CoW 1.5 balancing changelog June 2020

The stack size and combat system need some work. As it stands currently the best attack option is to build 10 of each unit and then put them all in one stack and go. Whenever you run into something the 10 best will be used. I thought one of the objectives in the new design was to encourage players to use smaller and more mixed stacks. Somehow the SBDE needs to have an effect here, or some sort of proportional factor when calculating combat odds. Example 50 units in the stack of 5 unit types of 10 each, would use 20% of each unit type for combat odds.

I just got blown out of a game where I thought i was doing fairly well and got jumped on one end of the board by a 34 unit ship stack (10 Destroyer, 10 cruiser, 10 battleships and 4 carriers plus a few subs lurking nearby), while responding to that another player cruised into the waters near my core with over 70 units. So I am back to square one on day one of a new map.

Peter Mat wrote:

The stack size and combat system need some work. As it stands currently the best attack option is to build 10 of each unit and then put them all in one stack and go. Whenever you run into something the 10 best will be used. I thought one of the objectives in the new design was to encourage players to use smaller and more mixed stacks. Somehow the SBDE needs to have an effect here, or some sort of proportional factor when calculating combat odds. Example 50 units in the stack of 5 unit types of 10 each, would use 20% of each unit type for combat odds.

I just got blown out of a game where I thought i was doing fairly well and got jumped on one end of the board by a 34 unit ship stack (10 Destroyer, 10 cruiser, 10 battleships and 4 carriers plus a few subs lurking nearby), while responding to that another player cruised into the waters near my core with over 70 units. So I am back to square one on day one of a new map.

I do agree about your concerns with the navy. I personally am not a large naval player so I am less reliable to give my thoughts on it. But in my 1.5 game I did build a 40-55 ship fleet with 10 BB, 10 CL, 10 DD etc. This did lead to each side building up 1 large fleet rather than multiple decent sized fleets. - in 1.5 players would not stack 10 BB in one stack but have likely 3 smaller fleets in comparison.

I do not think it ruins the balance of the game at all as in either 1.0 or 1.5 if someone had 34 ships 10 DD, 10 CL and 10 BB they would have very strong navy. But some sort of limit on BB, CLs I don't think would be bad.

Now to your stack size combat concern. Mega stacks are certainly less effective in 1.5. I do think a way of making a 50 stack weaker would be nice, perhaps the new SBDE (name change but for ease of understanding I will use SBDE) of 30 troops in one stack and then a lowering of efficiency could be used.

Firstly, it is a valid strategy in both 1.5 and 1.0 to have 8 or 10 of every troop in one HUGE stack and only use that. IMO it is not successful as an army can simply too easily out manuviour you.

But here is imo the reason why mega stacks are weaker in 1.5. In 1.0 every troop in the mega stack of 50 will enter combat. Meaning if I try to attack it melee or with planes (range with arty is a bit more different when only arty is fighting - but still 1 stack of 10 arty and 10 RA would not do as well as 1 stack of arty and 1 separate stack of RA) in 1.0 if my planes attack a 50 stack the AA will defend, the inf will, the AT will, the LT will etc etc. Meaning my planes will suffer higher losses. In 1.5 only the AA will fire back meaning the mega stack deals less damage to my troops in general. Same goes for melee fighting.

Thus in 1.5 there is a need to balance having 10 of every troop as well as having small enough stacks to cover the entire front. Mega stacks I believe are weaker yes. But some sort of stack SBDE limit would further reduce mega stacks as they are and can still be used very effectively.

I am not disagreeing with your views on mega stacks, saying it is an improvement on 1.0 for sure. But it definitely could be further enhanced. Regarding naval combat I think those 10 BB would slaughter you if they did in your map regardless of 1.0 or 1.5 as 10 BB is strong. But yes having an SBDE on navy I think would be good as 50 stack fleets are IMO tooo large and difficult to achieve. I do think it makes naval combat almost too simplistic as just get 10 BB, 10 CL etc etc and off you go. Making building up a navy also very time consuming and expensive. Having perhaps a 5 BB limit could be effective.

