I kind of hinted at it before but I'll say it now I will not vote for any plan that does not include at least one Apollo factory, shipyard and shell plants. For several turns now the military has been saying there overstretched and even in game text has been saying they've been pushed to there absolute limit. We can not continue to go forward with our current operations without giving the military several turns(at a minimum) of attention because they have too many plates in the air and not enough hands to catch them all if we do not we only court disaster.

Out of all of our military branches only two are at decent and the rest have been left to the wayside we can't continue that anymore at the very least we need to get all branches up to decent as the minimum from here on out. Or else we'll face worse and worse problems from NOD as we fail to maintain a parity with them, which mind you we need to catch up to them on since we've neglected the military for so long.

So yeah I'd say our biggest issue now is our military and we need to focus on it and any plan that doesn't do so won't have my vote. And it's not something that will be fixed by a turn or two of factories this will most likely last well into the next plan if we truly want to both catch up on the military side of things and then gain an edge against NOD come the next war.
 
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There is a pretty major deficit in military effectiveness. The military is expanding into an entity that is not over-extended. They've lost air superiority. Like holy shit that's bad. Even though the military isn't saying no, I don't think they want to do that stuff. And yeah we have to listen to the military. Both the air force and navy have received very little spending in the last 5 years. Even ground forces have more needs than just artillery shells. Only ZOCOM is in good shape, and even that

Also I don't understand the obsession with income. I'm getting reminded of the tale of King Midas. Yes, we can make income go up a lot but we have other concerns. Like keeping the blue zones where all of our really important industry intact. So no spending on non-income generating Tiberium dice is not a waste of the dice, if you consider the fact that we have to spend that income.
The Military will never be satisfied with anything but having sufficient levels of everything, which is not necessary for operational purposes, and certainly never happens IRL either. When the military is too overstretched, they'll tell you by making the options unable to even be picked, such as the Red Zone mines. So until that happens, any available option is still viable to be picked and voted for, or else the military wouldn't have approved of giving such an option to let Granger choose from to begin with.

As for obsession, the reason why income is still needed is obvious, as in there is still plenty more that needs it to be spent on. Until the turn when there is literally nowhere to spend the income to, and there is no need to stockpile any for the start of the next 4-year plan, then there will always be a need to gain more income. Thus it's not an obsession but a Need, since income is what enables the capability to even choose every other option, including the options to help the Blue zones.
 
The Military will never be satisfied with anything but having sufficient levels of everything, which is not necessary for operational purposes, and certainly never happens IRL either. When the military is too overstretched, they'll tell you by making the options unable to even be picked, such as the Red Zone mines. So until that happens, any available option is still viable to be picked and voted for, or else the military wouldn't have approved of giving such an option to let Granger choose from to begin with.

As for obsession, the reason why income is still needed is obvious, as in there is still plenty more that needs it to be spent on. Until the turn when there is literally nowhere to spend the income to, and there is no need to stockpile any for the start of the next 4-year plan, then there will always be a need to gain more income. Thus it's not an obsession but a Need, since income is what enables the capability to even choose every other option, including the options to help the Blue zones.

Are you even reading the updates? Two of our tiberium projects, and many other places mentioned our military being overextended, undersupplied, and not enough for tasks we assign to it!
 
The Military will never be satisfied with anything but having sufficient levels of everything, which is not necessary for operational purposes, and certainly never happens IRL either. When the military is too overstretched, they'll tell you by making the options unable to even be picked, such as the Red Zone mines. So until that happens, any available option is still viable to be picked and voted for, or else the military wouldn't have approved of giving such an option to let Granger choose from to begin with.
The first sentence of this may be true, but is not relevant to our current situation. The military is currently massively short on hardware, especially hardware advanced enough to keep up with the stuff that NOD is rolling out.
Just because something is not locked out by political action from Parliament doesn't mean it's a good idea.
 
This kind of direct lockout is considered to be an extreme action on the part of the military. Generally, they leave the options on the table and do their best, and expect that their warnings are going to be enough to get movement on their priorities, rather than directing telling you no. However, if you keep not giving them what they think they will need, they will become more adversarial and start locking out options more commonly, in order to force you to do what they need.
 
Yeah. The military's actions in outright banning further Red Zone ops are sheer desperation for the Treasury to stop sending them there, after a disaster saw thousands of men outright massacred.

