Need help getting started

[troche58]

I am trying to use the tutorial and have watched several YouTube videos (none using Tutorial). Something is not right. In Tutorial playing resistance all the major powers are STRONGLY aligned with some other faction from the get-go. First thing I do is try to find a neighboring country to one of the major countries that I have at least some hope of someday persuading. Even that is very hard to come by and I need to use a lot of influence just to get a foothold in say Canada. By the time I try to public campaign USA or any other major it is already taken over by another faction. What the hell! I can't even get started.

The Tutorial keeps saying: "Open control point in Russia I should try to get it". WTF kind of advice is that. Russia has almost zero support for my faction and very high support for another faction. It seems a complete waste to spend all my turns and precious influence with at best a 20% chance of getting one control point. I've tried. Some other faction takes over while I waste my time.

It makes sense that most of the world would be sucking up to the aliens and supporting some other faction. But it is the "tutorial". I should have some hope of getting started. Do I just ignore what the advisors are telling me and try to get a foothold in some small countries where I have some support? But I will not have any boost so seems I would be hopelessly lost

[PAwleus]

Russia has almost zero support for my faction and very high support for another faction. It seems a complete waste to spend all my turns and precious influence with at best a 20% chance of getting one control point.   I've tried.  Some other faction takes over while I waste my time.

I see you already know enough so use your own judgement and don't expect Tutorial to be perfect in a Early Access game.
3 tips for the very early game:
- forget about Boost (focus on it much later when your faction controls substantial part of Earth economy)
- Influence is your most precious resource so don't use it hastily (spare it as much as possible for new councilors and orgs)
- get Money by Spoils in some relatively rich countries because you need quite a lot of them fast for orgs and for Public Campaigns as to use less influence for acquiring countries (you can repair damage done by Spoils later)

[Zanotirn]

- forget about Boost (focus on it much later when your faction controls substantial part of Earth economy)

I agree with the rest of the points but not this one. Boost is only useful in the relatively early game, up until you establish bases on Mars and Mercury (roughly 8 or so years from start), after that it becomes largely useless, but you are still not close to controlling a substantial part of Earth's economy. And in order to have enough boost to get all the good spots on Mars and all the ground spots on Mercury, you need to start working on it early, particularly if you are not grabbing Kazakhstan within the first year or two. Conversely, while stuff like economy, welfare, knowledge and military are useful in the long run, they are typically have less effect in the short-to-medium term.

[PAwleus]

Perhaps I was not clear enough: the tips here were supposed to show not what is needed relatively early but very early and significant in this case (relatively early) didn't mean large but significant enough to be able to research in reasonable time-frame techs that support the creation of early habs with mines (reasonable, meaning fast enough to coincide with enough Boost and Mission Control for them).

Edit: BTW, Boost is also needed later on as there are events that demand a lot of it and it's necessary for Money-giving hab modules eg. Space Hotels. You might need quite a lot of them to support your space infrastructure in mid and late game depending on how large you actually built it, eg. in my current game in 2036 I have over 2500 MC with almost 0 Boost per day and almost -3000 Money per day.

Generally, in the early game I prefer to have orgs with Boost than countries with Boost unless I have to choose between them and good orgs with science. I much prefer science over Boost because it's needed not only for researching the mentioned techs in reasonable time-frame but also for taking lead in general research from other factions as soon as possible and I consider it critical starting to focus at this direction when taking countries from the very early game onward (unless you would like to make the game more difficult for you).

[neilwilkes]

I am trying to use the tutorial and have watched several YouTube videos (none using Tutorial). Something is not right. In Tutorial playing resistance all the major powers are STRONGLY aligned with some other faction from the get-go. First thing I do is try to find a neighboring country to one of the major countries that I have at least some hope of someday persuading. Even that is very hard to come by and I need to use a lot of influence just to get a foothold in say Canada. By the time I try to public campaign USA or any other major it is already taken over by another faction. What the hell! I can't even get started.

The Tutorial keeps saying: "Open control point in Russia I should try to get it". WTF kind of advice is that. Russia has almost zero support for my faction and very high support for another faction. It seems a complete waste to spend all my turns and precious influence with at best a 20% chance of getting one control point. I've tried. Some other faction takes over while I waste my time.

It makes sense that most of the world would be sucking up to the aliens and supporting some other faction. But it is the "tutorial". I should have some hope of getting started. Do I just ignore what the advisors are telling me and try to get a foothold in some small countries where I have some support? But I will not have any boost so seems I would be hopelessly lost

Firstly, can I ask you what build you are trying to get started with? Is it the 'general' build or one of the development builds?
The first & most important thing to do is to make sure your first 2 Councillors are worth keeping. You are ideally looking for at least 7 persuade with the ability to do both 'Control Nation' & 'Public Campaign' being utterly essential at the start & ideally your second one should have similar attributes. Then you need to hire a 3rd as fast as you can - check immediately on accepting your first 2 Councillors (and I would suggest re-rolling until you get what you need for those 2) and see if there is a decent operative, with good investigate & good Espionage stats plus the ability to perform missions such as 'Investigate Alien Activity' and/or 'Assault Alien Asset' - if there is no operative (or whatever they get called) you can afford at 30, you can either hold on a couple of turns until you get past 60 influence or wait until you get notified there is a new selection of possible recruits.

I would highly recommend the PerunGaming tutorials.
This has taught me a whole heap - but the learning curve is seriously steep and you must not expect to win each time you play - I would go as far as to say you will not succeed in your first half dozen campaigns as what you need to do - plus the best order you need to do it in - is not immediately apparent.
Stage 1 is to get to The Moon, and begin your Space Economy, followed by Mars.
Then the mid game starts, where depending on your faction you must walk the tightrope.
Once you have a decent drive & Phased Array Lasers, you're good to go.