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I'm surprised by your chameleon whale. I've never found any part of the chameleon besides the head and tail to be worth a damn. Not when the musk ox is available.
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True, but the Sperm Whale has a noted lack of legs. I wanted a pure damage ranged tank, and a 23+-hitting lizard with regeneration fit the bill nicely, despite its *Shudder* 8+ land speed.
I could have gone for the Electric Eel, but then it wouldn't have been able to leave the water at all.
Chameleoxen were a major part of my army when I was still accumulating DNA. The campaign's a little different to multiplayer because you can safely assume that you'll be able to get to Level V in decent time.
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In fact, all three of your level fives are far too slow for me.
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It's a matter of taste. The "implacable wall of horror" is just my style in RTSs. They're tanks. They're
supposed to be slow. See: Necrons.
Also, I like the fact that you can tell which ones are Level V from memory.
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Though for all that, the elephant is definitely good for all that. I've used in myself, and the rhinoceros equivalent was most effective against Ganglion's archer hippos.
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Yeah, if you upgrade it, once it gets its charge on it moves at a decent whack, especially in water.
It never seemed very effective against tanks, though, despite its defense-lowering tusks; I used it almost exclusively against swarms and buildings (I gave all my creatures boring designations rather than names - Lobstephant was "Amphi. Demolitions Adv."). Maybe I just wasn't paying attention while they were fighting - An easy thing to do with regenerators.
Again, the Rhino served me well in the early campaign. I later upgraded to a Hippo, and finally Elephant. Balance wasn't really an issue here. I had near-infinite resources and all the time I needed.
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I've also used that same mountain lion and flying scorpion. I've also made the fish chimp, but purely for my own pleasure rather than deployment.
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The Chame-lion is a
very useful basic unit - very much my Terran Marine in
IC. Highly survivable thanks to the camouflage, regeneration, decent defense and non-contact attack, and good enough damage in a pack to take on Level IVs.
The Scorpeagles were my solution for Level 9. They were a cheap, average-damage way of sticking wings onto Barrier Destroy. Great at taking out island bases, too fragile to be good for anything else.
Archer Chimps are great. I wanted an artillery unit, and there are only two creatures in the game with artillery attacks. Attack speed isn't factored into cost, so by giving them two ranged attacks it lets them do twice as much damage as most enemy equivalents in a given period of time. Fairly fast movers, too.
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The first time I completed the game I used scorpions with whale heads
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scorpions with frickin' whales for their heads
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for the final assault, which were potent enough to pound their way in the front door with absolutely no tactics whatsoever. The primary benefit being that its ranged attack would take down flyers and antwhales, but will always close to melee against buildings where the claws can come into effect. Fuck, they were slow.
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See, I was never a fan of hybrid units. I'd rather go for something with a powerful ranged attack that was terrible in melee, and then back them up with melee tanks, than go for something okay at both. Again, it's a matter of taste.
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Most recently I combined the whale with the komodo dragon. These days I find it difficult to invest in creatures without regeneration.
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Yeah, on that Ganglion mission just before Lucy gets kidnapped, with hardly any coal, it was regenerators that saved my bacon.
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The sperm whale pisses me off though. It's clear that Relic had only ever seen a picture of one in profile. Not sure what their excuse for the ant was, though. Or the dragonfly. Or the scorpion. Or the lobster.
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Couldn't really give a reliable opinion on the Spermaceti, but the scorpion model was horrible, it was like a cartoon. Even I could tell that the ant and dragonfly mouths were wrong, though. THEY HAD JAWS. VERTICALLY HINGED ONES.
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Relic is still alive and developing.
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Different publishers treat development studios differently. Take into account the staff upheaval, a few people leaving during the switch and the fact that their IPs have all been pulled in different directions, and the Relic we have today may prove to be a very different beast indeed. Maybe I'm just being cynical.
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Do you know that the creatures they cut from the game during development included the octopus, penguin and henchman?
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Do I know? Yes, I do know, because you just told me.
Penguins would have been good.
The Henchman wouldn't have really made sense considering the *Snigger* "story", and also would have changed the feel of the game in a lot of ways. I suspect the reasons for it being cut were similar to those for human Creatures being cut from Black & White.
I've always lamented the lack of cephalopods - Squid could've had Charge Attack and (St)Ink Cloud, and Cuttlefish would provide an alternative source of Camouflage. Considering their radically different anatomy, though, I can see why they were cut. It already seems strange seperating all fish and sea mammals into just three segments. Have these people never heard of pectoral fins?
