This guide fills in the gap left by the ingame help, and provides all the information you need for a successful first playthrough.

Councillors

Councillor Skills

First, make your characters useful.

Administration is the key attribute of the early game. Administration such as Command and Persuasion increase the number of control points you can have.

You can increase Administration by gaining XP from successful missions. To improve an attribute by 1 point, you need 20XP Missions earn you 1 or 2 points. To increase your skill point, you will need to complete 10-20 missions.

Your councillors can earn 26 skill points per year (1 every two weeks) if they run noddy missions. They can earn 52 skill points a year if they participate in challenge missions. They can assassinate (. If they assassinate (every turn, they’d get the 78 but that’s not likely to happen in the early game.

It will take some time to get your admin in order.

It is easy to concentrate on acquiring organizations that increase administrative efficiency. These are often quite affordable and should be prioritized over things like the CIA or FBI, which can be eye-wateringly expensive.

These can be stacked up and your next goal is finding enemy councillors (through investigation). Then use hostile takeover to remove them from their admin granting organizations.

This accomplishes two things. It severely limits the power of enemy councillors. (Low admin = fewer organizations = fewer mission types + less skill buffs and fewer experience from running successful missions). It also allows you to boost your councillors in opposite direction, creating clear water.

It is best to concentrate on your primary and second enemies first. For example, you can focus on the resistance to disable the servants and secondly, the initiative. Leave the Academy, Exodus, and Humanity alone in the early game. Their strength = Servant weakness

Concentrate on getting admin up for everyone. You will then need to be a high persuader, high command, and high espionage agents. Science and security are not things you should let slip, especially in the early years.

Once you have a turn-character ability (, it is not worth it before you get admin/espionage to 15+). Use it to turn councillors against your primary/secondary enemy.

Your concern is enemies with any level of 10 or more. Kill them. To keep them alive, set the turned councilor to fail missions with a roll of 0. Next, cull the good ones, especially those with high admin. This limits their CP ability and thus economic power/growth/competiveness.

The best way to accomplish this, and this is definitely midgame is to take 2 – 3 out in one turn before they all go down. Assassination should not be used before your councillors have 25 admin (through) and their org capacity is maxed. You can use hostile takeover up to that point.

Councillor selection.

The largest countries are the ones with the most orgs. US, China, Russia, EU. If possible, choose councillors from these countries. This means that you don’t have to be a resident of the country to access the org.

In general, I find having two government councillors works well for me.

Early game councillors were chosen based on admin/persuasion max because these are the ones that pay the most. Negatives can often appear worse than they actually are. You can work around them.

Commandos and poiliticians are solid early game options. You can gain additional missions from orgs, so don’t worry about it

Councillor Acquisition

It is best to start research early and aim to get 6 counillors as soon as possible. Each councillor can support 75 CP from admin, persuasion, and command.) So 6 can give 450 CP without any research/mission bonuses.

Competitors often stall quickly when they have too many CP’s compared with what they can support. They then have to give up on them, making it easy to pick them.

Science

Allocating Research Points

There are many things to do. Researching most of the important information takes time. The majority of the stuff that is easy to research is of little value.

There are always tradeoffs to make.

The first tradeoff is where you should allocate your research points.

It is best to have at least one red in each research slot – top or bottom.

The second thing that is best is to ensure that you are researching in as many research areas as possible. Do not research 2 military projects or an alien.

Third, ensure that you win all research projects. It is best to do this so that you only pay the minimum amount. If you need 10k points to complete the task, pay 5001 and the other factions will complete the rest. Sometimes, you can win with only 30% of your spend.

You won’t always know what to search for. Research the cheaper items if you find things that have been studied to the 30-40k level, and others that are left at 2500. It’s stuff the aliens don’t care about so research that slows them down.

What should you research?

I won’t spoil the surprise. The general rule is that the more you can control/delay space expansion, the better. The more space-faring factions have, the greater your threat. It is better to control your expansion rate so you have Luna before Mars opens up. This forces competitors to use boost instead of resources to build new stations.

You should research the unification projects, which allow you to create super-countries. These projects are expensive and can take many years to realize the true benefits. If you are patient enough, they can greatly reduce the amount of CP you need.

Let’s get back to the allocation. Back to allocation.

Next, assign everything else to your projectrs. I will usually have a long and medium-term project on Red that is ticking away, and then I will move on to green and tackle many smaller projects one by one.

