Foreign aid as it stands has 3 major uses;
1)tech deals
2)reparations
3)internal alliance aid

but, when it comes to war, you can send up to only.... 2k soldiers. You cant even defend a hill let a lone a nation with 2k soldiers. No matter the level of infra you're at.

My suggestion? Allow up to 20% of the receiving nation's existing troop level to be aided (base of 2,000), and allow tanks to be aided (at most 30% of the sending soldier count, base of 600)

Why is this better? Because nations are not restricted by a sole hard cap number, and this scales up with infrastructure while not allowing major sums of troops to be aided to the lower ranks. Plus it would allow tanks to be transferable which would give more firepower then just pee shooters.

thoughts?

Approved for discussion.

Make soldier aid actually worth using? Sounds good to me.

Receiving six aid slots of 20% of existing soldiers would be ridiculous without a cap.

example -
Aid Slot 1: 80,000 + 16,000 = 96,000.
Aid Slot 2: 96,000 + 19,200 = 115,200.
Aid Slot 3: 115,200 + 23,040 = 138,240.
Aid Slot 4: 138,240 + 27,648 = 165,888.
Aid Slot 5: 165,888 + 33,178 = 199,066.
Aid Slot 6: 199,066 + 39,813 = 238,879.


edit: I had a suggestion very similar to this, but it didn't get approved for discussion; glad to know it probably wasn't this aspect of the suggestion but the other that wasn't to be discussed. I like this idea, it just needs to be done right.

Actually, I'm not really sure why that's ridiculous. Admittedly 238k is more than double 96k but we already have discrepancies of similar size based on declaration ranges and military Improvement/Wonder/Trade imbalances. If 96k is the normal maximum troop levels, they aren't going to be able to replace any of the 238k soldiers, either, so it's a temporary advantage unless very well conserved, which seems unlikely especially in nuclear war.

I can see this as potentially providing military advantages when well utilized by a coordinated group but nothing overwhelming considering you need to use aid slots which means you can't max out more than half your alliance at any given moment no matter what you do and accomplishing that will tie up all of your alliance's aid slots for 10 days which is a major thing during war time.

If you're that worried about it, you could always do 10%:

1: 100,000 + 10,000 = 110,000
2: 110,000 + 11,000 = 121,000
3: 121,000 + 12,100 = 133,100
4: 133,100 + 13,310 = 146,410
5: 146,410 + 14,641 = 161,051
6: 161,051 + 16,105 = 177,156

That's a total maximum potential of just over +75% troops if used in all slots consecutively. You could also do 20% of maximum soldier count based on civilian population (i.e. use 16% of the civilian pop as the maximum troop aid). That would be +120% in potential troop aid, but would not be subject to scaling abuse by laddering the aid and would still require all six slots be used.

I quite like this idea as it makes troop aid something that could be used tactically or just usefully for that matter. Right now the current cap makes it a but of a pointless feature so it's never used.

Really though all that's going to happen is that the bigger nations will aid all of the smaller nations as many soldiers as they can in war-time and assuming this happens on both sides it will still be more or less redundant...

How about if the aiding nations soldier aid is deducted from their total? So if I can have 50K soldiers, I could send 25K in aid but then I would only be able to have 50K until the were sent home or dead.

Otherwise it's just giving someone an advantage with no cost and the advantage is only until someone sends my opponents troops. If someone can't afford to max their soldiers, it's probably too late anyway, as they are inexpensive. So this system would be used to boost a nation at war beyond their standard capability, but it should leave the sender at risk or it would just become the standard way of performing every ground battle.

Of course at that level, then your forgetting about nuclear warfare and unless someone is REALLY lucky, they will get hit and that same nation wont be able to get to his soldier advantage for another 10 days.

On the more non-nuclear levels, you can expect at most roughly 38k soldiers from 15k, and even then there are ways to still defeat a nation with excess of soldiers (update blitz, gangup, turtle, navy,etc...) Not to mention that nation can also recieve aid from his/her own alliance.

Sounds good. The 2,000 soldier limit makes it just a slot wasted as long as you have any real about a infra.

