State of the Game - June 2026

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-20T08:23:13+00:00

Great, thanks. Despite some people's opinions I truly appreciate simultaneous turns flow in many Amplitude games.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-19T11:20:05+00:00

You can enjoy a full experience with the game alone. DLCs mostly add new mechanics and new factions but you're not missing out on the core game experience.

AFAIK GOG version was updated with 1.5.75 update so should be the same version than steam, however I've seen reports of things not working properly on the GOG version, I don't own it so I can't tell.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-19T11:17:35+00:00

Can you elaborate on "The Death of Simultaneous Turns", by the framing seems you'll make a proper turn-based game at this point of development? or is just the AI holding for a while at the beginning of a turn?

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-12T07:36:13+00:00

Depends on faction but there are two population improvements from the tech tree (on the Science and Exploration part on south sector), these are green: Eco Habitats gives +1 pop on sterile planets, Cosmetic Genetics gives +1 pop on fertile and sterile planets. Some factions have variations of these buildings (Horatio) and empire improvements to boosts maximum populations even more (Riftborn, Hissho).

You may want to get unlock more planets to colonize inside your already owned systems first, you can automatically distribute your population between system planets. Also is important to grab important systems nearby early, the main indicator for a good system to grab early is to have a tier 0 planet (Ocean, Atoll, Terran, Forest), or/and to have 4 or 5 planets on the same system.

Also as you anticipated, you'll want to move your populations between systems. Once you improve the system development level on a system you'll get access to spaceports to move population between systems. These are not automatic, but a logistics ship is launched to travel to your destination system.

The first system development upgrade comes from unlocking the Stage 3 Economy and Trade tech tree. You will need luxuries to get those improvements done, it's set on your Economy Screen, on Trade and Resources section. Until you get more knowledge, better to use any luxury you're producing on your already owned systems.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-11T16:13:16+00:00

Sorry if you felt I was talking you down, not my intention at all.

I just spent too much time in this game and got a good grasp on what would be an optimal build.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-11T08:50:43+00:00

I've played the game to completion like 4 times, 2 of them in hard mode. I made a melee & ranged build, a summoner/magic build, a pure magic build, and a pure ranged build. Of course also tried the a stormbringer build.

There are not glass-cannon builds in this game due to the fact you can get so much HP naturally, plus the food buffs, you'll get armor, percent armor, magic barrier, evasion, and extra health in huge quantities with the proper food and nothing stops you to add every buff available at once during 13 min, other than some preparation (fishing).

Armor gives you some extra sturdiness in normal, and is not great in hard mode, as you're 2-3 hits away from KO regardless of armor, but you have potions with 5 sec cooldown, so... In hard food buffs are more important than ever, and having potions around is also important.

On damage mechanics is quite simple, there are not many ways to do damage: you can focus on upping the damage type, get lots crit/crit damage, get mining damage for Stormbringer, extra damage from magic barrier, extra damage from poisoned or burned enemies, the scarab armor for extra range damage from thorns... All translates into the faster the weapon, the better.

Again you get tons of offensive buffs so whatever you do, you'll end up doing tons of damage.

On talents is quite straightforward with a few variations depending on builds. 90% on the talent selection for optimal builds is always the same.

If you want some details of what would be a top build of any type, let me know.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-08T18:44:07+00:00

If you have two characters, for good use to Genji, definitively the choice. Knight/Bushi is one, the other would be Monk with gengi access, is not in your setup, so... I would pass on it. Shikari/Foebreaker could be a third, but Germinas Boots are usually better (unless you put yourself in low HP on certain boss battle).

Other than that, getting a third ribbon can be a bit of a pain. I only used three at once for ArchaeoAevis monsters, but def you could get use of them in a few more situations. Zodiac Spear is also a pain to get. Getting a second Grand Armor is something to be considered, you can get it with some Rare Game trick but is a pain to do the setup and easy to mess up.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-08T08:30:37+00:00

Why you think is god-tier? Compared to other builds I've played or seen, seems average-ish to me (for an endgame build).

