Warhammer 40k: Soulstorm - Is it any good?

[Eeezee]

I loved Dark Crusade and Winter Assault. Has anyone played Soulstorm? I'm seeing mixed reviews all over (people are either loving it or hating it).

 

[Fox5]

More of the same it would seem.
Ultimately, you're buying two more races for the game. Basically the same campaign as dark crusade.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

3 expansions is a lot for a non-The Sims game isn't it?

 

[Dorkenstein]

There's a bunch more to the conquer-the-world mode. It has about 4 planets to pick from this time. Not entire planets mind you, but it's still more.

 

[Modelworks]

I found the AI to be pathetic.
I started a skirmish game, never even having played the game before.
Didn't do any tutorials.
Just installed, and played skirmish.
I beat the AI in under 30 minutes, barely even trying.
And that was with not knowing what half the stuff did.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
I found the AI to be pathetic.
I started a skirmish game, never even having played the game before.
Didn't do any tutorials.
Just installed, and played skirmish.
I beat the AI in under 30 minutes, barely even trying.
And that was with not knowing what half the stuff did.

what AI setting?

i also find the AI is not that hard. playing online though, i get pwned

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
I found the AI to be pathetic.
I started a skirmish game, never even having played the game before.
Didn't do any tutorials.
Just installed, and played skirmish.
I beat the AI in under 30 minutes, barely even trying.
And that was with not knowing what half the stuff did.

Yeah, the AI has always been kind of weak though. Even on hard the AI will never seriously come after you... it's set to be way too defensive no matter what difficulty you set it on, so inevitably the AI will leave at least 50% of its forces in its home base (and usually the AI won't build to the unit cap - the capital raid levels in Dark Crusade were only fun because the AI always started with a ridiculous number of units and strategic defensive advantages).

I'm wondering if the new expansion's campaign is as fun as it was in Dark Crusade. Yes, it is slightly repetitive, but I really enjoyed it!

Edit: The AI IS challenging in skirmish if you set up a team of AI against you. I can't beat 2 hard computers, for example, but I can defeat 1 hard computer.

 

[Zenoth]

This subject rises with superb coincidence.

I am a tester right now for an Advanced A.I mod that will soon appear for the public, for Soulstorm. The famous Dawn of Skirmish A.I, currently available for all of the WH40K games except of course SS, because it's so new. However the A.I code porting/merging was done months ago thanks to the team's internal contacts with Relic and that time around Iron Lore (before it closed of course, sadly). Right now the vanilla A.I is very limited, too few efforts and not enough time was put into it by Iron Lore. What they've done was to take much of the already existing vanilla code from WA and DC, and they adapted it to the new races, but not much else was done. I'm not an A.I coder myself, sadly, I'm trying to explain this as best as I can. But as a tester I'll do my best to help accelerate (without compromising its stability and quality) its release to the public. The team's actual coders will receive the first build either today, in a few hours or tomorrow, and then it should be approved for the testers soon after.

I'm posting this here because I thought that I should point at the fact that, indeed, and it is confirmed, the vanilla A.I in SS is quite poor. As an example, go in skirmish and see how long it'll take for your ally/enemy to build a vehicle (there's a major bug right now in the build priorities and orders, preventing vehicles to be built for about 90% of the time). If you guys want a good, challenging, competitive-quality A.I in off-line (or on-line, too) skirmishes then you'll have to wait for that must-have modification. At the moment of its release Soulstorm will suddenly shine. And keep in mind guys that it was the exact same story with Dark Crusade and even Winter Assault when they were first released (even though, technically speaking, Relic did worked more on their A.I for the vanilla version than Iron Lore did for SS, probably due to better resources and/or time to do so, I personally do not doubt of Iron Lore's A.I coders' talents, but when you have a deadline or you have a lack of help because there's only two or three guys working on it then you can't do miracles).

With all that said, Soulstorm by itself, A.I excluded, is a very good game, and is right in line and very comparable to DC's quality, and don't forget guys, for those who've played it, that Dark Crusade had major imbalance issues at release (Tau Krootox anyone?). It's always a question of time and patches before it gets better. I do have some complaints, as always (no games are perfect, that shouldn't be new to anyone), but in my book Soulstorm is a better product than DC or WA was, to me it's the best expansion so far, simply because adding those two new races just completed the cycle very well for this series, and if Relic ever intends to plunge into the WH40K universe again then they'll have to seriously surpass themselves since all of this huge game-play base, and all its basics are now established very firmly. Their series is now a reference for any other attempts at doing another Warhammer 40,000 game into the Real-Time-Strategy genre. It was worth buying, and it should be a good way to remember its now defunct development team.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Played the Demo. I rushed the Computer with Mandrakes. Won in 10 minutes.

