Balancing the game/rocket, tactical bomber and infantry criticism

start of part 2

So what kind of solutions do I propose? Probably nothing that has not been mentioned before somewhere on the forum, if you can bare with me, read on.

Make research somewhat faster, because the research tree widens, a lot! starting with 13 researchable options and ending in 31. I think this could easily be done by making follow up research increasingly faster instead of slower. This should lead to players researching not only one unit because with the other following changes you will need more than just tactical bombers. It would offer some welcome room for my suggestions yet to come.

Since there is a gap for a unit that destroys buildings well and travels by land, I propose a new unit. The katyusha rocket artillery. Splitting the rocket as it is now into two units, rockets like they are now at level two and katyusha launchers. Both would be researchable after rockets level 1. Rockets would still have their huge range and huge power output for demolishing buildings, but would be much less effective against units. On the other hand the katyusha woulde be somewhat effective against infantry tech tree units and also with building demolishing capabilities. I imagine it would fire only once every 6,8 or 12 hours replicating both their slow reload rate as well as rockets fast build time, evening things out again. For the game this could also fit nicely into needed airport repair time. Range would be more than artillery and less than railroad guns maybe 130 or 140 km. It would require a rare metal upkeep, this would reflect rocket technology being used in a normal army branch. It should be able to do quite some damage to infantry, a lot to buildings, very little to armor and ships. Defensive values would be horrible of course, like with infantry artillery and rockets not yet fired. The capabillities it has against armor would be somewhat lost. But with tank destroyers and anti-tank guns around I think there are good solutions against armor already. It would fill up a niche position in the game that is not yet filled and makes building destroying a more feasible tactic/strategy. Their reload time would not be much of an issue if they are used to actually fire at forts and/or airfields to slow down your enemy. If needed they could surely also offer some support at bottleneck positions to addanother lair to the defences. One more reason to root for this has to be this, katyusha's are really cool.

Make tactical bombers and other airplanes less effective at multitasking. Narrow their patrol range and have them not take over each other’s effective range (tactical bombers doing damage inside of interceptors their patrol range). Decrease their range.

In light of previous nerving I propose another new unit, the scout plane. It would have bigger range and patrol capabilities than other aircraft and be cheap. This makes interceptors have something to also be doing some home defense. And with more interceptors up (in reality not a lot probably). But it would mean less recourses could go into tactical bomber making since this way you would send them of blind without first scouting areas.

Make airplanes and rockets only be able to take of from airports that have 75% hit points instead of 50%. This should, combined with the possibility of another unit that can take out buildings make the advance of huge air fleets more troublesome.

Lower manpower requirements for infantry (the unit, not entire tech branch), I see no real need to use them in light of all I said above. Besides, armored brigades have infantry in them. No divisions ever were compiled of nothing but armored vehicles, something that the amount of required manpower now does not really show as much. Also since infantry is a cheap and bread and butter kind of unit I see no reason for it to be so expensive in manpower. This being said I think that militia needs this decrease in manpower even more. They are already weak enough as it is and since it was just people hiding out in the woods it makes sense that they are not as big as an actual army regiment. The reason I would vote for decreasing manpower cost for infantry instead of increasing manpower production overall is because it would simply be spend of other units. Infantry is to expensive in manpower compared to what you get for it (again looking at their unimpressive power gain with every level) and damage it does to other units. The manpower cost makes infantry the most expensive unit in the game. Since players do grow in manpower production throughout the game manpower is often not an issue late game. But that is precisely when no one bothers to make infantry anyway. Also, their better counterpart the motorized infantry already costs less manpower and actually does better damage.

Give anti-air a defense range. Even if they have a defense range of only 10 or 20 km in which they do 50% damage this would be a big help. One of the main reasons I think tactical bombers are somewhat overpowered is because their counter, anti-air, is forced to fight frontline battles, something it is not at all good at. They have to protect frontline troops from planes attacking while you are in a fight. This means that over the lengthy of a campaign they will always die down over time. So when you come to an actual enemy they need to be replaced. Along with other troops needing replacement the manpower issue comes into play here as well. This change could also make people use artillery more in the way it should be and make for multi layered battles that need a little more planning than it is now.

