After 200 h into the game, I believe I can talk a little about some serious balancing issues and exploits.
1) It is probably no secret that the game is way-way-way too long for what it offers. The gameplay itself is not bad, but because you do approx. 10,000 mission assignments over 15 years, it is a problem since the missions are generic, boring, and repetitive. I mention the mission assignment nightmare because it is probably the reason why the game feels so long to so many players. How come EU4, HOI4 and Stellaris never feel that "long"? Because you do spam the player with repetitive horror so often. After all, 2023-2040 is not that long. But that mission assignment Sisyphos horror... I'm sure that other game devs are right now working on their own take on this game concept, where they will probably fix this issue in particular.
2) Once you lose 2-3 councilors around 2030, your game is over. XCOM is built in the 90s around the idea that your soldiers are expendable. It hurs to lose an experienced soldier in XCOM but that game balances this issue much better at its core. In Terra Invicta, your councilors are so precious that you better not lose a single one, or else you will be killed over and over again > 2030 by more experienced enemy councilors. And you will be unable to perform important national missions successfully.
3) Therefore, once you realize that 2) is a perfect strategy to destroy the AI, all you have to do is kill all the AI councilors. Your enemies will never recover from that because not only are their councilors defenseless, but eventually, they also are unable to do important missions thanks to all the buffs in mid to late game. The game breaks eventually around 2030. Therefore: Maybe remove assassination entirely? It is too a too powerful exploit.
4) Making the Alien Threat Level more visible, its influences and influencers, would greatly improve the game experience of not only the beginners. One would assume that such an important game indicator is central to the UI, with frequent updates, tons of tooltips, and tooltip warnings to certain actions, yet Terra Invicta does the opposite -- and most players (except for the experienced ones) are frustrated for a good reason.
5) Once you discover that all you need are 2 ships with marines to break the game, your mid-game becomes a joke. All you have to do is to take all hubs from the Protectorate and the Servants. The aliens will retaliate but because of the silly alien AI, they may destroy a few ships or hubs of yours, but since you are mid-game, it doesn't matter. You rebuild. And the alien ally space economy is broken and will never recover from that. The same applies to the space control asset mission, which can have a similar effect. Tip: Maybe remove the hub conquest and the space asset control mission entirely? Until you balance and playtest it properly.
6) The space economy suffers from a horrible snowball effect. By 2030, I have 8k research. By 2038, it is 20k research. By 2040, it is 30k! Meanwhile, the other human factions sit at 1-2K research by 2030 and maybe 2-3K until 3038. So, you may pretend that your end game will be close but with such research levels, there is no reason to keep going. You know that you cannot lose. The aliens have no chance. And, since the alien AI does not work like in other grand strategy games, where it would a high-tech nation consider its biggest threat that it has to take out early on no matter what, the snowball effect is unstoppable.
7) The alien AI retaliation moments should be scary but once you learn how to create weak hubs as target practice for the aliens, the alien threat level doesn't matter mid-game. Tip: Make the alien AI retaliate properly. They have a huge fleet mid-game by comparison. Instead of single-ship attacks on the weakest hub, let them attack your best hubs with a bigger fleet -- so that the exploit mentioned earlier does not work anymore and the player feels the wrath of the aliens (let them target your best production hubs and build up a fleet strong enough to handle that which should be not a problem mid-game anyway).
It is a great game though. Please don't get me wrong. But the balancing issues are staggering.
Balancing Tips (after 200 h)
Re: Balancing Tips (after 200 h)
Just to comment on this point, UI improvement is really needed to explore the limit here. Right now, the jumping camera takes way too much time. But later on, the lack of keyboard shortcuts are still problematic. The simplest improvement would be to give shortcuts to Continue/Close(ie. stop)/Take me there. But to make turns fast, shortcuts for missions are also needed. Thus a grid system is probably needed. Also, alien agent prompts currently have no continue options. There needs to be a toggle for that.But that mission assignment Sisyphos horror... I'm sure that other game devs are right now working on their own take on this game concept, where they will probably fix this issue in particular.