You only have 6 aid slots. You can't perform every Ground Battle with an injection of soldiers. Besides, you can already send $3 mil and boost smaller nations way up. This just provides a different way to send aid that isn't completely useless like it is now.

nation with 30k citizens running around with 300k troops (over a few aid cycles), effectiveness of said troops ranging way over 1mil (probably closer to 2mil). Fighting other nations with 30k citizens that don't have the incoming troop aid (lone nation, wrong side of curbstomp, aidslots maxed out from tech deals, whatever the reason). their max troop level would be somewhere around 24000, say 144000 effective. Seems like instant defeat alert to me.

I vote no, and also, aiding troops right now with a cap of 2k troops is actually effective for a lot of nations. take same nation with 30k citizens and a 24k troop count. now add 10k troops to that (5 aid slots). Thats a decent advantage against a similarly sized nation.

I vote no to this suggestion. 2k troops IS actually enough for the majority of nations.

So you can't accept troops if you currently have more than 80% of your citizen count in soldiers already. Problem solved. As soon as you've accepted one package that puts you over, you can't accept any more.

Actually most people receive more benefit from having the aid slots filled with $3 mill per slot than just some extra troops. I would like to see what can be aided liberalized considerably however to include aircraft and ships (nation must first have a harbor of course). Yes, I recognize that you may have raiding alliances that use their biggest nation as an aircraft factory, spitting out level 9 fighters & bombers to nations that are otherwise unable to have such aircraft because of tech and infra restrictions, but there are ways to limit that sort of aiding as well.

My point is, nations in RL routinely aid cash, tech, small arms, tanks, aircraft, ships, even cruise missiles to each other, so it would make sense to allow them to do the same here in some fashion.

With that change i would support this.



You know, it isn't an either or thing, you can aid both cash and troops. Whenever I give aid to some low nation that got rogued I always send troops with it because pushing them over their 80% can be a big help



I'd support the RL reason of aiding tanks/aircraft/ships/cruise missiles when the RL time to build gets implemented (i.e. no instant solider/tanks/ships/nukes/etc). Until then, i'd be against aiding other forms of military.

I would love to see this. I don't see any reason why every aspect of our military and economic arsenals shouldn't be able to be aided to one degree or another. The issue is what the caps should be on various things since we are currently allowed to send multiple items in aid at once. $3 million plus 50 tech plus 2k soldiers might not be much, but $3 million plus 50 tech plus 2k soldiers plus 200 tanks plus 50 aircraft plus 5 ships would almost be too much.

Erm, no. Lemme help you on your math bud

30k citizens = at most 24,000 troops.
Assuming that nation doesnt have the DRA, the highest possible troop count he can get is 60k.

Now, lets just assume for kicks and giggles that it is a 1v1 fight. No nukes, no navy, and the guy under attack is at a tech disadvantage. There are STILL ways to win that fight. You just need to know how to attack right. Though then again, what kind of alliance wouldn't even send soldiers to one of their members whose at a disadvantage

And honestly, how useful is 10k soldiers to miller eh? There needs to be a way for military aid to scale with infra.

Alternatively, there could be what delta suggested and put it down to 10%, but those with a FAC can receive an extra 10%.

With the current system there are tiny nations for which the 2k cap is already too much (according to your kind of scenario), there are small nations for which the 2k cap is OK, mid-sized nations for which the 2k cap makes the soldier aid almost useless, and big and huge nations for which the 2k cap makes the idea of sending soldiers as aid completely absurd and utterly ridiculous.

The OP is about having a cap that varies with the size of both the nations involved; that not only makes sense, but it also fits better even according to your own kind of scenario.
The issue that needs to be adjusted is "only" the percentage (20% vs 10% etc).

Now, would this aid automatically get added to the soldier count? Would that mean they could get 100% of their population in soldiers?

I still think it would be somewhat worthless to send 20% soldiers every 10 days. They're basically a small aid to one battle which, granted could great, but in the upper nations, I doubt that one battle will do more than anarchy someone, which, if you know what you're doing, will happen anyways.

Personally, I'd be in favor of splitting financial and military aid, and make the military aid (probably more like 10-15% cap, maybe 1 plane too ?) every 5 days. That way the aid is able to be used effectively.

currently you can gain 12k soldiers every 10 days (6 aid slots * 2k troops). You do it long enough, and yeah, you can get 300k soldiers. This suggestion as worded would make it so that you get them much much faster. However somebody mentioned a quick fix for that. dont allow somebody to accept troops if they are already over 80% of troops.

Well sure you COULD in theory gain 300k soldiers, but if you were to reach that amount of troops for the amount of time it takes, you'll be collecting taxes with a decrease in happiness and less citizens (in case if you didnt know, you get less citizens the more soldiers you have). Plus having that amount of troops would skyrocket you in NS (somewhere between +8k-10k on soldiers alone) which means you'd be in range of those with nukes, and like I said earlier it just takes one, and thats assuming your not in a active war.

This still won't be that useful since the main time aiding soldiers to larger nations is useful is if they are in bill lock and cannot buy them themselves.

And 2000 soldiers currently is pretty useful to really small nations anyways.

Well they can aid both.

I think increasing the cap is fine, but it should be based on their maximum capacity, possibly rounded up to the nearest thousand. Once they are at that level any new FA with soliders attached cannot be accepted until it would not go over that level. This would not allow big nations to sink huge forces into small nations.

I do think though other military should be possible to move like this.

I like the Aid Idea...... but it would give nations aircrafts and ships they normally wouldn't have

A good way to still give them ships and aircrafts would be to put a extra tax on the ships in aircrafts to limit how much they will want to have aided to them


Something low that smaller nations won't want to pay allot of, but still will pay for some of them


I say about a 10% tax on the upkeep of the ship or aircraft this will make smaller nations prefer only 5-15 ships or aircrafts they can't normally have


This tax won't include ships and aircrafts you can buy





.

An idea to go in conjunction with this one to make the excess soldiers more useful:


If you are nuked while having >80% population as troops, the excess is not affected by the nuke.

This means if you have 100,000 population. You buy 80,000 soldiers. From two aid packages you gain 32,000 extra soldiers. You now have 112,000 soldiers.

You get nuked, normally this wipes out all defending soldiers. However this extra 32,000 is beyond your normal capacity so isn't staying inside the city where the nuke falls, and thus is unaffected. So after the nuke hits you still have 32,000 troops defending.


Combine this with an FSS where you save 50% of your defending soldiers. This means after that nuke falls you have 72,000 troops still defending, or almost your maximum full force, making this a viable defense for a day or two during a nuclear war.



Just a thought.


(btw I also agree with separating military and financial aid, to ensure that both can be used to the fullest extent. Alternatively the slotless aid I suggested ages ago would handle this perfectly)

I like the basic idea here, but think 20% is too high.

I would suggest changing the soldier aid cap to 10% of the target nation's citizens.

I agree, I think tieing the soldier cap to a % of the target nation's citizens rather than its soldier count is the only real way to make an easy fix to the system that doesn't involve changing the aid slot system drastically, something that's unlikely to ever be bothered with.

edit: What the actual percentage of citizens it should be, though, I'm not sure of. Between 10% and 20% probably.

I'd go with 15% is best. This way even if you have 6 aid slots you can't get above 100% soliders without spending money yourself. I also say you shouldn't be able to accept the aid if it'll put you above a certain % threshold.

why not make it say i have 2k infra i would be able to buy like 15k troops right something like that anyway why not only be allowed to send the max soldiers that they can have meaning you couldnt send soldiers if they have max troops but would only be allowed to send the right amount to max there troops if that makes any sence

The problem with that is that aid slots take 10 days to expire, so sending any amount that only temporary maxes a nation out will just be useless by the next day. Unless we can have more than 5/6 aid slots, aid slots expire sooner, OR we can aid truly ridiculous amounts of troops (or other military units), then the only functional functions for the aid system will be tech and money.

yeah but if you do have 5/6 slots then you can attack as hard as you want and youll be getting max soldiers the next day free + you can buy more soldiers daily if needed + if your fighting more than 2 people that will help a lot

Sounds good to me.

I support this.