Do you like “Civ” games? Are you into magic or other nerd garbage? Do you wish dragons were real and on C-SPAN? Well, this could be the place for you! “Endless Legend” is the turn-based 4X game. There’s a lot of playstyles to go over. But I’m gonna go through all of them. Wait, that’s a space ship. This is a sci-fi game… Let me give you the quick rundown. The first game in the series is called “Endless Space”, and it’s also a 4X. It didn’t use tiles like this game – the map looked more like this: It did have some issues, but it was competent, and sold pretty well. Well enough to fund two more games. A smaller team made “Dungen of the Endless” – an RPG Roguelike Tower Defense game. Bizarre, but pretty fun. The bigger team made “Endless Legend”, which was also turn-based, but fantasy. So you can call Amplitude a lot, but not risk-averse. Ah, right, all these games are in a chronological order, too! “Dungeon” is the first game, then “Legend”, then “Space”. I’ll get to how that works out soon, but for now let’s dive in. Over the years, the game’s gotten some free updates and expansions, so it’s changed a lot from release. So, for the most part I’ll try to go through the gameplay by faction and introduce new stuff they added when it comes around. I mean, look at this! I can’t do this all at once! If you value your eyes, the first thing you wanna do is turn the big UI on. I’m really not sure why this isn’t the standard, but whatever… If you have all the expansions, you’ll have eleven factions to choose from, and they all play very differently. In case you’re wondering: yeah, there’s twelve here, but one’s just a reskin. They also have a system where you can make your own custom faction, but I don’t use it often, because it breaks the game, and easily. When you make a new game, there are tons of map settings to choose from. This way you can let your inner cartographer, who was wise enough not to get a degree in it, run wild. You can tweak nearly any game setting you can think of. So if you want a “warfare only” game, you can go for it. “Endless Legend” doesn’t have a story campaign or scenario editor, so the base games are what you’re gonna get. I’ll get to new factions later, but start with the base ones. Vaulters are simplest, besides elves. "Y-A-A-A-A-GH-H!!" The Vaulters are a Science-based faction. They’re descendants of a space ship crew that crashed thousands of years ago. The first thing that I noticed about “Endless Legend” is that it has a very unique art style. Yeah, the Vaulters stuff does look like Viktor Antonov work, but that’s pretty unique for a fantasy setting. On a technical level, it’s not really that good. All the effects are limited by what their version of Unity could do, but the art direction really carries the game. Instead of just slapping a text box on an event and calling it a day, they have really nice artwork to go with everything that happens. There’s some stuff that gets recycled for events, but the original stuff is fantastic. I’m willing to bet money there are a bunch of D&D nerds out there who have these as wallpapers and have no clue what they’re from. This is a distraction to hide that the game is not exactly incredible up close. The artwork, the style and the color all come together, and the game world looks great. You can only see shortcomings if you REALLY peer close. So here’s how the game is played: cities work off of four main tile resources, called FIDS, which are present in every “Endless” game. You got Food, Industry, Dust and Science. But “Legend” introduced Influence, so I guess it’s FIDSI now. Food affects how many of these new workers you get, which you can move around to make more resources in the city. The more Food you have – the more workers you can maintain and the faster it will grow. Industry represents how many factories or sweat shops your city has. The higher the Industry – the faster your city can make buildings and units. Now, Dust is a… Let’s just say it’s your money in this game. You can use it for stuff like paying off building and unit maintenance, getting stuff off the market or just buying out a unit and building instantly, if you can afford it. Science is straightforward: the more you have – the faster you unlock technology. You can get anything from a wheel representing an Era, and once you get enough of one, you can unlock the next wheel. There’s no trees – get what you want. Plus, each faction has unique stuff, and some can only be found from quests and events. Influence is a tricky one. Think of it as... “diplomatic good boy points”. You spend it to make trade deals, create empire plans or assimilate minor factions. You get these resources off the map by where your city is put down. When your population gets higher, you can build expansions to it and stretch out the tiles you exploit. Then later you can get buildings which increase your output. The map isn’t designed in a way where you could put a city down and expand wherever you want. When you set a city down, you’re claiming ownership