new changes testable on beta: 2020-07-02

I don’t think you should’ve decreased coalition win. At the moment people almost always win by coalition. If you win solo you need 50% of the map...in coalition win, according to the new update, the coalition needs a total of 65%, which means each member on average only needs 13% of the map in a 5 player coalition...

all the other updates are good though.

most games are indeed won by coalitions, but we got alot of feedback that most often they are won long before the coalition comes close to its winning goal. In the end most coalitions have to do boring fights vs. the AI in the endgame. So we lowered the threshold a bit to shorten that.

A higher victory threshold does not result in more players remaining active, it justs results in a longer drag for those who remain active.

We may lower the solo win conditions in future updates (maybe).

freezy wrote:

most games are indeed won by coalitions, but we got alot of feedback that most often they are won long before the coalition comes cose to its winning goal. In the end most coalitions have to do boring fights vs. the AI in the endgame. So we lowered the threshold a bit to shorten that.

We may lower the solo win conditions in future updates (maybe).

freezy wrote:

Added Expansion factor morale penalty:

Starting at 0% penalty when conquering provinces that amount to 1 nation (slight variations depending on the map size), goes up to -35% penalty when owning ~half of all provinces on the map (some variations depending on the map size).

freezy wrote:

Lower victory thresholds:

65% for coalition & team win instead of 70%

freezy wrote:

Stealth:

Militia: Is now hidden in forest, hills, mountain and urban terrain. Increased costs slightly.

Paratrooper (Infantry Is now hidden in forest and hills.

Anti Tank: Is now hidden in forest, hills and urban terrain.

Tank Destroyer: Is now hidden in forest and hills. Increased costs slightly. Lowered terrain bonus in Plains from 50% to 25% and added terrain bonus in forests and hills of 25%.

Submarine: Increased damage slightly. Also added small damage values vs. land units to prevent nearly endless battles in some rare occasions.

freezy wrote:

Aircraft Carrier: Added small damage values vs. land units to prevent nearly endless battles in some rare occasions.

Overall, I think these changes are good.

DoctorDR1 wrote:

freezy wrote:

Added Expansion factor morale penalty:

Starting at 0% penalty when conquering provinces that amount to 1 nation (slight variations depending on the map size), goes up to -35% penalty when owning ~half of all provinces on the map (some variations depending on the map size).

From what I understand, this means that as you get bigger, you lose moral in all provinces. Wouldn't this increase the chance of rebellion making it harder to win? Is this the point?

freezy wrote:

Lower victory thresholds:

65% for coalition & team win instead of 70%

I agree with RiverWolf on this one. I think the coalition threshold should have stayed the same. Another point, slightly unrelated, on maps like All Countries: All In, where the coalition member limit is higher than the 1939 map, I think that the number of points that you have to reach should be higher. Just my thoughts though.

freezy wrote:

Stealth:

Militia: Is now hidden in forest, hills, mountain and urban terrain. Increased costs slightly.

Paratrooper (Infantry Is now hidden in forest and hills.

Anti Tank: Is now hidden in forest, hills and urban terrain.

Tank Destroyer: Is now hidden in forest and hills. Increased costs slightly. Lowered terrain bonus in Plains from 50% to 25% and added terrain bonus in forests and hills of 25%.

Submarine: Increased damage slightly. Also added small damage values vs. land units to prevent nearly endless battles in some rare occasions.

I appreciate all of these, especially the militia. This gives added value to the militia unit, which was desperately needed. I'm not really sure I understand the sub vs land unit thing. Is this defense, or attack?

freezy wrote:

Aircraft Carrier: Added small damage values vs. land units to prevent nearly endless battles in some rare occasions.

Same thing as the subs. I don't really understand this.

Overall, I think these changes are good.

1. Yes the point is to counter balance rapid expansion, especially since we also reduced the revolt chances. The distance to capital penalty was supposed to have the same effect, but didn't really work out in that regard. It resulted in far away provinces being hard to maintain even if you didn't really expanded that much (e.g. USA landing in Europe) while it made maintaining morale in core provinces too easy without the "at war penalty". That's why we moved parts of the capital penalty to this new expansion penalty. It is basically a more fair "at war" penalty that we had in CoW1.0. The problem with that penalty in 1.0 was that it punished nations who were already in a bad spot because many nations ganged up on them, and didn't differentiate between you starting the war or others forcing you to war. The expansion penalty on the other hand only hits those who are already far ahead in the game, to keep some challenges waiting for them. It also makes constructing Infrastructure in core provinces more worthwhile.

2. I don't think that a higher or lower coalition victory threshold changes anything in regards to when players are giving up in a game and when coalitions start to have free reign. Most of the times military defeat of a player or the military dominancy of their enemies lets players quit the game, while the amount of Victory points has hardly any effect on that. The amount of victory points right now plays hardly any role until shortly before the game ends, because it does not grant any additional benefit or power beforehand. So what I am saying is: The time when players quit the game is the same no matter if the victory threshold is at 90% or at 60%. But what it reduces is the chore that the winning coalitions have to go through to conquer the rest of the map, which is demoralizing for many.

Just imagine: A coalition which holds 65% of the map is nearly twice as powerful as the remaining 35% of the map. The chances to win for the remaining 35% of the map, where usually not even half of them are still active, are very very slim at that point. We rather let the game conclude at that point, enabling the remaining players to start new exciting rounds, instead of playing out a game which is already decided. The change from 70% to 65% also isnt that big, so the problem I was describing will still be relevant at 65%, but hopefully slightly less. And we plan to work more on that topic in the future.

3./4. Yes this is part of our "stealth overhaul". We felt like some defensive units needed some additional love and use cases, and we also wanted to enable some more sneaky gameplay and ambushes in the game. Plus land units not uncovering sea units and vice versa makes more sense now.

