Against the odds is the third and final mission in The Eden Project Global Event. As with the Atomic Terror event, the difficulty level of this last mission ramps up to hard, with its attendant penalties (only 10,000C to start, no refund of materials or cash when deleting buildings). You will need to settle 5000 Eco executives amongst potentially hostile neighbors.
Thor Strindberg is first introduced in this global event on this mission.
Difficulty: Hard
Description[]
- Settle some Eco Executives. Use some Bio Technicians on Islands with defective Formers. Both Thor Strindberg and Vadim Sokow have claimed this sector for themselves.
Objectives[]
- Reach at least 200 Eco Employees (and repair 1st defective Former with specialists)
- Reach at least 1000 Eco Engineers (and repair 2nd defective Former with trained specialists)
- Reach at least 5000 Eco Executives (and repair the last 3rd defective Former with experienced specialists)
Reward[]
- Formula: Guardian 1.0 high performance fibers blueprints in academy (Ark upgrade for Guardian 1.0, reduces power consumption)
- Formula: Guardian 1.0 converter upgrade blueprints in academy (Ark upgrade for guardian 1.0, decreases influence area and power consumption.
- 300 Career Points for Tycoon, Eco or Tech's careers at player choice.
"Manifest Destiny" achievement at your player profile.
Overview[]
You start the mission at the lower left corner of map. Thor Strindberg starts at the upper left corner and Vadim Sokow starts at the upper right. Yana Rodriguez' Ark appears near player's and Rufus Thorne's at the east side of the map. In addition, Trenchcoat sometimes visits this sector. Notice the absence of Prof. Salman Devi's Ark. Most of the islands, especially with rare fertilities, have rather hard relief with rivers and lots of mountains. However Thor's and especially Vadim's islands are flat and perfectly suit your need for buildable space. Remember that Eden Formers boost almost every island with huge ecology bonuses, increasing productivity of any farm to 147%. There are couple of ways to win this mission. Quick expansion and actions are strongly recommended in any of them.
Walkthrough[]
Method 1: War[]
To get started you will need take care of building materials and tax income. Settle the marked island, then build 6 Basalt Extractions and 6 Smelters. Spend remaining building modules on residences and keep building them as fast as you can because you will need a lot of money for your war chest. It is a good idea to buy additional building modules and tools from Yana's and Rufus' Arks, but avoid buying them from Thor, Vadim or Trenchcoat due to their high prices. Supply the residences with food by building Fisheries. Complete 1st phase by building a Concert Hall and 2 Tea Plantations.
Scout nearby islands and keep building houses. Build 2 Iron Ore Mines, 1 Coal Mine, 2 Iron Smelters and 2 Tool Workshops.The nearest small island has both Rice and Vegetables fertilities, so settle it and build a Health Food production chain. Communicators can be built at your main island. Also, build a Tree Nursery, 3 Sawmills and a Munitions Factory at your main island. Once this is done, you must settle as many islands and cover their shores with Depots preventing AI players from obtaining them, or it will be quite a difficult task to get rid of them.
Build 2 Limestone Mines at your Health Food island and transport the limestone to 2 Glassworks on your main island. Earn enough credits to buy Tech building blueprints from your Ark, then settle some Lab Assistants at your main island. You don't need to satisfy their needs, you just need enough to unlock the Airport and Fuel Factory. Soon you will receive an ultimatum from Thor Strindberg to lower the amount of islands settled or face a declaration of war.
- Thor's army consists mostly of Choppers, Vipers, 1-2 Deep Sea Hunters and 1-2 Colossus'. His islands are always defended by 4 Harbour Defence Turrets and completed with a Tycoon Shipyard and Submarine Base, so all of his islands will be able to produce more ships.
Build a Port Authority at the north side of main island and defend it with 4-5 Harbour Defence Turrets and 4-5 Flaks. Settle the nearest underwater island and build 2 Oil Rigs. This action will result -50 Influence from Vadim Sokow but he will not declare war. Transport Crude Oil to main island, build 2 Oil Refineries, Carbon Factory, Fuel Factory and an Airport. Build a few Hovercraft and choppers. You will need the aircraft units to clear the islands from enemies.
- If you've obtained enough influence with Rufus Thorne or Yana Rodriguez and have the cash you can simply buy a fleet from them, preferably from Thorne because of his Colossus.
Try to catch one of Thor's patrols separated from his fleet, then declare a war on him and attack his units. Using Hovercrafts lure his navy to your turrets, set game speed to "Slow" and target manually each tower and ship. You may lose some ships, but they are replaceable and Thor should be left defenceless.
