I've been reading a lot of negative feedback, so I'm wondering if the game is actually enjoyable, and more importantly improving in meaningful ways with all the patches they've been releasing?

FYI I'm very inexperienced with these types of games, the most I ever played was Civ 1 in the 90s, and not even a full game of Civ 5. I am about turn 10 or so in my first run as the humans in EL2 and so far I like it a lot, but I've been hearing a lot of mixed reactions that only seems to have cropped up more recently.

Apart from the bugs (and the corrupt save file introduced with Patch 45), is it getting better in the "right ways", or at least trending toward that direction?

What is this now? I can't play a game?

So, I started playing the Order of Zelevas, and one of my first faction quests had me defeat a rebel army with a power of around 542.

Meanwhile, my own army had a power of about 280.

I thought, okay, maybe I'm supposed to somehow win this through tactics or something?

Well, I tried, and I got absolutely fucked, I won but only my hero survived with little hp (no I did not do auto battle)

But then I noticed something even worse. Apparently, I wasn't supposed to defeat just ONE of these rebel armies. There were TWO of them.

How the hell is that reasonable for the FIRST faction quest?

Am I missing some mechanic here? Am I supposed to ignore my faction quest for a bunch of turns until I've built up a much stronger army? Or is there some way to deal with these armies early on that I'm completely overlooking?

Because right now, it feels ridiculous to be given a starting quest where the enemies have almost double my army power, and then discover I have to beat two of them.

I beat my first quest way way into the game while my friend has already beaten like 5 of his.

Genuinely asking, what am I supposed to be doing differently here?

I began my Amplitude journey with Endless Space 2, and fell in love immediately. To this day, it remains my favourite of the series and I find myself returning to it, time and time again. The gameplay being a bit simpler with planets as movement nodes is one thing, but the world, the factions and how full of personality it all is, are the main reasons. The asymmetric design and how each has their own playstyle or gimmick to strategize around, the visual designs, the voices, it's sublime.

Endless Legend was my next, and I've definitely had some good fun with it. The roster of factions is fun, and while I'm not the biggest fan of some designs they are definitely a breath of fresh air among the fantasy settings which seem hesitant to commit to a "weirder" species appearance.

When EL2 got announced I was very excited and as the factions kept being revealed that feeling only strengthened, but once the first Necrophage gameplay got released I saw something that worried me. A Necrophage hero reached the level necessary to build a haven and gain a companion, and the same generic conversation as with the Kin played between two bugs that spawn from larvae grown in killed enemies. I heard that was supposed to be addressed, but as far as I've seen it has not happened yet. In EL, as I understood it, the main humanoid bug leader was a new occurrence, a guiding intelligence behind the instinct. Due to the mechanics and the main quest this swarm feels less alien. I keep thinking back to Star Craft 2 Heart of the Swarm and the Zerg characters there, specifically Abathur and Dehaka. Even if they use language to communicate, the way they use the words are different, Abathur leaves out everything not necessary to the functional content of the messages, and Dehaka struggles with words or is not used to speaking. That's missing.

Why can the intelligent leader necrophage converse with the living ram like it's on the same level as it? Isn't its function different? Both use their heads, but one is meant to smash it into enemies not have chats.

I haven't played enough to experience all of the factions yet, so my strongest grievances are mostly with Necrophages, but it seems that the others might be experiencing similar issues. Tahuks not being "lizard" enough and the triangular jaw leader missing some of the cool technology they have, with dialogue being mostly sass between the religious leader and our character. Sandshapers might be my favourite faction due to their terraforming capabilities and alien appearance, but their dialogue does not reflect that. The voice being sort of similar to a whisper/blowing wind is interesting but it sounds a bit too human. I keep thinking of windchimes or something like Bard from League of Legends, would have fit them more.

I doubt it will be changed now since so much is built on this new quest system look, and the amount of dialogue they've written, but in the current form it feels like it takes away the factions' personality rather than expanding on it.

What are your experiences? If you were to change the voices or dialogues what would you do?

Tldr:

I feel that dialogues and language use choices are too similar between factions making them less unique, which is especially visible with Necrophages (siege weapon bug having a chat with the leader), and Sandshapers (fractal sand sculptures sounding too human and also chatting like people).

