Call of War 1.5: Mechanics & New Balancing

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  • SNYPRFYR wrote:

    Suggestion in Reference to the Units Leveling Up/Upgrades:

    Be cool if all fighting units were produced at a LV 1 regardless of current upgrade level researched and the ONLY way to level up fighting units was to 1) research level upgrade, and then 2) units gain experience battling with leveling up with victorious battles!

    In short, units must fight to gain experience in order to level up :)
    I enjoy games like that, but that's Warcraft (your Night Elf Mohawk gains experience fighting dragons and such), not WW2 (your 134th Panzer Battalion is re-outfitted with the latest Panther tanks fresh from the factory, and are immediately much more effective.)

    Of course experience is a big deal in addition to equipment, so there might be some way to implement it that would make good sense and be fun.

  • CityOfAngels wrote:

    1) Elite AI diplomacy. Without getting in to details... If you want to conquer territory in this war game, all of the AIs are going to hate you and randomly declare war and attack you, even if it's suicidal. There is no way to make friends with AIs long term, only enemies. This is especially bad on large maps, where there are huge numbers of AIs and it assures you of a persistent -25% morale penalty compounding the problem of the resource shortages and stretched supply lines inherent in big maps (likely to cause a frustrating morale death spiral.)

    1a) In competitive team games, the random chance of a key AI offering one side Right of Way and not the other can break the match before the human peace period even ends (ex. will USA be able to land their whole army in Portugal, or end up stuck in convoys all game waiting for the submarines to come?) Way too decisive for a random chance.
    Agree 100% with this comment. I understand CoW's desire to penalize over-aggressive players, the way the world did with the axis in WW2. But the popularity ratings have such a negative bias that by the final days of a game even most AI countries have less than 10% popularity. Perhaps the Popularity algorithm need s to be revised, and some of the factors downtrend- such as a large army making you too unpopular.

  • CityOfAngels wrote:


    what you are saying actually:

    - a high level of knowledge leads to advantages.....
    What on earth is wrong with that? A player puts in the time to learn stuff and thus gets the benefits from that...Very realistic. Unless you are of the opinion that all player initiative should be killed off and everything should depend on hyper-predicable mechanics? I do not believe that you would really want that, so this comment about 'exploits' is not fully understood by me.
    No matter what, there is no issue with 1 player getting better results than another, if that player put in the effort to become a better player.

    - a high level of commitment, i.e. micromanaging movements and actions, leads to advantages...
    Again...what on earth is wrong with that?? A player is committed enough to be there and do what is necessary, while another is not committed enough and loses... Very realistic. Absent commanders lose battles! If anything, the game forces players to have an off-line strategy next to their online. Too lazy to do so? TOO BAD and you lose.

    The air force example (btw, I hardly ever still use massive air forces, except vs AI and as rapid intervention force vs fast units) is so dull... I am saying this just once, so read carefully: There is no exploit there! Someone is merely tactically deploying his air force the right way. His opponent has exactly the same option!
    Two opponents will be circling each other, like in a real dog fight, hoping on a mistake of the enemy.
    Can't keep it up? Have to go shopping? (go read my 2 Red Barons example some time ago)
    That means you have to WITHDRAW your planes. Choosing to leave them there for the slaughter is NO REASON for complaining. Exploit? Pahhh...It is tactics and commitment. Nothing more and nothing less.



    Or are you truly of the opinion we should adjust the rules of soccer so that every halfwit can play in the top tiers, because - even though the halfwit doesn't want to learn to play properly - everybody should have equal opportunity to play in the top tiers?? Wrong! everybody should have equal opportunity to develop their skills. What they make of that is their concern and none of anyone else. Every player has the same equal opportunity to become a good player of CoW, IF they are willing and able to put in the effort.

    I fear this kind of 'silly complaints' may have lead the devs to think they have to rethink the game too.

  • _Pontus_ wrote:

    It is tactics and commitment. Nothing more and nothing less.
    It's bug using, even developers accepted that cheat is not planned. In CoW of 2015-2018 we had higher defensive air to air stats by Bombers, stat. Bombers and naval Bombers. It was changed, HP's of planes was nerfed. In version 1.5 it is not impossible to cheat, but it is highly expencive.

    And this is best change of version 1.5; Even if i dont like Airforce nerfs, but unless we dont have cheaters it is only one way to decrease their advantages.

    Average player is employed, must have sleep times, has family and otherwise duty. No need to punish them with cheating of mikromanagement. It is not taktik, it is misusing of not fixed errors.

  • Wanted to play a few days before sharing my opinion.

    Before that , I have a question has the upper management been replaced in the last few months ? Since July/August there were changes that lead to this. Are you guys trying to cut the costs of maintaining the servers from COW and moved them exactly how the other games are ? From a developer side is easy to have 10 games exactly the same just change the design. From a player perspective I could guess Bytro is cheap because you can't hire 1-2-3-4 extra developers that can clean the codes ( I understood they are all messy and have been like that for some time) . How do you guys think you can keep all core players from each game if they all look the same ?

    Bytro do you need money ? Because we all know these changes lead from your perspective to a higher demand in gold, so I can propose a GoFundMe or Wish or give us a paypal link donation for you guys, so this way you can have it directly without us going into a broken game that is "Alpha or BEta or how ever you want to call it" and test it because at the end you will implement this with some twists, but it will be implemented never the less .

    To be honest ... have a great day :) , who cares about 1 player ?

  • you guys talking about cheaters.. but where the hell do u see cheaters? lets talk about cow 1.5 instead..the game could even work if they would give more resources so that we can just try more then 1 or 2 strategy and not to be feared if we went for air force and the enemy went for artillery and anti air.. everyone should be able to keep updated any type of troops ( or at least more then 2 types ) but in cow 1.5 its hard cuz you need the research and the buildings and would be doable with way way way more resources but right now it just sucks

  • _Pontus_ wrote:

    Rrred wrote:

    - Why change the game anyway? What is wrong with it? @GaiusUltima @Arcorian @Ibeses Low retention rate? What is the problem?
    Well, there we are at he core question.... WHY? Why do this silly operation, pissing off your loyal customers?
    These costumers came to play CoW, because CoW was a unique game !!
    (indeed you created a UNIQUE game!! I can't find anything like it out there! Tens of people asked me what I am going to play now and I have yet to find anything remotely like CoW)

    What was so good about CoW and made it worth playing over a gazillion other so-called strategy games ??:

    - CoW was as realistic as a Grand Strategy war game can get, with realism approaching mechanics and lots of knowledge based 'thingies' that represented aspects like skill of troops, good or bad weather, which rewarded dedicated players for their choice to gather the required knowledge, but didn't make the game impossible for those who didn't..

    - CoW had an extensive diplomatic framework, allowing for a multitude of diplomatic interactions, which was extremely realistic; ranging from cooperation agreements on various levels to full fledged coalitions or simple one-off transactions between nations, depending on the players' choices..

    - CoW had a wealth of things to research, allowing to adjust to your nation's resource output and still have a powerful army, even when you lacked certain resources, or allowing for a multitude of military approaches to future conquest and defense, all depending on your choice among a few givens.

    - CoW offered a realistic and well developed economic mechanism, in which i.e. an IC itself did nothing except increase economic output, but by adding Infra, Harbour or an Airfield, the IC would be able to do more. All depending on choices that had to be made.

    - CoW offered an ever changing challenge with its ever changing starting country, offering a realistic dilemma to what to do. Almost true geopolitics! Needing acces to sea-harbors or oil or grain? Are you based on an island like UK or landlocked like Tibet? Nasty mountains ranges to cross on the north, but open field on the south? It determined your campaign or defensive choices as realistically as it can get!

    Did this wealth of options and choices make the game complicated???
    NO!!! Conversely ... it made for the number 1 reason to play THIS game!!

