1. State the current situation.
Currently, you either have defending troops, or deployed troops. the land and infra defensive bonus is extremely negligible in comparison to the other battle modifiers.

2. State the problem with the current situation.
When a nation is attacked, and outnumbered, it has no defense other than to turtle. (if it chooses to fight, it will lose much more than if it doesn't defend at all)

3. State how you suggest to changing it.
Add fortification as a choice for defending nations, in the same place where you deploy troops.

Have 3 settings
1) Defending
2) deployed
3) fortified

troops that are defending may either be deployed, or set to fortified.
troops that are deployed may only be undeployed back to defending.
troops that are fortified may only be undeployed back to defending.

Fortifying/unfortifying uses up your 1 deploy per day.
Having any troops in a fortified position causes a 5pt happiness penalty
having more than 40% troops in a fortified position causes a 10pt happiness penalty
Maximum of 60% troops can be in a fortified position.
you cannot fortify the day after unfortifying. (prevents people switching pre/post update to sneak in a collection and avoid penalties)

Fortified troops get a 1000% increase in battle strength (10x the strength of unfortified)

When attacked, the attacking army first battles and kills defending troops, then battles and kills fortified troops.

4. State why your suggestion is better than the current situation

This gives a decent chance to a defending nation other than turtling. Choosing to do this reduces their effectiveness of fighting an offensive ground battle, as they cannot quickly switch from fortified to deployed. Happiness penalty is added so that nations don't always have their troops fortified.

(note: both tanks and soldiers will be able to be set to fortified. Hven't thought about it, but i'd probably use the same ratio for buying tanks as setting them as fortified, so that you can't avoid happiness penalties by just fortifying tanks. i.e. 10% of your fortified soldiers is max amount of fortified tanks)

Approved for discussion

Wow, I think you may have came up with an easily balanced (I don't think it is right now, but close between the happyness penalties) third option to defending and deploying troops. I'm not sure if it would prove a deterrent to the necessity to turtle, but if the efficiency multiply was as significant as you're suggesting then people would stand a chance possibly. Question: Would you be able to fortify tanks as well as soldiers like you can deploy them?

I like this idea.

yes, I include tanks in the fortification process.

Of course numbers need to be looked at to further balance things, but I wanted to get the idea out there and i wanted to make sure it was a significant defensive modification, and i wanted to make sure it wasn't something that everybody would just run with all the time.

As far as an option other than turtling, I believe having essentially a defending army that is 10x stronger is a very viable option considering that you will have a much increased chance of winning, and obtaining dropped loot.

Yes this would defiantly help defeners in war. However what would happen to the soilders and tanks that are Fortified if attacked by CM's or spy ops?

10x more battle strength, isn't that a little extreme? Even if 6 ground attacks are performed in a row I think it would be unlikely one of them got through. Wouldn't it result in both sides of the war fortifying as many troops as possible and just bombing each other? Even when you're outnumbered 3 to 1 you can still get successful ground attacks in after a nuke, not so much if your enemies have all fortitified their troops. This IS in a way beneficial for the defender, because he would've normally lost more ground attacks than he'd have won. However, this might mean ground attacks will not be used in war anymore, as it's generally beneficial for the weaker side to fortify their troops, at which point neither side can really ground attack each other anymore.

EDIT: I'm assuming fortified troops are not all killed by a nuke? That would kinda defeat the purpose.

EDIT 2: Someone who has fortified his troops will actually have a relatively stronger offense than his enemy. Do the math, if nation A fortifies 60% of its troops, the remaining 40% will be stronger against nation B's defending military than all of nation B's troops are against nation A's fortified forces. In other words, Nation A, the "defender", gets better offensive battle odds than nation B. The result: everyone fortifies their troops.

This suggestion might work if fortified troops are only like 3 times stronger than defending/attacking troops. If the gap is too big you'll get really weird wars, Cybernations will turn into trench warfare. And as we all know, modern weapons have greatly reduced the effectiveness of fortifications.

Why would troops in fortified positions cause a happiness drop?

It's more logical that the happiness rises because the troops are protected from harm to a certain degree.

It shows promise, but the numbers are way off still.

Sorta, kinda. Also, have any of you heard of something called the 'Maginot Line'? You might want to Google that.

Yeah.. it was useless because the Germans just went around it. And when the Germans tried to use it, the allies went around it.

