Let's Play Alien Crossfire as the Hive

[ManTheMaker]

Hi folks, I recently started a new Let's Play as Shenji Yang and thought I would share it here. I'm running the expansion with no mods on the 2nd highest difficulty. I haven't played AC in 5-6 years and I'm having a blast playing it again.

Here's the playlist. Come and share in my enjoyment if that's your thing. Cheers!

 

[bvanevery]

Phew! 16 episodes, sub 30 minutes, comprising a total of less than 8 hours of play, to get to the midgame with Needlejets and R-Lasers. A big empire infrastructure, but no enemies substantially conquered yet. I could not do more than skipping through a few videos to see what's going on. I strongly prefer text-and-image After Action Reports, such as I write myself, as they're way quicker to get through. Of course I am biased. Power to you for making these videos though. I'll be interested to see how many hits they get, especially compared to the AARs I've written.

 

[ManTheMaker]

Is that fast or slow? I've no clue as to the 'meta' and am playing without really min-maxing, though I don't think I'm playing poorly. I remember the AI being tougher than it's been this playthrough. Granted, most of my time spent in this game was when I was a much younger and dumber me haha.

Personally I like both written AAR's and Let's Plays. I'll check out your Continental Consciousness AAR, as it looks pretty cool and maybe I can glean some tips for my own run.

 

[bvanevery]

If you weren't making a Let's Play, 8 hours to get to midgame would be pretty slow. But I assume there's overhead for rattling on about whatever you're doing for the "home audience". I think R-Lasers in 4 hours would be a more normal speed. Especially since it looks like you haven't actually done much fighting. Thinking hard about all kinds of unit tactics, and pushing them across the map, would slow things down.

 

[Volcanon]

Game looks fine to me. Midgame planes and choppers are by far the best units, especially before the AI gets aerospace complexes and other anti-air. Just make sure to have some units that can actually occupy the cities you're attacking.

Just one tip - you need to better abuse the bonus tiles. You have the jungle, plateau and desert. If you don't have a city that can work a given tile use a crawler instead. One way to get way ahead of all the other AI is to set up an energy farm on a high elevation area and then build tons of crawlers so you jump way past the AI in techs.

 

[ManTheMaker]

No comment on the planes/choppers for spoiler reasons...

I never thought of setting up an energy farm using crawlers. My experience with crawlers is limited so I'm not surprised I'm not using them effectively.

 

[bvanevery]

That's ok, crawlers are overpowered. In my mod they're a relatively late game technology, so it's not so easy to commit crawler abuse.

 

[Volcanon]

No comment on the planes/choppers for spoiler reasons...

I never thought of setting up an energy farm using crawlers. My experience with crawlers is limited so I'm not surprised I'm not using them effectively.

Find some unusued high ground (or raise some ground) that ideally isn't within range of enemy planes, put down mirrors and solar panels and prepare to science. Really helps get to the higher techs after the plateau factions tend to hit when they hit plasma shard.