Research Balancing Update

Hello @Arcorian;

I'm happy to see that you've changed some of the things about the investugations, it it's not the important thing i've seen in this text.

You also said that in the provinces you have changed the resourser consumition, If it's true my production on food will be better, but yesterday i had -200 on my production and today i have -400 on my production for hour.

My question is if you have changed something on the troops consumtion.

Anyway you must improve the secondary provinces production, at least at 30%, so in my opinion when you have a big army always the food will be in negative, you will have to build a lot of infrastructures and factories to at least don't have the food in negative.

Thank you for your pattience.

KingofCalradia wrote:

My question is if you have changed something on the troops consumtion.

Arcorian wrote:

KingofCalradia wrote:

My question is if you have changed something on the troops consumtion.

Units have not been reviewed yet. That will happen in a later step of a general balancing review. This resarch update is just the first step.

KingofCalradia wrote:

Hello @Arcorian;

I'm happy to see that you've changed some of the things about the investugations, it it's not the important thing i've seen in this text.

You also said that in the provinces you have changed the resourser consumition, If it's true my production on food will be better, but yesterday i had -200 on my production and today i have -400 on my production for hour.

My question is if you have changed something on the troops consumtion.

Anyway you must improve the secondary provinces production, at least at 30%, so in my opinion when you have a big army always the food will be in negative, you will have to build a lot of infrastructures and factories to at least don't have the food in negative.

Thank you for your pattience.

In new games after the update you will have better food income overall since provinces consume less food in the new version. No need to increase the 25% of non-core provinces to 30% for that.

We didn't change troop consumption.

Greetings all,

I am really trying hard to see the positive in this change and see how making units available sooner in the way you chose to do this will actually encourages players to change their habits.

At first glance it looks as if your plan of shortening research times and making units available sooner just might work but looking at all the changes as a whole and taking into account the current meta we quickly realize that all this change does is exacerbate the existing binary unit production issues we are seeing namely light tank / tactical bomber spam.

Level 1 infrastructure now takes 4h and lvl 1 airfield 8h to construct while lvl 2 airfield takes 36h. So basically our typical spammer can start cranking out lights tanks within 4h of starting a game and tactical bombers in less than two days.

Before this change light tank spam was not possible for at least 24h and tac spam not before day 3. Furthermore now our tac spammer can quickly advance only having to wait 8h for a new airfield (15m refuel) when before it was 9h before lvl1 airfield was operational (30m refuel). So how exactly is this change making things better considering current meta?

All this is further aggravated by switching research resource requirement from goods to grain. Is our spammer going to be more likely or less likely to produce units that require grain now that research also requires grain? Hell no! Save the grain for research and build more light tanks/tacs obviously!

The funny part according to the reasons provided for this research change to grain is that you find players have too much grain accumulated in the early stages of the game. Speaking as a player that doesn't tank spam early game and builds grain fed army I never have an excess of grain if anything my grain production is constantly flirting with the 0 per hour barrier, so I really do not see how this change is relevant unless you really want to push people towards oil based armies and away from grain fed armies.

I am also not really hyped about research taking grain instead of goods, I don't see that as a realistic thing, ¿Why would military research cost food? And goods are even more useless now. AI better start selling a lot more grain on the market now cause I'm gona have problems lol.

Hi all,

I also tested the new research tree but I am not really amused. Whlie there are some positive aspects (reduced time to research a weapon) I still think that overall it is missing the purpose. The old research tree was encouraging players to think strategically, especially in the early days it was crucial to find a balance between investment into infratructure/production facilities, production of army and investment into research. Now, this is widely gone. I think the new research will favour unexperienced and/or strategically weak players.

Excellent point, the synergy between construction times of required buildings, the research times, and the production time of units is completely wrecked. Its one big ugly jumble with no foresight given to balancing unit research.

Seriously lvl1 rocket on day4? Level 4 rockets on day 18?!? Isn't the rocket spamming bad enough as it is must we make it worst? Nuclear bombers day 14 and nuclear rocket on day 20 is this some sort of bad joke? Please don't come back saying "but we increased the resource requirements" because that will do nothing to resolve the horrid spamming that will ensue.

I agree. The old research tree worked much better, and grain is never really a problem if you manage yourself well and have an advanced army largely running on oil. Also, airfields should definetely be able to run at around 75% health, which is realistic, just give the planes a slower refueling time. I tested this for frontline pioneer and hated it, the food is massively effected. The only good thing is the faster research times earlier, but it doesn't matter because by the time you've researched it you don't have enough resources accumulated to move to the next research.

Please revisit this, I talked to a few other frontline pioneers while it was being tested, and they didn't like it either.

the resource thing is a huge part of the tree. with research being earlier, it was made that research would be more expensive. this way you would have a choice: either make more units or research.

Not true, research is not more expensive then before I would say it comes out to about the same. However what used to take me 4+ days to research took me less than half a day hence it feels like its more expensive as you have to dish out more resources sooner then you would have otherwise.

