Hans A. Pils wrote:
I so far haven't said anything about the centralization of resource and unit production into urban provinces. Can somebody from Bytro explain why that was done??
The only argument I read from you is "realism". Well, it's true that urban centres generated more money, goods and manpower. But about the other resources rather the opposite was the case. CoW1.0 reflects this well, while 1.5 exaggerates the importance of urban centres very much.
And unit production? OK, production of the most heavy units required heavy steel industry in the vicinity, which weeell, yes, could rather be found in the major urbanized areas. But restricting production of all units to the few major cities? Training infantry only in major cities ? And why shouldn't we be able to raise production centres for light/medium units in one of the medium cities, of which there are enough in the so-called rural provinces in CoW? Why not construct planes in Newcastle? Why not build artillery or light tanks in Hannover, Nürnberg, Liverpool or Florence, which are just very few examples of places that are rural provinces in both CoW1.0 and 1.5.
So that much about realism. And I also cannot see how that centralization should help in terms of gameplay. I think it only makes maps and the game as a whole more single-sided and boring.
Hans A. Pils wrote:
What I do understand better now is the progression depending on level that 1.5 introduces to build times. For buildings this is clearly positive, that much is clear, no need to talk about that. For units it's not realistic, but improves gameplay: In CoW1.0 it's striking you cannot produce much at the beginning, while in late game there's so much to do you cannot care about everything unless playing as full-time job. Although I personally never found this disturbing (before the "Market overhaul" update you could fill the void during the first days well by trading, analysing what the others do in order to know how you want to position yourself diplomatically and by messaging others to learn about them and to build up first diplomatic relations), I must understand that for many players that's a major issue. Which for sure is tackled by 1.5 successfully - I have to admit that much.
So I now agree to production times of high-level units being a bit higher than of level1-units. I now agree in this aspect, realism should step back in order to allow better gameplay - also because industrial capacity / the ability to produce many units in short time should be an important factor also in later game phases.
But what I still totally cannot content myself with is progression in production & upkeep costs of units. Neither with a progression for their damage output that's higher than in CoW1.0, nor with a high HP increase.
I understand that all of these pursue the same purpose as described in the first paragraph (above), but are too badly unrealistic.
I'll soon create a comprehensive proposal of how units and buildings should be balanced in order to have them realistic, offer many challenging strategic decisions to the players and to let the number of possible production orders not to grow so immensely over time as it does in CoW1.0.
One idea I have for the latter is to:
* keep the SBDE system as in 1.0 counting per unit type (and not per total number of units in a stack),
* make it very very strict - only two units of same type (regardless of their level) can go in the same stack with 100% SBDE,
* introduce a new "Tactics" research tree with the following techs:
1.: "Army command": 2 levels - each level increases SBDE limit for infantry units except AA/AT/arty by +1.
2.: "Ordnance command": 3 levels - each level increases SBDE limit for AA/AT/arty by +1.
3.: "Airforce command": 2 levels - each level increases SBDE limit for air units by +1.
4.: "Armour command": 2 levels - each level increases SBDE limit for air units by +1.
5.: "Navy command": 3 levels - each level increases SBDE limit for AA/AT/arty by +1.
These should be very costly and time-consuming to research, but would enable players who don't want to manage many small stacks give the option to build large stacks in mid or late game.
Certainly that would require some programming, but would be perfect.
Thanks for the suggestion, but old SBDE per unit type is not coming back. First it is broken when having multiple unit levels of the same type on the field (as we have in 1.5) as each level counts as different unit in the code, secondly it is hard to visualize and to understand (in comparison, a stack limit for the whole stack we can very well visualize on the map soon), and thirdly it still can be easily circumvented by splitting unit. Not a deep mechanic, just arbitrary complexity.