Call of War 1.5 round 2!

EZ Dolittle wrote:

I am totally opposed to the manpower cost to upgrade a unit. We are changing equipment not the people !

Manpower shortages are rough in the beginning especially with large manpower costs for research.

This needs to change

lvl 1 infantry require 990 manpower, and lvl 2 cost 1060 manpower. So if it costed 70 manpower to upgrade I would understand this perfectly and it makes sense, extra troops in the division, extra men to be trained. But to cost 990+1060 no I do not understand at all and agree if this was what your feedback was about.

From looking through the stats of units here are my thoughts / questions on some of them:

Firstly, I do really like how some troops seem to maybe synergies with others, planes and no metal, tanks and no rares. Whether with production this is possible to build together idk yet but in theory I like it.

Tanks don’t seem do enough damage to infantry units, looking at stats, they seem to do like a bit of inf damage but LA (light armour) and MA (medium armour) but they don’t seem to do enough inf damage at all. Infantry lvl 1 does more damage to inf units than LT? This seems a little not right how does this work? Yes they will win due to armour difference, but they should be doing more damage to inf right? Is this a conscious choice? Day 2 inf does only 0.5 inf damage less than day 3 MT. This follows into higher levels. So I feel esp since MT are meant to be offensive (I like that) they don’t do enough damage to infantry units. MT in my mind should slaughter infantry (If no AT) but they wont, or at least not compared to other troops which to me means they are not a clear inf killing troops, at elite lvl only 3 difference between inf and MT is just I feel not enough at all! ESP as AT are very strong.

Finally (for my tank bit), I super strongly believe offensive melee combat is never a good idea. I almost never offensively attack someone with anything unless i’m 5x+ stronger, I use arty or planes but never tank attacks, tanks on defence yes! So to change my mind about it, tanks need to **really** pack the offensive damage which they are not. I really hate doing this but no tank melee attacks has lead me to win 8/9 100 maps and not ever seen a successful player win using tanks on the offensive. I really think MT need to smash in the offensive damage, not do okay in it when I can just let my arty kill from a same distance and let the enemy run into me with some AT and tanks in defence. I’d love to see large tank attacks do well, but for their cost and relatively low inf attack I don’t see myself using them esp with strong AA and AT HA defence values. I will have to test this ofc, but it will all depend on what my opponents do, and i’m rarely wrong with troop stats and combats... I may play to much...

Motorized infantry (I think stat wise this unit looks really good) does more inf damage than a MT at elite level. And it an inf unit so more difficult to counter (no AT to kill it/ anti-infantry unit) so to kill infantry I’d be using motorised infantry, and to kill armour AT / TD. So what is the point of a MT? A HA inf killer? Not really, a good armour killer, TD better.

I think MT inf attack needs to be buffed.

AA has better HA defence than infantry?

I always felt inf was the average at everything but not great at anything, now AA has ofc better AA defence and better HA defence just seems odd. I feel AT should have good tank defence and crap infantry and air, AA good air defence and crap infantry and armour etc. Why does AA have better HA defence?

Troop consumption and cost: Is the aim of 1.5 to on average have less total units produced than in 1.0. Seems so but wanting to know for my tests if this is intentional or not. May not be as i’m basing off 1.0 production capabilities with 1.5 costs. But is it?

Similar to above, I am very active, so I want to ensure my testing is inline with what the planed build amounts are: So I guess how often do you think we should be able to build a troop, factory and IC? Equal, more, less than 1.0? On average as each troop/building costs different.

AA can be used as anti tank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.8_cm_Flak_18/36/37/41#Support_of_ground_troops

"The 8.8 cm Flak performed well in its original role of an anti-aircraft gun and it proved to be a superb anti-tank gun as well."

Discarding realism and looking at balancing, I don't think the AA is overpowered that it needs a nerf to its stats. I think its nice to have units with more than 1 role. Anti Air having more purpose than shooting down airplanes is nice. For example tactical bombers do great against ground targets and okay-ish against naval vessels.

Day 4 impressions:

Naval forces are encouraged, no goods required. Also Motorized infantry.

Build min. and keep low level troops, that's all you need to take over the

abandoned countries, due to the high drop out rate.

Not being able to produce troops in rural provinces is NOT a problem.

There are inadequate supplies and cash, anyway.

Also, just capture foreign cities when your neighbor countries quit without

ever having moved or recruited a single unit.

Requiring manpower for All research and All units results in fewer unit types.

Better to research a few types just to level one, use the scarce manpower

for low level units.

A test event without a minimum rank? Opinions solicited from players who start one

game and quit?

cycle9 wrote:

A test event without a minimum rank? Opinions solicited from players who start one

game and quit?

and rank doesnt really matter when it comes to feedback anyway; quality/depth of the feedback matters more than just the sheer amount of it

Alright thanks for the feedback everyone! Will start answering on feedback and questions. prepare for wall of text. Hopefully it is useful to you

-----------------------

JesterTheSheep wrote:

*sigh* Here we go again.

I'd like to stress that this is PURELY a first impression. I would like to say that while I appreciate that the developers are trying their damndest to make this game better, I can safely say that this is NOT the way to go.

Let's get into it. First, here's my praise:

1. Visuals? Spot on, m'dudes. I actually really like the new visuals for all nations involved. The rockets look great. Tanks still look good. Infantry is looking lovely. Commandos now look unique, and I'm digging it. Etc.

2. Research. I actually kinda like the idea of an ordinance tab: it's not something I had considered in the past. It's a nice touch. It does, with the addition with Commandos and Paratroopers, reduce the clutter a great deal.

