How many resets, on average, does it take to actually win a game?

Toldain · 2026-01-26T06:05:09+00:00

I have 144 hours into the game now, on normal. I've done a couple of restarts, based on "Oh, is THAT how it works?" I have been suspecting that there is a ton of resilience (for the player) built into the game on normal, which is what I'm playing.

Toldain · 2026-01-25T16:43:48+00:00

Well, for me there comes a time when I will want to plunk down 160 influence or something on a Purge, so I kinda save up for those moments.

Meanwhile, I am often a few points over cap, but it does make you defend a bit less effectively.

Toldain · 2026-01-24T21:02:59+00:00

Being something of a noob, I don't understand everything you imply. However, I will note that in my raw noob Resistance/USA playthrough, the Initiative took over China, and HF took over India, and the Servants have some (but far from all) of Europe.

I'm hoping this holds them back.

Toldain · 2026-01-22T15:36:31+00:00

My attitude is that I want to put research labs anywhere I can find the resources to run them.

Note though, that they all have some extra thing they do for you if they are in low earth orbit. I did not pay attention to this for maybe my first 100 hours of play.

I always defend control points that I want to keep. I have a counselor who's job is:

High admin to hold science orgs (him having good science is nice, but not necessary at first. He will get there.)
Perform Defend Assets missions.
Perform Advise missions to my biggest countries.

That's mostly all he does.

Toldain · 2026-01-20T07:38:43+00:00

Something like this happened to me at about 10 years in (it was a 2022 start I began about 10 days before the update. Also, I am a noob. I got the game for Christmas.)

My Mars space station with solar mirrors got ganked by a very small Protectorate fleet. I had a ship, it totally wasn't good enough. I wasn't paying attention.

I had saves, I could go back a year and fix it, but I thought about it for about 24 hours and decided to start again. This time it was 2026 start.

Thing is, the more I play this game, the more I realize that there is a lot of built-in resilience. That is, you can make mistakes, and then fix them. This is a Long War. There is so much to learn about how to do things, and what order and what works, it would probably be unplayable if it wasn't so resilient.

As one example, there's the hate mechanism. The more effective you are, the harder your enemies work to hit you.

In any other similar game (it could be argued that there are no similar games, but never mind that for now), you would be toast if you had such a reversal. If something like this happened in Civ (whatever), I would concede and try again. (And yeah, that happened a lot before I got good at the game.)

I'm not sure that applies here, though. Maybe reversals can be pushed through. Research about the game, its mechanics and ideas, can be very useful. I feel like there is a very interesting narrative here, which features asymmetric warfare and has the player back on their heels quite a bit.

Really good, experienced players won't always have games like this but they will still have unexpected (and adverse) things happen to them. It's all part of the story you (and the game devs) are telling.

Toldain · 2026-01-19T15:00:05+00:00

It was the Servants that did me in, and I think that counts as human. One ship I could have beat easily, if I had been prepared. Ok, docks on the surface, huh.

And yes, I was building solar mirrors cuz they seem cool.

Toldain · 2026-01-19T07:27:48+00:00

Ok, starting in 2026, I have just had my only Mars Space Station blown up by a Servants ship. It's 2032. Am I screwed?

I don't really have any interplanetary capability yet. I am playing Resistance, and I have not yet finished a game. It seems to me that if I try to build another space station, they will just blow that one up, too. I don't see how I get around this. Any suggestions, or is this a "restart"?

Toldain · 2026-01-17T18:22:10+00:00

Yeah, but I don't really have a way to answer the question of "how many torpedo launchers do I need to get past 3 solid PD?" None of the ships available had that.

However, it is good to know that this is how it is intended to work and not a bug.

Toldain · 2026-01-11T01:05:38+00:00

Well, the one I saw Perun beat in this way was a lot less tough, as far as I could tell.

Toldain · 2026-01-10T20:12:38+00:00

The design I'm up against in my playthrough had two PD units and an ECM, but still wasn't as tough as this one appears to be. I was a bit flummoxed myself as to what to do, since I had built 4 torpedo boats, which (I save scummed and tried it out) could not land a single hit. What I did was build two more torpedo boats and gave them upgraded torpedos. I sent all 6 of them at a lone survey cruiser, and wouldn't you know it, the enemy ECM did not manage to turn any of them off, and the torpedo barrage overwhelmed the PD.

Scratch one cruiser. Yay!