Regarding the MP talks above. I personally do not like any sort of 'caps' on players. If a player wants to only build troops and not spend anything on their economy they should be able to do this. I don't think it will be successful but to limit a strategy I do not like.

I will often be in a tough war (often due to my own making) but I will spend 80-90% of my rss on my army and once the war is over spend a few days only working on my economy. When players are in a war they need to pump out troops. When at peace build up the economy to support a war in which players only build troops.

My economic plan is generally to build an economy that supports a long war. I aim to be able to when I go to war pretty much solely build troops as that is what I will need. And while I do build a lot of economic buildings. I would say I more play a stop and start strategy with some days 90% on the army and other days 90% on the economy rather than a 50/50 split between economy and army. A forced cap might mean I cannot simply pump out troops and not build ind buildings while im fighting a 1v5. In the short term I need troops. Yes in the long run my eco will be hurting but let future me deal with that problem as current me needs troops!

I am yet to see a player win (against tough opponents) if they only build troops. But there is certainly a valid strategy in spending a heavy amount on the army to fuel your army. Taking land to enable you to take more land.

This goes for my feedback on CoW in general. I support the mechanics that enable more tactical decision, regardless of how effective they will be and options and do not like any mechanics that limit options.

If a player wants to only build lvl 1 troops on day 50, let them. If a player only wants to build the max research troop then let them do that. If a player only wants to build from the ordinance section and thus not use rares, let them.

I very much like how rss are now balanced as it enables more options to players on what to do. Same for making troops more unique. But any mechanic that is designed only to stop a certain play style and limit game options and decisions I do not like.

I agree that players should not spend all rss into units only. But a "cap" to enforce that I do not like. Like I said in another forum section. If a player only wants to build troops as they think investing in buildings is a poor use of rss. Let them! One of the great things for me in CoW are the vast variety of different strategies. Even in my own alliance of very similar players (highly competitive, active and somewhat stat focused players) we often disagree on the ideal strategy. I love the discussions that come out of different strategies.

Now I might be going off topic slightly but a mechanic solely to encourage a certain play style I don't like.

That being said, if MP is really needed to "to balance weaker units vs. stronger units." I do not have a different/superior method other than just increasing other rss and having MP something to be concerned about, but not an in game limit on something.

I guess it really don't matter what any of the players say, the Call Of War Lovers will always attack us like we don't know anything...that's what happens on any forums

Torpedo28000 wrote:

I personally do not like any sort of 'caps' on players.

My understanding was Bytro went with a 10 unit size to encourage players to use more mixed and smaller size stack. If that is the case, they missed the target. If their goal was to simplify combat programming by only having to calculate for the 10 best units in the given situation, they hit the mark. So what was the objective in the change in combat calculations? If we know that then we can comment on whether the change has been effective or needs work.

Sorry for the miss-communication. I was referring to the 'cap on players' in regards to the population cap Freezy mentioned and previous players have been discussing.

I agree some SBDE limit on stacks above X size would be beneficial. I suggested a 30 stack before SBDE comes in as a start - and perhaps if possible an SBDE of 5 or 6 for BBs but the reduction to 30 ships might be enough. Continuing with the 10 troop limit for combat but with an additional scaling penalty like SBDE for stacks over 30 troops as an example to further reduce mega stacks.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

By the way, my impression is that this limit now even has become a bit too soft - it would be nice if players sometimes feel an urge to build industry also in non-resource provinces of their core, just to gain manpower. As things are now after the June update, I'm almost sure that no reasonably thinking player will ever build industry in non-resource core provinces. But would be good to hear experience from others on this - if that turns out to be true, I'd lower the amount of manpower in late game a bit again (like reducing manpower bonus of level 5 industry to 110% or something similar).

Torpedo28000 wrote:

But here is imo the reason why mega stacks are weaker in 1.5. In 1.0 every troop in the mega stack of 50 will enter combat. Meaning if I try to attack it melee or with planes (range with arty is a bit more different when only arty is fighting - but still 1 stack of 10 arty and 10 RA would not do as well as 1 stack of arty and 1 separate stack of RA) in 1.0 if my planes attack a 50 stack the AA will defend, the inf will, the AT will, the LT will etc etc. Meaning my planes will suffer higher losses. In 1.5 only the AA will fire back meaning the mega stack deals less damage to my troops in general. Same goes for melee fighting.

