X-COM Enemy Unknown Difficulty Curve
- Thread starter tendaji
- Start date
Recommended Videos
I'm only about 10 missions in or so, and I haven't run into even so much as a Cyberdisk yet. Floaters are the nastiest enemy I've encountered. Yet, I manage to lose an average of 1-2 guys per mission (usually rookies, thank god). My last abduction mission was 100% perfect across the board, not even a hit taken, despite being "very hard", so I expect the game to start violating me soon.
Playing Classic/Ironman, btw. The game is definitely no hand-holder at that difficulty level, most particularly on the strategic layer. Panic just spirals out of control so quickly...
Playing Classic/Ironman, btw. The game is definitely no hand-holder at that difficulty level, most particularly on the strategic layer. Panic just spirals out of control so quickly...
Yea, the curve takes a rather sharp turn upwards. It does rather fit in with the pacing though (or at least for me).
Though, it does often seem that some bad rolls can really screw one over. First time I see a group of mutons? Capture all 3, no one in my squad is injured.
Then I get cocky and lose 3 men the next mission. Oops.
Though, it does often seem that some bad rolls can really screw one over. First time I see a group of mutons? Capture all 3, no one in my squad is injured.
Then I get cocky and lose 3 men the next mission. Oops.
You obtain their weapons when you do that, in case you are short on getting the new plasma weapons due to lack of engineers. I find myself doing it more often, cause to me it's more of a thrill (and a very large part stupidity after I tried to stun a Chrysallid only for it to look at me and say "Nope" before implanting its eggs in my soldier's belly). I also think it might assist in research as well, but not sure.BloatedGuppy said:
I know for most of my first playthrough I was focusing on dissections and interrogations, where I ended up getting pretty far in the game storywise, while my units were still rocking out original armor/weapons, and ended up being torn to pieces completely in the terror mission. I think my current playthrough is a bit more balanced, most of my unit has laser weapons, but unfortunately I lost 2 of my best soldiers (cursed floaters and their superior elevation just wiping out my sniper. I find the game to be quite brutal as soon as you think you can get away with a position that is unfavorable.
Only problem is that I'm having trouble affording satellite uplinks, so Russian and India are right about to shut down due to panic, and I'm only getting about $350 in cash, and 3 scientists/1 engineer per turn. Finding that perfect little balance is really hard in this game (at least in my view).
I lost one of my promising squaddies going for an ill advised capture (RIP Jalani Okafor) on one of those Stranger guys, so I'm getting a bit paranoid about trying to force captures. Keeping my squad alive long enough for them to earn promotions and be effective has been an ongoing challenge, and I'm finally getting to a point where I'm not losing half the team on every mission. Live capture Chrysalids? Good god.tendaji said:
I'm finding managing the global terror situation to be absolutely punitive, yeah. Despite an A rating and what could at worst be called a very, very solid performance, I'm bordering on losing at least one country, with several more looking to go red.
Awwwww, that's what made them so terrifying in the first place. I still remember the first time I had to deal with those fuckers and one of my men got infected. I killed the chrysalid and gunned down my former comrade and thought it was over. To my surprise, another chrysalid rose up from the corpse and all of my men around it were out of time units.cathou said:
Played about 12 hours of it, up to the first alien base attack though I haven't attacked it yet. Also an oldschool Xcom player who has beat X-Com and Terror from the Deep (didn't like apocalypse.)
Playing on Normal I was getting frustrated at first going "Wow! I can just wipe everyone out, maybe I need to increase the difficulty level or something. Then..... Mutons and Chyssalids started showing up. After that it seemed like ALL the alien troops started to get better and better at fighting and every mission became a scrap fight.
Granted I still have only lost 10 recruits in all, including the first required deaths in the tutorial but I grant that more to the fact that I'm used to XCom difficulty rather than the game being too easy.
The difficulty really does go from handholding to F-U in no time flat.
EDIT: And the only time I've reloaded a save so far is when a car blew up and killed two of my men and someone I was escorting. Only reason I reloaded was... I didn't know cars could do that!
Playing on Normal I was getting frustrated at first going "Wow! I can just wipe everyone out, maybe I need to increase the difficulty level or something. Then..... Mutons and Chyssalids started showing up. After that it seemed like ALL the alien troops started to get better and better at fighting and every mission became a scrap fight.
Granted I still have only lost 10 recruits in all, including the first required deaths in the tutorial but I grant that more to the fact that I'm used to XCom difficulty rather than the game being too easy.
The difficulty really does go from handholding to F-U in no time flat.
EDIT: And the only time I've reloaded a save so far is when a car blew up and killed two of my men and someone I was escorting. Only reason I reloaded was... I didn't know cars could do that!
To be exact, the zombies still grew a chrysalid, but it take a few turns to do that, so you still better kill those infected comrade pretty fast !Product Placement said:
it's more logical i think, it take some time to hatch instead of a full growned chrysalid getting out of the corpse only a few seconds after been infected.
