The Economy is the most important element of a war. All wars are economic, most notably so is World War 2. Coming out of the Great Depression, all countries had frail economies, which is particularly illustrated in the historic rounds. Generally, the economy is the base of your country. Not only do you feed your armies and people, you have the ability to grow your nation because of a strong home front. In this guide, we will walk you through the basics of Economy in Call of War and establish the main ways to effectively build your nation in order to win the game! Remember, one can have the best tactics, most loyal allies, and well researched units, but without resources to back them one is dead in the water.
Call of War Economical Terms:
Resources -There are 5 resources in Call of War
Food - is consumed by your army and population as well as when units are upgraded. Barracks also consume this resource.
Goods - a resource required for building and units. Some is used by units daily.
Metal- a resource used in buildings and units
Oil - is consumed by your army as well as when units are upgraded. Naval Bases also consume this resource.
Rare Materials- A resource necessary for research and certain units.
Core Production : It is the production of resources that takes place within a core province. It is your production with modifiers or boosts. It is your economy at it's purest form.
Resource Provinces (RP) : Any province that produces resources.
Production Rate: This is the amount of a resource you produce in an hour. The bigger the number, the more resources you are producing in an hour. A negative rate will drain your resource reserves until they are zero.
Economy Boosters
Infrastructure - In real life, Infrastructure is everything from roads to bridges. They are also the most effective boost to economy, with level 3 giving a 50% increase of Core Production in that province. Also, the infrastructure gives the same boost to units speed as resource production.
Industrial Complexes - In real life and in the game; Industrial Complexes are the factories that produce units as well as manufacture resources. There are 5 levels to Industrial Complexes, each adds an extra 10% of speed and resource production.
Naval Bases - These buildings give small boosts to resource production at the cost of oil. They also boost your disembarking times at the same rate as infrastructure.
Other Mechanisms in the Economy
Money : As in the real world: Money makes the world go around. Buying resources, making deals and producing units are all essential purposed of money. Cash is essential to a victory and one can accumulate millions throughout the game.
Stock Market : The Stock Market, in real life, is an ever-changing exchange and flow of goods between countries and companies. The prices of resources in the game's Stock Market are always changing, though at the beginning of the round AIs offer a good deal for a lot of resources.
Invading : When one is short on a certain resource, one can always invade an enemy province that contains a resource. One thing to remember is captured provinces only produce resources at 25% efficiency.
Morale : Morale is very important as it affects your economy. In your core province, your economy rarely dips below 90%. The higher morale you have, the more resources you will produce. Building infrastructure or fortications can counter this problem.
Negative Production Rate Your economy is running smoothly, and your people are happy. But a small problem crops up: your production is in the red. What do you do?
There are 2 buildings that actually drain your resources : Barracks and Naval Bases. The naval bases do produce resources, but they drain oil at the same time. Luckily, these buildings can be deactivated in the setting.
Build Economy Boosters in RPs : It may take a while, but eventually your Production Rate will become Positive if you build them in high producing RPs.
Slow down the invasion : Sometimes your economy can simply not support a blitzkrieg. Consider slowing down the invasion until your economy can catch up.
Buy from the Stock Market : Doing this will create a buffer between your resource count and 0.
FOR EXTREME CASES ONLY : Suicide missions. I'm not joking. Group up some infantry, artillery, militia and food/oil hungry units and march them into a small AI country's borders and let them all die. Also start to consider producing less costly units. Another option is to try to sell them to an ally.
Timeline- There are many different methods to building a strong Economy. This is one example.
DAY 1- Your first step in a map should be to begin to build an economy, that said this is our preferred method.
Resource Purchases - You should buy some resources on the Stock Market while it's still cheap. Get the stuff you think you need to stock up on while also saving money for unit production and building Economy Boosters.
Build Barracks- I personally don't build but 1 or two barracks; one in the capital and one inland.
Build Naval Bases in resource producing coastal provinces.
