Why are the mansions so pumped up?

[envLight]

Look, don't get me wrong. I already have a third promotion, aliens have long been flying around the planet as at home, I have power armor from magma with a valkyrie rifle, almost the entire alien bestiary caught but...

Why the hell are there so many people in cult mansions? I understand, but I cleaned them up a year before the aliens arrived, and these assholes there are like 80~ people in there, I have no problem with their cleanup, but it's just unbearably boring! It's easier for me to take out hybrid embassies, alien bases, and even outposts of the Men in Black than these goddamn mansions!

And like, okay, I'm okay now, but before, how was I supposed to deal with them? I cleared one mansion near the base, shooting off at night between two houses, and even that seemed crazy. Their headquarters is much easier, why is that?

[Solarius Scorch]

Why the hell are there so many people in cult mansions?

Because you allowed it to grow out of proportions.

I understand, but I cleaned them up a year before the aliens arrived, and these assholes there are like 80~ people in there, I have no problem with their cleanup, but it's just unbearably boring!

How on Earth is bombarding a building boring? It's not like I can't take criticism, but boring? Why?

(A couple days ago I made another variant of the building, this should make things a bit less repetitive.)

It's easier for me to take out hybrid embassies, alien bases, and even outposts of the Men in Black than these goddamn mansions!

They're just mooks, what's the problem?

Okay, Dagon manors can be a pain due to the dogs and other critters.

And like, okay, I'm okay now, but before, how was I supposed to deal with them? I cleared one mansion near the base, shooting off at night between two houses, and even that seemed crazy. Their headquarters is much easier, why is that?

Don't be ridiculous.

[envLight]

Like the longer you leave them untouched, the more people stay there? 

Because I'm pretty sure the first mansion I visited had 60~ people in it, and I found it practically at the beginning of the month. But they had no reinforcements, it was a red dawn.

[Whatever]

Yes mansions grow with time. They have 3 "levels".

IMHO at certain point the quickest way to deal with waves of human grunts is to pack a lot of incindiary explosives and go scorched earth on them. Identify chockepoints, lead the enemies to them and just burn them all at once. Plus focus on hunting down aliens and animals - once all of those are gone + majority of human enemies are gone, the rest of the enemies should just surrender.

Also, for me one way to make the crowded maps less crowded is to turn off the demigod option (in some ini file, forgot which) - it makes the game always spawn maximum possible number of enemies on the map. In case of mansions it should make them about 20% less crowded on average (up to 33% percent less enemies if you're extremely lucky, 0% less enemies if you are extremely unlucky)

[psavola]

It is advisable to take out the manors at level 1 (while they still spawn intercepting cars moving at pace 170). The enemies are easier and more importantly, there won't be reinforcements. Sometimes those can be surprising and tedious especially because elite soldiers are unlikely to surrender.

Go there at night and check that no enemy has had visibility on your troops. If they have, abort and retry. Throw lots of smoke grenades to ensure no one comes wandering close. Take along some bats (best), rats (second best) or dogs (workable) to be able to see through smoke yourself while not being spotted. Spam TAC grenade launcher gas grenades for 5+ turns. Usually it goes faster if you open up the manor side with a couple of high explosives so the enemies will get out faster. Be wary of the manor variant where the manor is very close to your spawn location.

Usually this takes ~10 turns. Sometimes you will have to go after the stragglers. In particular, against Dagon or Black Lotus, because some of their units cannot surrender and this can particularly annoying compared to the other cults.

IMHO, many other missions (or repeating the same ones over and over again) are much more boring and take much longer than the manors.

[Stone Lake]

Bombing mooks is fun, but manors are still boring. Because, well 1) repetitive when you clear like 10 of them 2) no decent reward. It's made like a chore, so it's a chore, like "OK, I'll do one per month". Shouldn't be surprising, no? I try to clean cults ASAP just to NOT deal with manors. And yeah, they are roughly HQ-hard.
Embassies and such are boring for same reason.

[Solarius Scorch]

Lack of reward is a fair point, but also a core concept - it's supposed to be a punishment. So I'm not going to change this aspect.

Best I can do is add more maps, which I've already done to a degree. Please post feedback.