Noob here, this is painful

[George Smith Patton]

I really just want to slam my head into a wall repeatedly; this is a challenging game to learn; I expected it to be and wanted the challenge. However, I can't make any progress; the best I can manage is if I get a good starting position; sometimes, yes, sometimes, factions just block me. After that, I usually am overwhelmed at what to do next. I am determined to learn this game and really want to; however, I'm just not good at it yet. How did you learn the game, and what tips can you give me to understand it a bit easier?

[tserleg1471]

If you hadn't suffered all of these problems, you would have been the only one. XD

To learn I recommend you:

- How to defeat an alien invasion in 10 steps. A very complete guide. If you are going to read watch a single thing, be sure is this:
https://hoodedhorse.com/wiki/Terra_Invicta/How_to_defeat_Alien_invasion_in_ten_easy_steps

- Technologies guide. Probably there are more (besides the chapter from above 10 steps). I like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2872971271

- Ships guide. Besides 10 steps, I've also found this, which looks good:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2920424519

And a reddit discussion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/z0ycvt/best_ship_design/

- Youtube channels. My favourite is PerunGamingAU, although there are other competent youtubers, and maybe I'll focus in another one in the future. The problem is that those videos can be series of some chapters, with 1 hour each of them.



What I could tell you before to play:

- Start with 2 counselors with Control Nation and at least 7 Persuasion, and someone with Crackdown (I dunno the exact word because I use Spanish language) and Purge with good stats. For the fourth I usually get a jack-all-trades with a minimal Control Nation but other skills, although if the third has good Crackdown but bad Purge (see stats), the 4th can compensate being good with the other skill/stat.

- Best starting nations: USA, France, China, Russia. Although Russia is considered a harder start, and China will require a counselor with ultra high persuasion, and preferred a Chinese guy without problems with his government (more details in 10 steps). France plays into getting the bigger european nations you can afford with your GDP limit (and not taken by rivals), absorbing them after some months unifying UE, to free more GDP to absorb more countries (although rivals will get some of Europe).

- Priority technologies are the one that allows your 4th counselor, and the ones needed to mining Moon/Mars.

- Once I suspect that aliens could come in next year (see Threat Level) I'll try to prepare techs to have ok ships at time.


VERY USEFUL:

Even with Cinematic difficulty, you will feel the game overwhelming and fear that despite being 'easy' you have ruined it because your lack of experience. So I've made it even easier with Custom Settings:
- Speed technologies at max. It also heps rival factions, but most of them also fight aliens so no a big problems.
- Speed mining. The same.
- Alien progress: Minimal. I've put it low, but I should have put it the lowest, to have more time to compensate mistakes, and to be able to experiment more.
- Maximum GDPs. So you can still adding more nations with no need to unify them, or invest technologies for new federations.

These not only make first run less frustrating, they also help to learn more (although in future runs you'll have to keep in mind that you will techs slower with more normal settings).

[Fairin the Drakitty]

my first game i dedicated to a learning campaign where i unified africa first and kicked everyone out of it, hellbent on making it awesome. it failed spectacularly as expected.

but the things i learned back then still mostly apply now with newer updates. mind you this was before all the fancy guides and youtube videos... that i still havent watched or read XD

my second game i beat it through a long slog of figuring out mechanics and owning USA and the EU, which snowballed really well.

looking back at that game was blessed beyond reason, i fished 5 striver councilors and 3 astronauts and 2 spies... and humanity first absolutely owned china so the servants and protectorates only had 3 nukes from india...

now i look for those things, actively prevent the servants from getting nukes. crack countries so the right ai can take over them while im at my CP cap and make a passing attempt at not pissing off everyone all at once.

the general rule of "you're gonna suck at something till you master it" applies here.

i find that writing my own guides for personal use helps alot... like what team of councilors do i want, and why is striver suddenly stupidly rare

and how to turn a councilor then hire them... =)

(hey fairin what councilors do you use!?) highly prefer spies over everything, not all agents are equal... it will take a decade for a fixer to reach the skills of a starter astronaut, i.e. waiting 10 years then replacing them with an astronaut,

