Before we begin, I’d just like to mention that
while I will try to cover most of the important rules of the game, this will not be a fully
comprehensive tutorial but is rather meant to introduce the most important aspects for you
to be able to start a game as soon as possible. The following tutorial only includes
the base game of Endless Space 2. Endless Space 2 is a 4x, turn-based, grand
strategy game set in a science fiction universe. It was developed by Amplitude
Studios and published by SEGA. The goal in Endless Space 2 is to be the first
faction to achieve one of six victory conditions. When in game, you can click this icon on the upper
left side of the screen and then the Victory tab. Here, you’ll find the victory conditions and
your current standing for those conditions. Supremacy Victory requires you to take control
of all your opponents’ home worlds/colony bases. Conquest Victory is achieved by controlling
the majority of star systems in the galaxy. Science victory is achieved when a faction has been able to research the most expensive
technologies from the technology screen. Economy victory is achieved when a faction or alliance produces a certain amount of
“Dust”, which is the game’s currency. Wonder Victory is achieved when
a set number of the Obelisks of All Space-Time system improvement has
been built by your faction or alliance. Score victory is given to the faction
with the most points after a set number of turns if no other victory conditions
were achieved within the set time limit. Your score is determined by
different aspects of the game. Some of these victory conditions will be
explained in depth later in the video, but you can hover over each one to
see a more detailed explanation. In this screen, you’ll also find your current
standing for each victory condition here, compared to your opponents. There can also be multiple winners as
alliances can be made with other empires. If you are part of an
Alliance with another empire, these victory conditions will change
to adapt to the alliance’s scale. As an example, here, you’ll see
that the Science Victory currently requires 4 of the Technologies
of the Endless to accomplish. But fast forwarding to having an alliance with
another empire, it has now changed to six. And the more members you have on your alliance, the higher the number and other
victory condition requirements go. Before we get into the actions you can do, first, we’ll need to explain an
important aspect of the game. Clicking on a Star System you
control will zoom in on the system, and I’d like to turn your attention
to these icons on the left panel. This is the FIDSI. FIDSI stands for Food which is used to
grow and sustain a system’s population, Industry which is used to construct
improvements in systems and to build ships. Dust which is the currency of
the game and is used when buying, selling, or trading a variety of things. Science which is used to research technologies that will unlock various
functions for your empire. And Influence which is used when interacting
with other empires like for negotiations. These are your basic resources
and are what your empire will use and spend to be able to perform
the different actions in the game. The numbers beside the icons represent the
amount you produce per turn for each resource. You can hover the cursor over each resource type
to view where the production Is coming from. For example, we can see that
we are currently producing a total of 29 Food per turn in this system. 35 Food is being produced here since this is our
colony base, 18 food comes from Hekim which is the only planet colonized in this system, 5.3 food
is being consumed for the production of manpower, and 18.3 food is being consumed to
sustain the system’s population. Take note that food and Industry can only
be utilized by the system that produced it, while Dust, Science, and Influence are
pooled together for Empire-wide uses. Aside from the basic resources, there
are also strategic and luxury resources. The strategic resources available to your empire
you’ll find here in the upper left-hand panel. They need a certain technology to be harvested, and can only be harvested from
colonized planets that produce them. In our current example, we can see that
Bellatrix II produces 3 Titanium and 3 Hyperium once we are able to colonize that planet
and research the required technologies for each. The luxury resources we’ll
get to at a later chapter. Strategic and Luxury resources are mostly
used or required for more advanced actions and functions such as bigger ships, better ship
parts, better system improvements, and so on. However, they aren’t as easy to gain
or produce like the basic resources. While I won’t be explaining everything
that will make use of these resources, we should be able to tackle a
few of them as we go further. Another resource you’ll be utilizing
throughout the game is manpower. You can find your current manpower
here, and its production as well. Manpower is mostly used for
combat, but it has other uses too, and we’ll explain them when
they become relevant later on. A game of Endless Space 2 is divided into turns. Each turn you’re able to do several actions the
amount of which are dependent on some factors. At the start of a turn, you’ll always receive
notifications on the lower right side of your screen that will inform you of events in
your empire that might need tending to. This is very useful so you won’t
miss out on available actions. In this example, our notifications are
telling us that we have discovered 2 new luxury resources that should
be helpful when harvested, and that we have a new hero that can be
assigned a job for additional bonuses. I want to note that you don’t have to worry
about missing out on these notifications. If you do, the game will give you a
reminder of things you might have missed, if any, once you end the turn. In the same example, after clicking
on “End Turn”, the game doesn’t do so, and instead reminds us that Bellatrix system
isn’t currently constructing anything, our research queue is empty, and that
our new hero is still unassigned. By clicking on these notifications, you’ll be
provided the relevant information relating to the available action, and there
will be a button as well that should send you to the relevant screen
for you to be able to do those actions. Before we move on, I’d like
to briefly explain one of the notifications you might receive
during the game called quests. There are several types of quests
that you can receive, but basically, these are events that you can
choose to do or participate in to receive different kinds of
rewards and sometimes penalties. Most of them are timed, meaning you’ll have to
accomplish them within a set number of turns. Some of these quests are exclusive
to you, but some are competitive or semi-cooperative with other empires where
it becomes a race to accomplish a task, with better rewards given to those
who contributed more to the quest. To give an example, here’s the first
quest we received in our current game. As you can see, we’re given
three options to choose from, each of them requiring different things to
