I've been thinking a lot lately about how people seem to misunderstand the heart of the game, the economy. The economy touches every aspect of the game. In my opinion, economy decides games more than units or tactics. I'd like to take a minute to explain the theory behind economic play in Call of War and how that theory should guide your strategy and tactics.
First, you need resources to build units and structures and to research things. It should be obvious how important this is to victory, but I'll say it anyway. Resources are the most important thing to your country, without them you are useless. Of course you need an army to defend your wealth, but resources come first. You need resources to build units to defend your resource generation engine, your economy.
Second, destroying armies is meaningless if your opponent still has a robust economy. They will return and in greater numbers.
Third, when two nations or coalitions are at war with each other, the winner will usually be the nation/coalition with the larger economic output, all other things being equal. They are more able to replace losses and continue the fight longer and are less likely to lose valuable territory.
In the long term, the larger economy will have more units and higher tech levels. Of course it is possible through superior play to even a deficit and I'm sure there are plenty of stories of it happening. However, you have to do more economic damage to the opponent over time than the economic deficit you are at. That's it, that's the game.
Here's how to use that understanding to your benefit to win wars:
1. Always aim to do more economic damage to your opponent in every engagement. This is a hard, fast rule. You don't have to do the math. Seek favorable engagement, avoid unfavorable engagement. If I can shell your huge artillery force with battleships, I take no return damage. Artillery against forces without artillery, again no return damage. Air strikes against forces with limited air defense are another example. Sometimes engaging a force with an overwhelmingly superior force is a favorable exchange. In general, using appropriate counters should result in favorable economic exchanges. Also in general, regular infantry/AA/AT are cheap units that tend to result in favorable exchanges. This is only situation though, attacking with AA is stupid, but they do a ton of damage to planes which are expensive to replace.
2. Build tons of industry or expand like crazy. These should be done in some combination. The expansion type player still benefits from building their five core double provinces up early. For an economic oriented player, you can build city industry to level 5 and local industry to level 3. It takes a good number of days before you hit a limit here and you can grow your economy very well without angering every AI country. Take capitals whenever possible and do it toward the end of the day to lock in territory gains and improve the economy of recently claimed land.
Here's an example, I'm on day 7 with the US in historic world war, I have the Japanese mainland but it's not contributing much to my economy yet. Almost all of this is homegrown:
3. Attempt to occupy the enemy's core. You don't need to take all the non-core territory your opponent has right away. It isn't contributing much to their economy. Your objective should be to take and hold their core until they can be completely eliminated. Usually people defend their core territory poorly if they're attempting to rapidly expand. Their armies are usually off on adventures toward the fringe of their territory. Some players will even expect you to fight them for non-core territory first for some reason because it's closer to you; don't.
23 Replies
21 Apr 2021, 21:38
After further review, I think because the total resources is equal to the money for all levels and the generation rates are the same for all provinces, the ROI is equivalent for money and resources. ROI, however, will vary based on the output of the province, which can also vary based on morale. If we assume a 1:1 resource ratio, provincial morale is 100 and use 6000 resource production (core, double-resource, urban), we get the following days to breakeven:
Urban Provinces
Level 1
5.33
Level 2
4.72
Level 3
4.75
Level 4
5.07
Level 5
5.61
Using the same assumptions above, but use a 1500 resource rural province and the appropriate rates we get:
Local Industry
Level 1
6.10
Level 2
4.36
Level 3
3.80
There are some rural provinces that have other rates, Indianapolis for example in HWW is only 750. Breakeven takes a fair bit longer for those rural provinces:
Local Industry
Level 1
12.19
Level 2
8.72
Level 3
7.60
Breakeven for a non-core double is discouragingly long (1500 assumed resource rate
Urban Provinces
Level 1
21.33
Level 2
18.89
Level 3
19.00
Level 4
20.27
Level 5
22.44
Non-core rural provinces aren't worth bothering with at 1500 normal base (375 actual for non-core) and would be worse for the 750 base provinces:
Local Industry
Level 1
24.38
Level 2
17.44
Level 3
15.20
The big takeaways are:
1. Don't bother with non-core unless you plan to play for another month.
2. Local industry level 3 has the shortest ROI for 1500 base provinces and level 2 is shorter than the average ROI for urban industry. This indicates to me local industry should be an early priority to get to level 3. Particularly for oil, metal, rare materials.
3. Diminishing returns start to kick in after level 3. It takes longer to see a return on the resources invested versus previous levels.
22 Apr 2021, 14:00
I will probably reorganize this at some point to make a true guide, but I'll go ahead and touch on the rudimentary points that were raised earlier.
Provinces are of two types, urban and rural. Urban provinces are cities and they are worth victory points. Urban provinces generally produce more resources than rural provinces and are where unit production structures are constructed. Each province may produce a resource, in addition to the money and manpower all provinces produce. The amount of resource, manpower, and money produced are based on what I will call the "base province production value". This will vary, some urban provinces only have a "single resource" while some have a "double resource". As you would expect, doubles produce twice as much as single resource provinces.
The amount that a province actually contributes to your economy is modified by morale. Let's take a look at an example province in the UK on Clash of Nations:
The morale of this province is 70%, meaning the output is reduced by 30%. I can calculate the base value, what the province would produce if the morale was 100 by multiplying the current production by 1.3. I get 6016.4 which seems a little off, I know the true value is 6000 at 100 morale. Perhaps there's some rounding going on here.
Morale is extremely important to your economy. As you can see, each province's output is reduced when morale is below 100%. This can have a massive impact when your country is large, 30% of a huge economy is a lot of resources. Losing your capital will reduce morale in all provinces by 20%. Obviously you want to avoid that. Claiming an enemy capital increases morale in all provinces by 10%. Obviously you want to do that as often as possible.
When morale is below 31% a province may rebel, resulting in a loss of control and resetting morale to 25% if the province is reclaimed. You can avoid this by taking an enemy capital near the end of the day to raise morale to 35% in all newly captured territory. You can also leave garrison troops in low morale provinces to reduce the chance of rebellion. If the force is strong enough, it will prevent rebellions completely. Check the morale info button for details.
Propaganda Offices are an important tool if morale management. If you are unable to take capitals, propaganda offices are the only other option to increase provincial morale. Propaganda offices increase morale generation by 10/20/40 depending on the level. You can review the factors that effect morale generation by clicking the morale info button. Sum the bonuses and penalties to morale, if you have more penalties than bonuses your morale threshold will be reduced. Let's say for example you have an expansion penalty of 4 but a neighbor bonus of 4. In this case morale will be stable at 100 and no office is needed until more expansion takes place.
22 Apr 2021, 15:30
Great stuff! I'll close this thread for now and I will delete it once you have published your definitive guide. Good job!
