Sup, since I have been playing a lot of ES2 since it's (slightly premature) release I want to share my vast yet very subjective (read possibly incorrect, random blah blah blah) wisdom, of how to achieve greatness in the game.

I would love to see myself as a respected opponent and a great ally in any MP ES2 game I have played, I have won quite a few, lost quite a few (my getting gud has intensified), have gained first hand experience, got all dem achievments down and eat Endless AI for breakfast. So listen to me, or don't, I don't care.

Visit my blog to get cancer here[eveors.blogspot.cz]..
Check out (my) other guides, any guide is probably better than this one.

My personal favourites as of late are the Lumeris. So we shall start it off with them. (And never get on to anyone else cause I am lazy. And other races are so stupidly OP and easy they need little explanation... or not)


Guess I should explain why, thereason is simple, Lumeris kinda suck, and that's the point, when you rock the game, there is no excuse like "OMG [insert any other race name here] op race".
But they have a good lore background and suit my style the most, and are mostly easy to (micro)manage and play, but most importantly FUN (and you get rich).
When compared to races that basically win on pick if you are not a noob they still make the game interesting for me.

Also:
Forget about economic victory and trading companies. They became mostly irrelevant by trading company output reduction by about 95% throughout the game. Yeah it sux, yeah I told devs, yeah they did not really listen, same about inflation.
What you want to do now is pick lumeris so game remains interesting vs nabs, cause Lumeris simply suck and suck and that's all they do, and if you can win with them, you should feel good about your skills.

• As much as the starting FIDSI output suggests otherwise, you are an mostly EARLY game race.
  While you can remain competitive easily, you will eventually run into obstructions caused by your dust orientation and less impactfull hero abilities while others will not.
  
• You should focus on expansion, since you have somewhat less limited expansion than other races and can expand to anywhere in your vision.
  
• You should expand on systems with strategic or luxury resource nodes, stress on strategic cause their price does not decline so quickly. But diversity can be helpful. Remember - outpost generate deposit income.
  
• You should hug market every turn to generate extra dust from said nodes and convert it into extra outposts or extra minor faction relationship bonuses
  
• You should be rushing enemies early on, before they outgrow you and reach their relevant endgame bonuses.
  
• While pacifism and anti-militaristic pop means good FIDSI in the endgame provided you have the allies for it (that is extermely conditional) it also means somewhat difficult struggle to maintain and gain experience on any other party, rendering your space combat abilities limited when compared to factions with militaristic, industrial, scientific laws accessible.

Let's look at what we are talking about at their official wiki page.[wiki.endless-space.com] Useless much?
Here is wikia page[endless-space-2.wikia.com], much better. althought possibly outdated and crowdsourced.
Did you know about ITER?
If you seek aditional interesting statistics such as individual ship model stats etc., I suggest you refer to ITER on G2G forums[www.games2gether.com], which has some (ir)relevant data of all sorts.

Yup, so basically they are a bunch of spacefishy fellows behaving like the Venetians of space.
Their racial bonus is not amazing but still strong, they also have a strong faction quest rewards and ok-ish faction specific techs to make up for it. Unless you want to pew pew, then they are mostly useless, sorry not sorry. Be optimistic, gain +20 approval, like Lumeris.

As for the planet broker affinity, it is not that great, in the early game, it feels really good and strong while you can just go shopping around the galaxy, but the outposts get quite expensive quite quickly (first is just 250 -> 350 -> 650 ...)
It frees up your construction queue and industry to do other things, but lategame it can tie your hands with planets being worth 4,5K, 20K, 50k and more, but you should never get there on smaller maps. Also inflation applies to those prices, make that count in your decision whether to colonize now or next turn.
Also you can buyout planets off-lane without warp tech, while those outposts will grow slower, people will have hard time contesting you, on smaller maps you could easily claim academy, if you get lucky and find it and it has a decent system for you to colonize.

The ability to sell your planets/outposts comes in handy for diplomatic means, but it is not going to be used overly frequently unless you feel like being a nice person, it can help you combat the growing price of new planets and overcolonization on rare occasions, and get you out of trouble by simply dropping said outpost/colony for other player to leave you alone (and then to tryhard by wardecing again and killing you without said system).
Read: neat, can be both great and punishing
This trait is easily the strongest thing about the lumeris trait kit. You can easily reach and maintain ecstatic approval for +30% dust/science income with use of basic laws, and handle some extra overcolonization dissaproval.