The submarine and aircraft carrier receive both attacking and defending stats vs. land units, but only very low. It is just there to prevent nearly endless battles. Also would be unfair if only land units can damage them without them being able to return fire when those ships idle on the shore.

(I already sense that I have to type all of that again in the relwase thread in 2 weeks where the main discussion will occur... )

Firstly defining two terms:

* "cocooning playstyle": During first one or two weeks investing bigger part of resources into industry and research. Therefore not being able to expand a lot during first two weeks. Only afterwards building a lot of units and trying to take the world in a rush.

* "expansionist playstyle": Already during first two weeks investing bigger part of resources into units. Expanding like there's no tomorrow from the beginning on.

The expansion malus is a very bad idea. I fully agree with replacing parts of the distance to capital malus with one that hits all provinces. But malus for large country:

1.: Punishes success. It's the goal of the game to conquer. With this malus, we'll see situations like in CoW1.0 again that certain provinces you don't want to have, because they reduce your production capabilities - but still have to conquer them to bring the game to an end. Such situations are very demotivating, lead to unnatural behaviour of players and simply are unnatural. In reality your population didn't refuse work because their country had success at war and conquered others. Having this in CoW would feel very very weird.

2.: Makes games take longer. To illustrate this with an extreme example (but effect would be noticable in all situations If there are two similarly strong parties left in end game, these might battle forever, because as soon as one side advances a bit, the expansion malus gives the other side more power to gain back lost territory. I understand you don't want a successful first quick rush to give a country an uncatchable advantage. But you shouldn't achieve that by punishing conquest.

3.: Promotes cocooning playstyle. Do you really want that? In my observation, the balance between cocooning and expansion is fine (otherwise you would have heard complaints about it ). I could still use cocooning with success, while most others with less patience went for expansion. Almost like it was in CoW1.0 all the time. More people cocooning, especially in later game (when the expansion malus becomes really tough), will make the game more static, more tedious and less intense.

4.: Worst of all, forces to play in coalitions even more than is already the case. Coalitions already have giant advantages over share-map-alliances and solo players. Defeating a coalition of 5 on your own is already very difficult. With the expansion malus it will become impossible. In other words, now all players will have to play in coalitions, which removes diplomacy from the game and drastically reduces options players have in positioning their country politically. We've had that already when you prohibited trade outside coalitions and we've all seen how bad it was for the game. Please don't make that mistake a second time!

5.: You know the minds of those many war-kids in this game. They will utterly hate this malus, also for non-objective reasons. So that comes on top of the four objective reasons above.

All other changes from this update seem to be OK at first glance, but my VERY STRONG vote against the expansion malus!

There must be better ways for a morale malus that hits all provinces (which, as said, would be good). First idea coming to my mind: Replace the expansion malus with a malus for bad global popularity. Like this:

* Set maximum capital distance morale penalty to -40.

* Remove the expansion malus.

* Introduce a morale malus from bad global popularity:

-0 for global popularity in between 100% and 60%.

-10 for global popularity 30%.

-20 for global popularity 0%.

(with malus relating gradually to popularity, of course).

This would punish players who blindly attack every neighbour at hand without any diplomatic integrity. Not those who win wars. That's a very significant difference.

Of course, to make this come to full effect, you should rework the way that global popularity increases/decreases and should display it on mobile. But these two things you should do anyway, sooner or later.

To conclude, perhaps you have a better idea for a morale malus on all provinces other than tying it to bad global popularity. But pleeease, pretty please no expansion malus.

The expansion penalty is not a new idea. Rather an adaption from S1914 (corruption) and Sone.

This penalty in Sone is so severe that the very first province captured sets back the homeland by a huge amount.

For example:

Capturing just one enemy province gives a morale malus of -9 to every home province. That

would require 15,000 food, tools and metal and 50,000 cash to build offices to overcome the

negative effects.

We can look forward to more and greater penalties as the road to CoW2.0 progresses?

About destroyers now seeing subs: Be aware that a player with HC can after this update get rid of stationary hostile submarines very easily by letting his destroyers (or his fleet containing at least one destroyer) swim around on offensive fire control setting.

I mean, it's not negative that this makes HC more important. HC (in contrast to gold) doesn't distort the game, because everything you get from HC can be made up for by being online more often.

Also I don't have a problem with making the life of stationary subs harder. In CoW, subs are regularly being used as spies - placed at the coast of a (potential) enemy to gain intelligence on the ground units he has there. Which is not realistic at all.

I only mention the destroyer-on-offensive-fire-control thing so you're aware it will change the game fundamentally. Don't know how big the buff is you gave to subs with this update, but if it's not big, I suggest to lower their manpower costs. I know that manpower in CoW1.5 includes the workers needed to build the vessel, but it also includes the crew. And subs had a small crew compared to surface ships, so they should require less manpower.

Question in this context: Would it be easy to implement that subs no longer see ground units (unless embarked, of course)? If yes, you should do so (and clearly mention it in the unit detail view of subs). This would finally put an end to this irrational usage of subs as spies along the coast. Of course, subs would then deserve another buff. I would go for lowering damage that destroyers deal to sumarines (cause it's not realistic destroyers deal that much more damage to subs than to air and surface ships - in reality, they were rather allrounders).

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Firstly defining two terms:

* "cocooning playstyle": During first one or two weeks investing bigger part of resources into industry and research. Therefore not being able to expand a lot during first two weeks. Only afterwards building a lot of units and trying to take the world in a rush.

* "expansionist playstyle": Already during first two weeks investing bigger part of resources into units. Expanding like there's no tomorrow from the beginning on.

