Call of War 1.5: Mechanics & New Balancing

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  • GaiusUltima wrote:

    Hey guys,
    we really appreciate the feedback you gave so far. It has been ages since the last time, the forum was as active as in the last few days. Thank you for that.
    It is nice to see, that the some of the drastical changes were percieved quite well. We designed them because we thought they would be a nice addition and bring more variety to the gameplay but also keep up the spirit of Call of War. Though some changes worked not as good as we hoped for.
    A lot of criticism that I take comes from the overall balance of the units as they are in this state. I will try to explain how we got there and why we rolled with them, the way we did.
    First of, we had many different ideas on how the progression and expansion should develop. We wanted - and still want - to bring more tactical depth into the battles, which should be from our understanding a core mechanic in Call of War. There are other features in development to improve battles and enhance the general understanding of them. With these these upcoming features in mind we also decided to try something different with our unit stats while perserving the historical accuracy (which many of you arleady stated didn't go well). As mentioned in the first post, the unit stats and resource cost are still a hugh subject to change, somthing that will be touched multiple times before there will be something that can be called kind of final.
    The idea, of every unit costing some of each resource originated from the historically accurate thing. When defining "well, what was used to created [insert unit here] ?" We came to the point that all units kind of need money, manpower, goods, and grain. Everything motorized would obviously also ned oil and steel. And as we, inside the design team, already defined for ourselves that "rare material" would include things like ammunition, minerals and aluminium, it made sense to include it in the production cost aswell. So now, we ended up with units costing 5-7 different resources - the UI was a mess. Much worse that it is now. So we said "why not include this cost in every unit? That way you can at least compare them properly. And this is why units and building ended up costing every resource.
    But we do have other approaches and will present them in the upcoming events.
    So now for the question, why we released the event in the current state. Many of you claimed, that you could not do much in the beginning of the game. So how could we possibly release it like that? Did we not test in before?
    Well, we did. But on the same page: we know much more about how to play the new event. We know how to use which units in which cases better than you do, as we obviously put much effort into changing it. Of course we would know where to put most attention in the early stages of the game. And we did not realize, that you do not have this insight. Because you simply can't have. So while for us, that were testing in a different environment, this balancing felt good. But on a much larger scale, which is why we roll this whole event, those issues are getting much more visible.
    Again, we will continue to develope more features and rethink the current state of the balancing. And in the future, I hope we will meet your and our vision of Call of War.
    Thank you again, and have a good night :)

  • kahue16 wrote:

    <p>Well, my opinion regarding all the changes regarding the units, buildings, provinces and the course of the strategies is as follows:...I know there will be more balances to be made but I hope this makes the game better and keeps the classic and realistic look of the game as usual.</div>
    I'm really sorry, but I'm not reading that wall of text. Pretty please give this a better format, this is a confusing mess.

  • Greetings,

    It has been some time since I have actively posted on these forums, and much longer since I have actually tested anything in this game. For those of you who may not know me, I was a long time player of Supremacy 1914 from release until 2017-2018. I was additionally on of the Pre-Alpha testers for Call of War, and a former member of the original Support Staff for Call of War as a Senior Moderator / Acting Senior Game Operator, among other things. I have been around for a long time, having been around people that actually did try to play SP1914 and this game at a Non-Gold Competitive level (Players League and Alliance Tournaments). - As well as around people that actively broke down the math behind the game, partially via some fun tools and partially via heavy testing. I used to be in and talk to people who were in developer chats as well.

    I am currently now just starting to test Call of War v1.5, and here are some general thoughts on everything in general, some things some of you should be looking for to test, and some other thoughts.

    - The first game Bytro Labs released was Supremacy 1914. The core game behind it has served as a base and template for virtually every other game by Bytro in some form or fashion. Particularly the two incarnations of 30K and Call of War. Though we have had many different sub versions of Supremacy 1914 over the years, the same core base mechanics have still applied throughout its history in some form or fashion with tweaks and patches thrown on top of them. In fact, when we first started testing the original Call of War, plenty of the graphics were placeholders from 30K and Supremacy, with older texts and what not. The game code itself from my understanding over these past ten plus years is that it's one giant pile of spaghetti. Making core infrastructure changes to everything is a enormous amount of work, where changing one thing here will break multiple things in other places. Not counting the fun buggy databases and everything else. So understand that while the Developers are doing anything, it itself is an enormous amount of work that requires specific feedback rather than generalizations.

