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[axiomsofdominion]

Does anyone else just buy diplomats and activists and take over all the governments. I usually have a single "operative" and then all political people.

Pretty much the same here. Seems like the most sensible choice - at first, it's a scramble for control; then they all switch to propagandising while the sole operative runs errands and occasionally expands control.

There's actually a little icon you can hover over that'll show you the cooldowns and which actions you can take. Pretty hidden (like a lot of things...) but you can find it here.

Yeah, I did find that eventually. Though swear to god I did not see any cooldowns there. As far as I understand from reading elsewhere, there's a one year waiting time after leaving (or joining?) a federation before unification can be attempted. However, I'd swear the goddamn Denmark was under my control longer than that and still wouldn't budge. But then again, can't go and check if that's how it actually was, because no saves lol.


Also, the game tries to fry my laptop.

Game only ever uses 4 cores/threads on my computer and rarely maxes them out. Whenever the AI in Axioms runs it uses all 8 and my CPU usage is 100%. Maybe they capped it at 4 on purpose?

[Il Palazzo]

Is the purpose to fry eggs on my keyboard?

[Cthulhu]

I dunno how I feel about it.  The demo is pretty limited, and I dunno.  With the amount of time it takes and the fact that it seems a lot of the real dynamism of the gameplay comes in afterward, I didn't feel much urge to actually play through the entire seven year span.  There is a weird sense of disconnection between real-time and turn-based elements but that may be less prominent later on. After four months or so the initial hubbub of the alien arrival wears off and the mission phase slows to every two weeks, I'm guessing it's eventually once a month as the game transitions from nothing but earth councilor missions to space stuff, which seems like it'll be more real-time. 

I like the general vibe, there's a lot of interesting things going on, from the illuminati angle where instead of playing a specific country or alliance you're playing a supranational organization, and the potential for this to eventually turn the world into a chessboard for secret societies, nuclear war, etc.  There are mentions of greenhouse gases, e.g. choosing the kleptocracy priority (which periodically gives you a chunk of instant cash in exchange for harming the country in question) puts out a lot of greenhouse gases.  So it seems like there's some potential for seeing how that technological process of adapting to an alien invasion happens on a global scale rather than just being guns.  Will we see the "jackpot" scenario where the lucky survivors of the alien crisis wake up to a utopia, or will we end up destroying the planet and living in space?

I think it is a problem that right now the first part of the game is relatively uninteractive, moving pieces around on a board, very "first ten turns of dominions" vibe.  And since there's no saving in the demo, this is all that 90% of demo players will experience.

One thing I'm very curious about, which so far they've been tight-lipped about, is the nature of the aliens and their mission on Earth.  Because we've got seven factions and several of them have completely different views on what the aliens will be.  Like it'd make sense for the aliens to be universally hostile, but then what if I'm playing the academy and I win?  Do I just have a ton of egg on my face as the aliens blow up my parley ship and start deorbiting asteroids?  Will it just be "the aliens are whatever the player faction thinks they are" which is reasonable but boring, or will it vary?  Like the Resistance is mostly a fight-back kind of faction but not extremely so, they seem like the most likely faction to adapt if the aliens' posture turns out different.

[AlStar]

Flailed around for a couple hours. Managed to gain control of a good chunk of Europe, as well as some far-flung properties in Africa and Central America that randomly had high% chances of victory; finally managed to grind up enough launch capability to start construction in LEO. Got to the point where I was trying to win the hearts-and-minds of France (I was at 2/4 control against the Academy, but they managed to secure overall control), but even with 60+% of the population behind me, trying to shatter their control was only around 10%, even with spending a decent chunk of influence.

I've got to say that not giving us the ability to save is a major hinderance. While I wouldn't say I disliked the time spent, I don't know that I'm willing to start over from scratch; especially since it looks like the early game will play out about the same - vying for control of various countries with the other organizations.

I want to see the stars! Establish bases and mining operations in deep space; but I'm not even sure that it's possible in the demo, and if it is, I'd need to play for hours to get there.

And who even knows what the aliens are up to - they managed to successfully send a ship with 4k offensive power into orbit of Earth, where it (apparently) did nothing until it crash landed a couple months later.

[Cthulhu]

Disabling saving is a preventive feature, they've been very tight about everything that's not in the demo and save files means editing save files.

