Late last night after my post on Terra Invicta I was poking around the game trying to win Iran to my side (they have resources needed for future space expansion) and I went into the various reporting panels available in the game. One of them, the “Intel” screen, lists all kinds of things such as the percentage of beliefs of people around the globe that align with the different factions, alien activity, and — most importantly — dossiers on the other factions themselves.

One thing caught my eye, though.

You’ll have to take my word for it, but no one in this panel is doing that much better than I am in terms of Numbers that Matter, aside from cash, which other factions appear to be hoarding. At the time this screenshot was taken, I had more influence (though the Initiative and the Servants had more per-month growth than me in that field), more research, and more ops, which more or less means I’m not spending as much per turn. I am pretty much on par with everyone in terms of boost and mission control, although everyone has more mission control max than I do.

Of interest is the nondescript circles in the middle of the second row. That indicates how much “bandwidth” factions have for control points. Nations with more population and higher GDP “cost more” of this bandwidth than smaller, less prosperous nations. Everyone in this panel has a higher ceiling, and everyone is more or less maxed out while I have a ceiling of about 145 and am only hitting about 125. As you can see, everyone but Humanity First are exceeding their caps and would therefore be experiencing penalties, but this is both a good and a band thing. Bad, because it means that the AI continues to plow through control points as if the cap doesn’t exist, but good because of the harm it’s doing to itself (which I assume isn’t catastrophic for them but would be a PITA for me). I don’t know if the AI respects that cap or takes measures to raise it when it becomes inconvenient, but I would hope that they AI is subject to the same restrictions that I am, because the control point cap is designed to force players to make hard choices about which nations they must keep and which they can release in pursuit of larger fish.

These are currently “my” nations, the ones I have ownership of to some degree (I should have looked at this sooner, because I have some serious work to do to maintain these). This is just a small portion of what the AI controls:

There are some heavy-hitters in here. Japan, South Korea, and Mexico are all controlled by a single faction. Others like Russia, the UK, Brazil, Canada, and Italy are shared. I am not participating in any four-point nation, and my largest claim is Spain, followed by Iran. That’s not impressive.

Here’s a breakdown of world sentiment and how it aligns with the factional divisions:

I would actually like to get an alliance with Humanity First, as I think they and I (the Resistance) are kind of on the same wavelength at least where it matters, but I don’t exactly know how to start that ball rolling. I’ve been having a hell of a time tracking down opposing councilors on the map, and I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong, not doing what I should be doing to find and reveal them, or if my councilors just suck at their jobs.

So per the previous post, there’s certainly something to the prevalent complaint about the AI’s blitzkrieg out of the gate in every new start. I recently tried working in Mexico before anyone had any control points and was unable to make headway despite no direct opposition. Now, I see the Initiative is all up in there. That happened in less than a year. Considering they control Mexico, and Humanity First and the Protectorate share Canada, I expect the Initiative to make a run at the U.S., as having control of a country makes neighboring nations more agreeable.

I have since entered the 2-week turn-around phase of the game. I don’t know what triggers this phase, but it’s another good-bad scenario. Good because it means that resources start to pile up over two weeks rather than just one, leaving more to spend when the action phase takes place, but bad because even on high speed, there’s really nothing to do over those two weeks but check out these info panels I had sadly been neglecting only to find out how far behind I am.