I like this game, but it's sooo similar to GalCiv.  I was hoping for something different, a reinvention of the genre or at least a different take.  It's more a Galciv homage than it's own game.

It is really having an awesome and good interface. Thanks for sharing !!!  Will keep an eye on this as it looks very interesting

Great game, just bought it after 3 days "testing" of "torrent version"

Really like it, there are some thing to improve but it's more close to MoO2 than GalCiv.

The style is a bit different, as I said more like MoO2 and Accendancy but I really like it! Actually more that GalCiv1/2 - it was good when where nothing else around but never really "shined".

Downloaded it this morning, have been stuck playing it at my computer for the last 6 hours. Very interesting game so far. I'm getting an Alpha Centauri vibe when playing it, with different unlocks for new mechanics coming from tech trees. The empire building part feels highly complex, but the tactical combat on the other hand I feel like I have basically no control over (even with special orders).

Question: Are there new orders from anywhere? Hero unlocks? Tech unlocks? I haven't found any yet, but I'm guessing there should be more than the initial ones you have.

It's a very good game. The only Space 4x I have been actually enjoying after MOO2 (Masters of Orion 2). It has less stuff than MOO2 but it's beautiful to look at, and quite fun.

In fact it is a lot like that game and hopefully with expansions could become as deep and interesting.

Compared to MOO2 it doesn't have: ground battles, a city development system with buildings one can actually see, a tech tree based on different kinds of government (dictatorship, communist, democracy etc...), an intelligence agency to spy and do sabotages. In other words it is great but so far very basic.

I strongly advise to try it out.

Hero leveling is one way, but most of them cost dust to use and don't seem worth it compared to the standard ones (Ultimate Defense and the Black Hole one are the only ones worth anything). The standard way of getting more orders is teching up the 'right-side' tree (Science & Industry I think?). You'll find orders for offensive retreats, EMP blasts, locking beam weapons, deflecting beam weapons, adding armor on your ships, etc. When zoomed in all the way on the tech tree the battle orders should be denoted by a colored tab, red is for military I think (orange for industry, green for food, blue for science, etc.).

The devs posted a nice FAQ on their website for the post-release plans and direction, thought it might be relevant to a few of you here.

Now let me try to answer a few frequent questions since release:

Right now:
What are the main issues you are working on at the moment?
We have been working on quite a lot of optimizations, AI tuning and gameplay tuning (things like Hero injury costs are being tweaked, traits costs balance to avoid OP builds and battle healing)

Do you think you will be able to improve the multiplayer by adding new features like a team victory, with options to communicate with your partner?
Globally I would love to add quite a few features to make the MP experience even smoother like MP default battle option selections, direct chat, better notification of players finishing their turn and other timer options.

The new project: can you give us any ideas? Will you still work on Endless Space? How often will you deliver patches?
Right now our focus is definitely Endless Space, and we'll look at Major content updates as well as continuous support. Patching wise, we consider our game a live game, and now as we can afford a full time dedicated team on the game, we could patch as soon as we have something that we believe could benefit the experience.

Multiplayer: LAN support?
It is not on our top priorities, but we'll do it eventually.

Will there be Steam achievements?
we were discussing it again today. we were so swamped with the release that we put it aside, to focus on core gameplay. But it is definitely something fun that we'll gladly try to put with our first major content update.

Will you implement the Steam Cloud so we can play a saved game on any computer?
our programmers are looking at several services offered by SteamWorks, like SteamCloud saves and the SteamWorkshop. no dates on that yet, but we want them in.

Will you implement the Steam Workshop to makes modding easier?
Probably quite a bit after the modding is added to the game. we don't want to delay the release of the modding to the community, even though installing and using mods at first will be "old school".

You are already working on the Mac version. Do you plan on porting to Linux along with Steam and their Linux project?
We have no plans for linux.

What about a solo campaign in Endless Space?
We are a sandbox game, so I doubt that we'll go for big campaigns. Yet I definitely would love to add more scenario support (which can be seen as some sort of campaigns...)

Do you think you will be implementing ground battles and planetary invasion in some kind of expansion/DLC?
We have plans for it, but I would love to work in top priority on the battles, diplomacy and espionage as big content updates. We'll pay a close attention to what you guys think of that ...

Will you add Carriers/Strikecraft to improve battles?
Definitely!



Again Thank you all for all your support and feedback, and as I already said, the release of the game is just the beginning for us. Consider it as a foundation for great things to come!

Spacetroll

After working through some of my game backlog (by playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which was awesome), I went ahead and picked Endless Space up. Really liking it so far, though the tech trees are kind of overwhelming when I'm looking for a tech that does a specific thing and don't know where it is.

Also having approval problems, but I think I expanded into too many systems too quickly.

Don't listen to him! Cravers crave systems. Dust. Power. Flesh. EAT EAT EAT EAT

But yeah, don't skimp on the morale improvements. They introduced the expansion disapproval near the end of the beta and it single-handedly curbed the rampant "colonize everything" approach. I still think they should make the expansion disapproval for outposts disappear after they become full colonies (but by the time you've gotten several previous outposts into the core empire you've probably got a couple of the expansion disapproval techs anyways). Since you're currently only penalized per system and not per planet, those 6 planet systems are much more attractive, even if they don't have any green/blue jewel in them. Unless they're all toxic lavaballs. Of course if you're the Sowers that can still pay dividends...

The AI does need some work. The major challenge of the game is learning the nuances of its mechanics. Once you have that knowledge, the second highest difficulty is the only thing one can consider difficult. Multiplayer is great, but the challenge is finding a few good humans to play with. There are some balance problems, but most of them are minor and only come up in MP. There are only 15 devs for the game and many of them are on vacation. The rest are working on a Mac version and modding. I would guess the next major balance will come in a month or so. Still, I find lots more to learn each time I play. I don't think this game will ever be shelved for me.

From what I could tell a while back, ES lacked a distinctive diplomatic screen for each of the races, and any kind of "flavor" in diplomatic contact.  This is an area I really enjoyed in the GC games.  Has this been remedied?

I'm crossing my fingers that they continue to properly support and update this title.  I really like it.