Economic Strategy

*Disclaimer: This is a guide based on my personal experience as a member of the CoW community, as well as a certain number of amateurly compiled spreadsheets. I personally believe everything that I write, but some of this may not match the experience of every player.*

In a recent article (Doctrine Analysis) I joked that discussing how to play economy in Call of War would require an entire other article. I then discovered that there is in fact, not a single article discussing how the economy of the game actually works - nothing! Nothing around resource management and scarcity, stock market trading, or industrialisation. So this article is to clear that up, and explain the basics of economic strategy in Call of War.

## Construction

There are three main buildings in any Call of War map that can help to increase your resource production: Industry (page outdated) and its rural province counterpart the Local Industry, Recruiting Station and Propaganda Office. Regarding these, there are normally two key components to any decision: what to build, and where to build it.

### Industry

*Main article: Industry*

Industry is the most basic form of economic development building - it increases the resource production in the province you build it in by a percentage. This percentage steadily increases throughout the five tiers of the building, starting at 10% at lvl 1 and gradually increasing up to 100% at lvl 5. Crucially, the increase increases by exactly 5% absolutely (additively, not multiplicatively) per level. This means that there is more incentive for each level of Industry - however the cost also increases. Industry primarily requires metal and oil to construct, with a small helping of rare materials, meaning that to sustainably construct Industry you should focus on building them in oil and metal producing provinces especially (see later in the article for an explanation of a typical CoW game resource scarcity curve).

As a rule, you should build Industries only in your core cities. These generally produce each of the five key resources, and since they have the largest starting production, they gain the biggest boost. This rule can be relaxed later in the game (~day 12) when it is normal to have max-level Industries. The cities you should choose to focus on are the ones that produce resources you frequently find yourself running out of - again, this will be discussed more later in the article. It may seem instinctive to try to build Industry equally across all of your core cities, but this is a mistake because you will be producing excess of some resources and not enough of others for most of the game.

### Recruiting Station

*Main article: Recruiting Station*

Recruiting Stations increase the manpower production of the province they are built in. Manpower is an interesting resource for a variety of reasons: it is needed only for unit production, but for all unit production - furthermore, it cannot be bought on the market for money. Each level of Recruiting Station increases manpower production in its province quite significantly: the increase at lvl 1 is 33%, equivalent roughly to a level 2.5 Industry in terms of increment. This rises to +100% at level 2 and + 200% at level 3, meaning a maxed-out Recruiting Station triples the manpower production of its province. In order to be constructed, Recruiting Stations require mostly food and goods, along with a little metal.

Recruiting Stations become incredibly important around day 5, when lack of manpower really begins to drain a country's ability to expand and maintain its army. Default manpower production for a whole country is around 310 per hour, and the average unit requires between 900 and 1200 manpower to be produced, meaning that at the base rate of manpower production, you can only produce a single unit every 3-4 hours, which is incredibly slow by CoW standards. For this reason, constructing Recruiting Stations quickly is vital, and ideally you should begin constructing them before manpower becomes a really scarce resource. They should be built only in core cities, until all are maxed out at which point they should be built in other core provinces that do not produce other resources. This is because provinces that produce food, metal, oil etc. have a 67% reduced manpower production, meaning that the percentage increase from Recruiting Stations has less of an absolute impact.

### Propaganda Office

*Main article: Propaganda Office*

Definitely the least-used and probably least important economic building, the Propaganda Office increases the target morale of a province by an amount, starting at 10 at lvl 1 and increasing up towards 40 at lvl 3 (I believe the current accurate lvl 2 value is 25). Since any reduction of morale below 100% decreases resource production, and below 85(?)% increases construction and production time, it is important to maintain the morale of all of your core provinces at least in order to maintain your economic capabilities. Propaganda Offices should be built especially during times of war as they are cheap, fast to produce and can counteract the negative morale effect that war possesses. The main resource required to construct them is goods, followed by food.

Propaganda Offices only really become important late-game, when it becomes quite normal to be at war with many countries simultaneously. This can incur a massive morale penalty, causing the target morale of even your core provinces to drop to 60 or so. Not only can this lead to the economic penalties described above, in the worst cases it can cause vast swaths of your colonised provinces to revolt, causing you to lose large amounts of resource-producing land. As a result, it is very important to build Propaganda Offices when needed - their construction should NOT be put off under any sub-extraordinary circumstances.

## Resource scarcity patterns

On average, every balanced nation (i.e. produces more than one unit type) in CoW goes through the same resource abundance and scarcity patterns, with a period of decline after the start of the game, but (hopefully) growth again by day 11 or 12.

