Video Game / Terra Invicta

"Being shot at is easy. The hard part is convincing someone they're drowning. Before it's too damn late."

"We remember the day the stars answered. The day we learned we were not alone. As a familiar sun rose on an unfamiliar universe, some of us saw wondrous possibility, and others existential danger..."

Terra Invicta^note "Earth unconquered" is a Grand Strategy game created by Pavonis Interactive (the creators of XCOM: Long War). The game was released for early access on September 26, 2022. Before that, a free demo was made available on Steam from June 12-20, and again on September 1.

On September 30th, 2022, an alien ship crash-lands on Earth, and its pilot disappears into the wilderness without a trace. More such ships appear in the coming weeks, proving beyond any doubt that humanity has caught the interest of an extraterrestrial civilization. With the aliens' motivations unknown, the nations of Earth begin to fall under the influence of seven international factions, each with its own plan to address the situation:

• The Resistance, who aim to resist the alien conquest of the solar system and preserve human independence;
• Humanity First, who want to exterminate the aliens and their human collaborators;
• The Servants, who worship the aliens and want humanity to submit to their rule;
• The Protectorate, who want to figure out the aliens' true motives, hoping they can use this knowledge to appease them and foster a form of peaceful co-existence;
• The Academy, who wish to prove humanity's worth to the aliens and establish an alliance;
• The Initiative, who just want to profit from the turmoil; and
• Project Exodus, who aim to build The Ark and flee the solar system.

The player takes control of one of these factions and aims to establish their supremacy across the Earth, expand across the solar system, and lead humanity to its fate.

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Tropes Found in Terra Invicta:

Tropes A-L

• Absolute Xenophobe:
  • Humanity First believes that the only way to safeguard the human species is to exterminate the aliens and anyone who defends them. It's stated plainly that they've gathered most of the Earth's xenophobes under their banner.
    Colonel Hanse Castillo: They are not 'lifeforms' or 'xeno-sapients'. They are demons incarnate. They and the traitors who support them will face our judgment.
  • The invading aliens' homeworld was destroyed by a planetkiller from a species of these. The victims managed to pull off an upset victory through mind control, but their dreadful ordeal, complemented by the destruction of their culture, traditions, and virtually entire civilian population, resulted in them joining the club by deciding to enslave all intelligent life that can be potential threats to them.
• Alien Abduction: A common occurrence in the early-game, with the aliens seizing people and animals for the purposes of intelligence gathering and, eventually, turning their victims into spies.
• Alien Invasion: It quickly becomes clear that the aliens are in the early stages of an assault on the inner solar system, and will soon begin to launch attacks on Earth and humanity. Their invasion of Earth usually begins around 2035, although you can provoke them into launching it early by repeatedly attacking their ships and agents.
• All for Nothing: One faction's philosophy is hopelessly flawed and doomed to fail abjectly, especially if they come out on top. It's the Protectorate, who believe humanity can't hope to fight a star-faring species, and must reach a conditional surrender. Only, what incentive can they give to make it conditional to an enemy they can't hope to fight? They never find the answer to that one. Instead the Hydras exploit the Protectorate's terror to pressure them into handing over everything the Hydras wanted and doing the hard work of subjugating humanity. The only "consolation" is that they're still given power over mankind, at least for so long as the Hydras are content. Even the alien-worshiping Servants get humanity a better deal by at least sticking to their ideals of how this subjugation business is supposed to go.
• The Ark: The goal of Project Exodus is to build one of these to carry some of humanity to a new solar system, abandoning Earth to the aliens.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Of a sort. The Nuclear Weapons Taboo exists for human-controlled nations regardless of their ideology. Even Humanity First and the Servants mortal enemies they may be are loathe to start nuclear war unprovoked. However if the Alien Administration gets hold of a nuclear weapons stockpile then they have no such compunction. They'll fling nukes around at human nations without a care.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Pion Torch uses an equal mix of water and antimatter for fuel. It's a very light drive with the raw power of a much larger and heavier drive, allowing for high acceleration all around the solar system...but fueling it takes tons of antimatter, so even a single tank will consume the yearly output of multiple supercolliders. The only use case you might have for one is for when you need to send a councillor to the outer system and you need them there yesterday, damn the expense.
• Bait-and-Switch: You would be forgiven for thinking on first impression that the Protectorate are the moderate and reasonable pro-alien faction, and the Servants are the insane extremist one. Playing through both story lines reveals it's actually the inverse.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: This is effectively how the Protectorate manage to seize power over the Earth in their ending. They bomb the UN Headquarters in New York City with their orbital weapons platforms (also taking out a good chunk of the city in the process), blame the incident on an accidental misfire, assume a position of leadership amidst the public's confusion and shock a la the bombing the Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and sign an agreement with the aliens to end the war. However the actual sovereignty they have supposedly secured for Earth in the aliens' new empire is very dubious, and their authority over Earth only really exists as long as the Hydras are content to leave them in charge.
• Beam Spam: Late-game laser and phaser weapons are quite useful for both point-defense and directly damaging enemy ships, especially at close range.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The Protectorate's plan of a conditional surrender to the Hydras does technically succeed, with itself serving as Earth's rulers on their behalf. This comes, however, at the expense of having to accept and enforce just about all of their demands. Even that hard-won sovereignty is hinted at as being much more tenuous than its members are willing to admit.
• Biological Weapons Solve Everything: The aliens use biological weapons to control humans and xenoform Earth. The human factions develop countermeasures to both, and Humanity First and the Initiative turn the tables and use biological weapons to exterminate and enslave the aliens, respectively, while the Academy steals Humanity First's bioweapon and uses the threat of unleashing it to force the Hydras to the negotiating table.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • The Resistance succeeds in destroying the wormhole device, albeit at tremendous cost. While there remain some Hydra holdouts across the solar system, humanity is saved and will rebuild.
  • Project Exodus manages to launch a large arkship just in time to sally forth to a new world. For Khalid Al-Ashgar and those fortunate to get onboard, however, they take a moment to look back melancholicly at Earth one final time before setting off for their destiny.
• Blue Is Heroic: The Resistance, the default heroic faction, has blue as their color of choice.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Victims of Alien Abduction tend to become spies or agents for the aliens, resulting in the Servants gaining a foothold in the region in question.
• Casual Interplanetary Travel: Alien ships typically have enough delta-v to cross the solar system in days or weeks, as opposed to the months or years it takes human-built ships (at least initially).
• Church Militant: As the Servants become more aggressive in advancing their plans, they become progressively more militarized. By the end, they've evolved into a fanatical cult backed by a core of professional Gas Mask Mooks. Even after using mind-controlling pheromones around Earth, said troops are still relied on to crush any lingering resistance to the Hydras' rule and to protect the Servants' leadership.