do and providing different rewards as well. One of the things you can do during
a turn is to research a technology. You can open the technology screen by
clicking on this icon on the main panel. Technologies provide new and better tools
for a variety of functions when researched. When shopping for potential technologies, you can always refer to the icons
around them for information. The small circles will tell us what will be
unlocked when that technology is researched, and the color of the circle will tell us
in what aspect the unlocks will be useful. For example, Plasma Metallurgy has
two orange icons which means both of them will provide industry-related abilities. If we are able to research Plasma Metallurgy, our empire will gain a new System Improvement
for producing more industry, and it will give our empire the ability to harvest Hyperium,
one of the strategic resources in the game. I won’t go over all of the
icons as there’s quite a lot, but you can always hover your
cursor to read what they offer. However, I will go over some of them if
they become relevant to the tutorial. Science is the resource used
when researching a technology, with the production amount determining
how long a research will take. In the same example, Plasma Metallurgy
costs 66 science to research. We can see on the left-hand panel that
we currently produce 35 science per turn. This means that it will take us 2
turns to research this technology. I’d also like to point out that researching a
technology will increase the science cost for all other technologies, therefore, possibly increasing
the turns it will take to research succeeding technologies, encouraging you to be more efficient
in choosing what to research in future turns. Clicking on a technology puts it on
your research queue, and while we are able to queue multiple items, take note that
only one item can be researched at a time. This means that only the first technology in line will progress even if you have
multiple technologies lined up. You’ll be able to see how many turns
it will take to research a technology using the numbers below each of them on the queue. You can cancel the researching of a technology by
clicking on it, and you can also move them around by dragging a queued technology if you change
your mind on which one you want researched first. I’d like to point out that any science
spent in the research of a technology gets saved permanently even if you move
down or cancel unfinished research so none of the resource spent will ever go to waste. There are four branches of technologies with each
branch specializing on an aspect of your empire. Military technologies help
with combat and planet defense. Economy and Trade improves industry
and dust functions and production. Science and Exploration improves science
production and exploration efficiency. Empire development improves
food and influence production, unlocks and upgrades ship types, and provides
new ways of interacting with other empires. While that’s just a general overview for
the quadrants of the technology wheel, each quadrant may also have unique technologies
in them, usually different for each faction. You find these by looking for your
faction icon on the technology wheel. For example, here, you’ll see that Xenolinguistics
has the faction icon for the Sophons, which means either this technology is
unique for the current faction we’re using, or it provides different bonuses compared to what
will be available here instead for other factions. The technology wheel is divided into
levels with higher levels providing better functions and abilities to your empire. However, to be able to research
higher level technologies, you’ll need to unlock the level for
the technology by researching lower ones first, and you’ll need to follow the
connecting lines as well if there are any. I’d like to point out as well
that when unlocking higher levels, aside from other technologies becoming
available, unlocking a new level itself will provide additional benefits as
well represented by the circles here. Let’s give an example. Let’s say I wanted to research Maximized
Exploitation which is a level 3 technology. In our current state, I’m not
able to do so as you can tell with the technology still being grayed out. First, I’ll need to unlock the
level 3 technologies, and to do so, I need to research two technologies from level
2 as pointed out by the two circles here. Aside from that, we can see
that Maximized Exploitation has a line connecting it to a level 2 technology. This means that we need to have
Atmospheric Filtration researched first as well in order to have access
to Maximized Exploitation. Fast-forwarding several turns, after 2
level 2 technologies have been researched including Atmospheric Filtration, we are
now able to research Maximized Exploitation. Take note that some parts of
the technology wheel will give you an option between two similar technologies, that when one is chosen, the other will become
unavailable to you for the rest of the game. As an example, here, we can see that there is a line between Advanced Fusion
Power and Hyperium Magnetics. Fast forwarding to the research
completion of one of them, we can now see that we are no longer
able to click on the other one. A very helpful function in the technology screen
that I’d like to point out is the search bar. Here, you can simply search for keywords to help you find the technologies that are
best suited for your intentions. For example, if I were looking for technologies
that would help with science production, I can simply type in “science”, and all
related technologies will be highlighted. Another thing you’ll find in
the technology screen are Deeds. These are tasks that you and other empires
will race to finish for certain bonuses which means each deed can only be
accomplished by one empire in a game. These can be accessed by unlocking
the levels the deeds belong to. Continuing with the example earlier, we were able to unlock the 3rd level of the Economy and
Trade quadrant with what we researched. As we can see, the Consolidator of
Systems deed is now available to us. It can be accomplished by
being the first empire to control 4 star systems in the same
constellation, and if completed, it will provide us a unique improvement
that will only be available to our empire. Before moving on, I’d like to give a reminder
that Science victory is one way to win the game which can be accomplished from this screen. On the outer part of the circle, you’ll
find the four final technologies. When all have been research before any other
victory condition is met by any empire, you’ll win the game. But remember that the number of these that need to be researched will increase if in
an alliance with another empire. At the start of the game, you’ll find
yourself with at least one Star System that has already been colonized by your faction. This is your faction’s home system/colony base. A faction’s home system is marked with
a crown symbol of their faction color. Aside from your home system, you’ll also start the game with some ships but we’ll get
to explaining those a bit later. A Star System has several functions