In my games I've mostly focused on America. You can increase your success rate on missions by taking adjacent control points like Canada and Mexico, and people don't tend to go for the big difficult countries early, you've got a few months of breathing room if you want to rush America or China or something.  Another way to get early boost is to take Kazakhstan and then have it break away from Russia.  There's a lot of little details that are intuitive when you realize what they are but not so much before, like countries in a sphere of influence giving part of their resources to their leader, which means less for you.

I suppose with enough time you can stand up a space program anywhere, but the limited amount of space-capable countries makes me worry a bit that some factions will just be effectively knocked out of the game early on, unless there are catchup mechanics related to boost.

It looks like you can potentially use councilor missions and priorities to bootstrap and develop weak countries, but I dunno if it's worth as a strategy.  Africa especially is really easy to take because of low stability, but also really easy to lose for the same reason, coups and stuff happen frequently and those wipe control points. 

[Nirur Torir]

Today I tried an EU rush, while throwing money to raise my popularity in the USA and Russia until I could grab those.
I centralized most of the EU, as my control capped. Its investment pool is now about as big as the USA's, but about a third of the boost it makes is going to my rivals.

It's okay, but I'm not impressed. I think a stronger strategy would be to start with Kazakstan, for its spaceport, and run full Spoil to get the funds to advertise yourself in Russia and the USA until you can take those, and then try for China.

[axiomsofdominion]

You can get full USA control on February 1, 2023. Are these other strategies even faster? That's wild.

[Nelia Hawk]

the one thing that was really weird to see in a "new game" was that russia was at war in the game with ukraine. its interesting they included that to make it feel like "the game starts from now".

also "high tech alien ships" that orbit the planet..... and randomly crash...
not knowing what happens as i didnt get far in the demo... but i guess finding out WHY they randomly crash on the planet i would want to find out.


that they have 8 or so different factions you can play as might actually give it some replayability if the story events and such are quite different for each.

[axiomsofdominion]

the one thing that was really weird to see in a "new game" was that russia was at war in the game with ukraine. its interesting they included that to make it feel like "the game starts from now".

also "high tech alien ships" that orbit the planet..... and randomly crash...
not knowing what happens as i didnt get far in the demo... but i guess finding out WHY they randomly crash on the planet i would want to find out.


that they have 8 or so different factions you can play as might actually give it some replayability if the story events and such are quite different for each.

My first crash in my longest running game was in Kharkiv lmao. Russian conquered Ukraine quick that time.

[Il Palazzo]

The last time I played I think I managed to get to the third or fourth year, and I didn't quite like how the gameplay started to look then.

The final couple hours or so was pretty much just waiting and busy work. Waiting for federation/unification cooldowns to expand (which leads to more cooldowns). Waiting for techs to complete and for boost to accumulate so that you can colonise the next set of objects (which also takes its sweet time).

During that waiting, it's constant reissuing orders to deal with enemy public campaigns and expiring defended interests. By that time I had maxed orgs on all agents, and trying to optimise the loadout any further was too much work to bother given the number they had equipped and the number in the pool - so I just started to ignore this aspect altogether.
Stealing orgs and assassinating agents similarly seemed like too much effort for little gain, but I'd still do it occasionally to break the routine.

Never got around to building spaceships. Maybe the game then shines once more. Or maybe it's just the limitations of the demo. But, as is, it was starting to get tedious with little to do.

However, as with my previous complaints, the game will still be an instant buy on release for me. I've clocked way too many hours on the demo these past few days. As far as I'm concerned, whatever the price ends up being it's already delivered the bang for the buck. And it seems like with new factions and further content to play with it'll deliver more enjoyment to waste the life on.

[Malus]

I don't know if TI's a good game but it's certainly interesting. I put 20 hours into the demo (got to the "end screen" once, though the last hour or two was basically AFK while I waited on some techs), unified the USA and Canada, fought an alien ship, built Mars and Moon bases, etc. The plate-spinning on Earth is not super important after the beginning because of how defender-sided control points are -- though there are quite a few techs/projects that might be able to shake things up a bit in the full game. I spent most of a campaign training up a super persuader to try and snag China but never managed to get my success chance up above 7% (in retrospect I should've just gone for it, I had something like 2k influence stockpiled) and then the servants swooped in. I also soft capped on control points pretty early after taking USA/Canada/UK/France/Japan/Taiwan: the AI mostly seemed to content themselves with squabbling over the rest of the European countries and Africa and left me well enough alone.

