Victory Strategy

[ScardyBob]

http://i.imgur.com/gUAzu.png
It took a lot of trial and error, but I was finally able to beat FotW. Here's (roughly) the strategy I used.

1. Choose at least three regions to basically abandon (i.e. you don't buy any agents or play any cards). I usually did North Africa, South Africa, and South Asia (although you might choose the Middle East instead if they get unruly and kick you out early).
2. Tobin Tax as many regions as you can as long as you can (at the beginning that includes North America, Europe, Russia, Japan, and Oceania and, eventually, China). Bribe these regions with happiness cards to prevent them from kicking you out. I like to use cheap environmental office or energy policy cards (e.g. protect endangered species, 2nd gen biofuels, etc).
3. Focus on North America, Latin America, and China for emission reductions as they will likely be the major contributors for most of the game. That means getting max agents for these regions asap and starting long-term emission reduction policies early. Here's the type of emissions reductions I'd focus on for each region:
   • North America = Industry, Electricity, and Transportation emissions
   • Latin America = Forestry emissions
   • China = Industry and Electricity emissions
4. Other regions that you will probably have to invest in emissions reductions include Europe (though, if you do it right, you will only have to worry about Europe in the early game), India, Middle East, and South Asia.
5. Use Japan, Russia, and Oceania to do primary tech research.
6. Start eco campaigns in all your regions (especially in tobin tax regions) fairly early so you can use the later +happiness policy cards as cheap happiness generators.
7. Only build political offices in Middle East, India, Latin America, and China (though it might not be necessary in China). Political offices and their corresponding cards are mostly useless because 1) if you follow this strat you've already abandoned regions (N/S Africa, S Asia, Middle East) that benefit the most from them and, 2) anything besides martial law/security assistance is either a waste of time/money or likely to get the world jarateed off at you.

I only squeaked by with this strat (0.5 HDI, banned in 7 regions, +2.9 temp increase), but a victory is a victory. Anyone else beat the game yet? If so, what was your strat?

Also, my two biggest pet peeves were

1. There was a lot of information and options available, but it wasn't clear which cards affected what. For example, its not clear what exactly reduces industrial emissions, although that was usually the prime emission sector in China.
2. Not a lot of options for increasing your money flow. The tobin tax was the only method and that was open to regional economic
   fluctuations and bans. I would have liked more control such as being able to set regional tax rates or global cash transfers.

My strategy had a similar emphasis: abandoning non-productive and non-emitting regions of the world. I found that North and South Africa, the Middle East, and India could all be written off without a penny spent on them. Southeast Asia is also a possibility. I then tried to hold onto everywhere else, without using -any- Tobin tax: I have a feeling it reduces the long-term economic effectiveness of the region, which in turn has serious impacts on tech development.
A few years of Forestry in South America and South Asia (optionally, south africa too), and world forestry emissions are well down: keep everywhere protected and try to develop nuclear and renewables wherever possible. I hold out on banning 1st gen biofuels, because it's the write-off regions that produce them and suffer the famines as a result - this gives me about an extra turn's worth of oil overall, and holds off the recession for just a little while longer.
Overall, I go for a tech-rush solution : access market AI's and fusion power ASAP, and your problems are pretty much solved, with effectively unlimited resources available to draw from Europe and North America.
I've had varied results with this strategy: My best was a temp increase of 2.6, banned in 5 regions. Can't remember the HDI, but the mass famines and a couple of well-placed Indian gene plagues did cut down on the numbers living in poverty, so it dragged the average up somewhat.

I know what you mean about the information available: it would be nice to be provided with more info about the nuts-and-bolts of the game engine on the cards. Organic oil substitutes were good for industry.. when they finally arrived. I'd quite like some other way to cut down on industrial emissions other than general tech advance or a global recession.
With regard to money, a few of the 'stimulate development' cards (Can't remember the real name: Picture was of a guy holding out cash with a pedobear expression on his face) in the developed regions did help to boost their Commerce mechanisation and thus income. I don't think you should get much control over the world economy in terms of taxes: you don't own the world, you're merely a massively powerful international body funded by it.

I feel somewhat guilty about my strategy involving the deaths of billions of people (I once ended with a world population of 4.6 billion, from a peak of 10, without even deploying gene plagues), but i'm sure it is for the best in the long run :P

Had a similar approach about the all out Tobin-taxing (strange that name was chosen for the regional extra tax, since what I read about the concept suggests that it only works if introduced world wide)

But I didn't feel it was necessary to abandon regions from the start.
Especially since you need all regions for a world wide carbon cap&trade.

Didn't find research that useful, since stuff gets discovered either way.
The tech sharing was more more useful, as it is guaranteed the region will get the tech next turn. I spread electro cars, bio-fuel and bio-polymeres to reduce oil addiction as well as advanced ai to get all regions economy up to date.

Also I had bad experiences with too much eco campaigning.
The people start protesting and getting more unhappy if emission is still hight, so I paused the campaigning for some turns in most regions at comunal or balanced attitude.

In the end, world wide hunger and collapse of the amazon rain forest (was more than half of my emission in the end) nearly got me, nonetheless.
The last three turns temp was at 2.9° and still rising very slightly
and I lost most ~6 regions in that time. Didn't really feel like a winner.

