LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance
Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 8:19 am
Hi all!
I don't feel like many players are really engaging with Strength and Vigilance yet. A lot of people playing a high difficulties are just bypassing the mechanic by running 0% missions to break the strategic layer, and I get the impression that a lot of people at lower difficulties are having trouble getting a good grasp on how it works.
Since beating my 1.0 and 1.1 L/I campaigns I've been focused on 1.2 playing exclusively with two house rules:
1) No missions with <50% infiltration - this prevents breaking of the strategy layer by abusing Supply Raids (see esp. my 1.1 win, where I beat 12 from April to June).
2) No Radio Relays in regions where I haven't beaten the Network Tower mission yet - this forces engagement with liberation chain missions and intel collection missions throughout the game at a far greater rate than I was participating in them in 1.0 and 1.1.
These two rules create much more strategic pressure and make the strategic layer a lot more fun to try to manage. They also approximate what I'm hoping Legend will look more like with future balance changes. I've lost several campaigns to late-November AVATAR completions due to my inability to create vigilance/alert deltas to slow the project or to contact regions with Golden Path missions in them due to the prohibitive intel costs. Each new campaign I've been asking more and more of my tactical game, and have found that I'm able to push my soldiers to limits I didn't previously consider "safe" with moderate reliability and with a surprising ability to bounce back from heavy losses in the starting months of the campaign.
The largest key to learning to be successful under these conditions has been working out how to find regions which are easy to liberate in the midgame and regions which can provide workable missions all the way through lategame. As I type this there are more than 80 legions on the planet, meaning an average of around 6 each for each of the non-liberated regions in the game, and yet I'm still able to create beatable missions in regions with strength 4 or lower quickly enough to keep 1.5 teams of soldiers occupied and progress toward a ~late November victory (with Warden and even some Plasma!) in a campaign where I've never done a 0% supply raid and have only liberated one region.
In order to achieve this I've stuck to a fairly static approach to managing new Havens. Here it is .
1) Gestation. Recruit up to 8-10 rebels. You should generally go higher the earlier it is in the game, unless you desperately need missions for your soldiers (for example in your first region!). While this is happening any Vigilance in the region which was built up by the resistance in it before you contacted them will be dissipating. If the region happens to be hot for other reasons (like that it's next to a region ADVENT is trying to reinforce a lot) you should put one rebel on intel to make sure you have a good chance at detecting Troop Columns whenever it's at above 4 strength. If it's above a strength value where you're worried about recruit miniretals it's okay to flip to intel a little sooner.
2) Youth. Flip everything to intel. Scan with the Avenger too if you can to bomb extra intel. Go on every mission you see in the region. If you don't have enough soldiers to keep up you should be recruiting in other regions instead of generating intel in them; this is your region right now! With a wide Barracks I'm usually able to keep pace with two of these in the early-game and three later on. One of the biggest things this does is give you a very good chance of detecting supply raids entering the region, because it'll start getting reinforced very often and you'll have 13 rebels on intel in it (assuming you get a jailbreak at some point, which is very likely). Decent chance you'll get a Reinforcing UFO detection too!
3) Middle Age. We're now at a point where the region is being overwhelmed by legions, but don't despair. Hopefully we've created a ton of vigilance here, which will slow Avatar for a good amount of time to come. Also, as legions entire a vigilance-heavy region, we're going to generate a lot of Troop Columns and a lot of Retaliations. RETALIATIONS ARE GOOD. Intel mini-retals are quite easy, keep your rebels still on overwatch to make sure they don't pull anything and move your main team aggressively in the first turns to clear flanks of potential yellow alert pods. Wave defense retals are EXTREMELY easy. Pitched battle retals are deadly for your rebels, but quite safe for your soldiers. Bring your A team to these retals; they're quick response missions and the experience will get them closer to MSGT faster.
4) Old Age. Once the region is up to 8+ strength missions are going to start to look a lot less appealing, and retaliations will probably start sneaking through your A-team (especially as they're going to be busy in newer havens now). What you do exactly with the haven at this point doesn't matter much, its real value is that it has 8+ legions stuck in it and they're terrified of the resistance in it so they're going to be staying there for quite a while. Especially if you were able to uncover the Network Tower, these regions are going to keep legions in them for a very long time or possibly the entire game, and that's going to let you find regions elsewhere which are low strength.
I do this, more-or-less, with every haven I meet. Because the pace of the strategic layer is variable (consider what happens when an intel DE hits while you're trying to bomb intel in a haven, for example, or when your B-team wipes and all of a sudden you can't really keep up with missions) this formula ends up being extremely flexible and challenging to implement with good success. At some point you have to liberate at least one haven, and liberating more than one is a decent idea if you're struggling to keep Avatar progress low, but keep in mind that your retired 8+ strength havens are actually doing more to generate you missions than a liberated haven ever could by keeping 8 strength off the map (while a liberated haven just kills 4-5 strength (depending on how you count) and then pushes the rest out to the rest of the globe).
I also want to mention the maintenance mechanic. Currently if you end a month with negative income but have no net supply you will not lose any supply; the game can't understand how to make your money go negative. Because of this there is very little reason to generate supply for the first ~half of the campaign; you just won't make enough to meaningfully overcome the amount of maintenance you have to pay before you start generating real income. Playing Havens to efficiently generate missions for you, as explained above, is going to get you a good amount of Supply Raids and Troop Columns, which will make up for not having a monthly income as long as you're aggressively selling everything you aren't currently using on the Black Market.
