I have been playing FoC for quite a bit the past couple of weeks (or maybe slightly more). I saw it on sale so decided to pick it up and kinda got back into the groove of playing and just kept going.
As far as the campaign goes, it was rather easy but fun. I really enjoyed the voice acting of Zhan. I think it was kinda fun hearing the sudden jumps in mid sentance from menacing to almost jovial at times. They did a pretty good job with it imho. As far as the content goes, I have not read any of the books so have no idea what the complaints Ive seen come from. As far as I am concerned its a game.. if you dont like rancors just deal with it. The devs thought they needed a powerful melee ground unit and made one. Its that simple.
I do agree that the ZC is way way overpowered. It made the campaign childs play to be honest. I have also been playing a grand campaign as the Imperials on normal difficulty and its actually rather difficult simply due to just how much money the ZC can crank out. Its like day 48 or so and as Imperials I am making less than 4k a week. On my ZC campaign I was cranking out around 15k a week by that time if I remember right. It may have been more. I am constantly seeing building after building being blown up and cannot keep any buildings at all on any of my planets. It is just simply WAY WAY WAY out of wack on the balancing.
Example:
15k: You can destroy 2 enemy buildings, build about 8k in ships, 2k in ground units and still have a few credits left over.
Empire with only 3.8k in that same ammount of time: It costs 1500 just to remove the corruption on a planet that only cost the consortiumm 1k to put there to begin with. Now you have 2.8k remaining. If the ZC was smart, that is maybe enough to replace just 1 of the 2 buildings that were sabotaged leaving hardly any left over to build ships or space stations with.
It just seems like I am fighting an uphill battle. I am so glad the medium difficulty is so darn stupid to be honest. I am constantly fighting 5 to 1 odds or worse every time the Rebels or ZC attacks me.
Heres what to do. Make shure your planets that can be attacked (because next to enemy planet) well defended and build Mining facility's on all other planets. This way i got 15K income as imperial as well. And i wasnt bothered by all the useless planets (a planet that only brings in money is pretty useless when it comes to battle)
Only problem is that the defilers who do the bombing missions can sneak to any planet they wish. Defenses will not stop em
Im shocked you actually liked Zann's voice acting. I think it was the worst thing i had ever heared. All the others are great but Zann sounded like some 60's black and white cliche'd villain. Plus his dialogue was cheesy to say the least.
You think Zhan was bad, what about Silri!!! Silri was horrid! Shes sooo angry....and stupid, making idle useless threats, talking back to YOU, GOD of the game!
Neeeway.......
As the Rebels I found the ZC a challenge but the Empire pitiful on hard difficulty.
I still beat the ZC by saving some creds, and routing them out, and almost ignoring the Empire, which was equally worried about the ZC.
I had to remove corruption from most of my major credit producing planets, and I jsut kept it in place for planets where I built a lot of ships or station upgrades to get the costs down.
And Garm Bel Iblis in the gargantuan, or any of the Jedi, were perfect in raid missions.
Still the Empire did not build ONE BLOODY Imperial Star Destroyer that I could see, while the ZC seemed to have an unlimited number of Keldabe calss battleships and stuff!
Personally, I think the Kedalbe should be removed from the game permanantly, as I don't see much of a use for it, and for a compromise, the devs should add more turbolaser hard points on the Aggressor Destroyers, and perhaps some Ion Cannon Hard points as well.
cant they only use their defilers if your planet is corrupted? and in that instance just get old palpy to un corrupt the planet. thats what i do, and as long as you remain with un corrupted worlds, you only have to worry about raids from the rebels and normal attacks from the consortium
Ya..the first time I played the empire I lost horribly. The learning curve for me was that one game I guess. You just have to be a lot more agressive than the ZC. I guess playing as ZC made it seem just so easy you could not lose if you tried.