Anti-air, anti-tank and artillery need their speed buffs earlier in the upgrade tree. Players now just leave them behind because they are slow. I surely know this is each individual players own lack of tactical planning, I mention this more than anything since compared to airplanes, another gap gets wider this way.

I really like Call of War and the strategical play it offers. I would not like to see the game die down to people getting sick of every game just building a certain kind of unit as fast and in a big as possible quantities. For this I think Call of War needs a tweak, so that there will be more than just one way to win maps.

I sinceirly hope fellow players can see what I am trying to say, let me and the forum know what you think. I do not expect the call of war people to implement any ofthese suggestions. Though I’d still like to know what people think.

With kind regards,

Edepedable

Actually, tac bombers can be easily countered by interceptors (something you may have left out)

Not something I left out really, I know interceptors are very decent protection against air. The assumption on my part is that people all use tac bomber/interceptor winged combo's at the least, some even with strat bombers and naval bombers to for damage soak. This way their defensive rating is that of tac bombers + the interceptors and other planes combined. Stopping them with interceptor wings is possible, but you need a lot. Since it is the only thing interceptors are good for it is also a bit of a waste of recorces to spend a lot of it on interceptors. Rocket fighters dont make sense because of their SBDE of 3 and expenses.

My main issue is with the way tac bombers work now, not even as much their stats. One thing I forgot to mention and is a big part of this is that the green pizza slice area they can operate in also makes them super powerful, interceptors to. By letting a scout plane come into the game that has more range than the other airplanes and more of a green pizza slice area to fly in they would be useful. This would divide the muli usability that airplanes have in the game now, more specificly but not only tactical bombers. Historicly more acurate to since fighter and bombers only were sent out to go on missions, not to act as scouts (interceptors and naval bombers were to some degree though).

I think it is more about a lot of game mechanics working in the advantage of airplanes and tactical bombers specifically. The defender, anti-air and SP anti-air are in no way helped by the game's mechanics while planes are in a multitude of ways. By having a defensive range on anti-air I think things would balance out a lot more.

Hey, thanks for all the detailed feedback.

Some of the points mentioned are being looked at by us as well and when we have more balancing updates next year we will certainly revisit some of the points.

You also suggested some new unit features, these are generally more tricky to do since they require more dev work. Usually we try to go with balancing stats if that way we can achieve the same goal, with less effort needed. But that's only fyi.

ECONOMIC DAMAGE: Every time you capture an enemy province you do damage to their economy. You do damage to the buildings in the provinces when you capture. You also lower the morale of surrounding provinces which weakens their economy, Sweeping through an enemy's core provinces is devastating to the enemy's economy. You don't need to hold them. It also greatly reduces the enemy's ability to produce more troops.

In most case, it is more desirable to capture the buildings than to destroy them.

Bombardment lowers morale of a province and thus has a negative effect on the enemy's economy.

If the enemy has level 1 industrial complexes, any damage renders them useless till they can be repaired which takes rares. Early in the game damage to an enemy's industrial complexes can be a major blow.

I agree tactical bombers become more powerful as the game progresses. AA helps a little against them. You often need a lot of AA with other units to soak up damage to counter a stack of tac bombers. As you pointed out, you do need interceptors to protect your tacs if your enemy has interceptors.

You can counter tacs or int/tacs with interceptors or interceptors/tacs and AA/SP AA stacks.

An effective tactic can be to just kill off melee units defending the airbases and overrun the airbases. If the tacs have no airbase within range, they turn into convoys. Surprisingly, a lot of players leave many of their airbases undefended thinking that they are out of harm's way. As the tac range increases this becomes harder to pull off.