• Civil War vs. Armageddon: The entire premise of the game is how Earth may respond to the sudden presence of a hostile alien force that has the means and the will to bring about the end of humanity as we know it. Some of the factions aren't even necessarily convinced that that's a bad thing, or at least that Earth can do anything meaningful to stop them, but even beyond the basic "pro-alien" vs. "anti-alien" divide, some factions that are notionally on the same side differ wildly in their methods and ultimate goals, and everyone is competing for influence and control in the world's most powerful governments.
• Colonized Solar System: Once your faction has a solid power base on Earth, you can expand into the rest of the solar system, building bases, space stations, and shipyards on the various planets, moons, and asteroids. The other factions and the aliens will be doing the same, mind you.
• Cosmopolitan Council: Every faction ends up looking like this, as they recruit talented councilors from across the world and all walks of life. Even Humanity First and the Initiative are egalitarian when it comes to their fellow humans.
• Covert Group: The seven human factions start out as this, pulling the strings of entire nations to enforce policies that benefit them. Depending on the events of the game, some of them might go public, though the scope of their influence appears to remain unknown to the world at large.
• Cthulhumanoid: The Hydras are eventually revealed to be bipedal Starfish Aliens with red tendrils dangling from their mouth.
• Cult: The Servants and Humanity First, both of whom tend to attract evangelists and misanthropes to their causes. The former openly worships the aliens and wants to help them conquer humanity, believing they'll cleanse the Earth of sin. The latter regards the aliens as "demons incarnate" and wants to exterminate them, along with any humans who sympathize or even attempt communication with them.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • Project Exodus tries to maintain a public image of being a group of enterprising dreamers and scientists seeking to push the boundaries of space exploration. This is both done to gradually ease humanity into the idea of escaping to a new homeworld and conceal the fact that only a handful of the human population will realistically be able to leave.
  • The Protectorate genuinely believes that its plans of arranging a conditional surrender are for the greater good, even if the rest of humanity will hate its members for it. Not only does it install orbital weaponry to keep Earth contained in its ending, but its leadership will even stage an "accidental" misfire on the UN Headquarters, taking out the entirety of Southern Manhattan, in order to destroy any organized opposition to alien hegemony.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The United States has everything a faction could ever want: a robust space program, lots of funding and research, SIX information age armies with full ocean-crossing capability, a stockpile of nuclear weapons, and lots of development points to make all of these things even bigger and better over the course of the game. It's also REALLY difficult to get a foothold there due to the sheer size and wealth of the country. A faction that wants the USA's control points will first need to secure the control points of neighboring Canada and Mexico and carry out numerous Public Campaigns to raise popular support in the country to even have a chance of success, and then large amounts of influence will need to be spent to get the success rates up to reasonable levels. And even if you succeed, the USA's six control points are each very expensive to maintain, a problem made worse by the fact you have to maintain additional control points in Canada and Mexico at least until all of the USA's control points are claimed. That being said, even owning one of the USA's control points is very useful, and if you can manage to get and maintain all six you will have one of if not THE strongest power bases on Earth.
  • Taking over China is even harder than taking over the USA. It's the largest economy on Earth and has a massive population, requiring a sustained effort over in-game years just to take over - and unlike the USA, it's technologically a middle power, with an inefficient authoritarian government, and its military is nowhere near America's might at first. But its economy is mighty, and China has more room to grow than any other power. If developed into a first-world democracy, China (or even better, the Pan-Asian Combine) can make America's research establishment feel distinctly inadequate, and a well-developed Chinese military is one of the few things that can match alien power on the ground.
  • Unifying the EU is relatively straight forward. However due to some idiosyncrasies in the economic calculations it's much easier to build mission control in individual countries than one large one. So if you max out the mission control capability of each region before you bring it into the EU then you can have an EU with a incredibly high mission control stat. However this tends to put a significant strain on your early game control cap and councilor actions putting it cleanly into this category.
• Disc-One Nuke: Though nowhere near as strong as the world superpowers, there are a handful of minor nations that are worthy of note:
  • While Japan is quite far away from taking over the world, the country is fairly cheap and easy to seize control of and has an established space program, a strong economy (albeit with fairly stagnant growth), and four control points with secret development towards Build Navy. Assuming no disasters early on, Japan can quickly build an army and navy and do some force projection. Japan also has a funny way of gaining lots of miltech, and it can form the Pacific Defense League to boot^note Which has claims on Taiwan and is able to fold China into it later in the game..
  • Similarly to Japan, the United Kingdom is another fairly low-cost regional power worth picking, and it even has several crucial advantages over Japan: it starts with a modern army (and a navy to transport it), two nuclear weapons, good research output, the potential for good Boost income thanks to a region in the Caribbean, and claims on Ireland right from the start of the game.
  • Kazakhstan is not big, rich or powerful, but it does have the highest Boost income of any country in the game. More than the United States. While most of this Boost ends up going to Russia due to Kazakhstan's place in the Eurasian Union, it is quite easy to pull Kazakhstan out of it within the first 200 days (and if you want to grab Russia as well then this isn't a problem anyway). For space expansion strategies and especially for Project Exodus, grabbing Kazakhstan is near-mandatory.
  • Israel is a small and inexpensive country with one modern army and a working nuclear weapon, a nascent space program and a reasonable number of investment points. If you can get its unrest down and fix its democratic issues, Israel is a wonderful little launch platform to lock down for your space expansion.
  • Nigeria is an African nation with an enormous population (around 250 million at game start), it's really close to the equator and has 10 IP per month which optimizes your early game Boost development, and for some reason the AI never wants it. It's also the perfect launchpad for uniting the continent into the African Union eventually, if you want to do that.
• Divergent Character Evolution: While all the factions start out relatively similar in their methods and position, it doesn't take long for them to become radically different in policies, tactics and general gameplay.
• Early Game Hell: Humanity is divided just like real life, and initially has to make do with contemporary tech. Lifting anything to orbit can only be done by a tiny trickle until resources can be stored in orbit for easier construction. In the meantime, the Aliens are much more technologically advanced albeit still deeply divided in their own way, and can zap anything in the solar system with a few days of traveling. You are supposed to turn the tide against that foe and start settling the solar system without attracting too much attention.
• Easy Logistics:
  • All resources, mined anywhere in the Solar System, are available to you everywhere.
