What attacks actually do.

The five attack types

• Standard Strike (SS) — the workhorse. Send a mix of units. Captures land from the defender and kills some of their military. The most flexible attack.
• Paratroop Strike (PS) — jet-led precision attack. Captures land. Your paratroop brigade returns home after a delay, during which those units are unavailable.
• Ghost-Acre Raid (GS) — troops-only. Doesn't take the defender's existing land — instead, generates new land for you. Smaller hauls. Strong when targets are too well-defended for SS.
• Bombing Run (BR) — jets-only. Damages the defender's population without taking land. Pressure tactic.
• Tank Assault (AB) — tanks-only. Bigger land captures than SS when you have a heavy tank stack.

Missile attacks (chemical, cruise, EMP, nuclear) are separate from these — they don't use your units, just your stockpile.

What happens in an attack

You pick a target from the Find Target screen or by tapping into someone's country profile. You pick an attack type. You allocate units. You confirm. The server runs the resolution and shows you a Battle Resolution screen with the full breakdown:

• Whether your attack succeeded.
• How many of your forces died.
• How many of the defender's forces died.
• The land you captured, or the ghost acres you generated.
• The buildings that came with the captured land.
• The defender's resources and technology you skimmed.
• The population damage you inflicted.
• Readiness lost on both sides.

Casualties

Every attack costs you forces. There is no risk-free war. Successful attacks lose less than failed ones, but they always lose something. Medical technology reduces your casualties on successful non-missile attacks — a heavy attacker without medical tech bleeds out fast.

Repeated-attack diminishing returns

Hitting the same defender with the same attack type repeatedly gets less effective each time within a rolling window. The system uses a time-decaying curve — your fifth attack on a target in a few hours is worth far less than the first, but if you wait a day, the penalty recovers.

This is the single most important combat concept to understand. Pounding one player to dust isn't a free strategy — the engine actively pushes you to spread your aggression around. Most successful attackers rotate between several targets rather than camping on one.

Defender response

When you attack someone, three things happen on the defender side:

• They get a news event telling them they were attacked and by whom.
• Their readiness drops, even if they successfully repel you.
• For a window of time after the attack, they get a cooldown against further attacks from you — repeated harassment gets harder, not easier.

GDI — the shield

The Global Defense Initiative (GDI) is a defensive treaty you can join at any time from the War Room. While you're in GDI, you can't be attacked. The trade-offs:

• GDI costs you a small recurring fee.
• You can't attack anyone while in GDI (it's defensive only).
• Leaving GDI is delayed — you announce departure, and the protection drops some hours later. You can't dive in and out instantly.
• Some governments make GDI cost more than others.

GDI is great when you go on vacation or when a much stronger player targets you and you need time to reorganize. It's a poor permanent strategy because you can't grow much by sitting still.

War

Anyone can attack anyone (subject to pact rules and protection). Declaring formal war is different: it lasts at least 48 hours, applies a war bonus to combat on both sides, and costs the declarer war upkeep every tick until peace is signed.

Alliance war

Alliances can declare war on other alliances. The upkeep splits 50/50 between the declarer country and the declaring alliance's treasury. The war bonus applies to combat for every member on both sides. Alliance war is the highest-stakes mechanic in the game.

Pacts

An active pact between two countries — defensive, offensive, intelligence, research, or trade — blocks every attack type, including missiles, in both directions. Pacts are peace. Breaking a pact to attack burns your reputation across the season.

Bounties

Bounties make dangerous countries worth hunting. The system marks leaders and other high-pressure targets with rewards tied to specific triggers: kills, landgrabs, and bioterrorism. The trigger matters because the payout goes to the country that completes that exact kind of successful action.