War Footing Playthrough: Complete Defense Procurement Strategy

A standard playthrough in War Footing—the turn-based defense management game developed by Strategist's Den Games—divides into two critical phases: a pre-war procurement race lasting roughly 35 to 50 weekly turns, followed by an operational border defense. You act as the Minister of Defense tasked with allocating weekly funding, drafting manpower, signing foreign arms deals, and designing a military force capable of withstanding an imminent invasion across three operational sectors.

Because losing your central capital sector or losing both flanking sectors triggers an immediate defeat, every turn during peace must balance military infrastructure, domestic production capacity, and supply chains.

Pre-War Preparation: Economy, Manpower, and Doctrines

The first 15 to 20 turns determine the economic ceiling of your playthrough. You receive a weekly treasury allocation that can be spent on domestic industrial capacity, ministry lobbying, or diplomatic outreach to foreign weapon suppliers.

Expanding Cash Flow and Manpower Pools

• Budget Lobbying: In the politics interface, funding the lobbying effort costs 500,000 currency units to raise base revenue by 50,000 per turn. This investment requires 10 turns to break even, making aggressive lobbying during the first 10 to 15 turns a core economic play.
• Boot Camp Throughput: Unassigned civilian volunteers sit in an induction pool that sheds 10% of its remaining personnel each turn to the civilian economy. Upgrading the Boot Camp infrastructure converts recruits into usable military manpower:
  • Level 0: 25 recruits per turn
  • Level 1: 100 recruits per turn
  • Level 2: 200 recruits per turn
  • Level 3: 350 recruits per turn (up to 800 at maximum level)
• Conscription Toggles: You can toggle conscription policies without cost. Extensive conscription yields 400 recruits weekly at a penalty of -2 stability, while Volunteer Only grants 50 recruits and +1 stability. Alternating between Extensive Conscription and Volunteer status allows you to fill your manpower reserves without driving national stability down toward the game-over threshold at zero.

The Mass Assault Doctrine Pivot

To adopt a doctrine, you must first upgrade your Training Center to Level 2 (costing 6 million currency units total). Playthroughs frequently utilize an opening switch to the Mass Assault doctrine:

• Mass Assault Effects: +20% industrial production capacity and accelerated unit training, balanced against a -10% combat effectiveness penalty.
• The Pre-War Pivot: Because Mass Assault takes several turns to integrate, players run it during the industrial buildup to rapidly output vehicles and weapons. Once intelligence reports warn that the invasion timeline is 6 to 8 turns away, players switch doctrines to Prepared Defenses (+15% infantry defense, +15% artillery soft attack, 6-turn integration time) or Elite Training (+15% global combat power, 12-turn integration time), shedding the combat penalty right before hostiles cross the border.

Procurement: Market Purchases vs. Domestic Licensing

Acquiring military kit can be handled through spot purchases on the open market, scheduled foreign arms deals, or licensed domestic manufacturing.

Domestic production requires investing in factory capacity (roughly 1 million currency units per 10 capacity points). Each piece of equipment requires a defined amount of industrial "effort" points to build.

• Programming Long Runs: Rather than dropping orders into an ad-hoc queue, scheduling production as a 10-turn or 15-turn program grants scale discounts of up to 12% on top of the domestic 50% baseline savings.
• What to License: High-cost, low-effort assets yield the fastest return on factory investment. Licensed fighter jets (such as the JAS 39 Gripen at 280 effort points) and heavy armored vehicles repay their licensing costs rapidly compared to market markups.
• What to Buy via Arms Deals: Small, high-effort components like guided anti-tank missiles (Spike or Javelin systems) require excessive factory capacity relative to their face value. These are more efficiently acquired through 5- to 15-turn foreign contracts.

Force Structure Strategies: High-Tech Armor vs. Garrison Mass

Playthrough testing demonstrates two proven approaches to force design, largely determined by whether you align with Western suppliers (USA, Germany, Sweden) or operate under restricted relations.

The Armored Spearhead Build

Ideal when allying with the United States and Germany:

1. Armor Core: Build multiple 450-man Armored Battalions equipped with main battle tanks (such as M1 Abrams or Leopard 2 variants) and Infantry Fighting Vehicles (M2 Bradley, Marder 1A3, or CV90).
2. Manpower Efficiency: Tanks consume high capital and factory effort but require very little manpower compared to foot infantry, insulating you against manpower pool shortages.
3. Air Superiority Pairing: Outfit fixed-wing squadrons with multirole aircraft like the Swedish JAS 39 Gripen (which has an 11,000 air attack rating and low maintenance hangar complexity of 78) to sweep enemy fighters, allowing ground-attack wings (A-10s) to strike during combat phases.