  • While stations and habitats require crew and crew needs food and water, the matter of actually getting crew to a station or hab is largely abstracted and a station in Jovian orbit can immediately function at full performance even after being expanded massively using on-site resources and going from a crew of 15 to 500, without having to wait for 485 people to make the journey from Earth or existing large stations and habitats.
• Enemy Mine: In addition to certain factions being able to cooperate with one another despite disagreements over how to deal with the Aliens (such as the Academy and the Resistance), it's also possible to manipulate or persuade rival nations into joining forces to advance your interests.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • The Protectorate and Servants, the two Vichy Earth factions, are sent the same terms of surrender by the aliens when they contact them. The Protectorate accept the terms. It's the Servants who find the terms insulting and successfully negotiate better ones.
  • As much as the Initiative is more concerned about profits and control, its members would rather that humanity or more accurately, themselves be the dominant force rather than submitting to the Hydras. It also knows that simply milking the planet dry isn't good business.
    Chairman Soren Van Wyk: He who controls the water controls the world. That's where we're headed now. But hell, even I know that a dying world isn't really one worth controlling.
  • Certain factions are not able to recruit certain organizations because of this, one way or the other:
    • Al-Qaeda and similar terrorist organizations can only be recruited by Humanity First, the Initiative, and the Servants. Also, the Councilor who handles them has to be The Sociopath, because anyone with a shred of basic humanity won't work with someone like that.
    • The Academy will not recruit any criminal syndicates. Exodus is slightly more lenient, but draws the line at drug cartels.
    • Most government organizations can be freely recruited, but Mossad and the Servants won't work together, and Exodus and the Protectorate won't work with the Quds Force or Hezbollah.
    • Backer-added organizations can also be unavailable to certain factions. Typically this means the Servants and sometimes the Protectorate.
• Evil Is Easy: The Servants have the designated easy campaign. Inverted with the pacifistic Academy, who have the hardest campaign but the most idealistic ending.
• Evil Pays Better: The Spoils priority allows you to plunder countries through such means as forced labor, ignoring environmental laws, and other extractive, colonial methods. It's by far the most effective way to get money into your coffers. While developing a country's Funding priority allows for more long-term development of financial resources for your faction, it just can't compare to plundering a developing country, plus you have to defend your influence in any country where you build Funding. As an aside, Spoils is more effective in undemocratic countries, which further encourages neocolonial behavior on the player's part.
• The Extremist Was Right: Funny enough, not the extremist factions of humanity but the Aliens themselves depending on your playthrough. They think all other life will try to enslave or genocide them again. If you're playing as Humanity First or The Initiative they're completely correct. Granted, it is still possible to let them have some basic trust on mankind if you succeed as Academy.
• Eye of Providence: Featured in the emblem of the Initiative.
• Faction-Specific Endings: Each faction has their own unique ending and future for humankind. Interestingly, it is possible for some factions to achieve their victory conditions after another faction has done so.
  • The Resistance: An assault on the alien base on the edge of the Sol system destroys the wormhole device and severs all contact with the Hydras' homeworld, decapitating the invasion force in one go. With the Resistance's work complete, the faction disbands and Commander Ayoade gracefully returns to her quiet life as a mother of two.
  • Humanity First: Despite heavy casualties, Humanity First successfully delivers a bioweapon into the wormhole and the Hydra and their alien servants are rendered extinct. The final scene shows red human ships spreading across the galaxy, suggesting that humankind has become a xenophobic and militaristic star empire just like the Hydras.
  • The Servants: The Alien Administration assumes control over the Earth's remaining nations, and humankind joins the Hydras' star empire, albeit enjoying a relatively respected position within the alien hierarchy. A public meeting is held, and mind-altering pheromones are spread amongst the crowd. Superior Howell concludes privately that she expects to be one day assassinated even after brainwashing much of the planet, but remains resolute in her belief that humanity will embrace their extraterrestrial brethren.
  • The Protectorate: Orbital strike platforms are installed in Earth's orbit, and a strike wipes out the UN Headquarters in New York (and a sizeable chunk of New York City) which the Protectorate blames on an accidental misfire. The Protectorate enforces an authoritarian Vichy nanny state that leaves humanity confined to Earth (as space expansion might threaten the aliens) and subject to very harsh terms in exchange for some tenuous sovereignty. Discredited within his own organization and worn down by the heavy price he paid, Commissioner Banerjee appoints the Commander as co-ruler of Earth and retires to civilian life in India.
  • The Academy: The Academy are able to steal Humanity First's bioweapon data to develop their own, and manipulate the Hydras' internal politics to ensure a pacifist movement takes hold in their leadership. By threatening the Hydras' with the bioweapon and demonstrating they can sneak it onto their homeworld, the Academy is able to convince the Hydras leadership to come to the peace talk table and hash out a agreement, even possibly leading to an equal partnership between humanity and the aliens in the future.
  • The Initiative: Growing beyond simply wanting to profit from the chaos, the Initiative are able to seize control of both Earth (through secretive government control) and the Hydras (by modifying and releasing mind control pheromones among their population). The malevolent conspiracy entrenches itself and subjects the aliens to an apartheid situation where they are basically slaves.
  • Project Exodus: Project Exodus manages to construct a working arkship and sally it forth out of the Sol system. For Director Khalid Al-Ashgar and those fortunate enough to meet the stringent criteria to book a seat aboard, they take a moment to look back melancholily at Earth for one final time before leaving the homeworld of mankind to its fate, before setting off into the unknown where destiny awaits.
• The Fatalist: Councilors with the "Apocalyptic" trait believe that the extinction of humanity is imminent and inevitable, and want to convince others of this. Interestingly, this doesn't affect their dedication to the cause, but rather makes them more persuasive during campaigns in which nukes have been used.
• The Federation: At the beginning of the game, there are two of these, and more can be created. The European Union is the first, a union of several nation-states with the potential to become a single united force in service of a faction, or to splinter over response to the aliens. The other is the Eurasian Union, though that's more of a Hegemonic Empire composed of Russia and its satellites, with Kazakhstan being particularly important for containing Baikonur Cosmodrome... and it's interested in bringing in more countries.
• First Contact Faux Pas: The Protectorate attempts to arrange a diplomatic meeting with the aliens, with the help of Lavrentiy. This goes horribly wrong, with some of the attendees getting killed over being resistant to pherocytes, while those who try to escape being silently dealt with by the Protectorate to prevent word of the incident from reaching the public.
• Foil: Four of the factions act as foils to one another, representing combinations of two dichotomies.
  • The Resistance is Practical and Anti-Alien. They fight a fairly standard (for sci-fi) guerrilla war with the aim of driving the aliens off.
  • Humanity First is Fanatical and Anti-Alien. They aim not only to kill every single alien, but also every human who worked or sympathized with the aliens.
