I would like to see the neighboring province morale influence receive a better balance treatment. As it is, now, you can only get a maximum of +15 morale from neighboring provinces. But you can have a bad morale effect with a much higher maximum much greater than -30 morale from neighboring provinces (and this doesn't count neighboring enemies). And, I don't think you get any effect from neighboring allies.

The problem is that a province has to be in the green to give a positive morale to its neighboring provinces. That means that it's already at 80% morale or higher. But, a negative morale kicks in just below that. So, unless you have a very high morale, over all, your provinces will try to bring each other down. This is especially problematic in far-flung map-spanning empires where your distance-to-capital morale modifier has a strong effect up to -39 for most of your provinces. Since the Fortress bonus has a maximum positive effect of +25, there just isn't enough to alleviate the stacked negatives fighting against you. Add on to that the fact that occupied provinces only produce resources at a maximum of 25% of their original potential and you have a piss-poor economy that must be maxed out early and often just to keep from sinking. And if you want to keep your economy from going into the starvation death spiral (another negative morale modifier), then you have to farm a bunch of enemy and NPC capitals just to keep yourself afloat.

This becomes so tedious. The micromanagement required to keep your economy up when you have a large empire is exhausting and totally takes away from the time needed to properly manage your forces and engage in combat. I'm in a match where I have over a 1000 units and half the world's army, and yet, I can't spend any time controlling them and I keep losing units to my enemy's hit and fade tactics simply because he's online a lot more than I am. Even if I used build queues with High Command, I can't stop the micromanagement necessary to keep my economy in the black....and I have an epic economy! My empire spans almost all of Eurasia and North America, most of the Middle East and parts of Africa and Australia. I'm about to invade South America to end the match, but I need to advance slowly just so I can try to raise my stats against the guy that's currently fleeing before my armies (to try to even out our scores; he's killed far more of my units than I've killed of his).

Now, if the neighboring province morale modifier was more balanced, say, having a value of zero not at 80%, but at 50%, then empire could be mostly in the green around the world...and that without my farmed capitals. My nation is Finland, yet I took over eastern Europe and then Asia and then North America and now the rest of Europe. I have most of the northern hemisphere and I've centered my capital in mid-Asia. Yet, my empire has lots of green morale provinces even in North America because I keep taking a capital every day (sometimes two!).

Sure, my strategy for morale is strong enough to combat the horrible imbalance. But most players aren't that savvy with their economies and morale. And it's really not fair to punish a player for empire growth by ruining their morale both with the distance-to-capital and neighboring province morale factors. There aren't enough positive factors to counter this (after two years, there is still no positive modifier buildings aside from Forts and the capital). The negative factors outweigh the positive factors by four or five times. The negative neighboring factor is more than twice as big as the positive neighboring factor. There is no positive (ally) neighbors whereas there is a negative (enemy) neighbors factor. And there's the ubiquitous distance-to-capital factor as well as the number of enemies factor. Add in the occasional nuclear explosion and you can have a combined negative factor adding up to nearly -200 points whereas the most you can get positively (outside the capital itself) is +40 with Forts and green neighbors.

So, the following possible solutions can bring fair balance to this issue:

• Lower the median morale level for neighborly influence (+/-) from 80% to 50%.
  
• Add allied neighborly influence.
  
• Reduce the distance-to-capital morale influence.
  
• Add secondary "Forbidden City" secondary capitals.
  
• Add other buildings for positive morale effects (i.e., monuments, city halls, recruiting centers (which could also increase Manpower growth)).
  
• Add a way to naturalize conquered provinces (like in Conflict of Nations).
  
• Add hero/leader units that can raise morale like a portable capital.
  
• Add a regular unit that can increase the effectiveness of a fort's morale influence by a small percentage (cumulative up to and additional 25%, for example). Or allow existing units to automatically accomplish this by fortifying enough of them in a fortress.
  
• Add a "trending" morale modifier for players who are generally winning or losing in war in their troop counts casualty lists (e.g., if 20,000 of your troops die to 30,000 of enemy troops, it would give you a national positive morale modifier of +5; if 40,000 of your troops die to 10,000 of enemy troops, it would give you a negative morale modifier of -10). This could have a day-to-day spillover effect for overall trend across multiple days (older values would be weighed less against the overall modifier. Additionally, coalitions and teams could have an option to have shared combined values that can be turned on or off in the match creation.
  

