Iron and Blood - Sign Up Thread

The map is divided into 100 land regions or provinces, and a number of sea regions. Land regions can be occupied as part of a country, sea regions are important for naval warfare.

Capital: Your capital is important and must be defended at all cost

Core: Cores are your “central” provinces, your heartland. It is the land of your forefathers, which you commit to defending till the last drop of conscript blood. Your own cores are much less prone to revolt than other provinces. Foreign cores, on the other hand, are very restive. They will want to join their motherland, or they will demand independence.

Your capital will start as a core. However, other provinces you annex will not be cores. Some events or inventions will allow you to turn your non-core provinces into cores, or get rid of foreign cores, or claim a foreign territory as a core, so look out for those.

Note that you can only move capitals to a “core” province. If you’ve lost all your core provinces, it means you’ve run out of places to move your capital, and bad things will happen. You have been warned.

Cities: Cities are major population centers within a region and, as described, affects your ability to build units. New ones will typically appear via events.

National Focus: You can choose a National Focus region. This region will receive an added defensive bonus, will be less prone to revolts, and may develop faster economically.

Each turn there will be 2-3 events. Some of them will be good for you, some will be bad. Often you’ll be given several ways to respond to the events, each with different effects for your nation.

The types of events you get depend on your Stability (more on that later), your internal politics (more on that later) and how you roleplay your nation. So, if your nation has trade-focused policies, you’ll get more economic events; if you’re a militaristic nation, you’ll get more military-related events, and so on.

Internal Politics: The Industrial Age is one of accelerated development, and that includes the development of ideologies and ideas. At the risk of overgeneralising, there are six ideologies in the game: conservatism, liberalism, socialism, communism, nationalism and ultranationalism. Each will have a percentage “influence” its supporters have in a particular country. Each will want to see your nation develop in different directions.

The description you gave me at the start will determine which ideology is dominant in your nation. However, as the game progresses, some groups may become stronger or weaker, and at some point you may have to decide whether to enact reforms or crush the opposition.

IC is the income you receive per turn, and represents your nation’s industrial might. It is the number of factories in your country, plus any modifiers though events, stability, etc. A factory costs 3 IC to build and produces one IC per turn. IC cannot be banked.

You can donate IC to other countries. You can also loan ICs, and set your own loan conditions or interests. However, ICs sent one turn can only be used in the following turn. Also, events and blockades may affect your ability to send or receive ICs.



Stability: It’s a measure of how happy your citizens are with you. There are six categories: strong, stable, guarded, precarious, fragile, and collapsing. All nations start as “guarded”. Stability affects several things:

- Revolt risk (low stability increases revolt risk, especially in non-core provinces)
- Income (at “strong”, you can use 100% of your income, at “collapsing”, only 50%)
- Troops’ fighting ability (low stability damages morale)
- The type of events you get (low stability increases the chance of bad events)

Stability can be lowered by events and spies. Declaring war without support from your people can also lower your stability. If your stability rating is lower than “strong”, you can invest income in raising your stability. The more you invest in stability (as a percentage of your total IC) the higher the chance of your stability improving. So, if you have 10 IC total, and you spend 5 IC, there’s a 50% chance your stability will increase.

Science: IC investment in science is cumulative and is calculated as a percentage of global science investment. Each turn, there will be one or two scientific breakthroughs. The more you invest into science, relative to other countries, the more likely a breakthrough will happen in your country (these will appear near their historical dates, for example the light bulb will appear in the 1870s or 1880s). These can give you really good bonuses that last for multiple turns, or unlock new units or technologies. As with random events, what sort of breakthrough or invention you get depends on how you roleplay your nation, so a militaristic nation is likely to be the first to invent machine guns or ironclads, for example.

Espionage: “espionage efficiency” is a single number that determines how good your spies are. Once a turn, you may choose to either “investigate” (try to find out the espionage efficiency of another country) or initiate a spy attack (attempt to destabilize the country). The higher your espionage efficiency is compared to the espionage efficiency of another nation, the higher the chance of success, and the lower the chance of discovery.

