What triggers difficult enemies?

[Mandrake]

Some people say that adromadons and above (in difficulty) start showing up after you have done the skulljack; some say it's after you have researshed plasma. Which one is it? Does somebody know for sure?

[Aseran]

Most of the enemies are spawned based on the in-game date, not your tech level, the Andromedons show up around July, so don't hold off tech for this reason.

If you want more spawn dates for the enemies, the XCOM wikia is a good place to get that.

[Kunovega]

I think the only enemy that are tied to your actions are codex (after you skulljack an advent), and the avatar (after you skulljack a codex ~ and he stops coming if you kill it)

And of course the 3 rulers which will begin showing up after you do the trigger mission (or randomly if you have the story mission shut off when starting a new game...)

Everything else is pure timeline, but the date varys depending on your difficulty level. Andromeden is mid July, or mid September on Legend.

Gatekeeper is August, or mid-November on Legend.

Click on each alien type in the wikia and it will tell you:
http://xcom.wikia.com/wiki/Aliens_(XCOM_2)

[marshmallow justice]

Researching does not affect Force Level. Force Level scales with time progression. You will always see the same types of enemies at the same time periods, every run on the same difficulty.

[Lemonhead]

Why do the difficult enemies spawn later on Legend? Shouldn't they come earlier to make it more difficult?

[HoroSaga]

Originally posted by Lemonhead:

Why do the difficult enemies spawn later on Legend? Shouldn't they come earlier to make it more difficult?

The player's construction and research speeds are drastically slowed down at higher difficulty levels, and the early game enemies are already tougher as well, making it more difficult for the player to build up the strength of their soldiers. The whole timescale is adjusted to give the player a fair chance to prepare themselves for the mid- and late-game enemies, hence why the stronger enemies start appearing later than they normally would on lower difficulty settings.

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by Lemonhead:

Why do the difficult enemies spawn later on Legend? Shouldn't they come earlier to make it more difficult?

Just play on legend, heh. You will quickly realise what's the trick.

[Lemonhead]

Originally posted by st88:

Originally posted by Lemonhead:

Why do the difficult enemies spawn later on Legend? Shouldn't they come earlier to make it more difficult?

Just play on legend, heh. You will quickly realise what's the trick.

I have played legend, so I know it is difficult in general.

My first question still remains: "Why do the difficult enemies spawn later on Legend?".

If I would take a guess, I'd say it is to tone down legend in a way unnoticable to the player so even with the insane research times and equipment cost, it is actually doable because you don't need the items as early as in lower difficulties. A way to empower legend players with sneaky difficulty tuning. I have no idea though, hence my question.

EDIT:

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

Originally posted by Lemonhead:

Why do the difficult enemies spawn later on Legend? Shouldn't they come earlier to make it more difficult?

The player's construction and research speeds are drastically slowed down at higher difficulty levels, and the early game enemies are already tougher as well, making it more difficult for the player to build up the strength of their soldiers. The whole timescale is adjusted to give the player a fair chance to prepare themselves for the mid- and late-game enemies, hence why the stronger enemies start appearing later than they normally would on lower difficulty settings.

Guess I missed this post. Yes, this was my thoughts as well. Game design trickery...

[Tamiore]

I'd say that legend gameplay in general is much more about making the most of your basic abilities and equipment when fighting against rather low-tier enemy units.

And it's a great thing, too: XCOM in general is much more fun in the early and mid game (before you snowball enough momentum to just steamroll everything).

In a way legend is much more of a guerrilla game: you build up slower, but advent also takes longer to allocate more advanced stuff to fight you.

[marshmallow justice]

Originally posted by Lemonhead:

Guess I missed this post. Yes, this was my thoughts as well. Game design trickery...

and despite said "trickery" people still seem to believe XCOM has it out for them, they have the worst luck out of everybody in the known universe, and the AI is cheating. When in reality, it takes a couple of minutes of scanning through .ini's and the common sense to realize % chance is % chance and nothing more, to realize that even in Legend, the game is still actually cheating for you.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by marshmallow justice:

Originally posted by Lemonhead:

Guess I missed this post. Yes, this was my thoughts as well. Game design trickery...

and despite said "trickery" people still seem to believe XCOM has it out for them, they have the worst luck out of everybody in the known universe, and the AI is cheating. When in reality, it takes a couple of minutes of scanning through .ini's and the common sense to realize % chance is % chance and nothing more, to realize that even in Legend, the game is still actually cheating for you.

Looking through the ini is pretty funny when you realize most of the aliens are set to way lower accuracy than your own troops will achieve. So yea, the game is actually cheated slightly in the players favor and than there's all the moves that aliens do which don't do immediate damage...