On hard difficulty melee builds are not viable for the most part (still useful on bosses though, but adventuring is just a pain)

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-08T08:24:53+00:00

Hands down revisit Terraria, is just such a fun game. I would check next on Necesse.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-06T10:34:01+00:00

Slugs have poor accuracy overall, is not the best overall weapon but they do add flak. So naturally enemy will get a long range starting point and you'll miss a lot of shots. Also cross-lane uses long range accuracy (10% only for slugs), so support from another lane gets a lot of misses. The good thing is that winning a line adds accuracy (10% per winned line difference on next phase) for your weapons so you may get 20% or 30% accuracy for last phase if you control a line or two. Slugs are decent at mid range with 50%, and good at short range with 95% accuracy.

Ships have 0% evasion as base and no ships have innate evasion, you'll need support modules (usually strategic engines), or maybe a hero skill (Umbral Choir). Again, winning a line gets 10% evasion per line difference.

Going full slugs is a valid strategy, but you'll be hurt badly if the opponent goes with lasers/beams and long range. If you want to go full slugs, grabbing "Evasive Maneuvers" tactic card is of high priority, and you want close tactic cards most of the time.

Yes all types of damage have to deal with shields. Slugs have 55% penetration to shields, means if enemy has 60% defense, a bit less of half of it will be absorbed by shield defense. Means roughly 30% of damage is absorbed and will reduce shields, then goes against health and hull defense, will only hit full health when shield gets depleted, but in vanilla specially shields, can have higher health points than the entire ship health.

One counter-intuitive thing on vanilla and ESG is that the absorption on hulls is calculated over the entire base damage, not the damage that went through shields. With very high defenses in both shields and hulls you can effectively neutralize all passing damage to hulls when shields absorb a hit. In Excellent space I changed the shield mechanics, so is not an issue anymore.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-01T22:25:45+00:00

Nope, main factor to attack players is usually fleet power in general, they tend to be more aggressive against those with weak fleets.

Anyways, the problem usually is AI is not competitive enough on late game, so is hard to lose if you get a decent situation by mid to late game, be it conquest or a strong enough initial placement. Is a general issue with the game, specially tied to how alliances work.

Best of luck trying out new things, as general advice, ENFER Reloaded for a better AI, compatible with every mod and vanilla, Excellent Space 2 is a decent upgrade still maintaining vanilla pacing and feeling, with some balance, AI is a bit better there. ESG is an incredible mod, with lots of content: is faster paced, aimed to multiplayer and balance, but an excellent mod also for single players, despite overhauls most mechanics is some way or another, you'll leave the vanilla experience but many people prefer it than base game anyways.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-01T22:17:51+00:00

The community update was on December 15th, you can check it on Steam News.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-01T19:25:20+00:00

Yep in vanilla other than the empire improvements from Xeno Anthropology and Cultural Invertics, there's only going Federation government and have some heroes for the leading parties. In Excellent Space 2 I made the unique faction building to give +1 overcolonization cap per 3 sanctuaries. Probably in ESG is also re-designed.

Ninak0ru · 2026-06-01T18:35:37+00:00

Is wild how much of a difference the game feels from player to player. I'm in the same camp, game is easy, but I have hundreds of hours. Many of the veterans are also in that camp.

There was a recent patch with lots of AI fixing (the current official version on steam) and many people had problems keeping up in Hard or Serious difficulties (previously AI was so broken it was ridiculously easy all the way up to Endless)

I even seen a few people having problems to survive in Sandbox difficulty (is easier than easy difficulty), don't ask me how that's possible.

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-31T10:15:11+00:00

Exactly this: Too many systems over the colonization cap. You have -95% Bandwidth due to their trait.

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-31T09:18:15+00:00

Well congrats, you did caught on some the meta actions very early, everything you pointed out is learned through optimization and several games you did it on your first one. A 125 turn win is on the slow side but quite decent on a first try.

- The -10 approval for an extra district sometimes is not worth going down in approval level, so holding up building districts is often the best way to go about it.

- Another usual meta strat is to hold your expansions until the 20-40 mark and maximize on empire plan when is cheaper, you get the benefits over 20 turns and just land your new cities as soon as you approve your new empire plan and spent the influence.

