Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Malus]

I've been playing quite a lot. I gotta say, not having the demo's time limit looming overhead (and, you know, the ability to save) is real nice. I think they tuned upkeep costs from the demo because I had trouble controlling just Canada, the USA, and a couple of random Central American countries early on. I was hemorrhaging like 20 influence a month for the first 2 or 3 years. In the future I'd probably be quicker to cut loose countries that aren't worth their cost. In the demo I had a few runs where I rushed combat stuff just to get a taste of what it's like, but this time around I'm just playing the long, slow eco/research/political game. I spent probably 5 years quelling rebellions in Central America and federating and then unifying them (absolutely not worth it from a cost benefit perspective, I literally had 3 of my operatives permanently stationed there lowering unrest while I poured all effort into welfare trying to lower inequality so the unity set point was above 0.0).

I unified Canada and the USA and now I'm working on adding Cuba, Mexico, and the Central American Confederation, which will hopefully not tank my economy or ruin my meticulously managed inequality and education. The rest of the world has been a bit of a shitshow with the Servants taking complete control of the EU (and expanding it significantly) and Humanity First seizing China. I am not looking forward to the inevitable nuclear exchange. The Initiative took Russia, and Exodus took India, and everywhere else changes hands pretty frequently. I added Taiwan and Japan to my collection, and I finally have the management cap to take a few more countries too, but I'm not sure where to start. I don't think I want to expand into South America -- I really need research more than anything -- but there aren't many other options. Probably breaking up the EU is going to be my next order of business. HF can have China for now, as long as they're using the largest GDP in the world to kill xenos. (Though right now they seem to be fighting endless proxy wars vs. the Servants in Africa.)

[Salmeuk]

Lol at the political drama in Steam discussions.

the game definitely has a 'perspective' if you could call it that. I question its inclusion of such a wild variety of economic models (or whatever the drop-down menu selection is called, the one filled with Wikipedia's version of world governance models) when most seem mildly flavorful or, at worst, utterly demonstrative of a historicists perspective on future possibilities. Its strange to be researching Elon Musk's wildest fantasies while South America continues to suffer from a performative unrest despite an obvious change in global dynamic. regarding ukraine, I think the fact that it chose to include so topical a war that it is STILL ONGOING says something to the creator's attitude toward political simulation, or imagery. I kind of cringed at that, myself..

The game lacks political creativity in the sense you are locked into our modern perception of governance, but show me a game that doesn't these days.

I've been playing quite a lot. I gotta say, not having the demo's time limit looming overhead (and, you know, the ability to save) is real nice. I think they tuned upkeep costs from the demo because I had trouble controlling just Canada, the USA, and a couple of random Central American countries early on. I was hemorrhaging like 20 influence a month for the first 2 or 3 years. In the future I'd probably be quicker to cut loose countries that aren't worth their cost. In the demo I had a few runs where I rushed combat stuff just to get a taste of what it's like, but this time around I'm just playing the long, slow eco/research/political game. I spent probably 5 years quelling rebellions in Central America and federating and then unifying them (absolutely not worth it from a cost benefit perspective, I literally had 3 of my operatives permanently stationed there lowering unrest while I poured all effort into welfare trying to lower inequality so the unity set point was above 0.0).

I unified Canada and the USA and now I'm working on adding Cuba, Mexico, and the Central American Confederation, which will hopefully not tank my economy or ruin my meticulously managed inequality and education. The rest of the world has been a bit of a shitshow with the Servants taking complete control of the EU (and expanding it significantly) and Humanity First seizing China. I am not looking forward to the inevitable nuclear exchange. The Initiative took Russia, and Exodus took India, and everywhere else changes hands pretty frequently. I added Taiwan and Japan to my collection, and I finally have the management cap to take a few more countries too, but I'm not sure where to start. I don't think I want to expand into South America -- I really need research more than anything -- but there aren't many other options. Probably breaking up the EU is going to be my next order of business. HF can have China for now, as long as they're using the largest GDP in the world to kill xenos. (Though right now they seem to be fighting endless proxy wars vs. the Servants in Africa.)

now, do you think you would want to do that over again? I had this issue with the demo where the upfront capturing of large areas of the planet was not particularly difficult or interesting to do. And was then followed by many many turns of click-through research and paranoid re-positioning of agents despite knowing the A.I. likely lacks finesse. I kind of wonder if everything comes to a crux and the W/L is determined by some chaotic decisions made many turns previous. which seems unfun but in the genre's tradition, I suppose

[LoSboccacc]

>  you are locked into our modern perception of governance


well it is a game whose setting is $current day


so, once the alien go public, what's the lore reason for aliens not just conquering everything immediately when humanity is not ready?