As far as the voice for Zhan... come on, give em a break. You cant tell me its not a funny break from all of the horrible voice overs of people trying to act serious and failing miserably. Anyway.. I digress, I guess its one of those that you you either love or hate. I will say this though: THE A #1 best voice over of any game ever (imho) was the narrator between missions for MYTH: The Fallen Lords (the first one in the series). I was horrified when they took that part out of the following installments of the series.
Personally, I think the voice for Thrawn in FOC was perfect. I thought that Thrawn's voice was the same as Illidans from Warcraft III.
Welcome Apostolos. I enjoyed your rather sedate analysis of the game. A few of us (myself among the worst offenders) are rather more animated and vicious, so its good to have some normal people around.
Its been mentioned before but i was surprised it was not mentioned here but Vaders voice in FOC for Executor was positively the worst attempt ive heard. Zann wasnt so bad and I liked Thrawn although having played the TIE series years ago, (and I know the voice for Thrawn in that was crappy) it has somehow stuck in my head. Silri was designed to be annoying so you would buy the next expansion just for the opportunity to kill the bitch!
As far as overcoming the ZC, corruption is not something to be overly concerned about early game when you are raising funds. Dont try to keep pace with the ZC corruption because you will be wasting valuable money you could be spending on units to use in attacking (or defending). I will only uncorrupt worlds that get a black market on them (ASAP) and to a lesser extent, piracy. Racketeering is another good one to remove if you can afford it because that gives the ZC good income. Every defiler that sabotages is out for play for a bit and their attacks seem to come in waves. It is a real annoyance but I couldnt imagine deflier sabotage alone crippling your entire cause; if it did, I would not expect you to have lasted long anyway. It is very annoying that there is no way to intercept defilers apart from using a hero (fett). I wish there was some way you could at least detect their presence.
yeh thrawns voice was perfect. I found Zann's voice not bad either.
And i remember playing as the empire for the first time. I was overrunned quickly and lost in not too much time. But i learned the playing style of the ZC and when i played again I pwned em.
MY sister is in an electronic band and has some software on her mac that can make your voice sound like anything.
I can make mine sound EXACTLY like James Earl Jones with it. Im suprised the petroglyph sound dept was so lax in this respect.
OK.. I think Im gonna bust out my first flame here. Im still going at this thing averaging about 3-4 hours each evening.
THE COMPUTER IS A !@$#! CHEATER!
I swear by everything that is holy it has to be cheating. I started over, got a bit more agressive as Imps and now its around turn 78, tech lvl 5 and I have like 75% of the planets. My income is around 11k per week. I can barely manage to scrape together a 30ish point fleet for offensive duties and the rebels are constantly throwing 95-180 point fleets at me left and right. I swear they are pulling money out of their collective asses. (pardon the french, but to hell with it at this point). I cant even get any offense going since Im constantly rebuilding my measly defenses. Gah this is pissin me off lol.
/rant off
Haha welcome to EaW. Honestly 180 point fleets are uncommon. I dont think I have ever encountered one bigger than about 150. The AI usually withdraws even a big fleet such as this when I bloodied its nose; they build up and keep harassing you. Like in Rebellion it usually came down to one almighty pitched battle so build yourself a gravity well generator or interdictors, amass what you can and intercept one of their attacks on your stations. You need the free units. Kill as many as you can and you will either break their back militarily or they will be licking their wounds for quite some time while they rebuild.
I have like 75% of the planets. My income is around 11k per week.
You're moving into the endgame stage of a GC and you only have 11k/day as income? Man, you must not be doing enough to rake in cash from your holdings...
OK.. I think Im gonna bust out my first flame here. Im still going at this thing averaging about 3-4 hours each evening.
THE COMPUTER IS A !@$#! CHEATER!
I swear by everything that is holy it has to be cheating. I started over, got a bit more agressive as Imps and now its around turn 78, tech lvl 5 and I have like 75% of the planets. My income is around 11k per week. I can barely manage to scrape together a 30ish point fleet for offensive duties and the rebels are constantly throwing 95-180 point fleets at me left and right. I swear they are pulling money out of their collective asses. (pardon the french, but to hell with it at this point). I cant even get any offense going since Im constantly rebuilding my measly defenses. Gah this is pissin me off lol.
