Humans! They are irrelevant. They couldn’t presumably threaten us, the mighty AI that destroyed them and conquered the galaxy. I’m certain that little exploded warp gate orbiting Ursinoe is nothing to fret about. We’ll reinforce the realm a bit. Just a couple of pests. Mice within the partitions, nothing extra.
That’s kinda how AI War 2 works. You’re the determined remnants of humanity, and your job is to take advantage of that behaviour to outlive and construct up your forces till you’re robust sufficient to assassinate the CPU. It is, in fact, Arcen’s sequel to their defining 2009 mega-strategy game AI War: Fleet Command, and after a 2016 Kickstarter and a 12 months in early entry, it’s lastly prepared.
Like the unique, AI War 2’s bland title hides essentially the most uncommon of designs. It’s an actual time technique with tower defence bits on an enormous scale. Two hostiles AIs management all however one planet (yours). You should construct ships to retake them, which you can construct higher fleets, and ultimately push their huge silly robotic faces in. But most belongings you do will make the AI extra conscious of your presence, and the moment it decides you’re a major risk, it would effortlessly obliterate you. You should weigh up the strategic benefits of attacking every planet, relying on how tough it will likely be to carry, and the way a lot it would irritate your enemy.
This sequel additionally affords a number of the non-compulsory issues provided by AI War’s years of DLC, and welcome labour-saving gadgets. Ship constructing is organised into formal, routinely replenished fleets, scouting occurs immediately and routinely. “The interface respects your time by automating things that you would do the same 95% of the time anyway”, says its retailer web page. I actually spent much less time babysitting scouts.
I’ve performed for an hour or two and it positively feels much less fiddly and overwhelming. But it’s nonetheless an advanced game, and a notoriously tough one when you bump the AI’s intelligence up. The much-vaunted crafty of its behaviour is one thing I count on to put in writing about once I’ve had time to essentially get my tooth into it, however I’ve already had an excellent second the place a faction of hostile human marauders tried to raid my homeworld, and by sheer likelihood, a fourth occasion of resistance fighters confirmed as much as assist me, then promptly Poochied out once they’d cleared it up for me. Arcen have traditionally put a tonne of labor into their games lengthy after launch, however I’m already optimistic about this one.
AI War 2 is out now on Steam and GOG with a 40% launch low cost bringing it right down to £9.29 till Thursday the 29th. It’s additionally on Humble, although doesn’t have the low cost there proper now.
