Research Balancing Update

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  • Kanaris wrote:

    EZ Dolittle wrote:

    Some tips:
    1. Do not train Infantry or Militia


    5. Trade away your militia or infantry to someone who is already grossly negative on food to reduce your draw down.
    So basically you have come around to seeing my point that this update is wittingly or not pushing people towards more mechanized armies in essence encouraging lt/tac spam as a valid strategy.
    While we are at it lets rename the game to call of mechanized warfare because 1942 simply doesn't fit in this type of mindset
    Oh dont worry too much, as said numeral times now already, more balancing, including unit and cost rebalancing, will follow :) We know that the game is still skewed towards certain types of units. We will try to make every unit useful and more diverse units necessary to build.

  • Well I cannot comment on things that have not yet been implemented. What I can say beyond the shadow of a doubt is that currently trying to create an non mechanized army early and mid game is not possible at a competitive level and before this "balancing" update it used to be. This is after play testing on 2 speed maps and 3 normal speed maps they all give the same results...

  • Kanaris wrote:

    Thus the only viable option is to move away from armies that take lots of grain for upkeep which once again gives the advantage and encourages lt/tac spam or at any rate mechanized armies.

    Before the update it was hard but viable to have grain fed armies early game, this is no longer possible and yes it is VERY much as shame as it is completely senseless and ahistorical.
    It seems to me that if you prioritize grain production from early on you should be fine. It just takes a different aproach to economy building. Also, probably not a good idea anymore to always keep a lot of barracks turned o for extra production speed. Its just a change, I still see room for grain fed armies as it is now.
    I just started playing my first game with the new changes implememted and I still have more grain then anything else after 1 day. After doing pretty much all the researxh I would usually do in a week. You don't HAVE to research everything. Just have your picks. For example, I feared planes wpuld be a huge problem bit I do not see players build airfields yet because the aditional airfields needed to move them around makes them both more costly and potentially vulnerable. Also, early on, food upkeep is not an issue yet.

    Im still at the start of this map so nothing to say for certain yet. But I do not necessarily recognize the picture you paint so far.

  • We are having the same discussion in our round. Everyone tells me save your grain for research, don’t waste it on militia or infantry. They eat so much grain and take much longer to build vs tanks or artillery, etc. Even so, without hard real world cash or constantly selling all my resources for food, I can’t do hardly any significant research and get left behind!

  • I am in 3 games with the new research and balancing stuff, in all three there is a massive across the game board shortage of Iron. I think one of the unintended consequences is that faster infrastructure means early tank production all of which puts pressure on Iron,.

    One of the positive sides is that in the Historic map where I am in Asia the massive population without corresponding grain production, the grain per population reduction has allowed for those in the east to stay above the curve in food generation vs consumption. I do not know how long but will see.

  • Well that just goes to confirm exactly what I have been saying, more mechanized armies less grain fed armies. I have no steel problems I am floating 10k early game as I avoid light tank spam and try to build infantry based armies which is very very hard after this update as I don't have either the grain nor manpower (as barracks are turned off) to produce a proper grain fed army. This is a really sad state of affairs...

  • Kanaris wrote:

    Well that just goes to confirm exactly what I have been saying, more mechanized armies less grain fed armies. I have no steel problems I am floating 10k early game as I avoid light tank spam and try to build infantry based armies which is very very hard after this update as I don't have either the grain nor manpower (as barracks are turned off) to produce a proper grain fed army. This is a really sad state of affairs...
    But training infantry early on has never been a good idea. You start with a lot of it in every map, why build more? You get more units manpower wise if you build LT. Its not a spam, just a balancing thing of your entire army.

    Though I agree that not being able to use infantry is an issue. I think manpower requirements should be lower and so should food upkeep be as a consequence. Since the last update manpower requirements were lowered for infantry, but they still eat as if there are still 1500 of them. Might be that makes infantry harder to upkeep in food in relation to manpower spent.

  • To Kanaris: You obviously started with one of the rare countries that has more steel than goods provinces. But in general, since the update, steel is rare in early game (as Doolittle correctly stated) and the opposite in late game.
    So your fear of many tanks in early game isn't justified.

    And many planes in early game? If not using gold, that's also a bad strategy. Already the building time and ressources for a level two airfield in one of your cities is too much for that.

    Edepedable is right that building infantry is never a good idea - neither before the update, nor after; neither in early nor in late game.

    So that leaves towed units as the best choice in early game. While in real life 1935 warfare, it was a mix of a lot of infantry, some towed units and few tanks & planes. I now wrote --> this thread <-- to fix this.

