Over the past six months, Trump has been making increasingly false, absurd, and dangerous claims - from saying the “only way” he’ll lose in November is in a rigged election to claiming his opponents illegally “spied” on his campaign.
However, not only is he making these claims, the president and his cronies are corrupting the power of government to inflate his lies to the level of truth and oppress any evidence to the contrary. With the help of loyalists atop every federal agency, Trump has perverted the government to serve his own re-election desires.
This list is nowhere near comprehensive. There are many more examples that could be given, but I tried to keep it short enough that it is still readable.

ODNI and Intelligence Community

Limit disclosure of knowledge of Russian sabotage.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Trump loyalist John Ratcliffe, canceled future in-person briefings on election security issues to the congressional intelligence committees. Instead, the ODNI will provide written briefings only.
The change came after a classified briefing in which top counterintelligence official Bill Evanina told House members that Russia is again trying to boost President Donald Trump’s reelection and denigrate his opponent, Joe Biden. Trump was enraged after details of the briefing leaked to the public, revealing that his own administration’s intelligence officers contradict his repeated assertions that Russia is not interfering on his behalf.
Reminder: Trump fired the previous DNI, Joseph Maguire, after learning that one of Maguire’s staff members gave a 2020 election security briefing to the House Intelligence Committee. In the briefing, Maguire aide Shelby Pierson alerted committee members that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign in an effort to tip the election in Trump’s favor. In firing Maguire, Trump sent a warning to the entire intelligence community: Trump’s opinion and electoral prospects must be prioritized over facts.

Department of Homeland Security

Twist intelligence to support campaign and personal motives.
Election interference
Former acting Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis Brian Murphy filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf interfered with intelligence assessments in order to benefit Trump politically.
In May 2020, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told Murphy to “cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran.” Wolf told Murphy those instructions came directly from the White House.
In July 2020, DHS chief of staff John Gountanis intervened to stop publication of an intelligence bulletin warning about a Russian disinformation plot to “denigrate” the mental health of Joe Biden. On July 8, Murphy said, he met with Wolf, who told him that the intelligence notification should be “held” because it “made the President look bad.”
Trump not only attempts to hide intelligence that contradicts the false narrative he continues to push about China actively interfering to boost Biden, according to Murphy Trump’s officials directed him to prioritize intelligence on China and Iran.

It’s disturbing enough for a president and his allies to distort intelligence assessments for political gain, but Murphy’s account suggests something more nefarious—that intelligence authorities and positions of public trust might have been used to engineer the narrative from the outset.

Campaign agitprop
Murphy’s complaint also details that Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli ordered him to modify intelligence assessments to make the threat of white supremacy “appear less severe” and include information on violent “left-wing” groups and Antifa. The reason given was “to ensure they matched up with the public comments by President Trump on the subject of ANTIFA and ‘anarchist’ groups.”
Trump has spent months fear-mongering about imagined mobs of far-left activists coming to attack the suburbs. On Saturday, the Trump campaign sent out an “ANTIFA ALERT” text message to supporters, saying “they’ll attack your homes if Joe’s elected. Pres Trump needs you to become a Diamond Club Member.”

Customs and Border Patrol

Cause unrest in Democratic-cities to assist in fear campaign.
Border Patrol agents were among the federal forces sent to Portland to confront and arrest protestors over the summer.
Gil Kerlikowske, former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection under President Barack Obama, said BORTAC, the unit dispatched to the city, is chiefly trained to pursue fugitives and criminals. "They're clearly the wrong group to be doing this.”
The violence they provoked was featured in Trump’s campaign ads and RNC nomination acceptance speech.
“Trump has ratcheted up political ties to border patrol to another level,” Todd Miller, the author of Empire of Borders, said. “He based his whole 2016 campaign around this, and it is now at the core of his 2020 re-election bid. These are his people.”
Most recently, the Border Patrol produced and published a dramatized video showing a Spanish-speaking attacker stabbing and killing a man in a dark alley after escaping from U.S. agents - “a clip apparently created to dramatize President Trump’s depiction of migrants as fearsome criminals.”

Justice Department

Weaponize the law to harm opponents and save himself.
Investigate Trump’s rivals
Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr are reportedly pressuring U.S. Attorney John Durham and his team to release the results of their probe before the November election. Durham was appointed by Barr to investigate the origins of the Mueller investigation and the FBI’s Russia probe. Last week, a highly respected and experienced prosecutor, Nora R. Dannehy, resigned as a senior aide to Durham due to concern over this improper political pressure.
Trump has publicly expressed impatience with the Durham investigation, saying there should be more prosecutions and disclosures of information that would damage his political rivals. Last month, Barr indicated the DOJ would not respect an informal policy against taking investigative steps 60 days before Election Day.
In a speech on Wednesday, Barr essentially rebuked the Mueller investigation and the cases it spawned: “Smart, ambitious lawyers have sought to amass glory by prosecuting prominent public figures since the Roman Republic. It is utterly unsurprising that prosecutors continue to do so today to the extent the Justice Department’s leaders will permit it. As long as I am Attorney General, we will not.”
Assist Trump’s allies
Attorney General Barr has explicitly interfered in at least two criminal cases against Trump’s allies, helping the president promote the narrative that the Obama administration (in which Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden served) acted inappropriately. In February, Barr overruled career federal prosecutors in order to recommend the former Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone receive a lesser prison sentence. The entire team of prosecutors resigned from the criminal case due to the Justice Department’s interference. Trump ultimately commuted Stone’s 40-month sentence, much less than the original recommendation of seven to nine years in prison.
Then, in May, the Justice Department filed a request to drop the criminal case against Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, despite the fact that Flynn twice - before two separate judges - admitted to lying to the FBI. In response, nearly 2,000 former DOJ employees called for Barr’s resignation, saying he had “assaulted the rule of law.”
Politically-motivated actions
Barr reportedly told prosecutors to explore aggressive charges against people arrested at recent demonstrations across the US, even suggesting bringing a rarely used sedition charge, reserved for those who have plotted a threat that posed imminent danger to government authority.
The AG asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for not acting immediately to disrupt the police-free zone created by protestors over the summer. According to the Associated Press, charges were also explored against city officials in Portland, Oregon, for the continued protests in the area.
The Justice Department is targeting Democratic governors for coronavirus outbreaks in state-owned nursing homes. The four governors - PA’s Tom Wolf, MI’s Whitmer, NJ’s Murphy, and NY’s Cuomo - are frequent targets of Trump for not lifting pandemic restrictions as fast as he’d like. Republican-run states have very similar rules about nursing home admissions yet are not under DOJ investigation.
Just yesterday, Barr publicly bashed states that still have restrictions in place, saying that “stay at home orders” are “like house arrest.” Incredibly, Barr added: “Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history."

• More: In April, Barr issued a memorandum directing the nation’s U.S. attorneys to be on the lookout for public health rules that might, among other things, constitute “undue interference with the national economy.”

CDC and FDA

Rush coronavirus treatments to save his election chances.
At the end of March, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to allow hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for coronavirus COVID-19 treatment after weeks of pressure from Trump. For instance, eight days before the EUA, Trump tweeted that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin could be "one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine" and should "be put in use immediately."
Ultimately, the FDA revoked its EUA in June after more evidence revealed hydroxychloroquine can cause “serious cardiac adverse events.”
Experts say the FDA again caved to political pressure when it approved an expanded use of convalescent plasma to treat covid patients, the night before the Republican National Convention. Despite concerns over plasma’s effectiveness, Trump called Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the N.I.H., to tell him: “Get it done by Friday.” When it wasn’t, Trump took to Twitter to accuse those at the FDA of being part of the “deep state” withholding an approval “to delay the answer until after November 3.” The next day, the FDA announced its approval.
Finally, and most obviously, Trump has pressured the FDA to approve of a coronavirus vaccine before the November election. Experts across the board have said there is no way our government and existing infrastructure will be ready to distribute, administer, and track doses by November.

Trump, Sept. 2: "[It's] going to be done in a very short period of time -- could even have it during the month of October… We’re going to have a vaccine very soon, maybe even before a very special date. You know what date I’m talking about” (clip 1 and clip 2.

Just yesterday, Trump contradicted CDC chief Robert Redfield’s timetable for the vaccine, saying the doctor was “confused” in his congressional testimony.

"If you're asking me when is it going to be generally available to the American public, so we can begin to take advantage of vaccine to get back to our regular life, I think we're probably looking at third, late second quarter, third quarter 2021," Redfield told a Senate appropriations subcommittee.

"I think he made a mistake when he said that. It's just incorrect information," Trump said about Redfield's vaccine timeline. Following Trump’s repudiation, a CDC spokesman walked back Redfield’s statements to be in line with the president’s. "He was not referring to the time period when Covid-19 vaccine doses would be made available to all Americans," the spokesman said.

Department of Health and Human Services

Convince the public that the pandemic is gone.
DHS is bidding out a more than $250 million contract to a communications firm as it seeks to “defeat despair and inspire hope” about the coronavirus pandemic. Among the goals of the contract: “sharing best practices for businesses to operate in the new normal and instill confidence to return to work and restart the economy.” In other words: exactly what Trump has tried to project onto the nation despite his failure to effectively contain the spread of the coronavirus.
As the House Oversight Committee has expressed, “rather than focus on planning and executing a national strategy to contain the coronavirus, the Trump Administration is using a quarter of a billion dollars in taxpayer money to fund what appears to be a political propaganda campaign just two months before a presidential election.”
Remember, the pandemic crisis still gripping America is Trump’s own creation. Olivia Troye, Pence’s top aide on the White House coronavirus task force, went public yesterday with her firsthand experiences. She relays that throughout the pandemic, Trump was consumed by himself and his prospects in November. “For him, it was all about the election,” Troye said.
Instead of trying to help Americans and slow the spread, Trump is spending 250 million taxpayer dollars to try to convince us not to believe our own eyes and ears.

US Postal Service

Discredit vote-by-mail and suppress the vote.
President Trump on Thursday continued his months long campaign against mail-in voting this November by tweeting that “MAYHEM” will occur in states that send ballots to all registered voters. In another tweet, Trump falsely asserted that “the Nov 3rd Election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED” due to nine states running universal mail-in voting.
By casting doubt on mail ballots and the election results, Trump is trying to accomplish two things: (1) persuade voters not to participate in the election, and (2) claim victory prematurely, or even after a decisive loss.
To this end, Postmaster DeJoy - a big donor to Trump’s campaign - has sent confusing misinformation to voters in these states that automatically send registered voters ballots by mail.
DeJoy has also implemented changes at USPS that significantly slowed the delivery of mail, making it harder for people to vote by mail with confidence and, likely, scaring some people away from voting at all in the middle of the pandemic. Trump is betting on these changes having a bigger impact on Democrats than Republicans, especially considering the fact that he has spent nearly the entire year downplaying the threat of the coronavirus to his base.

• Note: Barr is also cranking out false public statements to discredit vote-by-mail, whether it’s falsely claiming it’s vulnerable to a massive foreign-engineered conspiracy or blatantly misrepresenting actual domestic cases of fraud.

National Park Service

Assist in taxpayer funded staging of campaign events.
Yes, even the National Park Service has been corrupted by Trump, via former oil industry lobbyist and Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt. Most recently, the NPS produced what appears to be a campaign ad, with no other purpose than promoting Trump. In fact, the words “PRESIDENT TRUMP” in all caps are the first words to appear on screen. The video likely breaks the law:

The federal Anti-Deficiency Act prohibits the use of federal funds for purposes other than those Congress has authorized… if Congress has not authorized the Interior Department to use our money to create campaign ads (and it hasn’t), then the Interior Department cannot legally create campaign ads. In addition to this general prohibition against using funds for unauthorized purposes, there is an express prohibition against propaganda.

Additionally the NPS allowed Trump to take over Mount Rushmore National Memorial for an air and fireworks show ostensibly to celebrate Independence day. In reality, Trump used the event to rail against Democrats, promote his statute-protecting executive order, and warn of a "left-wing cultural revolution." Put differently, it was a campaign event in the middle of a national park.
In June, U.S. Park Police (officers of the NPS) took part in forcibly removing peaceful protestors with tear gas and rubber bullets from the area in and around Lafayette Park, a national historic landmark and public place, for the president's photo-op with a bible. And in 2019, the Park Service used $2.5 million in fees paid by national park visitors to fund President Trump's "Salute to America" celebration in the National Mall.