  • The Protectorate is Practical and Pro-Alien. They believe that the aliens are too powerful to be defeated, and that helping the aliens get what they want will result in the least amount of suffering for humanity.
  • The Servants are Fanatical and Pro-Alien. They are an alien-worshipping cult that tries to brainwash everyone into becoming the aliens' slaves.
  • In terms of the in-game public opinion axis (pro-alien vs anti-alien and idealism vs cynicism), both the Initiative and Project Exodus are neutral on the aliens but Project Exodus is on the idealistic end while the Initiative is on the cynical end.
• Genre Blindness:
  • The Protectorate hope that the aliens will be reasonable, civilized, and enlightened even when they detect their heavily-armed battlefleet in the outer solar system. They insist that anti-alien xenophobes are to blame for the alien abductions until the evidence becomes not just strong, but undeniable. Even then, they equivocate and are more concerned about the potential diplomatic fallout than the fact that people are being abducted. They are every Wide-Eyed Idealist and Obstructive Bureaucrat in the genre, without any self-awareness.
  • Downplayed with the Initiative. Its members are opportunistically taking advantage of the chaos to fill their pockets and to accumulate more power. Even as the organization becomes more cohesive and develops more of an identity, it's not until they're forced to defend themselves from Hydra attacks that they treat the extraterrestrials as anything other than a means to consolidate more control and they’re quick to catch on. They're a nascent corporate/government conspiracy straight out of Metal Gear and Deus Ex, thrust into an Alien Invasion setting.
  • Also downplayed with the Academy, who start the game believing that the aliens can be reasoned with to treat humanity as equals. When the Hydras make their true intentions clear, they suffer a massive credibility hit with most of Earth's population which they will find hard to recover from. Ultimately subverted, as their continued efforts to try to understand the Hydra menace ultimately allows them to discover that the Hydras are just as splintered as Earth itself, and they end up adopting a measure of Realpolitik to achieve their goals. A Space Cold War enforced by the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction may not sound particularly idealistic on the face of things, but the fact that they manage to acquire a credible threat to the Hydras and don't immediately use it to conduct a genocidal first strike allows their opposite counterparts among the Hydras to gain credibility, potentially forming the basis for a lasting if somewhat uneasy mutual coexistence.
• Glass Cannon: Missile escorts are usually able to flush their entire cargo of missiles before the aliens get into attack range, allowing them to be combat-effective even if they aren't built for survivability.
• Global Warming: A minor game mechanic. Climate Change lowers GDP in every nation and brings about negative events including eruptions of arctic methane, environmental degradation and rising sea levels caused by ice sheet melts. Spoils and Economy priority makes climate change worse, Welfare priority mitigates the worst of it. Protracted nuclear exchanges can induce a nuclear winter, which reverses climate change... but then you have worse problems. Xenoflora is also good for fighting climate change, because it consumes CO₂ in vast quantities.
• Golden Ending: Arguably The Academy. They are by far the hardest faction, considering their massive loss of support and control points early in the game, alongside having one of the most brutal and expensive victory conditions on top of that. However, in return, you get what can be considered the morally best ending: you have saved Earth AND the aliens; you've ended a cycle of violence that began with the almost complete genocide of the aliens long ago, found peace, all but united Earth in the process and probably increased its prosperity, and you did it all without completely relying on bloodshed.
  • However, the peace is not certain. You’ve only taken the first steps toward a ceasefire that could either collapse or lead to something more. It’s ultimately up to the player to decide whether idealism is worth the uncertainty.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Played with but largely upheld.
  • The default protagonists and all-around heroes, The Resistance, have a brilliant, Eagleland flavored Blue and White color scheme. The Academy, the most moderate of the pro-Alien factions who desire a free Earth that can cooperate with the aliens as equals for mutual benefit have a majestic Green and Gold color scheme. Project Exodus, who seek to avoid conflict with the aliens by leading humans to escape Earth, have a Gold and Blue color scheme.
  • In contrast, the genocidal fanatics in Humanity First have a blood red icon of a human hand with slight black overtones, the utterly unscrupulous opportunists of The Initiative have a sinister Orange-Red color, while Alien-worshipping fanatics of the Servants have a teal flame offset by a pitch black background and an eerie purple frame.
  • The Protectorate are perhaps the biggest exception to this, since they largely have a reassuringly bright green-orange-blue color scheme in spite of favoring conditional surrender to the aliens. But, they are ultimately trying to save humanity in the only way they think possible.
• He Who Fights Monsters:
  • After the leading alien barely prevented an extinction event of their own, the Hydras become xenophobic and militarist like their oppressors. They even make use of their mind-controlling abilities to enslave other alien species they encounter.
  • If Humanity First succeeds, mankind itself becomes no better than the invaders, being a xenophobic, militaristic empire in the making.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Project Exodus considers those who either choose to say behind or simply refuse to go as doing a valiant service to mankind, buying precious time for the faction to finish its arkship. If Project Exodus does manage to launch said vessel, it's all but stated that any members left behind will try to buy more time by taking out as many Aliens as they can before dying.
  • The end-game of the Resistance involves shutting down the wormhole device in order to stop the invasion dead in its tracks. Those who take part know that it's practically a suicide mission, but nonetheless sacrifice their lives to ensure that their loved ones get to survive.
  • While less benevolent, Humanity First throws just about everything it has at the Hydras to get just close enough to deploy its bioweapon, its forces ready to die just to see it through. Though at tremendous cost, it nonetheless succeeds in giving mankind a decisive victory.
• History Repeats: The implied horror of a Humanity First victory. While mankind stands victorious over the invaders, it has adopted the "shoot first, ask questions later" approach of the Salamanders and Hydras... the same approach that, ahem, led both races to extinction. Hanse may well be leading the human race out into the galaxy, and into oblivion.
• Homeworld Evacuation: Project Exodus considers fighting the aliens to be pointless, and are instead building The Ark to leave the Solar System entirely. Though the resulting arkship can only carry thousands at most and the launch is made potentially at the skin of its teeth, Project Exodus can nonetheless succeed, giving humanity another chance at civilization. After succeeding in that, Project Exodus pledges to fight the alien invaders till victory or defeat (and to grab more of their juicy exotics to build more arkships.
• Hope Springs Eternal:
  • Despite potentially losing Earth forever, Project Exodus can succeed in launching its arkship, giving humanity a fresh start to rebuild civilization in another world free of the extraterrestrial threat.
  • As the Servants soon discover after managing to mind-control much of humanity, their ploy wasn't quite as thorough as hoped. There still remain sizable pockets of free people ready to take Earth back.