  • Edepedable wrote:

    But training infantry early on has never been a good idea. You start with a lot of it in every map, why build more? You get more units manpower wise if you build LT. Its not a spam, just a balancing thing of your entire army.
    Though I agree that not being able to use infantry is an issue. I think manpower requirements should be lower and so should food upkeep be as a consequence. Since the last update manpower requirements were lowered for infantry, but they still eat as if there are still 1500 of them. Might be that makes infantry harder to upkeep in food in relation to manpower spent.
    I did not say I train infantry early game I said I build a grain fed army units that use up alot of grain in daily upkeep such as AA, ATGs, arty, etc. Infantry alone just like any other unit is useless but a combined arms approach its a very tough nut to crack even if its not mechanized.

    I am on my sixth game since this update was released and I said it before I will say it again you can no longer support grain fed armies due to this update until late game which is completely ridiculous.

  • Hans A. Pils wrote:

    To Kanaris: You obviously started with one of the rare countries that has more steel than goods provinces. But in general, since the update, steel is rare in early game (as Doolittle correctly stated) and the opposite in late game.
    So your fear of many tanks in early game isn't justified.

    And many planes in early game? If not using gold, that's also a bad strategy. Already the building time and ressources for a level two airfield in one of your cities is too much for that.

    Edepedable is right that building infantry is never a good idea - neither before the update, nor after; neither in early nor in late game.

    So that leaves towed units as the best choice in early game. While in real life 1935 warfare, it was a mix of a lot of infantry, some towed units and few tanks & planes. I now wrote --> this thread <-- to fix this.
    Hans I dont know how you are playing what you are building what the level of competition is that you are facing but you do not seem to be in touch with CoW reality. I read you post and I believe what you are proposing is a horrible idea. I will take the time and address my concerns with your proposal in that thread when I have more time; but for now in short you are not taking into account the stages of the game.

    Early, mid and late phases of the game have different requirements and challenges. This update really made early game much harder unless you spam lt/tacs and your proposal will make it even worst for grain fed armies (what you call towed units). Thats exactly my point building towed units early game is no longer viable under the new update you dont have enough grain to both research and unit upkeep early game and have barracks open for manpower

  • Kanaris wrote:

    and have barracks open for manpower
    So that's where your food problem is coming from. Of course you may not build barracks. Like never (except in your capital if you've researched commandos). Not to mention letting them activated. Sure that brings you in food trouble - only now early in the game while before it would catch you in the later phases.
    You don't have to build that many units right at the start that you would even need to boost your manpower with barracks. Also you don't have to research everything right when it becomes available. And no, you don't have to conquer the world within the first 5 days. Just settle down a bit, lower your blood pressure, have a cup of tea, first build some infrastructure and industry instead of many units and you will see everything will smooth out. No food or manpower issues in sight.

    Of course I agree it's ugly that building barracks and equally recruiting infantry is a mistake - and that's exactly one of the reasons why I wrote --> this thread <-- for that. But don't blame the research update for it.

  • Kanaris wrote:

    I did not say I train infantry early game I said I build a grain fed army units that use up alot of grain in daily upkeep such as AA, ATGs, arty, etc. Infantry alone just like any other unit is useless but a combined arms approach its a very tough nut to crack even if its not mechanized.
    I am on my sixth game since this update was released and I said it before I will say it again you can no longer support grain fed armies due to this update until late game which is completely ridiculous.
    Yes I know, I meant infantry as in infantry tech branch. Sure you need them, but building nothing but infantry tech tree gets you food trouble. I also start my maps with training AT and arty and AA if the enemy has planes (though I'd rather use my own fighters cause its more manpower efficient). Combining these new units with your starting infantry (unit) is indeed quite effective early game. I do mix in armor wherever I can though. Not just for food reasons but also for being effective. I never have had nor am having any food problems. Perhaps if I would start with a short on food country, but it has not happened so far.

    So I'm sorry but your food shortages, according to my best guess, are because of your actions. Not because it is necessarily in the game.

  • What I do know is that pre update I did not have problems with grain fed army early game and maintaining research tempo, now its impossible.

    I am guessing if I can't do it newer players don't manage it either and probably are going towards lt/tac spam more and more which explains what I am seeing more and more and also explains the metal shortage early game Hans reported.

