X-COM Firaxis - XCOM: Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within Expansion

I will never understand bitching about AI "cheating" by difficulty level, you are not playing an independent mind you are solving a puzzle

The difficulty levels in EU are quite good and create real qualitative breaks. I don't give a fuck what the particular mechanics used to generate those qualitative breaks are

Normal is an idiot game fit for some like your small brother

Classic you have to think about cover. Generally speaking if you burn any "consumable" like a grenade you win, if you are in better cover you win, if you get past the early game you win. The strategic game is easy but loseable. A TBS fan can start up the game and play classic ironman as the first game and have a good time - I did

Impossible you lose every time you have a real, non-ambush firefight - someone useful is going to get maimed at the very least. You generally have to win by outright manipulation of the AI or exploiting other abusive game mechanics. You have to know the general flowchart of the maps.

Also I can recommend a fun difficulty mod (for people that don't know the maps). It is called "start the game on classic for the first two months, then switch it to impossible in May".

 

I'm pretty sure the AI gets a permanent +10 bonus to accuracy and critical chance or something to that effect.

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/10

 

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/23/firaxis-talks-future-xcom-content-slingshot-dlc-announced/

Well that sounds lame. Game's shit.

 

Minus cinematics and with the major problems fixed, this would look good as a free browser game.

 

Wshew I thought after sullying myself installing steam I would get swept up in all the modern DLC shit like an indian coming out of the woods for firewater. But this firewater no good white man

 

This is the mod I am using, without the extra UFOs (will try that later), and I bumped the time to build satellites back to 20 days. Required some tweaking of said mod.

That overhaul makes things way too easy because your starting weapons are as powerful as the rest. There is a weapon 'balance' making laser weapons overall most accurate, but plasma most damaging and starter weapons average. Which means you can now instakill enemies behind cover without flanking, unlike vanilla classic. This also ruins the sense of progression. Why research?

Regarding the repetitive maps, that is the game's biggest problem at the moment. They should have made some kind of random map generator.

 

Wow that's really retarded. Was hoping for something TFTD related. I can understand the "balancing issues" but still

 

What is supposed to be so bad about a slight aim bonus?
It makes the aliens a bit more dangerous and is a complementary change to generally better AI. The aliens, as a different "race" do not directly compare to your guys anyway, so I don't see what's supposed to be "cheating" with the increased aim of aliens on higher difficulty.
At least we're not talking about the usual lazy "just increase health and damage output and call it a day".

 

Behelit: Is that a mod or a patch? It looks awful.

 

Grunker: Seeing that the link points to a modding site, I guess it's a mod.

 

there is nothing magical or strange about a aim bonus for the AI. Basically it just means they are better soldiers or have a higher level. Otherwise the AI don't have levelling soldiers, they just have better types. I think a change like this is perfectly okay. Worse is a aim penalty for your soldiers as I think they should not become more incompetent at a higher difficult.

But what really irks me is things like in the Paradox games were your armies is simply put just worse at a higher difficult. That is a really bad way of doing it IMO.

 

I guess the issue is that it lets them make cheap shots that you could generally never get, and they get far more lucky crits than you do, which isn't really harder on a tactical level, it's just an artificial handicap, which I do not like. It's like the computer getting bonus resources in StarCraft, or being able to see the entire map without fog of war, etc. Technically speaking true symmetrical single-player against AI is impossible, but I prefer it when developers try their best to achieve it.

Also, I wouldn't complain if they had reserved that for impossible or something. Problem is a) they don't tell you the AI get bonuses on classic and b) there are already more enemies who have much better tactics on classic to begin with, so being able to play "as it was intended" without cheats is impossible without mods, because otherwise you are stuck with a dumbed-down AI, fewer enemies, etc. if you want to play "fair" on normal.

 

Been playing for a fair amount of time now, and I'm still trying to figure out what the fuck causes your rookies to become heavies. Basically every other class I've got down in terms of triggers except the damn heavies.
Don't get me wrong, I like supports and assaults, but when my only two fucking heavies (both of which I only got through plot mandatory shit and an abduction reward) are injured and I have to quell a terror attack with a bunch of fucking half-cocked assaults and snipers. Well, shit gets grating.
Also, my best sniper was a nigger who'd panic at a skinned fucking knee. Had to finally let him go when one of his shit-fits exposed his plump anus to a Cyberdisc.
Godamnit.

