Balancing Changes

    This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy.

    • The balancing changes are good.
      At least these:

      * Increasing AC damage vs. armoured units: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: . Very good. Probably not enough to make them a good choice in many situations and also not enough to reflect reality (thinking of later models like SdKfz234/4, carrying a 75mm gun). But an important step in the right direction (If that's an easy change, I propose additionally Xarus' idea: make level 2 researchable from day 6. This would make researching them attractive in many games. But still not building them in masses - so they would only be used as single units for example for scouting or catching unguarded artillery, as in reality).

      * Nerfing tactical bombers: . That was essential. So far, using them a lot was the only reasonable strategy. In all games and all situations. Which had - for example - the negative effect that you were almost always forced to cluster your ground forces to 2 or 3 giant armies of a size that Napoleon would have been proud of. But which didn't exist in 20th century warfare. With these changes, we will see a seamless frontline more often - just as generals built up during WW2. And players will have to find the right strategy in each game and in each situation anew. You will actually have to think. Which most people want from a strategy game. It is logical that a big part of the community opposes the change, since many strategy lovers already had left the game due to the overpowered tactical bombers we had until now. So we don't hear their voice here. But from now on, the game will attract more of them, which is very good.

      * Increasing damage strategical bombers vs. buildings: Yeees, very good. In WW2, strategical bombers played a relevant role. Whereas in CoW, it never made sense to research them (so far).

      * Increasing range of atomic bomber: Yep.

      * Increasing costs of rockets: Very good. In CoW they have some abilities they really didn't have at around 1942. Nerfing them is good, so they're no longer a standard option.

    • Hans A. Pils wrote:

      you were almost always forced to cluster your ground forces to 2 or 3 giant armies of a size that Napoleon would have been proud of.
      Clustering into 2-3 giant armies is always the logical way to do it. Spread it out, you're probably gonna make yourself a hole in the lines, whether tac bomber or not. Concentrating in 2-3 main HUGE armies actually could do the effect of Blitzkrieg, where Germans concentrated pretty much everything they got to puncture the French lines. So, it doesn't affect the tactic of clustering with the nerf of tac bombers.
      "As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable." Albert Einstein

      "Giving up is not an option in war, for it proves one's incapability and incompetence as a leader." - Me (Little Racoon)

    • I really have way to much free time. So I am going to sort of respond to everything I have read so far, post by post. I'm reading from backwards to front.

      - Someone said something about lots of players leaving because of overpowered tactical bombers. I really can't say this is true. I know a lot of older players that have been playing since the game was in Beta and have been paying HC/Gold to support the game are leaving en masse. A lot of little groups I used to be in are gone. With changes like these as part of the reason why.

      - "Tactical Bombers are overpowered". Erm. No. Pre-Update. They are pretty useless in low numbers, so you'd have to have a decent stack of lets say seven in order to make use of them. I heard something about a exploit. I thought I taught some of you how to counter a few of the tricks in the game, but oh well. - If you do less then seven? They start to die off. Fast. But they die pretty easily. So you'd have to balance being active, using them, where to use them. Can you reproduce the inevitable casualties? Am I having to spam LT's/Infra as well? What about Dessies? What country am I? Can I pillage my local AI's? Etc etc.

      - Someone said something about three giant stacks. Generally, early game alli strats consisted of three LT armies, lets say 5-7 each. With infra in support, and if you can get them early enough - Tacs. A lot of early game gameplay would be team mates coordinating their resources/Units (Alliance play), or the singular above I stated. With the defense bonus changes + the Tac nerfs + Misc unit changes + Infra requirements, in theory, it changes the early game from being a war of "Offense or Defense" to one that really, really favours the afk defensive player. Or sitting around and not maneuvering /Building Forts/Stacking all your units on your border provinces and forting up. Which traditionally have been a really, bad idea to do in this game. Especially early/Mid game in most cases. If you start to stack to many units, they technically become less efficient. Aka, die easier, deal less damage.