    Add to that:
    - the pretty good AI; especially with Elite AI becoming the standard.
    - the fair and level playing field, which allowed for gold-victories at an appropriate price only, but even allowed lesser or non-gold-users to put up a fight without having to lose. NOTABLY this provided a challenge to both the Gold-user and the Non-golder and thus was a GOOD THING.
    - the accurate historical contexts of certain maps and wealth of historical info on weaponry to be discovered (that even made a some-what-hooked on history guy like me look up certain things to verify it, just to find out your description was correct, or offered a new insight in things that a fool-for-that like me did know little about, like German Artillery or long range bombers).

    All that possibly was too much for a multitude of dimwit players also visiting this game...and going inactive after starting a number of rounds.
    All of that, however, NEVER being a reason for a low retention rate, because there was NO OBLIGATION to go this deep into the game, and still be able to play a nice game.

    IF combating LOW RETENTION RATES is at the base of this game wrecking project 1.5 ... you will fail.
    Because:
    - Anyone not understanding the old CoW, will still not understand the 1.5. It is now less complicated, but more befuddling, because the logic and realism is gone out the window.
    - Anyone finding the old CoW too slow, will still find this 1.5 too slow, if not slower!
    - Anyone seriously attracted by the old CoW now loses interested and will start looking at other games (90% of the vervent old and lotal players here that bothered to comment bc they CARE!)

    IF making more money is at the base of this game wrecking project 1.5 ... you will fail.
    - You will find out that players like me, Anzac, Alphared, RogodeterSnowl etc and so forth already did not renew their HC and play less maps or have stopped completely or soon will have and are ALL looking for an alternative and actively communicating about this. And maybe they were not your biggest monthly spenders, but they were regular and loyal spenders, even if only on HC for years on end.
    - You will also find out that the dimwits - for whom you are dumbing-down the game - who did not spend then, will still not spend on the new game (too slow, too befuddling, too illogical, too unrealistic)


    The mistake Bytro makes is in its marketing, CLEARLY attracting too many of the wrong players and too few of the right ones.

    Fix the marketing and stop 'fixing' the game!

    Just a few comments on this.

    - Call of War was not a realistic Grand Strategy game, or anything close. It was a alright decent casual game that could be played at a Pseudo-Competitive level for fun - And at a low one at that compared to other games in the same genre. It was a definite improvement over Supremacy 1914 at the very least.

    - Diplomacy was entirely player driven, and as such was interesting. It still is here with some gameplay mechanic restrictions that I personally dislike.

    - Call of War has a wealth of things to research, but the vast majority of these things are useless. The way the game is built and designed, the game just doesn't support researching multiple units and using varied diverse unit types across the map. It favors optimal production of a few units. Now can I build things for fun on the larger maps? Sure.

    - The IC concept is pretty solid. Inspiration here was taken from the Hearts of Iron series - Which you can look at for some ideas and inspiration.

    - Was the game complicated? You have to take into account SBDE, optimal build times, optional unit build times, raiding the Stock Market(No longer as much as a factor), and a few other things. We figured this stuff out to a T in SP1914 and early game CoW. It's just figuring out the optimal math, and doing that is time consuming and can be a little complicated. Their are some interesting concepts under the hood and a lot of unintended game mechanics. Plus luck.

    - Elite AI is still pretty meh.

    - Their is no challenge between a serious dedicated Gold User and a regular user. Practically twelve plus years, I have been around and with some of the older top tier alliances in Bytro Labs Games. All my exploits and tricks - And none of this matters if I am facing a semi-active, serious dedicated Gold user who has a good job. The only skill is seeing how long I can last.

    - Player retention has always been low. It traditionally has been the community that kept people in - Be it the SP1914 Forum Community, the Chat community, the RP Community which was a mixture of on the Forums and on Skype - The Competitive Alliance scene and tournaments, and Players League. All of this stuff died out ages ago and took a pretty long time to do so. The vast majority of the Call of War Community I have been with has left the game and activity has shrunk across the board. A reason half of those older people still play is because of their sub communities at this point and not really the game itself, it's just something to do. And pretty much every single CoW Skype or Discord Group I am in started disliking CoW with some of the 2017 and later 2018 changes, and are already moving on to other games.

    - The "Stronger" community that came in with SP1914 never really took off here in any aspects. A lot of stuff that people tried to do community wise fizzled out. Alliance play never developed to anywhere near the same level it did - Though before it did have Bytro support and other things in SP1914. And at that time the game was way more popular and had a larger adult audience.

    - Anyone who could not understand Call of War will not understand V1.5 and vice versa. It's not more confusing - It's just broken and isn't as fun, at least for me.

    - Even though you pay for High Command, you are not the biggest money makers for Bytro. You are a loyal paying customer, but some people are more loyal, bigger paying customers.

  • - Bytro has tried over the years to try to equal the playing field with activity. Aka make it so that Micro-Management doesn't do much and someone who just occasionally logs in has as nearly a equal playing field to someone who is hyper active as possible. Usually it ends with less depth, not actually fixing the core issue, and leaving most exploits in the game. I mean the Global Chat whisper is still bugged. A few glitches that existed ten years ago are still possible to varing levels of effectiveness.

    - Bytro isn't making any mistakes in marketing really. If anything they have increased it over YouTube, Facebook(Logins are broken and have never been fixed)., Instagram and other sites. That's how a lot of decent people I met over the years got into the game. They put it on the Google Play Store and on Steam.

    - Something to understand that Bytro occupies a very niche position that is filled with a lot of better games, and the advantages that they once had (Free online game), etc, are completely gone. Hence why they are trying to re orientate to Mobile Gaming - Their monetization policies are more acceptable their and their is a larger audience of people to attract. Especially with other formerly decent HTML5/Mobile app companies like Gameloft aren't doing so well. The vast majority of their games didnt't do so well. SP1914 was a hit and developed a strong, niche community that eventually died out. Their mobile tank game died. 30K died twice. CON is practically dead. The other game they made died. Call of War is the only one that was a second hit, and it's dying down fast. It's a tough go either way.

    Their is just so long you can keep the same Formula/Model going with the same rewards. I'm not saying anything that will come next is better or inferior, but things change. The market changed. I've always disagreed with Bytro's money making policies, though it's a industry standard - But at this point, outside of the contracts they have and outside work they do with the Stilfront group - They are trying to survive.

    The newer game as it is definitely isn't CoW style play though. It's more akin to SP1914 but a bit worse.

    Not specifically disagreeing with you. It looks like they are hiring for Senior positions across the board and one or two guys I used to know their left the company awhile ago. I know Kayako was moved to cheaper servers and they are still using a older version.

  • Last Warrior wrote:

    because of this cheaters like you
    I don't use air force en masse, because I don't need them and I never liked them and so many more reasons why they never fitted in my play-style
    Btw, I laugh at those players that are still going about maps with LTs and Tacs. So dull and uninspired.
    I Also laugh at those still getting massacred by air forces, bc they are equally uninspired gamers.
    The great thing about CoW was that there was an intelligent answer to any and every threat, if you were committed enough to think it up.

    So, Little Warrior, before you call me a cheater, for probably the simple reason of your ineptitude to adapt to your opponents actions, better watch your words.

    Stop blaming the game and the committed opponents for your failure to command your troops at a moment it is required for you to be there. There is nothing your opponent can do which you cannot do also.
    Your absence and/or lack of commitment is what is killing you, probably combined with a lack of knowledge.
    However, if you were playing soccer with that same level of commitment vs a much better and more committed player you would also lose! That is life and that is RT-GS for you.
    If you want predictable outcomes, don't play against humans, but buy some CD with a nice predictable AI enemy.

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

  • Just want to comment on airstrips vs aircraft factories. Why can we not build airstrips in cities & only Aircraft factories?
    The 30 minute build time vs 6!? hours seems way off*.
    Plus I would lower the cost of airstrips just a little more, the grain & goods anyway.

    Also glad to have read it will not always be all tank factories at the start.

    Happy in general so far with first impressions.

    *seems harder & longer to put an industry together vs just flatening some ground for runway & put radio equipment in some kind of temporary hut.

