First off it depends on where the community wants the game to go. In terms of making wars more of a one on one affair this might reduce the power of treaty blocks, but it takes away the realism to a degree, not that I expect Cyber Nations to be a perfect copy of the real world or anything. In the real world militaries seek to avoid fair fights, large, power countries don’t look at their target and go “Well we have a huge technology advantage and air superiority, let us only send in one battalion, it is more sporting that way.” Rather as a naval officer once summed it up succinctly to me as “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” The game needs to reward political accomplishments by letting dog piles occur.
In this vein it follows wars should be destructive and larger nations should be able to quickly gain dominance. We’ve seen how quickly NATO forces can walk over any organized army they desire to. Point, click, fire smart bombs, good-bye pther side. It is the guerilla stuff that causes the problems.
The game itself seems basic with how it shows the military so I’m not sure if you could create a guerilla warfare category all that easily without major alterations to the war system. Rather I would suggest that we address the unlimited manpower issue nations have. In the real world if I invade everyone, even if I win every time, sooner or later attrition will rob me if my well trained troops. I can afford to buy more assault rifles, more tanks, more jets but I just plain run out of military personnel. Then I start drafting adults, giving them quickie training and sending them off to the front. Then I run out of adults and I start passing out AK-47s to 14 year olds.
If you want to change the war system add in two modifiers, one for military effectiveness and one for the economy. As you purchase more troops to replace combat losses these modifiers become negative. They represent that you’re killing of your trained troops, the NCOs with 12 years in the service and the adults you need to work in your factories. The economic penalties for nations who declare war could be higher, representing war weariness since you’re the aggressor and getting your population killed in foreign adventurism.
I don’t have the background to propose numbers but I would structure using this:
*Military
-A small hit, to replace loses you have to relax standards a little, make your support costs go up since you need higher recruitment bonuses to lure new cannon fodder in to enlist and replace the dead or you have to outsource to Blackwater, etc.
--Sharp drop as you kill off the majority of your pre-war cadre, Elvis and your institutional exprience have left the building
---Slow drop as you draft your adults, run them through a quickie basic, toss them out, each cadre is about as effective as the previous
----Huge drop when you hit the point of trying to teach 14 year olds how to fly strike missions in an F-15 Eagle
*Economy
-Minor at first, you’re fighting with standing troops, some people might be angered by the war but you aren’t drafting your workforce.
--Steady drain as you draft your adults, pulling them from the workforce over to the military, gets worse the longer the draft goes on
---Huge drop because you’ve now reached the point of having 8 year olds build F-15 Eagles for your 14 year olds to fly
If you stay peaceful your modifiers increase, representing the efficiency boost you get from having a long term professional career military that doesn’t get killed off on a biweekly basis. Same for the fact you aren’t disrupting your workforce.
What happens is the size of the winning coalition needed to oppress the game because huge. Treaty Block A can say beat up Alliances I, II, III and IV, but by the time they get down to Alliance V their nations have no adults left to run the economy. Alliance V may be small, but due to the fact their population base has not been sucked dry they’ll win.
It sets up a world where Alliances can thumb their nose at a hegemonic power. It becomes a balance, you have some leeway because the other side won’t want to expend troops against you, but if you annoy them enough they will.
I could be totally out to sea here, but this is my two cents. Right now the game seems to be about money. Money buys me infrastructure, as I buy infrastructure people magically appear (weird, but okay). I can magically summon more trained troops from within these people. It is like we’re 50% of the way to real life, we have the economic part, but the population part doesn’t exist, so we’re missing a check. In the game money means people, large alliances and those big nations have be sitting on metric tons of money and new people will never catch them. Make all nations face the same population curve, 18 years to train their kids, followed by additional training for specialist roles, etc. Don’t make it so I can just spend money to have new pretrained adults pop up and run off to fly my F-15s. If we do that the money always wins and unless the admin devalues currency or something you can’t compensate for preexisting bank accounts.