The expansion malus is a very bad idea. I fully agree with replacing parts of the distance to capital malus with one that hits all provinces. But malus for large country:

1.: Punishes success. It's the goal of the game to conquer. With this malus, we'll see situations like in CoW1.0 again that certain provinces you don't want to have, because they reduce your production capabilities - but still have to conquer them to bring the game to an end. Such situations are very demotivating, lead to unnatural behaviour of players and simply are unnatural. In reality your population didn't refuse work because their country had success at war and conquered others. Having this in CoW would feel very very weird.

2.: Makes games take longer. To illustrate this with an extreme example (but effect would be noticable in all situations If there are two similarly strong parties left in end game, these might battle forever, because as soon as one side advances a bit, the expansion malus gives the other side more power to gain back lost territory. I understand you don't want a successful first quick rush to give a country an uncatchable advantage. But you shouldn't achieve that by punishing conquest.

3.: Promotes cocooning playstyle. Do you really want that? In my observation, the balance between cocooning and expansion is fine (otherwise you would have heard complaints about it ). I could still use cocooning with success, while most others with less patience went for expansion. Almost like it was in CoW1.0 all the time. More people cocooning, especially in later game (when the expansion malus becomes really tough), will make the game more static, more tedious and less intense.

4.: Worst of all, forces to play in coalitions even more than is already the case. Coalitions already have giant advantages over share-map-alliances and solo players. Defeating a coalition of 5 on your own is already very difficult. With the expansion malus it will become impossible. In other words, now all players will have to play in coalitions, which removes diplomacy from the game and drastically reduces options players have in positioning their country politically. We've had that already when you prohibited trade outside coalitions and we've all seen how bad it was for the game. Please don't make that mistake a second time!

5.: You know the minds of those many war-kids in this game. They will utterly hate this malus, also for non-objective reasons. So that comes on top of the four objective reasons above.

All other changes from this update seem to be OK at first glance, but my VERY STRONG vote against the expansion malus!

There must be better ways for a morale malus that hits all provinces (which, as said, would be good). First idea coming to my mind: Replace the expansion malus with a malus for bad global popularity. Like this:

* Set maximum capital distance morale penalty to -40.

* Remove the expansion malus.

* Introduce a morale malus from bad global popularity:

-0 for global popularity in between 100% and 60%.

-10 for global popularity 30%.

-20 for global popularity 0%.

(with malus relating gradually to popularity, of course).

This would punish players who blindly attack every neighbour at hand without any diplomatic integrity. Not those who win wars. That's a very significant difference.

Of course, to make this come to full effect, you should rework the way that global popularity increases/decreases and should display it on mobile. But these two things you should do anyway, sooner or later.

To conclude, perhaps you have a better idea for a morale malus on all provinces other than tying it to bad global popularity. But pleeease, pretty please no expansion malus.

Also if you conquer 3 players in the beginning of the game you will still be better off than turtling in most cases, because the expansion factor at this stage is not that drastic and won't set off the gain from conquering. Your own core provinces push eachother by +10 morale on average, so you won't even notice the expansion penalty in your core until you conquered a sizeable chunk of the map. And afterwards we expect players to build Infrastructure.

The one point I agree to is that it makes solo play more difficult than coalition play. We probably have to do further tweaks in that area in the future to strengthen solo play again.

We think it is totally needed to include such a factor though to make morale management in your core provinces worthwhile, which was non-existent in CoW1.5 so far. We will also discuss your suggestion of a global popularity penalty as an alternative.

cycle9 wrote:

The expansion penalty is not a new idea. Rather an adaption from S1914 (corruption) and Sone.

This penalty in Sone is so severe that the very first province captured sets back the homeland by a huge amount.

For example:

Capturing just one enemy province gives a morale malus of -9 to every home province. That

would require 15,000 food, tools and metal and 50,000 cash to build offices to overcome the

negative effects.

We can look forward to more and greater penalties as the road to CoW2.0 progresses?

Hans A. Pils wrote:

About destroyers now seeing subs: Be aware that a player with HC can after this update get rid of stationary hostile submarines very easily by letting his destroyers (or his fleet containing at least one destroyer) swim around on offensive fire control setting.

I mean, it's not negative that this makes HC more important. HC (in contrast to gold) doesn't distort the game, because everything you get from HC can be made up for by being online more often.

Also I don't have a problem with making the life of stationary subs harder. In CoW, subs are regularly being used as spies - placed at the coast of a (potential) enemy to gain intelligence on the ground units he has there. Which is not realistic at all.

I only mention the destroyer-on-offensive-fire-control thing so you're aware it will change the game fundamentally. Don't know how big the buff is you gave to subs with this update, but if it's not big, I suggest to lower their manpower costs. I know that manpower in CoW1.5 includes the workers needed to build the vessel, but it also includes the crew. And subs had a small crew compared to surface ships, so they should require less manpower.

Question in this context: Would it be easy to implement that subs no longer see ground units (unless embarked, of course)? If yes, you should do so (and clearly mention it in the unit detail view of subs). This would finally put an end to this irrational usage of subs as spies along the coast. Of course, subs would then deserve another buff. I would go for lowering damage that destroyers deal to sumarines (cause it's not realistic destroyers deal that much more damage to subs than to air and surface ships - in reality, they were rather allrounders).

Sadly its currently not possible to remove sight on land from submarines. Probably would also be a rather expensive feature calculation wise.

Let's let it play out this way

We discussed it in the team and won't change the expansion penalty for now. But we agree that it penalizes solo players harder, that is why our approach is now to also lower the solo victory conditions from 51% to 45%, making it easier for solo players to win.

(in the unlikely case that more than 1 player reaches the 45%, the player with more points wins at daychange)

I will add it to the change list.

I think an expansion moral penalty is fine and could provide a good solution to both moral in core / close to core land too easy as well as far off land too hard to maintain.

I will add it again but I think a good method to improve the system is with a reworked neighbour penalty as I think it is a little out of date.

