Terra Invicta – Jupiter Rush Guide

Guide to Jupiter Rushing

What’s a Jupiter Rush? It is planting a mine on Callisto (the best Jupiter moon when you consider resources + radiation cost) as soon as possible in the game. For purposes of tracking arrival times, we define it as arriving at Callisto AND having a Mars mine online, as to build your initial Space Dock (and plant on Callisto) you’ll almost always need Mars mine resources. This guide should allow you to arrive at Callisto by mid-to-late 2025 with average skill/luck, and Jan/Feb 2025 (or earlier!) with high skill+luck, even on Brutal.

Why rush Jupiter? What about nearly unlimited resources doesn’t appeal to you? Or being completely unconcerned about Alien Hate? In a successful Jupiter Rush, you plant on Callisto and its neighbors early enough that you can easily stop the aliens (who have no idea, as of [0.3.90], how to Doomstack early) from dislodging you. It is not an exaggeration to say that it can give you the resources to meet any win condition by 2037 — and probably earlier.

The guide below was written based on targeting as early an arrival as possible: the first ideal Callisto Launch Window is ~August 19, 2024, which will lead to a late Dec arrival. To make this target (or earlier) you need both a ton of luck (and probably some game-start rerolls) and a lot of skill. However, even on Brutal, you can miss this window by 3-4 months and still crush the aay. Here, we’ll assume our launch target for super-rushers is the still-very-solid Sept 19, 2024.

Jupiter Rush: Summary

Stage 0: Roll good on your starting councilors/hireable councilors. Social Scientists/Astronomers with good CP totals are S-tier.

Stage 1: Grab tiny countries, coup Kazakhstan, get the US while grabbing control of the tech tree. Stabilize the US with War.

Stage 2: Steal orgs while beelining Mars/Moon/Space Refining, with a very important side visit to Domestic Policies for +5 Orgs. Probe Mars, plant on Moon.

Stage 3: Keep Stealing! Plant on Mars at least a year before your expected arrival. Develop your Drive/Solid State Fission techs and Industrialization of Space as well as your second +5 Org tech (Arrival Economics). Build as many social science / space science habs as you can support while noting that soon, you’ve got an interplanetary ship to build. Your 20+ SCI councilor should start Advising the US every turn (if they aren’t already).

Stage 4: Keep Stealing! Build your Starter Ship (which will probably need a Refit). Research Mission to the Asteroids/Mission to Jupiter, noting that ideally, you finish Mission to Jupiter on the day that your ship finishes its final refit.

Stage 5: Launch your Fission Platform ship to Callisto.

Stage 6: 4-6 months later, arrive at Callisto, Plant your platform. Build a Space Dock. 30 days later, probe Callisto and refit your ship into one with a Fission Outpost.

Stage 7: Spam Callisto with 3-4 mining sites, build a ship or four to crush any local alien platforms. Research Marines and refit your escorts to land on any weak/developing alien mining sites.

Stage 8: Win at your leisure.

Jupiter Rush: Into The Weeds

Stage 0: Roll Good

You’ll get to Callisto eventually with any set of councilors, but there are good starts and there are bad starts. (And very very good starts and very very bad starts.)

Ideally you have at least some of these (re councilors, being in the starting pool also counts):

A minimum of two mid-to-high and one high PER councilor:

• Ideally with Opinion Leader or better (bonus in 6+ democracy)
• Ideally with both Control Nation and Public Campaign

A Social Scientist or an Astronomer. Physicists are not bad either. Doctor/Military scientist is no better than a random chump. Technocrat is good to see.

Not necessarily needed immediately, but ideally by week 2 or 3: a high CMD Coup d’Etat councilor. (This is arguably a requirement for a super-rush, you want that K-stan boost ASAP.)

A Boost or Science or +PER org to buy early. A non-sucky Moon:

• Depending on your level of capacity to feel shame, you can edit the file TIGlobalconfig.json to set console peeking from ‘false’ to ‘true’ and then use the console command ‘prospect Luna’ to probe Luna at game start.
• I tend to punt any Luna that doesn’t have at least 8 combined water/volatiles on one site. Most will have that, though.

Stage 1: Expand, Coup Kazakhstan, Grab Tech Tree

Note – re starting events, Declare yourselves to the world! Use the influence to buy a 4th councilor. For the next two choices, take 50 Ops and take +5% Welfare/Knowledge.