At some point while watching the series I started looking up the words I didn't know or whose usage I wasn't familiar with. I'm sharing the resulting list of 56 words here should any of you cocksuckers find it useful. It's in reverse-chronological order (i.e., season 1 at the bottom).
simoom| səˈmo͞om | (also simoon | -ˈmo͞on | ) noun a hot, dry, dust-laden wind blowing in the desert, especially in Arabia.
unguent| ˈəNGɡwənt | noun a soft greasy or viscous substance used as ointment or for lubrication.
vapid| ˈvapəd | adjective offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging: tuneful but vapid musical comedies.
pinchbeck| ˈpin(t)SHbek | adjective appearing valuable, but actually cheap or tawdry.
depredation| ˌdeprəˈdāSHən | noun (usually depredations) an act of attacking or plundering: protecting grain from the depredations of rats and mice.
eventuate| əˈven(t)SHəˌwāt | verb [no object] formal occur as a result: you never know what might eventuate. • (eventuate in) lead to as a result: circumstances that eventuate in crime.
janissary| ˈjanəˌserē | (alsojanizary | -ˌzerē | ) noun (plural janissaries) historical a member of the Turkish infantry forming the Sultan's guard between the 14th and 19th centuries. • a devoted follower or supporter.
decorous| ˈdekərəs | adjective in keeping with good taste and propriety; polite and restrained: dancing with decorous space between partners.
arrant| ˈerənt | adjective [attributive] dated complete, utter: what arrant nonsense!
accede| əkˈsēd | verb [no object] formal 1 assent or agree to a demand, request, or treaty: the authorities did not accede to the strikers' demands. 2 assume an office or position: he acceded to the post of director in September. • become a member of a community or organization: Albania acceded to the IMF in 1990.
exigency| ˈeksəjənsē, eɡˈzijənsē | noun (plural exigencies) an urgent need or demand: women worked long hours when the exigencies of the family economy demanded it | he put financial exigency before personal sentiment.
fastidious| faˈstidēəs | adjective very attentive to and concerned about accuracy and detail: he chooses his words with fastidious care. • very concerned about matters of cleanliness: the child seemed fastidious about getting her fingers sticky or dirty.
proscribe| prōˈskrīb | verb [with object] forbid, especially by law: strikes remained proscribed in the armed forces. • denounce or condemn: certain practices that the Catholic Church proscribed, such as polygyny.
impertinent| imˈpərtnənt | adjective 1 not showing proper respect; rude: an impertinent question. 2 formal not pertinent to a particular matter; irrelevant: talk of “rhetoric” and “strategy” is impertinent to this process.
jocund| ˈjäkənd, ˈjōkənd | adjective formal cheerful and lighthearted: a jocund wedding party.
guffaw| ɡəˈfô | noun a loud and boisterous laugh.
cogent| ˈkōjənt | adjective (of an argument or case) clear, logical, and convincing: they put forward cogentarguments for British membership | the newspaper's lawyers must prepare a cogent appeal.
miasm| ˈmīˌazəm, ˈmē- | noun (in homeopathy) any of the three underlying chronic diseases that afflict humankind: sycosis, syphilis, and psora.
turpitude| ˈtərpəˌt(y)o͞od | noun formal depravity; wickedness: acts of moral turpitude.
gunsel| ˈɡən(t)səl | noun US informal a criminal carrying a gun.
vogue | vōɡ | noun [usually in singular] the prevailing fashion or style at a particular time: the vogue is to make realistic films. • general acceptance or favor; popularity: the 1920s and 30s, when art deco was much in vogue.
lanceolate| ˈlansēələt, ˈlansēəˌlāt | adjective technical shaped like the head of a lance; of a narrow oval shape tapering to a point at each end: the leaves are lanceolate.
gainsay| ˌɡānˈsā | verb (past and past participle gainsaid) [with object and negative] formal deny or contradict (a fact or statement): the impact of the railroads cannot be gainsaid. • speak against or oppose (someone): none could gainsay her.
counterpoise| ˈkoun(t)ərˌpoiz | noun a factor, force, or influence that balances or neutralizes another: they see the power of Brussels as a counterpoise to that of London | money is a good counterpoise to beauty. • a counterbalancing weight. • a state of equilibrium: the building stands in counterpoise to a Roman temple.
discomfit| disˈkəmfət | verb (discomfits, discomfiting, discomfited) [with object] make (someone) feel uneasy or embarrassed: he was not noticeably discomfited by her tone.
alack| əˈlak | (also alack-a-day) exclamation archaic an expression of regret or dismay. Alack for me!
atrabilious| ˌatrəˈbilyəs | adjective literary melancholy or ill-tempered: an atrabilious old man.
forbearance| fôrˈberəns, fərˈberəns | noun patient self-control; restraint and tolerance: forbearance from taking action. • Law the action of refraining from exercising a legal right, especially enforcing the payment of a debt.
cinder| ˈsindər | noun a small piece of partly burned coal or wood that has stopped giving off flames but still has combustible matter in it.
rake2 | rāk | noun dated a fashionable or wealthy man of dissolute or promiscuous habits: a merry Restoration rake.
capon| ˈkāˌpän, ˈkāˌpən | noun a castrated male chicken fattened for eating.
labile| ˈlāˌbīl, ˈlābəl | adjective technical liable to change; easily altered: persons whose blood pressure is more labile will carry an enhanced risk of heart attack | we may be the most labile culture in all history. • of or characterized by emotions that are easily aroused or freely expressed, and that tend to alter quickly and spontaneously; emotionally unstable: mood seemed generally appropriate, but the patient was often labile.
beard | ˈbird | verb [with object] boldly confront or challenge (someone formidable): he was afraid to beard the sultan himself.
forbear | fərˈber, fôrˈber | verb (past forbore; past participle forborne) [no object] politely or patiently restrain an impulse to do something; refrain: [with infinitive] : he modestly forbears to include his own work | the boy forbore from touching anything. • [with object] refrain from doing or using (something): Rebecca could not forbear a smile.
exaction| iɡˈzakSHən | noun formal the action of demanding and obtaining something from someone, especially a payment or service: he supervised the exaction of tolls at various ports. • a sum of money demanded for a payment or service: the billions flow in through 28 taxes and countless smaller exactions.
prerogative| prəˈräɡədiv | noun a right or privilege exclusive to a particular individual or class: owning an automobile was still the prerogative of the rich.
in extremis| ˌin ikˈstrāmis, ˌin ikˈstrēmis | adverb in an extremely difficult situation: they suddenly find themselves in extremis 20 miles out to sea.
protraction| prəˈtrakSH(ə)n | noun 1 the action of prolonging something or the state of being prolonged: the protraction of the war.
remit | rəˈmit | [with object] | verb (remits, remitting, remitted) 1 cancel or refrain from exacting or inflicting (a debt or punishment): the excess of the sentence over 12 months was remitted.
dissemble| dəˈsembəl | verb [no object] conceal one's true motives, feelings, or beliefs: an honest, sincere person with no need to dissemble. • [with object] disguise or conceal (a feeling or intention): she smiled, dissembling her true emotion.
hustings| ˈhəstiNGz | noun (plural same) a meeting at which candidates in an election address potential voters: he could hold his own in an election hustings | Mrs. Jones organized two public hustings. • the campaigning associated with an election: a formidable political operator at his best on the hustings.
rasher| ˈraSHər | noun a thin slice of bacon: two rashers of lean bacon | he cut into one of the rashers on his plate.
collation| kəˈlāSHən | noun 2 formal a light informal meal: lunch was a collation of salami, olives, and rye bread | a cold collation.
repast| rəˈpast, rēˈpast | noun formal a meal: a sumptuous repast.
rebuke| rəˈbyo͞ok | verb [with object] express sharp disapproval or criticism of (someone) because of their behavior or actions: she had rebuked him for drinking too much | the judge publicly rebuked the jury. noun an expression of sharp disapproval or criticism: he hadn't meant it as a rebuke, but Neil flinched.
confound| kənˈfound | verb [with object] 1 cause surprise or confusion in (someone), especially by acting against their expectations: the inflation figure confounded economic analysts. • prove (a theory, expectation, or prediction) wrong: the rise in prices confounded expectations. • defeat (a plan, aim, or hope): we will confound these tactics by the pressure groups.
ruddy| ˈrədē | adjective (ruddier, ruddiest) 1 (of a person's face) having a healthy red color: a cheerful pipe-smoking man of ruddy complexion.
fettle| ˈfedl | noun condition: the aircraft remains in fine fettle.
fatuous| ˈfaCHo͞oəs | adjective silly and pointless: a fatuous comment.
rend | rend | verb (past and past participle rent | rent | ) [with object] tear (something) into two or more pieces: snapping teeth that would rend human flesh to shreds | figurative : the speculation and confusion that was rending the civilized world.
offal| ˈôfəl, ˈäfəl | noun the entrails and internal organs of an animal used as food
venal| ˈvēnl | adjective showing or motivated by susceptibility to bribery: their generosity had been at least partly venal | why should these venal politicians care how they are rated?
blinker| ˈbliNGkər | verb [with object] put blinders on (a horse). • cause (someone) to have a narrow or limited outlook on a situation: college education blinkers researchers so that they see poverty in terms of their own specialization.
august| ôˈɡəst | adjective respected and impressive: she was in august company.
​
EDIT (additional submissions provided by commenters):
reconnoiter| ˌrēkəˈnoidər, ˌrekəˈnoidər | (British reconnoitre) verb [with object] make a military observation of (a region): they reconnoitered the beach some weeks before the landing | [no object] : the raiders were reconnoitering for further attacks.
aspersion| əˈspərZHən, aˈspərSHən | noun (usually aspersions) an attack on the reputation or integrity of someone or something: I don't thinkanyone is casting aspersions on you.
gleet | ɡlēt | noun Medicine a watery discharge from the urethra caused by gonorrheal infection.
ambulatory| ˈambyələˌtôrē | adjective relating to or adapted for walking: continuous ambulatory dialysis | five similar pairs of ambulatory legs.
faro| ˈferō | noun a gambling card game in which players bet on the order in which the cards will appear.
bivouac| ˈbivo͞oˌak | noun a temporary camp without tents or cover, used especially by soldiers or mountaineers. verb [no object] (bivouacked, bivouacking) stay in a temporary camp without cover: he'd bivouacked on the north side of the town | the battalion was now bivouacked in a field.
de rigueur| ˌdə riˈɡər, də rēˈɡər | adjective required by etiquette or current fashion: it was de rigueur for bands to grow their hair long.
randy| ˈrandē | adjective (randier, randiest) 1 informal sexually aroused or excited: as nervous as a randy adolescent on a hot date | he was making her more and more randy.
trope | trōp | noun a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression: he used the two-Americas trope to explain how a nation free and democratic at home could act wantonly abroad. • a significant or recurrent theme; a motif: she uses the Eucharist as a pictorial trope.
gambit| ˈɡambət | noun a device, action, or opening remark, typically one entailing a degree of risk, that is calculated to gain an advantage: his resignation was a tactical gambit.
ofay| ˈōfā | noun US offensive an offensive term for a white person, used by black people.
mitigate| ˈmidəˌɡāt | verb [with object] make less severe, serious, or painful: he wanted to mitigate misery in the world.
meet | mēt | adjective (archaic) suitable; fit; proper: it is a theater meet for great events.

Bannerlord is a great game that is currently plagued by some serious issues, from glitches and bugs to simply not bothering to explain its own mechanics. Without any mitigation or forewarning, these little problems can really snowball and ruin your experience. I've compiled this list of tips and tricks to help other players get around some of these problems and also to maximise your fun while the game remains in early access.
 
I've separated everything up into categories so that you don't have to dig through too much to get to the stuff you're interested in. Also, stuff that's relevant to new players only is marked with a [NP] in front of it, so you can skip that if you already know the basics.
 
Edit: Wow, I hit the 40000 character limit so now I have to add more tips as comments instead!
 

How Stats, Skills and Perks work

[NP] Your character's progression consists of increasing stats, skills, focus, perks and levels. Stats govern your base aptitude in a set of three skills. For example, the Vigor stat affects your aptitude with one-handed, two-handed and polearm skills. Skills represent your ability with that particular skill. For example, the Bow skill affects your aim with the bow and the Steward skill directly affects how many members you can have in your party. Perks are essentially special abilities that are awarded at specific skill levels, e.g. 25, 50, 75 and 100. Sometimes you will get to choose between two perk options. Make sure you check whether a perk is implemented before you choose that perk! (See paragraph below) Lastly, focus points allow you to increase your max skill level with a skill and also provide an exp multiplier, making you gain skill points faster. Note that if you try to train a skill that's reached its limit, it will grow very slowly and eventually stop growing altogether. Thus, you need a constant investment of both stats and focus points to max out a skill. Since your stat and focus points are limited, I suggest you prioritize only a few skills to max out, and accept that the rest will never be fully completed.
 
[NP] In the character creation screen, the various skills are grouped by stats (in bold, above the individual skills) and each specific skill can have up to 5 focus points assigned (the vertical bars). Each skill you can learn is limited to a max number which is determined by the combination of stat and focus points you have for that skill. With full focus (5 bars), you will need about 6-8 stat points in a skill to allow you to completely max it out. Furthermore, the perks available for each skill are only partially implemented. This means that investing points into some skills is currently useless. To see which perks are implemented, I recommend using a site like https://www.bannerlordperks.com. At the time of writing this post, the entire "Cunning" stat has zero perks implemented, making it virtually useless to you. If you're new, I highly recommend getting points in Social, Vigor and Endurance. Social (specifically the charm skill) allows you to convince nobles to marry/join you more easily and improves your troops' morale (leadership skill). Vigor is your basic melee combat stat, which you will use a lot in the early game and especially in the arena. Lastly, endurance allows you to improve your movement speed (riding/athletics) and is necessary for smithing (skill), which is a really useful mechanic that I highly recommend you try. Another good choice is Control, if you wish to be a ranged character.
 
So how does leveling work in Bannerlord? Well here's what the Skills screen looks like using the character (C) menu Using skills with slowly increase your ability with them. The more focus points you have in a skill, the faster it's skill points will go up. Furthermore, your character will gain "exp" every time he/she gains skill points. Or more accurately, exp in this game IS skill points. That is to say, training the various skills is the only way to level up. NOT killing enemies, as you might have first thought. This means you can level up just by trading, smithing, running around, or leading armies. You don't even need to fight simulated battles mostly, though doing so will award you with tactics points and some combat skill points. Every level you gain will award you with either a stat point, a focus point, or both. You can spend these points to increase the relevant stat or skill focus bar. When you have points to assign, they will show up on your character screen. In the earlier screenshot is your NPC brother who you always start with, though his name and appearance is randomized. Because I chose the "assign perks myself" option, I can choose his perks right away (represented by little numbered shield icons next to his skills that tell you how many perks are available to choose). You'll note that to the left and right of the "Skills" table there are weird icons with the number 0 next to them. The left number represents stat points to assign, and the right number is focus points. Your new character will start with 1 free focus point to assign. To assign a focus point, select the desired skill and click the "+" sign. REMEMBER: No choices will be saved unless you click "Done", and you can revert all changes made so far by clicking the curved arrow between "Done" and "Cancel". To assign perks, click on the shield icons in the banner in the middle of the skill page and a popup will appear. Click on the perk you wish to choose - again making sure it's actually implemented first - and then when finished click "Done" to finalize your choices. Don't forget that you can use the left/right arrows to assign skills and perks for your NPCs too!
 
One more thing about perks. The "Governor" perks DO NOT APPLY to your character, because you can't be the governor of any of your cities/castles. Thus, don't pick governor perks for your main hero unless they also come with side-abilities that you want.
 

Starting the Game and the Main Storyline

[NP] The various factions each come with a special ability. You can use all troops from all factions, so don't worry about being shoehorned into any particular troop type by your choices. Instead, focus on the ability you'll get. Not all abilities are made equal and not all factions are equal either. Currently, the Khuzait faction is kind of OP due to the AI being too dumb to figure out how to handle horse archers, so select them for an easier early-game. Vlandia gets bonus troop exp, which means you can promote veteran troops faster than others. Empire skills are building-focused, which means you need to own fiefs to really gain any benefit from using them. Sturgia are... faster in snow. Also their troops are supposedly weaker than normal (this will eventually change), so pick Sturgia if you're a masochist. Battania are kind of situational with their forest boost (so maybe don't pick them either), and Aserai get trading bonuses, so pick them if you want to be a merchant or just like money.
 
