Fire at will!

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

  • Do you have HC ? Because I got into 2 wars because of my arty, now whenever I approach a border I switch from aggressive . Bad part is if I want to lock down Gibraltar , set my ships on aggressive and instead of keeping spain and Italy away I got in wars with African nations because of HC. I'm so glad that HC ends in 2 days so I don't have this problem anymore (if I have HC i want to use the aggressive mechanic but is not worth it) .
  • Hi guys, thanks for the feedback, as always.

    I actually explained all of this already multiple times here in the forums. But to reiterate:

    The "Fire at Will" setting was reverted to its original behaviour already in early September. Already since then ships on water with default settings did not trigger wars anymore when meeting eachother.

    What we did not revert and also don't plan to revert is the "aggressive" setting. It will stay as it is now: You open fire on neutral and enemy units in sight (hence the word "aggressive"), the tooltip texts reflect that.
    This feature can be used to set up pre-emptive naval blockades or to protect your own coastline from soon-to-be enemies without needing to declare war to everyone upfront. You can also use it to instruct your range units to already fire on soon-to-be-enemies who are entering your territory to not waste any attack ticks until they started the war. All this was not possible before, making it for example pointless to position submarines along a coastline unless you were at war with everyone beyond that coast already.

    It is true that it makes using aggressive stance a bit more difficult, but you can perfectly deal with this already:
    - you can set the nations in your vicinity you definitely don't want to attack to "right of way", then your "aggressive" units won't fire on them, even if the other nation does not return the "right of way" setting. Normally players set pretty much all AI nations to right of way in the beginning anyway.
    - you can make sure your artis don't come close towards neutral borders when sending them on their march while being set to "aggressive"
    - you can set them temporarily to "fire at will" when in the vicinity of neutral borders
    - in the late game when most smaller nations are dead and frontlines are large it won't be much of an issue anymore naturally

    Sidenote: This behaviour is also needed for our other new game "Supremacy 1" which shares the same codebase and thus the same behaviour of this feature. There we have unowned territories (roads) and it is important that players have an option to block such territories so that no one can just move through them, similar to blocking naval pathways.


    So all in all with the new settings you have more possibilities than before with just slightly more micro management required.
  • Freezy can i suggest one change to the way aggressive is set up.

    Instead of aggressive attacking all neutral "At Peace" countries it is set to attack "Trade embargo" countries or counties you are at war with at the time.

    The way it is set up it actually punished those of us who purchase HC. The paying members should not be the ones who have to constantly give neighboring nations right of way status to avoid unwanted war.

    By coding it to trigger with embargo or war it allows HC members to categorize hostile nations without giving right of way to countries you want to leave neutral as they may or may not be friendly.

    I truly believe that since so many changes were made to HC membership benefits a better effort to accommodate those players should be undertaken.

    Thank you.
    Call Of War All-Time Wins Leader
    Top 20 player
    Frontline Pioneer
  • Just put the nations that you don't want to attack on ROW, if they abuse the row well then you have an excuse to attack them ;) The point is that this still allows to set up a naval blockade which is really good. However maybe they could edit it for maps where blockades are less important like the homefront map for example.
    BMfox
    Moderator
    EN Community Support | Bytro Gmbh

    Check out my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BMfoxCallofWar


    Found a bug or need help? Send a ticket here!
  • freezy wrote:

    It is true that it makes using aggressive stance a bit more difficult,
    Hi Freezy, thank you for hopping over to the forum once more and your answer.
    Pls brace yourself for a Wall of Text, because I like to be overcomplete and stem from a generation that was still able to read a book (you know, those flat things with sometimes 100's of pages). So, a 1 page message to me is still short...

    Ofc it is possible to 'work around' the issues created (= war with every nation around you and popularity 0%) with another 'workaround'...

    And ofc it is 'fabulous' that subs can now do a better naval blockade... (who was not waiting for that...?)

    But... the main use of the 'Agressive Stance' was in attacking an enemy nation, planning a route and not having to worry.
    As I put it to players who were contemplating to buy HC: HC gives xyz advantages AND you have more hours of sleep!