[Jurok]

bro this post needs to be pinned or something, just made a post asking basically the same question when this is the most indepth answer i could of asked for, my fault for not looking for like 5 seconds before posting but like tserleg said it seems this is standard practice for learning this game

[George Smith Patton]

Originally posted by Fairin the Drakitty:

my first game i dedicated to a learning campaign where i unified africa first and kicked everyone out of it, hellbent on making it awesome. it failed spectacularly as expected.

but the things i learned back then still mostly apply now with newer updates. mind you this was before all the fancy guides and youtube videos... that i still havent watched or read XD

my second game i beat it through a long slog of figuring out mechanics and owning USA and the EU, which snowballed really well.

looking back at that game was blessed beyond reason, i fished 5 striver councilors and 3 astronauts and 2 spies... and humanity first absolutely owned china so the servants and protectorates only had 3 nukes from india...

now i look for those things, actively prevent the servants from getting nukes. crack countries so the right ai can take over them while im at my CP cap and make a passing attempt at not pissing off everyone all at once.

the general rule of "you're gonna suck at something till you master it" applies here.

i find that writing my own guides for personal use helps alot... like what team of councilors do i want, and why is striver suddenly stupidly rare

and how to turn a councilor then hire them... =)

(hey fairin what councilors do you use!?) highly prefer spies over everything, not all agents are equal... it will take a decade for a fixer to reach the skills of a starter astronaut, i.e. waiting 10 years then replacing them with an astronaut,

i go for celeberties and actvists, as i said im only at the point of taking over nations and i found them to have good persuassion stats

[George Smith Patton]

Originally posted by tserleg1471:

If you hadn't suffered all of these problems, you would have been the only one. XD

To learn I recommend you:

- How to defeat an alien invasion in 10 steps. A very complete guide. If you are going to read watch a single thing, be sure is this:
https://hoodedhorse.com/wiki/Terra_Invicta/How_to_defeat_Alien_invasion_in_ten_easy_steps

- Technologies guide. Probably there are more (besides the chapter from above 10 steps). I like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2872971271

- Ships guide. Besides 10 steps, I've also found this, which looks good:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2920424519

And a reddit discussion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/z0ycvt/best_ship_design/

- Youtube channels. My favourite is PerunGamingAU, although there are other competent youtubers, and maybe I'll focus in another one in the future. The problem is that those videos can be series of some chapters, with 1 hour each of them.



What I could tell you before to play:

- Start with 2 counselors with Control Nation and at least 7 Persuasion, and someone with Crackdown (I dunno the exact word because I use Spanish language) and Purge with good stats. For the fourth I usually get a jack-all-trades with a minimal Control Nation but other skills, although if the third has good Crackdown but bad Purge (see stats), the 4th can compensate being good with the other skill/stat.

- Best starting nations: USA, France, China, Russia. Although Russia is considered a harder start, and China will require a counselor with ultra high persuasion, and preferred a Chinese guy without problems with his government (more details in 10 steps). France plays into getting the bigger european nations you can afford with your GDP limit (and not taken by rivals), absorbing them after some months unifying UE, to free more GDP to absorb more countries (although rivals will get some of Europe).

- Priority technologies are the one that allows your 4th counselor, and the ones needed to mining Moon/Mars.

- Once I suspect that aliens could come in next year (see Threat Level) I'll try to prepare techs to have ok ships at time.


VERY USEFUL:

Even with Cinematic difficulty, you will feel the game overwhelming and fear that despite being 'easy' you have ruined it because your lack of experience. So I've made it even easier with Custom Settings:
- Speed technologies at max. It also heps rival factions, but most of them also fight aliens so no a big problems.
- Speed mining. The same.
- Alien progress: Minimal. I've put it low, but I should have put it the lowest, to have more time to compensate mistakes, and to be able to experiment more.
- Maximum GDPs. So you can still adding more nations with no need to unify them, or invest technologies for new federations.

These not only make first run less frustrating, they also help to learn more (although in future runs you'll have to keep in mind that you will techs slower with more normal settings).

that is guinely helpful, i was thinking about mods to make it easier, settings seem more viable though now that youve mentioned it, I apperciate you taking the time to reply!!!