Like, the Air Force has lost air superiority. That's something that, IIRC, hasn't happened against NOD since the First Tiberium War. Relative to NOD's capabilities (lack of unity notwithstanding), GDI's military is probably in the worst shape it's ever been in history (certainly since at least the 2nd Tib War.) They might not be banning further extensions in the Red or Yellow Zones, but they really, really don't want them when they're already badly overextended and undersupplied as it is.
 
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Yeah. The military's actions in outright banning further Red Zone ops are sheer desperation for the Treasury to stop sending them there, after a disaster saw thousands of men outright massacred.

Like, the Air Force has lost air superiority. That's something that, IIRC, hasn't happened against NOD since the First Tiberium War. Relative to NOD's capabilities (lack of unity notwithstanding), GDI's military is probably in the worst shape it's ever been in history (certainly since at least the 2nd Tib War.) They might not be banning further extensions in the Red or Yellow Zones, but they really, really don't want them when they're already badly overextended and undersupplied as it is.

As I said, we have to regard the GDI economy as the Prussians did theirs. As much as 5/6ths of the budget of that state was expended on the Prussian Army. I'm not suggesting anything so drastic, but it would be wise for us to begin expanding our armed forces industrial capacity.
 
I know I keep saying this but NODS heavy industry makes no sense. I understand that they have the population of the Yellow and Red Zones, I understand they have direct access to and more tiberium, but they literally lost tens of thousands of men in 5 years. Outside of tib war 3. Whole armies. And still pressure every Yellow Zone and assault RZ convies at the same time? That amount of material is staggering.

And GDI cannot contest them in open battle? I can understand small arms and powered armor fanatics. I have trouble understanding them having enough armor, mechanized units and planes to contest an open battle. We need to take prisoners of there engineering and logistical staff because they are straight up wizards. And their tech is improving at pace that still outstrips ours. Its impressive.

Now to back to the normal thoughts. What kind of action do you think it would take to connect the two MARVs in South America? A tunnel? Having the two be separate does feel off.

Consumer goods will probably stay at it negative for a number of turns even if we did go full CG spam, so a moderate pace seems correct. As for capital goods still a desperate need for those but they are all so expensive.

Putting more money into the Space command might be our only option if we want to get any sector of our economy away from NOD. Did we ever find out if anywhere else in the Solar system is infested wit tiberium?
 
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Are you even reading the updates? Two of our tiberium projects, and many other places mentioned our military being overextended, undersupplied, and not enough for tasks we assign to it!
They grumble and mumble all the time, but without some way to actually mechanically affect the actions, how are we supposed to truly know what they can and cannot do? Descriptive complaints are far less useful than something solid and quantified to understand and consider what they need, such as a number or symbol like things such as housing, electricity and anything else with a properly estimated value to work from. Hell, if there was something like '--- Military Forces' as part of the cost or '+++ Military Forces' as part of gains, then at least their concerns can finally be taken into account properly and by the numbers.

So if they want their opinions to be better considered, then they'd better give some minimally detailed numbers to work with at least, or else they'll be like Consumer goods before a proper estimation was given about precisely how much was gained from actions, and how much was needed to break even in terms of demand vs supply.


This kind of direct lockout is considered to be an extreme action on the part of the military. Generally, they leave the options on the table and do their best, and expect that their warnings are going to be enough to get movement on their priorities, rather than directing telling you no. However, if you keep not giving them what they think they will need, they will become more adversarial and start locking out options more commonly, in order to force you to do what they need.
That's irresponsible of them to allow options they themselves don't think they can accomplish to still be a choice for Granger to take.

Aren't they the Military? Shouldn't they know about what's possible to do more than the Treasury? Or are they actually expecting Dr Granger to somehow know about what their limits are better than they do only based on the simple words they give? To the Treasury of all places, where solid numbers are what they're supposed to work with?

Honestly, if they can clarify what they want and need at the cost of them having more power over the actions, then I'm all for it, even at the cost of the amount of control over choices per turn. Because it's better for the potential actions to be limited to the things that are actually feasible vs letting players rush headlong into failure simply for the sake of freedom of choice.
 