Build Infrastructure in all of your main RPs. This will give you a leg up over other players.
Pick one large building to build, airports, industrial complexs or fortications,
DAY 2-4
Industrial Complex should be upgraded to level 2 at this time.
Level 2 Naval Bases and Infrastructure should be begun to be built.
Shut down all Barracks except the one in the Capitol.
Consider maybe one province where an Industrial Complex would be useful IF you have a lot of extra Rare Materials.
Day 5-8
Infrastructure should be at Level 2.
Level 3 Naval Bases and Industrial Complexes should be under construction as well as Level 2 Barracks in Capitol.
Day 8-16
Infrastructure should be at Level 3.
Industrial Complex should be at Level 3.
Day 16-24
Begin building new Industrial Complex in oil and food provinces, if they are not already being built.
I hope this guide helps, if you have comments, please leave them below.
-General Nightman, Intelligence Division
-GGBugh, Review Division
-Ependable, Support Division
-Attacker101, Support Division
General Nightman
Retired Hero "War is fought in three ways. Helping your enemy to lose, helping your allies to victory or helping yourself to win. Any way you take it, you are always helping someone."
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17 Replies
22 May 2019, 05:00
Just wanted to thank the player who helped out with writing this guide and critiquing it before it went live.
It added a lot the post, thanks.
General Nightman
Retired Hero "War is fought in three ways. Helping your enemy to lose, helping your allies to victory or helping yourself to win. Any way you take it, you are always helping someone."
I've seen it, it was part of my initial research when I joined the game.
I may produce some duplicate guides; they're not meant to upstart anybody, their just a different view.
General Nightman
Retired Hero "War is fought in three ways. Helping your enemy to lose, helping your allies to victory or helping yourself to win. Any way you take it, you are always helping someone."
7 May 2020, 13:00
How can you "sell" your units to an ally? If i remember correctly in supremacy 1914 you could, but I didn´t find anything in CoW.
"War doesn´t determine who is right. Only who is left."
7 May 2020, 13:05
Unit transfers have since been removed from the game. This is no longer possible.
7 May 2020, 23:02
Because it has been abused
27 Oct 2021, 16:29
Alright, a few questions & thoughts:
1) It seems infrastructure (not Industrial Centers) do NOT help resource production. Has this changed or am I missing something?
2) How much RSS an hour level should you be up to before moving to fight another continent?
I try to get my hourly rate up to +6-700 an hour to support my war efforts, but as my army grows, my hourly rate is obviously smaller.
Player Name: MosheDyan68 ID: 30148568 Have fun. Stay young. Follow Jesus.
27 Oct 2021, 17:24
Pilgrim2 wrote:
Alright, a few questions & thoughts:
1) It seems infrastructure (not Industrial Centers) do NOT help resource production. Has this changed or am I missing something?
2) How much RSS an hour level should you be up to before moving to fight another continent?
I try to get my hourly rate up to +6-700 an hour to support my war efforts, but as my army grows, my hourly rate is obviously smaller.
1) You are in a classic game mode guide you should go to the 1.5 guide section. All guides have been updated including this one.
2) It's not about RSS per hour but about armies. Do you have enough units to both defend your own country/continent to attack at the same time another country/continent?
Did anybody compare how much behind (or ahead?) in terms of resources would be person who was focusing on building up his economy and only the rest of resources for some troops to a person who would attack from start and focus on producing troops. Lets say the attacking one would conquer 12 cities (2 player nations and 2 AI) and building one would conquer 2 AI nations after a week.
Attacking one would lose some troops during the process.
The one playing passive would build new troops directly into 2/3 level and attacking one would build at 1 level and then upgrade to 2/3 lvl.
Obviously some approximation would be needed. I always attack early and actually wonder if i should play more passive and focus on buildings more, since they anyway give way more resources than conquered cities and upgrading troops is quite expensive compared to producing directly to higher lvl.