Re: Balancing Tips (after 200 h)
Right, the UI requires more attention in general. I didn't want to want to mention it, since my comment was about balancing issues that break the game, but here are my UI tips:
- Tech tree: The tech tree is almost useless to use. The Terra Invicta wiki is much better, and it is getting better every day (kudos to whoever is responsible for it). Tip: A tech tree is nice to have but I also need to know better what buildings (hub improvements) exist so that I can select them by tier 1 or 2, and then focus on that research. Think Civ6 in-game encyclopedia. Same for everything else. Even the tech tree of HOI4 is phenomenal compared to Terra Invicta, and it had its issues in the past.
- Space combat: The space combat UI is not fun to use. I appreciate the effort that went in, but as the IGN reviewer said in his review: he did autoresolve or auto-combat because that combat UI is behind space combat UI standards. Tip: Take a look at "Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2", or "Star Wars Rebellion" though it is older. My point is: No need to reinvent the wheel. The ship control, how you indicate the ships, should be much better and cleaner. Currently, the space combat UI makes movement really counterintuitive and hard to follow, and the movement markers apparently are to the UI more important than the actual ships and its torpoedoes?
- Alien Threat Level: The Alien Threat Level is hidden behind a slow screen, but it is absolute central to Terra Invicta -- like a diplomacy rating or aggro in EU4. Therefore, put it next to the date indicator in the top right corner, left to it, right in the main screen. But learn from Paradox and do not hide relevant info, improve the tooltips that break down how the Alien Threat Level can be improved, how it is composed (like the World Tension meter in HOI4). Why? Because it absolutely defines whether 50 h are wasted for a beginner or not, if he plays the game wrongfully (i.e., by counterattacking the aliens). And: please make the Alien Threat Level value 100 % accurate and up to date. Again, think of aggro or diplomacy rating. Because the player spends until 2035 playing against this value -- only afterwards he neglects it and goes in open battle. Think of any other grand strategy game, or even Civ6, how they handle diplomacy, which values they hide and which not.
- Diplomacy: Also, diplomacy. In my current campaign I am unable to meet Exodus for 6 years... because I cannot find a single Exodus councilor. Tip: We are in the 2030s and the future, people have satellites and smartphones. Diplomacy should be possible any time.
- Rest Value: Even though the "rest value" is so critical to the national economies, its role is not well shown and explained to the player. I've seen many Let's Plays in which players spammed the economy with unrest countermeasures and immediate action -- instead of working on improving the rest value, i.e., improving the democracy rating. The tooltips mention it the value but without highlighting it, yet it is such an important value.
- "Initiative Council" / Council Overview: That UI is confusing. So many values, packed to densely. This is badly designed. After 200 h, I still prefer to check every councilor one by one instead of this screen. Either get rid of this screen, or improve it. You are overwhelming the player if you spam so many values at different colors, packed with profile pictures, at him.
- "Mission Assignment" Phase: There is currently no obvious indicator on the main screen for it. If the game is almost-turn-based, working with phases, and if those phases are absolute central to the game like a "turn" in Civ6, then indicate at the top. Add a bar for it. Why? Because the game is phase-based and somehow it is not indicated in the main UI at all, except for the small tooltip hidden behind the speed button. Not okay.
- UI performance: I have a high-end PC with an RTX 3080, with 64 GB RAM, etc. Yet, opening the fleet UI is very slow. Same for the research screen. Same for "Intel". Fix it by not calculating the values when I open it but beforehand, between phases. Why? Because I tend to check these screens during the mission assignment phase, so it is okay if I wait a little when the phase is running. Cache those values. Almost all these values do not need to be up to date to the same day.