TL;DR Let's add some more positive morale modifiers or reduce the strength of the negative morale modifiers.

@Lawrence Czl, thanks for reminding me of some more of the negatives. Yep, there are so many. Yet the positives are so few. It makes sense that there would be more negatives than positives, given that, in the real world, peoples' collective morale can plummet rather quickly over perceived problems. But the balance is tilted too far in the negative direction! Simply put, whereas the number of negatives are realistic, the number of positives is not.

Where is the rallying cry of a heroic leader whose call to arms spurs an overdrive of the economy? Where is that innovative spirit that a society might utilize to greater-than-average effect because of the noble and just cause of their nation's fight? Where is that lock-step unity of purpose of a people deceived by their tyrannical, yet enigmatic, dictator?

Where is that super production bonus which was achieved because one of your nation's wealthy industrialists has converted their automotive business empire into one that builds the latest and most innovative dive-bomber frames because one of his geologists discovered a new seam of aluminum ore and also because that tycoon's business rival's son just so happened to wed his daughter and so his competitor, of whom happens to own a massive smelting plant, is now willing to work with him to convert that aluminum ore into the necessary materials for that tycoon's automobile-turned-dive-bomber factory?

The point is that there are so many potential and realistic positive morale factors that aren't even considered whilst the negative morale factors have been carefully researched and added to the game. I mean, I love a challenge, but there is no fun in having a negative challenge without the potential to alleviate it with positive rewards. And farming your enemy's capitals isn't a realistic solution. "Yes, we keep deceiving our enemies into thinking that their war effort is going to turn around and we won't invade their latest capital...even though their army is gone, their leaders are in chains, and their factories have all been seized, ha ha ha!"

There is a very simple reason for this. Though you can have a 100% chance of rebellion in a province, that doesn't mean it will always happen...it only means it is very likely to happen. Unfortunately, the game designers don't seem to understand the very purpose of the concept of "100%" which implies that a rebellion will "always" happen. This isn't a glitch, it's a design flaw. But, the color codes are a very handy way to indicate your morale. If you have lots of red, deep red, and beet red provinces, you've got problems.

As for the 5% gain (or any percentage gain), the likelihood is that the province was pushed down to zero morale by other factors that are no longer true (i.e., a nuke was used previously but now is no longer registered, or maybe it had Interceptors or Strategic Bombers hovering over it all day and they've either since left the province sometime before you examined it or they're still there but fog-of-war is preventing you from seeing/detecting units in or above that province.

Actually, this isn't uncommon and I've seen lots of players do this. If one or more nations is playing a long time, have built up an incredible economy, or are just plain savvy at avoiding casualties in battle, then high unit totals are completely doable. Without spending Gold, a player can reach numbers of units as high as they want so long as they have the stockpiled resources to source them, the available factories to build them, and the resource production quotas to maintain them.

In the match that I mentioned, I said that my empire pretty much spans the entire northern hemisphere. This isn't bragging, I actually have a gigantic empire...and it's not the first time for me. Yes, it took a while to get that far, and the match is about three months old. But I achieved most of my gains in the first couple months and then kinda back-burnered it when some special challenge matches were created and when my alliance had a couple team games.

But it's plunking on; I've got victory waiting for me the moment I decide to push my line forward in South America, and the fleeing forces who are "returning" to their homeland in Africa are being intercepted even as I type this. For all intents and purposes, the match is already over, but I'm toying with my opponent because he got on my nerves early on with some very unsporting behaviours that won't be discussed here. Like a cat with it's prey, I'm having a little fun while taking the time to improve my stats.

While you may be fascinated by me having 1000+ units, it is actually kinda embarrassing for me to admit that I've actually built several thousand units over the course of the match yet have lost so many as pawns in war. I mentioned that I'm trying to fix my stats. This is because the opponent that I'm at war with, presently, has actually taken out easily double or triple the number of forces that I've destroyed of his. And that's war. Some players worry about having the "perfect" stats...and to others like them, stats are "so" important in deciding who joins your alliance or in-game coalition.

