Amplitude Studios and publisher Iceberg Interactive have just released Disharmony, the first expansion pack to Endless Space, their turn-based space 4X strategy game.
Endless Space was released in July of 2012. We wrote a review back then and we think it was a good game all things considered. But, overall, everything felt a bit too lifeless, and combat was quite a disappointment. Amplitude released four free add-ons/DLCs since then, which fixed many bugs and brought some new improvements. Now, Amplitude releases Disharmony, the first expansion pack to Endless Space.
Disharmony main features:
- A brand new Faction called “the Harmony” with a single objective in mind: Annihilate Dust!
- New Fighter and Bomber units that will completely change the shape of combats, especially with the new Battle Formation and Targeting systems
- A complete rework of the Ship Design interface, including an improved Weapon System that provides family types for modules (short, medium and long range)
- New Invasion mechanics have been added: Prepare your population for Bombardments, Sieges and land Invasions!
- Expect to face a real challenge when playing against AI opponents with the New Adaptive Multi-Agent System (AMAS)
- Other additions and features voted or requested by the community include:
- Four new Heroes [Games2Gether]
- A new option to disable Exchange of Technologies, as a request from the Multiplayer community!
You can check the full release note here.
Disharmony is available on Steam for $9.99/€7.99€9.99/£8.99 for the PC and Mac. You’ll need the Endless Space base game to play. According to Iceberg’s press release, an English retail version (key-only box with art book) should come out on the 28th of June.
Expect an Endless Space re-review in around a couple of weeks. So, if you want to know how much this turn-based 4X game has evolved, and how valuable this Disharmony expansion pack really is, you may want to stay tuned for that ;)
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I’m looking forward to this!
I’m curious to see how your re-review goes in consideration of the add-ons and the expansion. I REALLY want to love endless space, but each time I try to play it eventually I just hit this wall of monotony that manifests through a mundane technology grind, system management, and uninspiring conflict – none of which provide very interesting or deep choices.
The game has a lot of pieces moving in the right direction, but the total is somehow less than the sum of its parts.
I get that feeling a bit too, even though I love Endless Space so much.
The key is finding a right balance of opponent difficulty and map size. I usually play large, grand maps in most other 4x games, so I stuck with those for Endless Space for awhile… but I found that it would get monotonous, and basically if I had ~50% of the galaxy there was no way I would lose. It seems counter-intuitive but I think the excellent UI actually makes larger maps more boring, as it’s a piece of cake to micromanage everything and make it feel like you’re just going through business as usual.
I upped the AI difficulty and started playing on smaller “knife-fight” maps and integrated a couple of very excellent mods out there (the Fair Fight one is great) that rebalance weapons and armor. It makes the game much more fun and tense. A greater variety of maps would also help.
I felt the same as you to some extent. The technology progression didn’t live to expectations. The combat I already talked about above. I also got the feeling of repeating the same tasks over and over. There was some spark missing, some extra life (or soul) perhaps. Maybe the 4 DLCs have changed that. And, perhaps the expansion even more. At least I hope so. That’s why we think a re-review is in order. We’ll see.
I’m looking forward to the re-review. I just couldn’t get into it because of the soullessness you mentioned. It was modern, beautiful, but for whatever reason, I felt like I was playing an enterprise application. I just noticed that I haven’t played it since last July.
The re-review is going to be from the perspective of someone who has not really played much of the game since its vanilla release. It should serve as a great update for those who have put it down since release and are wondering if they should spend the time or money to pick it back up again.
The price at least here in Austria is still €9,99, at least on Steam
Ok, so probably it’s different in some countries. I see it cheaper here (€7.99), because I own Endless Space perhaps? The press release stated €9.99, but I found odd it being the same price in dollars. Then I saw €7.99 here and assumed that to be the price. I updated the prices and will re-check later.
Good to see a new review :)
This expansion make the game very interesting, I think is a good addon.
Hope in a future with a expasion centred on diplomacy
how do formations work? Does this addition improve combat in a considerable way?
I’ve only played for a few hours, but you now have options to choose your “targeting system” and your formation. You only have three options for your targets (that I could find), everyone fire at every ship (“Spread Fire”), concentrate fire on one ship at a time (Nosebleeder or something like that) and concentrate fire on the first three ships (“Guillotine”).
Now, because you have those targeting options, you can choose one of 6 or 7 formations to maximize your fleet potential. You can choose your formation by having your ships with the highest HP up front (default), or highest Armor, highest Defense, highest firepower, highest evade, etc. This way you can tailor your fleets to have your big, beefy blockers “up front” and protect glass cannons in the back. Of course, the enemy could still choose spread fire and damage those ships, they just won’t be able to concentrate that fire.
So far I’ve found combat radically different from the vanilla game, but that’s probably because they really changed the warfare tech tree and each type of weapon also now has a “specialization” of long range, medium range or melee. That’s not even including the new fighter and bomber mechanics. I guess it feels like I need to relearn the whole system balance over again… they went from rock paper scissors to 4 kinds of rock, 4 kinds of scissors and 4 kinds of paper with a lizard and Spock thrown in there.
