Metal Seems Overused

Why ??

Metal is used in everything if you think about it

Why? When you're seeing the market selling everything else at more reasonable prices and metal is topped out at 30, it might be a bit unbalanced. It's a game, not real life. So, for balance, thats why.

Sure metal is used for a lot of things, but sometimes it doesn't make much sense either. But you could say the same thing about food, because literally everything requires people to work or use the things you build/produce, aka they need to be fed, thus food should be used more than it is if you think about it too. Not saying it should be rebalanced too, but metal brought more in line with the other resources, yeah that seems only logical to me.

Whether or not anything comes from this feedback, I wanted to get it out there at least.

It's a real life based game

Metal is never 30/unit on the market in my games, nor do I need to buy metal that often. By midgame, I'm usually self sufficient.

I agree... metal is usually he last industry on my "to upgrade" list and it doesn't run out. My early problem resource is often goods, sometimes rare when I go very air-heavy, while the late ones are oil and food. I don't see extreme prices in the market in my games either. Are you talking about a specific map? It might get overused if the map required lots of naval units, for example.

K.Rokossovski wrote:

I agree... metal is usually he last industry on my "to upgrade" list and it doesn't run out. My early problem resource is often goods, sometimes rare when I go very air-heavy, while the late ones are oil and food. I don't see extreme prices in the market in my games either. Are you talking about a specific map? It might get overused if the map required lots of naval units, for example.

Mind you, none of this was a complaint, though but maybe my games have just been too many people going heavy navy at once because I was and they realized they needed to try to compete and started buying up loads of metal driving the price up lol.

Nova0213 wrote:

Metal is never 30/unit on the market in my games, nor do I need to buy metal that often. By midgame, I'm usually self sufficient.

So metal is alright, it seems

This all depends on your doctrine and army composition.

If you are going strongly with tanks (majority of CoW players do this) you will be short steel and oil throughout the match.

If you are going primarily air units you will be down some rare materials.

If you are doing strong infantry and ordinance then you will be down on food and goods.

I believe the resource balance was great because it feeds DIRECTLY into what units I want invest in.

On games where I know I'm going to produce a lot of tanks I will build up oil and steel provinces.

Comintern and I want to spam ordinance and militia? I am investing in my food and goods provinces.

There's a simple reason why metal is being overused and that's because 99% of the COW players make only tanks. Producing only armoured units demands a large supply of metal. Tanks are very easy to counter as more experienced players know that it's the main unit that's being used. Instead of making only tanks make your army more varied, motorized infantry don't require steel and pair well with tanks. Even mechanized infantry, one of the best units in COW with better stats than LT only costs 530 steel.

My point being is that you have to adapt your army to your economy instead of doing always the exact the same thing being tanks tanks tanks and buying up all the steel together with all the others on the map because you don't have the economy to support tanks in the first place.

I'm having usually problems with goods in the early game as I make a lot of artillery early on. In the mid game I'm having trouble with rare resources as my airforce becomes bigger and i need to upgrade them. In the late game oil becomes an issue as the upkeep of navy, air force and armoured units starts to take its toll.

I actually have more trouble with food when expanding my navy haha

Oddly for me its always been metal from early to late game. I don't even spam tanks, my previous game I had a good balance of mostly motorized infantry, a few mech infantry, popped out a bunch of light tanks when I needed to rush out a bunch since these were left at level one, still work great for blitzing and pumping out a unit rapidly. Hardest part was rare and metal for my navy and airforce, but that was because I managed to lose most of my planes while I was asleep and needed to replenish them, so that took a lot of time and effort, plus upgrading the heavily damaged ones that I parked away to wait for repairs.

Metal was mostly due to a fleet of 15 battleships, cruisers, 20 destroyers, and 10-15 carriers, which I did have planes for at one point lol. Every time I saw unprotected tanks though I was chuckling as atk bombers made short work of them, even basic and SP Artillery were just shredding them and heavy tanks while staying out of range.

I'll also note my economy had been a steady top 5, and #1 most of the game, as it is in my current game as well. I do know what I'm doing but I think its the ones that don't know who're driving up the metal prices so badly with their excessive tank spam. Will see how it goes in my current game, if the trend continues as my previous two.

Keep in mind that Industry (both city and rural) requires metal, oil, and rare materials. If you need to improve your metal production, it costs metal, oil, and rare materials. Goods production? Metal, oil, and rare materials. Food production? You guessed it, metal, oil, and rare materials.

What I've learned to do in 1.5 early game is focus on improving industry in metal and oil provinces. Not rares, because early units don't require rares. The second wave of industry is rares, goods, and food. That's independent of which resources will be in short supply later on. The early industry investment in metal and oil is to open up more industry investment.

If you don't do this, then what happens is you run out of metal and oil as soon as you queue up industry improvements. Then you can only build infantry+militia, and you're stuck with a resource imbalance for a while. Early investment in metal and oil industry at the expense of other industry helps to balance out the economy much faster.

z00mz00m wrote:

Keep in mind that Industry (both city and rural) requires metal, oil, and rare materials. If you need to improve your metal production, it costs metal, oil, and rare materials. Goods production? Metal, oil, and rare materials. Food production? You guessed it, metal, oil, and rare materials.

What I've learned to do in 1.5 early game is focus on improving industry in metal and oil provinces. Not rares, because early units don't require rares. The second wave of industry is rares, goods, and food. That's independent of which resources will be in short supply later on. The early industry investment in metal and oil is to open up more industry investment.

If you don't do this, then what happens is you run out of metal and oil as soon as you queue up industry improvements. Then you can only build infantry+militia, and you're stuck with a resource imbalance for a while. Early investment in metal and oil industry at the expense of other industry helps to balance out the economy much faster.

If you have a rural province with metal or oil (or both if you are fortunate enough) I would definitely plop some industry in those just as much as I would in the urban oil and metal.