How is Difficulty / AI??

[XWolven]

Something that often gets swept under the rug by many devs is AI, and that totally ruins too many good Tactics/Strategy games. So how is the Challenge here? Does the AI know how to synergize it's abilities at all? Does the AI just do the same thing all the time in a given situation like in XCOM the Soldier aliens will ALWAYS throw a grenade if two people are standing close enough together. Games like this live and die by how smart the AI plays. I guess I need to wait for more reviews to come out. Looks really potentially great though and I'm very happy to see Devs involved responding in the forums here!

[Altron]

Hey XWolven,

The AI is pretty good, in my (biased) opinion. Especially on legendary difficulty. It will use its abilities and the environment against you and will recognize your weak spots.

I'd recommend playing on Classic or Legendary for a seasoned player.

I'm a fan of challenging tactical games as well, so I believe you won't be disappointed by it.

[Eran.Yaacobi]

The answer here is divided to two, as there are two AIs.

The tactical AI is quite complex, and not very predictable (enough that as the developer of it I cannot always foresee what it'll do). How well it plays depends on the difficulty setting chosen.

On the highest difficulty setting (though in some cases on lower ones) it has some synergy between its units (for example it mostly knows to try and first cancel overwatch/attack of opportunity with units that can do so safely before moving other units). It also takes in consideration what other units did, and chooses the order of units in a way that (usually) improves their efficiency as a group.

That being said, it's not nearly as capable as expert players in the game, and there's more room for improvement (especially on Legendary, as it's okay for the AI to be really good there), for example it doesn't know well to avoid giving the players Physics opportunities (despite knowing well how to take advantage of that when the player fails on that front). Because of its somewhat random nature it also sometimes acts oddly.

But overall it still sometimes manages to surprise me and make a move I didn't anticipate nor prepare for (true mostly regarding its usage of Physics), and it poses a significant challenge.

The Strategic AI on the other hand is fairly basic and isn't too bright. It can and does pose a challenge to players, but as a player said about our strategic AI in our discord server recently - "The pattern I have been having is: The AI wins after each new update until I figure out how to beat it and then I can beat it consistently". Since then we've improved the strategic AI more (closing some significant loopholes), but it's still not at the level of the tactical AI.

If things go well enough, we're very likely to improve both (though our focus was and still is the tactical AI because that's the heart of the game), as while we feel that overall the AI works well, it can be further improved and we agree that it'll improve the game.

[XWolven]

Those are great answers! I don't expect ground breaking AI (like deep mind LOL) but just good enough to beat me on my first games and make me think it out and have to try different methods to win. That is such a welcome surprise to hear that Difficulty level actually affects AI instead of the typical make them stronger and you weaker. I'm really interested now!

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

Originally posted by XWolven:

Something that often gets swept under the rug by many devs is AI, and that totally ruins too many good Tactics/Strategy games. So how is the Challenge here? Does the AI know how to synergize it's abilities at all? Does the AI just do the same thing all the time in a given situation like in XCOM the Soldier aliens will ALWAYS throw a grenade if two people are standing close enough together. Games like this live and die by how smart the AI plays. I guess I need to wait for more reviews to come out. Looks really potentially great though and I'm very happy to see Devs involved responding in the forums here!

Don't play on Legendary, whatever you do. Basically the AI will just focus down a unit and you will permanently lose it, because lul, permadeath. Except, you know, even your tank barely has anything that protects it from this fate due to the opponent just having WAY more stuff than you do.

I've played through both modern XCom games on max difficulty ironman and through Into The Breach, so I know about positioning and how to do tactical combat. So far had to restart about 5 times, simply because of how squishy your units are compared to how many enemies you'll fight.

Turning off Permadeath effectively doesn't do jack, at least in the beginning, since you won't have the resources to buy back your dead heroes.

[XWolven]

But if Iron Man is turned off, can't you just reload?

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

Originally posted by XWolven:

But if Iron Man is turned off, can't you just reload?

You can also just restart the fight, but some of them are just unwinnable. One of my starts was basically in the corner of the map and the only two paths leading away were blocked by 4.5/5 difficulty fights.

