u/Viktor_Vertex

I have just 'won' a brutal difficulty game in broken earth scenario as academy.

TLDR: Australia, Kuiper belt roach and many, many nukes.

Usually, the space strategy is to keep your bases far away from the aliens, so that when they come for you, you have time to build up defensive ships in time. You usually do this by rushing space and attacking any alien station in the asteroid belt, so they need to refuel/raid from Jupiter or beyond, giving you time to react or build fleets. In Brutal Broken Earth, this is not possible, as the ayys will usually colonize Ceres and other asteroids before you can, so early space war wont work well. I used a kuiper belt rush strat instead.

To start, controlling Australia and Westralia into Republic of Southern Cross. It has a few really good peaceful unification options so it can be played like the EU is played normally, maxxing MC, funding and some boost before unifying/conquering. A few years in, this left me with 1.5k funding. I bought up all the research orgs i could, rushed space, rushed settlements, and filled them out with labs. Then beelined for helicon drive and mission to the outer planets, and sent out colony ships to ALL the Kuiper belt planetoids.

By this time the AA has formed and the aliens were in firm control of Earth space. Good thing is that in Broken Earth, controlling nations with actions is harder for the aliens too, so abduction/surveillance missions are comparatively less harmful, especially for meganations.

The problem with expanding colonies is MC, as the nations on Earth arent that good and cannot build much, so Ops centers had to be relied on. Kuiper belt has really great mining spots which was nice. I built out Pluto to 10k+ population with residential modules, and plopped down as many research academies and space hospitals i could afford. The ayys would send out ships to destroy the Kuiper colonies, but we had years of warning to build out as many missile monitors we needed to drive them off. For most of the game, chemical propulsion, copperhead armed missile monitors did the job.

By this time the AA got to around 50% of the worlds population and half the world covered in alien bases with about 10 or so alien armies on the planet and in total 60 ish AA armies. The AA doesnt declare war on superpowers if it has other targets, even though they could have eliminated me at this point.

My councillors were tasked on unrest missions. This is how i expanded to Atlantic states and California.

But we couldnt defeat the alien armies so we turned to the only option remaining. We broke the Earth once before with massive nuclear wars, and we will need to do that again. We set countries to 50% economy, 50% nukes (economy gives a diversity bonus which is huge, going from -95% malus to like 70% malus is 6x the efficiency) and reseaching the re-nuclearization project combined with the overall higher investment points you get in BE scenario made the nuclearization quite fast. I got up to about 10 nukes and 10 navies with pretty high miltech and decided to take on the AA.

The ayss were about to land another wave of assault carriers, so i had to intercept them. A massive nuclear barrage decimated already existing alien armies giving us naval superiority, which we then used to intercept the alien landing sites.

The plan failed horrifically.

The aliens, having been unopposed in space, were landing 5 carriers, that being 15 armies per wave. While we could have beaten them on their landing sites, they immediately brought navies with them, and having naval freedom, escaped to heal. Australian armies were now blockaded in India and we were out of nukes. This is another point where the ayys could have just invaded my capital and i couldnt stop them. But they decided to go territory by territory and we fought a retreating battle across india. This too proved futile as the alien fleets began bombarding my armies.
However, i got the idea to declare war on a nearby random nation, use my armies to conquer it fast, then direct invest a space defences complex in it. Id sent my armies to engage the aliens, the alien fleet would begin bombarding my armies, and id retreat them to the region with the space defence complex, deleting the bombarding fleet. Still, it was only a minor victory as the aliens had like 30 ish alien armies on Earth at this time that i was powerless to stop as i couldnt build nukes fast enough.