Expansion: There are two ways to expand into the grey (“neutral&#8221 areas on the map:

1) – Colonial Expedition. Basically akin to attacking another nation's territory, only you fight against neutrals who won't pursue a war.
2) – Economic Dominance.Basically this involves throwing ICs to finance settlers, bribe local leaders, and establish economic dominance in a province. Each IC you spend increases the chance of a province defecting to you by 5%

Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Economic Dominance can take over a province without (much) of a fight, and the province will develop quickly. However, you may need to send in your gunboats and Gatlings against stronger states, and the invasion may cause economic damage and resentment among the locals.

Armies and Land Battles:

Armies cost 2 IC each to build and one IC to supply (more on that later). They are a theoretical force that you build to go and storm other people's countries. Armies don’t represent any specific number of troops, but rather an abstract indicator of strength and the military personnel/equipment of a nation. They are maintained in a national pool.

Armies can either attack or defend. To attack, PM me where you want to attack and how many armies you're dedicating to each battle, and which direction you are attacking from. Any armies not used in an attack will defend. If you get attacked the defenders will be automatically divided between the provinces which are attacked. Alternatively, you can also specify how many armies you want to defend each province.

When calculating battle results, first I add the strengths of the armies participating. Then I add the modifiers:
1) – Stability. Soldiers of “strong” countries fight with 100% efficiency. Each stability rating below that lowers it by 10% (so “collapsing” countries fight with 50% efficiency).
2) – Events and scientific breakthroughs.
3) – Terrain. Attacking harsh terrain favors the defenders. Defenders also get a 25% bonus if the territory is a core, and a 50% bonus if it’s the capital.
4) – Battle plan. You may get bonuses for giving me details about how you want your attack to play out, eg attacking from multiple provinces, or attacking nearby provinces to disrupt supplies, etc.
5) – Naval and, eventually, air support.
6) – Luck. Not every battle is decided by number, skill or equipment. I will use an RNG to represent the luck factor in battles, which can add between 0-25% to the strength.

Both sides will suffer casualties, depending on the final strength of each side (after modifiers). Defending armies may potentially retreat, though if the province is encircled and/or blockaded or otherwise cut off from the rest of your empire, the defeated armies can’t retreat and will be automatically destroyed.

You need to neighbor a province you wish to invade, or if you want to conduct an amphibious assault you need to have a fleet offshore of the province you wish to invade. Which brings me to:

Navies and Naval Battles Navies cost 4IC each and 2ICs to supply, and are also in national pool. In a war, you choose which sea regions you want to deploy your fleets. If there’s an enemy fleet there, then a naval battle commences. Naval battles are calculated in a similar way as land battles. Note that if you have a province bordering the sea region the battle takes place in (ie a naval base) you get a huge advantage over the opposing fleet.

Aside from allowing amphibious assaults and supporting land armies, navies can be used to “take control” of a sea province and they can decide who can pass through it. They can be used to blockade; blockaded provinces don’t produce ICs and foreign aid won’t be able to pass through a blockade.

Supplies: “Supplies” in this case refer not only to materiel but also reinforcements, organization, logistics, morale, training and leadership of your forces. Your armies and fleets require a certain amount of supplies per turn to fight at full capacity. Unlike “upkeep” in past IOTs, however, you don’t need to supply your troops, but they will fight better if fully supplied or oversupplied (ie spending more IC on supplies than the recommended minimum).

You can build armies and fleets and use them in the same turn, though you’ll need to pay for both the build cost and the supply cost in that turn.

Upgrades:
A list of upgrades to your armies and fleets will be made available, and more can be unlocked as the game progress.

A word on canals: You can build a canal through Egypt (Suez) or Central America (Panama) though they are pretty expensive, at 50 ICs each. If you want to build a canal anywhere else, PM me and I’ll consider it.