What's the general strategy early game?

[Nef]

Bounced off this a few times, finally started to get traction and just been derping around, 2 faction, Resistance, smol solar system. Got a couple of small European countries to open up France, now a few have a bit of MC and Boost I've been rolling them into the EU so I have the CP to take the US. Nothing in space yet, have Kazazk and Holding the space techs back so I can choose the timing and hit everywhere hard out the gate. Pretty much every councillor level has been in ADM to hoover up orgs.

Servants seem to be obsessed with grabbing every little country they can and sitting in England glaring at me, I seem to be in a loop of detaining one councillor every turn as they're all nasty and Martyrs so can't really off them, but I feel I'm being massively suboptimal.

What's the general flow for councillor picks/evolution, and doing stuff as the Resistance? I've got the mechanics down now but it just feels like I'm goofing around without being able to *get* it.

[gimmethegepgun]

Your mistake is running 2 factions instead of all 7. The fewer factions there are, the harder it is (as non-Servant), because it will take much longer for the CP of the world to get claimed and thus have their IPs directed somewhere useful, and there aren't enough factions opposing the Servants and Aliens that are doing stuff you don't see like killing them and taking their CPs.

[debott]

Minimal factions is an interesting decision for a first game. I recommend playing with all 7 factions enabled, as they add a lot of value to the game, i.e. make it more interesting. I do no know why one would choose to play with fewer factions, except maybe performance?

Originally posted by Nef:

Holding the space techs back so I can choose the timing and hit everywhere hard out the gate.

I think herein lies your problem: Go to space already! It's were all the cool kids hang out.
Controlling nations serves no purpose on its own at this stage of the game. They are just a means in order to get into space ASAP (and make some science and money on the side).

[CaptainSpacetime]

What's even the point of allowing number of factions as a setting? Just seems like it only serves to confuse people.

And yeah only you vs Servants and Aliens seems like turbo-hard mode.

[wei270]

go to space early is a good idea just watch your cash flow it cost money to maintain all that space stations

[Overlooter]

I've never played with two factions only at the start, so your playthrough will be completely different. However in general, I prefer to go for a big nation in my opening like the US or China.

I try to avoid Europe from the start because the nations are small compared to other options and it'll take time to unify everyone peacefully. However with only two factions maybe Europe is not the knife fight that I know it from the start, so you could manage better.

[Nef]

Thanks all.

I went with 1v1 as I thought it would be easier only keeping track of and competing against one AI as there’s so many plates you have to spin (defending, purging, research primacy, space claims…), I’ll bump it up and see how I fare.

As for space I was behind in the boost game despite having Khaz and the US (Servants took all the tiny launchpad nations it turns out) so was being conservative.

Europe seems like a newbie trap; been playing around with Can -> US still but might then pivot to Taiwan -> nibble China, but try and grab the Gulf for spoiling for early game funds.

Also realized that faction default investment profiles are utter garbage and don’t help with starting to learn the game at all :/

[wei270]

haha no the earth economics system is actually very complicated, not only it is complicated after so many patches no one is really keeping it up to dates as what exactly does what. so you will just have to do trail by error some time.

however the most important measure is actually population. more population generate more investment, and more science. but rising population is a long run endeavor.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Nef:

As for space I was behind in the boost game despite having Khaz and the US (Servants took all the tiny launchpad nations it turns out) so was being conservative.

Did you remove Kazakhstan from the EAU? If not, the holder of Russia will get the overwhelming majority of its Boost, not Kazakhstan. You can remove it from the Federation by either controlling its Executive for 180 days (which is known as Consolidating it) and using Set National Policy, or if you launch a successful coup it will leave immediately.

Europe seems like a newbie trap

Europe + Kazakhstan has been the strongest start for pretty much the entirety of the game's EA.

[CaptainSpacetime]

Originally posted by Nef:

Thanks all.

I went with 1v1 as I thought it would be easier only keeping track of and competing against one AI

Most of the factions are ostensibly against the aliens and friends. So you took what's normally a 5v3 to a 1v2.