Some things I'm not clear on: how does the space asset takeover mission work? It says you target habs but it was always greyed out despite other factions having moonbases and me putting the agent in lunar orbit -- so I built a ship on the moon, loaded them on, then landed at the enemy hab I wanted to take, and still nothing. Is it not implemented in the demo or did someone get it working?
How *exactly* do Federations and Unifications work? China starts with a claim on Taiwan which means you can unify the two. But there's also a project called "Liberating Mainland China" that gives Taiwan claims on, well, mainland China. What's the benefit? If you win a war against a country, you install yourself in all their control points, so there's no reason you can't just unify from the PRC side once you've won. I mean, I like the RP potential of putting ROC in the driver's seat, but "Liberating Mainland China" costs 30k research which seems like a tough pill to swallow for what's basically just a name swap -- unless there's some benefit I'm not aware of, like maybe the other party inherits the tech levels of the leader or something.

[Il Palazzo]

Does anyone know if they divulged the planned release date (other than 2022)?

[Nirur Torir]

You can get full USA control on February 1, 2023. Are these other strategies even faster? That's wild.

The point isn't to get the USA faster.

Before getting tired of it and ending my game, I ended up with USA, most of the EU, Russia, and China. I was over my management cap, but had enough influence gain to keep up. By keeping my own popularity up in the other three, the AIs left them alone until I was done taking undefended EU provinces. All my councilors were persuasion classes, except for a spy I picked up later. Everyone being able to campaign for popularity and take control of neutral areas, and do them well, helps a lot.

I think I had 13 persuasion on my agent who started in on China, with about 33% odds per attempt with 32 influence spent, and about 66% of the population loving me. It took a lot of 25% chance public campaigns with $640 spent, but I was swimming in money by that point.

By the end, I think I only had about 55 boost, after spending 10 each on a pair of Mars bases, that would have taken a year to complete. My moon base gave me enough resources for both, other than the titanium. I think that reduced the Boost costs to only what the titanium purchase cost was, but there might have been a small extra cost.
I didn't build any ships, thinking a 60 power ship useless against the 7k alien power. I should have built one to see if they do anything interesting against other humans. I expect they can shoot down stations, but being able to lock down all of the orbits near Earth would give too much power to whoever gets there first.

How *exactly* do Federations and Unifications work? China starts with a claim on Taiwan which means you can unify the two. But there's also a project called "Liberating Mainland China" that gives Taiwan claims on, well, mainland China. What's the benefit? If you win a war against a country, you install yourself in all their control points, so there's no reason you can't just unify from the PRC side once you've won. I mean, I like the RP potential of putting ROC in the driver's seat, but "Liberating Mainland China" costs 30k research which seems like a tough pill to swallow for what's basically just a name swap -- unless there's some benefit I'm not aware of, like maybe the other party inherits the tech levels of the leader or something.

If you win a war and have a claim, it gets annexed outright.
China is hard to break into when it's neutral and you have high popularity. If someone else takes it, you're not taking it from them with spies under normal circumstances. I assume that research is so you can take the much easier Taiwan, ally them to superpowers who can beat China, and then declare a war from Taiwan and pull the superpowers in to win the war.

Federations let you diplo annex if you control both governments. Until then, they share Funding and Boost, apparently giving an equal share to every province in the federation. It seems more annoying than it does useful.

[axiomsofdominion]

You can get full USA control on February 1, 2023. Are these other strategies even faster? That's wild.

The point isn't to get the USA faster.

Before getting tired of it and ending my game, I ended up with USA, most of the EU, Russia, and China. I was over my management cap, but had enough influence gain to keep up. By keeping my own popularity up in the other three, the AIs left them alone until I was done taking undefended EU provinces. All my councilors were persuasion classes, except for a spy I picked up later. Everyone being able to campaign for popularity and take control of neutral areas, and do them well, helps a lot.

I think I had 13 persuasion on my agent who started in on China, with about 33% odds per attempt with 32 influence spent, and about 66% of the population loving me. It took a lot of 25% chance public campaigns with $640 spent, but I was swimming in money by that point.