Is the amazon thing temperature triggered? I did quite some forestry stuff in Latin America, but it didn't seem to help.
And food and famine definitely need to be more transparent, there is still too much guess work.

I'm pretty sure that food and famine are bugged right now: I recall one of the devs talking about some flaw in the system world agricultural GDP calculations that nearly always lead to famine.
You can usually avoid the worst of it by carefully using forestry in a staggered system, even on continents without major forest loss, but there will eventually be starvation.

As for the Amazon, I think it's temperature change alone. Even if you act to save the Amazon from the regular deforestation, it'll collapse from the climate change.

Hello, all!

I finally won this intriguing game after many tries, and thought I'd share.

I, too, had a dramatic collapse of the Amazon rainforest close to the end in spite of having worked hard at preserving it (and Latin America in general) throughout the game. I managed to squeak by with a 2.98 C temperature rise, and Latin America forestry accounted for about 70% of total emissions.

My general strategy was to start by focusing on switching to electric cars in North America and Europe, preserving the forests in Latin America, doing multiple projects in China, and ignoring te rest. I abandoned Africa, Oceania, and the Middle East throughout the game, and eventually India as well.

I'm still working on strategies, and I've certainly found this forum useful.

[TurinTuramba]

I just managed to create an Utopia. 12 agents in each region, global HDI of 0.85, 2.9 degrees, Global GDP of ~1.000.000, 8.44k Fund contributions, all regions teched up to Fusion/AI, 16k Final Emissions with about 7k coming from the amazon collapse and 11.7k billion people.
No region defected from my benevolent rule, although I got lucky with Northern Africa. It was at 0 hearts for two consecutive turns until I could deploy AIs there.

The trick was to prevent ecodisasters in the developing regions and to spread the important techs as soon as possible to the developing regions. Of course you also need to tackle the biggest polluters on turn one and make sure that you avoid most recessions (Had only one this game) by investing in early electric transport in the regions with a high transport/pop ratio. The money to pay for all this comes from Tobin taxes and your rapidly growing developing countries.

[Gridbug]

Thanks for posting your victory stories, it's great to read them.

TurinTuramba, your victory sounds extremely impressive... I've never heard of anyone winning the game with such a high population... well done!

For the record, my strategy broadly focuses on the following:

* Banning Tar Sands and Shale Oil as soon as possible, which prevents a great deal of CO2 being emitted

* Instantiating Electric Transport and Organic Oil Replacements as quickly as I can, to minimise Oil Shortage impacts

* Generally, being as nice as possible to all regions, to avoid the HDI and ban losses.

* Chasing tech hard, and sharing it as quickly as possible.

* Carefully using Eco-Awareness campaign to prevent Austerity protests/riots (the greener the Outlook, the less of an impact material wealth has on Contentment), but not using it so much that I get severe Ecological impacts

* I don't use Gene Plagues or the other 'evil' cards (all cards beyond and inclusive of Fund Black Ops), due to the risk of the whistleblowing game loss (and also because I'm a nice guy )

* Using Tobin Tax as much as possible to pay for everything

If you're struggling to win, bear in mind that the Temperature goal is the hardest to achieve - using Tobin Tax to fund the poor countries' development will mean that you can avoid the HDI or ban losses quite easily.

Focus on doing as much as possible to reduce carbon emissions - primarily, this involves banning high-emitting practices (Coal to Liquids, Tar Sands, Shale Oil), moving off coal for power generation as much as possible, and stopping deforestation in key areas (South Asia, Latin America, South Africa). It's still no walk in the park, but definitely achievable!

Another thing that makes the game harder than it should is the fact that research cards hang around for 1 turn after the tech is researched - it's a pain to remove them manually, but each time you do this, you've saved yourself $50bn!

Finally, thanks to all of you for your suggestions, praise and interest in our game - we look forward to seeing how you like the final product.

[SBytheway]

Out of interest, have any of you managed to save all, or managed to loose all the "news-worthy" extinctions (like the Panda)?
I'm just curious as to how well the natural world does from these victories

[Stryfe.pawt]

I somehow won the game on my first try and haven't been able to win since.

I can't say exactly what my strategy was since I was just trying to figure the game out at that point. I do know that I had massive population loss by the end with only 2.7 billion people left.

I managed to save a polar bear (just!) - does that count?

My strategy was to sterilise any country with a population greater than 10% from the start (China and India being the most important). Focused on getting Latin America taxable then focused on China and then on North America whilst trying to keep everyone happy-ish in the meantime by fire-fighting their various needs and disasters. The only way I could manage US emissions was to let them do their own regional bans rather than trying to control them globally. I just screaped to the 100 year mark with a temperature of 2.98!

Can't wait for the real thing - roll on 15th Feb

I saved most creatures, though oddly enough I never heard anything about Pandas. Also I seem to have invented Schroedinger's Kiwi, it was both saved and extinct at the same time!

[ScardyBob]

Extinctions seem to be temperature triggered, so my just barely squeaking-by 2.9 increase didn't really save anything.