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:
Unit functionality updates:
General balancing changes:
Gold cost changes:
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!
Re-checked the Healing Rate and two units came out healing 14.3% of Damage. So it must still be same as CoW 1.0 at 15%
My earlier calculations that came out just under 25% must have been wrong.
1.5 review – game currently still in progress
To Start - I love this game.The only way to level up is get blueprints.Otherwise a 1st time player as much of a chance to win as someone that’s played 100 rounds.Moreover, there’s many ways to outplay someone.War, Spies, Economy, & Diplomacy – not to mention Morale management.
[list]
[*]Diplomacy& Morale
[list]
[/list][*]General – the troop/population costs are too high.I wasn’t a fan of switching research to food – but this is worse.It does make more sense that you need people to build things – but then the provinces have to produce more troops/people – and the food provinces have to be balanced to feed them – or not – since you have to spend a ton of them on research anyway instead of battle units.Troop production is the only thing you can’t use the market to get – so (although gold is part of the game) it incentivizes that part over resource management.
[/list]
I think someone mentioned this situation already but I couldn't locate the post to quote......
So I have a need to rush some units into production although the Ordnance Factory is one level lower than the highest level foundry I have constructed in another province.
Same for a couple of tank plants.
However, when I go to produce a lower level tank, AT, AA or arty, the mechanics are not letting me do so.
Only the highest level unit researched is available to be produced thereby not allowing any production whatsoever until the next level foundry or plant is constructed.
Is this really the way the game mechanics are set up or is this just a bug?
Does anyone know?
Earlier in the game I was able to construct various levels of units based upon what level of plant or foundry had been constructed, but now I cannot.
My expansion plan was formulated around the concept that various levels of each unit could still be produced as I expanded.
Now that doesn't seem to be a viable option.
I already sent in a bug report.
But if anyone knows one way or the other how this part of the game mechanics has been set up, I would appreciate hearing back from you.
Thx.
Hey white bird,white bird wrote:
SNIPBut if anyone knows one way or the other how this part of the game mechanics has been set up, I would appreciate hearing back from you.
Thx.
What you describe is currently the intended game behaviour.
Say you have researched infrantry level 5. If you have a province with level 5 barracks you will only be able to produce level 5 infrantry there. If you want to produce infrantry of a lower level you will have to do this in a province with barracks of a lower level.
(the post was in the wrong forum and I repeat it here correctly - sorry if you already seen it!)
To my long experience, the Present CoW is one of the best games of the kind (either board or PC) EVER (ever = last 40 years!). So, by default: Congratulations for the idea & the implementation!!
First, a significant General Suggestion (for the mobile GUI, that I use occasionally) and for both new & old CoW:
-Problem: Mobile Version does not report the remaining time for the next attack or bombing, so, mobile players can't synchronize units correctly.
-Correction(?
There is plenty of space to add it, in place of the travel timer, as traveling is not reported any more when engaged in a fight.
Now,
about the NEW CoW 1.5 - Some Comments-Suggestions I collected during play:
1. The number of Coastal cities is naturally not the same for all, but now a Naval Base can't be built in a province and the ship production will be always inferior for that player.
2. All cities initially have Tank Plants(!), I believe that 5 (of the same) is too much for start. At least 2-3 of them could be replaced, instead, by e.g., Ordnances &/or Barracks, so a player can build basic units. It is more realistic too, one should be able to build infantry if he already invented tanks...
3. Infrastructure is unimportant now in 1.5 and can be renamed to e.g., 'transportation'. So it is not like the normal CoW 'infrastructure' which was very important, and current players will not be confused
4. Research of higher levels does not update old units! Not Realistic or Logical. When a new machine gun is produced in a real country, it is distributed to all its troops. Old troops do not keep their obsolete muskets & arrows. New guns replace old ones even with a small delay ... At least, there must be a button to Upgrade the units at a certain cost/delay or disband them and receive some resources back!
5. Refueling time in Airbase (city) is double (1hr) the Airstrip (province) refueling time (30min)!! This is illogical! City airports are more efficient than province airports. Not mentioning that 1 hr that is way too much for military airplanes (... even civil aviation refuels faster in congested airports)!
6. Convoy Ships are stronger (
than Destroyers (5)? When in history this happened, or, when a submarine took damage from a convoy? Convoys should have a much lower strength (e.g. 2 or less) i.e. less than half of the lowest naval unit.
