CoW balancing changelog - 2020-07-14

Rail Guns

Actually I think they are too mobile. I might suggest that you make them multi level with 4 days in between and increase the speed rather than the attack factors as things go. Might be a better solution, though I believe that they are out of character with the period. I saw a killer stack of 10 of these protected by 8 Anti Aircraft guns and they just vaporized the neighborhoods.

Alternatives to the hospital idea that could also be worthwhile (as the hospital is in a fixed location meaniing a lot of time is spent traveling to and from

• Bump unit condition with upgrades - I keep running into manpower problems midgame and consequently do not upgrade units due to the manpower cost associated with it. If I got a 50% bump for my 50% manpower cost it would be very worthwhile to upgrade the unit. Heck even a 25% bump in health for the 50% cost of the upgrade would be worth considering.
• Replacement units? Build them at factories and move them to units that need healing and have them join the unit there. Make them a fraction of the unit cost (10%) and when they join a unit bump the unit health 10%. I think this is already baked into the daily upkeep, but this is something that could help more rapidly heal units that have seen heavy combat damage.

Sorry guys to be the party pooper, but if we had hospitals, the winning tactic would be: Compose a very big stack (so you'll never have units dying), crush a few enemies with it, then withdraw it from the front to the next hospital and after waiting for a few days, send it back to the front again.

So this would not only incentivize big stacks even more than CoW already does. It would also bring along a lot of work moving units to the front and back, again and again, which I can't imagine to become my favourite hobby. Don't know if you'd like that, but I'd consider that to be quite a hassle.

That's two disadvantages that new building would have.

Also I don't really see a problem with the way it is now. If you don't want to pay the upkeep for heavily damaged units, you can send them on a suicide mission into enemy territory - that way they'll at least deal a bit of damage to the enemy. Whereas if you want to pay the upkeep and wait until they're back to 70% or 80% health, well, then at least you have that option.

I usually take heavily damaged units away from the front and use them as coastguard somewhere - they'll hardly be able to stop an enemy invading, but at least shine light on a section of my coast, so I see an invasion approaching earlier. Having in mind that since about a year, you don't see somebody disembarking on your coast if that beach isn't within the line of sight of any of your units. So you should never have a single coastal landing point without any of your units nearby. And to cover your entire coast, you can well use damaged units. They can recover while doing that boring job.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Sorry guys to be the party pooper, but if we had hospitals, the winning tactic would be: Compose a very big stack (so you'll never have units dying), crush a few enemies with it, then withdraw it from the front to the next hospital and after waiting for a few days, send it back to the front again.

So this would not only incentivize big stacks even more than CoW already does. It would also bring along a lot of work moving units to the front and back, again and again, which I can't imagine to become my favourite hobby. Don't know if you'd like that, but I'd consider that to be quite a hassle.

That's two disadvantages that new building would have.

Also I don't really see a problem with the way it is now. If you don't want to pay the upkeep for heavily damaged units, you can send them on a suicide mission into enemy territory - that way they'll at least deal a bit of damage to the enemy. Whereas if you want to pay the upkeep and wait until they're back to 70% or 80% health, well, then at least you have that option.

I usually take heavily damaged units away from the front and use them as coastguard somewhere - they'll hardly be able to stop an enemy invading, but at least shine light on a section of my coast, so I see an invasion approaching earlier. Having in mind that since about a year, you don't see somebody disembarking on your coast if that beach isn't within the line of sight of any of your units. So you should never have a single coastal landing point without any of your units nearby. And to cover your entire coast, you can well use damaged units. They can recover while doing that boring job.

I don't like mega stacks at all, but a strategy of building big stacks, let them fight and get close to death then retreat can be done for almost any unit no matter the size. Additionally, this makes those specific mega stacks unable to conquer new land but simply act as a defence unit as if for example; fight for 3 days, retreat for a day, heal for 4 days then head for battle again results in a 6 day off the battle result which is a really long time this is not really a viable strategy to take new land, or at least is a super slow method, realistically the way I see this working is these troops would fight a few battle against a player, and by the time they are healed the war would be over. I don't ever get into fights that last over a week with a player, wars I find just don't take that long. Then once the troops are healed they are ready for the next war.

