So yeah, my income per month is around 1,800 (I have all the satellites I can) and I've already bought EVERYTHING.

Well, I don't have any of the stuff you might get from interrogating some of the higher up enemies but man, this game is proving to be a cake walk and I'm a little surprised.

2 snipers with Plasma rifles and double tap + a mind control support with maxed out assaults as backup just wrecks house. I'm on the mission where I need a powerful psi powered unit to advance but I'm starting to lose interest. The meta-game seems done for me - I've built on every tile and right now I'm basically destroying and replacing structures (e.g. satellite uplinks for a nexus).

I'm on normal and this is my first Xcom game so unless it starts to pick up real soon, I may just start again on hard. Everything I go up against goes down so easily, even the larger enemy robots don't survive long if I've moved up slowly and have everyone concentrate their fire. All I see are threads complaining about the difficulty but with the best weapons and armour I only ever lose a go if I rush in without everyone else being on overwatch first. I've been sticking to my decisions too, no reloads. Am I the only one here who's getting a little bored by the lack of challenge?

I think you can change the difficulty without restarting.

it's pretty awesome that youre so good at games. it's not a bad problem to have

@Vitor:

You are in this position because it is actually almost the end of the game. There is only one story mission left.

And you have pretty much done everything there is to do and upgraded everything there is to upgrade. So yea ... unsurprising.

Also: normal is not that hard. At least without ironmanning it. Classic is where the game shines.

Ryan is just bad at strategy games.

@thedj93 said:

it's pretty awesome that youre so good at games. it's not a bad problem to have

Well all this talk about how brutal Xcom is was making me look forward to another Demon Soul's type experience. I guess I was a little disappointed when expectations didn't mesh with reality. I enjoyed the game but the tactical side of it just started to wear thin once I'd worked out the best squad make up.

@Tennmuerti said:

@Vitor:

You are in this position because it is actually almost the end of the game. There is only one story mission left.

And you have pretty much done everything there is to do and upgraded everything there is to upgrade. So yea ... unsurprising.

Also: normal is not that hard. At least without ironmanning it. Classic is where the game shines.

Ryan is just bad at strategy games.

Ah, that explains that then. I never felt like I'd put in that many hours though, weird.

And yeah, Ryan's talk was what led me to have somewhat skewed expectations. If you move slowly, with overwatch always on for half of your men, and have 2 snipers with good vision, it's a peace of cake.

Although, that being said, I do keep getting pitted against awful enemy types (terror missions only have the bug things which die so damned fast against my assault/snipers, bomb defusal missions ONLY have thin men and I've yet to let an Ethereal get close enough to do any damage at all).

I might complete it and start again on Classic because this was a little lacking tactically. And while I didn't ironman it, I only reloaded once (I missed 4 75% shots in a row and it resulted in half of my team dying which I felt was somewhat BS... I've also missed a 95% and a 98% recently but that was on another mission).

Yeah, you should definitely try out Classic. I started out on that difficulty level and was doing OK, but eventually I would get completely wiped out on a couple of missions in a row and just quit.

I eventually decided to drop down to Normal and give it a try, and it honestly felt like cheating when compared to Classic.

Yeah, if you get those satellites up early, the game can go pretty smoothly.

Jake Solomon, the lead designer, talked about how Ironman-Classic is the purest form to play the game.

In normal, the AI is actually a bit nerfed. It is fully unshackled in classic difficulty. And also there's a bit less hitpoints on your dudes, and you start off with a bit higher panic levels.

@Vitor said:

All I see are threads complaining about the difficulty but with the best weapons and armour I only ever lose a go if I rush in without everyone else being on overwatch first.

You don't say. Do you have Ironman on?

I wish I had your problem

I have 14 engineers, a billion scientists, 2 satellites and a barracks full of fresh fish

P.S. The world hates me

Well demon's souls only had one difficulty, this game has a bunch and you're playing on normal. You aren't gonna find much challenge there. Turn the difficulty up. The only time I've had real difficulties is the first time I see a new enemy and when I rush in too fast.

Normal is definitely doable, and it seems like you play tactically sound game, being careful and using overwatch liberally. Not surprising that you don't have much trouble on normal.

I am playing normal (ironman) as well, and I am losing plenty of men. I don't have any max guys left and I have one or two guys dying every other mission. The game is obviously not balanced for going in with 6 max level guys, that would make it impossible for people who don't reach that level.