3. Speaking of infantry and paratroopers, they're (still) not secret tech! Huzzah! In addition to making both units far, far cheaper and more accessible, it's damn near perfect.

4. The attack values, at least for infantry, are nowhere NEAR as ridiculous as the last version. Ahh, the new balance is far more acceptable. Now, Light Armor is far more sustainable, due to the far more reasonable leveling.

5. Elite Commandos!

6. Interesting idea, making "flying bombs" and rockets two different units. I mean, it makes sense, but still, nice touch.

Alright: time for the part nobody wants to hear. Time to get a little salty. Let's move onto the ugly:

1. [b]Limiting unit production to cities is getting really, really old. STOP DOING THIS. [/i][/b]Surely I'm not alone on this one, right? This game is NOT Conflict of Nations, and it shouldn't be! So please stop doing that! Keep the fancy buildings, like ordinance and tank plants, but please expand the boundaries to EVERY province. Keep Call of War... well, Call of War!

2. In addition to that, this is clearly a shift to Conflict of Nations, and I rarely say this, but I hate it. If I wanted Conflict of Nations, I'd play Conflict of Nations. I come to this game for a more strategically challenging endeavor, where even if you have one final province, it ain't over yet. You can make one last push. With this, if you have a province, but no armies, you're done. It's over.

3. Even if you're going to limit the production of units solely to cities, add more! 5 is not enough!

4. I'm still not a huge fan of the specialized buildings. It just feels... overly complex?? Like, ordinance I can understand. That was its own separate industry. Tank production and Aircraft manufacturing just feels off. Maybe it's the visuals, I dunno.

5. Secret Labs are already old, and I don't even have secret tech yet. Seriously... no.

6. Even with graphic improvements, Naval Assets still look mostly the same?? Is this just a work in progress? If so, I can forgive that.

---

I am well aware that I am being harsh. In a case or two, probably overly harsh. I just want the Bytro development staff to understand that they are intentionally undermining everything that makes Call of War a good game, and are actively ignoring the fact that many, many players are heavily against that. If the unit production problem is not solved, I can't really say that I'd wanna stick around. Call of War would just become a WWII themed Conflict of Nations.

Now to the things you don't like as much:

1. & 2.: I have to say that units being producable only in cities will likely stay. It is actually not too much of a shift from 1.0, as there you also start with production facilities only in urban provinces, and industrial complexes often times being too expensive to be built anew. And later on when you conquer more territory you have more factories available than you have resources for producing, so its not a big factor there as well. And the final push when having only one province left is also a big edge case, I would estimate 99% of players would quit beforehand. We don't think that we reduce the strategic aspect of the game, we just shift it around a little bit and lay the focus on different things. We don't think that this part was the defining factor of the success of CoW.

3. To balance this we reduced the build times of units and buildings in 1.5 compared to 1.0. So even when having only 5 provinces to produce units, in practice you can output more units in the same time as in 1.0 (given you have the resources for it).

4. Visuals of those new buildings will be improved in the future.

5. not sure what you wanna say with this Having a separate industry for producing secret weapons makes sence (e.g. V2 programme or manhatten project)

6. Naval assets have updated looks already. There were not many optical differences between nations when it comes to smaller ship types, and the bigger ships have unique looks for different nations.

Tasmine wrote:

I starting to test CoW 1.5.

Find some issues maybe devs can think about it. We do know 1.5 only allow players to build military buildings in urban area. And I remember Freezy said, there's the big deal of militias, they can't change anything. Then, why can't we produce militias without any building?

I see players occupy another player's province, Then those building(lv.1) disappear after occupied. That's really a big different from previous version, Bad different.

Right now I secured my border. Because I have been learn the experience from CoN. I don't know what feelings other players have. I just don't like it. But thank to the change. I can scout far distance by using bomber.

Still not other new buildings 2d models.

Patrol has some bugs, ghost image when fighter flying from A airport to B airport. Click "patrol" to another location, fighter will suddenly appeared in there. Restart the game, problem solved.

Patrol a left location, move angle showed right direction but head to target. Click again, airplanes go back to airport, problem solved.

2. That is because lvl1 buildings don't have that much hitpoints. Once you get to lvl2 and more there will always be buildings that remain after conquering.

3. Not sure what you mean with the point about securing border and how it relates to CoN.

4. Building graphics will be updated in a future version.

5. patrol "ghost" image is a known bug, will be fixed.

Michael Myres wrote:

btw how is the 1.5 update going to effect the 25 player map anyway are there going to be more cities added and when are we getting the update officially?

Can we get an update for rivers and coastal bunkers with the coastal artillery in the game if possible, and just wondering are you adding new skins to each unit like for example i upgrade my lvl 1 light tank from model PzKpfw.1 to model PzKpfw.35 lvl 2 and lvl 1 fighter from model Heinkel He - 51 to model Messerschmitt Bf 109 lvl 2 fighter and so on if you are that would be amazing, and if not can you consider it besides you are trying to make the game historically accurate and this would do it, i really hope it makes it's way to the game i would love it

Rivers and bridges would more be a future thing, currently no concrete plan on that. Costal artillery may be also a possibility for the future.

Additional unit skins won't come for all single levels but we probably will introduce some additional ones for higher levels in the coming months.

Torpedo28000 wrote:

Alrighty,time to start what is going to be a lot of these. So buckle up.

Fromlooking through buildings, troops, stats, pretty much everything I can look,this event seems a lot more polished and balanced than the first one. So welldone there!

Formy current day 1 experience so far, in one map but plan to join 1-2 more.

Sofar I am 21 hours 30 minutes into my game.

