AI War 2 is a grand strategy/RTS hybrid against a galaxy that has already been conquered by rogue artificial intelligence. It's also "a sequel to [Arcen's] enormo-space RTS AI War, which we called 'one of this year's finest strategy games' back in 2009" (Tom Sykes, PC Gamer)The most devious and acc...
AI War 2 is a grand strategy/RTS hybrid against a galaxy that has already been conquered by rogue artificial intelligence. It's also "a sequel to [Arcen's] enormo-space RTS AI War, which we called 'one of this year's finest strategy games' back in 2009" (Tom Sykes, PC Gamer)
The most devious and acclaimed artificial intelligence in strategy gaming returns... with a host of mutual enemies.
Face off against a more advanced version of the original AI, who once again has captured the entire galaxy leaving you only a tiny planet to yourself. Then strike out and find a way to cleverly outwit it nonetheless. All the new capturables, larger fleets, and hacking abilities are sure to help. (You're going to need it.)
Or immerse yourself in a far more complicated galactic struggle involving the nanocaust, macrophages, dyson spheres, and more. Other factions each have their own goals, rules, units, and entirely unique economies. Make the scenario complicated enough and it can become "World War XV is in progress, you're in a tiny farm in the middle of it, nobody likes you, but if you can just kill that one giant angry enemy leader this will all be over."
If that sounds over the top -- and frankly that bit is wearying to us to imagine even though some people seek it out -- then take a break and maybe hack the all-consuming computer virus to be your ally, and convince the star-sized alien hives to watch your back as you take on a suddenly-less-arrogant AI.
(If you're really feeling spiteful, take yourself out of the equation, turn on super fast forward, and watch them all fight like ants on a galactic scale.)
Modernized and supercharged.
It's been ten years since the original AI War launched, and the gaming world has changed a lot -- as has the available computing power on any device you're using to read this. We've pulled out all the stops to build foes more formidable and intelligent than before, and to create simulations of hundreds of thousands of units running at 120fps in a lot of cases. You can speed up and slow down the simulation without any extra load on your CPU, and pause at will.
The interface respects your time by automating things that you would do the same 95% of the time anyway. For that other 5% there are indeed advanced features such as placing spy nanites, tweaking or disabling the rules of automation, or redesigning your fleet compositions as much as you want.
Streamlined, yet deeper.
Sometimes when a sequel says it's "streamlined," it can really mean "dumbed down." And there are indeed fewer tiny choices to be made in some areas here: you don't have to decide how to wash each dish; you have a dishwasher. And it's a good thing you do, to be honest, because the rabbit hole of complex and confounding scenarios goes as deep as you want it to.
All those bits where you make the interesting strategic decisions? Those bits are tougher than ever, and you can't fall back on old boring habits to muddle through. You need your attention free to anticipate, to plan, to dream... and then throw those all aside and figure it out by the seat of your pants when everything goes sideways.
There's too much to memorize (but tooltips are always right there, anyway), and there's always an unfamiliar element. Clicking fast won't help you. To win the AI War, you'll have to improvise, adapt, and use your wits.
As it should be.
How About Some Highlights?
Many optional factions, each with their own goals and strategies, create a living galaxy.
A new Fleets system gives you even more ships than before, and allows you to customize your empire more than ever.
A ton of map types, and with a lot of sub-options to make them even more varied.
Outguard to hire, factions to ally with, and oodles of targets to capture or hack --with the AI or aliens.
Warden, Hunter, and Praetorian Guard sub-fleets of the AI provide for new challenges (and sometimes opportunities) in how both you and the AI interact with each other.
Crazy moddability, with many levers available in easily-accessible XML.
What's New Compared To The Original?
More approachable gameplay, but with a rabbit hole that goes as deep as ever.
More to do, in terms of moment to moment gameplay and choices. More to find, more to conquer or be conquered-by.
Polished gameplay mechanics, representing everything learned from first game’s six expansions (plus three years of development on this sequel).
Trimmed fat: repetitive boring tasks have been automated or streamlined, but more options than ever have been added for you to customize things when you want to. Our goal is never to waste your time, but always have an array of interesting challenges for you to pursue at once.
Redesigned UI that gives you a ton of information and power right when you need it.
1.5 hours of new music added to the 4.5 hour included score from the original game.
Multithreading for modern performance, and a codebase that will not summon an elder god (recoded from the ground up for modern rigs).
Over 1900 lines of spoken dialogue from more than 25 actors.
Unique strategy game where you have to make the most of what you find in a procedurally generated galaxy to beat the AI overlord. The latter already controls the whole galaxy and launches predictable waves at you which increase as you take territory, as well as the not-so-predictable Hunter and Warden fleets.
You can't possibly conquer the whole map, so deep raids to capture or destroy objectives are essential. A variety of allies and aliens can be added to the game to spice things up.
Coop multiplayer (the sequel was renowned for this game mode) and a first DLC are coming Q2 2020.
The strategy layer is fascinating and the game tense and very satisfying when you win, but the interface while better than the first game is pretty unpolished and confusing at first. I also find the unit control and actual tactical gameplay serviceable but somewhat dull, with units that differ only by HP, damage and speed as well as a complicated rock-paper-scissors system.
All in all a unique game that's well worth trying. Once coop is in it might become the best coop strategy game out there.
A question the product planners at Arcen did not ask themselves in 2008: "Why has no 4X game in over 25 years used this approach?" A question they did not ask themselves in 2011: "Why has no competitor jumped to copy this approach?". Yet those two questions have the same simple answer: "Because it is boring". Although you spend 99% of all game time in combat, victory is gained not so much by winning per se as by winning as by scoring low enough on the "how much did this annoy the AI" scale. And that scale is not even related (that I could tell) to territory loss or equipment loss or anything concrete.
To describe the overall effect, I could reach for fancy French and German and Latin words like ennui, anomie, Weltschmerz, and marasmus. But honestly, just plain "boooooring" says it all.
Not a fan of capital fleet ship lines. Essentially you go to grab tech in order to make decent frigates and you find out that it's locked like most things in this game; in this case behind capital ship experience that you attain from arduously attacking AI ships.
It seems it's the theme of the game, lock individual control under automated processes that while one can argue streamline the process in fact end up in a lack of fine control.
As an example capital ships being used as carriers. You pack up your blob of units transport the carrier to what you assume is a just within range distance, then you let the frigates pour out willy nilly.
Then in the clusterf%$( you try to pick out the ones you want to move in only to have your shield unit land on another and randomly divert and not look like they intercept much anyways.
Oh did I mention that blob is not firing at anything in particular? Good because there is no target toggles from what I or the tutorial can tell. It's unblob and fire at random units in range or ctrl shoot that one thing.
Oh and your units will then scatter to get their max distances from there, automatically splitting forces that move at different speeds *facepalms.
It's hard to explain all the small reasons why removing direct player controls from a range of instances affects this game poorly; it is much easier to point out that if the idea is to spamforce the galaxy then control via the galactic map should of been a higher focus instead of the clunky tab in tab out and am I still selecting the unit mess that it is; or how utterly abysmal the tutorial is.
Frankly speaking i don't know why developers don't simply make a lets play tutorial on Youtube these days; because tooltip click here to continue tutorials are the height of stupid design.
For starters they are slow, secondly they are extremely picky with actions, thirdly they are too specific to the most core concepts and as such fail to go through the actual motions employed in game.
