Rebel Inc: How to Win on Brutal with All Governors

Beating Rebel Inc on Brutal difficulty is… pretty brutal. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong and you’ll be struggling for a long period of time before the tipping point when things will finally start working in your favor. And today we’re going to talk about this alone: how to win on Brutal difficulty in Rebel Inc.

Basically, most of our general tips and tricks will apply to this situation as well. The main thing here is that you will have a tougher fight against the Insurgents and everything will go at a slower pace than usual. At least this is how it works for me now – probably a speedrun is possible, but I haven’t figured out a way to do it yet.

Now, back to beating Rebel Inc on Brutal, this is the most important thing to keep in mind: you have to be patient and take everything both methodically and strategically. I’m going to get more in depth with actual strategies that you need to follow, so let’s not waste a single second and instead let’s see how to beat Rebel Inc on the Brutal difficulty level!

1. Know the map you’re playing on
Each region / map that you can play on has some strategic options that give you or the Rebels an advantage. If you have played a map at least a couple of times on Normal (or even on Brutal), you probably found that best spot to start in and where the Insurgents will usually spawn and start to cause damage.

Usually, it’s best for you to start in or near a large city – if Rebels capture a city, they will do more harm to your Reputation and Support and the larger the city, the larger the damage. Also, some areas are easier to manage in terms of keeping the insurgents away from spreading, as is the case of the example below:

In the above image, it’s easy for my 3 soldier troops to keep the rebels tucked in that corner for a while. Sure, eventually there will be more in other areas, but having that advantage early on is huge. So always try to get that advantage which starts with setting up your base.

2. Choose the right governor
As you unlock more regions, you unlock more Governors – each coming with their own set of things that they can do differently. I personally consider the General to be the best to approach Brutal difficulty scenarios in Rebel Inc – although I haven’t unlocked the Warlord just yet.

But with the General, you can start the game with a soldier unit and start working on National Soldiers ASAP, then use the Soldiers themselves to gather intel which is a huge advantage. Civilian Ops are a bit more expensive because of that, but overall in Brutal games, it’s not really a problem since you’re generally looking at a longer game anyway.

3. Let the rebels Roam free (a bit)
If you can’t contain the Insurgents early on like I did (and was lucky to) in the screenhost I shared above, don’t worry too much about them. Building a huge army early on is not sustainable early on – so try to do the best you can with three soldiers, constantly denying the rebels territory.

Instead, start building Garrisons and other Military related bonuses (in the Government section as well) in order to keep the effects caused by the Rebels under control and use every move you make to further consolidate your power.

4. Plan your moves, well ahead
The secret is, in Brutal Games, to plan your moves ahead and be very patient. You should have a solid plan, mostly focusing on the Operations you want to unlock and the order you need to unlock them to.

Key in Brutal games are two things: keeping your Reputation in check and slowly taking over the map by not allowing the Insurgents to get too much themselves. The Military and Governments initiatives become a lot more important here and we’ll talk about them below.

5. Patience makes perfect
It is extremely important to be patient. Every Brutal game will have a point where you will feel like you’re on the brink of losing it all, but if you’ve played all your moves right and invested at the right time in the right Operations, things will turn in your favor eventually.

Just be patient, stick to the plan and hope for the best – like to new Insurgents in really open areas or no random events that really break the game for you. But anything can happen.

6. Focus on National Soldiers
On the Casual and Normal difficulty, paying with Reputation to keep the National Soldiers on the map indefinitely is extremely easy. However, things get a bit more difficult on Brutal and you might have to either drop them all or at least some of them.

That is why you should instead focus on the National Soldiers. These are also made for the long term game: They are weak and almost useless at first, but you will unlock various Initiatives that will eventually make them really strong. They also upset the local population a lot less than the Coalition’s soldiers, so it’s a win-win situation. So start working on them early to have an easy end-game on Brutal difficulty.

7. Slower Civilian Initiatives
Getting the support of locals is mainly done through unlocking many Civilian Initiatives – and doing so early on is simple on the easier difficulty levels. However, things get more complicated when playing on Brutal.

As I was saying above, you should prepare for a longer game, so rolling out a ton of Civilian initiatives won’t be that easy or recommended. You will have to first consolidate your power and only afterwards switch your focus on getting a massive support boost from the locals.

This doesn’t mean that you should ignore the Civilian Initiatives completely. Do just enough of the Services to keep the population happy, and also focus on the Ingfrastructure. The latter category is essential early on as it gives bonuses to Intel gathering and combat!

8. Greater focus on Military
Since you’ll be playing on a really high difficulty level, you will instead have to spend more money on the Military-related initiatives. These will not necessarily be from the Military category per-se, since Government initiatives also help and boost your military power and general stability as well.

You can manage to beat the game on Brutal even without working on the Airstrikes, which is a good thing: you save money and keep the locals happy.

Your main goals in the Military category is to move towards the National soldiers areas and keep unlocking boosts there (you will eventually make them stronger than Coalition soldiers), but also a bit on Interpreters & Guides (vital early on for gathering intel) and Drones – get to the point where your Drones will offer military support and combine that with Garrisons to never have to worry about the Rebels.

9. Grab those Government Boosts
As I was saying the Government initiatives are just as important as the Military ones, although timing here is a bit more important.

You will have to play the regular game here: Start working on the Corruption initiatives early on (Corruption really starts to affect the game in Brutal) and make sure that you keep it under control. In the later stages of a mission, you will need to invest in things like PR& Media and other boost-offering initiatives, but Corruption should be your main priority here.

10. Cheats for the easy wins
If all things fail, you have the Cheats that you can use to start the game with. These cheats will be unlocked – paradoxically or not – by beating all areas on Brutal, which makes them sound a bit useless.

But they are actually not – you can unlock the cheats with real life money and they will indeed offer a massive boost if you are stuck with this extremely difficult game mode. But I do think that it should be a lot easier for you to beat the Brutal mode in the game by following my advice above – and even without the cheats.

What other tips and tricks would you have for fellow players struggling with winning Rebel Inc on the Brutal difficulty mode?