    - Going from the above, when we first switched over to Call of War and played it throughout its first few years of its history, plenty of our old Excel sheets and general math did still apply to Call of War, though tweaks were necessary and the people that did this stuff moved on ages ago.

    - From the above, you need to differentiate between:

    A: Brand new base game mechanics / How the game works at a base level

    B: Just tweaks to existing mechanics or multiple mechanics in tandem.

    C: Patches on top of this: Aka resource and unit tweaks, new units, and the like.

    For example, over its history Supremacy 1914 and Call of War introduced multiple new units. Though some of these units were fun to play with in a casual setting, from a standpoint of "Optimal/Efficient play" or "Anything trying to be competitive", the vast majority of these units are virtually and completely useless. The core game mechanics simply don't support building a vast variety of units in tandem. It simply supported a basic model of "Start units followed by Fast units supported by long range units". In Supremacy 1914 this was traditionally Infantry, Armored Cars, and Artillery. Spam Battleships. In Call of War, this has traditionally been Infantry, Light Tanks, and Tactical Bombers. spam Submarines, later Spam Destroyers after the Submarine Nerf. It's gone back and forth from what people have told me. In Supremacy 1914, specifically Alliance play, Building Forts/Timing spy bombs and what not were additional concepts on top of this. We used to have pretty detailed spreadsheets that detailed optimal build times, unit build times, amount of buildings, how to group units, and a whole bunch of other stuff detailed down to a T.

    Quite a bit of additional depth, like in many games were not the intended mechanics but the unintended mechanics. By this I'm speaking of numerous exploits and glitches. When we first started testing Call of War, virtually every single one that existed in Supremacy 1914 applied to Call of War. Familiar old ones older players may be aware of are the Tele/Lightning xploit, numerous fun tricks you can do with units, dividing units up to exploit the Artillery bombardment, putting them on delay. One in Supremacy 1914 was to add infantry onto Battleships and they would soak up the damage for the Battleship. Numerous interesting things with patrol mode and things involving fortresses, SBDE, and other things were/are still possible. Though some of them are harder to pull off recently due to later patches. Quite a few were banned in the Supremacy 1914 Alliance Tournaments, quite a few become unintended mechanics that older players learned.

    Of course, their are amounts of "Luck" to the game. In any game, your country placement, just being invaded from all sides en masse, and what not are additional factors. Just like we have the individual X factors for units on the Micro level, on the Marco level you have the luck of country placement/Skill of other players.

    On top of all of this is though this is slow based real time game, it heavily favours people that are active and that can actively micro their forces. If you are the sort of person that only logs in occasionally, as most casual players do, it would put you at a massively severe disadvantage. Bytro attempted to remedy this several times in Supremacy 1914 to "Even it out" and ensure that activity wasn't as big as a factor, which only caused quite a few people to leave and never really did "Fix the problem". A lot of the older competitive alliances in the day would use teamviewer so they could ensure constant activity on all their alliance forces and proper build times. It's hard to try to be up 24/7 with jobs and a life.

    So you have intended game mechanics, unintended, luck, and extreme activity.

    Where Call of War was unique in this manner is that it

    A: Encouraged aggressive fast paced game styles

    B: Added a few new mechanics with in combination with the older stuff and unintended mechanics, made for some really fun tricks and play

    C: Allowed for minor counters to existing Meta. Nothing that itself would be efficient or highly viable by itself consistently but allowed for slight variances in play styles and made some competitive Player League and Alliance games really fun.

    It essentially for many of us older players was in a sense to us, the original Supremacy 1914 before many bad patches, with new interesting, innovative mechanics. Sad to say at this point in time the vast majority of the community in Supremacy 1914 had moved on due to numerous reasons and we never got a really good competitive scene going here on the scale that existed on 1914. Neither did ever get a highly vibrant active Role-Playing community going either.


