#oneaday Day 845: Endless SPAAAAAACE

As I believe has been well-documented on this very site a number of times, I am not very good at strategy games, be they of the board- or computer-based varieties. I have trouble prioritising what I want to do, and as soon as I do decide upon a course of action, some asshole other player comes along and beats the shit out of me before I have a chance to follow through on my master plan.

So it was with some trepidation that I decided I would give Endless Space a go. I've been playing a bit of Starbase Orion on iOS recently and, having recently won my first game (against one Easy-level opponent) I felt I wanted to investigate the space-based 4X genre a little further.

Aside: If you, like me, constantly forget what "4X" stands for, it means "explore, expand, exploit and exterminate" and is used to describe strategy games that involve a combination of building, expansion, collecting resources and military conflict. They're typically (though not always) turn-based in execution due to the amount of micromanagement necessary to keep an empire running smoothly, and depending on the game, victory can generally be attained in several ways. Sid Meier's popular Civilization series is one of the best-known examples.

With me? Good. Endless Space is an upcoming space-based 4X game from French indie developer Amplitude. You can preorder the game right now and jump into an impressively-complete alpha build and, in an interesting twist on the usual development cycle, participate in the decision-making process as the game gets closer to release. I shan't go into detail on that side of things right now (though I may in the future as it's a very cool idea to get the community involved in development) but I will talk a little about the game itself and how I've found it after a few hours of taking it for a spin earlier.

Endless Space, like many other games of its type, takes place in a randomly-generated galaxy. You're given a starting colony and a meagre supply of ships to get yourself up and running, and from there it's all about the empire-building. Scout out new systems, send colony ships to the richest-looking planets, then build, expand and conquer until you are the undisputed ruler of the Universe. Easy enough, right?

Unlike some similar titles, Endless Space's map is based around specific routes between star systems. (In Starbase Orion, for example, ships can move between any systems that are in range via the most direct route.) Because of this, it's much more straightforward to figure out how to defend yourself because attacks will only be coming from certain angles. Blockade your systems that are on the front line, then figure out a pathway through your opponent's defences that will whittle them down piece by piece. In some ways it reminded me of the excellent board-game adaptation of Blizzard's StarCraft, which is well worth a punt if you have a few hours (and a very big table) to spare.

The basic mechanics are similar to the classic Civilization titles. Each colony under the player's control produces food, industry, science and "dust", which is the currency used in the Endless Space universe. Food leads to population growth. Industry is used to build things — the more industry, the quicker things are built. Science is used to research new technologies. And dust is used for all sorts of purposes — hurrying production, upgrading ships and all manner of other things. Each colony in a star system adds to that system's pool of food, industry, dust and science (referred to in-game as "FIDS"), and each system may then use said pools to upgrade its population, contribute to the empire's overall research progress, build ships or build improvements to that specific system. It's simple to understand in practice, particularly if you've played Civilization before.

An interesting twist on the usual formula comes in the form of "hero" units, who are generated every few turns and may be hired for a fee of dust up front, then paid a salary each turn. Heroes come in two main forms: system governors and admirals. The former provide various bonuses to FIDS and morale in the system they're assigned to, while the latter may be used to take command of a fleet of ships and make them more powerful. As they do their jobs, they level up and may be customised with various abilities to specialise them or make them better generalists. They can be shuffled around the player's empire at will, too.

Combat, too, takes an intriguingly unconventional approach. Rather than going outright real-time such as in Sins of a Solar Empire, or almost completely hands-off as in Starbase Orion, Endless Space's combat takes a curious "cinematic" approach. A combat encounter unfolds over a set period of real time which is divided into several phases. There are a few seconds at the beginning of combat while both fleets approach each other, then the battle progresses between long, medium and short-range phases. The player may play a "card" on each of these three phases which provides numerous special effects. Cards have categories, too, and certain categories cancel out the other player's abilities. This gives an element of uncertainty to the combat, though the "combat preview" window, which estimates the player's chances of victory prior to the combat unfolding, is a pleasing addition, as are the Battlestar Galactica-style cinematic combat sequences (complete with ethnic instruments) and ability to completely skip the combat scene altogether if it looks like being a complete whitewash.

I haven't played a game through to completion yet, but I've been enjoying what I've tried so far. I don't feel overwhelmed with things to worry about and I don't feel I'm being "left behind" by the computer players. (I may feel differently if I get stomped on by one of them — my closest neighbour declared war on me just because I forcibly removed one of his scout ships from my border system with a fleet of destroyers.) The "hero" mechanic adds a cool sense of progression and the way the game is presented is simple, clear and easy to understand while remaining aesthetically impressive, with smoothly-animated, attractive UI elements, excellent background music and atmospheric sound effects.

If this is an alpha version, I very much look forward to seeing how the game evolves over the coming months. If you have the slightest interest in the turn-based strategy genre, I'd strongly suggest you give it a shot — and thanks to my good buddy Alex for the recommendation.

Check out the game here and preorder on Steam to get access to the alpha build.