Starting off strong
Introduction
The purpose of this page is to help guide you towards creating a strong, stable country while still in the 300 turn protection. While your numbers won't accurately reflect those mentioned below, it should be close enough to still give you similar results. Bear in mind, this strategy does not focus on tech points.
Country Management
Government Type: Democracy
Tax Rate: 21%
Turns
At this stage, you want to keep a close eye on your Cabinet messages. They will let you know when you should be building houses, shops, oil rigs, and farms.
Start off by exploring for new land. Continue exploring until the game requires you to start building on your unused land. You will want to focus on houses and shops to start with. You'll want to make sure you build 10 buildings at a time to avoid wasting turns. Continue this process until you run out of funds.
Once you've run out of funds, you'll need to continue exploring until you have enough money to build 10 buildings. This is where the turn usage starts to slow down. The only time you should use generate funds is if you don't have enough money to build and you are unable to explore for more land.
Be mindful of your cabinet messages. You'll want to build farms (no more than 10 at a time) when your cabinet tells you that you are generating less than 1,000 food per turn. Also, try to sneak in a few oil rigs here and there. The sooner you get them built the faster they can start building up your reserves.
Eventually, you'll reach a point where you are becoming cash positive again. You'll need to decide the type of offensive units to build. My advice is to have a blend of tanks/jets/spies.
Military Unit Production: 25%
Tanks: 33%
Jets: 33%
Spies: 34%
Begin building military factories. You'll want to continue building shops/houses/farms based upon your cabinet messages. After around 50 turns you can increase your military production to 50%.
Once again, be mindful of your cabinet and build accordingly. Remember the focus is on military factories with shops/houses/farms as needed to generate revenue.
The goal is to try and have the following buildings at turn 200:
Houses: 400
Military Factories: 300
Shops: 550
Farms: 80
Oil Rigs: 30
At this stage, you should be fairly self sufficient and have a pretty good amount of money banked. Now its time to focus on your offensive strength.
Military Unit Production: 100%
Tanks: 100%
Continue exploring for land until you start getting 2-3 land per turn. After that, you can start using generate funds if you want to. You'll want to continue building farms as needed, but focus primarily on military factories, shops, and houses. Build oil rigs as needed to ensure you have enough oil to attack/defend with.
Stopping at turn 299
This is where most people make the biggest mistake. Be sure you stop at turn 299. You should have a fairly decent sized army now, but you aren't ready to continue. Instead, you'll want to wait until you have 300+ turns banked.
When you have 300 turns banked, break out of of protection and start looking for targets. The extra turns gives you the ability to recover readiness after attacks and build additional army as needed.
Events
Events can make this process easy or difficult. A negative event will have a dramatic effect on your ability to generate income in the early stages. Use generate funds when necessary. On the flipside, a positive cash event is an enormous blessing during this process. Unfortunately, you can't plan for events due to their randomness. So, just be mindful of the events and try to adjust accordingly.
Conclusion
Hopefully this strategy guide gives you some ideas on how to create a powerful nation from the ground up. One of the best ways to make your way to the top rankings is to get there first. It's sometimes easier to hold the #1 position then it is to try and take it.