Build new ships as needed and stay on top of new ships Thor may build. Fill the Airport with choppers, then start to clear Thor's islands. Remember that Level 3 Depots are armed with weak rockets. Destroy his Depots and prevent Thor from rebuilding them by settling the islands and building your own Depots. You do not need to destroy any other buildings they will all collapse when the depot supporting them is destroyed. Keep control of the territory until Thor is gone for good. Continue to clear Thor's islands, and prevent him from rebuilding a fleet and you'll soon have him eliminated.
With Thor out of the way you will able to eliminate Vadim who is a much weaker opponent.
- Vadim never defends his islands with turrets and only builds Shipyards on his main island. His Depots are mostly Level 1 and undefended. His home fleet consists mainly of Vipers with no aircraft. This makes him very easy prey for your choppers. Remember that sometimes Vadim's Oil Fleet enters this sector protected by lots of Vipers and Choppers, so wait until they leave the sector to declare war on him.
After eliminating all the AI players the sector becomes a huge sandbox, you can destroy the unnecessary Depots and your war fleet and turrets. Leave only Command Ship and Choppers - for future quests from Neutrals. You can settle Vadim's huge island and reach the final objective here using the free space, you can even build Hydroelectric Power Plant and Leisure Center monument here.
Method 2: Stockpile[]
You should be able to settle enough residents on your first island if you set all your information buildings to the setting that increases residence counts. You will need to build approximately 594 Eco residences with 100% coverage to executive mansions for this strategy to succeed. All consumed resources and building materials must be stockpiled in sufficient quantities before upgrading any houses. You must also deny residences heavily consumed resources they don't need to keep from degrading once they reach the minimum quantity to support a higher population, this will extend resource pools further, giving you more time to pull off the method.
- This method requires a significant amount of micro management, so if you're not a pacifist or a special type of masochist, better try Method 1.
- Use of the Shipment ability from Trenchcoat compliments this method, allowing you to reach 5000 executives without many of the higher end production chains. This does, however, require a fair amount of capital to accomplish.
Method 3: Take the biggest island - quick and easy[]
Drop 20 Building Modules, 20 Tools and 10 Fish at your Ark, then go to Yana Rodriguez´ ark and fill your Command Ship with modules and tools. Now get directly to Vadim Sokow´s island in the north-east area and settle next to the left of his port authority.
Now take the whole island with Depots to stop Vadim´s expansion. Be sure he's not taking to much space on the island, you will need it. This may take 2 or 3 tries. The slow gamespeed will help you here ("-" button on your numpad). Ensure that there is no space free from your Depot's construction zones or Vadim will build his buildings in the middle of your colony.
You will need MUCH more building modules and tools, so buy them from Yana and Rufus.
After a while Vadim will declare war on you, and like Method 1, you can destroy him with aircraft or take the large warfleet from Yana Rodriguez or Rufus Thorne.
- This method, however is very ineffective because of additional losses of building tools and money for building Depots to capture Vadim's territory (and NO refunds after destroying them to clear some space). This, in turn, will slow your expansion, forcing you to waste time, waiting for money needed for construction and gives Thor an opportunity to capture all the islands with rare fertilities.
Method 4: Nice and Easy[]
For this method to work:
- Settle no more than 5 islands.
- Do not build your navy & air force until you have enough materials.
First settle the island marked and get your Ecos to Engineers, you can settle the nearby island with Rice & Vegetables on it for your Health food production. Settle Two other islands for your techs and for production of Coffee and Sugar, Also settle one of the underwater plateaus for algae and oil production. These are the 5 islands that you will need initially.
Vadim will not give you any Ultimatums.
Thor will only give you an Ultimatum for having a Munition Factory. If you do not want to go to war yet, simply wait until there are ten seconds left, demolish your munitions Factory and then wait until the time has elapsed to rebuild it.
Set up some Engineers and Researchers so you can make all the resources to furnish and build aircraft.
When you have enough materials to build your navy & air force, do so. You can defeat both Vadim & Thor with six Choppers (if you have a good income, build more) and Four Vipers (if you are lucky and get a Boarding Crew from doing a quest use this on one of Thor's Colossi to make it yours). Use your Choppers on their ships, only the Commando ship can fire at your Choppers, use Vipers for the subs & trimarans. Take out Thor first and then Vadim. Try to take out their main warehouse first, this will slow down their rebuilding of the island while you are destroying it.
When both computer players are gone, settle the big island to the north east, this has enough room to settle the 5000 Executives.