  • _Pontus_ wrote:

    CityOfAngels wrote:


    what you are saying actually:
    - a high level of knowledge leads to advantages.....
    What on earth is wrong with that? A player puts in the time to learn stuff and thus gets the benefits from that...Very realistic. Unless you are of the opinion that all player initiative should be killed off and everything should depend on hyper-predicable mechanics? I do not believe that you would really want that, so this comment about 'exploits' is not fully understood by me.
    No matter what, there is no issue with 1 player getting better results than another, if that player put in the effort to become a better player....
    I fear this kind of 'silly complaints' may have lead the devs to think they have to rethink the game too.
    Please understand, I am demonstrably one of the very top Call of War players. I haven't seen you in top-end play - Maybe I've just missed you. But I compete on an Alliance team with 4 other elite players, against other highly competitive teams who give us a run for our money. I have a lot of insight into this game including inside information from the Devs (via my connected teammates), and my complaints are the opposite of 'silly'.

    That said, the mechanics I mentioned are (almost) entirely predictable. Once you know the tricks, they will always work. They are also counter-intuitive, and that is dumb, and it makes new players who give the game a try more likely to quit in frustration. A good game should be as intuitive as possible. Imagine a sword-fighting game for the Nintendo WII. One developer proposes that to make your avatar swing its sword, you should swing your arm. The other proposes that to swing your sword you should kick your leg. One of those ideas is clearly better, right?

    Aside from the issue of being predictable, there is a huge problem with defending in general (combined with needing to sleep). Fortified positions are supposed to be an advantage, not a disadvantage. WW2 wasn't like the siege of Constantinople, but well-prepared defenders still gave better than they took. Moscow and especially Kursk shattered the German army, for example. Armies throughout history have paused their aggressive campaign season and dug in for rest and recovery in a well-defended spot where it would be foolish for the enemy to attack them.

    Instead, in CoW if you dig in to a fortified position with 8 artillery and the enemy approaches with 8 artillery, despite your fort bonus he is going to eventually wipe you out without taking any damage at all. I hope you can see how senseless that is?

    Trust me, there are many aspects of the game that legitimately take a lot of time and practice to get good at. How to build up your economy, which units to build and when so that you are somewhat prepared to resist an air attack as well as a tank attack (while also defending your coasts against naval invasions), how to juggle your resources with production needs, and change your build strategy to suit the strengths of your country, and so on. You can use the terrain to your advantage, and even the alignment of the roads between two armies can be crucial to success in key artillery duels. There is a lot of good strategic depth in this game!

    But the exploits I'm talking about are like 'cheat codes', hacking the game to throw all that strategy stuff out the window. Field Marshall Rommel himself could sit down with this game, study the manual until he has it memorized, play as long as it took to learn how all the units work and all the details of game play aside from the un-guessable exploits, and I would mop the floor with him, 10 times out of 10. The exploits make all the strategic genius in the world impotent.

    You aren't the only one who I've heard basically defending 'cheat code' play. I hold that people who think that is a fun way to play only believe that because they haven't gotten far enough into the game to see how much potential it has for actual realistic strategic depth.

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

  • CzarHelllios wrote:

    - Bytro isn't making any mistakes in marketing really. If anything they have increased it over YouTube, Facebook(Logins are broken and have never been fixed)., Instagram and other sites. That's how a lot of decent people I met over the years got into the game. They put it on the Google Play Store and on Steam.
    The fact that a lot of marketing channels are used, doesn't make it the right marketing.

    When running an MMO that delivers RT-GS, that is slow paced, has incredible depth (compared to competitors) and lots of things to discover, your marketing - over the various channels - should attract people who like those core aspects.
    It is thus only the right marketing if you achieve that.

    If your very active marketing campaign, over so many channels, however, attracts mostly 12 year old players, looking for action, who thus get so bored and confuddled that they don't bother to finish any game they started, then your marketing FAILS.
    No matter how active you are at it, apparently it attracts the wrong kind of player and thus is the wrong marketing!

    This doesn't mean Bytro is not active.
    This doesn't mean Bytro is not using the right channels.

    It does mean the marketing itself - over the various, actively used channels - is not the right marketing!

    If the marketing campaign would send the right message to the public, it would attract (more of) the right players and less of the wrong type.

    I.e. if AEG manages to reach a gazillion people with the promise that owners of their newest laundromat will be able to experience 3D world journeys while doing laundry, but does not provide anything for it to be realized, then what use was that campaign? Will it result in more people buying their laundromat? Maybe, but if they do ... will those that fell for it, be satisfied?

    That is what happens to most new players attracted by the current marketing efforts, which attract a lot of players....but the wrong ones.

    PS: check out the 3 videos that jump up when you search for CoW on Google. Swooping action by fighters, fast paced examples of paras being deployed, tanks moving like in WoT, but in reality... Need i explain further? Wrong message!

    The post was edited 4 times, last by _Pontus_ ().

  • Last Warrior wrote:

    @_Pontus_ Why do you defend this gamestylethen, if you dont like use it yourself?

    And Stop abuse me, you did it already third time...
    I was 1st teacher of rogodetersnowl in PL...
    I do not defend any game-style. I defend committed players who spend time to learn the game and are there to fight the battle when they are required to be there.
    Simply said, if I leave my (anyways rudimentary and puny) air force in a place where an active player can kill them off on the def-tick, well, that is MY mistake. Not the game's mistake nor cheating by my opponent.
    It was my responsibility and I made that mistake (quite often, actually).

    I do 'counter' players who want to turn the game into a totally predictable game, where the personal influence of any player is mitigated by game mechanics, flattening everything to the same potato mash, irrespective of anyone's input.

    The simple solutions to any and all those so-called cheats:
    - Off-line strategy: have your own well thought through off-line strategy. Many a morning I came online to see I lost a few provinces and looked for the enemy, and I suddenly had a kill sore of 10-thousands on an enemy of whom I couldn't find any meaningful army in sight.
    - Timely tactical retreat: needless to explain, but tactical retreat is an underestimated tactical move. When I knew I couldn't keep up i.e. the circling match AKA dog fight, and I knew I had to go, I would break of the dog fight and tactically retreat, so that I wouldn't suffer needless casualties (though many times, I did not and rushed to somewhere to come back an hour later and find my ... uhmm.... didn't find them, actually)

    And, no it is not my intend to abuse you, but I can't allow false accusations at my address nor at the game's, because such false input brings developers to wrong ideas, like i.e. that they need to completely overhaul their once perfect RT-GS game...
    The latter, as is now proven, leads to horrid disasters.

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

  • Newbss wrote:

    To be honest ... have a great day :) , who cares about 1 player ?
    Newbss, you do realize that almost all players active on the forum (at least those with more than a few months or a few games under their belts) are all on your side?

    We are not alone at all.

    It only is unfortunate that still no-one cares....

    The post was edited 2 times, last by _Pontus_: can be removed. ().

  • CzarHelllios wrote:

    - Their is no challenge between a serious dedicated Gold User and a regular user. Practically twelve plus years, I have been around and with some of the older top tier alliances in Bytro Labs Games. All my exploits and tricks - And none of this matters if I am facing a semi-active, serious dedicated Gold user who has a good job. The only skill is seeing how long I can last.
    Ofc that is true. Gold used by a good player is unbeatable.
    But who minds a good player winning?

    An average gold-player could however be stopped, beaten or at least be driven to extreme costs. The latter equally being a victory; maybe not on the map, but surely over his wallet.

    And a gold user is not a problem. He is an asset, enabling the game.
    And - honestly - yes, we meet hem, but how often? Does it effect your overal scores and statistics? Not really or better: really not!

    I feel though, that gold could be much more powerful now in 1.5

  • The tone in this thread is becoming more aggressive, which we don't want to see. Please refrain from insulting eachother, thanks!

    Now long post incoming, sorry for that :)

    CzarHelllios wrote:

    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.
    Quoting this post instead of your longer ones so my post doesn#t get too long. Just wanted to say I appreciate all the detailed and well written feedback of yours. I share the sentiment of others that I would like to read more of your feedback on 1.5 once you experienced it for longer.

    white bird wrote:

    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.
    Refueling times go down by leveling up Airstrips or Aircraft Factories. This is also stated in the description of the buildings.