Blockade breaking is now at 50 pop. I don't know if it is fixed, but I think it still does not work.
Trading is bad on this patch. Researching trade and investing into trading companies is not worth it, unless you have a quest (oh and you will probably have a quest, cause you are Lumeris!)
Read: useless

Pacifism is great if you have tons if influence and tons of friends and tons of whatever. So usually not great. Since you get no peace bonuses like unfallen, but only the universal package, you are better of just killing everyone anyway...
You are also anti-militaristic, so to progress towards militaristic government (which you will probably need eventually), you need to develop extra effort, spend extra dust, really like focus on it, cause otherwise pacifism wins and you get left behind with no approval for war bonus.
Read: ok, with drawbacks (riftborn don't get drawbacks for instance)

Starting hero is a lumeris (duh)/seeker, Lumeris talents are not really that worthwhile with the later top tiers not being bad for planet management, but not providing much value in combat (unlike some OP races that get T2 +40% fleet energy damage (sophons, vodyani...), look out for those heroes on market, since they are still gamebreaking).
The ultimate to convert trade route gains also in dust and industry is well ... pathetic and utterly meaningless and not worth investing in, playtested and have severe doubts if it even works.
You'll have to settle for +20% dmg from seeker line, but even that is subpar, but at least early available and can turn fights in your favour if you get into them (you should not, but will have to).
Seeker is also great, cause of the off-lane movement (also nerfed recently, but still worth it).
So all in all starting hero: bad -> get better one ASAP
read: "NOT the best"

His starting skills also mostly suck

You get tech to contact minor factions which is neato, if you find any, fingers crossed. Once you do, it's actually pretty ok, since you can easily finance them for tiny bit of extra income which matters early game and assimilate them later early game.
You also have the mediteranian and science on kill mod tech, which is meh, but is preReq for T2 discoveries and can be interesting at times, xenobiology would have been better though.

Dust inflation wrecks you, since you are heavy buyout oriented, if you play with max AI count, they will flood the market and destroy your ability to buyout stuff quick (yup, inflation can be like 2.5 - 4 on turn 15), so ups and downs, but players do not have that increased income, so you should be fine for the most part. Just know that the more dust you produce, the more you are screwing yourself over by blocking your own buyouts and stuff. Also it makes any dust income of yours practically irrelevant, since all dust is produced by selling resources on market for ridiculous amounts.
Yes it does not make sense, yes it's stupid, yes I told devs. I think they know.

From now on, "guide" assumes you kinda know what's up, if you don't, read wiki, pray, and ask silly questions in comments to your heart's desire.

I think back in the designing days and early patches, the intention was for lumeris to win an economic victory.
Even back all factions were similarily well equipped to win it as lumeris, the only tiny bit of advantage was the trading income, which lumeris had like 10% extra of, which is really not much so nevermind.
Basically if there are unfallen in the game, they should win it sooner, cause they get the +15% science/dust per friend bonus.
So you are left with conquest (read expansion) or supremacy (read killing everyone's capitals) and of course score.
So simply putted - for every victory type there is a better race to play.

But remember, you do not play to win, but to get rich!

One way to win is to snowball, are you familiar with snowballing?
It's throwing a tiny snowball down the hill and watch it turn into an avalanche.

Same concept should apply to you, you should utilize your early game expansive (dis)advantage heavily and build around that. If you don't, you will fall behind. I mean don't kid yourself, if there are vaulters/riftborn/UE in play you will probably fall behind anyway, but at least not so much.
But if you do it right, you might just be the chip leader (read the guy with the most score) which can be entirely meaningless or can dictate the game, depending on what you do with it.
But compared to vaulters you suck, just face it, almost everyone does.

If you have the advantage, you should use it, by using it I mean building ships, engaging, being oppresive to people who do not have that advantage. If you just and be like "look at my score, my score is amazing" you will just get rekt later in game. You really need to get your sh!t together and start roflstomping stuff or you will fall behind and unlike [almost any other race on the game] you will probably not come back favourably.

Can you buyout that one extra ship to win that fight?
Can you get that industry upgrade down quickly?
Will you be the first to be on X planets?

as my video proves and many so called guide authors fail to convey, there is never a swiss knife opening to a game with randomly generated environment such as endless space 2, however, this is your go to dream scenario you want to follow, good luck with your RNG!
Here is a descriptive meme of what you should do:


Here is a video with a crappy mic vs endless AI including couple starting tricks to follow:
Here is a video with me playing an MP game with "Best ES1 player ever" (turned out not that great really) and it is the same crappy mic, however I am speaking much louder so you won't fall asleep and it's from turn 1 till supremacy win.

