Below is some nuggets of insight that I gathered after several games. Feels free to add your own as well.
Just to make this abundantly clear: The list below are what you should NOT do. The comment below each item is explanation and details on what you should do.
Just to make this abundantly clear: The list below are what you should NOT do. The comment below each item is explanation and details on what you should do.
- Build outpost and/or Local Industries in every provinces:
Ah, the first thing most of us do as a new player and have no idea of the mechanics of the game. This is also a signal of whether someone's a newbie or not.
Local Industry only boost the resources of a province, not the manpower nor the money generated from that province. Resource means: supplies, electronics, components, fuel and rare materials. If a province doesn't have any resource generation, building local industries on them is a huge waste because your gain is effectively zero.
Outpost is only useful if you have troops stationed there and is waiting for an invasion. An empty province with an outpost would do nothing against invader and once the invader took over the province, the outpost will go poof. Outpost usually take 1h30 to build the first level and it doesn't have to finish building to give you the benefit. The effect of outpost would slowly increase proportionally to its HP. With that in mind, Outpost would be more suitable to build if you're reacting against an invasion. Start building as they approach a province that you have troops stationed. Also it's only worth building outpost when you're facing a lot of troops, not when you're facing 1 or 2 infantries.
War and economics go hands-in-hands and CoN is no exception. Resources spent on outpost & local industries that are not doing anything would eat into the available resources to build up your army and nation's strength. - Build army bases / unnecessary buildings in every cities (except for Arms Industries):
Same idea as #1 but more refined. Each city can only produce one unit at a time and the building cost will increase for each higher building level. So to optimize your resource use, you should specialize your cities into producing a certain type of troops instead of trying to be a jack of all trade. The common distribution is to have 2 cities with army bases to produce walking troops, 2 with airport to produce flying troops, 1 with naval base to produce swimming troops. If you have more cities or your country is land-locked, the distribution can be changed based on your preference. This is my personal preference but the building that can be spammed (lvl 1 only) to all cities at the beginning is Recruiting Office so you can spam National Guard. National Guard only need Recruiting office and later on its building effect will still help with other type of troops. After that, Arm Industries can and need to be built on all Homeland cities. - Neglect upgrading Arm Industries in your Homeland Cities:
Your Homeland cities are the economics engine for your nation. A country with no arm industry and a country with lvl 5 arm industry on each city would have a difference in resource generation at around 10k-15k resources per day. Unless you're worried about getting invaded, you should prioritize getting your arm industries to level 5 ASAP (except for cities with fuel generation, I find that a level 1 Arm industry is enough for it. If you find yourself lacking fuel, maybe you're focusing on too much unnecessary buildings or you're going full naval with tons of Cruisers late game) - Build Arm Industries in Occupied cities:
Occupied cities production is 25% that of Homeland cities, plus when you first take them over their morale is 25% which drastically reduce resource production. Arm industries only increase this by 10% per level. Not worth the resources. - Don't sell off buildings in Occupied cities:
Did you know that you can demolish building to sell them for 10% resource back? Also, did you see those lvl 1 army bases in the Occupied cities that you have no use for? Well, sell them off! Exception would be airbases with 4 HP or more or a cities with a bunch of valuable buildings that you plan to annex in the future. - Don't stack your troops (which means you SHOULD stack your troop):
Stacking troops before attacking or defending is crucial in CoN. Basically if you have a 5-infantry stack vs. 1-infantry stack, your army will attack with 5 units of power while your opponent can only respond with 1 and vice versa. So you deal 5 units of damage while the opponent deal 1 unit of damage. Meanwhile, if you attack using 5x 1-infantry stack separately, your army will attack the opponent 5 times with 1 unit of power and your opponent also respond with 5 times with 1 unit of power. So you deals 5 units of damage and your opponent also deal 5 units of damage. See the difference? In extreme cases where your stack is overwhelming enough, you can completely wipeout the opponent and only lose a minimal amount of HP (25% the damage of 1 unit)
Note: This is an oversimplification of combat, I know. I'm just focusing on the benefit of stacking. For other combat mechanics there'll be other points below. - Don't mix your troops (which means you SHOULD mix your troop, with exception in point 8):
Mixing troops helps spread out the damage. Some people refer to this as loss mitigation and should be done in majority of cases.
If you have a 5-motorized-infantry stack, each unit constitutes 20% the HP of the stack. So if your stack lose 20% the HP during combat (let's assume losing 15 HP), it'll get down to a 4-inf stack. The kicker here is that not only did you lose one unit, the damage of the stack is also reduced to that of a 4-inf stack.
If you have a 4-moto inf + 1 national guard stack, the 15 HP loss will be spread between the 4-moto inf and the 1 national guard.
What if you merge multiple injured unit and resulted in a 5-inf stack with 20% HP? well, when the next combat comes, the stack would get reduced to a 1-inf stack immediately before the combat begins. So you'd better get them home to heal up first before engaging them in another combat. - Mix troops that are not compatible (very important for navy and air force):
This is a little bit more advanced. But when mixing troops, take note of the individual troop's speed. The speed of the stack is based on the speed of the slowest unit. That's why advanced players rarely stack corvette, which moves slow in highsea and fast in coastal water, with other ships as the stack will become a turtle and risk getting hit-and-run by opponents. They also don't mix heavies like bomber with normal plane like Strike Fighters because the result of the stack is the worse of both world: the turtle speed of the bomber with the awful range of the strike fighters. Imagine mixing bombers with helicopters, now that's a marriage in hell. - Leave your homeland cities empty:
Unless the homeland city is in the smack dead middle of your territories or near the border with your coalition-mate or you're very confident that the cities won't get invaded anytime soon, you should leave at least one inf to defend against surprise invasion. Additionally, when you attack someone, they can do the same to you. So leaving all your troops away without any resistance is foolish. There have been wayyy too many cases where I get attacked by a newbie who drag all his armies away from his cities. I just group my troops up for defense and rush one national guard around to take over his cities. Never been easier. - Leave your newly occupied cities empty:
When newly occupied, the city will have 25% morale with 50% insurgency rate. You should leave at least one or, optimally, 2 moto inf stack or 1 moto inf 1 national guard stack in the city to keep potential insurgent at bay while reducing the insurgency rate of said city. Armored troop like Tank or Tank Destroyer would drastically reduce the insurgency rate as well. The exception is if the troop is low in HP, it's better to have them retreat back to base to heal up than have them standing guard and get defeated when insurgent spawn. When the morale reach 34% or more, it's safe to move your troops away for another job.
The post was edited 5 times, last by vynical ().