If anything they made it easier to produce certain units such as mechanized or planes as more goods are now available as research no longer requires goods. The only units that are now harder to build are infantry and towed units, which is ludicrous it should be the other way around.

Although for sure the changes aren't perfect (mainly I agree with Kanaris the earlier availability of level 3 and level 4 rockets is an issue, even though their research costs have been increased a bit compared to other units), they are a great improvement!

Before the update every half-way experienced player would choose at the beginning about 11 units from the following: One type of tanks or tank destroyers, AA, AT, artillery, planes, commandos, destroyers, submarines, either battleships or cruisers, rockets, nuclear rockets, maybe railway guns. Then whenever a research slot is free upgrade one of these and forget about all other units until these 11 are researched to maximum level.

That worked with every country on every map and was boring as hell. Also not realistic (e.g. constructing jets while not even being able to assemble a simple, 1934 type level 2 armoured car... which might still be the right strategy now, but isn't always any more).

And now, after the update? If somebody can still give me such a simple recipe that will lead to victory in every game, I pay him/her a crate of beer.

Now every time a research slot is free you have to adapt your research strategy to the situation. What's the best decision now always depends on which resources you have or can buy in which amounts, what enemy you're going to face and on which terrain you expect the battles to take place. And it's no longer clear whether researching a new unit instead of upgrading those you already have - or maybe not researching at all for a while - is the best idea. Also more units than before come into question for being the right choice. You now have to think a lot in every moment of every game. In other words we now have a good strategy game.

There will be way more variety on the battlefield and only the intelligent players will always hit the right research decisions.

You'll see. Try it!

About the concerns:

* Food being too rare: Now small countries with few provinces (e.g. at the beginning of the game) have less food than before (since they now have to spend some on researching). On the other hand big countries (most countries in later game phases) now have more food than before (because province food consumption was reduced). Seen over the total length of a game, the average amount of food available for units is similar to before the update, so there is no issue.

* Goods being less valuable: Quite the same story. At the start you have a surplus (compared to steel). But as you expand, that changes.

* Quick light tank spamming being favoured by the update: Seriously? Have you ever been afraid of somebody spamming tanks? I'm always happy if I meet an opponent who's that dumb.

* Quick tactical bomber spamming being favoured by the update: What makes you think so? Because before the update you had to research fighters first? Well, someone who was willing to spend gold on getting an early tac stack just needed 2000 gold to do that level 1 fighter research within a second. And those who don't want to spend gold make a clear mistake if spamming tacs in early game. That acoounts for both before and after the update.

* Nuclear bombers available already on day 14: You need to invest a lot in getting them researched and they aren't very useful. That clearly isn't an issue.

* Nuclear rockets available already on day 20: Don't forget you first have to research conventional rockets level 4, nuclear energy level 4 and nuclear bomb level 3. So if you want to have your first nuclear rocket built on day 26 (earlier isn't possible without gold), you either have to leave all other units at about level 1 (=> no chance to win that way) or spend VERY much gold for that. And somebody who's willing to spend VERY much gold also has a lot of other ways to get a big advantage.

Also after the update, the value of rare materials doesn't drop on about day 25 any more (as it did so far), but later. The low value of rares in mid and late game was the main reason why nuclear rockets were such an attractive unit - now this reason is deferred to late game, so situation is unchanged: You can go for nuclear rockets in late game, but earlier usually makes no sense.

Still I agree it's not nice they have that role in CoW... but to improve this I would prefer a solution like "You drop a nuke on a province that's not your own => All AI countries declare war on you" instead of simply nerfing them or making them available later.

pametna joskota wrote:

The old research tree was encouraging players to think strategically, especially in the early days it was crucial to find a balance between investment into infratructure/production facilities, production of army and investment into research. Now, this is widely gone. I think the new research will favour unexperienced and/or strategically weak players.

Your entire thesis doesn't take into account the current meta. If CoW was a brand new game that no one had ever played before maybe I could buy what you are saying. But even then like Pametna pointed out the synergy of the old research tree was 100 times better.

As to your point of more unit diversity sadly thats not what is happening at all. If anything I see the opposite effect. As I pointed out in detail in my earlier posts now spamming light tanks and tac bombers is faster and easier then ever, people have gotten wise to it already and thats exactly what I am seeing in brand new games. Thats only day 2 folks! Can hardly wait to witness the impending rocket spam 3 days from now...

Whats even worst, players are now punished for producing units that cost alot of grain to train and upkeep and sadly players are being pushed towards units that cost less grain for upkeep as a consequence of replacing goods for grain cost for research.

In the zeal to make units that were sparsely seen before before on the battlefield more accessible the game balance has been destroyed and spamming a handful of units has been made easier not harder. I am sorry but thats not the staple of a good strategy game. In a good strategy game spamming should be a losing tactic not a viable one.

Without gold, the first light tank now can be built after 29 hours (before 48 hours).

And the first tactical bomber after 74 hours (before 84 hours).

