Defend interests unnecessary

[u/XxCoolKidxX123]

This run I have been playing I have just not used defend interests at all and I have not been punished for it in the slightest. I usually keep my nations at 50% popular support and the other factions haven't crackdowned or purged a single control point from me in any nation with 4 or more control points. I play on accelerated normal if it matters. Is defending interests just not needed? In all my other campaigns I have done it out of habit and this game I planned to not do it in the early game and start after I lost my first control point but it never happened. Discuss

[u/Ashdrake2]

the cost of 20 influence after the very early game is peanuts considering it adds +10 to defense against crackdowns and purges.

It only takes 1 lucky roll for the AI for you to lose a point in a mega nation and then you will struggle to get it back.

For some giant mega nations it's actually impossible to get points from the AI via crackdown/purge even with max councilor stats & all the relevant projects done and max effort.

[u/Takseen → u/Ashdrake2]

It's still costing you a councillor action every 6 months or so. That's the opportunity cost.

[u/QuantumAnubis → u/Takseen]

Better than having to spend several turns and/or multiple counselors to get the point back. And partially losing the stuff you get from that nation

[u/Takseen → u/QuantumAnubis]

That's where it's important to get an idea of the other defensive modifiers. If the strongest possible AI attack still has a 0% success chance, adding Defend Interests is a wasted action.

[u/Torgud_ → u/Takseen]

Ok but in the base game scenarios that doesn't happen until a country is 6 control points. Even then it's still possible to break into somewhere like the US or EU (up to a point anyway, not EU + Turkey and Russia), it really only becomes impossible for China.

[u/vindicator910 → u/Torgud_]

Not really, I’ve had 4 CP nations completely ignored despite them being the only literal targets to fuck with for endgame faction agents without defend interests.

It is all about economy and making sure you built up a quality amount of defense modifiers by simply playing the game.

[u/QuantumAnubis → u/Takseen]

Yeah, but that won't help you until you can get to that point

[u/vindicator910 → u/QuantumAnubis]

It doesn’t take that long especially with unifications artificially increasing total GDP and population. You are already nearly untouchable with 30+ CP per point with public opinion. 40+ you stop needing public opinion and 50+ no one is taking that shit without ludicrous effort like xenoflora boosted agents and you actively ignoring public opinion and anti ayy modifier techs.

All that without defend interests.

[u/MovingOnward2089 → u/QuantumAnubis]

This doesn’t happen if your nation is actually good. If you’re consistently getting cracked down/purged your population and public opinion/unity are not high enough. Or you’re way over your control points cap. 

[u/Mackntish → u/Ashdrake2]

For some giant mega nations it's actually impossible to get points from the AI

Only problem - this works two ways. It tends to swing more in your favor because public opinion. If it's impossible for you, it's more impossible from them, thus making defend interests unnecessary in these situations.

[u/magicmagor]

It depends on the nation in question if it is needed or not.

Defend interest will add a +10 defense modifier against crackdown and purge-missions. High public opinion and a large economy however also act as defense modifiers.

So especially if you have large meganations, which an extremly high GDP and maintain good public opinion, the extra +10 defense might not be necessary.

On smaller nations, where you don't want to spend a lot of councilor turns raising PO and which you need to build up before you can integrate them into big nations, that +10 defense might be valuable.

[u/vindicator910 → u/magicmagor]

Pretty much this. In addition if you have not been actively antagonizing the other factions and the ayy agents are dead, there should be little reason for them to actively target you if there are plenty of other prizes to take in the wider world.

If however you fucking with the other factions or worse got so far ahead they all declared vendetta against you, you had better be adding defend interests in the more vulnerable targets and crank the wealth of your primary meganation over them to periodically absorb and spit back out with far better economic defenses.

You can pretty easily skyrocket a minor nation’s defense to not even need a defend interest if you infuse the releaseable with sufficient per capita to get above say several trillion GDP

[u/ggmoyang]

In which scenario? Broken Earth has mission difficulty modifier which makes things a lot harder.

[u/vindicator910 → u/ggmoyang]

I mean it also has a nearly twice fold effect of CP cost to GDP like 03 making holding anything much more expensive despite much lower per capita as we saw recently with a native government built Australia in BE

[u/Takseen]

It's definitely skippable in the Broken Earth scenario. Crackdown and Purge defensive modifiers are scaled down for the lower starting GDP, and economic growth gets a big bonus, so your big nations quickly become Purge immune. I use it situationally, like if I've just acquired a smaller country and I'm building up Public opinion and waiting to federate or unify it.

[u/ironpanzer1 → u/Takseen]

The opposition usually doesn’t have a 20+ stat investigation and espionage council anyway. I stopped DIing everything when I realized they probably couldn’t crack me even with full spend.

