How to counter alien landing?

[Magic]

I'm playing as EU in 2030 when the first wave of aliens are landing. It seems like it's impossible to counter alien landing. Then the situation become dire like "50 alien and servant armies" or nuclear exchange. Meanwhile I've got no idea how to destroy them while landing cause:
1.They land at midAsia, where surrounded countries werent even bother to ally with you theres no way to send a troop to stop them
2.You cant target nuclear to them at landing stage, and apparently executives has 0% chance stop them. So even Im allied with the landed nation I can do nothing
3.After their army spawn and you launch the nuclear missile it says "alien army destroyed" but apparently they arent
4.bruh unfied with servant China
5.For sake idk how they had brought navy that easily blocked everyone else even with USA on my side
6.No way to stop another landing with sea blocked, gg

[Iron Horse]

You saved your game right before it lands. There are some warnings.

The worst possible place it could land is in the middle of China if you were playing as America or the EU. You load your saved game, and it may land somewhere else.

You ally with whomever the aliens land on, or go to war with them, or take over the country with the councilors. Sit two or three armies on the landing. The Aliens pop at half health. Your armies should be able to easily take them.

There is also the 8% change a 25 Command Councilor can take out the landing. 6% chance if you didn't get the tech that allows you to overkill.

If you got all the espionage techs, the places the alien administration take over are prone to rebellion.

[Blaarg]

The best way of dealing with them is blowing up the assault carriers before they can land.

Lacking that, nukes do destroy alien armies. However, while nukes will usually destroy a full stack of human armies, a nuke will only destroy one alien army in the stack. It will damage the other armies in the stack. Just keep nuking them (ideally on friendly allied terrain that you don't own/don't want to permanently own).

Once the alien armies are nuked out of existence, you are dealing with human armies which you can hopefully hold off. Until you regain control of low earth orbit, you can't really push on them, as orbital bombardment will ruin invading armies. Instead aim to contain them until your space fleet wins LEO. And then freely use said fleet to bombard them to pieces.

[Iron Horse]

I took out like three invasions 2035+ by sitting my armies on the landing in the first 30 days.

One day, the aliens sent me three assault carriers at once, so three alien landings. They all landed in Russia. I was the US, and the partial EU. Servants were China, and the Protectorate and Servants were fighting over Russia. I saved ahead of time, loaded my game, and all three of the Armies Landed in the EU. Problem solved.

[Pawleus]

Originally posted by Iron Horse:

I saved ahead of time, loaded my game, and all three of the Armies Landed in the EU. Problem solved.

For someone boasting to not think in vacuum ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/1176470/discussions/0/4358998287111025574/#c4358998644636332409 ) it's strange you miss that your save-scumming isn't even necessary in this case - you could attack Assault Carriers even with a token force (even 1 ship) and their landing operation would be cancelled with a large probability of assigning a new target for the next one.

[Swat__Raptor]

I've noticed that if you look at the assault ship right when they start their landing mission but before it triggers it will list what region they are targeting. With this information you can offer to ally with that country with your big army/ navy faction and if the country accepts then the mustering will trigger the alliance war and you have a good amount of time to send armies there to greet the landing aliens.

If the alien nation forms and they are able to build up a sizable army, if you can build enough naval power to blockade them then you can wait till they try to use a naval invasion of a country, somewhere they cannot escape from via land route. Once they declare war and invade a nation that is willing to ally with your countries then you join the allys war once they land a handful of armies which will trap them in hostile territory And then you send in your forces to mop them up, afterwards you can offer peace allowing them to move their remaining armies and you just wait for another such trap.

[Mercure]

you can attack the assault ship in space before it lands forcing it to land somewhere else

[Iron Horse]

Originally posted by Pawleus:

Originally posted by Iron Horse:

I saved ahead of time, loaded my game, and all three of the Armies Landed in the EU. Problem solved.

For someone boasting to not think in vacuum ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/1176470/discussions/0/4358998287111025574/#c4358998644636332409 ) it's strange you miss that your save-scumming isn't even necessary in this case - you could attack Assault Carriers even with a token force (even 1 ship) and their landing operation would be cancelled with a large probability of assigning a new target for the next one.

It takes 40 hours or so to get to the middle of the game. How many hours did you put in to come to your conclusion? Did you get a spread sheet out and hammer some hard math? Have you figured out how to min/max everything in such a way that everything else in the game lost meaning? That is what it looked like you did. That is what I meant by thinking in a Vacuum. That is not fun to me.

Personally, I have played this game on three separate occasions, with several months in-between. Every time, the AI works differently. It is hard to find guides. It is rough having to restart after 40 hours.

[Pawleus]

Originally posted by Iron Horse:

It takes 40 hours or so to get to the middle of the game. How many hours did you put in to come to your conclusion?

