Demo Brutal AAR

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spacedoggo
Terra Invicta Beta Tester
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2022 6:47 am

Demo Brutal AAR

Post by spacedoggo »

I posted this on the Reddit, but thought I'd post it here as well in case it's useful feedback for the devs!

So I noticed three main differences from normal difficulty.

The first is that nearly all your counselor missions have 4 points of difficulty added to them, this makes a huge difference in the early game, raising costs and slowing you down. Previously I was able to Unite Europe without too much hassle, this time I couldn't dig out other factions on the periphery fast enough. When I tried they left the EU so I had to resort to force, making myself long term enemies with the academy and the protectorate.

The second is that the other factions are more aggressive putting up bases and stations. Don't expect to monopolize the moon or mars anymore. I was still able to lock up Ceres, and mine more than I needed. The other factions are still limited by their CP so they won't snowball much in space as long as you're doing well on Earth. I also had a much harder time keeping public opinion up in my own countries, had to run two dedicated evangelists to keep it reasonable. I think the competing factions are either running more public campaigns or they are more effective, or both.

Third: the aliens are terrifying! They seem to expand their space holdings faster, send more and larger ships to Earth, and their agents planetside can wreak havoc. Xenoforming became a problem a few years in, and my poor Officer, Colonel Jack O'Neil, couldn't burn it out fast enough, even with help from a second counselor when I could spare him. I had to use the army to keep it in check in my territory, and gave up on keeping it under control in Africa and S. America. Oddly this didn't result in hordes of Xeno-Kaiju roaming the earth, maybe that's not implemented yet?

But the World War in late 27 really revealed the power of the aliens to mess with me. To set the stage: I had the northern hemisphere locked up but the servants had India and their nukes. I had given up on ever kicking them out, but I could at least keep the problem from getting worse by stopping servant controlled Australia and Indonesia from getting nukes as well. So I embarked on some regime change operations, as one does. Australia went swimmingly, no problems there. But India objected to my liberating Indonesia with a strongly worded diplomatic cable to Washington, taped to the side of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile with a warhead in the megaton range. And while I started this adventure with no intentions of invading India, 7 million dead Americans changed my feelings on the subject somewhat.

So the campaign in the subcontinent started off well enough, with a simultaneous invasion by the US, Russia, China, EU and Pakistan. The Indians launched several defensive barrages on their own territory, wiping out two Pakistani armies, 4 Chinese armies and the French foreign legion. Their last nuke went to Dallas (dicks!) devastating the region and catching an infantry division I had moved there and forgotten about. A pissed off America finally retaliated with a single nuke to New Delhi destroying the bulk of the Indian army and paving the way for the other 10 invading forces.

And just as the coalition was about to win the war by occupying the Indian capital, something very odd happened. In the United States, a nation where the resistance had massive popular support and well defended control over all levers of power, on the eve of victory in a war that had claimed millions of lives and countless resources, the President decided the aliens and their proxies in India were in fact very good people with an interesting religion and it was time to sign a peace treaty. I did not see that coming.

Now it was a mad scramble to invoke the 25th amendment, purge the executive, reposition the armies, and restart the war as India furiously worked to build a new arsenal of nuclear hellfire. Oh and the aliens mind controlled a new CP in the United states every turn, fun times! As far as I can tell there is no defense against MC at this point in the game, you just have to deal with it after the fact.

And as the allied armies again closed on New Delhi India finished another nuke, hooray! (Narrator: what he yelled at the screen was not, in fact, Hooray) I glanced at the popup to see which armies had died now only to discover.. they launched it at France? They're weren't even any armies there! What was there was Paris and my junior evangelist running a PR campaign. R.I.P.

Three days later New Delhi finally fell and the war was over. The aliens got to the new president again, but a week too late to pull the trick off twice.

I breathed a long sigh as the servants earthly power base was now gone forever, so long as I could keep up the crackdowns and purges of the mind controls, which seemed to have no end. Some turns they even pulled off a second MC, garbing back points in India and Indonesia. This combined with constant sabotage of my facilities and the theft of my space habs left me hard pressed.

Then in early 29 I finally intercepted and took down an Alien Destroyer with one of my shiny new missile monitors. Now I don't quite understand it, but when I shot that ship down the mind controls stopped! Freed up from the threat of my CP's switching out from under me the game got much easier. By the time October came around and the demo ended I definitely felt I was winning. Too bad I'll never see the Alien fleet that's bound to come for revenge.


TLDR: Brutal makes the game much harder but still very winnable, at least for the first 7 years.
Rufus
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Jun 23, 2022 5:54 am

Re: Demo Brutal AAR

Post by Rufus »

When I watched a streamer, the normal difficulty seemed on the easy side. He was succeeding everywhere and ahead in space exploration and colonization despite still figuring out how to play. Brual difficulty sounds like it's much harder.
GeneralLemarc
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Jul 02, 2022 2:36 am

Re: Demo Brutal AAR

Post by GeneralLemarc »

Would a middle difficulty be too much of an ask at this stage? Because, while the obvious answer is to tone Brutal down a bit, I feel like alot of people will actively want the constant edge-of-your-seat challenge OP described. I can already see comparisons to the original XCOM
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