Hey, I'm bad at strategy games too! I'm looking forward to getting fucking wrecked by XCOM.

@Tennmuerti said:

@Vitor:

You are in this position because it is actually almost the end of the game. There is only one story mission left.

And you have pretty much done everything there is to do and upgraded everything there is to upgrade. So yea ... unsurprising.

Also: normal is not that hard. At least without ironmanning it. Classic is where the game shines.

Ryan is just bad at strategy games.

I think the problem with giantbomb dudes is their innability to understand game mechanics. They can't look at a game mechanic and devine an optimal strategie to save their goddamn lives. That fact becomes pretty clear if you look at a bunch of quicklooks and endurance runs. Of course, I don't begrudge them for that since I'm personnaly terrible at speaking in front of a lot of people and can't spell words correctly. To each his own strengths, some way more usefull than others...

@pyrodactyl said:

@Tennmuerti said:

@Vitor:

You are in this position because it is actually almost the end of the game. There is only one story mission left.

And you have pretty much done everything there is to do and upgraded everything there is to upgrade. So yea ... unsurprising.

Also: normal is not that hard. At least without ironmanning it. Classic is where the game shines.

Ryan is just bad at strategy games.

I think the problem with giantbomb dudes is their innability to understand game mechanics. They can't look at a game mechanic and devine an optimal strategie to save their goddamn lives. That fact becomes pretty clear if you look at a bunch of quicklooks and endurance runs. Of course, I don't begrudge them for that since I'm personnaly terrible at speaking in front of a lot of people and can't spell words correctly. To each his own strenghs, some way more usefull than others...

The worst piece of advice they gave was "never not be in cover". Yeah, cover's important, but if you need a motherfucker dead NOW, run your dude out of cover and shoot him point blank in the damn face. Sticking exclusively to cover limits your tactical options to an insane degree, and just sets you up for "oh, that Muton chucked a grenade at me, now my guys are all at 2 life".

Cowardice is the second biggest killer in this game (right after uninformed recklessness). A lot of people look at the alien base mission and go "oh man I'm not prepared for that" when, if you do it as soon as possible, you get the weakest aliens staffing the place in addition to unlocking psionics, the "detect landed UFOs almost anywhere" device which REALLY helps keeping panic down, about 300 credits worth of loot (more if you sell the valuable bits), and a 2 point global panic reduction. You can go from barely holding on to having that shit on lockdown by tackling it as soon as possible.

classic is the mode to play. impossible is stupid hard.

Really?

LOL; normal.

Yeah try starting on classic

@Dredlockz said:

Jake Solomon, the lead designer, talked about how Ironman-Classic is the purest form to play the game.

In normal, the AI is actually a bit nerfed. It is fully unshackled in classic difficulty. And also there's a bit less hitpoints on your dudes, and you start off with a bit higher panic levels.

Yeah, I noticed a couple of times that enemies weren't being as aggressive as they could be.

I think I made a mistake not bumping up the difficulty straight away. But then again, I'd never played an xcom game before so I didn't want to risk it in case it was all a bit too much.

Max level dudes just seem so overpowered on normal, especially the snipers.

I started on Classic having not played an X-COM game before and it was brutal. On one early mission where I had a squad of quite capable guys, scrub enemies like thin men and floaters were shooting me in full cover and critting everybody for instakill. A few hours later, I'm up to around the time where it's probably a good idea to take on the alien base, but I can just about hold my own in battle now and it was really satisfying to finally pull through 3 or 4 tough missions in a row with no deaths and no reloads (that wasn't an endless streak though - I just lost my good sniper). On the global strategy side, though, I am still struggling. I constantly have no credits, I've lost Mexico, and 4 other countries are close to pulling out.

So long story short, Classic is where you should have started.

@Vitor: Play on Classic Ironman to start. Jake Solomon said in an interview that Normal is balanced to make you feel powerful and not be too intimidating for first time players.

Classic mode is tuned to keep you always hurting for money and always struggling to hold on to council members. Enemy aim is boosted as is their crit chance. Troops start with 1 less HP than Normall, some enemy types have more HP (Floaters have 4 HP (maybe Thin Men too? can't remember) so you can't just 'nade them all day long), etc. It's way tougher, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Impossible is supposed to be impossible. Even less HP, enemies tuned higher, but the difficulty was less tuned so it's just hard for the sake of being hard.