[NP] Clicking the various family options will show you the potential change in stat points and focus points that you will gain for that choice. You will have about 7 different choices to make before your character is ready to play. Try to pick choices which focus on your ideal stats and skills while minimizing the other ones. Here's a sample character I generated using the stats I recommended earlier. Don't worry too much about making perfect choices here, since you will gain many more stat and focus points throughout your game too. Plus, you'll use most of the stats/skills at one point or another. After this, your brother will ask if you want to do the tutorial. The tutorial only teaches you how to fight, so if you already know that you can skip it.
 
If you follow the story you will play through a storyline quest for a while until you've rescued your siblings and experienced the execution mechanic in action. Then you will have to chase down a bunch of clan leaders and lie to two special characters who will never interact with you again once you've made your final choice. However, and this is something I want to emphasize heavily: You do NOT need to make a choice about what to do with the dragon banner immediately. In fact, I strongly recommend you do NOT make a decision until you're very well situated in the game. Why? Because it starts a doomsday timer that you cannot slow down or affect in any way, and when it runs out 3 factions will declare war on you all at once and try to grind your entire faction into the dust. Instead, forget about the story quest and just enjoy the game at that point until you are extra powerful and ready to take on the world. Once you succeed at that quest I'm pretty sure you win the game, and if you start it before you're ready you'll be in for a world of hurt.
 

The Campaign Map

The game has a really useful feature called the "Encyclopedia". Press 'N' to open it when in the campaign screen. If you want to track down a notable figure, you can search their name or clan in the search bar and it will tell you where they were last seen. Anytime you speak to another noble or visit a settlement, town or castle, it will update the rumours of where that noble was seen most recently. This will allow you to track down anyone with ease. You can also see if they were taken prisoner, got pregnant, or switched allegiances recently. Furthermore, you can use the Encyclopedia to check nobles' relations with you or each other, allowing you to single out the nobles who hate their liege and are ripe for conversion to your kingdom. You can also use the encyclopedia to check troop upgrade paths, details about cities/settlements, and info on minor factions, who are like secret clans that you can recruit if you choose to be your own kingdom. All in all, it's incredibly useful for planning your next move.
 
There's a circle next to city/settlement names in the overworld and the encyclopedia. Clicking that circle "bookmarks" the city/settlement, which means you can easily find it on the map. Clicking it again removes the bookmark.
 
[NP] If you hover over any of the symbols at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, you can get detailed info on how the values are calculated. The symbols are, from left to right, money, influence, HP, troops, food and morale. The money icon will show you your daily income vs daily expenses. Influence will show your influence gain/loss over time. HP is your own health and recovery rate. Troops shows what troops you have in your army. Food shows how much food you have and morale shows what's affecting the mood of your soldiers. Using these icons helps you figure out what you need to do to make their values go up instead of down.
 

Fighting Battles

Against minor enemies like looters, it's usually relatively safe to use "Send Troops" instead of going in there yourself. You won't gain tactics skill from this, but your troops will gain all the exp instantly instead of spending 5 minutes fighting first.
 
[NP] You can issue commands to your troops by using the F keys. F1 is the movement menu, F2 is the direction menu, F3 is the formation menu, F4 is whether or not to use ranged weapons, F5 is mount/dismount for cavalry, F6 enables AI control, and F7 allows you to split your groups up and assign the split members to other groups. (e.g. split infantry and assign half to "heavy infantry"). You can also use the number keys (i.e. 1,2,3 etc) to select specific groups of troops to give orders to. 1 is infantry, 2 is archers, 3 is melee cavalry etc. Any non-mapped number selects all troops. This allows you to have fine-grained control during combat. HOWEVER for the most part the numbers and relative experience of the two armies is the deciding factor in how a battle goes. Sometimes you can use the terrain to your advantage, but mostly your tactics will do very little to actually affect the battle's outcome, especially in sieges where taking control of the AI will completely break their ability to use siege equipment and attack or defend properly.
 
Some basic strategies for manually commanding troops during simulated battles are as follows:

• The lazy way: Immediately press 0 and then F6 at the start of a battle. Your troops will do their own thing and you can just run/ride around increasing your combat skills without having to worry about managing battles.
• The terrain way: Place infantry in front of your archers and put your archers on high ground. The archers will pick off lots of enemy troops before their infantry get close enough to do any damage, and your infantry will protect the archers when the troops finally do arrive.
• The big brain way: Research your opponents' army composition and culture by riding close (but not too close!) to their army to scout them. For example, Sturgians generally will have lots of shield infantry while Battania will have a lot of ranged folks. Figure out the counter infantry type (e.g. for shielded infantry it's heavy 2-handed weapon infantry. For heavy 2-handed infantry it's archers. For cavalry it's spear-throwers. For archers it's cavalry, etc) and fill your army with those units. Engage in wholesale slaughter. Note: This works best when you have a fief garrison you can switch veteran troops in and out of, because rookies get rekt even with a "type" advantage.
• The OP way: Get just zillions of horse archers, select them at the start of the battle and press F6. The horse archers will run up to the enemy, fill them with arrows, then run away again and repeat. Currently there's no really effective AI counter to this and they will just bleed troops while you sit there wondering why you're even there.
• The "No 'I' in team" way: If you're helping another noble in combat, their troops will automatically be on F6 mode. And you can't do anything about it, either. If you don't want their troops to get completely wiped out, it's best to set yours to AI mode (0 then F6) too. Otherwise they WILL charge the enemy archer wall with their 15 sturgian recruits...
• The "Actually, my troops are more valuable" way: Conversely, if you are helping a noble but don't actually need their troops to win (i.e. you have a huge numbers advantage), don't auto send your troops and use whatever your usual strat is. They'll get wiped out but at least you won't lose your precious troops!

 
You can cheese simulated battles by abusing the "Retreat" command. Hold "Tab" to bring up the stats menu, and press middle mouse button to get your cursor back. Then you can click "Retreat" to teleport your entire army safely out of the battle. Then you can restart the battle with the number of troops remaining from before, but both armies are placed far away from each other again. Combine this with a lot of archers, and you can whittle the enemy numbers down before they reach your army and then simply retreat and start over again until the odds are solidly in your favour. This lets you overcome basically any odds so long as you ensure your opponent takes more losses than you do each time.
 
Levelling up your troops can be tricky as the experience system isn't very clear as to what gives the best troop exp. However, the following things seem to work fairly well: * Some of the Leadership perks grant lots of free exp over time. In particular, Raise the Meek will rapidly turn all of your lowest-level troops into higher-level ones over time, and the level 225 one, Companions, basically gives you the Vlandian empire troop exp bonus, which stacks with actually being Vlandian * Steamrolling fat groups of looters using "Send Troops" is relatively safe and usually awards a handful of troop upgrades each time * Beating nobles' armies when you have about a 2:1 ratio of your troops to theirs is also usually pretty safe and the higher-level troops they have with them yield much more exp * Winning a siege will be extremely costly in terms of deaths, but the troops who survive will gain tons of experience. Defending a siege will be less costly due to having the home turf advantage, but it's harder to engineer those to occur * Doing hideout raids and taking along a group of only archers is a great way to level up those 9 archers, so long as you don't aggro the entire hideout at once. Just make sure you use F4 frequently to enable/disable "Fire at will" or they WILL try to shoot bandits at the other end of the map and summon the wrath of god down on you * Keep your troop morale high by buying lots of different varieties of food. I'm not sure if morale is fully implemented yet, but you won't have the awkward issue of your troops all running from a difficult battle at least
 

Building your Clan

[NP] Your clan has a ranking in the clan screen (press L), shown at the top right. Earning renown increases this ranking, and every new level adds more soldiers to your armies and other useful clan perks to your arsenal. Max clan rank is 6, but you won't get there for a very long time. The easiest way to gain renown is through winning large battles, so battling lots will quickly raise that renown score.
 
The game doesn't tell you this anywhere, but you can have your family join your party by visiting them in whatever city they are hiding in and talking to them (or left-clicking their portrait in that city). Your brother in particular is basically a veteran soldier right from the start of the game, so adding him to your party will give you a huge early-game boost. His high steward score also increases your party size by a lot, so having him around lets you field more soldiers until your own steward score catches up. Later on, set him up as governor of your best city/settlement to give it a huge boost.
 
You can recruit companions at taverns in major cities. Not all companions are created equally, so I recommend using a companion guide to figure out which ones have skills that you want. You can also manually check their skills by right clicking the character's portrait from the city screen or searching them in the encyclopedia. That way you'll know what they are good and bad at before you go through the long dialogue with them. I personally find the tacticians/stewards most valuable as you can make them lead armies for you (more on that in a bit), and the ones with high trade are helpful because you can create caravans with them for bonus income during peacetime. You can only recruit your clan level +1 companions at a time, (e.g. 2 at clan level 1). This means you should be very picky about who you hire.
 
If you have joined a kingdom (or started your own), you can persuade other factions' nobles to betray their current faction and join yours. For this you need three things: High charm, luck and money. Save your game. Speak to the noble and say you have something to discuss. Ask about their liege. This will lead to a skill challenge where you have to get 4 successes in 4 attempts (either 100% successes or at least 1 critical success). This is entirely RNG, so choose the highest % options and pray. Or load back a lot. If they hate their monarch you'll have a very high chance of succeeding in at least 1 of the 4 challenges. Once you've successfully convinced them, you then need to bribe them. The bribe usually is about 100k denars, but can go all the way to more than a million denars if they own lots of land (because your team gets the fiefs too when they convert). Unless you're insanely rich, use the encyclopedia to find the poorest, most disenfranchised nobles and you'll discover that you might be able to pay them even a single denar and they'll happily convert. Beware, others can convert YOUR allies too, so try to make sure you give every noble at least one castle to keep them happy and on your side. Also if you save a lot and see the message that a noble has left your kingdom, you can load back and often they won't leave the second time.
 
If you release a noble whom you beat in combat instead of taking them prisoner, you will get a 6-7 point relationship increase with everyone in that noble's clan. Doing this is an excellent way to butter them up for future conversion to your kingdom.
 
Convert the head of a clan to your kingdom and their entire clan will also convert along with them!
 
You can use your influence points to put policies in place that suit you before adding others to the clan. In the Kingdom menu (K), you can go to the policy tab and scroll through the various policies there. Basically, most policies either benefit only the ruler, benefit only the vassals, or adjust your kingdom's rates (e.g. tax rate and growth rate). If you're going to start your own kingdom, take this chance to vote in all the royalty-favouring policies before you add people who disagree with you. Conversely, if you're a vassal, you want to add more vassals to the clan and THEN vote in all the vassal-favouring policies. Both of these strategies will not only increase your influence gain rate, but also make it much harder for a rogue AI to steal powecities from you later on in the game. It will also prevent you from getting disliked by other nobles from voting against their wishes since they won't even be in your kingdom yet.
 
As a male character, you can marry a noble to have her join your clan. I'm not sure if it's the reverse situation for female heroes or not (i.e. you join their clan). This provides two main benefits. One, you gain another party member to bring along in battle, and two, you can make babies (heirs) who will inherit your stuff if/when your character dies. If you end up playing for enough time you can also eventually add those heirs to your party once they've grown up enough. To woo a noble, simply profess your love to them then return and visit them a few times. You'll have to pass charm checks to woo them properly, so as always, save beforehand! Eventually they'll tell you to talk to the clan leader, and then you'll barter for their hand in marriage. Usually it's pretty cheap.
 

Kingdom/Clan Management

Did you know that war declarations can be avoided (by sort of cheating)? If you save often and then suddenly get war declared on you (or by your kingdom on someone else), just load back to that save. It's a (low) random chance for war to be declared so there's a strong likelihood that the next time you get to that point in time literally nothing will happen. This allows you to avoid all wars that you don't want! Since the game AI is so bad right now, sometimes this is the only way to save your kingdom from utter annihilation.
 
You can equip the companions in your party with awesome gear too! This took me 40 hours to realize, but on the Inventory (I) or trade screens, there are arrows at the top that let you select a different character to equip. This works with the Character (C) screen too, allowing you to assign perks or stats/skills to your companions.
 
In your clan management screen (L), under the parties tab, you can assign your companions to various roles within your party. Generally, this causes the game to act as if your own skill with that particular role is the same level as the assigned companion. For example, if you assign a companion with 80 medicine skill as surgeon, the game will cause you and your troops to heal as if you had 80 medicine skill. Keep in mind that if you don't assign a party member to a role then you will gain the exp for doing that role. In other words, it's a trade-off between gaining free experience and having your party be more effective on the campaign map. The one role in your party you definitely don't want to assign a companion to is Quartermaster, because that trains the Steward skill which you want to raise as high as possible.
 
You can create separate parties under your clan management screen's "Parties" tab. This allows you to send companions off to raise armies and gain exp all on their own without your intervention. You can also assign them to their own personal role within that party (even the Quartermaster role!) for bonus exp and it won't affect your own exp. Parties have three major benefits that make them very useful. Firstly, they will recruit their own troops for you! The max party size is dependent on the companion's steward skill and your clan rank. This means that with enough time you can create an allied party that's virtually equal in size to your own army. Secondly, those parties can be summoned to your army on a whim (click the flag icon down the bottom right of the screen - you must be in a kingdom to do this) and it costs 0 influence! Thirdly, the parties automatically will go around fighting battles for you and increasing your own influence and reputation. I highly recommend creating at least a few parties. There's a few downsides to be aware of, however. Firstly, you pay all the troop wages for the other parties. This can get VERY expensive if you're not at war and constantly defeating armies for money. Secondly, like any roaming entity, your companions can get attacked and captured by enemy armies. If that happens, you have to wait for them to escape or be ransomed and then track them down in whichever city they end up in to reclaim your companion. This can be very annoying. Lastly, if you're a vassal, your liege can actually summon your companions to their army, thereby using your hard-earned troops for their own personal gain! That's the price of being a vassal though.
 
Sometimes you cannot assign roles to party members through the clan screen. This tends to happen if you assign a companion to a role and they die in battle. If this happens, instead select them in the party screen (P) and talk to them. You can assign them roles from the conversation menu instead.
 