The method I proposed for a hospital would not have instantly healed troops. A 20% boost to damage received rather than the 15% would result in troops healing at max lvl hospital 35% of damage received would still take a long time for troops to fully heal. An example of this is a troop at 40% condition will go along the progression of:

40--> 61--->74-->83 So in 4 days the troops have healed 40 condition. In the current method it would follow:

40--> 49--->59-->65-->71-->75-->79-->83 which is 8 days to heal only 40 condition. As you probably know but ill mention it, troops heal more when more damaged so a troop at 5% condition will heal way faster than one at 90% condition. Adding to this healing % would get troops up to average fighting shape faster but still take ages to get to 80%+ so they never will fight like brand new again.

I personally feel this is simply far too long. The games pace has increased from what it was in 2016, but healing has not changed for this. 1.5 esp has a much faster pace, it results in stacks surviving with 10% condition which pretty much renders the entire stack useless, whereas in 1.0 damaged stacks would have single troops left due to the more replacing nature of troop damage when 1 troop dies, then the stack condition bumps back up and so on. Troops move 15% faster min in 1.5, battles are now 2x as fast at 30 mins not 60 mins. The pace of the game has changed, but healing has not which I would argue is not right. If originally id say 100 maps probably took around day 40-50 to end based on when elite research would be done (day 40 was from memory when we got elite troops, or day 44?, doesn't really matter) Now 100 maps end in day 20-30. This means the pace of the game is much faster, meaning troops should heal faster to adjust to the new dynamic of the maps and their speed.

In my 100 map I am even concerned that late game troops are a little too expensive and will go into this in a later post, but having to still pay for these troops while useless sucks. And your idea of suiciding troops is I don't like to ever be insulting sorry, but stupid. If I win a battle, why am do I also lose it at the same time? It makes no sense to me. If I eliminate the enemy stack, and have 30% condition by the end of it I also am a loser in that fight.

Just to touch on your point of mega stacks again, I agree mega stacks should not be boosted. But I don't believe making it so stacks of 10 troops, 20 troops, 5 troops what ever should be negatively impacted by mega stacks. The solution to stop mega stacks should be mega stack related and not impact other stack sizes. Troop stacks of any size can use the hospital building. For example, stacks above 20 in size also receive a slow reduction in damage dealt similar to SBDE. Currently 10 troops enter combat max. But what if if that stack had 25 troops in it total then there would start to be a damage % reduction similar to having 12 arty in an army not 8. That imo is how to deal with mega stacks, a mega stack relation solution, not making all stack sizes suffer because of mega stacks. I already believe building large stacks in 1.5 is quite effective and would very much like this to be reduced, so my reasons for hospitals are very opposed to aiding mega stacks. But in my current 100 map, I wiped an enemy stack of 30 troops with 20 of my own stack, but now my stack is at 17 troops with 15% condition which means I still gotta pay for them despite them being useless. And im never going to suicide them as that would just be completely against how I like to play which is all about being as efficient and KD effective. Both for stats but also the simple fact as the less troops you lose the more likely you are to win.

I believe if there is a problem, fix the root of the issue, not what the issue has created as then the problem never goes away.

Hopefully this can help you see my side of this argument. As always thank you for posting your opinion on the matter and while we may disagree here, at the end of the day we both want the same thing. A fun CoW experience.

Maybe the root cause here is also a bit psychological then? If you have 17 out of 20 troops left at 15% condition, you only lost 3 troops so far. In CoW1.0 you would have lost 15 or so already. So if you think that those 17 troops are basically lost, then you should also regard them as lost K/D-wise and don't care anymore if you send them into their death. But to the contrary you still care about keeping them alive, so you are not actually considering them as lost and useless.

I also don't think that you should feel as having lost that fight if you only lost 3 units so far. Yes the remaining troops are now weaker, but they still can be salvaged and healed. And they still can fight and conquer. For conquering it does not matter how damaged your units are. You could now spread up your 17 units into stacks of 1 and send them to 17 different provinces to capture them. The enemy probably does not have enough troops left to protect them all, so I would not call this useless at all. Even if you decide to keep them together and keep fighting, 17 troops at 15% health are still as strong as 3 troops at 100% health (at 0% health a unit still deals out 20% of its damage). Not as powerful as your initial stack but still not useless. You can also use them for diversion tactics or bait (which enemy doesnt get lured by that big juicy stack at only 15% health?), or you could place them as scouts in your rear. There are still enough possibilities to make use of your damaged troops, so calling them useless is a bit too much in my book.