But there was a plan and luck smiled on me. The alien capital was in Pakistan and we were fighting in India. The councillors managed to pull of a breakaway nation in one of the minor indian states. The geography now, was that the majority of alien armies were inside the continent, and didnt have access to sea, or back to pakistan. So i immediately declared war on these breakaways and sent all my armies into pakistan through the breakaways the aliens could walk through. The capture of their capital and subsequent collapse of the AA (which was immediately reestablished next turn) was enough for the AA to accept a peace. Finally, breathing room! Peace for our time. So naturally, the entirety of mega-Australian and Californian economy was tasked on mass producing nukes while the aliens, in the meantime, proceeded to conquer half the world, again.

By this time, we had good fusion engines and we were building a battlefleet Terra Invicta around Pluto. 55 coilgun dreadnaughts and laser lancers were ready to take the fight to the alien base at Haumea. The aliens had 650 ships in total. Immediately as we launched to Haumea, which would take 2 years, aliens sent reinforcements from all around the solar system to defend Haumea, half of which would arrive in time. I also constructed a second and third wave of lighter, faster marine battleships to reinforce the dreadnaughts and rendezvous with them before they reach Haumea.

I also started a few shipyard stations in Mercury and Venus langrange points. The aliens would systematically destroy them, but one survived long enough to build out a defensive fleet and survive. I began a buildup of fast coil battlecruisers in Mercury-Sun L orbit to take Earth back.

The 3 front war would converge at the same time. The battle for Haumea, the battle for the inner solar system, and the battle for Earth proper.

First, the 35 battlecruiser coil fleet called Shepard fleet liberated Mercury from the protectorate, then was sent to take Earth back. The aliens, in their infinite arrogance, split their Earth fleet in two, and sent one half to intercept battlefleet Shepard. We destroyed them on the way to Earth and established a Reconquista shipyard station in intermediate Earth orbit. Several more waves of aliens crashed against Shepard, which survived long enough to construct and repair at Reconquista. There were no longer any major fleets in the inner system, so Shepard separated a smaller garrison, Hackett fleet to shield the Earth stations while Shepard was systematically destroying alien stations in the inner system. A separate marine fleet, Dundee would follow to assault the alien mining bases that are left behind.

On Earth, the AA had 50-ish alien armies and a navy strength of 600. We had 20 navies with a strength of 150. But we also had a stockpile of 40 nuclear barrages between California and Australia. And as they say, and this apparantly also applies to nuclear war, third times the charm!

Hundreds of millions died as alien armies across the world were nuked into oblivion. The worlds GDP was halved as the Earth was broken a second time. But the human armies achieved naval supremacy over the alien invaders and the rest was cleanup.

At Haumea our fleet of 80 ships arrived to face 150 of theirs, 10 of which were motherships! As soon as we arrived, they intercepted us

The first savescum attempt simulation resulted in our entire fleet dying in the initial alien missile barage. So the second savescum simulation we attempted to evade, and burn away from the alien missiles, so our PD held. But now, with their 10 motherships, our coils simply could not penetrate and we lost again. On the third attempt real engagement though, we used the lessons learned from the simulation, evaded, and replaced all laser lancers in the initial fleet with the dreadnaughts. We survived the missile barrage, and (barely) broke their PD. But that was enough. One by one their ships fell, even though our coils were weaker due to relative velocity loss while running away. The turrets were set to bracket fire, which is really good to deal with flankers, and focus fire once their main fleet of motherships arrived in range. The engagement lasted for hours and by the end, our siege coils and 40mms were out of ammo, but their large ships were gone. I autoresolved the rest. The marines proceeded to assault their bases.

And with that, all 3 fronts were won. The Aliens still hold Jupiter and Saturn, but the rest of the game is cleanup.

Personally i found Broken Earth much, much harder than 2003. In 2003, you just take USA and do a normal early space war. Yes the AA is formed early, but nukes really are a solution to all your Earth based alien problems and USA has plenty. How did you guys with BE on brutal? Did you manage to do early space war successfully? Why doesnt the AA attempt to 'win' by rushing superpowers it can easily defeat?

Minor spoilers ahead.

How to beat a 5 tale combo on highest difficulty?

TLDR: Rush autonomous reindeer outposts for all resources, use desireable goods for heatstamps and use R&D race to beat the plague.

