Once your colony is established, you’ll be able to start development, which is done by system, rather than individual planets.

Opponents can put a competing outpost in the same system, though, and the first to a colony wins, so you’ll be able to spend Influence resource to help keep the edge over the opponent’s outpost. Colonies don’t just turn up overnight, though, instead developing from an outpost over time, with colonists piling up each turn. If you’ve got a colony and the technology, once you reveal the resource deposit, you’ll harvest a small amount every turn. These wildcards are typically either a small cache or a lasting supply of a luxury or strategic resource. This is the first time I’ve seen this, and it adds significant depth, especially to the early and mid game.Įxploration and colonization go hand in hand, of course, and ES2 creates an overlap with planet anomalies, which can be investigated by your explorer ship’s probe or a colony in the system, even if it’s on another planet. As your probes flit into the void, they’ll catch glimpses of systems in the periphery, and once you know the location, you’ll be able to jump off the navigation path to scout it out. ES2 eschews these, mirroring the true emptiness of space, all too easy to forget in some games. Exploration is typically a straightforward process on the semi-standard hex grid and navigation paths of 4x games.

I didn’t realize this my first game, and was just wandering about in a closed collection of stars, until I noticed the function.

You eXplore the galaxy in search of habitable planets, which you colonize (eXpand) and develop (eXploit), until you find a planet you want that someone else own, in which case, you’ll go to war (eXterminate).Įndless Space 2(ES2)’s explorer units can launch probes into the fog of war, ignoring the movement paths, and discovering new systems or anomalies. There’s only so many resources in the universe, and you can’t always share.ĭetailing every system and mechanic in Endless Space 2 is more of a wiki-size effort, but it’s got a lot in common with the broader 4x genre, even if it does a few things unconventionally. Endless Space 2, like its predecessor, is a 4x (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) Space Strategy game, in which you lead a civilization into the stars, where you meet exotic races from distant galaxies, and then probably kill them, assuming they don’t kill you first. The sequel’s been in Early Access on Steam for several months now, and it’s primed for proper launch. Review key provided by publisher.Įndless Space was Amplitude Studios’ first game, launched back in 2012.

Endless space 2 ground invasion