      - Gameplay wise, I never saw "Armored Cars" as a actually useful unit. AC/LT's - They seem pretty redundant. So it seems the recent game changes are to lengthen out the game, and per what Freezy said, to encourage people to spend Gold + Pushing Mobile. So I suppose AC's gameplay wise are started to be pushed as early game units as they are in SP1914. But they were always pretty worthless, traditionally speaking. So eh. To many units that exist for the sake of existing and don't actually serve a purpose. This is where the "Overall Formula is broken when you do all things" comes into affect.

      - Something about stacking units to keep tacs from being effective. This is actually, not really the best idea. It really varies per map and game. But the overall thing is, build AA or Interceptors. Or a mixture of both. Play on the offensive. Tacs could be countered.

      - I keep seeing players go on about "Historical accuracy" or "This is how they did it in X war.". I look at it as "Alright, this is a game. This is the formula for how the game works. Is the formula solid? How can we make a funner, more skill based game? Alright, lets slap a WW1/WW2/Cold War/etc theme here and apply artwork.

      - It still makes very little sense to research strategic bombers.

      - Rockets were always hilarious from a "Solid gameplay" perspective from me.

      - Now, when I'm going on about this stuff, I'd like to divide gameplay into this game into a few categories. Competitive Alliance Play. Competitive FFA. Role-Playing. Casual play. C.A.P is usually done on smaller maps. Competitive FFA as well. Overall, I never felt that the game was properly well designed or built for some of the larger maps. Yeah, they are fun to play on. They can be interesting. But it's the same vibe I got from SP1914 when they announced it. For some things to work on a larger map, they needed to make interesting...Gameplay changes which overall still negatively affected gameplay on the larger maps, and definitely on smaller map sizes as well. Of course, people trying to play the game as a skill based game definitely aren't their target demographic.

      - Ah. Favoring players who are offline or not playing. Gotcha.

      - Well. Just because people with different opinions respond a few days later after all the "Yay Changes are awesome!" people post, doesn't mean their opinions mean any less. General reception is pretty dead though. The overall general community of this game is a cycling door of "Customers", with a small but dwindling dedicated community.

      - Oh. Someone else said this. Their is no real naval aspect to the game. It's essentially make sure you can spam more of X unit than any other. So lets spam as many Dessies as we can. Cost efficiency is a big player in most things here.

      - I dunno. I suppose I could post every single exploit and non fixed bug that exists in the games code. Especially all the little ones that haven't been fixed in over ten years. And misc bugs. I'm feeling generous.

      -

    • Stormbringer50 wrote:

      so far in frontline games, the report is that it is too much. It isnt fair that very expensive units, esp when taking into account that air bases must be built in addition to the research and high cost of building planes, are extremely fragile to very cheap units. Building ABs means you are not building infrastructure and other resource enhancing buildings. Anyone that spams only airforce is left extremely vulnerable in their rear, as they only have resources to build planes and airbases.
      You know, it is quite common in the real world that a cheap weapon sometimes trumps the valuable ones....or destroys a valuable target. Take explosives, for example. The United States military has some of the most powerful explosives...literally hundreds of thousands of bombs stockpiled, most worth a very large amount of money. That wide variety of those bombs can do anything from blast open a door of a terrorist safe house, to leveling an entire city....and everything in between. Proportionately, the cost of the bombs tends to increase based on their yield or utility. Yet, despite all that logically-based cost increase, in the hands of the right (or wrong) person, a much cheaper solution can be had.

      It was a cheap fertilizer bomb that destroyed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. It was a cheap rubber raft filled with cheap explosives that blew a hole in the side of the USS Cole. It was a couple plane-loads of airline fuel that brought down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

      A single bullet can end a life. A single bullet can cost far less than a cup of coffee. Yet, despite the cost, it's the value of the man holding the gun that determines who dies....that is, the value of the character of the man. In a good man's hands, a bullet can save the lives of the innocent. In a bad man's hands, a bullet can shatter a family and a community.