Making Money

[NP] In the early-game you will find the tournaments in city arenas to be almost impossible to win. However, with the power of save/load and determination, you can win big in tournaments by betting on yourself every round. If you win the tournament, not only will you get a sweet prize but you will also be several thousand denars richer. At least until your reputation catches up to you and they start offering less and less money for your bets.
 
The best way to make money in Bannerlord is smithing (once you've unlocked enough recipes and have about 140 smithing skill). Early on, the stuff you produce is worthless, but as you start making tier 4 and higher weapons you will discover combinations that create weapons work up to 100k denars in value! Make a handful of these and you can go around from city to city, buying up all the expensive armor while still walking away with 20k+ more denars each time. There are many guides to smithing that can be found elsewhere, but here's a few minor tips:

• Try not to sell anything you make that's worth less than 10k denars. Otherwise you will encounter these items as arena prizes which will generally make it harder to get the rare arena prizes (e.g. special horses and armour). Instead, smelt it down.
• 2h swords and javelins seem to be a great money maker once you hit T4+
• Smelt the weapons you loot from battles if you need the materials for smithing. Even worthless rusty iron spathas can be broken down into huge amounts of valuable materials.
• No matter how many days pass from traveling, none of that will allow you to be able to smelt again once you've hit the limit. This means that even if you come back 3 months later, if you haven't rested in any villages or settlements in that time, you will not be able to continue smelting. You MUST click "Wait here for a while" and just sit around for a day or so to get all of your smithing stamina back.
• Weapons worth 100k make decent bribes for bringing nobles over to your side, but expect about a 30% value loss when using them this way. If you just straight up give them money it's cheaper overall.
• Smithed weapons are not necessarily better than the ones you can buy. Sometimes they will be, but smithing mostly gives you the ability to trade off damage types and attack speed on weapons. For example, you can increase a sword's length and swing damage but it will reduce it's swing speed and thrust. In other words, smithing is useful for making very specialized weapons, but not for making some OP magical sword of head-lopping.

 
The second-best way to make money is by thrashing other nobles in combat. If you're at war, target every enemy noble you see whom you can easily beat and trounce them. Not only do you get money and items for beating them, you can also ransom them at taverns for even more money. You also get money when you capture cities in sieges. Naturally, when you're at peace, you'll find it much harder to make money this way.
 
You can purchase workshops in cities and have them produce goods for a small profit (around 75-125 denars per day). It generally costs about 13k denars to buy a workshop, so it won't become profitable for approximately 140 days. Because of this, if you wish to use workshops you should select cities which you are unlikely to be at war with for a long time (e.g. your own faction's cities!). After all, if you end up at war with a faction, all of your workshops in that faction are stolen from you. To buy a workshop you must physically walk around town. If you hold alt you will see three semi-random workshops throughout the city (e.g. wine press, brewery, smithy). If you walk to one of these shops during the day you will find NPCs loitering around nearby called "Shop Worker". Talk to the shop worker and tell them you want to purchase the workshop.
 
To decide which workshops to build in which city, examine the fiefs which feed into that city. You can also use a workshop guide, but I find these aren't always correct due to frequent patches. The bottom line is this: Pick a city which has at least one source of workshop materials (e.g. grain, sheep, hardwood) in its settlements. More than one source is even better. Next, buy a workshop and select the type that uses that material. For example, grain is used by breweries, and wood is used by a wood workshop etc. Then, you wait. You can check the workshop's profitability from the clan tab (L), but remember, don't expect it to become super profitable anytime soon. These are long-term investments.
 
Another way to make money is caravans. Caravans are more profitable than workshops, but come with significant risk, especially if you're at war with anyone. Basically, you assign a companion to manage a caravan (which costs 15000-25000 denars to make depending on the troops you assign), and the caravan will travel from city to city buying and selling goods. Companions with high Trade skills are essential here. While travelling, the caravans can be attacked by looters, bandits, and worst, enemy armies. If the caravan is captured, you'll have to go rescue your companion or wait for them to be released. Then you'll have to spend another 15-25k to get the caravan going again. Basically, don't do this if you're a warmonger. Anyway, to form a caravan, talk to any merchant in a city and choose the "I want to form a caravan in this city" option. Caravans will net you varying amounts of money, and the income will not be every day, but in my experience they are more profitable than workshops and much more annoying to keep track of.
 
If you have a high trade skill, instead of making caravans you can be a caravan. Load up on sumpter horses which increase your max load, and then use trade rumours (talk to civilians hanging out in town markets) to determine the best places to buy and sell stuff. Buy low, travel, sell high. If you make 30 denars per sale and sell 100 trade items, that's 3k of profit. If you make 100 denars per sale, that's 30k profit! Again, keep in mind that cities generally only keep 20k-30k denars on them at a time, so if you take too many goods you will not be able to sell them all.
 

Siege Warfare

Holding the alt key highlights both important people and weapons that are lying around. You can use this during sieges to replenish ranged ammo and locate nearby interactible things.
 
You can use the siege weapons that your army/city has built. This will train your throwing skill and also open some neat opportunities. For example, you can use catapults to smash siege towers! It takes 4 hits to achieve but boy is it worth it!
 
Catapults and trebuchets can be aimed left and right but also have a red gauge on the side which affects the distance that your shots travel. You can change this bar using W/S to choose how close or far to shoot. Generally you want the distance to be less than half the red bar because your targets are a lot closer than the range on the siege engines.
 
When defending a city you will notice piles of rocks (called merlons) lying around upstairs in the gatehouse. You can take these rocks and drop them on enemy troops for massive damage (400+). You can also use them to smash the battering ram with a few good throws, thereby protecting your gates.
 
You can place your troops before a siege by pressing the numbers (e.g. 1 for infantry) and then clicking where you want them to go. However they just run back to where the AI would have put them anyway, so it's not worth it right now. But someday it might actually work as intended!
 
Is the castle you were staying in being beseiged by overwhelming numbers? You can sally forth to attack, use archers to pick some troops off, and then retreat from battle before their enormous army starts hacking your party apart. Repeat this about a dozen times and you'll have a much more manageable enemy to fight, with very few casualties on your side. For the love of god though save before you try this. Also note that, due to a bug, when you sally out of the castle you'll be plonked onto the overworld map when you retreat and won't be able to get back in without sacrificing troops.
 

Misc

• Save often. Make multiple save files so that you can jump back in time up to half a year if need be. Sometimes bad decisions (e.g. a war with a much stronger faction) take a long time to bite you in the ass.
• Buy lots of (non-sumpter) horses. As long as you have at least a 1:1 horse to troop ratio, your campaign movement speed will be hugely increased, allowing you to chase and catch foes must more easily.
  • Although the tutorial teaches you to buy grain, don't just buy grain. Instead, buy even amounts of every food you can find. That means grain, dates, beer, cheese, butter, oil, meat, fish etc. This will do two things: Grant you huge amounts of Quartermaster exp every day, and also keep your troop morale maxed out, meaning they won't run like cowards from a difficult fight
  • If you can get your leadership to 125, you can unlock the "Disciplinarian" perk. This allows you to promote bandits into regular military units, which at the minimum makes them as useful as recruits. Some bandits, however, can become very powerful military units, such as bushwhackers, freebooters and forest bandits turning into the much-beloved Battanian Fian Champions!

THINGS NOT TO DO

• Don't give anyone the dragon banner before you're ready to fight the whole world. That also applies to founding your own kingdom by completing the relevant quest.
  
• Don't put companions in the Quartermaster role of your party. Otherwise you deprive yourself of an easy way to gain Steward exp, which increases your troop size.
  
• Don't buy workshops in cities you plan on warring with anytime soon, because once war is declared you automatically lose those workshops.
  
• Don't make caravans if you want to go to war a lot. The enemy nobles will target your caravans mercilessly.
  
• Don't leave siege weapons you've built out in the open to get destroyed one by one. Instead, click on the weapon immediately once it's finished and choose "Send to reserve". Once you have 4 weapons built, place them all simultaneously and watch the mayhem unfold!
  
• Don't fight battles where your army strengths are similar (unless it's really important to do so e.g. you're defending your own fiefs against a siege). You will lose a lot of good troops this way, and if you instead fight easy battles you'll get way more rewards with way less casualties in the long run.
  
• Don't execute nobles unless you want to make the game harder on yourself. They breed like rabbits and everyone hates you when you execute someone. Plus there's a good chance they'll execute you too if they capture you in a fight after that. Releasing other nobles grants the most benefit to you by far, even if it's not as satisfying.
  

 
And... that's it for now! I'm sure I forgot some tips but I'll edit them in as I remember. At the very least it should open up some new gameplay avenues for some people, and maybe make things a little less stupid for others. If you made it to the end of this very long post: well done!