Your starting councilors (and rolls) will determine how fast you can do the following:

Hire a 3rd councilor on Oct 1. Take the first pip of Kazakhstan, Coup it ASAP, spending 32 (or even 64!) ops to do it.

• It’s legit to buy a councilor only for the Coup and then ditch their Rebel ass.

Grab lots of small countries! They have the best Science:CP ratios.

• Iceland is a strong first play.
• Consider Kyrgyzstan (it’s next to Kazakhstan too), Belize, Guyana, Namibia, etc. One Ireland/New Zealand to help with early Spoils is a good idea.
• If you have the councilors, an early Canada grab is fantastic – gives good science, spoils, AND helps get you the US.
• As suggested – set EVERYTHING to Spoils (except for Kazakhstan, Boost there)

Once you’ve got 40-60 pips in countries it’s time to get the US!

• Take pips in Canada and Mexico for the adjacency bonus. (Cuba doesn’t help, it’s a rival.)
• Public Campaign the US up to 50%, then start grabbing CPs.

Tech: Try to win all techs from here on out (though without a strong start or some luck, you may not be able to.)

• On Oct 1, switch to 3 pips each in Skywatch / Mission to Space and 1-2 pips in We are Not Alone.
• The next three techs you want are Orbital Habs (for Mission to Moon/Mars), Chemical Rocketry (high speed probes / boost orgs) and Arrival – Domestic Policies (+5 Org project)
• Don’t put more in any tech than you need! Let the AI help. This might mean pulling back on pips as the tech pie gets close to completion. Finish Skywatch/Mission to Space barely ahead of them.

Of course, buy any $ +science, +boost, +ADM, +PER orgs you see without thinking twice. For other orgs, at least think twice (esp with an influence cost). +Gears is good as well, you’ll have a lot of faction projects.

Pain Point: For super-rushers, the end of Stage 1 is (IMO) one of the trickiest parts of the game, because just holding Kazakhstan and the US takes up 178 CP, and you may have low CP councilors that you are loathe to part with. Now, Clandestine Cells – something you want ASAP – gives you an extra councilor and +10CP, but it can be tough to research it AND hold the tech tree AND have enough influence to buy that 5th councilor while you are spending influence to grab the US. Possibly, you may find you need to hold back on getting the 6th US pip until you have Cells done.

BTW, after you take the US, but NOT before Jan01, declare war on one of its rivals, to get +1 Cohesion in the US. I tend to set all US pips to Unity pre-6/6 CP, and all to Knowledge post-6/6 CP.

Depending on your starting faction, starting councilors, and luck, you might finish November with 6/6 pips in the US and complete control of the tech tree for the rest of the game – or you may lose some tech control and/or not have the US until the end of January. Regardless, on to Stage 2!

Stage 2: +Orgs and Space Techs

Now that you’ve got your Science engine and your (starting) Boost engine, time to buff your councilors with as many +ADM and +Science (especially +% social/space/energy) orgs as you can find.

Ideally(-ish) you’ll fire/hire councilors here to get:

• A high-PER councilor that can Turn
• Two good Scientist-types that you can put +INV orgs on to help spy on the enemy or a Hostile Takeover org to help mug people – obviously, you prefer these be specialists in astronomy/social sciences/energy
• At least one high ADM Hostile Takeover councilor (an Exec or Tycoon-type, if you can’t do it with an org)
• A high INV/ESP councilor for spying/purging yourself some new CPs

Your councilors have three jobs from now through the rest of the rush:

• Spying on jerks and setting up stealing from them. Turn if you can, it helps a LOT but early you probably won’t be able to turn anyone unless they have very low Loyalty.
• Knocking down unrest in Kazakhstan and if you have the availability (or nothing else to do), your small countries.
• Accumulating countries to stay slightly above your CP cap.

Tech: Habs → Mars Mission, as well as Electromagnetism (to Mass Drivers, to Space Refining) and of course Moon Mission. You’ll also need to find research ASAP for Institutional Outreach (+5 orgs).

• If you want to make that Aug-Oct 2024 launch window, you’ll probably need a boost org by Feb.
• Often one is for sale by now, but you might be able to steal one early, or if you get lucky, buy one at an exorbitant price from another faction.
• Don’t forget to research High Speed Probes by the time Mars Mission is done.

Tech targets for a late Sep 2024 launch:

• Mission to Mars by early July
• Mission to Moon by late June/early July.
• Space Refining by July, hoping to unlock the Faction Project for the Mining Outpost tech by August.
• Plant a Moon mine in August.