[tserleg1471]

You are welcome. :)

[RipoffPingu]

Originally posted by Jurok:

bro this post needs to be pinned or something, just made a post asking basically the same question when this is the most indepth answer i could of asked for, my fault for not looking for like 5 seconds before posting but like tserleg said it seems this is standard practice for learning this game

i would hesitate quite a bit in regards to pinning year-old information that doesn't all hold up anymore, to be honest. (there's probably more up-to-date guides that are just as in depth as these)

[Pawleus]

Yes, it might be helpful but you have to keep in mind that the info is heavily outdated so it will be misleading in many cases. With coming 0.4 it will probably become unacceptably outdated.

[tserleg1471]

I've mentioned the ones I know. I will thank you if you mention here better guides.

[The Shadow Rose]

If you want a simple and easy way just take india and go all into gdp with like 2 or 3 pips for welfare. Wars can up cohesion although its not as op as before with the cooldowns so its basically just turning india and china into 100t+ economies by 2030 - 2035. You can end all cohesion falls just by leveling inequality to 1 btw. Disregard all wars except to unite your greater regions with greater india and the combine. Use nukes whenever aliens land (the tech to take less damage with nukes is nice) and tada now you have 2 mega nations with over 50k gdp per capita and at least 5 - 10k research. From there you want to get knowledge up and youll end up with over 20k research per month. Mil tech amusingly is one of the last ones i do simply because nukes exist and with economic growth from admin orgs and techs youll be going up 4t a month minimum and any damage from nukes is to far off in the future. Despite getting environmental degradation and a over 3% malus from my wonton use of nuclear weapons my gdp grows by like 50%+ a year. Somewhere around 2025 - 2030 you will want to start trying to turn a councilor of each faction and start hostile takeovering all their good orgs. For advisors i go for 2 command/science duel jobs. 2 investigator/espionagers both criminals and 2 persuaders but at least 1 needs undercover and control space asset and one needs inspire while both need turn councilor. I try to aim for guys under 35 so they last a long time. If you need mission control take over the eu and america and form their mega nations through war. The only thing you need to watch out for is nukes which is where your duel inv/esp criminals will be cracking down and purging every turn to get to their executive control points so it wont nuke you when you use your high mil tech asian armies to invade. As for peace for factions just non aggression pact them whenever you need a break. I give them enough to get to generous 3x in a row to bring them up to tolerant. As for space a few missile frigates early on to monopolize mercury and mars spot while you build up resources and dominate the earth is my style. It sounds insane but it works. I do it all on brutal to. Humanity first forever.

[Pawleus]

Yes, I don't know why some players can't believe there are many different strategies that work - one doesn't have to play even remotely close to optimally as to win, also currently. Playing close to optimally the game is just easier and faster to win.

Originally posted by tserleg1471:

I've mentioned the ones I know. I will thank you if you mention here better guides.

All I am saying is that while they still might be helpful one shouldn't be surprised if the game works differently than described in these guides. The differences might heavily affect available strategies and tactics so one should be aware of it.

I think people stopped making guides because they realized they were becoming outdated fast - the game is in EA so this is good as it means it's improved fast. However, one could find plenty of current info in different threads on this very forum. One could also find current gameplays on Youtube, as you rightly pointed out.

[Damedius]

Originally posted by Pawleus:

I think people stopped making guides because they realized they were becoming outdated fast - the game is in EA so this is good as it means it's improved fast. However, one could find plenty of current info in different threads on this very forum. One could also find current gameplays on Youtube, as you rightly pointed out.

I think people stopped making guides because most people stopped playing the game. There is a small handful of people still playing the game.

It was a niche game to begin with and the devs decided to make it more niche.

[Pawleus]

Originally posted by Damedius:

I think people stopped making guides because most people stopped playing the game. There is a small handful of people still playing the game.

I see at this very moment 334 people playing the game on-line - I am curious to which game in EA you compare it that you say it's a "small handful of people".

[Ty26_44]

I would watch youtube videos about the game. Admittedly there are only a few good ones, but Perun Gaming is playing an up-to-date Initiative campaign. Potato McWiskey also has a campaign thats good, but its at least a year old, and things have changed.