Dropping an entire continent in XCOM Long War

[salilsurendran]

I had fully covered Asia, however China, Japan and India dropped off and only Australia is left. Providing air coverage for just one country is not the most optimal. I was thinking should I just move my air force from Asia to another continent like South America or Africa? I believe there is no way to transfer the satellites over the countries that left to the new continent. Don't have Gauss Weapons as yet so doing a base attack would be very difficult? Also do the aliens become stronger when a country leaves? For eg. if Australia leaves will that make combat much more difficult?

[[MadTs] Phyrys]

Aliens does a metric crapton of research with the ressources their bases give to 'em. I made the mistake to let them have half the world, I'm now to the point when I fight übersectopods and warmasters with gauss weapons while they spam one infiltration (aka one free surrend) per month, now.

You do not want to let them accumulate bases.

[EagleClaws17]

Originally posted by MadTs Phyrys:

Aliens does a metric crapton of research with the ressources their bases give to 'em. I made the mistake to let them have half the world, I'm now to the point when I fight übersectopods and warmasters with gauss weapons while they spam one infiltration (aka one free surrend) per month, now.

You do not want to let them accumulate bases.

Pretty much this, you can afford to loose a country here and there, and in the endgame even survive with a single country, however loosing too many countries while you are still earlier on in the research will make aliens out-tech you. Another example I can bring up, in my current campaign aliens got africa, europe and asia, and the first Mechtoid ive encountered already came with almost all its upgrades

[Premu]

Losing countries makes a big difference for you and the aliens in the long run.

In earlier games I typically lost at least two, most times three countries. At that time I was able to take them back and start my counter offensive. Still it was worth to delay the aliens as long as possible to deny them ressources.

In my current game I started in France with the bonus which increases the number and the effectivenes of the tasks you get from the council members, effectively doubleing the rate in which their "shields" fill up. And this time I was exceptionally lucky as the first nation to fall was Nigeria, and afterwards the aliens concentrated on South Africa which also gave me lots of tasks, so the alien attacks didn't cause as much panic as usual. The typical council mission which gives a significant panic reduction every month was enough to keep South Africa. And I felt the difference - the aliens were significantly slower with sending better units, and they sent them in lesser numbers. And they didn't even start an attack on my head quarters yet as they didn't manage to get the necessary conditions due to the lack of ressources.

Now I'm close to start the final mission, the whole world is covered with satellites and panic is at 0 everywhere. This game has been significantly easier just because I only lost a single country.

Also, your argument that it is inefficient to use your interceptors to cover only one country is flawed. An interceptor is ineffecient if it just stays in the hangar all the time. The best place for your interceptors are those continents where you know the aliens will strike in large force - and that happens to be Asia for you. Everytime you damage or destroy a UFO the aliens suffer losses, and you reduce the panic in the country there this happens. So reinforce Asia (or should I say Australia?) and prepare to start a base assault as soon as possible.

[Sabaithal]

Generally you shouldn't "drop" anything. If nothing else, because your ultimate goal should be securing every country. And having to go through alien base assaults is a pain in the ass that should be avoided, IE don't lose countries if you can help it.

Now I generally don't try and secure every bloody country right away. I'll usually start out with my home continent (north america usually) then maybe south america since it only has two countries. It can be done with only two adjacant uplink facilities pretty early on. Then you just need interceptors, preferably with laser cannons, to defense the continents.

I don't try and secure the rest of the globe until I have 2 satellite nexus online, as well as money to afford the interceptors I need, and of course the satellites themselves. Needless to say, this won't happen until mid-game most of the time given its quite the undertaking.

Still, by securing two continents, regularly shooting down UFOs and such there, you should be making enough of a disruption so that the aliens won't get ahead of you.

[salilsurendran]

So my plan was to move my air force from Asia to Africa and deploy new satellites over Africa to cover the whole continent. I guess I could leave a couple of planes over Asia to simply protect Australian satellite from being shot down.