The chart depicted shows the average abundance and scarcity of different resources over time. As can be seen, metal and oil are generally the first to become scarce - this is due to mass construction of Industries at the start of the game. After the construction of more industry, focused on those two materials, they begin to regain abundance. Around day 5-6, food and manpower grow very scarce as days of producing unarmored units begin to take their toll. About the same time, goods troughs as well - however, generally goods are less used and so rarely become truly scarce. However, this depends significantly on playstyle and care. As the game goes on, more expensive research requires much more rare materials; as a consequence they decline in quantity until around day 10. The sudden leap upwards after that is due to a tendency for players to overreact to this scarcity and heavily industrialise rare materials provinces. As goods lose relevance due to more advanced units requiring fewer of them, their numbers also soar.

This is relevant because by preparing specifically for scarcities as they come, you can lessen their impacts. Since goods and rare materials tend to be used less, you can reduce the amount of Industry you have to build in provinces that produce them. Metal and oil become scarce very quickly, so your first level 2 Industries should be built in core cities that produce those resources. Good food production is also vital because food is the rarest resource required to construct Recruiting Stations and Propaganda Offices, which are very important.

## Stock market

*Main article: Market*

The stock market is a really interesting concept that not a lot of games have implemented. It is a way for players (and also AI countries) to trade resources that they have an excess of for money, and in turn trade money for resources that they have a dearth of. However, in order to properly explain how to optimally use the stock market, it is first necessary to understand a quite esoteric concept - effective resource value.

### Effective resource value

Effective or relative resource value is a way of measuring how valuable a resource is, generally in terms of its scarcity and how easy it is to acquire more of it, combined with how useful it is. The equation for relative resource value is as follows:

δ
4

×
I

(
δ
r
m
i
n
(
Q
,
δ
r
)
)

{\displaystyle \frac{\delta^4 \times I}{(\delta r + min(Q,\delta r))}}

. In this equation, r represents how much of the resource you gain per hour,

δ

{\displaystyle \delta}

 is a number that is roughly equal to 10 for most resources and represents the rate of consumption, I represents the "importance" of the resource and is a quantity between 0 and 1, and Q represents the amount of the resource you currently possess. If the effective value of bought resources is greater than the effective value of the cost, then the trade is worthwhile. I is the most complicated part of this equation, because it is more subjective. For money, I is equal to exacly 0.5, for the sake of standardisation. Most resources are more important than money, so have greater values of I than 1/2. As a rule the following criteria should be used to determine I:

 Infrequently used
 Used in small quantities for several things
 Regularly used for many constructions and productions
 Used for every construction and production
 Needed for a current important construction or production

Naturally, I values of 0 and 1 are practically non-existant, so the value you end up with is likely to be somewhere in between. The table above is only a guide, and you should estimate the importance of your resources as you see fit. As long as you always use the same method to determine importance, the formula will work.

### How to use ERV in stock market trading

As mentioned above, the simple way to use Effective Resource Value while trading is to simply evaluate the ERV of the item being traded and the item being traded for. If the gain is worth more than the cost, then the trade is worthwhile. This works extremely well when you are exchanging resources for money and then money for other resources - however, when just exchanging resources for money (or vice versa), it is important to know that money is the exception with ERV and uses a

δ

{\displaystyle \delta}

 value of ~20.

Another way to use this technique is when creating trades of your own on the stock market. You can use ERV values to create a trade that seems like a good deal but is actually beneficial personally to you (just remember that 10% of money collected from a trade is lost). You can similarly use this when personally trading with another country over messages. In addition, ERV can help determine which economic buildings to construct and where. Ideally, ERV for all resources should be equal, with the greater importance of some resources offset by better production rates. If the ERV of one resource is particularly high, you should aim to construct Industries in provinces that produce that resource.

## Economic alliances

One economic technique that I rarely see used is that of economic alliances. This is the process of making agreements to trade excess resources to other nations, typically in a coalition that you belong to, in exchange for that nation's excess resources. For instance, if Britain builds most Industries in food-, rare materials- and oil-producing provinces, whilst France builds Industries in metal- and goods-producing provinces, they can trade these resouces with each other over Diplomacy chat, allowing both countries to thrive. The advantage of economic alliances is that they can, when successful, increase the overall ability of countries to not run out of resources. They can also build faith and interdependence between nations that are allied to each other, and decrease the incentive to betray. However, this very interdependence is also a liability - if one nation falls, the other is unable to continue to function as effectively. In addition, economic alliances can easily turn sour if one country develops more economically than the other, as this often leads to the relationship being one-sided, with the economically developed player possessing more power. Typically in this scenario, either the dependent nation crumbles and falls, or it uses its probably more advanced army to take over the controlling country. Overall, economic alliances are worthy of consideration, but can pose a risk if handled rashly.