    Now several advantages of the Agressive Stance are gone in exchange for ... basically a better naval blockade...yay?

    And one workaround (sigh...another one) entails giving your neighbors ROW...which is not an issue with AI...but...it IS with human players!
    In short, we - the HC customers - should (a) not need workarounds and (b) not have to give ROW to potentially dangerous neighbors...notably for something which was working perfectly before.

    The idea that the (paid for) Aggressive now simply means 'Make enemies and destroy popularity with AI' is simply ridiculous. Nobody in his right mind can disagree with this statement.

    It would also have been much more convenient and customer friendly to add a Blockade Stance for instance, than wrecking a popular and paid for feature. You know - maybe a weird idea - but ADD something instead of WRECKING the game with changes (that limit player interaction, ruin trade, ruin RP, aid map-mobbing alliances, force you to set just anyone to ROW etc.?)

    If for some unearthly logic or outlandish reason Aggressive can not be reverted to as it was (which was the REALISTIC version) or a Blockade Stance can not be added ('can' is the wrong wording; some form of 'unwillingness' fits in there better, because it is possible), then AT LEAST serve the paying customers with a good solution instead of workarounds, like:

    CitizenKane wrote:

    Instead of aggressive attacking all neutral "At Peace" countries it is set to attack "Trade embargo" countries or counties you are at war with at the time.

    As Bytro you have/had THE BEST pure strategy game by far ! Realistic game mechanics and elements of the oldest strategy games around like GO and CHESS. Just in a more likeable and appealing historic packing. I have played a ton of strategy games, but COW and S1914 are the only ones I stuck with over the years and that applies to many if not all of the loyal players here.

    But with the recent changes Bytro is quickly destroying the appeal of CoW by:

    - your change to the Aggressive Stance now implies that the original command to attack all ENEMY units, means the totally unrealistic MAKE ENEMIES OF ALL (unless you use workarounds...which already implies the new setting thus is an imperfect setting, basically only suiting naval players);
    - your change in diplo means limitation of player choices and options, limited interaction between players and favoring or even pushing of map-mobbing;
    - your change in the market mechanics only favors map-mobbers by putting non-aligned players at a disadvantage and solves no problems that anyone was really bothered with.

    All in all, what Bytro has tried, doubtlessly sprouts from good intentions, but has hopelessly failed in achieving any of the objectives and, moreover, only results in pushing map-mobbing, annoying non-aligned and non-mobber alliance players and adding completely unrealistic and unwanted features.

    Unfortunately, the explanations given for the changes remain platitudes:
    - Enhancing game experience: by annoying players, ruining good features or even removing much loved features?
    - More realistic: by turning a perfectly logical command into mass-murder and imposing taxes that even the Netherlands wouldn't dare to impose and limiting historically correct diplomatic options?
    - Hiding of in-game resources & capital: doesn't Bytro destroy more in-game capital by taxing/extorting both sellers and buyers with completely unrealistic 10% tax, removing 20% of the capital involved in trade from the game economy? And for sure 20% is more than the resource & cash hiding practices of all 'wrong-doers' together!
    - Crippling the RP community?
    And so forth...

    And the goals that should have been achieved to justify these changes?:

    - Resource & Cash hiding in market: really... nobody was really bothered with a losing party hiding some resources or cash in the market. I don't know which old Evony player thought this was a problem in COW, because (a) very few did it, (b) the effect is minor, (c) nobody won or lost a map because of it. Ergo: the whole problem was an insignificant occurrence...not justifying annoying 1000's of players.

    => Now, if you disagree or I am simply wrong with this analysis and you do have a better answer, PLEASE enlighten the community and stave the the problem with hard numbers and relevant facts to justify the change.
    Like e.g.: 5% of games was won by resource and cash hiding and we had to change this. THAT would be an acceptable explanation and garner support for this ridiculous Soviet style interference.