Now, we are about to finish this first 1.5 event, with a coalition victory, and, my general impression is not so positive, but, i'm a fan of strategy and I may be biased! In 1.5 the gravity center is somehow moved from strategy to 'build units & capture provs as fast as you can...'.
In fact, I got closer to winning the event, since I decided to stop building higher level buildings, and use everything to research & build many simple Lvl.1 units running the map capturing provs and stealing resources...
Kind Request: Classic CoW is a very different game with much more strategy and building/relationship planning than other games. Many new players do not understand it at start, but there lays its beauty and most CoW fans like it just for this. So, please, keep the Engineering principle: Never replace a good working machine with a mediocre untested one, just because it's newer (at least you keep them both in parallel).
Keep Up the Good Work!
Many Thanks for your time
foeVtest
Very good summary.
I would like to add that, in my opinion, losing or simplifying many of the features which have somehow to do with relations and interactions between :
Whereas COW 1.0 incorporated an interesting mesh of interaction between all components,
COW 1.5 feels like the interaction between game components is very limited.
With that, COW 1.5 misses out on many of the attractions of COW 1.0, while providing nothing in return.
As such, without wanting to resort to sexism,
- COW 1.0 is like a not really pretty woman (looks-wise), but well built, interestingly dressed and having an intriguing character and a truly pretty smile; all making her beautiful and attractive.
- COW 1.5 is that very pretty looking girl, but after meeting her, you can only think that it is deep how she can be so shallow.
Eagerly waiting for Saint Nicholas / Santa Claus!
My wish list:
- keeping COW 1.0
- not another 1.5, but a 1.6
@GaiusUltima : you meant St. Nicholas Eve on the 5th of December; or the USA Santa, coming X-mas?
A 20 day difference!
I havent read this whole thread as i only just registered to the forum to say this one thing so i dont know if im repeating something thats already been discussed...
There really needs to be a way to at least disband units if not upgrade or sell/scrap them! Having to declare an unwanted war just so you can sacrifice obsolete units to avoid paying their upkeep costs is ridiculously unrealistic!
21 pages already 
Thanks for the feedback again everybody. Didn't really have the time in the past few days to comment in this particular thread. After reading through the last pages I have the feeling though that by now alot of arguments get repeated over and over and certain discussions end up in circles. So I feel like we already got most of the feedback we need to tweak the second Event, and that there probably won't be any new ground breaking new points being presented. We are currently evaluationg all the feedback and we will make a separate news post about the changes before we start the second Event, which will happen earl next year. But still looking forward to impressions from the mid to late game of the 1st Event rounds.
How many events will there be and when will 1.5 possibly be released?freezy wrote:
21 pages already
This is not set in stone yet. Multiple, and that will also take multiple months.
Much more feedback to givefreezy wrote:
This is not set in stone yet. Multiple, and that will also take multiple months.
Day 16 feedback on 1.5 event. Economic development had fewer options to consider. This round was interesting mostly because a 3 vs. 3 coalition battle happened. Now that one side has won, it's just mop-up. Only now starting an air force (was not affordable sooner), so it will not play a role because the round will end soon. Didn't build or research any Secret but fought enemy Commandos. Their stealth feature gave some value into researching AC3.
The simpler 1.5 economy simplified military planning. Just make superior numbers of artillery + counters to whatever the enemy prefers. Prioritizing arty, upgrade everything to Level2 before producing units, then upgrade to L3 and spam away. Diminishing returns after that. Most of the research options had no utility this round. A larger map might make more of them worth testing.
End Game Observations (Coalition win on Day 16)
I tend to play the Civ Style / Empire Builder type game that is heavy on the economy and end up swarming my enemy's late game.
This type of play was quite do-able in CoW 1.5. Surprised how quickly the game ended. Diplomacy aside (which I tend to start on Day 1), my Coalition cleaned house. I was caught off guard in how the economy works in first game, so took a couple days to read up on Building Bonuses and ended up with the following
--------------1st-----2nd-----3rd
Pts ---------480-----360-----230
Economy - 157k ---147k ---87k ----72k- ---67k
I put about half my res into economy daily for the first 10 days, then could afford the Manpower and Fuel heavy building upgrades in late week 2 to start putting out the Lvl 3-4 units.
These were the Top 3 Scores, with the next economies being half of mine. By the end, I had wiped out 3 x 12 unit (or so) stacks of the most powerful enemy, but since I was dropping Lvl 4 units on his 1,2 and 3's, they melted way too quick. Even though the units seem to take Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to long to die... lower Lvl units just MELT !