[Nirur Torir]

How well do the Earth faction AIs do in the space war against the aliens?
If you play as Resistance or Humanity First, are you pretty much fighting alone, other than sometimes tripping over an AI colony? Or if you play as the Servants and do nothing but observe, will the Earth AIs often win the war?

[Journier]

when I played AI was garbage other than annoying you by taking over random nations on earth or a space station. IIRC you cant kill off another group sadly either, so its always annoying.

[Vivalas]

snip

I spent 30 minutes scrolling through reviews and found precisely one review that was political, so I can't help but wonder if these comments about political drama are trying to paint a narrative about a controversy that doesn't really exist, whether by accident or or in bad faith. Personally, the game is pretty open about starting in 2022, so I don't see why portrayal of the world in 2022 is such an issue.

Most of the other negative ones seem to be from people with 1 hour in the game who have no business playing game like this, UI, or flow. Out of these, the flow ones concern me since often in strategy games I can end up in a repetitive action loop that just becomes tedious (looking at you, Aurora), so that one concerns me, but the others 90% or so seem to say it's brilliant.

Interested in picking it up but I'd also need more disposable income first.  I love the Expanse, KSP, Grand Strategy, and most od the things one of the comments mentioned, so it seems up my alley.

[Malus]

now, do you think you would want to do that over again? I had this issue with the demo where the upfront capturing of large areas of the planet was not particularly difficult or interesting to do. And was then followed by many many turns of click-through research and paranoid re-positioning of agents despite knowing the A.I. likely lacks finesse. I kind of wonder if everything comes to a crux and the W/L is determined by some chaotic decisions made many turns previous. which seems unfun but in the genre's tradition, I suppose

Sure. But then, I have 1k+ hours in EU4 and quite literally always play the same 5 nations (England, Scotland, The Isles, Brandenburg, Oda), trying different starting strategies is always fun. I made tons of mistakes and there's a lot to optimize, and this is on the default difficulty. I'm actually getting my ass kicked by the aliens now and I'm losing stations and habs left and right. I don't even have proper interplanetary fleets yet -- the most I can scrabble together are a few missile boats and I lose three for every alien ship I shoot down. And now my shipyards are gone (I'm not sure if the AI intentionally attacked while I was upgrading my hab point defense or if it was just a very unfortunate coincidence.) Unifying countries seems to average miltech based on population share(?), so my conventional armies aren't in good shape either.

If anything, I really want to restart now that I know my way around the tech tree and have an idea of what projects are actually worth pursuing, what hab modules I should be putting in interface orbits vs. dumping on extreme earth orbit, etc. Early mines on the moon and especially Mars seem good even if you can't hold them, long-term investment in infrastructure like tier 2 labs/shipyards, less so (better to put those somewhere safe and keep them very well defended). In the demo, you could pretty trivially secure the US, China, and Europe, but with the balance changes in the full game it's harder to snowball and the AI factions have a chance to get a foothold at least. If I played much more aggressively and expanded with wars (and just ate the inevitable public opinion debuff from all the atrocities) I could be in a much stronger position planetside but I don't think the calculus would change up in space. With that said, the AI is surely exploitable (I just don't know how, yet.) I could see the early game getting tedious once you have the perfect strategy worked out and it does drag out too long, like probably 6 or 7 hours before you've finished "setting up the game board" and then the real game begins. The difficulty is in transitioning an early game lead into some kind of significant advantage: the tech gap between humanity and the aliens is massive and unless you really can just zerg them with tons of crappy ships (might be viable if I had 5x the shipyards and started building my fleet a few years earlier) you need to spend a while playing catch-up. The shared tech system also means that squabbling with the other human factions (Servants excluded) is kind of zero-sum, if anything you really want to be transitioning into space so you can grow the pie rather than spilling blood splitting it slightly differently.