Ihave built:

1 IC in all Urban rss provinces

1barracks, 2 TF (tank factory), 1 AF (air factory), 3 OF (Ordnance factory)

Troops:

2 LT, 7 arty.

Andnow I am pretty much broke. Saving up some rss now for motorised infantry asthese look pretty strong offensively.

Only2.3k cash left so I think the starting cash is a little too low. Otherwiseother starting rss I think are okay, cash should probably beincreased.

Now comes the bit im not so sure on. Troop costs and training times. Comparedto 1.0 day 1 troops produce very very fast, this means the first few hours areawesome as your getting new troops out, but after that you run out of tss MUCHfaster given you spend them faster. So now after about 20 hours of playing Idon’t have the rss to build new stuff so my factories are sitting empty (notfun) But at the same time its not day 2 and I have 7 arty and 2 LT (Yay!)

Whatfor me this means is, early expansion can be done faster with these new troops.What used to take 2-3 days now done in 1. So this is AWESOME!! But it now meansless to do once they are done, so my day 2 may be boring as im broke and onlyslowly able to afford troops.

Ialso feel rss production may be too low. Arty cost higher than 1.0 but goodproduction lowered. But I don’t have enough evidence/game time to really saywhether this is true, just from judging how unit costs are higher and rss production with no upgrades is lower. But 125% increase from IC is an extra 25% we can get, I feel it may not be enough but not enough time played yet. I am out of rss now but did just spend a lot. Day 2 willsay I think how well I can produce more troops/buildings. Unit consumption alsoseems SUPER high, again ill see how it goes once I have more units whether thisis a huge consumption and drain on rss.

Ialso am at war with Poland (I am romania) not part of 1.5 but I was sendingtroops about to attack him, so in his wisdom he declares on me and fullyretreats (no loss of global pop for me! )

Planfor day 2 will be:

Ensure lvl 2 factories in all Urban,

Try to get an IC ingoods and metal, maybe an oil or food as well.

Produce some motorised infantry(Their inf attack looks great)

See after that if I can produce troops as well.

Also,I feel research times for lvl 1 troops should be lowered… yes IK only 2.5 hoursis not long. But hear me out. So I started this map at about 9:30 pm my time,so after the 2.5 hours I was asleep (Sure I could have started in the morningbut that was not going to happen. This meant I was not able to produce anytroops for until I woke up. This would also have been true for ppl at work,school, etc. So I think lvl 1 research should be 30 minutes.

Soto sum up my almost day 1.

• Built 9 new troops (pretty good I think)
• Built a factory in all urban provinces and an IC in all urban
• Am broke

Ifeel I wouldn’t build less troops and this was fairly well done, if day 2 Idon’t have enough rss for much then I think base production should increase

1. Yeah for sure it is a change in mindset that now your factories won't be producing nonstop troops, as you would run out of resources if you do. But this adds some strategic choices now. Where in the old version it was the standard choice to have them running at all times, you now have to balance production time and resources. Shorter build times add some more possibilities for faster counter reactions and also add some more action on day 1 as you said

2. Resource costs and production can still be balanced of course, so would be nice to get more updates along your playthrough (maybe you already posted more, still have lots of posts to go).

3. Hm not sure about the research times. Last time they were slightly lower for lvl1 but then people also were idling with their researches rather fast at the end of day 1 as not enough time was needed for researching. Still may need some finetuning.

cycle9 wrote:

Day 2 observation:

Province morale seems to be a problem. Only infrastructure can increase

morale, and then only by 5-20% at considerable costs.

Teburu wrote:

In general:

- manpower for research feels odd (what exactly are we doing do this poor men? sacrificing them to our demon overlords for superior technology? )

- not a fan of this lack disadvantages on different terrain (like previously tanks would get -50% strenght and half health in cities); now units only have positive modifiers and only on one or max two types of terain, they could def be more effected by terrain

- i like the focus on cities for unit production; actually gives them some more value over provinces and makes them of some strategical importance

- the damage/HP scaling seems a bit crazy; tho i have yet to see how that actually plays out

- i like the diversity of when units become available for research

- same prices for industrial in cities and provinces doesnt make that much sense; seeing how cities produce a shitton more

- not really a fan of these extremly short mobilization times cuz this puts you at an extreme disadvantage if you dont have high command

In detail:

- wtf why do strategical bombers have more offensive damage against aircraft than tactial; and why do they have it to begin with

- it was mentioned that arty range has been reduced to compensate for more frequent offensive ticks; however ships seem completly unaffected by this (especially battleships profit from this now, they even start with 70 range)

- i like the changes to carrier capacity scaling

2. We did that so dealing with terrain modifiers becomes easier. You can now calculate the different values better and it's also easier to remember which unit gets what. Since we also dont have so many different terrains we settled with 1-2 buffs for units as it would be pointless to give units bufs in all terrains.

3. Nice that you like unit productions in cities. Actually in the first event this was also a point where we got feedback in many directions, it was never all negative as some people suggest. Also a reason why we continue on this path.

4. Damage scaling is actually toned down alot from the first 1.5 event It is now closer to 1.0, but should still be meaningful.

5. The armortisation time of Industries in cities and in rural provinces is actually nearly the same. They cost the same because the boost of local industries also is twice as high and you only need to build 3 levels instead of 5. So I would advice building both types of Industries.

6. Mobilization times get longer as more you level up your troops especially if you don't upgrade your production buildings. They are lower for the lower levels to create a bit more action in the early game and to allow for more flexibility in terms of changing plans.

7. Strategic bombers have more air to air guns on board, thats why they have some more damage vs aircraft. But its still rather insignificant.

8. Ships were also reduced in range but also normalized (all levels have same range), same as arties. Thats why it appears as if they have more range on lower levels.

