Day 6 as Romania
Trying to look at this as a new game and NOT a process of development that will wreck The Real CoW as most of the 'un-blessed' players love it...
Do not expect a dry and cold blooded analysis from me, though. I am not like that
The game is still sporting 9 actives (though some are walking dead) out of 22 starting.
I chose to develop economy first, as this should always pay off, while producing lvl1 troops with remaining res.
The deliberation behind that: increased cash and res output would likely enable me to catch up on development, whereas in the meanwhile I would crush a neighbor and increase my economy significantly (compared to building).
I did not manage to be very active in the first 1-2 days, missing a lot of consecutive building/production moments.
A case of HC-pushing?
Yugoslavia was an ideal target, as interference from the north by Poland was unlikely.
Ukraine I deemed no problem, having super-bad stats.
Turkey would go for Bulgaria, but also with 'blessed player' stats.
I put Yugo on embargo basically immediately, to prevent being looked bad upon by AI later.
Attacked Yugo end of day 3. Crushed it. Not that I went fast; I was again not too active in the map, bc of having to lambaste the devs about Pokemon-Cow on the forum and some other things.
Simply concentrated troops available in 3 groups and attacked from 3 points, rolling over the spread out defenders. I had my 'given' troops followed by newly built artillery, which was helpful as soon as my 3 groups had to split up to cover more land.
Day 4, before I had fully finished with Yugo, Turkey grabbed some rsource province from Yugo, which my arty had already emptied and 2 Inf regiments were waiting to take it. But I wasnt there (again) and when returning to the map, I see my 2 regiments standing on now Turkish terrain.
Gave Turkey the opportunity to make amends, which he did not, while being arrogant about taking parts of 'my Yugo'.
Tant pis. Logically put Turkey on embargo ASAP.
Somewhere between day 4 and 5 started kicking Turkey out of Yugo, Bulgaria and Greece, taking his capital, which only had a few fighters and Tacs ... on the ground... (sigh).
Met no meaningful resistance. Why he thought he could step into Yugo with this kind of war preparations, is a mystery to me. But then again, I noticed he had 115 games with 4 solo victories, even though he plays since January 2017.
About day change to day 6, Turkey's ally Poland stepped across the border. Apparently also through Czech Republic...which gave him right of way that quick (...used to be at least 7 days from map start. Blast ... that is in a different game. Sorry).
Anyways, I was already producing some level 2 reinforcements and had a force northeast to go towards Poland, but quickly noticed how the increased speed, the humongous HP pool of Purple Monster units in Pokemon-CoW and the more specialized attack stats of LTs vs a mixed defenders supported by a few artillery work out quite differently than assumed.
Not just differently, but also unrealistically; this clearly favors the 'blessed' state of play: throw a few armies with LTs at your opponent and go away for the rest of the day and trust you will have results, w/o even knowing what you opponent has on your planned route.
Now realizing the difference, a tactical retreat was in place, shielding the artillery units with whatever I had (only now noticing the truly laughable def-stats of my LTs). Micromanaging the retreat as in The Real CoW: arty moved as far as the tick left time, fired and moved further back.
Made a stance at Debrecen vs the Northwestern invasion group, pulling in ACs for reinforcement and artillery from all corners. Suffered some losses, but defeated the invader.
On the Northeast, 2 groups invaded behind each other, but were progressing so slowly through my mountains, that my tactically retreating artillery with Inf support (which was actually en-route to Poland) pulverized them before reaching Suceava.
A 4th group of 8 Inf, coming south in-between of the 2 more diverse and threatening groups, is currently trapped and dying somewhere, though it will cost me another LT probably.
In the meanwhile my economy is by far the largest and my army by far the strongest.
I have no immediate threats anymore on day 6.
Yugo is gone:
---- Groot-Roemenië - 3,986
---- Joegoslavië - 19,590 (kills 90% from overpowering concentration of troops; not yet from arty, which came late to the party)
Neighbouring Ukraine is inactive since day 3 and Italy inactive since day end of day 4.
Turkey has given up (as he doubtlessly always does) and is now being invaded by me and a friendly:
---- Turkije - 12,840
---- Groot-Roemenië - 1,356
Poland's army is in a fairly poor state and so probably the moral of its leader, while I am now turning to take over Poland:
--- Polen - 18,556
--- Groot-Roemenië - 4,173 (higher casualties due to weak prepared def)
Surprises noticed:
- the laughable and unrealistic def-stats of the LTs
- high HP on everything
- the fairly small damage of artillery compared to the HP pool of other units
- the total shortage of everything
Noted as not-cool:
- must have HC or miss out on many crucial production/building moments or don't sleep
- battle-tick 30 minutes, faster units, fast production and build times, thus fast spending of res&cash: everything fast... except res&cash production.
- the enormous increase in unit stats per level; unrealistic
- the lacking fast lanes are the only immediately noticeable difference with S1 (well, and the color scheme), so do I need to play Pokemon-CoW at all, being a compromise between S1 (with its true innovations) and The Real CoW?
IMO opinion the game further only leaves 2 opposing options, which effect both military and economy:
(1) sit back and build up ... thus attack later
(2) attack, attack, attack! ... and then having to sit back.
Option 1 is rather boring and will not do good for new player retention. Your are only fighting the very unexciting res&cash shortage and while sitting back, you can't go away, bc you might have an aggressive neighbor like me.
Also the industrial and economic development choices are not very exciting, because not a single building has anything to do with another building; there is no interaction. There is no benefit to smart building development, because there is none. Basically all is single purpose. Just lose blocks that you must have somewhere in your country.
And these blocks sometimes have very weird and unnatural effects, whereas an equal building type for a different purpose does not have that effect i.e.:
- a weapon factory increases moral; an IC (= also a factory) however not.
- a barrack increases moral, but not manpower ... which in turn an IC does?
- infrastructure improvement does nothing but speed up movement, whereas in real life it is key for economic development and increased well-being of the population
(btw, for inspiration, the devs could look at another RTS game that did all that really well: The Real CoW)
Option 2 implies a need for über-onlineness, because of everything going fast.
This will only be attractive to a certain kind of player, probably lacking the stamina to play the round to an end though.
While it all feels unbalanced, this may change a bit with tweaks. It is a new game after all.
But overall, the new game also feels like a compromise. I am all in all much more positive about S1, sporting some real innovations like fast lanes, cool units like Zeppelins, Flame throwers etc., and an interesting map-concept as in the Flanders Front, which makes it worth a try. (though The Great War map is somewhat boring)
In Pokemon-CoW, the limited (simple) choices on country management level, as well as the constraints to military development, simply do not entice me.
Let alone the unrealistic feeling of it all.
Trying to look at this as a new game and NOT a process of development that will wreck The Real CoW as most of the 'un-blessed' players love it...
Do not expect a dry and cold blooded analysis from me, though. I am not like that
The game is still sporting 9 actives (though some are walking dead) out of 22 starting.
I chose to develop economy first, as this should always pay off, while producing lvl1 troops with remaining res.
The deliberation behind that: increased cash and res output would likely enable me to catch up on development, whereas in the meanwhile I would crush a neighbor and increase my economy significantly (compared to building).
I did not manage to be very active in the first 1-2 days, missing a lot of consecutive building/production moments.
A case of HC-pushing?
Yugoslavia was an ideal target, as interference from the north by Poland was unlikely.
Ukraine I deemed no problem, having super-bad stats.
Turkey would go for Bulgaria, but also with 'blessed player' stats.
I put Yugo on embargo basically immediately, to prevent being looked bad upon by AI later.
Attacked Yugo end of day 3. Crushed it. Not that I went fast; I was again not too active in the map, bc of having to lambaste the devs about Pokemon-Cow on the forum and some other things.
Simply concentrated troops available in 3 groups and attacked from 3 points, rolling over the spread out defenders. I had my 'given' troops followed by newly built artillery, which was helpful as soon as my 3 groups had to split up to cover more land.
Day 4, before I had fully finished with Yugo, Turkey grabbed some rsource province from Yugo, which my arty had already emptied and 2 Inf regiments were waiting to take it. But I wasnt there (again) and when returning to the map, I see my 2 regiments standing on now Turkish terrain.
Gave Turkey the opportunity to make amends, which he did not, while being arrogant about taking parts of 'my Yugo'.
Tant pis. Logically put Turkey on embargo ASAP.
Somewhere between day 4 and 5 started kicking Turkey out of Yugo, Bulgaria and Greece, taking his capital, which only had a few fighters and Tacs ... on the ground... (sigh).
Met no meaningful resistance. Why he thought he could step into Yugo with this kind of war preparations, is a mystery to me. But then again, I noticed he had 115 games with 4 solo victories, even though he plays since January 2017.
About day change to day 6, Turkey's ally Poland stepped across the border. Apparently also through Czech Republic...which gave him right of way that quick (...used to be at least 7 days from map start. Blast ... that is in a different game. Sorry).
Anyways, I was already producing some level 2 reinforcements and had a force northeast to go towards Poland, but quickly noticed how the increased speed, the humongous HP pool of Purple Monster units in Pokemon-CoW and the more specialized attack stats of LTs vs a mixed defenders supported by a few artillery work out quite differently than assumed.
Not just differently, but also unrealistically; this clearly favors the 'blessed' state of play: throw a few armies with LTs at your opponent and go away for the rest of the day and trust you will have results, w/o even knowing what you opponent has on your planned route.
Now realizing the difference, a tactical retreat was in place, shielding the artillery units with whatever I had (only now noticing the truly laughable def-stats of my LTs). Micromanaging the retreat as in The Real CoW: arty moved as far as the tick left time, fired and moved further back.
Made a stance at Debrecen vs the Northwestern invasion group, pulling in ACs for reinforcement and artillery from all corners. Suffered some losses, but defeated the invader.
On the Northeast, 2 groups invaded behind each other, but were progressing so slowly through my mountains, that my tactically retreating artillery with Inf support (which was actually en-route to Poland) pulverized them before reaching Suceava.
A 4th group of 8 Inf, coming south in-between of the 2 more diverse and threatening groups, is currently trapped and dying somewhere, though it will cost me another LT probably.
In the meanwhile my economy is by far the largest and my army by far the strongest.
I have no immediate threats anymore on day 6.
Yugo is gone:
---- Groot-Roemenië - 3,986
---- Joegoslavië - 19,590 (kills 90% from overpowering concentration of troops; not yet from arty, which came late to the party)
Neighbouring Ukraine is inactive since day 3 and Italy inactive since day end of day 4.
Turkey has given up (as he doubtlessly always does) and is now being invaded by me and a friendly:
---- Turkije - 12,840
---- Groot-Roemenië - 1,356
Poland's army is in a fairly poor state and so probably the moral of its leader, while I am now turning to take over Poland:
--- Polen - 18,556
--- Groot-Roemenië - 4,173 (higher casualties due to weak prepared def)
Surprises noticed:
- the laughable and unrealistic def-stats of the LTs
- high HP on everything
- the fairly small damage of artillery compared to the HP pool of other units
- the total shortage of everything
Noted as not-cool:
- must have HC or miss out on many crucial production/building moments or don't sleep
- battle-tick 30 minutes, faster units, fast production and build times, thus fast spending of res&cash: everything fast... except res&cash production.
- the enormous increase in unit stats per level; unrealistic
- the lacking fast lanes are the only immediately noticeable difference with S1 (well, and the color scheme), so do I need to play Pokemon-CoW at all, being a compromise between S1 (with its true innovations) and The Real CoW?
IMO opinion the game further only leaves 2 opposing options, which effect both military and economy:
(1) sit back and build up ... thus attack later
(2) attack, attack, attack! ... and then having to sit back.
Option 1 is rather boring and will not do good for new player retention. Your are only fighting the very unexciting res&cash shortage and while sitting back, you can't go away, bc you might have an aggressive neighbor like me.
Also the industrial and economic development choices are not very exciting, because not a single building has anything to do with another building; there is no interaction. There is no benefit to smart building development, because there is none. Basically all is single purpose. Just lose blocks that you must have somewhere in your country.
And these blocks sometimes have very weird and unnatural effects, whereas an equal building type for a different purpose does not have that effect i.e.:
- a weapon factory increases moral; an IC (= also a factory) however not.
- a barrack increases moral, but not manpower ... which in turn an IC does?
- infrastructure improvement does nothing but speed up movement, whereas in real life it is key for economic development and increased well-being of the population
(btw, for inspiration, the devs could look at another RTS game that did all that really well: The Real CoW)
Option 2 implies a need for über-onlineness, because of everything going fast.
This will only be attractive to a certain kind of player, probably lacking the stamina to play the round to an end though.
While it all feels unbalanced, this may change a bit with tweaks. It is a new game after all.
But overall, the new game also feels like a compromise. I am all in all much more positive about S1, sporting some real innovations like fast lanes, cool units like Zeppelins, Flame throwers etc., and an interesting map-concept as in the Flanders Front, which makes it worth a try. (though The Great War map is somewhat boring)
In Pokemon-CoW, the limited (simple) choices on country management level, as well as the constraints to military development, simply do not entice me.
Let alone the unrealistic feeling of it all.
especially when my units is powerful than the enemy and still get beaten.
return nuclear research to research tree.
