DxC... this first map is also a tiny version of the smalest map... so limited in what you can do. Once the Balancing is worked out it should be much more playable.
18 Nov 2019, 22:02
General Maximus Decimus Meridius - "Are you not entertained?"
Locked
Call of War 1.5: Mechanics & New Balancing
Attention Generals!
In the last news we communicated the changes to urban provinces and new buildings. Now the first test event for Call of War 1.5 is about to start. To be fully prepared, please read up on more changes in this brand new version!
Mechanics changes
Let’s start with the changes regarding game mechanics. As the title of the game says, this game is about war. Therefore we don’t want to punish players anymore for waging wars and conquering provinces. That is why in CoW 1.5 the morale penalty for being at war will be removed, as well as the province resource upkeep. To balance this out the morale penalty for distance to capital will be slightly increased.
Another aspect are changes to how combat is resolved. A new combat calculation will be at play, resulting in more predictable results, while still retaining a small intended variance. To give more chances to retreat and heal up, units in armies will only start to get destroyed when the condition of the army drops below 50%. When units drop below a condition of 50% they will also face movement speed penalties. Additionally ground combat will be updated every 30 minutes instead of every 60 minutes. Finally, damage limits will no longer be determined by the amount of each individual unit level. Instead, a damage limit exists for the whole army, with damage being reduced at 10 and more units and being capped at 20 and more units.
Furthermore, in Call of War 1.5 units on the field will no longer automatically upgrade when a higher level is researched. Instead, the new unit level has to be produced. Higher unit levels can only be produced in higher building levels, while lower building levels still support producing lower unit levels even if higher levels are already researched.
Last but not least we updated some unit functionalities: Commandos will be stealth units that ignore defence bonuses, while Motorized Infantry, Armored Cars and Interceptors will receive the scout ability. Rockets will not ignore the defense bonus anymore and deal friendly fire upon impact. For more details, please check the forum post linked below.
New Balancing
With Call of War 1.5 we will also introduce a lot of changes to the balancing, which you will experience during the test events. These changes are so countless that we cannot list them all, but we want to highlight a few changes:
There will be a clear progression in power and costs for all buildings, units and researches. All unit values, including damage, speed, health, production time, cost and upkeep will start low but rise from level to level. The same holds true for researches and buildings, which have their cost but , if applicable, also their effects increased per level.
To create a true Rock-Paper-Scissors style balancing which still acknowledges the realities of the war, we will split the armor class ‘armored’ into ‘light armor’ and ‘heavy armor’. This will create more opportunities to counter enemy army compositions. Additionally all unit roles will be reviewed, making sure every single one has its use. As a result of this nuclear powered sea units will be removed from the game. Also, some units will be much stronger in defensive or offensive positions and will be much more effective against certain armor classes, making tactical maneuvering more important.
Resource and gold costs also will be revised and vary depending on type and level. Going forward, all units and buildings will require each resource to be built. Depending on the unit you might not need a lot of them, but they will be required. This way resource demand reflects the need of workforce, materials and energy more realistically. As a contrast, researches will require only money and manpower. These resource philosophies may be still subject to change.
As the CoW 1.5 event is about to start, make sure to join an event game during the sign-up period to provide us with first hand feedback! This will only be the first event in a series of events and there is plenty of room for changes and improvements, so please tell us what you like. We are counting on you to change the future of Call of War together with us!
Your Bytro Team
- Please understand that the list below is only provided in English for all languages -
More details:
Mechanics & formula changes:
- There is no more war morale penalty on provinces.
- Removed building upkeep and province upkeep.
- The distance to capital penalty is increased.
- Changed combat calculations to reduce outliers in the results and to make results better predictable. A variance of +/-20% is intentionally kept to not make results TOO predictable.
- Single units of the same unit type within an army begin to die as soon as their unit type is at 50% health or below.
- Units move slower when at 50% health or below.
- Units with lower health now deal less damage than in the previous version.
- There is no damage limiter for each unit level anymore, instead there will be a damage limit for the whole stack limit, with reduced damage beginning at 10 units and damage being capped at 20 units. Visualization for this will be implemented later.
