Benefits of Federation and Unification

[VDmitry]

I still struggle understanding how much I get from Federation or Unificaton.

Let's assume there are 2 countries: A and B. If they join into Federation - do you get any benefit in numbers? Unification obviously helps with less points to Defend Interests or Advice. However, probably at least Investments are in disadvantage, as 2 separate A and B countries would have more than if you unite them.

More specifically:

- Investments (you probably loose some if united)
- Funds (may be no change if united, no idea for Federation)
- Science (unclear, but probably not A + B if united, and no change for Federation)
- Boosts
- Command Points

Also:

- Admin points
- What's about military tech level (becomes average or highests?)
- GDP?

[Malthus]

Not only less points to defend, you also need less administrative capacity once those two countries unite. The economies are added together and you can take over more countries afterwards.

[VDmitry]

Are you sure for less Admin points? How much. Don't they get increased cost for large population/territory?

[VoiD]

The way I see it federations are just alliances, and a necessary step for unification.

Unification is, as you said, really not worth it for humanity, but it can be useful to you, granting you more stuff for a lower cost while also keeping some good countries away from your enemy's hands.

In my current game I've unified the EU and made a federation with the Russian federation and EU, I was also holding the exec branch of the US to keep those nukes away from the servants and dominion (which have held the other 2 and 2 branches of the US for a decade).

Eventually the servants have made us research the separatist movements, so I researched the end of america, split everything up, abandoned every one of those other nations and just kept main america with the 30 nukes for a much lower cost and let the other orgs fight over the scraps.

I've also released the UK, to get access to the tech to restore the commonwealth as I build up every mission command in english lands (12 dev from england and 20 from the EU instead of no england and 21 from the EU) and I am planing on re-joining later, also released itali to fully develop their lands and I'm going to annex them back with all the mission comands later on.

tl;dr it depends on what you want to do.

[Malthus]

I cannot tell you how much less exactly, but I can guarantee you, that after unification your administrative costs are lower than before.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by VDmitry:

Are you sure for less Admin points? How much. Don't they get increased cost for large population/territory?

Very sure. I've been folding together the Eurasian Union and every time I unify another bit I get back a bunch of my control budget.

[VDmitry]

Ok, that's good if Admin points go lower, but if you loose science for example it's no good.

[Uland]

As far as I can tell, Unification merges the stats of the countries but gets rid of the control points. This allows you to essentially have more GDP, armies, boost, etc while taking less control cap thus allowing you to control more territory. I don't know how this mix actually happens though. Stuff like GDP seems to be added together but miltech is averaged (USA is Robotic era in my game but I (EU) am still Information Age because I keep Unifying Atomic Age countries. My GDP and Science is extremely high though). As you Unify more countries, you can create new control points (I think it's GDP based) but generally it's a net positive to Unify countries.

Federation is the intermediate step between countries being Allies and being Unified. It's essentially a faction or bloc that shares resources. If one country in your Federation produces a lot of boost (Kazakhstan) and one does not (Russia), Russia still gets a lot of boost shared by Kazakhstan. Countries must be Federated for a certain amount of time, have a claim (either through game start or by various technologies), and you must have total control to Unify.

[silent.e]

In my experience, all the countries stats seem to get averaged out after unification.

This can be bad for Miltech, Cohesion, GDP, etc.

I'm kind of rethinking my strategy about unification. I don't think it's 100% the thing to do all the time.

For example, I've reunified Korea. Now I have 2 atomic age armies, instead of 1 atomic and 1 information age. The country now has low Cohesion, and growing Unrest.

I think Unification works out better for countries that are very similar, otherwise it feels like your dragging down a good country with a bad one. But I haven't done the math, maybe output numbers-wise your still getting more out of the countries per the control point cost.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

Originally posted by VDmitry:

Are you sure for less Admin points? How much. Don't they get increased cost for large population/territory?

