Community Spotlight #2: Endless Legend Community Patch by LeaderEnemyBoss

Our Amplitude community has many passionate individuals. Some people pour their heart and soul into a long role-play session based on the Endless universe on the forums or with their local group. Others create board and card games set in the Endless universe. We have seen mods, fan art, and even music! We love it.

This week, we turn our attention to what may be one of the most popular and most ambitious mods ever made for Endless Legend: the Endless Legend Community Patch (also known as the ELCP), developed by a small group of players led by LeaderEnemyBoss. Whenever players ask for mod recommendations, the ELCP almost inevitably comes up, for a variety of reasons. The mod touches on many aspects of the game, from balancing through AI to user interface. However, these changes are so extensive that a Workshop mod is not enough to handle them, so you will have to follow the fairly straightforward instructions in the thread to install and uninstall it. And for the completionists out there: The mod does not even disable achievements.

The breadth and depth of these features are impressive, so we will just point out some highlights and suggest you check out the full feature log:

• Unit and Hero Capacities color-coded by source (see image above)
• Tweaked AI
• Faster army animation options on the strategic map
• Options for re-balanced Tech Trading, Diplomatic Victory, Fortification, and Stockpiles
• New UI elements for Stockpile Use

Interview with LeaderEnemyBoss

Given the scale of changes in the ELCP, we decided to interview the lead developer of the project. You can read an abridged version of the interview below, but the full version is worth the read if you want to know more about the ELCP and the mind behind it.

Hey there, can you introduce yourself?

Hello, I'm LeaderEnemyBoss, main developer of the Endless Legend Community Patch. When I'm not living inside EL's code, I'm a social scientist and PhD student from Germany. I'm a huge gaming nerd since I was young, which may or may not be related with my modding activities.

How long have you been part of the Amplitude Community? Which of our games did you play, and which one is your favorite?

My history with Amplitudes starts far in the past, in the mythical year of 2018. Endless Legend was really my first Amplitude game, I picked it up after being interested in it for some time, and basically started modding within a few weeks.

Well, that's a quick turnaround then. What inspired you to do create the Endless Legend Community Patch?

When playing EL, I quickly noticed two things. First: This game is a great new take on 4x. Second: There are bugs, and the AI has many issues. It’s hard to describe, I basically get this itch. I notice stuff in an otherwise enjoyable experience, that irks me, and I want to see if it can be fixed. I also knew the game was old, and I didn’t expect any further patches (which was wrong in hindsight, see Inferno and now Symbiosis), so I thought "why not try doing it myself".

The community certainly seems to appreciate what you are doing, and seeing how soon after getting into EL you started work on your mod, I wonder if you had any prior experience in modding.

My previous modding experience is mostly limited to XCom 2. None of my mods are amongst the most popular ones, but I am not completely unknown either I would say.

We are happy that we have passionate fans with plenty of modding experience to pick up the torch where we had to put it down. That said, what was the greatest obstacle you faced creating the Endless Legend Community Patch?

Well the greatest obstacle is basically that what I do isn't really the intended way of modding EL, which is why it's not a workshop mod. So I quickly began to wonder "man wouldn’t it be great if I could access the games core files, have no shackles, no restrictions." Well turns out I can!

With mountains like that to climb, what are you most proud of in the ELCP?

I am watching youtubers like "SB" and "TheNosePlays" play the game with my patch. SB had to tune down the difficulty from Endless (which he beat handily previously most of the time) to impossible after several demotivating losses. While I don’t want to see the man suffer, I can’t help but feel pride. Both SB and TheNosePlays also had many positive comments about my reworked diplomacy AI, which (for the most parts) acts more proactive, offers deals and treaties on their own more frequently, and tries to actually build "peace/alliance-blocks".  I also taught the AI to solve some of the game's quests. Not all of them, because that would be too much work. Mainly some of the global ones like "From Dust to Rust" and most importantly the victory quest!

I can understand that would feel like quite the achievement. What are your future plans for the mod?

After the surprising release of Symbiosis, I will mostly focus on improving the AI's management of the new mechanics. Mykara need to be taught how to use their tunnels for fast travel, the AIs currently dont use Urkans in army form and tend to be a bit overaggressive when attacking them. I also plan to make the AI able to solve the Wings of ruin quest.

I may need to keep some bandages on hand when playing with your mod in the future. Yet even with all you have already done, it sounds like you still have ambitious plans. Are you entirely focused on EL, or do you have other cool projects you'd like to tell us about?

No, because to be honest, while its fun, coding ELCP is sometimes like a second job (next to me writing my PhD thesis), so even more projects would be just too much. There has to be some time to actually play games (EL and others).

Well, we're looking forward to seeing the fruits of your labor. Thank you very much for taking the time to answer our questions, and all the time you put into your mod.

Thank you for playing! I wanted to give a shout out. While I am the main developer, there are other modders that made some significant contributions, and they shouldn’t be left unnamed. There is Morgoth, who made some improvements to the battle-AI, figured out how to alter the world-speed of armies, and introduced the zoom-detail setting, Cornebre/GATC who made many small contributions and is in general very helpful when it comes to modding .XML files, and Celtik, who did lots of testing regarding the AIs tech and equipment decisions.