- Units on the field do not level up automatically when a higher level of the unit type was researched. For the future we consider implementing an option to upgrade units on the field manually.
- Buildings can continue to build lower research levels when not upgraded.
- Land and sea combat ticks now happen every 30min.
- Removed movement speed penalty on allied terrain.
- Changed some AI defense preferences. They now value border provinces to non-friendly neighbors, capitals and provinces with many buildings (usually urbans) more when deciding where to collect troops.
- Changed resource outputs of supply crates to have rewards within the same range for all main resources, as their value is now equal. General hint: If you collect supply drops in provinces of stronger nations, you will receive more resources out of them.
- Increased maximum manpower storage amount (may be removed later). The storage amount increases with conquering provinces.
Unit functionality updates:
- Commando - stealth, ignores defence bonus.
- Interceptor - scout (makes stealth units visible).
- Motorized infantry - scout (at level 3 and above).
- Armored car - scout (at level 3 and above).
- Rocket - Friendly fire, does not ignore defense bonus anymore.
- Moved Commando and Paratrooper to Infantry category, now counting as Infantry type.
General balancing changes:
- Changed nearly all values, costs, bonuses and build speeds of all units, buildings and researches, which are sadly to countless to list here. And they are also not final and will change in future iterations. For general infos on building changes, visit the previous news “Urban Provinces & New Buildings”.
- All values of units, except view range, ground attack range and terrain bonuses, follow a progression, from low values at lower levels to higher values at higher levels. On average a unit on maximum level has 4-6x better fighting values than on the first level, and 2-3x the resource cost and upkeep, making it still a bargain to produce higher levels.
- Changed offensive and defensive focus of many units, with them now being 2-3x as strong in their prefered role. Some units also serve as an allrounder with no off or def preference but also slightly lower values in both roles. General reminder: Defense values are used by a unit when this unit is standing still without any command given, offense values are used when another unit is actively attacked. If units meet on the field while both are in movement, both values are used.
- Changed preferred terrains of some units. Units also no longer have penalties in certain terrain. Instead, units receive bonuses in certain terrains only. This makes values better comparable.
- Split armor class “armored” into light armor and heavy armor, whereas Medium Tanks, Heavy Tanks, Tank Destroyers and Railroad Guns are considered heavy armor, the rest of the vehicles light armor. Units therefore now have different or additional target preferences.
- All costs of researches increase per level.
- All costs and bonus effects of buildings increase per level.
- All resources are needed to produce buildings and units, sometimes only small amounts. Units also need all resources as maintenance upkeep. Sidenote: Rare materials represent many different materials, including rubber and aluminium, that’s why they are also needed.
- Manpower and money is needed for researches.
- Removed nuclear powered sea units from the game due to role conflicts and deemed unfitting for the time frame of the game.
- Removed Nuclear Power research from the game to simplify requirements. Nuclear Bomber and Nuclear Rocket now only require the Atomic Bomb research as prerequisite, but got more expensive in return.
- Removed research levels of several units: Militia -3 levels, Mechanized Infantry -1 level and all ships except transport ships -1 level.
- Added research levels to the following units: SP Artillery +1 level, Commandos +2 levels.
- The last level of Commandos now also requires blueprints to unlock.
- Updated the ingame unit and building descriptions to describe the preferences and uses of them. Open their details panel by clicking on them in the respective menus to read the descriptions and to check out all new values!
Gold cost changes:
- With the new importance of urban provinces some gold actions became more powerful as less provinces have to be targeted in total to make a lasting effect. Therefore adjustments needed to be made to balance the game. Sabotage building and reduce morale costs are increased from 2,000 to 3,800 gold. Morale boost costs increased from 500 to 950.
- Most build times got reduced drastically, especially on early levels. To balance this out gold costs for speed ups had to be increased. These prices now also vary on power or level of a unit or building and therefore don’t have a common listing price anymore.
- All units now receive higher amounts of health when leveled up. As condition boosts heal always 10% of the missing health, condition boosts on later levels became more powerful. The gold costs of condition boosts had to be increased to balance this out. These prices now also vary depending on the health and level of a unit and therefore don’t have a common listing price anymore.