## Economic war

In general, when fighting an opponent in Call of War, the chosen method is to destroy their armies first, then take over their provinces. This is generally because it is the simplest and fastest way to do so. However, such an approach also has drawbacks. For one thing, the opponent is still able to produce units during the war, which can allow them to alter the pace of battle, especially if they just spam Militia. This allows your foe to stand a fighting chance in what might have intially seemed like an inevitable victory. In order to counter this, you can aim to wage economic war. This focuses on the destruction of buildings and/or the capturing of provinces before the destruction of units, in order to limit the size of your opponent's army. This can similarly function in a defensive situation, as it allows you to throw expendable troops at them whilst making a permanent impact.

### Methods

Most economic war techniques focus on one of two ideas: capturing your enemy's resource-producing provinces, or destroying the economic buildings that they construct to improve their resource production, as well as the buildings used to in fact produce units. Both have merits and flaws, and when used effectively can bring an opponent to their knees, practically without attacking a single unit.

#### Capturing

Capturing resource-producing provinces can make it impossible for an enemy to produce new units. Doing this whilst avoiding direct confrontation typically requires a great deal of skill in flanking (which I will definitely make an article on soon). The basic way to do this is to enter the view range of an opposing army, then cut around them when they move to attack you (the loop may have to be quite large due to the movement lines in CoW). The benefits of this method are that you gain these valuable provinces before all of the buildings inside them are destroyed, saving you a lot of time and resources. In addition, because you are capturing enemy territory it can both demoralise your opponent (in-game and IRL!) and provide you with Victory Points as quickly as possible. A slightly more esoteric advantage is that you get to become the defender in your opponent's territory, and CoW fighting generally favours the defender (offensive units are more expensive and take longer to produce). One downside to capturing over destroying is the increased risk of actual battle. Typically during economic war you should aim to minimise actual fighting, especially if you are the weaker power militarily, because it slows down and damages your units, giving the opponent a chance to effectively defend their territory. In addition, some provinces will be very difficult to capture because they may contain large quantities of defensive units and/or bunkers, which may require a full invasion force to overthrow.

#### Destroying

Destroying the buildings in city provinces (and in theory also other resource-producing provinces) can both reduce the rate at which your opponent gains resources, but also make it physically impossible to actually produce any units because their unit production buildings will have been destroyed. This is typically done through the use of Artillery (and its variants), Strategic Bombers and Battleships by bombarding the provinces until all of the buildings (and ideally units) within are destroyed. This is also the best type of warfare to use Flying Bombs and Rockets in. This is generally safer than trying to capture the provinces because there is less direct confrontation, and it reduces (but does not eliminate) the threat posed by massed defensive armies. Furthermore it can be put into effect and shift targets much more quickly, because Strategic Bombers and Battleships move much faster than most (if not all) land units. However, it also completely obliterates provinces that you intend to capture, ruining an opportunity to take over pre-constructed buildings. In addition, the attacks must be maintained long enough for land units to arrive, which can be difficult if the enemy is intelligent enough to produce counter units (such as Submarines and Anti-Air) with their remaining resources.

### Comparison to conventional warfare

Economic warfare is a much more niche and underused approach to warfare than the conventional techniques described at the start of the section. The main reason for this is unclear. The obvious explanation might be that it is generally less successful, or less frequently useful, but this is not true. In fact, when fighting active players economic warfare can be much more effective than conventional warfare, because it cuts off the player's ability to restore their troops. This forces them to decide between two evils - spreading out their units (and making them more vulnerable to attack in the process) or concentrating them in a smaller region, effectively giving up land and making flanking much easier. Players also have typically less experience dealing with economic warfare, precisely because it is so rarely made use of. In contrast, they will be able to combat conventional tactics such as Artillery clumping and rushes easily, generally by making use of aircraft and/or defensive units. Many players will feel very uncomfortable, and probably defeated long before they even lose, in a situation where they have to work with a limited number of units.

However, at its core, economic warfare is less effective in situations where a land invasion is easy. This is because the enemy will counter simply by flooding their troops into your provinces and probably destroying your nation, as the resources required to produce economically dangerous units will be wasted. This makes economy-based strategies less potent than conventional fighting when the distance between the battling countries' core provinces is small. In general, if your opponent's troops can reach your core provinces in under 12 hours, economic warfare is probably not worth the risk.

--Written by Qweifomapsvoiams, editing and links by Inferno46