I don't feel like many players are really engaging with Strength and Vigilance yet. A lot of people playing a high difficulties are just bypassing the mechanic by running 0% missions to break the strategic layer, and I get the impression that a lot of people at lower difficulties are having trouble getting a good grasp on how it works.
Since beating my 1.0 and 1.1 L/I campaigns I've been focused on 1.2 playing exclusively with two house rules:
1) No missions with <50% infiltration - this prevents breaking of the strategy layer by abusing Supply Raids (see esp. my 1.1 win, where I beat 12 from April to June).
2) No Radio Relays in regions where I haven't beaten the Network Tower mission yet - this forces engagement with liberation chain missions and intel collection missions throughout the game at a far greater rate than I was participating in them in 1.0 and 1.1.
These two rules create much more strategic pressure and make the strategic layer a lot more fun to try to manage. They also approximate what I'm hoping Legend will look more like with future balance changes. I've lost several campaigns to late-November AVATAR completions due to my inability to create vigilance/alert deltas to slow the project or to contact regions with Golden Path missions in them due to the prohibitive intel costs. Each new campaign I've been asking more and more of my tactical game, and have found that I'm able to push my soldiers to limits I didn't previously consider "safe" with moderate reliability and with a surprising ability to bounce back from heavy losses in the starting months of the campaign.
The largest key to learning to be successful under these conditions has been working out how to find regions which are easy to liberate in the midgame and regions which can provide workable missions all the way through lategame. As I type this there are more than 80 legions on the planet, meaning an average of around 6 each for each of the non-liberated regions in the game, and yet I'm still able to create beatable missions in regions with strength 4 or lower quickly enough to keep 1.5 teams of soldiers occupied and progress toward a ~late November victory (with Warden and even some Plasma!) in a campaign where I've never done a 0% supply raid and have only liberated one region.
In order to achieve this I've stuck to a fairly static approach to managing new Havens. Here it is .
1) Gestation. Recruit up to 8-10 rebels. You should generally go higher the earlier it is in the game, unless you desperately need missions for your soldiers (for example in your first region!). While this is happening any Vigilance in the region which was built up by the resistance in it before you contacted them will be dissipating. If the region happens to be hot for other reasons (like that it's next to a region ADVENT is trying to reinforce a lot) you should put one rebel on intel to make sure you have a good chance at detecting Troop Columns whenever it's at above 4 strength. If it's above a strength value where you're worried about recruit miniretals it's okay to flip to intel a little sooner.
2) Youth. Flip everything to intel. Scan with the Avenger too if you can to bomb extra intel. Go on every mission you see in the region. If you don't have enough soldiers to keep up you should be recruiting in other regions instead of generating intel in them; this is your region right now! With a wide Barracks I'm usually able to keep pace with two of these in the early-game and three later on. One of the biggest things this does is give you a very good chance of detecting supply raids entering the region, because it'll start getting reinforced very often and you'll have 13 rebels on intel in it (assuming you get a jailbreak at some point, which is very likely). Decent chance you'll get a Reinforcing UFO detection too!
3) Middle Age. We're now at a point where the region is being overwhelmed by legions, but don't despair. Hopefully we've created a ton of vigilance here, which will slow Avatar for a good amount of time to come. Also, as legions entire a vigilance-heavy region, we're going to generate a lot of Troop Columns and a lot of Retaliations. RETALIATIONS ARE GOOD. Intel mini-retals are quite easy, keep your rebels still on overwatch to make sure they don't pull anything and move your main team aggressively in the first turns to clear flanks of potential yellow alert pods. Wave defense retals are EXTREMELY easy. Pitched battle retals are deadly for your rebels, but quite safe for your soldiers. Bring your A team to these retals; they're quick response missions and the experience will get them closer to MSGT faster.
4) Old Age. Once the region is up to 8+ strength missions are going to start to look a lot less appealing, and retaliations will probably start sneaking through your A-team (especially as they're going to be busy in newer havens now). What you do exactly with the haven at this point doesn't matter much, its real value is that it has 8+ legions stuck in it and they're terrified of the resistance in it so they're going to be staying there for quite a while. Especially if you were able to uncover the Network Tower, these regions are going to keep legions in them for a very long time or possibly the entire game, and that's going to let you find regions elsewhere which are low strength.
I do this, more-or-less, with every haven I meet. Because the pace of the strategic layer is variable (consider what happens when an intel DE hits while you're trying to bomb intel in a haven, for example, or when your B-team wipes and all of a sudden you can't really keep up with missions) this formula ends up being extremely flexible and challenging to implement with good success. At some point you have to liberate at least one haven, and liberating more than one is a decent idea if you're struggling to keep Avatar progress low, but keep in mind that your retired 8+ strength havens are actually doing more to generate you missions than a liberated haven ever could by keeping 8 strength off the map (while a liberated haven just kills 4-5 strength (depending on how you count) and then pushes the rest out to the rest of the globe).
I also want to mention the maintenance mechanic. Currently if you end a month with negative income but have no net supply you will not lose any supply; the game can't understand how to make your money go negative. Because of this there is very little reason to generate supply for the first ~half of the campaign; you just won't make enough to meaningfully overcome the amount of maintenance you have to pay before you start generating real income. Playing Havens to efficiently generate missions for you, as explained above, is going to get you a good amount of Supply Raids and Troop Columns, which will make up for not having a monthly income as long as you're aggressively selling everything you aren't currently using on the Black Market.