MARITIME CHOKEPOINT
Suez Canal · Held by 🇪🇬 Egypt · Measured across 4,320 simulated wars
Suez is the rarest closure in this model and the only one that is almost never merely a warning. Nearly every war that shuts this canal shuts it as a blockade, which is the exact inverse of the Bosphorus a thousand kilometres north. The cause is the same term read the other way round. Egypt does not sit in the blocs that get pulled into everyone else’s wars, so it stays out — and on the rare occasions it is in, it is in because the fighting has physically arrived, which means it has already been struck, which is precisely what buys the second rung of the ladder. The canal does not get harassed on its way to being closed. It skips that step. Five European states lose their sea lane when it does.
The engine sets a level per strait per round, and it is the lower of two terms: how badly the holder wants the strait shut, and whether it still has the ships, mines and coastal missiles to keep it shut. Willingness only ratchets up — a state that has been hit has less reason to reopen, not more. Capability is the only term that can fall, which is why a closure here is not permanent.
A level is the lower of two terms, so every strait is limited by one of them. Resolve arrives when the holder is shot at — that is what buys the second rung. Whether the level actually follows depends on whether the holder still has the ships, mines and coastal missiles to enforce it.
Both terms hold. When this strait closes at all, the holder has already been struck and still has the means to act on it — which is why almost every closure here is a blockade rather than a warning.
Share of all simulated wars in which this state is cut off by a partial blockade or worse.
Opening moves that most often end with this strait shut. Click one to run it.