Call of War 1.5: Mechanics & New Balancing

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  • freezy wrote:





    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 :) We will still tweak costs, so there is a change airstrips will get cheaper.
    Yeah it will give us a better test ground for the next events and if we can start doing war since day 1 without fearing to be lack on resources then it would be more fun for anyone.. The strategy from COW also come from been able to selec and develop your army as you wish according the enemy you have to fight...
    Another important thing is to not let other ppl see what lvl of your structures we are making because right now just by looking at the map i can see what others ppl are producing and thats no good because we believe that guessing what the enemy is producing without ,actually, spying and scouting will result in a lack of strategy and strategy is paramount for the game. I hope next test event will give us 2x or 4x speed to get a faster community response about the game because some balances or unbalances can come at day 4 like day 20 but the point is you dont have to wait 20 real days when it could take just a week to find out.

  • freezy wrote:

    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.
    Appreciated (as in valued for what it is). I can't 'know' and only comment on my experience.
    As for 1.5, I am again surrounded by, in majority, user names that indicate an player age not allowing for much maturity. This is further corroborated by what I see in their game-play. As said: that is what I see.

  • freezy wrote:

    So you say giving out more resources would fix alot of issues in 1.5?
    IMO that in itself would not make the game more interesting...

    One of the nice things of the old CoW was that you had to work with various sets of resource situations and amend that by investing in (a certain) resource development and/or by planning your campaign towards obtaining certain resources.
    And when investing there were several choices, ranging from Infra to IC to harbor or leveling up any of those, each with different positive or negative consequences.
    This provided for a frequently changing approach to a map and thus for a challenge.

    Since 1.5 is in early phases and (I hope) only for now all countries have the same (too limited) set of resources and cash income, I would hope for later iterations to bring back that challenge which the old CoW provided...

    (...and to bring back meaningful diplomatic options, inter-player trades including troops, a lively market, multi-layered game-play, the wealth of options to choose from, and ... oh wait... there I go again about all that was lost)

    The post was edited 2 times, last by _Pontus_ ().

  • On unit balancing of ACs:

    In the old CoW you only quite recently - was it a year? maybe 1,5 years ago? - made ACs cool again.
    The dimw... errrm.... vast majority of players ofc did not understand their usefulness before and still not after they finally got some buffs.
    But even without the buffs, their speed is what made them a mighty little weapon, if applied correctly. It is not for nothing I have far more casualties in ACs compared to other troops; I built them a lot and, yes, they perished a lot..after doing their job.

    Now, in 1.5... their fighting capabilities seem to have increased, but their speed is nothing very special compared to LT's. With that, their unique feature, the one thing that made them so useful and different from LTs, is gone.

    IMO another impoverishment of the game-play options.

  • _Pontus_ wrote:

    freezy wrote:

    So you say giving out more resources would fix alot of issues in 1.5?
    IMO that in itself would not make the game more interesting...
    One of the nice things of the old CoW was that you had to work with various sets of resource situations and amend that by investing in (a certain) resource development and/or by planning your campaign towards obtaining certain resources.
    And when investing there were several choices, ranging from Infra to IC to harbor or leveling up any of those, each with different positive or negative consequences.
    This provided for a frequently changing approach to a map and thus for a challenge.

    Since 1.5 is in early phases and (I hope) only for now all countries have the same (too limited) set of resources and cash income, I would hope for later iterations to bring back that challenge which the old CoW provided...

    (...and to bring back meaningful diplomatic options, inter-player trades including troops, a lively market, multi-layered game-play, the wealth of options to choose from, and ... oh wait... there I go again about all that was lost)
    well its not that deep as you wanna make it appear.. yeah in cow in order to make more res you had priorities like infrastructure ,IC and harbor whatever but thats just bringing more longevity to cow and in COW 1.5 they got all in 1 structure which give short life for the game because in 5 or 7 days you have already +100% resources on at least 1 province ( if you focus 1 resource type) and thats it.. In cow there were matchs that could last months in battling and raising economy that gave longevity to the matchs but in Cow 1.5 i believe its more easy ,short, and maybe with more action ( if we got the resources ) duo to no morale penalty
    Im not saying Cow 1.5 is bad in that sense but its has not the longevity of cow but i believe they can work around that and change something about provinces .
    i like the idea of all nations starts thr with same resources but in order to make war we must have a reason to do it so i would increase the resources you can get from conquered provinces.
    Also i would restore the +10% morale for getting a capital and the CASH !!

