I learned about this game through a Penny Arcade name-drop a few weeks ago and I’m getting seriously hooked. But when I poke around the web for info, I find it’s nearly a year old and I wonder why I didn’t hear about this game earlier. Anyone else here playing it?
If you haven’t played it, but are interested in a pretty deep turn-based post-apocalyptic strategy game, purchasable online, PC or Mac, no CD, and the AI doesn’t cheat, then I heartily recommend it. There’s a demo on their website, armageddonempires.com. Warning: the interface is not very flashy at all, but the underlying product is worth it.
I bought it after playing the demo for a few days. Very addicting. My only complaint is the total lack of multiplayer or even hot seat mode, playing the AI is only fun so many times.
I heartily recomend it as well. I got it two months back, based on its appearance in the Tom vs Bruce column in Games For Windows magazine, it has been reviewed (very positivley) by GFW since. It plays like a hybrid card game/hex based wargame that would require far too many counters, dicerolling, and record keeping to work on the tabletop. It has 4 playable factions, lots of independents, 3 map sizes (randomly generated each game) and you can customize your army’s ‘deck’. A game can run from 20 minutes to a few hours. The computer (which really does not cheat) chooses between numerous decks for each faction, so even though there is no multiplayer support, your opponent can vary significantly in capabilities and strategy from one game to another. It also has very good treatment of stealth, recon, and fog-of-war. Its not deep in the sense of calculating how many millimeters of side armor the Leopard Mk IV has; but rather in the sense of strategic maneuvering and allocation of scarce resources. Plus it’s chock full of pop culture sci-fi references and some nice artwork. Did I mention that one of the factions are Cthulhu-esque aliens? The creator is working on a free expansion due out in March that will add non-playable cults and some other stuff. Go to www.crypticcomet.com right now and check it out.
About those guys (the Xenopods): is there some trick to playing them effectively that I haven’t seen yet? I’m playing as them in my current game for the first time, and I’m having a hard time getting the ball rolling; compared to the human empire or the machines, it seems like anything beyond the cheapest scout unit requires a metric ton of resources to deploy. I’m harvesting human resources as fast as I can, but I’m still only able to play about one card every two turns, and meanwhile the AI’s got upgraded heavy infantry backed up with artillery breathing down my neck…
But like I said, it’s my first game playing the Xenopods, so maybe all the reasonable cards are still buried in the back half of my deck.
I’m concentrating on the Empire and the Free Mutants currently, so I’m not sure, but the Xenopods seem to have quite a bit of stealth, including hidden bases. One strategy may be to concentrate on keeping your forces hidden and slowly building up resources, using scouts and heros to trash unattended resource collectors in the enemies’ rear, assassinate leaders, and slow them down with active espionage. I’m not sure though, since I’ve only dabbled with them. Also, a general deck building strategy I use when learning a faction is to remove the research facilites and research-oriented characters, which gives you a greater density of things that hurt the other guy at the expense of some depth.
Just wanted to let you know, I finally got back to my Xenopods game…and yes, stealthed heroes were very useful. The Imperial bastards couldn’t keep a hero alive thanks to my assassin, I had a stealth commando unit to kill their scouts, my saboteur played merry hell with their outlying outposts for a while, and the hidden bases made excellent forward supply posts.
The problem was, the AI had a pair of “Zeus” powered battle armors (it must have found them in a neutral camp) and those were nearly impossible to stop. They had the “counter attack” ability (i.e. if you swing at them and miss they can damage you as if they had attacked you), some kind of “glitter surface” which reduced the damage I did manage to inflict, and Dr. Strangelove managed to build them energy weapons to boost their damage output before my assassin got him. I had actually captured their headquarters with a sneak attack at one point, and had two whole armies defending the place, but the AI managed to move the Zeus armors there and re-take the base in the same turn so I didn’t win that turn. These two battle armors wiped out a total of five heavy units and an artillery piece camped in a headquarters-level fortress in a single turn, although I was able to destroy one of them in the process.
I ended up emptying out my deck to build a new heavy assault force, and upgraded them with tons of goodies from my geneticist…and in the end, all I needed was one unit with the “shock” ability to tie the remaining Zeus down while the rest of my heavies smashed him into paste. Fun!
Time to start increasing the number of AI opponents, methinks…