Alien conquered countries

[NKF]

Well, if you manually withdraw all the countries with an editor, you can still play, and the aliens will still foolishly try to infiltrate a country that's already theirs (just like in the normal game!). You'll still lose as normal.

 

So you don't exactly lose instantly, you'll lose the game at the end of the month when the game does its progress check.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Er, doesn't one of your challenge games have all the countries withdrawn? Wouldn't that make things kinda tricky, if you lose the game at the end of the month?

[NKF]

Not really, you just lose. You'll lose through all the normal means, you just won't have to worry about countries withdrawing due to infiltration, as there's no one left to withdraw (but, of course, the aliens will still send out infiltration teams)

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

On a related subject, I've heard rumors that you can never get all the countries to switch sides. There always seems to be a lone holdout.

 

I'm wondering if any of you have lost the game because all the countries signed a pact with the aliens.

[Jman4117]

I've heard you can't lose Russia from somewhere, due to it being on two contentants. Never really tested it though.

[Stewart]

That happened to me. I was asking if that happened to other people and was speculating about the multiregional quality of Russia.

[FullAuto]

Doves cry?

[Stewart]

I was referencing an episode of the simpsons which was referencing stupid "Prince" Lyrics. It was the episode where the kids go to shelbyville to get the springfield lemon tree back and Milhouse meets a kid also named Milhouse.

[Zombie]

Back to the alien conquered countries thread. For the past couple of days I have been playing X-COM on my PlayStation in hopes of getting a country to sign a pact with the aliens. China was first to succumb, effective October 1999.

 

I figured that the best way to get a country to sign-up with X-COM again was to gain a ton of points every month thereafter, in hopes of impressing it. Instead of implementing the old alien base "smash 'n grab" routine which is extremely time consuming, I decided to shoot down every craft that came by. I equipped all 5 of my bases with 3 Avengers sporting dual Plasma Beams, then went to work blasting everything in the sky that flew.

 

What helped the most was my decision to leave any alien base alone, and focus on shooting down the Supply Ships. In October, when China turned, I had 3 alien bases on the map. Every month, at least one more alien base was built. Pretty soon I was swimming in a sea of Supply Ships, and since each one is worth 400 points shot down, my score slowly crept higher and higher.

 

Overall, in the 7 months I have been trying to impress China, my score averaged 8000 points. Since February 2000, I have a total of 12 alien bases on the map! Therefore, in the past 3 months my score averaged around 13,000 points. At that rate, China must be taking notice, right? Well, no, not yet.

 

One problem I'm running into is that my Elerium stockpile is dwindling rapidly with the increased UFO activity. Since I have only Avengers, and I do not visit any grounded UFO's in the interest of time, the Elerium is not being replenished. I was actually contemplating getting rid of my Avengers and buying 15 Interceptors!

 

What I hope to do is lure the aliens to attack my heavily fortified bases. That way, I gets lots of points for the destroyed Battleships, while choosing which craft I want to go after in the air. This slows down the constant Elerium drain, and hopefully allows me to recoup some. In any case, I'll keep you posted on whether China or the other countries that signed pacts, return to X-COM.

[Rzhanov]

Maybe it is nessesary to take over UFOs, that are downed over China?

[Zombie]

That's an interesting point Rzhanov. (I'll get to a more thorough explanation later.)

 

How should one go about luring a country back to X-COM's side? I thought about this a little bit today. Since the score is probably going to determine the country coming back, the higher the better. For those of us unfamiliar with the Official Strategy Guide's take on scoring and countries funding, I'll list David Ellis's explanation here:

 OSG Chapter 5, top of pg. 127
(Alien Activity in Country) + (Overall Alien Activity/5)

This calculation is compared to the following:

(X-COM Activity in Country) + (Overall X-COM Activity/10)

In short, the two numbers are compared to each other at the end of each month. If X-COM's score wins out, the country will increase it's funding by a random amount, but not to exceed 20%. If the alien score is higher, the country will reduce it's funding by a random amount, but no more than 20%.

