Quick winning principles
- Never play ops in DEFCON 2 battleground countries.
- Realignment beats coup when you have adjacency advantage.
- Space race: dump bad events, not good ops cards.
- Asia/Africa/Middle East: 2 influence for control, not 3.
Ideal strategy
- 1
DEFCON timing: coup in battleground drops DEFCON; at DEFCON 2, coups are forbidden. Play ops in non-battleground at DEFCON 2; save coups for DEFCON 3+.
- 2
Ops/event sequencing: play event when opponent benefits more; play ops when you need influence. Never waste 4-op card as event when you need 4 influence.
- 3
Control thresholds: 2 influence for control in Asia/Africa/ME; 3 in Europe. Over-investing in Europe bleeds ops.
- 4
Realignment vs coup: realignment when you have 2+ adjacent countries; coup when you need to break control and DEFCON allows.
- 5
Scoring card timing: play scoring when you have ops advantage that turn; never hold scoring card opponent can play.
- 6
DEFCON manipulation: force opponent to coup at DEFCON 2 (they lose) by placing influence in battleground they must answer.