/rant off
It's no secret that the AI cheats, and the AI's nefarious cheating is not subtle either. Thankfully the patch has made it much easier for the other two sides to stand a chance against the Consortium. With that said, the game still needs some more tweaks here and there; especially for the Consortium Capital ships and the Canderous tanks.
Speaking of large invading armies, one time (while playing as the Rebellion) I was attacked by the Consortium on the planet Eriadu (spelling?) and the invading army consisted of 10 groups of Canderous tanks. Needless to say, it took no more than 20 seconds before my well-defended base was completely reduced to rubble. Well, that's my sob story anyway...
I really wish they had included some "cannon," e.g. non-consortium Galactic Conquest maps in FOC. The new ships and gameplay additions (, larger ground maps, orbital bombardment, pre-planned defensive deployment) are nice, but the Consortium is just plain annoying sometimes. After all, I bought EaW to relieve/refight the famous Galactic Civil War.
I just don't remember the "Consurtium Strikes Back." I must have missed that movie.
I really wish they had included some "cannon," e.g. non-consortium Galactic Conquest maps in FOC. The new ships and gameplay additions (, larger ground maps, orbital bombardment, pre-planned defensive deployment) are nice, but the Consortium is just plain annoying sometimes. After all, I bought EaW to relieve/refight the famous Galactic Civil War.
I just don't remember the "Consurtium Strikes Back." I must have missed that movie.
stop being a cry baby this is Expanded Universe stuff so thats why you dont see them in the movies ..
Actually I agree with NimitsTexan, I think a galactic conquest that is Rebels vs. Empire would be much more..."movie-like" in my opinion. Sometimes it's fun to just kick-back and enjoy some classic Star Wars battles. It's not that I hate the ZC; they offer a good challenge to the game, but sometimes I just get tired of sending Palpatine and vader to every corner of galaxy to remove corruption from all the different planets constantly.
Actually I agree with NimitsTexan, I think a galactic conquest that is Rebels vs. Empire would be much more..."movie-like" in my opinion. Sometimes it's fun to just kick-back and enjoy some classic Star Wars battles. It's not that I hate the ZC; they offer a good challenge to the game, but sometimes I just get tired of sending Palpatine and vader to every corner of galaxy to remove corruption from all the different planets constantly.
you should maybe start playing multiplayer skrimish?
Actually I agree with NimitsTexan, I think a galactic conquest that is Rebels vs. Empire would be much more..."movie-like" in my opinion.
Yeah. The omission of an episode V-VI campaign was pretty bad. You could always erase the Consortium froma GC game by doing some XML editing.
you should maybe start playing multiplayer skrimish?
I don't find skirmish mode very fun, at least not as fun as galactic conquest mode anyway.
Yeah. The omission of an episode V-VI campaign was pretty bad. You could always erase the Consortium froma GC game by doing some XML editing.
I'm not really sure how to alter the XML's, I've never tried.
I heard the patch was ok, heck and degrading of the Consortium sounds good. Unfortunatly when I downloaded the patch and tried installing it it told me I need to re-install my game. GAAAAAHHH. Wonderful, after being beaten down by the ZC and then striking back to take over 1/3 of the planets to learn I'll need to re-install is perfect...
But I think ill do it anyways, for some reason my death star has it's destroy ship ability turned off, been that way at Correlia, Kuat, and the Maw.
However, I would really like it if AIs didnt cheat, cheating ruins the game no matter what side is doing it. Also, someone mentioned the Empire isn't making Star Destroyers, I noticed that in EaW (regular) so it must be some AI issue.
Hopefully in the next expansion theyll add the Hutts, and the ZC and Hutts can have their own underworld battles, perhaps doing more corrupting than conquering entire planets.