that you’ll manage throughout the game. As a game progresses, you’ll be
controlling more and more systems each of which you’ll have to manage individually. When you click on a Star System, you’ll be
greeted by several important information. The planets in the system, the
stats of this particular system, improvements available for
construction, the construction queue, and the ships that are currently
docked in this system if any. There are several actions we can
perform for each Star System. The basic ones are colonizing a new planet
in the system, building system improvements, studying curiosities, if there
are any, and building ships. Most of these actions will be
listed in the construction queue and will be accomplished in
order just like technologies. And like researching technologies, you
can cancel and change the order of the queue if you happen to change
your mind on certain actions. As mentioned earlier, each system
has to be managed individually, so in future turns where your empire has
colonized more star systems, each of them will have their own construction queue where tasks
for that particular system go when initiated. Aside from building ships, most of the actions
that will be available for each star systems, like the ones I mentioned earlier, are basically just
a means to produce more resources for your empire. As the game progresses and
technologies are researched, more and more different tasks for your
Star Systems will become available. But for now, we’ll only explain the ones
available to us at the start of the game. We usually start the game with one
planet colonized in our home system. You’ll find the current status of planets here
when looking at the overview of the system, and at the bottom of each planet when zoomed in. As we can see in our example, we only
have one colonizable planet at the moment. Inhospitable planets will require a technology
to be researched before they can be colonized. For instance, Bellatrix I
requires the HyperPACs technology. Like most actions, colonization
of available planets has a cost. By hovering over the colonization action,
we can see that this action will cost a total of 80 Industry that will take 3 turns to
produce with our current Industry production. Colonizing a planet will provide more resource production for both
the star system and your empire. You can find a summary of the
benefits above each planet, and you can hover over the planet
to see a more detailed description. For example, Bellatrix 2 provides some Food, Industry, Dust, and Science
production, but no Influence. In addition, it will also
provide us titanium and hyperium, two strategic resources, once the required
technologies to harvest them have been researched. Take note that a planet’s production
will be affected by the number and type of population that you assign as inhabitants. And another thing to factor in
are the traits of the planet as they might provide positive or negative
buffs depending on the population as well. We will get into more detail
about this in the next chapter. Before we continue with the other star system
actions, I’d like to explain population. In the Star System Management screen, another
thing you’ll find are the population occupying your planets which is represented by
the dotted lines above each planet. The number of lines represent the maximum
number of population that each planet can hold. By hovering your cursor over a planet, you’ll see what population types are
currently occupying them, if any. In this case, our starting
planet has three populations. Two Sophons, and one Pilgrims. By hovering our cursor over them, a panel will appear that will explain
what bonuses they provide to our empire. In the same example, each Sophons population
provides an additional 1 science production, and 3 additional science production if they are currently occupying a
planet with the “Cold” trait. In this pop-up, we’ll also find other
information associated with the population type such as its political opinion and preferred
luxury item, but we’ll explain these later. Another important panel in the star system
management screen that relates to population is this one that refers to population growth. Remember that food is the resource
that helps with population growth. The higher the food production, the
faster population will be produced. Here we can see how many turns it
will take for our population to grow, and what population type will be produced. Population type is randomized between the
currently available types in the system. However, by opening the Population Overview by
clicking on a population type on the left panel, you can spend each of the population’s
preferred luxury resource to increase the chances of producing the
associated population type. For example, if we wanted
more Sophons in our empire, we can spend 2 Dustciduous Trees
once we are able to get some. This is one of the uses of luxury resources. Another important aspect that you can find in
the Population panel is the System Approval. This represents your populations’
overall happiness in the system. As you can probably guess, a high system
approval will result in positive buffs, while a low system approval
can result in negative ones. As always, you can hover the cursor to see a detailed explanation as to how the
resulting percentage is computed and the accompanying positive or
negative effects of the current status. To help manage your populations once you
have multiple planets in a star system, you can freely move them between planets by
dragging them from one planet to another to better utilize them by matching them
with their preferred planet traits. However, take note of the red line. If a planet’s population reaches this, it will be considered overpopulated and the
system’s approval will receive a penalty. And once the required technology is researched, you’ll also be able to move populations
from one star system to another. System Improvements are upgrades
you can build in a star system. They provide different benefits such as better
resource production, better defenses, and so on. Like everything else, they have a cost to
build and usually an upkeep cost as well. As an example, let’s take
a look at Drone Networks. As we can see, it has a cost of 80 Industry. Our system currently produces
34 Industry per turn, which means it will take 3 turns
to complete this improvement. This is signified by this
symbol beside the cost so we don’t need to make the computations ourselves. The Drone Networks improvement has an
upkeep cost of 2 Dust per turn as well. This means that every turn, our
Empire Dust will decrease by 2 for each of this particular improvement
that has been built throughout our empire. Once the construction of
this improvement is complete, the system will gain an additional 10
production of both food and industry. And again, these computations
will be automatically done for us. Fast forwarding to when the improvement is
complete, by hovering on our system’s FIDSI, we can see that we have a
current food production of 38 due to several factors including the
newly built Drone Networks improvement. Some improvements have requirements for their benefits to take effect even
