Difficulty

Terra Invicta has four difficulty levels - Cinematic, Normal, Veteran, and Brutal. These difficulties impact a wide range of game mechanics, especially related to alien strength and behavior.

Difficulty is chosen in the Game Options screen, and cannot be changed during the game.

Non-Alien-Related

Value	Cinematic	Normal	Veteran	Brutal
Player modifier to contested missions	+3	0	-1	-2
AI spaceship build costs	x1	x1	x0.75	x0.5
Min ideological distance for AI envy	2.5	1.8	1.2	None

AI factions will also generally invest more of their research into global technologies at lower difficulties, and more into faction projects on higher difficulties.

Alien-Related

All alien-related effects are inverted if the player is playing as The Servants. A Servant game is easier if the aliens are stronger, so the same increases to alien strength that other factions would experience on Brutal difficulty are appropriate to Cinematic difficulty in a Servant game.

Importantly, the above is not true for The Protectorate. A Protectorate game will have a stronger alien faction on Brutal difficulty and a weaker alien faction on Cinematic, just like the anti-alien factions do.

SPOILERS INSIDE!

Many of the following values are changed by the Alien Progression Rate value in Game Options. Value Cinematic (Servants Brutal) Normal (Servants Veteran) Veteran (Servants Normal) Brutal (Servants Cinematic) Exotics Income per Month 10 20 30 40 Salvage rate for exotics x2 x1 x0.5 x0.333 Alien hate cap 70 + 2/year Becomes 200 after 25 years 1000 + 100/year 1000 + 100/year 1000 + 100/year Hate per MC used 0.05 0.3 0.6 1.0 Years before total war is possible 25 20 12 0 Max alien bases built 10 12 +3 if total war possible 18 +7 if total war possible 25 +10 if total war possible Years before advanced alien technology 35 25 16 10 Abduction scaling for Enthrall/Xenoform missions 0.05 0.15 0.35 0.5 The alien AI also gets a wide range of adjustments on higher difficulties, making it more aggressive in general, and less prone to delay in the early game.