It's true that's changed a bit. But still spending your early game resources on one of these two units instead of infrastructure / industrial complexes is a very short-term strategy, just like it was before. You might defeat one or two neighbours like that, but then you're out of breathe. And just like before, it can be easily countered with AT / AA or fighters. You only have to check early enough what your neighbour is producing.

So such early-game hara-kiri strategies are nothing we should worry about when judging the overall game balance.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

And just like before, it can be easily countered with AT / AA or fighters. You only have to check early enough what your neighbour is producing.

So such early-game hara-kiri strategies are nothing we should worry about when judging the overall game balance.

Basically you need to give up on research early on to save your meager grain supplies in order to train and upkeep the necessary units to counter the spammers and fall behind on research while they blitz through newbs, inactives and NPCs and have the grain required to research advanced units faster then you can as they have very little grain upkeep compared to you.

Before at least you could rely on the fact that certain units research was locked until day X so you have time to work on your economy and compete with the spammers that expand much quicker at the cost to their economy while keeping up research wise. This is no longer true the grain advantage is a huge factor in what has now become the research race and the side that enjoys a considerable advantage in the research race is the side with the least grain upkeep commitment. Thats definitely not the combined arms approach but it definitely suits the tank/tac spammer like a glove.

THE RECENT UPDATES. Anyone else concerned about these massive changes...let it be know.

In my opinion these changes are too drastic on terms of COW game-play, I think that the half rate research is narrowly acceptable, notwithstanding the fact that the alternative food cost is perturbed...

I will note that the attack damage of mechanized infantry versus tanks has been reduced 50%, this is the best decision made thus far and suitable to the recent detrimental reorientation.

The infrastructure and Naval yards build time and those costs incurred are not in the better standards of COW strategy. I would hope that these changes are not synonymous to the paratrooper introduction, this unit type is completely overrated on terms of COW.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt, since I've not begun a new map as of now to see it in action for myself, but I am very concerned about the change in research from goods to food. Idk what their game is about that and frankly I don't like it.

"While food became important in later stages of a game round, players experienced a large surplus of food during earlier stages of the game. This change will give players means to invest the food they otherwise do not use."

I for one can not even begin to confirm this, I've been building up a large surplus of food because it becomes really freaking scarse later on, and now with this change we are being forced to spend it on research as well to make this problem even worse? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Right now I am in the middle of a pacific war map, for days I've been struggling to get my food shortage under control after conquering like 6 players, one after the other. My morale's at over 90% with most provinces even being at 100%, I've stopped building units almost entirely to pump my resources into infrastructure to get food production up everywhere, yet I'm still in the red by over 100, and now the devs decide that food was in such high supply that you have to spend it on research now? Ugh...

Granted, I also have no idea how We normalized province resource consumption: Lowered Food consumption and raised Goods consumption. will play out, I could just be ranting right now, but I am quite unenthusiastic about this change.

Food is definitely not in high supply after a certain stage, to me this change would mean that after that certain stage I'd be more or less crazy to throw away my food for research since my provinces will go hungry even faster than before.

Oh and one more edit since this has slipped my mind concerning food and stuff:

Last time I was ranting about the scarcity of food I was talked down by people who told me that one has to keep it slow, that food adds a "strategic" resource to the pool, forcing you to think about building up your production and punishing you for over-extending your lines, but since the last update, I do think that those people are just full of it. My coalition and I have been taking it slow, conquering those 6 players took me 20 days, yet me and another one are still in the red with our food, how much slower should we have gone about this? On the other side of the pond the other coalition meanwhile have steamrolled through Asia and after that change which lowered the victory points needed for winning, they're really close to that. This just does not add up at all.

My coalition and I followed peoples advice on taking it slow, building our production up ever moreso than before, and the result is that we've been left in the dust by the steam rollers to whom food production seems to be of no concern. Make up your freaking mind, geez! Also still I have no clue on when your army becomes too big to supply with food, probably the size is a problem, but what the hell man? I ain't sending like a quarter of my army to its death simply because of food, I've not build up my forces for decoration and giggles, I need those guns at the front!

Thanks for the feedback!

To those worried about food: With this change you actually have a higher food income than before, because the food consumption of provinces was reduced. Therefore it is easier to have a positive food production, and that additional food can now also be invested into research.

As for the concerns about the current meta strategy: This update won't be the last balancing update. As the news post suggests, we will look into the balancing of other game apsects again in the future, including units and buildings.

Some of the balancing concerns brought up here in this thread have actually already been adressed in the update itself. You can read up on all the reasonings in the Beta Forums section if you wish, or you just try the update out yourself.

In general I advice everyone who has concerns to test these changes in a new game round. These changes were in beta testing for roughly 6 weeks and we had multiple fruitful balancing iterations together with our frontline pioneers. So the changes have been tested and are a product of working together with the community. I hope you all give them a chance and try them out .

freezy wrote:

Thanks for the feedback!

To those worried about food: With this change you actually have a higher food income than before, because the food consumption of provinces was reduced. Therefore it is easier to have a positive food production, and that additional food can now also be invested into research.