after they have been constructed. For instance, let’s take a look
at Public-private Partnerships. One of the benefits of this improvement
is it gives +10 Science for Fertile. This means that you’ll get the additional
10 science production for each planet with the “Fertile” trait in this system
that has already been colonized. At this point, I’d like to mention
that some technologies will allow you terraform colonized planets to change their traits to make them even more compatible to
your improvements and overall strategy. We will explain this further in a later chapter. As the game progresses and more
technologies have been researched, more and better system improvements
will be available for construction. Take note that some improvements can
only be constructed by your empire once, and some can only be
constructed by a single empire. As an example, in our current game, we have the Endless Research Park and
Endless World improvement available to us. When hovering over the improvement,
we can see that it mentions that this improvement can only be built once per galaxy. This means that once this improvement
has been built by an empire, it will become unavailable
to all the other empires. Ships, like system improvements, also
have an Industry cost and an upkeep cost. The difference is that ships will
appear in the Hangar once completed. You’ll need to create a fleet
with ships on your hangar before they can be deployed to move around the galaxy. You can do so by clicking this button here once
the ships you want to combine as a fleet are already in the system’s hangar, and you’ll find
the fleet ready to be moved once you zoom out. I want to mention that you can create
a fleet even with just a single ship, if you want one to move around on its own. Most factions will start the game
with two constructable ships with more becoming available once specific
technologies have been researched. Ships in this game are customizable, but
we will get to that in a later chapter. Curiosities are random things that can be found on
planets but need to be studied to gain access to. They can be additional planet
traits or additional resources. If a curiosity is within a system
where you have a colonized planet, the curiosities can be placed in the
construction queue to be studied for a cost. They can also be studied using ships if you
don’t have a colonized planet in the system, but we will explain that
further in the next chapter. Another major part of the game
is exploring the vast galaxy. In earlier turns, this is mainly done through
the movement of ships through starlanes with more traveling options, such as warp and wormhole
travel, becoming available through technologies. Starlanes are represented by lines connecting
star systems to form a constellation with the galaxy comprising
of several constellations. You start the game with a number
of ships depending on your faction and a single visible star system. Another way of exploring the galaxy in the
earlier parts of the game is by launching drones. You can do this by selecting a ship with
a drone, in our current case the Detector, and choosing the direction we’d
like the drones to explore. The drones will travel in that
direction for several turns, revealing everything it passes through. While drones in ships are unlimited, they still take several turns to
replenish before more can be used. You can increase the number of drones
a ship can carry by customizing them, but we’ll have to explain that a bit later. There are different types of ships and again,
sometimes they differ depending on your faction. In our example, the Sophons start
with a Detector and an Incubator. The Detector has probes used to
scout unexplored areas and to study curiosities as mentioned earlier,
and the Incubator is used to colonize planets in unoccupied star systems to
expand your empire and galaxy control. Each ship has a number of movement points
that dictate how much it can move per turn. Ships can also be merged together to
form a fleet that can move together, but a fleet’s movement will always follow the ship
within the fleet with the lowest movement points. Here, we can see that the Detector’s
movement speed is 9 and the Incubator’s is 8. After merging the two to create a fleet, we can see that the fleet takes the
Incubator’s movement speed as it is lower. The satellite icon represents your
current maximum command points. This number dictates how many ships
can be merged together to form a fleet. Take note that not all ships
are worth 1 command point as bigger and more powerful ships may cost more. Like everything else in the game, you can increase
your command point limit through technologies. In our current scenario, we have two ships,
each of them costing one command point. We currently have a maximum
of 5 which means we should be able to combine them together
no problem with room for more. Fleets can be disbanded in a star system you
control if you want the ships to separate. This will park them in the star system’s hangar,
which means you’ll need to create a fleet with each of them individually
to be able to deploy them again. One of the things you should be on the lookout for when exploring the galaxy are
star systems with useful planets. These can be planets that provide strategic
and luxury resources you don’t have access to yet, planets with traits
that complement your population types, or planets that produce a high amount of a basic
resource that you know you’ll need a lot of. Once you find a star system you like, you’ll
need to colonize it to reap its benefits. To colonize a vacant star system, you’ll
need to send a colonizer ship to the system. In our current scenario, we started with an
Incubator which is the Sophons’ colonizer. Once the colonizer in on the system, simply choose which planet you’d like to
occupy first and click on the flag icon. As mentioned earlier, some planets
won’t be colonizable at the start of the game and will require certain
technologies to be colonized. Take note that there’s a soft limit to
the number of systems you can colonize. You can find the limit by clicking on this
icon to open the Empire Summary screen, and it will be located here on
the lower part of the left panel. Going over this limit will result in
an empire-wide system approval penalty. As usual, you can increase this limit
by researching certain technologies. Colonization of vacant
systems isn’t instantaneous. It will first become an outpost
where a certain number of food needs to be delivered to complete the process. The delivery of the food is automated via ships through starlanes and will come
from your colonized star systems. This is another thing to consider
when deciding what systems to colonize as enemy empires and neutral factions can
interrupt this process if they have ships occupying or wandering around the delivery routes. There are several ways to speed up
the process of the colonization. In our current example, we can spend
manpower, dust, or influence to do this. You can also stop the colonization process if you
change your mind by clicking on this button here. Take note that a star system with
your outpost isn’t yours yet, so other empires can come in and