Having tacs patrolling while you are away is an invitation to have someone destroy them.

Tac Bombers are more effective than infantry in the real world, so what is your point in trying to level them out in the first place. If all the units were equal it would be a pretty boring game. The reality is airpower is superior, in this game and real life tactics, so of course Tacs are superior. Inf has its place, Tacs can't take territory, Inf can, so you didn't mention that small detail.

Venicethemenace wrote:

Tac Bombers are more effective than infantry in the real world, so what is your point in trying to level them out in the first place.

Hello to all,

Lawrence Czl wrote:

ECONOMIC DAMAGE: Every time you capture an enemy province you do damage to their economy. You do damage to the buildings in the provinces when you capture. You also lower the morale of surrounding provinces which weakens their economy, Sweeping through an enemy's core provinces is devastating to the enemy's economy. You don't need to hold them. It also greatly reduces the enemy's ability to produce more troops.

In most case, it is more desirable to capture the buildings than to destroy them.

Bombardment lowers morale of a province and thus has a negative effect on the enemy's economy.

My point is more that there is only 1 viable strategic solution to defeating your opponents in the game, destroying their units. While during the second world war, doing economical damage was a big part of the war. For the game I think it makes sense that building destruction is more included because it is a recource gathering army build strategy game and also would better represent history.

As it is there are plenty of situations where destroying someone's buildings/economy is a desirable result. For example: enemy fortifications, crucial enemy recource provinces, there is only one enemy left on a map (end game) adding production capabilities is by then no longer a priority. Now especially during those first two scenarios I think having another unit capable of doing good damage to buildings is a gap in the game not yet filled. Strategic bombers do direct damage, they themselves have to fly to what they destroy bringing risks with them and usually makes them wear down due to received damage building up over time. Rockets are amunition themselves and have no such issues. The gap could be filled by a unit that can possibly do damage without receiving damage so shooting amunition, thus being ranged, therfore my sugestion of katyusha's.

The unit would be a new type of building destroyer that is damagable, but is capable of doing damage without receiving damage. I think it would add another interesting layer of play to the game when attacking fortifications and hampering the enemies economy.

Lawrence Czl wrote:

I agree tactical bombers become more powerful as the game progresses. AA helps a little against them. You often need a lot of AA with other units to soak up damage to counter a stack of tac bombers. As you pointed out, you do need interceptors to protect your tacs if your enemy has interceptors.

You can counter tacs or int/tacs with interceptors or interceptors/tacs and AA/SP AA stacks.

An effective tactic can be to just kill off melee units defending the airbases and overrun the airbases. If the tacs have no airbase within range, they turn into convoys. Surprisingly, a lot of players leave many of their airbases undefended thinking that they are out of harm's way. As the tac range increases this becomes harder to pull off.

Having tacs patrolling while you are away is an invitation to have someone destroy them.

Venicethemenace wrote:

Tac Bombers are more effective than infantry in the real world, so what is your point in trying to level them out in the first place. If all the units were equal it would be a pretty boring game. The reality is airpower is superior, in this game and real life tactics, so of course Tacs are superior. Inf has its place, Tacs can't take territory, Inf can, so you didn't mention that small detail.

Linking this to your economy in game it is easier to build a lot of airplanes than it is to have enough anti-air in all places you need them. In the endgame of maps where my army is 300 units or larger airplanes account for about more than 100 of that number. If my enemy also uses airplanes in large numbers than the other third is almost all anti-air/SP anti-air. The point here is that economicaly making a lot of airplanes makes a lot more sense. Because of their speed they can be wherever you need them. Airplanes cost less manpower than anti-air (as devs also noticed according to the last upgrade) which also gives a huge advantage. Anti air costs 750 manpower, tac bombers cost 400. If a tac bomber is better than anti-air, there is no reason to spend manpower on anti-air (the reason this does not count for SP anti-air is because tbombers are less effective against them because of their armor class).

Manpower is a big concern since it does not grow into abundance as the othe recources do throughout the game.

