4 replies to this topic

[Istrebitel]

Greetings.

I love and hate this game...
Last game of X-Com A i played, it became increasingly boring to the end since it wouldnt let me have a personal teleporter, but instead it was more and more crashing and crashing and crashing on switching from battlescape to cityscape and back. Didnt finish it, unfortunately.

This time, its even BETTER!

At game start, when i couldnt afford to counter it, an alien drop into cultist temple made them "under alien control". To fight that drop would mean to fight both cultists and aliens - didnt want to risk it on my nosaveload playthrough.

Now, at week 9, it turns out that HALF of the city is ALLIED to the Cult and aliens! INCLUDING if-you-see-KayING GOVERNMENT AND MEGAPOL! !
Every time i attack aliens, i start getting worser and worser with like half a city! And worst of it - government and megapol are among the ones who are influenced (at least transtellar isnt).
They would not take money from me saying about alien friends.

Even worst, i am now getting base attacks by cultists, and after successful defense it gets EVEN WORSE since its like a major hit. Soon they all will be hostile to me.

Now what the if-you-see-Kay is this? Really? And what do i do?

At least, does anybody know, can hostile Government actually close X-Com project? Or can i safely play even when whole city is against me?
Is there any way to edit this back to normal (i mean, its NOT normal, right?)

To clarify, no, they arent under alien control - only cult is...

[NKF]

It's normal only if infiltration levels are left to get out of hand. Generally you need to be very persistent in keeping infiltration levels down to avoid such a disaster.

There are various ways to sway a hostile company back into your favour (Even the ones that no longer accept bribes), but in your scenario it sounds like it will be quite difficult to get the companies to start disliking the aliens again.

You can still try sending evasive hoverbikes after UFOs when they enter the city and just follow them around and get them to miss and deal damage to nearby buildings. If there is an overspawn or a fleet of UFOs come in simply to attack, leave them alone unless they are directly attacking one of your bases. While this does hurt your score because of the city damage, any organizations affected will have a lesser opinion of the aliens. It's not a quick fix for your situation though.

A slightly quicker option is to start attacking organisations seen as enemies of those that you want to recover. The worst case scenario is to end up with a completely polarized city where you have to constantly attack the other half of the city just to use services on the other.

There are relationship editors you can use. It has been years since I last used any, but I think j'ordos' editor called Apoc'd has such a feature. XED is also a likely candidate.

- NKF

Edited by NKF, 25 July 2011 - 12:07 AM.

[Istrebitel]

I kept infintration to zero. Except Cult of course, as i said. Every organization except cult is 0% infiltrated.

Thanks for the advice, Apoc'd worked wonders.

I think i understand what is the flaw here. Its the algorithm "enemy of my enemy". This will eventually inevitably create a polarized city and aliens would be included. This is because such algorithm should never work for bigger corporations. I mean, imagine that, Microsoft supporting terrorists because they blew up office of some Linux promoting company? It can only work for like street gangs where indeed someone who stands up and attacks your enemy can very well gain authority with you.

So eventually, after Aliens unluckily harm some side of the "alliance" more than once, other side starts to like them. And nothing can be done about that. guess i have to hug this editor and change values of alien relationships every now and then...

Edited by Istrebitel, 24 July 2011 - 01:38 AM.

[NKF]

I think they just wanted to keep the whole mechanism simple. The relationships do get very chaotic towards the end. It's quite absurd to see headlines that the government have raided Lifetree for example.

You can manage without having to rely on an editor. A few things that have helped me a lot:

- Try not to deal too much accidental damage to the city.

This includes limiting your air battles. Go in, shoot down only what you need and concentrate mainly on the ground missions and increasing your technology levels. The more air battles you perform, the more collateral damage is done to the city. Similarly;

- Take the air battles to the alien dimension fast.

This step is very important as once the aliens are no longer able to enter the city, you'll no longer deal any damage to it and harm your relations with anyone else - not unless you start attacking vehicles or buildings.

- Unless the building belongs to an enemy, keep your use of (strong) explosives down to the absolute minimum when fighting in buildings

Companies value their walls and floors more than the civilians in them, and they don't care who caused the damage and will automatically blame X-Com.

- Protect even the Cult and other organisations that no longer accept bribes.

It may seem counter productive, but you are much better off having them hostile and loving the aliens than hostile and 100% infiltrated.

- Like I suggested in my earlier post, do things to make the companies like you better than the aliens. Mainly by letting the aliens cause more damage to city than yourself. Or finding some organization that no one likes (such as the gangs) and attacking them a few times on the ground.


- NKF

Edited by NKF, 25 July 2011 - 12:28 AM.

[Istrebitel]

Oh well, i have finished now (game is insanely fast after you obtain teleporters, finsihed full alien dimension in like an hour of real time).

Still, problem in my game was that there were no companies that everybody hates (for example some gangs ended up allied with some corps, thats all due to "enemy of my enemy" rule i guess - since A is hated by everyone, when B, also hated by everyone, deals damage to A, it gets liked by everyone).

Also i found out a strange thing - i edited everybody relations to aliens to -100 but after one battlescape it ALL WENT BACK! It seems that game treats Cult (or infiltrated corps) in some special way - unless i set relations to negative both with cult and with aliens, it would jump back to positive after any agression act against aliens from my side.

Also fun - if you manage to get an organisation "hated by everbody" you can get allied with whole city cheap - just keep banging their buildings even if they are completely destroyed. After i set everybody to hate the cult, destroying one cult building brought EVERYBODY to allied or friendly with me! Even shooting on some pavement (totally destroyed building with some scrap around) would get me from neutral to allied in no time! This means that it might be a valid strategy to get Transtellar hate aliens as soon as possible - that would make you gain their favor with every tactical mission, and ease the problem with need to constantly pay it to remain non-hostile.