    Garaelb wrote:

    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?
    Players starting with Tank Plants is not intended, it has some complicated code-reasons. This will be fixed in the next event.
    Local Industry has 3 levels while Industry has 5 levels. Both have different costs and bonuses per level, and one can only be built in urbans, the other only in rurals.

    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.
    We are discussing implementing a feature in future 1.5 Events that would give you the possibility to upgrade your units on the field manually. I think that would adress alot of the feedback on this topic :)

    EZ Dolittle wrote:

    Manpower and troop development is the most critical issue here that needs change.
    The investment in factories to increase manpower is not cost effective.

    The payback on manpower increases should be about 1 day or at the most 2. Currently it is 7 to 9

    Massive troop level disparity is a problem, suggest a more reduced power increase and corresponding reduced cost.

    The diplomatic adjustment do not seem to correspond to what was anticipated or I misread them.

    As Algeria I attacked (with declaration of war) Tunisia and then Libya. My popularity is 6%. I thought there was less penalty for declaring war and being at war.
    The current balancing is still very rough and will be improved in future versions. Feedback on economic balancing and unit balancing is the most valuable to us, as it is still in a roguh state, but easily tweakable. I think there is a good chance that we give you more resources to play around with in the next Event, which should adress most of the concerns I have read so far.
    AI popularity penalty is still in place, we just removed the morale penalty on provinces for being at war. AI popularity though is still on the plan to be tweaked and in the near future some adjustments are coming already which should reduce AI war declarations.

    BMfox wrote:

    I'd like to give some feedback about the 1,5 version that was launched 3 days ago.

    Buildings:
    - Specializing the building according to each troop type is realistic and it is how it works in the industry.
    - It gives the possibility to specialize per troop type per city.

    Manpower:
    - I'm happy that the use of manpower has been used more realistically. However why manpower for building? Yes you temporarily need labor to produce all the building part and to construct the building. However when the construction is done then that manpower that was used has become available on the job market again. This being said, when a building is finished you should get your manpower back. I'm getting stuck in the game by lack on manpower.

    Research:
    - The already overused manpower for producing units and construction is now also imbedded in research. Therefor one doesn't need to prioritize the research he's doing but also weigh in the production and building as you can't do it all.
    - Only new troops get updated which makes the starting troops in mid game more or less useless. Luckily we are all in the same boat.

    Economy:
    - I've got the impression that the economy is now more balanced where there's no big food shortage in the start and overproduction of oil.
    - I've said it twice and repeat it again, manpower is problematic and should be rethought.

    Battle mechanics:
    - Now that the battles are faster the gameplay will be more fluently
    - On the downside, now that the battles are faster a higher rate of game activity is required. In the basic COW there's a large playerbase that plays but is not highly active. These players won't have as good as a player experience as they once had.

    Units:
    - Infantry: they get overpowered fast and it's just not realistic
    - Airforce: tactical bombers have more or less become useless. They had gotten more balanced with the last updates which was a good thing but with the 1,5 there's no more utility for an airforce.
    - Rockets: good that there's finally friendly fire, makes it more realistic.
    - Nuclear navy: I'm happy it's finally deleted as there was no nuclear navy in WWII


    Overall a good version when some adjustments are made but i would hate to see the original COW go, both should be available in the future.
    Thanks for the feedback on all these topics!

    Giving manpower back after finishing production would only work if Manpower was a constant pool instead of a resource that continuously increasing. Sadly at this state CoW can't simulate this type of economy completely, so we have to work with the current model. Still may be a possible feature for some time in the future. If it helps you, imagine the manpower to also go into the staff and workers inside these buildings, after the buildings are finished :)
    We will also rebalance the resurces, including manpower.

    Units on the field will probably be upgradeable in a future version.

    Level 1 units are not at all useless even if higher levels were researched. There may even be situations where players want to produce the lower level units, because they are cheaper, have less upkeep and are faster to produce. They still can conquer provinces or function as decoys or bait.

    Unit balancing we will still tweak.

    OneNutSquirrel wrote:

    BMfox wrote:

    ...
    Units:
    - ...
    - Airforce: tactical bombers have more or less become useless. They had gotten more balanced with the last updates which was a good thing but with the 1,5 there's no more utility for an airforce.
    ...

    Overall a good version when some adjustments are made but i would hate to see the original COW go, both should be available in the future.
    1 Hr re-fuel time for planes... That's a horrific nerf. Just made air obsolete and rockets into Lazer-Death-Stars for anyone atempting to use Air.
    Air Power was, is and will continue to be KING in warfare... now it's utterly useless.
    1h refueling only on the first level of Aircraft Factory, because they are buildable in 30min. Refueling times get way lower when leveling up these buildings.

    Airpower was indead KING in the old CoW version, a thing we actually don't want. We want Airforce to be a viable and worthwhile option, but not an option which dominates and drowns out al other option. We may have overdone it with the nerfs in 1.5, but as I said already, this is just the first rough balancing. We will tweak it heavily and will try to make sure that all strategies are valid: Infantry, tanks, artillery, airforce, naval etc.

    coolgame2019 wrote:

    After trying out a few days, I personally think it is do more good than bad. Some minor tweaks can get this game better.

    I understand the important of fair/balancing, but I think it doesn't have to be each countries start with (2pcs)resources of each type, and (1pcs) resources of each type. To make it more realistic and tactical, middle-east have more oil, can add 1 extra oil provinces, and take out a iron provinces, etc...
    * In the old time, I would strategically to plan which resource i need most, and target the specific country or provinces first. Now, it becomes whoever the closest country to me, BAM i will killed that first. No need to think or plan a strategy!

    2) If infrastruture removes bonus resources, should you guy find something to fill up like 1) oil refinery (oil) 2) farm (food) etc... Other than, just increase the industry to 100%. It is kind of no brainer to just press a button for upgrade.

    3) The good thing is airbase is cost more, so no more spam airbase and air units, but since the map is big. Shouldn't it be the planes run further in distance. Otherwise, planes is not convenience to move from one place to another.

    4) Lastly, why do infantry need oil, as to tanks need food. That i think the old CoW is better. Because it makes more realistic and tactical whether which units to recruit.

    Too bad, my previous post have more cool sugguestions. I don't think you guy have taken any into account.
    Thanks! We will think about more differences in country balancing, though it is alot of work to adjust each country. For the first Event we simply did not have the time to do so and wanted to give players an equal playing field, because learning all the changes is hard already, no need to make it harder by making resources different for each country. Still it is an option for future Events.

    Infantry also needing oil or tanks also needing food is actually the more realistic approach, because in reality also tanks had drivers as well es mechanics who assembled them (needing food), while Inf during their training, equipment production or deployment to the front also used up oil, e.g. for transport or rifle manufacturing. Thats why we ended up with all resources being required for all units, as it also makes everything better comparable (one resources is always in the same column). Still this is not set in stone and we may try something different.

    C88 wrote:

    LOL pls someone explain me this xD
    i think some weird bug its going on there
    It is indeed a bug, please report via the ingame report form.

    Alphared wrote:

    I either have to build up my forces (at low levels)
    OR
    Build up my industry (to maybe have a chance at building higher level forces)
    OR
    Research higher level forces (without an infrastructure to use the research to build the forces)
    BECAUSE
    I neither have enough money, nor enough manpower, to accomplish any two of these things!

    Maybe it's me... but, I am wondering - how is this improving my strategic or tactical options?!?! My game play option?!?!

    (Oh, and side note: fix your map, there is an area in Florida that is land but that you have o embark/disembark to move through!!!)
    Alot of players share your sentiment that resources are too scarce. We will tweak this in coming Event iterations!

    white bird wrote:

    Last Warrior wrote:

    white bird wrote:

    Defensive strength of some units against air force seems a bit unrealistic / disproportionately out of balance?
    And? Airforces were too overpowered, now they are nerfed, but still usable. SP AA and Mech. Inf. are day 6 researches, airforces after day 6 research can have 120 HP's. also its not so terrible as you think.
    Excellent points !
    I did forget to take into account what the planes could be valued at if each level of air force research had been achieved / performed for each type of plane utilized by Day 6.