      This is only a game, but I totally accept imbalance costs. Heck, I've literally lost dozens of nuclear bombers because I fell asleep and left them on patrol near a target and they were eventually shot down by single units like the lowly infantry.

      freezy wrote:

      This leads to point 2 and 3: Indeed previously the only solution to deal with a large air force was to build an airforce of Interceptors yourself. But this is not how a game with rock-paper-scissor balancing should work. In every type branch (ground, sea, air) there should be counters to units of the other branches. Air units therefore need to have a hard counter within the ground branch, which is the anti air unit. Tac bombers are therefore supposed to lose against stacks with anti air, as they are very effective versus all other ground units, while also having the mobility to avoid these stacks entirely. There should not be a unit in the game which counters pretty much everything if you spammed it in large enough numbers.
      This is exactly the point, I've always thought, why I and so many other people thought the Tacs were OP. It was never about them being too strong, it was about them not having their own exploitable weakness. A part of the game's strategy is to try to determine which types of units your opponents have, and build the right units to exploit their weaknesses. Meanwhile, they were doing the same to you. The winner is he or she who has the most accurate picture of their opponents' strengths -- and is able to plan accordingly.

      freezy wrote:

      You should have to deploy many different unit types against your enemies to be able to win, that's what we want in the end.
      This is what I want, also. And I know I'm not the only player who thinks so. To you and the devs, I say bravo!

      Stormbringer50 wrote:

      I dont agree with the rock paper scissors argument, because a properly stacked navy will absolutely shred air power, including even naval bombers, which we have had to live with since the beginning.
      Though I've not been the biggest fan of the Naval Bomber, I have seen fleets of them rip through massive navies. As with any unit combination, it's not just what you have, but how you use it.

      Stormbringer50 wrote:

      Maybe if we want to retain more new players, we should give them a stack of 5 interceptors on the tutorial, instead of the medium tank.
      Frankly, I don't think this would really help. And not because I'm against giving noobs extra forces at first....but because the starting tutorial matches rarely have experienced players in them. At least, the last couple times I played in them, I noticed I was pretty much the only non-noob present. That's when I started paying more attention to the list of players in a match...and I started playing the Road to War map, a whole lot less.

      Stormbringer50 wrote:

      Idar_Oberstein wrote:

      I do admire the counter arguements about the all knowing expertise of dev staff knowing that "players who use TAC don't develop any other tech: they go right to TAC and don't develop their infrastructure or industry".
      however, we all know this is not the case. without a very well developed economy, there are not enough resources to build a strong air force. And as far as arguments from the other "camp", there is not a single post on this thread that has said they approve of the nerfing in hps on planes. There have been lots of people that like the new update (I'm one of them, other than this single point), but not one person has said, "gee, im sure glad they are lowering the hps on planes".
      And there definitely was not enough input from beta testing, as frontline games have worked seldomly for the last 2 weeks. These are facts.
      Gee, I'm sure glad they're lowering the hps on planes.

      Here's the way I see it. The devs are experimenting with the balance of the game. They lowered Tacs' hps, they lowered the cost of AA. They tested it in beta and got some results. They'll wait a while longer, then evaluate what the larger playing community says. As for me, I think the hp nerf was a good thing, but I'm willing to compromise with those louder people and suggest that the hps still get lowered, but not by as much. Instead of taking 5 points off, maybe take 3. Little tweaks like that might not sound like much, but they can go a long way towards alleviating the gripes of the community.

      freezy wrote:

      Previously in Call of War airforce was the dominant branch, while ground forces at some point only played a supporting role. Now we want to change it more into the direction of airforce being the supportive role, while ground forces play the main role, like in the actual war.
      More than anything else on the issue (except for the overly-high SBDE overlapping patrols), I have said over and over that people who build mostly Tacs were missing the point of this game. It's not a perfect simulator. But it is supposed to be a wargame that includes mostly ground forces with navy and air to support those ground forces. Having ground forces support the air forces (i.e., Light Tanks or Armored Cars to assist the Tac Bombers in taking over entire continents) was always so absurd. This is a period game. And, though air power was proven to be a strategic necessity in WWII, it was not the focus. It was never the focus.

      [soapbox found in the next post]


      Hans A. Pils wrote:

      It is logical that a big part of the community opposes the change, since many strategy lovers already had left the game due to the overpowered tactical bombers we had until now. So we don't hear their voice here. But from now on, the game will attract more of them, which is very good.

      CzarHellios wrote:

      - Someone said something about lots of players leaving because of overpowered tactical bombers. I really can't say this is true. I know a lot of older players that have been playing since the game was in Beta and have been paying HC/Gold to support the game are leaving en masse. A lot of little groups I used to be in are gone. With changes like these as part of the reason why.
      And I HAVE seen and known players -- even long time players -- who have left the game either because of heavy gold usage by others or else by issues with game balance...especially the OP Tac Bombers. Just because you don't know them, doesn't mean they don't exist.
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3

    • Display Spoiler


      [Soapbox Speech, referenced in last post]

      Even today. America has the world's most advanced, most numerous, most experienced, and by far the most powerful air force in the world. And yet, the Army gets a bigger chunk of our national military spending. The Navy gets a big bite, and so does the Marines and Coast Guard. But the Army is needed to win wars. Because you can't win by only killing your enemies. A bomb from the sky can kill your enemies. But more will come.

      More always come. The only way to stop your enemy from coming to your lands is to send your army to their lands...and not be afraid to kill the enemy there will all prejudice. As an example, the War on Terror has not been lost, but it has yet to succeed because our military is gun-shy at actually killing the enemy and is too worried about non-combatant collateral deaths. Of course, it's good to try not to hurt the wrong targets. But when your enemy is cowardly mixed into a civilian population, instead of facing you on the open battlefield, you must be willing to kill your enemy by targeting the crowded streets and buildings.

      Nobody wants to admit it, but if you target your enemies as they hide amongst civilians, you will not only effectively kill your enemies, but those that survive will no longer be able to hide -- because the civilians will rise up....and not against you for killing some of their own, but against the cowards that hide among them -- to push them out -- and to force your enemy to stand in the open and become an easy target.

      By targeting your enemy, regardless where he is, you teach the civilians to realize that you are uncompromising and that they only have a chance to live if they reject those that they once allowed to hide among them. This may sound heartless, but in the long run, it saves far more lives than it costs, by avoiding a many-years-long drawn out war against soft targets that use other humans as shields.

      America has always gotten it wrong about the recruitment of terrorists by our enemies. They don't join up with Al Qaeda or ISIS or the PLO, because they are fed up with the presence of foreign troops in their lands. No. They join up because they aren't afraid of what those troops will do, because they don't fear those forces....because those forces tried too hard not to hurt them when it was targeting the bad guys. So, emboldened by that failed strategy, more and more civilians become radicalized and seek to join up against an opponent they believe to be weak of will.

      And, as far as the leadership of our nation is concerned, over the past decade, it has been woefully unwilling to let our armies fight to win where it counts....in the urban battlefield. Not only that, but ever since we decided not to use our own nuclear weapons during the Korean War -- and later, in Vietnam -- our politicians have handcuffed our military time and again. Mutually-assured destruction (M.A.D.) -- both as a policy and threat -- would never have come about had we been willing to show our true strength and occasionally bare our teeth to the hostile nations of the world, when needed.

      Alas, it's not too late to start doing that. We did it in Japan. We can do it in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Syria....and Iran, and even North Korea. When we get the guts to do it, we'll return to having both the admiration and respect of even some of our former opponents. Believe me when I say, the Russians both feared the US and respected it as a worthy opponent for years after World War II...until we stopped using all the forces at our command, during wartime.