Torpedo28000 wrote:

I agree that players should not spend all rss into units only. But a "cap" to enforce that I do not like. Like I said in another forum section. If a player only wants to build troops as they think investing in buildings is a poor use of rss. Let them! One of the great things for me in CoW are the vast variety of different strategies. Even in my own alliance of very similar players (highly competitive, active and somewhat stat focused players) we often disagree on the ideal strategy. I love the discussions that come out of different strategies.

freezy wrote:

Well the manpower resource in of itself is a limitation or cap because all units use manpower to be built. No matter how low we set the MP costs, as long as all units require more than 0 MP to be built, it would technically be a limit since you could not produce an endless amount of troops. Of course you would not really feel a limit if we set the costs really low, but this is also not desirable. Right now the game is balanced with a bit of a limit in mind. I mean even your resources are limited overall, as well as your production time. Yes you can choose where to build and what to build and when to build, but you can't build an endless amount. The game needs such limits to work, it's simply a balancing necessity that you can't push out an endless stream of units. We can think about how to increase the choices within those limits in the future, and I think right now in 1.5 we already increased those choices already. So while maybe not perfect we are on a good level already.

freezy wrote:

Mega stacks are indeed less efficient in 1.5 compared to 1.0

While in CoW1.5, it's more viable to research and build lots of different units, although you can't keep them all up-to-date. Which is a good thing, of course, but it has the side-effect of air and navy stacks having a tendency to be larger in CoW1.5.

Looking at air: In CoW1.0, you usually selected two or three types of planes (and researched these to the max). So your maximal SBDE-optimized air stack size was 10 or 15. In CoW1.5, you should go for two or three, in late game even four types of planes. So you can have air stacks of 20 or 30, in late game even 40 planes that always deal maximal damage to no matter what enemy.

Navy: In CoW1.0, nobody should build both cruisers and battleships. Usually on large maps battleships + destroyers and you're good to go. I don't fully remember what the SBDE limits for battleships and destroyers were... I think something around 6 and 8(?) So then, the tallest imaginable fleet was 14 units (maybe additionally subs, but that's a different story).

In CoW1.5 you'll sooner or later want battleships, cruisers and destroyers. So you'll possibly end up with 30 ships in one stack.

Ground: I state there the stack size limits hardly matter, neither as they are in CoW1.0, nor as it is in CoW1.5. Because such giant ground stacks are a noob approach. Can be too easily outmaneuvered and/or be fired at with several ranged attack stacks.

Anyhow, a few thoughts on what might be done:

(A Easiest adjustment: Reduce limit of 10 strongest units to 8 strongest units.

Advantages I see in that:

- Would give further incentive to research and build a big variety of different units.

- Less giant fleets and air stacks.

- The stack size limit might become relevant also for ground units here and there.

Disadvantage:

- It would less often occur that the second strongest unit (against the armour class of the target) in your stack counts (because having 8 of the strongest unit in your stack is more easily reached than having 10 of these). As things are now, I find it interesting to not only have a few "specialists" for each skill in your stacks, but also to care about allrounders and secondary skills of specialized units, because you don't have 10 "specialists" for each job in each stack.

(B Better, but probably difficult to implement: Create a "tactical" research tree, in which "army tactics" / "navy tactics" / "air tactics" can be researched to increase the stack size limit from 5 (level 1) to 10 (level 6).

Advantages:

- Maximal stack sizes without penalty would grow over time, so the stack size limit would incentivize to broaden your research already at the beginning, while not forcing players to command hundreds of small stacks in late game.

- Nice new choice for players to either adapt their playstyle to small stacks or invest research time and costs for "tactical" research.

(C Reduce efficiency if total stack size exceeds (e.g.) 30: Implies more complexity than (A) - I would prefer (A) over that.

