The game was won on 17th December 2035 with 5 alien bases, 2 stations and 31 ships left (3.5K total combat value). I am unfortunately too lazy to count my habs, sorry, but there was a lot of them (it would be nice if the game counted them and showed it somewhere as in case of ships). Anyway, I ended the game with 546 ships (over 39K total combat value) and most of them were still Pegasus missile Escorts for local defense (many obsoleted troop carriers, colonizers and some already unnecessary Escorts but of still current designs have been scraped)
Victory picture (values are per day):
Things not seen on the picture:
- there was 1150 Cash per day from Spoils in the last 7-day period (so I wasn't actually loosing 10K Cash per month but there were periods in the game when I was loosing 60K Cash per month if Spoils were not counted)
- I was actually getting 10.5 Boost per day from Earth but almost all was used by habs (there was period in the game when I used almost all of my stored Boost)
- I got 775 MC from Earth and 3864 from habs while 539 is used by ships and 4069 by habs, including 1540 used for the Extensive Network of Mines mechanics (158 MC is being built)
- from 2003 research point generated daily, 35.9 is from councilors, 111 from nations, 1390 from habs (even though large numbers of my Research Campuses have not yet been upgraded to Universities) and 462.2 from distribution bonus (yes, over 4x more than from nations of Earth is from the distribution bonus alone - that's how insignificant Earth can be in regards to research in the late game but I admit I wasn't trying to improve it on Earth outside of the early game)
- there was 206% bonus to mining (a lot less than in my previous game where I had 342% in 2038 - I have no idea why the difference is so huge)
- Mean Annual GDP Impact (of temperature rising) -1.48% (a lot of Spoils in this game but it doesn't look bad, yet)
How it was done (main features):
1. Early research rush by taking USA, stabilizing it, disbanding armies (leaving only 2) and heavily investing in Knowledge (supplementing it with EU countries as soon as possible). The main goal of it was to steer global research early to have AdvPulsar guaranteed and I researched it at the end of 2026 when it was soon dearly needed (my first space combat was at the end of 2026 in order to defend Mars and my first ships had to move using still Pulsar)
2. Gathering early Boost-rich countries: Kazakhstan soon after USA, EU countries as next ones and making them also MC powerhouses (my councilors were very efficient in taking them because I didn't waste actions and Influence on Defend Interests - observation: I discovered that DI is not needed at all with the current balance while keeping high public support and I am not sure whether or not it's intended)
3. I was unlucky with unlocking mines so I was delayed by it but after Moon the first one on Mars came on-line in the middle of 2026
4. My AdvPulsar Viper Escorts allowed me to destroy surveillance ships without losses in the beginning of 2027 - from that moment Earth was safe and alien agents were eliminated one after another as they were revealing themselves by their actions (observation: player doesn't have to do any surveillance missions). This resulted in Total War from 2027 onward.
5. I was lucky (while increasing chance with high-Science councilors) to unlock Fission Spinner in 2027 which replaced AdvPulsar in my defensive Escort designs (although I still had some AdvPulsar Escorts and used them when needed until the end of the game) and Pegasus in 2028 (which replaced Fission Spinner entirely and became my main defensive drive for the rest of the game - observation: that's how good it is, perhaps too good because I even prefer it to Adv Fission line drives)
6. After Mars I heavily invested in LEO1 and LEO2 - my conquering of other faction habs and taking their countries resulted in 2027 with war against all of them (observation: despite wars with factions there wasn't notifiable pressure from them on my faction's countries).
7. Grid Drive and colonizing modules researched in 2027 allowed me to send 2 colonizers to Jovian moons - they arrived at the beginning of 2028. The Aliens had at the moment 3 Corvettes there, each guarding one of their colonized moons (one colony on small moon, Elara, was not guarded at all) - they were passive toward my colonizers even though I used one of them (armed with IR laser cannon) to destroy 6 of their stations (on Europa their Corvette seemed to guard orbit instead of the station, on Elara nothing defended it, on Callisto 3 stations were not defended and 4th one I destroyed when Corvette that guarded it moved to destroy my station there that just started to be built by my colonizer). What was worse for them and definitely should be changed (observation: it makes colonizing trivial) they were totally passive toward my station built around previously unclaimed Io until I constructed there local defensive force. They sent help from other places but my initial 2 missile Escorts easily dealt with Corvettes in 1vs1 fights and could patiently wait for incoming forces while next Escorts were being built.
8. While Jovian colonizers were on route I constructed more of them to colonize resource-rich asteroids fast and to provide distraction for the Aliens at the same time (observation: they usually were able to establish a station which built a defensive force before the Aliens came after them). In this part of the game Noble Metals were a limiting factor and my main source of them was actually from salvaging destroyed alien ships. It was a limiting factor until Io mines came on-line. From this moment until the end of the game Basic Metal limited me even though I tried hard not to build anything metal-rich at highly radioactive places (Mercury, Europa and especially Io) and increase metal mining as fast as possible.
9. The Aliens are currently too slow at adding defenses to their habs (this was observation) so I was able to remove all of their Jovian moons bases and most of Asteroid Belt bases just by establishing a station with marine modules in the interface orbit and assaulting from there (alien hab core is currently very resilient to bombardment so destroying it from orbit was out of the question unless nuclear torpedo boats were built which I was unwilling to do - observation: even several late game Corvettes with tier3 Light Coil Cannon and 60 cm UV Phaser couldn't do it).