  • _Pontus_ wrote:

    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....
    Are you familiar with artillery 'shoot and scoot' though?

    If I'm attacking your fortified artillery with mine, you will never get the chance to shoot unless you sit staring at the screen as I approach and give your gunners an attack command at exactly the moment I come into range. If you are 2 seconds late clicking, or have a little lag in your connection, I will get away. If you do it successfully once I'll see it, and the next time I come I will probably stop just out of range and wait for 5 or 10 minutes before closing the distance. Don't blink! ;)

    Then I will march my artillery away for half an hour, and a half hour return trip, ready for the next 'tick'. Despite only being in firing range for 5 seconds or less per hour, I will do just as much damage as if I was parked there the whole time firing away. And you probably won't do any damage at all, despite presumably having your gunners sitting watching with their fingers on the trigger as my limbered artillery column moves into place. As a war aficionado, the whole thing just makes me grind my teeth with frustration!

    Anyway, we are getting off the topic of v1.5 - I'm glad to hear Freezy mention that the Devs at least have an inkling that some of these exploits are bad - Especially the 'can't defend allied fort' one.

  • _Pontus_ wrote:

    On unit balancing of ACs:

    In the old CoW you only quite recently - was it a year? maybe 1,5 years ago? - made ACs cool again.
    The dimw... errrm.... vast majority of players ofc did not understand their usefulness before and still not after they finally got some buffs.
    But even without the buffs, their speed is what made them a mighty little weapon, if applied correctly. It is not for nothing I have far more casualties in ACs compared to other troops; I built them a lot and, yes, they perished a lot..after doing their job.

    Now, in 1.5... their fighting capabilities seem to have increased, but their speed is nothing very special compared to LT's. With that, their unique feature, the one thing that made them so useful and different from LTs, is gone.

    IMO another impoverishment of the game-play options.
    But ACs are now probably the best (practically only) way to prevent your cities from being 'ninjaed' by stealth commandos! (Because of their high defense value even compared to LTs and MTs, and stealth detection at L3... Which of course makes absolutely no real-world sense.) :P

    Imagine investing the massive amount of resources it takes to build 5 L3 ACs, just so you can station them in all your cities just in case someone attacks you with commandos some day, as unlikely as that probably is on a random map.

  • CityOfAngels wrote:

    Are you familiar with artillery 'shoot and scoot' though?
    Yes, it was - to my best possible recollection of events - last used successfully against me in S1914, so that is quite a while ago, and I literally was still a noob, despite ranking 500 at the end.
    As far as I remember I started using ACs a lot in combination with Arty (for several reasons) as soon as I was in CoW and if I am right, my Arty fires automatically at any troops of any nation I am at war with, as soon as they are in sight.

    So, maybe having ACs parked with my Arty prevented this from being a successful tactic/exploit against me, simply because of the increased vision of my Artillery?
    Or maybe that in combination with HC and my Arty on Agressive?
    I have not extended my HC now, after it recently expired after the first batch of BAD CHANGES (to market, diplo and HC fire settings), so I can't test it fully under the current circumstances.

    However, if it is due to the increased vision range (w/o the combi of HC setting Agressive for the Arty), then I could indeed possibly still call it an exploit, but hardly a hack, since there apparently is an effective counter measure, basically making it a (anti-noob or anti-AI) guerrilla tactic, being useless against any player that knows just that little bit more.
    But maybe I am wrong about this one.

    Nevertheless, if I am right, it is the same as I refuse to call the air force def-tick use an exploit or a hack, despite it always having been used to my disadvantage, because I blink too often....

    Micromanaging your troops equals applying acquired knowledge with the willingness to make the (rather extreme) effort, which equals winning by commitment and dedication. That is not an exploit or a hack, but the logical reward for doing so.
    The opponent, having counter measures at hand, but not applying them, thus deserves the loss.
    IMO it is like: "Heck, I put my plane on auto-pilot during the dog-fight, laid back and took a nap. And then that b@stard got me, because he did not put his plane on auto-pilot like I did! UNFAIR!"...