start colonizing a different planet. In this case, it becomes a race as the first
empire to complete the colonization process gets to keep the system with the other
opposing outposts getting destroyed. When in competition with another
empire in colonizing a system, there are several ways to hinder
the enemy’s colonization process. One of which is guarding the
system with a ship or fleet. Placing a ship in the system and pressing the guard button will stop enemy empires
from delivering food to the outpost. Take note that the removal of the
ship, whether by you or your enemies, will continue the colonization process. In this example, we can see that the enemy empire
will successfully colonize the system in 9 turns. By clicking the guard button on our ship,
we can see that this icon has appeared, telling us that this outpost in now
dying due to the lack of food delivery. Fast-forwarding several turns, we can see that
the outpost has now been starved and destroyed, leaving the system unoccupied once again. At this point, I’d like to remind that one of the
victory conditions you can aim for is the Conquest Victory which will require you to colonize a
certain amount of Star Systems in the galaxy. As explained earlier, curiosities can be studied if you have a colonized planet
within the same star system. However, if this is not the
case, ships with probes can be used to discover what they are instantaneously. And to reiterate, curiosities will usually
either provide some kind of bonus like resources, or they could be an additional trait
for the planet the curiosity belongs to. Some curiosities will appear with a locked
symbol, meaning, as you can probably guess by now, requires certain technologies
for us to be able to study them. In this case, we need a technology that
will raise our Curiosity Expedition Power. Minor Civilizations are population types with their own planets that are not
yet associated with any empire. Once you discover a minor civilization,
you’ll be greeted by a screen like this and you’ll be presented with options on
how you’d like to interact with them, some of which might not be available at
the moment needing certain technologies to be researched first or progressing your
relationship with the minor civilization. This is one of the uses of
Influence, one of the parts of FIDSI. Some interaction options, whether it’s with
a minor civilization or another empire, will require influence to be spent. In this panel, you can also see a bar which represents how
much this particular population likes you. Advancing this will unlock
other interaction options. Each option is also used to reach a certain goal
whether it’s to integrate them to your empire, or to annihilate them as they might not be as useful to you or might even provide
some benefits for opposing empires. When deciding on what to do
with a minor civilization, the best things to look at are the
benefits they provide as a population. In our current example, this population we discovered have the
traits Warmonger and Stalwart Stoics. By hovering over these, we’ll be able to see the benefits they will provide if
they are integrated to our empire. The second box, on the other hand, shows the benefits they will
provide when placed in our planets. The third box provides information on
the political outlook of this population. We’ll explain this later when we get
into the political elements of the game. The fourth box will show the benefits of having a
friendly relationship with the minor civilization once a certain amount of progress
in that aspect has been made. Pirates are a factionless population that
can be quite unpredictable in their nature. They randomly pop up all over the
galaxy, colonize star systems, and have ships that constantly
move around fighting and exploring. They can also grow as a population so
be careful not to leave them alone. They cannot be converted to your empire and mostly just pose a threat to some
plans to keep you on your toes. Neutral Celestial Bodies are uninhabitable
parts of the galaxy that provide some bonuses to the star system that has it
inside their influence ring. Your star system’s influence is represented by a
ring around them with the color of your faction. This ring increases as the influence
production on a star system increases. Aside from neutral celestial bodies,
the influence ring also has other uses, but we will get to that in a later chapter. Another thing you’ll encounter when
exploring the galaxy are other empires. These are your opponents
or possibly future allies. They are also racing to achieve one of the
various victory conditions explained earlier. Like minor civilizations, a new
screen with diplomacy and trading options will become accessible
once you meet another empire. The screen can be accessed by clicking
on the empire’s icon on the map, or through here, the diplomacy screen. Here, you’ll see empires you’ve
met and empires you haven’t. In the negotiation screen, you’ll also find the
current diplomacy status you have with an empire, and the influence pressure bar. This bar will dictate who has
more power in the relationship which can also dictate how good or bad an offer
the empire will accept from you when negotiating. This can be increased through various
actions such as getting their favor by helping them out or threatening
them by invading or attacking them. As mentioned earlier, negotiation and
trading will require a lot of influence. You can find your current influence
here in this screen, and as usual, you can hover the cursor over some of the options
to see a detailed description of their effects. I’d also like to note that you don’t lose any influence if your offer was
declined by other empires. Let’s take a look at some examples of
interactions we can have with other empires. In the Diplomacy Screen, we are presented
with things we can trade with this empire. Since it’s still pretty early in the
game, there aren’t a lot of options yet. Looking at the Influence bar,
we can see that they currently don’t have a lot of leverage over us so
it’s still a good time to make an offer as they would probably still be okay
with deals that benefit us equally. Since we’re not looking to fight anyone
this early and are hoping to have a good relationship with our neighbor
so we can trade with them later, we’ll offer them a peace treaty
which costs 157 Influence. We currently have 200 influence as we can see
here, so we can easily afford this treaty. Before officially making the offer, we can check this bar down here to see how likely
they are to accept or decline our current offer. It looks like they are pretty happy with
this deal and will most likely accept it. In cases where the empire you’re dealing
with isn’t happy with your current offer, you can try to sweeten the deal by
adding other things such as resources. But of course, this will cost more influence, and it will be up to you to gauge if the
deal is still worth it to you in those cases. Once we send the offer, we’ll
immediately find out their decision, which in this case, they gladly accepted. Another thing I’d like to mention is that you and other empires can colonize each other’s
