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:
- Wha

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

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

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 maki

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.