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?
In chapter 6 in the first sentence i think you meant to say coalition soldiers instead of national…
Not helpful for me
Worthless.
As General
At the beginning, try to focus on Initatives that focus on strong support (Left – Development) and Infrastructure (upper right).
– I choose a City with many Rural Areas around and start with Infrastructure “Main Roads”.
– I then tab to Government and take “District Representatives + Outreach Office”
– I tab back to Civilian and choose Development Discussion
I then wait until August/September (about four Months) and choose “Livestock Development” + Services Discussions
After that I start one Coalition Soldier with a National Soldier right away. Until the first attack happens, I order a second coalition divison right away.
If you are lucky, the enemies spawn at an easy to control location.
Important Steps afterwards:
– Take a second Initiative under “Development”
– Take the Anti Corruption LVL 1. I usually end my games with LVL 3 or even more if its going well
– When you have taken a second Development Initiative, focus on “Universal Justice” it increases support by a mile
– After Universal Justice, your next step should be “PR & Media Offices”, which almost doubles your support Level.
– Take Services Discussion when you have some spare money and it doesn’t increase Inflation as much
– Try to spend the 10 $ to reduce backing of insurgents when the event pops up
– I usually extend the service of Coaltion Soldiers at least two times.
During this, keep an eye out for needed soldier amount. At the end game you almost certainly need 5-6 Armies. “Interpreters & Guides” can be useful in mid game as Areas with 100% Intel grant fighting bonus also it costs only 4$.
Every game I had (I did all maps on brutal but the last one) were very close. I was able to end the first 3 Maps without peace negotiations, and 4 with it.
Don’t use Air Strikes. Upgrading Natinal Soldier Weapons can be worth it, UAV as well. Not sure if Forts are worth it.
That said, Brutal is heavily RNG based and not very well designed
– If you get bad spawns, you will lose 100%
– If insurgents fall back to a very bad spot (you can’t cover them all on later maps), you will lose 100%
– If you get bad events and lose them, you will fall behind 100% and lose
– If it’s going well and you get one really bad spawn (F.E in a main city, immediately losing 6 rep) you are going to lose 100%
My tries until victory
1 map: 7 times
2 map: 5 times
3 map: 20 times
4 map: 27 times
5 map: 4 losses so far, seems to be the hardest, I have no idea to win this, you’ll need to get extremly lucky
THIS is what I expected. Much better than the article. Felt more like he was getting paid per word
Thanks for the tips. :)
Made things worse on Pistachio forest. Guaranteed to lose after two years because of the lack of stability penalty.
You said it yourself, “I don’t have the Warlord quite yet.” That means you have literally not won all stages on Brutal. You are unqualified to publish something about winning on Brutal if you haven’t. That’s like me publishing a guide to deep-sea oil drilling. You tried to get views. Congrats, you got mine. But never again will I return. Also, your advice isn’t even good and I figured out how to do all of these “tips” on my own.
They are all possible to complete on brutal difficulty, even with god awful spawns and without any governors. Albeit, it did take me at least three days of non stop trail and error to figure out how to beat the desert level, once I had that the others came easy. If you’re really struggling I’d recommend following IPickMyBut’s Youtube channel and he will break down the initiatives he uses.
Anyhow my strategy is to start of with a bit of healthcare, a bit of literacy, apprenticeship initiative as well as district representative. Then completely disregarding any more public initiatives, except the infrastructure ones (in particular the Highways, Main Roads and Minor Roads), as these are vitally important for the mobility of your troops.
Regarding troops I always try to follow 2 coalition for every 1 national, sometimes I take Air Strikes, depending on if I need the firepower. I always disregard drones, unless I have a bit of extra cash later on, even still I’d rather just spend on upgrading national troop strength.
A few tips as well:
– Make sure you are keeping reputation up (universal justice early on is decent)
– Get foreign relations as mid game as it is pretty hard to win without a peace deal
– Keep training national troops constantly
– If you’re trying to ‘close the net ‘make sure you have Intel on all the zones adjacent otherwise insurgents will just run into it even if you have troops in there (intel perks on the military page can help with getting this done quickly)
AND ALWAYS TRY TO KEEP CORRUPTION BELOW 20!!!!