City trades:

I know under normal circumstances province trades can not occur until day 7. I thought core provinces would automatically revert to the original owner when both people were in the same coalition. I joined a coalition to assist (I was a silent non-member partner) and two core cites of the leader were in my possession having captured them from an invading army. they did not revert to him at acceptance off my application.

My suggestion is that core provinces always be available to trade back to the original owner without the 7 day restriction.

Peter Mat wrote:

City trades:

I know under normal circumstances province trades can not occur until day 7. I thought core provinces would automatically revert to the original owner when both people were in the same coalition. I joined a coalition to assist (I was a silent non-member partner) and two core cites of the leader were in my possession having captured them from an invading army. they did not revert to him at acceptance off my application.

My suggestion is that core provinces always be available to trade back to the original owner without the 7 day restriction.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Wouldn't say so. In CoW1.0, your maximal SBDE-efficient stack size was pretty much limited by the number of different units you could research to maximal level.While in CoW1.5, it's more viable to research and build lots of different units, although you can't keep them all up-to-date. Which is a good thing, of course, but it has the side-effect of air and navy stacks having a tendency to be larger in CoW1.5.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Looking at air: In CoW1.0, you usually selected two or three types of planes (and researched these to the max). So your maximal SBDE-optimized air stack size was 10 or 15. In CoW1.5, you should go for two or three, in late game even four types of planes. So you can have air stacks of 20 or 30, in late game even 40 planes that always deal maximal damage to no matter what enemy.

If you have a stack of 40 units then only 10 of them at any given time will deal damage, while the damage values of the other 30 planes (albeit small) is ignored. Example: Even if the 10 strongest damage values would be 10 each (so 100 combined), and the 30 other units did only 2 damage each (so 60 combined), the stack would only do 100 out of 160 potential damage.

I am only speaking about theoretical damage output btw. That doesnt mean that in practice its a bad idea to mix together a larger stack, since also other considerations have to be made, like survivability (which a large stack has more of) or time until the battle is over (multiple armies have more ticks than a single army). Also an important factor is certainly if both sides are attacking eachother or if only one side is attacking, which changes the dynamic a little bit. In the plane example it probably wouldnt make sense to separate the weaker planes and let them attack a ground army, since they would get defense damage in return every time. often its then a better idea to keep the planes in the stack to tank some damage so that the real damage dealers remain effective longer. So for planes vs. ground armies its probably indeed better to keep mixed stacks, but not because of the damage output, but because of the survivability. But for armies where both sides are attacking each other usually single armies are more effective.

And of course you can also optimize your stacks in a way that your efficiency loss is rather low, by combining units which have their strenghts in different categories.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Anyhow, a few thoughts on what might be done:

(A Easiest adjustment: Reduce limit of 10 strongest units to 8 strongest units.

Advantages I see in that:

- Would give further incentive to research and build a big variety of different units.

- Less giant fleets and air stacks.

- The stack size limit might become relevant also for ground units here and there.

Disadvantage:

- It would less often occur that the second strongest unit (against the armour class of the target) in your stack counts (because having 8 of the strongest unit in your stack is more easily reached than having 10 of these). As things are now, I find it interesting to not only have a few "specialists" for each skill in your stacks, but also to care about allrounders and secondary skills of specialized units, because you don't have 10 "specialists" for each job in each stack.

(B Better, but probably difficult to implement: Create a "tactical" research tree, in which "army tactics" / "navy tactics" / "air tactics" can be researched to increase the stack size limit from 5 (level 1) to 10 (level 6).

Advantages:

- Maximal stack sizes without penalty would grow over time, so the stack size limit would incentivize to broaden your research already at the beginning, while not forcing players to command hundreds of small stacks in late game.

- Nice new choice for players to either adapt their playstyle to small stacks or invest research time and costs for "tactical" research.

(C Reduce efficiency if total stack size exceeds (e.g.) 30: Implies more complexity than (A) - I would prefer (A) over that.