You will need 653 houses to accommodate 5000 Executives, A trick on this is to get your Ecos to 1400 Executives, then start stockpiling Service Bots & 3D Projectors. You then have two choices, either build a monument or build the needs buildings as required. Then start filling your island with 653 house total and get them all to Engineers ready to go to Executives (make sure the tax rate is on dark green for the Engineers and ascension rights are turned off, arrows will start to appear above the houses). You will need lots of Glass, Wood, Tools & Building modules as well as Executive goods (this way you will save on having to build 8+ Service Bots & 3D Projector factories).
When you have all things ready, set the taxes of engineers to euphoric, de-deny your Executives Service Bots and 3D Projectors, set their taxes to light green, go to your city center, hold down the shift key and press the up arrow above the engineers tab (it may be mistaken for the house icon) to upgrade as many as possible Engineer houses to Executives, when you have 5000 Executives: fix the last former and mission won.
Method 5: All Your Island Are Belong To Us[]
This method is the easiest strategy by far (but can be considered "cheap"). It is based on a strategy I used in Continuous Games back in Anno 1404 (which still works in Anno 2070) to prevent AI players from expanding without having to declare war on them or use any diplomatic methods.
Due to the way the AI players are programmed in both Anno 1404 and Anno 2070, they will avoid settling on an island that is already settled by another player. This means if you quickly settle all the islands on the map at the beginning of a game, the AI players will simply not expand. Please note that for this strategy to work in Anno 2070 (without having to deal with military conflict) you must not discover the AI players. As long as the AI players' islands aren't discovered by you, they will basically think you don't exist, and will therefore not issue any ultimatums (which most AI players will do if you settle too many islands or have weapon facilities).
So, knowing the aforementioned, here's how to easily beat this mission: as soon as you settle your main (marked) island, send you ship back to Yana's Ark and purchase all the Building Modules and Tools she has onboard. Then while you are building up your main settlement, send your ship out around the map and settle each island as you uncover them. Be careful not to discover Thor and Vadim (located in the top-left and top-right corners of the map, respectively). Settling all the islands will cost you a hefty sum of money, but you have enough in starting cash to cover all the expenses - besides, you won't be in any rush to level up your settlement, because both Thor and Vadim will simply ignore you indefinitely.
Now you have all the time in the world to build up at a leisurely pace. If you are a perfectionist like me, you can fully satisfy all of your population's demands (no need for all the micromanagement and pick-and-choose with the supplies like in other methods) and even build up the Tech and Tycoon factions on other islands!
Also, a small tip: it is highly recommended that you save all the available space on the main island for housing only - the islands available to you for settlement on this map are fairly small, so you won't have a lot of building space to reach 5000 Executives. I produce all the Tea and Health Food on another island and ship them in, for example. You should only produce bare necessities on the main island that doesn't take up much room (Building Modules, Tools, Wood, Glass, Communicator - items that don't require space for farms)
And that's it! Without having to worry about Thor and Vadim, simply build up the entire map the way you like and slowly fill up that main island with housing units. Voila! Mission complete!
Method 6: The 1% are the 99%[]
A variation of Method 5 is to settle all islands except the two in the top corners. Ensure to take the island near the top in the middle. Save your game before going for it so you can load if you run into an AI player.
You will treat your suggested starting island as a city state. Once you unlock the building for building ships, use trade networks from the various colonies you established. Specialize each island, and it is a must that you get an Academy. Your reason for getting the Academy is to get the modules which increase mineral deposit amounts. Namely: copper, iron, coal, limestone and sand. You will also want to get a few modules which allow your container ships to fight fires, and put them with your oil rig colony.
Build up your main island with tons of residences, and keep upgrading them until they are engineer level. Turn off consumption for various levels to make life easier. Often I found myself limiting health foods and communicators to keep a positive balance. Over produce like crazy, and set ports to auto buy what they produce or require to produce on each island. Set your main island to buy all finished goods to keep people happy. Your population should be so large that a positive balance isn't difficult to keep.
You do not need to build the eco wonder. Just upgrade enough houses so that there is an executive population cap just over 5,000. Now you will probably have hundreds of thousands of dollars saved up, so this next part shouldn't worry you. Because all the citizens demand goods, wipe out the Engineer buildings. Yes, that's right, demolish all houses except the first two tiers and the executives. Your island will now look almost empty with a bunch of towers surrounding the city centers. This is excellent, because now you don't have to worry about where to put the emergency services. Your Executive population will be about 3,700 right now. They pay so much in taxes, you will not need the Engineer class which just consumes valuable resources.
The last step is to finally start making robots. Once you have at least 30 (this is the point which I was successful), let the executives have access to them. Watch the population climb over 5,000 executives.
This method took me 16 game hours.
Video Walkthrough[]
Video Walkthrough by YouTube user Leafonthewin