star systems without going into battle. This is the other use for the
influence ring explained earlier. Once another empire’s system is inside your
influence ring, and the relevant technology for this action has been researched,
you can initiate a peaceful takeover of a system that will transfer the system’s
control to you once the process is complete. Remember that alliances can also be
created where you and other empires will work together towards a victory condition. This can be done in the Diplomacy Screen as well
once the required technology has been researched. But remember that alliances can be broken
so be careful how you treat other empires. At the start of the game, you
will have one unassigned hero. Heroes are unique characters that
can be assigned either to a fleet or a star system to provide certain effects. The longer a hero is assigned to a task,
the more experience they gain which allows them to level up and allow you to assign
them special skills for further effects. Each hero has their own ship, a somewhat
unique skill tree, and several traits. These will provide you with information
on how to best utilize your heroes. In our current example, our
starting hero is a counselor which means most of their skills will
be excelling in resource production. Their starting skill is that they give +1
Science production per population on planets and +10% health for ships in their fleet. To further exemplify the use of heroes, since I’m not hoping to see any
combat this early on the game, I’ll be assigning this hero to my home system for
the additional science production they provide. Heroes can be moved around through
the hero management screen which can be accessed by clicking
this icon on the main panel. You can move heroes around as you need or see
fit, but take note that they may take several turns to be reassigned as they would still have to
travel to their new assignment like normal ships. Heroes in fleets can participate and contribute in
combat as they have their own customizable ships. If they were ever defeated, heroes don’t
die and are merely considered injured, taking several turns to recover. Once they recover, they need to be
reassigned to a fleet or a system again. More heroes can be acquired over time
either by discovering the academy, a planet that is randomly located somewhere in
the galaxy or by building the academy embassy, a system improvement that can
be unlocked by a technology. By going to the Hero Management screen here, we’ll see a progress bar that will indicate
how long until we get another hero. The advancement of this bar and
the type of hero we will acquire depends on the actions we perform during the game. You can hover over each hero type in this screen
to see a more detailed description of each. As you probably noticed by now,
another aspect of the game is Politics. The main benefit of Politics are the laws you’ll
be able to pass to gain even more bonuses. What laws will become available to you depends
on the current political ideology of your empire. This is affected by pretty much everything,
such as the population types in your systems, technologies you choose to research,
improvements you choose to build, and so on. Political parties gain experience
and provide related laws the longer they are kept as the leading
political parties of your empire. Let’s look at our current scenario
to further explain Politics. With our current Government type which is
Democracy, we are able to have 3 Political Parties represented, which means we should be able to pass
laws from 3 Political Ideologies at the same time. As you can imagine, each government type has a different set of rules when
it comes to passing laws. We currently have two available slots for
laws, so let’s take a look at our options. The current leading political
parties in our empire are the Scientists and the Religious which
unlocks these two laws for us to use. Take note that laws have a normal cost and
upkeep cost, both usually in influence. When your empire does not have
enough influence to maintain laws, they automatically get abolished, available to
be passed once you have enough Influence again. You can also choose to voluntarily abolish laws
if you want to decrease your influence spending, or if you want to change the laws
that are currently in effect. Other laws will come with other ideologies,
and more laws can be unlocked through changes and advancement in an empire’s political
ideologies and leading political parties. They change through elections which
occur once every several turns. In our current case, as we can see here,
the next election will occur in 9 turns. As an example, fighting other
factions a lot might increase your empire’s leaning towards a military ideology. You can check your empire’s political
standing by asking for a survey here, although surveys are also conducted
automatically several turns before an election which can help you gauge
which ideologies are currently leading. This will give you a bit of
time to alter your decisions if you prefer some ideologies to win over others. Take note that the political ideologies of your
populations play a huge role in this aspect. By going to the Senate Screen, clicking on
the population details, and hovering over each population, we can see which political ideology
each population are more inclined to support. Larger icons in the wheel indicate huge
support for actions that lean towards that particular ideology, medium-sized icons means
normal support, and small icons indicate less. To give an example, let’s
take a look at the Sophons. This population will provide a huge boost in
support when Scientists related actions are done. They are also special in that they will
also add more support to Scientists even when Pacifist actions are done. Religious actions tend to get
little support from them though. Aside from the bonuses you receive from
populations when placed in specific planets, this is one aspect you need to consider
when increasing your population and deciding which populations
to assimilate to your empire. As you can imagine, having populations
with conflicting political ideologies can slow down the advancement of the
political parties you prefer to improve. On the day of the elections, you can take certain
actions to support your preferred party as well. Depending on the type of government you have, there are a number of actions that you can
take that may require Dust or Influence, with more becoming available once the
corresponding technologies have been researched. Let’s take a look at an
early example of an election. Here, I played a normal game
with the Sophons doing actions that mostly lean towards Scientists and
Industrialists, and election day has arrived. Having heroes assigned to systems will also help increase support for their
preferred political party. I have one Scientist hero assigned to my
home system which is why they appear here. In this screen, we’ll also find the actions we can do to potentially influence
the result of the election, but as we don’t have any actions available to us
at the moment, we’ll move on to the next screen. Here you’ll find the breakdown of