    A problem many games has is "Real Depth versus Fake Depth". Their is a tendency in many games to add things onto them "New units, new buttons, a feature or two" that itself doesn't really on a intrinsic level affect the core game or change much. It seems like new for the sake of new. Something to do for the sake of doing. And often a mistake is made that if people aren't using this stuff, we will "Nerf" or change things until it is viable. What most often happens is the new stuff isn't useful or viable at all "Be it partially implemented mechanics or patches on top of the existing mechanics or just new units", but it degrades the existing game where it still "Works". But everything isn't as "Interesting" or "Consistent" as it was before. Things still work and that is still the optimal level of playing the game. But their is overall less depth to everything and choices. You don't have the new stuff as a choice. The old stuff is still a choice but their is less to do with it. Or they can end up "Nerfing" everything where sure, you can use anything or everything. But at this point it is purely luck based and their is very little depth.

    It's a bit like a Rock Papers Scissor formula. It's solid. Then you suddenly make everything beat anything else. Then you add in rolling a dice, and depending on its roll one will randomly beat the other. At least with the original game their is some level of Reflex/Poker Face/What not. I know it's a silly example, but it's to demonstrate what I'm trying to say here.

  • Now, with this aid, I had my account recovered and my statistics wiped. I was going over V1.5 and here are the things I noticed, in combination with replies to the points made in the OP.

    - Morale penalty to capital was a corruption feature I remember being added in Supremacy 1914 and expanded upon to many peoples dislike.

    - I find some of your mechanic changes interesting. Combat wasn't exactly that random in the original Call of War provided you understand some concrete details. It will be interested to test how how the mechanics act in reality, in combination with some old tricks and what not.

    - Commando units in the original game were pretty strong(Especially with a trick or two) but seldom used units in Alliance or Psuedo-Competitive FFA games. They simply weren't practical to throw resources at when you could spam other stuff. Rockets were always pretty useless in Call of War outside of "Fun" games though.

    - I think more buildings for the sake of more buildings is a mistake. Most other real time strategy games keep it pretty simple and consistent with pretty complicated stuff going on in the background. I understand from my conversations with the original developers years ago that the Hearts of Iron series was a inspiration for Call of War at one point. I recall on one level in HOI3 they kept it pretty simple to IC. HOI4 added a few other things, though that was a different sort of game. I think the complication here for the sake of complication is a mistake from a solid game mechanic perspective, though probably a good decision for a Mobile Game/Monetization viewpoint.

    - The idea of actually having usable diverse unit types is pretty interesting. Though in practice I feel as these are just quick patch changes that won't have the intended affect. A alternative change would be dividing provinces up/Making the maps more detailed(Think HOI) with the ability to build more units. It would require more Micro though allow for actual detailed operational warfare.

    - Morale penalty wasn't a big deal in Call of War. It was a bit important in Supremacy 1914.

    - Requiring Manpower and money for research is a mistake. A problem here is where their is a opportunity to innovate and create a whole new mechanic, instead existing mechanics are used to make existing features more of a resource sink.

    - Militia are and will always be useless.



    Things have changed though. Supremacy 1914 was the game where we had a solid competitive community with Players Leagues, Alliance Competitions, and a vibrant and active Role-Playing Community. Call of War improved on the Supremacy model where all the other Bytro games have failed so far - but due to a mixture of reasons, that "Community" element never received the same support post launch and for a long time that the original Supremacy game, among other things had. Or rather, the same sort of community never developed as times have changed for online games and Forum stuff. The average age of the players have moved down, people aren't that much into online games - The niche that you guys are trying to get into is already occupied by several more successful, robust and solid games. On top of this you are trying to remain financially existent with industry standard moneization practices which did cause a massive amount of community backlash in 1914, and did end up in having a lot of people leaving in combination with the times changing.

    It's hard to say this, and I will eventually get around to doing some of the hard tests - But this doesn't look like a improvement of your base model. Their are multiple opportunities to add whole new mechanics(A royal pain, I understand) and integrate them into existing features. It's just when your existing model works so well in one way and you are trying to go in another way, it just doesn't feel right. As a long time player of your games who is one of the very few who has been here since the beginning and at the very base minimum has a "Feel" for things, I ask that you at least try to go the extra mile, even if unpopular and try to create new mechanics, new depth, change things around in a new version of the game. I understand this is a Pre-Alpha of sorts where you are just testing things and are overall just getting feedback, so this is just a basic review of what I'm seeing: "It seems you have some good starter ideas you threw into the pot here. As it is if implemented within the current model, it be a bastardization of it and wouldn't be as enjoyable or interesting. As a starter point to greatly expand upon and innovate later, it's a start.".