Also I would recommend you start centrally, on or close to a city as this will allow your troops to access all maps of the maps far quicker than if you were to put them in a corner.
GOOD LUCK :)
Wow, you’re writing a useless guide about winning the difficult brutal mode, full of obvious (and sometimes bad) tips, and even admit that you yourself haven’t even managed to do that?
I didn’t hate the guide as much as the other commenters, but I didn’t find it very helpful, and the part about using “cheats for easy wins” is just ridiculous to even mention.
Here’s my guide to winning on Brutal (for the Civil Servant as a starter for ten):
Advisors used: Town Planner; Tribal Elder; Celebrity; Investigative Reporter; Chef; Censor
Make sure that you choose a town/city a close to the centre of the map as possible (not possible for all maps).
Start off by buying the following: Anti-corruption 1; Effective Procurement; District Representatives; International Assistance (as soon as the choice is offered, choose additional budget); Services Discussions; Medical Supplies; Water Supplies.
Then wait for your resources to replenish enough to buy PR&Media Office
Then buy (when you can): Development Discussions; Development Bank; Commercial Support (these all ensure that your starting base will become stable as soon as possible). Time your purchases effectively to ensure that inflation isn’t too high to avoid wasting crucial $
Following this, buy Infrastructure Discussions and Telecoms 1: these civilian initiatives should be enough to ensure that you gain stability at a fast enough rate to avoid losing too much reputation (if it’s not happening fast enough buy educational initiatives)
By now, the insurgents should be on the verge of attacking
Once you’ve done the above and are allowed to make military purchases, buy your first coalition soldier. Once done, purchase your first national solider as soon as resources allow it. Whilst it is training, buy two more coalitions soldiers. Try to herd the insurgents into corners of the map and destroy them if possible (difficult with only three units). Purchase Interpreters and Guides and Human Terrain System as soon as possible following the coalition soldiers.
By now the first national soldier should be trained: Purchase another one immediately (you should always have one training at all times). Focus your purchases on Highways, Main Roads and Dirt Roads whilst the national soldiers are training (these are crucial as they allow your soldiers to get round the map quickly to deal with insurgents). Once these are done, corruption should be hitting you: purchase these whilst national soldiers are training until you have all four. Depending on how stable things are, you also at some stage will need to buy Outreach Office and Universal Justice, as well as buying Garrisons. Garrisons are crucial to your military strategy as they are effectively a standing military unit that allows you to destroy insurgents more easily.
If you’ve done all of this, corruption should still be hitting you fairly hard (often c. 0.52 per month). So focus your purchases on Surveillance Drones and the three improvements to it, as these purchases don’t increase corruption. You should also purchase National Travel Logistics to improve your coalition soldiers as well as the Foreign Relations Office. Combat reinforcements is also useful if the insurgents are particularly entrenched. Don’t bother with Airstrikes unless they are exceptionally entrenched.
Always choose long duration for your coalition soldiers unless it is clearly suicidal; never choose short duration. Avoid getting them into fights of long duration in the mountains as they’ll want to go home sooner.
Once you’ve got seven troops into the field (four national + three coalition) and your road infrastructure is complete at level one (at least), it’s time to enter into peace talks with the insurgents. Always choose the option that will gain you reputation, which will annoy them but will allow you to gain enough time to keep your coalition forces in the game. Constantly playing this off whilst building out your road infrastructure and getting Strategic Communications should put you in a good enough position to win the game by stabilising the map entirely (I never agree peace deals with insurgents – feels wrong).
OTHER TIPS
– whenever the game informs you that people are annoyed because they’re lacking something, always build it: the support boost will be key
– reputation is almost always worth more than money: in the in-game events try to choose the option that will gain you the most reputation, even if it costs more and/or will decrease support level (particularly as usually this will benefit you in the next stage of the in-game event: women’s rights, prisons and refugees are all good examples of this)
– where the first couple of insurgent attacks occur will have a massive effect on your odds of winning the game: sometimes they’ll spawn in two completely different places at once and spread rapidly, in which case you’ll find it very difficult to win. Focus on attacks closest to your base unless they’re attacking a major urban area: last thing you want to do is to bog yourself down in the mountains on the other side of the map if they’re also attacking much closer to home
– for the other governors, this strategy broadly works, but you’ll obviously need to tweak it to take into account their differences
I’ve really appreciated your comments yet they don’t help much.