Another way of "healing" damaged troops faster is by mixing them with newly produced troops of the same type. Yes it basically damages the new troop but also ensures that the other ones survive and slows down your K/D losses.

It's true that the game pace increased while the healing rate did not, but one also has to acknowledge that the healing is basically more effective now in CoW1.5 since you can heal alot more damaged units, whereas in CoW1.0 you could only heal a small amount due to units dying immediately 1 by 1. Maybe the effectiveness of healing is in total rather similar in both versions because of this. Still it certainly does not hurt to look into it at one point and we may even consider having a hospital or adjusting the heal rate in general. But not in the near future as we are currently on some other topics.

Still appreciate the feedback on this, so keep it coming

Playing the Market

The new market algorithm in 1.5 drives the price that the market offers to buy goods at to below 2 very quickly,

What I have started to play with is NOT sellng the full amount of the last purchase at 3 or higher. This way I believe what will happen is that the machine will start to offer to buy goods at a higher price.

I am not sure if this is figured into the algorithm or not so I am testing it out. Either way it does seem that you never want to sell your goods in a quantity that wipes out the price offering below 3.

PS PLEASE change the wording on the trades to get rid of the obnoxious: We Demand ... for...

also I find it very annoying to my tech rule writing style that when you write the order for a trade you put your offering first but that when it is printed and sent to the other player, the order is reversed with your 'demands' first. This is bad tech rule writing form. Petty, but still annoying in an OCD manner.

Arcorian wrote:

Added Expansion factor morale penalty:

Starting at 0 penalty when conquering provinces that amount to 1 nation (slight variations depending on the map size), goes up to -35 penalty when owning ~45% of all provinces on the map.

What starts at 0 penalty? what goes up tp -35 penalty? it goes up or down? both words in the same sentence makes it very confusing.

Thank you.

Gral Anibal wrote:

Arcorian wrote:

Added Expansion factor morale penalty:

Starting at 0 penalty when conquering provinces that amount to 1 nation (slight variations depending on the map size), goes up to -35 penalty when owning ~45% of all provinces on the map.

I dont understand this, please someone write this again, it makes no sense or it's bad English or I'm not reading well.What starts at 0 penalty? what goes up tp -35 penalty? it goes up or down? both words in the same sentence makes it very confusing.

Thank you.

@freezy

Revolts:

One of my coalition partners reported 4 cruisers going over to the rebelling province at day change. (Game #3,321,565 with North Ural telling us of his observaton) In the past units had to be in the province center to be eligible for changing sides, and an effective strategy was to keep units out of the province center to avoid loosing units and being able to quickly recapture the province. If his observation is true, it brings up the question of how far a unit needs to be from the province center to avoid this surprise, as it appears the revolts now affect a range from the province center, not just the center. Though I notice units placed off the center do not apply their factors to preventing the revolt.

Torpedo28000 wrote:

I don't like mega stacks at all, but a strategy of building big stacks, let them fight and get close to death then retreat can be done for almost any unit no matter the size.

Torpedo28000 wrote:

And your idea of suiciding troops is I don't like to ever be insulting sorry, but stupid. If I win a battle, why am do I also lose it at the same time? It makes no sense to me. If I eliminate the enemy stack, and have 30% condition by the end of it I also am a loser in that fight.

And secondly, you also have the option to instead retract the damaged units and keep a good K/D. So you're clearly not the loser of the fight.

I think what's disturbing for Torp (and me and all other players who care about K/D) is not the fact that healing is slow, but a thing it brings along: In CoW1.5 you often have to choose between either caring for your K/D or caring about winning. This had very seldomly been a decision you had to take in CoW1.0 and it's not a decision anyone ever wants to face. There should always be a right decision, which helps you with both - as was the case in CoW1.0. Of course, it should be difficult to make the right decision, but you should never have to decide between playing for good K/D or playing for the victory.

Coming back to the healing topic: In CoW1.5 if you care about K/D, you should very often remove damaged units from the front, whereas if you care about winning, you should in most cases let them march forward or at least keep them at the front until they're dead - saves you the hassle and time of replacing them with fresh units from your inner country and saves you the upkeep costs for the injured veterans afterwards.

