Terra Invicta: Terra Invicta Beginner’s Guide, Part 2

Once your Control Nation missions resolve, you may end up with a Control Point (CP) under your control. CP represent the various institutions and elements that hold power inside a nation. There are between 1 to 6 CP in each nation. Larger nations with bigger economies will have more CP, representing the increased difficulty in obtaining full control of more powerful nations.

The rightmost (or in the case of nations with only 1, the only) CP is always the Executive CP, and represents the most powerful office(s) in the nation. When taking control of a nation with multiple CP, you can only attempt to gain control of the Executive CP if you already have at least 1 other CP in the nation. In the example shown to the right, we have taken the only other CP in Sweden, leaving the Executive as our next target.

If you did not end up with CP after your first Councilor Phase, that’s okay – you can just repeat the process earlier in this guide (perhaps hiring an additional councillor to help out), until you do end up with a CP. It can also be beneficial to Boost the mission by spending Influence.

Control CP allows you to affect the nation’s Priorities, which determine where they will spend their national budget. By default, they will be set to your Factions default Priority template, but you can adjust them by clicking on the pips beside each category – these work the same way as in Research, with your portion of the budget (so for example, 50% per CP in a nation with 2 CP, 25% per CP in a nation with 4, etc), split between the pips according to their distribution. Uncontrolled CP will have a default Priority configuration depending on the nations real world policies.

Once you control the Executive CP of a nation, you will also be able to adjust the nations foreign policy. This is done via the Relations tab, where a Manage button will appear once you have control of the executive CP. With this you can pay Influence to change your stance towards other nations from Allied to Neutral to Rival. Changes have a cooldown, so its worthwhile to plan ahead here.

In addition to the above, once you have the Executive CP, the Set National Policy mission can be used to perform other, more significant policy changes, such as declarations of war, forming federations, unifying with other countries, or disbanding armies.

With an initial foothold with some CP, your next priority should be to aim to take full control over some of these nations.

Nations with 2 CP are ideal for this, as once you have the first one, it is impossible for any of the other factions to take the Executive CP if it is uncontrolled (as doing so requires at least 1 other CP, which you have the only one of).

For larger nations, you may run into cases where another faction also ends up with a CP, and thus you only end up with partial control of the nation even if you take the Executive CP. This is where the Crackdown and Purge missions come in.

Crackdown can be used to disable and weaken a CP controlled by an enemy faction, and this will make it significantly easier to Purge. CP which have been affected by a Crackdown have the Crackdown mission icon on them in the Nation Panel, and a yellow/orange icon next to their on-map CP.

Purge is used to take control of a CP controlled by an enemy faction. Like Control Nation, taking control of an Executive CP requires control of at least one other CP in the nation. It is far easier to execute Purge missions against CP which are affected by the Crackdown mission.

Both Crackdown and Purge (and many other missions) are much easier to conduct in nations with high Public Support. The Public Campaign mission can increase this, and it is recommended to use it if you are attempting to go after larger (3 or more CP) nations, or enemy CP in nations with high Public Support for their faction.

The other symbol you may seen on the Nation Panel or on-map CP is the Defend Interests icon, indicated as the mission icon on the Nation Panel, and as a shield next to on-map CP. Defend Interests is a mission which will add this modifier to any CP under your control in the targeted nation, and any CP affected by this modifier become much harder targets for Crackdown and Purge missions. The modifier expires after a set period.

Hopefully after the first month or two, you will have control over at least a nation or two. At this point, with some initial footholds gained, its worth it to take a step back and consider what you will need as part of a longer term plan to fight back against the aliens.

The first thing we need to consider is Resources. In the longer term, this will mean the Space Resources shown on the right side of the Resource Panel, but in the short term, this means Money, Influence, Ops and Boost.

The second thing we will require is suitable Technology, which will enable us to expand our council, progress the story missions, and put the resources above to better use. In the longer term, technology will provide us with the tools to expand into the Solar System, design and build Spaceships, and fight the aliens on a more even footing.

• Money can be gained via councilors, or from nations via the Funding or Spoils priorities. It is useful for both Direct Investment, acquiring Orgs, and later on, for various costs related to space assets. It is also important for Boosting Public Campaign missions.
• Influence is gained for your share of global Public Support, as well as via councillors. It is important for acquiring Orgs, Direct Investment, hiring Councilors, certain new Councilor traits, and certain missions. It can also be expended to boost the Control Nation, Purge and Crackdown missions.
• Ops is gained mainly via councilors (and more specifically, relevant Orgs assigned to councilors). It is used for boosting various missions, particularly those that target enemy councilors and assets.
• Boost is gained via certain Orgs assigned to councilors, or from nations with space launch infrastructure. At the start of the game, the key ones are the USA, Japan, China, India, as well as any nation in the European Union or Eurasian Union (weighted to the bigger members). Boost is vital for expansion into space.

In addition to the uses above, all of these resources also have uses in Events, and having some on hand can offer alternative options.

The last Resource to consider in the longer term is Control Points Capacity. This is effectively a cap on how many nations/CPs you can maintain effective control over. It can be increased with certain councilor Attributes and Technology.

While initially your research will be directed at simple projects providing some resources and global tech providing awareness of the Aliens, after a few months you will want to start directing this with specific goals in mind.

Broadly speaking, we can divide early technology into 3 broad categories.

The first are those that provide a direct benefit to your operations and expansion on Earth. These include the ‘Clandestine Cells’ project to recruit a 5th councilor, the Commercial/Audience/Operations/Management Research ones providing additional resources, and others with similar bonuses.

The second are those that pave the way to serious expansion in the Solar System. This includes technologies that improves the amount of Boost you get, create Orgs providing Boost, reduce the amount of Boost required for sending payloads beyond Earth Orbit, and most crucially, those that allow you to send probes, and later build bases and mines on the Moon.

The final category is those that advance the story missions for your faction, revealing more about our ‘guests’ and their possible objectives. I would strongly recommend doing these whenever possible (unless the cost is completely unpalatable), as only by understanding the enemy can you begin to oppose them.

The final thing to remember is that contributing the most Research Points to a Global Research will allow you to pick the next one for that slot. This is very powerful, as it allows you to work towards technology you need to achieve your goals longer term.

Once your councilors have completed a few missions, it is worth taking a look at their pages in the Council Panel again.

There are 2 ways to improve your councilors; by using the Augment button to spend XP on improving their Attributes and Traits, and by acquiring and assigning Orgs to them.

Augment allows you to spend XP (and in some cases, other Resources like Influence) to either improve their Attributes (up to a maximum of 25) or to purchase new Traits or improve existing ones. Generally, you will want to either focus on improving Attributes that help with the mission types you run with that councilor, or on improving Administration, which will allow you them to control more Orgs, and help with your CP Capacity resource.

Orgs are shown on the right side of the page, with Orgs assigned to this councilor shown in the upper half, and Orgs available for acquisition, or unassigned shown in the two tabs in the lower half.

Orgs are shown with their icon, name, 1-3 stars for their level, small icons showing what they do, and their cost. This cost is typically either in Money or Influence, though occasionally other resources are also used. Hovering over an Org will tell you more about its bonuses, and also any extra requirements to acquire it (for example some orgs require the Government trait).

An Org requires as much free Org Capacity (based on Administration attribute) as the number of stars on their icon. If you have both sufficient Org Capacity and Resources to acquire an Org, its icon will be shown in a brighter colour in the Org Panel.

It is worthwhile to check up on what Orgs are available every month.