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Descriptive complaints are far less useful than something solid and quantified to understand and consider what they need, such as a number or symbol like things such as housing, electricity and anything else with a properly estimated value to work from. Hell, if there was something like '--- Military Forces' as part of the cost or '+++ Military Forces' as part of gains, then at least their concerns can finally be taken into account properly and by the numbers.

So if they want their opinions to be better considered, then they'd better give some minimally detailed numbers to work with at least, or else they'll be like Consumer goods before a proper estimation was given about precisely how much was gained from actions, and how much was needed to break even in terms of demand vs supply.
If you feel this way, then this is not the quest for you. Ithillid has said, several times, in several ways, that not all the information will be in the statistics, and that paying attention to the narrative descriptions is vital.
If you don't feel that this is how you want to interact with the quest, well... I am quite happy with it being this way, and I believe many other questers are.
 
They grumble and mumble all the time, but without some way to actually mechanically affect the actions, how are we supposed to truly know what they can and cannot do? Descriptive complaints are far less useful than something solid and quantified to understand and consider what they need, such as a number or symbol like things such as housing, electricity and anything else with a properly estimated value to work from. Hell, if there was something like '--- Military Forces' as part of the cost or '+++ Military Forces' as part of gains, then at least their concerns can finally be taken into account properly and by the numbers.
The narrative is an equally important part to the story as the mechanics of the quest are. Make sure to read everything and take it in holistically so that you can understand the big picture this tiny window into another world is trying to show you, not everything needs a number attached.
 
It occurs to me that the consumer goods shortage could be mitigated by the implementation of some kind Library Socialism. After all, nobody needs a vacuum cleaner or an electric drill 24/7. By allowing limited stocks of transient use consumer goods to be shared among many users, we could reduce the consumer goods shortage without having to actually produce more goods.
 
Quest Philosophy
So, since this discussion has happened several times.

1. Not everything is in the numbers. This is intentional. Not everything can be summed up into a set of +s and -s or as points on a scale. Among those is the military. Military performance is not just my number bigger than yours, but a delicate interplay of multiple fields and the tactical and operational doctrines of the forces. I am not going to turn that into (Military Need +)

2. The narrative is important. Read the updates, because it is not just fluff text. There are warnings, there are potentials, I am trying to weave multiple stories that matter through the text.

3. The numbers lie. They are not perfect, and you do not have a god's eye view. They are your best estimate of what the overall situation is, and how well your current abilities match up to needs. They are generally pretty good, but are not perfectly reliable indicators of anything.
 
They grumble and mumble all the time, but without some way to actually mechanically affect the actions, how are we supposed to truly know what they can and cannot do? Descriptive complaints are far less useful than something solid and quantified to understand and consider what they need, such as a number or symbol like things such as housing, electricity and anything else with a properly estimated value to work from. Hell, if there was something like '--- Military Forces' as part of the cost or '+++ Military Forces' as part of gains, then at least their concerns can finally be taken into account properly and by the numbers.

So if they want their opinions to be better considered, then they'd better give some minimally detailed numbers to work with at least, or else they'll be like Consumer goods before a proper estimation was given about precisely how much was gained from actions, and how much was needed to break even in terms of demand vs supply.



That's irresponsible of them to allow options they themselves don't think they can accomplish to still be a choice for Granger to take.

Aren't they the Military? Shouldn't they know about what's possible to do more than the Treasury? Or are they actually expecting Dr Granger to somehow know about what their limits are better than they do only based on the simple words they give? To the Treasury of all places, where solid numbers are what they're supposed to work with?

Honestly, if they can clarify what they want and need at the cost of them having more power over the actions, then I'm all for it, even at the cost of the amount of control over choices per turn. Because it's better for the potential actions to be limited to the things that are actually feasible vs letting players rush headlong into failure simply for the sake of freedom of choice.
Or players can actually read what the military is saying and what the actions narrative is saying.

For military overstreched and trying to do missions anyways... You haven't really looked into modern military stuff have you?

The military will try to accomplish stuff it is ordered/requested to even if it doesn't have the assets to do so. It'll just be doing so on a shoestring budget.

Recent examples is the US navy being so overstretched that the 7th Fleet ends up being in disorganized and with insufficient training due to lack of time as they have to be on missions all the time, and that ends up being a contributing factor to US navy ships getting into collisions that cost the lives of 17 US sailors (10 on the USS McCain and 7 USS Fitzgerald, in separate collissions).

