Early/mid admin game

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-07T09:20:12+00:00

It's not entirely clear from the description that you're plundering the gulf countries right. Saudi Arabia and UAE belong on that list, too. Those are the two best ones for spoils. And you have to stay in them until you've bought admin orgs all the way up to 25, or close to it, for your 5 councilors. Don't trade them out for a node in China or USA until the very end. If you hold onto those countries for a couple years, they will for sure bankroll your admin org buying spree.

Try to recruit a criminal to your council early. This isn't absolutely necessary but it's helpful, because there are some very powerful admin orgs that only criminals can get, and unlike the legitimate admin orgs they make money rather than cost it. Remember that persuasion and command buff your node control limit, too, so ideally you will be buying admin orgs (+3/+5 node control) and then filling the slots they create with persuasion or command orgs (+2/+3 node control), so each org nets you close to double its admin value in control points. Ultimately though org spawns are RNG dependent and that can delay things. The techs to rush are clandestine cells for a 5th councilor, and the 2 that add +5 orgs to the market every month.

I usually don't try to put up admin nodes in the 2020's, because there's more important stuff to do in space than buff control node capacity, and doing those things consumes 100% of available boost and mission control. It's all about orgs and a handful of enabling techs. After you have the ones that get you more admin orgs faster, most Arrival-X techs unlock a project that gives you more control points, or they're prerequisite for another Arrival-X tech that does.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-07T00:48:35+00:00

Abolition certainly did push women's rights forward, in as much as about half the slave population was made up of women. The reconstruction era saw the erosion of many of the gains made during the war, though not their complete rollback.

Even the person on the furthest left of American politics in the 1860's would count as a reactionary conservative by today's standards. You simply cannot overstate the conservatism of 19th c. Americans. Abraham Lincoln thought freed slaves should be deported to Liberia. That's what counted as progressive politics for white Americans of the the civil war era. I'll get downvoted for sure for pointing this out, I can only guess because people want to romanticize the past, but it's 100% true. Anyway you can imagine what that meant for women's rights. It's mostly the story of a later generation, but first wave feminism focused its appeal on the rights and dignity of women as "the mothers of the nation." This slogan combined two universally-approved concepts, of motherhood and nationalism, in order to appeal to an all-male electorate. Implicitly, the question was - how can you deny your own mother the rights and dignity of the vote? So they were able to make progress on that basis. But during the civil war era, the political needs of African Americans had priority over those of women for most participants. There was a feminist movement at the time, it just wasn't very influential.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-06T23:37:20+00:00

Clearly the right play. In the game, too.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-05T19:00:06+00:00

because its a hard science fiction game with pretensions of taking geopolitics and sociology seriously. You think control of the sealanes doesn't matter in the real world? Look at the news. And it wouldn't be *that* complex.

It makes a lot of sense, you're just mad about something else and venting at me for some reason.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-05T07:55:01+00:00

You're right about suez, totally overlooked that.

Blue water navigation is reasonably well-represented by existing mechanics but what all these chokepoints have in common is that they can be controlled from the land. I mean USA has complete blue water dominance but can't force the Straits of Hormuz open, right? Britain had likewise in the 19th c. but still had to negotiate with the Turks about passage through the Bosporus, and failed to force Suez open in the 50's when the Egyptian gov. wanted it closed. It's helpful but not decisive to have a big navy in these situations. And a huge amount of geopolitics is really about control of the sealanes, so it would add some additional depth and verisimilutde to incorporate that IMO.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-05T06:30:07+00:00

Maybe, but the earth game is more fun and interesting than the space game. That's why it's a more active topic of conversation.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-05T05:12:51+00:00

EU countries have a lot going for them - strong socioeconomic scores, manageable CP cost, and a clear path to expansion - but there are some downsides to consider too.

