Understanding the Military (Little Upsilon)

I was tempeted to call this help topic Index II: the Military, but I quickly realized, as one commentator put it in the discussion of Index, "I'm not really interested in the score, as I am in maximizing income, and minimizing cost."

In this case, maximizing effectiveness at minimal cost, is what I hope we can get to.

I realize there is extensive discussion already in the documentation and in posts about the miltary index(es) and how spending may work, but since this last post was so much clearer and more consice, I thought I would give a go at getting to the root of what I think are the questions of most new(er) players, in this aspect of the game.

1.) Do you need to defend your first (secured) country at all? Can you sell all your weapons and fortifications and be peacefully left alone as a happy level 1.

2.) If you want to go for that "easy" second city:
- Whats the most efficient way to do it a) if its adjacent to your first, b) if its not, or c) if it's not adjacent, should you even try?

3.) Does the answer to question 1 change after you get a second country?

3.) What does "garrisoning" a place/city do, over having the weapons/armies in bases or "used in defense of the country when you are not online", and is it worthwhile?

4.) How much does it cost, really, to keep a standing army of say, a Battalion, LRD, and Bomber squad, along with the associated supply and transport units, up and running? Is it worth it, or should you mobilze when ready, and how do you tell what you will need before hand, and how long does it take to mobilize?

As someone once said, the first step in learning is knowing how much you don't know. These questions, while I hope they don't show off my newbishness too much, will help to get a discussion of what's important in starting to get from a starter country to really understanding the multiple levels of the game.

I realize that they are all over the place, and I want to say thanks in advance for any comments.

1) Yes, you have absolutely no need to defend your secured main (unless for some crazy reason, you decide to pull your main out of secured mode).

2) Not sure what you're asking here. Are you asking the easiest way to conquer a c3 if it's either adjacent to you, or not adjacent to you?

3) No, your secured main will always be safe. However, your additional countries can be attacked. In all probability, though, unless you've actually pissed someone off and they have a vendetta against you, as long as your country is below 20M people (and not hoarding trillions of dollars in assets), no one will raid your country because it's not cost effective for them (they won't get anything out of it).

4) I've not run a detailed analysis, but I don't believe the costs are any different in having your 1,000 planes in a air wing with your 1,000 jeeps in supply units, versus just keeping your 1,000 planes and 1,000 jeeps in base. Assuming your forces are active (not deactivated) and have sufficient ammunition, you can deploy your garrisons within a few game days typically. New units (air wings, battalions, etc) are immediately available for use.

Thanks for the response, and please excuse the typos and rambling thoughts of the first post.

With regards to Q. 2)

I've read you can use ground and air forces to conquer an adjacent country, but if it is not adjacent, only air power can be used (or sea power, I assume, if both countries are costal).

How does this change the cost/ease of taking the first C3? The docs suggest the taking of the first C3 is easier.

The first C3 is easier only in the sense that for your first C3 conquest, you only need to get the War Index down to 25 instead of 0. Afterwards, you'll always need to get the War Index down to 0.

Sea power does not require a coast. Your navy can move to and attack any country in the world.

A country adjacent to you can be attacked with either ground or air forces. However, you obviously have to move your ground forces around to get from target to target. Your air forces don't have such limitations. However (and only for countries adjacent to you), your air forces are significantly weakened if you do not have ground forces also in play and near the target you're trying to attack with your air forces. This weakening of the air force does NOT occur if you're attacking a country that's not adjacent to your attacking country.

If you're attacking a non-adjacent country, but are within 3000km, you can airlift ground forces to attack with (which can take quite a while) or you can airdrop special forces. Either one can be used to paint the country, significantly taking a bite in the the War Index.

As for cost, land forces and ammunition are the cheapest and are probably on par with the attack drones. Fighter planes, precision bombers, and navy fighter planes are next most expensive and are about equitable to each other. Cruise missile batteries (land and ship based) are quite expensive, but very effective in taking C3's. Don't bother with conventional missile batteries for c3's. They're very expensive for such attacks. To offset the helpfulness in being able to move your navy around (while not being able to move your land forces around at will), the naval forces, on average, use up about 50% more military personnel than their land based counter parts, and you can usually use less of them to attack with (400 versus 1000).

Thank you very much for these comments.

I noticed that the garrison question wasn't dealt with. So, the point of garrisons is to have your defensive equipment defend a particular structure in the country. Let's say that I'm attacking your capital. If your capital has a garrison, the units contained therein will fire back at my offensive military. If your capital has no garrison, nothing will fire back except air defenses (interceptors, helicopters) if any are still up.

Weapons contained in bases do not defend the country. They're just in storage. If someone attacks the base the weapons will fire back then, but they won't protect your cities and forts and such. Missile batteries must be placed in garrisons to be effective in your defense, and interceptors/helicopters must be formed into the corresponding types of wings.

Thanks Tranq, for that very important distinction.

As the check in the box where the game asks, "Do you want your weapons in stock to defend you if you are not online" might lead one to think that all weapons were used in defense automatically, when this is set, no matter where the attack occurred.

To extend this issue then. Might I assume, if you are attacking a first C3, you may only need to destroy the targets air-defenses, and not worry about the military bases when painting? Can you get to the 25% required for the first conquering without destroying the land based bases?

Never destroy a C3's bases. Kill air defense, paint the country, destroy the capital. For the first C3, that will do it. In subsequent C3s, you should then destroy cities until war index is 0.

Well, almost Tranquility, there are other schools of thought.
You may want to destroy factories, especially of the type you dont desire, before killing lots of population in the cities. Be aware C3 Factories have defensive garrisons, though minimal.

Crafty

Yes, you can also destroy factories. The reason I recommend that new players kill cities instead:
1. You have to kill more of factories than cities, resulting in more losses to the attacker and less spoils from the C3 because it uses up more ammo shooting at you.
2. Destroying factories kills population too. I must confess that I have not compiled spreadsheets to test it, but based on eyeballing it in the numerous C3s I've taken, I believe the deaths are actually higher per point of War Index dropped when killing factories as opposed to cities.
3. Destroying factories messes up the country's economy. If you're keeping the country you'll just have to rebuild them. In many cases C3s build horrible corporation types so you will want them gone, but in the cases where they have good corporation types built already, rebuilding factories wastes production plants. Further, new players may become discouraged to see their new country making losses after all the corporations have been destroyed.

Overall the difference between destroying cities and factories in C3s is not large. If you were going to just raid the C3 for $$$ and then drop it, it might be better to destroy factories instead for the sake of being done with it faster (ie: you don't have to close them all manually at a rate of 3 per month) but this thread was dealing mainly with empire-building AFAIK.

Yes T, and I wasn't correcting you, just saying when giving advice I think one should try to offer it with no prejudice to ones own way of doing things. We all know there are lots of ways of doing things here, long may it be that way.

Seasonal salutations to you and yours.

Crafty

With regards to the garrison question, is not right that garrison units waste a vast amount of ammo on target practice whereas stored weapons dont use any.

They use the same amount of ammo either way.