WELCOME TO EARTH

Saving the world grand strategy-style in TERRA INVICTA

- By Len Hafer

It looks great from a distance but the aliens clearly didn't know about Cleveland.

Every once in a long while, a game comes along that's tangled and messy and kind of obtuse, but its sprawling mass of interlocking systems and overly ambitious design goals just fit snugly into my weird little strategy brain. This happened once with Sid Meier's Civilization 3. It happened again with Crusader Kings 2. And now it's happened for only the third time with Terra Invicta. Yep, just the third time.

If you've played any of the XCOMs, the premise here will be familiar—appropriately enough, given that it comes from the people behind Enemy Unknown's cult hit mod The Long War. Aliens are attacking present-day Earth and it's up to you to figure out why they're here, what they're made of, and send them packing. Or maybe make friends. Or just profit from the chaos. We'll get to that in a minute.

The aliens must be Pacific Rim fans. Good movie.

The difference is that this shadow war plays out across a detailed map of Earth and the entire solar system involving Lagrange points, interface orbits and delta-v calculations for sending rockets to mine asteroids. The physics stuff isn't quite as granular as something like Kerbal Space Program, but it's close.

And there are many dozens more celestial bodies when you include all the asteroids, moons and Kuiper belt objects. It's legitimately jaw-dropping, and terrifying at first.

Down on Earth, you can click on a nation to see stats like environmental sustainability, wealth inequality, and education—all of which can shift over time through the influence of various pro-human and pro-alien factions. Even for a seasoned player with hours in