Reducing the limit from 10 to 8 or 5 or whatever won't change the dynamics regarding single big armies vs. multiple small armies though. It will only reduce the amount of units in both single armies and mixed armies and increase micromanagement needed (which I am not a fan of). Example: With a limit of 10 a single stack of 4x10 units would be countered by another player with 4 separate armies of 10 units each. With a limit of 8 it would just lower this on both sides to 4x8. Of course it would promote formation of more armies on the map, since armies can effectively hold less units, which makes splitting armies (micromanagement) more important. Not sure if this is benefitial. But yeah we can think about lowering it to 8 or something.

The research idea to improve the stack limit over time is neat, as that would indeed create differences. I noted it down as suggestion but probably nothing for the near future. We don't have any buff system within the research system yet.

One idea I had is introducing also a HP efficiency penalty in addition to the damage efficiency penalty, since larger crowds are also easier to hit.

We talked about it in the team though and while seeing the benefits of adjusting the stacking mechanics further, we concluded that it is not super necessary right now. After all the damage efficiency penalty still works and it may be more clear once we visualize it properly in the game, so players see more directly how much potential damage they theoretically lose by creating big stacks. Part of the reason why players still make large stacks is because the limit is not communicated clearly.

Also there are still too many ways to circumvent stack limits or SBDE anyway since you can for example move your army in a single stack but then during combat split it. A bigger combat revamp would be needed to really fix all loopholes, which is not a short term possibility. We may do further tweaks later after we worked on some other 1.5 things.

Peter Mat wrote:

City trades:

I know under normal circumstances province trades can not occur until day 7. I thought core provinces would automatically revert to the original owner when both people were in the same coalition. I joined a coalition to assist (I was a silent non-member partner) and two core cites of the leader were in my possession having captured them from an invading army. they did not revert to him at acceptance off my application.

My suggestion is that core provinces always be available to trade back to the original owner without the 7 day restriction.

Complicating the trading logic with more checks to enable more use cases would be certainly neat from a players perspective but from our perspective it has rather low priority as there are more important features that have more benefits.

freezy wrote:

If you have a stack of 40 units then only 10 of them at any given time will deal damage, while the damage values of the other 30 planes (albeit small) is ignored.

I regularly saw such 20 or 30 or even 40 planes stacks in my CoW1.5 games and players made no mistake there.

For navy it's even clearer you'll keep your 20 or 30 surface ships in one stack.

freezy wrote:

Reducing the limit from 10 to 8 or 5 or whatever won't change the dynamics regarding single big armies vs. multiple small armies though. It will only reduce the amount of units in both single armies and mixed armies and increase micromanagement needed

Air is very dominant in late game because of that and that's not good. Ground forces would keep their relevance in late game if they had to face only 8-bombers-stacks.

freezy wrote:

while seeing the benefits of adjusting the stacking mechanics further, we concluded that it is not super necessary right now. After all the damage efficiency penalty still works

Down to 5 I wouldn't go, because as said, I like situations in which you don't have enough units of strongest type (against the target) so the damage output of the second strongest unit type in your stack also matters. Such situations would be very seldom if reducing the limit to 5.

freezy wrote:

when an enemy conquers the core territory of an ally in your coalition and you conquer that territory from the enemy, then it should automatically go back to your coalition ally

No idea though whether it's the same in CoW1.0 games now.

City trades, fair enough, so long as you are aware that it is a special circumstance issue to get to someday.

A new item: Goods. I am not sure if it is me and my development strategy or an imbalance in the resource requirements, but in two games to date I am constantly running out of goods. My current game I am even going out of my way to develop that resource type ahead of all others. Also based on market pricing in the current game I am in, other players are experiencing a similar issue as the Goods market price is higher priced to buy then other commodities. Game# 3,294,711 if you need an example.

Possible solutions:

* more single goods provinces

* slightly higher starting amounts on the doubles

* slightly lower goods requirements whenever they are required.

* Some combination of above.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

freezy wrote:

when an enemy conquers the core territory of an ally in your coalition and you conquer that territory from the enemy, then it should automatically go back to your coalition ally

Then we have a small bug there - like @Peter Mat, I also observed this not working any more in a CoW1.5 game.No idea though whether it's the same in CoW1.0 games now.

