How the hell do you win this game?

[3D Master]

I do not get it; even without ironman and safe scumming (not that I really needed it) and winning every mission, the city still collapsed.

With the second and third faction, a mission you don't do just raises unrest in a district too fast; one missed mission is all it takes, with the next mission you have unrest at max; and you can't do all the missions. The moment even one district is at max unrest, city anarchy instantly rises one per day.

There seem to be only two ways to lower city anarchy, and that's a final faction mission, and the specops to lower it with three. That's nowhere near enough, it seems, that meter went irrevocably upward, even spamming the specops tp lower city anarcy wasn't enough to lower it.

Is the only way to have a shot at beating this game, unlock taht lower city anarchy specops as fast as possible; a team of each type at level 2, and then do nothing but spam that specops to lower city anarchy as early game as possible?

[chair5768]

The trick is to get your field teams set up as quickly as possible so you can manage district unrest and avoid gaining anarchy.

[3D Master]

Every one of the districts had a field team; didn't make a difference.

[Synavix]

Yeah, you seem to be missing the field team abilities at the bottom of the city screen. You want to get all 4 of those working as soon as you can.

The first one unlocks right away with a field team and reduces district unrest in any district on a 4 day cooldown. The amount of unrest lowered goes up by 1 for every level of field team you have in that specific district. So every 4 days you can easily lower your highest unrest area by 2-4 points.

The second one unlocks when you have 4 field teams in any district. It freezes district unrest from rising temporarily, and has a 6 day cooldown. You can use it pretty regularly when you have to choose between yellow missions (since they raise the unrest by the largest amount in a single day). Freeze unrest in the one you skip.

The third one unlocks with a level 3 field team in any district. It effectively "completes" a blue mission instantly (without ending the day) and gives you partial rewards from it, but lets you still choose a real mission to complete. I use it any time I can when there are 2 blue missions to choose from. Skip/complete the worse one (since you only get partial rewards) and then complete the better one regularly. Which means you get no unrest rising from skipping one and extra rewards. 4 day cooldown.

That last one unlocks once you have a field team in every district and directly reduces city anarchy on a 5 day cooldown. You can just use it every time it's available if you have any anarchy at all, and the amount removed increases once you get all field teams to level 2 and again to level 3.

By using all of those on cooldown you can easily keep city anarchy to below 20% almost the entire time. With good mission choices you can even keep it at 0 an entire game (although it's usually worth letting it go up a few points if it means getting better mission rewards).

[carlosjuero]

You need to use the field team map skills judiciously. Don't waste the skills that reduce unrest on districts that are only at 2 or 3 unrest - unless the unrest will raise if you don't take its mission and need to take a different one. Use Quarantine - locking a 4 unrest district down that will go to 5 if ignored is a great help - chances are low that the next mission will hit that district with an unrest increase.

The final field team unlock (all districts need a team) will reduce anarchy as well. Not to mention the spec ops that reduces all districts unrest which will keep the Anarchy meter from rising too quickly.

[slamble]

As others have said: field ops are the key. There are also spec ops that will reduce unrest and anarchy. I'm probably about halfway through the second faction, and although unrest is a little high in spots, it's not too bad for me.

[LordLancelot]

The key is use all early intel on field team, mostly security. You also need to use all the field team ability. You should finish the game with zero city anarchy, even on impossible.

The game is really easy even on impossible once you learn it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2074212723

End game you have lv3 field team everywhere, mostly or all security. -2 unrest every Friday.

[3D Master]

Well, those buttons at the bottom need a bit more of a highlight; I now vaguely recall the game mentioned them at the very beginning, but I had no need for them at the time and didn't use them. Didn't play the game for a day or two, and then starting again I forgot about them being there, and they are stealthily placed there without highlights, I didn't make note of them.

Thanks for the help; I'm getting onward past my previous end point.