By the end, I think I only had about 55 boost, after spending 10 each on a pair of Mars bases, that would have taken a year to complete. My moon base gave me enough resources for both, other than the titanium. I think that reduced the Boost costs to only what the titanium purchase cost was, but there might have been a small extra cost.
I didn't build any ships, thinking a 60 power ship useless against the 7k alien power. I should have built one to see if they do anything interesting against other humans. I expect they can shoot down stations, but being able to lock down all of the orbits near Earth would give too much power to whoever gets there first.

How *exactly* do Federations and Unifications work? China starts with a claim on Taiwan which means you can unify the two. But there's also a project called "Liberating Mainland China" that gives Taiwan claims on, well, mainland China. What's the benefit? If you win a war against a country, you install yourself in all their control points, so there's no reason you can't just unify from the PRC side once you've won. I mean, I like the RP potential of putting ROC in the driver's seat, but "Liberating Mainland China" costs 30k research which seems like a tough pill to swallow for what's basically just a name swap -- unless there's some benefit I'm not aware of, like maybe the other party inherits the tech levels of the leader or something.

If you win a war and have a claim, it gets annexed outright.
China is hard to break into when it's neutral and you have high popularity. If someone else takes it, you're not taking it from them with spies under normal circumstances. I assume that research is so you can take the much easier Taiwan, ally them to superpowers who can beat China, and then declare a war from Taiwan and pull the superpowers in to win the war.

Federations let you diplo annex if you control both governments. Until then, they share Funding and Boost, apparently giving an equal share to every province in the federation. It seems more annoying than it does useful.

Yeah I also immediate went for all PER agents if possible. Also took the lobbyist influence thing. I also almost always went full exposure.

[Malus]

China is hard to break into when it's neutral and you have high popularity. If someone else takes it, you're not taking it from them with spies under normal circumstances. I assume that research is so you can take the much easier Taiwan, ally them to superpowers who can beat China, and then declare a war from Taiwan and pull the superpowers in to win the war.

The problem is -- and maybe this should change -- you can just declare war on any rival. So if you can win a war against China there's not much of a point in bothering with Taiwan, who doesn't even start with an army. Probably the way to do it is take South and North Korea for the land border, ally them to each other, then send their armies into China to soak 2/3 of China's nukes. Then you can invade with America's armies and trade one US army for the final Chinese nuke and then occupy Beijing with the remaining 4 armies and take complete control of China. Alternatively, the UK and France both start with 1 amphibious army each, so you can use them to tank a couple nukes, if you can't get NK & SK allied fast enough. One thing that's interesting to note is that if you have control of Taiwan, you can declare independence (you don't need claims or anything for this), which forces China to declare war on you -- which counts as a defensive war for you -- and automatically calls your allies into war. So depending on how braindead/not-braindead the AI is you might be able to win vs. China without personally controlling the USA, just by forcing them to defend you. The problem is the AI seems to be pretty trigger-happy on the nukes and nuclear war is not fun. I ran a quick test game and China ended up nuking London, which brought the UK's GDP per capita down to $14,000 and they permanently lost a control node.

I bet you can abuse the Taiwan independence war thing to steal China out from under another faction's nose (depending on who's in control, maybe some factions are less keen on using nukes than regular, uncontrolled China) without letting them automatically call their allies in. I think the AI plays by the same rules so to join an offensive war they need to complete the "Set Policy" mission and then manually declare, so if they're a big bloc like China/Russia/India you might be able to buy an extra couple of months to snag Beijing quickly. All of this seems strictly worse than the diplomatic option though -- if a nuke hits a province with high boost, it'll take years to recover. And the GDP and population will probably never come close to what it was beforehand.

I didn't build any ships, thinking a 60 power ship useless against the 7k alien power.

I have no idea how those calculations work, because my ships were around 60 strength in the designer but when I built them, they showed up as 800. I built a fleet of 3 missile boats and engaged the 7k alien ship and just ran away while pelting them with missiles. Lost one ship but eventually my missiles won, and then the victory procced like four story events at once (I think you're supposed to assault a landed alien ship on the ground before you destroy one in space, but I never got the opportunity to do so in 7 years of gameplay; I don't think it's in the demo) and I got some interesting projects to research, but the time limit was pretty much over by then.