No, truth is that the military capabilities of the GDI have been neglected for too long. It needs heavy, and *continued* investment to rebuild its capabilities and get it back to the level needed to get a lid on Nod.
 
I do have a question. Its about the Nod Assault Waves. Do we know how often these waves occur? And primarily where? In the updated for the shell factories we received the information that 'the' 'fortress' and 'terminus' cities are under assault enough to dry out their munitions dumps.

How often are they being attacked? And by what? Nod Infantry? Cyborgs? Combined arms? I know we are the treasury and its not there responsibility to tell us what they are facing but it seems like there is a excessive use of shells. People are harder to make then bullets after all. Unless they are growing the fools. Was that a NOD project? Would our former loyalists have an inkling about something like that?

Everything else about the update makes sense in its way.
 
I do have a question. Its about the Nod Assault Waves. Do we know how often these waves occur? And primarily where? In the updated for the shell factories we received the information that 'the' 'fortress' and 'terminus' cities are under assault enough to dry out their munitions dumps.

How often are they being attacked? And by what? Nod Infantry? Cyborgs? Combined arms? I know we are the treasury and its not there responsibility to tell us what they are facing but it seems like there is a excessive use of shells. People are harder to make then bullets after all. Unless they are growing the fools. Was that a NOD project? Would our former loyalists have an inkling about something like that?

Everything else about the update makes sense in its way.
If I had to guess, various Nod warlords are taking advantage of how overstretched GDI is and launching various attacks using expendable militia and light assets to force GDI forces to respond and then hitting where it hurts with heavier/elite forces once GDI response forces is tarpit in putting down the fanatical militias.
 
I do have a question. Its about the Nod Assault Waves. Do we know how often these waves occur? And primarily where? In the updated for the shell factories we received the information that 'the' 'fortress' and 'terminus' cities are under assault enough to dry out their munitions dumps.

How often are they being attacked? And by what? Nod Infantry? Cyborgs? Combined arms? I know we are the treasury and its not there responsibility to tell us what they are facing but it seems like there is a excessive use of shells. People are harder to make then bullets after all. Unless they are growing the fools. Was that a NOD project? Would our former loyalists have an inkling about something like that?

Everything else about the update makes sense in its way.
Throwing warm bodies at fortified targets is 100% a tried and true NOD tactic. Human life is something that NOD isn't short on, having a recruiting base of roughly twice that of GDI (four times as much pre 3rd Tiberium War when GDI did fuck-all in the Yellow Zones), and far lower standards for Militants than GDI has for its professional troops.

What we're facing are probably probing attacks from local warlords and militias (the guys who get Militants, Buggies/Attack Bikes, maybe some Scorpions and Venoms if they're lucky/relatively prosperous) bullied/urged into launching hits to keep GDI occupied. Why should the Inner Circle care if thousands of Militants die if it leaves GDI spread thin enough that other, more valuable forces can say, hit some long-range harvesting ops with a reduced escort? It's a net gain in their book.

Hell, sacrificing vast amounts of men and material just so GDI acts in a way that creates a larger advantage elsewhere (or just achieves a larger strategic goal) was basically the entire grand strategy of NOD for the 3rd Tiberium War. From Militants to Avatars, NOD's military bled itself white first to provoke GDI with attacks on the Blue Zones that would eventually lead to the Temple Prime Campaign, then sacrificing itself to ensure that Kane's Threshold Tower was defended until it became invulnerable.
 
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Throwing warm bodies at fortified targets is 100% a tried and true NOD tactic. Human life is something that NOD isn't short on, having a recruiting base of roughly twice that of GDI (four times as much pre 3rd Tiberium War when GDI did fuck-all in the Yellow Zones), and far lower standards for Militants than GDI has for its professional troops.

What we're facing are probably probing attacks from local warlords and militias (the guys who get Militants, Buggies/Attack Bikes, maybe some Scorpions and Venoms if they're lucky/relatively prosperous) bullied/urged into launching hits to keep GDI occupied. Why should the Inner Circle care if thousands of Militants die if it leaves GDI spread thin enough that other forces can say, hit some long-range harvesting ops with a reduced escort? It's a net gain in their book.

