KickStarter Terra Invicta - sci-fi grand strategy from Long War mod creators - now available on Early Access

[Joggerino]

I think the same, there's 0 reason to build ships early on and founding outposts is way to easy.

 

[thesecret1]

I think the same, there's 0 reason to build ships early on and founding outposts is way to easy.

Yeah, while there's a whole ton of autism with ships, founding your first outpost on Mars is a matter of two clicks, after which you find out it's totally useless anyway until you get mining tech (which is quite a while away). Same with space stations. Basically a waste of money up until you get to Tier 2 cores, but there's a long, long way before you reach that point. It's why it feels the AI is being too passive at start. The AI knows outposts and stations are completely worthless up until you reach those critical techs, at which point it starts building outposts and stations like crazy. It's playing the waiting game too.

 

[Talby]

Holy fuck, this game is slow. SLOOOOOOOOOW. 20 hours in and I'm only in 2030, AI is slowly starting to build mining outposts in the solar systems, and first ships (hilariously shitty compared to alien ones, will take a lot of research to make the competitive) are starting to appear. The aliens aren't really doing anything either. Occassionally they build a new mining colony on some asteroid or whatever, and other than that, they just send agents to Earth to perform abduction missions and spread xenofauna (which I subsequently cleanse with fire). It started off so great, when everyone's scrambling for control points and figuring stuff out, but then it turns into a repetitive as fuck grind as you mostly just wait around, sitting at your control point cap, waiting for more research to finish. Except the vast majority of research is shit you don't really need (a small incremental upgrade on a ship part that you don't need because you don't really need ships at this point in the game anyway, for example), so really, you are mostly waiting around for some really long research project to finish to give you something to do for a couple turns, and then it's back to waiting.

They really should redesign this part of the game, the progress is absolutely glacial and there's nothing but routine busywork to do.

Filtered.

 

[Jaedar]

Also watch out, the AI can fuck shit up pretty badly. In my game, USA attacked EU (which was just a merge of France, Spain, and Denmark), and they proceeded to nuke the shit out of each other. EU expended ALL of its nukes, and US used like 80% of them. EU went from one of the richest places in the world into essentially an unlivable wasteland, and US didn't fare much better, being left about on par with middle eastern shitholes. Which would all be fine and dandy, except the environmental damage this caused essentially halved the GDP of everyone in the world.

This is the servants ideal scenario. The richest nations destroying each other leaving humanity very weak and vulnerable. Should be a tough game for you now.

Yeah, that's actually a kind of cool sabotage move from the AI.

I think the same, there's 0 reason to build ships early on and founding outposts is way to easy.

You can't use early ships to target stations and outposts of the other factions?
In the demo I tried the default skirmish settings to try and kill an alien ship, and all my ships got blown up in 10 seconds without as much scratching the aliens, so I can totally believe they are a complete waste of resources.

 

[Joggerino]

You could target other factions but that makes them hostile.

 

[thesecret1]

You can't use early ships to target stations and outposts of the other factions?

You can, but they don't build them early on. And once they do, destroying those things counts as an attrocity, so it's probably better to wait for space marines tech to take them over free of consequences

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Yeah once you see how much boost you need for things it becomes apparent very quickly this game is very slow. I don't think that's a bad thing but there is a lot of downtime where you're not really sure what your council should be doing at any given time. I'll give a hint though that the only way you can do CB claims on other nations is to first complete the Unity tech and go down that line to get more claims. But this takes ages so you won't be doing world conquests as Somalia or Zimbabwe anytime soon. One thing I don't like about the game is the constant fear of having your country taken over, its annoying I don't think playing tall is a strategy that works in this game, it seems geared towards constantly switching countries.

I found its easy to take over countries but difficult to hold onto them. I also think its really annoying how the game just throws free countries at you, making me go over my cap, can they code it in so that it only does it when I'm under my control cap please, just annoying to have to keep clicking abandon all the time and abandon doesn't work half the time. There's a lot of QOL issues but you expect that from an EA title otherwise games addicting af had a lot of fun turning the USA into a dictatorship.

