Marthbell's guide of military magic

Don't Panic! - Stay calm, ask for advice. Don't lash out and waste military units. Coordinated attacks with your alliance members are full of win.


If you log into the game and you discover that you are at war, follow these steps:

1) Look at your attacker's nation. Note the Leader Name, Nation Name, Alliance, and Score. Also note the attacker's nation link. Remember this information for later, you'll need it. | "OR you are not a person with photogenic memory and you know what CTRL+c and CRTL+v are for"

2) Look at your attacker's current military units. Note how many of each type of troop your opponent has. Remember this information for later, you'll need it. |"Or multiple tabs and or multiple monitors and nation simulate like a boss"

3) Look at each of your attacker's cities. Note how many of each type of military improvement your opponent has. Also note whether your opponent has any unused improvement slots, and how many. Remember this information for later, you'll need it.

4) Go to the Department of Defence forum section, and see if a thread has been opened for your attacker.

4a) If no thread has been opened for your attacker, you should post one. Follow the format for reporting wars[/url], and create a new thread. As you can see, this format includes all the information you were asked to gather above, so use that information now.

4b) If a thread has been opened for your attacker, read it and see if any instructions have been left for you. If any of the information you gathered in steps 1-3 has not been posted to the thread yet, post it in your reply. If there are any instructions for you in the thread, follow them.

5) Check back at the war thread each time you come online, before you take any actions with your nation. There may be important instructions for you in the thread. If for some reason you are unable to access your war thread, contact a member of government immediately both in-game and by forum PM.

(Contents developed by Don Juan and Lambdadelta, with updates by Grillick - Used with permission)
original text

Combat Mechanics

Whenever an attack is launched, the game determines whether that attack is successful, and how successful it is. It does this in three steps:

1. The game calculates the strength of the units involved in the battle (see individual chapters for how strength is computed)
   
2. The game selects a random number between 40% and 100% of the combat strength for each nation involved. It does this three times for each number and compares the three numbers, assigning success to the player with the higher of each of the three sets of numbers.
   
3. If the attacker succeeds in at least one set, he achieves a "victory" dependent on the number of sets he succeeds in. With one success, it is a "pyrrhic victory." With two, it is a "moderate success." With three, it is an immense triumph.
   

Battle Simulator
groundbattle
airstrike
navy
missile
nuke
espionage


Military Unit Types
There are four kinds of military units that your nation can possess - soldiers, tanks, aircraft and naval vessels.
Each costs a certain amount of money to purchase, a certain amount of money per day to maintain, a certain amount of resources to either purchase (tanks, aircraft and naval vessels) or maintain (soldiers).
Each unit also has a cost in munitions and all units except soldiers have a cost in gasoline when used in battle.

Unit Type	Purchase Cost	Upkeep Cost (peacetime)	Upkeep Cost (wartime)	Battle Costs
Soldiers	$2.00	$1.25 and 1 per 750	$1.88 and 1 per 500	1 per 5,000
Tanks	$60.00 and 1	$50.00	$75.00	1 and 1 per 100
Aircraft	$4,000.00 and 3	$500.00	$750.00	1 and 1 per 4
Naval Vessels	$50,000.00 and 25	$3,750.00	$5,625.00	3 and 2 each

War Actions
Each war action you can take costs a certain number of military action points (MAPs).
As soon as you enter war, either as attacker or defender, you are given 6 MAPs. Every turn (2 hours) you are at war, you gain one MAP. The cost of each action is as follows:

War Action	Cost	Max Uses
Ground Battle	3 MAPs	4 per day
Airstrike	4 MAPs	3 per day
Naval Battle	4 MAPs	3 per day
Missile Strike	8 MAPs	3 per 2 days
Nuclear Strike	12 MAPs	1 per day

Militarization Levels and War Materiel Stockpiling
Since it will not always be possible to deploy aid or other GPA nations to help you when you're at war, it is expected that GPA nations will maintain a sufficient level of military force and war materiel to defend themselves - at least for long enough for aid to arrive before you become blockaded. What is considered a "sufficient level" will depend on how large your nation is - specifically, how many cities you have.

Use revised-war-resource-minimums post to figure out how many war resources you should keep on hand. Refer to the War Department's militarization recommendations to determine what units and military improvements you should have.

Ground Control, Air Control and Naval Blockades
Getting an "immense victory" in one of the theaters of war will give you control over that opponent in that theater.

Ground control prevents 1/3 of the opponents airforce from participating in battle.
Air control will make the opponent's tanks operate at half their normal effectiveness.
Naval control will enforce a blockade, preventing trade and bank activity to and from that nation.

To cancel control, one of several things must happen.

• The defending nation achieves some kind of victory in that theater of battle against the nation enforcing the control. For example, if someone has Ground Control against you, getting even a Pyrrhic ground victory against them will cancel the Ground Control, or
  
• A third nation achieves an immense victory against the nation enforcing the control in the theater it is being enforced, or
  
• The nation enforcing the control is reduced through outside action (ie. not by selling off their own units) to zero units in that theater of battle.
  

Winning a War
In order to "win" a war, you must get six "immense triumph" victories in ground attacks without your opponent getting any ground attacks of their own in that aren't "utter failure" defeats. Once you've done this, the opponent will be sent to the Beige color (where they will not be able to be declared on or declare wars without leaving Beige) and you will gain a share of both their own resources and cash on-hand and the resources and cash stored in their alliance's Bank. The war will then end.

Ground attacks are the most common type of war action. They are used to "win" the war, and to loot cash from your opponent.


Ground attacks are commonly used by raiders because the purpose of a raider's activities is to loot cash and resources from other nations and their alliance's banks. Ground attacks are the only combat action that can do either of these things. They are very important in defensive wars as well.