    So if the point of this update was to push players towards building mechanized armies which from a WW2 perspective makes no sense at all then it succeeded. From my perspective this is a horrible update. I like my grain fed armies early game and transitioning to more mechanized mid to late game, which to me makes more sense from a ww2 perspective

  • Kanaris wrote:

    What I do know is that pre update I did not have problems with grain fed army early game and maintaining research tempo, now its impossible.
    Correct. You now have to decide for either having a tall army right from the start or for researching a lot right from the start. Now there's a trade-off; you can't have both. Which is a positive change, isn't it?


    Kanaris wrote:

    and also explains the metal shortage early game Hans reported
    No. The metal shortage in early game is because now you don't need goods any more for research. That's why you now have more goods for building whatever - units or buildings. Since you need both goods and steel for practically everything you can build, your steel production cannot keep up.
    While later in the game, it's the other way round, because goods consumption of provinces was increased by the update.


    Kanaris wrote:

    I like my grain fed armies early game and transitioning to more mechanized mid to late game
    As Edepedable and I already stated, you should still proceed this way. If you're convinced that was changed by the update, please give it a try with mainly mechanized units first and tell us afterwards how far you did get. My prognosis: You'll be able to defeat one or two human opponents, but then have no chance any more. Because you have to spend a lot of resources on the expensive mechanized units, which you at the beginning essentially need for raising your economy.

  • Hans A. Pils wrote:

    Kanaris wrote:

    What I do know is that pre update I did not have problems with grain fed army early game and maintaining research tempo, now its impossible.
    Correct. You now have to decide for either having a tall army right from the start or for researching a lot right from the start. Now there's a trade-off; you can't have both. Which is a positive change, isn't it?
    Please elaborate how is this a positive change? I will be more than happy to listen if you have valid arguments but I fail to see how incentivizing new players to go lt/tac spam is a good thing which is exactly what this change does wither it was planned that way or not...

    As for going mechanized early game I am sure I can make it work and I am willing to try it on my next game and tell you how it goes.

  • Hans A. Pils wrote:

    You now have to decide for either having a tall army right from the start or for researching a lot right from the start. Now there's a trade-off; you can't have both.
    That's a positive change because before there was the overall #1 rule: If you want to have a chance to win, always keep both research slots filled, no matter what (except for a very short break on day 7). Don't think about it, just go for it. Now during the first 15 days or depending on how the round develops maybe even during the first 30 days, you'll always have to ask yourself whether you really should start a research whenever you're able to. Because now if you research like hell, you'll badly feel resources missing if trying to raise economy and/or army at the same time. And that's what a good strategy game is made of: decisions shouldn't be easy.

    You're right by going for mechanized units instead of those from the infantry tech tree, you can free food for research. But the primary limit for researching is rares. So that's only an argument for countries with rares in abundance, which are seldom as I think (speaking of situation as it is now, after the update).

  • Hans A. Pils wrote:

    That's a positive change because before there was the overall #1 rule: If you want to have a chance to win, always keep both research slots filled, no matter what (except for a very short break on day 7). Don't think about it, just go for it.
    There are so many reason that I disagree with this statement that I have to enumerate them.

    1. The reason why we had to keep researching non stop before the update is because even for lvl1 unit research most units took more than 24h to research now you can research lvl1 in 4h lvl2 in 8h for most units.

    2. The consequence of #1 is that you no longer need to plan your research ahead of time and try to strive for a balanced research plan that leaves no gaps that can prove costly in the future. Example if I want to ignore every unit and simply focus on say light tanks and tac bombers well I can! If I start getting rolled by my opponents and I notice that I really need ATGs or TDs to counter their tanks no problem I can have lvl2 researched in 12h! So all the planning required is gone out the window so the game was dumbed down by a fair margin and this is definitely NOT a positive change.

    3. Furthermore as was proposed many times by many people if they wanted to offer players the option to have access to more units sooner thus diversifying unit production it was very simple: allow for more than 2 research slots! This option offers all the positive effects you mentioned because you will not be able to keep all your research slots going continuously without running into resource shortage, while it preserves game balance as you still cannot get lvl2 units researched in 12h it will still take you 3 days. This is important because in a strategy game you SHOULD be punished by game mechanics for bad planning!

    4. The limiting factor for research now is NOT rares in all my games I have 10k plus rares sitting there gathering dust with an average production of roughly 100/h The limiting factor is grain not rares.