representatives in each of your systems. Representatives represent the support that each
political party gained during the preceding turns. As I mentioned that most of the actions I
took are mostly science and industry-related, we can see that reflected here. This in turn results in the
Scientists and Industrialists parties winning the election and
unlocking this law for me to use. Before we explain how battles work, first we need
to explain ships, ship blueprints, and ship parts. By clicking on the Military Screen, we’ll find the ships that are currently
available for construction for our empire. More ships can be unlocked through several means,
the main one being through technology research. In the technology screen, you can find
technologies with these ship symbols which unlocks new ship types and these symbols
as well which upgrade current ship designs. Aside from acquiring other ship types, you can also customize the parts
of your current ship designs. By clicking on a ship on the ship
design panel, and clicking on edit, you’ll be able to change the parts of the ship. Take note that changing the designs
of your current ships doesn’t mean they will retroactively apply
to ships already constructed. You’ll still need to bring them to
any star system you own for upgrading. Each ship has a number of
slots for dedicated parts, and each module has costs
and sometimes upkeep as well. In earlier parts of the game, you’ll only
have limited options for modules and slots. In our current example, we have
an empty slot for a weapon module. By clicking on the weapon module tab,
we can see the available options. You can hover the cursor over each
module to see what they add to your ship. For weapon modules, you’ll
find its damage, damage type, and its range efficiency
which we’ll explain in a bit. As the game goes on, more and more modules
can be unlocked either through exploration, events, or researching specific technologies. Going back to the technology screen,
you’ll find unlocks that pertain to certain types of ship modules such as
weapons, shields, and support modules. I won’t be going over every single one of them, but to give an example, Hyperium
Magnetics will unlock two weapon modules. The color of the modules is important as it
represents which type of strategic resource you will need in order to use the module,
in this case yellow being Hyperium. The significance of the different
weapon and shield types is that some weapons are less effective towards
ships with certain shield types. So, it’s important to have some knowledge of what modules compose a fleet before
going into battle with them. You can do this by clicking on an enemy
fleet that you may go into battle with which will give you the
relevant information you need. For example, in our current scenario,
we have an enemy fleet composed of one ship hovering over our side of the galaxy. I would like to get rid of this by
either destroying it or scaring it away. By clicking this fleet and
hovering the cursor over the ship, we can see that it has a shield value of 165 and
its shield is strong against projectile weapons. We can also see that the fleet is
equipped with projectile weapons. This means it will be beneficial
for me to attack it with a ship or fleet that has energy
weapons and projectile shields. Aside from weapons and shields,
there are also different support modules that can be attached to ships
that will provide different functions such as additional movement, better drones, and
so on as combat isn’t the only use for ships. There are a lot of these so
I won’t go over all of them, but you can always hover your cursor over each one
to see what they contribute to your ship or fleet. I’d also like to remind that you can also customize hero ships through
the hero management screen. And unlike regular ships, hero
ships automatically implement the changes you make to its design as
long as they are in a system you own. Ship combat can be initiated
when two or more fleets from different empires are present in a star system. Take note that when a ship battle is initiated, the fleets involved are not allowed to move
or take action until the end of the battle. Once a ship battle is initiated,
we’ll be greeted by this screen. Here we can see which ships are involved in the
battle and the chances of winning for each side. Your chances of winning a ship battle
depends on three major factors. The composition of your fleet,
their positioning during the battle, and the tactic you choose for the battle. We already explained how to customize your ship
so let’s move on to positioning and tactics cards. Once a battle is initiated, you can
head over to the Advanced screen to access these functions and create a
better plan for the upcoming battle. Ship battles are presented
in a grid with three rows. However, some rows can only be
unlocked if the fleet in battle has the right number of ships and command points. If available, we can change the starting
position of our ships between these three rows. The importance of this coincides with the
tactics card you choose for the battle. Tactics cards represent your
strategy for the battle which will include the movement of your
ships during, and an added bonus. These lines represent the movement your ships
will execute during the battle depending on their starting position as the lines represent
the three rows in the field of battle. The highlighted boxes represent
the target positions of your ships which can be in long range, medium
range or short range of the enemy. This is where the range of our weapons come in. By hovering over each ship, we’ll be able to
see in which range each ship is efficient at, and, as you can imagine, placing each ship at
their most efficient range is highly beneficial. Tactics cards also provide some
kind of bonus to the fleet. In our current example, the tactics cards will
either provide a bonus for energy weapons, a bonus to our energy shields, or bonus
resources for destroyed opponent ships. While we currently only have three tactics
cards to choose from in this battle, these cards can be changed beforehand. By going to the military screen represented
by the ship icon in the upper left screen and by clicking on this icon in the lower left
panel, you’ll find other tactics to choose from and more can be unlocked through various
means such as researching technologies. You’ll also see here that more slots can
be unlocked through technologies as well for you to be able to bring more
cards and options during a battle. Choosing the starting positions, the movement, and the bonuses of your ships during battle is
very important as it can make or break the fight. Take note that you’ll also have
the option to retreat if you’re not interested in participating in a battle. In this case, your fleet will
automatically move to a neighboring system only suffering a small damage as a penalty. After a battle, you’ll be greeted with a battle
result screen that will relay the victor, if any, and the surviving ships, if any. If both sides have remaining ships, another battle with the same fleets can
be initiated again on the next turn. Ground combat is a means of invading planets
