Air, sea & missiles

Everything that reaches past your own border.

Each of these has to be unlocked by a building, and each does exactly one thing. The distinction that matters most: airstrikes destroy but capture nothing, while paratroopers capture but destroy nothing.

Air

Airstrike — needs an Airport

Destroys buildings and troops in a radius. It takes no land at all. Use it to knock a hole in a defence — a bunker line, a cluster of industry — and follow up on the ground. On its own it wins nothing.

Paratroopers — needs an Airbase

Capture land from the air, within a limited range of your territory, and put your troops down there. They destroy nothing. This is how you land behind a border rather than grinding through it — and how you take an island. You choose how many troops to send; send too few and they are gone for nothing.

SAM — pure defence

Shoots down aircraft, paratroop transports and cruise missiles inside its radius. It is the only answer to all three. Placement is a guess about where you will be hit: over your silo and your densest building cluster is the usual answer.

Sea

Boats and beachheads — need a Harbor

A boat carries troops across water and lands them on a distant coast, taking a small area around the landing point. Slower and more visible than a paradrop, and it needs a harbour rather than an airbase — but the range is not limited the same way.

Trade routes

Two or more harbours on the same body of water open a trade route between them, which pays points continuously. This is the strongest passive income in the game and the main reason to hold a coastline.

The rules are worth reading carefully, because they are easy to get wrong:

  • Routes run between your own harbours, and between yours and those of players you are directly allied with.
  • They are not transitive. If you are allied with B and B is allied with C, you do not trade with C.
  • You always need at least one harbour of your own in that water region — you cannot live off an ally's network alone.
  • Both harbours must be on the same sea. Two harbours on opposite sides of a landmass with no water path between them are just two buildings.

Routes follow a real sea path, and that path can be cut.

Blockades

A blockade parks a boat on open water. While it sits there, enemy trade routes passing nearby earn nothing. It is the sharpest economic weapon available and it does not take a single cell of land.

The counter is an airstrike — it sinks the boat, and the routes resume. Blockades expire on their own after a while, so an opponent who cannot answer one only has to survive it.

Cruise missiles — need a Missile silo

The most expensive thing in the game, and global range: you can hit anywhere on the map. The impact area is scorched — buildings destroyed, and the land left ownerless and expensive to take for a long while, by anyone including you.

So it is not a way to win ground. It is a way to take something away: an enemy's silo, their industry cluster, the bunker wall you cannot break. The flight is visible and a SAM in the target area will shoot it down, so the first missile against a prepared opponent often buys nothing at all.

Reading the counters

  • Airstrike ← SAM.
  • Paratroopers ← SAM, and a defended landing zone.
  • Cruise missile ← SAM.
  • Blockade ← airstrike (which needs an airport, which is why coastal players build them).
  • Ground attack ← bunkers, see Attacking & defending.

SAM answering three of the five is why it is worth more than its price suggests once anyone on the map has reached the air stage.