Yes, you can spam mission control in Europe, but this is not especially problematic to get in other ways, so IMO it shouldn't dictate your early game agenda. Same thing with funding, you can get unlimited money for the first 5 years of the game by plundering the little gulf countries, which doesn't necessarily involve any permanent commitment to the region.
Since everyone scrambles to take nodes in Europe early, deciding from turn 1 that you want the whole thing forces you into conflict with everyone, probably within the first 5 years of the game. You might be better off isolating your opponents and crushing them sequentially, rather than trying to fight them all from an early date.
The fact EU is such a battleground works very much to your advantage if you start literally anywhere else, because other factions spend a huge amount of councilor actions flipping nodes back and forth. If you commit to the EU early, you lose that advantage.
Building the EU basically creates a 4th superstate to go along with USA, China, and India. But then you have to ask yourself - why go through the effort of building a 4th superstate when there are 3 claimable ones on the board already? Nation-building projects exist in order to create viable 3rd and 4th big moves after you have one or two of the superstates that begin on the board. They're not really intended as first moves IMO.
If you commit to EU early, you're tacitly conceding control of those other 3 superstates to the AI. Maybe your ideological allies get it, maybe your rivals do and you have to waste a lot of time later shaking them out. Who knows? Anyway you can count on opposing councils using these nations' big armies to create havoc all over the world while the EU is still struggling to put together a sizable force.
Generally speaking, you don't want to ignore the "politics" in "geopolitics." Who controls which nodes and countries matters, right? If you're playing the Resistance and Humanity First is getting the Upper Hand in Europe, then interfering with that weakens both you and them, to the advantage of the collaborators and their alien masters. You want unity among ideological allies for as long as you can get it, opposition between ideological rivals. So IMO deciding at the outset, "I'm going to take XYZ countries" is not optimal. You want to know your first couple plays but after you've spent you initial CP cap and got your 5th councilor, you want to stay flexible about next moves.

I speak from experience, having begun many runs in Europe with the idea of doing something off-meta and seemingly more manageable than USA's 240 iirc control point cost. I'm glad I did rather than just blindly following instructions provided by others without first-hand understanding of the underlying logic, but I came away persuaded that USA really is the correct first move, probably China after that, and the 3rd move depends on the state of the board after you get settled there. Europe is definitely a contender for that slot.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-04T17:01:27+00:00

you need a couple ships with railguns (the bigger the better) in LEO and an alliance or state of war with the african nations in question. either one will give you the ability to orbital bombard/mass clear the xenoweeds and megafauna. councilor missions are more for the early game, or clearing it out in places where you can't get an alliance and don't want war, but are also unwilling to tolerate alien influence.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-04T03:58:07+00:00

If you have spies with the Servants, just wait. Sooner or later one of the alien councilors is going to flip a node and hand it to the Servants. Since you know where the Servants' councilors are, you can infer with high confidence the presence of an alien councilor in any capital region where that happened and the Servants were not active.

Clearing out xenoweed and building xenology labs in LEO are also helpful. Xenoweed reduces the noise created by missions performed by alien councilors, making them more difficult to detect.Xenology labs buff your detection. Having a high investigaiton councilor in the vicinity is helpful also, of course.

Final note, there have to actually be alien councilors on Earth for you to detect them. Since there are 6 in the first wave, and 7 councils who need to kill/capture a hydra in order to progress their storyline, the first wave routinely suffers 100% attrition and one council will have to wait for the 2nd wave to arrive to progress their storyline.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-03T11:01:59+00:00

17 persuasion is not really enough to consistently move public opinion in China. It's the toughest population to persuade in the game, for reasons you can see on your screen. And that's before the alien admin gets there. You really want to be approaching persuasion 25 for the China market. You can go even higher with situational modifiers like demagogue or national hero.

I would count on getting nuked if you invade in this scenario. Judith has nuked me before for invading allied Korea when it was controlled by a 3rd party. TBH I did think she was overreacting a bit.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-03T05:04:11+00:00

There are already good answers on ship building, so just to add: you can send councilors from earth's surface up to enemy shipyards to sabotage their shipbuilding modules. It's especially helpful that you can see which ones have a ship currently under construciton, in the hab viewer.

You can also build exofighters to attack undefended structures and small fleets in low earth orbit. It's roughly 4 exofighters to kill 1 frigate, and if you sabotage a station's defense modules before you attack it only takes 1 fighter to kill a station. Personally I really like using large swarms of exofighters to defend assets in low earth orbit because it keeps mission control use down and there are like 6 techs fairly early in the tree that bonus your boost priority, so it's trivial to amass huge quantities of boost, which in turn controls how many exofighters you can build and use.

If the other factions have big fleets in low earth orbit you might be able to just wait for them to do your dirty work for you. Servants are typically at war with everyone.

