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Take for example Chapter 11. You can just hole up in your starting island/castle and wait for the enemies outside to rush you, then pick them off a couple at a time while you let your allies get massacred and completely ignore Beatrix as if she wasn't even there. Optimal, probably, but I think it's better the game incentivize you to move out.
But regardless of that, I'm also strongly of the opinion that more options is a good thing 99% of the time. I'd be totally behind them being toggleable.
A pretty easy way to make sure you have that many strong squads is to have all your melee squads be mixed squads. They take a lot less investment to be strong enough to more or less oneshot enemy squads.
Well my impression has been exactly the opposite. I am already maximizing my squads (within reason) and making use of horse archer squads too. Even then, a lot of the time the objectives put me in the mind of:
"If we are not PUSHING FORWARD BY TURN 2, we won't make it"
"if this area is not beeached by turn 6, then it is better to reload."
Many times I am even counting the squares, as the objectives are extremely fined tuned. So much so that you HAVE to be moving the max squares per turn, take into account 1-2 turns for fighting, then another at least 2 to kill the boss (1 turn kill might be too risky and you need multiple squads in place), and you're at the time mark.
The only levels that don't have such extreme tuning are:
A) levels with "gimmicks"
B) levels from Legends. I actually TREMENDOUSLY appreciate a more relaxed limit.
I'd be okay with the mechanic if it wasn't so oppressive, and if it was occasional but not on every level. The odd one is fine. Every level with this mechanic I think subtracts from the game.
60% less sounds about fine. The occasional level with the mechanic I qm okay with. But I also would like to take my time sometimes.
Spoiler tag
well your allies are coded to leave by X turn no matter what. There is also an objective to defend their base or lose the battle.
This level is not representative of the whole game, but I wouldn't mind the timer on this level as it makes some sense as you say
Uh, no, there's no objective to defend your allies base in chapter 11. The 2 loss conditions are losing your MC and losing YOUR base. Fort Findorian (The ally base in the south) is literally set dressing. The enemies will run straight past it to you. There isn't even a challenge mission to get there or defend it or anything, all of the challenge missions are additional timers. I just loaded up Chapter 11 and confirmed all this. Hell, Beatrix left before she even reached me, I never even had to fight her.
Chapter 11 was just the first to pop into my mind, several missions would be much simpler and safer if you just turtled and took your time, dealt with aggressive enemies charging you, and then cleaned up afterward. It also comes in to play when dealing with dangerous squads, when you've got no time limit you can take 40 turns shooting boss squads with archers.
In general the devs also included other means to incentivize offensive play, like challenge missions or timed chests or loss conditions, and this is good (though they also come with their own issues, see chapter 9's allies...). But ultimately a universal timer to incentivize offensive play with a relatively minor bonus attached I don't think is all that bad.
Again though, I absolutely think it should be a toggleable option for players like you that would prefer they not exist.
On my first playthrough on normal difficulty I could make most of them, but some optional objectives were hard. (like timed treasure chests, I missed a few of those.)
They incentivise decisive action and planning ahead, and on building and designing a large army that can multi-task, which in turn makes me learn the game faster than if I were able to rely on making a few super-squads and slowly grinding through the enemy.
But I only like the timers because they're pretty optional. Making the timers gives you maybe 5% more gains than not making the timer? 10%? It felt something like that. A single arena fight will more than compensate for a low mission score, in general.
What I did not like was that missions would automatically end sometimes before I could complete optional objectives. I.e. main goal is kill all enemies. Secondary goal is to capture X mines. Last enemy charges my army and dies, mission ends even though I have time left to capture those mines.
I restarted a lot more missions because I accidentally killed everybody too soon than because I did not make the timer. (Mostly because I accepted not making the timer.)
When I push aggressively (no cav/flyer to rush ahead), many of the chapters I finish with over a third of the time limit left, so it's not quite as tight as you're thinking. Side note, your horse archer diverts resource away from higher damage melee squads that lets you push faster, so maybe that's why.
There are a few missions with tight-ish timings, but they're all timed chests (or in chapter 26 and legend 1b's case, bonus objectives).
It is possible I simply had misread the objectives for that mission. I've played this game a couple of times and each one I've played it as in Ch11 you needed to protect your ally base.
Let me explain: The problem with XCOM 1 was the best strategy was to bait out enemies one by one which, while optimal, was boring. This game would be the same - put a tanky squad in front and let the enemy come to you and kill them one by one. This would drag out each fight and become repetitive rather quickly. Not to mention that then you might need to balance the game's difficulty around this style, which would force even more people into this optimal pattern of play.
However, with timers you don't have the luxury of slowly killing your opponent. You have to make hard decisions and play more aggressively, which means you also need to play even more strategically to offset those potential loses.
I completely understand why time pressure isn't fun, but there is reason for this design choice and helps the game avoid defaulting to one boring strategy.
It's just that from player to player it's either going to be just right, not enough or too much. Being able to toggle a global increase of 1-3 turns (decrease would probably be locked to -1) could be just enough for anyone to still feel like they need to be proactive but at least open up some freedom of approach (I certainly often end up feeling like there's only one path to S rank)