    I do recommend that you do keep the original version of the game live as you did with Supremacy 1914. If you need to tuck it into a corner where people need to click the right buttons to even find and play the old version while you promote your new game, that is fine. But treat it as a whole new game and relaunch rather than a massive patch to the existing framework.


    To the existing players that are interesting in testing this out, this is what you need to do:

    - Get together in groups (Discord, Skype, whatever works) and setup a good Google Doc sheet.

    - All fill up a event game and test concrete things. Don't aim to play the game, aim to test things, try to break things. Play around with the age old exploits and unintended mechanics and see how they work with the changes Bytro has made.

    - By specific things, start at one level. Just build one infantry unit and ram it into another infantry unit. Vice versa. Both at once. Repeat en masse. Get someone who is good with math to get the formulas down. Record data. Mix with other units. See how things work. In another game, fill it up and test in that one a FFA style of play. In another have two teams and test aggressive play for both, the SP1914 model as written above.

    - Break things down to the core mechanics. Try to exploit them to the best of your ability. Try to break things. Try to play within the intended parameters. Do all things.

    - At the end of the hard data, write your honest thoughts and feelings on specifics, where you would like to see this game go, and what kind of game you want to play. Give inspirations from other games or mechanics you see in other Grand Strategy games. Submit it to the Developers.

    Probably won't remember writing this in the morning though, like most of my stuff. Tequila does wonders for the mind. At this point I have mostly moved on. But some of you newer players that do like this game on a more serious note and are interested in how it works on a mechanical level - Break it down, figure it out, get the hard math. Excel/Calc/Etc. Get your thoughts together and present it to the Developers if you want to. Be aware however of the niche they are trying to fill, and the monetization standards and goals they are aiming for and what sort of things they are interested in in regards to this and Mobile Gaming in general.

  • I suppose another note is for someone to actually get around to testing Naval Combat in V1.5. The Call of War model never really had good naval mechanics besides just "Spam X naval unit en masse. By virtue of being able to build more of X instead of diverging into X, Y, Z, I can overwhelm counters easily.". SP1914 had some interesting naval tricks at one time, but a few of those were unintended mechanics. Most patched, few weren't consistent or solid enough.

  • Czar, heck, I do remember you :) I have been playing S1914 and then CoW for the better part of the past decade, though not as long as you. Quit S1914 around ranking 500 when CoW started; quitting CoW now at rank 140.

    Concerning your post(s): nothing to add.

    Best suggestions IMO:
    - tuck CoW into a corner where we can still play it, while the new game develops!
    - don't compromise by mixing the new game into the old one, breaking both ideas!

    The rest probably goes beyond 90% (and I am being friendly) of the players, of which some dare to complain that 'now' a 1 Infantry regiment attack on another 1 Infantry regiment will surely fail ... because of the new stats?
    As if anyone with an ant's brain could do such an attack and consider it sound tactics? But 'they' do and think they are OK-players.

    Now where it comes to occupying a niche... Thát is exactly what s1914 and CoW did!
    Thát is what is going to be lost to us, as well as to Bytro.

    But again, maybe I am wrong and maybe Bytro will start making a humongous amount of money now, with this new game, and all the newly recruited players will start spending money, instead of quitting after their first 2 failed games. (not!)

    My suggestion to you: drop the tequila and come back to write more sensible, well phrased stuff that isn't soaked in resentment as mine. They might listen to you.

    My suggestion to Bytro: stay in your beautiful niche of pure RT-GS and do the RIGHT MARKETING to draw more of the right players into it, instead of dumbing down the game.

    The post was edited 3 times, last by _Pontus_ ().

  • I would like to point out a major flaw in the concept of this test, in troops needing every resorse to be built and how it impacts inactivity.