That antagonism isn't nice.

What I propose as a solution instead of hospitals: Change the way units die back to how it was in CoW1.0. Why has it been changed to stacks only starting to lose units when at very low health / what's the advantage of that? I think I never read a statement from Bytro on this, but is possible I missed it.

Second best solution - still better than hospitals: A new medic unit (might optionally be even two units - medic heals only infantry units, tech support batallion all others... possible ordnance being healed by both or by both at half rate or whatever you prefer) that gives a fix, absolute healing to the stack it's in (i.e. not relative to the degree of damage and the size of the stack). Like +0.1 HP per hour or +2.0 HP per day or something alike. Maximally one or maximally two such units per stack.

In comparison to hospitals, this would similarly have the downturn of promoting big stacks. But other than hospitals, it would not increase the annoying, tedious hassle of retracting units from where you need them in order to heal and afterwards bringing them back. It would even decrease the need to do so.

And one more positive thing about it: You could use them to heal the few last percent of damage that take an eternity to heal the regular way. So there would be more units at 100% health and less at 99.8%... not an important aspect, but nice psychologically / aesthetically.

Peter Mat wrote:

@freezy

Revolts:

One of my coalition partners reported 4 cruisers going over to the rebelling province at day change. (Game #3,321,565 with North Ural telling us of his observaton) In the past units had to be in the province center to be eligible for changing sides, and an effective strategy was to keep units out of the province center to avoid loosing units and being able to quickly recapture the province. If his observation is true, it brings up the question of how far a unit needs to be from the province center to avoid this surprise, as it appears the revolts now affect a range from the province center, not just the center. Though I notice units placed off the center do not apply their factors to preventing the revolt.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

What I propose as a solution instead of hospitals: Change the way units die back to how it was in CoW1.0. Why has it been changed to stacks only starting to lose units when at very low health / what's the advantage of that? I think I never read a statement from Bytro on this, but is possible I missed it.

Second best solution - still better than hospitals: A new medic unit (might optionally be even two units - medic heals only infantry units, tech support batallion all others... possible ordnance being healed by both or by both at half rate or whatever you prefer) that gives a fix, absolute healing to the stack it's in (i.e. not relative to the degree of damage and the size of the stack). Like +0.1 HP per hour or +2.0 HP per day or something alike. Maximally one or maximally two such units per stack.

In comparison to hospitals, this would similarly have the downturn of promoting big stacks. But other than hospitals, it would not increase the annoying, tedious hassle of retracting units from where you need them in order to heal and afterwards bringing them back. It would even decrease the need to do so.

And one more positive thing about it: You could use them to heal the few last percent of damage that take an eternity to heal the regular way. So there would be more units at 100% health and less at 99.8%... not an important aspect, but nice psychologically / aesthetically.

It also wasnt the most intuitive that units in battle received rounds and rounds of damage, but their health always stayed between 90-100%, since it always filled up again when a unit died. Because of that it was hard to see battle progress unless you were an active player who keeps track of all the different unit amounts in all armies. I think it feels nice seeing units getting blown down to red health bars, especially with the new army bar that we will release soon.

I personally like the new distribution very much and it is unlikely that we return to the old one

Not sure if I would like medics or hospitals more, both have ups and downs in terms of gameplay feel, implementation difficulty and balancing. Another solution could also be to implement a new officer feature, where you could attach officers to stacks which provide certain bonuses, and one of them could have a healing effect. But since all of this isnt set in stone and is nothing for the near future I would postpone the discussion about it.

@freezyHere is what the paper shows, unfortunately it does not tell which units changed sides. Maybe with the game number above it can be traced?

Rebellion in Nikolayevsk-on-Amur.

The garrison troops of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur have been overpowered in a violent uprising. The crowds proclaimed to join Manchukuo.

Spain - Official government communiqué, 00:26

Rebellion in Nizhniye Kresty.

The garrison troops of Nizhniye Kresty have been overpowered in a violent uprising. The crowds proclaimed to return to East Yakutia.