 

If you are doing your job correctly, X-COM's activity in a country is always more than what the aliens can dish out. But let me give everyone a real example from my game. Just remember that the following numbers are approximations from the funding screens. The more activity, the greater the range of the graph, and therefore more error is introduced by reading it.

 

Now because alien activity in China was way too small to do any comparisons (usually between 0 and 12 points), I am going to use alien activity in all the countries, and the same for X-COM. Here are the numbers for March 2000, the highest alien activity of any month up to this point:

(Alien Activity in all Countries) + (Overall Alien Activity/5)
(674) + (2400/5) =
674 + 480 = 1154

(X-COM Activity in all Countries) + (Overall X-COM Activity/10)
(4662) + (17188/10) =
4662 + 1719 = 6381

Look at the aliens total score, it's 1154. My Overall activity/10 was 1719! That's more than enough to push the tide in my favor. (All I really need to do is get one point more than the aliens total for a country to increase funding). Now, look at the aliens activity in all countries, it's 674. My score in all the countries was 4662, or 7 times more than the aliens! When all was said and done, my overall score was 5.5 times more than what the aliens could muster for March! A little bit overkill, I admit, but it forces each country to look at X-COM favorably.

 

Since all I need to do is beat the alien's score by 1 point to hit the random increase up to 20%, what I might have to do reload at the end of each positive month to see if China gets the hint. Eventually, they'll turn, right?

 

Here is a very important quote from the OSG:

These two values are compared by all contributing countries at the end of each game month.

The operative word in the above sentence is "contributing". Since China obviously isn't contributing, it doesn't do this check. Quite possibly, countries that switch sides will never come back in the later versions of X-COM. I'll keep working on this to find out one way or the other!

 

[Kill the imposter! Zombie is starting to post like NKF!!!]

[Stewart]

As the "other" guy whose gotten countries back. It was an assumption on my part that keeping scores high did it. Since, I certainly did by, in fact, leaving bases around as zombie did (it would seem the pluses out numbered the minuses); I've had up to 23 of those little dens of sin kicking around at once. Umm, your planes are busy to say the least.

 

In light of your experiment, the scary thing may be, in fact, that countries come back randomly?

[Stewart]

Oh I just had a thought!!!!!!!!!

 

Maybe . . .

 

Recall that conquered countries can still be terrorized. Maybe the computer tries to infiltrated ALREADY infiltrated countries. If you foil the effort, BINGO, the prodigal son is back!!!

[Danial]

As the "other" guy whose gotten countries back.

Don't worry, I was in the same boat as you back when we were discussing Zombies "popping" of their own accord (without being shot). I knew I'd seen it happen in my own games, but no one else believed it was possible

[Danial]

While we're on the subject of activity graphs, how busy has everyone been?

 

My last save-game (from around '97 or '98) showed my highest were:

• UFO Activity was 1120 in Australia @ Jun '99
  
• X-COM Activity was 1314 in China @ Sep '99
  

P.S. My game is currently saved during Sep '99

[Bomb Bloke]

The notes on the games where countries came back seemed to show a regular pattern in their 'allegiance', which would indicate it was more of a game glitch then something the player achieved.

[Stewart]

It may be a glitch but that one graph is insufficient evidence to conclude it. By my recolection I had countries come and go with out consideration of each other. That the two countries came and went together in the posted example is just a cooincidence I think.

[Zombie]

What "notes on the games" are you guys talking about? Is it on the other website (www.xcomufo.com)?

 

Well, today I got through another month in X-COM. My score: 15,173! Since my Elerium-115 supply was fairly low at some of my bases, I decided to indulge in some Supply Ship missions to grab some loot. Since you get 150 units of Elerium for an intact Supply Ship, that equates to a 3 month supply with 3 Avengers running full time per base! It also nets twice the points as just shooting one down. That pushed my score up!

