Waste Regions

Waste is land a nuclear or chemical strike has ruined. You cannot buy it and you cannot sell it — an enemy gives it to you.

Waste stays on your books. It counts toward your territory, it costs the same upkeep as any other region, and it earns you nothing. A realm that takes several strikes and ignores them ends up paying for land that does no work.

Cleaning it up is called decontamination, and it is offered during maintenance whenever you hold any. Two limits apply:

• You can clean a fifth of your waste each turn, but never fewer than 10 regions and never more than you actually hold. A big mess takes several turns to clear no matter how rich you are.
• Each cleaned region costs half the going price of new land. Agricultural research cuts that further, down to a quarter.

Paying part of the bill cleans part of the pile, so a short turn is not a wasted one.

Cleaned land has no type until you give it one. You are asked to share it out across region types, the same way you share out land you have conquered.

Strategy: decontaminate early. The upkeep on ruined land runs every turn, so a pile you leave alone quietly taxes you for the rest of the game, and the clean-up rate means you cannot fix it all at once when you finally get round to it.