I'm trying ot make guides for basically everything about this game. Check the index on the right to see if there are tutorials you might be interested in. They range from basic tips for new players, to explanations on how each of the factions work, to tutorials devoted to single mechanics of the game.

These are videos containing general tips for the game. Written versions are found below as well.


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1) You can destroy buildings you've built by clicking on the 'automation policy of this system' button. This gives you an overview of how much you spend on upkeep per building, and allows you to scrap them if you don't want them anymore. This is especially useful when optimizing trade-routes, as you can scrap trade subsidiaries to allow you to build new ones further away (as trade routes get more profitable with distance)

2) In most 4X games you can buyout your production. Here you can do that as well, but you need the right technology for it, called multi-thread management in the Economy & Trade section.

3) There is actually a search bar for technologies in the bottom of the technology screen. I find this especially handy when looking for specific colonization technologies.

4) Research has an incremental cost. This means that technologies get more expensive to research the more other technologies you've already researched. This can make a big difference (see video for example), so plan well!

5) While production has a drag and drop function to re-order the things you are building/producing, the technology screen does not have this. However, if you already queued up a lot of technologies, and suddenly find one that you would like to prioritize without messing up the entire queue, you can alt+click that technology and it will go to the front of the queue.

6) You will run out of things to build with your colonies at some point. At this point, all the production goes to waste. Because of this, it's good to research 'infinite cost' technologies, such as Chameleon Spaces or Maximized Exploitation (in the Economy and Trade section...or use the search bar! :) )

7) In your main screen there is a scan button on the top of the screen. This has different effects depending on the zoom level. Although they differ in their usefulness, it's good to play around with them and know what they do, just in case you need them.

8) Don't forget to customize your colonization and exploration ships! Your colonization ship starts with a free slot. I like to put extra movement on it so it can reach places I want to colonize much faster.

9) Curiosities can be explored in two different ways. If you've colonized the system, you can make projects, which cost time, but even when you've colonized a system, you can still explore the curiosities with exploration ships instead. To do this, zoom out a little bit, click on your exploration ship, and then on the curiosity. At the beginning of the game you will not see every curiosity yet. Through the technology screen you can improve both your curiosity detection level (to see more curiosities) as well as your curiosity exploration power (to actually explore these higher level ones).

10) Ships have different roles and bonuses, and it's a very good idea to read what they do. For example, a ship can have the 'guardian' bonus, which basically 'taunts' the enemy to fire at it. Knowing this, you can put one or two of these in your flotilla with a lot of health, armour and shields, and focus your other ships purely on damage. All ships also have their preferred targets, which you can see by mousing over their role.

11) There is a limit to how many systems you can colonize before your empire starts to be unhappy in the empire summary screen (leftbottom of that screen), so make sure to choose your systems well. However, you can extend this limit by research. Search for 'overcolonization' in the technology screen to find the technologies that allow this.

12) This might be obvious to some, but I thought I'd include it, as I read that some people wasted a lot of turns before finding out about this. You don't have to know what's on the other side of a starlane to explore it. Of course you could send out probes first and then click on the found system to travel there, but you can also rightclick on the starlanes itself to travel along them.

13) When you colonize, another system will send ships with food to that outpost to help it grow. This seems to be based on the system that has the highest food output. Problem is, this system might be super far away. You can choose yourself which system to use for this, by clicking on the outpost, and then on the little button on the left of the screen. Find a good balance between distance and food production to speed up the colonization process.

14) In options -> game, you can set how many autosaves are allowed to be stored. As the game is in Alpha, I've actually run into a bug that corrupted my save. Unfortunately I continued playing, and when I reloaded the save, or any of the autosaves, it didn't load anymore. If I would have had more autosaves, I could have loaded a game from before the bug happened to restore my game, but unfortunately I didn't know about this feature yet at that point.

15) Unlike in Endless Legend, luxury resources can be used for two different things in Endless Space 2. First of all, you can use it to customize your System Developments in your economy screen. Be careful to have a good source of the resources you choose though, as you can never reset those system developments (see video for a bit more detail). The second thing you can use resources for it to 'boost' a certain race in the population screen. Boosting means that there is a higher chance that the boosted race will reproduce instead of other races. This can be useful. Let's say you have a race that likes cold planets, but you don't have many of them, but you have many cold planets. By boosting this race, you make sure to get lots of these ones, for more efficient colonization!

Introduction to the Horatio guide: brief overview of how the race plays, as well as some things to look out for.

For people that are interested, I have a let's play on Pacifist Cravers here

This guide details how planets differ from each other.

https://youtu.be/PR2q_wOtr28
This is the chart I made: