how to tell you have lost

[Altmunster]

This seems like a game where the effects of early bad decisions are unrecoverable. Is there some quick indicator that one can use to determine if they are already in check mate status?

[Toblm]

When the aliens have occupied the earth except for your capital in Australia.... it might be time to give up. We all know the Aliens can't invade Australia, because Australia, but neither can you weaponize it to retake the earth.

[Cyborg]

Aliens hold a quarter of earth and land 4 pods-> now 18 Alien armies.

[Altmunster]

got it. So a long was from now, as I do not even have a single space ship. but i control a lot of nukes. maybe i can just nuke most of the world and sit out the fallout in siberia.

[Buddahxx]

See I feel the exact opposite. I came away from my first game thinking "man you can really screw up in this game and there is so much opportunity to come back"

[Altmunster]

That is encouraging. I limited myself early on by exceeding my control point limit by a lot, which robbed me of influence (was not aware of the significant penalty) to defend key interests. so I lost some things I wish I hadn't. That said, i still have three armies, bunches of nukes, good boost stream, moon base, but.... the aliens are already all over the solar system and I have not a single ship.

[Buddahxx]

I usually don't have any ships until probably 2028-2030. Those early ships vs the aliens is like putting a musket vs a machine gun. And the other factions don't seem overly excited to engage in space combat either.

[Batailleuse]

Originally posted by Altmunster:

That is encouraging. I limited myself early on by exceeding my control point limit by a lot, which robbed me of influence (was not aware of the significant penalty) to defend key interests. so I lost some things I wish I hadn't. That said, i still have three armies, bunches of nukes, good boost stream, moon base, but.... the aliens are already all over the solar system and I have not a single ship.

yeah ... it's a balancing act to win pretty much.

you must balance between earth and space, and techs.

you can technically with without investing anything in military only if you start with EU or USA. as their military is already pretty strong, and no other faction can match them to begin with.

just make sure you have enemies enabled, as you will sometimes get events which give +0.1 militech. and that's almost better than a whole year full investment in military.

Science is super important, the more you have as early as possible, the faster you can reach the techs to actually beat aliens.

and for that you need to make as many Orbital base around earth as possible.

and have Skunk work on every single station you make on other planets.

you can reach 100-150% more faction project speed with that alone. so it's not to be frowned upon.

Try to always control 1 global tech to steer towards either earth to orbit defense, or good ship tech, and then just pump everything in your faction tech.

Other faction will eventually unlock other useful stuff, like most expedition missions, orbital/hab t2 and such. just make sure you steer techs when needed.

if you really need something done, drop all points into 2 global tech. stop your faction techs. and progress things faster when needed.

and for space supremacy its all about numbers. monitor is on top of almost anything provided they have a good PD and good missiles, but you need several (10+) to be able to defend earth.

if you get that around earth, it's just a matter of time before you actually get tech far enough to go kill aliens i suppose.

[Xavori]

It happens at the point where you screw up and click "New Game". As soon as you make that fatal mistake, you've doomed the Earth to a slow, painful death.