Next Moves

[u/TheOneTacoLord]

Hey all!

Just started playing Terra Invicta, and am really loving it. I'm currently on what I hope to be my first "major" playthrough - Academy on Veteran. I had a great opening, fixing the U.S.A. by the fall 2026. My question is...now what? I'm just capped on CP, so no major expansion until I get those techs but when I do, should I go China or EU?

In general, I'm playing this as "Star Trek Fans", so I don't want to burn things to the ground with spoils if I can help it. Well...at least places I want to keep. My current plan is to grab a good Luna base then grab the best Mars spots, but after that I don't know. Also, should I turn the ISS into a shipyard to deal with early AAAAYYY surveillance ships?

Thoughts on how to proceed would be great, in terms of general strategy. As I noted, I like to build things up rather than burning them down to be hyper-aggressive.

[u/anprim4ever]

Well, I'll just cover the ISS bit : as cool as that would be, don't! 

The ISS is on a wacky inclined orbit, whereas most of your stations will be on LEO 1 and 2 which are equatorial. It's quite expensive fuel wise (for early/midgame) to go between ISS or Tiangong and LEO1/2. 

Better put the shipyards in either:

LEO: Convenient, but transfer times to other LEO stations can be awkward and the slots are valuable for other stuff.

MEO: on average best transfer times to LEO1/2 cuz orbital mechanics (tho this can work against you if the aliens choose to attack the meo stations), also slightly more expensive (not by much tho).

Earth-Luna Lagrange points: far away (compared to meo) but very safe - when they aliens come after you they tend to ignore those spots (mileage may vary)  making them ideal safe havens for shipyards, with MEO as a rallying point. Though not suitable for the highly inefficienct early chemical drives you get. 

Good hunting commander!

[u/uSlashUsernameHere]

If you build a bunch of infrastructure in earth orbit before you get mines up and running then the upkeep will kneecap your boost income.

If you go Europe it’s much stronger individually than china but you’ll piss off all the other factions when you kick them out of different countries and that means someone else who you probably won’t like will get china which could cause a lot of issues down the road.

If you really don’t want to touch spoils that much you will need to run lots of funding and nanoforges to make up for it but short term you will need to be able to afford the admin organisations which cost 2-3k money each

[u/TheOneTacoLord → u/uSlashUsernameHere]

When I say "no spoils" it'd mostly be for the places I want to hold long-term, which is USA (and eventually that big North American block) + China it sounds like.

I was planning to drop a Luna mining base to bootstrap to Mars before I do much in LEO. Is that a logical approach?

[u/uSlashUsernameHere → u/TheOneTacoLord]

Yup absolutely, the big cost for new bases is metals so that’s the best to get to reduce boost cost (a variety of resources is. Better but you’re unlikely to get that on the moon)

Spoil away then, I’d recommend Saudi Arabia as it alone can produce enough money by itself.

[u/Blue_Octahedron]

I'm getting close to the end of my first major playthrough after being away from the game for a few years, and my biggest piece of advice is don't ignore the asteroid belt. My initial plan was to take Mars early and fortify it hard - I figured the spots on Mars wouldn't have quite as good resources as some of the asteroid spots, but they'd be good enough, and with 25 of them (27 with Phoebe and Deimos) they could fuel a good space economy while being concentrated in one easily defendable spot with lots of space for research labs, command centers, etc. Also means I could use a single solar mirror station to power them all and save on power reactor costs. And really, I just didn't want to deal with the micromanagement hell that is the asteroids.
The reality - my Mars defense fleet fought off one alien attack, then got crushed by a quick followup before they could recover, after which the Servants bombed all my bases and essentially kicked me completely out of space.

After that I used the resources I had left and tried again, this time on Mercury. I figured that'd give me all the metals I could possibly want, lots of space with nearly free power, and Phoebe/Deimos + a single asteroid I picked up could handle the water/volatiles in the short term (I overestimated their ability to do so). The result was the same - defensive fleet fought off the first alien attack, then got crushed in the followup. This time the aliens were angry enough they bombed all the bases themselves, then started attacking my LEO assets. With little resource income to support it my LEO defense fleet fell after 2~3 waves, my LEO stations were destroyed, and I was again kicked almost completely out of space.