10. Seeing how easy colonizing was I was sending lone Grid colonizers farther and farther and they arrived at first bodies of the Kuiper Belt in 2033 (observation: not a single one was intercepted during their travel and some of them had over 80 weeks of it which showed how inept the Aliens were). At Neptune moons the Aliens had 15 ships at the moment of my arrival, yet my station was not attacked until I constructed first 2 missile Escorts and even then only with 1-ship fleets which had no chance of winning.
11. My standard fusion hab has 8 Operation/Command Centers and 1 Research Campus/University (observation: current QoL in building habs are nice but it would be even nicer if we had an option to set alarms reminding us when to start building certain modules)
12. Basic Metals limited me so much that most modules on my habs and all mines weren't upgraded to tier3 until the game was won. It would probably be better idea to develop my antimatter industry better and sell antimatter instead of constructing so many Nanofactories around Mercury but I was unable to make it perfectly timed and Spoils were becoming insufficient too fast for growing upkeep of my habs.
13. With the invention of Daedalus Drive and tier3 Inertial Fusion TeraWatt reactors at the beginning of 2035 it was time to build offensive fleets (at this moment I had about 300 missile Escorts for local defense disseminated in over 120 fleets throughout the Solar System and the Aliens still had over 70 ships - observation: not a single one of my combat fleets was destroyed until the game ended even though vast majority of them had only 2 Escorts). My idea of late game combat is to continue using small ships and Daedalus is ideal for them allowing Coil/UV Corvettes with 4G and 2.9 km/s deltaV while still being well armored (75-10-20) and having heat sink (they are 2x more expensive in Basic Metals than my final version of Pegasus Lancehead Escorts). 20 such Corvettes supplemented by 5 Coil/OlympusTorps Destroyers (with the same acceleration and deltaV as Corvettes but slightly less armored) can create a highly maneuverable wall that I consider capable of destroying practically any fleet (unless the Aliens start using highly maneuverable formations). Together with Deadalus Elite Marines Frigates (with the same acceleration and deltaV as pure combat ships and 11 Frigates was enough for any base - 5 full assault fleets were formed) and Daedalus colonizer/tankers (with the same acceleration but over 5x more deltaV) it's possible to clear all alien assets within a year because they can be built in large numbers very fast - my goal was to build about 150 Corvettes and I could have them all within 6 months while building corresponding amounts of Destroyers and Frigates (and at least one small colonizer/tanker for every of 7 full offensive fleets). There was no perceivable reaction from the Aliens and they even sent their main Mothership fleet to Earth (observation: with arrival in 2037 which was really misguided when my fleets where on route to their main base with arrival in 2035) - I intercepted it with another fleet, anyway, for role-playing purposes.
To sum up (observations):
- standard Brutal is much too easy to play and win (this is based not only on my game which I admit is extreme but also on my brother's which was played casually by him)
- changes to combat from 0.3.112, IIRC, made the very early combat much harder so it's a step in the right direction. Combat with even slightly better tech is still quite easy (both by using a static PD wall or by proper missile tactics) and I think the best way of making it substantially harder is making AI to adapt to battles won by a player by gathering larger fleets (which should probably be easy to do) or using better missile tactics (which is probably harder) or starting to fight in proper highly maneuverable formations (which I consider hardest to do). Especially, sending again and again ships of a design that repeatedly lost combat against another design in the past without increasing number of ships in fleets looks like a folly (and AI is doing it year after year - my Total War lasted 8 years and they were still doing it with old-proven-insufficient-designs).
- the game is far from being prepared for standard 4X strategy of keeping small but sufficient forces for defense while developing industry as fast as possible and building in this way strongest achievable snowball effect for enormous size of research and military in the late game. Alien AI should abandon limits on their development when it notices the growth of player faction is becoming close to exponential or even only surpasses their own substantially. Otherwise, the game feels for players using this standard strategy as if they fight against an opponent that has both hands tied on his back.
- the Aliens shouldn't allow player habs to exist close to their colonies as it's the easiest way of defending them and slowing down player development. Leaving a station unopposed in a gas giant system, even around an unclaimed moon, is a huge mistake.
- no matter the stage of the game the Aliens shouldn't allow lone weak colonizers to travel unopposed, especially for so long periods of time as 80 weeks. This is where they should use single-ship fleets, not against combat vessels or in places where they are close-by. Otherwise, Grid Drive is enough to colonize the whole Solar System fast.
- perhaps something should be done to alien drives because they are very inferior to human late-game drives which makes alien designs not up to task of being a substantial threat
- fleets with Transports (presumably carrying alien agents) shouldn't always try to avoid combat as it leads to very micromanaging-intensive ways of dealing with them (multiple attacks and pursuits with weak 1-ship fleets until the fleet with Transport has so little deltaV that it's willing to fight). Transport should just have large enough screen and apply conservative tactics in combat or even try to disengage while the rest of the fleet is fighting. When it arrives and meets dangerous forces it should try to escape to a close-by alien station and return with large enough escort, not try again and again to land until it depletes its deltaV.
(I will probably have some feature-requests but I have to think about them more)