Especially in the early stages, I get swarmed by insurgents, money is never enough, reputation has no way to replenish with standard initiatives and – what is worst – I suffer huge damage or from insurgents or from lack of stabilization. Even if I seriously invest in infrastructures, for the game it never looks enough! What should I do? Buy cheats? No way…
Hi, at last I’ve understood how to beat the game at Brutal level.
Some hints:
1 – to unlock Black Caves and the Warlord, you don’t need to win each map at brutal level with all governors, it will be enough to win each map at brutal level once with only one governor and then to win the easiest map at brutal level with the remaining governors that have not been used for a brutal map level yet.
2 – the key for winning lies in the Government facilities:
– investing in PR & Media really boosts stability and is a core choice.
– it is enough to trigger the basic civilian services as medical and water supplies and basic education to have a solid support base, then keep using local police recruitment (but not local militia, use Universal Justice instead) AND anti-corruption choices as the game progresses, to keep corruption low.
3 Other tips:
– balance national troops with anti-corruption options to compensate
– Trigger the garrisons in order with “civil support” as soon as possible, then add “security checkpoints”. They really help to stabilize the area, make your troops stronger and prevent insurgents from spreading over the map.
– never ruse the “democratic transition”option because it has a too high risk of harming your reputation rather than boosting it, also it drains your economic resources. Do it only after mid-game to improve your reputation to win peace negotiations
– when the map gets stabilized, use the basic options for civilian development (as markets and banks) to gain support, then switch to infrastructures because they help your units to move faster and provide support at once, but are pretty useless at first
– try to trigger “foreign relations office” early in the game, right after the garrison: it gives much better diplomatic options. Without it, it is impossible to win, because it will drain your economic resources.
– it is true that insurgents will do much less harm as long as they remain in uninhabited areas, so don’t waste your troops early on in the game trying to fight them on hills or woods, but just protect cities and villages and then swarm them with combined attacks to crush them, once your troops are strong enough
– anti-corruption options also help to stabilize regions
– Advisors may be useful but there is not a mandatory choice. They must be chosen to exploit each governor’s strengths and compensate weaknesses. I usually go on with: town planner, tribal elder, celebrity, realist, drill sergeant (very useful) and censor. Some of them, like the monkey, are useless or counter-effective.
– It is also a matter of luck: if you start in a wrong location (I prefer nearby big cities or centrally in the map) or if insurgents appear in too different spots and spread too quickly, just close the game and restart.
For me to win all maps with all govson brutal difficulty: Patience. And I remember to quickly stabilise zones by putting the focus on the specific needs of the region. E.g. if I start HQ in the biggest city I initiate industry, markets and highways; if I start HQ in a rural zone I get info which roads (dirt or main) and then invest in livestock and crops within the next four to five months (limit to one initiative per month to curb inflation). This seems natural, come to think of it. Corruption: Extremely difficulty to handle with the Warlord, admittedly. But still, if two to three anti-corruption levels are done early on, it works. Military: National soldiers are cheap but need to be given boni over time. I normally disband one of four. I usually start with two coalition and one national even though itreally depends on the situation. Good luck my fellow COIN kings ;)
With the warlord on brutal difficulty I find these advisors indispensable:
Doctor (to accelerate stabilisation of zones).
Tribal Elder (to have enough time to get 2-3 lvls of anti-corruption).
Engineer (I start installing garrisons as soon as I got my first national soldier for $1).
Celebrity (gives a bit of a rep buffer at the onset)
Investigative Reporter (helps with corruption).
Chef (since I find the national soldiers contribute too much to corruption if you don’t pay them off or disband them).
I agree that the tips given in the comments are better than the article.
The ultimate unlock tip! Keep winning on brutal with every governor on the very first map. First beat all standard maps on brutal. With the recommended governor. Then go back and use every governor on first map. You unlock extra advisors and, next in line special governors. Then later use them to beat the more difficult maps. I learned this by accident. After failing on cave map prolly 50 times. I went back to first map and kept winning on brutal. Huge difference maker.