But it's not about stats, as far as I'm concerned. I'm more interested in winning the fight than coming out unscathed. Sure, it seems a little tyrannical in terms of real-world casualties, but if you want to achieve victory, you have to be willing to sacrifice whatever and whomever that is needed (it is a game after all....those casualty lists are only numbers, not souls). Now, though I apply that principle in-game, I'm actually a very moral person and don't betray my allies. The reputation of a player's personal character means a whole lot more to me than their win/loss stats. And this is probably one of the biggest reasons why people like to have me on their team. I win at all costs, but I play fair and I play nice....aggressive, yet nice.

You are amusing....to take bits and pieces of my post out of context the way you have. You raise a strawman argument. I never said I can't win. I never said I can't manage my economy. I never said I can't put in the "effort" to make these things happen.

What I did say was that the tediousness of the game's micromanagement gets old when you are playing long-term as I have. In the match that I was in -- and subsequently finished with a very high first place -- I did not shirk my "duties" as the supreme leader of my empire. It was tedious. It was boring. I had to let my enemy take random victories all over the place just so I could live my life a little. Did that mean that I was failing at doing the job required to manage it? Of course not! I simply had other priorities...like a different match that was more important to me within the time constraints that I could afford to spend on gaming. Once that match was over, I redoubled my attention and efforts on the match in question. That was when I brought about the push that would bring down my fleeing enemies once and for all.

It's not a matter of lack of skill...my player score will attest to that. It's not a lack of commitment...my two and a half years of battling through nearly a hundred matches will attest to that. It's not my lack of game understanding...my shear mastery of every trick and nuance of this game for most of that time is an incredible testament to my experience. The only thing that stands in my way -- that has ever stood in my way -- is my lack of the ability to afford High Command.

But even with High Command, with my years of knowledge and experience, I know full well that it's powers to automate some actions and build queues, etc., are insufficient to relieve the long-term needs of micromanaging a gigantic empire in one of the larger maps. It is by my experience that I can assuredly tell of the needs for better game balance. The lack of sufficient methods to alleviate the micromanagement is not an acceptable thing.

The lack of sufficient methods to counter the off-balanced negative effects of morale-manipulation factors are, in themselves, the biggest killer of big empires. It isn't a lack of skill that ruins the economy (though a smart opponent can exploit their size against them), it's the lack of sufficient counter-balance methodologies to maintain economic strength.

It is by my skill and experience that I do use NPC capital farming to maintain a massive economy. Indeed my economies usually are massively overpowered compared to my competitors. In fact, it is very rare for me to encounter ANYONE else who builds up their economy at least as high as I do without using copious amounts of Gold premium points to enhance their productivity. As stated many times in the past, I don't use Gold. I use careful manipulation of a match's relevant in-game elements so that I never introduce a non-mental external factor into game-play (I don't believe in using outside influences in a competition...to me, that's cheating).

Is my Food in danger of a death spiral when I play? Am I not building up my Food provinces sufficiently as you supposed? Of course not! Usually, by mid-game, my Food output is one of the highest in a match and I have seeded Industrial Complexes in copious numbers of non-urban Food provinces. In order to achieve that, I've already had to invest in growing my Rare Materials provinces. I am producing the various resources at levels that keep up with my needs.

It's all one massive plan that I create and implement in every match. No two matches are the same, but patterns emerge from playing multiple matches on a single map. As an example, for the World map, there are many patterns that can be used to build and grow, depending on innumerable starting factors like where you start, who are your neighbors, what alliances can you form, what are the early trends of the market, and so forth. But with experience, as I've learned, one can create many adaptable playing styles that can fit each situation. The key is to remain dynamic.

But, regardless of one's playing style or styles and starting position, and all the other various starting factors, some basic truths of the game remain the same. For example, for every map that isn't a specially-planned map (like an alliance challenge or a PL match) there are going to be some players that abandon right away. There will be some players that throw all their military into a one-front war while totally ignoring the back-stabber on their other border. There will always be some player or players that max out all available technologies as soon as they're available with Gold expenditures. And there will always be someone throwing bombs and talking smack with poor vocabulary in the World Herald.

So, there are things that are always the same. One of them, as I've pointed out in my prior post, is the economic issue. And, in case you didn't read my post more clearly, I was actually making my statements on behalf of the need of others in the community. I find the micromanagement tedious and I'm sick of it. But I continue to do it because I DO love this game so much. But if the dev team at Bytro were to heed my advice and implement some of my suggestions, not only would I be happy as a faithful CoW community member, but I'm confident that so too will a great many of my fellow Call of War community members be made happy as well.