At 100% we gain a +2 bonus but at 25% it is a -5 which to me at least feels like an unbalanced scale. At 80% moral it is neutral meaning 75% moral will give a - penalty. In 1.0 we had a +25 moral potential from forts and another +15% from infra meaning this penalty could be negated more easily as we could gain +10% moral than in 1.5. I 100% like the increased infra from 20% - 30% as 20% was not enough AT ALL! I had provinces with lvl 3 infra revolting away lol.

To get back to neighbour penalty. I believe the penalty perhaps could be altered in two ways:

1) 25% moral has a 0 modifier. 33% has a -maybe 3 and then 60% is neutral with +/- 0, with the modifier going up to +5-7 at 100%.

The reason 25% has a 0 maybe realistically does not make as much sense. But for balancing it means it becomes easier to raise moral. I believe one difficulty is 25% land has a HUGE negative neighbour penalty as well as distance from cap. Meaning raising it above the revolt chance is harder. So by having 0 at 25% is will enable players to raise moral beyond revolting risk then have a penalty at 33%.

I also believe lowering the neutral level to 60% is better balanced, 80% is really tough to achieve in far off lands. I would estimate that land -30 away likely will have at least -10-15 expansion to accomodate the distance, meaning getting that land above 60% is really tough - impossible. Trying to get to 80% I can never achieve so I will always have a - neighbour penalty when I believe 60% is reasonable to assume they are neutral. 60% contentness to me neutral and 75% is pretty damn happy. Also a 60% neutral means the + affect which will be discussed in the next paragraphs has a better chance to be impacted.

Then having the bonus go up to +5 would mean provinces with infra can provide a large radius affect. I am trying to attach an image below which had lvl 3 infra in every city province to show how they don't positively assist those province next to them but it is not loading I could try sending it on discord but idk guess my internet is slow again.

I also believe it would make sense for a high moral province to impact those provinces near them more. At the very least not providing a - penalty because they cannot achieve 80% or above. I have a province currently in 1.5 that is stable with -14 moral points at 60% moral. I also have lvl 3 infra in it. I feel a -14 is not really that much as even with furtherest distance from cap with half expansion penalty we are above 14 negative moral points. But the 60% province is still - impacting provinces. I believe with a 0 it might be able to get higher to maybe even a + value.

I believe this would provide better strategic placement of infra as well. I have tried spamming infra in all provinces and it is not feasible. In my 1.5 map I got about 90% of my further than 30 from cap provinces with lvl 3 infra but that was while I was producing less troops due to MP issues. As well as solely building infra and by the end not troops as I was bored and had no time to really play the map (thx exams).

2) is really the same but 25% moral stats off at -3 or -5 moral, up to 0 at 60% and maxing off at +5-7. This method is probably easier to implement and makes more historic sense. Just a little harder for players but maybe thats not a bad thing.

Id like to note my numbers of +5-7, -3 are really just numbers ive really just made up. Maybe higher or lower is needed but I believe the jist and notion of what I mean is understandable.

The increased neighbour bonus would keep core land at 100%. And in fact likely keep it higher throughout the game. IMO that is certainly a good thing, I do not believe people from lets say Libya cared if the nation had expanded into Asia or America and the core ppl likely did not get less happy, probably made them happier as they where winning! Also this would make solo games easier if cores did not lose moral. From 1.0 games, the -25 moral from 5 wars for even core land is BRUTAL! I personally hated it and one reason I am preferring 1.5 is not having core land at 70-80% moral and tanking my production. I believe expansion should impact non-cores but core land really should not be impacted. With some infra core land should always be at 100% because why would the people not be happy with getting their nation larger? Both from a realism and a game play perspective I do not like core land moral going down from large penalties. In 1.0 even with lvl 3 infra core land can be at 85% which just sucks and esp in comparison for me at least, 1.5 was FAR superior. I have mentioned it a little bit ago that I really liked the no war penalty, largely as I am a war monger player and it felt just wrong to punish me for waring in a war game, but also the -25 penalty really hurt my core lands.

In addition, I believe we should have the ability to negate penalties. Whether we choose to or not us up to the player. But the possibility is there. Enabling a larger neighbour bonus from high moral due to building infra I believe further rewards players for increasing moral, and enables a negation of penalties. I think penalties are important for a challenge and balance, but enabling players to overcome the penalties is the best. For me at least, a problem that cannot physically be solved is annoying and not fun, one that requires work but is possible is far more rewarding. Different ofc, but a penalty that can become -45 realistically and likely common but we can only get +30 as well as a further negative bunch from neighbours kind of sucks. If on average core land can get to +10, then for the average province it will have 5 provinces next to it all providing a nasty penalty, likely at least -2 but I believe likely -2-3 making that -45 land now -55 -60 which means we are now having a -30 moral for not even max penalties which is harder again to solve and overcome.

I think the -30 for distance and up to -35 for expansion are both well balanced and considered. BUT, they have not factored in much the - from neighbours. On average a province has -2-3 neighbour penalty adding another -10-15 penalty without a method of correcting it- ofc some of my numbers as I am yet to play this new iteration are assumptions as I do not yet know the expansion penalty limits. But it is based off a LOT of gameplay as well as the neighbour penalty I have mentioned before.

Anyway, to sum up. I believe altering the neighbour penalty would be beneficial by increasing strategic decisions for infra placement, better balance the new moral numbers as well as simply making a system more up-to-date.

Hopefully I have been able to explain my ideas well . Unfortunately for some reason I cannot upload any images. I blame my dodgy internet.

I will probably make another comment later about the other changes - as a whole I believe they are great additions but I will need to join a map to properly see.