      Now, folks like Vladimir Putin, see us as a nation of wusses and knows he can get away with out and out invasion of another nation, just to capture and steal Crimea from Ukraine. And did America jump on Russia and force them to pull back? NO!!! And we should have. We still can. Maybe Trump will have the guts to do so. But I doubt even he will. Not since Ronald Reagan -- or maybe George W. Bush -- has there been a real man in the White House, willing to say and do what it takes to keep our opponents in check. Clinton wasn't that kind of man, nor was George H.W. Bush, nor Carter, nor [especially] Obama. Trump talks tough. He was raised in a military school and seems to respect the military industrial complex. So it remains to be seen how he'll turn out.


      Stormbringer50 wrote:

      Maybe if you folks are adamant in the idea that planes need their hps nerfed, then in the future we could have airbases contribute in some small way to resource production. It would make sense, after all.

      I always reckoned that the reason naval bases and infrastructure contributed to resource production because resources could be moved faster. airbases would fit right into that mentality
      Well, having a well-planned infrastructure in the real world has always been one of the key components to the Industrial Revolution in any land. The railroads, and later, the highway system, allowed the timely shipping of goods and services, parts and machinery, raw materials and finished products, and even people -- as a commodity -- to be shipped across our vast land from coast to coast and every stop in-between. Growth...a rapid growth...of industrial might seeded America's rise to the status of the world's greatest nation and the only remaining superpower.

      Anyway, I agree with you, that it makes sense that airports might contribute to shipping. But, the reality is, that during the era that this game represents, shipping by air was restricted mostly to high-profile dignitaries, military leaders, mail, and a few needed special-case equipment and such. It's simple fact that, though airplanes were rising in numbers by leaps and bounds in the war era, most of them were for combat, not transport duties. I'm not saying there were no transports, just that they were mostly a luxury, not a standard, like it is, today.

      However, it would still be nice to see airbases offer something besides just aircraft base of operation for purposes of air range and refueling times. Maybe, instead of resource percentage improvements, like Infrastructure and Seaports do, the Airbase could increase the defense rating of all allied units in a province by 5% per level of the Airbase....to represent the extra readiness that troops get from having scouting planes to see what's coming on the horizon.

      Or, if that isn't popular, then maybe having an airbase could act like a radar station, adding a ring of sight to eliminate the fog of war in the area around a province, or only in a circle around the airbase itself. Higher level airbases would get a wider range of view. Also, instead of only having wider views with undamaged higher level airbases, the view range could be prorated along a gradient based on the total airbase (including fractionals) that you have. So, starting at half of a level 1 airbase, a ring of site could be granted to the control point or the whole province, and as the level rises up towards an undamaged airbase, so too does that visibility range. Thus the only way to get the maximum range is to have a fully-completed (or fully-repaired) level 3 airbase.

      Remember when provinces used to have their own range of site beyond your borders? Well, with the above idea, airbases could return us to that. Or, having just a circle of visibility around the airbase might be more realistic. But, regardless of whether the airbase or else the whole province gets ranged sight, this would be a good idea. And it would also eliminate the need for my proposed new structure, the watchtower or lookout fort.

      CzarHellios wrote:

      I suppose AC's gameplay wise are started to be pushed as early game units as they are in SP1914. But they were always pretty worthless, traditionally speaking. So eh. To many units that exist for the sake of existing and don't actually serve a purpose
      I can see why one might argue this. But AC's do serve a valuable purpose....not to mention a nasty surprise. They have several advantages over the Light Tank, even. First, AC's are faster. And they keep getting faster in the higher levels. IF you are going to use mostly Tac Bombers (which I oppose, FTR), then AC's are actually better than LT's in the mid-to-late game because of their insane speed. When you can have a unit buzz along the road at 70+, you are going to acquire tons of land in short order. Conversely, with a mid-sized stack of maxed out super-fast Armored Cars, you can sneak into a province and take out a stack of bombers before the other player has a chance to check in and notice the impending danger to his precious Tacs.