 

Pretty sure there are no triggers, you can reload a game on the last turn of a mission and do shit in a slightly different order than last time (so the RNG point changes) and the rookies turn into different classes. The only help the game gives you is to make it certain that all four rookies in the first mission turn into different classes if they live. And it sucks because if you don't have at least two heavies for April on impossible it is gonna be a shitstorm of 6 hit point thin men and floaters that can crit-kill people that are hunkered down in high cover.

 

Is this really determined by something you do?
I thought it would just be completely random. OTOH, I get mostly snipers and heavies, but almost no assault and support.
Could very well be RNG screwing you, the sample size is rather small for me, but I'm not sure.

Also isn't there an upgrade from the Officer's school, making rookies start as squadies, i.e. shouldn't they start with a class? How is it determined then if not randomly?

Playing as "intended" is a difficult metric if they obviously intend the aliens to have better aim.
Seriously though, I still don't see this as real cheating, the aliens can not be translated 1:1 to humans. It's like complaining that Beholders have all those special powers in a DnD rpg, while your mage only gets shitty magic missile.
Would you be playing against humans and they would always get a bonus over your guys, regardless of level, maybe I'd call it cheating.
But if they'd say, e.g. you are up against battle-hardened veteran alien soldiers on classic, would you still consider it cheating that they have slightly better stats?

 

Class assignment is completely random as far as I can tell because if you take the officer school upgrade that makes everyone start out as squaddies instead of rookies, they'll already be assigned a class.

 

RNG can be a bitch. A friend of mine got nothing but snipers during one playthrough (seriously, nearly 3/4 of his dudes) , I remember I could only get my hands on one support for the entire game (spent 200$ on recruits and got 2 more... but they were instakilled whenever I tried to level them up), but other than that I got assaults, heavies and snipers in equal proportions. I don't think you can influence it in any way, thought so at first, but I think it's pretty much confirmation bias.

When it comes to AI cheating, on the one hand I am butthurt about the insance critical hits the AI gets at times; on the other, it forces me to use every trick in the book to get the upper hand.
If it was possible to simply outshoot the aliens from behind cover, the game would have been too easy (ironic that people would call it "popamole", when it actually isn't), starting at classic, trading shots is not the way to go which forces me to look for options to flank aggressively, I think that's actually a good thing. The amount of criticals may need to be turned down a bit, but notice that the aliens do not seem to have an equivalent of the rocket launcher, squad sight, run and gun, lightning reflexes and many other useful abilities. Giving it some "cheats" is a nice way to balance it out, imo. And I think it's not necessarily bad, as long as you can still beat the AI in a "fair" fight, by just using the various options available.

Now, let's compare it to the cheating AI in Civ, which is an implementation I hate with a passion. The AI gets so many production and research bonii, that you cannot even dream to keep the pace. Even if you use wonders for tech slingshot, the AI will outperform you (and it will even be able to produce two things at once in one city!). Your only option is to say fuck this and throw as many units at the AI as you can - which means science and cultural victories go out of the window - that's a clear case of a bad cheating AI I think.

In comparison, XCOM AI commits a different sin, its advantage lies in skewing the random chance in its favor. It would be fine, if it were more subtle. Unfortunately, as it is, it undermines one of the core game mechanics - high cover and hunker down. My opinion is, that the design principle should be thus: when I hunker down behind high cover, I deserve to feel safe from random shots with a degree of certainly. That's what the description says, so when it doesn't I am forced to say: fuck you Jake Salomon, this is NOT xcom, baby.

 

I don't get the complaining over the RNG. I treat this game as a roguelike where each playthrough is basically different based on a number of factors. RNG only contributes to this, and lucky enemy shots or something like that simply makes me have to deal with that shit. I don't really care that I get fucked over big time or the reverse, it just changes the current game and I have to adapt accordingly.

It's not like the RNG in Age of Decadence where getting arbitrarily screwed on one point can ruin the current game, IMO.

 

The rocket launcher and other extremely powerful stuff the player gets should be balanced by what the AI is capable of, preferably in a like-for-like fashion. Why can't the AI launch rockets, or even throw grenades until the very late game? I don't know - the AI get all sorts of powerful counters, better guns, etc., maybe it was decided a rocket launcher was "cheap" even though they can insta-kill you in melee, spawn extra enemies, spawn out of nowhere when you complete objectives, etc. Maybe it's because the rocket launcher is available immediately, while the aliens don't get their powerful abilities until much later?

Except Civ has a difficulty setting (4/10) which gives the AI no bonuses at all. On easier settings, you get bonuses. The entire point of deity mode etc. is that the AI cheats mercilessly - they tell you as much.