of an entire region, and there’s only one city per region. So, if you’re gonna settle, you gotta choose wisely. Each region has unique resources you could dig up if you have the technology for it. Some are strategics for buildings and weapons, others are luxury resources, which can give your empire some pretty big buffs. But you need to spend them to activate the effects. Vaulters are unique in that they can activate strategics this way. You don’t only find these things in tiles though. Regions will always have some minor faction mud huts, so you can do a quest for them, which might give you extra resources, or just kill them off. This is useful when they live in one of your regions, because each one counts as a worker towards your city. If you assimilate them, they’ll give you some nice buffs. Plus, you can then draft them into the army. So whether you’re grave-robbing for hard cash or finding a place to put a new city down, you really get rewarded for exploring. But you do have to take the risk that the locals or an enemy empire might see your troops and attack them. It’s risk versus reward. It’s why Vaulters are good for new players. They don’t do anything too crazy, and with their Science bonus you could see the stuff in the game pretty quickly. They have excellent defense, since you can teleport troops from city to city. They also get bonus resources during the Winter. Alright, the Winter! I can talk about this setting a little bit, and what’s going on here. Like I said before, the only story is doing your faction’s main quest. Even though the factions are different, they all have a very similar goal in mind. They’re all aware that their planet of Auriga is about to eat shit hard, so they’re each seeking a solution to either wait it out or get off the planet. (whispering) It doesn’t end very well… The deep lore is that the entire planet was a laboratory for an ancient race called The Endless. But then it got bombed out a few million years ago by other Endless, or… somebody… and it was lost to time forever. So the current planet is made up of a combination of escaped lab experiments and a prisoner ship that crashed a few thousand years ago. The Winters are becoming more frequent, longer and harsher. There’s less resources in Winter, and people will starve if you’re not careful. It only gets harder as the game goes on. Most units will have movement penalties, and the effects will become even harder. You should always be thinking about Winter. But if you’ve got technology, or you’re a faction like the Allayi, you’ll always know when the Winter is coming. Otherwise, you can only make a guess. We’ll talk more about Winter a little bit later. Some expansions tweaked it a bit. As for the Vaulters, I like their aesthetic, and they’re fun to play, but I’ve heard arguments that another faction is good for new players. “We must leave the forest. Start again. Explore and reach out.” They’re elves. These are the Wild Walkers, and they… ehh… they really like trees… If their cities are exploiting a forest tile, they get way more production out of it. So if you have a nice forest and some good anomalies that boost production, you could get a pretty big start. They have an ability where they can sense enemy armies in your own region or neighboring ones. Their units also get more defense if they spend time squatting in trees. But I don’t think we should talk about combat just yet. We’re having a good time, let’s not ruin it… Their production bonuses mean that they’re pretty adept at pumping out armies quickly, so, if they’re left to frolic in the woods alone too long, they can have a Woodstock swarm show up at your doorstep. They’re pretty simple to play, and they don’t bring anything unusual. Idunno… I think we could move on. “Use your eyes, or I will remove them in atonement.” These are the edgy wizards. If you combined the mall Hot Topic with “Harry Potter”, you’d probably have the Ardent Mages. They can pay resources to cast magical pillars in their cities, which help boost their output, or other effects, like increasing troop speed around it. They can even use spells in battle. Ugh… There’s no avoiding it… Let’s just do this now. Battles take place right on the game world map. You can choose a few tiles to deploy your troops, choose their stance and who they should attack. Then you click “Launch” and watch it happen. It’s a bit “hands-off”… If you want, you can zoom out and do something else on the map. It’s not… terrible, but it’s not good either. Yeah, I’m gonna have to bring this one up. Besides having cool designs, you can also customize your units in “Endless Legend”. You can choose the kind of weapons they use, research upgrades for them, use materials to make new weapons or find them from quests – there’s tons. There are also hero units you can get, and they have the same level of customization for their equipment. Besides being able to equip special stuff you might find from ruins or quests, they also have skill trees, and these skills depend on the