    5. Encouraging mechanized armies is one thing (bad in my opinions as people spam lt/tac was already bad enough) but when at the same time you render countering mechanized with grain fed armies early game extremely hard; due to a combination of lack of grain (due to research) and lack of manpower (due to barracks being turned off to preserve grain for research) then this is VERY bad for gameplay and completely ahistorical to boot. Again not at all a positive change not by a long shot!

    The post was edited 1 time, last by Kanaris ().

  • AdrianTheStrategist wrote:

    The disadvantages with regards to the proposed research changes outweigh their advantages. Both advantages and disadvantages will be discussed below.

    The main advantages occur in early-game, in which more units are accessible sooner, hence game pacing will increase and a much wider variety of strategies will be available. No longer are games restricted to infantry stacks in the first few days. The research costs in the beginning are manageable for the early game economy, which is characterized by a surplus of food. However, given the time costs of each upgrade are so short, the player would soon run out of rare materials, and now it is no longer possible to be constantly researching. A typical production for rare materials in early game is around +100/hr. The potentially accessible researches, for example in the naval tab are have huge opportunity costs given their cost in rare materials. The current costs would be problematic in games where diversification is needed, ie. Pacific Conquest or World at War.

    The main disadvantage is that the costs for the researches during middle game are too high. Given that it costs more rare materials and food for research, it now sacrifices the option of building industrial complexes on resource tiles for economic development. In particular, food and rare material would be a much more valuable resource. Moreover, during this stage of the game, there are many wars ongoing, and those who have conquered lands should start to realize that their food productions are decreasing due to the food consumption of the population and upkeep from the armies. The flexibility of early-game is now reduced as more typically used units dominate many others. For example, the tactical bomber, a focused research on this would result in highly valuable returns compared to a focused research in troops with low anti-air defense values. The costs for focusing solely on the tactical bombers are comparable to troops that it easily defeats. Hence, it will become disadvantageous to research a larger variety of units, and focusing on units such as artillery, and tactical bombers will be norm for more experienced players. In effect, the amount of strategies to work with will be decreased due to the economic costs of researching them. Although the accessibility of researches is earlier, the feasibility of having a particular research is far lower. This would lead to fewer researches being accessible to players, and thus more limited strategies at play on the battlefield. The new research system effectively forces the player to focus on just one or two research streams. Even though some researches are cheap, the resources invested into those can be better used on specialization. ie. Researching many different tanks, only to be defeated by tactical bombers.

    Feel free to provide counter-arguments and feedback.
    If you have enough resources, you should of, by the middle of the round have amassed an army to take, or have taken locations like budapest that are rich in rare materials and other areas rich with resources, i think the real trouble is getting food. The food is consumed mainly by production and troops, so said troops could be used to take more land to increase food and resource production, which would require more troops, and so on, but that research needs to be done at the beginning of the round, so less resources are consumed later into the round, and then you can take and defend land more effectively later on, and then less armies are needed, because a level 3 2 unit tank brigade can do the work of a level 1 4 unit tank division, in a faster and more efficent way. The main problem with infantry and tank research is yes, your shiny new level 3 panzer can get wrecked, but the ability to mobilize your ground troops to take and defend your land is invaluable, and your new tank can still be taken out on the ground by other ground units, and if you cant get your own airfield or keep another one safe, then how are you going to get your own tank feckin’ tac bomber in the air, what are you gonna be lazy and borrow your ally’s fancy new lufthaven? Exactly. It makes it more predictable with which research another player is going to use because of price, and that is a major nerf to the whole “what’s he gonna do” factor of the game, on the other hand, how are AI influenced by the price of research, or do they just not research?

    It overall makes waaaaay more sense to go for airpower, and drive up enemy production costs and soften up their armies, but it makes sense to make it possible to destroy a countries, say, last 2 researches (as long as they are something like tank levels) by destroying a capitol or stealing someone’s research by detroying a newly researched unit. But, if you did that, research costs would grow out of control and simply destroy the enemy’s economy, make the game fast, and would make it more intuative.

    The post was edited 1 time, last by 12471998meh ().

  • General Nightman wrote:

    I like every suggestion except one.

    Arcorian wrote:

    - We reduced the hitpoints of Infrastructure, Barracks, Airport and Naval base to 5, and also reduced their economic ranking factors to 5
    --> This change addresses the fast construction time of these production buildings. They are easy and fast to construct, but also give less ranking points and are also fast to destroy.
    Strategic bombers would be extremely powerful against these, one bombing run and another building is gone. Resources are tight early game, having to rebuild that much would be devastating.Perhaps 10-15HP?
    I agree, and why have an easy to destroy building, resources are tight.