Turn 1:

• Attach hero to scout(s) and investigate all anoms (this generates XP, you want xp fast)
  
• (Situational) Create separate fleet from scout ship (deattaches hero as a solo ship), refit his ship for extra probes, and upgrade/add engine if you want to. (this does cost dust though, but that should not be a problem)
• Repeatedly retrofit one caravel to refill probes and probe all the things! - possibly a bug, might get "fixed" don't get too used to it, but flavour of the month applies. Costs dust though, try to keep dust for the colony
  
• Set queue for home to:
  
• available planet with good stuff like luxury and strategics on it
  
• Cerebral reality, if nothing else really works for you
  
• if, there are many starlanes and the galaxy is huge, possibly caravel, but cerebral reality beats it.

Turn 1+

• Look around, search for suitable planets, you want luxuries, strategics, nice anoms, fertile stuff, again, heavily situational, sometimes there is gotta be something better around, and sometimes beggars can't be choosers. You are not limited by range, try to get a planet with resource nodes since they produce it even while being an outpost.
  
• If there is no planet type you would desperately want to rush tech for, and you have titanium/hyperium in within couple turns, start the related tech (xenolinguistics preffered) and then go on to market and buyout techs.
• This will provide you with the dust you need to go shopping for planets, of course this only works if you can score a luxury/strategic deposits, if you can't, there is no need to rush the market.
  
• And buyouts can speed up your game and reward you for scoring some competitive multiplayer objectives. But they are not as OP as they used to be.
  
• Since food update, it's np to have 2 outposts up, but try to minimize the overlap, as it still drains your pop and avoid using influence, unless you really want to.
  
• Get the +indy improvement from the research to speed your further production up. (picture)
  
• Choose the most probable quest path, Lancelum (4 planets) is usually a safe bet and doable early. All others suck! Assimilating a minor is unreliable since someone can steal it (AI can definitelly easily steal it with the extra income) and searching 50% galaxy will take forever.
  
• If you can see minor factions or there is at least normal amount of them in the game, activate the trusted broker law for cheaper bribes and quests.

Turn 5 (fast):

• Once the hero is (investingating anomalies does wonders for early xp) level 2 - 3+ and you don't need him around to scout anymore I suggest giving him +30 science and putting him home (that's turn 5 minimum because of the assingment duration), cause your science output sux, cause you are lumeris, and that's the way of the balanced gameplay.
  
• Gid gud, by now you should
  
• see stuff, sell stuff on market for extra dust, use extra dust to expand, repeat and profit.
  
• know which planet types to focus on in research
  
• spot potential threats and neighbours, minor factions, and bribe them if you want and can afford to - preferably bribe at 25 to 75 dust (and use law discounts), afterwards scan anoms on their systems.
  
• know what to do with your life and this galaxy, adapt!
  
• have your first system upgrade resource selected from those available, if you wanna be hardcore you go with supersbuds, but they suck, inflation is going to ♥♥♥♥ on you end game no matter what you do, jadonyx is nice for production, dust trees are cool to keep you buying more planets, even the science or influence luxuries work, since you probably be stuck with one with no other choice. It can also happen you will have none. I am personally not a fan of redsang, cause it increases influence upkeep, but it is not a bad choice either.

Turn 20ish :

• Getting rushed? Well kill them, you have early advantage and they are stupid not to know. Oh wait, you are lumeris, nevermind, overcome or die.
  I actually killed rushing craver player at this point of game, so that is not impossible. But read up in combat guide on how to perform well.
  
• Assimilate factions already! Good traits win games, hissho tait op, mavros trait op... "balance" - but make sure to buy a planet before assimilating, cause it will be more expensive afterwards since it counts as a system.
  
• Focus on T2 strategic deposits, obtain them, obtain the tech.
  
  
• Getting rekt by OP race anyway? Well, try for peace, give up some planets, you can make a comeback, I guess, be friendly, give up your ego and turn into full support role, might even win eco by accident anyway.
  
• Nothing happening? Good, keep making friends and eliminating your enemies. In MP you usually can't trust people, so just kill them or roll over and die, whichever works for you, but try to avoid getting salty.

Turn 60 (fast):

• Things went well, you expanded, you have like 4 trading companies and they are useless, have fun
  
• Not winning eco victory? Why? Oh wait! Is every other race better equipped to win it than you? Hmph, time to pew pew and win or die.
  
• counter enemy stuff, play it smart, don't be a space-♥♥♥♥♥♥, and watch out for mixed model fleets to confuse you
  
• every turn at this high income totally wrecks the inflation and your ability to buyout stuff, be prepared, your money till now is worthless, cause... "balance". But so is everyone else's, oh wait no one else buyouts so hard, haha, screw you. You are so dead, don't pick lumeris you imbecile.
  
• Use shift + click on a luxury to sell it all, but sell in reasonable amounts like 10 - 50, cause the price decreases rapidly.
  
• Alliances increase the target values of specific victory types, does not always show in the UI, if you need to win and fulfilled your requirements, just drop alliance and win.

Turn 70+ (fast):
Either won or getting rekt, make more dust, win sooner.

Turn 80+ (fast)
Economy victory is off, check settings next time, time to make big fleets and win through combat

• Since you will search lot of anoms, you should get science party coming up, try and have it, dirty hands act is strong for your early game and helps you compete on wonders
  
• If you feel like it, go for the competitive wonders, noobs mostly don't care enough for them, cause they are still busy making colony ships and stuff, it depends a lot on the situation, but riftborn can probably do it faster than you, cause... "balance".
  
• Yet might not have both mats, since the loot from anoms is random, only one to guarantee enough mats are riftborn if they get hyperium tech really early. Since lumeris get extra scout(s) you can score more strategics than they have through exploration.
  
• If there are pirates (or minor factions), and there should be, be battle ready, but do it smart
  
• Faction quest is good for you (+3 luxury deposit value on empire, dust to manpower), try and pursue it within limits. It's more or less meh, heh. Can probably ignore it for most of the game.
  
• Trading companies suck right now. Sorry, not sorry.
  
• Selling stuff on market does not count toward your economic victory, but enables you to level up your companies to generate more dust, even though the income is pathetic, totally not worth it.
  
• Avoid unnecesary fighting unless you know you can win and profit, in larger games it slows down both of you, usually it's better to be at peace, but explain that to the cravers.
  
• Maximize your dust/turn income, be rich, reinvest, get an advantage from being able to buyout a battleready fleet on demand (spoiler: with inflation on the rise, you won't)
  
• Get tanks ASAP or as soon as needed depending on your manpower levels throughout the game and upgrade them. Noobs usually hang around with infantry, so you counter them, unless they have minor traits for op infantry, then well, you still counter them.
  
• Too many planets? Toys for boys! Lategame, it may be interesting for you to start selling unused systems - systems without interesting resources - for dust, simply abandon the colony and you will get a refund, endgame refund can be 20k dust, which is nice. - also good trick if you wanna go all in, you can not however, trade in systems you do not fully control. Shame.

Since this is not so unique across the factions, perhaps it would be smarter and less cluttery to use another guide for it?
You bet ya!
Click here for combat stuff, fittings, setups and combat advice.

Quests for lumeris consist on mostly reasonable requirements which relate to planet control and senate manipulation, active laws, etc... the important point of choice is whether to go for eco or indy branch, I suggest you evaluate your capabilities of completing either, indy law reward is nice to have, but either eco or indy senate is tough to maintain mostly (and not really intended to be maintained by design)

• Lancelum (4 planets) is usually a safe bet, don't really choose anything else
  
• Branch eco vs indy (save up dust for elections, do lobbying for chosen party, gg) but check ahead if you can complete the followups:
  
• Eco continues with task to have 3 minor/major faction home systems under control - could be trouble, or even impossible
  
• Indy continues with task to have 3 HUGE planets (usually desert/ash/lava), again, could be trouble
  
• These two eventually reward you with bonus luxury deposit value of +3, up to you whether it is worth it, it should be
  
• Final part is choice from unique upgrades in which you can only reasonably choose the 75% 50% indy to dust conversion (you can research 75% on your own later) other's are mostly ♥♥♥♥, uselss and again, ♥♥♥♥, militarry buyout is now my default choice.

It is also worth mentioning again that lumeris don't get any relevant racial bonus to trading so with minor adjustments this should work for any peaceful eco strategy, other races might even do it better, because ... "balance"

You should play lumeris if...

• You find the other braindead factions not challenging enough
  
• You need to prove to yourself and others that you don't need OP to rock
  
• You want to level the playfield when facing new players, so that you don't roflstomp them, with facerolling something like unfallen, you can even give planets away to slow down your victory and light up those sad struggling noob faces
  
• You like being rich and dusty
  
• Like trains
  
• Think vaulters are gay.

You should not play lumeris if...

• You are not jewish and think that money corrupts (hint: harmony ES1 mains)
  
• Are mentally challenged and think this game sucks, I think you should not play this game at all
  
• Need training wheels to feel relevant such as "Vaulters"

Here is a link to Lumeris comic I never read[wiki.endless-space.com] but it exists, and it is up to you whether you should read it.

Also props to Devs for making the game and giving Lumeris all the hate and Vaulters all the love. If you don't get it yet, I am not a fan of ¨Vaulters and I am an avid fan of Lumeris.