I didn't notice the difficulty at all until I submitted my Medkit support character for Psi testing for 10 days. For whatever reason I've only found two supports and the non-healing skill tree is sh*t so I pretty much ruined my second one.
Anyway, the character was a terror and has never been hurt long enough to miss a mission. When I lost her for 10 days... things didn't go well.
On the plus side, she's now psionic, so it's back to business.
Anyway, the character was a terror and has never been hurt long enough to miss a mission. When I lost her for 10 days... things didn't go well.
On the plus side, she's now psionic, so it's back to business.
I know what you mean (more from my experiences with the original.) I swear the game does it to mess with you. Really easy mission that's supposed to be hard... "Yeah I've gotten good at this!" Walk into the next mission, total meat grinder.Xeorm said:
CAPTCHA: how quaint
No captcha! It isn't
Well it seems my bragging about never losing people jinxed me... recovering a crashed UFO cost me 4 of my best soldiers.
That's XCom for you, just when you feel safe... BOOM!
That's XCom for you, just when you feel safe... BOOM!
Yeah frustrating isn't itDraech said:
Oddly there was a rockpapershotgun article about this very subject, although they chose Dishonored as the game in question but it raises a lot of good points.http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/10/no-oceans-dishonored-uk-launch-trailer-takes-the-piss/
I know exactly what you mean. Heck, what's worse is when the game lulls you into a false sense of security at the start of a mission.DeimosMasque said:
I remember one mission in Glasgow where it started off with just a few Floaters. I though "Easy! I've got Lasers, and some experienced guys, this'll be cake!" Sure enough, the Floaters are killed with little trouble, and one of them is even captured. I'm sitting there thinking "Oh, this should't be too hard. Why'd the difficulty for this mission say 'Very Difficult' anyways?". Next thing I know, Mutons. Mutons everywhere. All of a sudden, cars are exploding, my guys are missing shots left and right, and an alien grenade somehow manages to kill my stunned Floater. Mission ends with nearly the entire team gravely injured and one of my best Snipers dead (you are missed, Lt. Santiago).
It's moments like that that really get you. The game gets you to start getting sloppy, then BAM! in come the Mutons and Chryssalids.
what i have done is made damn sure to get at least 2 people with med-kits on every mission. I also got kinda lucky with getting wounded but not killed for multiple people across multiple missions because of strategic miffs (but because of this luck, my casualty count is at a whopping 2, and Im fairly certain im fairly far into the game)TheKasp said:
from what i can gather, keeping your guys alive is incredibly important, though it is also good to have at least one backup of every class, just in case the worst happens.
Lazer weapons are totally worth it, though if you concentrate your fire with ballistic weapons, and use explosives when times get desperate, you can pull through (i still have heavies and assaults with just plain old bullets, and they can still cause serious harm. 5 damage a shot can REALLY hurt mutons and chrysalids, and even them floating discs, and 1 shot the more basic enemies)
dont let your satellite coverage waver though. when you put one up over a country, -2 panic, and you get bonus money per month. so having good satellite coverage is a big boon.
yeah i had something similar, but a smackering worse. starts off with me feeling confident. difficult abduction you say? well, i just spent a bunch giving everyone carapace armor and some laser weapons, i can handle this. have my sniper grapple up to a building to get a viewpoint, walks up to a window for one of those small rooftop rooms. nobody is inside, so he dashes in to get to his optimal position a bit quicker. oops, there were 2 mutons hiding behind the telescope, and some floaters right outside the other window, and some more mutons on the ground.The Critic said:
the following would take a bit of time to describe, could totally be in an action movie, and somehow wound up with no casualties on my part, yet every alien was killed.
seriously, it was such a clusterfuck 2 people panicked, and i still won. dear god did i get lucky (and the health on my heavies really helped)
oh, and one tip. in order to fuck over the random number gods, if you have a shot or something thats a bit of a longshot, but you REALLY need to make that shot to keep people from dying, or to capture something, save, then re-load, and re-load, and re-load. it feels like cheating a bit, but when everyone survives because of it, its worth it.
This is how Xcom is supposed to be.
You don't research, you die.
Luck hates you, you die.
Chryssalids show up, you die.
Ethereals show up, you die.
You exist, you die.
You have to understand that if you bought the game this is what you're gonna get, Xcom is meant to kick your ass 5 ways north and south; if you don't like that your playing the wrong game.
You don't research, you die.
Luck hates you, you die.
Chryssalids show up, you die.
Ethereals show up, you die.
You exist, you die.
You have to understand that if you bought the game this is what you're gonna get, Xcom is meant to kick your ass 5 ways north and south; if you don't like that your playing the wrong game.
I was just thinking that too.... then a sms from eb games saying my copy of se ce is ready for pickup arrived. I almost jumped through the roof in excitement as I was planning to go in and ask for my copy tonight after work as Friday is useless when shops are closed by the time I get home. thank god for late night shopping on Thursday!!!!Zhukov said: