Endless Legend Guide – Your first game [1.2]

Overview

Endless Legends offers some complex mechanics. Therefore you can really use strategy to get ahead in the game. In many aspects it is much more flexible than the more popular Civilization series (especially Brave New World). However Endless Legend can be a bit overwhelming. Here is a guide to get you started!

Intro

This guide is a quick in-game reference. For the full guide containing more information please check: Endless Legend Guide – Your first game[www.gameplayinside.com]

Setting up your game

Faction
For your first game I strongly recommend to stick with the default “Wild Walkers”. They are the most traditional faction
Difficulty
For a new player it is highly recommended to play either on easy or newbie. In Endless Legend the AI actually gets ‘dumber’ if you lower the difficulty below normal. On newbie difficulty it is very unlikely that the AI will declare war on you. If you have played Endless Space I recommend starting on Easy difficulty. Otherwise play your first game on newbie as you will be playing against yourself mostly.
World settings
I recommend a normal world size (6 players) with shape Pangea.

FIDSI

FIDS stands for Food, Industry, Dust, Science and Influence. These are all resources that can be accumulated by your cities by exploiting its neighboring tiles. Similar to Civilization (or The Settlers of Catan) the tile output is determined by the terrain type. A desert will not provide any food whereas a nice green field of grass certainly will.

Food:
Used to grow city population.
Industry:
Used to construct buildings and units.
Dust:
Dust is a currency similar to gold. Dust is used to pay maintenance cost on your cities and armies. It is also used to nstantly complete projects from your city production queue. Finally the following can be purchased on the marketplace: heroes, mercenaries, luxury resources, resource, resource stockpiles.
Science:
Science is used to research technologies.
Influence:
Every 20 turns you can spend influence on your empire plan policies to gain empire wide advantages. Influence is also required for almost all diplomatic actions including declaration of war.

Cities and workers in Endless Legend

Cities will automatically harvest any tiles in their range. Meaning that the city gains the income associated with those tiles. Unlike Civilization V Endless Legend does not require population assigned to these tiles.

Every inhabitant will be available as a worker. These workers can be freely assigned to boost any of the 5 FIDSI. Once assigned the number of workers will be multiplied with the production per worker. The production per worker can be increased with technologies, buildings and even the empire plan.

Examples can ben found on Endless Legend Guide – Your first game[www.gameplayinside.com].

Strategic resources

Strategic resources are used to construct powerful weaponry and armory for your military units.

They are obtained by creating so called “extractors” on resource nodes. Alternatively you can also build a city (district) on top of resource nodes. The city will act as extractor. Strategic resource totals will be listed in the top left corner.

There are six types of strategic resources divided in three distinct tiers. Technological era 3 will unlock Tier 2 extractors. Technological era 4 will unlock tier 3 extractors.

• Tier 1: Glasssteel (yellow) and Titanium (blue).
• Tier 2: Adamantian (orange) and Palladian (red) .
• Tier 3: Hyperium (purple) and Mithrite (green).

Higher tier resources will allow you to construct superior gear. Within the same tier the stats are roughly comparable. However each have their preferences. For example Glasssteel based weapons tend to have more initiative. The titanium counterparts offer a higher attack rating. Keep in mind that higher tier extractors are more expensive to build.

• A single extractor will provide you with +1 per turn, so it takes a while before you can purchase gear.
• During winter NO strategic resources will be generated (except for the Vaulters)
• You can stockpile strategic resources (up to 999)
• Purchasing armor/weapons from strategic resources is a one time fee, not a permanent upkeep like in Civilization V.
• You can also purchase strategic resources from the market place
• You can trade strategic resources from other players

Luxury Resources and boosters

Luxury resources are extremely important in Endless Legend but are easy to miss. They can provide huge benefits to your empire. Especially on approval (happiness).

Besides strategic resources your map is filled with luxury resource nodes. Like strategic resources these can be harvested by extractors and city districts. Once an extractor has been build you will start stockpile them (+1 per turn per extractor).

If you gather enough luxury resources of the same type they can be spend on a booster. The bonus depends on the luxury resource. The cost depends on the number of cities the player controls; the larger your empire, the higher the cost!

To activate a booster simple click on a luxury resource with a yellow square around it. Boosters will be active for 10 turns.

Science

Endless Legends uses a refreshing way for dealing with technological advancement. The system was setup for maximum freedom and forcing the player to actually choose. Let’s find out how they did this.

All techs are scattered across six era’s. Every time you unlock an era some changes to your game are made.

• You will receive a new tier of weapons and armor for your military
• Newly trained units will more experience but also more costly to produce
• New empire plan levels will be unlocked (up to level 4)
• New strategic and or luxury resources become visible on the map

Within each era there techs are split into quadrants

• Military
• Science and Industry
• Empire and Expansion
• Economy And population

However this distinction merely exists for your convenience. All techs can be researched regardless of order. There are no paths! So once an Era is unlocked you have complete freedom.

For every 9 techs completed you will unlock the next era. How you progress to the next Era is completely up to you.

Like pretty much all 4K games research gets more expensive the further you get in the tech tree. However Endless legends adds an additional factor; nominal cost.

Nominal cost: For each tech completed the cost of ALL other technologies increases

For additional examples please check the complete guide: Endless Legend Guide – Your first game[www.gameplayinside.com]

Combining the Era’s with the nominal cost a us a very important rule can be distilled; only research something if you need it! This is the exact opposite from competitors such as Civilization V where you are forced to research that Longswordman, even if you have no acces to iron.
So if you have no war then do not research the Armor and Weaponry. Just take the ones from the next Era. If you have only one city with access to a lake then do not research the shipyard. Etc!

How to manage approval in Endless Legend

Basically approval forces you to chose between a lot of small cities and a few very large cities. Both strategies are viable in Endless Legend. Luckily you can overcome this barrier with technology and careful planning

• Sewer System: +20
• Central Market: +25
• Arts Council: +30
• Imperial News Network: +20

Every time you surround a district (or city) by 4 other districts it will upgrade to level 2. This process provides it with a +15 approval bonus. So if you plan ahead you actually start to generate additional approval from your city. Meaning you can found additional cities more easily.

For more information please checkout the complete Endless Legend Guide – Your first game[www.gameplayinside.com]

Every time you are close to a luxury or strategic resource you should consider to expand your city to that tile. Besides acting as a “free” extractor it will also provide your city with +15 approval instead of -10.

In tier 2 ,4 and 6 technologies can be found that lower expansion disapproval by 25% each. If you have multiple cities then these technologies are an awesome approval boost.

• Bread and circuses
• State-approved theatre

Luxury boosters such as grapes provide a +30 approval bonus on ALL your cities. Since you can activate multiple boosters at the same time all your cities will be fervent (max approval) in no time!

Summary

Thanks for reading my guide. I hope it has been helpfull. I tried to reduce the text in this Steam version so that it is better usable as ingame reference. For a more detailed guide please check the original: Endless Legend Guide – Your first game[www.gameplayinside.com]

If needed this guide will be extended with additional concepts (I am planning on talking about Science and Military units).

Version history

Version 1.0
2-11-2014: Original release

Version 1.1
12-11-2014: Chapter “Science” added.

Version 1.2
16-11-2014: The missing “Approval from using districts as extactors]” paragraph was added to the Steam guide.