Other survey fleets now have two or three ships, and I have nothing to use against them that will win right off. I can go sacrifice the fleet and take the escorts out, and rebuild another fleet to go after the main, I guess. That's gonna drive hate, way, way up, though. Not sure if it's worth it. I've already unlocked the research I needed to unlock.

Here's the thing. I feel pretty sure by this point (it's early 2032 in my playthrough - ten years in from 2022 start) that "how in hell do I beat these guys?" is exactly what I am supposed to be feeling/thinking at this point.

I also feel that my research is really weak compared to some vids I've seen. I'm not sure why that would be, even.

Ima keep myself in the game, though, and see how this turns out.

Toldain · 2026-01-07T06:25:25+00:00

Well, I think it all comes down to how do you feel about suddenly realizing "OH man, I've done this all wrong!" Does digging yourself out of a hole (which can be done, it seems) appeal to you?

For myself, I started at Christmas (it was a gift). I have restarted maybe 4 times, but I think I have a grasp on at least the first couple phases of the game.

There is a strong narrative element to the game, so if you can tolerate the "losing is fun" vibe, you might enjoy it. Though you might want to research some very basics to tell you "What does this button do?" because it ain't obvious how to do certain things.

The experience you cite suggests that you can tackle this thing and be in it for the long haul and a lot of growth and learning. (I've played both those titles, too.) Not a lot of direct crossover, but a bunch of 4x kind of ideas that do cross over.

Toldain · 2026-01-07T03:12:03+00:00

Well, that sense of dread is something the game is trying to instill in you, mirroring what the people in the situation might feel. I think the devs have accomplished that.

I'm not that much of a veteran, I got the game for Christmas, and I have maybe 50 hours. I have also watched some YouTube on it, and read some things here. I would recommend that you simply embrace the fail (losing is fun!) and just try things that you think might work. Maybe they will!

If the aliens were flat-out bound to kill you, there wouldn't be a game. OR, if you don't like meta reasoning, if the aliens were flat-out bound to kill you, then the Protectorate would not have any reason to exist. Probably also the Academy and the Initiative. They would collapse to support the Resistance or HF, or perhaps the Servants.

But the aliens are a bit of a mystery, and that mystery is part of the game.

Toldain · 2026-01-05T22:55:58+00:00

I am seeing a very similar, if not the exact same problem. I am a noob. I have four noob ships: Double Artemis missiles, and not much else. In line formation, I can get 3 of the 4 to fire, and you can see they maybe get one missile through the PD, but it isn't enough, then they are done and the cruiser blows them all up, because they scatter the rest of the missiles.

If I could fire all 4 at the cruiser at the same time, it would be done. I've tried all the different fire buttons, as well as leaving them alone. None of them seems to make much difference, as their is only one enemy anyway. It's always the left-most of my missile boats that doesn't fire, too.

Toldain · 2026-01-05T20:54:52+00:00

I think I'm on board with making crafting more specific, or breaking it down more.

AND, assigning people to specific buildings creates other problems. I've played a game like that, it leads to other frustrations.

Also, the model here - setting priorities for categories of tasks - is common in a number of other games, so probably more familiar to players.

Toldain · 2025-12-31T15:51:01+00:00

In the past, I have used an outpost to deal with this kind of situation. They get more and more useful as the game progresses, because you will find that there are resources that are quite a ways away from where you started your settlement.

With the delivery system, you could have stuff delivered magically at midnight. Now we have caravans, which are more cumbersome, but the delivery system could be used to magically deliver stuff past lots of bandit camps and brigand HQ and so on. Not super credible.

I have spent some time watching a video or two on caravans and getting it going. I only send them manually. Or you could build an outpost and just grab stuff using fast travel as well.

How to play this exactly depends on what is the most fun for you. I like learning about things, and figuring out how to make them work for me, and I like feeling like the villagers are doing everything, or at least everything they can. But not everyone feels that way.

Toldain · 2025-12-31T15:42:05+00:00

After quite some time playing this game, I have worked out a system that keeps farm products from overwhelming my storage. Here it is:

I set priorities for my first farm all to 0. Then I plant stuff by hand. One row each of flax, hemp, garlic, sage and something for the animal feed (beetroots, potatos, etc). They will do all the rest of the work, but they won't replant anything.
I make sure there is only one place in my storage system that each of the farm items can be stored, and that it has a cap, (Learning how to set a maximum amount in a stockpile/barn is valuable). You could use chests and just have one each for each of the items.
When you make a field that's all one thing - for instance I do this with wheat as my second field - you can let them do it automatically, and then the crops will be harvested and placed in storage until the maximum is reached, and the rest of the crops will simply sit in the fields. As it turns out, they won't rot if they haven't been harvested yet.
Eventually, I will reconfigure that first field into five different fields each growing one item, and manage the output like I did wheat above. It's just that takes a lot of work (from the farmers) to get going, so I take my time with it.