NOTE: Some parts of the new mechanics are not yet complete, especially regarding corresponding interface information. This will be improved in future versions. This is also just the first version of the new balancing and there will be a lot of fine tuning going forward. If you like to give us detailed feedback on this version, it would be highly appreciated, especially if you feel like certain units are too strong or weak!
575 Replies
18 Nov 2019, 22:44
Open letter to Bytro team
Hy guys,
you've been asking for sincere feedback, so here we go:
First of all, let me make it clear I'm totally "on your side" and do respect your work. We have the same goal - making CoW an even more enjoyable game than it is now (or rather than it was, before resource trade outside coalitions was removed and with it all that was fun about trade and diplomacy).
I very much want 1.5 to be a success and I'm not opposing changes in general.
You may remember the times when I was defending the nerf for planes in August 2018 against a fierce shitstorm of angry planes-lovers, together with freezy (by now I think it's clear to everyone that this nerf was of essential importance and improved the game very much).
Or the moment when I joined testing the research-balancing update in May 2019, pointed out more than a dozen aspects that were not yet balanced... you then adjusted many of these in the direction I suggested (in a different way, but same direction) and all of that turned out to be very positive... without these adaptions, all the criticism that the research-balancing update received later on would have been justified. I afterwards defended that update with all words my limited English provides against Kanaris&Co. And I still state it's very well balanced except for the loophole that rares cost the same amount of gold as other resources (while should have twice the gold costs) - which easily destroys every balance as soon as some gold is being used.
The result is that Current-CoW now has a beautiful, well-balanced research tree / set of units with realistic characteristics (exception: infantry costs too much food) that doesn't quickly become boring and that makes it difficult to make the right strategic unit choice in every situation. Which you're now going to replace with a plane, mathematical schema with every value progressing at the same degree. But why?
* For the sake of each unit having a very clear role in ultimate paper/rock/scissors battles? In reality, some units had similar roles, so this will bring CoW away from realism - no matter how much finishing you give it. And it isn't disturbing at all in Current-CoW that some units have similar roles - except that this promotes hyperfocusing on just a few units. But I described in my last post how a big variety in army compositions can be made attractive without having to invent fantasy roles for the units. Just take units as they are in Current-CoW, make them no longer automatically upgrade research levels and make SBDE limits more strict. That's all that needs to be done for that.
* To see more tactical movements on the board? You mean movements like the by now famous manoeuvre of Romanian tanks, stepping back behind the own infantry just to come back soon after so they can be the attacker? True, such tactical movements are not yet seen in CoW... and neither anywhere else in the history of warfare. My point is if you want players to be able to move their forces in a realistic and thus intuitive way, units got to have realistic values.
* To make units easily comparable? That's bad in itself. Makes you have to think less. And asking yourself which unit to research, upgrade or build next is the fun part of the game.
Hmmm.
I understand what we're seeing now is only the first version of CoW 1.5 and you're going to improve it a lot. But let me hereby say that there's no way an even-shaped, mathematical unit & research schema can ever be as compelling, interesting, long-term motivating and realistic as the units tree in Current-CoW is. Even if you get them well-balanced (which you certainly will), all you can achieve is a game that resembles Supremacy1 very much. And what do you want with two Supremacy1s? Name them "Rock/paper/scissors WW1 edition" and "Rock/paper/scissors WW2 edition"? Nobody will want to play both. While strategy and realism lovers will leave.
Please seriously ask yourself what you want to have: Either
* Realistic units with realistic level-ups like in Current-CoW + SBDE system like in Current-CoW but with lower limits.
Or
* Unrealistic units squeezed into unrealistic roles with unrealistic level-ups like in 1.5 and Supremacy1?
In both alternatives, players will research and build a broad variety of different units in every game, so that's no argument for the latter.
Bottom line: If I feel sure a change is not good for the game, I have to warn you. Like I warned you several times before (and after) release of removal of resource trade outside own coalition. Of course it's your game and totally your decision. I hope you make the right one.
Only if you stay on the path of the new unit values & level-up principle, don't say afterwards nobody warned you. I hereby decidedly predict the result won't be good!
OK, that much from me; I shut up now.
Best regards and best wishes from me; good luck either way!