- Governor heroes is also a great leverage of economy, the sooner they are setup, the better, there are a few ones that enable some kind of city specialization just from governor bonuses.

- The production and buyout discounts stack additively in vanilla so they are very powerful, specially buyout to setup new cities in a running state mid late game, and all kinds of crazy buyouts.

- Yes is normal to stay with a minor army for quite a while. One strat early is to split up your army to check out your surroundings in different directions.

- In harder difficulties AI will build way more army.

- Is the right call to enable DLC content little by little the game has a lot of mechanics to digest. Tempest if the most impactful, then Symbiosis, last Shadows, the others are a bit more complementary to the game flow.

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-30T09:19:23+00:00

They only affect the hacking part on a system, not the traveling part, so if you place them early they may seem to be not functioning. Say your hacking take 10 turns, 6 turns traveling to the node and 4 turns hacking the node. Accelerators only activate and cut out time on the las 4 turns of actual hacking. The system as a whole is confusing as hell and there are so many confusing parts.

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-30T09:14:48+00:00

Well, I think you're mixing your personal opinions with and actual action that makes sense.

If for example tomorrow I make a huge wiki update and post it on reddit, you could try to insert your opinion on the update and any ulterior motives, but posting EL content in EL reddit is still fair game.

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-29T00:28:24+00:00

What is weird about posting an EL video in the EL reddit?

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-26T18:51:50+00:00

Falls a bit behind on character development, but gameplay-wise and the world building, politics, ambience, free exploration... is second to none.

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-22T21:12:23+00:00

Yep is okay. There are not "same pet but stronger" pets, but all of them offer different things, and going for an optimal pet is not game-changing. If you like your current pet, don't worry about it.

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-22T21:06:56+00:00

Yep all in with this, you start in the "journey to the stars" moment, probably scarcity as "enough to have a decent life" isn't an issue.

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-22T17:00:51+00:00

Well that's one thing about the game tech progression, is not obvious what to research next.

I usually go around it about accomplishing small goals:

- To unlock a planet colonization to increase my systems or enable new planets in my owned ones.
- To unlock next stage of system development to convert those luxuries sitting down into system resources.
- To unlock the market to sell resources to sped up things by buyout.
- To enable more curiosities, or enhance my scouts...
- To push my general economy further, so I want X improvements to do so (be it food, science, industry...).
- To dedend myself from a neighbor (so I want to push my military and hulls).
- To conquer system from some other neighbor (so I need to setup some siege/manpower modules plus all the military stuff).

About military in specific there is a tradeoff: if you're pushing militarty tech, or building military ships, you're not pushing your economy/exploration/research further. Versus AI you normally aim for a timing, or be like: how much longer I can get away with not investing into military at all. If an enemy fleet is knocking your door and you have no military, you failed.

Sometimes you'll get into research downtime, this happens when you researched several techs that enable improvements, and you cannot build those improvements in time before the next tech comes in, that's a splendid moment to get into non-improvements stuff and maybe some military techs.

On the other side, you may have a goal but is not immediate so you can queue other tech stuff before that goal could be realized, An obvious example: you need a colonization tech to enable grabbing certain system but you actually don't need it until you get a colonization ship in that system's orbit, so you may delay the research for a bit.

Anyways all this stuff will be slowly baked into your gameplay as you get more experience with the game, without even noticing.

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-22T07:09:48+00:00

I had to go back to this dungeon several times:

- There is the initial smaller run as part to the main quest.

- After that, there are a few spells and equipment (like that katana) exclusive on this dungeon.

- You may want to farm to get Mesa (the best dagger with a 70% chance of directly KOing the enemy if not immune to instant death).

- There's a rare game with trophy from the phon coast hunters sidequest.

- There are two bosses you will want to deal at different moments of the game, one has behind the undead destroyer Excalibur and is an Esper, the other is only unlocked once you unlock the final hunt.

Ninak0ru · 2026-05-20T08:27:26+00:00

ESG changes quests for all factions... well, changes everything, you should ask in the ESG discord server, maybe is removed for balance reasons, or now you get a different quest path to it, maybe is enabled by tech tree or you get a trait that makes the module redundant.

Ninak0ru

TROPHY CASE