    Ok so I start a game, some one stacks their troops and takes an urban center that has raw materials. Now I can not build any type of troops. Usually I would find a way to try and fight it out and not quit. But if I cant build any troops how do i keep fighting?

    To me this change is going to have people play for 3-4 days and if they lose an urban center and cant build any troops they just quit.

    I'm sure the counter argument is how important it will be to defend the urban center. But first If someone stacks all their troops I can not protect all my urban centers. To me this means sit back try to play defense and that is lame single approach to game play.

    Please do not turn this game into farmville.
    Call Of War All-Time Wins Leader
    Top 20 player
    Frontline Pioneer

  • Citizenkane wrote:

    I would like to point out a major flaw in the concept of this test, in troops needing every resorse to be built and how it impacts inactivity.

    Ok so I start a game, some one stacks their troops and takes an urban center that has raw materials. Now I can not build any type of troops. Usually I would find a way to try and fight it out and not quit. But if I cant build any troops how do i keep fighting?

    To me this change is going to have people play for 3-4 days and if they lose an urban center and cant build any troops they just quit.

    I'm sure the counter argument is how important it will be to defend the urban center. But first If someone stacks all their troops I can not protect all my urban centers. To me this means sit back try to play defense and that is lame single approach to game play.

    Please do not turn this game into farmville.
    Player retention is already bad and most people go inactive in games pretty fast. It was a major issue we used to discuss back when I was Staff in a few private chats. The real question besides making it worse, if how many people it can drive away versus how many people it could bring in.

    Trying to defend all your provinces in Call of War proper was never a good idea early game. Though it does seem the new game may favor building forts and turtling a bit more into mid game.

    ""There is no damage limiter for each unit level anymore, instead there will be a damage limit for the whole stack limit, with reduced damage beginning at 10 units and damage being capped at 20 units." is a interesting concept here though.

  • GaiusUltima wrote:

    Hey guys,
    we really appreciate the feedback you gave so far. It has been ages since the last time, the forum was as active as in the last few days. Thank you for that.
    It is nice to see, that the some of the drastical changes were percieved quite well. We designed them because we thought they would be a nice addition and bring more variety to the gameplay but also keep up the spirit of Call of War. Though some changes worked not as good as we hoped for.
    A lot of criticism that I take comes from the overall balance of the units as they are in this state. I will try to explain how we got there and why we rolled with them, the way we did.
    First of, we had many different ideas on how the progression and expansion should develop. We wanted - and still want - to bring more tactical depth into the battles, which should be from our understanding a core mechanic in Call of War. There are other features in development to improve battles and enhance the general understanding of them. With these these upcoming features in mind we also decided to try something different with our unit stats while perserving the historical accuracy (which many of you arleady stated didn't go well). As mentioned in the first post, the unit stats and resource cost are still a hugh subject to change, somthing that will be touched multiple times before there will be something that can be called kind of final.
    The idea, of every unit costing some of each resource originated from the historically accurate thing. When defining "well, what was used to created [insert unit here] ?" We came to the point that all units kind of need money, manpower, goods, and grain. Everything motorized would obviously also ned oil and steel. And as we, inside the design team, already defined for ourselves that "rare material" would include things like ammunition, minerals and aluminium, it made sense to include it in the production cost aswell. So now, we ended up with units costing 5-7 different resources - the UI was a mess. Much worse that it is now. So we said "why not include this cost in every unit? That way you can at least compare them properly. And this is why units and building ended up costing every resource.
    But we do have other approaches and will present them in the upcoming events.
    So now for the question, why we released the event in the current state. Many of you claimed, that you could not do much in the beginning of the game. So how could we possibly release it like that? Did we not test in before?
    Well, we did. But on the same page: we know much more about how to play the new event. We know how to use which units in which cases better than you do, as we obviously put much effort into changing it. Of course we would know where to put most attention in the early stages of the game. And we did not realize, that you do not have this insight. Because you simply can't have. So while for us, that were testing in a different environment, this balancing felt good. But on a much larger scale, which is why we roll this whole event, those issues are getting much more visible.
    Again, we will continue to develope more features and rethink the current state of the balancing. And in the future, I hope we will meet your and our vision of Call of War.
    Thank you again, and have a good night :)
    As a game developer myself, I know the pain the game devs took to make this update. However, the players who form the support base of this game will never adapt to these drastic changes. I understand the pain when you update a game only to get negative remarks about it by the players. Hence, I can propose a simple solution: Just make this a new game. I understand the game devs wanted to improve this game, however for us players this is going to make it a completely different game. To us, CoW is perfect in the way it is now.
    Hope you understand. I am not criticizing, this is just a small advice.