  • "If it ain't broke, don't break it." Devs, you done broke the game with 1.5. You created an entirely different game with a gigantic manpower bottleneck besides other awful decisions. Please, just create a new game called BTSaMCTCoW 1942 = "Bigger time sink and more complicated than Call of War 1942". TWO HUGE THUMBS DOWN!

    Let me correct something as well =
    Changed nearly all values, costs, bonuses and build speeds of all units, buildings and researches. There, now your original post is factual.

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

  • _Pontus_ wrote:

    CityOfAngels wrote:

    Are you familiar with artillery 'shoot and scoot' though?
    Yes, it was - to my best possible recollection of events - last used successfully against me in S1914, so that is quite a while ago, and I literally was still a noob, despite ranking 500 at the end.As far as I remember I started using ACs a lot in combination with Arty (for several reasons) as soon as I was in CoW and if I am right, my Arty fires automatically at any troops of any nation I am at war with, as soon as they are in sight.

    So, maybe having ACs parked with my Arty prevented this from being a successful tactic/exploit against me, simply because of the increased vision of my Artillery?
    Or maybe that in combination with HC and my Arty on Agressive?
    Nope. None of that helps. (AC extended vision can help with a different problem, but that at least kindof makes sense.)

    The problem is that when the attacker's arti moves into range, yours will wait two minutes (!) before shooting at them. The attacker of course attacks immediately, then can 'scoot' away before the defenders think to shoot back. And in 5 seconds the attacking artillery (being hauled behind trucks or horses mind you) does an hour's worth of damage, which part I've sortof gotten used to, but that's clearly ridiculously unrealistic too.

  • Missing Building

    Infrastructure Increases land unit movement speed through the province where it is built. There is no building that provides the same benefit to CITY provinces.

    This movement bonus should be added to the Industry building available in City provinces, unless this was an intentional omission, normally roads would improve the closer they were to cities.
    General Maximus Decimus Meridius - "Are you not entertained?"

  • CityOfAngels wrote:

    Nope. None of that helps. (AC extended vision can help with a different problem, but that at least kindof makes sense.)

    The problem is that when the attacker's arti moves into range, yours will wait two minutes (!) before shooting at them. The attacker of course attacks immediately, then can 'scoot' away before the defenders think to shoot back. And in 5 seconds the attacking artillery (being hauled behind trucks or horses mind you) does an hour's worth of damage, which part I've sortof gotten used to, but that's clearly ridiculously unrealistic too.
    So, basically, as long as the distance from becoming visible to getting into shooting range exceeds 2 minutes, it would work... i.e. like in mountains and/or the artillery having to move through enemy terrain, cutting their speed down.
    I would really like to test that some day; to see if Arty can cross that distance from becoming visible to firing range in 2 minutes. 2 minutes doesn't make for too much of a distance for Artillery.

    Ofc, all in all, it remains a somewhat silly mechanic; both that the arty does an hours worth of damage in a few seconds, as well as that it takes 2 minutes for well prepared defenders to start firing at an approaching enemy.

  • CityOfAngels wrote:

    _Pontus_ wrote:

    CityOfAngels wrote:

    Are you familiar with artillery 'shoot and scoot' though?
    Yes, it was - to my best possible recollection of events - last used successfully against me in S1914, so that is quite a while ago, and I literally was still a noob, despite ranking 500 at the end.As far as I remember I started using ACs a lot in combination with Arty (for several reasons) as soon as I was in CoW and if I am right, my Arty fires automatically at any troops of any nation I am at war with, as soon as they are in sight.
    So, maybe having ACs parked with my Arty prevented this from being a successful tactic/exploit against me, simply because of the increased vision of my Artillery?
    Or maybe that in combination with HC and my Arty on Agressive?
    Nope. None of that helps. (AC extended vision can help with a different problem, but that at least kindof makes sense.)
    The problem is that when the attacker's arti moves into range, yours will wait two minutes (!) before shooting at them. The attacker of course attacks immediately, then can 'scoot' away before the defenders think to shoot back. And in 5 seconds the attacking artillery (being hauled behind trucks or horses mind you) does an hour's worth of damage, which part I've sortof gotten used to, but that's clearly ridiculously unrealistic too.
    A mixture betwen Shoot n Scoot, the splitting one, tele, and a few others makes for a very...interesting game.