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      “Me?” Draevin repeated dumbly while the guards pushed past him.
      “What was that about?” Sylnya asked him at the first opportunity.
      “Trundle just told me that the demon attack during registration wasn’t an accident. He said they were summoned to kill me.”
      “You? Who would want to kill you?”
      Draevin thought about it. He generally stayed out of politics as much as possible, despite being sponsored by Caldenia most years. If anyone wanted to kill him it would have to be another contestant who wanted him out of the picture to increase their own chances. “Zolt?” He guessed. “He’s my first opponent and it’s pretty unlikely he could beat me without finding a way to cheat.”
      “No, that doesn’t make sense,” Peter said. Draevin was annoyed to see the human had been listening in. He probably should have been more careful discussing it with Sylnya after Trundle went to all the effort of trying to keep it secret. “The attack happened before the brackets were announced,” Peter reminded them. “Before you had even registered.”
      “That’s a good point,” Sylnya agreed.
      “Then it has to be Korack,” Draevin declared. “He’s the only contestant who actively hates me.”
      Peter shook his head. “You said you lost to him last year and you’re still alive. Not only does that imply he had an opportunity, but that he doesn’t have a motive, since he can already defeat you.”
      Peter was making a lot of sense. More sense than anything Draevin expected out of a human. He actually sounded smart. “Who do you suggest then?” Draevin asked the human.
      Peter readjusted his glasses. “It’s simple really. You need to find someone who you could defeat easily, but would otherwise stand a good chance of winning the tournament if you weren’t in it.”
      “I’ll have to think about that,” Draevin decided. Nobody came to mind immediately, but he tried to think it over while they walked towards The Pot. He was still thinking it over when he spotted the line.
      The last group in line was a werebeast standing next to a dryad. All thought of which contestant might have been involved was quickly forgotten. “Werebeasts aren’t allowed outside the Eldesian embassy, right Syl?”
      “As far as I’m aware they aren’t. Do you think that werebeast is the newbie contestant you were talking about yesterday?”
      “I’d bet on it.” Draevin saw a valuable opportunity to scout a powerful potential opponent.
      “What exactly is a werebeast?” Peter asked Sylnya.
      “They’re biological weapons developed by Eldesia,” she explained. “Feral monsters made by transforming slaves with a combination of mutamancy and blood magic.”
      “Human slaves,” Peter said darkly. It was not a question.
      “They’re mostly deployed on the front lines in Trenal,” Draevin told him. “I’ve fought them before, and they’re never easy. They usually take a whole team of lesser wizards to take down.”
      “So humble,” Sylnya said with an exaggerated eye roll.
      Draevin examined the hulking beast. It was quite a bit taller than anyone else in the line and at least twice as wide as Draevin himself. It was covered in a thick black fur and rippled with muscles every time a limb so much as twitched. The real danger was in the claws and jaws though, which Draevin knew from experience were long enough and strong enough to cut right through steel armor even without their innate Blood Burning ability active. The creature wore an ornate silver circlet upon its head that Draevin remembered from the preliminary melee. The circlet had to have enchantments that kept the beast as calm as it currently was because werebeasts were normally feral monsters that attacked anything with a pulse.
      The creature leaned down and appeared to mutter something into the ear of the dryad that was standing next to it. Draevin practically stopped in place. Could it speak? Did that mean it could cast spells? The thought of a werebeast using its massive mana pool to cast a Levin Bolt crossed Draevin’s mind. He shivered.
      “Oleno? Is that you?” Sylnya blurted out when they took their place in line. The dryad, apparently Oleno, turned around. Sylnya jumped forward and embraced the other dryad in a hug. “I haven’t seen you in ages! How is Taelshin these days?”
      “Oh you know, she gets by,” Oleno said. “Never was able to find a way to lift that curse, but she got used to it. Now where are my manners?” She tugged on the arm of the great big werebeast next to her to get it to face them. “This is our son. Grrbraa.”
      “Wait a second,” Draevin said. “Is he actually a dryad then?”
      Sylnya smacked her palm against her face and groaned. “No you dolt, he’s obviously adopted.”
      “So what, I’m an idiot when I assume you’re all the same and now I’m an idiot for wondering if you can look radically different? I’m sensing a theme here.”
      Sylnya sighed. “Oleno, meet Peter and Draevin. Draevin’s just… well Draevin’s an elf.”
      “Ahh.” Oleno nodded as though that explained something. “A pleasure to meet you both,” she said.
      “How did you come to adopt a werebeast?” Peter asked. For once he didn’t have his notepad out.
      “Oh, we found him as a little puppy,” Oleno cooed. “He was so cute we knew we just had to take him home.” The dryad reached up as high as she could and scratched Grrbraa’s chest just under his pectoral. This tail flicked back and forth once, then abruptly stopped.
      The werebeast ducked his head and said in a soft rumbling voice, “Mother-Oleno, you are embarrassing me.” That confirmed it; the thing could speak.
      Draevin didn’t know what was going on this year; first a human that could read, now a werebeast that could talk. “I’ve never heard of a talking werebeast,” Draevin admitted. “I didn’t think they were capable.”
      “Oh they’re not,” Oleno said easily. “We were having such a hard time training him we got some magical assistance.” She tapped her own forehead to indicate the silver circlet on the beast’s head. “That’s Archmage Caladin’s Circlet of Intelligence, we won it at an auction for a steal. He’s been wearing it since he was two.”
      “The Archmage Caladin?” Peter asked excitedly. “He’s a legend!”
      “He couldn’t be that legendary,” Draevin pointed out. “He never even competed in the tournament.”
      “That’s only because he didn’t need to,” Peter countered.
      Draevin just chuckled lightly at the human’s wrong-headed insistence and ignored him. “So what does the circlet do?” he asked Oleno. It was a rare opportunity to find someone willing to just tell you about their strategy, and Draevin wasn’t above exploiting the desire of a mother to brag about her child if it meant giving himself an edge. He noticed that Peter perked up too when he asked the question, though he didn’t go as far as pulling out his notepad.
      “It makes the wearer many times smarter,” Oleno explained. “But it also kills them if they wear it for too long, which is why we got it so cheap. Thankfully our little Gerby can regenerate fast enough to offset the damage.”
      “Mother-Oleno, we have discussed this,” the big creature rumbled out while looking down at its mother. “I am a big boy now. You said you’d use my full name in public.”
      The dryad clutched the beast’s massive arm in a hug. “But you’ll always be my little Gerby!” The werebeast’s tail noticeably drooped at the attention. Draevin found himself strangely empathizing with the creature. His own mother had embarrassed him by attending his first tournament as well.
      The group’s conversation had caused a gap in the line and Draevin stepped forward to fill it. He left Sylnya to continue visiting with her old friend. Ultimately he decided the information he gathered on Grrbraa wouldn’t come in handy. If all the circlet did was make him intelligent enough for speech then knocking it off his head would only turn him back into a feral monster. That would probably not make the fight easier.
      “So I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Peter said out of the blue, “do you by chance have a book on you?”
      Draevin did a double take when he realized the human was addressing him. “Didn’t you hire Sylnya? Go bother her. No, I don’t carry any books on me.”
      “You know,” Peter continued, “a numbered book.”
      “Stop speaking nonsense,” Draevin told him. “If you need to look something up ask someone else.”
      Peter studied Draevin’s face closely, then seemed to decide something and looked away. “I see,” he said. “Forget I said anything.”
      “Forget what?” Draevin asked him, still not entirely sure what he was talking about. Peter nodded and stepped back without complaint to start chatting with the werebeast. All the better.
      Having maneuvered his way past the werebeast Draevin found himself much closer to the head of the ever-moving line. The spot in line before him was occupied by a pink-haired little gnome that he’d never seen before, and in front of her was a Guild acolyte in purple robes. Third in line didn’t seem so bad. Up front one of the Guild officers, Perseus, was overseeing the use of The Pot from his little booth as always. He had a large nose and a high widow’s peak that Draevin always thought made him look a bit like a hawk, even if the purple robes offset the effect somewhat. Draevin still remembered when Perseus had competed in the arena as a regular for a few seasons before retiring to an administrative job with the Guild. If his own career ever faltered Draevin had long ago vowed to himself he would never let himself end up in administration.
      “Next!” Perseus called. The Guild acolyte stepped up and someone Draevin actually knew stepped down from the mana well.
      “Draevin!” Tenna said in excitement when she saw him. She ran up and threw her arms around him before he could react. She pulled back and held him at arm’s length with a pout on her face. Today she had her slightly longer hair spiked up in an icy hairdo reminiscent of Draevin’s own. He didn’t know how to feel about that. “You said we’d catch up yesterday but I couldn’t find you. They said you cancelled your reservation at the Fardew?”
      Draevin’s mind flashed back to getting thrown out the night before. “Yeah, umm. I got an opportunity for an upgrade actually.”
      “An upgrade? I didn’t think there was a nicer Inn anywhere.”
      “Yeah, it’s this dryad place. You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s all very exclusive and they don’t let non-dryads in without an invitation.” Tenna’s eyes went wide as Draevin explained and he allowed himself a moment of pride for how masterfully he’d twisted the narrative in his favor. “Yeah, they don’t even accept money. Last night I slept on a bed of living cotton!”
      “No way! What was it like?” Tenna looked positively giddy.
      “Best sleep of my life,” Draevin declared with no exaggeration.
      “Really? Do you think you could get me a room?”
      Draevin remembered the rude tree-people, the lack of food, doors or windows. He decided the Whispering Willow was a place Tenna would be better off imagining from a distance. “Oh, sorry no. They told me all their meat, umm, all their non-dryad rooms were full.” Technically he wasn’t even lying!
      “That sucks. You made it sound so good!” Tenna looked down at the ground for a moment. “You don’t have room in your—”
      “Hey lovebirds!” Sylnya snapped in their face. “You’re holding up the line.”
      Draevin looked over to see the little gnome already prancing off like she thought she was cute or something. Peter had cut in front and was talking to Perseus. “Hey, what’s Peter—”
      “I think he’s taking your place,” Sylnya answered.
      “Mother-Taelshin says only bad boys cut in line,” the big werebeast rumbled from behind them.
      Draevin turned back to Tenna. “Sorry Tenna, what were you saying?” She didn’t answer right away and it looked like her cheeks had flushed pink. Probably from all the mana she’d just soaked up. “Never mind.” Draevin interrupted her stuttering with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go, but hey, maybe we can catch up later, yeah? I haven’t taught you every trick I know yet.”
      “S-sure,” Tenna said, suddenly much less animated than moments before. Draevin gave her a quick one-armed hug and tried to reclaim his spot in line.
      “…best fakes I’ve seen in ages, but you don’t really expect me to believe—”
      “Hey!” Draevin said to interrupt Perseus’ speech to Peter. The elf was studying a piece of paper of some kind.
      “Is there a problem?” the Guild elf asked.
      “Yeah, he cut me in line!” Draevin pointed to Peter.
      Perseus shook his head. “No, he couldn’t have cut you because non-contestants are—”
      “He did so,” Draevin argued back. “I was behind that little gnome girl and I just stepped over there to talk to Tenna and when I turned back this little human just took my spot! He thinks just because he’s the first full-blooded human to qualify for the tournament he can go wherever he wants or something! First he steals my breakfast then he—”
      Perseus raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying he is a contestant?”
      “Hell yeah he is!” Sylnya chimed in. “If you don’t let him use the damn Pot…”
      Perseus held up a hand to stay Sylnya’s wrath and she trailed off. “Relax, Sylnya.” He waved Peter forward. “Go ahead Peter. Sorry for the mix-up. First time for me is all.” He handed Peter back the paper he’d been holding.
      “I understand,” Peter said as he stepped forward, “first time for me, too.”
      Peter sat down on the raised seat and the hole in the middle of it flickered for only a second before blasting raw mana straight through his body. “He’s just wasting it!” Draevin objected. “Look, it’s passing right through him!”
      Perseus nodded. “He’s right, Peter. I’m going to have to ask you to step down. When it’s busy like this contestants are only allowed to stay until they’re filled up and…” He paused. “Well it’s obvious your human body just can’t hold any mana. I’m sure it’s very exciting to come and sit on The Pot with the rest of the real contestants, but in the future I’d appreciate if you not waste the Guild’s time with this sort of thing.”
      Peter stepped down. He kept his mouth flat and didn’t say a word.
      “What future?” Draevin snickered to Perseus as he walked up for his own turn. Unfortunately, Perseus was too professional to laugh at a joke while he was working, even a great one like that.
      When Draevin took his turn on The Pot, the white glow of raw mana emanating out of the hole was immediately absorbed into him. It took over a minute before it started flowing through and around him like it immediately had with Peter. He savored the pleasant tingle a full mana pool offered as he stepped down. Unlike Peter, Draevin didn’t have to be told to make room for the next person.
      “Have you seen this?” Peter asked as Draevin stepped to the side to wait for Sylnya to take her turn.
      “What?”
      Peter pushed a paper into his hands. “It’s the match schedule for the day. Have you seen it?”
      Draevin scanned the page to see if he or Sylnya was anywhere on it.
      “All dressed up and nowhere to go,” Draevin mused. “Looks like I’m just spectating today.”
      “What’s that?” Sylnya asked. She was just coming down from her turn on The Pot. The trio started their descent down the hillock where The Pot was situated and towards the arena.
      “Match schedule,” Draevin said and handed it to her.
      “Peter!” Sylnya shouted nearly immediately. “Your match is third!”
      “I assumed that’s what that meant. Do you care to explain the number next to my name though?”
      “Attention fans and contestants,” a soft, echoey female voice announced for everyone to hear. The announcement was sourced at the arena, but was magically projected to the immediate area around the stands as well. “Please make your way to your seats. The first round of the tournament will begin soon.”
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Fair warning, this will be a long post and I won’t be throwing down any rocket emojis. If you’re looking for that turn back. This post is me seeking some legit discussion about whether or not Next DC (NXT) is a buy at the current price.
For those not in the know, NXT (Next DC) builds and operates data centers Australia wide. I’m looking at it as a potential multi-year buy and hold. It's currently sitting at $12.77 a share or about 5.88B on market cap, and made minor losses in FY19 and FY20 (more on why later). I’m going to talk about it at ~around $12 because $12.77 is a short term high and it could probably be picked up for less if you were patient. Another thing to keep in mind is that it has come up off $6 a year ago, with a capital raise in 2020, so it has more than doubled in market cap.
Since I’m considering this as a long term hold my decision to go in has to be based on fundamentals, not price sentiment. I’m aware that this is a foreign concept to most denizens of ASX_Bets, but you retards are the closest thing to ASX stock analysts (*) I have on reddit. I consider myself to be a beginner at this kind of thing, so I welcome all kinds of feedback (good and bad) on my analysis.
One of the first things I do when I’m trying to put a valuation on a company is a dive into the consolidated financials of the last few annual reports. This approach isn’t the be all and all of DD, but I like it as a starting point because it provides quick insight into how the company does or does not generate earnings, and trends in that behaviour. So, I tabulated the consolidated profit and loss statements of NXT’s 2017-2020 annual reports, and it only raised more questions for me.
You can find my table at this imgur link. The numbers are rounded figures in millions, and the ‘scaling’ rows at the bottom are my own addition (sum of the ‘blue’ rows in the actual statements).
https://imgur.com/nSYNdeI
This table tells an interesting story, but before I get to that the number one thing to know about these figures is that the D&A Cost is Depreciation and Amortisation and it represents the continual loss in useful life of the company’s buildings, plant and equipment. So, when the company invests truckloads of cash into building a new data center the cost does not all appear on these statements in one lump, it gets spread out over the entire ‘useful life’ of the assets. This means it would be wrong to assume that the P&L statement looks bad just because the company is growing. Those growth costs simply don’t hit the P&L that way.
You will observe that I’ve highlighted figures in blue that I consider to scale with the size of the company’s core business of building and running data centres, including lifetime D&A of those assets. These figures show a very nice underlying profitability to that business.
Secondly, you will observe that the company made a profit in 2017 and 2018, and only made a loss in 2019 and 2020 because of the arrival of large financing expenses. If you dig through the 2020 annual report, you will find that this financing is mostly in the form of short term corporate bonds, about $800M worth. Some of the bonds mature in 2021 and some further out, at rates of 4% to over 7% per annum.
Now, with the cash from the recent capital raising NXT could technically just pay out the bonds when they mature and be debt free, but they don’t really want to do that. The company has been growing at about 20% YOY by investing capital into new data center capacity, it needs cash on hand to continue this strategy. If the management of a company thinks that they can get a return on investment greater than the cost of capital then it makes perfect sense to take on some form of debt. NXT used that bond financing to fuel growth in the last couple of years. Read the section titled ‘Funding’ on page 23 of the 2020 report for confirmation that the company will seek continued financing.
On page 73 of the annual report you will find a summary which shows a debt gearing ratio of 35% in 2019 and no gearing in 2020. However, they have used a Debt-to-Capital ratio there, which makes the debt cancel with the cash for technical reasons. To get a different view of gearing I worked out the Debt-to-Assets ratio (still factors in cash) and got 47% in 2019 and 32% in 2020. I don’t think the company will go back to shareholders for more cash again soon, so they will either need to draw down on their $300M debt facility or issue new bonds to roll over the old ones (hopefully at lower rates). The important take-away from this is that in order to keep growing (as shareholders will expect) the company will have to carry debt, and should carry debt if they can get a return on investment. They only need to hold cash temporarily while they set up the next expansion project.
What this means for earning figures is that ‘financing expense’ scales with size of the annual growth for now, and will only later morph into an annual asset replacement cost proportional to the size of the business. This will never go away and it will eat into that ‘underlying profitability’ I mentioned earlier. It will also be a bit patchy and unpredictable from year to year as the company gets funding from different sources. Note that (the way I think it works is that) the financing impact on the profit and loss statement is the interest coupon on the bonds. I.e the -$57.7M in 2020 is about 6.5% of the total outstanding bond amount, equal to the average coupon which gets vaporised and forever disappears from shareholder value. The repayment of the principal on bond expiry will not appear on P&L, just like the initial funding injection did not appear as revenue.
I know that was a lot to take on, but understanding the capital structure is a necessary foundation to valuation in this instance because the business model is so capital intensive. Company management is happy to blow past year’s ‘profit’ on next year’s financing if it will allow continuation of growth. You can expect the company to keep doing this until it hits some kind of growth ceiling or slowdown, at which point financing would drop to an asset turnover rate and the company would start paying dividends. The share price of the company, or I prefer to use total market value of the company (5.88B), should reflect earnings potential once the company stops growing, discounted depending on how many years in the future that point is, and should also count book value of assets at that time.
The problem for me attempting a valuation is that the assumptions going into that method are all guesswork. Can the company continue to grow at +20% revenues for the next however many years? What about the growth rate in asset value? What if there is a significant shift in finance cost? Basically it is one of those situations where you can make present value come out at whatever number you choose, just by tweaking the assumptions.
What’s worse, it looks to me like almost all of the present value is counted in the future value of assets. I won’t bother showing you the discounted cash flow because the numbers are meaningless, but in summary the annual profits generated are small in comparison to the value of assets, and once growth slows down the growth in profit is eaten by inflation and risk anyway.
Even now (in 2020) the ‘scaling profit’ in my my original imgur link is less than 10% of net current asset value in each year (50M vs 1700M in 2020), which supports the view that a large portion of any debt fuelled infrastructure valuation is just book value of the assets. NXT will grow until management does the maths one day on return on capital and decides it is not worth it to keep growing at that cost or at that rate of return. In this way NXT is very much like an airport, a port or or a toll road company, just with data instead of physical goods. Valuation will trend towards nominal replacement cost or purchase price plus a return rate only slightly better than cost of capital (very low right now).
Conclusions and Questions
On the one hand, the rapid growth in net asset value looks likely to eclipse current market cap in a few years. Net assets (inclusive of debt) have grown at an average x1.6 for the last three years. 2017 506M > 2018 893M > 2019 875M > 2020 1683M (includes 862M cap raise). Now while that includes a capital raise, i.e. shareholder money, Net Current Assets (mostly just property, plant and equipment) have been growing at a similar rate. So, just project that rate out a few years, throw in reasonable revenue (beating cost of capital as a ROI) on top of that and you might consider it a buy at $5.88B today. It certainly would have been at $6.
As far as risks go, I think the data center business is probably resistant if not immune to most foreseeable economic disruptions. The black swan stuff is not a reason not to invest, if you are diversifying properly. Direct threats would be mismanagement or competition. A near term (<3y) increase in cost of capital would also be problematic because it would put the brakes on growth. However, that would also affect competitors and would allow NXT to set prices. For upside risks, if the company can access cheaper debt it would be a great boost to shareholder value because it would slash the annual financing costs.
On the other hand, I have difficulty making my preferred discounted cash flow model arrive at a $5.88B valuation. I figure that the company will return in the order of 10-15% of revenue as profit after the rapid growth phase is over (e.g. Replacing 5% of current assets value each year at a cost of 5-7% debt finance.), or a smaller percentage as return on assets. So, if it grows revenue at +20% for another 5 years it might make 75M in profit in 5 years time. If you run that into a cash flow model you get nothing like $5.88B present value (more like 2-2.5B). However in that model the present value is clearly dominated by underlying asset value (which I always count in total valuation) and that has been growing much faster as noted above. It would be silly of me to say that NAV will still be $1700M odd in 5 years time, which is what is happening in that 2-2.5B calculation.
Some of you might be saying ‘but ASisko, you can’t use a DCF to value a growing, capital intensive business!’. Well, I think you can still make some ballpark guestimates, especially if you take the company’s depreciation and amortisation of capex at face value. However, this still leaves me wondering how to reconcile the rapid expansion in net asset value with the relatively paltry free cash flow. I can just project NAV at x1.6 (or a lower multiple for risk) and it comes out much higher than accumulated free cash.
I guess my first open question to you guys is what the f**k to do with this weird NAV growth in a discounted cash flow? Or alternatively, is the DCF right and the NAV figures are wrong?
Secondly, does anyone know of a superior fundamental analysis model for this type of business?
Thirdly, would you invest or are you already invested in NXT, and why?
Lastly, any other comments on my analysis or on NXT itself?
Cheers guys and if you read all the way here instead of looking for the TLDR; I appreciate it.