This would work, I believe, because it would also force you to be more careful when choosing allies. And, consequently, it would force you to rethink who are your current allies. Is your neighbor being a responsible ally and keeping his own morale in check? Are you being a good neighbor or are you at risk of getting abandoned by your coalition? Implementing neighboring nations (allied and [maybe] neutral) morale modifiers would certainly enhance the diplomacy aspect of this game in newfound and wonderful (or mischievous) ways.

While this is essentially what I proposed for the "Forbidden City" effect, I've also thought that maybe it would be cooler if each secondary capital (upto whatever limit of total secondary capitals makes sense on a particular map for that map's size) were to affect the distance to capital ratio not by resetting the rate from that point, but rather by creating a 2D vector gradient such that a province that is closer to one capital than another can have a greater draw to that capital than the other. In other words, the morale modifier could be adapted into a simulation of the effect of cultural influence (similar to another great feature of the Civilization series).

So, while one wants not just to have their capital (or capitals) positioned in a relative-center of their provinces, but they also need to space out their multiple capitals from each other so as to get the maximum-possible effect over wider areas. But, if they space them out too far from each other, their cumulative pulls against a province could have a canceling-out effect (a vector in one direction (positive) "minus" another vector in the opposite direction (negative)) that would actually make that province have an even-greater distance-to-capital penalty.

Now, if that last part seems a little harsh (and I think it is), they could make the accumulation vectors only add to each other and never take away from each other. But then the positives would be too great. If that were so, then it would make more sense to expand on the cultural idea and let foreign capitals have a negative influence on your provinces (their attractiveness as "cultural centers" would pull your people away from your own "culture"...which is, essentially, how the Civilization cultural feature works). Thus, having a foreign capital close to your border would actually lower your provincial morale near that border in a proportionate manner.

However, rather than cloning the Civilization cultural ideas, Call of War could have the diplomatic relationship status have a direct effect on foreign-capital morale modification. So, instead of just blindly having a negative effect on your morale, if you are allied with that other nation (Shared Map agreement or Shared Intelligence agreement with you and/or are a coalition or alliance member with you), their capital could act like a secondary capital to your provinces.

And, if they only have a Right of Way agreement with you, then their capital would have zero effect on your provinces (like the off-balanced neighbor morale of your own provinces (remember that 80% is the median between positive and negative neighbor morale (and I think it should be 50%)). If you have a neutral relationship, their capital would have a small negative effect on your provinces and the worse your relationship status is with that neighbor, the stronger their negative morale effect on your nearby provinces would become (although, to keep from breaking the game, the effect would have to have a smaller range and more-centralized strength within that range (a different gradient than your own capital's effect)).

I think this idea needs to be fleshed out some more, but it could really enhance the dynamic of the game and, if it becomes a successful new component of play, it could be added to other Bytro titles as well. (Man, I really need to get into game development.)

This is kinda what I was thinking about the Fortress boost. I think Militia shouldn't be able to add morale just anywhere. But it makes sense that if they are in their ideal role (e.g., defending the homeland), then they should add to positive morale...upto a maximum. So, if you build a Fortress and man it with Militia, then it's positive morale modifier should increase up to double its original potential based on how many Militia are in it. Perhaps you need two Militia for every level of a Fortress to double its effect on the province.

Additionally, maybe Anti-Air and Anti-Tank guns could be a part of this. They are also defensive, so maybe having Militia alone aren't enough to fully-increase a Fortress's morale modifier. So, maybe Militia, by themselves, can only increase the morale effect of a Fortress by 50%. But, by adding either an AA or an AT, that morale enhancement grows by 75%. And, if both an AA and an AT are present, then that morale enhancement grows by 100% (the doubling).

So, then this would be an example of how the effect would work:



I think it might make more sense to reduce the effect of the morale increase in non-core provinces. So, if in a non-core province, then the effect of adding the minimum necessary Militia and Anti-Tank guns to a Fortress would only increase the Fortress's morale effect by half of their normal increase. Thus, for a Level 4 Fortress, instead of a positive Morale Value of 40 (which is 20 x (100% + 100%)), the Fortress would have a positive Morale Value of 30 (which is 20 x (100% + 50%)).

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