 

I saved the game 30 seconds before the end of the month, then looked at the funding screen to see if China switched sides. Nope. So I reloaded the game and did this again. And again, and again, and again... you get the picture. So far after 200 reloads, China is holding it's ground firmly. Geez, I'm 8 months past where China signed over, and still no signs that it will turn. I'll reload a few hundred times more just to be safe.

 

Stewart may have been on to something when he said that a country could switch sides again after it was terrorized and successfully killed by your troops. It's possible.

 

Anyhow, after I reach 500 reloads, I'll continue on. It still is only 3 months past where this happened to quantifier. Who knows, maybe it just takes longer!

[Bomb Bloke]

The notes in this thread, I was talking about.

[Stewart]

You know this just might be a bug too in the older versions. As I said my version of Xcom is just about old enough to get it's beginners drivers licence. That being the case no amount of reloading on a newer version will uncover that.

[Zombie]

That's what I initially thought. X-COM came out on the PlayStation a year after it came out on the computer. Most of the problems computer users experience don't show up on the Playstation version. That's a fact. But I still am curious if this bug was eliminated!

[Stun Grenade]

In my game just then, Nigeria just signed a pact with the alien forces... I'm so puzzled on how this could happen since there were no alien activity in that country. There was a base outside of Nigeria but I cleaned that up...

 

Unless, a week before there was a rush of like 6 ships in the Africa region but I don't know if that has anything to do with it

 

~SG

[Zombie]

Unfortunately, a country can sign a pact with the aliens without the aliens landing directly in the country. All the aliens need to do to "get their foot in the door" is to land nearby. Then, by any means necessary, they will cross the boarder into that country and sign a pact. Talk about loose boarder controls:

 

Boarder Patrol Officer: "Where you from, little fella"?

Sectoid: *via telepathy* "Mars, of course"!

BPO: "Purpose of your visit"?

Sectoid: "To infiltrate this country".

BPO: "Come right in. And have a nice stay".

Sectoid: "I won't be staying long...." :devil:

 

If you have the Hyperwave Decoder running nearby, it will say what those six alien ships were up to in Africa. My guess is alien infiltration. Usually, the aliens send multiple Battleships/Supply Ships for infiltration missions to try and overwhelm your abilities. Most likely, one will slip past and sign a pact.

[NKF]

Heh, it's like in one of my games where I had a base right in the middle of the US with a working HWD. Amazingly enough, no UFOs for an entire month in the region, and then suddenly, bam, they sign over even when it looked as though I was having overall positive scores for all the regions.

 

They snuck in somehow. I just wish I knew how.

 

(If I haven't mentioned it before: Aliens will freely infiltrate a country that's withdrawn funding. This is good, since they cannot withdraw as they're already withdrawn - the main effects will just be the dissatisfaction from the neighbours, but they're easy to placate)

 

- NKF

[Stewart]

Unfortunately, a country can sign a pact with the aliens without the aliens landing directly in the country. All the aliens need to do to "get their foot in the door" is to land nearby. Then, by any means necessary, they will cross the boarder into that country and sign a pact. Talk about loose boarder controls:

 

Boarder Patrol Officer: "Where you from, little fella"?

Sectoid: *via telepathy* "Mars, of course"!

BPO: "Purpose of your visit"?

Sectoid: "To infiltrate this country".

BPO: "Come right in. And have a nice stay".

Sectoid: "I won't be staying long...." :devil:

 

If you have the Hyperwave Decoder running nearby, it will say what those six alien ships were up to in Africa. My guess is alien infiltration. Usually, the aliens send multiple Battleships/Supply Ships for infiltration missions to try and overwhelm your abilities. Most likely, one will slip past and sign a pact. 

No no no no it would be like this.

 

Border guard: "Identification?"

Alien waves hand: "you don't need to see his identification"

Border guard: "we don't need to see his identification"

Alien waves hand: "These aren't the droids you're looking for"

Border guard: "These aren't the droids we're looking for"

Alien waves hand: "Move along"

Border Guard: "Move along, move along"