P.S.: I tried out Supremacy1 for two weeks and it felt boring already since the second day. So after the two weeks I came back running to Current-CoW... cause it's so much greater. Please don't throw away what you have!
18 Nov 2019, 23:47
Sone is not so much boring as it is cluttered.Hans A. Pils wrote:
I tried out Supremacy1 for two weeks and it felt boring already since the second day
The concept is innovative, the implemented GUI is horrible.
19 Nov 2019, 01:08
And now, Artillery will only 'attack' by direct melee engagement with enemy units?
Please fix the war fighting aspects, before introducing additional meaningless role play "features".
19 Nov 2019, 01:29 (edited)
Feedback on the two 1.5 games I've completed
Game 1: Lost on day 4 to the tactics described by Alphared below. Not an enjoyable experience when I realised that my carefully thought out research, building construction and prepared defence (within the severe limitations on resources) can be so easily negated by a mass charge by cannon fodder on my food producing city (which, being Ukraine, is conveniently located right on my border). Having 80% of production of each type of resource concentrated on a single city is a recipe for a short and unsatisfactory game if these tactics win out every time.
Game 2: Coalition win on day 11. Achieved highest individual score. Once past the first 4 or 5 days of not enough of anything, I managed to build enough infrastructure and forces to begin operations. Attack ... attack ... attack seems to be the winning tactics to employ. Certainly I didn't have resource issues once I'd expanded to controlling 12 or more cities. Didn't need aircraft. Little use of light tanks. Used ACs and destroyers for scouting and raiding. Artillery used extensively to wreck cities and defenders alike. Tank destroyers and motorised infantry used for attack; infantry and anti-tank guns for defence against counter-attacks. Opposition didn't bother defending open territory so my ACs and motorized infantry had a free sweep, creating the illusion of doing more harm than actually inflicted. One opponent even quit before I'd attacked any of his cities. In the end, it was all a bit easy, but that may be influenced by the bamboozled opposition.Alphared wrote:
Call of War v1.5 Strategy GuideAttack
1. Take your enemies Food Production City. You win!
Defense
1. Defend your Urban Areas, in preparation for your enemies to drive straight for your Food Production City.
2. If you have been attacked, and you have established your defenses correctly, you have already lost.
Overall impression: Still uncertain whether all these changes are going to lead to a better version of CoW. The game needs several tweaks to even out the offensive/defensive values of units. Both games were an interesting experience without achieving a "must do again" feeling.
19 Nov 2019, 05:10
If it's not broke, don't fix it...Rrred wrote:
This isn't CoW anymore lolCouldn't you just make a new WW2 themed game from scratch and preserve CoW?
Must be much easier with coding and you wouldn't hurt your loyal CoW playerbase in the process.
19 Nov 2019, 08:01
I am now able to set stack of mixed lvl subs to 'return fire'. Not sure what changed.DxC wrote:
When I have a stack of subs at different levels and I use the HC setting "return fire' it doesn't change it for the stack. It goes back to 'fire at will'
19 Nov 2019, 11:45
Its so "de ja vu" it isnt funny. I can see myself writing this exact message, because I almost exactly did. I felt so defeated tonight and I used to JUST LOVE this game... I didnt start that long ago 12 months but after 8 months the changes just started killing the mood and I took 4 months off to come back to more bad changes. Literally our group is unraveling, people less interested and that is in 1.0 CoW. Man this was a couple day affair but it looks like my feelings are warranted and that 1.5 isnt going to make it better. Thank you and I am sorry._Pontus_ wrote:
CzarHelllios wrote:
I'm just going to permanently retire this time around and move back on to .... HOI. I can't even sort of play casually with old friends every few days once a year when we/they all quit. A few entire communities I used to be in all finally left Bytro Games in the past week and tonight, and another one just unraveled.
- Living the dream!
19 Nov 2019, 12:25
Hello there, i would again like to sum some stuff up and maybe give general answers.
With 1.5 we wanted to introduce more ways to play the game. We wanted more strategies to be viable, while at the same time keeping up with the historical accuracy.
