Endless Space 2 - 14/20 hours

When I first get a new 4X game, my first act is always to play it on the easiest difficulty at the quickest speed. Just so I can get a lay of the land, and try to understand what the tech tree is capable of. But more and more, I'm finding "quick" to be something of a misnomer. I actually started a whole new game after my last post, and now, 9 hours later, I've just won. It's probably because I insist on taking the long way through the game - pursuing late-game victories like Technology or Economic, instead of going for a fast conquest. Still, the thought that 9 hours counts as quick is kind of silly.

And yet, I'm starting to feel like it's almost too fast, like I don't get enough time with each technology and building. Like they're already obsolete before I can even register their impact, and thus my plan to learn the ins and outs of the game is self-defeating. It's likely that 4X games, by their very nature, take dozens of hours to learn and hundreds of hours to master and there's no easy shortcut to getting there. I won't know until I've played Endless Space 2 for at least that long and look back at my early, fumbling days with a new perspective.

If I had to guess how it will be, though, I'd say that this game appears to have the same basic structure as the original, and thus may be susceptible to some of the same flaws. I didn't find myself terraforming every planet in the galaxy, but I can't say whether that's because the lower tier planets are better or because I just didn't get around to it. Also, it's tough to judge the AI by how it reacts in sandbox mode - most of the factions were willing to get into peace deals/alliances with me and then stay true to their agreements, but then the remaining ones may have declared some truly suicidal wars (it's hard to say - your alliance makes war and peace as a unit, so it's possible that one of my allies started these wars, and quite sensibly so).

Also, and this might just be quick speed talking, but a lot of the fiddly decisions you have to make, about the assignment of your population (different races have different production bonuses), or about the makeup of your senate, don't really seem to have a noticeable short-term effect. I never got to the point where I thought shuffling my people around would help me achieve a concrete goal.

That being said, I enjoyed the game as a whole, and I'm energized by the thought of playing it some more. I think I'll go the other way and play it on the slowest speed, to see if micromanaging becomes more worth my time.