    Also I really wasn't attempting to complain about the air force being nerfed.

    My post was attempting to illustrate some (perhaps) some inconsistency in defensive values such as:

    1. An AC @ 6.0 but an LT @ 0.5 and a MT @ 1.5. What sort of weaponry does an AC carry that an LT or MT doesn't have? I'm asking seriously, as I am no weaponry expert whatsoever. It just is a bit confusing when analyzing the stats which show an LT or MT will kill the AC, but the AC can defend against a plane better.

    2. There just seems to be a disparity imho between an SP Arty level 1 @ 42 and a level 1 plane that cannot be upgraded. The Air Force was not only nerfed - it was also practically eliminated for the first six days and beyond considering one has to not only construct level 4 air bases but then produce the level 4 planes after completing the level 4 researches for each type of plane. Castration is the word that comes to mind, but may be politically incorrect (as well my apologies to the women among us).
    SP Arty lvl1 is a unit that becomes available at later days and also needs more building upgrades to be produces than day 1 units. We also measured all pros and cons a unit has and tried to balance them out. If a unit is very strong against a certain type, it is usually weak against other types. If a unit is however good vs multiple units, the values are lower than for units which specialize against a certain type. Then we also have the offensive and defensive focus. Units who are not focused can be used as allrounders, but have in turn lower values in both. If a unit has a lot of utility due to its range or speed, it gets a little less damage or higher costs to balance it out. That's basically the whole approach. We may have overlooked some things of course. The balancing is not yet final and will be tweaked in the coming Events.

    Torpedo28000 wrote:

    I like the concept of this update. I have told pretty much everyone that I believe this update could add some really good aspects to the game. Therefore, this is not an attack on the update at all but a way to make it better and CoW in general better, based off what I see has already been introduced. I believe attacking in CoW should be preferred on attacking being stronger than the defence. LT and planes have already begun to show this in 1.5 and as such am guessing this is the direction Bytro is headed? If so GREAT! I believe WW2 was an attackers war. I used to play supremacy1914 (S14) and correct me if im wrong but it is a defenders game with arty ruling the game. I remember HUGE arty slogs with 500+ units fighting in the 500 map. This works for S14 as WW1 was a defensive war. Attacking in S14 should NOT be stronger than defence

    However, CoW and WW2 was an offensive and attack focused war. As such I believe the focus of CoW should be on attacking and not defence. Troops should be stronger when attacking to encourage and simulate what it was in WW2 - ofc inf units should be defensive, but an inf vs tank army should favour the tanks unbelievably. Armour units should be offensive beasts. The "meta" I believe should be mechanised units with air to simulate the "blitzkrieg" as much as possible. Planes and tanks should be strong and should rule CoW much like arty does in S14. However, the current stats of the update and really the current version do not completely simulate this. The "anti-units" (Anti-tanks and Anti-air) are WAY too strong. By having these anti-units very strong it encourages and strengthens defensive game play which is not what CoW should be. If you want to play a defensive game, play S14. For an attack focused game, play CoW. I do not believe the best way to counter tanks should be AT nor do I believe the best way to counter planes should be AA. I believe the best way to counter tanks should be with tanks, and the best way to counter planes should be planes. The battle of Britain was not (im no history expert) But 2000 German planes verses 2000 British AA guns. It was a constant dog-fight between planes vs planes. AA should provide some additional defence and bonus towards defending against planes, but it should NOT be a substitute for an air-force. Armies of WW2 where not defensive artillery, anti-tanks and anti-air forces, they where offensive tanks and plane driven armies with arty in support.

    For this reason, I believe the CoW 1.5 should focus on this for its strategic game play. Those who neglect their air-force should be beaten by those who have one, AA should NOT be a substitute for a strong air-force. Given the 1.5 focus of one key resource per unit type (metal for tanks, goods for arty, rares for planes) to me it suggests having a diverse army, one that has tanks, arty and planes. However, the current stats mean AT beat tanks, AA beats planes so really we are left with defensive arty fights. Which gets me back to those big defensive arty fights of S14. Additionally, given the high cost of planes and tanks compared to the cheap costs of AA and AT, this defensive game play is further strengthened. I think 1.5 has all the makings to simulate this "meta" and be a really good update, but the anti-units should be support units that help a bit, not counters to large swarms of tanks and planes. Therefore I would recommend halving the defensive stats of AT and AA and possible increasing their costs, or deceasing the costs of planes and tanks (I will get into later costs of units which I believe are too high but further testing is required) to encourage the use of interceptors to counter plane forces, tanks to counter tank forces. Currently in Version 1 (V1) melee is not favoured. Tanks are not very strong as melee leads to high losses on both sides. This SHOULD be the cas

    in tank vs tank battles, but tanks vs inf and AT I think should lead to the tanks winning quite decisively.

    I hope this concept is taken into consideration or at least explained to us why if not CoW, is headed to something that is very similar to S14 with anti-units being more powerful than expensive offensive units. I do not think AA should beat planes in a 1v1. Planes should beat planes in a 1v1. AA should provide some additional help, but if a player has absolute air supremacy, they should win. It shouldn’t be a case of if I have 20 tacs, 10 AA units beat or cripple that (given that AA cost about 2.7x less than 1 plane it is much easier to spam AA and counter someones air), interceptors should. It should force me to build a stack of 10-10 ints - tacs, with my enemy building either 20 ints or 2x10-10 stacks. Again, if the enemy has overwhelming tank supremacy, an AT-arty army should not beat that.

    Now while WW2 still did favour the defence, attacking with tanks and planes was quite strong and effective which currently is NOT mirrored or reflected.
    I gave you feedback on this in another place already, so I will make the response short here :) In the past the Infantry branch was neglected alot, although Infantry was the bulk of all armies in WW2. Our vision of the game is to make all unit branches worthwhile, instead of just focusing on the Tank and Airplane branch. In the end a player should need to be able to win using alot of different strategies. We may not be there yet though.
    Regarding AT and AA: They are anti weapons that serve a single purpose, have low mobility and cannot be used for attacking. Therefore their defensive stats must be very good to compensate this. A player building only these units cannot win, therefore building and researching higher levels of them is a huge commitment, making the player vulnerable for attacks. Therefore their defensive benefit must be valuable to balance this out. Still the offensive player always has the advantage to decide when and where to attack, making offense always a useful tactic, especially in an always-online game where your enemy may be offline during your attacks.

    OneNutSquirrel wrote:

    Lvl 1 Convoys in the water have same stats as Subs...???

    LoLz
    Shouldnt be the case. We will review all unit stats and tweak them in coming events. This is just a very rough first version, so no need to "lol" about it :P

    Torpedo28000 wrote:

    EZ Dolittle wrote:

    Rather different to have no negatives to armored vehicles in urban areas. Is this correct or is this a bug?
    Seems to be correct given the way my level 2 light tanks are running over things.
    Infantry units now have a +50% bonus in urban so I believe the focus is now giving troops bonuses rather than making them weaker in different terrains.
    Exactly. Mixing up buffs and debuffs makes comparing values hard, as you have more calculations to do between units to compare values. Therefore we decided only go for buffs.

    GARY WACHTLER wrote:

    Greetings gentlemen.

    As this is only a beta test of a beta test, I do understand changes can still be made.
    These are my current thoughts.

    1) requiring manpower to build facilities and upgrade is very constraining.

    2) requiring a little bit of everything to build or upgrade anything is very constraining. In the original COW if I lacked a resource to build one type of building or unit, I could still build another that did not use that resource.

    3) no unit upgrades. Why? Historically when new equipment was developed it was issued to existing units as well as new units. The german army started the war with panzer II, and ended the war with panzer 4 and 5. The Russian army started the war with BT-5, and ended the war with T-35/85 and JS-2 and 3. If you do not want to allow automatic upgrades, the give us a method to manually upgrade them.