[The_Explorer]

I like the academy the best (so far anyway, remind me sorta of the institute from fallout 4). Initiative are 2nd, but haven't played them so I could end up liking them more, apparently they are like the illumanity or something need to play them next. Or maybe they are more the corpo faction than illumaniti, not sure. Humanity first reminds me too much of the other "FIRST" that is going on today in the US. I'm pretty sure its meant to be too, its pretty on the nose. I know people are complaining of political stuff in the thread, but I'm mostly talking about in-game but there is in-game stuff related to real life stuff going on. Resistence is default faction I guess and reminds me of "humanity only, wont kill aliens except to defend humanity but ITS NO ILLEGAL ALIENS!" is what it seems like to me, literally, almost worse than humanity first and worse in some ways, at least humanity first is upfront about hating outsiders (except at least resistence likes other people, humanity first hates everyone probably each other too) lol.

Then got the servants, they are like humanity first but for the aliens, but seem fun to play for an easier game, they are pretty evil I guess if you want to protect earth. In my test game, they ended up getting everyone nuked lol. Which I shall add, nukes should be a lot hmm...harder to use. But guess thats balancing

The Protectorate...well...I don't really want to play them but I'd want them as an ally

Exodus is actually really cool, fight for position for 2nd for me, though wouldnt be #1. But I always thought a mass migration off a planet is pretty neat and different.

Maybe there is more to the factions than that. But in any case, I won't ever like humanity first. but maybe the others I'll find out more details overtime and like them more (or...dislike them more lol)

[The_Explorer]

Well faction stuff aside....which I guess made political but that is exactly how they seem to me in the game, with one being the worst faction ever on par with one in HoI4....anyway....

The game itself seems good to me. Very confusing and a lot to learn, but slowly figuring it out. I skipped the tutorial cause it forces you to play the resistance and I don't want to be them and I won't ever touch them at all. They should open the tutorial for everyone. But I find the game fun. I definitely won't ever ally with the resistance and humanity first, but I like all the other factions really. I think nukes can be harder to use or get, its pretty easy to just wipe out earth. But the game is worth the money mostly. But the gameplay I find great. I can see getting more playtime out of it than maybe EU4

Other than that, 99% of my time has been staring at stuff figuring it out. I haven't even really got that far honestly. because I refuse to do the tutorial as I won't ever play two nations in the game (and one of those is one that tutorial wants you to play ), I am forced to rely on videos and then remembering what to do lol. I'm sure will figure it out in time.

In any case, with the academy...I do really love starting with the ISS. Thats awesome. Though I guess gonna run into a fun "event" soon, does something where everyone will hate me or something dunno

[Cthulhu]

I started an HF game, haven't done too much but they don't seem /that/ bad?  The guy comes off pretty reasonable, there hasn't been any crazy right wing demagoguery, their perspective is basically "assuming this is anything less than an existential threat is an unacceptable risk, and nothing is off the table to survive an existential threat."  Which you might disagree with but it's not like they're nazis.  Maybe it gets worse later on but they come off as a more extreme version of the resistance who thinks feeling things out to determine the aliens' goals is wasting time we don't have, and if you're not willing to do anything to stop them you're in the way.  In any other circumstance yeah, that kind of hardline stance would be bad but when aliens invade it's kind of all bets are off, completely here be dragons territory ethically/philosophically.  In a "what if this really happened" scenario I can't say they're not right. Who the fuck knows.

The political drama was in the steam forums, not the comments, and was started by a guy who saw "welfare" in the priorities and started going on a rant about how the game had a woke left wing perspective.  That happens in almost every game though, there's a surprisingly large contingent of video game talking people who are basically non-sentient and will stimulus/response into giant crazy rants whenever they see certain trigger words or images.  The resistance leader is also a black woman, which is always good for a right wing rant in the steam reviews, but I dunno if they've hit that yet.

