it's full of game breaking glitches. I tried doing a playthrough with using infinite points cheat, doing everything thing the authoritarians and Malthusians liked and nothing they disliked, and both never joined my alliance . sometimes emissions drop to 0 randomly, I think from a production shortfall, and you get 500 PP, and building a space elevator or space colony is guaranteed success, but unlocking new forms of nuclear power has like a 1% chance and if you don't get it first time you're forced to give up.
unlocking new forms of nuclear power has like a 1% chance and if you don’t get it first time you’re forced to give up
I don't think that's a glitch, I think that's a bit of :zizek-preference: on the part of the developers. All of the high-tech solutions suck.
I completed some space project and my emissions went from negative to like 232,000 and immediately lost the game? I'm proud of my people for holding me accountable for the 5000 years of emissions in a single year and assassinating me even though I don't think it was my fault.
Any tips on how to play? I keep losing because my contentedness goes to zero.
No matter what you do, you will lose a ton of political power in your second and third turns because warming hasn't stopped and species are going extinct. However, you can compensate for this by getting power from maxing out happiness and completing fast projects.
With this in mind, go through your research and infrastructure tabs and start every project that can be completed in 10 years or less, and sign every policy that only costs 5 points except the malthusian one ("stop food aid"? fuck those guys). This should give you a nice head of steam so that by turn 3 you're getting a ton of political power from completing projects and the results of your policies.
Balancing energy takes more trial-and-error, all I can say is that they have a pretty nuanced simulation and sometimes you'll find that moving to a more polluting energy source actually decreases emissions because you need fewer power plants to meet demand. Look at the info on the bottom of the screen as you make your changes and try not to cause shortages.
sometimes you’ll find that moving to a more polluting energy source actually decreases emissions because you need fewer power plants to meet demand.
Aaaaaaaaah. I was wondering why that was happening. Okay.
Bread and circuses
Champagne socialism + Recycling initiatives are good for an early game happiness boost (and the recycling initiative eases biodiversity pressure)
my second victory (2050) was way quicker and easier than my first, and i focused a bunch of cheap short term stuff at the start as well as the longer-term stuff
early biodiversity stuff seems good - you get points and also it helps prevent a lot of extinction type events that further tank your contentedness (and soon gives you lots of positive contentedness events too). increasing biodiversity damage to reduce emissions early is bad, and switching to biofuels is a big mistake, i discovered
dont be too afraid of ramping up electricity use, as you switch to more electricity and less fuel you can be making your electricity more renewable at the same time (the offshore wind is particularly good, and the batteries are important too)
and a slightly slower path to world veganism via meatless mondays and vegetarianism worked better than saving up all my points to make everyone vegan on turn 2, as much as i wanted to
putting more than 1 point into a research/infrastructure project doesnt seem worth it until a bit later when you have more points to work with - better to spread it over lots of projects, ive found
Cool game but the developer's politics can get really :cringe: sometimes. Like the "authoritarian" (obvious stand-in to marxist-leninists with their bright red color and reference to "personality cult" :stalin-approval:) is clearly based 1984 animal farm polcomp take than any legitimate "authoritarian" socialist views. Like seriously, the auths supports stopping food aid?! What the fuck, this is straight up slanderous to the struggle of AES states in supporting the global south against western imperialism. I really did not want to hear what the devs have to say about the OBOR project :fedposting:
But the game have strong commitment to upholding third worldism which is guess made it up for me.
Yeah once you work out the winning strategy the game kind of falls apart. IMO there's not enough options and there's not enough touch choices - in my win I researched every single technology (except "end natural predation" which describes doing DNA modification to every apex predator and injecting contraceptives into all of the herd animals and that skeeves me out quite a bit), finished every single infrastructure project (except for a couple of the really long space ones that were in-progress and the geoengineering ones that have disastrous side effects), and didn't have to pass any of the "harsh but effective" policies like enforced veganism or degrowth.