Hell, sacrificing vast amounts of men and material just so GDI acts in a way that creates a larger advantage elsewhere (or just achieves a larger strategic goal) was basically the entire grand strategy of NOD for the 3rd Tiberium War. From Militants to Avatars, NOD's military bled itself white first to provoke GDI with attacks on the Blue Zones that would eventually lead to the Temple Prime Campaign, then sacrificing itself to ensure that Kane's Threshold Tower was defended until it became invulnerable.
Exactly. This is straight out of Nod's playbook, and they keep doing it because it works. Nod isn't about to run out of fanatical militia any time soon and GDI has to be strong enough to be strong every where or have enough mobile forces to respond to every serious engagements.
 
Which leads me back to my original question on their heavy industry and recruiting base. So they have reserves we know but those reserve dry up all the same. These are still people throwing their lives away in suicidal attacks over and over again in regions that are already tapped.

Local Warlords don't have an infinite supply of man power. Especially in every single region. Even if every single person outside of the towns and cities of the yellow zones was a NOD fanatic, that still means there is a finite pool of human resources. For example if even only 10 NOD fanatics die in every raid that would still mean over a year of 10xNumber attacks*365= casualties-survivors. Even if only 3 died in every raid that's not sustainable. Lets say a terminus city is attacked every day with a group of 10 and they lose maybe 3. And are refreshed with new bodies every day. That is still a ton of people dead. If only 30% die every attack for a whole year that's still 1095 people dead a year. On one town. Now do that for every town and city under attack.

How many people died during tib war 3 again? Was it almost a Quarter of the population? Real question. Numbers aren't real but it would be nice to know if NOD lives in the same world sometimes.
 
Which leads me back to my original question on their heavy industry and recruiting base. So they have reserves we know but those reserve dry up all the same. These are still people throwing their lives away in suicidal attacks over and over again in regions that are already tapped.

Local Warlords don't have an infinite supply of man power. Especially in every single region. Even if every single person outside of the towns and cities of the yellow zones was a NOD fanatic, that still means there is a finite pool of human resources. For example if even only 10 NOD fanatics die in every raid that would still mean over a year of 10xNumber attacks*365= casualties-survivors. Even if only 3 died in every raid that's not sustainable. Lets say a terminus city is attacked every day with a group of 10 and they lose maybe 3. And are refreshed with new bodies every day. That is still a ton of people dead. If only 30% die every attack for a whole year that's still 1095 people dead a year. On one town. Now do that for every town and city under attack.

How many people died during tib war 3 again? Was it almost a Quarter of the population? Real question. Numbers aren't real but it would be nice to know if NOD lives in the same world sometimes.
Keep in mind that Nod has access to pretty advanced subterranean tech which means they can move troops out of sight of GDI satellites.

Although Nod may be fractured there's groups that'll have influence quite widely and they will be building up their connections.

There's at least one centralized group focused on RnD that's handing out tech to select warlords, there's not much of a leap to think that there may be groups that are focused on replenishing manpower reserves of various warlords with fresh recruits from elsewhere in order to bind them together and be the puppet masters of various warlords. Combined together these may form the basis of a reunification effort of a new Nod.
 
It wouldn't be every single Fortress Town, every single day being attacked. The issue for us is that from basically the word "go", we've been dealing with a massive shell shortage. That means it's absolutely worth it for NOD to burn a few thousand militants from the local militias launching attacks on Fortress Towns, which use up a lot of their arty's sharply limited reserves throwing back those attacks, which means they have to be resupplied, which means that other nearby GDI detachments (such as say, an expedition pushing into the Red Zone in search of new mines) are short on shells because the last shipment had to go towards the Fortress Towns, which makes it much easier for NOD to overwhelm them while losing few of the actually valuable troops. If nothing else, those Militants can absolutely be replaced just by offering the territory to another Warlord to bring in his forces, and maybe bribing him with some fancier goodies for the added burden.

Once we start having a solid array of heavy artillery whose stockpiles are regularly full, then it becomes far less beneficial for NOD to launch these probing and diversionary assaults, so we'll probably see them die down. But as it stands, our entire frontline situation is resting on "Just in Time" resupplies. And even aside from the diversionary value, NOD only has to succeed once to crack a Fortress Town and shake the Yellow Zoners' faith in GDI's ability to protect them.
 