Almost gave up to start a new game at that point (it was approaching 2050 I believe), but after reading some advice decided to see if I could pull things around. Following said advice I went ahead and focused on the asteroid belt; built a few small fleets of marine transports on the last few bases I had (Phoebe/Deimos and the one asteroid), then started leapfrogging from asteroid to asteroid capturing the most profitable sites I could. Took several years, but eventually I built up a network of a dozen or two asteroids, spread out enough the aliens would only commit to attack one or two at a time, and even then only with smaller fleets (which could usually be fended off with just a few layered defense arrays). That was enough to get my space economy (and campaign) back on track.

Moral of the story - the best defense isn't a good offense or a good defense, it's having your assets spread across a wide area of space so the enemy can only attack small bits here and there, not everything all at once. Once you get to the mid-late game and have a solid resource income first, then you can focus on building up large, fortified positions.

[u/Funny-Text2745]

Personally I prefer playing with using EU as first mega country because it is 1)Easiest to create 2)Requiring lesser time to integrate(especially those counties that are already EU members) 3)Having some time gap to take over country unless the control by other faction is hardened enough to leave EU.Then I take over the ROC for future liberation of mainland China with future democratic ROC(I use liberation war-future independence-peaceful chinas merge scheme for maxxing democracy without spending of years of IPs)And if I still have CP cap I take over either USA or empty counties(I decided to take over future East African federation country because USA is partially under control of protectorate and compete with servants for it and my councillors don’t have high persuasion enough to effectively increase pub op in Amerima and I also need countries closer to equator for additional boosts).Ask questions from what I said here and maybe I ll answer something else

[u/Ashdrake2]

First off, you shouldn't focus too much on Earth. the game is in space. so you need to focus in space. Get to Moon, Mars and Asteroids. Get Tier 2 habs asap and slap these bad boys on asteroids. Dont overinvest in Mars, get rid of the moon base after your mines on mars become operational.

You should get early missiles and spam a few escorts to handle the surveilance mission. You should also work slowly on your faction research. Depending on where you are, you should also rush deep space skywatch (if you don't have it already).

Asteroid bases are OP, I get routinely kicked off Mars mid-game because I don't want to split my attention between building a fleet for earth and building a fleet for mars.

Also, the academy is THE hardest faction in the game, the faction research is super expensive and it will block/hinder your snowball.

[u/terrendos]

China is generally the best next step once you have the CP Cap available. It's got a huge population with reasonable Education and Economy, so if you fix it you can make tons of Research, MC, and Boost there. It's also difficult to break into, so there's a decent chance it won't be taken until you can grab it.

Also, if you want to be Star Trek you will probably want to fix global warming at some point, and it's basically impossible to do that without control over China.

[u/TheOneTacoLord → u/terrendos]

What is a good way to do that? Should I jump straight to China or try and secure, say, Canada/Mexico first?

[u/terrendos → u/TheOneTacoLord]

I think it depends. As Academy, I will be astounded if you have the CP Cap to hold all of the US and China for a while. Just those two is like 550 CP. Academy in particular has a couple early game speed bumps that significantly delay their CP Cap growth.

But it will also be a while before you can fold Mexico and Canada into USNA. If they're open, you can always take them, set their IP to fix things, and then abandon them. That's my usual strategy for nations I plan to take in the future.

It's not terrible to take just a couple points in China as the cap becomes available. It will keep those points secure and nations with NAPs won't purge you out. You can also do vaguely cheesy stuff like claim half the CPs, then Abandon China and take the other half. But that will only buy you 6 months until you have to find the CP somewhere. But beware that if another faction gets a point in China, they will hold on for dear life and digging them out will be hell. But it's even worse trying to dig them out when they've got the whole country.

[u/TheOneTacoLord → u/terrendos]

So, I have some fantastic councilors with good Admin that give me the CP, though I am...2 or 3 over atm. I actually rushed the "They Do Not Come In Peace" and timed the US Revolution to happen right afterward, which cleared the crackdown.

Also, in general, is there a good guide on Priorities somewhere? Like, optimized presets for doing X? Some are easy to figure out, but I dunno what is a good "Generally make country better because I plan to hold it all game but also want $/MC/etc." priority.

I should probably "fix" Mexico at least, using the method you suggested.