I've never played it so I can only speak in generalities but in at least one game I've seen in the genre they made starting new cities/colonizing new planets reduce overall happiness as a balancing tool so people couldn't just mass expand early and get a comical lead and had to actually build happiness buildings. In other words a way to slow the game down. Also so it'd be more of a decision on whether to grab marginal worlds/cities or not.
Not just colonize "as many systems as you can" but also adequately build them up, otherwise you are overextending yourself.
^This, you need to build things and defenses or the pop gets pretty angry, and even then they start getting very snippy when you get too far from your capital, you need to put leaders so they can get less uppity.
Because Endless Space is a GSG rather than a 4X, fundamentally. What you're running into is the fundamental difference. Systems that mechanically penalize or limit expansion make something into Grand Strategy, 'true' 4X (e.g. MoO, dominions) you're always supposed to expand when able.
I played it. It's a little bit like they made a Parasite Eve game for the Dreamcast, which I'm down for. The MC's definitely gonna need people, and especially a Daniel, to interact with to really bring out the Parasite Eve buddy cop but it's a horror movie vibe that made Parasite Eve particularly charming. I do like the that the map tells you when you've got all the stuff in the area.
It's been a while since I placed ES2 and I never played the original. I can only assume it's either due to a niche faction mechanic or there's something else that's lowering your citizenship happiness level. Maybe depending on the faction you're playing as or you're playing a game with a DLC mechanic some people recommend disabled. If you have more information about the specifics I could help you figure out why.
It also has a shockingly good boss theme.
Quality Waifus make up for many sins, not all but many.
Yeah, there's nothing quite like having a Headcrab jump at your face in VR. It gets easier to deal with Combine troops as you progress and upgrade weapons, but they never stop being dangerous. And then of course there's the whole Jeff sequence, which is just great level design in general.
The Resident Evil 2 Remake isn't quite as action-y as the RE4 remake - you'll need to shepherd your ammo more, and will discover that frequently you're best off running by zombies because ammo is precious and zombies typically take multiple headshots to put down - but it's still a very good game. Definitely worth $10 in my view.