class of the hero and the faction they’re in. So you can set them up as a good governor, a powerful leader or a strong warrior. Now, all of this sounds cool, but the thing is – these are all passives. There’s nothing you click on. Any sort of spell a magic unit has is just a damage modifier. In a game like this, with some really creative units, that’s pretty disappointing. The “Guardians” expansion tried to fix this with some super units, but their abilities are mainly in the overworld, not in battle. To make it even less appealing, the auto-resolve system is really fair. There have only been a handful of times where I thought that controlling a battle would save the outcome for me. Those were mainly based on unit weaknesses, or if I saw some terrain I could use. What makes it a problem for me especially is that a game came out a few months before this, which had a system like that. Even if you say that’s too short-term, it’s clear they are looking at a ton of other things. So they had plenty to draw from. To be fair, “Endless Space” used a “pick a card” system for the battles, so… maybe I expected too much. But to get back on topic, the Mages are unique, because they have active spells they can use in combat. Briefly, but they’re there. Let’s check out another faction. “We must drain Dust – drain energy, or die…” These are the Broken Lords. Basically, suit-of-armor-Dust-vampires. If you'd look at the map, something’s missing. You see it? They don’t use Food. Because these are the Money Boys. Broken Lords are walking ATMs. Since they live off Dust, you have to buy new workers. No passive Food increase for you. Your units don’t auto-heal either – you gotta buy that too. You’ve always gotta be sniffing around for new money sources. Dust is everything. This might sound tedious, but there are big bonuses here. The Winter doesn’t hit you as hard, since there’s no Food stores to freeze up. Plus, when you’re making a new city, you can buy out population and buildings quickly. They can make a new high-quality city faster than pretty much anyone else in the game. You make money, and you don’t stop until your Capital looks like a castle in a Yung Lean video. The drawback is your success depends on a map. Without good Dust income, you’re toast. So, if things get bad, you have to search high and low for nickels. Units can’t heal outside of combat without Dust, but they can in combat with Dust Bishops. So get used to using this formation a lot. If you’re falling short on anything, you can always just buy off the market. Unless these dudes show up... “Do they not see that only Dust can give them what they want?” “For it is money and power and magic…” This is the Roving Clan. They are a group of desert nomads who have the control over the whole world’s economy. That’s not even a joke. Any time someone buys something off the market, you get a share of it. First thing you see is that all their units are mounted. It makes sense – they are nomads, after all. They have big bonuses to trade route income. These are made by building roads or a dock. They are very diplomatic people. So diplomatic that you can’t actually declare war on anybody. But the Clan has a bonus where mercenaries bought off the market have double their life. And there’s some tricks you can do. There’s an Era 4 technology, called “Privateers”, but the Clan gets it in Era 2. This disguises your troops. When you activate it on your mercenaries, to other players they look like a neutral army. So to them it looks like the minor factions are attacking their cities, not you. If they wise up to your trickery and start amassing troops on the border, you just take your city and pack it up on a beetle. Once you feel comfortably far away, you can just resettle it back down. It takes some time, but, boy, is it funny! Not to mention that the trade routes immediately get rebuilt. Now, if someone is really getting pissy – just outright ban them from the market. Good luck getting resources now… They are a fun faction to play with a lot of neighbors. Very schemy. Let’s get on to the next one. “They will not only be our hands and our eyes – they will be the sword and the shield of our armies that will bring the Eternal End…” These are the Cultists of the Eternal End, and believe it or not, they were designed by players. They turned out so well, because Amplitude did it the smart way. JEFF SPOCK: “We had so many brilliant ideas – over a hundred great ideas – and the community voted on it.” JEFF SPOCK: “Ended up with this one: The Cultists of the Eternal End. The name alone makes you want to play them, I know!” JEFF SPOCK: “So, first off, I have to thank Nosferatiel, who came up with the design,” JEFF SPOCK: “Telum, who came up with the city and unit artwork, and Adazu came up with the ships and the logo.” JEFF SPOCK: “You guys are an example of why our community is so awesome (and I use that word very seldom)!” That’s how you let fans help you with your game – you use a screening process. On a visual level, they're probably