Well, boys, I reckon this is it - nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin' on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin'. Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human bein's if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelin's about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a-countin' on you and by golly, we ain't about to let 'em down.
Major Kong, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb [quote here] [full film available here at archive.org, highly recommend, definitive American dark comedy on the subject]
Hello! We're sort of taking a break from East Asia-specific this week to talk about a great conversation-starter: Thermonuclear war. As developments in this area have not entirely halted in the past few decades, and yet I suspect most [not all--there's probably like one 80-year-old or something] of the readers of this post were either not alive during the Cold War or were too young to really appreciate most of what was happening during that period, I feel that it's important to cover the topic, especially with "great-power competition" being a new buzzword and the possibility that the NPT and the other arms control and limitation agreements that have been prominent for the past few decades falling apart being very real.
I'm sorry in advance if I occasionally get a bit repetitive but I think I've made a fairly comprehensive post on the subject, and I don't think I've particularly biased it one way or the other [though of course, that's what I would think].
Glossary:
Bunker-buster = nuclear warhead designed to destroy hardened sites, like bunkers or missile silos
Nuclear weapon = nuclear bomb = nuclear warhead = weapon that uses an operating principle based on nuclear physics
Thermonuclear weapon = more advanced type of nuclear weapon that uses fusion as its primary energy source rather than fission
Warhead = the part of the weapon that goes boom
Fuze = what sets off the bomb, distinct from fuse, which is an electrical part
Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty = one of the biggest arms control treaties in recent years, barred the US and USSRussia from having land-based missiles that were nuclear capable with a range from 500km to 5500km]
Ballistic missile = missile that travels in ballistic trajectories, fast, difficult to intercept, accuracy problems and always powered by rockets
Cruise missile = missile that travels in the atmosphere, smaller, difficult to intercept but easier than ballistic missiles--but harder to detect, powered by jet engines and air-breathing and thus slower
SRBM = Short-range ballistic missile [1000km range or less, most less than 300km to comply with MTCR or less than 500km to comply with the former INF Treaty]
MRBM = Medium-range ballistic missile [1000km to 3000km range, common in arsenals outside the US and Russia]
IRBM = Intermediate-range ballistic missile [3000km to 5500km range, common in arsenals outside the US and Russia, previously barred by the INF Treaty
ICBM = Intercontinental ballistic missile [5500km+ range, standard in US and Russian arsenals, China, France, and possibly North Korea operate a handful]
SSBN = "boomer" = ballistic missile submarine, nuclear powered and nuclear armed [no conventionally armed ballistic missile subs exist at present to the best of my knowledge, the only proposal being known a Trident conventional version]
Early warning = the systems used to detect missile launches and track them, could be ground-based radars or satellites
MIRV = Multiple independent reentry vehicles, a way to attach multiple warheads to one missile
SLBM = submarine-launched ballistic missile
Tactical nuke = determined by usage, not yield, tactical nukes are meant to be used in conflicts that do not escalate to an all-out nuclear war
Countervalue = a capability to strike against an opponent's cities and hard targets
Counterforce = a capability to strike against an opponent's hardened missile silos
Gravity bomb = nuke dropped from a plane
Nuclear triad = the full set of nuclear delivery methods: Air-launched cruise missiles/bombs, submarine-launched missiles, and ground-based missiles
SDI = "Star Wars" = strategic defense initiative, the origin of all of America's modern missile defense efforts
ABM = anti-ballistic missile
Nuclear sharing = a system via which nuclear warheads, owned by the US, are located in NATO countries [and in the past non-NATO countries] and can be turned over to their management in wartime
Some particular pieces of hardware to know about:
Trident = the submarine-launched ballistic missile currently used by the US and UK, can carry up to 14 warheads in MIRV configuration [typically 4 under treaty limits], solid-fueled and an ICBM as well as a SLBM
Minuteman-III = the current ground-based nuclear deterrent of the United States, ICBM, also MIRVed to handle 3 warheads, built in the 1960s originally and solid-fueled
Peacekeeper = MX = LGM-118 = the most sophisticated ground-based ICBM fielded by the United States and, possibly, by any power, solid-fueled and carried 12 [limited by treaty to 10] MIRVed warheads. Retired in 2005 due to high cost and arms limitation treaties. Meant to replace Minuteman.

1. The Bomb

The very first nuclear bombs relied on fission, the power of splitting atoms of fissile material to generate vast amounts of energy very quickly in a chain reaction. The general principle here is critical mass. Once a critical mass of the fissile material is achieved--usually either Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239--it activates a chain reaction which results in a nuclear explosion. These bombs are very simple in operating principle--pretty much anyone could build one if given the requisite materials. The main problem, and the reason we have not yet seen a nuclear warhead DIY, is that the fissile materials are very difficult to get. One must either synthesize plutonium in an atomic pile or use one of the various methods developed to enrich uranium--gaseous diffusion and centrifuges being the major ones. Either one takes a significant amount of time and specialized equipment, at least to produce nuclear weapons in any quantity. However, when you get down to it, any sufficiently motivated group could build one of these--at least if not stopped by another, more motivated group. Even North Korea could do this.
The next step in evolution was the boosted fission nuke. It represented a nuclear weapon that was more capable, but not radically so. By adding fusion fuel to the nuclear weapon, specifically the fission assembly, you could get a better yield--splitting more of the atoms in the core assembly before it suffered a critical existence failure and got spread out over several square miles. Fission-boosting is also fairly easily done, with the main obstacle being obtaining enough deuterium, lithium, and/or tritium to do the job correctly. These are, to my knowledge, pretty seldom seen; but I would suspect that both Pakistan and North Korea have them.
Thermonuclear weapons are, however, a major leap in capability. Much larger yield warheads can be built, in the multi-megaton range, and miniaturization is also possible, which is very useful for missiles in particular. Thermonuclear weapons rely on adding a fusion "secondary" stage, which is set off by a "primary" fission stage and generates vast quantities of energy. However, thermonuclear weapons are much more difficult to develop than fission-based weapons; largely because they rely on exotic materials and classified physics to operate. The United States itself has had difficulty building new thermonuclear weapons, or refreshing ones in current inventory, because it has lost knowledge of how to build some key materials. Most nuclear powers, however, are believed to or known to possess thermonuclear weapons, the exceptions being Pakistan and North Korea.

2. The Cold War

Nuclear weapons were probably the defining feature of the Cold War, at least once it finally began in earnest in the 1950s. To this day, the Cold War defines the cultural conception of nuclear weapons.
What this is about, though, is more a mechanical than philosophical or sociological discussion, explaining why nukes were, and are, used. Or rather, are planned to be used, because despite hundreds of nuclear tests, nobody has ever used a nuclear weapon in wartime in just over 75 years, since the US dropped a crude plutonium device on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
The very beginning of nuclear war involved hundreds of strategic bombers--first B-29s, which actually cost more than the Manhattan Project to develop--and then more advanced jet bombers, the most iconic of which and perhaps the most enduring is the B-52 Stratofortress, which the US Air Force expects to remain in service through possibly the end of the century. These were the only viable delivery vehicles, and thus both the US [well, mostly the US] and the Soviet Union rushed to build as many of them as possible, with [unfounded] concerns of a "Bomber Gap" resulting in the construction of thousands of strategic bombers. In the event of war, these bombers would take off from their bases and drop nuclear bombs on enemy positions. For a substantial length in time, the US actually maintained a constant patrol of B-52 bombers with nuclear warheads onboard, which, in the event of a surprise attack, would retaliate against the USSR. It is one of these bombers which Dr Strangelove focuses on--though I should note that only a handful of people actually possessed the ability to launch a nuclear strike, and even then only in contingencies when the president was unavailable, and this persists to this day, excepting submarines--which will be mentioned in a moment.
However, technology marched on, and soon the ballistic missile became the delivery vehicle of choice. Early ballistic missiles were relatively crude, based off of the original V-2 design and whose quality was largely determined by how many Nazis you had stolen at the end of the Second World War. However, technology continued to evolve, and soon ICBMs had enough accuracy to launch countervalue attacks. These attacks targeted cities and aimed to deter an enemy from launching a first strike by ensuring that doing so would destroy the nation of the attacker. This doesn't mean that ballistic missiles were the only delivery method, though. Smaller nuclear weapons were built, designed to be delivered by air. They offered greater accuracy and tactical utility, and lowered the risk of a strategic nuclear exchange breaking out. It was around this time that tactical and strategic nuclear exchanges began to be devised in nuclear theory, with tactical nukes becoming essential to NATO war plans due to the numerical, and sometimes qualitative, inferiority of their conventional forces when faced with Warsaw Pact opponents. Nuclear weapons found their way into practically every kind of format. Nuclear-tipped air-to-air rockets were an early invention, aimed at shooting down massed bomber formations. Nuclear-tipped surface-to-air-missiles soon followed. Nuclear anti-ship missiles, nuclear artillery, and even "backpack nukes" like the Atomic Demolition Munition all were developed for a variety of purposes. Nuclear depth charges, nuclear torpedoes--if you put explosives in something, chances are someone drew up a plan to put a nuke in it. [as an aside, Cold War schemes to use nuclear weapons to perform massive construction projects, such as liquidating the Athabasca Tar Sands or creating a giant salt lake in Egypt, are one of my favorite Cold War relics]. Nukes were the bread and butter of Cold War strategy in a way that seems hardly conceivable today. This is largely why both the US and USSR had stockpiles of tens of thousands of weapons.
Mutual assured destruction, or MAD as it is commonly known, was also derived during this time, suggesting that the way to prevent nuclear war was by ensuring that any initiation of nuclear combat would lead to certain destruction. The development of SSBNs and SLBMs, which provided a way to ensure survivability of the nuclear arsenal and a sure second strike capability--usually countervalue because of the lower accuracy of SLBMs--seemed to make this set in stone. These would avoid destruction in a first strike by hiding within the ocean, and would then launch based off of orders issued from base--or, in the case of Britain, off of orders written by the Prime Minister and secured in the submarines to be opened in event of war.
Unfortunately, life tends to make things more complicated, and this was and is the case with MAD. The first problem that developed was that of the MIRV, or Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle. This allowed missiles to carry large numbers of warheads, as many as twelve in the case of the LGM-118 Peacekeeper [probably the most sophisticated ICBM ever developed, the Soviet R-36 threw 10 and Trident D5 14 smaller warheads]. As a result of this fact, combined with increasing accuracy of reentry vehicles [especially, it is thought, on the part of the United States], a counterforce strike that could eliminate an enemy's ground-based nuclear deterrent became possible. MIRVs also place a high value on first-strike because each MIRVed missile can destroy numerous enemy silos but is correspondingly more vulnerable to first-strike as it replaces a dozen independent missiles with a single one. As a result limitations of MIRVed warheads have been a major focus of arms reduction treaties and several attempts have been made to ban usage of the technology altogether. Other problems complicated the situation further, such as anti-ballistic missiles, which potentially could shelter a nation from a weak second-strike. However, this broadly describes most of the key elements of nuclear war, skipping over the vast cultural and political impacts of nuclear weapons for the most part, because that's not really what I'm focused on here.