      Second, AC's are cheap...and faster to produce. They are a good compromise between building a fleet of Light Tanks and spamming Militia or Infantry. Especially in the early game, I've seen many players (myself included) who have successfully built many AC's and employed them to great effect while other players (also me in some matches) are still slowly trying to get their first wave of LT's online.

      Third -- and this is more valuable than one might think...especially in the early game, but also throughout the whole game -- AC's are excellent scouts. They can sneak in and out of hostile territory swiftly, they have the widest viewing range of any unit in the game. And with only a few AC's in your collection, you can illuminate much of your coastline and/or borders with other potentially-hostile neighbors without having to get too close to those borders so as to avoid inciting your opponents into becoming enemies. Side note: Naval Bombers serve this purpose, also, at sea...and also on land...with their very wide patrol areas, which is another reason why Naval Bombers are actually a pretty nice unit to have.
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3

    • Quasi-duck wrote:

      it is the same of -75% resource production in conquered territories which only serve to have people spend more on resources.
      No 75% penalty is good ballancing against steamrollers. The war is not over, till it is over. Even if enemy has 2 times more provinces he is not two time stronger economic power, but still has two time higher daily upkeep.

      cchyt wrote:

      It is very strange to read repeatedly that air force is dominating the game when game itself makes most of navy useless vs ground targets and most offense useless against the overwhelming defense. Instead of balancing the gameplay you plan to reduce even more the offense.
      Check the stats of the units to find out defense/attack ratio. Combine that with the STACKED 15% defense bonus on ANY PLACE of native provinces and you will understand why players had to go for air and rockets. (It is funny that forts give bonus to one point of the province and you have to pay resources). Ground attacker has no vision, moves with 50% speed and faces an extra 15% defense bonus in all the native provinces. Main advantage of the attacker was suprised focused attack which was already removed with the addition of the 1 interceptor.
      So company thought what to do next:
      You know that we have only few coreprovinces, except historical map. also 15% bonus is not really important on mid-/lategame. And for sure defensive well digged units should have advantage over attacking units.

      Defender dont know where enemy would strike, also good defender should spread his strikeforces over many points.
      Attacker can concentrate his power on single point. Without bonus for defencive we would have simply risk game of year 1980ies; where greater number ever wins. No thanks. Not in CoW...
      Use your brain, so you can win with smaller numbers...

      cchyt wrote:

      Let players be safe with the starting units from any 2 attackers without building anything else and make expensive infras, the building needed for attacking day 2. Increasing cost of lts did not work out, people still tried to attack so let's make the economy of all game worst.
      Players still had the option to go for air. In order to make air you make buildings that are useless economy-wise , leaving yourself low to economy and you have to wait until day 9 to make them lvl 2 so you can actually cause some damage. Until then tacs are useless and the initial 3 aa can fight against any number of interceptors. More over, you can not go for tanks and air or air and extra industrial because of rare limitations. In order to make your air efficient you need to make more air fields before you magically reach 25 tacs and you win the map. ( so many random conclusions for air domination used that i will not even try to comment on )
      You have choice: *blitzkrieg*, or well prepared domination. Last update doesn't change it.

      cchyt wrote:

      For some reason, game nerfs attackers, who usually are the most active and good players.
      Most attackers are worsest players, without *plan B* if enemy can repell their 1st attack.
      Slowing down those player gives them better chances to stay at live at least till day 20...

    • Huh, some folks are really hard to convince about the tactical bomber nerf.

      I'm not going to answer everything, but here I can't resist:

      Quasi-duck wrote:

      Obviously you do not understand SBDE.
      Man, of course I do. My point was so far, you needed to have about 10 AA (SBDE limit for 100% damage is 9 or 10, if I remember correctly) in your stack combined with other ground units to be able to defend against the usual 6-fighter-6-tacs stack. The presence of a hostile airforce forces you to extreme clustering, which just wasn't the case in reality.


