u/mitiamedved

Looks like that itch is about to finally get scratched. First time I care about something Star Wars in my life probably - XCOM veterans making this game is the only pitch I need.

https://youtu.be/WxLUZ1omFA8?si=2altIeWDeow1fdZB

And no, they’re not aware BG exists!

I played this last night. First round went to the AI as I was massively behind, second round I had to reload to optimize my army, third round I was confidently in the lead.

Had to play smart and not waste any moves for this one. Feels like the best challenge yet.

I tried a few attempts of 200% with the Hive, learning how to play this new faction the hard way. A few times the map was just too hard as I could barely move anywhere or resources were too gatekept, and then another attempt that felt good ended on week 2 or 3 when the AI rushed in and steamrolled me with an army 10 times my power.

So I decided I will keep AI to just one opponent, start an Anarchy/Random map where the AI should be on the other end.

After reaching a point where I could beat 70% of neutral squads, the game felt beatable. First run-in with the AI happened after I'd unlocked the whole map in a building, and I was... surprised.

- The AI had 10 heroes (the limit), with around 1-2 'sargeants' with 1 unit, and the others had their army spread almost equally. The AI controlled almost all the remaining map, but it looked as though it had just broken into the desert (and this was week 6 or so). There was no powerhouse. I ended up beating the strongest of them in the first hero I challenged. That hero was massively high level, had a worse army than mine, and did NOT really use any of its 377 mana against me although I did waste a skill slot preparing for an AI mage.

- The AI did some seemingly smart things like beat a neutral mob with one hero and pick up the artifact with a different hero.

- The AI did some really dumb things as well, like not picking up a free neutral city on the way, nor did it use any smart spells on the battlefield. Then again, fully upgraded hive + all heroic strike perks makes almost all battles trivial and last 1-2 turns. I barely had to use any magic.

- I hadn't seen the AI use Town Portal a single time in the two weeks that I had access to the whole map to watch it.

- The general difficulty curve for the map was in tackling neutral mobs, where basically the whole map is flooded with massively OP neutrals, and your best bet is to go into reward building to challenge set seeds of enemies. The other big challenge was ore and wood - at one point I had 10 castles with just the one lumbermill and ore mine from my starting castle. I had to take Economics just for that. Also, the artifact discount perk on Economics saves a ton of money when you're hunting combos.

- General takeaway: it feels like 200% is too hard for the AI to tackle neutrals as well. The fact that the AI didn't pool in armies to fight me felt weird, as was the fact the AI just let me plough through its lands and take all the castles one by one. I was 10 or so days away from victory from my first encounter with an AI hero.

This battle opened my eyes to the fact that Lich Dragons are Tier-8 as Excalibur was useless against them!

Silence spell on first turn to prevent Lich death-to-all ability, wait with everyone, then larvae, then my Reavers did the trick.