In comparison, XCOM AI commits a different sin, its advantage lies in skewing the random chance in its favor. It would be fine, if it were more subtle. Unfortunately, as it is, it undermines one of the core game mechanics - high cover and hunker down. My opinion is, that the design principle should be thus: when I hunker down behind high cover, I deserve to feel safe from random shots with a degree of certainly. That's what the description says, so when it doesn't I am forced to say: fuck you Jake Salomon, this is NOT xcom, baby.[/quote]

 

I said it before but randomness is not a genuine issue outside of first and maybe second month of impossible ironman. But it is an issue there. There are abduction maps that are ridiculously harder than others on impossible, like ones with no LOS breakers or flanking routes or with multiple patrols that pop in on top of the starting position. Several bomb defuse council missions require tremendous luck, while the other types of council mission are not too bad. You need heavies badly and might not get them. But I can't really fault the game for making the "too hard to be fun" difficulty level too hard.

 

Instakilling enemies without flanking? How the hell did you make this mental leap? From my short experience with the mod so far, it was not uncommon to have a 12% chance of popping sectoids behind cover. At the very most a 55ish percent when I got a flank. Granted they were rookies but your claim is disingenuous when you haven't even tested the mod yourself. As for the weapons as I interpret them

Ballistics: Jack of all trades
Moderate accuracy
Lowest Max damage

Good for primarily disposing of low tier critters like sectoids. Shortcomings are obvious against damage sponges like cyber discs.

Lasers: The Gambler
High accuracy
No reload necessary
Has a higher & lower min and max than ballistics.

Can either rescue you or fuck you. I assume the min can be so low that its entirely possible it wouldn't one shot 3HP sectoids.
But one way or another you'll be landing hits more frequently than your squad buddies. A god send for supports since they are always wasting ammo.

Plasma: L33T T3AR
Low accuracy
High criticals
High damage

Weapon of choice for the Kompetent Kodex Kompanions. Only officers have the privilege of top class weaponry for top shelf enemies. Popamole plebs don't have the mental finesse to wield such weapons of mass destruction.

I dunno about you bruh but I think it digs more tactical depth in the game.

 

I did 'test' the mod, newfag, and I routinely killed sectoids behind cover with one shot from a normal assault rifle.

It is also possible the mod wasn't working properly for you, steam doesn't seem to play nice with those mods. Those seem to be the percentages I got in vanilla classic.

 

I don't understand why you guys complain that AI got bonus accuracy in higher difficulty. The original XCOM gave bonus to ALL the stats, and not just in set numbers, but in percentages.

What I think more about what the game lacks, I think it's proper alien equipment and skill scaling. Like the other guys mentioned before, Sectoids (and Thin Men, and just about any other alien except for Mutons) only use their set weapon (plasma pistol or light plasma rifle). Back in XCOM and TFTD, even sectiods/aquatoids are deadly in the late game, because they can use heavy plasma/disruptor pulse launchers. Also, like mentioned before, late game council missions got reeeaaally boring because all you fight are Thin Men.

It'll be great if they could make aliens equip different and advanced weapons over time. The heavy floaters was a pretty nice surprise tbh, but such surprises are far too few.

Last but not the least, they really should have increased the final mission difficutly by 3 to 5 folds. Currently it's big joke compared to the Alien Base mission, in which I got my whole team wiped out by 6 Chryssalids in the first try.

 

Slingshot DLC? Man, why are they adding more story to the game? One of the things that most gets me about the game is the story points and cutscenes. I don't want more of that shit, I usually end up tapping esc throughout the game as it is trying to skip as much of that crap as possible. I'd rather see a DLC that opened up some sort of sandbox mode that made the game feel more like the old X-Com games and less like a railroaded story campaign with relatively dull cutscenes. Even the research and building ones could be stuck into the UFOpaedia thing they have so you could see them if you wanted.

As far as the aim bonus goes. I don't know even since the original games, they've had lore about how the enemies are full of cybernetics and have vision implants and stuff. I don't think it's much of a leap to figure that they can see better and as a result fire more accurately at range than humans can. I don't see things like that as a problem.

 

Yeah, the DLC thing absolutely sucks. I found myself thinking while playing the game: "Man, a game where DLC might make sense, expanding options, buildings, weapons, classes, abilities, maps, all that shit, so much room for expansion." I would pay full expansion price in the future for a heavy collection of this kind of DLC; just expanding the game that's already there.

But more cutscenes you'll skip after watching one time and three new missions? Are they fucking kidding?