3. Arms control and non-proliferation

From the moment the US first got its hands on the bomb, it sought to keep it away from everyone else, including a very miffed Britain which had been promised access to the secrets learned from the Manhattan Project as a result of the contributions of its "Tube Alloys" program to the American development of the bomb. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, or McMahon Act, has largely set American nuclear policy since its creation. Britain ultimately developed its own nuclear bomb, and the Soviets, in a large part thanks to the involvement of traitorous American nuclear scientists, developed their own bomb as well. By the 1950s, the world was in a frantic race to build the bomb--those who had it, to build more of them, and those who didn't, to get them. Even Sweden ran a nuclear weapons program. France got the bomb, and China did as well--much to the chagrin of the Soviets, who had undergone a dramatic split with the Chinese a few years earlier and whose original research work was invaluable in contributing to the Chinese nuclear program. It must be understood that back in those days building nuclear weapons was much more difficult than it is now, without computers or without even easy resources as to how they functioned. Nowadays, I can learn how to build a nuke off of Wikipedia, and, barring the ten tons of heavy water, hundreds of kilograms of natural uranium, and large quantity of nitric acid required, doing so is a relatively trivial task.
The real shift, however, began around 1970. The first major act in this was the development of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which all the nuclear powers promised to work towards the reduction and abolition of nuclear weapons, and in return the majority of non-nuclear powers agreed not to build nukes, and it is upon this foundation that the modern order is built. However, it has hardly proved perfectly successful--only six years later the detonation of the first Indian nuclear weapon occurred, which had been built using Canadian technology that had not been adequately controlled, or, indeed, controlled at all--the reactors Canada sells are, by the way, essentially DIY kits for nuclear weapons. As a result, an increasingly involved control regime began to be built. The IAEA was founded and membership was generally required for the ownership of nuclear reactors. The nuclear powers banded together to ensure that critical components of nuclear programs were not exported, pressured nations in their own blocs into cancelling nuclear programs [as the US did to both South Korea and Taiwan], and, barring some relatively low-profile cheating on the part of China, which has sold peripheral equipment to North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran, this vast patchwork mostly held together. As a result, instead of a predicted 30-40 nuclear weapons states, there are only 9 today.
Also around this time, both the US and USSR recognized that spending large quantities on building ever-increasing quantities of nuclear weapons without either side gaining any decisive advantage was helping absolutely nobody, and the two states began to agree to various reductions in arms and limitations in weapons development, including the ABM treaty and SALT.

4. Anti-ballistic missiles and Star Wars

Eventually, starting in around the 1970s, people got the idea that maybe you could stop ICBMs. This sounds absolutely ludicrous--but it wasn't, per se, impossible, and it led to a lot of really advanced, science-fiction sounding technology.
The very first method was to launch interceptor rockets that carried H-bombs of their own, aiming to detonate them close enough to the missiles that they would either destroy the reentry vehicles, their electronics, or cause a non-critical "fissile" of the warhead. This was halted, however, by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, one of the first big arms limitations agreements, and also by a simple fact: Ground-based missile interceptors are generally much more expensive than building additional missiles--for instance, the US Ground-Based Midcourse Defense costs more to produce, missile for missile, than a LGM-118 with 12 warheads. This treaty actually held for its full term, despite what you may have expected, as it did not limit research, only the actual building of anti-ballistic missile systems, and actually, IIRC, excluded space-based defenses via omission. However, until Ronald Reagan came along, the idea of ABMs was largely cast to the wayside.
Reagan, however, revived the idea quite famously in his Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by many. It explored a number of ideas, many of which were quite outlandish--one of the more successful proposals, at least in terms of how much funding or attention was devoted to it, involved setting off nuclear warheads in space to power x-ray lasers to shoot down enemy missiles, which if nothing else sounded really cool. By far the most practical program to emerge out of this, however [a rather relative merit], was called "Brilliant Pebbles". It relied on a constellation of tens of thousands of kinetic interceptors, small, only a few kilograms each, which would target and destroy any ballistic missiles in low orbit. This plan was supposed to solve the issue where interceptors were more expensive than missiles, and allow the US unquestioned missile superiority.
It was also around this time when surface-to-air missile systems, originally designed with the mission to shoot down aircraft, began gaining limited anti-ballistic missile capabilities, which were... somewhat underwhelming in the Gulf War, though the technology was brand new at the time.

5. Peace dividend

When the Cold War finally ended, one of the parts of the peace dividend that probably made more sense than most was the vast savings made on nuclear weapons. The trend had already begun in the late Cold War, but once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, stockpiles fell from tens of thousands of warheads to just a few thousand on the part of the US and Russia. All sides had a vested interest in arms reduction, and so those thousands of warheads were disassembled and largely turned into fuel for nuclear reactors.
Ballistic missile defenses also got cut. The original Brilliant Pebbles scheme was cancelled and replaced with a less-expensive but substantially less effective program called the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, which relies on a relative handful of interceptor missiles in Alaska to shoot down ballistic missiles in the midcourse stage; primarily designed with China or North Korea in mind [oddly enough the first ballistic missile defense program of the US was also designed with the intent of stopping a Chinese nuclear attack]. Ironically Ground-Based Midcourse Defense ended up costing a large portion [more than half] of what the final Brilliant Pebbles implementations were proposed at, for a system with very limited capabilities [this cancellation may have also been part of what killed the DC-X spacecraft].
Vast fleets of SSBNs were disassembled. Expensive delivery platforms and programs, like the MX Peacekeeper, were scrapped. All in all, the threat of nuclear war practically vanished, excepting on the subcontinent, where India and Pakistan engaged in nuclear showboating multiple times. It's really hard to understate the sheer magnitude of what happened, with the number of warheads in existence shrinking from around 70,000 to 10,000 or so, with around half of those today being inactive. The US Navy went from stocking multiple warheads on each ship to removing them entirely from the fleet, aside from, of course, the SSBNs.
The successor states of the USSR, aside from Russia itself, were successfully convinced to hand over their nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees--Ukraine most infamously--and their fissile materials were turned into [relatively] harmless nuclear fuel. South Africa became the first nation with an independently developed nuclear arsenal to voluntarily denuclearize, admittedly largely out of fear of what the black population might do with the bomb.
Other areas saw major reductions and non--proliferation efforts. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program decommissioned large quantities of nuclear delivery vehicles and Soviet biological and chemical weapons sites. The Missile Technology Control Regime expanded and enveloped most nations with the capability to develop ballistic missiles and long-range cruise missiles, making nuclear weapons delivery difficult for the aspiring third world dictator--for instance, an Iraqi program to develop a ballistic missile in partnership with Argentina was scrapped by American pressure and Argentine admittance into the MTCR. While India and Pakistan still harassed each other, their open non-nuclear conventional war assuaged some concerns while raising others [perhaps nuclear powers could engage in conventional war after all]. Nuclear programs in several countries were stopped by diplomatic pressure, as in Libya, rather than by Israeli bombing campaigns.
For a time, all was peaceful. In the last decade or so, however, things have changed--and for the most part, they have done so below the radar of even Washington policymakers.

6. A Return To The Old Days?

Things in the past decade or so, however, have changed the nuclear situation substantially.
First on the list is that North Korea now has nuclear weapons and, it seems, a deterrent. This has seriously tested the efficacy of non-proliferation already, with the merit of non-proliferation when North Korea and Pakistan have weapons being rather suspect. Iran is also building nukes. North Korea's case was, and is, dangerous in particular because it suggests that, barring strong support from a great power, nukes are the only way to maintain autonomy [Ukraine and Libya both offering examples of why surrendering nukes, or even a nuclear program, is a bad idea to the world], and that they aren't too difficult to get. North Korea also may well already be engaging in proliferation activities as a revenue source--it's already known that they sell ballistic missile delivery vehicles and have exported materials related to chemical weapons production in the past, so exporting nuclear technology is hardly a stretch, especially given that North Korea is not seriously threatened by these activities and they provide a useful revenue source for the regime. As a result, the non-proliferation circle built over decades by the various great powers now has a rather large North Korea-shaped hole in it. This, however, isn't leading to big changes in Russia, China, and the United States. Rather, technological advancements, largely by the US and China, are slowly nibbling away at the tenuous nuclear peace.
Second is the problem, for Russia, created by the new Trident super-fuze. Under cover of a "refurbishment" of the Trident warhead family, a new fuze was introduced. However, this fuze is no mere one-for-one replacement: Instead, it allows the warhead to detonate within a range of zones that could destroy the target, allowing warheads that would previously overfly the target and miss to instead detonate in an airbust directly above said target. In effect, it increased the power of Trident by as many as five times, and has made it into a counterforce or first strike weapon. Quoted figures are a .86 probability of kill for a 10kpsi target, about as hard as defensive structures get, and .99 probability of kill for a standard, 2kpsi hardened target. As most of Russia's missile silos are only secure to the point of the latter, and Russia uses liquid-fueled ICBMs for the most part that are much more sensitive to attack than Western or Chinese solid-fueled ones, what this means is that Trident is now capable of wiping out Russia's entire ground-based strategic deterrent at extremely short notice. This has, it seems, quite possibly frightened Russian leadership, and is the likely reason why they have been desperately trying to devise new outlandish delivery vehicles, like an unmanned nuclear torpedo or a nuclear-powered cruise missile. This is further complicated by the fact that Russia has more or less completely lost its space-based ballistic missile warning network and does not seem to have the capability to replace it, which means that Russia must rely on land-based early warning radars to inform it of a nuclear strike. As a result, Russia will have as little as ten minutes of warning for an incoming nuclear attack, and will have essentially no idea what it will look like or what scale it is on. When Russian sources say they'll treat any ballistic missile strike as a nuclear attack, they probably aren't lying, because their sensor network is so bad they can't tell whether a sounding rocket is a nuclear first strike, and their survivability is so bad they can't afford to not launch.
There's also the interesting problem presented by the development of a new low-yield Trident warhead. While it might possibly have some use, many believe that low-yield nuclear weapons are dangerous because they blur the line between conventional and tactical nuclear war, and the use of Trident as a delivery vehicle runs a substantial risk on account of the fact that it may be difficult for an adversary [such as Russia] to discern that the vehicle is a tactical nuclear strike rather than the beginning of a strategic exchange. These same very concerns scuppered a conventional variant of Trident proposed for the Prompt Global Strike program, which would have used Trident to launch large conventional payloads, a bad idea for multiple reasons.
Arms agreements that defined the 1990s and 2000s have also begun to fall apart. The cancellation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was just the latest in what has been a slowly escalating trend since the 2002 expiration of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. The Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, for instance, which required the US and Russia to convert their stockpiles of plutonium into MOX reactor fuel, is also dead, ostensibly for financial reasons on the part of the US, but quite possibly to allow the US to retain its 80+ tons of plutonium in a diluted form so it can be easily converted back into warheads [keep in mind only a few kilograms of plutonium is needed for a warhead so we're talking about thousands of devices in the several hundred kiloton range].
Why this is happening is an interesting question, and it seems that both the US and Russia [but, to be honest, mostly the US] are involved in the end of these arms restriction treaties. The first problem, and most obvious, is China. China has a general policy of not engaging in arms-limitation treaties, viewing them as a way for dominant powers to retain their position, and has a nuclear arms reduction policy that amounts to "get rid of all of your nukes and then we'll talk". With China becoming an increasingly significant threat to the United States, the arms controls placed on it by agreement with Russia have become problematic for American strategic planners. In particular, the limitation on intermediate-range forces was seen as a major difficulty given the increasingly capable conventionally armed intermediate range ballistic and cruise missiles that are one of the edges the PLAN holds; and, I suspect [but cannot prove] that planners within the US government view tactical nuclear war with China as a very real thing they should plan for, with the US using nukes first to gain a decisive tactical advantage and not escalating to a strategic exchange--this is enabled by the fact that China has essentially no tactical nuclear weapons, seems to believe it can avoid nuclear war with the United States [or possibly not--I've heard both], and a very small strategic stockpile of which only around 50 missiles can hit the continental US. Russia, on the other hand, has a rather different problem. Its conventional forces in Europe are inferior in quality and quantity to what NATO can field, so it has to plan to make up the difference with nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the increasing sophistication of American capabilities in ways which Russia simply cannot match means that the survivability of the Russian nuclear force is beginning to be called into question, and thus a larger arsenal is required to ensure that a strategic deterrent can be maintained as it has traditionally. As a result, both parties are abandoning arms treaties with, well, reckless abandon.
Finally, the development of increasingly capable ballistic missile defenses, especially by the United States--which now holds pretty much all the cards in the event of nuclear war--means that nations will be required to develop either new and more sophisticated delivery vehicles, or, alternatively, produce more warheads, to ensure that they can maintain deterrence. These include the SM-3 anti-ballistic missile, which can intercept ballistic missiles in the midcourse stage, though only shorter ranged ones and not full ICBMs at the moment, and which is being deployed by the US not only aboard its numerous destroyer fleet but also in "AEGIS Ashore" sites in Eastern Europe [which also caused concern by Russia because these units could easily fire ground-launched cruise missiles that were banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty], and were to be deployed in Japan before local opposition halted construction. The US also designed THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, which provides an interceptor to destroy even ICBMs in the terminal stage, and has made significant improvements to the Patriot missile system which enhance its ABM capabilities. The US has also discussed reviving technologies from previously abandoned schemes such as the YAL-1, a 747 that aimed to shoot down ballistic missiles with lasers at a range of hundreds of kilometers [though it was suggested the new implementation be on a stealth drone] and even considered further research into space-based interceptors--which seem far more feasible in a day and age when private companies are already putting up constellations of advanced communications satellites in similar numbers to those proposed for the "Brilliant Pebbles" scheme.