Exactly 0 hours of gaming time - I know a combat interrupts an operation from reading a changelog. But yes, I later tested it in the game even though it's not useful for me during my gameplays (I always just destroy Assault Carriers).

Originally posted by Iron Horse:

Did you get a spread sheet out and hammer some hard math? Have you figured out how to min/max everything in such a way that everything else in the game lost meaning? That is what it looked like you did. That is what I meant by thinking in a Vacuum. That is not fun to me.

To answer your questions: No and No, so why you don't stop trying to tell people what they do - you are apparently bad at determining it.

Originally posted by Iron Horse:

Personally, I have played this game on three separate occasions, with several months in-between. Every time, the AI works differently. It is hard to find guides. It is rough having to restart after 40 hours.

Why do you even restart when you save&reload, anyway? There is nothing wrong if you do it for the purpose of learning and restarting is usually a mistake because you can learn the most by failing despite best efforts (at least I do).

[Magic]

Originally posted by Blaarg:

The best way of dealing with them is blowing up the assault carriers before they can land.

Lacking that, nukes do destroy alien armies. However, while nukes will usually destroy a full stack of human armies, a nuke will only destroy one alien army in the stack. It will damage the other armies in the stack. Just keep nuking them (ideally on friendly allied terrain that you don't own/don't want to permanently own).

Once the alien armies are nuked out of existence, you are dealing with human armies which you can hopefully hold off. Until you regain control of low earth orbit, you can't really push on them, as orbital bombardment will ruin invading armies. Instead aim to contain them until your space fleet wins LEO. And then freely use said fleet to bombard them to pieces.

Bruh Im not sure we are on the same page. I tried very precisely destroy them on LEO/orbit bombardement. But what do you do after the alien invasion bar filled? Theres a fleet of 2 dreadnoughts and a battleship coming rightaway

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Two dreadnoughts and a battleship? Sounds like slow moving target practice. Or it should be if you actually are planning on fighting the aliens, which you should intend to do at some point if them landing armies is a problem.

[Magic]

I think I kind of get the trick, and I would like to share with everyone else:

Basically, you are going to WAR against aliens at some point, so the best option is to prepare two missile fleets, one at mars and one and Earth. Everything out of earth-lunar system should have least equip 2 defense arrays. Personally I feel corvettes with 4 nemesis torpedoes are good for this job.

Then, when the aliens landing craft, whether you gonna take some small risk intercept them with your missile fleet at LEO, or bombard them with another non-missile fleet while they are offloading. Then you gonna enter WAR STAGE. Generally at start they will just sending something like one cruiser but there also might be some capital ships at LEO.

Or, if you are not very confident and doing generally well against the servants(make sure they dont have nukes)-like in my new save they only had Australia-you can just let them land and nuke them. Every landing craft will spawn 3 armies and you will need one for each. This, strangely enough, wont irratate the aliens. However every nuke you use will worsen the environment and have a negative impact on GDP

[Pawleus]

Originally posted by magic:

Personally I feel corvettes with 4 nemesis torpedoes are good for this job.

Except, a Corvette can have 4 Nemesis torps only if it launches at least 1 ;)

[Flaming]

I'd say just orbital bombardment with a small fleet of fairly small ships with railgun weapons or something similar for early game. If the aliens get pissed and attack it's disposable. Also if you have trouble with keeping your space stations alive just do what i did and make moon bases. The gravity is usually so low you can build many space ports there and try again and the moon is so close to earth at most all you'd need is a refueling station which you also probably don't need if they're just going into low orbit bombardment as sacrificial lambs. I took down most of the landing craft this way except like one or two and both times it was in a territory i either had or could easily invade.

I haven't had to use a single nuke yet in my game though a loose nuke went off in the EU which i owned and project exodus nuked alien armies invading south africa so much it wracked up atrocities and i was worried they'd start global nuclear winter.

[=]

I kill them in orbit now but I used to use orbital bombardments to wipe out their armies on the ground (railguns and/or green lasers can be used for this). This was a few patches ago but I assume it would still work.

You can also use agents with a very high command skill to destroy the disembarking armies but it is a very difficult mission.

[Magic]

Originally posted by Pawleus:

Originally posted by magic:

Personally I feel corvettes with 4 nemesis torpedoes are good for this job.

Except, a Corvette can have 4 Nemesis torps only if it launches at least 1 ;)

idk apparently some alien large mount have more than 1000km range but generally torps have enough range for most ships. Anyway the nemesis are just OP, if you dont use them (nor any other missiles) it just seems impossible to counter alien battleships/dreadnoughts. Like I've tried in skirmish with 3 green arc laser battlecruiser vs 1 alien battleship and they cant even penetrate its armor, meanwhile I can counter a fleet with 2 dreadnoughts + 1 battleships + 4 small ships with merely 8 nemesis corvettes and 3 battlecruisers (which are basically meatshields) without suffer a single loss