Soldiers
Soldiers are the basic ground combat unit. They are easy to obtain, cheap to build, cheap to maintain, and die easily. Each soldier counts as 1 strength for the purposes of determining your combat roll. If you use munitions, the soldiers receive a 75% bonus to their strength, making each 4 soldiers worth 7 points. Using munitions for your soldiers is optional on attack, but on defense they will always be used if they are available. They should always be available.

Tanks
Tanks are a ground support unit that massively enhances the strength of a ground army and, more importantly, increases its longevity. Tanks count as 40 strength for the purposes of determining your combat roll, and will always use munitions. If you do not have munitions, your tanks will not function. You should always have munitions.

Casualties
The casualties were lowered in June 2015 and the below is likely wrong, see http://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7098-6222015-war-formulas-overhaul/.
Casualties for the opposing side are determined based on your combat roll in each of the three contests built into the attack action. The higher your roll, the more damage the other side will take. Determination of casualties suffered by your opponent is independent from your opponent's roll, except for whether their roll is higher than yours or not.

This is the formula for calculating tank casualties when the attacker wins a contest:

Code:

AttTankCasualties += ((DefTankCasRand+1)/550) + ((DefSolCasRand+1)/6600)
DefTankCasualties += ((AttTankCasRand+1)/530) + ((AttSolCasRand+1)/6600)

This is the formula for calculating tank casualties when the defender wins a contest:

Code:

AttTankCasualties += ((DefTankCasRand+1)/530) + ((DefSolCasRand+1)/6600)
DefTankCasualties += ((AttTankCasRand+1)/550) + ((AttSolCasRand+1)/6600)

DefTankCasRand is the random number generated for the defender's tanks.
DefSolCasRand is the random number generated for the defender's soldiers.
AttTankCasRand is the random number generated for the attacker's tanks.
AttSolCasRand is the random number generated for the attacker's soldiers.

Loot
If you launch a ground attack, you can steal cash from your opponent. The amount of cash you steal is dependent on the amount by which your roll exceeds your opponent's roll and the amount of cash your opponent has on hand. A nation cannot lose cash if it has less than $100,000 on hand. The loot increases if you succeed on more of the opposed rolls.
You also loot manufactured resources (Gasoline, Munitions, Steel, Aluminum).

Alliance Bank Loot
The amount that attackers take from the bank is a random % between 0 and (Your Score/(Alliance Score*3)). This means that defeating smaller nations loots less from the alliance bank, and bigger nations loots more.
There's an existing hard 33% cap on that.

Ground Control
If you achieve an "immense triumph" victory in a ground attack, you will gain "ground control" over your opponent. This has no effect on your ground battles, but it prevents the opposing nation from using one third of its air force (rounded up). You will maintain ground control until your opponent launches a ground attack against you that is not an "utter failure."

Victory
Victory is the label that is currently applied to the mechanic of turning the opposing nation's color to beige, ending the war, and withdrawing cash and resources from that nation's alliance bank proportional to the nation's relative strength in its alliance. Each time you achieve an "immense triumph" while you have "ground control," your tracker goes up. You can monitor the status of your victory on the war screen by hovering over the icon to the right of the dropdown menu for selecting your action. It tells you how many more immense triumphs you need before you achieve victory.

Do not achieve Victory in a war unless instructed to do so by the Military Department.

Number of espionage operations

Don't waste espionage operations!
A nation can only be a target of espionage operations 3 times in one day in total.
Spy Assassination Operations are Capped at 25% of the Defender's Spies + 4

CIA Project

Central Intelligence Agency is a national project that allows you to do two espionage operations per day instead of one. It also increases your Spy Cap by 10, allowing you to train up to 60 spies.

Attack order

1. Assassinate Spies until you have good odds on:
   
2. Nukes
   
3. Missiles
   

Espionage performed with Extreme Causion reduces the odds/amount of of spy deaths on your side, even if the attack fails.

• A nation can have 50 spies. A nation with the CIA can have 60.
  
• A nation can run one spy operation per day; a nation with the CIA can run two.
  
• A nation can be the target of three spy operations per day. Therefore, it is critically important that all spy operations be reported in coordinating threads, so we can figure out if nations are cheating by spy-slot filling.
  

A nation with more spies is more likely to be successful than a nation with less. Therefore, nations with CIAs and 60 spies should make sure they attempt to use all their spy operations every day. Nations will fewer spies should give way to those with more spies.

The only things worth doing with spies right now are killing other spies and sabotaging nukes.

When you attempt to spy on a nation, you are given three relevant fields:

• The first is the operation type. You should always either assassinate spies or sabotage nuclear weapons.
  
• The second is the safety level. You should usually use extremely covert, as it will improve your odds.
  
• The last is the success probability. You always want your operation to be "Between 75-99%"
  

It is necessary to assassinate spies until the game informs you that the enemy has no spies to kills before attempting to sabotage nukes. Be sure to report in the coordination thread when you have received this message.

Missiles target a city and an Improvement Type.

Iron Dome Project

Iron Dome is a national project that gives you a 50% chance of shooting down enemy missiles.

.. destroy a ton of infrastructure and two improvements, as well as devastate the target city with pollution. Hitting your opponent with a nuclear weapon will automatically turn them to beige, meaning no new wars will be declarable on them for a short time 5 days/60 turns. They cost 12 Military Action Points to execute. Power plant improvements are not immune to nuclear weapons.

Vital Defense System

Vital Defense System is a national project that gives you a 20% chance of thwarting enemy nuclear attacks.

As of "resistance military update" of the game all resources are looted.