I've been looking at this for a while and just found something on fort building costs. Done in 2010, but probably still valid info.
ORIGINAL: vaned74
I did some testing on fort building out of curiousity to determine cost/time to build various levels.
I set up 10 Japanese naval const battalions (36 Engineers, 3 engineer vehicles) on two islands - Etorofu & Ishigaki.
Ishigaki started at level 2 fort, Etorofu at lvl 0. Both are non-clear terrain. On both islands thus were 120,000 supplies and 510 engineer equivalents (360 squads, 30 vehicles).
Both islands built fairly consistently in pace, Etorofu took less time to reach level 9. Here are the results for level to level builds w/supply costs.
Level 0-3 - Etorofu reach level 3 and 8% to level four in 3 days at a cost of 1,000 supplies.
Based on both islands (variance of 3% faster build rate at Etorofu).
Build level 3 to level 4 - 510 eng equivalents build at rate 11.5% per day; cost 280 supplies or 24 per 1% progress
Level 4 to 5 - 8%/day; 290 supplies/day or 36 per 1%
Level 5 to 6 - 5.5%/day; 290 supplies/day or 52 per 1%
Level 6 to 7 - 4%/day; 800 supplies/day or 200 per 1%
Level 7 to 8 - 3.1%/day; 800 supplies/day or 267 tons per 1%
Level 8 to 9 - 2.7%.day; 800 supplies/day or 299 tons per 1%
Note, you cannot build above level 6 w/o 25,000 tons of supplies present at the base.
So, totals are:
[font="Trebuchet MS"]Levels 1,2 and 3- cost about 1,000 supplies and take 3 days
Level 4 - 2,400 tons of supplies; 9 days
Level 5 - 3,600 supplies, 13 days
Level 6 - 5,200 supplies, 19 days
Level 7 - 20,000 supplies, 25 days
Level 8 - 26,700 supplies, 33 days
Level 9 - 29,900 supplies, 38 days[/font]
To go from level 0 to level 9 required ~93,000 supplies and ~145 days for the 10 battalions.
Obviously in bang for your buck - level 6 is the best payout and a large engineering force can achieve this in relatively short time.
I also tested 5 battalions building and the rates where just about exactly equal to 1/2 of the build rate with 10 battalions (510 engineer equivalents).
This was seemingly a one post thread, so I am not linking it. Good info though. I was thinking that maybe building too many bases to level 6 might have led to supply shortages, and this seems to support that guess, unfortunately. [;)]
So to map it easier to see this in terms of the cost for each level I've made an accumulating list. My math and his don't add up, so I'm wondering why? I'd have to do a similar test, but at least this puts things in the same ballpark.
[font="Trebuchet MS"]For 510 engineer equivalents:
Level 1 - 200 - 1 day
Level 2 - 500 - 2 days
Level 3 - 1,000 - 3 days
Level 4 - 2,400 - 12 days
Level 5 - 7,000 - 25 days
Level 6 - 12,200 - 44 days
Level 7 - 32,200 - 69 days
Level 8 - 58,900 - 102 days
Level 9 - 88,800 - 140 days[/font]
Now, thinking about the number of level 6 forts created for the Japanese in this game, I've gone through (without the game open in front of me but with a pretty good remembrance of which went to that level) and added up the cost of fort building. It's pretty staggering!
For the (estimated) 220 bases built to Level 6 the cost would be 2,684,000!!! Hmmmmmm.
Only two bases were built to a level 9, for another 177,600. About four more were built to level 7, for 128,000. That's 2,989,600!!!!! [X(]
That doesn't count the bases built to level 4-5 or less. Add another 100 at Level 4, for 240,000. Add another 50 at level 5, for 350,000. Add another 150 at level 3, for 150,000. So that's a total of 3,729,600!!!!!!!!!! [X(][X(]
This seems to account for a much higher portion of supply than changing air factories around or building a lot of R n D. Even 90 x 30,000 is only 2,700,000.
Looking at a mid-42 econ report I was making just about 27,500 supply a day. So that's ~10,037,500 for the year. That gives a total of ~30,772,500 for the war up to 1/1/45.
So I guess about 12.2% of total supply up to 45 was used to build forts.
All of this is a bit speculative as I don't have the actual bases and numbers in front of me, but I bet the numbers are even higher counting all of the bases on map including those conquered and held during the game.
The interesting thing for me is that if I'd built those level 6 forts to level 5 instead (at a cost of 1,540,000) it would have cost 1,144,000 LESS in supply! That would be useful now!
In fact I may settle with level 4 forts (for 528,000) most everywhere except for very important bases and especially isolated islands. The Marianas will still be level 6 at least.
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