Maybe this could solve the mission assignment madness:
- Remove the phases. Instead, double the mission time. When the councilor is done with a mission, he returns. But they return at different times. But if you keep the time long enough, i.e. 4-8 weeks, it feels less like work. But this may require some rebalancing. However, it may reduce the annoyance of doing the same missions over and over again. Also, get rid of dull and repetitive missions such as "Defend Interests" or "Contact". Because why would I ever want to avoid Defend Interests? I can abandon the nation, if I'm not interested anyway.
- If you consider removing the phases, why EU4 diplomats feel less annoying than your councilors, right? In EU4, you send diplomats on lengthy missions. Are all your missions that time critical? Why am I unabl to assign "Public Campaign" to a nation until I feel fine with the rating? For that, you need to indicate in the UI the relevant info -- in the case of "Public Campaign" the % publicity rating, right? At least, this is how EU4 is doing it, and it works perfectly. Same for other missions. Once you leave the annoying phases behind you, you'll notice how many missions actually need only be assigned every few months which drastically reduces the mission assignment boredom. Even "Surveil" could be the surveillance of all your territories, region by region, or something with this in mind, maybe with a starting point. Definitely room for improvement here. And it would reduce the overall campaign play time dramatically, I assume.
- Tech tree: The tech tree is almost useless to use. The Terra Invicta wiki is much better, and it is getting better every day (kudos to whoever is responsible for it). Tip: A tech tree is nice to have but I also need to know better what buildings (hub improvements) exist so that I can select them by tier 1 or 2, and then focus on that research. Think Civ6 in-game encyclopedia. Same for everything else. Even the tech tree of HOI4 is phenomenal compared to Terra Invicta, and it had its issues in the past.
- Space combat: The space combat UI is not fun to use. I appreciate the effort that went in, but as the IGN reviewer said in his review: he did autoresolve or auto-combat because that combat UI is behind space combat UI standards. Tip: Take a look at "Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2", or "Star Wars Rebellion" though it is older. My point is: No need to reinvent the wheel. The ship control, how you indicate the ships, should be much better and cleaner. Currently, the space combat UI makes movement really counterintuitive and hard to follow, and the movement markers apparently are to the UI more important than the actual ships and its torpoedoes?
- Alien Threat Level: The Alien Threat Level is hidden behind a slow screen, but it is absolute central to Terra Invicta -- like a diplomacy rating or aggro in EU4. Therefore, put it next to the date indicator in the top right corner, left to it, right in the main screen. But learn from Paradox and do not hide relevant info, improve the tooltips that break down how the Alien Threat Level can be improved, how it is composed (like the World Tension meter in HOI4). Why? Because it absolutely defines whether 50 h are wasted for a beginner or not, if he plays the game wrongfully (i.e., by counterattacking the aliens). And: please make the Alien Threat Level value 100 % accurate and up to date. Again, think of aggro or diplomacy rating. Because the player spends until 2035 playing against this value -- only afterwards he neglects it and goes in open battle. Think of any other grand strategy game, or even Civ6, how they handle diplomacy, which values they hide and which not.
- Diplomacy: Also, diplomacy. In my current campaign I am unable to meet Exodus for 6 years... because I cannot find a single Exodus councilor. Tip: We are in the 2030s and the future, people have satellites and smartphones. Diplomacy should be possible any time.
- Rest Value: Even though the "rest value" is so critical to the national economies, its role is not well shown and explained to the player. I've seen many Let's Plays in which players spammed the economy with unrest countermeasures and immediate action -- instead of working on improving the rest value, i.e., improving the democracy rating. The tooltips mention it the value but without highlighting it, yet it is such an important value.
- "Initiative Council" / Council Overview: That UI is confusing. So many values, packed to densely. This is badly designed. After 200 h, I still prefer to check every councilor one by one instead of this screen. Either get rid of this screen, or improve it. You are overwhelming the player if you spam so many values at different colors, packed with profile pictures, at him.