Casualties since the beginning of this war:

East Yakutia - 44,331

North Ural - 23,419

ok thanks. well that report alone sadly doesnt reveal too much . Since it was only 1 case for now and seems like a rare edge case we don't spend time on tracing this down at the moment (better to work on issues that affect more players). But if more reports about this come up we can look into it again.

freezy wrote:

Reasoning for the new damage distribution: It gives more meaning to healing troops and creates more meaningful decisions

I can't explain it well, but it is disturbing. Isn't it, @Torpedo28000?

freezy wrote:

@Torpedo28000It's also a bit better for business if you know what I mean.

freezy wrote:

It also wasnt the most intuitive that units in battle received rounds and rounds of damage, but their health always stayed between 90-100%, since it always filled up again when a unit died. Because of that it was hard to see battle progress unless you were an active player who keeps track of all the different unit amounts in all armies. I think it feels nice seeing units getting blown down to red health bars, especially with the new army bar that we will release soon.

Anyhow this isn't an important topic. Especially in case you plan to give CoW a different long-term goal but playing for K/D (which clearly isn't the ideal long-term motivation), like for example --> this one (bottom of the post) <--, we can live well also with the new way units are dying.

freezy wrote:

Not sure if I would like medics or hospitals more, both have ups and downs in terms of gameplay feel, implementation difficulty and balancing.

freezy wrote:

since all of this isnt set in stone and is nothing for the near future I would postpone the discussion about it.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

It clearly does. Although it's good in general to have difficult and meaningful decisions: This is a decision I'd rather not have to take. Because in most cases it means deciding either for K/D or for victory. It's highly dissatisfying to have to sacrifice one or the other. And it creates weird, unnatural situations: Because of this, sometimes a better player loses against a less competent one, because he's (possibly) caring about K/D and that in CoW1.5 is a disadvantage when it comes to winning the map.I can't explain it well, but it is disturbing. Isn't it, @Torpedo28000?

Understandable.

Maybe, but those I'd call marginal aspects. Partly because I think most players notice when a unit dies. Of course it can happen that a dying unit is replaced with a fresh one and in case you didn't see the reinforcement approaching, this in CoW1.0 leads to the enemy stack not changing at all (although swallowing damage all the time). But even then you can still read in the newspaper you've killed a few.

Anyhow this isn't an important topic. Especially in case you plan to give CoW a different long-term goal but playing for K/D (which clearly isn't the ideal long-term motivation), like for example --> this one (bottom of the post) <--, we can live well also with the new way units are dying.

Didn't mean to say we should have medics or hospitals. My statement was if one of the two, then medics, please. This organizational job of retreating damaged troops from the front and replacing them with healthy ones isn't a fun part of the game. It's work. With hospitals we'd have more of that, with medics we wouldn't.

Fully agreed.

Regarding the decision on K/D or victory: Probably only an annoying decision because K/D gets overvalued by players. Certainly you are right that we would need some more long term goals for players besides K/D. Actually we already have some additional incentives, as we also show amount of map victories and achievement progress, but its true that hardcore players tend to gravitate more towards K/D. We can think about new incentives down the road.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

freezy wrote:

Reasoning for the new damage distribution: It gives more meaning to healing troops and creates more meaningful decisions

It clearly does. Although it's good in general to have difficult and meaningful decisions: This is a decision I'd rather not have to take. Because in most cases it means deciding either for K/D or for victory. It's highly dissatisfying to have to sacrifice one or the other. And it creates weird, unnatural situations: Because of this, sometimes a better player loses against a less competent one, because he's (possibly) caring about K/D and that in CoW1.5 is a disadvantage when it comes to winning the map.I can't explain it well, but it is disturbing. Isn't it, @Torpedo28000?

I personally like to play with my KD in mind. Both for the KD stat, but also I feel it is a more efficient play style and I like the idea of it as it is a determiner for how efficient I am at winning. Win/loss is the more important stat, but if one can win most games (Im at about a 70% win rate) I search for something additional when I play. KD is that additional thing. Killing a player at 1:4 kills is just that much extra satisfying, when I know I can defeat someone, KD provides me something to play for.

Playing for simply the win can get boring I find. Playing for KD and a win gives me extra reasoning to play that extra bit, wake up at 2am to ensure fewer losses/more kills. My goal for a game is to win as efficiently as possible, high KD I believe is part of this. 1 troop saved means now my enemy needs to produce 1 more troop for an even battlefield.

