So is the ice island impossible on purpose?

[Fyre]

I see a lot of 'am I missing something' threads and I seriously must be missing something with the ice island because not only does it have the most abrasive CEO but all of the worst missions in the game with nothing that really helps aside from a freeze tank. Defend two buildings is the usual, this island has them spawning ever-incresingly dangerous hostiles. In general the whole island is filled with hostile robots that are in ADDITION to the normal amount of vek with no benefit like a little tank or artillery.

[Daid]

Did you clear islands before going to the ice island? The islands get more difficult the more other islands you cleared. If I pick it as first island, it's a breeze...

Also, I love the robots. So easy to kill for extra XP (or regeneration of the hazard squad).
And all the ice tiles are fun with the flame squad as well, burn the ice and see the bugs drown. The fire also does a good number on the droids.

[Fyre]

Originally posted by Daid:

Did you clear islands before going to the ice island? The islands get more difficult the more other islands you cleared. If I pick it as first island, it's a breeze...

Also, I love the robots. So easy to kill for extra XP (or regeneration of the hazard squad).
And all the ice tiles are fun with the flame squad as well, burn the ice and see the bugs drown. The fire also does a good number on the droids.

Hm, I always went archive first with flame because of the forests and thought ice would be bad but I didn't consider that putting an ice tile on fire makes it water. I think things with 1-hp getting spammed are just my blind spot in this game, I get wrecked by blobbers and spiders just from them having more units and actions per turn. I just can't seem to crack iceland like the rest, no pun intended.

[x_equals_speed]

The freeze robot is pretty good. 2 turns to do the mission and 3 turns of taking out an extra enemy each turn.

The ice storm tends to be good to the player as well. As well as creating a bigger-than-airstrike area that takes enemies out of the fight, it also gives any buildings in the area an extra hit.

Unfreeze the buildings is nice too. It tends to mean "focus on killing stuff while they spend their hits doing your objective for you"

It also has the mission where all enemies start on the board and frozen and defrost each turn rather than spawning through the usual mechanics. I find that one nice and easy because when you have good turns you can pre-kill a few of next turns enemies by nudging them into the water.

Defend the minelayers is a bit of a mixed bag. They're vulnerable and tend to make really stupid moves but they also pop mines everywhere that are easy to knock enemies back into. Probably a net loss for the player since their moves can make you lose on RNG if they select particularly daft ones.

The only mission I really despise in the ice set is defend the factory, which has the horrible trait of buildings spawning enemies that want to attack the buildings that spawned them - usually nowhere near the main vek spawns so your squad gets strung out and it's harder to arrange bumps and friendly fire. I hate that mission.

[x_equals_speed]

It would be neat if the robots in defend the factory (and maybe some other levels) always moved before the vek and used their turn to move and attack the nearest thing, be it mech, vek or building, so that it was like a 3 way fight and you could take advantage of them.

[Fyre]

Okay, maybe I let rage get the better of me, ice storm / mini-tank / frozen buildings are pretty helpful... but defending those factories even with the frozen titans is silly. It /feels/ like there's always robots out to get me on that island. In general mine layers and frozen mines I tend to avoid just because the board is too cluttered to do anything meaningful, and any splash just brings them back.

[glass]

Good island order can make the game much easier.

For example, Veks get high up towards the end, so acid island will help to increase your daamge.

Also, which enemies does the island have? Maybe certain enemies are easy once you get some reactor cores.

[Fyre]

Originally posted by glass:

Good island order can make the game much easier.

For example, Veks get high up towards the end, so acid island will help to increase your daamge.

Also, which enemies does the island have? Maybe certain enemies are easy once you get some reactor cores.

Depends on how much damage I'm dealing and whether or not I can deal with web. I think I'm really just having a hard time wrapping my head around the missions or got a string of bad luck or something because clearly other people aren't going as nuts about this.

[Wyrtt]

Ice island is the easiest out of all, Most objective play right into your hand.

[itssirtou]

Oldielocks is a WAY more abrasive CEO.

The fact that the robots only have 1 hp is very helpful. There are a lot of weird tricks that make the island easier. Way better than the hyper irritating Desert base. The only redeeming quality to that one is the Grassland mission.

I've never found the bot factory to be that hard. Maybe I've just gotten easy maps, or lucky with my squad picks. Normally they just feel like something to bump Vek into for free damage

[Greep]

There is exactly one hard map on ice island, the robot factory. If you skip it, the island is probably the easiest: You've got cities encased in free ice shielding, free ice tanks on turn 1, etc. Plus the robot boss that frequently pops up is hard to kill but easy to disable.

Still do ice island first anyways, because if you save it for later, the reactor core objective seems to always end up in robot factory >.> Maybe I'm just super unlucky.

[Donax]

I always keep Ice Island for the end because it's by far the easiest to be done last. As Greep said previously, there are a lot of environment stuff to make it easier for you:
- freeze mines,
- frozen buildings,
- already frozen enemies,
- ice tiles (which transform into water directly with fire)
- blizzard with 3x3 area effect which freeze enemies but also buildings
Then, most of the robots have only one HP making them easier to kill.

By the time you reach it as 4th island, you got yourself a team supposedly well equipped which should be able to deal with various situations.