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[Eagle of Fire]

Use DOSBox? Worked well for me.

Otherwise, I remember that Apocalypse was quite a pain to run on my Windows 98 machine. I had to reboot in DOS mode for it to work.

If you absolutely want to go the Windows 98 route, you will need to edit your autoexec.bat and config.sys files. This guide will be able to help you with that.

[jordos]

This looks like a good spot to promote my very own kick-ass xcom apocalypse editors!
If you'd like to fix the useless road vehicles, try roadwar, a tool that can make roads invulnerable, or at least very tough, along with a bunch of other tweaks like reducing air vehicle availability.
Links:
Strategycore
Xcomufo forums (needs registration, but since I can upload the files myself it tends to be slightly more up to date)

And if that's not enough you can do it yourself with the exe editor apoc'd. It also sports some savegame editing capabilities but won't beat XeD or Midnight there yet!
Links:
Strategycore
Xcomufo forums (same as above)

Have fun!

[telles0808]

This is my very first strategy game what I loved and shared with friends, before it I played all the serie XCOM, WC, etc and nothing is near of the quality of this game. This game is well made, veryvery advanced for that year and ultra very nice ambient of terror with a nice selection of sounds.

My five stars is for this game with certain!

Anyone has succeded in playing music for the game? I have dl a backup from internet but I think it dont have any music.

Any idea of a site where download the music?

[jasonmloh]

You can use proximity mines on poppers. The moment they move KABOOM and they have a very wide radius, so steer clear.
________
Arizona Dispensary

[Japo]

I have played only a tiny little, and it's hard to tell which weapons are most effective from the numbers... From what I read, if you have the ammo it always improves your odds to use the weapons with the highest firing rate, even though they will have the lowest accuracy per shot, and even to wield one rifle in each hand... It seems a bit off.

A question: Is there a point in fighting alien infiltration in the Cult? Considering that they'll end up hostile sooner or later, and that they don't have anything to sell anyway? And that even before they're infiltrated cultists fire on you on sight! Even though they're listed as just "unfriendly", not "hostile". And considering how much they like explosives, and cultists will happily run towards a whole squad firing at them to get the opportunity to toss a grenade before dying. I've found that mission very dangerous compared to any other at this point (right at the start).

[Eagle of Fire]

Do you play turn based or real time? The game is really balanced only for real time.

In real time, every main weapon is useful. I always bring them in a fight. At least until I find (research) better ones.

The minigun is useful at close range. Especially against mindsuckers. The laser sniper rifle is (surprise) quite useful at long range and the autocannon is your power gun, in the middle.

What is important when you equip your squaddies is not really the weapons themselves but rather what they can use effectively. First of all, you should always bring the Megapol armor on you as your most basic protection. This is a break in the traditional X-com gameplay as you normally have no armor and you need to research some ASAP. In Apocalypse, you already have armor... And a good one at that. The only downside is the weight and you need to trade speed for it.

I am used to send a 12 members squad team into the fray, so I plan 4 guns of each of those three types I mentioned above. So, first of all the autocannons should be used only by units with quite high strenght so their TUs (speed) don't fall too much because of it (robots are usually great for that). Then I usually equip the soldiers with highest accuracy with the riffles and the soldiers with the lowest accuracy with the miniguns.

I never used the other types of guns very much. The pistol is virtually useless as a minigun have more ammo and a bigger punch. The launchers have the exact same problem than the previous X-coms. The plasma pistol is very useful but its ammo is very hard to come by so I usually reserve those for half breeds (half alien, half human) because they have such a ridiculous strenght rating: the plasma pistol pack a good punch, is lightweight and don't take much inventory space.

The plasma pistol and the Marsec armor turn available after the first week. The red armor is nice for the half breeds because it allows them to run around (and fly) decently with still a decent protection... But for your normal soldier the protection is not enough to protect well enough against grenades and the Alien guns so don't bother even though it make them run faster. With the Megapol armor at least when one of your soldiers get a bad hit he will survive long enough to heal himself (medkits can be used by the soldier having to heal himself in Apocalypse) while the same cannot be said for the Marsec armor.

The most important thing you need to learn is how to defend you well enough against brainsuckers. Especially at the beginning of the game, those little guys will attack you often and in numbers. Once they latch on the head of a squaddie you will only have a few moments before you lose your soldiers permanently... Worse, it will turn hostile and try to gun your other soldiers. To prevent that you either have to move in squads so they can cover eachother or use the Eagle of Fire BS proof (tm) way to get rid of a brainsucker: have every single of your squaddies carry at least one grenade and when the sucker latch on your soldiers pause and go in the inventory of another soldier. Find the right one in the list and make him hold the grenade so it can prime it to explode immediately. Make it drop the grenade then unpause. Your soldiers will most likely be hurt but the armor will save him easily and the brainsucker will be dead.

Then you will eventually learn about those blue smoking balls of death... As soon as you spot one have every squad in range concentrate their fire on it until it either explode or die. Make it a priority every single time. If you cannot gun it, have a high HP unit run toward it so it take the brunt of the explosion while the others run away, hopefully alive. Again, robots are great for this since they have very high HP and usually (barely) survive the blast.

Just ask if you need something else.