  • CzarHelllios wrote:

    A mixture betwen Shoot n Scoot, the splitting one, tele, and a few others makes for a very...interesting game.
    As long as it boils down to Micromanaging your troops better, which equals applying acquired knowledge with the willingness to make the (rather extreme) effort, which thus equals winning by commitment and dedication.
    That is not winning by an exploit or a hack, but makes winning the logical reward for the effort made.

    As for the tele, I suppose you mean the 'jumping' to a fixed/still standing point, which used to span a distance of some 7 to 10 minutes in the far gone past, but is practically not interesting anymore after the patches which reduced it to a very small distance?
    I used to consider that 'extreme dedication', which represented all faster units helping to push or tow the arty :))
    Anyone willing to make that effort for an hour (pffff....) deserves that speed bonus, because he virtually really was pushing the slow unit with his bare finger tips along the screen.

    But we are drifting from commenting on 1.5 and how it is so much worse than good ol' CoW.

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

  • CzarHelllios wrote:

    CityOfAngels wrote:

    A mixture betwen Shoot n Scoot, the splitting one, tele, and a few others makes for a very...interesting game.
    Ooo - How did I forget about 'warping' the last few minutes to win a race to some objective? Yes, that definitely belongs on the list. "Beam me up, Scotty!" (And the rest of the 5th Panzer Division while you're at it please!) ;)

  • Back to 1.5:

    day 4;
    eating up all conquest by my next neighbor; player name indicates a teenage player, but he is still active.
    the latter cannot be said of 12 players out of 21; these have already gone inactive; nothing changed in that respect.

    if the efforts made - completely turning CoW into a new game - were made in an attempt to increase player retention and make it more attractive to the teenage mobile "I want it all! I want it now!" generation, then this does not bode well for the future.

  • _Pontus_ wrote:

    As long as it boils down to Micromanaging your troops better,
    We play RTS and not action klicker. Wasting real time is not taktik nor skill.

    Thank you very much for doing your job. Slowly i begin like version 1.5, If it mean at least one advantage slowdowned.
    Im out of this conversation.

    Good luck. Please, recruit more players who will change their mind from bad to good new version 1.5

  • Last Warrior wrote:

    _Pontus_ wrote:

    As long as it boils down to Micromanaging your troops better,
    We play RTS and not action klicker. Wasting real time is not taktik nor skill.
    I have had games vs very good players where days on end I could play on autopilot, until they became my neighbor. This either put me on their menu or them on mine.
    Logically battle ensues and you find out your opponent actually has skill and...dangerously much time.

    Suddenly the slow CoW game turns into close quarters battle mode and now survival of your troops or victory in a battle is no longer determined by hour-long artillery barrages from a safe distance on an incapable or absent player or predictable AI... Suddenly it is your personal skill and effort, using all your gathered knowledge, that will make the difference...

    If that were never the case, why play?
    If everything in a battle is predictable, why play?

    But, hey...yeah...whatever, suddenly, for some, it is no longer a good game. No problem, but don't complain when suffering the consequences of not using the counter measures you equally have at hand.
    Simple enough: either fight it out on the sharp edge of the knife, applying all your available time and knowledge or you don't, by choice or forced by time-constraints.

    RTS, action-clicker (as if CoW ever...), whatever... someone will win that battle and I prefer it to be me.
    And sometimes it can't be me, because I have to go somewhere or have visitors or even have to sleep.
    So be it.
    Absent commanders rarely win battles vs skilled commanders actively commanding their troops.
    Cheat? No, absolutely not.
    Bad luck? Yes.
    Can't recover from that bad luck? Next game!
    Complain about the dedication and skill of my opponent? Never! That is like whining about gold use...
    Learn to lose with grace ffs! That is part of life too.

  • freezy wrote:

    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.
    The game = the number of new players? The retention of new players? The overall number of players? The $ spent on the game?

    If it is new players, there has been enough said about Bytro's marketing. You could win a lot here.
    If it is the retention of new players, make a (much better) tutorial, which was already suggested > year ago.