Basically, menders autonomous reindeer outposts allow you to turn any resource outpost into a 50% efficient, but INFINITE and no upkeep outpost. This is amazing. Most of your resources will be coming from these passive income outposts. Be aware though that this has a one time cost in menders and you can run out of them. Menders are very happy to go live in the frostland as long as you give them enough land to settle. Early on you need to keep promoting menders so you dont run out. I also started adapting districts to menders to keep their numbers up. Later on, feel free to send them all to outposts and have the venturers have the city for themselves.

Venturers have a desireable goods law, increasing goods demand, which is great, as goods demand = heatstamps. Their goods emporium drastically reduces factory workforce and efficiency. So, desireable goods + goods emporium + factory wrapped around it produces almost free goods and a massive amount of heatstamps. Enough that you can ignore most other sources of heatstamps.

Do not be afraid to turn off districts and buildings to focus on what you really need in the moment.

Build districts in a circle around a hub. Stockpile hub for less workforce demand, rail hub for more efficiency(needed for whiteouts) or faction hubs as needed (industry around goods emporium)

It seems to me that larger maps give you more time before the tales trigger, but i didnt confirm this. If true this means that larger maps are easier.

Game will throw 5 tales at you.

Depleted cores - you only need to finish it before the apocalyptic storm at around week 300, and city will favour adaptation until then. You can ignore the core factory most of the game. But this means your generator cannot be upgraded, and you are limited in the number of districts you can heat. Favour dense districts and dont be afraid to turn the ones you arent using off.

Refugees - Game will throw refugees at you and enforce a 4000 deaths cap. The refugees arent hard, but a limit of 4000 deaths interferes with other tales like the plague, and the sickness makes the doomsayers worse. Just be ready for them, with dense or subsidized housing blocks ready to go.

Doomsayers - depressed bois that dont work, vote no on everything and later on cause negative effects. They lose members if there are no problems in the city and gain them if there are. You will also need guard enforcers to beat them up in districts, as well as jail and discriminate them. Their worst effect is that they drastically reduce the % of active workers, and they get worse the worse shape your city is in, so they are a death spiral mechanic. You need to compensate by always taking the workforce % increase laws and to have enough guards to beat them up when you can. They will announce their formation with a "talking to a mothers corpse event". Make sure to have watchtowers, prisons and guard enforces before. After that, try to use the jail, discriminate and disrupt actions as often you can and dont let the city suffer problems for too long.

Plague - Disease will infect your people and you need to research the cure and distribute it to everyone. The game calls it a vaccine, but it is actually a cure as it cures already infected people. With R&D race, this is trivial to solve. Make sure to have pharmaceuticals researched and venturers R&D race ability before it triggers. Immediately use R&D race on the vaccine research, and you will be able to produce enough vaccines with your existing industrial districts to cure your population faster than it can be infected making this tale trivial.

Apocalyptic whiteout - Will trigger around week 300. You need to solve the depleted cores and get the generator upgrades beforehand, stockpile some resources beforehand and research solutions to problems as they appear.

My opener is

2 research labs - rush researchers - factory - survivalist HQ - vanguard logistics - scouts danger decrease law, throw in a sawmill if needed.

You need to rush reindeer outposts. So favor adaptation, equality and tradition. Good laws are menders community service, family apprenticeships, foraged additives, all do maintenance and dutiful youth. Dont be afraid to use emergency council sessions.

Buildings wise, immediately make a factory in a circle, leaving 3 empty tiles in the middle for the goods emporium once venturers trigger. Immediately pass desireable goods to skyrocket your heatstamps. Other than that, rush logistics disctricts, pop the "extra food" and longer shifts on them for maximum number of frostland teams, and build a few reindeer camps.

As you explore the frostland, gift all outposts to reindeer farmers. This way, any outpost you discover is permanent passive income, and your frostland teams can keep forever expanding.

What is your strategy to beat 5 tales on highest difficulty?