X-COM Enemy Unknown Difficulty Curve

[toomuchnothing]

One of my biggest "Oh fuck!" moments in my gaming history happened while playing UFO - Enemy unknown (the original X-com). It was when my last surviving soldier walked inside a building, only to find it was occupied by a Chyraslid and five zombies.

Fear the Chyraslids, tendaji. Never underestimate them and you'll get far in this crazy, cruel world.

Yeah I'm dreading every Terror Mission, seeing how I know those Chyraslids will be there, and there will be a ton of civilians there too....Although rockets are very effective at killing them, and the zombies before they actually rise up again.

I know I had my really experienced squad doing a mission and Mutons popped out of nowhere and where beating down on my sqaud, then floaters came and were hovering over my position. Well I focused on the Floaters, yet my squad was so talented they could miss a 91% chance to hit >.> I lost my best sniper, and support guy that round because they ended up bleeding out since I had run out of medkits.

The game is really addictive, it's also really frustrating to play with some of the moves the AI pulls, or how your characters are controlled.

I think I bombed my first attempt at the first Terror mission which was composed of floaters, chyraslids and 18 people in danger. After that first attempt I rethought my strategy and completed it with 14/18 saved, zero units lost and I'm pretty sure I tazed a floater. For my 5 man squad composition it was easier to set up a perimeter outside the building and have my support, with the bonus 3 tiles move per turn perk, do all the saving inside the building and then haul ass outside where a firing squad waiting for the train on enemies to poor out of. While that was happening my sniper with the squad sight perk was able to pick off quite a few enemies since the support was acting as a spotter even at such a far range.

With that said I totally agree that this game will not have mercy on you but it will make you reconsider your approach and that is something I really enjoy. Also fuck Mutons, that is all.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

OT: The beginning of the game is super easy. It's so easy, in fact, that I think it teaches you to be tactically lazy. So when the difficulty actually arrives, you might as well be playing a different game. Rethink how you've been doing things and start over. So yeah, I don't think the problem with the difficulty curve is that it gets too hard, but that it starts way too easy.

Are we talking about just EU? Wasn't UFO Defense the same way? Sectoid scout ships and Floater terror missions for the first few months don't do much to harden X-COM commanders. Then out of nowhere, fucking Chryssalids. If you haven't kicked your ass into gear before the first Snakeman terror mission, you are seriously fucked.

I was doing a generally shit job managing my R&D during one of my first playthroughs and arrived on my first Snakeman terror mission still using rifles. (They were doing okay killing Sectoids and Floaters so far, hadn't even encountered cyberdisks yet...) Then the Snakemen show up with their Chryssalids, and suddenly, my entire armament is useless. A few turns later, the exterior of my Skyranger is surrounded by chryssalids and zombies. All because I didn't have adequate weapons. I just didn't know. I DIDN'T KNOW.

OT: Chryssalids are still as scary as ever to fight. I only encountered them a few times so far, but the old firing squad approach seemed to put them down well enough. If I know they are around, I keep my squad together and try to draw the bastard out so my entire team can blast it to pieces. I try to make sure I have the heavy hitters ready to use their strongest attacks against it and kill it as soon as possible. I haven't ran into a scenario where chryssalids zombified the entire civilian population yet, this is the scenario I'm truly dreading.

Man this game is addicting. I decided to put some time into it last night to get a good impression, and I ended up sinking the entire evening into the game without noticing. I am seriously loving the game so far. And I'm getting lots of remembrances back my experience with X-COM. You know, my entire squad being absolutely terrible shots, aliens landing insanely lucky shots from impossible angles/distances. I guess that's XCOM for ya.

 

[cathou]

One of my biggest "Oh fuck!" moments in my gaming history happened while playing UFO - Enemy unknown (the original X-com). It was when my last surviving soldier walked inside a building, only to find it was occupied by a Chyraslid and five zombies.

Fear the Chyraslids, tendaji. Never underestimate them and you'll get far in this crazy, cruel world.

Well at least in the new game the zombies don't turn into chrysalids when you kill them, for what I've seen so far

 

[BloatedGuppy]

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...

 

[Xeorm]

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.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Is there a benefit to capturing more than one alien of a particular type?

 

[tendaji]

Is there a benefit to capturing more than one alien of a particular type?

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.

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).

 

[BloatedGuppy]

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.

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.

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.

 

[Product Placement]

One of my biggest "Oh fuck!" moments in my gaming history happened while playing UFO - Enemy unknown (the original X-com). It was when my last surviving soldier walked inside a building, only to find it was occupied by a Chrysalid and five zombies.

Fear the Chrysalids, tendaji. Never underestimate them and you'll get far in this crazy, cruel world.

Well at least in the new game the zombies don't turn into chrysalids when you kill them, for what I've seen so far

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.

 

[DeimosMasque]

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!

 

[cathou]

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.

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 !

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.

 

[Gennadios]

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.

 

[DeimosMasque]

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.

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.

CAPTCHA: how quaint

No captcha! It isn't

 

[Alcaste]

Lost everybody in a terror mission introducing chrysalids. that was not nice.

 

[DeimosMasque]

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!

 

[Tallim]

The only thing this thread has achieved is piss me of at local launch windows.

I bought the game through the same client as my american friend and he is playing it while I aint.... in fact i wont be able to untill friday.... come on! this is bullshit!

Yeah frustrating isn't it 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/

 

[The Critic]

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!

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.

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.