I don't think wars without a claim are worth anything, especially as the only nations worth taking by force have pretty sizable armies anyway, the rest can be taken with coups so it's unnecessary. The early wars you see are pretty pointless with the exception to the Russian ones as they have claims. Otherwise, you'll need those Unity techs before you can start empire building.

EU seems to be one of the best starts in the game from what I can see as you basically start with Unity claims already.

 

[Joggerino]

Boost becomes basically irrelevant once you get space mining going. The switch is so sudden too, where you go from struggling to colonizing like mad. As for councilors I'm always busy taking over countries and Diplo annexing them.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Boost becomes basically irrelevant once you get space mining going.

I must still be really early in the game because that's only just happened lol.

As for councilors I'm always busy taking over countries and Diplo annexing them.

As far as I can tell you can't really do this with the USA until later on I haven't figured out how to do it early game as the US.

 

[Joggerino]

As far as I can tell you can't really do this with the USA until later on I haven't figured out how to do it early game as the US.

Yep. Without research the best are EU and Eurasian union IMO. USA and China are plenty strong on their own.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Awesome video. Exactly what I needed.

 

[lightbane]

So, can you use kill-sats to glass entire countries? Or drop colonies as a kinetic weapon of mass destruction, or are these two not a thing?

 

[RobotSquirrel]

worked out a tall strat that seems to work, Have 1-2 councilors running PR on loop, fortify the nation CPs (USA in my case), try to fix the inequality and unity issues (hint: if there's a yellow warning sign you're not spending enough on things) giving a small buff to PR, negotiate Non-Aggression with everyone that'll take one and finally have 2 people running counter-intelligence on every single councilor in the game, the AI seems unwilling to send any councilors that are known to the player, thus the number of attacks on the US went down dramatically and the AI is instead focusing on silly squabbles like India.

Once again that video was awesome at explaining what you have to do as the US to hold onto it.

Oh I'll also add, Orgs are awesome GET THEM! I have one guy whos on level 18 Admin, politician, he's got most of the USA's industrial military working under him so many amazing buffs that adds.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I am now addicted to this game. heh. Spam purging is the most therapeutic thing I've ever experienced in a game. That's when you get really good PR people, boost it all the way to around 75%, then get 3 councilors to all spam Purge at 50-75%. Almost always works even when fortified. Mine now AI! Nothing you can do! Mine now! not so fun when its on the other foot is it!

The random useless nation spam is annoying though, easily the most annoying feature in the game as its teaching you very bad habits of trying to grab lots of trash countries to snowball into something bigger, you need the Unity techs for that! so its not worth it early game. Those admin orgs are godtier, my cap is insanely high I have USA, Canada and Mexico all under my control and they can't be taken now.

The reason the AI doesn't send known counselors is that known counselors on your territory are easily detained/killed so this is why spamming the investigation over and over is a good idea, the AI just simply won't bother you if you do it, and if they do bother you chances are you can kill their people off but it costs a lot of org to do it without a highly trained assassin. Its also hilarious seeing how ridiculous the UI can get for counselors with lots of orgs, you end up with just this god of a character that can do everything.

Yeah this is fun.

Update -Can't do anymore for tonight pretty tired, almost about to get the North American Unity claims, very exciting only took a decade in game time to get them lol. The games going well, I feel like I'm falling behind on the space race but then I remember! oh yeah I can just steal their shit later! I have identified one major issue though with councilors, they grow old and die so maybe don't invest too heavy on their skills, the orgs are transferable thus more important. I buy up as many admin orgs as I can find this gives you a huge command point pool which is going to come in handy for world conquest. I gotta eventually switch tracks from turtling to full on military mode.

 

[thesecret1]

Is there a way to make space stations harder to steal? The AI keeps trolling me by grabbing them, only for me to send in the marines and take them back. Very annoying.