THEARBITER117 wrote:

Yeah and also, the fact I can't build unit production buildings outside my city makes NO sense at all, you're telling me that I can''t send labor out to the country and build factories on empty land to support the war effort? Why cities? Factories aren't always located in cities, this severely hampers the game's progression and makes cities a much more important location, which will be heavily defended compared to non city locations. There's so much joy in have every providence with a industrial complex in the late game and mass producing units to attack the other play who's doing the same. It makes for some memorable battles. Why change that? There was nothing wrong with this.

cycle9 wrote:

This new behavior is very amusing,

NPC's attacking each other on day 2:

4:56 pm Bastogne: The 2nd Infantry Regiment (Luxembourg) (BF 2) has been destroyed.

4:56 pm War! Without warning, Joseph Bech's troops opened fire on the unsuspecting soldiers of Charles de Broqueville. Leaders in the whole world are appalled by this ruthless action.

Casualties since the beginning of this war:

Belgium - 104

Luxembourg - 670

----------

ok that was it for page one of this thread I will continue with answering the next pages soon. My apologies if some of these answeres are already obsolete or redundant as I did not read the future posts yet. edit: I read through them now but no time to answer yet.

Also sorry if I don't answer on every single post as some answers would just be copies of other answers.

Let me know if such detailed answers are helpful or if you prefer discussing without me interfering

freezy wrote:

6. Mobilization times get longer as more you level up your troops especially if you don't upgrade your production buildings. They are lower for the lower levels to create a bit more action in the early game and to allow for more flexibility in terms of changing plans.

freezy wrote:

industrial complexes often times being too expensive to be built anew

d'accord!

Troops on sea transports seem to be relatively invulnerable to destroyers and submarines?

Noticed that you can not build a port in a non urban province. While we have airfields and aircraft factories why not have Harbors and Port Industries. This way you can speed up the embarkation and debarkation of troops.

Ja, Really!

In CoW 1.0 we can spend 1k goods and iron, 1.25k oil and 7.5k cash

to save 1.5 hour embark time. Not to mention the other 1.5 hours we

save retreating our forces back home.

Where is the justice?

Common mistakes seen:

1. INFRASTRUCTURE

by habit players are doing infrastructure on resources places but they have NO advantage to them. Infrastructure is now a luxury item to increase speed of bringing troops to the front. as an experiment I am doing this as Egypt in a game to go from Luxor to Benghazi so as to ship to the Southern European front.

NOTE TO DESIGNERS: infrastructure needs to have a little more incentive to use.

2. Production type

Multiple build types in a city. You start with 5 cities and four should be devoted to ONE type: Armor, Artillery, Navy and Air. The 5th City should be used for a duplicate of the Navy or Air or Tank as per your style. I would save the Barracks for a captured city since the upgrade costs for infantry is outrageous.

3.Research Manpower Sink

The early game there is a shortage of manpower, so avoid going for things like AA AT and maybe even Destroyers.

Wait till later in the game when manpower is more readily available as the research times are not much.

NOTE TO DESIGNERS: the manpower costs for research is absurd.

4. SILENCE

Too many people do not talk to other people. You should ideally send a message to every single player in the game and say Hi or simply ask if they know anyone in the game.

5. FAILURE TO DIPLOMACY WITH AI

You still need to set RoW or better with every AI country in order to secure maybe a RoW or even an Alliance with them. Having an Alliance with Estonia as Egypt gives you the equivalent of some spying around that area.

EZ Dolittle wrote:

Common mistakes seen:

1. INFRASTRUCTURE

by habit players are doing infrastructure on resources places but they have NO advantage to them. Infrastructure is now a luxury item to increase speed of bringing troops to the front. as an experiment I am doing this as Egypt in a game to go from Luxor to Benghazi so as to ship to the Southern European front.

I think it is similar to building forts in a 100 map for moral, only something I do when I have soooo many rss it doesn't matter. As well as I have NEVER built infra for the speed boost but always for the rss boost or to build troops.

I think if it had no moral bonus and pure speed but a VERY low cost it may be worth doing. And I mean maybe 300 goods for all levels or less. Then I could see myself building it.

I have always liked the idea of supply into the game, cutting off someone or investing to get your front sorted for a prolonged war, and IK this is not something that will be implemented due to them being far too difficult to implement, and im not suggesting to do so. But perhaps changing the name of infrastructure to supply lines - or something more creative, giving them a LOW cost but improving speed could be a way to implement the notion of "supply" into the game without actually changing anything. Or simply using them to increase troop speed and not supply but infrastructure. The end result is the same really.

You dont need them, but a 200% movement speed increase for perhaps 300 goods per province could be something used later in the game. (300 goods is just a number but I feel is cheap enough for me to do this probably day 10+) as speed increase is nice, but I will 99% of the time invest in troops or production given I don’t fight stalled fronts really ever, so for a straight speed increase building it needs to be cheap.

• Perhaps a sliding cost scale of 50 goods for lvl 1, 100 for lvl 2 and 150 for lvl 3. Just as idea - Perhaps one to explore pending how many users use Infrastructure from your data collecting.

Anotherbit of feedback regarding plane vs plane dog fighting:

The new plane air damage with planes doing far more damage in the attackcompared to the defence is a feature, in theory I LOVE! I think it makes sensecompletely and is an awesome change…in theory.

