Разработчик: Arcen Games, LLC
Описание
Wishlist Our Upcoming Game!
Join Our Discord Channel!
New DLC!
About the Game
AI War 2 is a grand strategy/RTS hybrid that reverses many of the conventions of both genres. Take territory without attracting attention, build your empire with care, and adapt to an ever-evolving galactic battleground. It's also "a sequel to [Arcen's] enormo-space RTS AI War, which we called 'one of this year's finest strategy games' back in 2009" (Tom Sykes, PC Gamer)The most devious and acclaimed artificial intelligence in strategy gaming evolves.
Most recent is 2021's Paradigm Shift (which has overviews and tutorials in that link). Every year since 2018, this AI has become more devious -- and the factions facing it, subordinate to it, or simply neighbors with it grow more numerous and more lifelike.
The premise is simple: you've already lost the war. The entire galaxy belongs to other factions, mostly the AI. You are starting with one small planet in a sea of hostile territory, and you must endeavor not to draw too much notice from the AI. Your job is to carefully evaluate targets, strategically expand your territory just enough to run your fleets and defensive networks, and then strike at the heart of the AI(s) when you are ready.
AI War 2 is meant to be both accessible and deep. Early 2021 has seen major improvements to make the midgame easier to get into for new players, plus a more forgiving Science system and a much more powerful Hacking system. Q3 2021 is going to introduce a new Expert mode for those who want the more extreme sort of challenge that comes from having elements of permanent loss, more reasons to hold disadvantageous positions, and so on. Which mode you choose to play will always remain a personal choice.
Unexpected Technical Advancements
In the twelve years since we coded the first AI War, we've made a lot of improvements to our simulation engine, which is now running on top of the Unity 3D engine. However, AI War 2 has presented some truly unique technical challenges, mainly involving running insane amounts of AI and simulations in a massively parallel fashion. We've been able to harness the power of modern multi-core processors to a degree that most game simulations cannot, and our challenge from 2020 onward has been to bring that into the multiplayer realm. While multiplayer currently remains in beta, it is also a bit of a technical showcase.
Mod support is heavily embraced by this game, and having mods be multiplayer-safe (or have deep access to change parts of the core simulation in general) is not typical for games as a whole, let alone this genre. We've managed to make multiplayer a self-repairing affair, which is beneficial both for playing with friends on different OSes and hardware, and for having most mod-code mistakes be corrected by the core game.
The AI has dramatically improved in intelligence every year since 2018, and your framerate is also decoupled from your simulation performance. You can have a great machine with 120fps during heavy battles, and a friend at 30fps and you both stay in sync and the actually simulation doesn't slow down. You can speed up and slow down the simulation without any extra load on your CPU, which is very helpful to avoid any boring waiting around, and you can pause at will.
The interface respects your time by automating things that you would do the same 95% of the time anyway. For that other 5% there are indeed advanced features such as placing spy nanites, tweaking or disabling the rules of automation, or redesigning your fleet compositions as much as you want. Hacking is one of the most interesting ways to customize your existing fleet leaders, as you can give them unusual upgrades or even transform them into new versions of their class.
Streamlined, yet deeper.
Sometimes when a sequel says it's "streamlined," it can really mean "dumbed down." And there are indeed fewer tiny choices to be made in some areas here: you don't have to decide how to wash each dish; you have a dishwasher. And it's a good thing you do, to be honest, because the rabbit hole of complex and confounding scenarios goes as deep as you want it to.
If you want to play at a level approaching Expert, you'll need that spare brainpower to design your fleets, manage multiple fronts at once, juggle offense and defense, and continually revise your empire design to suit your needs as the campaign unfolds. If you want to play more casually, that is absolutely okay as well, and the game can be much more forgiving while still providing a lot of interesting macro choices.
There's too much to memorize (but tooltips are always right there, anyway), and there's always an unfamiliar element. Clicking fast won't help you. To win the AI War, you'll have to improvise, adapt, and use your wits.
As it should be.
How About Some Highlights?
- Many optional factions, each with their own goals and strategies, create a living galaxy.
- The fleets system gives you tons of ships that can be organized and distributed with a minimum of fuss.
- Science upgrades are simple to manage, but provide many options on how to approach any given campaign based on your preferences and what you find in the wild.
- Hack the enemy, hack your allies, hack yourself. Hacking points are limited, but extremely powerful ways to get more ships or capabilities, directly weaken enemies, or even steal from enemies.
- A ton of map types, and with a lot of sub-options to make them even more varied.
- Outguard can be hired as a way of deploying surprise mobile forces whever you need, and many factions can be allies.
- Warden, Hunter, and Praetorian Guard sub-fleets of the AI provide for new challenges (and sometimes opportunities) in how both you and the AI interact with each other.
- Crazy moddability, with many levers available in easily-accessible XML. A number of player-supported mods are shipped directly with the game (defaulting to off) so that you always have the latest version of them and don't have to hunt for them to download them.
What's New Compared To The Original?
- More approachable gameplay, but with a rabbit hole that goes as deep as ever.
- More to do, in terms of moment to moment gameplay and choices. More to find, more to conquer or be conquered-by.