One question, does it mean a province with 100% moral will get a boost to production time with the new moral-production times? - now i'm thinking about it, it also would make sense for core land to keep at 100% and my moral ideas may be more important with production being based on moral as well. But I really would need to play a map to determine that.

freezy wrote:

Destroyer: Now reveals Submarines, but decreased its view range by ~30%. Decreased damage vs. Submarines slightly and increased costs slightly due to not being reliant on Naval Bombers to spot submarines anymore.

I know a lot of thought must have gone into making these changes, but I'm curious your reasons for giving destroyers the ability to reveal submarines ? In previous iterations, it was still possible for submarines to directly sneak past naval blockades while at war with the opposing fleet if you turn on the "hold fire" or "return fire" setting, provided the opponent did not have enough naval bombers to patrol the entire area, which is typically the case without a large complement of carriers in the ocean.

However, destroyers are easy to build and people typically have a large quantity, enough to cover all the sea routes in a particular area. Since there's no reason to set destroyers to "hold fire" or "return fire", which is the only scenario where opposing subs might be spotted but still not fired upon, it is now completely impossible to send submarines through a blockade and work behind enemy lines.

Torpedo28000 wrote:

I think an expansion moral penalty is fine and could provide a good solution to both moral in core / close to core land too easy as well as far off land too hard to maintain.

I will add it again but I think a good method to improve the system is with a reworked neighbour penalty as I think it is a little out of date.

At 100% we gain a +2 bonus but at 25% it is a -5 which to me at least feels like an unbalanced scale. At 80% moral it is neutral meaning 75% moral will give a - penalty. In 1.0 we had a +25 moral potential from forts and another +15% from infra meaning this penalty could be negated more easily as we could gain +10% moral than in 1.5. I 100% like the increased infra from 20% - 30% as 20% was not enough AT ALL! I had provinces with lvl 3 infra revolting away lol.

To get back to neighbour penalty. I believe the penalty perhaps could be altered in two ways:

1) 25% moral has a 0 modifier. 33% has a -maybe 3 and then 60% is neutral with +/- 0, with the modifier going up to +5-7 at 100%.

The reason 25% has a 0 maybe realistically does not make as much sense. But for balancing it means it becomes easier to raise moral. I believe one difficulty is 25% land has a HUGE negative neighbour penalty as well as distance from cap. Meaning raising it above the revolt chance is harder. So by having 0 at 25% is will enable players to raise moral beyond revolting risk then have a penalty at 33%.

I also believe lowering the neutral level to 60% is better balanced, 80% is really tough to achieve in far off lands. I would estimate that land -30 away likely will have at least -10-15 expansion to accomodate the distance, meaning getting that land above 60% is really tough - impossible. Trying to get to 80% I can never achieve so I will always have a - neighbour penalty when I believe 60% is reasonable to assume they are neutral. 60% contentness to me neutral and 75% is pretty damn happy. Also a 60% neutral means the + affect which will be discussed in the next paragraphs has a better chance to be impacted.

Then having the bonus go up to +5 would mean provinces with infra can provide a large radius affect. I am trying to attach an image below which had lvl 3 infra in every city province to show how they don't positively assist those province next to them but it is not loading I could try sending it on discord but idk guess my internet is slow again.

I also believe it would make sense for a high moral province to impact those provinces near them more. At the very least not providing a - penalty because they cannot achieve 80% or above. I have a province currently in 1.5 that is stable with -14 moral points at 60% moral. I also have lvl 3 infra in it. I feel a -14 is not really that much as even with furtherest distance from cap with half expansion penalty we are above 14 negative moral points. But the 60% province is still - impacting provinces. I believe with a 0 it might be able to get higher to maybe even a + value.

I believe this would provide better strategic placement of infra as well. I have tried spamming infra in all provinces and it is not feasible. In my 1.5 map I got about 90% of my further than 30 from cap provinces with lvl 3 infra but that was while I was producing less troops due to MP issues. As well as solely building infra and by the end not troops as I was bored and had no time to really play the map (thx exams).

2) is really the same but 25% moral stats off at -3 or -5 moral, up to 0 at 60% and maxing off at +5-7. This method is probably easier to implement and makes more historic sense. Just a little harder for players but maybe thats not a bad thing.

Id like to note my numbers of +5-7, -3 are really just numbers ive really just made up. Maybe higher or lower is needed but I believe the jist and notion of what I mean is understandable.

The increased neighbour bonus would keep core land at 100%. And in fact likely keep it higher throughout the game. IMO that is certainly a good thing, I do not believe people from lets say Libya cared if the nation had expanded into Asia or America and the core ppl likely did not get less happy, probably made them happier as they where winning! Also this would make solo games easier if cores did not lose moral. From 1.0 games, the -25 moral from 5 wars for even core land is BRUTAL! I personally hated it and one reason I am preferring 1.5 is not having core land at 70-80% moral and tanking my production. I believe expansion should impact non-cores but core land really should not be impacted. With some infra core land should always be at 100% because why would the people not be happy with getting their nation larger? Both from a realism and a game play perspective I do not like core land moral going down from large penalties. In 1.0 even with lvl 3 infra core land can be at 85% which just sucks and esp in comparison for me at least, 1.5 was FAR superior. I have mentioned it a little bit ago that I really liked the no war penalty, largely as I am a war monger player and it felt just wrong to punish me for waring in a war game, but also the -25 penalty really hurt my core lands.

In addition, I believe we should have the ability to negate penalties. Whether we choose to or not us up to the player. But the possibility is there. Enabling a larger neighbour bonus from high moral due to building infra I believe further rewards players for increasing moral, and enables a negation of penalties. I think penalties are important for a challenge and balance, but enabling players to overcome the penalties is the best. For me at least, a problem that cannot physically be solved is annoying and not fun, one that requires work but is possible is far more rewarding. Different ofc, but a penalty that can become -45 realistically and likely common but we can only get +30 as well as a further negative bunch from neighbours kind of sucks. If on average core land can get to +10, then for the average province it will have 5 provinces next to it all providing a nasty penalty, likely at least -2 but I believe likely -2-3 making that -45 land now -55 -60 which means we are now having a -30 moral for not even max penalties which is harder again to solve and overcome.