Edit: Okay, turns out there was one corner where it continued further inland.

[Eran.Yaacobi]

As someone who played both Fort Triumph (naturally) and XCOM quite extensively, I find Legendary to be much harder on XCOM than on Fort Triumph. From what we saw from some of our Youtubers, that's the case for them as well. This is not because of how good the AI is, but because of the numbers you're facing compared to how you can handle them. This is to the extent that we feel that we need to make Legendary harder (but plan on doing so only by improving the AI, and not by changing any numbers - we'd even probably lower them in that case), because for a good player, it's not that hard not to lose a single hero (no exceptional good luck required) in an entire run (without restarting/loading).

However, on Legendary if you play Fort Triumph exactly as you play XCOM, you won't stand much of a chance. While the game has XCOM mechanics (and you need to know how to use them), it also has unique ones of its own (most notably Physics), and you must leverage them in order to win the game on Legendary. This means always looking for opportunities for stunning several enemy units with a single action, and if they don't exist - making them.

Another thing to note is that you need to be very efficient in your usage of time on the worldmap, as the challenges become harder as the days goes by. So plan your moves there carefully.

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

Originally posted by Eran.Yaacobi:

As someone who played both Fort Triumph (naturally) and XCOM quite extensively, I find Legendary to be much harder on XCOM than on Fort Triumph. From what we saw from some of our Youtubers, that's the case for them as well. This is not because of how good the AI is, but because of the numbers you're facing compared to how you can handle them. This is to the extent that we feel that we need to make Legendary harder (but plan on doing so only by improving the AI, and not by changing any numbers - we'd even probably lower them in that case), because for a good player, it's not that hard not to lose a single hero (no exceptional good luck required) in an entire run (without restarting/loading).

However, on Legendary if you play Fort Triumph exactly as you play XCOM, you won't stand much of a chance. While the game has XCOM mechanics (and you need to know how to use them), it also has unique ones of its own (most notably Physics), and you must leverage them in order to win the game on Legendary. This means always looking for opportunities for stunning several enemy units with a single action, and if they don't exist - making them.

Another thing to note is that you need to be very efficient in your usage of time on the worldmap, as the challenges become harder as the days goes by. So plan your moves there carefully.

XCom is harsh in the battle itself. However, you can't get your base capped in XCom. Additionally, if you know what you are doing, you have plenty of tools in XCom to constantly stay one step ahead of the AI. Peg the Berserker with a Quick Draw from your sniper and let them charge your Ranger with Bladestorm for a free melee attack from them. Pop Killzones with Archangel while your MEC tanks the damage and baits shots, while still forcing the AI to come closer because of the reduced hit chance through defense.

Here the AI just pops into your keep out of nowhere, instantly capturing it and getting free (?) garrison of Lv3 heroes.

[Eran.Yaacobi]

I was referring to the difficulty of fights in the tactical layer.

In the worldmap, Fort Triumph is probably the harder of the two (definitely on lower difficulty settings, but not so sure about Legendary). It's very possible to lose (completely) in it.

Regarding AI taking your base, to avoid that, you need to defend it (you can put heroes in the base and keep them there) or alternatively progress on the map in several directions simultaneously (with multiple parties) so you have a better cover of the worldmap and cannot be surprised by the AI suddenly springing on you out of nowhere. This will allow you to either bring forces back or hire new heroes to defend the base (you can alternatively purchase heroes and always keep them in base, but that's not an efficient use of resources). As long as you have heroes in the town, if you have upgrades for the the Fort, you'll also have extra units participating in the fight (somewhat similarly to Heroes of Might&Magic, but not exactly), so the defense doesn't need to be too strong.

As to the heroes in the town after the AI captured them - they're not free. The AI usually buys heroes to defend a town immediately after capturing it. They're also not level 3, but I see where the confusion comes from, as the indication is not clear. The purpose there is to indicate that a hero is more or less equivalent to a tier 3 unit, which is the case for level 1 heroes.

In general, while Fort Triumph focuses mainly on tactical battles, it is a strategy game. With a few exceptions, the player and AI follow the same "rules", so you can't play just offensively but need to also prepare and react to the actions the AI makes on the worldmap.