• Hopeless War: The Protectorate and Project Exodus believe that any civilization capable of interstellar travel is one that humanity doesn't have a prayer of defeating in battle. The former wants to appease the aliens to stave off extinction, while the latter wants to flee the solar system entirely.
• Humans Advance Swiftly: Humanity starts the game with present day technology and, in the span of just a few decades, can end up consolidating itself into stronger nations, colonizing the entire solar system, and building a space fleet strong enough to defeat the aliens.
• Humans Are Divided: The early game consists of navigating the fractured political landscape of Earth to try to coordinate a unified response to the alien threat. One alien captured by the Resistance laughs at the notion that humanity might unite against them for this reason. Downplayed, in that said alien is speaking from experience - the Hydras are in an even more dire situation and they, if anything, are even more fractious, even with their Mind Control. It's why humanity has a chance, as the Hydras are too busy arguing to put their full military potential into operation.
• Industrialized Mercury: As one might expect, solar power is extremely efficient on Mercury (and in Mercury orbit), and it's a good source of base metals. Mercury can end the game as a major hive of human activity.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • During the course of the game, researchers are shocked to discover that the aliens are pulling Hostile Terraforming on Earth. Despite this, from the beginning of the game you can see "Xenoforming" in the globe view options.
  • The aliens are labelled "Hydras" long before your faction decides to call them that.
• Irony: The two pro-alien factions are the Servants, a pseudo-religious movement who outright worship the aliens as divine benefactors, and the Protectorate, a movement of Les Collaborateurs driven largely by pragmatism and desire to preserve humanity in the face of a galactic juggernaut. So you would expect the Servants to be mindless and uncritical of the aliens and the Protectorate to have a more positive assimilation, right? It's actually the other way around. When the two factions are presented with quite harsh surrender terms, the Servants actually find the initial terms insulting, akin to slavery, and successfully negotiate to give humanity more favorable terms; whereas the Protectorate just buckle and agree to everything they ask for.
  • The only reason why the anti-alien factions stand any chance against the aliens to begin with is because the aliens are in fact even more politically divided than humanity is. The Academy's win condition even involves manipulating the Hydras' internal politics so a pacifistic conquest-skeptic movement seizes control over the apparatus of the Hydra "government", bringing the aliens to the negotiating table.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope:
  • The Protectorate starts out as cautious but reasonable bureaucrats who want to avoid a war with an interstellar species. They want to prevent as much human loss of life as possible, and preserve everything humanity has built. It doesn't take long for them to fall into denialism and authoritarianism, dismantling everything they claimed they were trying to protect to appease the aliens.
  • The Initiative, being comprised of corporate tycoons and others from high places, start off simply as self-interested opportunists who openly see a mutual interest in profiting off from the turmoil resulting from the discovery of an interstellar race. As time goes on, however, they begin consolidating themselves through subterfuge and authoritarian means to secure their growing power, and eventually become a full-blown shadowy conspiracy, running humanity and controlling the Aliens with none the wiser.
• Kill One, Others Get Stronger: Every time you assassinate or detail an alien operative, the difficulty increases for the next one. Past a certain point, even maxing out a councillor's Investigation and Espionage skill points won't be much help, and you're better off shooting them down in space before they manage to land on Earth.
• Kill Sat: The Protectorate's Sentinel Complexes are superpowered combat modules built on habs in Low Earth Orbit. They are used to enforce global hegemony on the Earth and to keep humanity confined there.
• Knight Templar:
  • Kiran Banerjee, former UN councillor, is so driven to ensure mankind is not a threat to the Hydras that his Protectorate nuke the UN Headquarters off the face of the planet, simultaneously uniting Earth with a Bavarian Fire Drill and eliminating the people who know the truth about humanity's surrender.
  • If Humanity First win, they defeat the alien invaders by genociding them with a bioweapon heedless of their sympathetic motives, and take to the stars with an unwavering "shoot first, poke bodies later" approach to alien contact. Mankind has won, but in spirit and thought if not in body, they have been conquered and assimilated by the aliens.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Both the Protectorate and Project Exodus consider the fight against the aliens to be futile as they believe that humanity has no chance against a technologically advanced species capable of interstellar travel. However, while the Protectorate believes that humanity should surrender to the aliens in order to avoid unnecessary suffering Project Exodus thinks that the best solution is to evacuate humans from Earth to another planet.
• Les Collaborateurs:
  • The Servants, who worship the aliens and believes they'll solve all of the world's problems.
  • The Protectorate is this to a lesser extent — they believe that the aliens cannot be beaten and therefore doing what they want is the best option, with themselves serving to lead humanity on their behalf. As if to reinforce this point, the Hydras even send an "advisor" named Laventiy to serve as their direct liason and eventually, co-ruler of Earth.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: The Initiative's modus operandi in a nutshell. Their response to the discovery of sapient alien life in the solar system? Figure out how to make a profit from it. Early on, it's mentioned one of their schemes is selling snake oil cures to an alleged alien disease. And while other factions seek to convert people to their own ideologies, the Initiative's "followers" are described as having "various exploitable beliefs". Later on, this is taken to its logical conclusion, with the Initiative seizing the opportunity to not only control humanity from the shadows, but also enslave the Hydras.
• Lightworlder: The Griffens evolved in a low-gravity environment and can't function well on large planets like Earth.
• Lizard Folk: The aliens' Elite Mooks are reptilian humanoids referred to as "Salamanders".

Tropes M-Z

• Magikarp Power:
  • India starts off relatively insignificant compared to the more established superpowers of the United States and China, but a properly-managed and invested India can eclipse the US in GDP and science output within ten years of game start, and it can be expanded to include Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka into the Greater India supernation. India and Japan as two nations will fill up most of your Admin cap and be a fantastic start for your faction of choice, as Japan can feed India vital cash, research and Boost in the first decade while India gradually builds its muscle.
  • Corrupt, fractured and in almost-perpetual turmoil, Africa might seem like an odd continent to consider as the cornerstone of your strategy, but the place is brimming with potential if you can (metaphorically and literally) get it together. Picking Nigeria is a strong starting point, and has one of the easier unifications through conquest once you unlock the African Union or one of the other super-nations in the region (alternatively you could grab a mid-sized external power like Israel or the UK to do the heavy lifting for you). Great Bantu and East African Federation can be united in mid-game to fit a huge portion of the continent into a superstate with four resource regions and an impressive GDP for the late 2020's. And if the African Union holds the entire continent then it will probably control at least one-fifth of the Earth's total population with a GDP comparable to (or possibly even greater than) India or the EU, though admittedly it will take a while to get there. You can even unify African Union and the Caliphate, which makes it even more powerful.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Towards its ending, the Protectorate resorts to framing the destruction of the UN Headquarters by its orbital weapons platforms, taking out New York City in the process, as an accidental misfire. This not only eliminates the remaining organized opposition to Earth's new benefactors, but also conveniently wipes out anyone who could know the truth about humanity's surrender.