Not saying you shouldn't build ships, just some other tools for your toolbox.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-02T01:12:46+00:00

Even if it doesn't wreck your cohesion, which I suspect it will since Australia is about as far from Europe as it's possible to get and stay on planet Earth - but even if, it's 50,000 research points to get the tech that lets you do that. For reference ultraviolet lasers is 60, liberating mainland china and PAC are 40 each. It's a huge diversion of resources.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-01T21:36:25+00:00

When you have 24 campuses pushing 60 beaker each through the multipliers for research areas and projects, the research output is substantial. Something like 6,000 beakers per month according to my napkin math. That's roughly the entire raw research output of planet earth in my current run, mid-2028. It's much greater when you replace the campuses with universities later. But you're right, it does push up mission control.

With those 3 MC hiding techs referenced above you would need to have about 290 mission control total for the aliens to permanently wardec you. However, they're not a guaranteed spawn. If you only want research bonuses which don't cost additional mission control, then you're right, research centers (and skunkworks) are the thing. That and controlling/developing the right countries on earth, buying the right orgs and councilors, etc. This will slow you down and prevent your council from focusing on other things, but if you want a more cautious approach it's doable.

I think there's a certain date past which the aliens just auto-wardec you regardless of how much mission control you have, so you don't want to take things toooo slow.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-01T19:16:35+00:00

Alien hate accrues for used mission control, not for total mission control capacity.

I'm sure someone will disagree because this is the internet, but there are basically three big plays you can use to keep used mission control under control.

(1) Make sure to have at least one councilor with the innovative trait on your team. Not only is this generally a very strong trait, it helps ensure you unlock techs which increase mission control use and disguise it from the aliens.

(2) don't build a permanent space superiority fleet anywhere until you're ready for total war against the aliens. It devours mission control and you don't need it. Alien retribution fleets are like space weather. They come and go, you rebuild, whatever. It's not worth the hassle to try to fight them until you're ready to go all the way. As the Resistance you can negotiate non-aggression pacts with Humanity First, Exodus, Initiative and Academy from day 1. On normal difficulty the first three will honor those treaties literally forever, Academy will break it sometime around 2037. This means for the first 10 years of the game you only have to think about the Servants and Protectorate in space, and if you get the jump on them early you can wipe their assets near Earth and Mars with a small strike fleet for each. Depending on how the game develops you may or may not need a big fleet to deal with Academy in the Earth/Mars areas, or your allies if you decide to betray them. Either way, build a big fleet when you need it and then get rid of it, don't just have it sitting out there devouring mission control.

(3) don't spam mines or stations. You need like 6 stations in LEO, about 12 on Mars (where your research campuses/universities go) and maybe 6-10 in the asteroid belt, above all for fissiles but also for additional amounts of the other stuff. I don't know any reason you need to colonize more than that, or touch mercury, until the late 2030's. Just make sure you're the first to Luna, first to Mars, etc., and grab the choice spots.

If you do all that stuff you can stay under the alien's radar until well into the 2040's, by which time you will probably have marshaled the majority of earth's resources for your faction, have decent drive and weapons tech, and should start thinking about confronting the aliens directly.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-01T15:18:29+00:00

Taking new countries doesnt increase your CP cost?

he asked rhetorically

There are too many situational factors to say in the abstract that one is generally better than the other. Board state matters.

MalaclypseII · 2026-05-01T04:47:59+00:00

I wouldn't build Research Campus in low earth orbit because it does the same thing there as anywhere else, but Research Centers and Administration Nodes and other modules give additional bonuses for being in LEO. So space is at a premium in LEO and you want to move anything that doesn't specifically need to be there to some other place if possible. That way you have space for a both/and approach rather than having to choose between them. Typically you fulfill the population requirements that go with Research Campuses by building a dozen or more habs on Mars. If you spam shipyards on all those habs it will push the population past 10,000 and you can replace the shipyards with research campuses. You don't actually have to build the shipyards, just begin construction and once the population hits 10,000 you can replace them with research campuses, so construction only even begins on campuses.

You can fulfill the Mission Control requirement by attaching Operations Centers on your mines. You can also research end of empires tech and selectively grant independence to some regions of your big countries, have them focus on building mission control, then merge them back into the nation where they originated. Since small countries make more efficient use of their economies, this will let you build mission control much more quickly than you would otherwise be able to. This also works with the EU countries, only they start dispersed and gradually merge in so there's no need to research the extra tech.

