XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

It's not their turn. They shouldn't be able to move like that.

Malor wrote:

It's not their turn. They shouldn't be able to move like that.

Exactly.

Make them start in cover or something. But don't give them free moves on my turn.

I would agree with you if there weren't a fog of war, but with fog of war, it implies discovery and reaction. I.e. the aliens' free moves are a way to overcome the inherent unrealism of "taking turns" in tactical scenarios. We have overwatch, aliens have movement. Would you rather they be able to shoot you immediately instead?

The alternative would be something like Advanced Wars, where units that come across hidden units as they advanced the fog of war are simply stopped for the remainder of their turn. (Or am I remembering those mechanics incorrectly?) Of course, I'm biased against anything turn-based--out of principle because it's stupid--and prefer simultaneous turn resolution.

Keithustus wrote:
Malor wrote:

Does that stop the groups of aliens from doing the 'look up/assume new positions for free' nonsense, or does it just not zoom in with the camera? I actually don't mind the cinematic camera angles that much (which surprised me, as I thought I might hate them), but I don't like the way they always get to move into cover, right in the middle of my turn. (or, worst of all, right at the very END of my turn.)

What nonsense? You're not supposed to get a free shot at them, not unless you're using ghost armor, anyway.

This. I too, thought at first that Aliens getting a "free move" was a consequence of the animation. But the game is developed that way on purpose. I don't love it either. If the Sniper's ability; Movement Scanner could be an item you could build and equip on anyone, I'd see the free move for aliens as a penalty for not "playing strategically". There is ONE item in the whole game, the Ghost Armor, that helps you around this. And it's not that easy nor fast to get.

The alien free move animation seems almost like an afterthought or a quick fix they implemented after PlayTesting.

Regarding the scripting; I thing this could have been played in our advantage; have Easy/Normal have one scripted campaign (ie, the game as we have it now), give Classic mode additional story; more Alien Bases (spoilers!), make the Blaster Launcher part of the scripted plot points, make stealth satellites obligatory, etc.

For Impossible, there's two script ideas I'd love;

a) borrow from the original X-Com and have the aliens attack your base.
b) allow countries to go back on the Council; once you loose a country, after a certain amount of months, you get an infuriatingly difficult (reads: suicide) mission that allows you to overthrow the current government and win the aforementioned country back.

We have overwatch, aliens have movement. Would you rather they be able to shoot you immediately instead?

The original X-Com handled that scenario very well, with individual interrupts by both sides. But just showing up didn't set off a mad scramble by six aliens at once. It means you have to be bizarrely careful not to reveal any new map areas with players late in your turn, because suddenly a whole group, which previously was perfectly happy sitting still, doing nothing, is going to be hunting you.... while the next group, five squares further away, sits frozen in amber, waiting for you to show up.

That whole mechanic is very poorly done.

Hmmm. I think of it in terms of the AI. With the aliens, if their AI knows exactly where you are, every time you spotted one it would be in an optimal position for that encounter. If they move (or are pre-positioned) completely without knowledge of your movements to that point, it would be obviously random, and given that AIs are less challenging than humans, that would probably make the game so easy they'd have to balance it with numbers of enemies. (And if you used omniscience with some randomness, players would still crucify you for the omniscience part...)

So to me, it's a necessary evil - each time you spot an enemy "node", the enemies get a change to deploy into what local cover there is, or charge you, whatever their default behavior dictates. I'm guessing, but I think the alternatives either wreck balance, or require the aliens to know everything you do even when you're out of sight, so I'm willing to put up with it.

If you've ever seen a skilled player go through a game like the recent Jagged Alliances, which do model patrols and goal-oriented behavior, they learn very quickly to use that behavior against the enemies. While that is entirely realistic, it also is kind of tiresome; once behaviors are learned and can be predicted, the challenge goes right out of the game. At least this way, the aliens have a chance.

I don't really have a problem with the "move-on-sight" alien gig.

Either you play the game/play the numbers the old way and keep action points in reserve for overwatch or you game/play the numbers the new way and manage your movement points/overwatch/discovery ability.

In fact, writing that, I'm getting a severe sense of deja vu so maybe I've written that before in a similar conversation in the thread. The point is that any which way you're playing the rules of the game at themselves...

Probably what we would all prefer would be for the aliens to be playing the same game as we are: they start somewhere on the map, then must move their forces intelligently and either place them in overwatch as they see fit or continue moving/scouting and be unable to perform another action. Which reminds me, how does the multiplayer hold up? I've never tried it.

Robear wrote:

While that is entirely realistic, it also is kind of tiresome; once behaviors are learned and can be predicted, the challenge goes right out of the game. At least this way, the aliens have a chance. :-)

What chance? You leave two snipers, a heavy and a support or two on overwatch, move your assault up from cover to cover, and every time the assault flushes the aliens, yell 'PULL!'. Then watch as the aliens 'dramatically' dash for cover, and get cut down in a flurry of overwatch fire.

Sure, I played a slower game, but I didn't lose troops, and I didn't lose missions, and finished with all members of the council. Its the people that won't slow down and use the overwatch system to its fullest that suffer casualties.

You are right about the lack of challenge, its half the reason I stopped playing. The other half being the utter lack of replayability, once you figure out the right way to do things, on both the strategic and tactical levels.

So, once I've finished Enemy Unknown, which of the older XCOM games is the best? I picked them all up in a Steam sale a while back; which do I play?

Serengeti wrote:

So, once I've finished Enemy Unknown, which of the older XCOM games is the best? I picked them all up in a Steam sale a while back; which do I play?

Well.. the snarky answer is none of the above. Terror From the Deep is a buggier, bigger version of Enemy Unknown. Apocalypse is a disastrously unfun attempt to create a hybrid realtime/turn based engine game. I haven't bothered with the others.

You wouldn't even recommend the original UFO:EU, Tangle?

Wouldn't having the aliens start in a cover position be essentially the same thing as having them start in the open, then getting a free turn to move into a cover position? They never shoot during their free move anyway, what does it matter?

bighoppa wrote:

You wouldn't even recommend the original UFO:EU, Tangle?

I wouldn't mention it in a followup to itself (as I still haven't played the new one, I only think of the original as Enemy Unknown, and had a total brain fart)

Anyone know what the Marathon option does, specifically? Increase research times & build prices, fair enough. But the internets seem to be full of disinformation on:
1) Whether the aliens are also slowed down in their development (sounds like probably yes), and if so, if it's by as much or less than the factor the player faces
2) Whether there are more missions that will appear overall per x amount of research done/things built, or if those are slowed down by just as large a factor. (I would hope there are; if not, this mode would mostly just exist to give the aliens whatever time advantage they may gain on the geoscape.)

I tried a marathon game, and found that the extra expense for purchases and time for research just made it feel like a huge slog. Didn't seem to be any change to number of missions per month, but I didn't stick with it long enough to notice whether the aliens appear more slowly.

You'd want the same amount of missions over a set period of time in a Marathon game, from what I understand that's the whole point, the same amount of missions but less progress for any given peroid of time.

If you're just stretching everything out equally, all that changes is the amount of times the globe spins when you hit the scan button.

Kloreep wrote:

Anyone know what the Marathon option does, specifically? Increase research times & build prices, fair enough. But the internets seem to be full of disinformation on:
1) Whether the aliens are also slowed down in their development (sounds like probably yes), and if so, if it's by as much or less than the factor the player faces
2) Whether there are more missions that will appear overall per x amount of research done/things built, or if those are slowed down by just as large a factor. (I would hope there are; if not, this mode would mostly just exist to give the aliens whatever time advantage they may gain on the geoscape.)

I'm playing one now on normal ironman and not experiencing any more difficulty than just a normal ironman runthrough.... Everything just takes so goddamn long.

However, combining this with the randomised funding and weapon damage makes the game more fun as I'm surviving glancing shots and whatnot. Which, IMO, makes the game more interesting than just "standardised" damage depending on position.

Keithustus wrote:

Probably what we would all prefer would be for the aliens to be playing the same game as we are: they start somewhere on the map, then must move their forces intelligently and either place them in overwatch as they see fit or continue moving/scouting and be unable to perform another action.

The discovery move also makes act a bit more like malicious cockroaches, which I think changes the way I feel about the enemy in an interesting way.

:'-)

Love that film and novel.

Duoae wrote:
Kloreep wrote:

Anyone know what the Marathon option does, specifically? Increase research times & build prices, fair enough. But the internets seem to be full of disinformation on:
1) Whether the aliens are also slowed down in their development (sounds like probably yes), and if so, if it's by as much or less than the factor the player faces
2) Whether there are more missions that will appear overall per x amount of research done/things built, or if those are slowed down by just as large a factor. (I would hope there are; if not, this mode would mostly just exist to give the aliens whatever time advantage they may gain on the geoscape.)

I'm playing one now on normal ironman and not experiencing any more difficulty than just a normal ironman runthrough.... Everything just takes so goddamn long.

However, combining this with the randomised funding and weapon damage makes the game more fun as I'm surviving glancing shots and whatnot. Which, IMO, makes the game more interesting than just "standardised" damage depending on position.

I agree. I love (among other things) when the LOS happens during a move and the slo-mo action occurs. On the occassion when it's happening to me, I can only hold my breathe that it will be a miss or glancing shot (especially when my medic might be on the other side of the battlefield). But I do love setting up my folks: psi a enemy then 'dash' them into unknown areas to expose aliens, and using squad sight with my snipers, to lay waste:}

Tanglebones wrote:
Serengeti wrote:

So, once I've finished Enemy Unknown, which of the older XCOM games is the best? I picked them all up in a Steam sale a while back; which do I play?

Well.. the snarky answer is none of the above. Terror From the Deep is a buggier, bigger version of Enemy Unknown. Apocalypse is a disastrously unfun attempt to create a hybrid realtime/turn based engine game. I haven't bothered with the others.

Thematically, UFO Defense is still my favorite of the originals. TFTD gets a bit of a bad rap. Strictly speaking, it's a better balanced game than UFO (except for those annoying cruise ship terror missions). TFTD also has a weird issue with the tech tree where you can get into trouble if you fail to capture a live Deep One. I never bothered with Apocalypse, mostly because I didn't care for either the art style or the real-time gameplay.

I rank TFTD lower than UFO Defense for two reasons: TFTD lost a lot of the creepy atmosphere of the original game by taking place underwater. The night encounters in farms in UFO Defense were fantastic. Also, the boat encounters in TFTD were just tedious, both from going room to room to find aliens and in the two stage format of the encounters.

Enemy Unknown is a great distillation of what made X-Com great, though I do miss some of the aspects were dropped, like the "surprise a group of aliens that then ready for attack" in EU rather than the aliens already being set up when you land and being sniped from out of view distance, sometimes from aliens standing of farmhouse roofs or in second story windows. Also, that the degree that aliens were prepared in crash sites was proportional to how long it took the landing crew to arrive from when the ship was shot down. But I really don't miss having to build and manage a zillion bases for adequate radar coverage or some of the other nuances of the original that were dropped.

I really should get back to this game. It was the reason I upgraded my PC and then I was distracted by all the other shiny new games I was suddenly able to play and never gave it very much time.

complexmath wrote:

I rank TFTD lower than UFO Defense for two reasons: TFTD lost a lot of the creepy atmosphere of the original game by taking place underwater. The night encounters in farms in UFO Defense were fantastic. Also, the boat encounters in TFTD were just tedious, both from going room to room to find aliens and in the two stage format of the encounters.

Oh man, see I found the underwater missions super creepy, but then I have a thing about deep water.

complexmath wrote:

The night encounters in farms in UFO Defense were fantastic.

Night is one of the few quibbles I have with the 2012 version. It doesn't seem to make any difference except for the graphics shading. Lowered sight range was indeed terrifying in the original.

That and getting your base invaded, which isn't present at all, and makes me feel far too safe.

I agree they made an excellent decision re: only having one base. Don't miss having to manage more at all.

FYI, marathon mode also makes wounds in battle take longer to heal.
Like 36 days if you get critical shots on your behind.
Get fast recovery from the Officer School ASAP.

Cayne wrote:

Prebuy Bioshock infinite and if enough people do get a free copy of Xcom...

If it hits that mark, I would gladly take someone's extra copy.

Lost 3 countries now in my current (Normal difficulty) game. With a satellite nexus almost built next to my two uplinks, that means I'm close to covering all the countries that haven't already withdrawn.

I've seen posters in some forums claiming that it's easy to keep countries from withdrawing, especially below Classic. If that's so, I'm apparently using the wrong strategy.

I think the main places I erred in this game, given that I want to try for 100% country retention, were:
-Choosing too many abduction missions based on reward, as opposed to continent & country
-Launching satellites as fast as possible rather than waiting for the end of the month - and in general, not necessarily putting them in nations that needed a panic reduction
-Grabbing countries in smaller continents like North America and Africa. Since ignoring a mission costs you in all countries on a continent, it seems like you want to cover Europe and/or Asia before going to other continents, so that the two abductions you ignore aren't hurting you in a whopping four countries. (That should help prevent having to scale up with Interceptors so fast, too.)

Think I just got lucky. Was about to have 2 countries leave, with 2 days left in the month at max panic... and there was a story event that popped up and I completed it. It reduced worldwide panic by 2.

After that I finished my satellite rooms and got everything under control.

Ok. I caved in to this finally after Hobbes enabled me on it. Went to his house, played for a few hours, enjoyed it to the point of buying it when I got home. So, I do have some impressions, and would like to add to and contest to some of the things people have been saying.

1. This is a great game. A great turn-based, strategy game.
2. This is NOT a great X-Com game. I understand the reasoning behind many decisions on why the mechanics are the way they are right now, but I´ll get into that later. What really turned me off, and separated this game from its predecessor for me, was:
a. The art style changed too much. Sectoids look like Sectoids. Skyranger looks like Skyranger. Interceptor looks like Interceptor. Outside of those 3 things, EVERYTHING else is different. While I enjoy the look and atmosphere of this game, I feel they deviated way too much. Floaters look cool, but those aren´t floaters. Mutons are OK, but those aren´t mutons. Chryssalids. I can´t believe they decided to revamp him completely into this blue arachnid. The Ethereals...I don´t know. I´m torn. I love they gave him 4 arms, I hate they removed the cloaked hood and gave him a helmet. And Thinmen! f*ck that. I want my Snakemen back. Armor, weapons, maps, bases, alien UFO´s, UFOpaedia, Globe, Night and Day, everything else is different. Very nicely done and cool, don´t get me wrong, just, too different from UFO Defense for me.
b. Missions. I´m sure time and costs will be the reasons given, but why on earth would they limit the Alien Base missions to just one? Why on earth would they remove our own base from being attacked? Makes no sense to me.

3. This game is whole lots of fun, but offers absolutely no replayability, at least, for me and my tastes. Why? Because the game seems to follow only ONE course of action. The only thing that seems I can or can´t do differently, is whether I go with plasma or laser weapons. That´s it. Everything else? MUST follow a set path. It seems we´re being punished to the point of losing the game, if we deviate slightly from ONE path. And that path, is Satellites and Engineers. Go outside of that, and you´ll end up losing everything eventually. It´s not that having two satellite uplinks adjacent would give me a plus, it feels that if I don´t, I end up losing something. That´s not how "power-ups" work. Power-ups give us extra boosts, but we don´t require them to complete a task. Here though, it feels quite the opposite. Choosing where to allocate my last remaining 23 Ellirium pieces isn´t a matter of choice, when either research element is required for me to advance in the plot.

I´m about to complete my 3rd game in a row. I went Easy, then Normal, now Classic, almost done, Gollop Chamber just finished constructing. All 3 games have felt the same. It´s the exact same game. I don´t feel like I have enough under my control, or as enough options, to feel I can play differently this time around.

I remember back on UFO Defense, I never ever built any ships except the Avenger, and only because it was a requirement to go to Cydonia. Lightning, Firestorm, etc, etc, never built any. Interceptors with Plasma Cannons were strong enough to crash any spaceship except the Battleship, and then that would just land to construct a base, and I sent my squad down then. Also, I never ever used any Psi abilities. Sure, I did once or twice, to see how they worked, but I didn´t need them. It simply didn´t fit my playstyle, as I´m sure it completely fits to others.

Others have mentioned it before, I think Malor mostly, but it felt like the Aliens had their own agenda, and I had to keep up with what they were doing. If my starting base was in Europe, they were landing ships in Africa, infiltrating, abducting, and conspiring with them to abandon me. And if I didn´t keep up, and set interceptors to patrol over Africa, they would´ve succeeded. This game? Nope. None of that is present, and I do miss it. A lot. Again, I´m sure time and costs were strict restraints to everything they wanted to do, It just feels like a totally different game to me than XCom. It´s good, yes, I´m enjoying it immensely, it just doesn´t feel like XCom to me.

Keithustus wrote:

We have overwatch, aliens have movement. Would you rather they be able to shoot you immediately instead?

Um...They have Overwatch too. They do shoot you immediately. On our turn, sure, but they do use it. Quite a lot, actually.

I can understand almost every argument that has been given to justify why certain changes and things happened. What I can´t, for the life of me, understand or accept, is why did they choose move-move, and move-action as viable options, but decided to keep action-move out of the list? Why is it a perk for only a few classes, and only on certain conditions? That´s BS right there, and not valid in my eyes.

Outside from all this, I truly am enjoying this great game, but after I´m done with Classic, I think that´s it for me. No point in playing again, if I can´t play it differently...or, better put, differently enough.