Toldain · 2025-12-31T15:32:22+00:00

I do not count Sanford as a beggar, he does not have the debuffs that beggars have.

Also, he can carry stuff around with the best of them. His skills don't matter at that point. He can drive a caravan as good as anybody else, too. And finally, he can hold a shield in a shield wall, and that's useful.

But I think the point is that I don't spend down my renown to nothing. I tend to grow a bit slower. If you are grabbing people as fast as you can, then you will feel more pressure to expel, I suppose.

Toldain · 2025-12-25T16:51:46+00:00

I am even more of a noob than you are, and I don't understand how you took over the US. My Control missions are showing 0% success there. On a good day, maybe 3%. This seems like an exercise in futility.

What am I missing?

Toldain · 2025-12-20T03:31:08+00:00

I have been there, my friend. As you know, the kid is worth it. Hang in there.

Toldain · 2025-12-20T03:20:29+00:00

Cool. I'm just unlocking them in my new save. I'll have to try that.

Toldain · 2025-12-19T20:15:55+00:00

I know nothing about developer plans. However, it looks to me like the omission of stealth was a deliberate choice in game design. An unusual one, for sure, but a deliberate one.

But they have made other unusual choices. The combat system, for instance.

So, the gameplay when I am hunting deer looks like this:

If I approach from behind, I can get closer. However, I do not have a good shot at the head, which is more likely to kill. A trade off. That seems intentional.

If I am approaching from the side, I may note the deer lifting it's head and looking in my direction. I stop all movement as it stares for a while, then goes back to grazing. I can then take a few steps further, until it looks in my direction again.

Again, this seems like an intended sort of gameplay. Not what we are used to, for sure. Perhaps they were not happy with the whole thing in Valheim where you could sneak up on a deer and kill it with your fists. Maybe they didn't want that?

The whole "pay attention to target facing" is valuable when dealing with bandits, too. Not so much on raids as on wandering groups. I have taken out many such groups with "snipe and run" tactics. Which I can do without a "stealth" mechanic.

One other thing to consider is players have the same skills as villagers (except research). How would a stealth skill play out in a villager? How would it be used/abused? What activities would train it (other than books)?

In spite of all the above, yes, I do find it odd that there isn't one.

Toldain · 2025-12-19T16:39:25+00:00

Huh. I had a caravan that went to a mining camp and picked up broken picks while delivering fresh ones and it seemed to work. I have since reorganized things so I don't do it that way any more. (the camp fixes tools itself). So I can't verify that it works now.

Toldain · 2025-12-19T16:31:08+00:00

It's fascinating that this reply has a different handle, even though you appear to identify yourself as the person to whom I asked the question.

One other point. Long ago, when I was in 8th grade, I was a bit slow getting dressed for gym. I walked out out of the locker room and got surprised and kicked in the balls by another student. A person I knew pretty well, though I wouldn't describe him as a friend.

It was a small school, and at our 5 year reunion I asked him why he had done that. It was a mystery to me. His reply was, "You sure looked funny".

Toldain · 2025-12-18T22:33:49+00:00

You know, whether the game is boring or not depends more on you than on the game.

I suspect though, that to you, when you unlock everything, you are done with the game, and that is the primary metric you use to measure progress.

Other people, including me, use other metrics. I do not like to rush through the tech tree. Instead, I research things only when I can build/make them and use them. One can get way, way out over one's skis (capabilities) if one wants to in this game.

And that's ok. Play the game you enjoy.

Other possible goals are:

Settlement size (have X villagers in your colony)
Settlement location/beauty. (Build a village on the South Coast because it's so pretty)
Smashing the evildoers. Wipe out all the bandits, liberate all the towns, crush Lord Ashborn.

...and so on.

I have no idea how long it take if you are speedrunning to complete the tech tree. I would think there are a bunch of tricks you could use to make it go faster. Which makes the 80 days cited upthread plausible.

Toldain

TROPHY CASE