7. Conclusion

As a result of these shifts, the current lull in nuclear war preparations and small nuclear arsenals of today may not last much longer. Indeed, to an extent, the lull has already ended.
Without a doubt Biden will try to negotiate a renewal of New START--he himself has stated his intent to do so multiple times, but the short time window he has in which to renew it [it expires on 5 February 2021, little more than a week after his inauguration] means that whether he will be successful is uncertain. Even if New START is renewed or brought back in a new form I would expect it to be much less restrictive and a de facto abandonment of the arms reduction that has characterized the last thirty years of nuclear policy. I also don't think that New START, even extended, will last past 2026--that's the point when major nuclear modernizations are set to begin to the US arsenal, including the introduction of the Columbia-class SSBN into service and replacement of the 1960s-era Minuteman III ICBM that constitutes the ground-based deterrent.
Both the US and Russia are poised to make major modernizations to their nuclear arsenals and I expect both of their stockpiles to grow barring a renewal of New START as presently constituted. I also expect that the US may well begin preparing to build new facilities for nuclear weapons production, as its old ones have pretty much all closed at this point. Nuclear weapons may also begin to see a return to the naval field, with nuclear-tipped anti-ship missiles and torpedoes possibly seeing revivals--watch for a return to the US's historic nuclear ambiguity policy on whether or not its ships carry nuclear weapons.
New forecasts say that China is poised to double its nuclear arsenal in the next decade, and I suspect these ones will actually turn out, because China knows that their arsenal at present is too small to pose an effective deterrent to tactical nuclear war and may, within a relatively short time, become an ineffective strategic deterrent.
The list of states with nuclear weapons is likely to grow--South Korea is a near sure bet for reasons I have described previously, but I would not be surprised to see more states get the bomb. Iran seems likely to build one unless stopped via force, and they've gotten quite close already. However, more than the number of states which will possess nuclear weapons outright will grow, I predict a major expansion in nations which attempt to reach a nuclear-latent state. The recent burst of smallsat launchers provides a perfect cover for ballistic missile systems to be developed; drone technology and electronics have made cruise missiles easier than ever to design, and nuclear power will be sought after by a large number of states with potentially ulterior motives--once a sufficient stockpile of used fuel is made reprocessing it to extract the plutonium within is relatively trivial, and I expect more states to push for reprocessing technology and "full control over the nuclear fuel-cycle". As a result, strategic planners may ultimately have to reckon with a world in which most nations [or far more than the 9 current nuclear-armed states] could well develop modest nuclear arsenals within a few months to a few years.
As for what the US should do--well, my opinion is that the US should just embrace the inevitable. During the Cold War, the US saw that France wasn't going to be stopped from building the bomb--so instead they helped the French build their weapons and thus gained the trust and friendship of the entire French strategic community, at least to an extent where their nuclear and even conventional forces were de facto reintegrated into NATO.
That has lessons for today, I think. If something is going to happen one way or another, the US should just embrace it and try to help the process along and gain the trust and friendship of the nation involved, provided such a move is not directly contrary to American interests. For instance, take South Korea. If it becomes clear that South Korea intends to build nuclear weapons, the US would be better off discretely enabling that by amending its Section 123 agreement and clandestinely supporting the program than trying to fight it.
The US should also seriously reconsider whether it should maintain a non-proliferation stance, although I can see strong cases on both sides. Non-proliferation has failed to stop Pakistan or North Korea, and at that point it's really rather questionable whether it works, but for the moment it's the only thing that's holding the Middle East and world as a whole back from a nuclear arms race. If Iran does get the bomb, I doubt that the US will continue to hold onto that position. At that point [or this point] most of the nations the US doesn't want to have the bomb either already have it, cannot be stopped from getting it without war, or just flat out can't build it due to lack of money, will, and resources. It's unlikely that the US will openly support proliferation, especially Congress, but I find it quite probable that the US may well take a "wink-and-a-nudge" approach to the whole issue. A Section 123 Agreement might be amended to allow reprocessing and a solid-fuelled smallsat launcher sold or authorized, but how was the US government to know that the nation was pursuing nuclear weapons?
Furthermore, the US should start preparing as if an all-out nuclear arms race may resume, because it may well do so. Developing a new comprehensive ballistic missile defense strategy is part of this, possibly including Brilliant Pebbles--I'm a strong advocate of at least researching the solution especially given that so many hurdles already have been met by private companies like SpaceX--but also terminal defenses and directed-energy weapons. The US should also begin thoroughly examining the use of nuclear weapons in a modern context and prepare facilities needed for the production of additional warheads, including possibly a lithium-separation site to manufacture additional tritium, as well as reprocessing sites to produce additional plutonium.
[citations in comments due to max character limit]

Jessin Ayari 16-5-0 vs. Luigi Vendramini 8-1-0
Luigi the Italian Stallion is 24 years old, 5'8, 170lbs, with 73 inches of reach. He's on a very short fight notice replacing Belal Muhammad. His only loss came by a KO in his last fight against Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos. Good fighting team which is Factory X. Luigi is a black belt BJJ, his striking isn't the best.
Ayari is 24 years old, 5'8, 170lbs, with 73 inches of reach. Had a great UFC debut against Jim Wallhead then fought Darren Till and got destroyed. He then went down to 155lbs and fought Stevie Ray. Ayari showed good movement and laid heavy shots but honestly Stevie Ray is shit. Both haven't fought in 2 years and both got fucked up knees and had surgeries on them. If the fight goes on the ground then Luigi wins but it's hard to take Ayari down. Luigi's competition in the past hasn't been the best as well. So I'm not convinced on both so I'm staying away. If Ayari wins it'll be by decision and if Mario wins it'll be by submission. Bullshit fight.
Casey Kenney 14-2-1 vs. Alateng Heili 14-7-1
Kenney is 3-1 in the UFC and 7-1 since his loss on the contender series. He beat Brandon Royval and Vince Cachero. He has great striking and his grappling isn't bad at all. He lost to Merab Dvalishvili. I think with a win he'll get a top 15 ranking for sure. I really like him on his feet, he's fast and keeps on moving. Also his take down defence isn’t great sitting at 53% efficiency rate.
Heili is 24 years old, 5'8, 170lbs, with 73 inches of reach. Only good thing I can say about him is that he's got a dirty hook that comes with lots of power. Other than that his cardio is shit, grappling is average. Kenney might allow the take downs to drain his energy and take advantage of his shit cardio as that's his strategy usually with fighters like Heili. Kenney is great on the ground, he's always scrambling and trying to get on top and I think Heili isn't ready for this. I'm going with Kenney.
Loma Lookboonmee 4-2-0 vs. Jinh Yu Frey 9-5-0
Yes, the fight that sounds like a punch line to a terrible joke and a delicious stir fry dish! In all seriousness though, Loma is no joke at all. she's got over 100 Muay-Thai fights under her belt. she's 1-1 in the UFC, a split decision win over Aleskandra Alu and a unanimous decision loss against Angela Hill. Listen, with 100+ fights Loma throws some dirty elbows and knees. They're precise and powerful. This 24 year old fighter standing at 5'1 115lbs fighter is a beast!
Now Frey is 35 years old, 5'3, 115.5 lbs, with 65 inches of reach. She's a southpaw fighter, as boring as they come they don't make them any more boring. I saw tape of her "big" win against Smashley Cummings, yes we're both wondering who dat! Cummings is 7-6 , 33 years old enough said.
These are 2 different types of fighters with 2 different style of striking. Luma is 24 Frey is 35, Frey is utter shit on the ground and on her feet she's stiff and clueless. You'll notice she won't throw combos, only 1-2 punches at best. I'm going with the first ever Thai fighter in the UFC Loma Lookboonmee baby!
Jordan Williams 9-3-0 vs. Nassourdine Imavov 8-2-0
I'm calling it now, FIGHT OF THE NIGHT. Both are debuting In the UFC this Saturday. Williams was on the contender series a few years back if you remember but this guy took care of his head more than busting heads and tested positive for marijuana so his career was on pause for a while. I saw his fight against Cazula Vargas, Williams took a kick and hook fast fast and opened a nasty cut which ended up stopping the fight. Then he takes 2 years off and moves up to 185Lbs. I saw him recently on the contender series to secure a UFC contract.
Amivov is 24 years old, 6'3, 176.5 lbs, with 75.5 inches of reach he's a unit! He trains at UFC-Factory in France with no other than Francis Ngannou. The Russian Sniper deserves the name in every essence of it. His striking accuracy is deadly, quick on his feet and always throws combos always! A 2 piece that comes with fries and a drink, a large one! Only thing that needs to be worked on is his take down defence but Williams ain't a wrestler so I'm not worried. If I had to chose then my money goes on the sniper Imavov, Williams isn't convincing. I wanna sit back and watch 2 hooligans go at it hoping the sniper scopes him out!
Charles Jourdain 10-3-0 vs. Josh Culibao 8-1-0
Air Jourdain, is 24 years old, 5'9, 145.5 lbs, with 69 inches of reach. Ranked #31 in the Feather weight division Worldwide. I've been following this guy since his debut in the UFC in may 2018 which resulted in a loss by unanimous decision to Des Green. Green is 6 years older and isn't that good with 16 wins by decision. Then he beat Doo Ho Choi yes I know who dat! Choi is shit, hasn't seen a W since 2016. Then 4 months ago, he fought Touchy Fili and lost by split decision. It should have been unanimous IMO.
Culibao is 26 years old, 5'10, 155.5 lbs, with 73 inches of reach. Good feet movement but Air Jourdain is faster and smoother while dodging shots. He has good power though doesn't put much volume. Air is a heavy favourite and both are coming off a loss, I ain't convinced on Air and Culibao could pull an upset here.I'm staying away, this fight decides whether Air has a career ahead of him in the UFC or not.. he isn't GSP that's for sure.
Court McGee 19-9-0 vs. Carlos Condit 30-13-0
Oh yes the coin flip fight. The 2 washed up fighters, could be a great fight or a shit show. Look at those numbers! and I bet half of you haven't heard of any. If you did, its probably Condit who was something sensational 10 years ago. He is 36 years old, 6'2, 171 lbs, with 76 inches of reach. He destroyed Rory MacDonald in the 3rd 10 years ago then killed Dan Hardy in the first! He then went on to merc Dong Hyum Kim with a beautiful flying knee followed by deadly punches. This motherfucker wasn't done yet, he went on to beat my boy Nick Diaz by unanimous decision and that was back in February of 2012! Wish them silly Mayans were right.
After beating Diaz, the fighters in the Welterweight division decided to run a train on the "Natural Born Killer". Starting with GSP (you should watch that war of a fight!), Johnny Hendricks, Tyron Woodley, Robbie Lawler, Demian Maia, Neil Magny, enough right? Fuck no! Alex Oliveira & Michael Chiesa choked and Kimurad his ass out in the second!! Within 8 months apart! I think Diaz cursed him. This guy got shit cardio and a glass chin.
McGee is 35 years old, 5'11, 170 lbs, with 75.5 inches of reach. The "Crusher" isn't any better ladies and gents. He lost 6 of his last 9. His last back to back wins were waaaay back in 2013. He's good on the ground, but he's slow and limited. He beat Whitaker before Whitaker was a champ. He is better on his back than Condit. He's very good at pressuring his opponent which Condit really can't deal with any more. Listen I'm not touching this If Condit wins it'll be KO if McGee wins it'll by submission or decision. This is for sure Condit's last fight ever! He might put on a show but I doubt it. I'm not touching this as it could turn out to be like the debate a few nights ago, useless and unnecessary.
Dusko Trodorovic 9-0-0 Vs. Dequan Townsend 21-11-0
Townsend is 34 years old, 6'3, 202 lbs, with 79 inches of reach. Yes I know he's a mountain but he lost all 3 of his UFC fights. He's big and slow as fuck. He likes taking damage, he banks on his size to tire his opponents out as they try to knock him out. I have been following him since June last year and he doesn't look convincing at all. If the tarantula loses this fight he done done!
Dusko is 26 years old, 6'1, 185 lbs, with 76 inches of reach. He's undefeated and fast on his feat unlike the tarantula. His cardio is excellent. 5 KOs 3 submissions 1 decision. I'm going with Dusko.
Cameron Else 10-4-0 Vs. Kyler Phillips 7-1-0
Cameron "Camchida" Else is 29 years old, 5'8, 135.5 lbs. On a 6 fight win streak and this will be his UFC debut coming on a very short notice. I said 6 fight win streak all ending in round 1, but get this; his opponents had a record of 0-0, 1-1,0-1,4-2, 0-1 and finally 3-14!!! I'm not buying this hype, reminds me of sugar shit O'Malley.
Philips is 25 years old, 5'8, 135 lbs, with 70 inches of reach. The "Matrix" is ranked 47th worldwide in the Bantamweight division. On a 2 fight win streak, I watched him in February getting a W over Gabriel Silva. The matrix is fast and has a nasty powerful kick, he throws fast precise combos. I think the matrix wins here and sends Else somewhere else but I'm staying away.
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Julianna Pena 9-3-0 Vs. Germain De Randamie 9-4-0
Pena is 31 years old, 5'6, 135 lbs, with 69 inches of reach. Her last fight was 2 years ago yet she's ranked # 4 in the UFC and # 7 in the world. HOW?! Fuck outa here! she fought 3 times in the last 4 years. she got submitted by Shevchenko by an arm bar in the second.
GDR the IRON LADY! She is 36 years old, 5'9, 134.5 lbs, with 72.5 inches of reach. Undefeated in sanctioned kickboxing bouts!!! Get this: 46 fights 46 fucking WINS 30 motherfucking KOs !!! The first UFC Women's Feather Weight Champion! Due to a hand surgery she couldn't fight Cyborg. She lost her last fight to Amanda Nunes, she kept on getting taken down. Pena will try to do the same but come on she ain't Nunes lets not kid each other. GDR is the best female kick boxer on the shit hole of a planet period. She so strong, very powerful and precise kicks. Cardio second to none, but what I love the most about her are the elbows she throws. You never go against Margret Thatcher. GDR for the win.
Carlos Felipe 8-1-0 Vs. Yorgan De Castro 6-1-0
Yes the co-main event.. 2 overweight underachieving bricks for brain fighters. I'm not touching this not gonna even get into the numbers fuck that. I watched Felipe in July, it was sad. We could witness a blood bath or paint dry here, no in between. Listen they are both shit with KO power that's it that's all. Castro is the faster fighter here and better striker. I'm not touching this.
Irene Aldana 12-5-0 Vs. Holly Holm 13-5-0
Oh yes another bullshit matchup. The Preachers daughter Vs. Robles. The fuck you get these nicknames from.. Listen when was the last time you heard of Aldana? exactly! Holm has been utter shit since winning the title. Hear me out, if you follow me you know I'm a numbers guy.. Amanda Nunes has the worst PPV numbers in the UFC. What big names are left in that division other than Nunes and Holm? No body. So IMO this is an attempt from the UFC to help Aldana gain some fans because if she beats Holm she'll be offered a title shot against Nunes no doubt! Both are great boxers and Aldana trains with Canelo Alvarez, she throws powerful and fast hooks. Holm is a boxing champ and got annoying precise kick she keeps throwing lately. Lately Holm shows great grappling skills and forces a very technical boring as fuck fight. what I like about her is the combos she throws after the kicks she too serves 2 pieces with a side of fries and a drink. I should remind you that Aldana had a bad case of COVID which canceled her last fight, not sure what affect does that have on her cardio and power but ill give the edge to Holm. Stay away this a coin flip. I'm staying away but you could be like Norm MacDonald and gamble on a coin toss.
Casey Kenney
Loma Lookboonmee
Dusko Trodorovic
Germain De Randamie
EDIT: 4-0
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