NCH: The Basic of War (3/4)

When you fight, you are not directly killing another player. You are contributing damage to one side of the battle.

Battles are fought as a best-of-three. The first side to win 2 rounds wins the battle.

Each round is a fight over terrain. Every 2 minutes, the side that dealt more damage during that window gains terrain.

The first side to reach 300 terrain wins the round.

The damage you do joins everyone else’s, which means even a smaller player can matter when everyone is pushing the same objective.

Your combat damage output depends on things like:

- your skills

- equipment

- ammunition

- consumables

- Military Rank

- battle bonuses

You also need to physically be in the relevant region to fight; traveling uses Stamina, or Oil when your Stamina cannot cover the trip.

But you do not need to understand every damage formula yet.

For now, understand one thing: Damage costs gold.

The harder you want to hit, the more expensive fighting generally becomes.

This is why we spent an entire article talking about your economy before letting you anywhere near the artillery.

Not every active battle matters equally.

Countries and Military Units use Battle Orders to tell their members where damage is currently needed.

Before fighting, check:

1. Which battle is ordered?

2. Which side are you supposed to hit?

3. How high is its priority?

4. Is your MU giving different instructions?

Then hit accordingly.

WarEra is coordinated.

Ten people dumping damage into the right battle at the right time can be far more useful than twenty people enthusiastically firing wherever they please.

Country and MU orders are also ranked by priority, making it easier to see where leadership wants damage directed first.

This is the part new players tend to discover shortly after buying their first serious loadout.

Weapons cost money.

Ammo costs money.

Food costs money.

Armor costs money.

Consumables cost money.

This is why new accounts generally focus heavily on economic development before specializing into war.

Eventually, the goal is to find a sustainable build where you're able to fight consistently without your combat expenses slowly bankrupting you.

There is no magical level where this suddenly happens.

It depends on your companies, production, cash reserves, Skill Points, gear and how aggressively you intend to fight.

But to give you something to look forward to: efficiently built accounts can often start approaching this in the 20s.

Until your economy can support it, building more economic capacity is often more valuable than squeezing out maximum damage today.

You have plenty of time to become a menace in this game.

Like I said, with the right build, war can become profitable.

You can earn through battle loot, Mercenary Contracts, bounties, and other rewards.

Eventually, a good setup can let you earn back the costs or even profit.

That is the long-term goal: not just hitting hard, but making every click economically sustainable.

But you don't need to worry about optimizing that yet.

Just know that war eventually becomes much more than pressing Attack.

Damage calculations get complex quickly.

Fortunately, the community has built tools that can load your profile, test equipment, Skill Points, consumables and battle bonuses, and estimate different builds before you spend anything.

You'll find those in NCH: Tools Addendum.

For now: Follow orders. Build your economy. Don't waste expensive gear. Learn what your damage costs.

Once those four things make sense, you're already ahead of most fresh recruits.