- "Mission Assignment" Phase: There is currently no obvious indicator on the main screen for it. If the game is almost-turn-based, working with phases, and if those phases are absolute central to the game like a "turn" in Civ6, then indicate at the top. Add a bar for it. Why? Because the game is phase-based and somehow it is not indicated in the main UI at all, except for the small tooltip hidden behind the speed button. Not okay.
- UI performance: I have a high-end PC with an RTX 3080, with 64 GB RAM, etc. Yet, opening the fleet UI is very slow. Same for the research screen. Same for "Intel". Fix it by not calculating the values when I open it but beforehand, between phases. Why? Because I tend to check these screens during the mission assignment phase, so it is okay if I wait a little when the phase is running. Cache those values. Almost all these values do not need to be up to date to the same day.
Maybe this could solve the mission assignment madness:
- Remove the phases. Instead, double the mission time. When the councilor is done with a mission, he returns. But they return at different times. But if you keep the time long enough, i.e. 4-8 weeks, it feels less like work. But this may require some rebalancing. However, it may reduce the annoyance of doing the same missions over and over again. Also, get rid of dull and repetitive missions such as "Defend Interests" or "Contact". Because why would I ever want to avoid Defend Interests? I can abandon the nation, if I'm not interested anyway.
- If you consider removing the phases, why EU4 diplomats feel less annoying than your councilors, right? In EU4, you send diplomats on lengthy missions. Are all your missions that time critical? Why am I unabl to assign "Public Campaign" to a nation until I feel fine with the rating? For that, you need to indicate in the UI the relevant info -- in the case of "Public Campaign" the % publicity rating, right? At least, this is how EU4 is doing it, and it works perfectly. Same for other missions. Once you leave the annoying phases behind you, you'll notice how many missions actually need only be assigned every few months which drastically reduces the mission assignment boredom. Even "Surveil" could be the surveillance of all your territories, region by region, or something with this in mind, maybe with a starting point. Definitely room for improvement here. And it would reduce the overall campaign play time dramatically, I assume.
Re: Balancing Tips (after 200 h)
There are other ways to control enemy agent problem outside outright murder. Turning the agents works wonderfully, you don't want to hold on to these guys so just crank fail chance to 100% and they will have useless agent until they clue to what's going on. Once you've got a mole you can see all of their agents and be more informed who to compromise next time. When your agent is exposed, you don't lose the Intel right away, it's still there the next turn.
Hostile takeover is also a powerful tool, I'm scanning enemy agents after their organisation is compromised now & then to make sure they haven't piled ADM orgs on someone. That one becomes a prime target for takeover or murder. It is hard to get the takeover to succeed on 25 ADM agents but you should be able to hit 25 ADM yourself so just burn money like Elon Musk on Twitter, once you take one high - ADM org it's much easier to strip the rest.
I'm currently holding a bunch of 6-8 admin orgs because I want to deny them to the AI. Occasionally I donate some to HF or Exodus.
Aliens do target high value Hab on earth orbit and will send that Doom-Stack they have to go after them. You can't do anything about that ever growing doom - stack until you pull the trigger on MC.
Hostile takeover is also a powerful tool, I'm scanning enemy agents after their organisation is compromised now & then to make sure they haven't piled ADM orgs on someone. That one becomes a prime target for takeover or murder. It is hard to get the takeover to succeed on 25 ADM agents but you should be able to hit 25 ADM yourself so just burn money like Elon Musk on Twitter, once you take one high - ADM org it's much easier to strip the rest.
I'm currently holding a bunch of 6-8 admin orgs because I want to deny them to the AI. Occasionally I donate some to HF or Exodus.
Aliens do target high value Hab on earth orbit and will send that Doom-Stack they have to go after them. You can't do anything about that ever growing doom - stack until you pull the trigger on MC.
Re: Balancing Tips (after 200 h)
Checking known enemy agent stats is a chore, though. It needs a view where you can see their stats listed in one page, right now you have to click through them all with the laggy UI.