The issue for me is that the healing while yes, compared to 1.0 troops did die sooner... if they died that is . I would often split stacks around, merge and add new units in to attempt to have less losses. As an air stack got to 85% I would split it off, add it to a new stack or do something with the goal of less losses. But if that troop did die, I would not have to pay for a weakened less effective troop and spend the rss saved from that troops death for a replacement. Stacks in 1.0 where almost always ready to fight with no delay for healing.

In 1.5 however, troops may go down to 20 at 20% condition. Yes I could send out 20 troops as a diversion, or send them to defend a coast. But both of these options have now led me to have less options as I cannot actually use these troops for their intended purpose... fighting other players in combat. If i want diversion or coastal troops, ill build them. If I simply went down to 10 troops at 80% condition, sure I have less troops over all. But these 10 are effective, they are ready and prime to fight. The 20 however are a drain on the economy, less effective troops and if I want to care about my KD I won't sacrifice them.

Freezy your ideas for how to use the 15 troops are very valid. But against a skilled opponent 17 units spread out are easy targets for planes. It is why I always build air and ground armies, air is there at a bare minimum to prevent AC runs (any troop can do a run but AC run is what I call it). It is likely those 17 troops could take a few provinces, but my entire game philosophy is troops are more valuable than land. Ill sacrifice land anytime to save troops. So I could take some land but lose 17 troops. IMO not really an effective trade off. If the land they take is of value to them, whether thats core, troop production land, high morale land, then the war likely has already been won as these lands are close to a core. Additionally, if im in a situation when sending out a mass spam of AC runs is effective... ill use AC as they are fast, or new commandoes which are awesome. If I send them to a coastal defence, or keep them in the rear for reserves.... then im paying 15 troops worth of upkeep for the strength of 3 troops, im sure you can agree that economically this is suicidal!

Perhaps these troops are not useless. But they are far from effective for their purpose. spreading out 15 troops to take land is more effective by 1 AC or commando than an almost dead SPA troop which can die to a plane super easily resulting in a loss to the KD.

Ppl can say don't care about a KD, and I don't want to sound arrogant here, but in the last year when im winning 90-95% of my games, in coalitions or even solo 100s, I like having something else to focus on. Win/loss is easy. I like having something else to measure my success and the new troop mechanics currently are not positive for this while also focusing on winning.

I think everything that needs to be said on this topic currently now has. I understand hospitals, medic troops, healing officers or a revised healing calculation is not high on the priority list. I will argue that perhaps it should be higher given combat is the most important aspect of a war game and I strongly believe this aspect of combat is not as optimal as it could be and is a deterrence for 1.5 (or is at least for me). New features are very nice to have, but a war game is about war and fighting.

freezy wrote:

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Actually we already have some additional incentives, as we also show amount of map victories and achievement progress

I have that for 100 maps ages ago. I believe i've won about 12 of them but as its higher than 6 for 100 maps so for older players /players who have won more than 6 that is no longer an incentive. (would love it to be added as I think my 100 map win/loss is on the higher end XD).

@freezy

Just my 2 cents on K/D and healing. I think the new 1.5 is far more realistic in how it handles casualties versus 1.0. IRL a unit did not merge with another unit in the midst of battle. It fought, and at the end of the battle if it had suffered to many casualties it was pulled back from the front to recuperate and reinforcements were fed in to bring it back up to strength. Hence a need for medics or replacements or some mechanism to help boost unit morale faster, if you want something realistic. Of course the daily increase in morale captures some of this. Personally I would love to see a replacement unit (10%) morale that could merge with a distressed unit to boost it's morale 10% at which point the replacement unit goes away. From a reality standpoint this works well with ground and air units. It seems a little out of place for Battleships and Carriers.

IMO the hospital idea would be for those soildiers so badly wounded that they were going to be sent home anyway. Great for a morale boost back home that the soldier was kept alive but not all that helpful for regaiining the unit morale in the field short term.

K/D is often a reflection of play style. When I see a low ratio (<0.75) I suspect the player will rush me helter skelter and often has a one dimensional attack. When I see higher ratios (>1.25) it usually means I can expect a more thought out approach to the game, more balanced stacks and a multi-dimensional dynamic for attack and defense. If one is really concerned about K/D, then there are ways to play the game to maximize enemy casualties and minimize your own, though you will not likely win many games that way.