    - Enabling blockades: ... ... dotdotdot ... still looking for words for this ... Ahem... How on earth are paying players served with that change that allows naval blockades, but ruins entire attack methods? Which can only be circumvented by using workarounds, which include giving human player neighbors ROW? Is it a very bad trade off, pushed by some naval player with total disregard of what real players want? Notably when 99% of the battle takes place on land? Why do I say some naval player? Because the blockade on land was already being done with Aggressive arty covering a border crossing manned by an expendable unit which needed to be killed to pass, causing war and thus arty to fire...(That simple? YES!)
    So all you added was the possibility for a naval blockade...sigh...everyone was really waiting for that option.

    => Now, if you disagree or I am simply wrong with this analysis and you do have a better answer, PLEASE enlighten the community and stave the the problem with hard numbers and relevant facts to justify the change.
    Like e.g.: 5% of games was lost because subs did not blockade well and we had to change this. THAT would be an acceptable explanation and garner support for this ridiculous East-Ukrainian Militia style of Shoot-Anything-That-Moves-And-Passenger-Planes-Too command.

    - Limiting troops trades to prevent super-stacks: let me think... I have shoe size 44, which is pretty much average... so what happens to me, happens to most players.
    Now, how many times did I encounter a super stack built from units traded? ... NEVER! Yes, I saw stacks with units clearly traded, but, NO, the 10% tradeable units have never been a problem, unless a player was losing anyway! An unneeded, unwanted and much hurting change, following from a totally unrealistic problem definition of a insignificant problem.
    What I did see recently is how map-mobbing alliance members in a coalition are trading, creating big air fleets under 1 command, while the non-aligned players cannot anymore! Hence, the irrelevant or even non-existent problem, was solved by putting individual players at a disadvantage, while pushing map-mobbers. Well done?

    => Now, if you disagree or I am simply wrong with this analysis and you do have a better answer, PLEASE enlighten the community and stave the the problem with hard numbers and relevant facts to justify the change.
    Like e.g.: 5% of games was won by super powerful super-stacks and we had to change this. THAT would be an acceptable explanation and garner support for this ridiculous Soviet style of interference, limiting diplomatic trades and interaction between individual players.

    - Limiting resource, province and other diplomatic trades: as the above, but for resources etc.
    I only want to add that you really killed of an USP of COW: varied player interaction options, allowing for many different play styles, instead of just dumb throwing of forces at each other.

    Please explain the reasoning and back it with data... Well, I don't really expect that you will do that, but ...

    What I and many many many other players do expect: that - if you do not refute the above - you take back the until now irrefutably logical analysis above to the team that IMPOSED the ridiculously unrealistic changes on the player community, all the while dismantling one attractive feature of the game after the other and dumbing it down to an almost unworthy-to-play level.
    That you discuss what was the reasoning and why that reasoning was able to prevail over LOGIC and PLAYABILITY.
    And that in the future this kind of potentially disastrous changes are not implemented without extensive tests by seasoned players (for which the FP-player selection will have to be changed).

    Until the above presented - and widely carried by the community - reasoning is refuted with solid answers, the recent batch of changes (except the AI turning Elite) is a batch of BAD CHANGES...

    The post was edited 6 times, last by _Pontus_ ().

  • BMfox wrote:

    Just put the nations that you don't want to attack on ROW, if they abuse the row well then you have an excuse to attack them ;) The point is that this still allows to set up a naval blockade which is really good. However maybe they could edit it for maps where blockades are less important like the homefront map for example.
    FYI, setting active human player neighbors to ROW is a very dangerous thing. Especially early game.
    And ofc the experienced HC players already did exactly that (set to ROW) from day 1 of the bad change of the setting, when they felt it was their only or best option.
    So, when a logical and very good suggestion is made by a more experienced player, it is uncalled for to suggest a workaround that any HC player with an ant's brain figured out immediately. That, however, does not change that the new setting ruins complete attack methods and hours of sleep in favor of a ... naval blockade. That simply is not a good thing and no workaround will change that.

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

  • BMfox wrote:

    Just put the nations that you don't want to attack on ROW.


    One issue in my last game in a 1939 historical map, two human players not in my alliance keep going inactive ... I give the new AI nation ROW ... Then a day or two later the two human players (Canada and Australia) come back!