Late in my first game as Kin I start to notice more and cases when placing a district decreases (at least according to tooltip) some random stat. Sometimes it happens with approval, which could be understandable as some kind of semi-hidden growth limiting mechanic, but other times production, food and even fortification can decrease.

Is this a bug or Im missing something?

Not sure if anyone else feels like this, but I have tried probably half a dozen to a dozen 4x games over the years and non of them have clicked. I would usually start a game, make it to about turn 50-100 and then quit. But not EL2. Just finished winning my 2nd or 3rd game in about 15 hours of actual play time, had some matches in there where I was trying the first 50 or so turns of a faction to see if I like them. Here are the reasons I really love this game.

1. The heroes and the questing: I really enjoy RTS and RPG games and having heroes that level up, get gear and have skill points to spend is really cool to see in a 4x game. Also having quests to do for your faction and the neutrals gives something to do in between selecting researches or starting new productions, you have less turns where you mindlessly hit "end turn" and wait to be able to have something engaging to do again.

2. The city building: I think this is probably in large part due to the districts leveling mechanics and the ways they interact with each other and the environment, but the city building aspects of this game also seem a lot better than in other games like civ 6. I enjoy being able to just hover over my districts and quickly tell what they synchronize with rather than having to try and figure that out through a bunch of menus.

3. Combat: Similar to point 1, the combat is really good. Having turn based tactics inside of my 4x game with actual combos between units is far better than "It's my turn, my guy right clicks your guy and I do some damage" having defense, active abilities, leveling/specializations is just all very good.

4. Democracy: Probably the biggest point for me is the simplicity of the democracy mechanics with other factions. One of the things I don't enjoy about most 4x games is how the interactions with other factions is handled and how big of a role it plays in the game. I like having it so if I want to be friends with someone I compliment them a couple times and then go no aggression pact (if I cant right away), for me 4x is fun for building huge cities making an army and then rolling over the AI armies. Kind of a side note to this but just the systems in general not being super complicated. Not having a civics tree or trade routes and golden ages as things you need to focus on aside from economy and fight.

5. Victory Conditions: I honestly kinda like the alternate win conditions being "weird", but also just kind of difficult to do. I think its just because they all kind of require you to go down multiple avenues in the game. You can't just focus on science and then win by researching everything or win by having x number of territories. I feel like it actually pushes you more towards a domination victory since they all would require you to be in a position where you could just slam face with an army and win.

6. Faction Diversity: Really nice how every faction plays so differently. If I get bored of one playstyle I can go and effectively play a new game with a different faction.

Anyways, let me know what y'all think about the game, if there's anything you love that I missed, or things that I love that you don't.

Edit: added point 6

In addition to the issue mentioned in the title, I now no longer even have an option to create a hive in some newly uncovered regions. None of the previous updates had caused issues in my playthroughs that were underway at the time, but this one seems to have removed basic features of my current playthrough. Has anyone else experienced this, and was there any fix you were able to find? I'd really rather not just start a new playthrough, I put a lot of time and effort into getting this one to a reasonable place and want to play it through to my first Severed Claws victory.

So i am playing as Last Lords in this game and to my surprise i see the kin setting up camp without even clearing the fortress. Is the fortress mechanic specific only to the player or do the Kin have some special mechanic? Can sm1 explain i'm hella confused!

My last post was me playing a series with the Last Lords, and that was one slow game due to the early game economy and growth issues of the faction. Though mostly the game end turn was still the same so I guess the endgame of Last Lords is indeed stronger than others that I was able to recover well.

After that, I got to try out the Order of Zelevas faction, and they are actually so good. My only issue with them is that their first quest is actually way too difficult and takes too much time getting through, however once I started to snowball, the rest felt so easy. Here, I got my first ever sub-turn100 Worship Victory on Fast gamespeed that I achieved in 95 turns.

It is in the same playlist as always. This Order of Zelevas playthrough is a 4-part series, going from Ep.31 to Ep. 35. One episode in the middle is me getting tilted after being tired playing a start with Tahuks that I have now restarted again, and that I will post once its finished too.

First of all, as you can see in these photos, it simply isn’t working consistently. For the turn shown here, not a single of these forests was planted!

Secondly and no less importantly, please make planting less micro-intensive. Separating armies is already a chore; separating them and ordering them to plant individual hexes, turn after turn, is mind-numbing.

I recommend either:
1. An auto-plant option similar to auto-explore
2. Increasing the cost and making the action apply to multiple hexes