HotM:Tree Structure Of Chapter Two

Intro

There are lots of natural curiosities about how chapter two will play out, for people who have played the demo of the prologue and chapter one. This is very hard to explain well, but I will do my best.

How Many Times To Play Chapter One And The Prologue?

You're only really expected to play these once, ever. These are not the start of the game each time you play the game. These are the start of your FIRST game, once.

If you're digging the game and want to play them more, then by all means do so. There are some folks who have dozens of hours in the game, and 4 to 6 playthroughs of just these parts. But these are not really all that replayable, in the grand scheme, at least not compared to chapter two. I kind of figured that people might enjoy playing them twice, maybe, at most. Glad to see there is more replay value than that in these early pieces, but I suppose don't burn yourself out on these alone!

What Happens If I Skip Straight To Chapter Two?

I'm assuming here that you've finished chapter one at least once. If you have done that, then there's no reason to skip to chapter two on your existing profile, because the game will just seamlessly move into chapter two. You can keep your entire city and just keep playing, with whatever you did from the demo, or the full game, or the playtest build. Saves are forward-compatible.

The only real reason to skip straight to chapter two is if you lost your prior savegame, or you just want a fresh start, or something along those lines.

In the event that you skip to chapter two:

• Your tower is placed in a random-but-reasonable spot for you, but there are no other buildings.
• You start with all of the techs unlocked from chapter one.
  • EXCEPT anything from a contemplation, or anything from intelligence classes 2 or 3.
• You start with one each of the three basic androids.
• A pre-chosen set of all of the upgrades that you could have done during chapter one and the prologue are given to you.
  • These may not be exactly what you would have chosen, but they're my preferred picks in terms of what is most broadly versatile.
• You'll be intelligence class 1, but you have all of the things that you can use to quickly get to intelligence class 3 within 10 minutes or so of starting, depending on your speed of placing buildings.
  • That in turn will quickly unlock the other things you're missing, aside from the contemplations content. The contemplations content are how you titrate difficulty, so they are not automatically unlocked on any timeline.

During this super-early period of chapter two, if you skipped here, basically not-much will be going on in the city that directly harasses you. So take your time, set yourself up the way you want, and then get off to the races.

What Are Future Cities Like In The Same Profile? (Story-Spoiler Free)

Without getting into spoilers, you only ever need one profile in the game, unless you want more than one for some reason.

After you get to intelligence class 4, you will be able to see the "meta map," which is not called the meta map, but what it's called is a mild spoiler. On the meta map, you will be able to "start new timelines" of this same city, and you can then switch back and forth between timelines at will. This part works slightly like the regions feature in SimCity 4, but with some spoilery differences.

Every city you're in is the same city, but has its own name and arrangement and things going on in it. It's not quite a time loop, because you can hop back and forth between them at-will. Certain things you can do will also benefit one timeline from another, or harm one timeline from another, or you can isolate certain timelines from each other from how you place them in the meta map. Don't sweat the details right now; it's not that confusing when I'm not being all vague.

One big thing that is shared between timelines is your intelligence class. You will need many cities working together to reach the higher intelligence classes. But what this means is that when you dive into your second timeline in a profile, you will by definition be class 4 as an intelligence, at minimum. That means all of the unlocks from reaching class 2, 3, and 4 are there instantly in those timelines.

Aside from that difference, you can also choose some extra info about the seeding logic for the city, and you can choose your "machine origin," which affects loss conditions. Beyond that, a new timeline works like starting from chapter two. All of the other things I said in the section above still apply. Contemplations, upgrades, and unlocks from one timeline do not pass between timelines.