For reference: the big picture

@Vitor: You're super close to the end. Just finish the game and start an ironman classic game afterwards.

@ElCapitan said:

@Vitor: Play on Classic Ironman to start. Jake Solomon said in an interview that Normal is balanced to make you feel powerful and not be too intimidating for first time players.

Classic mode is tuned to keep you always hurting for money and always struggling to hold on to council members. Enemy aim is boosted as is their crit chance. Troops start with 1 less HP than Normall, some enemy types have more HP (Floaters have 4 HP (maybe Thin Men too? can't remember) so you can't just 'nade them all day long), etc. It's way tougher, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Impossible is supposed to be impossible. Even less HP, enemies tuned higher, but the difficulty was less tuned so it's just hard for the sake of being hard.

For reference: the big picture

Yeah, I just beat the game and started again and wow, the difference is staggering.

I'm actually using grenades for the first time and my bazooka because I don't want anything alive for more than one go because they will f me up in the early stages.

Already had India back out also, whereas I saved everyone in my first game (then again, there was literally nothing I could do to save India as I only had one satellite to assign to two hot zones).

Definitely a lot more interesting, although I keep playing the game as if I have all my high tier units which can prove to be problematic. I'm not ironmanning it yet and I've reloaded a few times already which I never did on normal but I'll likely stick to my decisions once I feel like I'm back in the swing of things.

Normal is plenty hard, but it gets much easier once you get to a certain point. I'm at a point where I have titan armor + plasma on everyone, and I can (obviously) wreck shit. But I got fucked up bad earlier in the game, and lost 4 countries before I got things under control. From what people have said, it sounds like classic is hard all the way through, so maybe bump up difficulty (which you can do mid-game)?

Personally, I have had my hands plenty full on normal (until very recently), and I might not have made it at all if not for reloading saves to undo poor decisions. My next game will be ironman because the reloading does remove a lot of the tension, but I really have no idea how anyone can say with a straight face that normal is easy. It's certainly possible to be better than normal (and obviously many are), but it is by no stretch of the imagination easy in the early to mid game.

Yeah I'm finding my sniper rather overpowered, ripping through enemies with it. That said I never have any money and some of the enemies can be really tough so I feel normal is just right for me. I've only lost a few dudes so far and that's mainly been from one hit criticals that come out of nowhere, but a lot of close ones.

@bigstrat2003 said:

Normal is plenty hard, but it gets much easier once you get to a certain point. I'm at a point where I have titan armor + plasma on everyone, and I can (obviously) wreck shit. But I got fucked up bad earlier in the game, and lost 4 countries before I got things under control. From what people have said, it sounds like classic is hard all the way through, so maybe bump up difficulty (which you can do mid-game)?

Personally, I have had my hands plenty full on normal (until very recently), and I might not have made it at all if not for reloading saves to undo poor decisions. My next game will be ironman because the reloading does remove a lot of the tension, but I really have no idea how anyone can say with a straight face that normal is easy. It's certainly possible to be better than normal (and obviously many are), but it is by no stretch of the imagination easy in the early to mid game.

Thing about Classic is that it starts out with your back against the wall. Unless you get your shit on lockdown, you will lose 2-3 countries in the first 2 months.

After you clear the alien base and shoot down the overseer, you end up with 1-2 bars on every country for the rest of the game.

Yeah, I started on Classic (but not Ironman), and up 'till now, I've mostly stayed away from forums to avoid getting outside information - and I messed up real bad. I pretty much forgot about satelites after the tutorial and wound up playing a significant part of the game (some time past the base?) with only the initial 2 satelites. Needless to say, I've been struggling for cash something crazy.

Actually, I am still struggling for cash, but I'm starting to slowly gear up my away team to the point where I believe they are "endgame geared"... though I'm currently trying to train up a group of Psi-soldiers to replace my old team, as I assume that will greatly improve my chances in the long run.

I lost Canada the first month, and France a couple of months later. It looks like Mexico is next to go.

Fortunately, I early on picked up an awesome Sniper who has been the lynchpin of my success, and has kept me from losing any important soldiers so far. Stil... that very large ship I shot down last night nearly had me in panic attacks.

I've contemplated starting over, and putting more effort into the satelites, but... it's actually quite a lot of fun to be struggling through it this way. But so much tension. SO MUCH TENSION.

Go Classic + Iron Man ;)