  • Has anyone gotten to the point in a game of V1.5 to be able to answer the following questions?

    I built Interceptors, TB's and NB's using a lvl.1 AB prior to understanding that each level of plane requires a new level of AB.

    Then I flew these lvl.1 planes to another AB and saw that the refueling time was approx. an hour (I forget the exact amount of time, but will edit post when I have the luxury of being able to test flights again in the game).

    My questions are:

    Does the refueling time become less when the plane is upgraded or when the AB is upgraded?

    Will the level 1 planes (which can't be upgraded) always have the same refueling time when flying to a lvl. 2 or higher AB?

    I couldn't find any information in the descriptors for either the planes or the AB's. If I find something when performing 3rd or 4th search, I will edit post.

    Any help is appreciated.
    wb

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

  • Michael Westerdahl wrote:

    As people said: This is not Call of War anymore. This is not some supremacy 1 thing that leaves the actual game intact, no... you are removing core mechanics of an game. Changeing Research speeds, economics. Joined with my account 2015. Did not even know about the forum for an long while so hence why this account is rather new compared to what my in game account is.

    Why not make this a separate game (Respect to Rrred that said that before me)? Like you did with Supremacy 1. I have seen most changes in game, I remember when the mediteranian map (Rest it's soul) was new and fresh, before Self propelled, before 100 player maps. But I learned and understood the game as I went along... now? pfft, I barely recognize how im meant to do it! Years of learning thrown out. It is an new game with the old skin. We all know it!

    An update is meant to inhance the core mechanics of the game, not remove them. The fact is: Units like Milita lose their charm, now you don't need industrial complexes (That made Rare materials worth anything) to make units, it was an strategy of what to build to maximize your production of resource and unit. Now it seems no resource is worth more than the other, the only one that mathers is manpower: something you can't sell/buy.

    I am by no means saying thease changes are bad. They could be great as an stand alone game. But you are removing what makes this Call of War 1942. It's not the game it was, and if it changes like this: will never be. It's an new game wearing the old ones skin.

    I Agree, one of the things that made CoW so enjoyable was that it was much simpler to get into and learn than 1914 or CoN, I admit I have not here that long, about a year or a bit over a year now, But I love the game as it is for the most part and would hate to see it become largely the same as 1914 or CoW, though They are not bad games in themselves.

  • Please find CoW veteran's feedback from High Command subscription, no gold, skills based tournaments perspective.

    Tactics & Units
    Adding more unit types and features (scout, stealth etc.) adds to experience and allows more variety of strategies.

    Realism
    Good changes increasing realism regarding rockets friendly fire and damaged units moving slower.

    Research
    Increased realism and more tactical options due to units not upgrading automatically.

    Resources
    The current model is good, new changes are bad
    - Concentrating resources in cities limits tactics as you don't need to defend your core resource producing provinces

    - Current version imbalance with different resources production volume between countries is good. It facilitates specialization, trade and players coalition cooperation.

    - Current version different resources requirements for units is good. It goes together with different resources production volume between countries.

    - Current version resources surplus is good. Manpower being the key scarce resource in the current version requires careful units research & production planning. Limiting resources production is bad, it removes army composition tactics.

    Units stats and research
    No comment here, it's an equal playing field for everyone. You need to learn and adopt.

  • With the much more limited resources in CoW V1.5, the need for inclusion of the research tree into the existing Queue System currently available to HC members becomes so much more evident.

    Having to sit for an hour and a half in order to begin the process of researching a next level unit without having to delete an entire production queue should not be necessary for a player using HC.

    With a brand new research tree the solution should be fairly straightforward?

    Clone the existing queue, delete all links / ties to resources, create ties / links to new research tree / create new tab for researching queue.