I will soon be posting a tactic/strategy breakdown where I discuss the use of all the units in the game. This should quite evidently show that tactical bombers (to a lesser degree interceptors) and rockets are to powerfull in the game as they are now.

Kind regards,

Edepedable

So what is your point ?

Edepedable wrote:

..

In the real world anti-air is replaced by surface to air missiles as time progresses but in the game that does not happen either. My point is that they grow appart to much when looking at Call of War through a gaming perspective and I want the game I love to play to be fun to play and complicated. With tactical bombers having a superior role in the game that ruins the game's experience. Tac bombes on level one do 3 damage to infantry and anti-air on level one does 5 to airplanes. On level 5 tac bombers do 9 damage to infantry and anti-air does 10 to air. After this tac bombers get another level bringing their infantry damage to 11. Tactical bombers become better at fighting anti air than anti air is at fighting tactical bombers, that seems a little strange to me. Combined with all the game mechanics at work tactical bombers have advantages that anti air can just never compete with.

..

From day 16, air force will become increasingly superior to unarmored AA / unit stacks, that's right, but gets worse against stacks with SP-AA mixed with other armored units.

So, as in reality.. >> after 16 days of a map (which means 8 years war) infantry-class units should no longer run unprotected through the open terrain, but secure the terrain while sit in fortifications whereas armored units make the conquests.

It is not that difficult as some think to operate with ground forces and prevail against players with the air priority.

Aircraft can not conquer terrain.

Apart from the option to stay online during air battles and manually control own planes (to restart the patrols), against big enemy air forces it's more usefull and efficient (both militarily and economically) if you deploy well mixed ground forces than to waste own planes in wear-out-air-battles ..

..which would be just the same as e.g. someone attacks with 25 tanks + 25 ATs vs. 25 ATs + 25 tanks, or with 40 infantry vs. 40 militia..

Always remember that this is not an action game or a simulation, but an (animated) board game.

If one plays slower and more thoughtful there' no problems against airplanes.

Hello fellow players and devs,

Venicethemenace wrote:

So what is your point ?

(1) The game is unbalanced because it allows for both a ''destroy buildings'' and a ''kill units'' strategy, but heavily favors a ''kill units'' strategy.

(2) Destroying buildings should be a more viable strategic move than it is now (more cost/return efficient).

(3) Part of the reason that a ''kill units strategy'' is more (cost) effective is because of some units doing their job to well. Mostly tactical bombers and rockets have to many good things going for them.

(3.1) Tactical bombers and rockets have a lot of traits that make them to much of a game changer.

Tactical bombers (to some extent all airplanes but tacbombers are the ones involved in the ''kill units'' strategy)

- gain intel,

- flee danger easily so can often avoid dying, in contrast to ground units that are usually just dead if they run into something they can not kill,

- their weakness of having to refuel can be somewhat neglected because of patrol,

- they can patrol (when having to fly far away better option than attacking),

- have a wide pizza slice area in which they can operate after take-of this meaning they can scout, pick favorable targets and run when done with just one click.

- they can attack for full damage when enemies are close (patrolling = 0.25 damage every 15 minutes, attacking = 1 per refuel) if your enemy is 15 minuites away, refuel takes 15 minuites they can do 1 damage every 45 minuits instead of 1 per hour like every other unit in the game.

- very fast and get faster with every upgrade thus making escaping nearly impossible

- big range that also get bigger with every upgrade

- low in cost (by the time they are useful around level 3 you already have level 5 industrial complexes and a lot of your core is somewhat fully upgraded. So no matter how much resources they cost, you can build them)

- airplanes can be repaired with gold when up in the air, this means that some gold players can have indestructable airfleets.

(3.2) Rockets are mostly to strong because they can do to much. Game mechanics gives players that use rockets have an upper hand.