    Currently one of them (Australia) looking for good landing spot in Northern New Zealand (which I hold)- so I confront him with either air patrols, ground or naval units.

    The other (Canada) has already parked several of his troops in remote Anchorage (I'm the US) outnumbering me. In response, I fortified Anchorage and I'm sending some naval units to support in case he decides to backstab me ... :(
  • Pontus hit the nail on the head when he wrote,

    _Pontus_ wrote:

    But with the recent changes Bytro is quickly destroying the appeal of CoW by:

    - your change to the Aggressive Stance now implies that the original command to attack all ENEMY units, means the totally unrealistic MAKE ENEMIES OF ALL (unless you use workarounds...which already implies the new setting thus is an imperfect setting, basically only suiting naval players);
    - your change in diplo means limitation of player choices and options, limited interaction between players and favoring or even pushing of map-mobbing;
    - your change in the market mechanics only favors map-mobbers by putting non-aligned players at a disadvantage and solves no problems that anyone was really bothered with.

    All in all, what Bytro has tried, doubtlessly sprouts from good intentions, but has hopelessly failed in achieving any of the objectives and, moreover, only results in pushing map-mobbing, annoying non-aligned and non-mobber alliance players and adding completely unrealistic and unwanted features.

    :thumbup:
  • Ok first TL;DR but i get the gist and noticed this little thing:

    freezy wrote:

    What we did not revert and also don't plan to revert is the "aggressive" setting. It will stay as it is now: You open fire on neutral and enemy units in sight (hence the word "aggressive"), the tooltip texts reflect that.
    Can it at least only be aggressive to "trade embargo" and "war" relations, possibly even "ceasefire"?
    This cause less hardships to those with "aggresive" setting, and a more realistic option.
  • AK140 wrote:

    Ok first TL;DR but i get the gist and noticed this little thing:

    freezy wrote:

    What we did not revert and also don't plan to revert is the "aggressive" setting. It will stay as it is now: You open fire on neutral and enemy units in sight (hence the word "aggressive"), the tooltip texts reflect that.
    Can it at least only be aggressive to "trade embargo" and "war" relations, possibly even "ceasefire"?This cause less hardships to those with "aggresive" setting, and a more realistic option.
    Notably it is a paid for setting from HC, which used to be good...and now is punishing us for having HC with popularity penalties due to basically war with everyone ... unless you use a workaround.....pffff.

    Oh ja....and the sub-blockade is really the only positive thing the changed setting does. I would love the devs to be transparent and honest and tell us HOW they came up with the idea that a naval blockade would favored by HC users over a perfect artillery (and almost perfect naval-) strategy setting....
    Maybe then we could point out which important points they lately keep missing when making changes that mutilate the game.
  • _Pontus_ wrote:

    Notably it is a paid for setting from HC, which used to be good...and now is punishing us for having HC with popularity penalties due to basically war with everyone ... unless you use a workaround.....pffff.

    Oh ja....and the sub-blockade is really the only positive thing the changed setting does. I would love the devs to be transparent and honest and tell us HOW they came up with the idea that a naval blockade would favored by HC users over a perfect artillery (and almost perfect naval-) strategy setting....
    Maybe then we could point out which important points they lately keep missing when making changes that mutilate the game.

    General Michaelis wrote:

    Imagine bunch of AI submarine for no reason attacks you
    What is this fuzz all about? This post is two years old!!!

    The AI has now offensive fire settings. So if you are at war with an AI and you are in range of the AI artillery on march. The AI artillery stack will stop marching and open fire at you. That's all what changed.

    If you aren't at war with AI then you have nothing to fear, nothing changed in this aspect. Let's face it, attacking AI is boring so now it's spiced up a bit. It will also promote the use of artillery and more refined tactics instead of all running around with tanks like every other player in the game.

    Spoken about subs, weather with default or with offensive fire settings, the sub will only attack nations at war as it's a melee unit. For sub blockade to attack neutral nations that try to disembark on your shore it should be on aggressive fire settings.
    BMfox
    Moderator
    EN Community Support | Bytro Gmbh

    Check out my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BMfoxCallofWar


    Found a bug or need help? Send a ticket here!