modules, and eight new things you can build to enhance your empire.
This is the sort of thing that low cost the DLC should do. If you pass over it, you haven’t made the game less playable; picking it up just gives you more options of content to experience.
Worth It?
Without a doubt. If there is any problem with this particular DLC, it’s that thanks to the number of narrative elements which are floating around in the game at this point, the timeline of what you know and when you know it is starting to get a little confused. If you have some experience with the game before, events being a little out of order won’t bother you at all. If you’re a stickler for only learning things in a very constrained order, this may bug you. You can always disable DLC and reenable it a little at a time if you want to replicate the original experience. You’ll definitely want CW to be part of where you end up.
Penumbra
Strategy Gamer has done a recent review of the Penumbra expansion which definitely bears reading. To recap: this is the real espionage expansion for this 4X game. The “hacking” system is a node-focused spying system with the serial numbers changed. The Umbral Choir are the extra-dimensional invisible influencers who are limited to a single hidden system and their secret invisible sanctuaries spread throughout the galaxy. The addition of cloaking/invisibility for ships on top of it all is a lot of things to add at one go.
Worth It?
Yes, with the caveat that it’s extremely likely there will be some fairly aggressive balancing that occurs in the next couple of months after release. There are a couple of bugs which are more annoying than game-breaking but the real focus is likely to be trying to put the Choir on the same footing as the rest of the major factions. That could come down to simply making their trade-offs more visible to players.
Free DLC
There’s no point in asking whether free DLC is worth it or not – any value at all makes it worthwhile. But what are you getting for your investment of bandwidth?
Endless Day
An exclusive quest, a unique hero, and a planet anomaly, all only available to play every year between the 21st and 25th of January in order to celebrate the original release of the game? It’s a built-in holiday!
Stellar Prisoner
The neutron star is a cool star system which looks amazing when you have fleets going at one another there, and once you discover it a quest unlocks for you. There’s also a couple of heroes who come along for the ride, including Koros Apogee, a charming member of the obligatory all-consuming hive-mind faction. Two more unique planets round out the content. In addition, Amplitude put in some tools which were squarely aimed at modders, who’ve been happy to take them and run.
Galactic Statecraft
This is the big Diplomacy patch, adding a ton more diplomatic interactions, things which require multiple turns in order to fully play out, and a way to ping parts of the map to let your allies know what you need. That the AI makes use of the same tools, understanding where you want to attack and defend and telling you where it would like you to attack and defend if you’re allies is a big deal. Weapons had a rework, pirates were introduced, and increasing the population and tech level of your systems will put space stations in orbit. There are some more narrative events to tell story, and the roots of the Academy experience which comes to a fruition in Celestial Worlds are planted here. Surprisingly, there’s also a leaderboard, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into.
Little Grin Man
The community for Amplitude games is really involved, and they like to both court and cultivate that community whenever they can. This Halloween update plays on speculation about a character who appears in the background of a lot of game art. The developers decided to build an entire quest line around him and a minor faction – and it’s surprisingly amusing.
Target Locked
Fighters and bombers were a big deal – first that they weren’t part of the base game, and then that they were. Here they were introduced and the cinematic battle mode became even more cinematic, explosions got bigger, planet destruction bits became even more joyously destructive, and a pirate heroine from the first ES popped in.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Not a big DLC by any means, a new quest, a new hero, a new empire improvement, and a new diplomacy contextual effect is nothing to sneeze at, but perhaps the most cruel addition to any turn based strategy game ever made was the addition of an in game clock so you never have the excuse of saying “just one more turn” without fully recognizing that it’s 4 AM and you have work in a few hours.
You’re going to say it anyway.
Stories
Not in-game content at all, but instead a series of digital comic books, each focusing on one of the major factions. It’s no surprise that the art is beautiful, but the writing isn’t bad either and it’s certainly no burden to read and experience a little more of each of the factions’ back stories.
Renegade Fleets
The August 2018 free weekend was extremely popular, and as a result Amplitude released seven new fleet skins for core factions. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they are absolutely beautiful and my favorite is probably the Sophon red and black. Absolutely no game effect, absolutely no reason to have it – except that the skins are fun and really attractive.
Recommendation
If you're not looking to pick up every DLC all at once, here is an informal suggestion of which premium packs to buy and in what order. A few things are a bit situational - for example if you value Hacking or narrative over combat, you should pick say Penumbra over Supremacy, and so on...
- Vaulters
- Supremacy
- Penumbra
- Celestial Worlds
- Untold Tales
If you like turn based 4X space strategy, this is a game that you probably want to keep an eye on. Even without a sale, Vaulters and Supremacy are less than $13 each and of the rest of the paid DLC are under $3 each. As content goes, it’s a bargain.