War Footing is a turn-based strategic defense management wargame developed and published by Strategist's Den Games, released on PC via Steam on October 15, 2026. Rather than controlling individual squads in real-time tactical combat, you serve as the Minister of Defense tasked with mobilizing an abstract nation before a foreign invasion begins. Surviving requires balancing tight weekly budgets, foreign procurement contracts, domestic industrial expansion, recruit training, and domestic political stability.
Every decision in the game takes place across a calendar where each turn represents exactly one week. When hostilities erupt—typically determined by an escalation gauge called tension—the army you prepared is the force that enters operational combat.
The Core Turn Cycle and Opening Priorities
Each week in War Footing requires completing administrative phases in a strict sequence. Spending your entire starting treasury on turn one is the most frequent beginner mistake; doing so leaves no capital to absorb maintenance costs, training fees, or surprise political crises.
- Review situation reports: Check available cash reserves, recurring weekly income, intelligence reports on enemy axes, political stability, and unit readiness before making commitments.
- Balance the defense budget: Ensure projected operating expenses and future arms installment payments do not exceed weekly revenue.
- Procure equipment and issue licenses: Order hardware from foreign supplier blocs or domestic factories based on available industrial capacity.
- Train and equip formations: Form companies, battalions, or brigades, and assign them to active training facilities to build unit experience.
- Address domestic politics and diplomacy: Dispatch diplomatic envoys to supplier nations, manage conscription laws, or resolve border incident choices.
- Position deployments: Station ready formations across northern, central, or southern border sectors, or hold them in the rear echelon.
- End turn: Advance the calendar by one week to process deliveries, training progression, and intelligence alerts.
Managing the Defense Economy: Budgets, Manpower, and Industry
National defense in War Footing relies on three domestic pillars: funding, industrial output, and human recruits. Neglecting any of these three creates severe bottlenecks before the invasion lands.
| Economic system | Baseline mechanic | Upgrade cost or trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Budget lobbying | Increases base weekly revenue by +50 per effort | Costs 500 per action; requires 10 turns to break even |
| Manpower pool | Unassigned recruits in the pool decay at a rate of 10% per week | Expanding Boot Camp capacity costs treasury funds per level |
| Domestic industry | Generates production points per week (starts at 400 points) | Adding +10 domestic capacity points costs $1,000,000 |
| Conscription laws | Determines weekly intake: Volunteer (+50), Limited (+200), Extensive (+400) | Volunteer adds +1 stability/turn; Limited costs -1 stability/turn |
Operating Funds versus Capital Reserves
At the beginning of a standard campaign, such as the Force Modernization scenario, weekly income starts near $2.2 million. While actions like lobbying increase recurring cash flow over time, the payoff is gradual. Players must retain an emergency cash reserve rather than allocating every dollar to equipment purchases, because active units demand continuous weekly upkeep and facility operations incur recurring costs.
Recruit Pools and Conscription
The initial recruit pool contains a finite reserve of volunteers (such as 1,215 personnel). If your Boot Camp capacity is too low to process them immediately, 10% of the uncollected pool disbands every week. Upgrading the Boot Camp to Level 3 allows you to process 350 recruits per turn into usable military manpower. Setting national conscription to Volunteer yields 50 recruits per week and grants +1 stability each turn, whereas Limited conscription yields 200 recruits per turn but penalizes stability by -1 per turn.
Industrial Capacity and Licensing
Domestic production allows you to build equipment locally at roughly half the base market price, but it requires domestic industrial capacity points. Producing items consumes weekly points (for example, building an armored recovery vehicle costs 32 domestic capacity points and incurs 800 maintenance per turn once completed). To manufacture foreign gear locally, you must pay a one-time licensing fee—such as $220,000 to license the Enhanced US Combat Kit—after which items can be queued directly in your domestic workshops.
