Startup Guide and Strategy

## Cold Conflict Basic Strats

Domestic & Production: Keep QoL above 30% to avoid rebels. The best way to do this is to keep 90%+ literacy and to stop spending any money on healthcare. Healthcare is just a waste of money, do not bother with it. From now on, we will not turn on healthcare initiatives unless we have a good reason to. The only exception is if an event reduces your QoL to below 30% and you need to bring it back up again.

Everyone should build at leas one university, as it brings two benefits. Firstly, a university reduces the cost of building schools by 1/2 ( a second one drops the price to a 1/3, third drops it to 1/4 etc...) which makes keeping literacy high even more cost effective. This alone means that at a GDP of a few thousand a university is more cost effective than a factory. Secondly, with the Freedom of Information (FoI) policy active at turn change we all get 1 x (our literacy percentage) x (number of unis in alliance) in research points. This means not only does the university benefit you, it benefits the entire alliance. You do not need to feed unis MG for either benefit. Feeding unis costs 1MG per uni and gives you an extra 4 MG per uni. This isn't cost effective and can be avoided by getting someone trusted to hold your MG at turn change.

When raising literacy, always ping an officer to turn on the literacy initiative. This halves the cost of building schools and stacks with the saving from having a university.

With this method you will save a lot of money. Your only expenditures should be literacy, food (if you don't produce enough of your own) military training, MG+ oil for weapons/planes/ships and materials/costs for factories/mines/wells.

You should focus on producing one resource and MG.

If you are Middle East that should be oil, otherwise it should be RM.

If you have a lot of land (60k+ outside of the Middle East) you should consider focusing on food production.

You should only spend Research on MG production, nothing else. The only exceptions are food producers and if you are producing a certain material on behalf of the alliance (I would have told you if you are). I appreciate this is late game, so some of you will have wasted research levels, but consider spending all of your research into MG and weigh it against your current production levels of other resources.

Military

The most important bit of your military is the army. You want it to be as large as possible without making your economy unstable. This is dependent on your number of factories and unis (or your natural GDP if you get a growth bonus, although it'll cause a crash eventually, so beware). You want to train them to elite ideally, although if you have a large army relative to your GDP then good will do.

Weapons are also important and often overlooked. You should be aligned to either US or USSR (Preferably US) and should aim to stay as close to Ghandi rep as possible. Your economic system should match your alignment. All of this will give you 8 reputation points per turn. For the first few levels of air force, it is more cost efficient to spend rep points then MG. After 5 or so air force levels, it is more efficient to use MG to build your airforce and rep points to claim free weapons.

If you are not at Vietnam war surplus yet I recommend you send your MG to someone in the alliance who is, in batches of 13. This is because they can manufacture weapons more efficiently than you can. I will happily produce weapons for anyone who sends me 13 MG, and will cover the cost of the oil used in production myself.

It is also recommended that if your army is up to a high standard and your literacy is 90%+, you spend the majority of your income on MG for weapons.

Airforce is also important. You should all aim to be 10 Airforce, at least. After 10 planes they start to ramp up in price. It is recommended that you all go *Military Junta* government type, as you have a small chance each turn of getting the option of a free plane. When you get that event, you should borrow MG, buy a plane, then claim the free one. This is especially important the higher your airforce level is. You should not use your airforce against another nation unless yours is much higher and you know you have a much higher weapons count, as the airforce formula can be unpredictable and you can risk losing a lot of MG if you lose. Your airforce is still useful firstly as a deterrent to another nations airforce being used, secondly it is factored into the land battle formula.

You shouldn't neglect your navy, but it is the least important aspect of your military, as unlike airforce + weapons, it is not factored into land battles. You should keep an eye on the nations that may pose an immediate threat to you, and keep your Navy roughly the same.

Finally, chemical weapons.

They are useful in some situations, but still not very.

I haven't bothered researching them this iteration, as they are hardly worth the effort. They should only be used once in a war as an extra way of killing 5% of enemy troops whilst lowering their manpower. They should only really be used when your rep in green.

Reputation is very important. Always try to keep it green. Never let it go red and whatever you do, do not ever go to Axis of Evil. You will get UN reset, you will lose your army and airforce and your manpower will go depleted. This means you will get declared war on by another nation and you will lose, with no chance of success. It also means you lose millions in the value of troops, training and aircraft + whatever you lose in the war.