• Make the Bear Angry Again: The modern Eurasian Economic Union can turn into a single country just as easily as the European Union can, and the entire former Soviet Union can be invited - or "invited". And while Russia isn't necessarily any more aggressive than any other country, they begin as an authoritarian dictatorship invading Ukraine, it's a lot easier for Russia to expand militarily than just about any other country, and God help the Earth if a nuke-happy faction gets control of them.
• The Man Behind the Man: At least initially, all the factions serve as this, working through operatives, intermediaries, and eventually, entire countries under their control/influence. The Initiative in particular stays committed to this path towards the end, preferring to rule humanity from the shadows while treating the Aliens as slaves.
• Mexico Called; They Want Texas Back: One of the later mega-nations you can create is a revanchist Mexico with claims on a significant part of the USA.^note Roughly the states of: Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, and Montana. It's named "Aztlán", which was originally the mythical homeland of the Aztecs, but here appears to refer to the term's use by the Chicano movement among 20th-century Mexican-Americans.
• Middle Eastern Coalition: There's a couple of options for this. The Arab League is a secular version that allows a pan-Arab unification, while the Caliphate allows the unification of the Middle East (and later, the rest of the Muslim world) under an Islamic banner.
• Mind Control:
  • The Hydras are revealed to possess pherocytes that allow them to mind-control any opponent in close proximity to them. They also eventually resort to using brainwashed human captives to serve as spies with no one suspecting them until it's too late.
  • The Initiative not only uses modified pheromones to enslave the Hydras in the ending, but it's strongly suggested that said pheromones are also used to brainwash the rest of humanity, allowing it to rule Earth from the shadows.
  • The Servants in their ending arrange a large public event with which to spread mind-controlling pheromones around Earth, leaving mankind completely at the mercy of the Hydras.
• Morality Kitchen Sink: The human factions run the gamut.
  • The Resistance and Academy are both idealistic factions who seek not just to defend Earth, but to protect what makes it worth defending and avoid committing atrocities or unnecessarily wasting human life. That said, they can employ criminals, exploit countries for profit, and commit war crimes as easily as any other faction. Project Exodus just want to get off the planet, hoping to find a better home for humanity among the stars. They believe that humanity can't win against the aliens, and are doing their best to protect human life regardless.
  • The Initiative actively seek to exploit the crisis, and only fight the invasion to defend their interest. Among one another, they don't even pretend to be anything but ruthless, self-interested bastards who want to be the "top dog", the rest of the world be damned. The Servants are an alien-serving cult and naturally opposed to almost every other faction, and to anyone who doesn't want to be the slave of alien invaders.
  • The remaining factions are more complicated, with varying shades of grey. The Protectorate truly believe their attempts to arrange a conditional surrender is the best way to resolve the crisis with minimal loss of life, but they are manipulative and Genre Blind. Humanity First are absolute xenophobes willing to go much further than the Resistance against both the aliens and their human sympathizers, but their initial theories about the aliens are proven painfully accurate.
• Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness: Terra Invicta is firmly rooted in Speculative Science. There's no Faster-Than-Light Travel^note how the aliens get here is a spoiler and the various drives are all based in presently-theoretical technologies.
• Multiple Government Polity: The seven factions consist of various nations that have united under their banner, voluntarily or otherwise.
• Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy: The Initiative is a cabal of corporations and industrialists who want to exploit the ongoing crisis to amass wealth and power. At first. They gradually coalesce into The Illuminati in all but name. Strictly speaking, of course, their goal never actually changes, it just grows to encompass the Aliens as well.
• Never Be Hurt Again: It's eventually revealed that the Hydras are the survivors of a genocide enacted by the Salamanders, and that their belligerence toward humanity and other sapient species is their way of ensuring that they are never threatened by invasion again.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The game begins on October 1st, 2022, and global politics are fairly accurate to the present day (up to and including the Russian invasion of Ukraine).
• No Place for Me There: The Servants' leader expects to be assassinated for turning the Earth over to the aliens. In contrast even Project Exodus' leader hitches a ride on the colony ship with supposedly ultra-strict selection.
• Not in This for Your Revolution:
  • In contrast to the other factions, the Initiative couldn't care less about the Aliens, unless they directly threaten its interests. So long as its members get a hefty piece of the action amidst the turmoil and become the shadowy puppet masters of mankind, it's all fair game.
  • Project Exodus' sole concern is simply to get humanity to a new homeworld, and couldn't care less about the Aliens' plans or fighting against them, unless they directly intervene in said Homeworld Evacuation. However, after they launch the ark, Project Exodus pledges to continue fighting the alien invaders till victory or defeat (and to grab more of their juicy exotics to build more arkships.
• "Not So Different" Remark: When the Resistance captures an alien for interrogation, it laughs at the notion that Earth could unite to defeat the aliens... because the aliens themselves did this to defeat their own invaders.
• Older Than They Look: The faction leaders at large can remain in charge even after several decades, with none looking any worse for wear.
• One World Order: Played With. The revelation that man isn't alone in the universe triggers a shift in the way humanity sees one another, but how this manifests varies considerably between individual countries and especially; among the various factions. Depending on what projects and policies are enacted, it's possible either for Earth to be unified under a group of super-nations if not a singular world government, a general status-quo to persist as various national powers preserve their way of life, or for countries to fracture even more into more easily-controllable puppets for the dominant faction.
• Orbital Bombardment: Can be used to attack or destroy enemy surface bases, as well as army units on Earth. How effective it is depends on what kind of weapons your ships have, and how thick the planetary body's atmosphere is.
• Piñata Enemy: Some countries can provide high Spoils for relatively little expenditure of Control Points, particularly rich, authoritarian and oil-rich countries (such as Saudi Arabia). Taking over one of these and looting it into the ground is a popular early-game move.
• Post-End Game Content: In certain cases, even after one faction achieves it ending, it's possible for another to achieve its own objectives, if not turn the tables on the erstwhile victor.
  • Even if the Servants or the Protectorate succeed in their respective schemes to control humanity, there's still enough organized opposition and pockets of non-brainwashed people for the Resistance to rebuild. There's even an achievement for doing so: "Phoenix".