Rockets

- rockets can destroy buildings/units at the same time!,

- are hard to kill when not yet used because they are hard to find and far away in enemy territory while still usable,

- impossible to kill once launched,

- cost less in resources than they destroy (by far),

- can be outrun but can also be made inescapable (locking divisions into frontline battles, then launching),

- can gain intel (they spot units as they fly through the air),

- have a huge range,

- ignore fortifications at level 4

- can to easily be mass produced (rockets level 1 need a level 1 airfield, after upgrading to level 2 all your level 1 rockets become level 2, this trait can be exploited).

- because they hardly cost manpower you can attack without spending a much needed manpower while costing your enemy a lot of manpower. You save a lot of manpower while you can still destroy that of your enemy.

- give you their flight time, if you see an enemy with your planes and you see they will be in a certain town 30 minuits from now you can fire a rocket, see that it takes the rocket 23 minuits to get there and then wait 7 minuits to fire a full volley from that same location.

(4) Above reasons make to many players just spam tac bombers and rockets, making for a very one sided gaming experience.

(5) To balance them out I propose the following

(5.1) Split up the rocket starting at level 2 as it is now into two units (flying bombs (rocket level 1 now) would stay

as it is but be called ''flying bomb''). Level 2 rockets would be split into rockets and katyusha's. Separating the

flying bomb from the line of rockets is very important (see point 3 under rockets)

(5.1.1) Rockets would be somewhat as they are now, but without the unit destroying capability, visual range

during flight, flight time displayed (you can just see in the papers when it hits) they should still do damage to

units, but very little.

(5.1.2) Katyusha's would take over the bulding destroy capabilities of the rocket combined with (to a certain

extent) their unit destroy capability.This should also make building destroying a more viable strategy in Call of

War and make them far more counterable than rockets are (For a more detailed description on how katyusha's

would function see my original post, part 2)

(5.2) Split up all the capabillities airplanes have now into airplanes as they are now (not so much the naval

bomber, but its should not be able to have a big visual range when flying over land), plus one extra unit (scout plane).

- ranges should not improve this much with each upgrade (for interceptors and tactical bombers).

- speed should not improve this much with each upgrade.

- the pizza slice area planes an operate should be smaller for tactical bombers and interceptors, (they were

planes sent on particular missions anyway)

- More airfield related than planes but their refuel time should take longer and not improve as much with

airfield level ups. Perhaps airfield lvl 1 20 minuits, airfield lvl 2 15 minuits and airfield lvl 3 10 minuits.

- make airplanes only repairable with gold when on the ground.

(5.2.1) Implement a scout plane that can do what planes can do now, or even have a wider pizza slice area to

fly in than planes do now.

(6) Infantry and militia are two of the worst units in the game because of their manpower cost, there is little manpower around early game. Training 1 infantry or milita unit will cost you more than 2 light tanks in terms of manpower. The upkeep of manpower that infantry does have and armored vehicles don't is not a help in this at all. Training 6 infantry/militia units will make you be able to not build 1 light tank every day manpower wise.

I think that summarizes it pretty well. I say all of this in the hope that the game will be improved and even more fun to play. Since it is a strategy game a lot of people just calculate what the best options for units are. At this point though rockets and tactical bombers are more helped by game mechanics than any other units. One addition to solving this over powerd status of these units would be to improve the game mechanics of anti-air/SP anti-air. The cost in resources for anti-air in most of all manpower and lack of compatible game mechanics make them bad at what they are supposed to do. Implementing a range on them would I believe solve this problem to some extent.

freezy wrote:

Hey, thanks for all the detailed feedback.

Some of the points mentioned are being looked at by us as well and when we have more balancing updates next year we will certainly revisit some of the points.

You also suggested some new unit features, these are generally more tricky to do since they require more dev work. Usually we try to go with balancing stats if that way we can achieve the same goal, with less effort needed. But that's only fyi.

I know that major changes in the game are not an easy feat to pull of. But I don't think balancing stats will fix this to be honest. The issue is a lot bigger than stats alone so I think it makes sense that the solution should also be.