If the whole feature doesn't work anymore that would be an issue of course, please confirm again to me if you see it again not working.

Peter Mat wrote:

City trades, fair enough, so long as you are aware that it is a special circumstance issue to get to someday.

A new item: Goods. I am not sure if it is me and my development strategy or an imbalance in the resource requirements, but in two games to date I am constantly running out of goods. My current game I am even going out of my way to develop that resource type ahead of all others. Also based on market pricing in the current game I am in, other players are experiencing a similar issue as the Goods market price is higher priced to buy then other commodities. Game# 3,294,711 if you need an example.

Possible solutions:

* more single goods provinces

* slightly higher starting amounts on the doubles

* slightly lower goods requirements whenever they are required.

* Some combination of above.

freezy wrote:

If I understood Peter Mat correctly his issue was rather that core provinces were not traded to his new coalition partner retroactively (he conquered them before joining the coalition). That case is indeed not supported with the feature right now.

It's been a while since I made a list comparing CoW1.0 with CoW1.5. Not everything from my list after CoW1.5.2 still is relevant - time for an update:

Positive (sorted from really great to rather small details

* Units not upgrading automatically: Absolutely vital breakthrough. That's the best improvement CoW has ever seen. Now every research decision is interesting and researching & producing a broad variety of units is a good option.

* The new production buildings - players now have to invest into having sufficient production capacities and destroying/conquering them is nice as a new strategic goal.

* Number of production orders a player can and should give in CoW1.5 increases only slightly from early to late game, which is much better than the slow start in CoW1.0 and the production orders click orgy in CoW1.0 late game.

* Doctrines added. Almost perfect at first shot. Good work, Bytro team.

* Fighters and rocket fighters offensive focus. In theory a very good thought. Only in my experience doesn't really work, because the bug that planes performing a direct attack on a patrolling or travelling (maybe also landed) air stack suffer more damage than you should expect from defender's stats still seems to be there. Had about 10 such battle results in CoW1.5 and every time the attacking stack suffered about twice the damage that it should get according to stats of the attacked air stack (and no, there were no other stacks patrolling the area). So if 1 fighter attacks an equal fighter with direct attack command, both suffer same damage - although attacker should get only half the damage. Does somebody else have more experience with this than 10 battles and can verify or falsify this observation?

* Commandos having stealth and ignoring fortresses instead of superior front-line power.

* Rocket artillery and attack bombers added.

* LT and MT having offensive focus. Is acceptable from realism perspective and improves the game tactically.

* Range of capital influence on morale depending on map size: A really very good change.

* Morale bonus of fortifications has been removed.

* Researching transport ships now makes sense on the world map. Well... at least sometimes.

* Rocket fighters now having a second research level.

Negative (sorted from really terrible to small details

* Same HP progression for all units.

* Manpower as available workforce instead of manpower as recruitable soldiers & all units same same. If each unit branch had it's own powers (infantry cheap upgrades because upgrades should have 0 manpower and food costs; ordnance low research costs; armour high speed and HP progression; planes high speed and range progression), that would be much more realistic and interesting. Already outlined recently in --> this post <--.

* High unit power progression and doctrines blur significance of K/D very much. It's good you made a first step by giving higher level units more military ranking points than low level units. Now all that still needs to be done to fix K/D is (fingers crossed you get that done

- Displaying military ranking points in the unit detail view.

- Adding a counter in DB for ranking points scored from kills against human players. Initialize it with units killed so far * ranking points units of that type gave so far (in CoW1.0).

- Analogically a counter in DB for ranking points other human players gained from killing your units.

- Displaying the quotient of these two new counters in the player profile either instead of the current K/D or next to it.

- Ideally reducing ranking points of Comintern units by -5%; increasing ranking points of Pan-Asian units by +5%; increasing ranking points of Axis units by +15%.

* Centralization of resource production to cities. Very unrealistic. Cities as main source of money, goods and manpower OK. For food, oil and rares totally NOK.