Everything about a country gets diminishing returns from economy size, including IP and admin cap usage. You usually aren't merging large enough countries for it to be entirely obvious. As silent.e said, most national metrics get averaged when you unify two nations, but I think it's weighted. This means that the stats of the larger nation will have a greater overall impact than the smaller one, though I'd assume that if the GDP/c is too different it would realistically spike the inequality. I'm not sure about that, though.

As for the benefits and disadvantages of Federations and Unification, Federations pool all their funding and boost income and give every member a weighted share of the two pools. This lets you have a single large nation with a few attached "smaller" ones that can provide funding and boost to more controlled locations. On the other hand, this means a small nation that doesn't provide boost or funding in a federation will leach a bit from all the others, making it necessary to take the entire thing to get the full pot. The most pressing advantage, though, is that so long as one member of a federation has a functional space program, every country in it can develop Mission Control even if they don't have a space program of their own. The downside is, as stated already, that a Federation takes more CP capacity to maintain and the smaller nations are easier to steal.

As for Unification, there's a few major benefits: the biggest and least obvious is that non-numerical attributes of the constituent nations (particularly nuclear status and whether or not they completed a space program) are incorporated into the unified nation. This means if, say, you have Panama complete a space program, then unite it with Guatemala before the latter can develop its own program, the resulting country will still have a space program. I believe this works in reverse as well in that, if a country with a space program "fractures" the breakaway may also have one, but I'm not certain. The most obvious benefit to a unified country is also its weakness: the larger economy makes the CPs naturally resistant to councilor actions, but if lost it makes them particularly difficult to retake. More importantly, when two nations unify, some of the CP ownership carries over, which means that if the Servants have a CP in Germany and you unify it into the EU, there's a chance that they gain a CP in the EU. On the other hand, the reverse can be weaponized: if you have a nation too strong to easily regain a CP in, you can fracture it into smaller nations and clear it out that way at the risk of losing more CPs.

[VDmitry]

Ok, I did a test - made unification of 2 countries to check the difference.

Investments: 9 + 7 became 9 (you loose)
Funds: 94 + 29 became 123 (remains)
Science: 65 + 24 became 79 (you loose)
Boost: 2 + 4 became 6 (remains)
Controls: 9 + 7 became 16 (remains)

Admin points: unification freed 13 points, it's close to the points for the smaller country I merged (15 points country merged into 60 points one).

Mil-tech: 3.9 + 3.2 became 3.8 (you loose, still some armies may benefit)

Also: Unrest and Cohesion seems going closer to average. GDP remains. Unclear for Government, probably it remains the same as it was for the Leader of Federation.

So you loose some Science, what's a problem. Also the big issue is Investments. Independent countries could develop FASTER than been unified. The advantage for Unification is certainly freed Admin points, while getting most of the merge country. And also less countries for Defend Interests (your Council actions are very limited after all) and Advice. Advice however impacted by less Investments, so it's barely an advantage. Also I believe multiply Advice actions on the same round against the same nation do not sum up (at least verified that for military bonus).

[The_Draf]

Unify to deny others lands

[VDmitry]

And finally got the idea of Federation. Funds and Boosts (and nothing else) are merged and then redistributed between members. If it's benefical to player or not depends on which country he has. If he controls the whole Federation it does nothing. If some small country without any local Boost - he may get some Boost. If he controls a country producing Boost while others don't, they he is loosing part of it, etc.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

It's important to note that Funds and Boosts are retained fully for unification, so the only real benefit of Federation over Unification in that regard is that a federation has more IPs and therefore can increase those faster than a united nation with all that land.

[MaiFlow]

Another advantage is that you now have fewer countries to manage the public opinon of. It also gives you some action economy bonuses in that you only have one country to run the Defend Interests mission on.

[Kuattro]

Originally posted by MaiFlow:

It also gives you some action economy bonuses in that you only have one country to run the Defend Interests mission on.

And advise.