"Using covert strategies, this attack sends only troops to attack and torch enemy lands. Because of the surprise factor, only opponent troops can fight back. If you are able to penetrate opposing defenses, you will kill a significant portion of your opponent's civilian population and be able to destroy a portion of their food reserves."

I noticed that after receiving a healthy dose of GS that my TPT dropped by about a thousand points. I can't find where GS could contribute to that, but I didn't see anything else that happened to my country that can explain it. Is TPT relative to population in any way? Is it just not updated in the above attack description?

tpt and other production is tied to population so until you get your pop to somewhat near max your tpt and other production will be fluffty.

It is a fairly recent change Buttman

"#3) Production based on Population

In an effort to make crippling and failed KR's less pointless, we have made production of indies/farms/labs/rigs based on population.

Basically production of each (&TPT) is multiplied by:

min(1,max(0.2,pop/(maxpop*0.8))

This means once you drop below 16% of population, your production will hit a floor of 20%; production does not get affected until you are below 80% of max population. Given cashers are already linearly affected from 100% -> 0%, this is not applied vs Ent/Res."

There are several threads discussing the change and a technique to minimise its effects in the Strategy Room.

As long as the gs run is long enough this is now a crippling form of attack particularly for techers and cashers. Probably not as damaging, still, as the traditional AB run but there are collateral benefits to the attacker; some return on the hits; less costly in military; and people still leave thmselves open to it not having caught up with the change.

It is also VERY BORING to counteract, requiring turn by turn pay. So you inflict tedium on a technically astute opponent. :). HA.

gs was bad for cashers even before that change since cashers income comes from taxes pop pays so gs casher enuf and it is out of picture quite a long time.

farmers were somewhat safe even from brs and abs even their production dropped they still produced enuf to survive and gs's against farmers were waste of time if no kill (less pop eating bushels = more bushels to be sold).

techers, indies and oilers were (and still are of course) very vulnerable to abs and brs since their production is tied to buildings they have.

today after that change if can't kill target/opponent then just gs his/her country to lowish pop and his/her country is fluffed up quite awhile no matter what strat he/she is running.

thank you guys

A tip I found quite helpful, and you may too when you encounter this situation. You're population replenishes slower and slower as you get farther from your max pop. What I mean is, and this is just a quick example, If if your max pop is 10k and your current pop is 5k, you may get back 500 pop per turn. But if your current pop is at 1k, you may only regain 50 pop per turn. With that in mind, A very effective way to speed up your population replenishment if your current pop has been decimated is to raise your tax rate to 70%. This will lower your max pop and cause civilians to come back at a faster rate, also it decreases cash lost per turn. When you see your civilians per turn start slowing down, lower tax rate to 60%, repeat this process until you are back to your desired tax rate

Yet another reason to not break GDI on express!

Kevro that is not quite right.

If you want pop to come back at the quickest possible rate drop tax to zero.

But that, of course, drops tax revenue to zero and also has the effect of reducing production (while your pop is low enough). That is because tax at zero increases your max pop.

If you want to maximise production, raise tax to 70%. While this slows down pop recovery it reduces max pop and hece improves the proportion actual pop bears to max pop.

It is a trade off.

The determining factor is how rich your country is in saleable resource. If you have the ability to raise lots of cash you will go for tax at zero and get your pop back to normal asap. If you are stony broke you need production and you will spend more time nursing pop back but with tax at 70%.

It's all rather tedious. A a techer you find yourself playing turns one at a time (because production in tech points keeps changing).

If you dislike your techer opponent with a vengeance and want to inflict several hours of tedium upon them go for gs.

You may want to look into that a bit more furious. In normal circumstances, you are right. However if your population has been destroyed, raising your tax rate decreases your max pop. By decreasing your max population, your dwindled population is now closer to max, which causes your civilians to return at a quicker rate, until you approach max pop again. Which is when you would decrease to 60 % and so on.
My example works when your civilians are close to extinct tho. If you've only been hit by a few gs or chems you won't need to raise it so much. Also, if your production is down from low pop, when you raise your tax rate you'll immediately see a rise in production due to being closer to max pop. Sorry if this is confusing, but it makes sense in my head lol

Well, Kevro, I've tried it.

More than once.

At very low populations and at populations approaching max, tax rate has little effect on recovery rate. But at all the intermediate points (where you are for most of the time while recovering population after an extended gs run) the position is as I describe.

I am perfectly willing to be persuaded that there are special cases at highly specific levels. I have not, Xin like, taken a calculator to the job turn by turn.

But if you like practicality, and are persuaded by impirical evidence, go for the technique I describe in the Strategy Room thread.

Well son of a fluff, I stand corrected. I was conveniently just hit with a barrage of gs and a few chems so I tested it. Your production is indeed helped by the raised tax rate resulting in lower max pop, but the civilian replenishment was much less than when I dropped the tax rate to 1% as furious said. I'm not sure which way is more beneficial and I'm not willing to do the math hah

First sell off your Residential tech (drops max pop). If you have a few Residences knock them down (same reason). If you are a casher I'm not sure about knocking down the Residences. Hard arithmetic involved I expect.

Sell to fund turns and cut down expenses.

Now go turn by turn. Whether you prioritise pop recovery (low tax) or maintaining as much production as possible (70% tax) does not, in my view, depend on arithmetic but on the immediate needs of your country. If you are wealthy and can raise the funds needed to fund all the turns you need to recover population (up to 100 or more) you will go for 0% tax and the most rapid increase in pop posible. If you are broke you need every bit of production you can get so you will primarily go for 70% tax with the odd turn thrown in when you can afford it at 0 % to give pop a boost.

Thanks for the advice and sorry for bad info