my favorite faction. They’re big, twitchy, faceless mannequins. Unlike the others, Cultists can only have one city. This makes where you first settle one of the most important decisions you’ll make in the game. That’s not to say you can’t expand – you just do it differently. When a village is pacified – either through bribery, burning it down or doing a quest for them – you can spend Influence to convert it. It’ll start generating units for you. It will also extract the tiles around it, just like regular city does. It will even exploit a small percentage of all the resources in the region. And you can convert these villages ANYWHERE – they just have to be pacified. So if you want, you can walk in your neighbor’s territory and convert their village to the Cult. But they probably will be unhappy with it… They’ve lost a free worker and any bonuses they got from that village. The perks of having one city means you don’t need to decide where you put national buildings, since you only have one option. You wanna try and snag as many legendary buildings as you can, before neighbors do. Your regular Cultist units aren’t exceptional, so you’ll be relying on minor factions to do most of your dirty work for you. You kinda want to herd your converts towards the enemy, like some kind of Abrahamic Jim Jones. One big problem is that your villages are vulnerable. Once neighbors find out where you live, you could also be in some trouble. So you’ve gotta keep your areas guarded. Otherwise, nerds might outmaneuver you and strike right at your city. This is because everybody knows that the Cult makes terrible neighbors, so they’ll come for you. But they’re definitely not the worst neighbors. “…their hunger. But I hunted for something more.” “I stole the sentience of an ancient power and saw greater purpose.” “For we were the first. Auriga is our planet!” Necrophages are a swarm of undead hornets, and there’s nothing good about that. You can’t use diplomacy with these guys. The only talking you’ll do is war-related (even if idiot dragons think otherwise). The Necrophage goal is to spread out like you’re in a horror movie. Necrophages take a penalty to any Food tiles they’re on, but they can get bonus Food supplies if they keep murdering everybody. For every eight units they kill, they get a Food stockpile, which they could apply to one of their cities. Uncle Ben’s rice IS Uncle Ben! Their first priority is usually raiding all the villages outside their region. At the same time, you wanna be looking for resources that will boost your Food output. Then you can spread around even more. One of the units you unlock can turn enemies you hit in battle into soldiers, and these soldiers can go over the stack limit for the unit capacity. Or you can sell them off for extra cash. If you start snowballing early, you could run through all your neighbors. If their units don’t have any AOE capabilities, they’re gonna have a really bad time. You can create so many soldiers and so quickly. They even get an attack bonus for each person you have a war declared on. So by the time they’re weakening your front forces, you should have really big stuff cooking. I really enjoy them as a swarm faction – they give you exactly what they’re selling. But that being said, it’s time for my least favorite faction. “Protect and maintain, as we always have. We may lack their sight and their knowledge…” The Drakken are… dragons. They aren’t noble or ferocious dragons – they’re just smug. Big smug lizards. The Drakken start the game knowing where everybody is. So you don’t have to wonder if they’re in your game – they’ll tell you in the first 5 seconds. Supposedly, their goal is to get along with everybody, but that doesn’t work. All those factions I mentioned earlier are living in the same place. Thinking they’ll all get along isn’t naïve – it’s just stupid. If you keep to yourself, they’ll always be asking for peace deals, but they only do this if they’re more powerful than you. If you surpass them at anything, you’re suddenly a threat to world peace. They can spend influence to FORCE you into peace, or even an alliance. I don’t want that! They even have these really powerful military units. But if you capture a neighbor’s city when THEY attack YOU – you’re the bad guy. You can’t trust anyone to keep peace in this game. So I hate them. Even the bugs are less gross. Those are all the base factions, but three of the expansions each added a new faction. Each one of them specialized in a certain gameplay mechanic that the expansion brought in. So we’ve still got a ways to go. Let’s start with “Shadows”. “In fear and shame they turned their backs on us, closing the door…” “Shadows” added a new group called The Forgotten. They’re a group of Vaulters that got kicked out. This is why most of them look like Shadow the Hedgehog. Every Forgotten unit has stealth, so if others don’t have towers or a spotter unit, they can’t see you. And I mean EVERY unit – from the settlers to the… dual-wielding crossbows. The Forgotten