There are more details than that, but suffice to say you will want to select a tactic that plays to your strengths… which will be “Turtle” for most of the game, since it increases the survivability of the ships. Only this time, you can only choose a single tactic, and it applies to all three of the combat phases while having different strengths and weaknesses for the weapon range bands. You set tactics before the fight, and you can watch a pretty visualization of the fleets duking it out. Space combat remains, on the surface, like it was in Endless Space. The ships fly from system to system, and battles take place on a separate screen You can move pops around from one planet to the other to improve production or happiness (certain species work better on certain worlds). The system is managed all at once, and the planets are only important as vessels for pop units, being restricted by habitability, and separated by resource production rates. The main unit of space is a system, which houses planets. Other than that, the gameplay in Endless Space 2 is relatively simple.

You’ll see the leaders of other races in the diplomacy screen. However, the Vodyani are also energy vampires and they need to draw Essence from other races to construct their population units and Arks. Much like barbarian camps in Total War: Attila, they harbor all of the planetary improvements and can easily transport them from system to system. Meanwhile, the Vodyani, who religiously worship the Virtual Endless, don't colonize planets as much as subjugate systems with their Arks. If that ship remains undisturbed for 10 turns, you can immediately colonize the system, which makes the spread of the Unfallen very slow and methodical. Instead, they send a ship to neighboring system to plant a beacon for interstellar vines. Unfallen, ents in space, don't have colonizer vessels. United Empire, a hegemony both corporate and feudal, can have the Emperor flex his muscle and hasten not only build times, but even research by spending the influence resource, making UE the race most interested in its generation. Unless they don't: while all races have their own quirks and gameplay differences, some are more different than others. Chosen from a number of different species, they all start their trek to the stars in a single system, having already built a scout ship and a colonization vessel.

But that's not a question many care about, and it certainly isn't something that will impede your space empires. I always wondered how these precursor races always leave behind ruin-strewn worlds that mysteriously aren’t stripped of all mineral wealth.

The unfallen endless space 2