Newsweek Stats Special: The Cost of War
Entry posted by Bob Janova
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We've now been in a global war for over two months. Just how much stuff has been destroyed?
Overall
Size of the top 80 on 16th January: 13.9k members, 375m NS, 66.0m infra, 19.3m tech, 86.4k nukes
Size of the top 80 on 23rd March: 12.8k members, 269m NS, 46.2m infra, 15.3m tech, 62.0k nukes
Bearing in mind that some alliances dropped out of the top 80 and were replaced by those with lower losses, and that some alliances outside the top 80 will have lost significant amounts of strength too, this is a conservative calculation, but one for which the figures are easily available (through my wiki page's history) to me. Obviously it also excludes unaligned nations and micro-alliances disconnected from politics, but that's what best shows how the war is affecting the alliances which are playing the political game, which are those that drive discussion and future events.
Thus, the simplistic answer is that this war has wiped out over 100 million NS – roughly equivalent to the top 13 alliances put together, and over a quarter of the politically active NS – along with a quarter of the world's infra (around 1000 infra for every nation) and fired a third of its nukes. It's also caused around 1000 nations to cease to exist.
However, for a true measure of the scale of the damage, we should also compensate for the growth that would have happened during those two months. To do that, let's look at the growth in the previous two months, as November to January were relatively peaceful (the two main incidents, Athens-Ni and Supergrievances-TPF, did not escalate to a full scale war).
The member count between November and January did not change much, so the 1000 nations lost during the conflict are almost certainly due to the war.
In November the total NS was 357m, so we'd expect roughly another 18m strength during a two month period, bringing the total actual loss up to around 120 million. This pushes the total loss nearer to 100m than 90m but doesn't greatly affect matters. Two million infra was built in those two months, so the extra two million built and lost in the war makes little difference to the scale of the damage there. And 1.3m tech was generated in those two months for top 80 alliances, and including the 1.3m expected growth in the last two months means that the loss is over 5 million tech.
So, as a rough measure, the materials lost so far by politically active alliances in this war, in total, are 120 million NS, 20 million infra and 5.3 million tech, between 25 and 30 per cent of the initial amounts.
TOP/IRON
As the two alliances ending up on the losing side of the war, with their coalition abandoning them or receiving peace, these two former giants have ended up fighting a rearguard action against a far superior force for a long time, and their losses are accordingly large. (DAWN and TORN weren't in the top 80 so I don't have stats for them. Ask UE 
.)
During the period 16th Jan-23rd March, their losses were:
TOP: 15.7m NS, 2.12m infra, 1.17m tech -> 3.9m NS, 0.32m infra, 0.48m tech
Loss: 11.6m NS (74%), 1.80m infra (85%), 0.69m tech (59%)
IRON: 13.6m NS, 2.29m infra, 0.70m tech -> 3.73m NS, 0.47m infra, 0.32m tech
Loss: 9.9m NS (73%), 1.82m infra (79%), 0.38m tech (46%)
As expected, both alliances have lost massive amounts of everything, and around three quarters of their strength.
C&G
Of the C&G alliances, only ODN, MK, Athens, GR and Vanguard have stayed on the web throughout. FoB and =LOST= were on in January and fell out; I've used in game stats from today (25th March) for them. This bloc is winning the war, so the losses are lower than on the other side, but they've still been fighting against some strong alliances, so we'd expect some serious losses here too.
Aggregated stats for the whole bloc:
Before: 35.8m NS, 6.00m infra, 1.96m tech
After: 19.1m NS, 2.84m infra, 1.26m tech
Loss: 16.7m NS (47%), 3.16m infra (53%), 0.70m tech (36%)
So despite winning the war, this bloc has lost around half its strength and infra, though it does maintain a tech advantage (only losing one third of its tech), perhaps rendering the conflict a strategic advantage in the minds of some. The biggest losses come from FoB and MK, who both lost significantly more than half of their NS; the least from =LOST=.
Polaris
As the alliance that started the whole thing, got involved on both sides and fought through the entire war, we might expect this alliance to have suffered some major losses as well. However, they've retained a large proportion of their strength and their position on the world stage (stats-wise, at least).
January: 14.4m NS, 2.47m infra, 0.76m tech
March: 8.7m NS, 1.40m infra, 0.52m tech
Loss: 5.7m NS (40%), 1.07m infra (43%), 0.24m tech (32%)
We can see that despite their actions, Polar have actually received less damage than C&G, although they have still taken a serious beating. Most of the damage to Polar will be done in the political sphere, as their actions during this war have alienated almost every other major alliance.
Other fronts
These three main points of analysis account for 43.6m of the 120m total NS loss, and 2.25m of the 5.3m total tech loss, so between half and two thirds of the damage (within the top 80) is spread out over the other fronts of the war. The Superfriends and Remnant power clusters, and C&G hangers-on, will have shared that out between themselves.
Conclusion
As has been clear since the moment FOK and the Stickmen decided to turn Polar's initial ill-judged attack into a global war, an awful lot of damage is being done for no great reason. Both TOP/IRON and C&G have lost far more, both materially and strategically, by their choices – to open that front on the one hand, and to continue it for so long on the other – if this front had been closed at the same time as the others, everyone involved would be better off. All participants are losing significant ground to the non-participants (the headliner being NPO) and to alliances that have participated in a minor or short way, like SF or parts of the ex-Hegemony. The war should never have started, and it should have ended every day for the past 60.
TOP's apparently enormous stack of technology has been largely demolished, giving the lie to the idea that tech inflation is inevitable and that a militarily elite alliance can't be brought down. Tech is not as easily destroyable as infra but nor is it impossibly slow to destroy.
The big winners are NPO, obviously, the neutral alliances, and also UPN, GATO and Legion, who all move to the area around the sanction line. And perhaps most of all, SF, who now easily hold the balance of power over a weakened C&G in the 'Supergrievances' megacluster, and have seen two other competing power clusters (Citadel and Frostbite) disappear entirely.
Note: if you want copypasta of the data feel free to PM me, though I just grabbed it from the MDP web history.
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