[Japo]

OK but what about organizations and the Cult? If I got it right, the downside of an organization being infiltrated is that you won't be able to trade with them any longer, and that they might attack you. But since the Cult has nothing to trade, is apparently hostile from the start, and anyway will hate me more every time I kill an alien, is there a point in investing any effort in fighting alien infiltration in their organization? The problem is that to fight infiltration at any other organization I have to fight the aliens only, but at a Cultist location there are guards attacking me, and they're much tougher than the aliens at this point, and this is before they're infiltrated (1%) and they're listed only as "unfriendly", not "hostile".

I haven't even tried turn-based battles. The experience I've had so far is that at long range I'm untouchable, it's when enemies come close that I'm at risk. And most of my soldiers had machine guns, but enough bullets hit the targets before they came close, even though my soldiers had no training at this point.

12 men 12 guns? Then you don't equip a weapon in each hand as many people seem to do? Have you tried it?

What's the problem with missile launchers? I previous XCOM games I didn't like them because they had terrible accuracy, and it was always better to throw a grenade, that always lands at least near instead of flying by. But the missiles in Apocalypse are homing (unlike explosive auto-cannon ammo), they look like a sweet deal. The only downside I see would be damaging property inside the city?

And how do you go about stunning aliens? It seems to be absolutely necessary to capture lots of them for research.

Do you use psi (I guess so if you recruit half breeds), if so how?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally Posted by Japo

But since the Cult has nothing to trade, is apparently hostile from the start, and anyway will hate me more every time I kill an alien, is there a point in investing any effort in fighting alien infiltration in their organization?

1. When truly taken over, they also have alien weapons.
2. When not taken over, fighting them gives you useable loot.
3. It is my understanding that once an organization is taken over, they help aliens spread in the city. Do you really want that?

I have played only a tiny little, and it's hard to tell which weapons are most effective from the numbers... From what I read, if you have the ammo it always improves your odds to use the weapons with the highest firing rate, even though they will have the lowest accuracy per shot, and even to wield one rifle in each hand... It seems a bit off.

It does nothing to aid or train your troops accuracy, especially at full auto. (to reiterate: from what I've seen, using aimed fire seems to develop your troops' accuracy stat faster)

12 men 12 guns? Then you don't equip a weapon in each hand as many people seem to do? Have you tried it?

Been there, done that.
Dual wielding is OK when you don't NEED accuracy (autocannons with incendiary or explosive clips, mini-launchers, alien guns used for demolitions).
Nowadays I'm much in favor of the sniper rifles used when kneeling or prone, on maximum accuracy, by 4-man squads.

And how do you go about stunning aliens? It seems to be absolutely necessary to capture lots of them for research.

Stun grenades (the cone-shaped yellow ones), as long as the alien is exposed long enough to the gas. Stun Grapples up close (they're not point-blank, fortunately). Or Psi - allegedly.

Do you use psi (I guess so if you recruit half breeds), if so how?

The hybrid needs to have the psionic amplifier device equipped (the name of the blasted thing escapes me right now). This will be one of the available modes of attack. Rookie hybrids (before spending a LOT of time in psi gym) are not very reliable for much beyond panicking the target.

Oh, and as for brainsuckers? Be friendly with S.E.L.F. Androids can't be brainsucked.

[Eagle of Fire]

Yeah but androids cannot evolve their stats either. They really suck for that except at the very beginning when all your soldiers suck anyways.

Dual wielding? Having anything in your second hand for a weapon requiring two hands destroy your accuracy. I never actually even thought about using two weapons at the same time unless they are pistols (which only require one hand). The problem here is that pistols suck and the plasma pistol, which don't, have very little available ammo. And you cannot produce them.

The best use of your accuracy is the weapon status. Place it on autoshot to fire fast and reduce accuracy. Normal mode is the mode you'll use most often. Aimed shots will greatly increase your accuracy but you'll fire way slower.

The most important aspect of the weapons at the early game is the ammo. Even minigun ammo will eventually run out if you use too much of it. Since you cannot produce anything human made this mean that you either need to stop wasting it or move fast to Alien guns which auto recharge after every battle. Once you have your own X-com guns then it is the matter of producing enough ammo for all your squaddies at once, which is not a small matter to begin with if you consider you'll also want to produce your own armor, own crafts, etc.

To answer Japo question on organizations, you want none of them to be infiltrated by the Aliens. Even the Cult. I think Fifth explained it well enough why. Beside, attacking the cult for the loot is one of the most abused cash milking method in this game. To prevent an organization to be infiltrated is easy enough anyways: go in map mode and select the organization in question. You'll have yellow markers indicating all the owned locations of those organizations in the city. If you are the least successful in preventing the Aliens to enter the city then you can simply guess from the nearest UFO beaming area which building would most likely be hit by the Aliens. If you miss the organization will dislike you a little more but then again if you do nothing you'll lose them completely anyways while you can always buy them back to your side later.

For missile launchers, as I said they have all the same problems than old X-com games: they are big, ugly, costly, slow to fire and reload and in real time they are even easy to dodge as long as you don't ask your soldiers to kneel in front of them. Moreover, once you get better armor you can even easily withstand a few missiles dead on before getting worried.

I think Fifth covered everything else pretty well.