Pavonis Interactive Forums

Time to time, in my playthroughts, i trying new strategys, and last one i remarked high GLOBAL alien strength - 40 in April / May. In Previous it was like ~27 in April - Jule. Veteran difficult
Can't understand why, mb someone explain me how to control it? What i need to do.

p.s.: I Know how Region strength works. It's ok for me.
Edit: How hold Region strength? why once it 40+, second 25, third 34?

Global strength is just the sum of all of the regional strengths, so if you understand one, you understand the other.

Well, if you keep vigilance much higher than strenght, ADVENT will periodically land extra reinforcement UFOs to try to equalize vigilance to strenght. You might or might not want that to happen:

- If you don't want it to happen then hide the rebels in your havens to reduce the vigilance after completing a short spur of missions. Price to pay is lower mission volume (unless you got many regions to do intel) and less chances of catching supply raids and UFOs, and if you keep strenght on the regions lower than 4, no Troop Columns. Also less retaliations, which are good (instant experience and loot) and bad (wounds and lost rebels). Benefits are that you get to more easily keep regions at low strenght to run your GOps at Ex-Light.

- By keeping vigilance high, you guarantee movement of legions and reinforcements. That means you're gonna be detecting Supply Raids and UFO missions, which bring a lot of resources and bodies, a big boon to your tech and equipment. You will need a really large haven on full intel job, hopefully with no faceless and a tower for extra 20% to detect those missions. I've done it without a scientist on my home region. Probably you'll need to intel boost some of these missions, so less intel to expand. Bad thing is one or more regions where you do this will eventually end with so many legions that will be useless for GOps. You don't want to overdoit tho, I once abandoned a campaign in January (2nd year) because I brought upon myself +100 legions and every region in the map sat at +5 strenght. Could not get enough intel out of doable GOps to complete the Golden Path.

From personal experience, I finished a legendary campaign on 1.4 where I hid and kept strenght low thru most of the campaign. I got a few doable Supply Raids, and I think a single UFO when I was completing a liberation chain. On the plus side tho, since strenght was low, I managed to liberate two regions rather fast because the missions were easy to do, and I got no invasions by doing hide cycles on the adjacent regions, so I had tons of supplies thru most of the game. On my current campaign I'm doing the exact opposite: I spiked vigilance with a propaganda mission at the home region, and I've gone thru 3 (or 4) supply raids, 2 UFOs and 3 Troop Columns, and it's barely July 14th or so. I'm eventually gonna stop it, possibly with a liberation, because I don't wanna face the 100-legion scenario again.

For me, it's also ideal to try and do HQ missions with the region at 5 strength exactly. When you liberate a region (finish HQ mission) it destroys up to 5 strength from that region. If there's more than 5 it moves to adjacent regions, less than 5, it's still destroyed, but it's best to remove the entire 5 strength if you can.

You can also look for UFO missions. UFO missions come from hack or recover missions that say "find a lead" and have an intel reward, but no intel package. They look the same as liberation 1, but instead of starting the liberation chain they give you a mission to intercept a UFO. Those UFOs are bringing off-world reinforcements that add strength to whatever region they land in, so doing a UFO mission means they won't increase strength from that UFO because you destroyed it. These missions are difficult to detect, so I'm not saying it's a viable strategy to try and farm these missions or anything, but if you see one it's usually a good idea to try and do it.

Thanks you guys, now i got it. Begin new, 43th try.

ginyu549 wrote:For me, it's also ideal to try and do HQ missions with the region at 5 strength exactly. When you liberate a region (finish HQ mission) it destroys up to 5 strength from that region. If there's more than 5 it moves to adjacent regions, less than 5, it's still destroyed, but it's best to remove the entire 5 strength if you can.

Bear in mind you may want to keep that high vigilance region around to slow AVATAR and attract UFOs. Keeping legion count low isn't all you want to be doing in the strategy layer.

Psieye wrote:

ginyu549 wrote:For me, it's also ideal to try and do HQ missions with the region at 5 strength exactly. When you liberate a region (finish HQ mission) it destroys up to 5 strength from that region. If there's more than 5 it moves to adjacent regions, less than 5, it's still destroyed, but it's best to remove the entire 5 strength if you can.

Bear in mind you may want to keep that high vigilance region around to slow AVATAR and attract UFOs. Keeping legion count low isn't all you want to be doing in the strategy layer.

That might be nice on paper, but in practice, it doesn't seem to work very well.

A UFO will delay the avatar project with something like 3 days. 2 UFOs can make a farming region into an abandoned region and the price the aliens pay is less than 1 week for the Avatar project.

Basically ...the trade off is not worth it.

I think most people would prefer having a 2 STR region and 1 week less on Avatar vs a 6 STR region.

There are some misunderstandings here. Vigilance doesn't create strength, it attracts it. The strength will continue to build up whether you create vigilance or not, it will just take it slightly longer to start pooling in your regions if you stay quiet. In my AAR, I had swatted something like 8 UFOs before autumn, destroying about 20 legions all told. Those legions would have arrived even if I hadn't been running up vigilance. By the end of August, I had only 40 legions total. Had I been quiet, I would have had closer to 60-70. Staying active and killing UFO, convoys, and troop columns is how you control strength. Avoiding missions is how you end up with 100 legions by winter.

Keep in mind that AVATAR slowing is per pip and per facility. That's how I ended up with only 5 pips in August, will only three of them in Waterworld, and almost all of the Golden Path AVATAR reducers still in the tank and ready to fire.

Antifringe wrote:There are some misunderstandings here. Vigilance doesn't create strength, it attracts it. The strength will continue to build up whether you create vigilance or not, it will just take it slightly longer to start pooling in your regions if you stay quiet. In my AAR, I had swatted something like 8 UFOs before autumn, destroying about 20 legions all told. Those legions would have arrived even if I hadn't been running up vigilance. By the end of August, I had only 40 legions total. Had I been quiet, I would have had closer to 60-70. Staying active and killing UFO, convoys, and troop columns is how you control strength. Avoiding missions is how you end up with 100 legions by winter.

Keep in mind that AVATAR slowing is per pip and per facility. That's how I ended up with only 5 pips in August, will only three of them in Waterworld, and almost all of the Golden Path AVATAR reducers still in the tank and ready to fire.

I don't know about that.

I have 7 squads in July, all deployed , spiking vigilance like there is no tomorrow. In the resistance management, aliens are on "guarded" and I am doing troop columns and raids one after another. I am on 60 legions at the moment so ..... it's definitely not a strategy to keep the STR low.

Whether I can finish the campaign or not before everything goes to hell, that's a different story.

As for UFOs, I didn't see a single UFO mission in the last 2 campaigns. I am completing non-liberation missions with "Find a lead" but I have yet to see a single UFO mission. I do have several facility leads so I am not to worried about the Avatar timer but keeping the STR low ....that's something you have to carefully manage across the campaign (e.g. spiking just enough vigilance to pull a single raid / scan 1 troop column each month).

Controlling strength is very RNG-dependent. If you get lucky with UFOs, it's possible to keep it low for a while, but it's unlikely, especially on Legend. A more realistic goal is to avoid strength rather than destroy it. Unless you're actually doing missions in a region, its strength rating is completely irrelevant, so focus your mission efforts on those low-strength regions and leave the high-strength ones to sit around looking threatening.