Enthrall Elites (Spoilers!!!)

[Jaszczomp]

Spoilers ahead.

Okay, i just wanted to make sure i understand what i've just witnessed.

Around 2030 Aliens will start to send those super-hard hybrids at you to deal with. And they have "enthrall elites" which allows them to take out any control point, no matter how big nation is, no matter how large your support is, no matter if its "defended" or not.
And you're not informed about any of it at all.
And because they have stupidly big concelent bonus, you have to activly hunt for them without even knowing they exist.
So once you figure out that all of your priceless control points of super-nations keep switching to servants because of them, you have to:
Kill at least one of them (which is hard on itself and they are extremlly hard to kill and no matter how good your concuilors are you have to count on pure luck...) ,wait for autopsy project to pop-up, do autopsy project.
So you can get 30,000(!!!) points project to develop counter messure to alien pheromones or whatever those are. Which translate to giving aliens -3 pentally roll when doing that mission. Which in practical terms means that "enthrall elites" will have 40-60% succes ratio instead of 80-90%. Later, with great difficult and having to relly on pure luck, I meanged to capture one of them and it gives me project to "talk to them", does it provide you with any, actually useful and feasable contermessure to straight up debilitating and comicaly overpower ability?
Please tell me i've just been unlucky and/or missed something?
This can't be "working as intended", right?

During all of my years i cannot recall a sigle game-mechanic as bad and detrimental to an experiance as this one. I've seen people complain about it since it was discovered but i am yet to see it actually adressed by devs? This single ability literally ruins your playthrough. You can only watch as your carefuly created and nurtured nations and network of alliances/federations is destroyed within couple of turns and not only you have no way of stoping it but its possible to not have any idea what is happening. What the actual ♥♥♥♥ were they thinking?

If i knew that game has that mechanic i would've never buy it.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Jaszczomp:

Around 2030

It starts FAR sooner than that.

no matter how big nation is, no matter how large your support is

National GDP is a defense against it.

And you're not informed about any of it at all.

Didn't you read what the game told you when you completed the objectives prior to researching Alien Movements?

And because they have stupidly big concelent bonus, you have to activly hunt for them

So?

without even knowing they exist.

Wherever you see alien activity pop up is somewhere that they were on the turn that it was discovered. They can only move to adjacent regions until the pro-alien factions research Alien Diplomacy, which will allow them to move between those pro-alien factions' CPs.
You can also find them by finding suspicious Servant CP changes, or a large amount of pro-alien sentiment in places that don't make sense otherwise (generally a rather even split between Servant and Protectorate)

no matter how good your concuilors are you have to count on pure luck...

How is that different from anything else councilors do? Almost all of their actions are chance-based.

So you can get 30,000(!!!) points project

There are other, cheaper projects that defend against it, most of which are locked behind the global tech Arrival Security.

This can't be "working as intended", right?

Of course it is.

If i knew that game has that mechanic i would've never buy it.

Then watch Lets Plays before you buy games.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Jaszczomp:

And you're not informed about any of it at all..

You're informed about alien mind control ability and them messing with humans around 2023-24 if you're doing story missions AND reading the texts.

So you'd ignored / skipped the story at your first run - definitely not the best move, TI is not some kind of mobile casual "CLICK IT and BUY BOOST" game.

Originally posted by Jaszczomp:

Which in practical terms means that "enthrall elites" will have 40-60% succes ratio instead of 80-90%.

That's happening mostly because you:
a) Ignored the story and allowed aliens to roam on Earth (they're preparing for the enthrall first so stack bonuses to it).

b) Ignored the space and allowed alien ships to perform Surveillance missions on Earth orbit (that helping A LOT to enthrall later). So you basically ignored 2/3 parts of the game and now blame game from falling into death spiral? O_O

[wei270]

well there is alot of information that is just not available to the player and this is not back in the xcom days where the players are willing to find out information about game mechanic them selfs. the develop should make these information more accessible to the broader player base.

also your collective councilor science point helps you defends against enthrall but that does nothing if they stack up a huge bonus over the years.

[corisai]

Originally posted by wei270:

well there is alot of information that is just not available to the player and this is not back in the xcom days where the players are willing to find out information about game mechanic them selfs. the develop should make these information more accessible to the broader player base.

Actually classic XCOMs don't have any kind of warning at all - running into first mind control or first chrysalids / tentaculates was always a huge shock for new players.

TI warn you several times through story objectives texts (after first abduction research, then following interactions with alien on Earth).

Plus IMHO you don't need a detailed information to find out that alien ships doing missions on Earth orbit = bad thing (c'mon - we already know from Store page that TI is about repelling alien invasion so they're definitely not come in peace).

P.S. But I will agree and AFAIK it was already suggested to devs - probably it would be better to get a special warning message on first alien enthrall elites done against player CPs. It could help such players like OP who get used to skip story texts.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

there's lots of much cheaper researches available to increase defense against enthralling. you can get a total of -6 or -8 to the missions reasonably early which converts Enthrall Elites from an unstoppable tide of CP flips to on occasional annoyance.

it's also often worth it to strip +persuasion orgs from aliens, they need high persuasion to really pull it off in rich countries.

whats weird is how pointless Enthrall Public is and how the aliens just dont bother with it after a while it feels like

[corisai]

Originally posted by TheDeadlyShoe:

there's lots of much cheaper researches available to increase defense against enthralling. you can get -6 or -8 to the missions pretty early which is huge.

