Does advent strength only go up once you detect the radio tower / HQ? I had a squad wipe in an early campaign where I had a lot of luck with the liberation chain. Between committing a squad of 8 and actually getting infiltrated the strength level went from 2 to 4. That was a bit much for Lcpl and Cpl soldiers.
If I were to have put that area on 'hide' and focus on other regions would it have had any effect on the strength level?
Question about Advent strength and Final Liberation
Re: Question about Advent strength and Final Liberation
Some advice:
1) As the in-game tips suggest, Regional HQ is a very hard mission and you should take as full - and as strong - as a squad as you can. Probably take the full 10 wherever possible.
2) http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Adve ... enda_(LW2)
ADVENT's strategy layer is primarily focused on the idea of Vigilance, and Strength (some people refer to Strength as Alert. They are exactly the same thing). Strength is visible: you can see the Strength in each region you've contacted. The higher Strength goes, the harder your life gets. Encounter sizes (aliens per mission) go up, frequency of higher-difficulty aliens on those missions go up, powerful command pods become more frequent, and reinforcement-drops become more deadly (and also more frequent)
Vigilance is not visible, unless you are using a mod (which I do). Vigilance is, roughly, how much pressure ADVENT feels in a given region. Each time you succeed at a mission, Vigilance goes up by 1. Other events (like specific types of missions in neighboring regions) also cause vigilance to go up. Gradually, vigilance decreases over time; the more rebels not in hiding, the slower it decays.
When Vigilance is higher than Strength, ADVENT is motivated to move Strength into the region. When it's low, they'll readily move troops out of the region to places that need them more. What I suspect happened with you is that you ran a ton of missions in your region, spiked Vigilance, and then during the infiltration period for the Regional HQ, ADVENT responded by moving in Strength to try and compensate for the high difference. Putting rebels on hiding does, in fact, make Vigilance decay faster, but for huge Vigilance spikes, it's often not fast enough before a substantial amount of Strength has already set down in your region.
Strength going up corresponds to either a Reinforcements activity (ergo a "supply raid" that you failed, or failed to detect) or an Emergency Offworld Reinforcements activity (a UFO - preluded by a retrieve data mission of some sort - that you failed, or failed to detect). You might be able to detect these activities and intercept the reinforcements, and maybe even earn yourself some much-needed loot and corpses in the process. However, reinforcements are fairly difficult to detect (and therefore very hard to reliably camp), even with LOTS of intel rebels, a scientist and the Avenger. Most times they'll slip in right under your nose without even detecting them.
Not to mention, reinforcements can be very deadly missions in and of themselves. Don't do an under-infiltrated Supply Raid or UFO.
1) As the in-game tips suggest, Regional HQ is a very hard mission and you should take as full - and as strong - as a squad as you can. Probably take the full 10 wherever possible.
2) http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Adve ... enda_(LW2)
ADVENT's strategy layer is primarily focused on the idea of Vigilance, and Strength (some people refer to Strength as Alert. They are exactly the same thing). Strength is visible: you can see the Strength in each region you've contacted. The higher Strength goes, the harder your life gets. Encounter sizes (aliens per mission) go up, frequency of higher-difficulty aliens on those missions go up, powerful command pods become more frequent, and reinforcement-drops become more deadly (and also more frequent)
Vigilance is not visible, unless you are using a mod (which I do). Vigilance is, roughly, how much pressure ADVENT feels in a given region. Each time you succeed at a mission, Vigilance goes up by 1. Other events (like specific types of missions in neighboring regions) also cause vigilance to go up. Gradually, vigilance decreases over time; the more rebels not in hiding, the slower it decays.
When Vigilance is higher than Strength, ADVENT is motivated to move Strength into the region. When it's low, they'll readily move troops out of the region to places that need them more. What I suspect happened with you is that you ran a ton of missions in your region, spiked Vigilance, and then during the infiltration period for the Regional HQ, ADVENT responded by moving in Strength to try and compensate for the high difference. Putting rebels on hiding does, in fact, make Vigilance decay faster, but for huge Vigilance spikes, it's often not fast enough before a substantial amount of Strength has already set down in your region.
Strength going up corresponds to either a Reinforcements activity (ergo a "supply raid" that you failed, or failed to detect) or an Emergency Offworld Reinforcements activity (a UFO - preluded by a retrieve data mission of some sort - that you failed, or failed to detect). You might be able to detect these activities and intercept the reinforcements, and maybe even earn yourself some much-needed loot and corpses in the process. However, reinforcements are fairly difficult to detect (and therefore very hard to reliably camp), even with LOTS of intel rebels, a scientist and the Avenger. Most times they'll slip in right under your nose without even detecting them.
Not to mention, reinforcements can be very deadly missions in and of themselves. Don't do an under-infiltrated Supply Raid or UFO.