* Almost all AI countries giving same number of victory points and almost all AI countries having similar power. Now Luxembourg is almost as important as Austria or Bulgaria, Iceland as great as Portugal, Villa Cisneros as important as New York and so on. That's trash. Why have the maps been designed like that?

Oh, you don't know where Villa Cisneros is? I hadn't known either, before start of CoW1.5. Proves my point.

* Centralization of victory points to cities. Really ugly.

* Infantry cannot be recruited outside cities. At least militia should be recruitable also in rural provinces.

* Attack timer reduced to 30 minutes. Makes you have to come online even more often. In other words makes it harder to have a healthy real life while a game is ongoing.

* AI seldomly researches and builds higher level units; also in some cases hardly builds units at all. Defeating AI in mid and late game is too easy. But I bet you know that (-; ... probably isn't easy to solve.

* Strats offensive focus against planes. Of course I remember you can't change that easily without giving them defensive focus against ground as well. But added it to the list nevertheless, so you don't forget that's still a task.

* As some others already wrote, railway guns are OP. They should make sense in a few situations - mainly if defending or attacking a fortified position. But in open field battle, RR guns should be clearly inferior towards regular artillery. I would reduce HP of RR guns, because in reality they were not that difficult to destroy.

* Huge 2D flags instead of the nice, unobtrusive flag pins to mark the capital.

* The damage output that plane transports have should be displayed in their unit detail view.

* Too tall city names on the map. Is ugly.

Some more words about centralization to cities: You wrote it's supposed to

1.: Make battles evolve around neuralgic spots. Doesn't really work out, in my observation. Even if it did: Why should that be better than battles along a front? I like battles along a front better, because that's more realistic for WW2 times.

2.: Prevent endless scrolling in province list if wanting to give production orders. This was hardly an issue in CoW1.0... partly because I'm sure most players don't give their production orders in the province list anyway. Secondly, if you do that, you'd sort it by the respective production facility anyway. That would work the same, also if barracks can be built in rural provinces. All in all I really don't find the province list better laid out or easier to handle than in CoW1.0. The centralization to cities helped nothing with that.

3.: Make maps less uninflected by highlighting some provinces. Maybe I can understand that a bit. I agree cities should be more important than rural provinces. But for that, it would be enough to give them higher money, manpower and (optionally) goods production. Also restricting ordnance, armour, planes, secret weapons and sea unit production to cities OK. But not so giving them higher food, oil and rares production and restricting infantry recruitment to cities. That's an unnecessary exaggeration. Sure, you don't want barracks outside cities so all six units branches are fully synchronous and thus easy to balance out. But do players also want that? I don't. I don't even want all unit branches to be equally important. Cause that's not realistic and not interesting.

Bottom line we've now tried the extreme, over-exaggerated centralization to cities. It feels just as bad as expected from the start. So now I'd say it's time to paddle back in that regard.

One more argument, although already mentioned by several concerned players after 1.5.2: The exorbitant importance of cities makes players more vulnerable to sneaky surprise attacks. One city lost for a minute and you won't recover. That's not positive at all!

Please at least reduce the gap between urban and rural resource production (except money and manpower). You can still keep it the way that industry in cities has a quicker return on investment than in rural provinces - which is a good feature, cause it creates a nice trade-off decision between either raising production buildings or industry in core cities... you want to do both, but can't do both at the same time. For that you don't need resource production 4 times as high in cities.

Following suggestion as easiest step in the right direction:

* Reduce cities food, goods, metal, oil and rares production to 66% of what it is now (12.000 to 8.000 if optimized).

* Reduce costs of industry in cities to about 70% of what it is now.

* Increase rural provinces food, goods, metal, oil and rares production to 150% of what it is now.

* Decrease money income of rural resource-provinces to 40% of what it is now.

* Increase money income of non-resource provinces to 200% of what it is now.

* Increase costs of local industry to about 133% of what it is now.

* Convert one non-resource province per country to a resource-province. Choose the resource this country so far doesn't have (otherwise resource differences between countries would become too big).

=> Result: Overall amount of resources and money in the game would remain as good as the same. But the terrible resource centralization would be softened very much.