Procurement: Foreign Suppliers vs. Domestic Production
War Footing features more than 180 equipment types across small arms, armored personnel carriers (APCs), main battle tanks, anti-tank systems, artillery, aircraft, and air defense. Suppliers are split across geopolitical blocs:
- Western Bloc: United States, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom, France
- Eastern Bloc: Russia, China
- Neutral Suppliers: Brazil, Israel
Purchasing directly from foreign suppliers requires strong diplomatic relations. For example, buying advanced Russian armor such as the T-14 Armata requires a relationship score of 90 or higher. Diplomatic relations also affect pricing: low rapport inflates prices above the 100% baseline (such as 113% for neutral suppliers), while high relations grant discounts. Staged arms deals allow large purchases with a 15% discount spread across 15 turns, but they lock up future revenue.
| Equipment category | Examples observed | Typical combat stats or role | Procurement notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small arms kits | US Standard, Enhanced US (7 soft / 2 hard), Elite US (9 soft / 3 hard) | Core infantry firepower across soft and hard attack | High-end kits require licensing fees or US relations |
| Anti-tank weapons | TOW (77 hard attack), Javelin (86 hard attack), NLAW, AT4 | Ground vehicle penetration and armor defense | Tow provides a high cost-to-damage ratio |
| Armored personnel carriers | Marder 1A3 (45 hard / 50 armor), M2 Bradley (55 armor), M113 | Transport and mechanized combat protection | Complex vehicles require heavy domestic industrial capacity |
| Tanks | Leopard 2A4, Leopard 2A6, M1 Abrams, M60 Patton | Heavy breakthrough, counterattack, and high hard attack | Complex chassis have higher weekly maintenance |
| Fixed-wing aircraft | F-15C (12,000 air attack), Eurofighter Typhoon (11,500 air attack), A-10 | Air superiority and ground strike sorties | Aircraft require specialized maintenance hangar levels |
Force Structure, Formations, and Readiness
Combat capability in War Footing is organized hierarchically into companies, battalions, and brigades. Building larger formations yields substantial combat power but places strict demands on your logistics and warehouse supplies.
- Infantry Battalion: Standard core defensive formation utilizing approximately 500 personnel. Requires small arms at a 1:1 ratio with personnel and anti-tank systems at a 1:20 ratio (25 anti-tank launchers per battalion).
- Infantry Brigade: Capable of holding an entire sector independently, but requires 3,000 manpower, 3,000 small arms, 150 anti-tank weapons (1:20), 60 artillery pieces (1:50), and approximately 200 APCs (1 per 14 personnel), plus optional allowances for up to 12 mobile artillery pieces.
- Support Companies: Armored companies, logistics transport companies, and air defense batteries designed to backstop frontline infantry.
Readiness and Training Mechanics
Paper strength does not translate to combat victory. Newly mobilized units arrive with minimal combat effectiveness.
- Training Center investment: At Training Facility Level 0, active units gain +0 bonus experience. Upgrading the center costs $2 million, enabling units to build combat levels during downtime.
- Rear echelon recovery: Units placed on frontlines without active transport capacity or maintenance support suffer mechanical breakdowns and readiness penalties (often falling to 60%). Moving formations back into the rear echelon allows readiness to stabilize at 80% without consuming frontline supply pressure.
- Combat doctrines: Upgrading training infrastructure to Level 2 unlocks national defense doctrines, such as Asymmetric Warfare, High-Tech Integration (which grants maintenance cost reductions and damage bonuses to high complexity equipment), or Elite Training.
Tension and Sector Deployment
Hostilities trigger based on the national Tension meter. Tension slowly creeps up each week and can surge following random border friction events. For instance, choosing to retaliate with military force against an enemy border patrol inflicts 50 enemy casualties but immediately increases tension by 15 points. At tension levels above 80%, invasion can occur randomly; at 100%, invasion is guaranteed.
Sector battles resolve across the operational map (north, central, and south sectors). Testing shows that positioning units one province behind the front allows them to accumulate readiness and defensive bonuses without granting the adversary invasion budget, allowing you to advance them into defensive positions when intelligence confirms an imminent assault.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does War Footing feature online multiplayer or co-op?
No. War Footing is exclusively a single-player turn-based strategy game for Windows PC, available through Steam.
What are the minimum PC system requirements?
The game requires a 64-bit Windows 10 operating system, a dual-core 2.0 GHz processor, 4 GB of RAM, integrated graphics, and 500 MB of available storage space.
When does the invasion typically begin?
Invasion timing varies by scenario and escalation events. Intelligence reports typically project the invasion window between week 40 and week 51, though early border skirmishes and high tension can accelerate the start date to earlier turns.
Why is my unit's combat readiness stuck at low levels?
Units lose readiness if deployed to border sectors without sufficient logistics transport capacity or maintenance funding. Pulling units into the rear echelon allows readiness to recover to a baseline of 80% while equipment upgrades and facility training are completed.