I think the -30 for distance and up to -35 for expansion are both well balanced and considered. BUT, they have not factored in much the - from neighbours. On average a province has -2-3 neighbour penalty adding another -10-15 penalty without a method of correcting it- ofc some of my numbers as I am yet to play this new iteration are assumptions as I do not yet know the expansion penalty limits. But it is based off a LOT of gameplay as well as the neighbour penalty I have mentioned before.

Anyway, to sum up. I believe altering the neighbour penalty would be beneficial by increasing strategic decisions for infra placement, better balance the new moral numbers as well as simply making a system more up-to-date.

Hopefully I have been able to explain my ideas well . Unfortunately for some reason I cannot upload any images. I blame my dodgy internet.

I will probably make another comment later about the other changes - as a whole I believe they are great additions but I will need to join a map to properly see.

One question, does it mean a province with 100% moral will get a boost to production time with the new moral-production times? - now i'm thinking about it, it also would make sense for core land to keep at 100% and my moral ideas may be more important with production being based on moral as well. But I really would need to play a map to determine that.

Right now the morale feature does not allow us to define a neighbour factor of -0 at 25%, that then goes to a negative value only to go back to 0 and then a positive value, like an S curve. Unfortunately there is only one morale value allowed where it is 0, and below that it's negative and above it's positive. Of course features can be changed but since that is not a quick balancing change it would have to be added onto the dev roadmap.

Now what we could theoretically easily do is to move this 0-spot around, from 80% province morale to for example 60% province morale. But this would make managing your core territory again far too easy (also managing far away provinces, so making the game much easier overall than currently). I know you don't like any penalties on your cores, but we are adding the expansion factor to do exactly that. So I fear our intentions contradict each other slightly in this regard We want to do that so that morale management and building (or destroying) Infrastructure in core territory becomes worthwhile later in the game. Even with the current implementation of +2 neighbour morale when at 100% morale you get morale bonuses from +8 to +16 usually for most of your core provinces due to the many happy neighbours. Which means that with the currently implemented expansion penalty you won't even feel that penalty until you already conquered a sizable chunk of the map, so still a pretty tame penalty overall for now. But when you would get a +4 neighbour morale or even higher for a province at 100%, there would be no need to build infrastructure in your core in later stages of the game anymore and they would boost eachother up to 100% without any effort. Then we would in turn have to make the expansion penalty much harsher again, like doubling its effect, but that would in turn make managing far-off provinces too hard again. So you see this proposal does not fit to our intention and contradicts other design choices.

But while thinking about it I had an idea: What we could do to solve this together with decreasing the "happy" threshold from 80% to 60%, is to also lower the target morale threshold of a province down from 100% to 70%. Meaning that a province without any morale boosts will only raise until 70% morale and not 100% morale, so that you have to achieve the other 30% via morale bonuses, like the then increased neighbour bonuses and Infrastructure. At the same time the starting morale of provinces should also be lowered probably from 70% to 50% or something. This would incentivice players to build Infrastructure in their cores to get more bonuses to reach 100% and would make it unncessecary to increase the expansion penalty further. It would also make it easier to reach the happy state in far away provinces due to the reduced negative neighbor penalties. That's just what I came up with by thinking about it for a moment, there could still be bad edge cases or loopholes. Also not any promise that we do it this way, right now for the next release the change is still planned as posted in the notes above.

We will tweak these values again anyway once we split the morale boost functionality off from Infrastructure some time in the future. We still have it on our plan to add an own building for that, which is a bit cheaper and provides a bigger bonus, maybe this should also help with some things or make it more interesting.

Marechal Saoul wrote:

freezy wrote:

Destroyer: Now reveals Submarines, but decreased its view range by ~30%. Decreased damage vs. Submarines slightly and increased costs slightly due to not being reliant on Naval Bombers to spot submarines anymore.

Good morning,

I know a lot of thought must have gone into making these changes, but I'm curious your reasons for giving destroyers the ability to reveal submarines ? In previous iterations, it was still possible for submarines to directly sneak past naval blockades while at war with the opposing fleet if you turn on the "hold fire" or "return fire" setting, provided the opponent did not have enough naval bombers to patrol the entire area, which is typically the case without a large complement of carriers in the ocean.

However, destroyers are easy to build and people typically have a large quantity, enough to cover all the sea routes in a particular area. Since there's no reason to set destroyers to "hold fire" or "return fire", which is the only scenario where opposing subs might be spotted but still not fired upon, it is now completely impossible to send submarines through a blockade and work behind enemy lines.

Yes sending subs behind a blockade is now certainly harder, but it was just too easy in the previous iteration to park subs everywhere and use them as cheap spies. Destroyers are more expensive than subs. If someone parks lonely destroyers everywhere as blockade, you can easily clear them out by fighting one destroyer with 2 or more subs or with just 1 cruiser, since Cruisers can outrange the destroyer and deal more naval damage. Using a destroyer blockade maybe is effective in scaring away single subs, but since destroyers are not stealth you can also easily spot and counter them or move past them (they now also have a smaller vision range than subs). I feel like destroyers will be more effective as troop escorts and when being on the move instead of being parked somewhere.

Destroyers being able to reveal submarines nerfs naval bombers and carriers. Because one of their purposes (spotting subs) can now be done more cost-efficiently with destroyers: Adding just one level 1 destroyer to your fleet or convoi already does the job.

So I'd say you should think about buffing at least carriers. I know it's not easy to find a buff for them that's not badly unrealistic. Their costs are already low in CoW compared to reality. But carriers were an important unit in WW2 and it's a lot of fun to use them in CoW. They shouldn't fall back to being an edge case unit like they were in CoW1.0.

