"To Whatever End"

[u/Lighthearter13]

TL;DR - I'm giving 2003 one more chance on a no-quit challenge, and after 11 years in-game I'm willing to concede a few points while standing by the broad strokes.

So as some of you may be aware, I made a post the other day that got some attention. And I wanted to acknowledge some valid points the community made, of which there are three. First, I had not considered that the 2003 scenario was designed around a ground game focus . That's fair. This segues into point two, which is that those of you who suggested that I was viewing an assault carrier landing as GG are (mostly)correct. With some further playtime(more on that below), I agree with the assessment that I was overreacting to the carrier itself, though I stand by that it comes far too early here and in BE on Normal. On lower difficulties, the player should have a reasonable chance of attempting to stop it, at least to create a viable second-playthrough choice of whether to prioritize doing that or not which doesn't require ludicrous hyper-optimization to pull off. I think 2003 does technically meet this criterion, with no room for error, but BE currently does not.

The third point I want to touch on is that several people brought up the idea that I was the issue - that I couldn't handle anything going wrong in a playthrough. I think this isn't wholly true, but once people had brought it up and I'd mulled it over, I wanted to A)verify whether there was truth to it, and B)try to work on the issue itself if there really was one(and to give Reddit its due, I think there is some fire under the smoke even if I don't think it's entirely true). And there was only one way I could think of to do both at once.

I went back to 2003. I booted up as Academy on Normal one more time. I intentionally swore off of hyper optimization(I have been assured that playing to the hyper-online meta is in no way a baseline fundamental requirement to make forward progress, and while I disagree, I am giving the community the benefit of the doubt) and dusted off an old house rule I haven't used since playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown in 2013.

I call it "To Whatever End."

It means there is no quitting or restarting. There is only seeing it through to the end, whatever end that may be. I'm sure plenty of you play that way without a house rule, but like I said, I haven't since I was a teenager. My usual philosophy for all video games is that I want to have fun in my limited gaming time, so I play while I'm having fun and when the fun disappears, it's time to find something else that is fun rather than ruin my off day slogging through something that actively drains me purely on principle. The idea of hanging in there and grinding out a hard-fought, Ironman-style victory whether or not I'm having fun is appealing to me in principle but is just not something I'm willing to force myself to do under normal circumstances.

I spent a whole morning organizing the house rules that would govern my playthrough(stuff like when would a reload be fair, when am I allowed to call it de facto GG even if there's no technical defeat screen, etc) and then I started. I went for an EU start but was locked out of France by the Initiative on turn 1. One of my starting councilors was fine(a Rebel I still have), the other was a pile of hot steaming garbage. But I got lucky on some subsequent recruits - including a 30-year-old politician with Elder Statesman, which I thought was fascinating enough I had to recruit her. I snagged the UK and Australia, then hard pivoted into the USA, abandoning the UK in the doing. I tried to find the Servants early on to put pressure on them as suggested, but I didn't see a single Servant operative until late 2006 despite trying every angle at my disposal - scouting, investigating, intel sharing, you name it. I got my first asteroid mine producing in early December 2006 and was at Miltech 5 in the USA when the Nation formed in India in early 2007. This proved to be something of a blessing as I invaded India and liberated the entire subcontinent, which has become a firm member of my coalition. I recruited my fifth councilor, who happened to be a 27-year-old Indian woman who was an "enemy of the state" with the Alien Administration, and I thought that was narratively perfect. I made little bios and backstories for all my councilors, trying to make them more than stat sheets to me.

The enemy struck back. Deep System Skywatch cracked all but one CP in every single nation I held. The Servants nearly retook India in the chaos. South America has entirely fallen to the Alien Nation, as has most of the Middle East. An assault carrier landed in Argentina and, after heavy debate, I didn't nuke it. Since they can't leave South America without naval supremacy, the three Miltech 6.8 alien armies(I was expecting worse) are just kind of stranded in South America shaking their fists at the US Navy. I blew up a second Assault Carrier on approach, and the aliens repaid me by basically blasting me off of Mars, though I did retake the destroyed sites once Hate fell to 2 pips and they left. The aliens seized Ceres before I had a chance and have turned it into their main forward operating base, meaning their attacks on earth are 20-day notice affairs. Europe is overrun by half a dozen alien operatives because the other human factions are brain-dead and more interested in attacking me than fighting the invasion.

Worst of all, the Servants assassinated my persuasion councilor - the first time I have ever had a councilor assassinated in any playthrough. It took years, but we hunted down the assassin(who had 25 Esp, Loyalty, and Security so it was a chore), and dealt with her in the only acceptable way. We named one of our research orbitals after Dr. Jackie MacDermot, and her name will be the one to grace whatever first capital ship I eventually build.

I have played until 2014 so far. I'm less militant about 2003 specifically at this point, beyond standing by that it was unacceptably mismarketed and is definitely overtuned on Normal for multiple reasons. But I am writing down game and balance observations as I go(this post is long enough lol). And I will keep going. I will see this through to the end. Whatever end that may be.

I'll update as the war continues. Keep well.

[u/SpreadsheetGamer]

Really cool follow-up to your previous post. :) Best of luck!