Do you still have to watch the animations or is there a way to skip them? I thought the battles got boring but if I autoresolved vs watching the battles my fleets did much worse (even though I didn’t really do much of anything during combat). I tried the game out but stopped playing at mid-game. Once I had to do several fights in a row it was just too boring.
Yes, it’s possible to skip the 3D battle by using an ‘auto mode’ (and you can still choose the battle actions). The feature was introduced in one free content several months ago.
Spock trump rock every time but freaks out when scisors are brought near his ears
So… No price drop for the day-one players? The ones that got the game early in development?
Downloading it now. Will try this. I know the battle system is a turn off but I guess everything and everyone deserves a second chance. Hopefully this and the new fallen enchantress DLC will hold me off until Brave New World and then Europa Universalis IV
well, I purchased the expansion and after playing some days I have to say that it’s a huge disappointment. The main problems of this game, the terrible combat system and the shallow gameplay, have not been addressed at all. The changes are marginal, just kind of cosmetic ones. As soon as I start playing, thanks to the indeed superb interface combined with the music I’m slowly but surely put asleep.
I guess I’ll never get into this game. Additionally I hate the galaxy generation, it takes too long if you play a huge map and I have never managed to get a somewhat acceptable starting position. I don’t know if there is way to mod some parameters to change its behavour. Maybe there are, but I don’t think I’ll take the trouble to search for it. Anyway, next week the early access version of Horizon will be on steam. Since it has tactical combat I’ll get it. Hopefully a better game experience. Endless space is rather kind of endless boring.
This game totally turned me off when I heard that it forced the use of starlanes for space travel. Roads in space do NOT help my immersion.
In order to make up for that, the expansion would have to make combat utterly amazing for me to even consider buying it, and from what I’ve heard so far…..no.
So far the impression I get is that if you like Endless Space the new expansion is worthwhile and if you didn’t like Endless Space you still won’t.
I’d like them to keep the user interface. Make the galaxy a little more lively (the universe seems pretty dead) and if they still want combat where you don’t take an active roll they should license Gratuitous Space Battles ship design and combat system.
I think if I could have Endless Space’s user interface, Distant Worlds’ hustle and bustle and GSB’s ship design and combat system I’d be a happy spaceman.
I have the feeling that most of you guys just wanted Endless Space to be a tactical 4X game that it is not. And you now you still want it absolutly different with the expansion.
Since the beginning it was announced like a strategic 4X game. The devs said that the combat system could not be modified due to the limitation of the engine. What they did with the expansion was just to add some deepness to the combat system (and it needed it).
But it is still a strategic combat system. Battles are not only solved when you press the “fight button” but when you research the good technologies against your ennemies, when you choose the composition of your fleet etc… The battle is not won during the battle itself but before, the battle is just the result of your previous choices.
Now with the expansion, you have the range of weapons to choose (during the conception of your ships), the defensive and offensive formations, the use of fighters and bombers (that can be adapt to combat or invasion) and a better invasion system.
If you want to play a tactical 4X, just do not buy Endless Space and its expansion! Go back to Sword of the Stars, Homeworld and Sins of a Space Empire. Endless space is “pure” strategy 4X game, a “Empire manager”.
It’s like a chess game, you build your strategy and counter the opponant strategy. It is also “cold” and sometime boring (the endgames…) but when you finally won, it is pure awesomeness. Especially in multiplayer!
And forgive me for the english mistakes, I am not a native speaker, nether a good speaker.
I don’t mind the lack of tactical combat. Gratuitous Space Battles and GalCiv2 both lack tactical combat. My problem was that ship design and combat were necessary but boring. It’s perfectly fine to automate combat and ship design like some historical grand strategy games. But having ship design and combat with so few meaningful choices and so little depth sucked.
When it gets a bit cheaper during a Steam sale I’ll give it another go. But I don’t want to risk another 9.99.
I like the tactical battles because they make the pacing nice and brisk and each expansion will add more depth like disharmony with fighters,formations and targeting.I like the new invasion mechanics and the new mineral race plays different.The ship graphics along with SOTS2 are miles ahead of the rest.
This expansion sadly was rushed out is pretty buggy and unfinished and a few weeks patching is needed.I could say the same for the new DW Shadows which also had a shitload of bugs too.
btw
Horizon is available on steam now on aerly access. I haven’t played much yet, just the tutorial, but I must say the game is superb, the interface is beautiful and intuitive, The planetary view fantastic. Reasearch interesting. Tactical combat well done, turn based, you have to take into account attack direction. I can only recommend it.
An even better experience to an already solid game. Lets not forget the soundtrack, one of the best in awhile and the music really gives you that nostalgic feeling, always wanting to come back for more. MoO2 though, is the best imo and makes you feel right at home
Also waiting for a re-review of Endless Space, the base game was quite boring to me (mostly due to shallow ship design and space battles ).. hoping the expansion mixed things up a bit :)
The Alpha Version of Horizon suits me already better than ES with, or without any DLC^^