Unless you’re super-rushing, don’t sweat it if these are all a couple months late.

Stage 3: +Orgs, Consolidation, Mars Mining

After you’ve got your Moon Mine planted there are two big Boost costs that will be very easy to hard to meet, depending on how lucky you’ve been at buying/stealing Boost orgs and on how awesome your Moon is.

• Cost #1: Your Mars Mine, which your Moon will help pay for.
• Cost #2: The colony (platform) ship you’ll be building in Stage 5.

Habs: Depending on how you feel about those two costs, after you plant your Mars Mine it may be time to spawn some habs! Like, potentially 9 or 10 of them. Research at this stage is ‘fungible’ – meaning that it’s easily mixed-and-matched, specifically the techs for space science (which you’ll need through game end) and social science (which you’ll need almost through game end, because Industrialization of Space is super-beefy). Because of this, I tend to spawn Social Science habs, which are more efficient (3 buildings per solar collector).

Note: I find that it is extremely useful to dissolve at least three of the US armies as soon as you can (e.g., June/July 2023). The boost in GDP will allow you to stay at Cohesion 5 much more easily, especially if you start Advising early.

Tech: Unless you found a spot for it already, research Arrival Economics (for another +5 org tech) and start on your Drive/Power Plants techs.

• Don’t forget to research Space Tugs to speed your Mars Mine. Sometimes you may benefit from Nuclear Freighters as well.
• At the moment, Grid Drive is the ‘meta’. You’ll need Deep Space Propulsion, Vacuum Electrostatic Principles, Electrostatic Propulsion, High Energy Electrostatic Propulsion, and (faction techs) Ion Drive and Grid Drive.
• For a (Solid State Fission II) power plant, you’ll need Deep Space Propulsion, Nuclear Fission in Space, Solid Core Fission Systems, and (TWO faction techs) Solid Core Fission I and Solid Core Fission II. Since you need two to randomly unlock, I prefer to finish this path earlier than the one for Grid. (At this point, it’s unclear how big the benefit is for Solid State Fission III – probably 4-5 days faster arrival, but 3 days of your total tech output to study it.)
• Your Mars Mine will need Fission Pile, from Nuclear Fission in Space.
• Your third tech path at this point (other than squeezing Arrival Economics in there) is Orbital Shipbuilding to Industrialization of Space, which will give you Construction Module and then Fission Platform. Technically you don’t need Fission Platform until just before you finish the Jupiter tech, but it can take awhile to unlock.

Meanwhile your councilors have hopefully been mugging people enough that you have a 20+ADM, 20+SCI councilor that can start Advising the US every turn. If you’re doing exceptionally well you may be able to start this in late 2023; if it’s the only councilor that can also do Hostile Takeovers, maybe not until early 2024. It may even be reasonable to double-advise, if you are lucky enough to have two high SCI councilors (noting that the 2nd one’s bonus is only half that of the first)

Stage 4: +Orgs, Build That Ship, Mission to Asteroids/Jupiter

Some ship considerations:

It takes 60 days to build your colony ship.

• 30 days to refit a power plant of the same type.
• 3 days to add a Fission Platform (make sure the spot is empty!)
• 0 days (!) to add fuel.
• And you can’t refit a Drive.

Thus, the first ship we build should ideally have Grid Drive with Solid State Fission II (or III) already prepped, but we don’t need our water or the Fission Platform. Here we’ll aim again at a Sep 19 launch. (BTW, the Aug19 launch window means you’ll be penalized extra for every day later that you launch, and the advantage you get for every day sooner shrinks; this is true for Grid and especially true for the other drive you might consider, i.e., Pondermotive).

By the way, your ship will cost almost exactly this in the end:

• 115-124 water
• 13.2 Volatiles
• 50 Base Metals
• 32.9 Rare Metals
• 2.1 Fissiles

If your Moon is bad or you built so many habs that you are not stockpiling resources, that’s a total cost of 215 boost, pre-whatever-the-deduction-is-for-the-tech-that-gives-a-deduction-I-think-there-is-one. But generally I find the boost cost for the ship is in the 40-60 range with an average moon, because I have done some stockpiling (and I’m pretty sure there’s a discount).

Aiming at Sept 19th:

We want to finish Mission to Jupiter on Sep 19.

