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[Chiefwaffles]

Has anyone had problems with schemes just... not starting?
I can't quite nail down the problem. The minions needed for the scheme just wait uselessly in the depot, usually overflowing if I have enough stuck schemes. Sometimes waiting helps -- likely for the ones that just have some needed minion on the opposite side of the base who has to walk all the way over. But usually it seems like they're just... stuck. The "minion" button for the stuck scheme (which should select a minion it's waiting on) either selects a minion already waiting inside the depot or is greyed out despite it not starting.

EDIT: Upon further inspection, I'm pretty sure this is due to losing required minions before they head to the depot. Like if a scheme requires 4 guards and has 3 waiting, but the fourth guard dies before he gets there. Just wish it would give some indication about this or even let me get a full minion refund on schemes cancelled before they start.


In other news, god is it annoying trying to wrangle my valets. I have 30 valets and when my casino is fully staffed it reliably turns away agents before they ever get to the front door. But it feels like a third of the time my valets just don't feel like manning a single station there.

[BigD145]

You might also have any of a number of bugs that will require a campaign restart.

[Shooer]

Has anyone figured out how exactly the "Scam Tourists" toggle on casino items work? It gives me money obviously, but do they then not distract agents or what? I feel like Agents still use them even if they're set to Scam but I'm not 100% on it

From what I've seen they just take money.  Never seen an agent approach a casino item set to scam.

I'm wondering how viable it would be to shut down all my criminal networks and go all in on a casino mid-early game.

[Malus]

Cleared the game playing as Max on Hard. There's a point quite late in the game where, once you reach it, you're locked out of doing any side missions... so I'd highly recommend getting to work on them as soon as you unlock the last tier of research. I managed to win without actually recruiting any more henchmen besides my starter (Jubei is very effective) and without finishing any of the Super Agent quest chains, so I'm going to posit that all the posts on the Steam forums complaining about difficulty are not really grasping the game mechanics.

On the whole, I liked it! Puzzling out the ideal base layout and proper proportion of minions was interesting. I'll certainly be jumping back in once the season pass content hits (and after a few patches hopefully iron out some of the really annoying QOL issues). The end-game is really tedious, and there were several times where it really should've ended and instead it feels like they wanted to stretch the content out even further. The 300 minion cap feels very constricting as early as the mid-game, which I suppose is an intentional design decision, but the game runs so well, it feels like a waste to not bump the limit up a bit.

Oh, also, one very important mechanic that I nearly missed: you can instantly hire 5 workers for $10,000 with no cooldown. This is utterly essential, without it, it's almost impossible to recover from total base wipes. You just click on Workers in the training menu.

[Chiefwaffles]

Just beat the game as Zalika. And man, it feels like they do her dirty. Her characterization and voice acting is just... amazingly good. I love her. But man, her campaign.

Spoiler: Actual Spoilers for Zalika's Campaign (click to show/hide)

For one, it very much feels like her campaign was developed last. Her doomsday device just... doesn't feel like it meshes with the doomsday device mechanics. It's overall pretty nebulous too. It starts out as a "hey what if I could see what people are thinking" but then seems to become some weird nexus thing that uploads thoughts of every connected person and has the ability to manipulate thoughts. But you "fire" it at specific regions? And in the endgame you "fire" it at the forces of justice bases to destroy them? It kind of feels like the campaign is sort of trying to do one thing but just arbitrarily throws in connections to the mechanics creating a super disjointed experience as you go from objective to objective, confused why you're doing any given objective as they just kind of "happen." Okay, get investors! Okay, cure the investors because you drove them insane! Get beta testers! Okay, it either drives them insane at high power or does nothing at low power! Okay, develop a handheld version! Congrats you have a handheld version! What does it do? Uh, it kills people for some reason. Okay, now agents are infiltrating your lair and can get past your traps! Fix this! Uh oh, it has a virus! Okay, use the virus to make the doomsday device better somehow! And... so on.

Most of all though it really feels like there are two completely separate interpretations of her doomsday device. If you go just by how the game talks about it, you could get a relatively charitable picture. A device that connects every human to another, sensing each others' feelings and whatnot while the device calculates stuff and manipulates people to work in a more common goal. Basically turn humanity into a hivemind with Zalika as the queen. Not an objectively perfect good ending for everyone, sure, but by a good number of viewpoints the next "evolution" of humanity.