    4) unit strength progression. This is way to much. doubling the strength of a unit in a single upgrade is very unrealistic. This currently means that the first combatant to get upgraded units to the front lines has a major advantage.

    5) Intelligent AI. I am all for the AI fighting well, but having it initiate a war is a bit much. I was invaded by an AI country without provocation.

    I understand you are in buisness to make a profit. This update makes this game one in which if I do not spend large sums of money, I am guaranteed to lose. It almost guarantees that the person who spends the most money will win. While this will make you a good profit, eventually you will lose because players will get tired of being out-spent and unwilling to put out the kind of money it will take to win.
    Thanks for the feedback!
    1) & 2): I see that. We will tweak the resources in the next events based on the feedback we got so far.
    3) With the units now have progressing stats, automatic upgrading would be very imbalanced. imagine someone driving with lvl1 units to your base and right before the fight starts the units level up and double their power, you have no time to react to that. It would also let players save alot of resource costs, as costs rise per level.This said we are thinking about implementing a manual upgrading option in future 1.5 Events.
    4) Strength doubles only for the first level, because its a linear progression, meaning each level adds the power of the first level on top. I see why it is problematic for the very first upgrade and we will probably think about switching it to a percentage based progression.
    5) This was not part of the 1.5 Update and is the result of AIs becoming Elite Ai in all game rounds. We will tweak AI behaviour in future updates though.

    Rrred wrote:

    There are some issues bugging me:

    - Why are you alpha- and beta testing "CoW 1.5" across all servers with all players? I didn't buy High Command and avoid Frontline Pioneers to eventually become a alpha/beta tester anyway. You are now "forcing" me to play a unfinished game?

    - Why change the game anyway? What is wrong with it? @GaiusUltima @Arcorian @Ibeses Low retention rate? What is the problem?
    You don't need to play in these events, they are completely optional. Therefore you don't need to test them and you are not forced to do anything.
    The game became a bit stagnant while the market is changing. Changes need to be made to ensure a continuous growth path and support for years to come.

    _Pontus_ wrote:

    Ibeses wrote:

    4 hours of playing and it is already the end of Call of War?
    Well into day 4 of the event map 1.5...
    Yes, indeed; I can positively confirm, this 1.5 is the final end of CoW.

    With the start of the BAD CHANGES and now this completely new game in the old jacket (new wine in an old bottle....someone said something about that)

    The realism is gone.
    The varied game play is gone.
    The diplomacy is gone.

    On top of all that it:
    - the game has become very, very easy. No more knowledge to be discovered, no more skill required;
    - the game has become very, very boring. In 4 days I did less military actions than on the 1st day in CoW;
    - the research activity is just a plain silly thing now; and I did less than in 1 day in CoW;
    - the economic development is a one way street now and offers not a single challenge or choice;
    - the development of unit stats is cut loose from anything that resembles anything natural or real.

    Enhancing realism?: you failed profoundly!
    Enhancing game experience?: you failed even more profoundly!

    Now, again I reiterate that I fully understand that innovation is necessary and that companies need to innovate to keep making money. This is even an obligation for a company, as it will not survive if it it doesn't.

    However, did anyone ever hear of a company throwing out the door their main product, and replacing it with a completely new product, without any proof that the new product will be at all an acceptable alternative to the client base?
    In short: that a company throws out its clients and trusts that they will be back for the completely different product?

    Rhetorical question, but let me answer it for the-apparently-not-so-well-informed-Bytro team: NO!!

    This is a new game in an old jacket.
    This new game is simply far less interesting then the old game.

    And you already have Supremacy 1. Really, if I am going to play this type of game, I will play S1.

    So... Why destroy CoW??
    I wish you would use the time and energy you spend on giving very broad and general critiques on the recent changes to actual detailed feedback on 1.5, that would help us so much more! And it would in turn shape 1.5 more into the direction you want to see. Please tell us why certain things in this version work well or don't work well, instead of just telling us that you don't like them and that you think CoW is all doomed. We get it that you think that as you have been repeating that over and over again in alot of threads over the past weeks. No need to keep making the point, please focus on detailed Event feedback.

    Also from now on please refrain to insult any players or player base as dim-wits and other derogatory terms. Your posts became very aggressive in the past weeks and such tone has no place in our forums. Thank you!

  • JackKrel wrote:

    Hello,

    I've played about 20 games of CoW, so still a relative new player but it is a game I truly enjoy and I've always loved the Axis & Allies board game. I tried to limit my comments around unit balancing, but the feedback provided is based off the perceived desire for a more realistically diverse force combined with my background of graduating from West Point and serving as an officer in the U.S. Army.

    I'm excited about some of the changes and the overall vision you are attempting to accomplish with 1.5 for deeper play and more varied strategies. I'm playing in one of those games right now, so below are my thoughts being a few days in. I'm trying to offer constructive criticism here instead of just saying "oh no my world is ending" like has trended in many other posts here.

    • Economy / Building Purchases: The economic complexity has increased significantly, or at least it's not as intuitive as first described. I feel like my pace is crawling, particularly with the manpower - cash bottleneck that's appearing early. So here are some thoughts.
      • Building Complexity: It is very difficult to actually produce the designed units and not intuitive, which will make 1.5's new player retention worst then CoW. I have a couple thoughts here.
        • Industry Building's Role: Industry harvests resources, it also produces all of the components used in the assembly plants (i.e. ordnance, tank, etc.). I recommend having the level of your industry impact the economy but also impact the level of unit you can build.
        • Unit Factories: Instead of tying unit level to the plant, tie production time to the plant. I think this would be easier for people to understand while reducing some of the complexity needed to produce advanced units while achieving the same outcome of specialized cities based off someone's strategy. Armor guys will build top-tier tank plants to quickly produce armored columns, same for barracks, etc.
        • Unit Advancement: I'm not sure how much I like the idea of deployed units not advancing as research increases, but I also understand the logic of why that decision was made. I think some middle ground is needed here, but I'm sure the coding related to my next comment would be difficult.
          • Option A: A unit has to stay in the same player controlled province for 24 hours and not engage in combat. I.E. providing time for the new equipment / modifications to be deployed.
          • Option B: Return units to a city with the necessary Industry Level (if using my economic recommendations listed earlier)
      • Morale, Manpower, & Cash: I'm not sure if this is the case for everyone, but the cash/manpower bottleneck is tough in the first few days. I think there is an opportunity to solve this by creating depth around morale, since most buildings now increase morale instead of production capability.
        • Compounding Manpower / Cash with morale: I think you should tweak the income of these resources to morale, with the idea that high morale increases popular support for the war (more people sign up, more people buy war-bonds, etc). Obviously morale already impacts resource productivity, but I suggest a more aggressive scale for these 2 resources where "100%" is really something like "80%" morale, and you can significantly increase morale and cash by having high morale provinces. This will create an excess of both mid-game as people conquer capitals, but become a constraint again in the late game as countries get very large.
          • If morale is tied to core provinces, you can use this as a method to keep rural provinces relevant if all core provinces take a hit of any core province is lost. Thus encouraging protection of core provinces even thought they aren't a huge economic factor.
      • Unit Balancing: I am not going to say a lot here because I'm sure you have lots of tweaks to this anticipated. Despite what everyone says, attacking is much more difficult then defending so some of the bonus's make sense. The rate of HP increased per level is too significant, and you need to tweak armor's advantage over infantry when not in cities. The parity between armor and infantry is too close.
        • Traditionally, a 3-to-1 ratio is used in the real world for infantry on infantry traditional combat planning. Since cities are now more important, I agree it should be very difficult to take out entrenched infantry in a city. Motorized and Mechanized infantry should be the key to taking those places out, supported by air and arty. That being said, in hills and plains, tanks should really own that space vs infantry unless supported by fortifications.


