Research Balancing Update

Attention Generals!

After several weeks of testing, we are releasing a major research balancing update to Call of War! Thanks to all our Frontline Pioneers for their extremely helpful feedback during the testing phase.

Note: All of the following changes are now available in all newly started game rounds!

The research balancing update is the first step of a general balancing review in Call of War. At later stages we will also review other aspects of the game (e.g. units and constructions). Today’s update will implement an overhaul of the research tree. It will increase game pacing and open up a wider variety of strategies for you to work with.

We want players to experience more units in Call of War, including those which are available in the later stages of a game round. The updated research tree will also give you better options to counter enemy attacks.

Here is how we are going to achieve all of that:

Research is available earlier

We want all players to be able to take advantage of as many units as possible. At the moment many iconic units can only be researched in the later stages of a game round. To give more players access to these units we are moving the day on which they are available for research to an earlier stage of the game. On average research time is being cut in half. Currently certain units can’t be researched until day 44. With the new changes you will be able to start researching those units on day 22 or even earlier.

Adjustment of research time

We are also adjusting the pacing of research in Call of War. This means that early research levels can be completed much faster, while later research levels will take much longer to complete. This adjustment will allow you to adapt your strategy much faster in case your opponents catch you off guard. Overall research will be more flexible than ever before.

Costs reflect research pacing

We are also adjusting the resource costs of research. With the new update costs will reflect research pacing. The more time it takes to finalize research on a technology, the higher the costs. While costs for early stages of research are cheaper than before, the more sophisticated technologies will need more time and therefore more resources to complete.

Goods are replaced by food

In tandem with the pacing adjustments we are also replacing all goods needed by research with food. We are doing this to better reflect the effort it takes to conduct research with gameplay mechanics. 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.

Reduced construction time

Last but not least we reduced early construction times to support the increased research speed! For Infrastructure level 1 you will now only need 4 hours to complete construction, instead of the previous 24h. Air Bases level 1 will be completed within 8h instead of the previous 18h.To make the fast construction speed balanced we reduced the hitpoints of Infrastructure, Air Base, Barracks and Naval Base to 5, and reduced their economic ranking factors to 5 as well. We also changed the minimum condition at which Airbases and Infrastructures on level 1 become functioning to 5 out of 5 hitpoints.

General Balancing Changes:

  • We increased Nuclear Rocket costs: Rare Material from 10,000 to 15,000 and Money from 30,000 to 35,000.
  • We normalized province resource consumption: Lowered Food consumption and raised Goods consumption.
  • We increased damage scaling per level of Anti Air. Old air damage levels: 5/6/7/8/10/12. New air damage levels: 5/6.5/8/9.5/11.5/14.
  • We increased damage scaling per level of Motorized Anti Air. Old air damage levels: 6/7.5/9/11/13. New air damage levels: 6.5/8/9.5/12/14.5.
  • We increased Research speed-up cost for 12h from 1,700 to 2,500 gold.
  • We increased Paratrooper range levels: Old range levels: 250/275/300/325. New range levels: 275/300/350/400.
  • We decreased Paratrooper production costs: Food from 1,000 to 500, Goods from 2,000 to 1,750, Manpower from 1,500 to 1,300.
  • We decreased production time of Paratrooper from 48h to 32h.
  • We decreased attacking damage of Mechanized Infantry against unarmored units from 7.5/8/8.5/8.75/9/9.5 to 6/7/8/8.5/9/9.5. Defending values are 50% higher.
  • We decreased attacked damage of Mechanized Infantry against armored units from 3.5/3.75/4/4.25/4.5/4.75 to 2/2.5/3/3.5/4/4.5. Defending values are 50% higher.
Again, all these changes are only available in all newly started game rounds!

Apart from the research balancing update we fix some bugs, too. For details see the complete list of changes below:

Bug fixes:

  • We resolved an issue that led to unknown armies being unselectable near the fog of war border.
  • We resolved an issue that prevented users from deleting their account when using a browser.
  • We resolved an issue that caused the diplomacy trade window to be cut off on some mobile devices.
  • We resolved an issue that caused a glaring sunlight effect in the top left corner of the map.
We hope you like our research balancing update and wish you good luck on the battlefield!

Your Bytro Team

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72 Replies

atreas1 wrote:

Perhaps, if instead of 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20

it was 1, 2, 4, 8, 14, 22, 30

It would make much more sense.

I like the way at the start the game escalates faster now. I hate the fact that already by Day 8 there are maximum 4 types of units around.

Why should level 4 units be available at day 8? If the average 22p game lasts 30-40 days and the average 100p game last 40-60 days how does it make since to have better then half way to max research for units by day 8 meaning by ~20% of the duration of the game for 22p and by 16% game duration for 100p. Hell you can have elite units for over half the duration of the game!

How is this supposed to be balanced? Specially if you consider the lethality of lvl4 units in general and their availability by day 8?

Furthermore just to give a simple example out of many; in what universe do you equate lvl3 militia with lvl2 motorized infantry? Because both are available for research on the same day, Or fighters and tacs, or Destroyers and Battleships?

If that is supposed to be "balanced" I really don't want to see what Bytro considers broken... The old research trees may not have been perfect but it was much more balanced and made much more sense.

First of all, a wrong assumption - that the average 22p map lasts 30-40 days. With the previous research tree, which was WAY slower, I didnt have a single game that lasted more than 30 days apart from my first one. We can say that the average is around 20-30 days, but experienced players will easily finish it in under 20 days (as will happen in my current game btw). Perhaps even before Day 15.

