![]() Of course the AI will try to wrestle it back but the real fun is when there are multiple Zenith Architraves involved. Depending on the settings, they will periodically enter an expansion phase where they will capture some planets to make their own little empire. They have their own agenda and generally will not go out of their way to harass you, unless you get in their way. These are tribes of the larger Zenith species that have made their home in the galaxy. The next faction are the rowdy Zenith Architraves. This provides the player with another important set of choices that can alter the flow of the game. There’s another way to deal with the Zenith Miner before it shows up, and that is by hacking its probe so it can either turn the planet into a Nomad one, or jump to a random adjacent planet to feed on. Remember how I mentioned Nomad planets can make the galaxy structure more dynamic by moving around? Well the Zenith Miner also does that by completely removing planets all together: nothing is left behind. Once the planet is consumed, it’s gone forever. ![]() It is up to you or the AI to destroy it before it consumes the planet. After a countdown the Zenith Miner will appear and destroy all defenses on the planet before parking on top and drilling into it. This probe belongs to the Zenith Miner, scouting for its next planet to devour. Every twenty minutes or so, a probe will be sent to a random planet. 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. AI War 2 is a game of strategy and suffering: a brutal journey against insurmountable odds. ![]()
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