    This approach could also clear up the messy process / steps someone must take in order to review / remind oneself of the specific requirements for each building unit / item listed in the queue.

    If the queue programming was cleaned up and some additional features added, such as,

    - the ability to click on a line item in the queue and have it take you to the production tab and show you why an item in the queue is being delayed or has a long start / finish time when it is #1 in the queue

    - the ability to pause the entire production queue so that an item in the proposed research queue can be prioritized

    and the new features marketed to players who get beyond the initial learning phase (level 20 perhaps) these additional features might be enough to increase the HC revenue stream enough to justify the associated programming costs of improving the queue system as it currently exists
    wb

  • Not sure if this has been addressed or not, but having tanks pllants available before having barracks seems contrary to any military doctrine. Infantry is always the first to moblize Tank factories would have been car manufactures prewar but there are always standing inf. So if you weregoing to start a scenario with any military buildings it should be barracks.

    Secondly, I dont understand the difference in building 'local industry' and regular industry. They seem to be identical in what they do. Couls someone explain that to me? Please?

  • My main concern so far is that units don't upgrade with research.
    Given that research times are fairly short in the early levels, there doesn't seem to be any point at all in building lvl 1 units ever. It feels like a waste of resources. And that is a shame.
    If there were a way to upgrade lower tier units manually (perhaps by sending them to an appropriate city, selecting an upgrade option, then leaving them there for X number of hours?) it would help. If not, then there should at least be a way of disbanding old units that have become obsolete and you no longer want.

    The second thing is that I feel there should be a way of producing at least militia in non-urban provinces. Some nations have regions that are totally disconnected from their production centres, so defending them is now nigh-on impossible.

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

  • Walterchang wrote:

    My main concern so far is that units don't upgrade with research.
    Given that research times are fairly short in the early levels, there doesn't seem to be any point at all in building lvl 1 units ever. It feels like a waste of resources. And that is a shame.
    If there were a way to upgrade lower tier units manually (perhaps by sending them to an appropriate city, selecting an upgrade option, then leaving them there for X number of hours?) it would help. If not, then there should at least be a way of disbanding old units that have become obsolete and you no longer want.

    The second thing is that I feel there should be a way of producing at least militia in non-urban provinces. Some nations have regions that are totally disconnected from their production centres, so defending them is now nigh-on impossible.
    Additionally, if you don't want to keep your outdated and resource consuming units and thus have to kill them off, your K/D will go to hell.
    But, hey, disbanding units or deconstructing unwanted buildings was a subject already in S1914, so don't count on it being introduced here.
    Who cares that players used to care about their K/D? Or used it as a good statistical measure for the quality of an opponent of potential ally?

    However, you are wrong about not producing lvl1 units. You should either take over a neighbor in the first 2-3 days or build up some def (to not become that neighbor).

    Just shredded my first neighbor (day 3 today), because the only way to increase your resource and cash production is through conquest.

    With that said, my fear of the devs turning COW into a faster paced 'hack 'n slash' for the less brained has come true too.

  • Garaelb wrote:

    Not sure if this has been addressed or not, but having tanks pllants available before having barracks
    Yes, this has been addressed with the introduction of the event. Reading and understanding what one reads is paramount.
    Recap: programming issues have lead to every core city being fitted with a tank factory and it is thus not a fixed feature.

  • An abundance of philosophy here,
    but very little concrete test results.
    Only in two test events, so limited experience thus far.
    It does seem like the attack/defend
    numbers are the exact opposite of those shown on
    the unit cards. Specifically:
    Infantry defending in home city completely shredded
    by attacking AC and AAA.


    (PS to Czar Helios:
    I was one of those involved in extensive testing and spreadsheet builds on S1914,
    also one of the co-founders of the PAL there.)

  • WayneBo wrote:

    I was one of those involved in extensive testing and spreadsheet builds on S1914,
    also one of the co-founders of the PAL there.)
    hold'em! there is evil guy :)

    it is a little bit early for solide feed back, but first expression is rather negative.

    This feeling demand for purchasing gold partially p2p feeling. No. Without reballancing that mean will not change.
    Methodical suggestion will follow for sure.