author: Sebastian Purtak
AI War II. Top 10 overlooked strategy games in 2019
Table of Contents
- Developer: Arcen Games
- Release date: October 22, 2019
- In a nutshell: a space RTS in which you fight with a powerful AI
In theory, AI War II is a classic real-time strategy (a combination of RTS, 4X, and Tower Defense) set in space. However, appearances are deceptive in this case, as this title is a continuation of one of the most innovative games in its genre.
You enter a world dominated by a powerful and rogue artificial intelligence that controls most of the galaxy. Mankind has been annihilated and reduced to a few individual bastions, which are struggling to survive at all costs. Although the storyline is not the most sophisticated aspect of AI War II, it determines the general course of the gameplay. From the very beginning of the game we have to face an inhuman opponent that is much stronger than us. The imbalance between the two opposing factions turns out to be so high that practically every open battle may end with a total defeat. For this reason, the game forces you to focus on continuous improvisation and to carry out partisan activities behind enemy lines. However, you have to be careful as it's very easy to provoke your aggressive enemy.
During the game you have to gather resources, develop technologies and produce units, without attracting too much attention. Although you can defeat the enemy AI by destroying its main computing unit, this task requires a powerful dose of creativity.
The graphics of the game has been improved in comparison to the first part of the series. The scale of battles is literally huge, because even several thousand units can take part in them. Also, the game supports various modifications and has a massive modding community that constantly grows. Only one question remains – when the OpenAI team will create a bot that may win the battle with artificial intelligence in AI War II?
DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE CLASSICS
Despite the fact that RTS genre is becoming more popular than ever due to brand new games, it's also worth to remember about some old classics. Let's recall such strategy game like Battle Realms, which was released in 2001. After many years it was finally released on the Steam platform – in December 2019. This rather forgotten RTS introduced an interesting novelty to the genre in the form of unit career paths. At the beginning of the game you are only able to recruit basic units, which gain experience over time and can be promoted to higher level units (you have to use special buildings to advance your troops). This solution has an interesting impact on the gameplay, forcing you to take extra care of your soldiers just like in the XCOM series.
