Endless Legend 2 introduces the coral hivemind faction, offering one of the most chillingly manipulative “diplomacy” strategies seen in 4X gaming in recent memory.

Endless Legend 2 is decidedly oceanic, with seas that shift and retreat to reveal new areas over the course of a campaign, so it makes sense that at least one of the 4X strategy game’s new factions should be aquatic-themed. Say hello to the Aspects, and say hello to their coral. You’ll be able to say hello to their coral because it is, in fact, a hivemind – a biomechanical reef that provides access to a gestalt intelligence called the Chorus, and which extends across their territory much like the Creep of StarCraft‘s Zerg, but in a less obviously menacing way.

“In terms of gameplay, the Aspects are an economic and diplomatic empire focused on cooperation over conquest,” explains a press release from developers Amplitude and publishers Hooded Horse. “Their main unique trait is their coral terrain – instead of claiming territories via outposts, the Aspects first place Coral Spores that will slowly spread coral to other tiles. These can be turned into cities, but they also serve as nodes for coral growth across the map.”

Yes. Yes. This is very much my cup of picturesque-but-insidious. Coral spores also extract dust, the game’s magic resource, from their surroundings, while healing and accelerating your units and letting them cross water tiles. Best of all, they infest the minds of your rivals, making them better-disposed towards you. One way this happens is that other empires can exploit any coral growing on their territory for dust, which in turn lets the Aspect player see what they’re seeing, and makes it easier to sway those empires in diplomacy.

Amplitude have written a big forum post explaining their inspirations for the faction’s visual design (coral aside, their architecture calls on influences from central Asia) and playstyle. “For them, we wanted to move away from the classical trope of diplomatic pacifist faction and make them something more like ‘deal with the devil’,” the designers write. “They don’t want this world to be safer but manipulate people for their own good.

“At first, we wanted to make them evil landlords, capturing territories then selling them to other empires,” the post continues. “This idea evolved into the Coral growing toward other empires’ assets and giving to the Aspect the possibility to sign some specific treaties and get additional resources.

“The main difficulty dealing with the development of this faction was the fact that the Coral is a common resource shared by all Aspect empires in the game. This creates drastic changes in how you will play this faction whether there is another Aspect empire in your game or not.” Intriguing.

As for the Aspect at war, they’re big on cooperation with a varied roster of “swarming scouts”, “steadfast archers” and “powerful flying behemoths”. One key overarching mechanic is that when an Aspect unit defends for a turn, it confers attack boosts on allies. So they are great counterpunchers, in short. If only real-life coral reefs were this resilient.

I really like this crafty and unpleasant approach to the idea of a diplomacy faction. It’s certainly channelling the spirit of the first game’s faction design, which (for example) cast dragons against type by sort of turning them into the UN.

But where is my faction of no-nonsense warmongering builder-bastards, I hear you cry? That would probably be the Kin of Sheredyn, a band of cyberpunk Romans who are the remnants of a fallen interstellar empire. They’re great at shield walls, hench automatons, and staying under their city cap because they think it’s uncouth to expand too much. I haven’t dug into the detail yet, but they feel like Endless Legend 2’s equivalent for the first game’s Vaulters.

There will be two other factions ready to go for Endless Legend 2’s early access launch this year, with two more planned for the 1.0 version. Any hopes for the remaining empires? I always liked the first game’s Roving Clans, who found their cities on massive beetles. Perhaps the new game will harbour an equivalent who live inside whales.