The major problem for rockets I think is that it is a unit that is on another governing level than all the others. With the exeption of nuclear bombers and nuclear rockets it is the only unit in the game that is acutally amunition, I think this gives it some unique challanges into balancing it into the game. Tactical bombers and airplanes as a whole just have to much going for them right now.

Kind regards,

Edepedable

Hello fellow player,

Restrisiko wrote:

Always remember that this is not an action game or a simulation, but an (animated) board game.

If one plays slower and more thoughtful there' no problems against airplanes.

Lets take your profile for example to illustrate my point:

You are a level 79 player with more than 2k of pvp kills while losing not even 150 yourself.

Your kills: 2232

Your achievements

Retributer: >1500 (gold medal)

Train driver: >1000 (gold medal)

Carpet bomber: 396 kills

Engineer: 1355 kills

Green baret: 0 kills (meaning you got all your engineer kills from rockets/railroad guns/nukes)

Little boy: 359 kills

Destroyer of worlds: 90 kills

Train drives: >1000 (gold medal)

Total kills with rockets/nukes/railroad guns: 2110

So that means that without being able to exploit the mechanics of all above mentioned units you would score about 2232 - 2110 = 112 kills versus 131 deaths of your own (Ralroad guns are among these because I can not seperate them from the others, I do not think Railroad guns are overpowered though). Meaning without these heavily exploitable mechanics your rating would be 112/131 = 0.85 instead of 17.04. Although it is likely that you used these lost units to lock enemy divisions in place and then shoot them with rockets judging from your retributer achievement.

Your stats

Your total losses: 131

Tactical bombers: 30 / 1.31 = 22.9% of total losses

Interceptors: 24 18.3%

Light tanks: 18 13.7%

Submarines: 17 12.9%

Infantry: 15 11.5%

Rockets 0 0%

Since your total losses is only 131 that means that every unit type with 13 losses = 10%, I picked every unit type with more than 13. Combining tacbombers and interceptors that is 41.2% of all your losses.

What stands out is that you have zero rocket losses, with more than 1500 of them made. Now if this does not show that the mechanics of rockets and tacbombers are being exploited I do not know what will.

So judging from your achievements and stats you should get precisely what I mean here.

Kind regards,

Edepedable

To the developers:

If you don't want to give AA a range because it id more work than changing unit stats, would it be any easier to add a new building, AA Defenses?

Regarding the complaint about the kill units strategy being too much better than the destroy buildings strategy:

That is historically accurate and I like it that way.

Another suggestion:

When planes or rockets attack a stack that is locked down in combat with friendly units, there should be some kind of "friendly fire" mechanic. Very realistic and hopefully not very much work for developers.

There is friendly fire in nukes (as I've personally experienced and regretted), but I would also like it to be implemented in bombing-related stuff too (even for arti, but minor).

dioglaert wrote:

Another suggestion:

When planes or rockets attack a stack that is locked down in combat with friendly units, there should be some kind of "friendly fire" mechanic. Very realistic and hopefully not very much work for developers.

dioglaert wrote:

Regarding the complaint about the kill units strategy being too much better than the destroy buildings strategy:

That is historically accurate and I like it that way.

From the article you can retrive the following, right unde the banner of Allied bombing statistics 1939-1945:

''According to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Allied bombers between 1939 and 1945

dropped 1,415,745 tons of bombs over Germany (51.1% of the total bomb tonnage dropped by Allied

bombers in the European campaign)'' (source mentioned above).

Now that is 51.1% of all bombings that were not aimed at military units but rather at infrastructure, industry, workers housing and such (its all in the article). There is a reason there is both a tactical bomber and a strategical bomber in the game. Your argument of the ''killing units'' strategy being more historicly accurate is invalid.

Now since it is a game I do not think that things should be even, but more even than now is a very welcomming feat.

Kind regards,

Edepedable

Some people are never happy.