Everything seemed to take longer than it needed too... combat took, to long... economy wound up way too slowly, but before we could get into some good fights... game was over. Large part of that feeling no doubt came from this TINY map used during this event.
I found I was walking infantry from my original starting cities... because upgrading cities closer to the action was too expensive.
One thing that stood out as "Odd" is the Manpower costs. A Lvl 5 Infantry unit is equivalent to 5 Lvl 1 units for 2x cost in Manpower.
Also 1.5 lost that feeling of "Economies of Scale" you would find in upgrading IC's to get faster unit production times.
Need to restore some of the "Specialized" costs of units instead of making cost everything.... it would make the resources more meaningful. Would also make Trade more important, as it's lost a lot of it's... umph! with the 20% Tax and limited trading partners.
Also found the units in higher Lvls very OP against lower Lvl ones. Just doesn't feel right to have a Lvl 4 unit be so overwhelmingly outgunning Lvl 1-3. As I mentioned before, I can see the "Tech dependant" units seeing such advantages WITHIN THEIR CLASS. What I mean is that a 1939 fighter vs a 1944 fighter stood little chance, but their effectiveness vs armour or infantry did NOT see the same effectiveness gap develop. Early war tanks had armour plate that worked by being thicker... then they realized they could get the same effectiveness by sloping/angling the armour and that increased the apparent thickness without actually using more materials and increasing weight. Yet a machine gun on a tank was just as effective vs infantry in 1939 as it was in 1940. There were no such significant tech upgrades that made class vs class combat strength improvements so "Drastic", even though within the same class those technological leaps could be felt quite significantly. The Bismark was torpedoed by Swordfish "Bi-planes" launching off the carrier HMS Ark Royal. Carriers became the technological end to the Battleships, yet that's not represented in the game.
By end of game, I was running short on food because higher Lvl units were eating it up... though I don't understand how a 15,000 man Lvl 5 Infantry Division costs 2x as much to train, and feed as it's 15,000 man Lvl 1 predecessor.
Many of these "Nuance" interactions seem to be missing in CoW 1.5 when compared to Cow 1.0
Looking forward to giving it a try again when some of the balancing issues are tweeked.
Thank you for the reply Akiar.Akiar wrote:
Hey white bird,white bird wrote:
SNIPBut if anyone knows one way or the other how this part of the game mechanics has been set up, I would appreciate hearing back from you.
Thx.
What you describe is currently the intended game behaviour.
Say you have researched infrantry level 5. If you have a province with level 5 barracks you will only be able to produce level 5 infrantry there. If you want to produce infrantry of a lower level you will have to do this in a province with barracks of a lower level.
My situation was a bit different, but my post was rushed because I was actually in the heat of battle when it was written and so probably I didn't express the situation properly.
I had an existing Ordnance Factory lvl. 2 and an existing Tank Plant lvl.2 both of which I was in the process of upgrading to lvl. 3's.
Then an AI attacked. So I decided to start producing what I could prior to the construction upgrades to lvl. 3.
My expectation was that I would be able to produce what ever the two production buildings would produce.
However, I kept receiving messages that I couldn't produce those units.
I think it is a programming bug. Both provinces were captured provinces. It took another 36 hours, but once I got the provinces upgraded to lvl. 3's they seem to work correctly.
So the problem was that as lvl. 2's the production choices of what I could build were not showing up. Meaning I was expecting one level lower than the lvl. I had completed research on should have been available as a production choice, but it was not.
I really dont like the fact that you cannot upgrade your old units. You should give us the option to repair damaged ones with resources and to level them up automatically once you move them to a town with the appropriate factory. Or just remove the factory requirements altogether.
This mirror most of my end game feeling (currently day 16, it is will be mop up until level 1OneNutSquirrel wrote:
End Game Observations (Coalition win on Day 16)(...)
This type of play was quite do-able in CoW 1.5. Surprised how quickly the game ended. Diplomacy aside (which I tend to start on Day 1), my Coalition cleaned house. I was caught off guard in how the economy works in first game, so took a couple days to read up on Building Bonuses and ended
(...)
One thing that stood out as "Odd" is the Manpower costs. A Lvl 5 Infantry unit is equivalent to 5 Lvl 1 units for 2x cost in Manpower.
Also 1.5 lost that feeling of "Economies of Scale" you would find in upgrading IC's to get faster unit production times.
Need to restore some of the "Specialized" costs of units instead of making cost everything.... it would make the resources more meaningful. Would also make Trade more important, as it's lost a lot of it's... umph! with the 20% Tax and limited trading partners.
