NationStates Jolt Archive

i would like to know how to build a military and then invade/annex other countries. how does a player go on about these things?

Read or skim the three stickied topics in the top of this forum

i would like to know how to build a military and then invade/annex other countries. how does a player go on about these things?

War? there hasn't been a war of any kind on II since early march of 06. This is a nice big happy forum where we have total elemitnated warfare, the need for militaries, and police.

War? there hasn't been a war of any kind on II since early march of 06. This is a nice big happy forum where we have total elemitnated warfare, the need for militaries, and police.

We're just a bunch of hippies here!

Read or skim the three stickied topics in the top of this forum

This.

In short, everything on the NationStates forums is role play based. Which means, you make it all up within the bounds of reason.

We're just a bunch of hippies here!

Yep.

I started a guide to it, but got bored due to lack of acknowledgement/length.

To Mer des Ennuis: Maybe start a new thread for this tutorial? Or we could make a united one.

i would like to know how to build a military and then invade/annex other countries. how does a player go on about these things?
First of all, annexation in NS is, generally, not possible.
Invasion is. However, it's best to play at least a month in non-military threads, and look at war threads in the meantime. You should first learn a bit about the world.

To build up a military, first check your military budget using the NSTracker (http://nstracker.retrogade.com/index.php). Note that it isn't a definite measure of military power - budgets above 10% GDP don't bring linear increase, and above 30% hardly do anything extra at all, since they have to absorb other budgets and do their job. But, if between 3-15%, it's a good measure of the power.

First, decide on your military organization. What branch is your priority - Navy, Army or Air Force? Do you prefer a lot of low-quality soldiers or a small highly trained force? The normal amount of army is between 0.2 and 2% of the population. Japan, China and India have <0.2%, USA 0.5%, Russia 0.7%, Israel 2.4%, North Korea 5% - the maximum a country can afford. Check the list of RL countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_active_troops) for the reference. The less soldiers percentage and the more money per soldier, the better their dedication and training are and the better their equipment is maintained and used. Some large NS nations opt to have very small militaries, well below 0.1% of their population, while some go above 1%. Of course, high numbers require your country to have low freedoms level.

Then, proceed with the equipment. The maximum amount of equipment countries can maintain is about their annular military budget, so, if it's in the range, take it as the guideline of total equipment cost. Note that you might want to leave some for future expansion.

There are two options: first, you can assume your nation followed the way of some real-life country, of course assuming you have comparable population and economic power. If you're a nation above 200-250 million and with GDP over 8-10 trillion, you can have full access to either Soviet, American, European or Asian equipment, which suits you best. If you're well below, probably you could only take the role of a smaller one - although their equipment isn't much worse. If you're well above, like 500+ million and 20+ trillion GDP, you probably could mix the equipment, although that will hurt your logistics later.
Then you just select which equipment you use, decide on the specifics, and base your military on the military of some country, adjusting as needed. Doing full calculation of the equipment is extremely long and tedious, since each branch has over 50 kinds of just vehicles/vessels, not to count smaller things. Just upscale using real-life ratios, like 12 CVBG per 300 million people. With higher military budget you could get more, but remember it is less than linear, so double budget could give, say, 20 CVBG.

The second option is particularly better for small countries or ones with limited military industry: you can purchase equipment from others. Note that this takes a certain extent of knowledge, since people often give absurd prices or specs even for RL equipment, let alone custom designs. An example of realistic storefront would be The Soviet Storefront; there are completely unrealistic ones, like Phoenix. If you want to play in the Modern Tech timeline, stay with real-life equipment or realistic storefronts.
An alternate way would be creating a thread listing what you need and waiting for bidders. Before creating it, make sure you have enough posts to be noticed and enough money to attract the sellers. This approach may also attract contractors who don't normally operate storefronts for just anyone, but will trade with good players.
When purchasing, keep in mind that you have only a limited amount of spending; and, since you can't buy everything at storefronts, keep some budget for the rest. Purchase should complement domestic production, not replace.

Once you have both the organization and the equipment, finalize it and write down in a thread or on NSWiki. Should you go to war now? Probably no, as going to war just for the sake of war might make you enemies stronger than the attacked nation. But, at least, the preparation is over.
Keep in mind that you don't really have to do all of this, and, if your actions seem not excessive, you can just make a few decisions on the basic layout. The deeper the involvement, the more detail are required.

i would like to know how to build a military and then invade/annex other countries. how does a player go on about these things?

Automagfreek's Ultimate Guide to War. (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8855692&postcount=4)

Eh, i need to find my good ole' army "how to design a corps/division" manual before I can hope to finish it.

We're just a bunch of hippies here!

Speak for yourself