DISCUSSIONS

I wanted to write down some of my observations and tips for those interested and especially for those playing multiplayer for whom this information may prove useful in defining the winning strategy. Many of the figures given here are calculated estimates with errors of only a few procentages. All the following observations are valid only for the latest Gold version.

All procentage modifiers are multiplicative not additive. So two modifiers of -50% and another -50% to combat power won't result in -100% power but actually -75%. Interesting to not in this case that having +- modifiers is less advantageous, for example +25% and -25% won't result in 100% of the original value but 93.75%. Also having multiple + modifiers is more advantageous. two +25% modifiers result in 56.25% instead of 50%.

---

Goods

1 goods unit is enough for 40 SMPU to have 100% satisfaction or 80 SMPUs to have 50% satisfaction

There are 2 important strategies affected by this aspect. Wether or not to produce any goods at all. Not producing goods generates a 25% penalty to IPUs and another 25% if your economy nose dives. The economic penalty can be avoided if you've conquered a rich food producing territory like China and/or exporting significant ammounts of resources, although late game military costs can still force a nose dive. The standard strategy is to produce goods towards 50% satisfaction, which is historically accurate as war economies provided less consumer goods then in peace time, whilst national economies went into significant debts.

From the goods requirement we can draw some important conclusions.

If you have pre-industrial cities 30 SMPUs generate 1 ipu so allow 10 SMPUs to be free if you are aiming for 100% satisfaction or 50 SMPUs if you are aiming at 50% satisfaction. That translates into 1 goods IPU per 2.66 IPUs or 37.5% of your IPUs blocked producing goods. For industrial cities you have 1 IPU blocked per 3.2 IPU or 31.25% of your IPUs. For advanced cities it's 1 IPU per 4 IPUs total or 25% of your total IPUs. The conclusion is that if you're economy can survive without goods it is worth not producing goods unless most of your cities are advanced in which case the economic boosts justifies the relativelly insignificant loss from IPUs not advanced. However, if you will end up with an economic penalty it most likely will make sense to produce goods as in an industrial economy (as most are) a debt of over 6.25 bill will result in you having lost more IPUs by not producing goods then by producing them.

There's another side to this. Some starting strategies rely on producing no goods only at the start in order to make full use of their IPUs in the idea that the penalty is more relevant on a small economy then on a larg one. This is somewhat true if you can manage to avoid any kind of economic penalty, otherwise the penalty will work towards canceling the small bonus you receive through this strategy. The bonus is however greater if your economy is mostly pre-industrial and upgrading to industrial. In which case it makes sense to produce no goods at the start for as long as you can avoid an economic penalty.

---

Agriculture

Boost per agricultural upgrade 25% to base production and 25% increase in production cost (Cost per food unit stays the same and is the one specified in the encyclopedia)

Food requirements UMPU 0.004 food SMPU 0.008 food

1 food = 200k

0% penalty | lvl 0 ~165 UMPU = 1 food | lvl 1 132 | lvl 2 110 | lvl 3 94 | lvl 4 82.5 | ~50k cost of producing 1 food = 150k profit

25% penalty | Lvl 0 ~220 UMPU = 1 food | Lvl 1 176 | Lvl 4 110 | ~67.5k cost of producing 1 food unit = 130k profit

50% penalty | Lvl 0 ~ 330 UMPU = 1 food | Lvl 4 165 UMPU = 1 food | ~100k cost per 1 food = 100k profit

75% penalty | lvl 0 ~ 660 = 1 food | lvl 4 330 | ~200k cost per 1 food = 0 profit

There are some intermediary penalties, for example having a province with 25% cultural penalty, in which case the penalties become: 0->25%, 25%->43.75%, 50%->62.5%, 75%->81.25%. The maximum possible agricultural penalty is for a natural 75% region plus the occupied 50% penalty and the 25% culture penalty, but these regions are not really usable. The practical penalty in this case is 90.6%.

The conclusion is that if there is a market for food or if you are suffering food shortages (my case most of the time) upgrading agricultural infrastructure is good in all cases except when the penalty exceedes 75%, which only happens normally in provinces with a culture penalty that suffer from a natural 75% penalty (mountains, deserts).

---

Lastly let's take a look at two important aspects of the game: military supplies and IPUs.

IPUs

It is actually very easy to quantify the value of investing in your industry by realizing that each IPU costs a specific ammount of IPUs to build. So a preindustrial IPU which costs 5 IPU to build will pay for itself within 5 turns, an industrial IPU which costs 40 IPUs will pay for itself in 40 turns, but an advanced IPU will only pay for itself in 150 turns.

