How to boost NM

[Durk]

In all my games I am hell on my forces. In EAW I seem to drive my nations into rebellion much more quickly than my opponent or at the same time as my opponent. What can I do to boost NM? I lose NM even when I win battles.

[Husaria]

Durk:

I think the key to raising NM is to very favorably winning battles.

In the campaign game I just finished as the CP I had my NM back up to the mid 120s by the middle of 1918. I was winning some large battles by large margins. Many of these were defensive battles on the Western front, as I was pushing into Russia and Italy.

I think capturing key cities may also help with NM, although I am less certain about that. I didn't pay that much attention to what happened specifically when I captured a silver star city.

I also was very careful with RGD that impacted NM, although many of these were necessary.

Again I'd say winning major battles by large margins was the key.

[Durk]

Thanks for these thoughts:
I have this issue, say with a recent game of the 1916 scenario as the Entente playing both East and West, I won a lot of battles by large odd, but my NM continued to decline even though I lost few battles.
This was combined with my inability to convert recaptured Belgium regions from 100% Central Powers loyalty to even 98% Entente loyalty. Similar result on the Eastern front.

[imperium3]

You get NM for:

- winning battles in which you destroy a lot of enemy elements.
- capturing one of a very limited number of objective cities, including the ones set in your initial warplan. These are listed in the ledger.
- making a besieged enemy garrison surrender without a fight. This one is a bit odd because you get 1 NM no matter how small or large the garrison was.

Note that in all these cases, your opponent loses as much NM as you gain (though I think I've sometimes seen differing behaviour with battles).

Since war exhaustion makes you lose 1 NM every turn from 1915 onwards, it is very hard to keep your NM up unless you're really thrashing your opponent. However, it is sufficient to make sure that your NM declines at a slower rate than the enemy's.

[Durk]

Ok, I think I get this. So with the 1916 start all factions are at risk with a 24 NM loss each year. This game has become very interesting.
Initially after the Great Power dropped, it was Italy, Belgium and Persia versus Turkey.
A Russian factions has joined.
Scotland, Ireland, Canada and Australia all can build troops, but with no commanders.
Italy exited the war.
The situation is very odd, but fun.