      Idar_Oberstein wrote:

      No regional or global conflict has been won without air superiority since the Blitzkrieg doctrine was developed.
      That may be true. But no regional or global conflict has been won since then with virtually no ground forces (as not seldomly happening in CoW, pre-change situation) either.
      Or think of Vietnam, as an example: Even 20 years later it was possible to lose a war in spite of overwhelming, 100% air superiority.
      Back in WW2, bombers were facing much more problems.
      You could hear them arriving from several kilometers distance...
      They were reliant on visual detection...
      Aiming wasn't an easy job...
      On a bad weather day: Forget it...

      Can you imagine bombing an infantry regiment scattered over a few miles with WW2 bombers? In CoW a piece of cake - in real life... have fun.


      Stormbringer50 wrote:

      if you patrol a single level 1 tac over a single lvl 1 aa, you will see what i mean.
      Try to do the same in a real tactical bomber constructed 1937 and you will see what we mean.
      Also as freezy correctly explained (scissors-paper-stone principle): AA is specialized against air and rather weak against other ground units. Whereas tactical bombers are effective against all ground units and have thanks to their mobility free choice when and what to attack. If someone is so clumsy or stubborn to attack a spot with AA, of course he must lose.
      Still forcing your enemy to build AA and to stay close to it are arguments enough not to completely neglect air. So balance is fine now.

    • Hans A. Pils wrote:

      Back in WW2, bombers were facing much more problems.
      You could hear them arriving from several kilometers distance...
      They were reliant on visual detection...
      Aiming wasn't an easy job...
      On a bad weather day: Forget it...

      Can you imagine bombing an infantry regiment scattered over a few miles with WW2 bombers? In CoW a piece of cake - in real life... have fun.
      T'is a good point, Hans. CoW can only be so realistic. But at least with the new balance changes, the reality of the simulation is made a little better.
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3

    • Very welcome changes for me, welcome enough that they even brought me back from a hiatus. One of my main gripes of early CoW was that tactical bombers were massively overpowered, well above their actual capabilities they had in WW2. They were too durable, too powerful, very fast and they cost less than half the manpower of AA which in the maps of the time was one of the more limited resources (it's changed in some of the newer maps it seems). In fact, I remember it was exactly as freezy said, the player who spent his resources on 20+ tactical bombers basically had an invincible air force.

      There is still some balance issues, my other main one being that conventional rockets should have next to zero unit killing capability except for the nukes.

    • VorlonFCW wrote:

      I disagree. How well do you understand the relationship between province morale and productivity? The benefit will be huge.
      Mostly irrelevant outside of the home territory where productivity is reduced a lot anyway. And managing morale wasn't hard before, so it doesn't really address an issue that is needed. And over expansion should have a cost.

    • The changes seem good, but I think they need some corrections .. (I'm a player who plays almost 24/7 and then the use of aviation that becomes devastating if one spends a lot of time on the keyboard).

      With my playing style (but I think it also applies to other styles of playing), the best counter against swarms of tactical bombers are the interceptors .. now with this new version has been increased both the oil cost maintenance of both interceptors and tactic bombers at 130 oil / day .. I find illogical the thing .. it would have been fairer since the issue are the bombesr and not the interceptors .. leave the interceptors at 100 oil/day and bring the tactical bombers to 150 oil/day, strategic bombers even at 150 / day (although these are rarely used en masse) .. naval bombers go well at 130 / day.

      ** my Wish list **

      - Implement a centralizated management possibility of the 5 resources that allows to correct some production problems and the fact that the use of resources varies according the game advancing and priority/usage of resources is completely different from early game and end game ... my idea is to have a slide at a global level that allows you to have a choice of resource at + 8% (mandatory with another resource at -8%) and a resource at + 4% (mandatory with another resource at -4%) and an unchanged resource .

