Liked it, then hated it

[Sweetz]

I bought a 4-pack of Greed Corp for friends when it was on sale with the intent of mostly playing MP. Sadly their interest completely fizzled after one and a half matches, especially with the limited MP map selection in the beginning (seriously, needing to play SP to unlock the MP maps was a HUGE mistake on the devs part).

So *sigh* I've been playing SP and I liked it at first, but now I kind of hate it.

The AI is frustrating the heck out of me. It more or less seems to turtle and then swoop in an take advantage of the player actually acting on something. So many times I whittle down an enemy to 1 hex only to have another AI kill them off gaining like 2 planes and a ton of credits, guaranteeing I have no chance to win. I understand that's the nature of the game, but man it pisses me off. Other than that sometimes it seems to unfairly prioritize attacking the player over the other AI opponents.

I hand it to the devs, they've made a great, devious AI - but sometimes it's too good. When you've got a system of mechanics that pretty much encourages unfair tactics, getting beat kind of sucks the fun out of the game.

Even when I win I feel more like I was lucky than any actual sense of accomplishment.

[Sweetz]

Well I stuck with the game and found that I could pretty easily beat the AI if I stuck to their strategy: I just turtled up and waited for them to act first. In fact I only used a cargo plane in one of the Empire missions. The rest of them, while the AI was preying on each other with their planes, I was building up cannon shells.

It seems the only reason the AI were ganging up on me before is because I was the weakest player because I was trying to attack early. If I just built up walkers and cannon shells, they attacked each other. Presumably because the AI is always building planes and they would gain back two planes when taking out another AI. But then that got them to a position were I could basically shut them out with cannons, by never letting them get another group of 16 walkers. The AI futility kept trying to build a full group of walkers and I kept whittling them down.

I enjoyed the game, but, at least as far as the single player game goes, the mechanics pretty much guarantee that he who attacks first will lose.

[MetroSmurf]

I enjoyed the game, but, at least as far as the single player game goes, the mechanics pretty much guarantee that he who attacks first will lose.

Turtling up is one tactic that will almost always prevail against the AI. Personally, I found it more fun going on the offensive and finding ways to beat the AI by being aggressive. If you plan your moves ahead of time, you can get fairly aggressive and still win.

Bummer your buddies didn't keep up with the game. Seems like that's the way of Greed, re: people start up enthusiastically in the beginning, but then a rapid disinterest, especially in MP.