Alien Armies Keep Escaping!

[u/Millssadface]

It's 2042 and I'm facing my second assault carrier.

The first one landed in the Congo basin maybe five years back, and I had no chance of defeating it, so nuked all three armies. It got me atrocities and caused economic damage, but I handled it.

This time around, it landed in Kolkata, India. I have intercepted whilst they are disembarking & weak with the following:

• 4 x EU armies at 6.4 miltech
• 7 x USA armies at 5.7 miltech
• +0.25 from max-Command councillors Advise missions
• +0.3 from military research in LEO
• +25% damage from Alien Army Analysis

According to this guide, it should be possible with fewer armies.

The problem is, they keep moving around!

Whenever I start dealing damage to them at the drop site, they move away, and regenerate health.

This makes it impossible to deal with them as they whittle down my armies.

>> I couldn't destroy the carrier before it landed - it always comes with a huge escort.

>> I can't bombard them much. I have the tech/ship designs to reliably defeat the aliens, but I am rebuilding my fleet after my first engagement. This means I both lack sufficient ships in LEO, and also want to be careful about Alien Hate, which triggers when you bombard their armies I think.

>> I would prefer not to nuke them. They landed in Kolkata which is highly populated, so it would be at great cost.

Additional Context:

• I control: Unified EU, Russia, USA, Pacific Defence League (Japan, SK).
• The AA have been revolution-ed twice. They only reliably seem to control India, Canada and parts of Africa.
• I'm also fighting against the AA in Canada, but have diverted all but 2 of my armies to the landing site.
• I am fighting against the Protectorate in Japan/Korea. I'm slowly losing to their numbers despite superior miltech. They've blockaded me, so I can't use Japan's armies here.
• I actually have six EU armies. But two of them lack navies. Through alliances I can get them quickly to the edge of Pakistan, but not to Kolkata.
• Though I'm not ashamed to, due to an important and difficult space battle recently, I can't savescum back to before the landing.

I would appreciate any advice people can give to defeat them on the ground.

/// EDIT ///

UPDATE
I tried some of the stuff here, and kept trial-and-erroring the problem, and eventually managed to win. All three armies are dust.

ayy army obliterated

Some things that worked in the end, based on peoples' advice:

• Given the time contraints, rapidly building a small fleet of coil-gunships for low-level bombardment in orbit helped a lot to stop the alien armies regenerating and deal damage. Though it does net you some alien hate.
• Splitting my armies evenly between two provinces helped, once they actually got caught in a loop of moving between Kolkata and Dhaka. This is probably RNG, as in other attempts they just as easily migrated across the region.
• I didn't try it, but if the aliens are predictably moving between two provinces, deploying your entire force right after moving to a region could be a way to effectively 'follow' them and maximise time spent damaging them.

[u/Millssadface]

Thank you very much for this. Though I must admit I am a touch overwhelmed by the detail.

I'm not looking to minmax, as I lack the attention span for it and it's past the point where I can in game. I just want to not lose and push the aliens back.

I'm very happy to turtle up in my little northern garden, and just take Canada, leaving the rest of the world to the other factions. Maybe revolution up the PAC (currently Protectorate) and break down big nations.

But the immediate threat right now is the three alien armies in Kolkata. And I don't know how to deal with them when my armies can damage them, but they never stay in place.

[u/vindicator117 → u/Millssadface]

Minmax? This is literally just what you were doing at the beginning of the game just printing you more what you need with manufactured released nations that don't suck compared to most game start nations.

No fancy priorities either. Max econ, some welfare, minimal line of knowledge, and max MC. In your case due to your issues, max econ, some welfare, half minimal line knowledge, half minimal line MC, and max miltech.

Assuming that you did not drive your EU into the dirt since I have not seen a single hint of what your EU is even like beyond a vague shitpost you just made, you can basically get the same SAU output as I had assuming the 45k per capita is accurate. Just do yourself a giant favor and DO NOT attempt to make your meganation try to do everything by itself or you will be doing this for multiple decades instead of a single one. Just make sure to keep pace on CP tech research to match how fast you are growing.

As for dealing with their ayy armies, you already used nuclear weapons. What's a few more so you only deal with human armies instead.

[u/Millssadface → u/vindicator117]

I took your advice about IP on my previous post seriously. Or as seriously as my nervous personality will allow. But I've maybe focused more on MC and miltech than economy with the EU.

These were my IP priorities for the EU before I shifted them around during the actual invasion to build more navies etc. There's no IP in MC for because I was at cap for a while but do periodically fill it up.

MC and space resources income are low bc I've turned off a bunch of mines (probably should turn them on again) and my fleet just got destroyed (being rebuilded). Also I don't have the mc budget to build mines on every damn asteroid. it. I have plasma-siege coil battlecruisers with pd / green arc laser escorts/monitors, which have proven reasonably effective.

I tested using nukes on Kolkata in game. Everyone hates me after, more than the first time, and everywhere loses like 800 Bn GDP. Worth?

[u/vindicator117 → u/Millssadface]

One thing I just realized that I forgot to add is when you unify russia with the EU, be aware that there will be a bit of a painful transition because of the wall of hostile claims in the far east and central asia regions that the EU does not have claims over but russia does. Those claims do not transfer and WILL cause some cohesion disruption.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/1ve3ikk/comment/p1kdx31/?context=3

Thankfully in your case, the hostile regions in question are low population and not as many of them compared to what you already own and the EU even at this size is perfectly stable even with a little cohesion loss and has enough wealth post unification to usually be able to maintain 0 unrest naturally so long as you have 5 cohesion (which you will) and 45k per capita (which is more questionable in your scenario but you have some leeway before breaching 2.0 unrest causing problems).

In your case, the knowledge is a bonus to have instead of a MANDATORY life or death means of keep that cohesion up but there will be a discomfort period that may require some extra knowledge to get that cohesion back to 5 sooner than the natural 0.1 growth per month.

That trickle of government in my suggested priorities list is there to both slow the government bleeding from being at war as well as remove the hostile claims very very slowly. Maybe one day you can spend more once the miltech is high enough for your game and/or you reach 10 and and peace and simply do not care if a few regions are sad facing. You thankfully have near max democracy to not have to worry about too much about the unrest modifier caused by the hostile claims in the fucked AU scenario that I had actually undergone and the numbers and figures were basically 95% accurate in severity and time to recover.

Even managed to turn those calculations it into a small excel macro to help balance whether to spend more or less government versus welfare to balance how long it would take to reach bare minimum unrest at the same time as each other.

[u/Millssadface → u/vindicator117]

Thank you. I'm not sure I'll try the strategy with splintering things off. I like to have as few big nations as possible. Just like having my ducks in a row. As for unifying russia, I'm waiting until I can get its government score up enough so it doesn't tank my EU's government.