Like it says on the tin, I'm not sure my game is working right. Every time I start a mission with enemy Syndicate agents, they all seem to know exactly where I am and swarm my starting point like ants.

Even more confusingly, I'm able to equip one agent with a mini gun, amp up all his chemicles, and he'll single-handedly kill them all as they wander into range.

This... doesn't seem very tactical, though it'\s oddly satisfying.

Do they detect my scanner or persuadertron or something?

Okay, on further playing, there's DEFINITELY something wrong. I started the American Revolt expansion after beating the main game, and within ten seconds of starting the first mission - to protect a fortress and a VIP - and ATV pulls up next to the VIP's car, blows it up, and guns down the flaming target, before I can even leave the fortress - partly because there's a door out front that only opens for a car. What's going on here?

Try lowering cpu cycles (Ctrl-F11), maybe the cycles are set too high.

I have the same problem. It started happening on mission 4. Around 30 seconds after starting a mission the combat music starts and within seconds all the enemy syndicate members come running at me. The police are fine. It is definately not meant to be like that. Any solutions?

I played the game from CD back on DOS when it came out, and the enemies knew where you were pretty quickly.

As the guy above said, try lowering the number of CPU cycles that DOSBox is using. While you can use the Ctrl+F11 shortcut, it's hard to know exactly what number of cycles you're on and you have to do it every time you start the game, anyways. Instead, open up your .conf file (dosboxSyndicate.conf is what the GOG version uses by default) and go down to the [cpu] section. It looks like GOG's default cycles value is 8000, which is pretty low and should be slow enough to not have any "too fast" issues, but perhaps you modified that or are using your own .conf file. If so, try setting it to 8000. You might also try setting cputype to 486_slow or 386.

I found the answer.


This is from a Techradar interview with Molyneux about the games AI and the IPA levels (the 3 bars under the characters portraits).

Molyneux explains how the emphasis of the game changed in development: "We realised that it was actually far more fun to just take your agents into the city and blow everything up. Now the bars are still there, but the actual strategy part of the game has been toned down."

The title of the article is,
How Syndicate went from clever AI exercise to murderous cyborg mayhem


So apparently it was changed late development from a tactical game to an action like game.

I've just joined as I'm having the same problem.

I know this never used to happen, so I don't think it is a Molyneux decision as such.

It never happened before when I had it installed. I'll try the cycles thing.

EDIT: cycles are on 8000. Changed CPU to 386. Hasn't really helped.

This is a shame as the game is ruined by this.

Tried dropping it to 4000 cycles. Affected performance but didn't fix the issue. This is broken unfortunately.

I believe I have the same issue.

All I do when I start a mission is: 1) Charge IPA, 2) Wait, 3) Win.

This issue also makes the Alaska mission in American Revolt unwinnable, because the enemy agents kill the VIP before you can reach them.

Same with the California mission in American Revolt. The enemy swarms you, but now they have far more powerful weapons than in the base game, and there are many more of them. You can survive for a few minutes, but eventually you die.

If there is a fix, i would truly appreciate it.

They fixed this yet?

Just tried mission 5 (Urals) in the original game and could barely get my agents off the platform before every, and I mean every, enemy agent on the map suddenly charged in one giant wave.

I'm pretty sure this is not how this game used to play, something is wrong.


I tried lowering the cycles to 3000 but there was no noticeable effect to the enemy AI's strange behavior.


Has anyone been able to find a fix for this?

Just checked that on my versions. I have a lot of them, from beta through final to plus.

Checked the Ural mission. And:
- At mission start, all agents are standing still (in all versions of the game)
- After some time (circa a minute) they do start rushing towards the player, even if he didn't moved (in all versions of the game)
- The 'rush time' does seem short
- I'm not interested enough in this to check the game on a real old hardware; but I am pretty sure the time was counted much slower there, at least the clock from the menu

Conclusions:
- It's not a matter of Syndicate Plus, all versions of the game work like this

Unconfirmed thesis 1:
- While the game frame rate, and world update turns, are properly limited to 16 fps or whatever, it would seem the internal timers for each level (or just counting ingame hours) is separate and goes without these restrictions.

Unconfirmed thesis 2:
- The ingame time may actually be counted as intended, but on original 386 hardware the game worked generally slower. This means it was ie. not 16 FPS but 8 FPS (the values I'm giving are not from any test, just suspected), and a lot more user actions could be performed in that time.

Hm, I wonder if I can fix that by DoxBox settings..

EDIT:
So the rush starts (in Ural) at circa 48 seconds.

Changed DOSBox config:
`machine=vgaonly` - as that is the graphics HW the game requires
`core=simple` - to avoid executing instructions in bulk
`cputype=386_slow` - as the game worked fine on i386 CPUs, and I just wanted to verify the low clock mode
`cycles=fixed 4000` - that should be enough, unless a lot happens on screen
I also disabled all the additional devices (music/sound/joystick) to decrease the amount of interrupts.

And - the rush still started at circa 48 seconds.

So my final conclusion:
Either the game just always worked like this and we are getting slow over the years, or the issue is somewhere deep within DOSBox core and cannot be reconfigured (which is unlikely).

Hi mefistotelis,

I am convinced that it is not you who is slower than before!

I remember when I was very fascinated about the original version with its Epic gameplay, the different types of weapons and even that shield which made you undestructable for some time.

Some missions required long-range rifles, one could be played by going through the map or just blow the target up with some of the Gauss gun.

The disapppointment when buying the American revolt on the electronic Bay was immense. The data and itself were great and I was able to install it.

But when I startet the first mission I was completely disapppointed. All enemy agents running towards you with legs better than version 3. The only way to survive was either to have those shields on and run and later either use the Gauss guns or weapons when being in a building. After the first mission I deinstalled it - at that time even storage space on hard disk was really an issue.

And now after your epic posts I remember that I assume that there have been three changes in gameplay:
1.) The enemy agents don't see you only with a limited range, eg in gunpoint distance.
2.) Everyone is running after you and the game could be over in some seconds.
3.) The whole experience was like the Atlantic Accelerator in the first game. Only tactis there was put on the shields, move constantly and let the agents of the other synducates firstly fight with themselves.

So you can be sure that it is not you. Simply a gameplay programmed in a bad way.
Personally
I dont know why there was no really working American Revolt game.

American Revolt was designed specifically to be like this. The idea was a) to make the game brutally hard so people who found the original game easy to beat would have a challenge, b) stop the player from always just massing all units together as a blob, c) introduce more specific solutions to a level that you WILL need to work out to win.

The level described above is a prime example of this philosophy. You start off with 3 agents close together and one upstairs. Within seconds enemy agents move in and obliterate the primary target, failing the mission. This seems impossible until you pay attention to the starting positions and what your weaponry can do. You get no cars, so you can't leave the compound. What you are actually supposed to do is rush the odd agent out to the edge of the top floor and use a gauss gun to massacre the charging enemy agents. There are these very specific prescribed solutions to the levels that weren't in the original game that give it a much more puzzle-like feel.