True, but it depend on game difficulty. While it's a good amount of protection for Normal, it not enough to save you on Veteran/Brutal if you aren't going to total war ayys ASAP (technically you're on timer to start attacking Surveillance ships on those difficulties).

[Cicero]

This is a mechanic which can be countered, but you can't ignore it until it snowballs.

Stopping alien surveillance missions in earth orbit also slows down their ability to enthrall elites I believe, since that skill relies on abductions and surveillance missions give them free abductions. Eventually, once you can stop them from deploying new agents with ship crashes, you can kill all the alien agents on earth and stop the problem permanently.

[BlueOrange]

The 30,000RP project is terrible value. Push the questline, and you'll get 10,000RP projects that do the same job. Stack enough of those projects, and you can be effectively immune to enthrall.

This actually makes a lot of sense to me, as someone who has worked professionally developing new technologies. The first implementations are "Well, we have a vague clue about what's happening, and we can do some horrendously expensive stuff to get some basic information based around working really hard to interpret vague clues."

And then later on, it's "We know exactly what's going on, so we can just do X."

I still haven't completed the 30,000RP project that I got as the first tool against the aliens - the later ones were so much better. The trick is to have someone with Investigation 25, and someone (else, probably) with Espionage 25. That can give you a fair chance that (with repeated attempts) you can kill an alien. The good news is that the aliens have difficulty replacing their dead agents - one assassination buys you a lot of quiet.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by TheDeadlyShoe:

whats weird is how pointless Enthrall Public is and how the aliens just dont bother with it after a while it feels like

I haven't noticed them stopping it, but it's still a substantial boost for Servant and Protectorate to use their own councilors to do things.

[Angry Obnoxious Goose]

Originally posted by BlueOrange:

The 30,000RP project is terrible value. Push the questline, and you'll get 10,000RP projects that do the same job. Stack enough of those projects, and you can be effectively immune to enthrall.

This actually makes a lot of sense to me, as someone who has worked professionally developing new technologies. The first implementations are "Well, we have a vague clue about what's happening, and we can do some horrendously expensive stuff to get some basic information based around working really hard to interpret vague clues."

And then later on, it's "We know exactly what's going on, so we can just do X."

I still haven't completed the 30,000RP project that I got as the first tool against the aliens - the later ones were so much better. The trick is to have someone with Investigation 25, and someone (else, probably) with Espionage 25. That can give you a fair chance that (with repeated attempts) you can kill an alien. The good news is that the aliens have difficulty replacing their dead agents - one assassination buys you a lot of quiet.

So rather than trying to mentally harden and train against alien influence, an innoculation would be put to use to counter the pheromonal effect itself.
Like stopping a sickness rather than treating the symptoms AFTER getting sick, yes?

[BlueOrange]

Originally posted by Phoenix Legacy:

Originally posted by BlueOrange:

I still haven't completed the 30,000RP project that I got as the first tool against the aliens - the later ones were so much better. The trick is to have someone with Investigation 25, and someone (else, probably) with Espionage 25. That can give you a fair chance that (with repeated attempts) you can kill an alien. The good news is that the aliens have difficulty replacing their dead agents - one assassination buys you a lot of quiet.

So rather than trying to mentally harden and train against alien influence, an innoculation would be put to use to counter the pheromonal effect itself.
Like stopping a sickness rather than treating the symptoms AFTER getting sick, yes?

Contact tracing is an option, once you have some of the prerequisites in place. As is full prevention for the select few. (Perhaps the Academy is willing to give the cure to people for free. I haven't played them yet.)

[Ninephoenix]

I'm just gonna use a mod. Its fine when they go for small nations that you can get back reasonably. But when they go for India/china Its ridiculous. The new size of economy debuff means the chance is like -40 to get it back. I'll basically have to nuke the country or something.
I think they should only be able to do it when you have low public opinion. Or also have the size of economy debuff.

[Pawleus]

Originally posted by Ninephoenix:

I'm just gonna use a mod.

Really? You won't learn the game in this way.

When you early fight the Aliens aggressively (on Earth and in space), as you should, you don't even have to research any pheromone-protective techs (except needed to advance the story) and as was already said by gimmethegepgun they already have the "size of economy debuff".

What is helping them (additionally to what was already said) is if you use more CP points than your current limit.

[Ninephoenix]

Originally posted by Pawleus:

Really? You won't learn the game in this way.

No, the values are obviously untested and arbitrary and I'm tired of pretending they're not.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Ninephoenix:

No, the values are obviously untested and arbitrary and I'm tired of pretending they're not.

Values are tested. On casual/normal - maxing your councilor SCI and completing all anti-enthrall techs will make you immune to enthrall (if you're stopping surveillance missions) or at least give you some time to reach space (if you're not).

Winning game by sitting on Earth and ignoring space until maxing tech is definitely not expected way to play the game (also it's a most boring way to play the game).