We did not decide to go for the gameplay first option many other games do. But of course, there always has to be a compromise. What exactly is the point in a unit, not good for anything? Thats why units have values that seem off at first. The vision is, to mirror the capabilities of the unit. Of course, a tank destroyer was in reality more often used to defend against tanks. But it was designed to engage tanks in offense and defense.
The bigger issue here is probably the design philosophy, and how we mirrored it in the game. Right now offense units have double or even more the damage valuesfor attacking than defending, contrary goes for defense units. And perhaps that was over-simplified. But that is why we wanted your feedback if it fits your expectations or not - and got it.
Same goes for progression where all of you pointed out very clearly, why you like or dislike certain changes. And i can agree, that in the live environment the game feels less interactive than in our testing runs. But again, this is something we can only see by having many games running and not base on a few test games.
And with the help of all of you we managed to fill over 900 maps of CoW 1.5. The forum is as active as it has never been. Over 15K users play and test the event and even if they do not give feedback actively, we analyze very carefully what units are used most, how games played out how resource production developed and so much more in big data.
We hear your concerns. And yes, we want to continue with CoW 1.5 because we believe in it. But that does not mean we will force any changes no matter what you say.
Please give us the opportunity to proof that we can listen to you. I haven't been here for the whole last 10 years, so i can only assume that you might have felt ignored - i don't know. But i know, that we dicuss all of your feedback - from both veterans and new players - and rearranged our plans to make this next CoW 1.5 event as good as we can.
Hopefully i did not bore you guys too much and what i said was understandable,
Have a great week.
P.S.: Look forward, as Santa might have a gift for you 
19 Nov 2019, 13:03
Gaius,
Thanks for the info. Looking forward to the next round. Not sure what is going on with the screen cap, a bug of some sort. See attached.
Good luck.
19 Nov 2019, 14:38
You must understand, some of us have been around since the beginning. We, at one time very long ago were encouraged to give this kind of feedback on everything... it quickly became a pretense. In fact, being insulted by staff and being banned for this can of feedback was not unheard of after a while. That was followed by simply being ignored.GaiusUltima wrote:
Please give us the opportunity to proof that we can listen to you. I haven't been here for the whole last 10 years, so i can only assume that you might have felt ignored - i don't know. But i know, that we dicuss all of your feedback - from both veterans and new players - and rearranged our plans to make this next CoW 1.5 event as good as we can.
If you are now changing your ways now, that is good. But, some of us have seen how this can go.
If you indeed want my feedback; I have one point that would clear up many of the problems that you are designing to solve... separate online from mobile play. Mobile needs to many buffs to speed for online players to contend with, online players have to much need for detail for mobile players to remain interested in. The two markets are incompatible at the point you need to slant the game to the benefit of one and the detriment of the other... there is no balance that will work for both!
Killings my business, and business is good!
19 Nov 2019, 15:30
that is a known bug with a fix on the next update, in the mean time submit a bug report and GO will have to manually remove that unit.Akulla3D wrote:
Gaius,Thanks for the info. Looking forward to the next round. Not sure what is going on with the screen cap, a bug of some sort. See attached.
Good luck.
Dante Bugler1
Game Operator
EN Support Team | Bytro Labs Gmbh
Game Operator
EN Support Team | Bytro Labs Gmbh
19 Nov 2019, 16:17
There are some things that I like. The new buildings allow for specialization. I like the new combat. I like the new moral system.
Unfortunately, the fact that there is no way to upgrade obsolete units is an absolute deal-breaker for me. I will be quitting if it’s not changed. Aircraft stacks with 6-7 different ranges? NOPE NOPE NOPE. its one facet I have no interest in managing. If you guys do not give us the option to upgrade older units, I’m just flat out done with this game. I am in two 1.5 games now and I hate it.
19 Nov 2019, 17:23
It was never a deal breaker, but I wasn't comfortable with it at first. The biggest issue for me is keeping track of different levels. I keep splitting my stacks into a lot of stacks, because everything moves at different speed. I am starting to enjoy the diversity and challlenge of it though. It makes it more complex in a way not everyone may like.Faunt wrote:
the fact that there is no way to upgrade obsolete units is an absolute deal-breaker for me
19 Nov 2019, 17:28
With three games at day 9, 12 and 12;
Six cases of the early rush tactic, only one of those
six players is alive. Not a large sample, and the one
who survived is much more experienced than the other five,
so might not mean much.