[The_Explorer]

yeah fair enough, to be fair and also I could probably actually play them and see for myself so I could be talking out of my a** and they are actually not what I thought they were and I may have egg on my face. I mostly gone by what I seen in videos and what other comments have said...from various places, not just the steam forums, but reddit and what not too. Maybe my knowledge of them is off, that and I haven't really got that far yet. Its really the name that got me the most honestly, and then see some posts about them and stuff made it more believable.

I did decide to check out resistence. So I looked in game and they actually don't seem bad at all like how some said they were. They just want everyone to be independent and left alone from what I can tell from initial impressions and then when aliens go away, they just disband I guess.

Also I like all the posts on steam before I stopped going to the terra invicta game section, saying the chinese were bombarding the game with bad reviews cause it shows taiwan as taiwan lol. but really when you look at them and use google translate, its 99%...not even taiwan mentioned xD at least thats how it looked when I saw the reviews last night. That whole game section there on steam needs some pretty heavy moderating, a lot of false info going around too (whether accident or not, the game IS just released so no one really knows officially all the "lore) that I probably fell for. Like actually don't think resistence is as bad as I thought, they just dont want someone else taking earth when humanity is already on it. I still dunno how I feel about humanity first though, the name is almost too much for me

[The_Explorer]

I think the setting though is what makes people jump to the political stuff on the steam forums, since it is pretty much stuff going on TODAY on earth. So I suppose it does kinda make it seem its a political game, even though its more a sci-fi game about aliens really

[Il Palazzo]

I didn't even see the woke thread. Although I've seen some complaining about transgender people in the game AND about the lack of transgender people in the game. There've been like four+ about the Chinese supposedly bombing the reviews 'because Taiwan', and at least a couple angry about Crimea being under Russian control. One was miffed that the war in Ukraine is 'dating' the game (as if having a starting date didn't do that already). Some Russians posting Zs too.
People went a bit nuts there.


As for the game itself - the start is harder than in the demo, right? Control limits seem much more stringent. Harder to dominate the everything. The exodus people are already settling the Moon, while I struggle to set up my first station and unify more than five countries into the EU. For all its economic benefits, the EU ain't exactly a boost powerhouse.

And I can't make myself play anyone else than the Resistance. They're the only sane ones.

[Cthulhu]

Management cap definitely feels more stringent, and yeah, apparently there's some countries in europe that are close enough to quickly be space-capable with some investment, Spain starts at like 40/50 on the spaceflight program priority, and some other countries already have spaceflight completed but just need investment in the Boost priority to get a launch facility built, but overall boost is really tight.  If you don't want to spend all your CP budget going for US/China/Russia I think it's inevitable you're gonna be slow on the space race. 

Another issue with Europe is it's far from the equator.  Possibly viable to go hard on Africa or South America and pump investment to get them modernized for spaceflight?  Proximity to equator gives a bonus to monthly boost income.

Did some asking, apparently Europe is pretty good for boost.  A lot of countries have spaceflight program complete so you just need to use boost priority and get a launch facility.  France controls french guyana which is close to the equator, and EU space facilities will automatically build there if it's available.  Probably wont' come online as fast, but you don't have to deal with the drawbacks of America/China/Russia.

[Jopax]

The game has definitely gotten harder since the demo, between the AI improvements and certain things being harder to pull off (like the super-EU strat) it's a lot more involved now, especially if you don't come in with a clear plan.

I'm on my second resistance run (first one ended terribly quickly since I, for some inexplicable reason decided to try and fix up half of Africa) and it's going ok, the biggest difference to the demo playthroughs is that space is nowhere near as developed as most factions seem to be focused on trying to stay alive and in control. Like, it took five years for anyone to break into freaking China, and despite me trying and pumping opinion to almost 40% the fucking protectorate somehow managed to get their foot in the door first.

Also, for folks struggling with getting a grip on the game and getting it off the ground Perun did a good guide on picking your opener. And he's planning to do some more guides, plus his playthrough of HF is good for getting some idea on how the game plays in general.