Do 10 military projects, 10 information science, and then 10 life projects.

TOP TIP: Organize your research by categories

Research Bonuses

This can be a bit messy, but it is usually possible to find a station template that can hold x research units. Then create x = all the units. Next, create a research station for each area of research. Or have 8 research centres on one platform. Both approaches are not very satisfactory. Habs will have more information.

Science is advancing

I don’t worry about the state of the research race a lot. I just acquire additional countries and blob to stay competitive (, at least when there aren’t many projects to steal.

To accelerate faster, it is worth creating research universities that produce pure research and can quickly outperform multiple superpowers (ie. US+EU+China)

Science from councillors is often trivial. It’s worth increasing science to an average 6 (to make more than 35+, if you have 6) councillors to avoid any negative events

Habs

Orbit of Earth

Earth Orbit Habs are stolen or destroyed.

If they have too much mission control, aliens destroy them and steal them from their enemies.

However, platforms don’t seem capable of taking over (MC -1 – in Earth orbit. You should only build platforms there once you have enough Earth control to ensure that opposing facions do not enter negative MC territory. They have 78 habs, but only 24 MC.

Once you reach this point, it is safe to build larger platforms in orbit.

But once you have a lot of MC, you likely have too many MC and the Aliens are angry with you. Guess what happens to all the habs in LEO? Lots of space dust.

The aliens appear to be running punishment missions. They arrive with the goal of killing X habs. It seems to be between 3 – 6. LEO (or all Earth orbits)) can be stuffed with many platforms. They can be killed to satisfy their bloodlust for very little cost (10MC + limited resources to you)

How can you stop aliens from stealing LEO?

They will keep coming back when they are upset.

It is important to build multiple stations immediately after the raid has ended. This is how you build. 4 solar power + 4 points defence + 4 sun array + 2 layers defence + 4 solar farms + 2 battle station. Everything comes up in sequence and in my games, 2 battle stations seem to be more than aliens are willing attack (. Assuming you have already researched the first 15-20 techs and have picked up lasers/railguns, defenses automatically upgrade so spamming military research can make it difficult to crack them quickly from an early start). To prevent your investment in battle stations being ruined, you do the point defense and layered defense.

Assault fleets

There is nothing worse than 12 alien armies with high-tech landings to defeat your 5 tech armies. 200% stronger? It’s not fun.

20MC’s strategy to stop this is to build monitors using the most effective standoff weapons – glass cannons. The aliens don’t like the idea of sending undefended transports into Earth orbit where they can be smashed. Your Fleet in Being has very little accel, delta v or armour. It only has enough to drop the gravity well and have enough firepower to kill the alines. It will not be used for any other purpose. Stop building these ships once you realize that the assaults are over. Monitors are what I use most often

Hab strategy

Uranium was first

Luna is the first place you can visit. The more Luna slots that you can get, the better. Focus on the uranium, as this will drive your expansion and cripple your competitors. If you fail to get there first, you can destroy or attack their bases. Free choice (.). Loyalty means a hit if you have) ethical councillors.

You can either use your Luna habs as a core module if you are short of MC, or hab + 2 solar + mining to get 14 MC (7 base * 1 outpost + 1 Mining MC)

Repeat the process with Mars, especially with Uranium. This will effectively block them from the rest the Solar system as they must use huge amounts of boost to support their stations.

Allow stations in Luna and Mars orbit, but don’t worry about the stations across the belt. The MC that’s used there can’t take over your large habs on earth orbit.

Outer planets

It shocks you to learn that building your new base on Saturn will take 2000+ days. Every upgrade will also take 2000+ days. It is best to start researching the mission to Jupiter/Saturn/outer Planets and to send a colony ship or two there. The construction hab will allow you to build in the same system as the usual 30 day construction time.

Command Points

You will find that the alien attacks take between 2 and 4 attacks to completely clear the wildlife in the middle to late game. It is possible to spend 1000+ command points, which is not sustainable compared to what you get from councillors or orgs. If you keep adding marine bases, the problem will disappear.

Countries

TBC – I want the chance to play

 

This is all about Terra Invicta – Councillor Skills; I hope you enjoy reading the Guide! If you feel like we should add more information or we forget/mistake, please let us know via commenting below, and thanks! See you soon!