One of the rush cases was against the country I was controlling.
Took the grain city while I was away. Managed to recover and
take that player out, one of his coalition mates, and the third
is about done for. So the initial loss of a grain city does not
necessarily mean defeat - but once again, inexperience on the
part of the rusher might be the bigger factor.
19 Nov 2019, 17:35
An early rush is always a potential strategy in 1.5 and elsewhere. I would say in 1.5 it is more risky due to the defense advantage. Even if you take a city, you will end up weaker on average and the defender is in a better position to counter. The attack city early strategy was espoused by someone here, but that doesn't mean it works or that it is some kind of meta.
19 Nov 2019, 18:01
I understood the complaint to be that if someone makes a concerted blitz attack against your grain city there's really no good defense. Even if the attacker ends up in a mutual destruction pact, you're equally dead.DxC wrote:
An early rush is always a potential strategy in 1.5 and elsewhere. I would say in 1.5 it is more risky due to the defense advantage. Even if you take a city, you will end up weaker on average and the defender is in a better position to counter. The attack city early strategy was espoused by someone here, but that doesn't mean it works or that it is some kind of meta.
Fortunately it hasn't happened to me, so I haven't had to try to defend against it. 
19 Nov 2019, 18:44
Early game grain city is the least important. On day nine, I have a ridiculously large army and I got more food than anything. Plus you just push him out and rebuild your lvl 1 industryCityOfAngels wrote:
I understood the complaint to be that if someone makes a concerted blitz attack against your grain city there's really no good defense. Even if the attacker ends up in a mutual destruction pact, you're equally dead.
19 Nov 2019, 19:30
It varies on country slightly. The biggest concern is thatCityOfAngels wrote:
I understood the complaint to be that if someone makes a concerted blitz attack against your grain city there's really no good defense. Even if the attacker ends up in a mutual destruction pact, you're equally dead.DxC wrote:
An early rush is always a potential strategy in 1.5 and elsewhere. I would say in 1.5 it is more risky due to the defense advantage. Even if you take a city, you will end up weaker on average and the defender is in a better position to counter. The attack city early strategy was espoused by someone here, but that doesn't mean it works or that it is some kind of meta.Fortunately it hasn't happened to me, so I haven't had to try to defend against it.
A: Defensive units have extremely high stats that can hold their own against same leveled or next leveled units
B: 15% bonus + the split exploit + forts
C: Stacking your units in defensive positions.
D: Enemy rushes. Hits your stacks. Early game even 2/3 greater force, the attacker will die. Combat ticks are faster. Defender can rush reinforcements in faster with fast build times, attacker will be more delayed to sending stuff 1 at a time which will die easily.
C: Attacker dead. Reinforcing rush leads to immediate resource shortage = dead. Not reinforcing lends more to a counter attack, but you'll be pretty weak and nearly out of resources then.
So by focusing more on turtling/the defensive and letting the opponent hit you, you'll retain a greater amount of units, exploit the resource shortage, and kill anyone who attacks you easily. The attacker loses tempo, the defender keeps it in this version of CoW versus the original original one. Or both people can sit, turtle up, exploit or two both suffer the resource shortage, and the person that hits first will usually be at a good disadvantage.
If your less active and or get bum rushed ASAP, losing a core province can/will drive you into the hole sooner. Regular old style strategies of trying to build up Tacs to cover your territories isn't as viable, though it seems Shoot n Scoot/Artillery is a lot more viable. More Supremacy, less CoW applies here in general playstyle.
19 Nov 2019, 19:47
I'm using a similar but modified style relitive to normal game. Spamming arty like usual, instead of AA spamming AC. Also a fair amount of AT just in case. Sub spam taking out BBs. Spamming RRG, can't wait till they get there, lol.CzarHelllios wrote:
Regular old style strategies of trying to build up Tacs to cover your territories isn't as viable, though it seems Shoot n Scoot/Artillery is a lot more viable. More Supremacy, less CoW applies here in general playstyle.
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