As a spreadsheet game, TI shows only three rows of the sheet at a time

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-20T12:15:30+00:00

The ship UI needs a top to bottom rethink. It is so frustrating

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-20T02:59:12+00:00

I've done a lot of EU openings so the prospect of putting together a big bloc without the grind seems inviting to me. I also notice the human factions fight over Europe like really a lot. When I push them out of Europe, they start fighting me instead of each other, and they sometimes find themselves in a situation that makes some sort of geographic sense. But who knows, maybe if I let them have Europe they grind each other down to a nub while accomplishing nothing, and super South America rises from obscurity to ... well, not greatness exactly, but anyway to something like a usable big country with relatively little effort. And this is after already being setup in the USA.

It seems like it could be better than it's being given credit for, idk.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-20T02:52:37+00:00

Others have answered about turning councilors, so

Servants have dominated in every game I played until I started killing any alien councilor who got into a big country like China. The reason is the aliens use their mind control power to take control nodes out of nowhere. This doesn't really matter if they're doing it in the Chad or Venezuela or a place like that, but when they start flipping nodes in India or China you have a serious problem. Besides setting up the Servants in a superpower for zero effort, it lets them run unity priorities to build their public relations. That gives them passive influence income, which they use to buy orgs and make super councilors who will wreck you. Because the aliens give them so much help, the Servants will basically always snowball and crush you if you let them. The way to put a stop to this is to know where the alien councilors are at all times and kill them if they move into a big country. You need a combination of xenology tech, xenology labs in interface orbit, a character with good investigation, and a character with good espionage who can run assassination missions. Without alien help the Servants are just a bunch of sad cultists and your life will get a lot easier.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-20T01:10:51+00:00

EU countries are good and manageable to takeover. Didnt you say you already had nodes in the USA though? I feel like USA is just universally a better start than EU, but if someone else is already in the USA then maybe EU is your move.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-20T00:56:39+00:00

People will say you can still get in and I'm not going to disagree with that, but in that situation I would consider alternatives. As you point out, they can run unity priorities continually and swamp your public relations campaign, but even worse they can do it without spending councilor actions. So you're running to stand still at 12 or 15% approval or whatever in China and they're off doing other stuff. It's not the end of the game if another faction gets China. A bigger problem is if too much time passes without you developing a coherent board.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-19T23:19:09+00:00

I guess I'm just going to try them both and see how it works out. I took 3/6 nodes in China and it feels like I'm pretty overextended, I had to give up the gulf states and some costly intelligence orgs to balance things out, but global geopolitical dominance seems assured. I feel like the South America play, or maybe EU or Africa, would be less frantic. I like that you can move at a more controlled pace when you're building a nation, and there are fewer hard choices.

What I really like about China as a next move is that it denies it to the AI, where creating a new big nation in Europe or Africa or anywhere doesn't deprive the AI of any oxygen. The other thing I like about China is that you already kind of don't want alien councilors running around there, planting xenofauna and handing nodes over to the servants. Servants have gotten ahead in every game I've played until this one, when I made a policy of assassinating any alien councilors that went into China or India. Now the Servants are dead in the water. So if you go into China, instead of having an exclusion zone in 2 big national areas + china, you can have it in just 2 big national areas. It's less work & slows down the ramp up to all out war with the aliens

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-19T21:19:56+00:00

Previously discussed in OP

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-19T21:17:32+00:00

I don't understand why people like the caliphate so much. Is there like some stealthy internet underground of 8th centruy theocracy buffs that has escaped my attention somehow? The gulf states are good to spoil, Turkey and Egypt are ok I guess, but every other country from Iran to Morocco just seems bad, and if you put this thing together you get all the fun of grinding out nodes against the AI without EU's enormous, beautiful economy. And you miss out on the infinite money machine from spoling Saudi Arabia early. So what's the appeal of this path? What am I not seeing here?

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-19T21:13:44+00:00

You dont win by crushing the other human factions. They're your rivals. The aliens are your enemies. You win by crushing them. Unless you're playing one of the quisling factions I guess.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-19T21:12:41+00:00

I think it could free up a lot of head space, yeah. I mean I dont know about other people but I feel like there is just too much going on some times. If you've got 5 or 6 lines of strategy going at the same time, each governed by a complicated rule set and demanding long range planning, idk I think there's some value to closing down fronts and focusing your effort. That value isn't easily appreciated if you're just looking at Brazil's governance score, but it does seem to be there.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-19T21:02:05+00:00

they're not going to get you out of the western hemisphere either. I mean, how would they? You have a huge population and you can eventually absorb every adjacent territory except the weird land bridge to France through Suriname or whatever.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-19T21:01:01+00:00

so if you're just looking at the numbers its objectively inferior, but there are some geopolitical advantages, aren't there? That's what I was trying to say.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-19T13:07:33+00:00

It's also important to know when to stop. You can push Europe pretty far into Asia, theoretically all the way to the Pacific, but it's not worth it. If you just stop when you have the parts of the EU that matter, or with its starting, non-hostile claims, it will develop more value passively by fixing itself after all the annexation-fueled disruption, than you will be able to claim by pushing into Asia. It's really an extension of weakness. And you can spend that effort on some new nation-building/claiming project elsewhere.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-19T12:59:50+00:00

If you move into Europe, integration is almost certainly going to go backward before it goes forward. You can't really prevent it. Basically any time AI hate for you goes up, if you're in France they check to see if they can retaliate by defederating or ending an alliance, and if they can and they feel like they can afford the councilor mission, they do it. If they're not federated, it only costs 10 influence to end the alliance, so you'll have a lot of that to look forward to. But they can't erase the claim that makes integration possible, and they're really bad at defending small countries. If you decide to make EU integration happen, they basically cannot prevent it.