• Finish our ship by Sep 16 (and add water/Fission Platform on a refit)
• Start building our ship (which can have a water shortage) by July 16.
• Start building our Earth Spacedock by June 16.

This is why we prioritized the Grid Drive and Solid State Fission techs; the last techs to finish should be Mission to the Asteroids, Industrialization of Space, and then (of course) Mission to Jupiter – often that being the only tech you research for a few weeks, as it’s very annoying to finish Mission to Jupiter and then just sit and spin waiting for Fission Platform to unlock.

As the tech tree frees up of techs you need, it’s up to you whether to pick new techs that you may not win but that you want (e.g., the Cybernetics ones) or expensive techs that you may win by rushing them post-Mission-to-Jupiter but that are less of immediate importance (like Ad Astra). Point is, you’re not researching them until you finish the Jupiter tech.

Since you’re in the home stretch, if you haven’t done it yet, you may find it beneficial to double-advise the US, to get that extra bit of Research.

Stage 5: Launch!

Do whatever you feel like on Earth at this point; in the next few years, you’ll want a TON of Mission Control and so some people immediately go after the EU. I tend to try to grab China and then move to the EU later, after I’ve researched a bunch of +CP techs from the remaining Social Science global techs. For what it’s worth, the “win in 10-12 years” strategy involves beelining to Ring Habs and spawning Venus with Research Universities while you fill up LEO with bonuses on Earth. Point is, at this point you are making a ton of science already (2k+ month) and soon you’ll be Scrooge McDuck’ing into piles of Space Resources. Enjoy yourself however you see fit!

Stages 6-7: Arrive and Consolidate Your Awesomeness

When you arrive around Callisto, do the following:

• Build a Space Dock (in fact, I tend to overwrite the Construction Module and build two)
• Once it’s done, probe Callisto and refit your Fission Platform ship into a Fission Outpost ship
• Undock that ship and settle on Callisto. Get the mine going.
• Redock, Repair, Repeat 3-4 times. (How fast you can do this will depend in part on how good your Mars Mine is.)

Once your first Callisto mine comes online, spawn as much as you can, noting your MC cap and that you also want some ships.

While on the way to Mars, research Missiles (for Artemis torpedoes) and Magazines. You’ll want to take care of any alien platforms ANYWHERE near Jupiter. Luckily, even those that have PD up are often not a threat, because the aliens stupidly try to upgrade them, making them ineffective (for a time). However, working PD will require a minimum of 3 escorts (expect to lose 2) with a single magazine (more is usually overkill) and double arty torpedoes.

Some time over the next year or so, after you’ve taken care of platforms, you’ll want to temporarily switch out magazines for marines (with refits), and create a little 32-strength force of marines (8 escorts) to land and crush any burgeoning alien mining sites anywhere in the system. The ones under development have strength 17, and the newbie ones have strength 24, also very achievable.

As of [0.3.90], the aliens will be quite miffed at what you’ve done, and start sending single corvettes and destroyers to go after your mining sites. A single double-PD escort + double-arty escort has a near 100% success Autoresolve rate (and 100% manual battle success rate) against Corvettes. Use minimal armor (5 nose on the arties?) so that your apparent combat strength stays low. For Destroyers, 3 double-arties and two double-PD does the trick. By the time Frigates and bigger ships show up, you’ll be ready for them!

Stage 8: Win

Managing MC / Research University cost is a whole ‘nother challenge, but one that should be fairly forgiving of mistakes, given how strong your start was.

Additional Notes

Additional note that goes over the character limit for Stage 6-7: if you need more rare metals and don’t want to wait for Mars to generate them, consider refitting your radiator from titanium to aluminum. You’ll get almost 5 rare metals from the conversion (but it will cost you some base metals, so don’t do unless you have a surplus).

Academy / Martyr Start Notes

If you don’t care about the inevitable problems of losing half your CP for a year, an Academy Start may be the route for you! It tends to be much easier going at the beginning, with the US usually completely taken over by early December; that sort of start is quite rare with a non-Academy faction, though it’s possible if you luck into a bunch of high PER councilors with good traits. Not only do you start with high public sentiment in a lot of countries, making missions easier, but you are getting a ton of influence as well. A lot of the tough choices you might have to make in late 2022/early 2023 are no longer tough (e.g., how to research the +5 org faction project while keeping up in Mars/Moon/Space Refining). The Academy win conditions are also annoying (the worst is 75% of all CPs on the planet) so you may be getting short-term gain for long-term pain.