I havetwo concerns with this change. If there is a plan to solve these issue then Iwould love for this change to stay as I think it makes sense the attacker hasan advantage, and I think more troops should have attack and not defence stats.(I also feel it gives ints an even bigger air role)

1. Because now the attack is significantly more deadly than defence and alsoovertly (whereas in 1.0 the defence is better due to game mechanics and notstats) I see fights with planes being very dull and no action occurring. If 2players now are doing plane vs plane combat you generally have all your planespatrolling over each other and let the combat go given the attack and defenceare almost the same. (stat ik are the same). But in 1.5 the attack is vastlysuperior so I see lots of cancelling the patrols to ensure you don’t have todefend, in battles against active or competent players I see the only way tokill a plane is to hope the enemy forgets his planes are still patrolling, noone will actively let their planes defend and therefore these fights will nowbe long durations of cancelling the patrol hoping the enemy doesn’t - notsomething that sounds enjoyable.

2 theobvious way to counter this problem is just to DA (direct attack), this meansthe first person to press the DA and if planes are the same lvl the one to doit first gets a lovely advantage and gets to attack first, this should resultin lots of attacks and defences. BUT, due to the patrol and DA mechanics, if Iwas to DA a stack of planes, but there are 1 or more stacks also patrolling, Iwill lose more than I will kill, (hard to explain but im trying to refer to thefact when you DA a stack and planes patrol, the patrolling stack loses nodamage and inflicts 100%). Because of this, DA is also not a viable option.

As withall my suggestions, im no coder at all, and so im not entirely sure how tosolve this easily without just simply "deleting the DA and patrolmechanic" (im assuming it isn't that easy? And it is something I do like as well, so a better idea would be nicer).

Is this a known issue/ something now that will be addressed? Again, if there isa way to solve this then yes I really love the fact planes now do far moredamage in the attack, I think it makes sense and could add some nice game playmechanics. However with these two limitations I have outlined, I do not likethis change.

Teburu wrote:

freezy wrote:

6. Mobilization times get longer as more you level up your troops especially if you don't upgrade your production buildings. They are lower for the lower levels to create a bit more action in the early game and to allow for more flexibility in terms of changing plans.

sure; but as @Mc_Johnsen already said; these (insane) fast mobilizations time paired with the "normal" movementspeed feels like a weird mix of a speedgame and normal one

I think having to upgrade factories to increase speed makes sense, and in a previous post I highlighted a possible issue (capturing provinces closer to the front and them being possibly useless, and provided a potential solution). My only issue with it is that it uses up lots of rss, and with what feels like less rss production overall, it means day 2 and 3 there is less to do troop production wise (but more war wise).

Pro vs Con however, I like this feature. Ofc if rss was increased and it was only a Pro then even better

freezy wrote:

Let me know if such detailed answers are helpful or if you prefer discussing without me interfering

I for one have spent a fair amount of time writing feedback so it is nice to know it's being read (pros of uni holiday still going on)

cycle9 wrote:

Troops on sea transports seem to be relatively invulnerable to destroyers and submarines?

So far this iteration is looking good!

I haven’t found any bugs and the game play seems smooth enough. I really like this version of COW as it makes the player have to focus on strategy more as the buildings you choose make a difference, where in current version you must throw up some factories and your good to go.

--- comments below

• Overall I feel that it is still a little expensive in the beginning, doing initial upgrades and research and building units I have run out of resources really quickly, as this does not happen in current game – if this is intended then leave it – because it really will slow people down in the beginning and give people a chance to not get slammed early game.
• Oil seems to be a bottleneck early on and I found myself almost out of it by end of 2^nd day where in other game this doesn’t happen until 15 or 20 if you are not paying attention.
• I feel like the Infrastructure improvement has lost its importance, as there really is no reason to build it unless you are in Russia or something and need the speed to move your troops across them faster.Not sure what to do with it maybe at end game it would be worth it for Moral.
  • Note I might be convinced to use them if there were very cheap.

Overall well done on this version, it is polished and purposeful. Looking forward to playing this in 100 man game.

Akulla3D

Day 5 commentary;

As observed in round one of CoW 1.5, rares are anything but rare.

In 4 games of round 2, rares selling for .

@Vorlon:

more than one game, more than one engagement with one submarine:

several instances of destroyer bombarding a troop convoy of just two units,

and NO damage in first two ticks.

another example:

submarine attacking a convoy of 6 units, who'e HP had been drastically

reduced prior to the engagement, the sub eventually won, but with only

32% HP remaing.

Will continue answering the second page now

EmperorEmp wrote:

For me CoW is about Strategy and Planning.

While the aesthetics of 1.5 is well done I believe they are missing an opportunity to work on the existing settings.

We don't want a game that is like Conflict of Nations, Clash of Clans, etc.

Bytro should put their time and resources into things such as unit designation and invasion planning. The bread and butter of this game is the importance of late round planning and making quick yet wise moves on the map.

IMO the release of new maps and accelerated rounds are steps in the right direction; however and entire overhaul of the game play is not the way to go.

Tasmine wrote:

I upgrade the infantry techs to lv2, then upgrade a lv1 infantry require 90% manpower of lv2 infantry. Why I need to upgrade? Make a new one will be more economic.

I remembered in last test event, players have been report this issue. And I think this is a really stupid mistake?

And I click my allie's troops. There also has upgrade mark on the infantry icon bar. I think no need to display their status. They are not my units.

Thanks for the bug report, will also be fixed in the next event.

Tasmine wrote:

V1.5 Test report:

CoW 1.5 doesn't have dock, at least CoN has it. Which means you can't build Naval Base outside, need more board time.

Can't produce lv1 units after lv2 tech developed. In this point, I agreed infantry can't produce each level, how about Tanks? Armored Cars? I guess result is the same, Once our great nation developed T54, there is no chance to make a new T-34.