didn’t pay attention in school, because they were carving this on their desk, so they just buy technology. They don’t need Science. But they can also strait up steal homework, too. This is thanks to a new espionage mechanic. Unlike some other 4X games, you can actually choose what to steal. That’s a big plus. The new spy mechanic works by assigning a hero to an enemy city. The first advantage is that you can see what their city’s doing, like you’re the player. You get more options the longer the spy is in the city. The effects also become more devastating. You can take an action against a city or even the entire empire, if you’ve been there long enough. You can weaken an enemy’s entire army for a pretty decent time. If you think there’s a spy on the loose, you could have a roundup. This destroys the civil rights to your people for a few turns and halves your production, but you do have a better chance of finding the bad man. Otherwise, you can just boost your city’s security, which the eyeball represents. If you’re crafty with Forgotten, you could run around the enemy lines all you want. “Shadows” introduced the pillaging mechanic, where you can rob buildings outside the main city, so if you hang out there a few turns, you get some money, plus the resources it dug up. Though I’ve gotta wonder: why is this a technology? You don’t need to go to West Point to learn how to burn a house down. I’ve never won with Forgotten, but they’re fun to play. Even without them, the expansion was worth it for the spy mechanics and the raiding. Time for “Shifters”. “…are not true Aurigans, and do not see that She, our Mother, as Her life ebbs low…” The Allayi are bat-moth people. I’m not sure how the design meeting went, but it was probably something like: “What should the new faction be?”
“Ehh, Idunno… Night Stalker?” Joking aside, they’re pretty alright. If I had to sum them up in one word, it would be “mobile”. They’re supposed to be natives of the planet, so they’re really good at crossing the terrain. This makes them unrivaled for map intel. One of their units is immune to being attacked by minor factions and ignores terrain types. Good luck catching that thing. The catch is they can’t expand cities like other factions. To build new burrows you need a new resource, called “pearls”. Your faction can find them in ruins. But when Winter rolls around, they spawn on the map, and anybody can grab them. They might even cry about it, too. You can unlock a special altar building when you get enough pearls. Anyone can get it. You can spend pearls to modify the effects of Winter, or unlock unique tech and buildings. It’s a pretty good incentive for every faction to explore during the Winter. But getting back to the bats – their units are “okay” during the Summer. Their units get some massive gains during Winter. Which means, while everyone else is at their weakest, these guys are at their absolute strongest. Seasons play a bigger role in strategy with this guys, compared to others. I’m not really good at them, but I have gotten stomped by them in multiplayer. So, if you know how to use their range and vision, they’re pretty formidable. Okay, last faction. “What if they break free,” “with their power, hatred and paranoia?” The Morgawr are the latest faction. They’re escaped telepathic lab experiments. Get ready for some Lovecraft. These fish came with an entire ocean expansion. There are now ocean territories, with a brand new minor faction. You can gain control of these territories, like land ones, by taking over sea fortresses. You take them by pacifying forts, just like you do land villages – either through quests, or burning them all down. You gotta be careful about the weather though. The oceans have dangerous storms and tile-blockers, like seaweed and fog. These tiles will also have an effect on sea battles as well. There are also the undersea ruins to explore, but your main reason for RP-ing “Deadliest Catch” is control of the facilities. Some of them have ridiculous benefits that you can’t get on land. I’m talking about “Red Alert 2” weather control devices here. Even without those, facilities generate resources for you. You can make docks for sea trade routes, and controlling an ocean gives you a lot of vision. So, even if you’re not a big frog, it’s worth checking out. Back on that, only one Morgawr combat unit is land-based, but they move quickly through water – so stick to rivers. Their one unit isn’t very strong on land, but they have some ways around it, besides assimilating a minor faction. Through a small amount of Influence, they can mind-control a neutral unit. They have a higher upkeep to balance it, but if you know what you’re doing, it’s not a problem. They rack in Influence by exploring the oceans, so it won’t be a problem either. They can also make any pacified village go crazy and spawn an army. Which you can then mind-control… This makes your enemies focus on the local struggle, but they really don’t have a counter to this. Besides killing you. You can do this multiple times a turn, and instantly. It’s not expensive either. I’ve talked about how a lot of factions can steamroll, but I haven’t really spoken about balance. That’s because nothing stuck out to me as overpowered. Besides this. You can take countermeasures against factions that don’t directly involve warfare, but not with these guys. I’m saying this as someone who’s never lost a game with them. They need some toning down. They’re in a really odd place to balance though, because they’re just so map-reliant. Sure, if they spawn in the desert with NO water, they’ll probably lose, but I don’t see those maps in multiplayer games. They’re the only faction with unique sea monsters. So if you’re gonna challenge then on the ocean, you better be prepared. Oh, God… Their playstyle is a blast, but I don’t use them against people anymore, because I know they’re obnoxious. Fun for comp-stomping. Speaking of AI: it’s not the best. Once you know how to play, I think the Serious difficulty offers the most fair challenge. That’s because this is one of those games where they have to cheat item and resource values at higher levels. At the same time, they don’t seem to do things like spy until higher levels either. The way they make their armies isn’t very smart either, but Serious makes them formidable, without cheating for them too hard. At least for a tile 4X game, I think this might be my favorite one for multiplayer. Playstyles are unique enough that you could get some pretty silly alliances and events that you can’t get from something like a “Civ” game. Competitive and cooperative world quests help you make a decision between who you should help out or screw over. It’s a great time with friends. Just be careful about playing with people with really bad internet or from Australia. I’ve seen a lot of technical difficulties. So do I recommend this, even with lackluster combat? My recommendation would be a little shaky on release, but now I think it’s a great game. Unless you’re drooling at the mouth, wanting to play it after seeing all this, I’d still recommend waiting for a sale though. Because it does go on sale pretty often. If a friend of yours has the expansions, you might not even need to buy them. For multiplayer games, if the host has the expansions, everyone else gets to play with them too. So you only need to get them if you want to play singleplayer. There’s naught really a “must have” expansion, since they’re all so different. I didn’t talk much about the “Guardians” expansion, because it just added new units, quests and buildings. So if you really liked the base game and just wanted more of it – I’d say pick up that one. If they’ll make a sequel, I’d really like to see combat improved. It’s the weakest part. I feel like trading, minor factions and some other stuff could be expanded on, but they don’t stick out AS sorely as the combat in this game. It’s not as simple as the newer “Civ” game, but it’s definitely not as complicated as something like a Paradox game. I’ve taught a few people to play, and it seems pretty easy to pick up. If you’re looking for something with deeper intrigue and complexity, I don’t think it’s for you. But if you’re looking for a laid-back strategy game with some very nice visuals and music, I’d say go get it. And that is “Endless Legend”. I’ve been assembling the secret army for the upcoming “Planetside 2” video. I’ve also been reading the comments, requesting obscure Russian shooters and bizarre sci-fi French RPGs, and those will be coming, eventually. I’m trying to keep a two-week release schedule, so I don’t die. So that’s it. Thanks for watching! "Ug-h-h-h-h-h-h-h..."
the only thing they have to do for Endless Leged 2 is redesign Battle system. I think something like Heroes of might and magic might work incredibly well for them. But as of now, the battle system is holding this game down very hard.
Its the same in other amplitude games, they know how to make 4x fun and very unique, but battle systems are so lame and boring and without any strategy, their games take a huge hit to the ratings
This game kind of ruined the genre for me. It's so good that I can't bother with any of the competition. When Civ6 came out I saw a shot of 3 cities all within like 4 tiles of each other and thought "Guess I'll install Endless Legend again."
Also Dungeon of The Endless is a far, far better game than a squad based tower defense rogue-like has any right to be. Amplitude is a fantastic developer.
I'm a huge fan of Endless Legend. Completely replaced the Civ series for me. But I do think that it got lost in the shuffle when it came out and didn't do much to help itself stand out in the crowd
I just got this game recently, and I'm already impressed by the variety of races and how differently they play. The only thing I'm wary of is I've heard the AI isn't too great. But we'll see.
I'm guessing the multiplayer takes just as long/longer than Civ multiplayer? Is there an option to take turns simultaneously? How long is an average game?