All in all, I'm sceptical about the change destroyers seeing subs.

freezy is right it wasn't nice that subs in CoW so far are frequently being used as spies along foreign shores. And of course I understand that from balancing perspective, you want very clearly distinguished roles for the three surface ship types.

But @Marechal Saoul's point about no longer being able to pass a naval blockade with a sub is also valid. Don't get why you reduced his worry to single destroyers parked along the coast. To name an extreme example: What do you now do if somebody parks his fleet, including one lousy level 1 destroyer, in the English Channel? You cannot pass that with a sub any more... which in reality you could.

The realism argument for this change I don't really agree with. Would say it's not more realistic than them not seeing subs. Yes, destroyers were good at hunting subs. But that was because of their speed. Their high maneuverability made it almost impossible for a sub to hit them with a torpedo (unless at night). And also thanks to their speed, they were able to hunt the sub until it had to emerge, or at least were able to drive above it and drop a few depth charges. All of this is already reflected with the very high anti-sub damage value destroyers have in CoW1.5. But seeing subs or rather locating them? As far as I know, cruisers in general had better sensors for that... not sure to be honest.

Stomach feeling says after this update, we'll probably see a lot of 30 ship-fleets consisting of 10 destroyers + 10 cruisers + 10 battleships dominating the seas. And hardly any subs, carriers or naval bombers any more.

But is hard to predict - I hope it'll turn out I'm mistaken.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Destroyers being able to reveal submarines nerfs naval bombers and carriers. Because one of their purposes (spotting subs) can now be done more cost-efficiently with destroyers: Adding just one level 1 destroyer to your fleet or convoi already does the job.

So I'd say you should think about buffing at least carriers. I know it's not easy to find a buff for them that's not badly unrealistic. Their costs are already low in CoW compared to reality. But carriers were an important unit in WW2 and it's a lot of fun to use them in CoW. They shouldn't fall back to being an edge case unit like they were in CoW1.0.

All in all, I'm sceptical about the change destroyers seeing subs.

freezy is right it wasn't nice that subs in CoW so far are frequently being used as spies along foreign shores. And of course I understand that from balancing perspective, you want very clearly distinguished roles for the three surface ship types.

But @Marechal Saoul's point about no longer being able to pass a naval blockade with a sub is also valid. Don't get why you reduced his worry to single destroyers parked along the coast. To name an extreme example: What do you now do if somebody parks his fleet, including one lousy level 1 destroyer, in the English Channel? You cannot pass that with a sub any more... which in reality you could.

The realism argument for this change I don't really agree with. Would say it's not more realistic than them not seeing subs. Yes, destroyers were good at hunting subs. But that was because of their speed. Their high maneuverability made it almost impossible for a sub to hit them with a torpedo (unless at night). And also thanks to their speed, they were able to hunt the sub until it had to emerge, or at least were able to drive above it and drop a few depth charges. All of this is already reflected with the very high anti-sub damage value destroyers have in CoW1.5. But seeing subs or rather locating them? As far as I know, cruisers in general had better sensors for that... not sure to be honest.

Stomach feeling says after this update, we'll probably see a lot of 30 ship-fleets consisting of 10 destroyers + 10 cruisers + 10 battleships dominating the seas. And hardly any subs, carriers or naval bombers any more.

But is hard to predict - I hope it'll turn out I'm mistaken.

I also don't think destroyers needed to be buffed against subs even if they cannot reveal them, given the high bombard damage and the possibility of engaging them at range. But I recognise that this is a highly subjective topic, and others will likely feel differently about this.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Destroyers being able to reveal submarines nerfs naval bombers and carriers. Because one of their purposes (spotting subs) can now be done more cost-efficiently with destroyers: Adding just one level 1 destroyer to your fleet or convoi already does the job.

So I'd say you should think about buffing at least carriers. I know it's not easy to find a buff for them that's not badly unrealistic. Their costs are already low in CoW compared to reality. But carriers were an important unit in WW2 and it's a lot of fun to use them in CoW. They shouldn't fall back to being an edge case unit like they were in CoW1.0.

All in all, I'm sceptical about the change destroyers seeing subs.

freezy is right it wasn't nice that subs in CoW so far are frequently being used as spies along foreign shores. And of course I understand that from balancing perspective, you want very clearly distinguished roles for the three surface ship types.

But @Marechal Saoul's point about no longer being able to pass a naval blockade with a sub is also valid. Don't get why you reduced his worry to single destroyers parked along the coast. To name an extreme example: What do you now do if somebody parks his fleet, including one lousy level 1 destroyer, in the English Channel? You cannot pass that with a sub any more... which in reality you could.

The realism argument for this change I don't really agree with. Would say it's not more realistic than them not seeing subs. Yes, destroyers were good at hunting subs. But that was because of their speed. Their high maneuverability made it almost impossible for a sub to hit them with a torpedo (unless at night). And also thanks to their speed, they were able to hunt the sub until it had to emerge, or at least were able to drive above it and drop a few depth charges. All of this is already reflected with the very high anti-sub damage value destroyers have in CoW1.5. But seeing subs or rather locating them? As far as I know, cruisers in general had better sensors for that... not sure to be honest.

Stomach feeling says after this update, we'll probably see a lot of 30 ship-fleets consisting of 10 destroyers + 10 cruisers + 10 battleships dominating the seas. And hardly any subs, carriers or naval bombers any more.

But is hard to predict - I hope it'll turn out I'm mistaken.

Destroyers on the other hand now get a bit more expensive and have their view range reduced and also their damage slightly, while Submarines get a little cheaper and get increased damage. All these should be enoguh changes to balance it out I believe?

You were also not able to sneak past a naval blockade in the past without using high command and setting your subs to return fire, which most player's dont have.

