How Malta spends 0.7 gold on wars and makes 2.3 gold back

On 28 July at 14:49, Malta declared war on Albania. Nine seconds later, on Bosnia. Then Croatia, Israel, Lebanon and Bulgaria. Six wars in thirty-seven seconds. That looks insane. It is arithmetic, and you can do the same arithmetic tonight. THE RULE THAT PAYS Win a country war and you take five percent of the loser's state treasury. Not five percent of a player's pocket - five percent of the national budget: its gold, every currency it banks, and every raw material in its state warehouse. After that, while you hold the ground, an occupation levy keeps flowing from that country's production into your treasury. Five percent sounds small. It is not, because of what a treasury holds. I checked all 196 countries. Eighty-six of them hold a budget worth between 800 and 1400 dollars. Most sit near 1000, because that is what a country slowly collects in taxes and never spends. Five percent of 1000 is 50. Malta's six current targets, and what a win pays: Albania - treasury 1001, prize 50 Bulgaria - treasury 1041, prize 52 Bosnia - treasury 983, prize 49 Croatia - treasury 967, prize 48 Israel - treasury 934, prize 47 Lebanon - treasury 0, prize nothing Five of the six pay about fifty dollars. Together, 246. WHAT A WAR COSTS Declaring costs 0.1 gold, paid by your treasury to the game fund. Gold is 129.75 dollars a gram today, so a declaration is about 13 dollars. Soldiers cost far less than you expect. Malta bought 320 of them for 1.4 gold - roughly 57 cents each. The five Special operations troops it sent at most of those countries cost 0.025 gold. Three dollars. Sixteen dollars to open a front, about fifty back. And the part beginners miss: soldiers who win do not die. They stay as a garrison for 100 days. You buy an army once and reuse it. Malta's entire war programme is 0.7 gold of fees across seven wars. It has already banked 49.53 euro from Greece plus 601 units of goods in occupation levy, with 246 dollars still on the table. Roughly 2.3 gold coming back on 0.7 gold of fees. WHY ALMOST EVERYONE IS A SITTING DUCK Of 196 countries, 193 have no army. Zero soldiers. Three countries own troops: Malta with 210, Romania with 45, Ukraine with 40. That is the entire military of this world. So for almost every country on the map, five Special operations troops - three dollars of soldiers - walk in unopposed and carry out fifty. Nobody will fight for a country nobody has armed. If you live in one of those 193, that is your warning. If you are hunting income, that is your opening. BULGARIA, THE ONE THAT FOUGHT BACK Malta sent ten Special operations troops at Bulgaria, not five. Bulgaria is the richest thing in reach: 1041 dollars in cash, 41 players, and 18,815 units of raw material in its warehouse. Five percent of that warehouse alone is about 940 units of wood, iron, clay, meat and wheat. And Bulgaria is defended by two foreign countries. Romania's parliament voted 636 to 554 to send five Special operations troops. They landed at 20:04 and died - but killed five of Malta's on the way out. Ukraine's parliament voted 681 to 86 to send ten Elite troops. On top of that a Ukrainian player, Jorjgvara, is marching in twenty Defense troops of his own: 10,000 defence points against the 5,000 Malta has left standing. Why would Romania and Ukraine bleed for Bulgaria? Because occupied land extends the occupier's reach. Malta could not even attack Bulgaria until it took Greece - Bulgaria never touched Malta's border, it touched Greece's. Every conquest opens the next one. They are not defending Bulgaria. They are defending themselves, early and cheap. Help a neighbour while it is still a neighbour. One tactical note from the Greek war, because it cost me. Greece was defended by six soldiers in five separate stacks, two of them mine. Arrivals resolve one stack at a time, so we were killed one stack at a time and Malta lost two men out of ten. Send one hammer, never five taps. WHY BUYING A COUNTRY CAN PAY FOR ITSELF A private country costs 5 gold, about 649 dollars. There are 117 for sale right now, holding 19,455 dollars between them. Malta can currently reach 23 countries. Those 23 hold 18,035 dollars of treasury. Five percent of all of it is 902 dollars - about 7 gold. Malta cost 5. That is the whole investment case. You are not buying a flag. You are buying a declaration button, an address on the map, and a list of neighbours. THE OWNER IS NOT GAMBLING Malta belongs to one player. His username is themerovingian. Keep that in mind, it gets funnier in about two minutes. Look at the order he did things in. Bought Malta on 11 July. Took Greece the next day with ten Special operations troops, losing two - Greece was the door, not the prize. Then sixteen quiet days collecting the levy. Then he bought 1 gold with real bitcoin, 130.85 dollars, and put it into the treasury. Then an army of 320. Only then six wars at once, against five treasuries he had obviously already read. A gambler bets everything on one fight. He opened six with a known payout on each and no way to lose more than the fee. That is a portfolio. Lebanon looks like the odd one out: its treasury is empty, so the five percent prize is nothing. That is not a wasted fee. A war buys three things, and the prize is only the first. The second is the levy, and it keeps paying for as long as you hold the ground. It is ten percent of what the occupied country's citizens earn - their income, not their treasury. Lebanon still has fourteen people living in it. The third is reach, and it is the one beginners never price in. Hold a country and its neighbours become countries you can attack. That is why Greece came first: it paid once as a treasury, then again as the border that put Bulgaria in range. Israel is the same kind of door. Take it and six more countries come within reach, two of them holding about 1,730 dollars between them, one of them with 213 players in it. So read two numbers before you pay the fee, not one: what the treasury holds today, and what the map opens tomorrow. HISTORY REMEMBERS Now, about that username. The Merovingians were real. They ruled the Franks from about 450 to 751, over what is now France, Belgium and western Germany, and were called the long-haired kings because uncut hair was the mark of royal blood. They made money exactly the way Malta is making it. First plunder: Clovis took the Burgundian and Visigothic treasuries and paid his followers out of the loot. Then land, the old Roman estates, worked by other people. Then tolls - every bridge, road, river crossing and market paid the king. And finally coin: they minted gold in more than 800 places, and minting was so profitable that the moneyer's name, not the king's, went on the coin. Plunder, land, tolls, minting. That is not a coincidence, that is a reading list. The man wrote his entire business plan into his username, hung it over his head where 196 countries could read it, and then did every item on it in order. Nobody looked it up. Six of them found out the hard way on a Tuesday afternoon. It worked for three centuries, then stopped for a dull reason. They ran out of neighbours worth robbing, split the kingdom between every son at every death, and let their own generals run the state. In 751 one of those generals, Pepin, put the last Merovingian king in a monastery and took the crown. Loot is starting capital, not a business. It pays for the first army. What you build with it decides whether anyone remembers your name. For now Malta is in the plunder phase, and the plunder phase pays very well. Check your treasury. Check your neighbours' armies. And if you own a country with 1000 dollars in the bank and not one soldier, understand what you look like from Valletta.