    Thanks for the detailed feedback, I am glad you are excited about some of the new aspects.
    In general I want to say to you that the current version is still rough and we will tweak the balancing alot. This also means adjusting the starting resources and resource production, to ensure you all have a good playing experience. We will also review the role and strength of units and buildings. Feedback like this helps us to do so, so thanks for that!


    C88 wrote:

    i agree with him.. the game right now its too easy because you just have to choose in which type of unit you want make progress about levelling up and such and thats it... so someone will do anti air ( OP ) and artillery someone else will go just tanks ( aggressive style since day 1 ) and some unlucky will go planes and thats it ! we dont have the resources to make a real army and this is not changed on day 4 and will not change even on day 20 duo to high cost of your high lvl troops and structures.Even with high resources at the begining it would end in a total war between anyone and the real strategy there is its to understand which one to attack first.. there is no more strategy in develop your army since you cant upgrade anything even trying to upgrade 2 type of troops at its finest lvl is damn hard.
    So if you want to not close your game you need to work better around these points and start to make the game more fun at the early days thats where you attrack new costumers
    We will indeed work on improving especially the early days in the game. We heard the feedback that you all fell like resources are too limited to do anything meaningful.

    CityOfAngels wrote:

    For the record I am, it's fair to say, a top competitive Call of War player. (2nd place team in the most recent Alliance World Cup.) I know better players than myself, but I have a very strong understanding of this fine game.

    I agree with others who mentioned that we'd like to hear what the devs are trying to fix exactly in the status quo (pre-v1.5) game. You can't find a solution before you identify the problem.

    As an expert player who stretches the status quo game to its limits and knows most (still not all probably) of the tricks... While the status quo game is a lot of fun, there are some glaring problems (focusing on competitive play):

    1) Elite AI diplomacy. Without getting in to details... If you want to conquer territory in this war game, all of the AIs are going to hate you and randomly declare war and attack you, even if it's suicidal. There is no way to make friends with AIs long term, only enemies. This is especially bad on large maps, where there are huge numbers of AIs and it assures you of a persistent -25% morale penalty compounding the problem of the resource shortages and stretched supply lines inherent in big maps (likely to cause a frustrating morale death spiral.)

    1a) In competitive team games, the random chance of a key AI offering one side Right of Way and not the other can break the match before the human peace period even ends (ex. will USA be able to land their whole army in Portugal, or end up stuck in convoys all game waiting for the submarines to come?) Way too decisive for a random chance.

    2) Exploits, i.e. important game design elements that are non-intuitive (or counter-intuitive) and give the player who knows about them a huge advantage. Probably the three biggest are:
    - Artillery shoot-and-scoot (+ intensive micromanagement): When you attack with artillery against enemy artillery, the defenders won't get a chance to shoot back if you run away within a couple of minutes. Completely counter-intuitive, since dug-in defending artillery batteries in sight of an approaching enemy should have a huge advantage, but instead are unable to return fire at all!
    - Tiny plane stacks (+ intensive micromanagement): If an enemy is attacking you (direct attacks or patrolling) with a planes, the very best way to defend is to break your planes up into many groups of 1 interceptor + 1 TB (maybe add 1 SB + 1 NB for bonus lulz). You then must micromanage so that your planes patrol over whatever the enemy wants to attack, and keep moving them so your planes never do their 15-minute 'tick' attack, and are always re-positioning when the enemy planes tick.
    - Moving through the defending stack: Say I attack a fortified city. I have enough troops to win, but the defender has a lot of reserves he can bring to reinforce. The reinforcements will be able to move in to the city and help the defenders unless I instruct my attacking troops to move through the city in the direction the reinforcements are coming from. If I use that trick, the reinforcements will be stuck outside the city (no fortification bonus, fighting alone, on the attack which is a further disadvantage.) Unlike the previous examples this one actually kindof makes real-world sense (the attackers encircle the garrison and lay siege), but the implementation is 100% opaque - Nobody would ever guess that clicking the mouse in that way would make that happen, and it can easily be completely game-breaking for those who have been told the trick.
    - There's lots more: I don't want to share all the tricks! ;)

    3) Sleep. It's a huge obstacle to success in this game at even a moderately competitive level. While you sleep, an opponent can easily break through your lines and probably crush your armies using exploits while you can't react. I get that the devs want to emphasize 'activity', and the game certainly does that... But sleep is crucial to real-world health, and a game that gets in the way of that for weeks at a time is actually bad for humanity.

    4) Inability to defend allied provinces. This horrifying mechanic is mainly game-breaking in competitive team games like the Alliance World Cup, but shows up in any game where coalition mates are trying to work together to fend off a concerted attack. Say I'm Sweden trying to help defend Germany, who has invested most of the team's Iron building border forts to defend against France, Spain and Italy. Germany is spread thin naturally. France moves to attack a German fort with a large stack, and I rush there in time to defend the fort with my 25 Swedes. Bloody melee ensues with the defenders having a big fortification advantage, right? Wrong! The attackers will ignore the Swedish stack and attack only the small German garrison. And once the Germans have been killed off, the French will capture the fort! The Swedish troops are then stuck there in an enemy-held fort, and as soon as they try to move they will be on the attack at a huge disadvantage, instead of logically having a huge advantage by defending in a fort against the original attack. Ugh.

    5) Unrestrained gold usage. Yes, I fully understand that the Devs want people to contribute money to the game. I have done my part by paying for a High Command subscription for several years now. And then I join a 100-player game looking for a little relaxing diversion... And some clown next door immediately attacks me with 20 bombers on day 1. I guess some people have more money than brains or whatever, but I can't see how it's fun to spend $100 for what is effectively an 'I win button', just instantly teleporting in as many max-research units as are needed, instantly healing any damage received, and so on. As a competitive player, when I see that I simply quit as there's obviously no point. How can that be considered good game design? Here's a thought - Would it make sense to develop a game mode where a player could spend as much money as they want beating up on AIs? That way they don't get in the way of the enjoyment of people who prefer to play by the rules of 'L2 airfield takes 1.5 days to build, and after that you can start building a trickle of TBs'. Or maybe those people would actually enjoy to play against each other, as a choice to make the competition become about who can spend the most money? I have no issue with that, as long as they aren't ruining my games!

    6) Recent balance changes have had a negative effect. Any damage to an airfield grounds and cripples all planes operating from it. Elite AI diplomacy problems per above. Seems to be too expensive/hard to effectively keep units upgraded now.

    6a) Can't trade troops (or resources outside of the coalition) now. This one is so bad that it needs its own line, because it dramatically compounds some of the other problems. Sweden can't defend the German forts with their AT guns, and now they can't trade their AT guns to their ally so that they could become useful garrison troops in the forts. And while the tech tree is now more expensive so that it's too prohibitive for Germany to build all of the different rock/paper/scissors troops themselves, the obvious measure of having Sweden build ATs or whatever and contribute them to the cause is prohibited. (I saw a Bytro rep saying "for obvious reasons", but I can't for the life of me imagine what they think it helps!)
    Thanks for the feedback part 1!
    1) Elite AI still needs to be tweaked. In fact there will be an update soon which adjusts the popularity factor so that not everyone ends up in war immediately.
    2) We know there are some exploits still possible and we have some ideas how to fix them. They are not the highest prio right now because it is affecting only a small part of the player base, and many members of said player base actually like to use some of these exploits. So while changing them seems reasonable, it will certainly result in a big topic with alot of discussions, and we currently have other construction sites :)
    3) Sleep is indeed important. There seems to be differing opinions here, with some players advocating that activity should be everything in this game, while others think that always online players should have less advantages. We will try to keep a balance in this.
    4) Inability to defend allied provinces: Its a bug that climbed up in our prio list, so there is the possibility that this gets fixed in the future.
    5) No comment on the topic of gold usage though, there are own dedicated threads for that in the forum.
    6) Trading changes: We are currently discussing about changing the part which received the biggest criticism, changes resource trades outside of coalitions. Unit trades on the other hand always led to possible exploits, and as I understand you are also not a fan of those. If we fix the allied territory defence bug, it should become far less of an issue.