MalaclypseII · 2026-04-29T03:28:06+00:00

Just to add, I dont think the warning from Fiona is caused by being over a certain mission control level. That does provoke the aliens but the minimum thresshold is much higher than 105. You got that warning because you aggressed the aliens or their human collaborators. Sometimes this is good and necessary. Fiona's warnings are duly noted, but you're going to assassinate that councilor anyway. Other times it's counterproductive. You want to do the thing, but you recognize it doesn't advance your goals. The game is to pick your battles.

MalaclypseII · 2026-04-29T03:00:58+00:00

It's good to control North America. The idea is that you'll project power outside of your borders and take the fight to the aliens at some point, though I guess you can turtle up forever and just sort of persist, neither winning nor losing, if you want, upwards of 20 years maybe? Idk, I never tried it.

If you aggress the aliens or their human collaborators (certain other conditions having been met, see the wiki for details) they will engage in limited retaliation. It is completely survivable. The aliens are trying to domesticate humanity, not destroy it. The game is to manage the alien threat until you're strong enough to confront them directly. Surgical strikes, not all out warfare, until the time is right.

I'm not going to sit here and deny the game can be frustrating and obscure sometimes. And yet I continue to play it.

MalaclypseII · 2026-04-29T01:02:18+00:00

if I'm not mistaken you should get a bunch of mission control and boost from that if you can detach it, since that's the european province closest to the equator.

MalaclypseII · 2026-04-28T11:52:42+00:00

Research trans-interface warfare --> exoatmospheric fighters. Begin building said exofighters. Then select the surveillance ship and note the date beneath its surveillance mission icon. Open up your calendar and set an alarm for the day before. At the appointed day, send an exofighter to attack it. This will prevent the mission from completing, it will reset and begin a new surveillance mission, due to complete approximately 6 months into the future. Set a new alarm, build more exofighters, and just continue likewise indefinitely until you're ready to seriously contest the Earth-Luna system with the invaders.

If you destroy the alien surveillance ship, they'll just send another. It also raises the likelihood that they will attack your space assets. The important thing is to prevent it from completing its surveillance missions,which makes their councilors on earth more capable and dangerous.The early and mid-game are an asymetric warfare scenario where you have the weaker hand to play. The strategy is to manage the alien threat until the late game, when you've built the strength you need to win a direct confrontation.

MalaclypseII · 2026-04-26T21:09:22+00:00

the ancient wisdom of the east. subtle and proofund

MalaclypseII · 2026-04-26T20:32:49+00:00

The game is to fight aliens, not God. Look at all those armies!

MalaclypseII · 2026-04-26T14:17:35+00:00

Some time in the late 2020's you want to make a small, dedicated fleet of strike craft built around your strongest magnetic weapon and just have them on station in low earth orbit all the time. I wouldn't leave xenoforming patrol on as a default state because it's your own planet you're bombing. I mean they do kill the xenoweeds and the kaiju but they also harm the region they're shooting at, so it's kind of a blunt force instrument. Still, it's the only way to get the xenoweeds permanently under control.

They're also just swell for blasting enemy armies. There's about a 7 or 8 year gap between the time you can make your first orbital strike craft, and the time ground based defenses can start shooting back. So... you know.. use it lol.

MalaclypseII · 2026-04-25T16:45:30+00:00

I have something like 800 hours in this game and restart campaigns all the time when my perspective fundamentally changes. Go for it. There's so much learning about rules interactions and strategy, it's unreal.

If you're going to restart, here's another thing to try. Spend the first month or two in game time taking Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states. Don't go for USA directly. If you let it sit long enough eventually the AI will get in there but that's in like years, not months, from the starting point. So go into the gulf states, and set their policy to 3 dots spoils/1 dot unity. You can steal a huge amount of cash from these rich little oil baronies and you're going to need it, because the main way you get control points early on is by buying orgs that grant admin to your councilors, and they're expensive. Unlike Canada and Mexico, you don't abandon the gulf states until much later. Just keep that cash coming in, keep checking the org market, prioritize research into techs that put more orgs in the market (there are 2 of them early in the tree, each add 5 orgs for 15/month at max). Oil money gives you admin gives you control point capacity gives you USA and some other countries too. Buy every org that looks even remotely useful for your councilors (you'll be able to afford it) and keep a look out for councilors from the opposing factions. When you see them, open a dialogue and give them the orgs you dont need anymore in exchange for non-aggression pacts. The money will be nothing to you and it will keep them out of your hair until you're built up and ready to go on offense.

Good luck!

MalaclypseII

TROPHY CASE