 

[incompleteunit]

Playing through the campaign as Dark Eldar here, so far it's totally worth it as a fan of Dark Crusade. The campaign isn't massively different - solar system instead of planet, but each planet has 4-6 territories, so the number isn't that different. The territories that conferred bonuses are now the home territories for each race, so you need to take out the Eldar to get advanced movement, for example. There are ancient gates in scattered territories that allow you to jump to different places on the strategic map. One annoyance is that you don't keep your previously held strategic points/fortifications between battles, so if the AI is repeatedly attacking a certain territory, you need to start from scratch each time, though you retain garrison units.

The AI isn't particularly brighter, but it does seem to be a bit more dynamic on the strategic map. I played through whole games in DC where hardly any territories changed outside of my own assaults, and that seems to have improved here, with the AI factions actually gaining and losing some ground.

Enjoying the Dark Eldar so far - nothing majorly different as mentioned above, but they do have enough new units and tactics to make it interesting if you liked the previous expansions.

 

[Skel]

While I do like the game, it really is more of the same. Even the planet map vs the single planet in Dark Crusade isn't that different. The two new races, while nice, don't make it worth the full price that's being asked for it.

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: incompleteunit
Playing through the campaign as Dark Eldar here, so far it's totally worth it as a fan of Dark Crusade. The campaign isn't massively different - solar system instead of planet, but each planet has 4-6 territories, so the number isn't that different. The territories that conferred bonuses are now the home territories for each race, so you need to take out the Eldar to get advanced movement, for example. There are ancient gates in scattered territories that allow you to jump to different places on the strategic map. One annoyance is that you don't keep your previously held strategic points/fortifications between battles, so if the AI is repeatedly attacking a certain territory, you need to start from scratch each time, though you retain garrison units.

The AI isn't particularly brighter, but it does seem to be a bit more dynamic on the strategic map. I played through whole games in DC where hardly any territories changed outside of my own assaults, and that seems to have improved here, with the AI factions actually gaining and losing some ground.

Enjoying the Dark Eldar so far - nothing majorly different as mentioned above, but they do have enough new units and tactics to make it interesting if you liked the previous expansions.

Damn, I really liked the persistent bases on Dark Crusade. It made a territory really easy to defend if you had bothered to put some time into it 8 barracks + 6 research facilities = I win (unless the computer has some ridiculous army I guess)

 

[Continuity28]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
Damn, I really liked the persistent bases on Dark Crusade. It made a territory really easy to defend if you had bothered to put some time into it 8 barracks + 6 research facilities = I win (unless the computer has some ridiculous army I guess)

It seems many people feel the same way, but I can't help but wonder... wheres the fun in eliminating an entire aspect of a campaign? With persistant bases, all attacks against your regions fail almost instantly, how is that fun? You might as well just make the AI never attack the players regions, as it's impossible anyways.

I like it better in Soulstorm. You can choose to purchase buildings for your own regions to give an advantage during defense, but it's not "I win!" like Dark Crusade.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

whats a persistent base?

 

[Continuity28]

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
whats a persistent base?

In Dark Crusade, when you attacked an enemy region, any building you placed would remain there when the map was over if you won. So people exploited this and basically killed the enemy until they had almost nothing left, and then made bases all around the map before finally killing them off. After that point, the region would be impossible to retake, because the enemy starts off surrounded and at about a 100x resource disadvantage.

It's realistic, but I don't see how it's fun...

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: Eeezee

Originally posted by: incompleteunit
Playing through the campaign as Dark Eldar here, so far it's totally worth it as a fan of Dark Crusade. The campaign isn't massively different - solar system instead of planet, but each planet has 4-6 territories, so the number isn't that different. The territories that conferred bonuses are now the home territories for each race, so you need to take out the Eldar to get advanced movement, for example. There are ancient gates in scattered territories that allow you to jump to different places on the strategic map. One annoyance is that you don't keep your previously held strategic points/fortifications between battles, so if the AI is repeatedly attacking a certain territory, you need to start from scratch each time, though you retain garrison units.

The AI isn't particularly brighter, but it does seem to be a bit more dynamic on the strategic map. I played through whole games in DC where hardly any territories changed outside of my own assaults, and that seems to have improved here, with the AI factions actually gaining and losing some ground.

Enjoying the Dark Eldar so far - nothing majorly different as mentioned above, but they do have enough new units and tactics to make it interesting if you liked the previous expansions.

Damn, I really liked the persistent bases on Dark Crusade. It made a territory really easy to defend if you had bothered to put some time into it 8 barracks + 6 research facilities = I win (unless the computer has some ridiculous army I guess)

the only map i had a hard time winning was the ork territory that gave you the ability to start with a pre-fabbed base. that was such an impossible map since the computer had squiggoths :|

 

[Inspector Jihad]

Originally posted by: Continuity28

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
whats a persistent base?

In Dark Crusade, when you attacked an enemy region, any building you placed would remain there when the map was over if you won. So people exploited this and basically killed the enemy until they had almost nothing left, and then made bases all around the map before finally killing them off. After that point, the region would be impossible to retake, because the enemy starts off surrounded and at about a 100x resource disadvantage.

It's realistic, but I don't see how it's fun...

that does sound very unbalanced...perhaps only the main base should be persistant.

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: Continuity28

Originally posted by: Eeezee
Damn, I really liked the persistent bases on Dark Crusade. It made a territory really easy to defend if you had bothered to put some time into it 8 barracks + 6 research facilities = I win (unless the computer has some ridiculous army I guess)

It seems many people feel the same way, but I can't help but wonder... wheres the fun in eliminating an entire aspect of a campaign? With persistant bases, all attacks against your regions fail almost instantly, how is that fun? You might as well just make the AI never attack the players regions, as it's impossible anyways.

I like it better in Soulstorm. You can choose to purchase buildings for your own regions to give an advantage during defense, but it's not "I win!" like Dark Crusade.

Ah, that changes things quite a bit then. I think in Dark Crusade you could only basically station some troops there, right? I don't remember, it's been awhile since I played it.

I would much rather be able to invest in a territory on the main map than have persistent bases. THAT is the most realistic scenario of all; if a territory is of no strategic importance, obviously you won't spend any money on it.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Eeezee

Originally posted by: Continuity28

Originally posted by: Eeezee
Damn, I really liked the persistent bases on Dark Crusade. It made a territory really easy to defend if you had bothered to put some time into it 8 barracks + 6 research facilities = I win (unless the computer has some ridiculous army I guess)

It seems many people feel the same way, but I can't help but wonder... wheres the fun in eliminating an entire aspect of a campaign? With persistant bases, all attacks against your regions fail almost instantly, how is that fun? You might as well just make the AI never attack the players regions, as it's impossible anyways.

I like it better in Soulstorm. You can choose to purchase buildings for your own regions to give an advantage during defense, but it's not "I win!" like Dark Crusade.

Ah, that changes things quite a bit then. I think in Dark Crusade you could only basically station some troops there, right? I don't remember, it's been awhile since I played it.

I would much rather be able to invest in a territory on the main map than have persistent bases. THAT is the most realistic scenario of all; if a territory is of no strategic importance, obviously you won't spend any money on it.

Dark Crusade recalled what buildings you had on a territory at the time you beat it. Unfortunately, this meant the best way to play the game (Since the computer got like infinite honor guard) was to build up the entire map prior to completing the objective. You could then spend resources to place an honor guard, but you could never match the comp.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Dark Crusade's problem wasn't the persistent bases - they were meant as a way to counter Honor guards and ultra-buffed generals, theoretically. When the enemy can show up with 12 units, several at second tier.....well, the result without them would've been "OMGZERGRUSHDIE" all the time.

It's problem was that the computer was largely incompetent strategically, and didn't just send out it's entire honor guard ASAP to do as much damage to your resourcing and production as possible before you could fend them off.

 

[Eeezee]

I'm playing this now and actually think it's pretty good! I don't like the Dark Eldar (but I hated the Eldar, too). I do like the Sisters of Battle even if the Living Saint doesn't do her kill animations right.

The campaign mode is just like Dark Crusade, very entertaining and story-driven.

To those asking why the Imperial guard, Space marines, and Sisters of Battle are fighting... did you pay attention at all to the storyline? We're talking about 3 different branches of the Imperium here, which with its own agenda. The Sisters of Battle are cleansing the system of heresy (and when the space marines and imperial guard didn't stand down immediately, they were branded as heretics and had to be cleansed).

 

[Dorkenstein]

I am getting my butt kicked on Normal. Any tips for gameplay as dark eldar?