    CityOfAngels wrote:

    ...(cont'd from previous post)

    So, that's a fairly comprehensive list of problems we might want to fix. Now we have v1.5, and it has fixed... None of them, I guess?

    Instead, 2 days into my first game of 1.5 (to be fair it's possible that my perception will change as I get further in), I see a number of new problems.

    1) Resource costs seem to be tuned so that it will be impossible to keep up with upgrades and produce max-level troops for more than one, possibly (not likely) two types of units (from Artillery, Tanks, Infantry, Air, Naval.) Bytro reps mentioned that they wanted to 'emphasize the rock/paper/scissors advantage'. How I see this playing out is, Player A decides to focus all his resources building artillery, and rolls over Player C who focused on infantry hoping to be able to build Commandos. Then Player B comes along, and having focused on Bombers he rolls over A's artillery. The glaring problem here is that you are being forced to pick one of rock/paper/scissors and stick to it, and as soon as you encounter the paper to your rock you are defenseless.

    2) Old troops don't upgrade when new tech levels are researched? Seriously?? So I start with 20 infantry, and by day 2 they are already obsolete as newly-built infantry units are more than twice as strong (and it just gets worse from there). Instead of my longest-serving veteran troops being the core of my elite divisions as has been the case throughout the history of war... They just water down my shiny new troops due to the diminishing returns of stack power. And worse yet, if I leave them back home they will be sucking up my precious manpower as upkeep!

    3) Everyone has the same resources. Boring AF. (May be a problem specific to the '1.5 beta' map.)

    4) It seems likely that it will be way too expensive to ever be worthwhile building any 'sexy' unit, like Heavy Tanks, Commandos, Rockets, etc. That's not what you want in a game. Boring AF (and frustrating to have those unattainable toys sitting there on the tech tree taunting you!)

    5) Core cities are sitting around completely idle on day 1, and likely to stay that way. There just aren't enough resources to put them to use effectively. Looking at the costs of things on day 1 I immediately figured that each city was going to need to specialize, i.e. one producing navy, one air, one tanks, two artillery (none producing infantry or 'secret' tech tree.) Because L1 troops are way less value for money compared to L2 troops, I planned to skip to L2 and hold off on building until day 2. I immediately ran out of resources, and have now given up on building anything but Medium Tanks (1 city) and L2 Artillery (2 cities), leaving 2 cities building nothing. (And on day 2 none of the cities can make further buildings. Need Industry upgrades to increase manpower production? Forget it, not enough manpower! (And it's a 15-day payback of the initial manpower expense anyway, which is not remotely worth it.)

    5a) My brother has noted that because the game 'spotted' us a L1 tank factory in each city, it might be extremely effective to 'zerg rush' by teching nothing but L1 Light Tanks and building as many of those as possible on day 1 until running out of Manpower. He may be right... But that's, you guessed it, boring AF!
    Thanks for the feedback part 2 :D
    1) Resource costs will be tweaked, not final yet. While we intended them to be more scarce in certain areas we still intend players to be able to play all kinds of strategies and have enough to do in the early days.
    2) As stated already we are thinking about giving players the option to upgrade units on the map manually to newer levels. This should both be balanced and realistic and adress most concerns. This said, as already explained in an earlier response, lower unit levels stay more relevant and useful than players think right now. :) They still can do a lot, can be used for baits or risky advances while costing less resources and production time and having less upkeep.
    3) We think about giving countries different resource productions, but for the first Event there was not enough time to do that, as detailed map balancing is very time consuming. Also we wanted to give all players a level playing field in the Event as there is enough to learn already.
    4) Cost-efficiency of units as well as resource production will still be tweaked. Would be interesting to get feedback of players who actually go for these sexy units, if they were worthwhile to them.
    5) We will likely rebalance the early game balancing so that players dont have to idle on day 1. The Tank Plant in all cities is also not intended and will be fixed in future Events.


    C88 wrote:

    you guys talking about cheaters.. but where the hell do u see cheaters? lets talk about cow 1.5 instead..the game could even work if they would give more resources so that we can just try more then 1 or 2 strategy and not to be feared if we went for air force and the enemy went for artillery and anti air.. everyone should be able to keep updated any type of troops ( or at least more then 2 types ) but in cow 1.5 its hard cuz you need the research and the buildings and would be doable with way way way more resources but right now it just sucks
    So you say giving out more resources would fix alot of issues in 1.5? Well its certainly an easy fix that we will think about :)

    ducwigen wrote:

    Just want to comment on airstrips vs aircraft factories. Why can we not build airstrips in cities & only Aircraft factories?
    The 30 minute build time vs 6!? hours seems way off*.
    Plus I would lower the cost of airstrips just a little more, the grain & goods anyway.

    Also glad to have read it will not always be all tank factories at the start.

    Happy in general so far with first impressions.

    *seems harder & longer to put an industry together vs just flatening some ground for runway & put radio equipment in some kind of temporary hut.
    We will still tweak costs, so there is a change airstrips will get cheaper. We needed to split aircraft factories and airstrips because units are supposed to only be buildable in urbans, and aircraft factories serve both as an airstrip and a production facility.
    Tank plants at the start are not intended, will be fixed in future versions.

    _Pontus_ wrote:

    CzarHelllios wrote:

    - Bytro isn't making any mistakes in marketing really. If anything they have increased it over YouTube, Facebook(Logins are broken and have never been fixed)., Instagram and other sites. That's how a lot of decent people I met over the years got into the game. They put it on the Google Play Store and on Steam.
    The fact that a lot of marketing channels are used, doesn't make it the right marketing.
    When running an MMO that delivers RT-GS, that is slow paced, has incredible depth (compared to competitors) and lots of things to discover, your marketing - over the various channels - should attract people who like those core aspects.
    It is thus only the right marketing if you achieve that.

    If your very active marketing campaign, over so many channels, however, attracts mostly 12 year old players, looking for action, who thus get so bored and confuddled that they don't bother to finish any game they started, then your marketing FAILS.
    No matter how active you are at it, apparently it attracts the wrong kind of player and thus is the wrong marketing!

    This doesn't mean Bytro is not active.
    This doesn't mean Bytro is not using the right channels.

    It does mean the marketing itself - over the various, actively used channels - is not the right marketing!

    If the marketing campaign would send the right message to the public, it would attract (more of) the right players and less of the wrong type.

    I.e. if AEG manages to reach a gazillion people with the promise that owners of their newest laundromat will be able to experience 3D world journeys while doing laundry, but does not provide anything for it to be realized, then what use was that campaign? Will it result in more people buying their laundromat? Maybe, but if they do ... will those that fell for it, be satisfied?

    That is what happens to most new players attracted by the current marketing efforts, which attract a lot of players....but the wrong ones.

    PS: check out the 3 videos that jump up when you search for CoW on Google. Swooping action by fighters, fast paced examples of paras being deployed, tanks moving like in WoT, but in reality... Need i explain further? Wrong message!
    Alot of your opinions are based on assumptions, that don't really hold true when compared with years of data that we collected. Our marketing gets optimized alot, we do alot of analysis and have lots of different tests going on. Of course you can't know that if you don't know all the data we have. But rest assured that we always optimize. Sometimes marketing is also very counter intuitive, you wouldn't believe that campaign A performs much better than campaign B by just looking at it, but the data speaks a clear language. Oh and we definitely don't target 12 year olds, quite the contrary, our target audience and the majority of registrations we are getting are quite mature. Therefore it is really not needed to discuss marketing approaches in this thread and I kindly ask you to focus on 1.5 changes instead.

    Phew that was lot, hope my answers helped a bit :) Keep the civil feedback coming please!

  • CityOfAngels wrote:

    But the exploits I'm talking about are like 'cheat codes', hacking the game to throw all that strategy stuff out the window.
    Well, that is something else. And I am glad I do not know them, so I can't even be tempted.
    Anything that has to do with truly cheating your way to victory is low and users of such hacks are of equally low character.
    On a side note: My dug in artillery always performed well though....