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Lets be positive and say that there are maybe 3 billion people still alive at the start of t3. That means a pop of 6 hundred million in the blue zones. That apparently means 2.4 billion NOD fanatics or sympathizers.

I need census stat. I know I'm hyperbolic but when I'm told numbers aren't real and it only really applies to our faction things get twisted in my brain. It doesn't help that none of the wikis provided or that I've seen give any kind of numbers to base plans around outside the references in the blurbs. Especially when the wikis themselves have contradictory information. But all is 'true' information.

We know that Tiberium killed off half the population minimum. That's from the games. We know that there has been more than half a century of war that lead to 10s of thousand to millions dying. And an alien invasion that made it worse. We know that we have been rebuilding the world brick by brick and are overstretched. That's understandable.

Am I to believe that NOD has more than half the entire population of Earth under its various remits. Okay. I understand for the game to progress NOD has to have reserves. That's their thing. It just feels like goal posts are moving and that's not whats happening but it feels that way.
 
I think for Plan Building for the next couple turns, we ought to allot our Mil and Orbital Dice first, then budget the rest of plan to see what we can activate in other sectors and where the free dice will end up.

This allows us to keep those two aspects at the forefront of our budgeting, and build a plan around Mil commitments rather than fitting Mil into an Infra or Industry Plan.

@Vehrec crunched some numbers in the discord. Orbital is at barely 3% of our total spending to date, while Military has only been 12% of our spending. For comparison, 31.5% of our budget has been toward Tiberium.

It may not feel like it, but we are at War with NOD. We need to consolidate gains rather than continue pushing fronts that are undermanned and under-equipped. Keep in mind that all of our build up has a delayed impact; building today helps the military 2 or 3 quarters out, not right now. If we don't build up early this plan, we won't be able to do any expansion in the latter half of the plan.

Those last 2 years are when we can make a big push out into the deeper yellow with Planned Cities. Right now we're struggling to hold the Tiberium Ops we have in the close yellow; the Planned Cities are going to be a huge NOD target and we are not ready.

Space is the biggest snowball in the game. NOD has no space assets; if we can get the snowball rolling it'll absolutely pay for itself. But we have to spend on the initial overhead to get the machine started. 3% Orbital spending is way too little. We have to start thinking long term and stop obsessing with the little numbers in the top of the update.
 
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Lets be positive and say that there are maybe 3 billion people still alive at the start of t3. That means a pop of 6 hundred million in the blue zones. That apparently means 2.4 billion NOD fanatics or sympathizers.

I need census stat. I know I'm hyperbolic but when I'm told numbers aren't real and it only really applies to our faction things get twisted in my brain. It doesn't help that none of the wikis provided or that I've seen give any kind of numbers to base plans around outside the references in the blurbs. Especially when the wikis themselves have contradictory information. But all is 'true' information.

We know that Tiberium killed off half the population minimum. That's from the games. We know that there has been more than half a century of war that lead to 10s of thousand to millions dying. And an alien invasion that made it worse. We know that we have been rebuilding the world brick by brick and are overstretched. That's understandable.

Am I to believe that NOD has more than half the entire population of Earth under its various remits. Okay. I understand for the game to progress NOD has to have reserves. That's their thing. It just feels like goal posts are moving and that's not whats happening but it feels that way.
WoG from Discord is that the current population of Earth is about 1.5 billion, 1/3rd of which is under GDI control, counting both the remaining Blue Zone population, and the Yellow Zone populations recently integrated into GDI (percentage of GDI population that is Yellow Zoner is approximately 15-20%.)

Other WoG from Discord includes some loose estimates on military numbers. GDI fields roughly 18 million soldiers, while NOD has a permanent (that is, the actual experienced elites, professionally trained soldiers, and sworn-to-the-Inner-Circle Warlords that actually get fancy tech goodies and therefore NOD actually cares about, possibly with some more expendable Militants to bubble wrap the elites) roster of 10-12 million soldiers. Adding in the local militias, fanatics, and less important warlords who rally to the banner when NOD sends out the word to go all-out, and that gets upped to approximately 30-34 million.
 
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How do they still have professional armies? They basically lost those during tib war 3. Unless NOD did the classic thing of not actually being present and let the idiots get murdered instead.
 
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