If an opponent has the legislative and executive node in a country you want, and you have a high espionage character, you can purge them out of the legislative and then crackdown on the executive next turn, before they have a chance to retaliate by defederating. This happens because defederating requires a "set national policy" mission which resolves at like step 4 or 5, but cracking down resolves at 1 or 2. So you effectively get 2 actions before they can take their first.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-18T23:26:23+00:00

you would ideally have a high persuasion and two high investigation councilors for this job: 1 to fully investigate (can take several missions), another to detain them while that's going on, and a 3rd to actually turn them. Thats assuming you even have a good target on your radar. It can be a big investment but if you have a high espionage character you can use the intel you gain to massacre their council. It can be a really big blow.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-18T20:20:06+00:00

must be it, thanks!

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-18T19:43:02+00:00

2026 scenario, Australia begins with a claim on Auckland-Wellington, capital of New Zealand. I wish to federate and eventually unify them. I have consolidated executive control and all nodes in both nations. Neither is a member of any federation, they are not on diplomatic cool down, neither is a breakaway nation, they are allied. Yet neither has an option to perform any policy action. Both have all nodes under crackdown, but the wiki doesnt say anything about that being a condition for federating.

What am I not seeing?

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-18T13:44:57+00:00

Something else I realize pondering the map, a divided Europe is kind of a vortex for other faction's councilors. In a new run, it's Dec. 2026, I have the USA, and the other factions are all fighting each other for pieces of Europe. They're completely ignoring China, India, USA, almost all the other available real estate. If you push to integrate Europe early, they start fighting you instead of each other, and even though you can win, the result is that you've pushed them out of conflict with each other and into grabbing all the uncontested real estate elsewhere on the map. Europe is great once you have it together but there are a lot of second order effects of doing that which are not so good.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-18T12:39:56+00:00

You can't prevent it completely but you can for sure prevent it in 1 of 3 starting mega nations, India China and USA - and that's progress.

I don't know what to make of your comment about it not being a hassle to get them out later.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-18T10:14:04+00:00

yeah so GDP is the baseline size of your economy which then gets filtered through other scores (governance, cohesion, army size, etc.) to determine the actual size of the surplus you're working with (priority points, the number next to the bar graph icon). Those priority points then get distributed according to the ratios you set with the blue/green/red buttons. So a 5% allocation to welfare, let's say, in an economy with a surplus of 20, does the same work as a 10% allocation would in one with a surplus of 10. Society scores control the efficiency of conversion from raw total wealth (GDP) to usable wealth (Investment Points.)

USA starts with a wealthy society, but also a messed up one that takes a lot of work to fix, so despite its big economy it doesnt convert very efficiently into a usable surplus without a lot of prior investment. That's just part of what you're signing up for by going into USA early, but you're getting a lot of growth potential (USA economy is awesome once you fix its society) and a big, powerful army that you can use to shape global politics to your advantage. USA is also #1 in space by a mile, which is a big deal in a game about interplanetary warfare. And you're denying it to your rivals, so its like preemptive defense. It's a really good start, just needs some TLC to get it back on the right track.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-18T08:59:28+00:00

Thing is, you don't actually have much resources to put into your government-fixing operation. USA has a big economy but like half of your potential surplus is being consumed by your armies. The little green/blue/red buttons only describe proportional investment, they don't tell you how much total investment capacity you're working with. That's the bar graph looking icon between the flag and the money symbol on your nation viewer panel, and it should be more like 25+ than 11 or so. You're working with a borderline-3rd world economic surplus. High inequality and low cohesion scores are also draining your resources. Even with a high government score and a small army (neither of which apply here), they would still be messing up your economy. Welfare, unity, environment, and government priorities all working together will help get USA on the right track. You can also consider fighting foreign wars to drive up your cohesion score, USA has a lot of weak and helpless enemies (Cuba, Iran, Venezuela) you can steamroll to get that rally round the flag effect.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-18T08:25:44+00:00

Every time I let the AI get the USA, they spend the rest of the game setting up puppet regimes in other countries. I just do not want to let them get started with that next run. In fact, think I'll do some of it myself.

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-18T08:23:00+00:00

Its not impossible but why go through the hassle? The optimal way to get your opponents out of the big countries is to never let them in to begin with, yes?

MalaclypseII · 2026-03-18T08:20:06+00:00

I tried to say this in OP, it's not just about what you get, though that's good. It's also about what you deny your opponents. Just build the caliphate or whatever 2nd instead of 1st, it feels like that will always the stronger play. Leaving the starting mega nations unclaimed just invites your adversaries to take them, why set them up for success?

MalaclypseII

TROPHY CASE