What mostly works for me (and that’s just for me) is limiting each skill to one use per turn, squad wide skills to once per turn per squad, speed soft cap at 20. That’s just to prevent wiping the enemy out on the first turn on any difficulty, mind you.
Or worked for me, because last night I quit playing, at least for a while. I don’t see a point in playing a game where this is the reward as a design choice for learning how to play well and putting in hours. Can anyone point me to another turn based strategy game that does it? Where an experienced player on any playthrough on any difficulty by midgame is rewarded with a mindless clickfest for the rest of the game?
And you are absolutely right, it can’t be fixed by modding. You can perhaps take away from the player the ability to wipe out the AI in the first turn, but if the game is designed to have alpha-strike in it, you still have a mess to deal with at turn 2. Just as now, for those of us playing with self imposed restrictions, you would every once in a while get a glimpse of the game that could have been…
How can there be any semblance of balance if player 1 can wipe out player 2 on turn 1? It doesn’t matter what super stats, abilities, weapons, or numbers you give to player 2 - he ain’t gonna have the chance to use them!
And of course then you get players who don’t know yet how to alpha-strike, nor how to deal with the things the game throws at them without alpha-striking, rightly complaining about difficulty.
IMO, there are only two ways forward:
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Redo the game to make alpha-strike an essential game mechanic, as in the upcoming Gears of War, which basically tries to emulate the pace of a third person shooter.
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Get rid of alpha-striking altogether, or allow alpha-striking on some difficulty levels. In any case, balance the difficulty of the game on the premise that there is no alpha-striking to avoid introducing a tilt that makes difficulty uneven.
IMO alpha-strike in = game unfixable.
Just to be clear, this is what I mean by alpha-striking: