The Real Cost of War

Day 906, 09:49 • Published in South Africa USA • by Judean Princess
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Today I have decided to comment on the changing military situation in the New World. Military activity is a popular topic of conversation in eRepublik, but mostly it seems to be focused on the various manoeuvring of countries rather than the overall strategic development of the game. I’ve written in the past about power politics and this week I want to talk about the differences in capabilities between the two big alliances, and the corresponding change in tactics used. I will then go on to discuss the cost-effect of various actions, both potential and actual.

To start with I will begin by limiting my discussion to a number of countries. Firstly I will only be talking about major military powers. Secondly I will only be discussing those powers with access to the Central European theatre of war. Why is this? At the moment Central and South Eastern Europe are the major conflict zones for both alliances, and correspondingly those countries are the ones which are innovating and escalating in their battle to try and overcome the others.


Conflict borders marked in red

So to start with I will discuss the different aspects of both alliances. Collectively EDEN has more citizens, and more citizen damage than Phoenix. It can deliver more in a max-MPPs war. This doesn’t necessarily mean they always win in such a situation- expending gold can pump up Phoenix’s army power and steal a victory. Individually Hungary and Serbia are still strong enough to 1v1 against any of EDEN’s powers, though a direct attack by Poland on Hungary would be difficult for them to survive without MPPs. Serbia is probably the strongest individual nation in Phoenix, and can do over four million damage under pressure, as seen in the recent battle for Lion King against China. The other countries can do varying amounts of damage.

Mobile damage wise, EDEN is stronger than Phoenix. In the Lion King battle Croatia, Spain, Romania and Poland all did over 500k mobile damage for China. USA did over 1 million mobile damage, an incredible achievement. On the other hand no Phoenix country did over 500k damage. This is perhaps because of other wars which Phoenix was defending, however on the whole EDEN countries often deliver more damage to 1v1 wars such as that one than Phoenix ones do. This means that with the noticeable exception of Lion King Phoenix are mostly limited to their home regions, as a 1v1 war is hard for them to win.


Phoenix World Map


EDEN World Map

Looking at the map from a tactical perspective, some countries have the opportunity to expand and others don’t. South-East Europe is tied up in a cats cradle of balanced powers. Poland and Spain can expand over Germany and France with little worry other than MPP damage. Canada and the USA are virtually free from any chance of invasion, only bordering the UK and Portugal, neither of which is a serious threat. They are free to fight in Asia because of alliances with China and India. Of all the Phoenix countries, the only ones with a realistic chance of expansion are Brazil, Argentina and Indonesia. Their target countries are the soft underbelly of Asia and South Africa. However these countries have strong MPPs at their disposal. So a stalemate exists here.

At the minute both EDEN and Phoenix appear to be focused on a war of annihilation against the others superpowers, with the USA focusing on taking out high iron regions in Asia. Croatia and Romania recently invaded and almost crushed Hungary. Slovenia is still partially occupied. Bulgaria is being attacked. Croatia and Romania have powerful MPPs activated against them. Both alliances are spending incredible amounts of gold, but for what? The original regions of these countries are mostly worthless. Bulgaria has medium grain, and nothing else except thousands of angry Bulgarians. Yet the EDEN alliance is determined to conquer it. Similarly Croatia holds two medium grain regions of Slovenia for no reason. I can understand spending thousands of gold on taking high regions (to a certain extent) but this inter-country war in SE Asia is simply draining the gold of both alliances for no reason.



Finally I want to move onto cost-effectiveness of the major attacks we’ve seen of late. This is of course incredibly difficult to measure. However we must consider three things to make even a perfunctory guess. Firstly the rough cost of the attack, including the DoW (if necessary), the direct attack, all distractions/secondary attacks, and the cost of tanking. In many cases an attack costing a thousand gold requires up to nine thousand golds worth of ancillary manoeuvres and tanking.



As you can imagine this can quickly build up. A co-ordinated campaign to take a high resource region can cost thousands of gold, and without alliance support can quickly drain a countries ability to press a war. I sometimes wonder whether when generals plan wars they consider costs at all. Many times thousands of gold are spent to secure a region which is worth only fifty to sixty gold a day, and is lost a few weeks later. Not a cost-effective decision.

Secondly we must consider the value of the region, both to the current occupier and the country which hopes to take it. 100g less for the country being conquered and 50g more a day for the occupier is a relative gain of 150g for the winner. So spending 5000g taking the region is a cost-effective in the long term, as it reduces the strength of the enemy and improves ones own position. In calculating this we must also consider the income change as a percentage of the countries income. This is important because of the base spending rule. All countries have a base spending which is dependent on fixed costs such as MPPs.



If a country maintains 8 MPPs then it has a fixed monthly cost of 800g. If it has an income of 5000g a month then you’re talking roughly 1/6 of its income being diverted into MPPs alone. On top of this we must consider wage costs for army units, RM costs, any government investments and so on. This means the actual income of a 5000g a month country could be more like 3500g. However if that countries income was reduced by say 50g a day to 3500g a month, it would still have the same base costs. So losing 50g a day effectively halves the disposable income of a country. So the cost-effectiveness of the attack is much greater.

Thirdly, and finally, we must consider the longevity of the attack. If a country takes a valuable region, it is likely they will themselves come under attack at some point. A country which spends a great deal of gold securing a region must be certain that it can hold the region afterwards, at least long enough to recoup any costs of taking it.



In conclusion countries in both alliances need to rethink their strategies. Many of the wars which are supposedly meant to weaken opponents or strengthen allies in fact do the opposite, opening hostile MPPs and costing thousands of gold which won’t be reclaimed. In this age of 1 million plus walls and countries delivering millions of damage, conventional tactics need to be rethought. Both alliances are literally spending all their income every day, and all the gold flooding out of the countries isn’t being adequately replaced. Despite all of the swapping and hundreds of thousands of gold being spent in the last 2 months alliance incomes are fairly similar as proportions of one another to what they were then. So really all that gold was wasted.



I’m not saying we should have no war. I’m saying that we need to rethink war. It isn’t an end in itself, it must be a means to either secure resources or otherwise strategically position to secure resources in the future. Fighting for the sake of it is wasteful and poor strategy. Worse, it can give your opponent the fuel for a baby boom, and sow the seeds of your own destruction. We need to stop calculating the value of war based on trolling, on hatreds, and start basing it on money. We need to put the economists in charge.

On a side note: Congratulations to everyone in my new home of South Africa for their valiant effort of reclaiming Limpopo and finally reunifying South Africa! An especially big thank you to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Amun Nefer for rallying so many allies of South Africa in the wee hours of the morning. eSouth Africa owes you a great thank you Amun. 🙂 Thank you to the Country president and other ministers who helped as well.