- Polished gameplay mechanics, representing everything learned from first game’s six expansions (plus three years of development on this sequel).
- Trimmed fat: repetitive boring tasks have been automated or streamlined, but more options than ever have been added for you to customize things when you want to. Our goal is never to waste your time, but always have an array of interesting challenges for you to pursue at once.
- Redesigned UI that gives you a ton of information and power right when you need it.
- 1.5 hours of new music added to the 4.5 hour included score from the original game.
- Multithreading for modern performance, and a codebase that will not summon an elder god (recoded from the ground up for modern rigs).
- Over 1900 lines of spoken dialogue from more than 25 actors.
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 7, 8.1, or 10 64bit
- Processor: Dual Core 64bit CPU (2.2+ GHz Dual Core CPU or better)
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 510+, Radeon HD5900+, or Intel HD4000+
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 4 GB available space
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- Processor: Any Quad Core or 3.0+ GHz Dual Core CPU
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB / AMD HD 7870 2GB
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 4 GB available space
Mac
- OS: Mac OS X 10.9+
- Processor: Dual Core 64bit CPU (2.2+ GHz Dual Core CPU or better)
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 510+, Radeon HD5900+, or Intel HD4000+
- Storage: 4 GB available space
- Processor: Any Quad Core or 3.0+ GHz Dual Core CPU
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB / AMD HD 7870 2GB
- Storage: 4 GB available space
Linux
- OS: Ubuntu 12.04+, SteamOS+
- Processor: Dual Core 64bit CPU (2.2+ GHz Dual Core CPU or better)
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 510+, Radeon HD5900+, or Intel HD4000+
- Storage: 4 GB available space
- Processor: Any Quad Core or 3.0+ GHz Dual Core CPU
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB / AMD HD 7870 2GB
- Storage: 4 GB available space
Отзывы пользователей
great
It's a fun game with the mindset of being Darksouls, but for real-time strategy.
A really unique PvE RTS with enough meat, challenge and reactivity to satisfy even PvP RTS players.
Good game, fun
amazing AI to fight against. great coop RTS game
Fun game, but I do not have friends to direct connect multiplayer to. Fix multiplayer to have actual lobbies, thx.
Tricky to play... but worth the effort
This game can be summarised as roughly:
A strategy game where you plan your next steps like in a puzzle, where the progression in a is similar to a roguelike, and the difficulty and playstyle of a session can be adjusted extensively to whatever degree you desire.
Make sure you read the things the game tells you, and you'll get the hang of it quite quickly.
If you want an easy and relaxed experience, you can have that. If you want it ridiculously difficult - you can have that too.
Everything is the same but also different
It was quite intimidating seeing the UI at first, but after the 20-30 minutes of OPTIONAL tutorials, I felt much less intimidated. There isn't a whole lot of lore, but what is there is great! The game isn't fast paced which i appreciate, the ability to pause gives you however much time you need to think about any decisions, and there isn't a ton of micro that keeps me away from other RTS games. I appreciate that the wiki is literally accessible from the menu, complete with strategy guides and every bit of info you could need! The unit variety is pretty good, with many different fleet setups possible, and the models are genuinely impressive, my favorite part of getting new units is just seeing the models! Another strength of the game is how customizable the game is, there are enough options to make your head spin, just about any setting can be changed to your liking! I also appreciate that many of the mods are also just in the game, waiting to be enabled if you are interested, i appreciate when the developers give tools and visibility to the modders, who add quite a bit of free content for everyone! I bought all the DLC and i enjoy all that they add, and of course the options let you only use the parts that you want to see! The other species have cool asthetics and mechanics to add, and with all the DLC there are many factions to choose from to make each game you play quite different, and the skill floor is very high. The depth is impressive, the AI seems to make good choices, and feels very fair compared to other 4x games on higher difficulties. Highly recommend to anyone that enjoys the theme and can get through the tutorial, after the tutorial the UI won't be intimidating and you can enjoy the struggle against the AI or powerful aliens and other oddities!
I've tried three separate times to get into AI War 2, and I've had to admit defeat. To be fair, I have never gotten much past the tutorial, but that's because the UI overall repels me. Nothing about it is intuitive, and my appetite for memorizing a game-specific way of thinking about using an interface just isn't big.
The problems start early with the third tutorial step, which is "hold Q to rotate the camera" Q? Ok. With a note longer than the tutorial about how this actually isn't a useful thing to do. Thanks?
Next step, "You may have noticed what appears to be some form of ship." I haven't. So I guess I'm stuck just clicking through the 10 or so objects I can find. Ok, finally found the ship. It has a wall of text stream-of-consciousness box of stats that mean nothing to me, but could at least be organized into a table or a column.
Next, "Right click on a drone to have the frigate attack it." Drones? Where? Nothing on the screen looks like a drone. Ok, time to randomly select things again.
Maybe there's a great game buried somewhere under the bad UI, the drab visuals, and the abstracted combat. And if you have a lot of patience and free time for that, great. I don't.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Arcen Games, LLC |
| Платформы | Windows, Mac, Linux |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 27.12.2024 |
| Metacritic | 75 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 90% положительных (903) |