Also found the units in higher Lvls very OP against lower Lvl ones. Just doesn't feel right to have a Lvl 4 unit be so overwhelmingly outgunning Lvl 1-3.
.First, an interesting note : my ally Morocco was backstabbed day 13 by Algiers, who took by surprise all his cores. Well, Morocco has taken the CSA and his army was there, and losing his core frustrated him but did not stop him from attacking the US : his tech advantage he had was so strong that he does not care for not being able to build more.
Which is for me a core example of why does not go well in late game : Any high level unit with destroy any low level unit (OK, excluding heavy tanks) without much losses, so the Rock/Paper/Scissor of the end game is mostly gone.
In addition, even if you had the tech the manpower limit totally blocks from recovering from a loss of your army in endgame. In CoW 1.0 you can build militia or AT or wait for your friends, not so much in 1.5 - hence the weaker Algiers neutralizing Morrocco very fast.
On balancing, I have the feeling, for the event map, that it I s not worth it to improve conquered provinces - the price is too steep (20k from IC 0 to IC 5, which will give +1.3k a day... so 15 days to be profitable on the resource produced, not counting MP, the other resources you used, time of construction and the opportunity cost.
On the other end, multiplying local industries in my core really gave me a MP advantage.
Conclusion : industrially my core is developed the rest is left as conquered.
Same with unit productions, though some players had leveled up some of their unit production so if it was only « one level » late I would upgrade it and use it.
So a final note :
I started playing CoW years ago, and my first game of CoW was a « victory ». Back then there was no tutorial match it was the 100 players map and there no coalition victory so I was one of the 3 last players and we agreed to stop there.
Observing other players m in the game, I discovered on the fly the importance of bombers and plenty of tricks, and could adapt.
1.5 on the other hand is a list of huge newbie trap, and if you made the wrong decision early on in terms of where you invest the manpower or what research you do (or don’t do) there is no way to recover. I think on our 22 players map, the game was decided (alliance nonewithstanding) by day 5 or 6. From then on, it was just snowballing
Why not make manpower growth researchable?
If you could reseach some "manpower tech" it would represent a more efficient recruiting system.
More manpower is needed since almost everything you do in this game use manpower.
In my current game I have a good economy, high tech and a good start, but I´m loosing it since I lack manpower to build armies (and I´m currently under attack from 3 of the top 4 players on the map).
The only way to survive is to become a "golden boy" and use money to get more manpower.
I do understand that what´s the developers want us to do, but to pay this much? Nope, then I´m out of here and find a better balanced game to play, a game where RL cash don´t decide the outcome as much.
Very interesting.OneNutSquirrel wrote:
I put about half my res into economy daily for the first 10 days, then could afford the Manpower and Fuel heavy building upgrades in late week 2 to start putting out the Lvl 3-4 units.
The exact opposite was the case in the three test games I tried.
Early mass attacks by noobs resulted in having to quickly recruit low level units,
which left little manpower for either research or leveling up buildings.
vast majority of the many battles were all level 1 or 2 units.
Results appear to be: easy win in one game, loss in another (3 very good players in one dominant coalition), and one still too close to call. About the same as CoW 1.0 experiences.
Mid-game status:freezy wrote:
But still looking forward to impressions from the mid to late game of the 1st Event rounds.
In my test rounds the known and always active players, are not active at all. Once a day or less, players log in to the 1.5 rounds. None of the known players is known for quitting maps and planning to go inactive.
As a solution to their predicament (being stuck in a game nobody is really enjoying),the active players, of which some are actually mortal enemies and would not easily join each other, have joined in a coalition for one single purpose: ending the maps ASAP.
The biggest issues:
Conclusion towards mid-game: The more the maps progress, the less interested the players are.
This simply is not boding well for 1.5.
Having discussed it with the players, it still remains a mystery to all what COW 1.5 is supposed to add or is fixing, which COW 1.0 did not provide or which couldn't be fixed in COW 1.0.
Understandable goals could be:
Unfortunately for COW 1.5, there is a huge difference in activity in the test games compared to the COW 1.0 games I am in. And I am not observing this with the random User1234567 players (they behave normally and go inactive als always), but especially with the normally more active players.
As is, the game has changed profoundly, but nothing seems to be fixed or added; on the contrary, because:
Thusly awaiting, and eagerly so, COW 1.6:
Naturally, the intended tweaks for 1.5 should be incorporated in 1.6:
