Call of War 1.5: Mechanics & New Balancing

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  • C88 wrote:

    coolgame2019 wrote:

    I totally agree with Freezy!! Because just the previous version, ppl spam tact bomber against anything. I sometimes felt sad for ppl (just log-off), and when they come back. BAM, their units and cities is gone. For me, i always prepare a few SP anti-air, so not as much problem. The previous version, only SP AA can kind of suppress, but not stopped because too powerful. AA is still too weak at that time, i found out only the stupid A.I (elite) will recruit them. HAHA.

    Home base defense do help abit, but we all know that majority of our land is not our homeland. So we are still vulnerable to spam attack. Unless, non-core land can turn to my homeland, and add more non core land into the map.
    you sound like a weak player.. do you want to kill a bigger stack of air bombers? make those intercpetors lol ! bombers alone are very weak and if they come with interceptors bring anti air stacked with other units and covered by your interceptors.. its not that you must bring only 1 unit of AA to kill 50 planes but you need both sky and ground cover just like IN real wars. You all are missing the whole point and crying about planes been too strong when you never ever done a proper stack with anti air and never ever done a decent ammount of interceptors..All this come from inexperience and bad strategy. I never won a single match without having heavy AA and a decent ammount of intercpetors but ofc there are some maps full of noobs were having light tank and tactis is enough!
    Im wondering why im loosing my time explaining the game to random ppl.. just a waste of my time

    this post has been edited.
    That is part of the problem.
    Before with just anybody being invited to be FP - as long as they started and quit enough games w/o a single victory - and not even grasping the beginnings of strategy and tactics, nor having any idea of the roles and application of certain units. "Unfair! My single lone AA regiment couldn't take out 30 Tacs. Not even while being in a level 1 fortress!". It was not any unit being to strong, it was the minds of players being to weak.
    But these comment nonetheless and gave input nonetheless through their FP games.

    And now, with this thread again. People who never got past the first layer of the game and just saw cool units that they imagine should be able to 'this or that', but they never even found the 'I' to click and see what other info there was available than just the basic stats of the unit.
    For such players a Pokemon-styled game is perfect. "See that cool monster I have? It has these stats, given by te devs! Cool hey?"

    But it has no place in a WW2 RT-GS simulation.
    Now facing the Pokemon-like (sucked-out-of-my-left-thumb-kind-of-stats-based-on-nothing) stats, I fear that was caused partly by those comments.

    For me and many other players, units in a WW2 simulation, whether a FPS or GS game, should perform their real life roles as realistically as possible. And tactics should approach realism, as should strategies.

    What I miss now:
    - Economy was very important ... if not everything ... which had a realistic approach to it with logical functions for buildings and varied choices to be made. In the economic management of your country, moral management was an important factor.
    Now, I have hardly any options for improving my economy, besides building IC's. Neither do I have many choices to improve moral, except building weapon factories or barracks (??!!) which I do not want or need or can afford everywhere.
    This lack of options creates one big 'emptiness'.

    - In real life, the Combined Arms approach - developed by the US Forces after landing in Normandy and earlier of some sorts applied by the Third Reich with its Blitzkrieg (it is actually wrong to say 'Germans', because none of what transpired in those days would have been possible without certain specific but also in general the Austrians, only with whom the Third Reich could come about. One a side note: the Germans also did not start the WW1 either; again the Austrians had something to do with that...) - was the ultimate way to successfully win the war on the ground.
    Support to regular front units from the air being the Western way to crush enemy forces, and massive artillery support being the Russian way. Whatever, every unit type having its role to play.
    In the old game, this was pretty well reflected in maps with players (who had gained at least some insight) who did or tried to do what was necessary vs the threat from the air and all other threats from various weaponry types.
    Ofc, vs AI and 'lesser players' the air force was still the weapon of choice, as it is nowadays when fighting noobs like would be powers like ISIS.
    But in general, the right combination of troops solved each and any problem. There was an answer to any type of threat if you were willing and able to commit your think-power to it for a little bit.

    This is no longer so in the Pokemon version of CoW: The out-of-whack unit stats (a defending LT stands no chance whatsoever vs an attacking LT??), the fast production, resource constraints: it forces you to make a limited choice out of the limited possibilities and promotes 1 regiment vs 1 regiment battles. It also promotes attack-attack-attack.
    Very unrealistic and IMO opinion, and the dimw... sorry... 'lesser players' will make again all the wrong choices.
    It has become more confuddling to them; not easier!

    All in all, the game until now, has allowed me to roll up 1 neighbour + all conquest by another neighbor in the first few days. Easy-peasy, because you left me no choice.

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

  • @crammy Thank you crammy, I always respect the opinion of good players. Especially when they have played a good number of maps, say over 30, and developed a deep knowledge and good understanding of the game (as it was) and thus are perfectly able to judge what the effects of introducing Pokemon means for CoW.

    Do you mind to publish your K/D here, because I currently have no time to look it up.
    K/D being a good indicator of how well a player understood the old CoW, it would be interesting to know it.
    But my guess is somewhere around 5? Maybe 6? It couldn't be a negative score with all your knowledge and experience, right? As in below 1?

    I also perfectly understand the positive comments (or the 'I-don't-mind-attitude'), towards the changes, of players who never grasped much more of the game beyond its looks and are happy with a K/D below 1; simply because it is already said in the bible:"Blessed are the ignorant".
    Heck, whether they enjoyed the game is all that matters and they made perfect cannon fodder for others, increasing their K/D's.

    Whether 'the blessed' should make comments about issues beyond their somewhat 'limited' perspective is, however, a different question, but freedom of speech is freedom of speech.
    Whether 'the blessed' should make comments like yours, is no question; they should not. But luckily you are not one of them, are you?

    Pokemon-CoW (or 1.5) is not about CHANGE or changes to the game named Call of War 1942; Pokemon-CoW is a new game, which should definitely not replace the Grand Strategy game that CoW was.
    Possibly, Pokemon-CoW, when tweaked, fine-tuned, re-balanced on resources & unit stats & building functionality etc, will make for a fine game too. Heck, it might become as entertaining and interesting as the old CoW even, but ... it is not CoW and besides the jacket, it has nothing to do with CoW. It is a new game that should get all opportunity to earn its place; not at the expense of the old CoW though.

    All that in my humble opinion, just being a player playing Bytro games for about almost a decade, only ranking 140, with merely 93 maps joined, 57 victories (slow learner), a modest K/D of 2,08 (was over 3, but became sloppy since the BAD CHANGES started and my motivation dropped) and a pretty average C/L of over 6 (was 8, but as said: I became sloppy since the demotivating BAD CHANGES). Oh, and a good number of years in S1914 with rank General, but possibly you don't know it so that wouldn't mean much to you.

    Always happy to learn from a good player like you that has been around a while and has a good understanding of the game.

    The post was edited 9 times, last by _Pontus_ ().

  • CzarHelllios wrote:

    - It is virtually nearly impossible to have a healthy work/life balance and be a competitive player. Granted, competitive play as it once was is virtually dead in SP1914 and in this game, and competitive play is neither this games target audience nor intended - It was just a happy fun accident. But in actually playing either game at the most optimal levels, and especially in Alliance matches, extreme activity is virtually a requirement. It was so much that many players would regularly set timers to wake up at certain times in the night to check up on stuff.
    no more of that :00000450:

    it's impossible

    for a win, if you wanted to sleep, you couldn't sleep more than an hour straight on or you would risk losing advantage to your enemy, insane levels

    although it was fun, i wouldn't do it again

    you basically give up your life in order to win the game
    Estoy dispuesto a darlo todo, a luchar por lo que soy, a ser libre dentro de mi, a guerrear mientras viva.

    Manual: Básico y Machiavelli
  • nemuritor98 wrote:

    CzarHelllios wrote:

    - It is virtually nearly impossible to have a healthy work/life balance and be a competitive player...
    no more of that :00000450:
    it's impossible

    for a win, if you wanted to sleep, you couldn't sleep more than an hour straight on or you would risk losing advantage to your enemy, insane levels

    although it was fun, i wouldn't do it again

    you basically give up your life in order to win the game
    L2nap, n00b! ;) You need one of these!

    ...so do I! :O
  • nemuritor98 wrote:

    CzarHelllios wrote:

    - It is virtually nearly impossible to have a healthy work/life balance and be a competitive player. Granted, competitive play as it once was is virtually dead in SP1914 and in this game, and competitive play is neither this games target audience nor intended - It was just a happy fun accident. But in actually playing either game at the most optimal levels, and especially in Alliance matches, extreme activity is virtually a requirement. It was so much that many players would regularly set timers to wake up at certain times in the night to check up on stuff.
    no more of that :00000450:
    it's impossible

    for a win, if you wanted to sleep, you couldn't sleep more than an hour straight on or you would risk losing advantage to your enemy, insane levels

    although it was fun, i wouldn't do it again

    you basically give up your life in order to win the game
    I totally understand and agree.
    For all my game before the 1.5, around 50%ppl inactive for 4 days. around 80% inactive for 8 days. One of my game i m playing on Day51, it is 2 left. Alot of players still have their complete core land untouch. Sadly, i always think why is this happening.

    Only those who keep harrassing ppl and they have no remorse whatsoever would love the old version, because they can do their little monster mind stuff and they don't need sleep.

    I urge the dev setup the old CoW for those old players with insane AI only (not elite AI not good for them), they don't need real players to play with since most already left anyway. I can imagine that their one or two hours sleep, and the AI BAM them hard on the wall.

    It is on the DAY5, it is still 12 ppl out of 22 still active. Looking better but not good enough.
  • CityOfAngels wrote:

    Nono... Skill does factor in to tactics for sure, and those "close quarters battle mode" scenarios can be the best part of the game. Will he leave his artillery in the fort while my tanks crash in to it, or detach them and shoot from behind the fort's garrison? When he detaches will my besieging artillery get a chance to hit them without their meatshield? That's all great, but we could still have that without these counter-intuitive exploits.
    "Why play" is for fun, obviously. From a competitive play perspective (which I realize is more or less uncommon in the community at large), mainly because of the exploits, you can't be competitive and get decent sleep. Because the game stretches on so long (i.e. we aren't talking about a 6-hour LAN party, or one all-nighter, but two weeks straight of nothing but quick naps in between ticks), that is profoundly unhealthy. A game shouldn't be bad for your health!

    Fundamentally I believe most or all of these exploits should be closed off with twin goals:
    - Making the game more realistic and accessible (It makes total sense that you would want to defend against bombers with interceptors. It makes no sense that splitting them in to 10 tiny groups would work far better than 1 or 2 larger groups.)
    - Allowing a player to go on a defensive posture effectively, to give the troops (and more importantly the player) a chance to rest up. To be clear, if you sleep for 10 hours and transports invade while you are sleeping or something like that, that's your bad for not securing your coast. You could have seen those transports approaching with planes or subs before you went to bed. But the business of waking up and finding out that your enemy used some kind of magic death ray to kill all your elite artillery in a fort overnight without taking a single hit in return because you weren't online to click the button at the precise second necessary each hour... That makes no sense.

    ------------
    I know some people don't care about game realism, but let's face it, this is a WW2 simulation game, not Starship Troopers or something where units can be made up however the author likes for convenience. (Glowy flak from their bums shooting down starships from orbit??) So here's a very-incomplete list of departures from reality in v1.5 that I believe hurt the game as a simulation.
    1. Mobile infantry are an attack unit, and infantry are a defense unit? That might seem to make sense (because they are faster, right?) but it doesn't. Mobile infantry are just infantry that can get somewhere quickly when needed. They are great reserves to defend an imperiled city or plug a gap in the lines. They are not meant to be used as a hammer to break through the lines - That makes no sense!
    2. LTs are an attack unit, and ACs are a (better) defense unit? LTs actually do more damage on the attack than MTs do? Again makes no real-world intuitive sense, and how does it make the game any better? In the Staus Quo game, all those things very much have their uses. Now it just feels like a dog's breakfast to me. Might as well make them big colourful insects or dragons or something instead of Pz3s that we should know what to expect from!
    3. Commandos capturing a city by stealth, killing 2 infantry divisions garrisoned there. This isn't Troy. :P It would make sense for a small unit of commandos to sneak in and sabotage an airfield or something, but we already have spies for that kind of mission. WW2 armies didn't sneak up on cities full of troops. (But it looks like Naval Bombers can detect Commandos if you want to patrol around your inland cities with those? lol)
    4. Heavy tanks are a defensive specialist, weaker than MTs on the attack? They are the opposite, if anything! KVs and Tigers were called 'breakthrough tanks' because their armor allowed them to smash through enemy lines as AT shells bounced off their hulls. And Tank Destroyers have been flipped from defensive specialists (which made historical sense) to offensive specialists? Oh my head... :( Again, I wonder if someone has made a counter-factual assessment that speed = attack power and slowness = defensive power? Mobility, attack power and armour are all different important characteristics. Mobility just gets you into place faster - It doesn't make you do more damage. TDs traditionally had weak armor, just field guns on a tank chassis. They were meant to be dug in, and then race away to a secondary dug in position after their first blind was compromised. Mobility for defensive use. On the attack they tended to end up like this scene from Saving Private Ryan:
    5. Units can't be upgraded in the field, meaning your 20 starting inf will end up being trash conscripts by the middle game instead of veteran core troops. (Apparently devs are planning to address this.)
    6. Convoys are stronger than submarines. (Apparently devs are planning to address this.)
    7. Resource cost tuning. It makes no sense for infantry to cost rare materials or a significant amount of oil and steel. Sure, they have rifles that have steel barrels. But compared to a Battleship? A single 16" gun (i.e. 3 of those per turret) weighed about 120,000 kgs! And in general everything is far too expensive for the resources available in this beta map, resulting in production being far slower than in Status Quo CoW. (Apparently devs are planning to address this.)
    8. Destroyers are able to shockingly quickly destroy a coastal city's industry with bombardment (and those buildings are depressingly precious and irreplaceable!)
    9. AA seems to completely neutralize TBs, which again makes no sense. A WW2 column of Panthers racing around enemy territory with 1 mobile AA unit and no interceptor cover would have been absolutely savaged by Sturmoviks. In this game the TBs will be unable to attack without getting slaughtered. L1 mobile AA hits for 42??
    10. Strategic bombers have 30 building attack at L2? (And L1 buildings have 5hp) Does that mean that a single bomber can flatten every precious building in a city in a single pass??
    11. Faster combat resolution (combined with map movement that is still very slow) seems like a bad idea that again breaks the realistic and working implementation in the status quo version. So Germany and France have armies lined up staring at each other across the Maginot/Siegfried lines. Realistically Generals would ensure that enough troops are at each point along the line that if a concerted attack shows up there they can hold long enough for reinforcements/reserves to pour in. But because movement is slow while combat ends quickly, there is likely to be no time to reinforce, which is likely to make defending basically futile in general. Why bother building forts when it's too easy to overwhelm them, especially with their strength badly nerfed? (Forts were not too strong in status quo!)
    From reading the discussion, it sounds like the devs have gone way overboard in pursuit of 'rock/paper/scissors', and I don't get it. Status quo CoW has plenty of that already, and it makes sense there. If you need to cheaply counter ACs running around your underbelly, rush out some AT guns. LTs are a more mobile (but more costly with much longer build time) way, but they are weak against bombers. Bombers are weak against interceptors, cruisers and AA. LTs are owned by HTs. Destroyers kill subs but get mauled by Battleships. Anyone who has read anything about WW2 intuitively gets all that, and that's a huge benefit!

    It sounds like you are chasing notions like "How do we come up with a few 'meta' build strategies that will be best for most situations?" when history already teaches us what is best for most situations (i.e. the army compositions that were effective in WW2) and the game should be designed to encourage us to simulate good real-world strategic deployment as much as possible. I want to emphasize that status quo CoW was already quite good in that sense, and making a big shift to the 'various specialist insects that only look like Pz3s' unit types feels like a big step back.

    Please don't throw away the realism of unit roles! Seek instead to find ways for us to effectively use the units in realistic ways!
    Thanks for the detailed feedback!

    1. If we turn nearly every Inf into a defense unit, there is not much variety or options for players focusing on the Inf branch. We want to enable different strategies, therefore we also need different roles within certain branches. From an intuition view point it makes sense to give motorized Inf a more offensive role than regular Inf, and I would say that for most people that intuition is stronger than their historical reasoning.

    2. Again, differentiation of roles needed. While you say that in the old game every unit had its role, I very much disagree with that. Usage of certain units was far below of what we actually want to see. We want to give all units a real use case.
    Armored Cars and Light Tanks unlock both at the same day, both units need differentiating factors in order to make it worthwhile to level up both. In 1.5 Light Tanks are offensive focused and better vs. Light Armor, while armored Cars are better vs Inf and defensive. That gives far more reasons to build both than the old version does.
    Medium Tanks are allrounders in this version. Because their def and off stats are 1:1 (was also the case in the old) it would be imbalanced to give them better attacking stats than Light Tanks, as it would negate the Light Tank's role. In 1.5 Light Tanks can be used for quick attacks, but not so well for defense. Medium Tanks are more flexible, they don't exceed in a particular role but can be used in more situations.

    3. Commandos are just much more fun with a stealth feature than being a beefier Infantry. It also differentiates them better and this role change was actually requested by quite some players. The old version didn't even make much sense, as Commandos in WW2 would never be able to take out an Infantry batallion. I would say them being able to sneak up to provinces in the new version, although not making 100% sense (though I can totally see commandos destroying encampments by placing explosives), makes more sense than their role in the old version. And they were able to conquer provinces and fortifications without support in the old version as well, even much more effectively due to higher stats. Them having lower stats but stealth is just a better fit. There are now more units than Naval bombers that can uncover stealth units btw.

    4. Heavy Tanks were also a bit more defense focused in the old version, just not as much. In 1.5 we wanted to exaggerate unit roles a bit to make them clearer to the players and to make tactical movements more important. Being an offensive focused or defensive focused unit matters much more in 1.5 and in turn creates more strategies and maneuvers on the map. The high defensive stats of HTs are the reason why a 1:1 unit like the medium tank is slightly better in offense, because it is much worse in defense than the heavy tank. This is to make all 3 main tanks viable to build, because all 3 have a different focus and use case. We can of course swap these focuses around if players feel there are more realistic approaches, as long as we ensure that all tanks serve a different purpose and have clearly different use cases. That means that some tanks have to have an offensive role, while some may have a defensive role. Same as with the infantry branch. We could make Tank Destroyers defensive and Heavy Tanks offensive focused for example. Or make Medum tanks offensive and Heavy Tanks 1:1.

    5. we will indeed have a solution for this in future events.

    6. will be fixed.

    7. We are currently discussing changing the resource cost model again to something where a unit does not cost every resource. We will see. And yes, resources will be heavily tweaked, and we likely will increase availability of resources in the next Event.

    8. Destroyers have the weakest attack stats vs. land units. So I would not say that they particularly good in it, their stats are rather low compared to other units. If we feel like they are too high, we will decrease them further. Other than that I have read more users thinking it is great that Destroyers to at least little damage to targets on the coast.

    9. I would argue that even in 1.5 a tank army with 1 AA would be slaughtered by multiple Tactical Bombers.
    This said though AA values will still be tweaked.

    10. Building damage displayed in the unit info does not translate 1:1 due to some quirks in the combat mechanics. You can test this also in the old version, Rockets have anti Building damage of 70, but if you hit a province with it, they do at maximum 10% of that value to buildings. This also results in Strat Bombers being pretty bad at their job in the old version, and is the reason why we needed to increase their anti building values. We still have to figure this problem out. When we did, we will of course decrease unit values vs. Buildings again, or give buildings more HP.

    11. Combat in the old version felt rather slow, with battles lasting for 10+ hours, with no status updates for a whole hour each time. That is especially off-putting for new users and is one of the regular feedback we got.

    12.
    Regarding your summary:
    Actually we didnt even implement enough rock-paper-scissors in the current 1.5 version in my book, as we still need to fully incorporate the difference between heavy and light armor in the counter gameplay. And the old 1.5 version had by far not enough rock-paper-scissors elements. Most players focused on a small handful of the same units in their games, because those were the most effective and most other units served similar roles, just with less cost-efficiency. When resources are scarce players will ignore those less cost-efficient units. With 1.5 we try to increase the amount of viable units and give each their own purpose in the game. We are totally not there yet in that regard, but will continue to work on it. We always try to stay historically authentic, but in some areas we really have to make compromises in the sake of gameplay. I would argue that players getting something by intuition is better design than players getting something only after reading ww2 material, which only the minority of players do. If we find historical justification for our changes, even better. But please remember, this is not a 1:1 simulation of WW2, but a strategy game, and we did not have enough viable strategies in the old version. My goal would be that players feel like they are playing a cool game that totally feels like WW2, but that has alot of variety and different strategy, with deep gameplay. By only simulating WW2 we will not get there, and by completely ignoring WW2 we will not get there. Compromises will be made and we will certainly get there to satisfy even your tastes better in the coming versions.

    WayneBo wrote:

    Manpower is required for all building and research.
    Very few options available to increase manpower.
    Infantry still requires the most manpower of any unit.
    Thus, the most basic combat unit is the least likely
    to be recruited.

    I would argue that if you completely ignore Infantry, you are also wasting alot of food, and thus playing less efficiently than a player who makes use of all his resources. Now Infantry is stats wise also much more viable than in the old version. Still we will certainly tweak units and costs in the next versions, especially the manpower bottleneck.

    WayneBo wrote:

    CityOfAngels wrote:

    Destroyers are able to shockingly quickly destroy a coastal city's industry with bombardment (and those buildings are depressingly precious and irreplaceable!)
    Indeed, Destroyers went from NO capability against any ground target,to the super power of shore bombardment.

    Even just level one artillery can devastate buildings:
    +2 damage (less X-factor) vs a Tank Factory with only 5 hit points?
    As already explained in my comment above, the anti building stats in the unit details panel are misleading. Units only deal a tiny fraction of their anti building damage to buildings, and for sure we have to fix this at some point (we will then of course rebalance building hitpoints as well)

    C88 wrote:

    im sick to repeat myself but you completly miss the point here.. versus a decent player u will never find a stack without AA protection and right now you need 2 or 3 aa units to avoid any attack from planes because planes are expensive and loosing them for nothing is a NO GO .The only worth plane to use is strategic one which can destroy the structures from far in order to block the producing of high lvl troops for the enemy. But there is no space for actually any fight for the others planes in this version of the game .
    My comments are not hyperbolic request im just testing the game that you asked for .

    P.S. Its your game and u are free to make it as you want but dont ever think to know the game better then ppl that been playing it for years and at least 8 hours per day.. you know that and thats why you made this test because developing and playing are 2 different things.

    P.S.S. you have been talking about AA but i said that my planes are getting smashed from simply high stack of infranty 5 and +2 AC lvl 1 vs 5 lvl 2 planes ( which are expensive ) so how in the hell i should not be upset that my expensive planes are getting smashed by cheap lvl 1 infranty with guns and 9mm ammo? XD lol come on you cant be serius
    I think the majority of players would agree that Airforce in the old version is still the most dominant strategy, outshadowing every other strategy. If used right, a player focusing on amassing a large airforce cannot lose vs. a ground player, even if that player heavily spams AA. Spamming AA is a huge commitment anyway, as it is a single purpose unit and very reactionary. It leaves the player totally open for ground based attacks, and the AA are not even able to catch the enemy planes. They just scare them off, but he really needs to cover all of his cities and armies (again, huge commitment) with multiple AAs to be safe. And this cost and time think will leave the player open to ground based attacks.
    Even if now airforce is a bit too weak in 1.5 (may be the case?), it is still useful because it fulfills roles that no other unit branch has. No other unit lets you quickly mobilize and move across a country, saving time and cost of building local attacking/defending armies. No other unit lets you ignore roads and enemy fortifications to hit vulnerable cities or units in the back. As long as the enemy does not use air units himself, it is solely the choice of the airforce player when to engage in fights and when his planes get damaged.
    In my book it should be possible to win with different strategies, with every strategy having a weak point. We will make sure Airforce is a viable strategy in 1.5 that is neither too strong nor too weak, and that means we can also still make it stronger in future iterations.

    CityOfAngels wrote:

    I broke this issue out of the list because the list got too long, and this one is really important.

    • Late-game produced infantry is 42x as strong as the 20 you started with? (7x AP and 6x HP) Why?? It would actually make more sense for the last infantry you produced to be weaker than the 4-year veteran survivors, as you're scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of recruits by that point. You seem to have abandoned the general principle that an L4 AT gun would be significantly better than L1, but not 'plate-wearing Knights vs peasants' better. Having the L4 units be 6x or more as strong (factoring in HP) and thus the L1 units being worthless in mid-game seems like it will be very bad for game-play. (Status quo CoW production allows for L1 ATs to be spammed out from any city in desperation as a counter to breakthrough ACs/LTs ravaging. Now teching to high-level ATs at a given city is far too hard to be viable, and L1s have no hope of stopping more advanced units. An L4 LT has 50% more attack but 11x the hp of a L1 AT! In this case that's not terrible from an intuition standpoint, but it is way too exaggerated in terms of realism, and it hurts game-play.

    We will review the strength increase of units and will probably tone that down, going for smaller increases per level than right now. This disparity is only the case when comparing lvl1 to other levels btw, as for example a lvl 5 is only slightly weaker than a lvl 6. Thats because of the linear strength increase, which was indeed not the best choice.

    C88 wrote:

    in this version of the game even infranty and armored cars can stop planes... and again a good player will make AA in day 6 and will mix it with tanks so in the end you will have armored aa and tank destroyers in the same stack so you are cover from infranty ( cuz infranty sucks vs armored ) from tanks ( cuz tank destroyer u know ) and from bombers ( cuz 3 or 4 aa units in a stack can kill like 10 planes with a level higher of researchs ) and thats what im doing in a map where im smashed anything is crossing me.. its not that smart and strategistic hard what im doing and thats the whole problem in this version because in cow you fear planes and you have to adapt your strategy in here you just need tanks and AA armored to litteraly conquer anything! so a noob like you can win vs a smarter player because there is no strategy at all it all ends in who has more troops or more gold.. not even artillery can do much because units are faster now so they will get cloose before actualy get bombed enough from artillery!So an artillery man must build AA to cover his artillery from planes ( but what im saying xD no one will ever make anymore planes ) and then makes anti tank in front to stop the tanks and let the artillery bomb the stack.. but since the lack of resources you cant make enough anti tank and artillery because both use the same resources so u are fucked up :D and tanks wins !
    P.S. lets not forget the crazy defense bonus that armored AA got xD thats some crazy shit because it was not enough to rule on the sky but even to rule on the ground xD
    Just today I read comments from another experienced player who argued that tanks are too weak in 1.5 and artillery being the dominant unit. It is interesting that your view differs greatly from that. It just tells me it is yet too early to really say which units are the best or the worst. The event is live for just some days and most players are still using lvl1 or lvl 2 units. That's why I said I want to read less hyperbolic statements like "unit X is completely useless now" because it is far too early and we have far too less data to make those claims.

    _Pontus_ wrote:

    That is part of the problem.Before with just anybody being invited to be FP - as long as they started and quit enough games w/o a single victory - and not even grasping the beginnings of strategy and tactics, nor having any idea of the roles and application of certain units. "Unfair! My single lone AA regiment couldn't take out 30 Tacs. Not even while being in a level 1 fortress!". It was not any unit being to strong, it was the minds of players being to weak.
    But these comment nonetheless and gave input nonetheless through their FP games.

    And now, with this thread again. People who never got past the first layer of the game and just saw cool units that they imagine should be able to 'this or that', but they never even found the 'I' to click and see what other info there was available than just the basic stats of the unit.
    For such players a Pokemon-styled game is perfect. "See that cool monster I have? It has these stats, given by te devs! Cool hey?"

    But it has no place in a WW2 RT-GS simulation.
    Now facing the Pokemon-like (sucked-out-of-my-left-thumb-kind-of-stats-based-on-nothing) stats, I fear that was caused partly by those comments.

    For me and many other players, units in a WW2 simulation, whether a FPS or GS game, should perform their real life roles as realistically as possible. And tactics should approach realism, as should strategies.

    What I miss now:
    - Economy was very important ... if not everything ... which had a realistic approach to it with logical functions for buildings and varied choices to be made. In the economic management of your country, moral management was an important factor.
    Now, I have hardly any options for improving my economy, besides building IC's. Neither do I have many choices to improve moral, except building weapon factories or barracks (??!!) which I do not want or need or can afford everywhere.
    This lack of options creates one big 'emptiness'.

    - In real life, the Combined Arms approach - developed by the US Forces after landing in Normandy and earlier of some sorts applied by the Third Reich with its Blitzkrieg (it is actually wrong to say 'Germans', because none of what transpired in those days would have been possible without certain specific but also in general the Austrians, only with whom the Third Reich could come about. One a side note: the Germans also did not start the WW1 either; again the Austrians had something to do with that...) - was the ultimate way to successfully win the war on the ground.
    Support to regular front units from the air being the Western way to crush enemy forces, and massive artillery support being the Russian way. Whatever, every unit type having its role to play.
    In the old game, this was pretty well reflected in maps with players (who had gained at least some insight) who did or tried to do what was necessary vs the threat from the air and all other threats from various weaponry types.
    Ofc, vs AI and 'lesser players' the air force was still the weapon of choice, as it is nowadays when fighting noobs like would be powers like ISIS.
    But in general, the right combination of troops solved each and any problem. There was an answer to any type of threat if you were willing and able to commit your think-power to it for a little bit.

    This is no longer so in the Pokemon version of CoW: The out-of-whack unit stats (a defending LT stands no chance whatsoever vs an attacking LT??), the fast production, resource constraints: it forces you to make a limited choice out of the limited possibilities and promotes 1 regiment vs 1 regiment battles. It also promotes attack-attack-attack.
    Very unrealistic and IMO opinion, and the dimw... sorry... 'lesser players' will make again all the wrong choices.
    It has become more confuddling to them; not easier!

    All in all, the game until now, has allowed me to roll up 1 neighbour + all conquest by another neighbor in the first few days. Easy-peasy, because you left me no choice.
    First of all we consider all opinions and we invite players of all levels to contribute here, because in the end the game is for all skill levels and has to work for all types of players. Asking players for their K/D is in our eyes unessecary and will not improve your arguments. What is more important to us is that players explain their reasoning, and everyone can do that.

    This is neither a Pokemon game nor a hardcore WW2 simulation (also not in the old version). We are a strategy game with a great emphasis on history and where possible we try to stay realistic. That's a difference.

    I still argue that in the new version you have more options and more choices of which buildings to build in your provinces. In the old version players usually had the same build-up every game. I saw other players echoing this sentiment. Usually players not agreeing on one thing is a good indicator for balancing, as it means it is usually a good middle ground :D But perhaps it is also still too early to tell.

    Well in the end this is a war game where you can only win by conquering, so rolling up a neighbor is not really a choice per design. Still I would even argue that you have more of a choice in the new balancing, because of the defensive focus of alot of units and because of the power gain of the first levels. While it was usually also the right thing to conquer your neighbours early on in the old version (and was actually easier due to infs not being as def focused), this time you are confronted with the choice: Do I use the superior def stats of my starting units and defend, while doing an economic-boom strategy or a tech-up strategy, to have an advantage in the next days? Or do I try to catch my opponent off-guard and risk my army to secure more resources via conquest early on. I saw very much differing opinions which of these strategy is the best, which also is usually not the worst sign.

    As stated earlier we will rebalance the resources again and make sure players have enough resources to play different strategies and enough possibilities. We will also make the unit stats a bit less "out of whack" in the next version :) The first version was still very rough and will be refined with each iteration. The first iteration was also alot about trying stuff out. We still have to review all opinions and there is even the possibility that we throw out certain stuff again or overhaul certain approaches. We also still have additional features planned for later event version that should make the gameplay deeper (and where I think that they will be less controversial and more liked in general :))

    Also as a final tip: if you word your posts in less provocative and less elitist ways (e.g. dimwits, lesser players, Pokemon-CoW etc.) you have more chances of us actually caring of what you write.
  • freezy wrote:

    1. If we turn nearly every Inf into a defense unit, there is not much variety or options for players focusing on the Inf branch. We want to enable different strategies, therefore we also need different roles within certain branches. From an intuition view point it makes sense to give motorized Inf a more offensive role than regular Inf, and I would say that for most people that intuition is stronger than their historical reasoning.
    A lot is going on in IT which has to with what developers call 'intuitive'; they try to make 'intuitive' UI's etc. for all kinds of devices and apps.
    But how often do people ask themselves "which intuition of which creature is this based on?"?

    A WW2 simulation game is just that and that is why people play it.
    A Purple Monster game is just that and that is why people play it.
    Is there a real difference between playing LoL or WoT? Nope...but some prefer Tanks, others Purple Monsters.
    There is a difference in how units are styled though and what people should be able to expect from them.
    Purple Monsters can have laser beams coming out of their bum; a PZ IV simply shouldn't.
    Purple Monsters can be defined as Attackers and the Pink Ones as defenders; Mech.Infantry is not at that liberty.
    Mech. Inf. being defined as attackers is 'intuitively' entirely wrong according to intuition and according to historical reasoning.

    The confusing thing in this reasoning is, why it would be deemed necessary to change the historical role of a unit, whereas, you could simply add the appropriate unit for such a role?
    Because if any unit can become anything, why not have Purple Monsters Pokemon-CoW?
    Further, I remeber the discussions with public when Paras were being introduced. A lotof cionstructive discussion went into them becoming what they historically were, with stats being adjusted much in that direction...
    How contrary to the lines of discussion now!

    As said, with the current state of things in Pokemon-CoW, lots of units might as well be Purple Ponsters with some magic ability, becoming enormously stronger after their first or second evolution.

    It might be a question of taste or a generation gap, but what I liked about @TheRealCoW was the very good simulation aka realism.

    Not being a 'cold blooded analist', but rather a hot-blooded-gut-feeling-follower with little eye for the exact detail, but a big feeling for the big picture, I do not see how Pokemon-CoW could ever replace The Real CoW (let alone the version from after the' August 28, 2018 update' and before the 'market-diplo-fire settings changes').

    But is it OR is it NOT the intention of Bytro to replace The Real CoW with Pokemon-CoW?
    My gut says it is so, and my gut is 99,9% of the time right, which is what fuels my fury born from fear of losing my favorite game.

    What can Bytro say about this? Is it the intention to scrap The Real CoW and replace it with Pokemon-CoW?

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

  • freezy



    Game Designer


    I think the majority of players would agree that Airforce in the old version is still the most dominant strategy, outshadowing every other strategy. If used right, a player focusing on amassing a large airforce cannot lose vs. a ground player.

    @ freezy / I think your evaluation on said scenario is frankly quite wrong regarding old version as being a person
    very well versed in RTS ect strategy & tactics war gaming that a player focusing on amassing a large airforce
    cannot lose vs a ground player. As i have many many many times over the years have with only using infantry,
    artillery,anti tank, anti air, as 90% to 95% military composition been very successful in over coming said scenario.

    Regards to the new version 1.5 as game designers and development could the foundation of the product
    be any worse as something to tweak and play around with / in your elegant words tweak tweak / in mine NO
    You's really have taken so many steps backwards to enhance the game and monetize that i doubt very much
    this will ever be considerd a grand strategy & tactics game again / or was it ever / NO

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

  • Seems like some of this conversation should be taken somewhere else, I think we should stick to evaluating the functionality and mechanics of this new version which I really like.

    One item I would like to see is a way to upgrade older units by perhaps sending them back for a refit, or a special order type where you would set it to upgrade perhaps paying the difference in resources and a fixed amount of time per level to upgrade to new version (the unit would have to not move etc during this time).

    I am enjoying the this very much great job to everyone in the Dev team and planning team.

    Akulla3D
  • im playing the new game right now. frankly its interesting. im not really minding the changes, just catching up. perhaps the two versions should be kept separate. its like when call of duty came out i loved it but when the new versions came out i hated them.... until i liked them. i always wished i could still play the original COD, until Battlefield came out for xbox 1.
  • freezy wrote:

    I think the majority of players would agree that Airforce in the old version is still the most dominant strategy, outshadowing every other strategy. If used right, a player focusing on amassing a large airforce cannot lose vs. a ground player, even if that player heavily spams AA.
    Freezy, so untrue. So pre-August 2018....
    Since the August 28, 2018 update, which took away a little more of that once truly OP Tac, not a single player focusing on Air Force has made a dent in my armies. My armies dented ... sorry; incorrect.... my armies shredded each and every air force that dared patrolling over them or even dared to outright attack.
    Also after my HC expired, which made it quite a bit more laborious to maintain non-remerging SBDE-honoring troop divisions, players still solely focusing on air force and a few LTs made me cry with laughter.

    If anything was OP - before you took away the usefulness of the HC fire setting 'Agressive' - it was a HC-player making multiple, simultaneously operating, SBDE-respecting armies of 6 SPA+6SPAA+4/5 AC (HP, speedy conquest of emptied points)+a few LTs (for when you didnt pay attention and suddenly needed some land based fighting power).
    You bring your 10 stacks of 5Tacs+5Fighters vs my 5 groups..heck 3 groups sufficed for 10 stacks.
    Why? Because every Tac group performs its individual attack vs all my SPAA+cohort, so each Tac group gets shredded.
    (Did I sit quietly on this? No, I have taught many newer players this answer to the threat from above, to enable them to ward off lazy older players, still counting on the 'blessed' nature of their opponents).

    Indeed, 'the blessed' players and all others who didn't want to put in the effort to learn something and never took the trouble to look at the info behind the prominently displayed 'I' buttons, yes, these players would still get shredded by air force....but then again, these players would also get shredded if I threw merely militia at them.

    But...if indeed it is the 'blessed' public you are catering for, then Pokemon-CoW is absolutely perfect.
    May I then suggest a few things?:

    Purple Monsters you now have plenty.
    Pls also add Red Monsters, Pink Monsters and Green Monsters.
    And after there first evolution, they should become Bi-colored!
    And 2nd evolution = Tri-colored!!
    Yeah!

    Now the question remains: is it the intention of Bytro to scrap The Real CoW and replace it with Pokemon-CoW?

    If that is not the case, I can focus on Pokemon-CoW and see what it is worth, without being hampered by that gut-wrenching feeling that I am actually hammering away at the coffin of The Real CoW.
  • freezy wrote:

    4. Heavy Tanks were also a bit more defense focused in the old version, just not as much. In 1.5 we wanted to exaggerate unit roles a bit to make them clearer to the players and to make tactical movements more important. Being an offensive focused or defensive focused unit matters much more in 1.5 and in turn creates more strategies and maneuvers on the map. The high defensive stats of HTs are the reason why a 1:1 unit like the medium tank is slightly better in offense, because it is much worse in defense than the heavy tank. This is to make all 3 main tanks viable to build, because all 3 have a different focus and use case. We can of course swap these focuses around if players feel there are more realistic approaches, as long as we ensure that all tanks serve a different purpose and have clearly different use cases. That means that some tanks have to have an offensive role, while some may have a defensive role. Same as with the infantry branch. We could make Tank Destroyers defensive and Heavy Tanks offensive focused for example. Or make Medum tanks offensive and Heavy Tanks 1:1.
    Indeed you can make any unit do anything you want, but is that what is asked by players who love to play a RT-GS game in a somewhat realistic WW2 setting with somewhat realistic mechanics, tech-trees, economic development etc.?

    IMO it gives no pass to just think up roles for units, because a certain role should simply be available. That is just creating Purple Monsters and I - for one; but you see there are many more - do not want to play a Purple Monster game.
    I played CoW for the many reasons I have already given many times and which have nothing to do with the fantasy elements you are introducing now.

    Besides all that, there are more roles for the units than just the practical in-battle functionality based on unit stats.
    Roles were also defined by play-style, availability of time, type of map, frequency of log-in etc. One would chose units fitting the type of map, fitting the available time, fitting the play-style while online or for Off-line strategies, etc.

    Take i.e.:
    - all fast, nimble and agile units, like AC, LT, maxed SPA or SPAA (and air force): they suited an active play-style with multiple logins per day and being online a lot, irrespective of their stats-based role. Wanna speed up the game? Use speedy units.
    - all slow, slower and slowest units, like HT, Inf-class troops: they were mostly very suitable in defense (HTs providing lots of HP and kill power; arty providing for a cheap ranged weapon; militia cheap HP; AT cheap AT-capacity).
    But for instance HT's als had an important aggressive role in games where one did NOT log in often and did not spend hours online, but did plan attacks over longer routes. Not speed was of the essence here, nor the specific unit stats predefining its role, but the reliable, durable killpower doing its (break-through) work while one was away.


    All this 'complexity' (if you chose to use it) catered for a multitude of possibilities and thus choices; for freedom to play the game as you saw most fit. With choices in online and offline strategies; for active or inactive game-play.

    For the 'blessed' all this meant nothing of course, but that also wasn't needed for them. This again represented a choice: play with use of all available possibilities or play the 'blessed' way, building what you think is the coolest and remaining ignorant of the wealth of other opportunities.

    No-one was forced to play along predefined lines.
    This went for army-play-styles as well as economic-development.

    For now and as far as I can assess, Pokemon-CoW severely limits this pallet of choices and forces me along a limited number of lines. Both army wise and economic or industrial.
    This may well be intentional; dunnoh how this plays out in monetization schemes or possibly works better for mobile users, but ...heck... it is not working for me and most more true RTGS players.

    Example:
    Player says: "Help, I need to improve moral"
    Pokemons says: "Build weapon factories"
    Player: "Weapon factories? I was thinking casinos, police stations, fortifying the city, beter infrastructure, a theatre, public toilets, public transport ... intuitively, yunno?"
    Pokemon says: "We don't have that here. Weapon factories have been magically given moral improving capabilities".
    Player: ÖK... How about creating more employment w/o the negative connotation of weapons? IC's also have this capability?"
    Pokemon: "NO! Only weapon factories and barracks. Take it or leave it"
    Player: "Errr... so even if I am not going to ever produce some weapon or infantry unit in that godforsaken province, far away from my capital, I am going to build a number of weapon factories and barracks there and level them up. And this will make my people happy?? This somewhat goes against my gut feeling....intuitively, yunno?"
    Pokemon: "Click the damn'd button and do it if you want your moral up! It is the only thing you can do."
    Player: "Okay, okay, Pokemon. Chill pls! But it is weird and counter-intuitive...and I think...."
    Pokemon: "Shut the F up and DO IT! It is what I allow. Don't like it? Pee off then..."
    Player: "Ehh..... Well that offers a choice at least"


    I miss the freedom of choice and I don't know how this can be tweaked away.

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

  • WayneBo wrote:

    Manpower is required for all building and research.
    Very few options available to increase manpower.
    I have not played 1.5 yet (currently working on my 12th CoW game). In CoW, manpower seems to be a function of the population available in the provinces of a nation. Normally the manpower total in a typical CoW scenario is pretty much fixed (e.g. 39 map), because the scenario takes place over a period of a few years- not generations as in Civilization, where you expand a civilization's/nation's territories and settlements/cities over a period of 6,000 years.

    I understand the principle of manpower been required for all buildings and materials. After all, people are the most important asset of any nation- but abundance of resources and cash always helps. So, what are the options to increase manpower, which is an issue brought in this thread by various folks? ... ?(
  • gusv wrote:

    WayneBo wrote:

    Manpower is required for all building and research.
    Very few options available to increase manpower.
    I have not played 1.5 yet (currently working on my 12th CoW game). In CoW, manpower seems to be a function of the population available in the provinces of a nation. Normally the manpower total in a typical CoW scenario is pretty much fixed (e.g. 39 map), because the scenario takes place over a period of a few years- not generations as in Civilization, where you expand a civilization's/nation's territories and settlements/cities over a period of 6,000 years.
    I understand the principle of manpower been required for all buildings and materials. After all, people are the most important asset of any nation- but abundance of resources and cash always helps. So, what are the options to increase manpower, which is an issue brought in this thread by various folks? ... ?(
    This is clearly the wrong thread for you to ask this question, since the current version you're playing is quite a lot different from 1.5. Your only option is to take a closer look at the barracks and realize that they increase the manpower with each level, but keep in mind that the barracks will consume food while doing so. If you have other questions, head on over to the help section of the forum (Questions and answers).

    If you are however asking on how to increase manpower production in 1.5 and I have misunderstood you:
    You can increase manpower "production" by building more industrial complexes in cities and rural industrial complexes in, well, rural provinces.
  • gusv wrote:

    WayneBo wrote:

    Manpower is required for all building and research.
    Very few options available to increase manpower.
    I have not played 1.5 yet (currently working on my 12th CoW game). In CoW, manpower seems to be a function of the population available in the provinces of a nation. Normally the manpower total in a typical CoW scenario is pretty much fixed (e.g. 39 map), because the scenario takes place over a period of a few years- not generations as in Civilization, where you expand a civilization's/nation's territories and settlements/cities over a period of 6,000 years.
    I understand the principle of manpower been required for all buildings and materials. After all, people are the most important asset of any nation- but abundance of resources and cash always helps. So, what are the options to increase manpower, which is an issue brought in this thread by various folks? ... ?(
    Somehow the DEV didn't put up the game long enough for some more enthusiastic people (especially those who already in a game) to try out. So they can hear more ideas and comments.
  • To continue my thread about early gameplay:

    So it is day 5 for my game now as Romania, I have the most provincesin the game (56) and had the strongest army day 4. I launched an attack into aplayer about 30 mins before the end of day 3 and so far have taken him out andalmost another player too. Casualties are the following:

    Ukraine - 34,650
    Greater Romania - 589

    And

    (thisplayer had previously taken a beating by another)
    Greater Romania - 134
    Communist Russia - 2,812

    This tome signifies that I probably could have attacked early on day 3 as my armyclearly was strong enough. Ukraine built many lvl 1 units whereas I only builtlvl 2 ones. This game me a HUGE advantage (as you can clearly see). I waiteduntil lvl 2 troops so began to build my army after about 11-12 hours after day2 so it took about 1.5 days to build up my army to quite a decent point (I had10 arty, 6-7 LTs and 2 ATs). After crushing a player who utilised lvl 1 troopsit is clear to me my decision to skip building any troops day 1 was a good one.However, I do not believe this was intended given the super fast productiontime of lvl 1 troops. For this reason I believe it strengthens my previousargument of having lvl 2 troops unlock on day 3,4 or 6. Given it took me about1.5 days to build up a relatively strong army I would say lvl 2 on day 3 couldwork. I do believe the progression from lvl 1-2-3 etc is too much and perhaps a50% increase instead of 100% would be better and more realistic/better forbalance.

    Thiswould have enabled me to begin my attack probably day 3 (I will assume 2 daysto build up as I would not have had as many rss stockpiled from day 1) I dohowever believe additional starting rss, esp cash (needs WAY more, perhaps goto 200k) and an additional 10k goods, 5k food and 5k oil and metal would benice to try in the next patch as I think building up the economy day 1 is alsoimportant. I have spoken to another in my game and we both agree the start istoo slow and quite boring (given I had to wait about 4 days to do anything) Myproposed research times along with rss amounts would aim for the possibility ofa day 2-3 attack being possible (if you want to build up more that is yourchoice, but atm it is not really a possibility)

    I reallylike the faster lvl 2 troop times but having to wait 1.5 days for it was notvery exciting, given you wanted to make the early game more exciting, thecurrent times have kind of done the opposite as lvl 1 troops are just not worthgetting when lvl 2 come only 1 day later and are about 2x as strong.

    So fararty has been VERY strong and successful, my LTs have done very well but enemydid not build any AT. I will begin building planes on day 6 to begin testingthem. I have so far however noticed that during my attack I did not have enoughrss to build any ab to send my int to scout. As such I think the rss for ab isa little too high. Also the 30 minute refuelling time I believe is too high.(Yes lvl 2 makes it less, (right? It actually doesn’t say so) but having to payfor lvl 2 abs all the time along with the increased plane cost really makesthem harder to use) That is all I will say regarding planes for now as I havenot tested them enough.

    Manpower has been a HUGE issue. I now have the most provinces and it is still my largestbottleneck and really think either manpower costs should be lowered, or our manpower production should be higher. I understand the reasons for making everything cost it, but right now it is too much of a bottle neck. I am alsostruggling for goods (I have a lvl 3 IC in my double and lvl 1 IC in single good province) But as I am building arty this does make sense. (Although I dothink goods production should be boosted a bit) as I am not a coder I don’tknow how difficult it would be, but would an overall 5-10% production increase of goods in all provinces be possible? I would think starting with a relativelysmall number to see if it has an effect helps with that. Rares are going to bea HUGE issue for planes as despite not really using them for troops I only have3k of them atm. I think either a decrease in rare cost for planes or increasein production will be required but I will investigate this further when I getfurther into plane use.

    Overall,I like the concept of the faster production times, but with the current systemit actually slowed down the early game instead of sped it up. I hope if youimplement my changes or something similar, I believe it will at least speed itup and make it more enjoyable, whether it is enough/too much is yet to bedetermined. In its current form it is a slower and IMO worse system thancurrent, but with the changes to speed I believe it would become a superior oneto the one we have. So currently good signs but definitely needs tweaking.

    Normally at this point I would have taken out 2-3 nations and my economy would be awhole lot larger. My ally (a fellow staff member) has taken over almost 1nation (due to it being further away than my target) and their economy is smaller than mine. In comparable games they normally would have taken out 1-3nations by this point and they also believe the start is too slow.

    To quickly sum up my main recommendations:
    - Changethe starting day of lvl 2 troops to day 3,4 or 6.
    - Start with 200k cash, 10k more goods, 5k more metal and oil to enable building sand troops for day 1
    - Increase manpower production/decrease manpower costs

    My minor recommendations/ones that need more testing:
    - Decrease AB cost (goods and rares) and planes cost (rares for planes)
    - Increase goods and rare / decrease good/rare costs overall
    - Decrease the lvl progression of troops to a 50% increase rather than a 100% one. (Or somewhere in between).

    Hopefully this all makes sense.
    Torpedo28000
    Main Administrator
    EN Support Team | Bytro Labs Gmbh
  • There has been a LOT of discussions around AA and planes so here is my stance/take on it. I will be looking at it in a slightly different way so maybe this will change some minds/incentivise some new thinking. Enjoy the read lol

    I will firstly state that much of my thinking is based on hypotheticals in the 1.5 update as im yet to use planes much. But it is based off lots of game experience and testing in the current version.

    Is AA too strong? Are planes too weak? Well in this update I do think AA has been over buffed and Planes weakened. But for planes mostly in that they are too expensive from observations and AA yes is too cheap/strong, but I will be putting forward an argument that is I think a little different from others reasoning for the outcry, rather than the whole "my strat has been nerfed and its not fair" I will be looking at the impact of their nerfing/the buffing of AA and offering reasons for lowering the AA ability of AA, along with offering what I think will force further unit diversity… and possibly a better solution to countering planes than more AA.

    Rather than using AA for plane defence I would personally rather see planes being encouraged for it.

    The next bit is going to be simplified a little bit just for ease of arguments sake. So take what I say with a slight grain of salt in its simplicity, but against new-average players (which is the majority of users) this will hold completely true. Just so players know where my experience is regarding what im about to write. I am lvl 64, K/D with a 3.79 and a win/loss of currently 48% (52% when I win my current games) - not including any previous wins from team /internal games (as they don’t/didn’t give stat wins), also I've won 7/8 of my 100 maps. I think this gives me enough experience and skill to know what im talking about with my generalisations, how players work/think and offering game solutions.

    My current main strategy utilises the following units:

    Tactical bombers, interceptors, strategic bombers, naval bombers (all in even proportions, with perhaps an additional few stacks of tacs/ints), Light tanks, SPA, SPAA, sometimes MT (I am experimenting more with this, but generally I don’t use them much), motorised infantry, rockets, AT and artillery.

    I would say this is quite a diverse group of units with research not always keeping up. I would say I am a primary plane user, but I love my SPA stacks and have been increasingly using them more and more, I am playing a game now with only SPA units to try it, and 0 planes, and its going very well and while slower than planes, it is a heck of a lot more reliable as it can do everything, and nothing can really counters it super effectively, but it is kind of boring as I set troops to march and come back hours later with a few-0 losses and haven't had to do much strategic thinking,so I will switch back to my everything stacks due to them just being more fun to use. I haven't faced large plane use however, but I do have SPAA and AA units researched and trained in case, although if I encounter a large plane user I will build planes.

    I will get back to these units later.

    Currently in version 1 I would say there are 2 main types of successful strategies I have observed: Planes and artillery.

    Now artillery is then split into infantry and armoured (SPA), with infantry being very slow and armoured being the more favourable late game due it its increased speed. But the core strategy is the same.

    Now ofc you can use a hybrid of all 3, and I believe that this is the better way to do it, but the point still stands of 2 core strategies and 3 real different units that are used.

    With the new SBDE stack limits of 20 total (as oppose to 8 per unit) - (BTW I think this is great and will add a whole lot of creativity and diverse different stacks now) it is yet to be observed on its impact upon the game and how it will change stacks, but the core principle of arty stacks with their counters I believe will stay the same.

    Artillery use is simple, you start with your artillery which does the damage from afar, you then add some extra HP to the stack as they suck at defending with either infantry (inf) or tanks to avoid the enemy artillery easily hitting you. The enemy has tanks? Well just chuck some cheap AT on, planes? Well chuck again some cheap AA and your good to go! These 4-5 units are all you will be needing really for the rest of your game and it does not require any deviation from this nor will you require any units from other branches. You can keep building up these relatively cheap stacks on continue marching on. Now AA is pretty good, is it amazing? No and it can be countered. But for the most part it is a great cheap unit to build to counter air when you forget/don’t want to build it.


    The way planes work is simple, bomb your enemies and then clean up their land. If the enemy uses pretty much anything but planes and AA/SPAA your good, easy from there. When however they bring in AA/SPAA it becomes much more difficult and ultimately when 8x AA/ 6xSPAA are added to the artillery stacks it is challenging to fight these stacks. You can throw more planes at it or build some of your own SPA/arty stacks (this is what I do) and continue on but at a slower pace, and depends on the enemy stacks perhaps begin losing to this new addition of AA. It can become quite annoying as 8 cheap units add some serious danger now compared to your expensive air that now cannot do much. The shift from weak to powerful stacks is HUGE and happens fast. But now the enemy can neutralise your planes with only 8 new cheap units! The enemy can continue on with their solely artillery/SPA and without planes while you now should build your own SPA/arty stacks, indicating that artillery is quite strong as you don’t really have to change much to counter planes/other troops.

    Now ofc there are ways to counter AA with planes, enough of them can do that, but cost-cost, this is not the most effective, and it does often lead to larger comparative costs for the plane user. But ultimately AA is not the best way to counter effective plane use. (I will get to this later) But in a nut shell, this is where planes get their criticism for being "too strong". You need to mega stack/for a large air stack to attack you, fortify and/or rocket those planes/ the ABs and GG their planes are no more. But do new-average players really know this? No, so they assume AA is enough, which it against experts is not. This leads to what can new players do against air that is simple… use planes to counter planes? But with AA looking so strong it is not the first choice. But the vast majority of players don’t solely use planes, so the concept of mass planes beating everything is overdone. I use planes, but in conjunction with other troops.

    Now why am I talking about this? Well because in the new version it is aimed at diversity of stacks and units. Artillery stacks are not going to change and you only require a few troops to use them. Plane stacks do have a simple and cheap counter already, which means that to use planes, you also need to/ really should be using some SPA stacks. Now the argument of this is enough planes will be enough, and sure, maybe. But given the new updates single rss expense for certain troops, it will be a HUGE waste not to spend those goods and metal. So unit diversity will occur from this as well. The necessity of SPA units will force users to use them, and the spare goods/metal will further encourage it. Additionally, planes have become very expensive and their speed reduced (longer refuelling time), which will further encourage SPA use.

    Arty stacks on the other hand, well metal and a good portion of rares for those armoured fodder units, goods for all the infantry units, this will leave some room for some planes, but not many of them given the high rare cost of HTs. You will have a few rares left over, but due to the fact that planes are not really necessary for these armies, planes will take a back seat and you will spend your extra rares on them when you get them, enabling maybe a small token air force to scout and harass lone units with, but nothing substantial. The nerfing of planes (for reasons I stated above) will mean that planes will be even less important and sort after than currently.

    Now what does this long rant mean? Well I think it shows how the new resource system and current game mechanics will not really change SPA stacks, if anything it will make them stronger as AA does more damage and thus not encourage the unit diversity you want and I think is needed.

    Now to get back to why plane use leads to further diversity? Well from the units I use atm you can see I use a large variety of units, but notice 0 AA or SPAA. Why is this? BECAUSE planes are better at countering planes than AA (planes now have a terrible air defence and stronger air attack values, leaving them unattended means if the enemy's planes can find them they will attack and inflict devastating damage - yet currently this will not be fully utilised as players will switch to using AA and not planes, meaning the difference in attack/defensive AA values are not used, but also showing how planes are WAY better at countering planes), and they can assist in more damage output too! AA is defensive and used in stacks to scare off planes. Is this a good thing tho? NO!!! Instead if using any planes, you can build a few AA and completely forget this branch of the game. I am able to counter planes with my planes and counter SPA units with my SPA and planes. Additionally, I am able to attack with BOTH SPA and planes. I believe this is a far better method and it is the reason why I think AA is too strong, it encourages players to simply use them instead of an entire group of units. Therefore, if AA was nerfed, and I mean really nerfed, it would do 2 things:

    1. Encourage and actually make planes weaker, yes weaker because more users would use planes! And as I said, planes are better at countering planes than AA. Like Freezy keeps saying (which is true) with planes you can choose when and where you attack, well with planes as your counter to planes, now you can counter the enemy planes more effectively! Not only are planes just better at fighting planes, they also enable you to attack and use the initiative when countering enemy planes. (Especially now that the attack and defence values of planes are SOOOO different), This means the one who uses the initiative and seeks out the enemy has an advantage. Currently you don’t really need to use planes to counter air, AA is pretty much good enough, now for new-average players vs new-average players this works. But when new-average players vs experienced guys, they learn that their AA isnt quite good enough (because they cannot defend in every location) In the few stacks they are in, planes cant really touch them, but unless they are in every stack, planes will kill those less protected stacks and you can attack in those exposed locations and stall out the enemy SPAwithAA stacks with your own. Now you can keep buffing AA until planes cannot touch them at all, something that is kind of being done atm (not completely, but AA got buffed and planes nerfed), which discourages unit diversification as you 1, don’t need to build planes to counter planes, and 2, planes are weaker so using them is less useful to counter in the first place! And well they are weaker so using them will be done less.
    1. It will encourage further unit diversity which is something that this update seems to focus on. By 'forcing' users to build planes to counter planes, it will mean that the air branch is both better countered, and utilised. And it will even be more realistic! In WW2, did armies just build a bunch of AA and no planes? Ahh no. (I don’t think so, im no history export)
    Planes would no longer be able to move around the map when ever and how ever they want, with both sides searching to find the enemy stack, but if the enemy is able to find a ground stack, unprotected, they can attack the stack, and likely wipe it. BUT with the changing of attack and defence values, the risk of leaving planes patrolling when they are not being watched by the user is MUCH more dangerous. A few attacks from planes will kill planes, again demonstrating that planes should be used against planes, not AA! An ideal stack will be ground WITH planes. Planes will be shock troops, used when your online and hidden when your offline. Ground can be used at both times, and unless your going to play 24/7 (if you do than you will win with any strat) Ground will be needed, if you only use AA, well I can leave my planes patrolling as nothing will attack them.

    AA could then be used more realistically, you can put a few in your stack, and COMBINED with planes, these stacks will be safer from plane attacks, if planes do attack they will have to face AA and planes against them.

    I believe this update is focusing on unit diversity as one thing. I think this is a good thing, but atm it is making artillery armies too strong/easy to use and planes (not just plane armies, but planes in general) less useful.

    I hope that this will enable players and the devs to see things a little differently. Maybe it wont, but hopefully it will.

    Will this update in terms of just AA and planes impact my strategy much? Well yes a bit, but I will still use my SPA stacks against enemy SPA stacks, and I will try using planes to see how effective they are, but it may cause me to use AA, and as such neglect planes.

    Are planes strong currently? Yes, if not countered correctly, and one reason for this is because of AA. AA is good at countering air, but it will never be perfect, it will either be too strong and as such planes cannot go near it, forcing users to build AA in every stack (how boring) and as such make planes useless, or it will not be strong enough leading to planes ruling the game. However, if AA was weaker, I actually believe planes may become less powerful as they would be properly counted.

    I will be interested to hear others thought, perhaps I am missing something important as to why this idea of weakening AA is not a good one.

    This would be a big change, but 1.5 is a big change, I think it could help counter “planes being too strong” with a fair counter, if you don’t build planes you get killed by them, but if you do you can effectively counter them. This will “force” more unit diversity as you will NEED planes to counter planes, but at the same time make planes more useful. Your enemy neglects their air? Great your air will slaughter them, both player build air, it will be a big cat and mouse to kill the others air, in combination with the air attack/ defence changes, this would fit it very nicely and while both sides have equalish air power - the ground will be the theatre of war until one can gain air supremacy. This would limit air power to when users are online. Limiting players being able to bomb enemies for hours without consequence.

    The big risk is that if your always online then less to counter air, but well users who play 24/7 or close to that win anyway, so for the few that do I don’t think it’s worth keeping AA strong just for that.
    I do think refuel times need to be lowered for this to work tho. Planes should be able to move around the battlefield quickly and ready to counter and retreat.
    Torpedo28000
    Main Administrator
    EN Support Team | Bytro Labs Gmbh