      This are not pay2win and maybe put them under "High Command"
      - Implement a combat log with indication of the combat position / province and with all the combat rounds noted.
      - Implement a unit management panel: with a number of each type of unit and a list (similar to the provinces lists) of all unit stacks.

    • Another good counter agaist massive stack of planes is put in place (as for aircraft carriers) a limit in airbases: a lv 1 airbase can hold 10 planes, a lv 2 can hold 20 planes, a lv 3 can hold planes (my numers are a placeholders).. this is more realistic (there is not a air base in the real world that contain the entires airforce of a nation) both in real and in game.. prevent the tactical bombers steamroller and favors the defender who in the course of the game has a way to build good defenses (need alot of days) with further benefit that the defender can perhaps quickly move his smallest air force and then hit the scattered enemy forces also giving time to also gather AA.

      It is not enough to build a single base area (in a half day working at 50%) to move all a whole air force forward, but it must build more bases and waste even more time if it wants to raise the level of the bases to contain bigger stacks.

    • Regulus. wrote:

      Very welcome changes for me, welcome enough that they even brought me back from a hiatus. One of my main gripes of early CoW was that tactical bombers were massively overpowered, well above their actual capabilities they had in WW2. They were too durable, too powerful, very fast and they cost less than half the manpower of AA which in the maps of the time was one of the more limited resources (it's changed in some of the newer maps it seems). In fact, I remember it was exactly as freezy said, the player who spent his resources on 20+ tactical bombers basically had an invincible air force.

      There is still some balance issues, my other main one being that conventional rockets should have next to zero unit killing capability except for the nukes.
      Its not true, also in WW2 tactical bombers when there was air superiority they were devastating, especially in the early stages of the war the German stukas were the hammer that destroyed everything and everyone and with the columns of tanks and mechanized/motorized infantry that raked up the remaining crumbs.

      The ace of aces of the stukas Hans Ulrich Rudel alone destroyed over 2,000 targets (including more than 500 tanks) and consumed alone, to give numbers, over 5 million liters of fuel and dropped over 1 million tons of bombs.

      If my proposal to limit the number of aircraft in a single air base (numbers based on levels) is taken into consideration (I think some part of the code used for aircraft carriers can be reused), there is a situation in which tactics and strategy (and having a balanced army) count a lot more.

      What makes tactical bombers overpowered as steamrollers is not the tactical bomber itself, but the fact that a single advanced air base lv1 (built in less than half a day operating even at 50%) far hundreds of km of another single air base lv1 allows you to transfer a whole huge stack of planes (all your air force if you want... a bit unreal) of all types at very high speed and in straight line that cover hundred of km of land with their attack/patrol range.

      If the Devs put a limitation on the number of aircraft in an carrier (numbers that can increse with level), they have the issue in sight (is also true that carries can by stacked :) ) and therefore way not to extend the concept to the air bases with a method that does not penalize, but enhances the tactics gameplay diversity.

      The post was edited 7 times, last by syncro ().

    • The (continuous) efficiency of air support against tanks is one of the huge myth of WW2. It was extremely difficult to hit an isolated tank with a bomber. If the tanks are in a column, it makes it easier to hit something, but that's because you just have to follow the road and you've got the hardest part (not overshooting your target) covered.

      There are 2 examples usually taken of the superiority of air force :
      The French lost very few tanks to air force, most of their heavy B1B were lost to lack of fuel, mechanical issues or AA/AT guns, with some (mobility kill) to artillery, and iirc less than 5 losses by bombers.
      In the Battle of the Bulge, the Americans had a absolutely massive number of planes in the air (upward to 75 000 sorties of all kind !), and even then their main target were armored columns and supplies, not individual tanks. Most of the tank kills were due to artillery (with the help of air artillery spotters !)


      Attack planes were critical to disorganize the enemy forces, destroy non-armored vehicles or disable it for a time (narrow miss => mobility kill). To kill individual soldiers or tanks - it is not that great. That's a job for artillery.