So the conclusions we can draw from here are: It allways makes sense to build preindustrial IPUs and subsequently upgrade them to industrial it takes a total of 23 turns to upgrade a 1 IPU city to a 10 IPU industrial city which is usually more then enough at the start of the game.

Most of the time it makes sense to build industrial factories.

Upgrading to advanced industry is most of the time a necessity to build better units, but we can actually determine how long it will take for you to recover your 400 IPU upgrade investment required to turn a city to advanced. Supposing that you have an economic surpluss and can therefore maintain goods output at 50% whilst staying positive that means changing a city from industrial to advanced will free up aproximately 6.25% of the IPUs of that city (see first paragraphs). That translates into 2.5 freed IPUs per turn. Considering that upgrading cost you 400 IPUs that means it will take a wooping 160 turns to get your investment back. That means investing in this only makes sense if you expect to stay out of conflict for the first 200 turns (eg the US). Upgrading your industry will also free up some people to provide an extra farming income, but not an aweful lot.

It rarely makes sense to build advanced factories. Unless you are an isolated country like the US which can expect to stay out of conflict for the first 200+ turns, investing in advanced factories will be wasted IPUs. What's more those 150 turns your IPUs are waiting to be recovered is time your IPUs could have been invested in troops to defend your homeland. This is especially relevant for hot zone countries like China, Japan, Germany, Italy, France and most of the time the USSR.

---

Military supplies

This side of the game's economy is relevant because of a simple strategy that can be applied in game. You can just not produce any supplies and use the IPUs you would have spent on them to produce more units. The direct implication is a -50% combat power penalty to all your units but you can have more of them. When analyzing the real strength of your forces under this strategy you should substract around 30% of combat power. You take 30% not 50% because you must take into account the extra hitpoints this strategy brings due to a higher number of units. The exact procentage in terms of actual power is 29.3%. This means your force will need to be 30% larger if it is to match that of an opponent not using this strategy. There are a few other factors to take into account: This strategy makes amphibious landings almost impossible, it takes away from some of the strategic bonuses you receive, it makes out of supply penalty less relevant, it creates additional financial costs, it requires larger metal resources.

Now we can determine how quickly you will be able to overcome the 50% penalty depending upon unit types. The obvious part is the number of IPUs a unit costs compared to the number of arms(IPUs) a unit requires to be maintained. Since wars are usually short it is best to compare with the inactive troop cost. Obviously the higher this ratio the longer it takes to recover your investment.

For light tanks (150 IPUs to build/2 arms to maintain) that means 75 turns to build a new light tank if you don't maintain this one. However you only need to build 41.5% of a tank for you to have the equivalent of one of your oponents (41.5% + 100% - the tank you are not maintaining). So it takes a total of 31 turns for you to match your opponent.

Since it never makes sense to build arms at the begining of the game most players will be under the 50% penalty. It takes exactly 45 turns to get from 0% supply to 100% supply. So in order to compare the two different strategies we must consider the scenario in which player A keeps on building units whilst under the penalty, player B starts investing in arms.

If the number of turns it takes for player A to build units using the free IPUs he gets from not producing arms is below the 45 turns it takes player B to get 100% supply then player A has the upper hand. If the amount of turns is greater then 45 turns then player B will have the advantage up until the turn were player A builds that extra 41.5% units. This is especially true because the supply increase is not linear, it takes only 20 turns to get to 75% supply, but it takes another 25 turns to go from 75% to 100%.

From this we can conclude that if the players were producing light tanks player A would have the advantage. Let's look at all of the useful types of units now.

Infantry 100 turns -> 42 turns -> player A wins

Heavy Tanks 125 turns -> 52 turns -> player B wins for at least the first 52 turns

Destroyers 50 turns -> 21 turns -> player A kicks ass

Basic Battleship 600 turns -> 249 turns -> B laughs histerically whilst A runs around in circles

Fleet carrier 900 turns -> 373 turns -> Player B can wait until the last turn of the game and still beat player A silly

It's easy to notice that the more expensive the unit the more valuable it is to provide military supplies. Generally speaking however it is a good idea to produce arms whilst in an actual conflict because the power increase in the first 20 turns is so great that producing units instead would be a total waste. So when you expect a conflict to arise in the next 40 or so turns it is a good idea to invest in arms unless the majority of your forces are comprised of light tanks and infantry. This however is the case in most early conflicts, and as the game progresses becomes less of a reality.

Relying on arms is especially important in countries using advanced naval forces were the penalty for not using arms is so high that it renders them incompetent against your enemies. The economic implications of not using arms also need to be considered for industrial powerhouses where unit production may put a serious burden on your economy. If using arms keeps your army smaller and more efficient it becomes the obvious option.

Whatever the case, the obvious aspect is that when you are at peace and feel safe you shouldn't be building any arms at all.