I very carefully avoided the word "balanced" because I happen to believe it is not. I said "better". I also specifically said about the nonsense of equal research times based on only the day.

Furthermore, I have written elsewhere that it is about time to have different research trees for the 22 map and the 100 map - to pretend that they are similar is equivalent to saying that I will make a perfect car that wins both F1 races and cross-country ones.

I'm sure the problems you're describing (big amounts of nukes and high-level planes early in the game) are because players now spend more gold. The early availability of such super-weapons makes it very tempting to press the "I WIN" button.

If you consider this a negative development depends on whether you look at it from player or from company perspective. Anyhow what urgently should be done to soften this is to make rares cost twice the amount of gold as other resources. Currently they cost the same, which makes it all too easy to boost your research with gold.

I'm still convinced the research balancing update is very well balanced as long as nobody uses a lot of gold. Cause if you don't spend much gold, it's a losing strategy to spam tacs, tanks or nukes in early or mid game.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

I'm still convinced the research balancing update is very well balanced as long as nobody uses a lot of gold. Cause if you don't spend much gold, it's a losing strategy to spam tacs, tanks or nukes in early or mid game.
Apart from the fatal "as long as" clause, which certainly will be untrue in bigger maps (simply by the law of propabilities) which would result by definition to unbalanced game, let's be serious now.

I take as an example Day 8 - early game, nothing special. Trust me, the situation in the next days is certainly worse due to research times. Since each research is 20h, practically you can research 8 things in the next 4 days, till the next research cycle starts. 2 of them are necessarily the planes upgrades, plus at least one arty (most probably two), plus at least one armor (some chance of two). Then you need a weapon to fight planes (normal or SP AA) and tanks, certainly either an upgrade on the infantry you use or an AT, and most probably rockets.

In the next 4 days, due to the increase of research time to 30h you will have time to research exactly 6 of these units AGAIN, in order to fight successfully. The rest of the units are thrown in the wastebin for ever.

Congratulations! This balanced upgrade just completely killed the role of the navy, made more than 50% of the units obsolete, and just gives an easy option to pay for a win in the bigger maps.

To the stubborn ones that will reply but the new research trees make more units available earlier on!

Let me preempt you, had the primary objective of this research update been to make more units available sooner there was a much simpler way that was proposed by many, make more research slots available instead of only 2

I do not pretend to know what the ultimate goal of the redesign was, but lets not kid ourselves making more units available sooner was not it.

lol

Kanaris wrote:

To the stubborn ones that will reply but the new research trees make more units available earlier on!

Let me preempt you, had the primary objective of this research update been to make more units available sooner there was a much simpler way that was proposed by many, make more research slots available instead of only 2

To me it seems to be that before the update, having a lot of troops was prevented by the duration of research and the availability of research at certain times.

Now having a lot of different troops is being prevented by shortage of resources. The result being the same.

A small number of units that have advantageous game mechanics or high damage output gets researched, the rest does not. Before the update because there was no time, after the update because there are no resources.

Seems to me the game indeed has changed in terms of gameplay, but the ''problem'' as in having a small variety of units out of all the possible units available has remained. Additionally the tempo of the game changed a lot with these changes. It is a lot more fast paced than it was before, this in turn means that old strategies and tactics no longer work. And, what I see as the main issue at the moment, high activity has become even more of a deciding factor in the game.

Edepedable wrote:

To me it seems to be that before the update, having a lot of troops was prevented by the duration of research and the availability of research at certain times.

Now having a lot of different troops is being prevented by shortage of resources. The result being the same.

With one footnote: now it is prevented BOTH by shortage of resources at the start of the game, AND by duration after Day 8 (and especially after Day 12).

I'm currently playing 1939 world map with new research tree. I have been fortunate enough to play with players with no evidence of gold use.

Anticipating the quick research of other players has only led me to be more aware or resources in the early game as oppose to trying to match their research ambitions.

Focusing on tactics and resource management especially with infrastructure in core resource producing territories has led me to be the only player left with resources enough to continue research and troop builds.

Previously resource production was a secondary concern with troop building the primary. This seems to have switched.

I think the changes have unfortunately favoured the golders and not the tacticians

It should be noted that all changes are made in terms of greater Bytro profits.

Unfortunately for real players - this is the way to hell.

Now the game is ideal for players (as someone wrote here) who can and want to pay pressing the "win" button.

At least limit gold spending to (for example) 25k per day and put some logic into the research tree.

Or to add new games to the choice of new games that would not allow gold to be spent and at the same time would not be rewarded (but this is a total utopia :)).

Now CoW is a children's patch with credit card access.

When the big maps will stop seeing players, after it is realized what will probably happen eventually there, this whole thing might be revised. That is the only practical way.

It is not bad to exist a method to win via gold. It is bad that the method is so easy and (comparatively) cheap and without real possibility of counter with normal play.

Mr. Bridger wrote:

Why doesn't a certain level (lvl 6) in the "normal" Naval research tree need to be investigated to produce Nuclear BS, Nuclear subs and Nuclear Carriers? now I can produce nuclear carriers without knowing the construction of at least level 1 normal carrier ...?!
In case it was intended to drop that dependency, that indeed was a really very bad idea. That change should be... no, must be reverted!

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