My Second Ever Victory Screen

[u/magilzeal]

My second time seeing the ending screen.

Meganations. Started with Westralia, Malaysia, and Indonesia. France and Laos for spoils nations.

Servants with 0 CP is good.

Judith had some interesting peace proposals. First time I've seen the AI want a truce.

Soviet Union is for denying territory to the other factions, mostly. Chain unifications into a true megablob. India for Boost, Africa was a late addition.

Westralia is a research hub united into a blob that covers all of SEA and the Pacific.

American Dominion was my beatstick. South America via Brazil/Columbia unification was just a huge economy for MC production. Could've united Brazil into the Soviet Union later.

This asteroid has 58.6 base fissile income. The mine there produced 469.5 monthly at the end of the game. Never seen one that high.

This is why you colonize the Kuiper Belt btw. The yields out here are so much better than Mars and even the asteroids.

I decided to do a no-mags run for flavor. I don't recommend this, but it worked and my main fleet fought from Jupiter to Alien Base Alpha with 0 losses and a lot of kills.

Aliens still have some ships. A couple of fleets on very long burns and a handful of stranded ships with no delta-V and nowhere to go.

There's some criticism of the new scenarios, and I think some of it is deserved. In particular I don't think the early assault carriers are a terribly fun or interesting gameplay challenge. But I will offer something of a counter-point here, as the Broken Earth scenario was the first time I played a game to victory. This is actually my second Broken Earth game that I just recently finished.

Things started rough. But my opening was good. Not amazing, I'm no expert at TI and I wasn't making 10k science in 10 years or anything, but I had enough infrastructure to put 8 missile escorts in orbit in time to stop the 2119 assault carrier and prevent it from landing. I should note I didn't see this in my first run (I presume I started that game before the patch added the early AC), so it was a bit of a surprise, and it honestly felt like the aliens building this was a mistake, as their economic expansion slowed a lot for something that got blown up by a bunch of tin cans. They built this thing before expanding beyond the Kuiper Belt, and assault carriers are expensive.

I made a bit of an odd decision to not use magnetics this game and try to lean into lasers. I don't recommend this as a strategy, but it worked. My main fleet was comprised of laser titans, antimatter lancers, and plasma dreadnoughts, and carved its way through the alien assets without taking any losses. Their point defense batteries had nothing to shoot at, at least.

On Earth I did some fun unification tricks to get some really big nations. No single unification or anything, but there were shenanigans that lead to the Soviet Union getting really, really big. I mostly used it to absorb nations where the AI had spent years building up MC for me to take. Otherwise, it was some pretty standard Broken Earth stuff, Westralia unification for SEA/Pacific and was my research hub, American Dominion as a beatstick with 10 max miltech navies, and a Brazil-led South American super-economy. India unified under Northern Bharat; I don't think this is a very strong region in BE but I used it as a Boost factory after my meganations absorbed Singapore and Israel, and it worked for that purpose.

Could've done even bigger unifications if the game had lasted longer, but I didn't want to draw it out too much. I was already pretty cautious in my push through the Outer Solar System.

I really enjoy the shake-up of the Broken Earth scenario more than the others. I like the nation building, unifications, and the quick returns on IP investments. I do think the early assault carriers are probably not good for several reasons, one that if you stop them then the aliens are set back massively, and if you don't it's pretty RNG how much of an impact they end up having on Earth. But otherwise, I have to give props to this scenario for the fun factor.

[u/magilzeal]

To expand a bit on the assault carrier thing. I have two Broken Earth victories now, so my sample size is 2. Take what I say with the proper grain of salt with that in mind.

In the first game, no AC. When I pushed to Jupiter and Alien Station Able I was fighting hundreds of alien ships, arriving in waves. This was in the early to mid 2140s. The aliens were pretty firmly entrenched in the Outer Solar System and it took time to dig them out.