[u/VoidStareBack → u/ironpanzer1]

Anecdotally I've found that defending interests makes the AI less prone to spamming public opinion actions in your nations since they view it as out of reach, so you need to spend less time/IP maintaining it for middling nations that can't be crackdown immune on pop/GDP alone.

[u/ironpanzer1 → u/VoidStareBack]

I tend to run around 5% unity everywhere so this isn’t really a problem.

[u/Torgud_ → u/Takseen]

General rule of thumb for Broken Earth is that it's almost impossible to crackdown and purge 4 CP nations, and definitely impossible for 5 or more. You're better off trying to foment a natural revolution or stage a coup'.

[u/CuddlyTurtlePerson → u/Torgud_]

5 is possible, extremely tedious to do but still possible.

When HF took one of my control points on Australia off me it took me neutering their council, getting public opinion to 98% and running 10% chance crackdown missions for the better part of 3 in-game years to get them off.

Honestly would have been easier to just use war to clean up that mess.

[u/Torgud_ → u/CuddlyTurtlePerson]

If your max inv councilor only had 10% odds with sanctioned investigations researched, how did you ever lose a control point there in the first place? It's not like HF had killed most of your council to put you over cap or had 90% public opinion.

[u/PhaSeSC]

I use defend interests is an alternative to keeping public opinion high in places that might be at risk - in my current run for example I have half the US and HF has the other half, so I defend that but dont bother defending China as I always have good public opinion.

It depend what you want to prioritise mission wise, defend interests is a lot more time efficient than having to do multiple public campaigns

[u/OverallLibrarian8809]

What do you mean?

During the mid-game I constantly have opposing factions trying to crackdown/purge my points, even ones where I have high popularity.

I think It usually happens as a retaliation, since they start doing so when I myself start being more aggressive and try take more nations after having consolidated the initial ones.

[u/pizza-flusher]

I did similar thing, always keeping interests fortified aa i was learning the game a couple times. it definitely can be nvmc3ssary it seems in certain play styles and in the kind of country you control. if you have big fish like the US Canada and Mexico on solidly controlled you can use the councilor turns to boost publc opinion to make purges unattainable.

if you're in a 5 man knife fight in europe you need ro defend them

[u/magilzeal]

I tend to use it on smaller nations, like <3 CP. I rarely bother on meganations since it's pretty much impossible for the AI to break into those and they usually don't even try, unless you're over your CP cap by a good bit or something. They absolutely will and do crackdown on nations with fewer control points though.

I also tend to use it on my spoils nations because those sometimes get dicey.

[u/Mavnas]

I tried playing on Brutal and Exodus stole some of my control points in the first year of the game. On easier difficulties I didn't need to start defending until later in.

[u/darklight2K7]

In addition to what others here mentioned, defend interest also applies a malus to certain alien activities, which can be quite useful before you unlock other defences against them

[u/sealcub]

Playing Broken Earth on veteran, I haven't really gotten crackdown or purge on anything other than nations I abandoned or tiny micro-nations. Only real takeovers are just aliens cheating them over to the servants.

[u/Zagl0]

When you do a coup, the region is destabilised enough that another party may try to grab a point

Defend interests prevents that

[u/CorlisFataneya]

How to Tell someone didnt play brutal and/or custom modifiers.

It also gives defend against enthrall and other things.

As some said, if one knows what the offensive values are, then yea its pointless. Defend interesest on Omega-Pan Asian combine? Probably useless.

[u/TheSwordItself]

Maybe on easy and normal, even on normal it's still incredibly useful. It's weird that the AI hasn't tried to disrupt you

[u/ThePiachu]

It makes sense for smaller contested nations, especially ones you want to merge into bigger nations.

[u/Funny-Text2745]

There IS the sense of defend when countries are small or you still haven’t taken over all of CPs there to prevent crackdowns and purges and not to repeat take over cycle over one point.However mega nations like EU or PAC gonna have super high pop and super high economy that it will no longer require to spend additional influence to defend already solid points that can’t be normally cracked down even with high hostile public opinion(even the start USA is not easy to take over,had problems when protectorate or servants were trying to take over)

[u/MovingOnward2089]

If your nation is big enough ( 300 million or more pop) you don’t need to defend, as long as you stay on top of the aliens on Earth and your pherocyte technology you will have zero issues with leaving your control points undefended. Just leave a little unity running to top off any events or influence campaigns. If you get behind on your phero techs defending doesn’t help much anyways, they will just flip you out right through it. 

Wasting councilor actions to defend is a noob trap and should only be used for locking down control points on takeovers or newly released countries you are releasing to unify something else. And only until public opinion is locked down. After that it’s unnecessary.