Terra Invicta just hit 1.0 after years in early access. It's a grand strategy game where you run a shadowy organization trying to control Earth's nations while aliens show up uninvited.

Al hasn't played it. Tim and Joe have hundreds of hours between them. The game has three layers: geopolitical manipulation on Earth, orbital infrastructure, and hard sci-fi space exploration across the solar system. Real physics, real nations with actual GDP figures and political metrics, and launch windows that matter.

Seven factions compete with different endgames you don't learn until you're deep in. The complexity is brutal. Learning curve is steep. Tutorial won't save you - hit Reddit first. But if you can stomach the initial wall, you get a modern grand strategy game that fills a gap Stellaris can't touch.

Tim and Joe walk through faction design, agent mechanics, research trees, space combat, and why China is the hardest nation to infiltrate. Made by Pavonis Interactive, the team behind XCOM's Long War mod.