that are already colonized by other empires. This is where Manpower, another
type or resource, comes in. You can find your empire’s current manpower and
its production here, this number beside this icon. By hovering the cursor over it, we can
see where the production comes from. Ships and systems can be occupied
by a limited number of manpower which can be increased with system
improvements, technologies, and ship modules. To initiate ground combat as an attacker, you must
have a fleet on a star system of another empire. Remember that your relationship status with
empires may affect your ability to attack them or even your ability to enter their star systems. The INVADE action here in the lower left
panel allows you to initiate the attack. But before clicking on it, if you hover over
it, you’ll be able to see the difference in Manpower and ground troop types
between your fleet and the system. This is one of the factors that
will decide if a battle is winnable. As you can imagine, the more manpower a side
has, the more chances they will win the battle. By going to the Military Screen, aside from ship designs, we’ll also find
the breakdown of manpower and ground troops. By clicking on “Manage” we’ll be able to access the ground troops and
customize them a bit as well. There are three types of ground
troops, Infantry, Armor, and Air. Each type has its own individual
stats and unique upgrades. Not all upgrades will be available
immediately and once available, will cost some resources to implement. The advantage of bringing different types
of ground troops to a battle is that each type will be more effective against
a specific type compared to others. Infantry can be more effective against Air Troops,
Armor against Infantry, and Air against Armor. Another important thing we can do in this
screen is to decide what percentage of our manpower will be allocated to certain
types of ground troops during a battle. For instance, in our current example, I’ve set
the percentage to 50% infantry and 50% armor. Last thing I want to emphasize about ground
troops is that you can change the manpower allocation before the initiation of a ground
battle and they will immediately apply. Once a ground battle has been initiated, you will be greeted by a screen that’s
a bit similar to the ship battle screen. Here you’ll find the same pie chart that will
show which side has a larger chance of winning, and, like in the ship battle screen,
a few choices for possible tactics. Similar to the cards in ship battles, each
card here will provide different bonuses. As you can imagine, some cards will be more
effective than others depending on the type of units and the amount of manpower that
you and your opponents have available. When defending instead of attacking,
the screen will be quite similar. The planet’s manpower will be divided according
to the ratio you chose on the military screen and you’ll get a choice of tactics as well. Just like ship battles, most ground
battles cannot be won in a single turn. When attacking, after a turn of a
ground battle, you can choose to continue attacking the next turn until one
side has won, or you can choose to retreat. But take note retreating will result
in the loss of deployed manpower. Winning a ground battle when
attacking will provide three options for what you’d like to do
with the star system you just won. You can choose to either Occupy,
Pillage, or Raze the system. Occupying will result in gaining control of
the system, Pillaging will have your empire siphon resources from the system, and Razing
will slowly destroy everything in the system. So far, we’ve explained everything that could
help when starting a game of Endless Space 2, but this being a deep game, there are
a lot of other important aspects that gets unlocked during the later parts
of the game that we haven’t discussed. Before we end, I’d like to go through
some of these aspects briefly. Another useful part of the game is the market. As you’re probably tired of hearing by now, a certain technology needs to be researched
to unlock this aspect of the game. The market unlocks the ability to buy
and sell things like resources and ships. And like most markets, prices will
change depending on demand and supply. Trading companies are a way to increase your
income in the game by creating trade routes between your systems and even with other Empire’s
systems through a trade agreement or an alliance. Setting up a trading company will
require building the system improvements, Headquarters and Subsidiaries which
can be unlocked by a technology. These improvements will spawn non controllable
ships that will travel system to system increasing not just dust income
but other resources as well. Basically, the more systems they
travel through, the higher the income. You can also buy additional ships for your trading companies to further
increase your gains from them. However, these ships must always have
unhindered routes for them to function. Enemies can simply stop these trading
companies from working by guarding or even capturing relevant
systems in the trade routes. As mentioned earlier, during the later parts of
the game, more and more star system functions can be unlocked through technologies and I’d like
to mention a few that I think are very important. First, with the right technologies and
resources, you can level up systems, not just to increase their production, but also to unlock other functions such as
moving population from one system to another. As mentioned earlier, certain population types are more efficient when inhabiting
planets with certain traits. This can help you manage your population
better for increased production of resources. Leveling up systems will first
require you to advance the tier level of the economy and trade quadrant in
the technology wheel as you can see here. Then you will need to assign a luxury
resource cost for each succeeding level. There are two things to consider when
designating a luxury resources for each level. One is the abundance of the resource in
your empire as leveling star systems is done individually like system
improvements and will cost the same amount of resources each time you level
up a system, so this action can be costly. The second thing is the bonus production that the resource will provide once a
system has been leveled up. When choosing a luxury resource,
you can see here what additional production they will provide if they
are chosen as the level up requirement. Take note that choosing a luxury resource for this action is permanent and
cannot be changed or undone. Aside from emigrating population,
through technologies, you can also have the ability terraform planets to help
them fit the inhabiting population better. While, admittedly, this video is
quite long, as I mentioned earlier, this isn’t a fully comprehensive tutorial. Endless Space 2 is a deep game. There are a lot of aspects
of the game that I either chose to omit from this tutorial or simply missed. Regardless, the information provided should
be enough for you to be able to start a game knowing what you can do, what you’d like to do,
and how you will go about doing those things.