7 Feb 2023, 17:17
The idea is to do both. The loot gained on the conquests also helps the industry. It isn't too hard to have full industries by day 4-5 AND conquer several countries by then.
When the enemy is driven back, we have failed. When he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded. - Alexander Suvorov.
7 Feb 2023, 19:38
Sewur wrote:
Did anybody compare how much behind (or ahead?) in terms of resources would be person who was focusing on building up his economy and only the rest of resources for some troops to a person who would attack from start and focus on producing troops.
Some sort of calculations of these kinds of trade-offs would be useful (or at least interesting) given a set of assumptions. There are a lot of things that are hard to assume though. For example, if you wipe out a country earlier it might save you a lot of resources and troops in the long run because that country could have built up and required more effort etc. Still, one could come up with the most probable assumptions or even do some sort of Bayesian-like weighting given expected chances of X occurring.
7 Feb 2023, 20:37 (edited)
Fundamentally, given the likely course of events early in the game for most Call of War maps in reality, attacking inactive players with ranged units while they are offline, ideally with offensive fire moving through their cities, is the best way to increase production long term. Unless you find a lot of active players around you, the best Return On Investment is to generally identify the inactive or barely active player and take their land while they don't react. I enjoy games more when most everyone is active, however. In that case I think building up your economy is best, because the defender has a big advantage on home territory, especially with a bunker in the defending province of at least level 1.
I do suppose one corollary to this is to figure out who's army is attacking a neighbor that is far from you, and attack them while they are busy, that can come off as a bit sneaky though. Most Call of War players are shy early on and won't take such risks against known active players.
7 Feb 2023, 21:41
Absolutely. I usually go all-in on one side and leave the other side unprotected, and it is VERY rare that you get attacked from there. Still happens sometimes, of course.
When the enemy is driven back, we have failed. When he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded. - Alexander Suvorov.
7 Feb 2023, 22:10
Yeah a lot of assumptions must be made but i dont think you can keep on building industries and in the meantime produce troops. And then if you keep on producing troops you have to upgrade them later on so you lose potential resources.
Even if you conquer inactive player you have longer border to protect so you kinda have to produce more troops.
It's nice to get some resources for conquering cities but kinda disappointing to get almost nothing when player you attack spent all of his resources.
Obviously if there is inactive player and you have artillery it would be a waste to not attack but what about attacking with melee troops? For example is it worth to roll through inactive player with big stack of yours?
Even some edge cases would be nice to test when you just build industries and dont move at all for some days and then wake up to build an army. How far will you fall behind with that strategy? I guess i should test this on my own.
8 Feb 2023, 01:46
The most conservative strategy is to build a lot of artillery and a few AC early on. This mostly uses food and goods, and a little bit of metal. For manpower, you build some RC, which also costs food and goods.
This leaves most of the metal, oil, and rares to pump your industry. Especially metal, oil, and rare industry to pump even MORE industry, but urban and rural.
So yes, you can do both. But not if you spend industrial resources on research or factories. No tanks. No planes. Artillery based armies are best for killing inactives anyway.
8 Feb 2023, 09:48
Yes and no. Artillery-based strategy takes less casualties of course, but it also takes more time. I find smashing through dispersed enemies with melee stacks is so much faster, and even slightly higher casualties is worth the time gain.
When the enemy is driven back, we have failed. When he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded. - Alexander Suvorov.
8 Feb 2023, 21:26
For key cities like capitals or a rival threat neighbor I will go in with an infantry stack. Generally artillery is the answer though. The process doesn’t take that long if you have enough artillery and shoot and scoot closer between shoots. Hills and mountains make it 50-70% faster as well.
For sleeping and or work, you can conquer with offensive fire artillery as well against inactives. A melee stack might run into a stack of enemy’s and that is costly
I also try to save a majority of my Comintern or pan Asian infantry and keep fresh for upgrading on day 3 or day 6 if I can as well