  • Just because Project Exodus achieves its goal of escaping the solar system doesn't mean it's mission accomplished just yet, when its members can buy more time by taking out as many Alien forces as they can or even contribute to repelling their invasion altogether. While other factions can still gain their victory conditions.
• The Pollyanna: Councilors with the "Pollyanna" trait are described as having a perpetually optimistic attitude, even in the face of strife or defeat. The practical effect of this is that their apparent loyalty is set to 25, giving the appearance of perfect loyalty to their faction even if that's not really the case.
• Pragmatic Villainy: No matter how bad a faction is, they need Earth to remain intact and the countries they rule to be in good condition if they want to achieve their goals.
  • Humanity First, for all its members' rabid xenophobia, isn't picky about race, gender or political ideology, and will generally allow others to pursue their own path. At least for so long as they're seen as not aiding the Aliens.
  • The Protectorate, meanwhile, tries to encourage and maintain some semblance of normalcy if it means making Earth's conditional surrender more palatable.
  • Even the rapacious Initiative will put some effort into stopping Global Warming and generally maintaining order. Though this is more to mitigate potential opposition and to consolidate power than anything else.
• Puny Earthlings: It soon becomes clear that the aliens are tough. Early in the game, you find out that a typical member of the dominant alien species is two meters, or about six and half feet, tall on average. They have multiple redundant organs, a majority of which must be taken out rapidly to put them down with anything other than heavy machine gun fire. And their pherocytes allow them to effectively Mind Control other creatures just by proximity. However, there is one weakness that comes up later, and is especially important to Humanity First's win condition: though long-lived, they have a low population and very low reproductive rate, leaving them extremely vulnerable to plague. Humanity First therefore develops a bio-weapon to target the aliens.
• Puppet King: Over the course of the game, the factions can seize control over entire countries through either proxies or subtle influence.
• Ramming Always Works: Ordering a ship to ram an enemy craft will cause spectacular damage and can take down even alien motherships if it hits, which can be a highly useful tactic for tin-can missile boats. However, it costs Influence to order your crew to do this, as it's a Heroic Sacrifice that calls for intense loyalty from the crew.
• Realpolitik:
  • Firmly believing in the idea that mankind wouldn't realistically just put aside their differences, the Resistance has to rely on realist geopolitics in order to get that various national powers to cooperate.
  • The Initiative doesn't really care much about culture or political leanings in its dealings with various nations. So long as the government is malleable enough, and the right people are bribed off or put in place, it's more than happy to work with anyone, and to toss them aside as quickly if they're seen as useless.
  • This is why Project Exodus is forced to fight other factions. Uniquely, their goals don't interfere with any other faction's. However, to launch their project, they need resources, and everyone else knows that, which leads to the same military buildups and conflict that the other six factions engage in. And if they become the strongest faction, the other factions will fear them and try to cut them down to size just as badly as if the Servants and Resistance were in the lead.
• Red Is Violent:
  • Humanity First has a blood-red handprint as their sigil, and their ships are painted the same color. Not a subtle bunch, those guys.
  • The Alien Threat meter turns completely red when they declare all-out war on your faction and begin destroying your habs.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: It turns out that, prior to being enslaved, the Salamanders destroyed the Hydras' homeworld and exterminated the population out of rabid xenophobia. The trauma of losing all but the dregs of their people and culture is what drove the surviving Hydras to become the militaristic slavers they are now.
• Restrained Resistance, Reckless Rebellion: The Academy, Resistance and Humanity First are at different points on this scale, though they all oppose the Alien Invasion. The Academy are the most restrained; they'll fight back to defend Earth but really want to establish a cooperative relationship with the aliens. The Resistance are in the middle; they want to protect the Earth, period, and don't really have much in the way of political goals for what Earth should look like afterward. And Humanity First are the Reckless ones, who want to exterminate anything not from Earth.
• Russia Is Western: With the "Europe Ascendant" project, Russia is a potential member of the European Union. This can be inverted by the "Forward Russia" project, which allows Europe to join Russia instead.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Project Exodus wants humanity to deal with the alien invasion by evacuating as many humans as they can from Earth to another planet outside of the Solar System where the aliens won’t be able to reach them.
  • Fleets controlled by the AI will generally run away from enemy fleets that they don't think they can overpower, and individual ships will sometimes cut and run if the tide of a battle starts to turn against them.
• Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: Downplayed in the game as a whole, but this is the core of the Protectorate plotline. While Humanity First's brutal counterstrike works and the Initiative takes over the world in their endings, the Protectorate's combination of distrust in humanity and refusal to accept that humans have a chance of even making the Hydras consider that humanity should be allowed a longer leash or that invasion is not worth it (as the Servants and Academy do) ends up turning them into a bunch of despots who let the aliens keep on talking them into worse and worse deals simply because they won't stand up for themselves.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Going from most idealistic to most cynical: the Academy and the Servants (most idealistic), then Project Exodus and the Resistance (somewhat idealistic), then the Protectorate (somewhat cynical), then finally Humanity First and the Initiative (most cynical).
• Space-Filling Empire: All over the place, sometimes with new names (e.g. Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia united as the "Baltic States") and sometimes through simple annexation (e.g. Syria has absorbed Lebanon). This is mainly part of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality / Anti-Frustration Features, since taking over governments is a major part of gameplay, it would be a real pain to monitor over 200 countries.
  • The player can also enforce this further with the unification polities that become available later in the game, such as creating an Expanded States of America or Arabian Union.
• Space Station: Platforms, orbitals and rings are progressively-larger space habitats, orbiting around planets, moons and Lagrange points. Low Earth Orbit in particular gets very crowded, very fast.
• Standard Human Spaceship: Zigzagged depending on the type of ship and the components used. The smaller ones, or those sporting wide radiator panels, generally look NASA-inspired, while the larger ones with smaller or retracted panels fit the trope more accurately. The trope is lampshaded in the Orbital Shipbuilding tech description:
  The old rules of aerospace cease to be when there is less "aero" and more "space". Craft built for the purpose of traveling, transporting, and fighting in space have greater allowance for design versatility when friction and drag are no longer an issue; materials can be more dense and designs can be more utilitarian.
• Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: Ship classes range from Gunship to Titan, and differ in the number of available nose hardpoints (dedicated to a Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon), hull hardpoints (for turrets, point defense, and missiles), and utility modules (for a variety of purposes). These classes are also divided into Small, Medium, Large, Ship of the Line, and Titan sizes, which mostly affect how much Mission Control a ship's logistical operations consume.
• Stealing from the Till: The Spoils priority allows you to use your control of a country to divert part of its wealth. It includes, but is not limited to, direct corruption; it also includes tax evasion, ignoring pollution regulations, exploiting labor, and other rent-seeking behaviors.