* Supremacy 1 can produce any level units.

We don't want to be inconsistent with our mechanics, that's why tanks behave the same like Inf in production. Yes in S1 you can continue to produce low level units, but S1 also doesnt have unit upgrading. What would happen in CoW is that players only spam T1 units and upgrade them to the highest level, thus saving all the building costs. We don't want that . Also this way CoW has a unique production mechanic.

Torpedo28000 wrote:

Yes I agree 100%, this is quite terrible IMO. The allies/enemy troops showing upgrade is a bit odd but not terrible.

The fact that it now costs 100% of a lvl 1, and 100% of a lvl 2 troops to get 1 lvl 2 troop is INSANE!!! I have to pay 950 goods for a troop that should cost 490 goods? This gameplay wise is really bad, and doesn't even make sense! For manpower am I killing all those lvl 1 guys and training new dudes for lvl2? Otherwise why the increase in manpower? (same for all other rss, am I throwing them out in the trash to order new ones?)

I was under the impression it would cos 30 goods for 1 unit to go to lvl 2. 460 for lvl 1, 490 for lvl 2 so 30 makes sense. A it more equipment so bit more cost...

This for me is a real shame as so far the game play aspects ive quite been enjoying from 1.5, I still think rss production may be low, im really struggling for cash (after spending the amount I got ive been not able to get over 7k of it). But I feel these can be changed and given it was increased from 1.5v2 I think if others experience the same thing it will be.

I really am hoping this upgrading cost has been a mistake/will be fixed.

Sorry for the somewhat aggressive tone of this post but this I think is really not well done and I don't really have anything good to say about the cost of this. Ill rather build an extra inf than pay for one and lose the other one I paid for.

I will be writing of my day 2 experience later... which was going pretty well until I upgraded my troops...

The reason why we went with a rather high upgrade cost is that a very low cost would be overpowered. Each level roughly grants a 30% strength increase, and you can skip levels with upgrading while only paying for the final level (e.g. upgrade from lvl1 to lvl4 and only pay for lvl4). The 30% would stack up on top of eachother, so you would already have a strength increase in that example of more than 100%. Additionally you also save the resources from upgrading the production building right away, plus you save alot of time: Upgrade time is only 50% or the production time and travel time from production site to front. You can pretty much increase your strength considerably in strategic locations. All in all upgrading is a very useful feature when used in the right circumstances. It may not be cost-efficient in all situations, but it will be in enough situations (maybe it is worth it to skip a level for example). And that's what we actually wanted to do: Create a new choice for the player, that is neither completely avoided nor the go-to option, but rather a strategic choice.

This said we agree that 100% of the resource cost may be too high and we think about lowering it in the next event.

Silent_Hastati wrote:

The part that is baffling me is the changes to unit production into discreet buildings. People are bringing up CoN as a comparison, but CoN shares the old CoW method of needing a combination of certain types of building to produce a unit, which when combined with only being able to build production buildings in urban centers, means you have to put significant investment to build tougher units compared to simply specializing cities into onl ever pumping out one class of unit ad infinitum.

For comparison, let's take the CoW Heavy Tank vs the CoN Main Battle Tank, which could be considered rough analogues.

For CoN's MBT, you need a level 2 Army Base AND a level 1 Factory (Called Arms Industry in CoN) to build the tank. That is 3 buildings essentially, with a combined build time of around 1 day 19 hours, not to mention the significant resource investment required.

For the Heavy Tank, you just need a lvl 1 tank plant. With a 30 min timer.

Now, I might not have a long history with either game,, but to me, that feels like it takes away from any sort of need for long term planning as far as city construction. If you need to switch to building tanks, yeah you'll be a little slow as lvl 1 buildings aren't great at build times, but you can at least go right to it fairly quickly.

Teburu wrote:

Well the major difference to old COW is that IC + infra no longer is access to basically 90% of ground unitsi also think mobilization time is waaaay to low; tho might just them trying to appeal to a wider audience/making more ppl consider HC

Mc_Johnsen wrote:

I agree with the others that this new building requirement system feels a bit off.

I do appreciate the system of "higher levels of units have longer production times, unless you construct higher levels of the appropriate building". It adds more meaning to higher levels of units, more than a mere stat improvement.

However, it feels really off, mostly because I am used to CoW 1, CoN, S1914, that all units are produced so quickly using lv1 requirements:

A destroyer and a battleship both have the same requirement: harbor lv1. In 30 minutes you can contruct all building requirements for the entire navy. Somehow, you don't need an improved dockyard to construct gigantic battleships.

The production time is very interesting as well, 4-11h for a battleship? Lets compare it: S1914: 3 days; CoW 1.0: 2d16hrs; CoN: 1d6hrs; Hoi4: 1yr minimum; reallife: 4-6years.

Battleships should feel like a huge project, not something built in 4-11hrs. Though this maybe something we have to get used to, since all units get produced so quickly.

Most importantly, there is no economic trade off to go for battleships. In CoW 1.0, the deicision to go for battleships is very significant: Do I really want to commit to a lv3 harbor and let the world know I am producing battleships/carriers? A lv3 harbor takes 4d total to construct, do I have that much time to commit? How many production centres for battleships can I afford? In how many cities can I afford to produce battleships non stop? Am I aware that the earliest I can get battleships is by day 6?

In CoW 1.5 there is no such decision. The decision to go for battleships, or other "supposedly expensive / non-early" naval units is made more easily. Economically speaking, the difference between battleships and destroyers is merely the increased cost in the production itself. There is no difference in the cost of building requirements. You don't think of battleships as "early game" unit, yet they are, you can get them in day 2 already because the building requirements are almost non-existant.