 

[Talby]

These alien scum went too far this time. They shrunk the Earth.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I'm going to have to wait on some guides I think. My game ended abruptly in nuclear war because Russia decided to do a dumb and attack me, jokes on them I decimated their GDP and killed all their armies the only problem is that I don't have the CP space for the entirety of Russia. So I don't really know what to do now all my effort was pretty wasted. I don't know how you avoid the AI just randomly declaring war on you maybe I needed to fortify the alliances more to discourage them I don't know. But it was annoying they nuked me first lost 3 armies also a lesson spread your armies out! bunching them together makes them prime real-estate for a nuke.

 

[Joggerino]

What faction controlled them and what faction did you play as?

 

[RobotSquirrel]

What faction controlled them and what faction did you play as?

This run was throwaway run anyway to learn the game but I was doing protectorate, the resistance were the ones that attacked me. So I mean it makes sense they'd try it but at the same time annoying because I was trying to stay neutral. I'm not a strong enough player for Humanity first which is why I'm avoiding playing as them since they're the most fun faction. I'd rather save that for when I'm actually good at the game.

 

[Joggerino]

What faction controlled them and what faction did you play as?

This run was throwaway run anyway to learn the game but I was doing protectorate, the resistance were the ones that attacked me. So I mean it makes sense they'd try it but at the same time annoying because I was trying to stay neutral.

Are you aware you can make non aggression pacts with other factions

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Are you aware you can make non aggression pacts with other factions

Yes, but they were already hostile to me. I'm unaware of any way of avoiding that, I think by the mid-game everyone's in their corners there's no way to avoid it. The simple fact is that I need to play better, I'm playing US all wrong I think, my strategy is probably better suited to China. I think also that I could have done more on diplomacy and set up better alliances. I had fun though so I'm not annoyed but I think I'll do better next time.

 

[Jaedar]

I'm going to have to wait on some guides I think. My game ended abruptly in nuclear war because Russia decided to do a dumb and attack me, jokes on them I decimated their GDP and killed all their armies the only problem is that I don't have the CP space for the entirety of Russia. So I don't really know what to do now all my effort was pretty wasted. I don't know how you avoid the AI just randomly declaring war on you maybe I needed to fortify the alliances more to discourage them I don't know. But it was annoying they nuked me first lost 3 armies also a lesson spread your armies out! bunching them together makes them prime real-estate for a nuke.

Did the game actually end, or do you just feel you are too far behind?

I gotta say, humanity nuking itself into oblivion over politics is a pretty fitting end.

It would be really weird if you could get non aggression pacts with everyone for the entire game.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Did the game actually end, or do you just feel you are too far behind?

fell too far behind because I was focusing entirely on claims. It ended up costing 50k in research points just to get the claims and all that got me was Canada. So a bit underwhelming.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Oh SO THAT'S WHAT THAT DOES! lol
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2868276295

I also realized then that if I continued nuking russia I could have reduced global GDP to the point where control points are dirt cheat as control points scale based on GDP. The downside is that everyone will be poor but since I'm protectorate maybe that's a good thing lol. YEP that strategy worked! So if you're looking to sabotage the entire world do that! might keep going with this. I reduced Russia to a single CP! haha

 

[Mitleser2020]

Oh SO THAT'S WHAT THAT DOES! lol
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2868276295

I also realized then that if I continued nuking russia I could have reduced global GDP to the point where control points are dirt cheat as control points scale based on GDP. The downside is that everyone will be poor but since I'm protectorate maybe that's a good thing lol. YEP that strategy worked! So if you're looking to sabotage the entire world do that! might keep going with this. I reduced Russia to a single CP! haha

You were playing the Crypto-Servants all along.

But on the other hand, you need Earth in decent shape to face the aliens themselves. And that means that maybe you don't want to go nuking the parts of the planet controlled by your human enemies, because the greater threat is still coming (or, if you are the Servants, then I suppose you'd view it differently, but even the Protectorate needs a strong Earth to negotiate what it wants).