• Stealth in Space: Fully averted. Once you research Deep System Skywatch, which is a very early global tech, you can monitor every ship and station in the Solar System in real time, down to the specific weapons and modules present (or under construction) on each.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Many Alien Invasion stories idealistically show the various disparate nations and creeds of humanity all putting aside their differences and standing shoulder by shoulder against the alien invaders. Well Terra Invicta is definitely not one of those stories. The moment First Contact is established and it becomes clear that they do not come in peace, different ideological groups emerge and carve up the planet amongst themselves, fighting each other as much as the aliens in most cases. Some people want to fight, but other people instead want to surrender, some people want to just leave, some people even advocate for joining the alien empire, and some people just want to take advantage of the chaos to gain power.
• Take Over the World: Multiple factions' endgoals require this.
  • The aliens, of course, since they're pulling an Alien Invasion.
  • The Servants don't want to do this themselves, but rather help the aliens take over.
  • The Protectorate wants to take control of Earth's orbitals and forcibly pacify the Earth, preventing a space development that would threaten the aliens.
  • The Initiative begin by just wanting to profit from the chaos, but their end goal is to take over both the Earth and the Aliens. Running Earth from the shadows, while making the Aliens glorified slaves.
  • In theory, this isn't necessarily the Academy's goal. But if they want to make an alliance with the aliens, then they need to beat everyone else into the ground and take even more thorough control over the Earth and the Solar System than the other factions do.
  • One line from Khalid al-Ashgar mocks this, since he sees taking over the Earth as a distraction that the other factions pursue, while he's busy claiming space resources.
    Remember, while they're building empires down there, we're building an empire up here.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Initial assassinations of alien operatives requires this. It takes far, far more firepower to kill an alien than it does a human, and leads to the first corpses available for study being heavily damaged. Once xenobiologists figure out where all the redundant organs are, you unlock easier methods of attack.
• Throwaway Country: North Korea is a tiny one-CP minor nation with bugger-all for an economy and one working nuclear weapon. Functionally, the country is of little use to anyone. But if the Servants are invading your core territories or maybe the Aliens have begun to land their own armies and you need a quickie "panic button nuke" from a country you don't mind seeing glassed in a retaliatory strike...
• Token Good Teammate: The Academy is this to the pro-Alien factions. The Academy wants to cooperate with the aliens but, unlike the Protectorate or the Servants, they consider humanity's independence to be non-negotiable.
• 20 Minutes into the Past: The start date is fixed to October 1st, 2022. Ironically, when the first build of the game was released, it was a week into the future.
• Tutorial Failure: The so-called tutorial for the game does a horrible job explaining anything beyond the bare bones of UI, forcing new players to go through wikias and online guides to even figure out what the game's goals are. Keep in mind that the official wikia for the game has better tutorial than the game itself.
• The Unfettered:
  • Though Humanity First shares the Resistance's desire to protect Earth from the Alien menace, it's not only much more xenophobic and zealous about it, but is also excessively vindictive against anyone deemed to be serving extraterrestrial interests. They're thus much less squeamish about unethical and immoral measures in the name of saving mankind. Notably, Humanity First believe that The Resistance's heart is in the right place; it is their methods are simply not enough to "meet the threat".
  • Played With in the case of the Servants. On top of all but worshipping the extraterrestrials and seeking to have all mankind submit to them with open arms, they'll go above and beyond to see their vision realized. In contrast to the nominally more measured Protectorate, however, they negotiate for more preferable terms with the Aliens as the initial ones come off as too insulting for them.
  • The Academy is gradually pushed into accepting no limits in its aim of proving humanity's worth as an equal to the Aliens. Whether it's bringing the entire planet under its influence, whether people like it or not, or doing whatever is deemed necessary to convince the Hydras of mankind's good intentions, just about anything goes. Though unlike certain other factions, its members are genuinely well-meaning.
• United Europe: The European Union begins as a union of separate countries, but can unite into a single country with just a little push from a faction. It can also include the UK, Norway, Serbia and Ukraine, and expand even further with the right social tech.
• Vichy Earth: The Servants and the Protectorate both want to bring humanity under alien control. In the case of the Servants it's because they believe that joining the aliens really is the best option, while the Protectorate think that resistance is futile and want to negotiate a conditional surrender, with itself in charge.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Once you have executive power over a country, you can use your influence to end wars and rivalries, improve living standards, stamp out ethnic violence and xenophobia, dismantle nuclear weapons, and even adopt policies to combat Global Warming.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: ...Or you can do the exact opposite. Waging wars, increasing strife to make a country more vulnerable to conquest, and raining nuclear hell on enemy-controlled nations are all viable options.
• Voluntary Vassal: The Servants are not just willing, but eager to submit to the alien invasion. Unlike the Protectorate, they genuinely want to be a part of the aliens' dominion, and require no coercion.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Spinal Mount lasers and particle beams. They can only be mounted on Lancers (ships of the line designed around the use of spinal mounts) and Titans (just plain big spaceships), can penetrate armor at long distance, and will utterly annihilate weaker targets. There's also a BFG kinetic version in spinal-mount Magnetic Weapons.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Just because Earth is under the threat of an alien invasion does not mean that all human nations are immediately willing to cooperate with each other. Therefore, preventing or ending conflicts is essential as they can escalate even further into a global war. The aliens are themselves equally politically divided, which is why it takes some time for the invasion project to get rolling in earnest.
  • Also, councillors of the same faction can sometimes come into conflict with each other. Just because you all share an ideology doesn't erase the fact that you have extremely different personalities and walks of life.
• We Can Rule Together: Inverted. The Academy wishes for humanity and aliens to become allies as they believe that cooperation with aliens will benefit humanity. However, unlike the Protectorate and the Servants, the Academy wants to have an explicitly equal relationship with the aliens.
• We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill: When Earth realizes that the aliens do not, in fact, come in peace, the diplomatic Academy faction gets kicked in the metaphorical junk and loses a good chunk of their support to the other factions. The Academy can still achieve their goals, however.
• World War III: Trigger-happy factions such as Humanity First or the Servants are likely to start a global war if they get their hands on nuclear weapons, so a good way to avoid this scenario is to rearrange the world’s military alliances to contain the damage. Massive wars are a straightforward way to alter the balance of power in your favor, but you generally want to avoid this in the early game, especially when relying on the Earth’s GDP to bootstrap your space industries.
• Zerg Rush: In the early game, this is your best counter to the aliens. Cheap, quickly-built missile escorts are a solid means of countering the aliens' initial ships.

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Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

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