This is only an example for naval units that is translatable for others such as interceptors <-> strategic bombers.

"Hey, why don't I start harassing my neighbours cities with strategic bombers on day 1!"

You can get an interceptor produced earliest: research 2h30min + production 2h45min = 5h15min

Anti Air: research 30min + production 2h45min = 3h15min

Strategic bomber: research 5h+ production 3h15min = 8h15min.

At least you can get interceptors or anti air before the enemy gets strategic bombers, but lets be real, who goes for anti air/interceptors first? When you see the enemy build a lv1 airfield, do you think of strategic bombers? Unlikely.

Can you imagine getting your cities bombed on day 1? Your buildings destroyed from air by day 1? You have barely finished the 2nd round of light tank production when strategic bombers are raining death from above. The city morale didn't even have time to change from 70%. Your spies didn't even get to work yet to see if there are any speical threats from your enemies to be concerned about.

On the other hand, why even bother disrupting the production of the enemy? You destroyed my tank factory? Jokes on you, in 30mins I got a new tank factory and can resume production. The strategic bombers probably didn't even return to their airfields for refuel when my tank factory already resumed production. I need to stop you from producing carriers? Unlucky because the building requirements of a battleship are fairly cheap and built in 30 mins. Even further levels of naval dockyards are constructed rather fast. Can you imagine flying 15 strategic bombers on an enemy harbor, completely destroying it, grounding an entire city, while having disrupted the carrier production for a mere 30mins before the production is resumed?

You want to use military sabotage spies to stop my carriers from being produced? Tough luck because I can produce 5 carriers minimum between each spy action. Even if you disrupt my carrier production, you invested so much money into the spies. 15.000$ per spy one time cost, 4.000$ per day change. I won't even bother placing counter espionage spies in my carrier production city. Reparing my dockyards is probably cheaper (and faster) than your usage of spies. Once every 24 hours you disrupt my carrier production for 30 minutes. Absolutely worth it!

Reduced time in production and construction feels really weird. I am playing a mixture of 4x speed and 1x speed. During the time I need to conquer a rather large province, I can produce a new unit. My spies have uncovered the entire enemy army? By the next day change my enemy might have an entirely different army because he produced so much so fast. I scouted his homeland with airplanes, determined its empty, launch a surprise invasion with light tanks spear head, by the time they reach a city, the enemy already produced anti tanks. The enemy didn't even need the building requirement beforehand, it is construced in 30mins anyways.

Lets say Germany is conquering Poland, his armies are on the gates of Warsaw. I, France, decide to attack Germany because he is distracted. Germany has very few units at my border. I attack. Germans manage to buy quite a few hours because of homeland bonus and a fortress. I breakthrough but I see the German army advancing into Russia, ignoring me? No. Germany built an entire new army. Why bother taking the German army from Warsaw to France when you can produce a new army, faster than the old army can arrive from the east. The time it takes me to reach Berlin is more than enough for Germany to produce half a dozen of units. (This is a drastic example based on theory crafting, might be a bit overexaggerated)

If its hard to imagine, imagine this: In CoW 1.0 you reduce all unit production times by a lot, so that units only take 2-4hrs to produce. You also cut the building requirements to level 1, and their construction time to 30minutes. Imagine what kind of chaos it would be.

Here is an example from my curret map:

I want to shell the enemy position. I want to use artillery to attack the province Schachty. I have an artillery production in KRASNODAR, my artillery in this picture still needs 5h until it is in range. You know what is faster? Construct the appropriate building and produce a new artillery in ROSTOW. This is even a tiny distance. Can you imagine this for larger countries? Why even bother constructing units in the backyard, by the time these units arrive at the frontline, the frontline cities already produced multiple.

The reason for the lower requirements and lower costs for naval units is that naval in CoW is a rather unpopular tech branch, that also does not win you any games on its own. In order to buff naval gameplay we made it easier accessible to build a fleet. We don't really want you to have to make a huge trade-off for building naval units, as they are seldomly built compared to other units and are regarded more as support units. of course there is still a trade-off because they cost resources and time after all, and the build spot in that urban province also competes with other unit types, thus decisions still have to be made. Also, due to the rock-paper-scissors balancing you also cannot just produce one ship type, as they counter eachother. That's why it is also fine that their build requirements are similar, as they all have different roles and there isn't one that is an advanced version of another one.

Also keep in mind that those production times you mentioned are also only that low if you constantly keep upgrading your production building as well.

Strategic Bomber same thing, a unit that is rarely built, we don't want to lock it away behind extensive building requirements. In my opinion it would be awesome to see someone buold strat bombers on day 1 to bomb down enemy production sites. That would be a unique strategy that adds some spice and mind games, because potentially you would also have to prepare to counter that.

Then you raise a point that is rather contradictory, that it is actually not a big deal to bomb someones facilities away. To me this sounds like that it actually enables more choices. It is true that he can just build a new one in 30min and that is one reason why that strategy is not OP. On the other hand your enemy has to waste resources to build his facilities, so it still hampers his war efforts. Also if you bomb down higher building levels you also increase enemy production times of later unit levels. By the way, something players usually forget is that high anti building damage also translates to higher morale damage. So Strat bombers are also better suited to lower enemy province morale

Regarding the statements on production times: That is only true for the lvl1 build times, as higher unit levels have longer build times in general and much longer if they are produced with a lower building level.

Spy costs and unit speeds are a thing we can balance still.

TheOrangePhilosopher wrote:

Okay I'm going to try to write down as many of my thoughts as possible.

