The first one is the Behemoth Zenith Miner. Zenith Onslaught introduces three new minor factions to add even more chaos to an already fuming galaxy. Some are robotic bugs trying to eat metal, others are roaming pirates looking for some quick loot, most are just cogs in the machine that assist the AI in making your life more miserable. The universe of AI War 2 has many different sub factions besides the AI. I found this alternate victory to be a lot of fun, because I mean c’mon, crashing a planet to annihilate the enemy is cathartic! It is up to you to hunker down and weather the storm until the planet makes it to its target. Naturally, the further away the AI homeworld is from the Nomad planet, the longer you will have to defend it against a terrifying wave of AI ships. Obviously, it’s not just going to sit there and await its own demise, so it will send everything it can towards your homeworld. If it makes it there in time *KABOOM* – the AI is dead and victory is yours. After a short hack, you can send a Nomad planet on a collision course towards the AI homeworld. These Nomad planets can be hacked so they can stop moving, if you so desire, but there is one hack that will really shake things up: the planet crash sequence hack, a new alternate victory condition. The Nomad planets can work in your favor: sometimes they create shortcuts allowing you to bypass a lot of other heavily fortified planets. I absolutely adore this new mechanic because not only does it affect your decision making, it also opens up new doorways. The galaxy will be in an ever shifting state and you will have to be perceptive at all times to make sure you are not caught with your pants down. That one planet you thought that did not need defenses because it was isolated, is all of a sudden connected to the Nomad planet, allowing an extremely cunning AI to take advantage and blitzkrieg through it. This opens up a new dimension of strategic depth. After every few minutes they will start to roam around the galaxy, shifting its structural makeup as they break away from adjacent planets and form connections with others. If enabled in the settings, between one and ten planets will become Nomad planets. This all changes with the introduction of Nomad planets. Since the planets were static you could build your weak economic stations in closed off locations with minimal defenses or create chokepoints to bait the AI. You could decide for yourself where to push, which areas to avoid and which areas to control. This made traversing the galaxy a sort of game of chess. Let’s talk about some of the new mechanics before this expansion, the galaxy consisted of a fixed number of planets connected to one another via a web of wormholes, with each planet having anywhere between one and six node links to another. This second DLC brings in a whole new array of new ships, new mechanics and some dreadful new factions. If the first expansion of AI War 2: The Spire Rises was about hope, this second expansion, Zenith Onslaught, is about despair and chaos. Sometimes things look so bleak you wonder if there is any point in going on, until a ray of light pierces through this dark cloud in the form of powerful allies and bonuses that can turn the tide in your favor. More details to come as we approach the release date next month.AI War 2 is a game of strategy and suffering: a brutal journey against insurmountable odds. This expansion will also coincide with AI War 2 fully launching its multiplayer mode. The Zenith Miners hollow out entire planets, and Golem variants abound. Wormhole Borers let certain AIs alter the map topology, while Nomad Planets alter the map topology on their own as they roam around. From “small” details like powerful new elite Cruisers that you can put in a new slot in your fleets, to galaxy-spanning empires like the Dark Zenith and the Zenith Architrave, this expansion is filled with new tools to use and new foes to untangle. The upcoming May 18th release of the Zenith Onslaught expansion is absolutely jam-packed with features as well. “There has always been a push and pull between these two competing ideas, and this new Paradigm Shift, as we call it, brings them into greater balance, while also reducing the impact of luck, and increasing the number of shooting conflicts you’re likely to get into.” “Procedural generation is an excellent tool often misused, but we’ve always had two competing ideologies within the AI War titles: one, you’re constructing an empire of your own design and two, you’re having to adapt to what you find and be clever with tools that are not always your top favorites.” “The new Paradigm Shift update (v2.800) for AI War 2 reimagines players’ relationship to luck within the context of the game,” according to lead developer Chris McElligott Park.
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