You are right that we may see a change in fleet compositions, but it is not necessarily a bad thing, considering in the past submarines were built the most usually. Maybe it makes it more equal now. So let's just roll with it and see what changes, then make adjustments if necessary. As usual balancing changes are not final and there is always the opportunity to make further changes to balance things out.

----

On another note, we now also added new music tracks on beta in the enhanced graphics

freezy wrote:

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Destroyers being able to reveal submarines nerfs naval bombers and carriers. Because one of their purposes (spotting subs) can now be done more cost-efficiently with destroyers: Adding just one level 1 destroyer to your fleet or convoi already does the job.

So I'd say you should think about buffing at least carriers. I know it's not easy to find a buff for them that's not badly unrealistic. Their costs are already low in CoW compared to reality. But carriers were an important unit in WW2 and it's a lot of fun to use them in CoW. They shouldn't fall back to being an edge case unit like they were in CoW1.0.

All in all, I'm sceptical about the change destroyers seeing subs.

freezy is right it wasn't nice that subs in CoW so far are frequently being used as spies along foreign shores. And of course I understand that from balancing perspective, you want very clearly distinguished roles for the three surface ship types.

But @Marechal Saoul's point about no longer being able to pass a naval blockade with a sub is also valid. Don't get why you reduced his worry to single destroyers parked along the coast. To name an extreme example: What do you now do if somebody parks his fleet, including one lousy level 1 destroyer, in the English Channel? You cannot pass that with a sub any more... which in reality you could.

The realism argument for this change I don't really agree with. Would say it's not more realistic than them not seeing subs. Yes, destroyers were good at hunting subs. But that was because of their speed. Their high maneuverability made it almost impossible for a sub to hit them with a torpedo (unless at night). And also thanks to their speed, they were able to hunt the sub until it had to emerge, or at least were able to drive above it and drop a few depth charges. All of this is already reflected with the very high anti-sub damage value destroyers have in CoW1.5. But seeing subs or rather locating them? As far as I know, cruisers in general had better sensors for that... not sure to be honest.

Stomach feeling says after this update, we'll probably see a lot of 30 ship-fleets consisting of 10 destroyers + 10 cruisers + 10 battleships dominating the seas. And hardly any subs, carriers or naval bombers any more.

But is hard to predict - I hope it'll turn out I'm mistaken.

Carriers got the buff in the recent update that all planes except Strategic bombers and rocket fighters can operate from them, on level 1 already. So they are now pretty useful for attacking a country from the sea. Naval Bombers also got buffed stats in the recent update. You still can use them effectively to combat Subs and fleets.Destroyers on the other hand now get a bit more expensive and have their view range reduced and also their damage slightly, while Submarines get a little cheaper and get increased damage. All these should be enoguh changes to balance it out I believe?

You were also not able to sneak past a naval blockade in the past without using high command and setting your subs to return fire, which most player's dont have.

You are right that we may see a change in fleet compositions, but it is not necessarily a bad thing, considering in the past submarines were built the most usually. Maybe it makes it more equal now. So let's just roll with it and see what changes, then make adjustments if necessary. As usual balancing changes are not final and there is always the opportunity to make further changes to balance things out.

----

On another note, we now also added new music tracks on beta in the enhanced graphics

By the way, it was mentioned in my list above, but maybe you didn't see it yet. When you press on the new info button in the army bar, you get a nice damage table.

It tells you the cumulative damage values of your army vs. each armor class, in attacking and defending mode, as well as the damage efficiency value for each armor class (which is lowered for example by the stack limit) and also the damage distribution value, which tells you how much % of each incoming damage type will go towards which of your armor classes (you can therefore also check enemy armies to see how much damage they would receive for each class).

here is also an explanation below the table. Hope this is helpful to you guys and that it makes clear how damage is calculated

(damage values are rounded though due to space constraints on mobile)

freezy wrote:

By the way, it was mentioned in my list above, but maybe you didn't see it yet. When you press on the new info button in the army bar, you get a nice damage table.

It tells you the cumulative damage values of your army vs. each armor class, in attacking and defending mode, as well as the damage efficiency value for each armor class (which is lowered for example by the stack limit) and also the damage distribution value, which tells you how much % of each incoming damage type will go towards which of your armor classes (you can therefore also check enemy armies to see how much damage they would receive for each class).

here is also an explenation below the table. Hope this is helpful to you guys and that it makes clear how damage is calculated

freezy wrote:

What we could do to solve this together with decreasing the "happy" threshold from 80% to 60%, is to also lower the target morale threshold of a province down from 100% to 70%. Meaning that a province without any morale boosts will only raise until 70% morale and not 100% morale, so that you have to achieve the other 30% via morale bonuses, like the then increased neighbour bonuses and Infrastructure. At the same time the starting morale of provinces should also be lowered probably from 70% to 50% or something. This would incentivice players to build Infrastructure in their cores to get more bonuses to reach 100% and would make it unncessecary to increase the expansion penalty further. It would also make it easier to reach the happy state in far away provinces due to the reduced negative neighbor penalties.

Pro arguments:

* Would allow to change influence of a neighbouring own province at 25% morale to +/-0 (and to a bonus if morale of the neighbouring province is higher). Because @Torpedo28000 is totally right that controlling adjacent provinces should never be negative. Cause it's weird, unintuitive and leads to ugly, chaotically torn chessboard maps as well as to weird behaviour of players. I even sometimes found myself trading away provinces far away from the capital or deliberately letting them revolt in order to keep only a few isolated "islands" within allied or neutral regions, because these can maintain an acceptable morale while coherent territory cannot.

* Would allow to reduce the expansion malus (which isn't a good one, for the reasons I wrote above in this thread).

Con arguments: Also after thinking about it for a while, none coming to my mind.