There should be 8 factions. Not 5.

[Yeoman]

You are fighting three allied factions almost entirely focused on you, the player. The Servants and The Protectorate are clearly aligned and actively being helped by the Alien faction. The problem is that none of the other four factions help you, help each other or even bother to fight off the alien menace. It is clear and confirmed that AI factions do not fight off alien incursions nor do they clear fauna/flora. They just fight amongst themselves and against you.

This is fine and fun in the early game where the narrative is that each group is figuring things out on their own, but once the game starts getting serious it starts to show its failings.

I have had my nations, stations and off-planet bases lost to the three enemy factions without explanation. These activities do not follow the game's mechanics, since the factions are clearly at a massive advantage in capability. When I tried to carry out the same assaults, my probabilities were between 0-20% success, yet I lost Russia and Gran Bogota within months to Purges and sudden Popularity loss, and this was with me having researched the appropiate defensive projects and every CP defended.

I'm actually kind of angry. I've defended this game against simplistic players that wanted everything delivered to them, within the first hour of gameplay. But now I see that the game's tutorial and constant tooltip pop-ups don't really prepare you for anything that happens in the game itself.

[Yeoman]

I'm sorry if I rambled, but as I wrote it I realized there was so much off with the game. It's true, it is feature complete and very bug free. But its Early Access because it misses one of the most important aspects of a game: balance.

[Sgt.Ray]

In my game as Resistance.. Humanity first has some of the EU and stays out of my lane. The only faction that messes with me is the servants but I screw with them all the time so I expect that. The others seem to be too busy or running from me when I knock them out of a country. As far as alien stuff I had a few megafuna's and the AI took them out. Even the USA who no one controlled at the time saved the day in Romania from megafuana. I'm just now making a play for Mars so maybe I'm not far enough yet but so far the AI seems to be acting right for me so far....I guess I'll find out if Humanity First fights along side me in space battles with aliens.

[Sgt.Ray]

The AI isn't Evil Genius tier thinking but it sure isn't stupid from what I can tell so far.

[Yeoman]

Originally posted by Sgt.Ray:

In my game as Resistance.. Humanity first has some of the EU and stays out of my lane. The only faction that messes with me is the servants but I screw with them all the time so I expect that. The others seem to be too busy or running from me when I knock them out of a country. As far as alien stuff I had a few megafuna's and the AI took them out. Even the USA who no one controlled at the time saved the day in Romania from megafuana. I'm just now making a play for Mars so maybe I'm not far enough yet but so far the AI seems to be acting right for me so far....I guess I'll find out if Humanity First fights along side me in space battles with aliens.

I'm at Early 2032, and its clear that the Servants and Protectorate get bonuses from Alien activity. That's my complaint. The Servants, Protectorate and Aliensare effectively one large faction with hidden bonuses. I'm losing stations, ships and countries without explanation to them. Humanity First had total control of the European Union until two years ago when the Servants took it all away. China turned Protectorate in less than one year, when no one else could get in.

[Zuul]

You're losing them "without explanation" because you haven't gotten far enough to FIND the explanation. I can assure you, there is an explanation, and the bonuses aren't hidden in the way "hidden" is traditionally used. There is also most definitely something you can do about it.

[ASMR gaming]

research alien related technologies

[Yeoman]

Originally posted by Zuul:

You're losing them "without explanation" because you haven't gotten far enough to FIND the explanation. I can assure you, there is an explanation, and the bonuses aren't hidden in the way "hidden" is traditionally used. There is also most definitely something you can do about it.

That may be the case but it also ties into another problem in the game: You can only do so much and what you can do is very limited given the scope.

You can research three techs max, and three projects max but if you devoted equal effort to each it could take you up to a decade to gain access to any benefit. And focusing efforts leads to the issue that there are MANY techs and projects to research. Focusing on one or two just makes the other ones last even longer.

[Riftwalker]

also, consider just snooping around the servants for a while and then assassinating or detaining a few, this can put the pain on them hard. keep looking around in high unrest areas under servant or protectorate control as they'll need someone to perform stabilize nation runs. how easy it is to see enemies is based on investigation stat, get someone to just pump into that stat especially if they have the ability to investigate councillors. (if you detain a bunch of councillors at once, the AI may fire them to replace them)

Councillors and orgs are the only hard assets a faction has, target them there for long term advantages.

oh and hostile takeover as many things as ou can from servants that allow for assassination or detainment

[Prisoner 76561197992841073]

Originally posted by Yeoman:

Originally posted by Sgt.Ray:

In my game as Resistance.. Humanity first has some of the EU and stays out of my lane. The only faction that messes with me is the servants but I screw with them all the time so I expect that. The others seem to be too busy or running from me when I knock them out of a country. As far as alien stuff I had a few megafuna's and the AI took them out. Even the USA who no one controlled at the time saved the day in Romania from megafuana. I'm just now making a play for Mars so maybe I'm not far enough yet but so far the AI seems to be acting right for me so far....I guess I'll find out if Humanity First fights along side me in space battles with aliens.

I'm at Early 2032, and its clear that the Servants and Protectorate get bonuses from Alien activity. That's my complaint. The Servants, Protectorate and Aliensare effectively one large faction with hidden bonuses. I'm losing stations, ships and countries without explanation to them. Humanity First had total control of the European Union until two years ago when the Servants took it all away. China turned Protectorate in less than one year, when no one else could get in.

That's odd.. I'm in November 2032 and I'm kicking their asses, especially the Protectorate. I've been capturing their bases and assassinating their councilors... and they can't retaliate. They are effectively neutered. Even assassinating some dumbass aliens. Same goes for the Servants who aren't doing very well for themselves. I'm currently in control of a $50 trillion EU economy, with several destroyers in construction and the future seems bright for humanity.

[Yeoman]

Originally posted by Riftwalker:

also, consider just snooping around the servants for a while and then assassinating or detaining a few, this can put the pain on them hard. keep looking around in high unrest areas under servant or protectorate control as they'll need someone to perform stabilize nation runs. how easy it is to see enemies is based on investigation stat, get someone to just pump into that stat especially if they have the ability to investigate councillors.

Councillors and orgs are the only hard assets a faction has, target them there for long term advantages.

You are right that councilors are the only hard assets in a faction... including yourself. You have 5-6 guys to: control nations, advise nations, reinforce assets, search for aliens, search for enemy agents, kill agents, turn agents, study agents, study aliens,destroy alien assets, steal projects, slow projects, stabilize a nation, destablize a nation, increase public support, coups, flip stations, flip habs, flips ships, check in on other agents and motivate other agents. All that in a world with over 50 countries, and a system with over 100 hab and station spots.

This is yet another issue. I appreciate the advice to use agents, but their hands are pretty busy too.

[fortydayweekend]

Originally posted by Joostorm:

Originally posted by Yeoman:

I'm at Early 2032, and its clear that the Servants and Protectorate get bonuses from Alien activity. That's my complaint. The Servants, Protectorate and Aliensare effectively one large faction with hidden bonuses. I'm losing stations, ships and countries without explanation to them. Humanity First had total control of the European Union until two years ago when the Servants took it all away. China turned Protectorate in less than one year, when no one else could get in.

That's odd.. I'm in November 2032 and I'm kicking their asses, especially the Protectorate. I've been capturing their bases and assassinating their councilors... and they can't retaliate. They are effectively neutered. Even assassinating some dumbass aliens. Same goes for the Servants who aren't doing very well for themselves. I'm currently in control of a $50 trillion EU economy, with several destroyers in construction and the future seems bright for humanity.

I get the feeling there's not that much limiting snowballing (on either side), some people are struggling from the start and others get way ahead. I wonder if any thought has been put into letting players recover from a bad position or if it's totally sink or swim

[Wolfboy]

Originally posted by fortydayweekend:

Originally posted by Joostorm:

That's odd.. I'm in November 2032 and I'm kicking their asses, especially the Protectorate. I've been capturing their bases and assassinating their councilors... and they can't retaliate. They are effectively neutered. Even assassinating some dumbass aliens. Same goes for the Servants who aren't doing very well for themselves. I'm currently in control of a $50 trillion EU economy, with several destroyers in construction and the future seems bright for humanity.

I get the feeling there's not that much limiting snowballing (on either side), some people are struggling from the start and others get way ahead. I wonder if any thought has been put into letting players recover from a bad position or if it's totally sink or swim

I'm definitely in the former category.

[🎀Hara🎀]

ahh i just got this i focused entirely on russia only for the aliens to show up with their overpowered stats and basically take my whole country from me.

humanity at first was at 21% control of the planet and owned half of china and all of india
resistance was at 19% control of the entire planet and had unified the warsaw pact and had half of china

didn't matter though Servants controlling only 1 country Canada within a few months they owned all of china and the US and were trying to take russia from me

i was told early game was focusing on planet stuff then i could have fun in space but this game wants you to ignore space and mess around with the planetary stuff where the alien supporting factions get huge bonuses

like i cannot believe how good of a start it was with the resistance and humanity first combined owning 50% of the global ecconomy and the 2 alien supporting factions were the weakest and then it flipped completely

[🎀Hara🎀]

honestly i would have a lot more fun in this game if there was no servants , protectorate or aliens and it was just humans fighting over stuff instead

like how am i meant to have fun colonising space and having space battles when the alien supporters have an I WIN button that can just steal massively defended countries for you that you spent 10 years building up

[Bauxite]

I'm not patient enough to play this game while dealing with all the difficulty while I'm still learning a few things, and there is a lot to learn here. Things kind of snowballed for the worse on my first game, especially since I basically pissed off everyone. So I started my 2nd game with 7 factions. No protectorate to worry about pissing off.

However, I did find out how to turn enemy agents on my 2nd game and adjust their failure rate.

Once you've got that, you've got all of the info on agents, their current missions, and current tech research for that faction. Additionally, this makes targeting their people much easier if you have the resources to do so. I'm kind of a fan of detaining agents more than killing them, unless they become more skilled. They always seem to have replacements. Identifying the agents that can use the Undercover trait is good too. Getting rid of them reduces the chance of those agents hopping onto your stations and ships without resorting to space marines and their own ships.

Sabotaging a project seems to completely destroy the progress on the selected research in the early game. It's a bit fun to watch them build a couple thousand points of progress, then sabotage it and make them do it again.