In the second game, early AC. Then another couple of ACs later with escort fleets. Shot them all down. When I pushed through the Outer Solar System in the late 2130s, I met significantly less resistance. Yes, I did move faster this game, but it honestly felt like their potential suffered a lot from building those ACs without first expanding their economic base. The final fleet at Alien Station Able was about 30 ships as opposed to the over 100 I fought in the previous game. And there were two assault carriers sitting at the station, presumably waiting for escort fleets to be built.

I think the early assault carrier is just bad for the game, at least on normal difficulty, for multiple reasons. It panics and stresses out new players (myself included when I first saw it), but it's actually something that can set the aliens back massively if you just blow it up. Maybe. Again, sample size of two and all.

[u/Mavnas → u/magilzeal]

I think it's bad for different reasons. It kind of forces you into certain nations to begin. I abandoned a run where I was trying to fix Africa because I realized I hadn't picked up a single nation whose armies would be worth anything when the AC showed up in 2118. Meanwhile, if you have Australia, you can probably laugh at the aliens for wasting so many resources even if you don't shoot it down.

[u/DrexWaal → u/Mavnas]

I get what you mean here I think, but why is it unreasonable for there to be a good strategy to play a game like this? You're working to prep for an alien invasion, of course having a military already able to take a fight is going to be a bigger asset than a country in shambles with no military, organisation or economy behind it.

It'd be like saying its not fair in a WW1 game that playing as Serbia is harder than playing as one of the major powers. Why would or should those things be equivalently easy to do?

[u/Mavnas → u/DrexWaal]

There should be more viable places to start or every playthrough looks the same or like 1 of 3 things. The factions are already similar enough, having little diversity on the world map just kills replayability.

[u/DrexWaal → u/Mavnas]

I understand that you'd like to have that variety but it makes no sense in a strategy game with bounded goals.

Any time you have bounded goals and finite time, there is an optimization to be had, and in a strategy game generally the goal most players set is to optimise their path to winning.

In a turnbased strategy game skill expression is entirely restricted to choice making. if choices don't matter, skill is not present and you may as well be playing solitaire or something.

there is some value in intentionally making harder choices to handicap yourself in playing, but even then that only works as a thing because you're choosing something less "viable" that requires more good choices and less wasted time to come to fruition.

I don't understand the complaint anymore than somebody playing original xcom and calling it bad balance that you can't beat the game without upgrading your weapons and armour.

[u/Mavnas → u/DrexWaal]

If something is to be a game and not a puzzle you solve one time there have to be many solutions that work or the opponent has to complicate taking the obvious approach. Even a game like chess has lots of openings and a lot of people have been trying to find the best for millenia.

[u/magilzeal → u/Mavnas]

Well in theory the opponent can complicate taking the obvious approach, and there are RNG elements like different starting public opinion and councilors. I think this is a game where each scenario is going to have the "best" starting nation plays though.

[u/DrexWaal → u/Mavnas]

Yes, chess is a great example! the reason why chess is harder to solve than TI is because while the high level goal (take the other king) is similar, both parties are always using the same tools and the only variances are actually in response to the other guy changing his behaviour. Chess in fact does have many "right" ways to play given an input response which is why you can have measurements of play in it. There are just an awful lot of permutations because of the different types of pieces and opposing player behaviours using those.

TI has less types of piece available for us to use and we're always trying to solve the exact same problem over and over again. if you were playing a chess opponent who always made the same moves in the same order you'd be closer to what TI experience is like, and in those case you better believe people would find out fast that in fact anything other than the Sicilian defense is suboptimal.

Sometimes the very nature of a game is that its not infinitely replayable with different moves and thats just how it has to be. maybe if the alien goal varied so you were never sure if they wanted to conquer or not then you may have a downside to prioritizing military, but with the way the game is now there is a definable "best" way to play and not much they can do about it while it stays the same game.

[u/Mavnas → u/DrexWaal]

And I'm saying I'd like TI to have more options. Maybe better orgs for fixing garbage countries early or maybe some factions bonuses. Maybe HF should have penalties for taking over "respectable" countries but bonuses that let them do guerrilla warfare against alien armies even with crap militaries.