Torpedo28000 wrote:

[...] perhaps adding a feature that shows how many map joins and victories. Currently it only goes up to 6 for 'amount of map victories' so realistically for an added incentive for experienced players they get this before it really becomes an incentive to get too.

I have that for 100 maps ages ago. I believe i've won about 12 of them but as its higher than 6 for 100 maps so for older players /players who have won more than 6 that is no longer an incentive.

freezy wrote:

K/D gets overvalued by players

freezy wrote:

we already have some additional incentives, as we also show amount of map victories and achievement progress

* as already described by Torpedo too easy to reach for serious players (at least if willing to play in a coalition... the fact that a victory achievement is given to every member of the winning coalition should be changed asap - only the one with the most victory points should get it)

* stopping to continue counting at ridiculously low numbers

* ironically hidden at the very bottom of the list, below all these trash achievements that only show you've already played a lot

* not respecting the fact that unbalanced maps exist (which leads to the top 5 powers always being taken immediately on the two historical maps and afterwards takes very long until some of the seldom folks who don't mind losing have the mercy to pick one of the weaker countries - that makes these maps practically unplayable in a competitive sense)

* to me and certainly most others unclear from which events you can also get a victory achievement badge... or are they only granted for victory on a scenario map(?)... also isn't fully clear whether one gets a victory achievement badge from winning a tutorial map

freezy wrote:

We can think about new incentives down the road.

Whereas in my opinion, there's not a single topic of similar importance. Giving CoW a goal is the one thing that should be done first.

To explain what makes me say so:

Before development of CoW1.5 started, CoW1.0 was a game that was almost as realistic as could be within the given constraints of its mechanisms and limited developer capacities. Which made it fascinating and inspiring to think about what could be done to make it even more realistic or better in other aspects. And secondly, to make up for the insufficient incentive given by victory counter and victory achievements, one could at least play for good K/D.

Now design of CoW1.5 hardly cared about realism any more and if you continue to play for K/D there, you won't have fun either (mainly you'll try to use only high-level units even in situations where that's not helpful for winning and you'll never play with Comintern doctrine... which both means an unintended distortion of the game and its balancing).

What's worse is, it turned CoW1.0 into a zombie game by soaking all dev capacity and at least half of the player base out of it. So now there's no reason left to play CoW.

Unleeeess you allow us to play it in a competitive way. Still the best solution I can think of is a "VP ratio" ranking (victory points your country has at beginning of the map divided by victory points you have when map ends... summed up over all games you ever played and presented in an additional ranking screen with a big list sorted by VP ratio that can be filtered by rank - still see --> this thread <-- for details).

Since proposals to make CoW1.5 realistic have already been rejected, that's the one thing left you can do to make CoW attractive again.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

* to me and certainly most others unclear from which events you can also get a victory achievement badge... or are they only granted for victory on a scenario map(?)... also isn't fully clear whether one gets a victory achievement badge from winning a tutorial map

freezy wrote:

We can think about new incentives down the road.

That sounds a bit like the standard euphemism for "I read the thought and will keep it somewhere in the back of my head, but we already have tons of outstanding tasks of similar importance so this won't be worked on within the next year".Whereas in my opinion, there's not a single topic of similar importance. Giving CoW a goal is the one thing that should be done first.

Yes that is indeed what I wanted to say: It is not a topic for now, but we can consider it at a later point. From your perspective (very experienced player who played CoW for years and thus was able to unlock lots of achievements already) it may look like the most important issue, but for the vast majority of CoW players it's certainly not an important issue. Most players are far from maxing out their achievements, and from those who did also not all care the most about stats. So I would rate this as a nice to have feature to give more incentives to a particular player group (not saying that its unimportant in general btw, only that its important for a smaller amount of players). There could also be other ways to intentivice players, for example by introducing a quest or mission system that gives you new tasks and rewards each game, which would probably benefit alot more players.

And in terms of competition feature we also have a bigger backlog of stuff we could do. For example giving alliances and alliance matches some love, probably there is also a fraction of the very experienced players who would want that. But as I said, all of these things are options for later.