The Low-Cost Garrison and Rotary Swarm Build

Effective in asymmetric scenarios like "Western Proxy," where Western equipment is embargoed or facing quality-heavy NATO opposition:

1. Garrison Battalions: Garrison formations field 250 small arms, require minimal logistics transport, eliminate expensive IFVs, and load up to 30 towed artillery pieces (such as the Israeli Soltam M-71 155mm) along with heavy anti-tank guided missile launchers.
2. Rotary Anti-Tank Wing: Rather than buying expensive tanks to trade with enemy armor, field attack helicopter flights (such as AH-64s or Cobras at 120 personnel per 6 airframes). If you secure air superiority or face minimal enemy air defenses, attack helicopters dismantle enemy armor without exposing friendly vehicles to opposing anti-tank fire.
3. Special Forces Augmentation: Deploy 100-man Special Forces companies to border sectors. These provide passive intelligence feeds on adjacent opposing sectors and grant combat stat buffs to friendly infantry fighting beside them.

Logistics and Operational Deployment

Ignoring the logistics tab directly destroys frontline combat readiness. Units deployed without corresponding support staff can see their readiness crater from 100% to under 55% in a single turn.

Staffing Logistics Sections

Every deployed brigade or battalion generates demands that must be manually covered in the logistics panel:

• Transport Companies: Require utility trucks (such as Ural-4320 or MAN HX) and personnel to transport supplies. Unmet transport demands cause immediate sector-wide readiness drops.
• Maintenance Platoons: Deployed in frontline sectors and rear depots to reduce vehicle breakdown odds (bringing failure rates to 0.0%) and repair backlogged equipment using recovery vehicles.
• Medevac Sections: Require ambulances or utility trucks, ideally reinforced by transport helicopters (Mi-8 or UH-60 Blackhawk). Medevac units return wounded personnel to active pools, preventing attrition from permanently draining your manpower.

Battle Map Lanes and Entrenchment

The operational map consists of three horizontal defense lanes (North, Center, South), subdivided into Border, Midlands, and Heartland (Capital) zones:

1. Entrenchment Accumulation: Deployed units dig in during peacetime, earning an entrenchment defense bonus of roughly 2% per turn up to a 20% cap (10 turns).
2. Border vs. Midland Deployment: Deploying directly onto the border forward-accumulates entrenchment, but early border staging can elevate diplomatic tension and accelerate the invasion timer. Staging in the Midlands avoids provocation, but units forced to rush forward later incur readiness penalties upon redeployment.
3. Lateral Shifts: Moving forces laterally between adjacent border zones (e.g., North to Center) carries minimal readiness loss, whereas shifting units from the rear staging reserve directly to the front line significantly degrades operational readiness for several turns.

The War Phase: Combat Resolution

When tension crosses 80%, war can break out on any turn roll; at 100% tension, invasion is imminent. Once combat begins, battles resolve weekly in sequential operational phases across active sectors:

• Air Interception Phase: Contesting squadrons fight for regional airspace. Dominating this phase prevents enemy ground attacks and clears friendly strike craft to operate. Fixed-wing fighters designated as Air Superiority intercept map-wide, whereas Ground Attack squadrons must be manually assigned to specific sectors.
• Ground Support & Air Defense Phase: Surface-to-air missile units and man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) engage attacking air wings based on their sector coverage percentage. Evading or destroying enemy air defense allows friendly CAS (Close Air Support) to strike enemy vehicles and soft targets before ground forces clash.
• Armored & Infantry Clashes: Ground combat resolves across initial assault, armored engagement, and final push rounds. In War Footing, vehicle armor acts as a damage sponge, absorbing incoming soft attack fire to protect squishy infantry until enemy hard attack values deplete the armor.
• Victory Condition: The invading force possesses a finite "Will to Fight" metric. By inflicting heavy loss ratios (routinely reaching 5:1 or 10:1 through combined arms, entrenched positions, and adequate medevac/maintenance coverage), the enemy's will to fight drops to zero, successfully ending the playthrough and securing the country's borders.