But then based on the imagery and especially the ending/victory cinematic, it's a glorified hypnosis zombie device. Almost exactly just the villain from The Incredibles 2 but the hypnotized people act extremely zombie-like. Disappointing.

I still love Zalika though. She's great and I love her campaign and the game even if the campaign feels extremely disjointed and arbitrary in what you're doing. The complaints in the spoiler are basically just.. lore/fluff/flavor nitpicks beyond the arbitrary campaign thing.


My main problem with EG2 though is the goddamn side stories. They are a slog. If you want to do anything it's 1-2 researches, 1-10 world map schemes, and 1-2 base invasions. The schemes are the worst part because you have to get the upgraded network where the schemes are and you need to lower heat first to start the scheme most of the time. Which means either waiting an obscenely long amount of time for the reduce heat scheme or spending way too much intel (an incredibly annoying bottleneck) on the quick heat reduction option. Most of the time I'm just waiting for more minions to train to send on scheme or I'm waiting on getting enough intel to do the schemes.

And even better is the fact that for the worthwhile side stories -- additional henchmen and super agents -- it's something like 4-5 side stories per thing. And you can only do one side story at a time. I can't even imagine how long it'd take to get rid of all the super agents.

[nenjin]

Yeah, holy shit, the Robotist Side Story is something like 10 missions. I just want this one to be over.

[Radsoc]

Got it and ran it just to get a "This game requires Windows 10" popup. Probably you could just open up OllyDbg and breakpoint it to block it jumping there. No good reason for it to run exclusively on garbo-Win 10 when nothing else requires it.

[JimboM12]

finished as max, replaying as ivan. i won as max by throwing money at my problems, as is maximillians trait, but i want an army this time. so as ivan i have a standing army of guards now at both entrances to my base, all armed with the best gear and all waiting at tables and guardposts to crack heads. unfortunately for them, the distract order is very powerful on anyone not a super agent or soldier so they simply escort most threats out to the casino with free game tokens by gunpoint.

its like dave n' busters if dave n' busters was run by vladimir putin

[EuchreJack]

finished as max, replaying as ivan. i won as max by throwing money at my problems, as is maximillians trait, but i want an army this time. so as ivan i have a standing army of guards now at both entrances to my base, all armed with the best gear and all waiting at tables and guardposts to crack heads. unfortunately for them, the distract order is very powerful on anyone not a super agent or soldier so they simply escort most threats out to the casino with free game tokens by gunpoint.

its like dave n' busters if dave n' busters was run by vladimir putin

Who says it isn't? 

[nenjin]

So I came back to this.

Originally I only put in 25 hours. I gave up during the Roboticist side story because.....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Near the climax of the mission when they send a dozen exploding robots in to your base, I wasn't aware what would happen and so all of them waltzed over from the helipad and detonated at the center of my base, setting everything on fire and killing half my minions.

More than that though, there was just a lot about the game that seemed needlessly grindy and questionably balanced.

Luckily, a lot of that appears to have been resolved in the intervening months.

-Missions for profit are largely just one type: send some minions for an hour, make a shit load of cash and build up a moderate amount of heat.
-So now you let a cash mission run to completion, then immediately switch over to a heat reduction mission. There's still options for 50 heat missions that pay out a lot of cash quickly, but no longer are you having to constantly revisit the world stage to maximize running missions. You just start some and largely forget about them. So that's pretty nice, if not overly interesting or dynamic.
-Side missions seem...faster? Like they cut out some kruft and redundancy? I haven't done any Henchmen missions besides Jubei, but by and large most missions seem to have fewer steps. Thank god.
-Digging between levels was made sane. Still kind of fiddly trying to decide exactly where to lay a stairwell, but it just seems to work better now.
-Covert operations seem to work better. Or I'm designing better. By using velvet ropes to guide people in a serpentine fashion through the front of the house, and making them pass directly by distractions the front of the house now seems to do its job pretty well. Whoever said above that the distract order is quite powerful, I'd agree. Even guys into the "meat" of my base still get caught by distract orders and sent home. So that's nice.
-Things are just kind of humming along now with upgrades and slowly expanding the base. It didn't feel so much like tedium this time. Waiting on research and upgrading my power plant for better generators is what's mostly pacing my game right now.

[Radsoc]

I tried it out some months ago but was not very impressed with it compared to Evil Genius 1. I like the research system as it was and the tutorial seems to proceed into a regular campaign. Will pick it up again some time later.

[Empty]

It's out on xbox gamepass on the 30th.