1. Production: We should be able to produce units in non-urban provinces. I want to be able to make use of as much of my land as possible. Why have 5 places making troops and an area 10 times larger doing absolutely nothing. This is my biggest issue with 1.5

2. New Buildings: I like the new buildings, but some units should need multiple buildings. These new buildings also defeat the entire purpose of Industrial Complexes (or whatever their new name is), and Infrastructure. Before, you needed them both, for most things. Now, I'm just wondering when I'm going to use them.

2A. These new buildings should have some sort of visible icon on the province, like Industrial Complexes, Airbases, Naval Bases, Fortifications, and so on. Barracks should get this too.

3. Rare Materials & Research: Some people probably agree with me, but rare materials should be used for research. Sure, they mean it's harder to research more things, but I like the challenge of planning how to spend my rare materials and what things are smartest to research

I have more opinions, but these are the main ones

2. We don't think that the purpose of Infra or Industry is destroyed, they now just have their unique benefits that are not mixed with other benefits. By giving each building its own benefits we allow for more strategic choices of what to build. At the same time we want to keep build requirements easily understandable, that's why each branch only requires one unique building to be produced.

2A. True, that may be added in a future Event.

3. We don't want to use a particular resource for research anymore, as it would result in most units which require that research not being built. This happened with Infantry-type units in CoW1.0, which are built less often because people need the food for researching. People still have to think about what is smartest to research simply because of the greater importance of rock-paper-scissors balancing between the units.

Citizenkane wrote:

I would like to congratulate the development team on all the improvements to this second attempt. It is obvious you took the time to work thru the feedback the players provided.

I still do not like the philosophy that you can not build troops outside cities.I understand you changed build times to compensate for less core provinces being able to build units but it falls short for me personally.

May I suggest allowing barracks to be built in non industrial provinces. This would allow people to attempt to stay alive even if lets say two of their cities got captured. Also lower the manpower for infantry and militia, with the 1.5 set-up it needs to be much lower.

I also don't like all the cities being the same point value at, some cities should should rank and have additonal bonuses. No country in the world has every city being equal value to the nation. The loss of terrain penalties is kind of a bummer, it allowed seasoned players the beat countries that had larger armies and now that plan of attack would not be available.

The game mechanics are better and I believe the unit rebalance will require players to learn new tactics and find the best stack combo's for given situations. I don't think any of the rebalance has destroyed the current essence of game strategy.

This round two is a leap forward from how I felt about the first event. There are still improvements needed as others have pointed out and I don't want to beleaguer any of these points so ill just stop here... for now.

Sorry that the new philosophy falls short for you personally.

We want to keep the new mechanics and philosophies consistent though, and allowing certain troops to be produced in rural provinces would make it inconsistent. In future versions we will even remove production tabs and production buttons in rural provinces alltogether to make it even more clear to players.

Resource costs are still in the balancing phase.

Regarding terrain penalties: We went with bonuses instead because they are easier to compare. Units still have strong buffs in certain terrain, so it is still perfectly possible to beat other players by using terrain in smarter ways.

Torpedo28000 wrote:

Alrighty, day 2 review time:

3h until day 3.

I have been focusing on my economy during day 2 for two reasons:

1.My economy is feeling too low and im unable to produce many troops, all productions are feeling really low.

2.After realising the upgrading cost of troops I wont be upgrading troops, therefore building troops on day 2 I feel is a foolish idea. (I have gone into why I think the upgrading cost is terrible so wont do so here… but pls pls pls change that!)

So I have done the following today:

3x lvl 2 IC in metal, goods and oil urban provinces

1x lvl 3 IC in goods province

1x Ordinance factory lvl 2

Researched inf lvl 2 and motorised inf.

Only been able to build 5 buildings in one day, 2 researches and 0 troops I think is not enough, this is also with rss taken from the nation I am beating. Therefore think rss production should be boosted. Compared to how much I could do and build on day 1, day 2 does feel a heck of a lot slower. Day 1 was exciting building a bunch of troops and a few buildings, this day has felt slow and ive felt really starved for rss.

Rss wise, I am struggling for cash the most, not been above 10k since the start and even selling my other rss to get it, despite also being low on these. Manpower so far has not been an issue so this is a very nice improvement. My allies have run out of manpower and it is an issue for them however, possibly not building any AT or AA and building 2 LT was the reason for this. I am doing super great on rares as I have not yet built any planes and due to upgrading troops (pls change!) I wont be building any until day 6 as in a similar fashion to old 1.5 upgrading troops (although this was not possible) how I would save, spam troops on that day then use them quickly is how I plan to play. Not something I enjoy as I love focusing on the future, building troops that will also be used in the future rather than just for a few days.

So to wrap up day 2:

- War with Poland almost over, took a little but longer as I lost 7 troops as I upgraded them in the middle of Polands land and then they couldn't move as I didn’t read the little warning saying that would happen… I prefer to learn as im going… and I did!

• Focused solely on the economy. (I am really liking the IC progression, whether costs are too high idk yet, maybe
• I do feel a bit rss starved, It is better than 1.5v1 but still feels like a large bottleneck, but again it depends whether building 5 buildings in a day is what is I desired. As an active player I feel this is not enough as 1 thing every 4.8 hours isnt fast paced or more exciting, which I believe is a desired outcome of 1.5 in the early game?

However, so far for all of 1.5 pretty good IMO. Def like 200% better than 1.5v1 that is for certain! I do feel a little too rss restricted but perhaps it is due to be spending all my starting rss on day 1 and not saving any (I would have done the same thing again)

Thanks for keeping up the updates on your game round!

Torpedo28000 wrote:

For this reason, perhaps there could be one research in the secret section around day 8-16 that halves the construction time of only factories.