@ Lord Michael. spy ops and bombers imo should affect defending forces first, and if none left, affect fortified forces with the same odds

@ Viluin. 10x may be a bit extreme, but its a starting off point. It does need to be a great enough bonus to make it a better option than turtling. Nukes would still affect fortified positions just as much as regular defenders. This isn't a fallout shelter, it is just fortifications. regarding stronger offensive, maybe i didn't make it clear. the strength modifier would only apply to troops/tanks that are fortified, not every troop. and fortified troops cannot launch offensive attacks. so no, 40% of my attacking force will not be stronger. So basically, i'm fine with playing with the numbers. imo attackers should lose more often than winning against fortified troops, but a coordinated assault should be able to over power them. if 10x is to much, then we lower it.

@ andre27, mainly to discourage people from just fortifying all their troops all the time and basically being immune to a surprise attack. But if you really want me to tie it into realism, you could always say your working population gets nervous when every street they turn down as troops bunkered in behind piles of sandbags. It would make them afraid of going outside and going to work. Hense the happiness loss.

@typoninja, well, lets play with the numbers a bit.

@ chairman hal. french fortifications. whats your point. are you saying that troops in a fortified position shouldn't have increased strength? Who is stronger, a guy out in the open, or a guy in an elevated position with greatly increased protection from multiple angles?




So, is the general idea good then, just need to hammer out the numbers? or does anybody see anything wrong or something that can be improved with the actual idea and functionality?

As far as numbers, what is more in line with better gameplay. I do worry that if it is too minimal of a bonus that nobody will use it and people will continue to turtle. If anybody has the ground battle formula handy we could plug in some numbers to see what happens with varying bonus. IMO though, a 1v1 battle, the attacker should have virtually no chance of winning on the ground against a nation that is fortified, even if they are a larger nation. 2 nations should be able to crack the defender, but it should be pretty hard to do, and 3 attackers should be able to take down the defender after suffering decent losses of their own. whatever numbers reach that imo are the right numbers.

This stands out. This means the suggestion won't make much of a difference, nuclear weapons have spread so much that anyone without them is basically a non-factor in alliance wars. What's the point of fortifying your troops if they're still gonna die?



With a 10x multiplier, 40% attacking soldiers vs 100% defending soldiers gives better odds to the attackers than 100% attacking soldiers vs 60% fortified soldiers. That's what I meant. Both sides would be forced to fortify their troops otherwise both their offense and defense would be inferior to their opponent's. A "defender" would get better offensive battle odds against the "attacker" than the attacker would get against the defender.

Hate to break it to you but

4,888 Nuclear Armed Nations
26,626 current active nations.

Just because every major alliance war will probably from here on out involve nukes does not mean that every individual war will involve nuclear attackers. excluding elite alliances such as TOP, the majority of most alliances are made up by non nuclear nations. Minor alliance wars will still likely remain non nuclear as well. Using your logic, we should just dump ground attacks all together as nukes make them useless.




thats a 1v1, now run it with 3v1. 3 nations cooridinating against a nation with foritified troops should be able to break through and cause damage. If the 10x modifier is to much and prevents that, then it should be lowered. but in a 1v1 war, it should be that way. 1 nation of similar size should not be able to beat a defender with fortified troops. If they could, then we're right back to nations using the turtle defense.

The point of this suggestion is to give the defenders a way to actually defend themselves instead of using the protection feature of not having any troops.

In modern warfare fortifications can be used to channel attacking forces or as trip wires, but a determined assault by a highly mobile force backed by sufficient artillery and/or air power will quickly overcome them. Dien Bien Phu for example. Fort Eben-Emael for another. The Bar-Lev Line for another.

That said, fortifications like those on the Gustav Line in central Italy in World War II were successful for an extended period of time because they took advantage of mountainous terrain that made maneuvers by large scale mechanized forces impossible.

This game cheerfully ignores terrain features and abstracts out ground combat to a very large degree. Therefore including fortifications would be tricky at best. However, if some larger reforms to the ground combat system are being contemplated, then fortifications would be a potential include.

Unfortunately, the big guys are the ones that win wars. Anyone who doesn't even have a Manhattan project yet surely won't have a warchest big enough to fight very long.




You don't seem to understand.. With a 10x multiplier, fortifying your troops gives you a stronger offensive than your enemy unless he fortifies his troops as well. That's pretty much borked. This applies to 3vs1 situations too, those 3 people will individually have lower battle odds against the defender than the defender will have against them. A 10x multiplier is so high that anyone without it will be at a disadvantage, both offensively and defensively.

Let's say both nations have 100 soldiers. Nation A fortified 60 of its soldiers and deployed 40. Nation B has 100 soldiers defending. If A attacks B, it's 40 vs 100. If B deploys 100% and attacks A, it's effectively 100 vs 600. As a result, B must fortify its soldiers as well, or it will be at a disadvantage in defensive and offensive battles.

still doesn't nulllify this suggestion, in fact it really doesn't matter whether or not nukes affect fortified troops or not, because the current situation stays the same in regards to nukes whether this suggestion is implemented or not





again, im ok with changing it from 10x to something smaller. I've said so numerous times.

However you are forgetting one thing. 100 vs 600 is the first battle. say i lose 20% of my troops, next nation up is now 100 vs 480, same thing, next nation is 100 vs 384. update rolls around 100 vs 307, 100 vs 255, 100 vs 200. That is of course saying that the defenders losses stay stagnant at 20%, and that the attacker only has one shot at an attack per day and that they're odds would be so low after the first attack that they don't try again. Really what would happen is if you are 3v1, you are going to be hit with 12 attacks in a row, with each successive attack having more chance of beating you. Because of this, only having a 2x or 3x bonus is likely not enough, i agree 10x may be to much though.

It matters because this suggestion does not do anything to help defenders in nuclear wars.



By fortifying your troops with a 10x multiplier, your enemies will have such abysmal battle odds that you probably won't have to fortify them again for a few days. If they even dare to attack, being outnumbered 6 to 1 (worse if you factor in leftover defending troops and that most people can't deploy over 80%) as an attacker probably translates to ~10% battle odds aka they'll drop a ton of money on you. During those few days you can attack your enemies more effectively than they can attack you. The 10x multiplier would have to be lowered to ~3 for it to be balanced, otherwise it would be beneficial for the attackers to fortify their troops as well, resulting in abysmal odds for everyone. Kinda like mutually assured non-destruction.

So? This suggestion wasn't made with the intention that it would help a defender in the wake of a nuclear blast. I see zero reason to take the time to come up with a modification to solve a problem that I feel is outside the scope of why i made the suggestion. If you feel the need to add in something, then feel free to suggest modifications to the idea that will accomplish what you want. Or you can submit your own idea if you do not feel that what you are trying to accomplish can be modified into this idea.

In other words, if you want it, you suggest it. I don't, so I'm not going to.




I just ran some numbers through a slightly outdated battle calc. giving the defending nation a 5x modifier on 100% of their troops and soldiers (not just the 60% max), the odds went from the original of 80% to 44%. Yes, that is a drastic drop. BUT ITS MEANT TO BE. The defender should have an enormous advantage when fortified. A single nation, even stronger, should not beable to win against a fortified defender.

When you start stacking multiple attacks from multiple nations, the attackers will win with coordination. If 2 nations are going head to head, then yeah, its better for both of them to fortify.

Currently, when outnumbered, people turtle. The do so not to spite thier attackers, but because it is the only way to defend themselves. If you handicap this suggestion down to a 3x increase, then the suggestion becomes worthless as people will just turtle as it will still be the only way to defend themselves.

Should've been a 6x modifier.. and if both nations have roughly the same amount of troops, those odds would be much lower than 44%. 44% is the kind of chance the attacker would have if both armies are roughly the same size and the difference in tech isn't too big. The defending infra/land bonus is quite noticeable in those situations.



But if you don't cap it at 3x, the attackers, even when they outnumber their enemy, would have to fortify as well otherwise their enemy would be able to retaliate relatively successfully, possibly more successful than them. Trench warfare is a very outdated concept.

I didn't use equal numbers because most people attack when they have an advantage, so i was shooting for 80%. I used a 5x multiplier accross the board, but my battle calc is slightly outdated and I haven't bothered to fix it as I never used the thing anyway.




Again, you're thinking of a 1v1 fight.

Whats better? attacking with 40% of your troops or attacking with 80%. obviously you are going to kill more defenders if you attack with 80% right? Now your buddy goes in and does the same thing. He's gonna kill off more troops. Now you other friend comes in with his 80%, except this time he's causing damage as the defenders are all bloodied. As far as the retalitory attack from the fortified nation? Well I don't know about you, but when i attack somebody, i rebuy troops, and they don't come in deployed, they come in defending. so now this nation has to attack with only 40% of his troops to nations that likely have 80+% of their troop count at home defending.

Whenever i've fought 3v1, even against like sized attackers, i could never attack all 3 of them, usually I focused on one guy, and i did it with a max deploy. with this suggestion if i was fortified, most i could attack with is 40% instead of 80%, so I would have half of the chance i would normally if this suggestion wasn't implemented. so no, implementing this suggestion does not make the fortified nation have a better offensive. It cuts their max deploy in half. and since fortifying uses a deploy slot, they won't be able to deploy every day.

Really no matter how you say it, a fortified nations offensive is going to be less affective than it would be today without the suggestion in place. this suggestion forces nations to chose to either defend themselves better, or to try and counter a nations defenses. Yes, a nation that was unfortified would have less of a chance at defending themselves then if they fortified, but their offensive will be cut in half.

I really do not see how you can actually be coming from the position that you are? You keep implying that fortifying ones nation will make thier offensive stronger which is completly wrong. Yes, if everybody just fortifies, then nobody will be able to crack anybody, but if people choose to attack instead of fortify, then yes, they will be able to crack the enemies defenses. It forces you to make a choice.


Also, trench warfare may be an outdated concept, but fortifications are not. Take a look at any embassy in RL. those are fortified and for a reason.

Fortifying your troops with a high multiplier doesn't improve your offensive, but it makes your enemy's offensive so bad yours will actually be better than his despite you being the "defender". The ability to dig in with a high strength multiplier only works if it renders you completely unable to attack, otherwise it must be a lower multiplier. A high multiplier would result in the same as a satellites vs. missile defense situation.. the "attacker" only does 7.5 infra dmg with his satellites, the "defender" does 10 infra dmg.

And I'm pretty sure it's not hard for any army to blow up an embassy. Their fortifications are just to keep the terrorists and other troublemakers out.

Fortifications represent entrenched defences across your land and borders making them easier to defend. Pill boxes, Barbed wire, machinegun nests, trechworks.

All the things that give a stationary defender an advantage, but cannot be easily translated to attacking advantages.

What if the multiplier changed depening on how many man people are in that war? For example if its a 1v1 then the multiplier is x3 ,if 1v2 x6 ,if 1v3 x9 ,and 1v4 x12. I don't know how this would work but this way if its a 1v1 it wouldn't be an impossable war and if its a 1v4 its still possable for a defener to win.

What do other people think?

What if instead of simply selecting defense as a ground attack slot, you could create a cumulative defense over time that would also decrease income? And you wouldn't be able to collect taxes before destorying it. In other words, it'd be like a reverse blockade. You selected "Create fortifications" and then for the next 20 turns your defense strength increases by 5% per turn. Meanwhile, your income goes down by 1% (or whatever).

I don't like the penalties to income for fortifying troops. That is completely unrealistic and serves no real purpose other than to always keep your troops in the quasi-middle state. Fortifying your defenses should, if anything, make your citizens happier as their country is better defended. Only when the troop/civilian ratio becomes too great would the happiness modifier be affected, as it currently is. I would be okay with those fortified not being used for the minimum to collect without anarchying. Thus you'd still have to have the 20% always in deference.

I could also see giving a larger sufficiency penalty if too many of your troops were fortified, though the percentage would be somewhat high, like more than 40%.

As TypoNinja points out, fortified troops cannot be used to give their bonuses in attacking. They are purely defense bonuses. My concern is that every nation will simply just prefer to fortify themselves unless they are going into nuclear war in which case they will never fortify. I do know fortified troops do not have nuclear protection, but perhaps the damage to troops could be calculated to do damage to defending troops first.

I understand the concerns about income penalties and being far from realistic.

Really the only reason I included that was to prevent people from just always having everything fortified.

How about instead, we could use something thats a bit more realistic. Upkeep. Just add a multiplier to the upkeep for fortified troops. It may actually be easier to code this way.

Right now i have the following
Number of Soldiers 29,996 (184,412)
Daily Soldier Cost (Per 1 Unit) $0.38
Soldier Bill $11,248.50
Number of Tanks 500
Daily Tank Cost (Per 1 Unit) $38.00
Tank Bill $19,000.00

for a total cost of $30,248.50 out of my normal $5,847,058.50

While any increase will add up, I don't think I myself would really care about anything less than a 10x increase. It would be significant enough that during peace I wouldn't want anything fortified, and during war it wouldn't be so much that it would bury me in bills.

Is that a better solution than an income penalty?

If implemented I'd think all damage should be first applied to defending troops. (might make the FSS a better wonder if all you're left with is a portion of fortified troops)